Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 26 – There is an old
Soviet joke that the West sends diplomats to Moscow and Moscow treats them like
spies while Moscow dispatches spies to Western capitals and Western governments
treatethem like diplomats, a joke that had more than a little basis in fact and
that resonates now because of what Moscow is doing and how the West is
responding.
In eastern Ukraine, the Russian
government of Vladimir Putin is engaging in subversion, that is, the use of its
own agents and disaffected elements on the ground to undermine and ultimately
destroy the legitimate governments on the ground. One advantage of subversion
is that it provides plausible deniability, allowing a regime to engage in it
and lie about it in the expectation that many will decide that it is unclear
just what is going on.
But there is another advantage of
subversion about which less has been said: it is relatively cheap for those who
engage in it. Governments who employ this strategy do not have to spend a great
deal of money, and just how little is highlighted when they actually seize or
annex territory when the costs go up astronomically.
That difference has been underscored
in the last several weeks by discussions in Russia itself of just how much
money the Russian Federation is going to have to spend on its illegal
annexation of Crimea and by the lack of such discussions about the price of the
subversive activities Moscow is employing in eastern Ukraine.
The cost of Crimea is already
forcing Moscow to take money from other programs and other regions, sparking
complaints from those who will lose funds, suggestions that Moscow may have to
raise taxes, and concerns that both these moves will drive the already weak
Russian economy into recession or worse.
But no one in Russia is yet talking
about the price tag on subversive activities. On the one hand, of course, this simply
reflects the fact that Moscow continues to deny that it is doing anything -- even
though the evidence available is overwhelming and compelling. On the other, it
is because the costs involved are relatively small and not affecting very many
Russians.
The West, in the format of the G7,
has chosen to counter Russia’s moves by sanctions. The announcement today of a
Western commitment to a new round of sanctions against the Putin regime can
only be welcomed. It is critically
important to signal just how appalled the West is by the Kremlin’s actions by imposing
a cost on Moscow.
(It is even more important that the
G7 expressed its support for Ukraine whose government has lived up to its
commitments, praising its approach and thereby drawing a sharp contrast between
Kyiv and Moscow, given that the latter has violated every agreement it has made
on Ukraine and continues to do so.)
But as has been widely reported, at
least some Western leaders concede that sanctions by themselves will not lead Putin
to alter or reverse course. In fact, he is certain now blame any economic
problems in Russia on the West thus deflecting the attention of Russia’s away
from his own mismanagement of that country’s wealth and generating support for new
aggression.
If a new sanctions regime dissuades
Putin from his drive to annex additional territories at the expense of Ukraine,
that will be real victory, but it could come with some costs few appear to be focusing
on: It could lead Putin to conclude that in order to get the political benefits
he believes he won with the Crimean Anschluss, he must launch an even broader
program of inexpensive subversion elsewhere.
Given that risk, the West needs to
consider other steps if it hopes to contain the aggressor in the Kremlin by
building pressure inside Russia against him.
Among these should be the freezing of Russian assets abroad, the reduction
in the size of Russian diplomatic posts abroad by cutting our own in Russia, a
more restrictive visa regime, enhanced international broadcasting, and a
radically new kind of security assistance to the countries Putin is
threatening.
Most of the Western institutions
such as NATO that have worked and continue to work to block overt military
aggression are not designed to cope with subversion. That requires different arrangements and
programs, and they need to be quickly examined and put in place so that Putin
will not be able to exploit what is a chink in the West’s armor.
Western countries have had experience
in dealing with subversion before – for the classic study of this, see Paul W.
Blackstock’s The Strategy of Subversion
(Quadrangle Books, 1964) – but what is needed now is for the West to
institutionalize this knowledge and to provide it to those who need it.
Sanctions are an important step, but
combatting and ultimately defeating Putin’s subversive strategy will require
more.
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