Moscow has Succeeded in Getting West to Talk about ‘Not Provoking the Aggressor’ Rather than about Defending Itself, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Wars are won not on the battlefield but on how those involved come to define them, Aaron Lea and Borukh Taskin say; and in the Putin’s war in Ukraine, Moscow has succeeded in getting the West to focus on “not provoking the aggressor” rather than on how best to defend itself against current and future attacks.

            In a two-part article for the Tallinn-based regionalist portal Region.Expert, the two Israeli analysts of Russian background say that “Russia has taken over the European narrative and thereby forced Europe to conduct debates” not about how to defend oneself but about how not to provoke Moscow (region.expert/strat1/ and region.expert/strat2/).

            Just how radical a change this is from Cold War times and how much of a Kremlin victory it represents, the two write, grew out of Western notions of the end of history and a peace dividend from the supposed end of east-west conflict and Moscow’s success in presenting anything that it does as being only a justified response to what the West does in reaction.

            In this new situation, fears among Western publics and leaders have been transformed and then exploited by Moscow into a weapon that Putin can and does use against them. And Lea and Taskin provide example after example of the way this new reality differs from that of the past and helps Moscow to win without having the forces to do so otherwise.

            The Kremlin is thus succeeding by shifting the mental maps of Europeans and the West more generally so that each new Kremlin advance has come to be viewed as the new reality that the West must not challenge lest it “provoke” the Russians rather than as an occasion to prevent Russia from advancing still further.