Category Archives: Russian foreign policy

U.S.-Russia Relations and the Great Trump Disruption

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Following is a slightly revised text of a talk I gave on March 21, 2019, at UC Berkeley for the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.

****

It’s a pleasure to be back at Berkeley, not far from the office that I occupied for some 25 years. I was privileged to have lived in the Bay Area, privileged to have worked at UCB, and privileged to have been part of a wonderful community of faculty and graduate students for a quarter century.

The people mattered most, but it wasn’t just the people. It turned out that the job was well suited to my academic interests and dispositions. My duties were in part academic administration, in part scholarship, and in part teaching, but I had a good deal of freedom to choose how much I devoted to each, more so than had I been regular ladder faculty in a political science department. I was also able to chase what I was interested in, in part because I didn’t have to worry about the demands of the discipline; in part because I could influence the institute’s research agenda; and in part because the institute covers so much ground geographically and thematically.

And as it happened, my interests changed a lot over the years, both in terms of region – initially Russia, then the Caucasus, then Central Asia, and finally Ukraine – and topic, of which there were too many to name.

I also loved being part of a truly interdisciplinary scholarly community, including not just scholars in the harder social sciences but many wonderful historians and faculty and graduate students in the Slavic Department.

In short, it was the perfect job for someone like me who likes being a jack of many trades but master of none.

My talk today reflects my focus in the last five years or so at Berkeley, which, for lack of a better term, was the geopolitics of our region in the lead up to, and wake of, the Ukraine crisis. I felt I had something to say about that dramatic turn of events, so I started a blog that I immodestly called “Eurasian Geopolitics.” And I decided the blog would be forward, not backward, looking. I’d focus less on the “how we got here” and “who is to blame” questions, and more on the “where we’re likely headed” question. The goal was to forecast, and to do so as accurately and clearly as I could.

My talk today is organized as follows. I’m going to start with some brief remarks about the “science and art” of forecasting. I’ll then discuss how Trump has made accurate forecasting about geopolitics and US-Russia relations even more difficult that it was previously. Next I’ll turn to the Kremlin’s strategic goals and how it assesses the risks and opportunities in this uncertain geopolitical moment. Finally, I’ll conclude with some thoughts about the implications for Russia if the Kremlin gets what it wants in the way a post-liberal, great-power “international order.” Continue reading →

Review of Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York, 2018

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The following appeared in the Newsletter of the UC Berkeley Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Spring/Summer 2018.

Michael McFaul, President Obama’s “Russia hand” on the National Security Council from 2009 through 2011, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia from January 2012 to early 2014, has written a compelling, readable, and self-reflective memoir of his long engagement with Russia. His special focus is the failure of the policy with which he is most closely associated – the so-called “Reset” in U.S.-Russian relations from 2009-2011. As McFaul bluntly admits, that policy led not to engagement, cooperation, and even partnership, as he and his colleagues had hoped, but to today’s “hot peace.” “What went wrong?,” he asks, and more particularly, “What had I gotten wrong?” (xi).

As a comparative political scientist at Stanford with an interest in empirics and public policy, a long list of academic and non-academic publications, and years of experience in Russia, McFaul has an excellent command of the facts. His record of offering prescriptions with real-world consequences also accounts for his emphasis on contingency and uncertainty; indeed, much of the book is preoccupied with counterfactuals – the “what-might-have-beens” had different choices been made in Moscow or Washington. And he uses contingent, probabilistic language intended to persuade, not “prove.”

I agree with much of what McFaul writes, but dissent from his explanation for the failure of the Reset, the core argument of the book.

*****

The post-Cold War relationship between Russia and the United States has had its ups-and-downs, but the overall trend has been negative since at least the mid-1990s. NATO expansion, Russia’s 1998 economic meltdown, Moscow’s wars in Chechnya, the 1999 U.S.-led NATO military operation against Serbia, the 2003 Iraq War, the U.S. decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty and its ballistic missile defense development and deployments, and the Bush administration’s efforts to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO helped turn a cooperative relationship into an adversarial one. Then came Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in August 2008, which McFaul argues “changed everything.” (76).  As a result: “By the time the Bush administration ended, American and Russian were barely talking to each other” (75).

McFaul goes on to describe the origins of the “Reset” during Obama’s presidential campaign, highlighting in particular a “major working paper” that he helped write. (He had been advising Obama’s campaign team since early 2007.) He and his co-authors concluded that U.S. interests would be served by a détente with Russia, but they worried about domestic political fallout from appearing weak, especially after Russia’s invasion of Georgia. To square the circle, the Reset would be framed as serving particular American interests, not as an end in itself. As the working paper put it: “Improved relations with Russia should not be the goal of U.S. policy, but a possible strategy for achieving American security and economic objectives in dealing with Russia” (79). The strategy, in short, was to seek cooperation on issues of mutual interest while downplaying areas of disagreement, including deeply rooted ones such as NATO expansion.

McFaul narrates the twists and turns of the Reset after Obama took office, arguing convincingly that it helped achieve many American foreign policy objectives. Payoffs included a new strategic arms control treaty (New START); increased sanctions on Iran; Russian acquiescence to an expanded Northern Distribution Network through Central Asia to support the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan; Russian accession to the World Trade Organization; more efficient visa processing by both sides; increased trade and investment; cooperation to defuse a political crisis in Kyrgyzstan; and Russia’s abstention on a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a limited use of force by the United States and some of its allies in Libya.

Despite these successes, McFaul makes clear that the Obama White House did not expect the Reset to lead to another U.S.-Russian “honeymoon.” Washington would work with the Russia it had, not the Russia it wanted. The relationship would be transactional – cooperate where cooperation was mutually beneficial. Meanwhile, the United States would continue to strengthen the NATO alliance, support democracy and state sovereignty throughout Europe and Eurasia, reduce Russia’s energy leverage in Europe, promote human rights and liberal democracy, and, tellingly, “reach out to the Russian people to promote our common values” (80).

Over the longer run, the McFaul and his colleagues hoped that Russia’s objections to U.S. policies – notably NATO expansion, NATO military activities near its borders, U.S. missile defenses, and Washington’s promotion of liberal democracy, “colored revolutions,” and “regime change” in Eurasia and elsewhere, including Russia itself – would pass into history. Its political elite would realize that participation in a U.S.-led “liberal international order” was a win-win outcome that served Russia’s interests better than confrontation, suspicion, and an imagined security threat from NATO. Meanwhile, points of disagreement were “manageable hiccups, bumps in the road of cooperation” (415).

McFaul placed special hopes on Russia’s “modernization” prospects during the presidency of Vadim Medvedev (2008-2012). Medvedev, he argues convincingly, was committed to the success of the Reset, as well as to measured liberalization and democratization. And he emphasizes the personal rapport between Medvedev and Obama, arguing that Medvedev “wanted Obama’s respect’” (420) and “wanted Obama to believe that he too was a progressive – a new, young, post-Cold War leader.” (421)

In McFaul’s telling, the key driver for the failure of the Reset was Vladimir Putin and his return to the presidency in 2012. Putin’s decision to serve a third term, coupled with the mass demonstrations that broke out after electoral fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary elections, meant that “Putin needed the United States again as an enemy” (416). He explains:

To be elected a third time as president of Russia in 2012, [Putin] needed a new argument. In the face of growing social mobilization and protest, he revived an old Soviet-era argument as his new source of legitimacy – defense of the motherland against the evil West, and especially the imperial, conniving, threatening United States. Putin, his aides, and his media outlets accused the leaders of Russian demonstrations of being American agents, traitors from the so-called fifth column. We were no longer partners, but revolutionary fomenters, usurpers, enemies of the nation (418).

The implication is that had Putin retired from the scene in 2011, there would have been no mass demonstrations by the opposition at the end of the year, no crackdown at home, no “pivot” away from the West, and no end to the Reset. U.S. and Western policies may have contributed to the pivot, but “only at the margins.”

*****

I have two main objections. First, I disagree, at least in part, with McFaul’s explanation for why Putin pivoted after 2011, and second, I think he underplays the explanatory weight of U.S. and Western policy in alienating the Russian political elite in general and Putin in particular.

As noted, McFaul’s explanation for Putin’s pivot after 2011 emphasizes perceived self-interest. In the face of the mass demonstrations of late 2011, Putin concluded he had to save his presidency by playing the nationalism card. And that meant playing up fears of an external enemy, the United States, even as he cracked down on dissent at home to prevent a “colored revolution.”

There is, however, a different explanation for Putin’s actions that I think is rather closer to the truth. I suspect that Putin’s decision to return to the presidency, as well as his 2012 policy pivot, were the product of his understanding of Russia’s — and not simply his own — interests. In my view, Putin, and indeed most of the Russian political elite, genuinely believe that the United States, and the West broadly, pose a threat to Russian political stability and security. They are convinced that Western democracy promotion, and the West’s public embrace of “universal values,” are hypocritical smokescreens masking U.S. ambitions to remain the world’s sole superpower and geopolitical hegemon. They also are convinced that the changes advocated by Western democracy promoters would produce chaos at home and weakness abroad, not prosperity and strength. And they understand the tolerance entailed in liberalism as incompatible with traditional Russian values and Russian “civilization.”

McFaul is aware of this Russian worldview, and indeed one of the many strengths of the book is his fair-minded summarizing of it (as well as the views of critics of the Reset at home). Nonetheless, his explanation for the failure of the Reset attaches no obvious weight to Russian beliefs. Instead, the argument is that Putin pivoted toward illiberalism, authoritarianism, and confrontation with West simply to preserve his own power.

We cannot be certain about what motivates Putin, let alone the Russian political elite, but I believe it would be a mistake for Western policy makers to accept McFaul’s explanation for the 2012 Putin pivot. The core of Putin’s political project is certainly regime stability, and after his return to the presidency that meant keeping himself in office. But there is a difference between leaders who believe they are serving the state from those who serve only themselves. One takes personal political risks on behalf of the state; the other doesn’t.

Moreover, explaining the pivot as a product of Putin’s self-interest risks misleading Western policy-makers into assuming that Russia’s challenge to the West comes from Putin and Putin alone, not from Russia’s political elite broadly (and, less clearly, from the Russian public). Were Putin to pass from the scene, it’s very unlikely that we would see a return to the policies of the Medvedev era, let alone rapid liberalization, democratization, and partnership with the West. Russian decision-makers see the world, and Russian interests, very differently, and that they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

My second objection is that McFaul underweights the role of Western policy in producing the “hot peace.” He argues that “American foreign policy decisions, both real and perceived, cannot be cited as the source of our current conflict with Russia for one major reason – the successful cooperation between Russia and the United States during the Reset, from 2009 to 2011” (414). He goes on to claim that U.S. policies pursued during the Reset to which Moscow objected – the Magnitsky Act, U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe and elsewhere, the “mission creep” of the U.S.-led intervention in Libya, and U.S. criticism of Russia’s “antidemocratic behavior (415) – were not determinative, and were instead the “bumps in the road of cooperation” noted above.

Again, there is another possibility that is consistent with the facts and probably closer to the truth. This is not the place to rehash debates over NATO expansion and U.S. unilateralism since the end of the Cold War, but suffice it to say that the Russian political elite, including those few who are still relatively well-disposed toward liberal democracy, have cause to believe that while the United States insists that other states comply with the rules of the “liberal international order,” it acts as if it, and it alone, has the right to violate those rules. Most are likewise unconvinced by Western arguments about NATO expansion, U.S. military exercises near Russia’s border’s, and U.S. force posture. For them, these are not benign efforts to promote stability and democracy in Central Europe or ensure American security. Rather, they are directed at containing Russia, subverting Russian interests, and projecting American power. And they are a threat to Russian national security.

For these and other reasons, by the time the Obama White House launched the Reset, not just Putin but most of the Russian political elite were deeply suspicious of Western intentions. Support in Moscow for the Reset was accordingly very thin, as McFaul himself suggests. He may have hoped that Russia would follow the path advocated by Medvedev, but he was well aware that Putin was the power behind the throne. And while Putin was willing, up to a point, to let Medvedev preside over the Reset, he was also very skeptical that it served Russian interests. McFaul writes, “[H]ardliners in Moscow – the silovikias they are called in Russia – were not very present in most of our meetings with Medvedev. As we would later learn, they were watching carefully their new young president as he embraced our new young president, and they are doing so not with enthusiasm but anxiety” (204).

If so, it is very possible that U.S. and Western actions during the Reset had a tipping effect on the Reset’s failure, analogous to the tipping effect that Russian meddling may have had on the U.S. presidential elections in 2016. That is, U.S. and Western actions from 2009 to 2011 may have been necessary though not sufficient conditions for today’s “hot peace.”

McFaul’s narrative lends support to this interpretation. He characterizes, for example, the Arab Spring and the civil war in Libya as marking “the beginning of the end of the Reset.” Putin and the bulk of Russia’s political elite were convinced that Western democracy promotion helped account for the revolutionary upheavals that shook the Arab world beginning in 2011. And they felt vindicated when their warnings about the consequences of political destabilization and colored revolutions were followed by disastrous civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and the failure of “democratic breakthroughs” most everywhere else.

The most important precipitant of the Reset’s failure, however, was probably the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya in 2011. As McFaul makes clear, Medvedev took a considerable political risk when he decided that Russia would abstain from a U.N. Security Council Resolution authorizing the use force to prevent a bloody assault by Qaddafi’s forces on opposition-controlled Benghazi. Since Soviet times, Moscow had objected to the use of force against sovereign states for humanitarian purposes. McFaul recalls that some of his White House colleagues felt Russia’s abstention “marked a major turning point in the evolution of national security norms and institutions” (224). But Putin publicly criticized the intervention, and by implication Medvedev for ordering Russia’s UNSCR abstention, referring to the operation as “a crusade.” (225) Medvedev responded, also in public, that it is “inadmissible to say anything that could lead to a clash of civilizations, talk of ‘crusades,’ and so on.” (225). McFaul recalls that he found this “public sparring” shocking, and that he “worried that Putin’s comments signaled an end to his patience with Medvedev” (226).

The Putin-Medvedev exchange took place shortly after the Security Council’s use of force authorization. The political costs to Medvedev would increase dramatically after the intervention went well beyond the letter of the Security Council’s mandate. A sustained air campaign led not to stabilization but to a prolonged civil war, regime change, and the death of Qaddafi at the hands of a mob — this despite the fact that Obama had assured Medvedev that the United States would not use Security Council authorization to bring about regime change. McFaul doesn’t explain how this “mission creep” happened or how he felt about it, but he does make clear that Medvedev felt betrayed by Obama. When Medvedev met Obama on the sidelines of a G-20 summit that May, McFaul writes that he had “never seen him [Medvedev] so upset.” And he speculates, in something of an understatement, that Medvedev “may have felt that his special relationship with Obama was not longer an asset but a liability” (227).

McFaul continues:

In retrospect, U.S.-Russian cooperation on Libya may have been both the height of cooperation in the Reset era, as well as the beginning of the end of the Reset. Years later, in defending his annexation of Crimea, Putin said as much, arguing, ‘You know, it’s not that it [the Reset] has ended over Crimea. I think it ended even earlier, right after the events in Libya.’ U.S. military intervention in Libya, which helped topple Gadhafi [sic], also inadvertently might have helped remove Medvedev from power in Russia (227).

I agree with McFaul’s assessment, and with Putin’s. I suspect it was the Arab Spring, and Libya in particular, that led Putin to lose confidence in Medvedev and his foreign policy, indeed to the extent that he no longer felt Medvedev should serve as president. Instead, Putin would return to the presidency to save Russia from the West. The result was the so-called “castling maneuver” whereby Putin again became president with control of foreign and security policy, while a much weakened and doubtless much less pro-Western Medvedev became prime minister.

If so, then the Reset failed before the Putin-Medvedev castling and before the mass demonstrations of late 2011 and 2012. The key precipitant was not the oppositional mobilization of late 2011 and 2012. Rather, it was the Arab Spring and Libya, which served as final nails in the coffin of Putin’s willingness to tolerate Medvedev’s efforts to seek cooperation with the West. And I suspect that Russia’s mass oppositional demonstrations later that year only reinforced his conviction that the West was simply incapable of refraining from destabilizing non-democratic regimes, and that Russia, sooner-or-later, would be in its crosshairs. That in turn suggests why Putin would then authorize a concerted Russian assault on Western democracy, a risky project that goes well beyond demonizing the United States and its allies at home. For Putin, Russia is simply doing to the West what the West has been doing to it. And he intends to win the “meddling war.”

*****

In writing this, I should make clear that I do not share Putin’s understanding of Western motivations, even if I believe many Russian grievances and criticisms are credible and understandable. Even less do I agree with Putin’s understanding of Russian interests or his policies at home and abroad. Rather, the point is to get Putin, and Russian decision-making, right. And that, in my view, means not turning them into straw men. It also means a frank and clear-headed assessment of how U.S. and Western policies have contributed to today’s “hot peace.”

Five points about Friday’s Syria strike

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1. It’s not over

The Trump administration has made clear that Friday’s strike was a one-off intended to (1) degrade the ability of Damascus to produce high-quality chemical weapons and (2) deter the regime from the further use of chemical weapons.

I’ll discuss whether these objectives were achieved below, but an initial point is that “degrading” is not “destroying” – hence the ongoing need for deterrence. That in turn implies a U.S. willingness to launch additional strikes should Damascus again use chemical weapons. Which is what U.S. and allied officials are saying – there will be more strikes if Damascus doesn’t get the message.

There is, however, an important ambiguity about the deterrence signal sent yesterday (more on this below). It’s not clear if the redline for the U.S. and its allies is the use of any chemical agent specifically banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention (notably the nerve agent Sarin) or the use of any chemical weapon covered by the Treaty’s general prohibition (notably chlorine). Continue reading →

Update on the Skripal incident

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On the investigation

It is looking increasingly likely that the “novichok” nerve agent used in the assassination attempt was delivered, doubtless unwittingly, by Yulia Skripal, Sergei Skripal’s daughter. Yulia was picked up at Heathrow on Saturday afternoon, the day before Skripal and Yulia fell ill, by a friend of Skripal’s in an Isuzu pick-up truck. The truck was impounded by British authorities on Monday, the implication being that investigators are looking for traces of nerve agent in the truck. Also noteworthy is the fact that over two weeks have passed since the incident, and British authorities have yet to identify any suspects by name or ask for information based on physical descriptions. So they don’t appear to have anyone on CCTV who might have dispersed the agent. Continue reading →

Nine points on the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal

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After chairing a meeting of the U.K.’s national security council earlier today, British Prime Theresa May read a prepared statement to the House of Commons in which she stated the following:

Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at Porton Down, our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so, Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations, the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal…

Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others…

Should there be no credible response [from Russian authorities within 48 hours], we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom, and I will come back to this House and set out the full range of measures we will take in response…

With that as backdrop, my take on where we’re headed with the Skripal incident is as follows. Continue reading →

Putin’s dilemma: Why pushing back against NATO “encroachment” makes Russia’s NATO problem worse

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As readers of this blog know, I believe that Putin and his advisors are convinced that the United States is trying to encircle, contain, weaken, exploit, and even destroy Russia as a unified state. They are also convinced that the West’s rhetorical commitment to democracy is a smokescreen for U.S. hegemonic ambitions globally and in Russia’s rightful sphere of influence particularly. This understanding of U.S. objectives is also shared by the bulk of the Russian public. It’s what many Russians believed before the Ukraine crisis (and it helps explain why the Kremlin reacted the way it did to the Maidan events), and it’s believed all the more now that Russia has lost Ukraine as an ally and NATO is reinforcing its eastern defenses.

That Russian officials and the Russian public think this would be dangerous under the best of circumstances. Russia, after all, is a nuclear superpower with a large and very capable conventional military. What makes it particularly dangerous is the fact that the Kremlin’s security problems with NATO are not only getting worse but are likely to continue to do so for years to come. Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, its role in destabilizing the Donbas, and its intervention in Syria have been very popular domestically, at least to date. But they have also produced an American military “repivot” to Europe, a steady but significant increase in NATO hard power capabilities close to Russian borders, and a surge in military spending by most of Russia’s increasingly worried neighbors. Continue reading →

Ten points about where U.S-Russian relations are headed

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I’ve been asked to attend a workshop next month that will “take stock of the economic, political and foreign policy developments in Russia and their implications for the United States.” In preparation, I’m going to post a long analysis of where I think U.S.-Russian relations are headed, but for now let me summarize my take as follows.

  1. The already dangerous U.S./NATO-Russian military relationship is getting more dangerous.
  2. A continuation or further deterioration of the West’s security relationship with Russia is not in the interest of the United States or its allies.
  3. Russia’s security problems with the West are not going to be solved by undermining the European Union, by promoting divisions within the West, or by improving ties to China.
  4. Russia’s security problems with the West are not going to be solved by turning Ukraine or Georgia into permanent political or economic basket cases.
  5. Russian military operations in Syria have added to tensions with the West and have increased the risk of a military clash with NATO.
  6. Russia’s overall relations with the West in general, and with the U.S. in particular, are not going to improve significantly unless and until there is a stabilization of the NATO-Russia military relationship.
  7. It is unlikely that Western economic sanctions on Russia will be lifted even partially in this year, and Crimea makes it highly unlikely that they will be lifted in full for years to come.
  8. Making Russia’s security relationship with the West less dangerous is going to require direct negotiations between Russia and the United States.
  9. Those negotiations should focus initially on arms control and security-related confidence building measures, and they should be comprehensive and include not just negotiations on strategic (START) weapons but also on theater nuclear weapons (INF), on ballistic missile defenses (BMD), and most importantly on conventional forces dispositions (CFE).
  10. Progress on arms control can make the NATO-Russia military balance less dangerous and contribute to a gradual normalization of political relations (a détente)—way down the road it might even give Ukraine and Russia the space needed to negotiate some kind of status compromise over Crimea (but don’t hold your breath).

US options in responding to Russia’s military intervention in Syria

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Last spring, I argued in a talk at Berkeley that the Ukraine crisis was still very dangerous despite the signing of the Minsk II Agreement on the Donbas conflict. In brief, my reasoning was that (1) the Ukraine conflict is the product of an intensifying geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West in general and the United States in particular; (2) there is a powerful ideological component to that struggle, which is one reason why it is very likely to last for the foreseeable future; (3) the most dangerous dimension of the struggle is the military one; and (4) there is a non-negligible risk of a military clash between NATO and Russia.

I’m going to double down on my Chicken Little-ism today and make three points about Russia’s military intervention in Syria: (1) the immediate effect of the intervention is to increase the risk of a military clash between Russia and the United States or one of its allies; (2) it is very unlikely that Russia’s intervention will lead to a genuine “grand coalition” against ISIS or “terrorism”; and (3) there are no good options for Washington in Syria in general, and no good options in responding to Russia’s intervention in particular. Continue reading →

Why the West should be pushing for a stable cold war with Russia

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[Following is an expanded version of a talk I gave at UC Berkeley on Monday, November 23, 2015.]

Much has been written recently about whether the United States and Russia are once again in a “Cold War.” Somewhat more optimistically, the question is often rendered as “Can the United States and Russia avoid another Cold War?”

I suppose one could treat these as invitations to make a purely historical comparison between the current US-Russian relationship and the US-Soviet relationship during “The Cold War”? But I don’t think that is what most people have in mind when they raise the issue. Rather, I suspect that what most people want to know is how adversarial are U.S-Russian relations today, how dangerous is the relationship, is the high level of tension between the two countries likely to last, and what are the costs of hostility going to be over the long run?

It therefore strikes me that to answer the implied questions, one needs to break the problem up into at least four parts, as follows.

(1) What do we mean by the term “cold war”? (That is a conceptual problem about a category of events or states – hence no initial caps.)

(2) Are we already in a cold war with Russia? (This is a descriptive or empirical problem about whether the current relationship meets the definitional criteria.)

(3) How is the US-Russian relationship likely to evolve over, say, the next two years? (This is a predictive problem that will likely produce different answers depending on the forecast period – say five years instead of two.)

(4) Is there a way to return to a genuinely cooperative relationship in the foreseeable future? (This is a prescriptive problem in which it is perfectly possible to argue that such and such should be done but it is very unlikely that it will be.) Continue reading →

On the implications of France’s decision to invoke the EU’s mutual defense clause

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Yesterday, France announced that it had invoked the EU’s collective defense clause in response to Friday’s terrorist attacks. This was the first time an EU member has invoked Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, which states that EU countries have “an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power” to any fellow member that is the victim of an armed attack.

Importantly, France chose not to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which obligates each NATO member to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area” if another NATO member is attacked. Article 5 also has been invoked only once, when the United States did so after September 11.

It is not entirely clear why France made this particular decision, which for reasons I will set out below may have important long-term consequences that the French leadership hasn’t anticipated. Continue reading →

Why diplomacy and foreign military intervention won’t end the Syrian war anytime soon

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Late last week representatives from 17 countries – including Saudi Arabia and Iran – plus the UN and EU (so no representatives from either the Assad government or the anti-Assad opposition) met in Vienna to discuss the Syrian civil war. The outcome was a “Final Declaration” on basic principles, which the media generally interpreted as a hopeful sign that the “international community” was moving toward some kind of consensus on how to end the Syrian civil war.

I don’t agree. My take is that at best – and even this is very unlikely – the Vienna Declaration will prove a first step toward getting key external actors – notably Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Turkey, Russia, and the United States – to limit their direct or indirect involvement in the war, including the delivery of weapons. That might at least ameliorate the scale of violence in the country. But in my view the Vienna participants cannot end the war or pave the way toward a political settlement for months if not years. And unfortunately almost none of the provisions in the Vienna Declaration will be implemented (more on this in a moment). Continue reading →

A response to Tim Ash’s “The big call on Ukraine” in the Kyiv Post

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Standard Bank’s Timothy Ash has an excellent “on the one hand, on the other hand” analysis of Ukraine’s political and economic prospects in The Kyiv Post. He begins by laying out reasons why investors (particularly those considering buying Ukrainian sovereign debt) might have reason to be optimistic about Ukraine’s future, and then lists equally compelling reasons why they should be wary and put their money elsewhere. Continue reading →

How the Kremlin is likely to push back against NATO’s eastern flank deployments

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In my previous post, I argued that a major offensive by Russian-separatist forces in the Donbas is unlikely because it would further undermine Russia’s geopolitical position and make Russia’s NATO problem worse. I also argued that the window for a successful Russian hybrid war on, or outright invasion of, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania has closed now that non-indigenous NATO troops, including American troops, are on the ground in those three countries.

Nonetheless, I believe Kremlin decision-makers when they tell us that they consider NATO’s eastern flank deployments, and NATO’s growing military cooperation with Ukraine, Georgia, Sweden and Finland, are a threat to Russia’s vital national security interests. (What matters here is not whether those beliefs are warranted, or what Russia did to provoke NATO’s deployments, but what Kremlin decision-makers believe.) I am likewise convinced that the Kremlin believes that its deteriorating security environment is the result of Western, particularly American, actions that are directed at establishing hegemony over Eurasia and at weakening, humiliating, and even destroying Russia.

Finally, it is not just the Russian elite that believes this. The Russian public does as well, which suggests that a change in leadership – which is in any case unlikely – would probably not produce much change in Russia’s strategic culture.

If so, it stands to reason that the Kremlin is going to respond to NATO’s moves, even if that response is not a major offensive in eastern Ukraine or an attack on the Baltic states. Continue reading →

Why the West should be pushing for a buffer zone between Russia and NATO

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In my view, Western decision makers should be thinking hard about an endgame to the current crisis in Russian-Western relations. What is a realistic, least-worst outcome in, say, five years? Where will NATO’s and the EU’s eastern borders be? Where will NATO’s and Russia’s military assets be deployed? Will there be any arms control agreements still in effect that limit force dispositions and reduce the risks of war? What kind of constraints on economic relations will there be?

In considering the big picture, it strikes me that there are three realistic possibilities: (1) a return to “normalcy,” in the sense that Russia and the West are again cooperating and can reasonably be considered “partners”: (2) an unstable hostile relationship in which the dividing line between Russia and “the West” is contested, rules of engagement are uncertain, arms control measures have little effect on force dispositions and fail to enhance military stability, and where there is a significant and constant risk of war – so essentially more of what we have today; and (3) a stable hostile relationship where the dividing line between Russia and the West and rules of engagement are reasonably clear and accepted, where arms control measures enhance strategic and regional stability, where Russia has little incentive to attack its neighbors, and where the risks of a conflict between Russia and NATO are very low – so more or less where we were with the Soviet Union during the second half of the Cold War. Continue reading →

A strategic response to Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis

Posted on by • Posted in CSTO, Geopolitics, NATO, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis, US foreign policy, US-Russian relations • 1 Comment

Much the most worrisome aspect of the current crisis in Russia’s relations with the West is the unstable and dangerous security situation. Accordingly, I believe Washington and its allies should prioritize the military dimension in responding to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Donbas war. The primary goal should be to reduce the risk of war while living up to NATO’s Article 5 commitments to its eastern member-states.

The second most important strategic goal should be to assist countries on Russia’s periphery in preserving their sovereignty without precipitating a military response by Moscow.

Finally, and importantly, the West should begin positioning itself to enter into negotiations with Moscow over a new security arrangement for Europe, including conventional and nuclear force postures, that minimizes the risks of new proxy wars on Russia’s periphery and a direct military conflict between NATO and Russia. Continue reading →

The Donbas war: Why a major separatist/Russian offensive is unlikely (Part 1)

Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis • 1 Comment

In my previous post, I argued that an unstable frozen conflict (continued low-level fighting but no major territorial gains) is still the least unlikely outcome in eastern Ukraine, but that the opportunity for a stable frozen conflict (a lasting ceasefire) to emerge has increased since the fall of Debaltseve on February 20. My reasoning was as follows:

  1. The intensity of fighting has been diminishing.
  2. The line of contact (LOC) has become more coherent and defensible.
  3. Neither side appears capable of taking significant additional territory unless Moscow dramatically increases the scale and nature of its involvement.
  4. The Kremlin appears to have concluded (correctly, I believe) that an escalation of its military involvement in Ukraine would undermine its geopolitical objectives, notably by precipitating an increase, not a decrease, in NATO hard power on its eastern flank.
  5. The most likely way for a stable frozen conflict to emerge is no longer by some kind of Minsk III agreement with a buffer zone patrolled by armed international peacekeepers but by “military facts on the ground.”

What I want to do is this post is elaborate on the first three points. I will take up point 4 in my next post. Continue reading →

EWW interview with The New Atlanticist’s Ashish Kumar Sen

Posted on by • Posted in European Union, Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis • Tagged ,

The full text can be found here.

Q: What are your expectations from the EU summit on March 19? Will the EU extend sanctions on Russia, or are the majority of member states inclined to give Russia more time to de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine?

Walker: It’s very likely that the EU will decide on the 19th to kick the can down the road and neither increase sanctions or agree to lift any or all of them. The EU is involved in an extremely difficult and complex political game over sanctions, particularly because the sanctions in place now have term limits and renewal requires unanimous approval by all member states. It does not want to undermine whatever chance the Minsk II agreement has of being implemented; members such as Hungary and especially Greece want to use their veto rights over sanctions as leverage on other matters, including of course for Greece over austerity and debt; and other members, notably the Baltic States, Poland, and the United Kingdom, want to maintain maximum pressure on Moscow.

There is another very important dimension to the sanctions question for the EU, which is its relationship with the United States. Most member states do not want to see the Ukraine crisis lead to a division within the Atlantic alliance, and they therefore have to worry about what would happen if the EU went in one direction and the United States another on sanctions. A split on sanctions could be extremely divisive. Moreover, the EU, Germany in particular, is very aware that the Obama administration is under growing domestic pressure to increase military assistance to Ukraine, and they have to worry that if they break with Washington over sanctions, the United States will break with European doves on arming Ukraine and otherwise ramping up its military response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. That, too, might provoke a crisis in European relations with the United States, where there is already growing resentment in policy circles that Europe spends so much less on defense than the United States, and where most NATO members spend less than NATO’s two percent of GDP target. Continue reading →

Why the Ukraine crisis is still very dangerous (long version)

Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, NATO, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis, US foreign policy • Tagged , , , , • 1 Comment

[Following is an expanded and updated version of a talk I gave at the 39th Annual Berkeley-Stanford Conference on March 6, 2015. The conference title was “The Collapse after a Quarter Century: What Have We Learned About Communism and Democracy?”]

The title of the talk I was going to give today was “Mishandling Russia.” However, last week a recent Berkeley political science Ph.D., Andrei Krikovic, now an assistant professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, gave what I thought was an excellent talk entitled “The Ukraine Crisis and the New Cold War: The View From Moscow,” in which he made many of the points I was going to make. We also have a talk scheduled for Monday by Masha Lipman, one of Moscow’s most prominent political analysts, entitled “From a Model of Development to Evil Incarnate: How Russia Has Come to Loathe the West.” So rather than repeating their arguments, I thought I would address one answer to the question in the conference title as follows: One thing that we know for sure 25 years later is that Russia’s relations with the West are in crisis. And I don’t see a clear path forward for resolving that crisis in the foreseeable future.

I’m going to focus on the security dimension of the current drama, which I think is the heart of the matter and the reason why it is so dangerous. Continue reading →

Whither the Donbas war after Debaltseve?

Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis, US foreign policy, US-Russian relations • 1 Comment

Yesterday, Ukrainian President Poroshenko read a brief statement at the Kyiv airport in which he announced that the Ukrainian forces in and around Debaltseve, whose main line of retreat to the north, the M03, had come under the control of the separatists a week or so earlier, had been ordered to break out and make it back to Ukrainian controlled territory. Continue reading →

Ukraine’s hostage crisis

Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, NATO, Russian foreign policy, Ukraine crisis, US-Russian relations

My impression is that the ceasefire called for in last week’s Minsk II agreement is being implemented along most of the line of contact. The principle exception is in the Debaltseve pocket, although there has also been some artillery/rocket exchanges in the south, in and around Donetsk/Horlivka, and near Luhansk. But with the possible exception of a Russian/separatist push to reverse the gains made by Ukraine’s Azov battalion last week in the south, I doubt that either side is pressing, for the immediate future, to make significant territorial gains. Continue reading →