Russia, after the collapse of communism and ensuing weakness, has found new strength and resolve. President Putin is acting more boldly if not belligerently in the world, initially in Crimea and the eastern Ukraine, now in Syria. Two chief aims are to restore his country to great power status and to solidify authoritarian rule at home.
There is a third aim: to express displeasure over NATO’s expansion to the Eastern Europe, including countries such as the Baltic States that were parts of the Soviet Union since Stalin invaded them seventy-five years ago. Putin may ultimately try to roll back NATO expansion, and his Syria campaign is part of the calculus.
Syria
Putin has moved with great speed into the Levant. He has dispatched fighter jets to a growing base in Latakia, fired cruise missiles into Syria from ships on the Caspian, and announced that “volunteers” would soon be sent to help against rebel groups. Russian officers are probably selecting the volunteers now from the ranks the special forces.
Russia is not only bolstering a longstanding ally that the West, among others, is trying to overthrow. Coming on the heels of arms sales to Egypt and Lebanon (financed by the Saudis), and negotiations with Iraq and Kurdistan, Russia is also strengthening its position in the Middle East.
Moscow presents its actions as essentially the same as the NATO powers and Sunni states, though it is in fact attacking forces backed – if half-heartedly – by NATO. Further, Russian planes have violated the airspace of Turkey on at least two occasions and possibly locked radar on Turkish jets. Turkey is a NATO member. An attack on it is an attack on all members.
Putin is seeking to expand his influence in the region at NATO’s expense, and testing its determination, both in the region and in general. How will the uncertain alliance react? How might Putin up the ante?
NATO resolve
The Russian government is more determined to act boldly in Syria than western powers are. The latter’s publics, after fiascos in Iraq and to the east in Afghanistan, are unenthusiastic about further involvements. Russia’s public, by contrast, is thrilled to see their nation acting boldly on the world stage again, and winning respect and fear. In any case, their opportunities to voice dissatisfaction are limited and potentially costly.
Putin may calculate that the US is overstretched, militarily and fiscally, and that the public mood leans against intervention. Americans’ appetite for intervention certainly waned after Afghanistan and Iraq went badly. However, ISIL’s rise has countered the non-interventionist mood, and opposing Russian actions in the world retains an almost reflexive response.
Putin may have miscalculated the American mood but been more astute regarding that of other NATO powers. Britain is cutting defense spending and a new Labour leader favors more cuts. France too faces defense cuts and is burdened by deployments to Mali and the Central African Republic. Other former colonies are simmering with Islamist unrest. Germany has been loth to use its military for seventy years now, for obvious reasons, but also out of the assessment that other states will assume foreign military burdens.
Many NATO countries still rely on Russian oil and gas and will continue to do so until Israeli, Egyptian, Kurdish, and American hydrocarbons can Russia’s in coming years.
The chessboard
The Russian periphery is vast. It affords Putin great opportunities to further vex his foreign rivals as they focus on Syria. Latvia, a former Soviet republic and now a NATO member, has a large Russian population – about twenty-five percent, and like the Ukraine, concentrated in the east near the Russian border.
It would surprise few, least of all the Latvians, if ethnic Russians complained more vocally of oppression and growing “neo-fascist” movements. Putin would then encourage separatism and send in troops bearing Russian issue equipment but wearing no insignia to indicate nationality.
China and N Korea could also add to the vexation by moves in East and Southeast Asia.
NATO expansion reconsidered
Ongoing events in Syria, and potential ones in the Baltic states, call into question the judiciousness of NATO expansion to the east following the Soviet Union’s collapse. It was bound to antagonize whoever held power in the Kremlin, trigger dark memories of foreign dangers in the population, and encourage a nationalist backlash led by an authoritarian leader.
Adding Eastern European states to NATO did not increase the alliance’s power. The new states did not have powerful militaries; they have been beneficiaries of NATO largesse and net debits. The lands do not add to the West’s security; they only detract from that of Russia.
Most significantly, it is doubtful that many western powers will go to war, as called for in NATO protocols, in order to defend countries with which they have only slight economic or cultural ties. That is the question circulating belatedly in western capitals. Putin asked it years ago.
©2015 Brian M Downing
Brian,
I have enormous respect for your analyses but this current commentary seems noticeably biased. While Kissenger would agree with your bias, you only characterize the West/US’s agreement not to expand NATO if the USSR would withdraw its troops from the occupied lands of Middle Europe as a matter of judiciousness. The Soviets/’Gorbachov kept their agreement and we, very typically, did not – thereby setting up this current confrontation in Europe. Further, after the fall of the USSR, the West, especially the US and US-centered multi-nationals couldn’t wait to get into the broken USSR/Russia and make fortunes at the expense of the Russian people.
Thanks for your comments, Steve. You go beyond my characterization of NATO expansion as injudicious and seem to call it something approaching treachery. I doubt the assurance Bush the Wiser gave was formal or put down in treaty, and I’d also note that existing NATO partners pressed for expansion, so I call the expansion simply injudicious.
And of course Russia did put down in treaty that it would respect the territorial integrity of the Ukraine, which of course it did not.
Most Eastern European countries were very eager to get into the EU and NATO, chiefly to get out of the Russian sphere and to get military support for what they must have seen as an inevitable nationalist backlash in Russia.