The Russian Challenge

Recommendations

Info

The Russian Challenge A War of Narratives and Arms In their masterful study The Menace of Unreality, Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss depict Russia’s information offensive in the West as a potent synergy of innuendo, false analogies, non sequitur and contradiction. 136 Yet this might also serve as a commentary on how Russia disinforms itself. The synergy is regularly refreshed by the elements of truth that it doubtless contains. Reality checks, where they have occurred, have led to a redrawing of lines rather than a reexamination of underlying assumptions. The Kremlin has difficulty understanding that Europe’s divisions are not objective facts defined by immutable political fault-lines, but realities subject to change. Putin is also temperamentally averse to the idea that for Europe’s elites, rules matter and partnership with Russia requires mutual trust as much as material interest. His interpretation of the West’s motivations and agenda assumed that Europe’s attachment to the post-Cold War system was as cynical as his own. Owing to these faulty premises, he was unprepared for the alienation of Angela Merkel and the reinforcement of transatlantic links. Thus the EU’s adoption of Tier 3 sanctions under German leadership and in unison with the United States came as a complete surprise. But arguably Putin’s greatest error was to underestimate the resilience of Ukraine. Two months after the Kremlin declared that ‘Ukraine is ours’, Yanukovych fled in disgrace, and Russia found itself with no influence at all. Within weeks, the state re-emerged. Ukraine reconstituted military force and by May 2014 had begun to win battles against the insurgents. Outside its initial strongholds, the insurgency failed to gain a critical mass, and by late summer it was on the point of collapse. None of this means that the Kremlin cannot achieve its core objectives: to create a semi-‘mobilization’ regime at home, to wreck Ukraine if it cannot control it, to preserve Russia’s western borderlands as a ‘privileged space’ and to make Europe accept that ‘there can be no security without Russia’. In any serious undertaking, there are mistakes and setbacks. But in the Russian mind war is a clash of wills, not an accounting exercise. The Kremlin’s cognitive framework contains some hard truths for Western policy-makers: an existential faith in Russia’s greatness, a willingness to accept risk, damage and opprobrium in the service of enduring state interests. ‘He who wills the end wills the means.’ Russia’s custodians believe that ‘reform’ and trust in the country’s enemies led to the USSR’s collapse, and they have no intention of repeating that experience. These predilections suggest that the path to accommodation will be long and arduous. Clarity and purpose Against one benchmark of assessment, its own burdens and priorities, the West’s response to events since February 2014 has been impressive. Against a second, Russian tenacity, the adequacy of this response is far from certain. For the West to raise and maintain its game, several revisions of thinking and practice warrant consideration: • Whether the West plays its cards well or badly, it faces a protracted struggle with Russia. The ‘crisis’ paradigm (which stimulates a Pavlovian search for ‘endgames’) is illusory. Over the past 20 years, Russia has attempted to limit the sovereignty of neighbours within the framework of a treaty regime that recognized no such limitation. It has now torn up that framework. Today there is no international law east of the Narva and Prut. Putin’s resurrection of the notion that language and ethnicity – rather than citizenship and internationally recognized borders – are the proper basis of statehood is a test for the legal order elsewhere. Statements by Lavrov and Deputy Foreign Minister Konstantin Dolgov to the effect that Moldova and the Baltic states should ‘consider events in Ukraine and draw conclusions’ confirm that major interests are at stake. 137 These interests will not be protected by a patch-and-mend approach. • The West therefore faces stark choices. The merit of the ‘realist’ prescription – that Russia be conceded its sphere of influence – is that it goes to the heart of the matter. The defect of the prescription is that Europe will not be able to endure it. We are no longer in a 19th-century world where ‘zones of security’ can be produced by lines on maps or people treated like furniture in a room. Betraying Ukraine – what else would it be? – and, soon enough, Moldova and Georgia will add to the stock of Vichyite states in Europe with no love for what remains of the West, and even less respect. It will then be entirely rational for Latvians or Poles to ask why, if the West is unwilling to uphold the Paris Charter by means short of war, it should be willing to uphold the Washington Treaty by means of war when ‘hybrid’ threats arise. • The West is then left with the task of defending the post-Cold War settlement and deterring those who would damage it further. To some, it is axiomatic that this will lead to a ‘new Cold War’. 138 Very possibly. 139 But the Cold War was not the reason for 136 Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money (The Interpreter, Institute of Modern Russia, 2014), p. 5. 137 Lavrov’s statement at Valdai Club meeting, 23 October 2014. 138 Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro, ‘Consequences of a New Cold War’, Survival (IISS, April/May 2015). 139 But not in that form. See James Sherr, ‘Russia and the EU: The End of Illusions?’, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, June 2014, https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/epaper_aupo2014.pdf. Chatham House | 31
The Russian Challenge A War of Narratives and Arms East–West discord. It was the result. It arose because fundamental interests were in dispute, and it ended when they ceased to be in dispute. Today they are in dispute again. Had there been no Cold War, the issues at stake in Ukraine would be no different from what they are now. Either the West bases its interests on a Europe of sovereign states, free to chart their own course, or it resigns itself to a coerced stability and the certainty of future conflicts. • Ukraine’s sustainability as a sovereign state and an integrated one depends first and foremost on Ukrainians. Nevertheless, they cannot succeed without Western support. That support must be multi-dimensional, well resourced and toughly conditional. Strategic patience is needed as well. A weak and fractured state is at war with a nuclear power. Ills that are embedded and systemic cannot be remedied without time and resources. Both the aid provided and the aid envisaged by the European Union, United States and International Monetary Fund are a life-support system, but not a launching pad for reform. In seeking an alchemy that will underwrite reforms without deferring them, financial assistance must be matched by institutional support and elements of co-management. • Towards Russia, strategic patience might not be enough. In the long term, time works against it. Within two years, the combination of sanctions and low oil prices is likely to have a debilitating effect on the Russian state. Yet it never was likely that the Kremlin would agree to a war of attrition on the West’s terms, at least so long as other tools of policy existed. Those tools are force and the threat of force. Because of them, time works even less to Ukraine’s advantage than to Russia’s. Ukraine and its Western partners need to find a way of devaluing these tools and turning time to their own advantage. That will require deterrence, not only on Ukraine’s western border but within the country too. The West has already undertaken modest measures to improve Ukraine’s defences. We do not know how Putin will respond if they gather momentum. What we do know is how he responds to weakness. It is time to abandon the notion that the Kremlin is concerned about anybody’s welfare other than its own. As the leaders of the Ukraine insurgency themselves lament, they are but pawns in a bigger game. In this struggle, Moscow does not care whether its ‘compatriots’ flourish or starve. It does not care about Western goodwill unless it can be used against the West. Nevertheless, Russia’s policy will change when its governing elites conclude that the current course is damaging the country’s interests and their own. With firmness and patience, that outcome is achievable. The longterm aim of Western policy should be to remove the new dividing lines that Russian policy has created. Meanwhile Western governments should be alert to any signs of ‘new thinking’ in the country and give thought to the contours of a diplomatic settlement that Russia might one day wish to honour. But until the premises of Russian policy change, any agreement is likely to be the opposite of a solution, and any respite gained is likely to be very short-lived. 32 | Chatham House
Page 2 and 3: Chatham House Report Keir Giles, Ph
Page 4 and 5: Contents About the Authors Acknowle
Page 6 and 7: Acknowledgments The authors would l
Page 8 and 9: The Russian Challenge Executive Sum
Page 10 and 11: Резюме и рекоменда
Page 12 and 13: The Russian Challenge Резюме
Page 14 and 15: 1. Introduction In the introduction
Page 16 and 17: The Russian Challenge Russia’s Ch
Page 28 and 29: The Russian Challenge An Enfeebled
Page 36 and 37: 4. A War of Narratives and Arms Jam
Page 38 and 39: The Russian Challenge A War of Narr
Page 46 and 47: 5. Russian Foreign Policy Towards t
Page 48 and 49: The Russian Challenge Russian Forei
Page 54 and 55: The Russian Challenge Russia’s To
Page 64 and 65: The Russian Challenge Russian and W
Page 72: Independent thinking since 1920 The

The Russian Challenge

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?