Former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev warns that the world risks a reprise of the Cold War between Russia and the West. The leader who presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union is mistaken. The Cold War was a global contest between two political and economic systems. For several decades, the world lived in the shadow of nuclear self-destruction. In 1989, Communism lost. There is no going back.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia does not have an alternative ideology to sell. The Russian president’s authoritarian style has its admirers, not least among populist xenophobes in western Europe. But truth be told, there is not much of a market elsewhere in the world for Moscow’s economic and political model. The Soviet Union was a superpower. Today’s Russia is a dangerous but declining regional power. Those two characteristics are connected. Putin wants to grab territory and influence in the former Soviet space. He craves “respect”. But if the annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine are a serious challenge to the global order, they fall some way short of an existential threat.
Gorbachev’s lament is for what might have been. It measures the present crisis in Russia’s relationship with the West against the partnership of equals he hoped would emerge from the ashes of Soviet Communism. As it happens, many westerners shared the hope. For the author of glasnost (openness), though, things went wrong when the US and Europe invited formerly Communist states into Nato and thus humiliated Russia during its moment of weakness. Gorbachev never quite explains how freedom for the nations escaping Soviet tutelage could have been reconciled with the preservation of a Russian sphere of influence. Poland was to be set free to make its own choices or it was not. The same could be said of Ukraine.
Putin does not even try to square this circle. He has always seen foreign policy as a zero-sum game. As a young adviser to the mayor of St Petersburg during the early 1990s, he was already bridling against the collapse of the Soviet empire. He later called it the geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. In Putin’s mind, for Russia to win — and for it to be seen to win — someone else has to lose.
All this said, there are Cold War lessons that can be usefully relearnt in response to Putin’s revanchism. The first of these is patience; the second is resolve. Together they add up to deterrence. Anyone who thinks that the conflict in Ukraine is susceptible to a quick diplomatic fix is deluding themselves. Likewise, those who imagine that appeasement will lead Moscow to compromise. Putin accords respect only to those ready to stand up to him. During the 1980s, Kremlinologists speculated that the Soviet economic system would one day collapse under the weight of its contradictions. Since they had no idea when this might happen, however, they assumed it would endure indefinitely. The strategy demanded patience.
The same is true now of a well-judged response to Russia’s military adventurism. Putin is settling in for the long haul. The West should do the same. Moscow has recognised sham elections held by pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk. The ceasefire has badly frayed and monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have recorded a new influx of Russian troops and heavy weapons. As happened in the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, Russia is creating facts on the ground to establish a frozen conflict.
Western sanctions are unlikely to change the calculus any time soon. Along with falling oil price, sanctions have inflicted damage on the Russian economy. Growth has stalled, capital flight has increased and foreign investment has shrunk. The rouble has taken a battering. But Putin has money in the (central) bank, control over the oligarchs and strong popular support for his nationalist posture.
He expects the West to blink first. Given the hesitations among some Europeans, this is not a bad bet. Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister, has told Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel that he speaks for “half of Europe’s governments” in calling for a dilution of sanctions. If you count Malta and Cyprus he may be right. This is where resolve comes in. At the ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Merkel said that the message of that moment was that “dreams can come true ... nothing has to stay as it, no matter how high the hurdles”. Stirring stuff, but true only if political leaders combine patience with resolve.
Sanctions can change the thinking in Moscow only if it is convinced the West will not flinch. Why should Russia concede anything if it seems Renzi rather than Merkel will carry the day? Yet, if sanctions come to describe the new normal in the West’s relationship with Russia, Putin may have pause for thought.
The purpose is not another Cold War. The facts of geopolitics demand that the West continue to do business with Putin, not least in negotiating with Iran about its nuclear programme, and in combating violent Sunni extremism in Iraq and Syria. But nor should the US and Europe give up on their values. Did not Gorbachev promise that the end of the Soviet empire would deliver freedom and democracy?
— Financial Times
