Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 16 – Ever more people
are calling for the containment of Putin’s Russia and some are even celebrating
that the West has already been taking the necessary first steps in that
direction, but such appeals and even more such celebrations fail to recognize
that in today’s globalized world, containment won’t be easy – and almost
certainly it won’t be enough.
The reasons for that unsettling
conclusion reflect just how different the world is than it was when George
Kennan first defined containment as a program intended to surround and isolate
the Soviet Union and defend those countries threatened by Moscow’s policies until
the internal contradictions of the communist system forced the USSR to retreat
and to change.
Containment, as many now appear to
have forgotten, was predicated on a large number of features of the
international system and the state centered on Moscow that are no longer true;
and because of these changes, containment will be difficult if not impossible
to carry out – and in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggressive policies, it won’t
be enough to stop him.
In this Window, I would like to
point to five changes in Russia and five more in the international environment
and especially in the US and Europe that make containment alone unlikely to
work as many of its advocates assume and that means that the West needs to
recognize that to counter Putin, it is going to have to do far more than “contain”
him.
Among the changes in the state
centered on Moscow between 1945 and now, five are especially important:
·
Stalin’s
Soviet Union was an ideological power committed to spreading its statist
socialist system around the world; Putin’s Russian Federation is not: it is a
quasi-capitalist authoritarian regime seeks to cover its weakened position by
promoting and then exploiting chaos and is not shy about cooperating with just
about anyone.
·
Stalin’s
Soviet Union promoted its ideology via the press and radio; Putin’s Russia uses
the Internet to jump over any barriers, including military opponents, and reach
into other societies to disorder them.
·
Stalin’s
Soviet Union was incredibly cheap: it rarely threw money around to recruit
agents or supporters relying instead on ideological commitments; Putin’s Russia
uses its massive funds, earned from the super-high oil profits of a decade ago
to corrupt businessmen, politicians, and media figures and to recruit spies and
agents of influence.
·
Stalin’s
Soviet Union could expect only minimal cooperation from Western capitalists and
none at all from Western human rights advocates; Putin’s Russia has split this
essential Cold War alliance by dangling the possibility of great wealth to the
capitalists and by marginalizing the rights activists by attacking them in the
electronic media.
·
Stalin’s
Soviet Union was in many ways a conventional power: it projected power primarily
by the use of its armed forces and thus could be countered by the mobilization
of the armed forces of other countries; Putin’s Russia is less able to use
overt military power preferring “hybrid” forms.
Among the changes in the international
environment and especially in the United States and Europe over this period,
five in particular make an effective containment policy alone extremely
problematic:
·
In
1945, the United States was fully mobilized and interested in projecting its
military, economic, and political power around the world; now, many in the US want
to withdraw from international responsibilities and turn inward, a shift that
inevitably will call into question any proclamation of a containment policy.
·
In
1945, Europe was prostrate and directly threatened by the Soviet Army. It was prepared
to defer to the US to defend it against that existential threat. Today, Europe
is divided on what to do about Russia both among countries and within them,
with many counselling the need for cooperation with Russia regardless of what
it does and with even more opposed to continued deference to an increasingly
uncertain American leadership role.
·
In
1945, the West by the very nature of its system viewed the development of the
Internet as a private and independent thing. It thus did not work to exploit it
against those, like Putin, who viewed it as a battleground and a weapon to be
deployed against enemies.
·
In
1945, there was a single ideological divide which the West accepted between
communism on the one hand and democratic capitalism on the other. Now, many in
the West believe that the main divide is between the Christian world and the
Islamic one, a change that means many in the US and especially in Europe see
Russia as being on the West’s side rather than on the other and are prepared to
overlook what it does.
·
In
1945, the West was intellectually self-confident. It had mobilized itself to
defeat fascism and it viewed its own system as the best one. Now, ever more
voices within Western countries have called democracy, freedom and liberal
values into question and accepted the “what about-ism” of moral equivalency
between the West and Russia that Moscow has done as much as possible to
promote.
To point to these ten changes – and in
fact, there are many more – is not to say that the United States, Europe and
the civilized world should not oppose the aggression and authoritarianism Putin
represents. Reviving NATO and other allliances and including new members in
them as soon as possible are necessary steps.
But it is to insist that those things will
not be enough. Even if there were tens of thousands of NATO troops in the
frontline states of Eastern Europe – and there ought to be at least that many
-- Putin could and would use his Internet and his corruption to reach over
those forces and change the nature of these countries and their willingness to
oppose him.
He has demonstrated this again and again
and again.
What then should the West do? First of
all, it must acknowledge that as attractive as fighting the last war always is,
containment which was part of that last conflict isn’t going to work in the new
war if it is the only thing going. Obviously, rebuilding its defense capability
must be part of the answer, but it can’t be the only one. Indeed, it wasn’t
earlier either.
Then, it must recover its own
self-confidence. The strength of the West is not as many, including Putin,
imagine in its GDP and its missiles: it is in the ideas on which the West has
been built. Those ideas will ultimately
like a blade of grass growing through concrete break it into pieces just as they
did the USSR.
And finally, it must join the battle that
Putin has chosen to begin, exposing his use of the Internet to destroy the
notions of truth and objectivity and of corruption to promote a sense of moral
equivalency where it does not exist. And it must recognize that his regime has
to be brought down and not just kept behind a line the West can no longer
enforce.
To do all this will not be easy, but it is
essential because what Putin is doing is just as serious an existential threat
to the West as was Stalin’s. Indeed, the current Kremlin ruler’s actions may be
even more dangerous. At the very least, they are currently far harder to
counter. But we have no choice but to try.
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