US Foreign Policy Toward Russia Worked Too Well
At home and abroad, the US seems to have ignored the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin as it built an international network of influence to prepare for a new Cold War with the West. Signs of this have proliferated since Boris Yeltsin named Putin head of the FSB.
Why would the US ignore a Soviet-like Russian resurgence? Has the US been lulled into complacency by its economic and technological advantages over Russia? Is the War on Terror so absorbing that the US hasn't the resources to check Russia? Had the US dismissed Russia as a threat because of its 1990s chaos? Did the US fail to see the chaos as Russia's way of elevating its fittest survivor to the Kremlin? Or that KGB training, ruthlessness and discipline would win that contest over democracy, idealism, and Gorbachev's reforms?
It seems unlikely that the US defense and intelligence establishment, with all of its resources, could become that foolish. More likely, the US feared Russia as a catastrophic WMD depot for ancient enemies vying for the Cold War vacuum and leveraging Russia's economic blight. Recall Russia's mortality rate, plummeting birth rate, corruption, substance abuse issues, and post-nuclear pollution. In this light, the US wanted a Vladimir Putin as much as Russians came to desire one. A strong ruler could efficiently secure and control the nation's most dangerous resources. It's been said before: a strong Russia is safer than a weak one, and a Russia with something to lose is easier to work with.
Recent history supports this view. Two events that accelerated Putin's standing and international strategy were US-driven. The first was the bombing of Serbia in 1999, deeply felt in Russia as proof that the West sought political dominance, not freedom, in the East. Analysts had to know that this would stoke Russian nationalism. It was after this that Yeltsin named Putin his first Prime Minister and successor. The second was the decision to exclude Russia from Iraqi reconstruction contracts in 2003 at a time when Western energy companies actively sought heavy stake in Russian oil concerns such as Yukos. This was a sign to Russians that the West sought economic dominance with double standards over the East. Shortly after this, Russia prosecuted key energy oligarchs and nationalized its energy industry, a foundation of Russian state resurgence.
American analysts had to know what the likely Russian responses would be to these "provocations." Vladimir Putin and his cadre of messengers have used the word "provocations" repeatedly when referring to American actions such as the missile shield. And yet, where military conflict might have occurred with the Russian seizure of a Serbian airport in the tense days of NATO's bombing campaign of the Clinton years, or America's post-9-11 military mobilizations in Eurasia, none did. It seems as if old business understandings, not war, prevailed. The US FBI and Russian FSB have even cooperated on anti-terrorism, anti-crime and international human trafficking prosecution.
Whether a Nixonian cynicism has motivated the US to accept Georgian forces to support its own in Iraq and then deny Georgia US forces to repel the Russians in recent weeks, who knows? The US has blamed surprise and cited overextension of its forces to explain its lack of reciprocity to Georgians. It has done everything it could outside of military assistance to help Georgia. Yet this will not necessarily stop Russia from absorbing Georgia over time. Instead, indecisive Western aid, without military protection, could eventually find Russian warehouses.
Russia's invasion of Georgia is where the strategy of provoking and aiding the resurgence of a strong Russia is reaching the blowback stage. NATO has just seen Russia successfully disrupt NATO's growth. Alliances do not become more secure by stagnating or contracting while authoritarian partnerships grow. And much has been done to divide the members of NATO in recent years. This has been part of Putin's influence campaign, using what human intelligence resources he had to compensate for what he did not. Most observers have warned of Russia's return to authoritarianism and Cold War posturing, citing for example, the end of free media and the commandeering of regional governorships, two blows to Mikhail Gorbachev's lauded reforms.
And Mr. Gorbachev, scarily, seems to have bet against one of the horses he rode into the West's heart, glasnost. By 2006 Putin had whittled Russia's fledgling free press down to Novaya Gazeta, where the late Anna Politkovskaya worked until her 2006 murder. Months before Politkovskaya's KGB style execution at her apartment building, Gorbachev bought a key interest in Novaya Gazeta. At first decrying her murder as a blow to glasnost, Gorbachev later switched horses and echoed the Putin government's talking points on Politkovskaya's murder: that someone intent on discrediting the Putin government must have shot her. It was a chilling shift by Gorbachev considering that so many Western dignitaries appear to have openly trusted Gorbachev and supported his foundation.
A candid look at the recent history of the US and Russia together suggests that democracy, liberty and other Western ideals may have been auctioned off for stability. We see ideals like reciprocal support to Georgia's democracy and unequivocal solidarity with the champions of glasnost drowning in icy waters. Now we are seeing the pendulum swing beyond stability to Russia towards hyper-centralized power. That kind of power corrupts and anarchy is its secondary infection. Then anarchy leads to despotism. It is a cycle of extremes for which bona fide checks and balances in a constitutional system with a bill of rights is the best cure. The Putin strategy has been to use spiritual and cultural heritage to vilify constitutional democracy as a corruption of the West while celebrating Soviet history as if it were part of the Russian tradition and not rooted in a utopian Western ideology itself.
