Home ›› 23 Feb 2022 ›› Opinion
Moscow still has the initiative in a crisis it provoked but apparent Russian failure so far to engineer a phony “internal” Ukrainian opposition leaves the situation literally on a knife’s edge. Russian propaganda is attempting to claim victory already by portraying post-Afghanistan America as “exhausted” but Moscow has struggled to provoke Western diplomatic disarray. For its part, the United States has lurched from a chaotic Trump Administration to the chaos of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and finds itself having to react to Vladimir Putin’s moves all around the former Soviet periphery. Still, Washington’s stern public warnings about Russian preparations seem to have surprised Moscow and out Putin on the back foot.
If reports from London are accurate Russia may have wanted to do in Ukraine what it failed to accomplish in Montenegro in 2016. Then, Russian interests and Serbian compradors botched an attempt to overthrow Milo Djukanovic. Some of those Serbs may have gone off script in a plot to kill Djukanovic outright. (Similarly, rogue pro-Russian Ukrainians may be responsible for the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in early 2020). Djukanovic’s subsequent problems have come from his mishandling of the Serbian Orthodox Church not from any external threat – and he remains President of Montenegro no matter Moscow’s preferences.
The Russians may have tried to exploit public discontent with the stranglehold patronal oligarchs have over business, commerce, and politics in Ukraine to create a plausible fifth column in support of whatever military action they undertake. Meanwhile, Moscow decried Ukrainian non-implementation of the Minsk Agreement with Western audiences in mind. The fact of Western impatience with Kyiv’s failure to root out the country’s indelible elite could still serve to deepen divides in the West over how resolutely to oppose Russian aggression. Similar conditions informed Russia’s playbook in Montenegro.
Any shortcomings in Russia’s performance so far do not vindicate the lack of American strategic thinking regarding Ukraine or geopolitics in general. Rhetoric out of Washington continues to flow from the assumption that diplomacy and military action are alternative choices rather than tools in the same toolkit. Nevertheless, the US has managed to raise the bar regarding what would constitute a Russian military “success.” Its narrative has created a general expectation that Russian troops would overwhelm Ukrainian troops and conquer the country if they set out to do so. If that happens the US will have suffered a severe setback but will point to the fact of its forecast and attempt to rationalize away the impact of Russian victory. . Expectations that Russia would win any military confrontation builds on Moscow’s successful assaults against Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine and would color perceptions in case war is avoided.
On the other hand, if Ukrainian forces manage to slow or stall a large-scale Russian onslaught Moscow will face tough choices regarding how brutal it is willing to be. Western rhetoric also could spin a limited Russian intervention as proof Western resolve deterred something more awful. The West, of course, also would impose serious sanctions and denounce Russian aggression. In either case the Russians would have failed for now to engineer a decisive shift in European security.
The problem for both powers is that the longer the crisis drags on without resolution the less either will seem credible. Putin will have massed troops for what increasingly will seem to be an expensive and pointless piece of performance art. Meanwhile, breathless American warnings of war will wear thin on public ears. As each side’s messaging begins to suffer from diminishing returns neither will want to be the first to walk back off the ledge. Until Moscow and Washington agree on a way out there will remain a danger of impatience and miscalculation.
At this point the best non-violent outcome for Russia would be if in exchange for military de-escalation the West forces Kyiv to implement the pieces of the Minsk Agreements that undermine Ukrainian sovereignty much as the April 2013 EU-sponsored deal between Belgrade and Pristina undermines the sovereignty of Kosovo. Russia loses if the crisis results in a diplomatic process in which the West can credibly trumpet NATO cohesion in the context of no substantive Ukrainian concessions on the Minsk process.
Moscow is exploiting French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition and political interests to produce a Russian diplomatic success. Macron faces reelection in April and could use something to brag about.
