Should We Fear Russia?

4 Navigating the New Normal

To begin with, one needs to recognize that, as time goes by, the West’s challenges related to Russia are not going away or getting smaller. A stronger Russia, should it emerge, will be a stronger challenger; but a weaker and, particularly, a failing Russia will be an even more formidable challenge to deal with. One also needs from the start to drop any residual illusions about a Russia somehow reassociated with the West and more or less following its lead. That window is permanently closed.

Russia looks ossified, even petrified, under the current leadership, which has been in place for over a decade and a half. Yet, it will change, either more smoothly, as a result of policies from above interacting with processes from below, or perhaps abruptly, in unexpected ways and without much prior warning, as it has done a couple of times in its modern history. However, even as Russia changes, it will be different from the West and even from its neighbors in Central Europe such as Poland. Russia will act in its own way and will not be subject to Western-designed norms and conventions in either domestic or international behavior.

Russia will continue to compete with the West. The West’s hope that Russia will inevitably succumb to the pressure of economic factors, such as the low oil price and economic sanctions, resulting also in the lack of investment and a ban on technology transfers, is so far just a hope. Even if Russia continues on a downward path, this descent may be long and will not necessarily lead to a friendlier policy vis-à-vis the West. The opposite is at least as likely. Pro-Western political and social forces within Russia are at their weakest in decades. Popular Russian nationalism defines itself as frankly anti-Western.

Competition and rivalry is not all there is to the West’s relationship with Russia. There are compelling reasons for cooperation in a few selected areas. As already mentioned, in the field of WMD non-proliferation, Moscow has continued to interact productively with Washington and others on Iran and North Korea, despite the general atmosphere of US–Russian confrontation. In Syria, Russia is key to the future political and military developments.

Over time, Russia may have to become more involved in Afghanistan and Central Asia in order to oppose armed radicals there. Up to a point, its interests will be aligned with those of the West. With Islamist extremism a rising threat to Russia itself, Moscow will continue to fight terrorism both within its own borders and internationally. The transnational nature of contemporary terrorism makes Moscow a valuable partner to Western governments, whatever they think about Putin or his regime.

Thus, Russia in the foreseeable future will be primarily a competitor but may also occasionally – and within the general environment of competition – be a partner of the West. Under the present politico-economic system, it is likely to continue on a declining trajectory, but its military power will grow for the time being. This unequal mix of competition and cooperation, economic decline and military expansion, will make crafting a Western policy toward Russia a particularly difficult task. This task can be divided into elements, each with its own time horizon.

In the short term, the focus has to be on ensuring that the West’s relations with Russia do not get out of control and lead to a dangerous collision that no one wants. The conflict in Ukraine’s east is now undergoing a lull, but it may be reignited and expand beyond the present battlefield. The number one priority is to make sure that it is safely controlled. It is too much to expect the West to pressure Ukraine into implementing Minsk II, which Kiev hates and Moscow likes. The least bad way under the circumstances would be to build a firewall around the zone of conflict to make sure that it does not spread.

It is also highly important to agree with Russia in avoiding any provocation involving Russian and US/NATO military assets and forces, in Europe and elsewhere. Accidents involving military aircraft and naval ships are particularly dangerous. It is also necessary to avoid provocative military exercises along the new line of the military stand-off on Russia’s north-western borders in Europe. As such exercises will continue in the absence of conventional arms control in Europe, some transparency would help. The purpose of the exercises can only be conventional deterrence, as actual war-fighting between Russia and NATO would almost certainly lead to a nuclear catastrophe.

A related issue is military deployments. So far, NATO has abided by the terms of the Founding Act on relations with Russia, which rules out large-scale military deployments and massive military infrastructure development in the eastern member countries. With Russia–NATO cooperation over, and relations downgraded virtually to Cold War levels, there is pressure building up to terminate the constraints and deploy substantial foreign (preferably US) forces and bases in the Baltic States and Poland. If this happens, the relationship between the West and Russia will become even more militarized, with Moscow probably seeking to counter Western conventional troop presence on its borders with a nuclear threat to the United States and its European allies.

This may also be Russia’s reaction to the deployment of US ballistic missile defenses in Eastern Europe and East Asia, ostensibly to counter missile threats from Iran and North Korea. Even though the Russian nuclear deterrent will not lose its effectiveness in the foreseeable future, these US deployments will not be ignored. In the asymmetrical situation of the lack of military balance between Russia and NATO, Moscow will have to rely more heavily on its strategic offensive systems. With traditional nuclear arms control between Washington and Moscow now history, it will be important for both sides at least to engage in a dialogue to help avoid erroneous assessment and resultant miscalculation.

This would require, at a minimum, keeping lines of communication open. Multilateral fora such as the UN Security Council, the NATO–Russia Council, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will need to have a bigger role to play. The institutions which functioned during the Cold War should assume some of the familiar functions; the bodies built in the hope of cooperation would need to be transformed into platforms for managing conflict. It is important that dialogue in all these organizations is not stopped as punishment for Russian behavior or in protest at Western actions; rather, it is in the crisis periods that such bodies will be particularly, maybe critically, useful.

In an environment where top-level communications have virtually broken down and only transactional foreign policy is able to operate, it is highly desirable for small groups of trusted individuals from both sides, who enjoy the confidence of their national leaders as well as each other, to carry on with more broad-ranging dialogue on managing the adversarial relationship and organizing cooperative projects where the parties’ interests approximate or coincide. These projects might range from the fight against extremism, to stemming radicalism, to the diplomatic process on crises such as Syria, to efforts to prevent WMD proliferation, and to less controversial issues such as dealing with infectious diseases and climate change.

In the medium and long term, it is necessary to work toward a new security arrangement in Europe and Greater Eurasia. The well-worn concept of European security needs to be rethought. By tradition, it was based on balances: initially among European states themselves, and later between the two blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union. In the post-Cold War era an attempt was made to organize it around NATO, which was to expand to include virtually all of Europe except for Russia, which would be linked to the system by a special partnership arrangement. This attempt has failed, but there is no going back to the old blocbased equilibrium. Russia has no real bloc to lead. Russia alone cannot balance NATO. However, the geopolitical framework has expanded beyond Europe.

Just as in the twentieth century European security expanded across the Atlantic, its twenty-first-century version also needs to expand, this time in the opposite direction to embrace all of Greater Eurasia. With China moving west toward Europe along its “One Belt, One Road” route, Russia looking toward Asia and the Middle East, and the United States repositioning itself with regard to both Asia and Europe, the security interests of the great powers across the entire continent of Eurasia are becoming more closely intertwined. Thus, twenty-first-century security arrangements will have to include China, as in the last century they came to include America. This expansion, however, is nothing like the Cold War situation when the United States came to the rescue of Western Europe. China is not coming to the rescue of a weakened Russia, and Eurasia is not becoming an area of intense Sino-American rivalry. The picture is more complex.

The transcontinental, transoceanic system which is emerging not just in Eurasia but in the northern hemisphere includes three great powers: the United States, China and Russia. It also includes a number of US allies that generally follow its lead but are powerful economically: the countries of the European Union, plus Japan, Turkey and South Korea. There is also a potential fourth great power, India, whose might and ambitions will significantly expand over time, and there are a number of important regional players, such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

To be minimally stable, the emerging system will need to rest on the basic principle of rough equilibrium among the great powers, some sort of balance between competing regional ones, and adequate protection to others. This will require creating a situation in which all key elements – i.e., great powers – are essentially satisfied that their security is not threatened by one or both of the other great powers. Regional powers would be safely balanced by their competitors or by the rest of the region. And all other countries would be sufficiently protected by means of alliances, partnerships and credible guarantees.

Although by far the weakest of the three great powers, Russia will play a pivotal role in that system. This follows from its geography, which reaches from Eastern and Northern Europe to East and Central Asia, and from the Arctic to the Caspian; from its natural and human resources; from its nuclear and conventional military power; and from its vast international experience as a European, Eurasian and global player over the course of many centuries. Of particular importance is Russia’s strong determination to play solo, not being the junior partner or tributary state of anyone – in today’s world, Washington or Beijing.

While Russia is pivotal – aligning itself with different players while always following its own self-interest – its role will not be central. The central stage will be occupied by the United States, seeking to protect and prolong its global dominance, and China, the rising challenger to that dominance. A Sino-Russian alliance is improbable for the same reason that the US–Russian one never came about: Moscow will not recognize the other partner’s leadership, and the other partner would find Russia too difficult and ultimately unnecessary to humor. However, following the rupture between Russia and the West, the Sino-Russian rapprochement has reached the level of genuine entente that others need to take seriously.

China and Russia share an intense resentment of US global dominance. They both advocate a world order based on great-power equilibrium, although, while China dreams of a new kind of bipolarity, Russia is wedded to a “polycentric” system of several major players. Like Moscow, Beijing is adamantly opposed to a Western-supported spread of democracy and defends the existing political regime in the name of national sovereignty. Like Russia, China is seeking to dominate its neighborhood in the name of the national interest. It employs a strikingly different strategy from Russia’s in Crimea and Ukraine, but it clearly regards Taiwan, the islands in the East China Sea and much of the South China Sea as its core interests. For Beijing, increasing its influence in the neighborhood and eventually across Eurasia is a key part of the strategy of China’s global rise.

So far, in view of its evident limitations and potential for rivalry, the United States has been relaxed about the evolution of the Russian–Chinese relationship. This attitude, however, is overly complacent. Russia is not China’s equal, but neither is it its satellite. In principle, under a different system of governance and management, and with an economic model that encourages development and innovation, it could marshal enough resources and unchain sufficient potential to become a formidable and effective player. Russia’s decline is a reality, but whether this is terminal or temporary is an open question yet to be answered by the Russian people. In a number of key areas – military and foreign affairs, diplomacy, intelligence – Russia continues to be ahead of China. It does not have many allies, but it has pragmatically partnered with a number of countries, including India and Vietnam. Moscow has not written Tokyo off, and it keeps up a productive relationship with Seoul.

China and Russia are not going to clash over Central Asia, as some in the West have long been prophesying, and, while they will not build a formal alliance, Russia will be contributing to the growth of China’s air and sea power. As the two militaries exercise together, Beijing and Moscow will continue cooperating closely on world order and regional security issues. As the competition between China and the United States grows more intense, what China can get from Russia will become more important. The strategic triangle of Washington, Beijing and Moscow has mutated over the past forty-plus years, but it has not vanished as some thought. However, it has lost its salient feature: Washington no longer dominates. It is Beijing which now has better relations with Washington and Moscow than the latter two have between themselves.

This situation challenges the West to come up with a broader strategic approach. To have any chance of acceptance, the transcontinental/transoceanic security arrangement needs to be guided by the principles of politico-ideological pluralism and mutual respect. This will be a hard sell in the West and will probably result in the simultaneous preaching of values in public and a hard-nosed pursuit of interest in reality. The arrangement cannot be managed within a single overarching institution. Rather, better use will need to be made of the multiple existing institutions while ensuring better connectivity and interaction among them. Thus, the OSCE might find it useful to talk to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); China could harmonize its “One Belt, One Road” project not only with the Eurasian Economic Union but also with the EU; and so on.

In this broader picture, relations with Russia are but one, albeit important, element. Basically, the choice for the West in that relationship is between containment and engagement on mutually agreed terms. For now, containment is winning. Russia remains under pressure politically and economically. In the domain of public information, it is pictured as a rogue state led by a gang of criminal, corrupt, and even murderous figures. This approach, however, hinges on the expectation of Russia’s inevitable decline and hopes of a political transformation that would return the country to the Western orbit which it left in the mid-2000s.

Dealing with a disintegrating Russia would again, as twenty-five years ago in the case of the collapsing USSR, demand maximum attention to the issues of assuring nuclear security and preventing WMD proliferation. Much else could be borrowed from contemporary history books, but one key element will be missing: unlike in the final days of the Soviet Union and the first days of the new Russian Federation, the West will have few friends in the Kremlin or among the Russian elites, whether outgoing or incoming. It would also have to deal with a population which would blame their woes largely on malicious Western policies.

And, very important, since a disintegrating Russia would present a major danger to China, Beijing can be expected to play a key role in preventing Russia’s collapse. While the end of the Soviet Union presented a historic chance to the West, which it chose not to use, a severely weakened Russia could become an opportunity to China to reach out and help it recover, so as to make a claim on its resources and exercise long-term influence on its policies. Should this happen, the geopolitical axis of Eurasia would shift.

This, however, is not necessarily what the future holds. As demonstrated in chapter 3, some Western policies, such as sanctions, can be and are counter-productive. Russia’s current economic model is unsustainable, and its governance is appalling. Russia is in deep crisis, which can be likened to a severe illness. However, as is common in such cases, if the patient does not die, he will get stronger. If Russia goes down and disintegrates again, the West will be presented with one set of problems; if it recovers, the challenge will be bigger than it is now.

A Russia which has recovered and set out on a path of economic and technological development would be of interest to European business circles. Investments would again become profitable, and the Russian market of 145 million consumers would look more attractive. At some point, some sanctions would have to be eased or even lifted. There would be no emergence of a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, but some form of relationship between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union would make sense after the latter has survived the test of the present economic crisis. This would not make Russia “part of Europe,” but it might eventually lead to the two becoming partners in selected areas.

An economically stronger Russia would make its foreign policy even more effective. Russia has made a difference even when it was weak but punching above its weight. If it becomes stronger, it will make much more of a difference. With both its own integration into the West and the former Russian provinces’ integration into a Greater Russia no longer viable options, a Russia which is a single major nation-state, global in its outlook and interacting with all its neighbors in Greater Eurasia – the EU, China, India, Japan, South-East Asia and the Middle East – plus others elsewhere, could be an influential world player. The West should also be prepared for this outcome, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the moment.

Dealing with a stronger Russia, but one which no longer sees itself as part of the Euro-Atlantic community – which was Moscow’s official policy line as recently as six years ago – will not be easy. Competition, if anything, will intensify. Russia’s main goal at the global level is the establishment of a polycentric world order which would end the centuries-old domination of the West and cut short the second American century. In pursuit of this goal, Russia would broadly align itself with China, India, Brazil, Iran and a number of other non-Western countries.

Such an alignment would not result in permanent coalitions built around such fora as BRICS or SCO. There are serious issues within the non-West, not least between China and India. Moscow and Beijing do not always see eye to eye, and they have a host of practical issues to sort out in addition to some historical baggage. The non-West is not going to evolve into anything like the present-day West, a homogeneous community of like-minded nations with a set of shared values and undisputed leadership provided by the United States. Yet, with the addition of Russia from 2014, this group has gained a particularly combative great power.

The “new normal” of competition and even confrontation will last years. It might end sooner if the Russian Federation breaks down under the pressure of rivalry, like the Russian Empire did in the midst of World War I. The West would then have to deal with the consequences of another major collapse following that of the Soviet Union twenty-five years ago. There is no guarantee that it would be as relatively orderly and peaceful as the dismantlement of the USSR.

The competition might last longer if Russia is lucky enough to avoid a cataclysmic scenario but still lacks the will to begin improving its economy and overall governance. Then the West would be dealing with a country which would be simultaneously declining economically yet still able to marshal sufficient resources in the military sector to ensure its own security and pursue an active foreign policy, defying US global dominance.

In the seemingly unlikely but not totally impossible scenario of Russia using its confrontation with the world’s most powerful country to diversify and modernize its economy, overhaul and upgrade its scientific and technological base, and radically improve governance at all levels – particularly by means of prizing competence and reducing corruption – it may become an even more formidable competitor with the West. In other words, a successfully modernized Russia would not again seek to join the West but, rather, press it harder to protect its interests and promote its own worldview. Whatever Russia’s future, the conflict with the West is helping shape it.