Did Putin Miscalculate?

When Russia laid out its demands of both the United States and NATO in order to pull back from a possible invasion of Ukraine, there was a lot that all parties could agree to. But the major sticking point is Putin's demand that NATO end its "open door" policy of allowing nations to apply for membership in the alliance. For some historical perspective, this map shows how NATO has grown eastward since its founding in 1949.

There are those on both the right and the left who are suggesting that the U.S. should accede to Putin's demands - assuming that it would persuade Russia to back off their aggression. But as former Russian ambassador Michael McFaul pointed out, "Putin doesn't think like we do."

First, Putin believes that the West unfairly dictated the terms of peace at the Cold War’s end...Now that Russia is powerful again, Putin is prepared to risk a lot to revise this so-called American imperial order, especially in Europe. He sees this mission as his sacred destiny...Even if Biden and his NATO allies wanted to offer that concession, Putin won’t be satiated. He will press on to undo the liberal international order for as long as he remains in power. Normalizing annexation, denying sovereignty to neighbors, undermining liberal ideas and democratic societies, and dissolving NATO are future goals.

Second...Putin does not view countries as unitary actors; he looks within countries to distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Not without reason, Putin believes that U.S. support for democracy abroad threatens his autocratic rule. During Putin’s reign, most crises in relations with the United States have been triggered not by NATO expansion, but by democratic mobilizations — Putin calls them “color revolutions” — within countries, be it Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, the Arab Spring in 2011, Russia in 2011 and Ukraine in 2014.

On this contentious issue, there is no deal to be had between the United States and Russia as long as Putin is in power. U.S. leaders cannot command other societies to stop wanting democracy. Putin will always fear mass protests and feel threatened by democracies, especially successful ones on his border with a shared history and culture such as Ukraine.

Writing at the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum went into even greater detail about why Putin would be willing to risk war. After pointing to the protests that erupted in Russia following the 2011 election (which Putin blamed on Hillary Clinton), she writes this:

In his mind, in other words, he wasn’t merely fighting Russian demonstrators; he was fighting the world’s democracies, in league with enemies of the state. Whether he really believed that crowds in Moscow were literally taking orders from Hillary Clinton is unimportant. He certainly understood the power of democratic language, of the ideas that made Russians want a fair political system, not a kleptocracy controlled by Putin and his gang, and he knew where they came from. Over the subsequent decade, he would take the fight against democracy to Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, where he would support extremist groups and movements in the hope of undermining European democracy. Russian state-controlled media would support the campaign for Brexit, on the grounds that it would weaken Western democratic solidarity, which it has. Russian oligarchs would invest in key industries across Europe and around the world with the aim of gaining political traction, especially in smaller countries like Hungary and Serbia. And, of course, Russian disinformation specialists would intervene in the 2016 American election.

What happened in Ukraine in 2014 is important to keep in mind. 

Conversations recently have been hyper-fixated on NATO, but before Russia’s invasion in 2014, Ukraine was not pursuing NATO membership. It was deepening ties with the European Union. Ukraine was attempting to sign an Association Agreement with the EU, which would foster closer relations. Russia strongly opposed the move...

Ultimately, the Ukrainian government abandoned the EU agreement. Russia swooped in offering improved relations and a cut in natural gas pricing. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – who was backed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the 2004 and 2010 elections – accepted the deal. The decision was met by a cascading mix of pro-European, pro-Ukrainian, and anti-Russian protests across the country. As the demonstrations persisted, Yanukovych eventually fled – tellingly, to Russia and aided by Putin. Moscow responded to the situation by invading — annexing Crimea and sending troops into the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east to support nascent pro-Russian separatist forces.

Fundamentally, Putin does not accept a Ukraine that has the right to choose its own foreign policy. He does not accept that Ukraine could integrate with Western institutions. He does not accept a Ukraine that cooperates more with the United States.

As McFaul wrote, Putin's goals aren't to simply block Ukraine from joining NATO, they are to normalize annexations, deny sovereignty to neighbors, undermine liberal ideas and democratic societies, and dissolve NATO. 

It is clear that the four years of Trump's presidency set the stage for Putin to take this next move of threatening Ukraine and making demands that would undermine NATO. Not only were America's relationships with our European allies strained, the anti-democratic forces that are alive and well in the Republican Party have led to extreme polarization in this country. It is very likely that Putin's calculation was that he could exploit those divisions at this moment in time in order to make progress on his goals. 

But with President Biden at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, the response to Putin's demands from both this country and Europe have been fairly seamless, as Edward Luce wrote.

By demanding concessions that have shocked a divided and rudderless Europe, Russian president Vladimir Putin has united the west behind U.S. leadership. It has been years since that sentence could be written with a straight face. Russia has brought about what it fears — a west that is displaying something approaching resolve. By threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty, Putin has done something Biden could not on his own — unite the west.

Both England and the United States have been declassifying intelligence about what Putin is planning as a way to ensure that the west remains both informed and unified. For example:

The United States has acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior administration officials and others briefed on the material.

The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making public — involves staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.

Russia, the officials said, intended to use the video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speaking people. It would then use the outrage over the video to justify an attack or have separatist leaders in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine invite a Russian intervention.

With that, it's probably back to the drawing board for Putin.  

Certainly Tucker Carlson and Senator Josh Hawley are doing everything they can to promote Putin's aims among right wingers in this country. But at least so far, the mainstream media is recognizing what's at stake. That means that the rest of the country isn't buying into the propaganda. The fissures are mostly constrained to disagreements between members of the Republican Party. 

At this point, things seem to be at a standstill in Ukraine. It is unlikely that Putin will make a move at least until the Olympic games in China are over on February 20. But it seems increasingly clear that he miscalculated when it comes to exploiting the divisions he's been feeding.