#2
The Washington Quarterly
http://twq.elliott.gwu.edu
Summer 2015
Putin's Choices: Explaining Russian Foreign Policy and Intervention in Ukraine
By Kimberly Marten

Kimberly Marten is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. She is also Director of the new Program on U.S.-Russia Relations at Columbia's Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies (where she served as Institute Acting Director in 2012/13 and Deputy Director for Development in 2013-15). She is a member of Columbia's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the PONARS-Eurasia network, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's evolving policies toward Ukraine have continued to surprise almost everyone. It was clear from the start that he considered the February 2014 ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to be illegitimate, another example of what he portrayed as Western-orchestrated regime changes-and feared he was potentially the next target. He also viewed Ukraine's definitive tilt toward the West as a challenge to Russia's power and control in its traditional sphere of influence. It was obvious that he was going to react negatively. But the specific choices he made have astounded even expert analysts.

First came the shock of Moscow's annexation of Crimea, using special operations forces known as "little green men" in Ukraine and "polite people" in Russia. After the fact, political scientist John Mearsheimer was quick to explain this as Putin's reaction to the possible expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include Ukraine. The post-Cold War NATO enlargement process started in the mid-1990s with invitations issued to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and official talk about extending NATO to include Ukraine began in 2008.1 Mearsheimer argued that Putin's dread over the possible loss of Russia's naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol explained his 2014 gambit.2 But in fact, there was nothing obvious that should have triggered this particular choice on Putin's part, and no one had (at least publicly) predicted it in advance. NATO had last expanded five years earlier, and further expansion of any kind was not on the alliance's agenda in 2014. No one in NATO was seriously considering inviting Ukraine to join the alliance anytime soon, given the abysmal state of Kyiv's economy as well as the corruption and Russian penetration of its armed forces, to say nothing of its lack of political stability.

A 2010 agreement with Ukraine guaranteed Russian access to the Sevastopol base through 2042, and Kyiv strongly benefitted from the heavily subsidized Russian natural gas supplies it received in return.3 While Ukrainian opposition leaders had long threatened to annul the agreement, Kyiv had little incentive to abrogate it unilaterally, and gas prices remained a powerful bargaining tool for Moscow in any future negotiations. By threatening Ukrainian sovereignty, Putin without question pushed Kyiv more closely into NATO's orbit, rather than securing its future cooperation with Moscow; and by taking Crimea's predominantly Russian ethnic voters out of Ukraine, he lost a political tool of influence that Russia had long held in Kyiv.

Following this annexation, Putin gave a triumphal speech before a joint session of the Russian parliament on March 18, 2014. For the first time during his fourteen-year tenure as president or prime minister, Putin used explicitly ethnic nationalist terms to explain and justify his foreign policy moves, calling Crimea "primordial Russian land"4 and complaining that with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 "the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders."5 While ethnic nationalism and violence against ethnic minorities had certainly been growing in Russian society in recent years, Putin himself had previously been careful to express his own nationalism in statist, not ethnic, terms.6 Once again, his choice was particularly confounding because it seemed to presage threats to the neighboring states of Estonia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova, all of which have significant Russian ethnic minority populations, and each of which reacted negatively at a time when Putin needed whatever international support he could receive.

Then came Russian military support for separatists in the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, known informally as the Donbas (or Donetsk Basin) region. These were areas where, unlike Crimea, ethnic Russians (at least in 2001, the last time a census was taken) formed only a predominant minority of the population, not the majority, even though native Russian-language speakers were in the large majority.7 While Putin talked about protecting the political rights of Russian-speakers in the Donbas who wanted more autonomy from Kyiv, experts immediately began to speculate that Putin's real goal was to create another "frozen conflict" (like those in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdniester, and Nagorgno-Karabakh), possibly in an attempt to ensure that NATO would never welcome absorbing Ukraine.

But the conflict in Donetsk and Lugansk wouldn't stay frozen. A September 5, 2014, ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk with the support of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)-supposedly inspired by Putin's notes jotted on a plane trip to Mongolia8-never really stuck. The evidence indicates that Russia instead increased its supply of advanced equipment and weaponry to the rebels, alongside Russian troops disguised as "volunteers," and by January 2015 a new winter offensive was underway against Ukrainian forces.

That month, Putin changed his rhetoric again. Now, he argued that the fighting in the east was not really a Ukrainian civil war aimed at resolving the kind of issues outlined in the Minsk accords, such as local autonomy and security provision for Russian-speakers in Donbas. Instead, he claimed, this was a NATO attempt to use the Ukrainian military as a "foreign legion" against the interests of the Ukrainian people, for the purpose of threatening Russian sovereignty and security.9 Simultaneously, the Russian state media purported to show a U.S. soldier involved in the fighting in the Donetsk port city of Mariupol.10 Rather than keeping the conflict frozen, it now appeared that Putin was laying the groundwork for a Russian escalation, perhaps to create a land-bridge to the Crimean peninsula, which had been economically devastated since being cut off from its only land border with Ukraine following the Russian annexation of 2014.

What explains these twists and turns, and what do they mean for the future of Russia's relationship with the West? Unfortunately, there is no way to know the answer to these questions until events in Moscow play themselves out. The next sections explain why, and what the United States and its NATO allies should do in the face of this terrible uncertainty.

Putin the Unpredictable

U.S. and Western leaders would love to know what Putin's "endgame" is. The term comes from chess, where the goal is to trap one's opponent into checkmate after a long series of moves requiring strategic vision. But Putin has never claimed to be a chess master; he is a judo master. Judo is about immediate tactics, not long-term strategy. A judoka walks into a room, sizes up the opponent, probes for their weaknesses, and tips the other off-balance in a flash-causing the opponent to fall from their own weight. The victor in a judo match doesn't have to be bigger or stronger than the opponent, just quicker and shrewder. When one match is over, the judoka moves on to the next, sizing up the new opponent and starting over again.

Judo has played a crucial role in shaping Putin's worldview. He credits judo for giving him discipline after a boyhood spent as a street fighter. He loves the sport so much that he starred in a film about it while serving as Prime Minister under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. Putin spoke in the film about the history of Russian victories in judo and demonstrated some of his favorite moves.11 (Imagine U.S. President Barack Obama making a similar movie about basketball from the Rose Garden.) When Putin's longtime judo coach Anatoly Rachin passed away in August 2013, Putin told his security detail to stay well behind him after the funeral, so that he could take a lone-if televised-walk of mourning.12

Meanwhile during Putin's time in office, his childhood judo buddy, Arkady Rotenberg, skyrocketed up the list of Russian billionaires as the Gazprom state-controlled natural gas conglomerate sold off subsidiaries to him.13 Putin helped the climb by awarding Rotenberg's company construction contracts totaling over $7 billion for the 2014 Sochi Olympics,14 and in January 2015 topped this off by giving him the contract for building the Kerch bridge planned for spanning the waters between Russia and Crimea.15 Putin's life is immersed in the world of judo-and a judo master doesn't need an endgame. Instead a judoka responds in the moment to the vicissitudes of a changing environment. The only goal is to be the last one standing at the end of the tournament, come what may.

It is not only immersion in the world of judo that shapes Putin's predilection for unexpected moves. His career history as a KGB operative also plays a crucial role. Putin credits the KGB with giving him the life-changing opportunity to transform himself from a mediocre student into a hardworking scholar.16 Exactly what Putin did in his KGB and FSB years remains hazy. Russia experts Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy believe that he was first a case officer, skilled at turning foreigners (including East Germans when he was stationed in Dresden) toward Moscow's ends. They believe he then added financial investigation skills to his intelligence portfolio during the early 1990s, when he temporarily resigned from official state service to work for the mayor of St. Petersburg on privatization and taxation issues.17 In addition, he has rewarded old friends, as his colleagues from the KGB and follow-on FSB (Federal Security Forces, using the Russian initials) have received high-ranking positions in government, and at the top of state-owned industrial conglomerates in the oil, nuclear energy, and defense sectors. Regardless of the specific roles Putin played, the KGB would certainly have trained him well in the arts of masking and deception, contributing to his talent for unpredictability. For this reason, Putin's continuing surprises should surprise no one.

Opaque Networks and Surprise Decisions

Moreover, even if Putin the individual were to be deposed (more on that later), the very nature of the current Russian system makes all of Moscow's moves unpredictable. This is because decisions stem from opaque political networks which connect to the leader through informal ties-not by well-defined institutions. Before the U.S. government makes any decision, its intentions are telegraphed far in advance: the executive branch launches trial balloons through well-placed leaks; experts debate each other endlessly in the media; Congress holds hearings; pollsters probe public opinion.

In contrast, the process of Russian policymaking is far less clear. Decisions are made not within well-defined constitutional bodies or bureaucratic institutions, but behind closed doors by unknown individuals. Authority comes through personal connections, cemented through family, neighborhood, and prior school or work experiences. While all political systems depend to some extent on such network ties, what sets Russia apart from its European or North American counterparts is the extent and depth of its personal patronage system.18 Leaders in every realm of Russian politics, business, and society have an obligation to protect and promote their personal clients in the network, and followers in turn owe a debt of loyalty to the patrons who care for them. Networks receive fortification from long-standing emotional ties whose power far exceeds the expediency of immediate self-interest.

There are reports that, over time, Putin's own personal circle has narrowed, and that he may increasingly be seeking advice from only a handful of people, especially his old KGB and FSB cronies.19 Hence, the surprising nature of his policy choices might in part reflect the incomplete information he has at his fingertips, if he is turning away from a broader range of expert advisers. As political scientist Jessica L.P. Weeks argues, personalist dictatorships the world over face this problem.20 No one wants to serve as the bearer of bad news that contradicts the boss's views or challenges the wisdom of the leader's choices.

But far from being just an artifact of Putin's personality or of the current tense climate in Russia, this informal network system has been in place in Russia for many years, perhaps even centuries. Scholars have long thought that the Soviet system was based much more on traditional patron-client relationships between individuals than on any abstract Communist Party structure.21 While the people involved and their philosophies had radically changed, this was a stylistic holdover from the politics of the tsarist era.

The fact that Putin's personal history and the overall Russian political system combine to favor surprises mean that we should continue to expect the unexpected. One prime example of this outside of Ukraine was the "September surprise" of 2013 in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suddenly announced a plan to remove all chemical weapons from Syria under UN aegis, just as the United States was considering launching an air strike in response to overwhelming evidence

that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against Syria's own population. The remarkable thing about Lavrov's announcement is that up until that point, Russia had consistently resisted all attempts by other members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose any sanctions or even any criticism against the Syrian regime for its attacks against civilians. Now suddenly it was Moscow that came to the rescue, spearheading a plan to send Western inspectors into Syria under UNSC oversight in order to take chemical weapons away from a regime that Russia itself had helped arm with conventional weapons. There was no apparent debate about the decision in the Russian press or by Russian experts in the area, either before or after the decision was made.

Predictions about How Informal Networks Operate

Despite the fact that the opaque Russian system produces surprise policy decisions, we can nevertheless make some predictions about how the system should operate, based on the logic of patron-client politics. First, as political scientist Henry Hale emphasizes, leaders in patron-client network systems must constantly signal their strength.22 This helps explain why Putin is relentlessly photographed while shirtless on horseback, shooting tranquilizer dart guns at tigers, or discovering ancient Greek vases while deep-sea diving. It isn't just his ego at play. These stunts are part of a concerted effort to send a strong signal to both the public and his network associates that he is a fit, vigorous, take-charge strongman, even past age 60. In turn, this has an important implication for Putin's foreign policy: he can never be seen as giving in to Western pressure.

Early on, in his first term as president, Putin reached out to the West. He attempted to find common cause with President Bush over the fight against Islamist extremism after the attacks of September 11, 2001, arguing that Russia faced a similar danger from Islamist rebels in the North Caucasus. Putin didn't even object when the United States first sent military trainers to neighboring Georgia to help develop Georgian peace operations skills, or when NATO invited the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join the alliance in 2002. (This marked the first, and so far only, time that former Soviet republics would join NATO, and it left the heavily militarized Russian seaport territory of Kaliningrad-separated from the Russian mainland by Latvia and Lithuania-surrounded by NATO on all land borders.) Instead, Putin commented to the Russian press that both Western actions were "no tragedy," as long as they were not followed by militarization of those territories.23

But Putin's outreach efforts soon cooled, largely because he felt disrespected by the West. As Russia expert Angela Stent argues,24 Putin seemed particularly irked by two U.S. actions that failed to recognize what he thought should represent Russia's leading role in international affairs. First was President George W. Bush's December 2001 unilateral abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a centerpiece of U.S.-Soviet arms control during the Cold War that emphasized parity between the two great powers. Second, and even more important, was the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 without UNSC approval, in the face of a likely Russian veto of the action. As Russian power went into decline after the Soviet collapse, its veto in the UNSC remained its one clear lever of global influence. While the United States and Russia continued to find some common ground, especially during the interregnum presidency of Dmitry Medvedev from 2008-2012-for example, in crafting limited UNSC sanctions against Iran and North Korea, and in having Russia join the World Trade Organization-the relationship from then on was often fraught. Putin returned for a third stint as president in 2012, following massive political protests in Russia that began over vote fraud claims in the 2011 legislative Duma elections and morphed into a condemnation of Putin's rule itself. Putin portrayed these protests as U.S.-inspired and -coordinated, and from that point on the West seemed to become Putin's personal foe.

This helps explain the ferocity of Putin's reactions to the events in Kyiv in late 2013 and early 2014. Not only was what happened in neighboring Ukraine a central security concern for post-Soviet Russia; even more important, Ukraine-especially Crimea and the southeastern regions of the country-played a central role in Russia's conception of its own great power identity dating back to the time of Catherine the Great. Her expansion of the Russian empire into "Novorossiya" in the late 18th century marked the true emergence of Russia as a force to be reckoned with on the European stage. This means that it is likely politically impossible for Putin to compromise in Ukraine in the face of Western economic sanctions or other pressures. It is not surprising that he told the annual Valdai Club meeting in October 2014, "Pressure from outside, as has been the case on past occasions, will only consolidate our society."25

A second foreign policy outcome that we can predict from Russia's informal politics system is that all interactions with foreign leaders will be heavily personalized, since Russian leaders think of politics in personalistic-not organizational or institutional-terms. This will prove especially true when they deal with those in other post-Soviet states, who all had school or workplace networks of one sort or another, not far removed from Moscow in past decades. Even those too young to have been directly connected in Soviet times are connected by ties stemming from their families or older colleagues.

This certainly applies to the relationship between Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko was also a talented judo enthusiast in Soviet times, although he never reached Putin's mastery level-a fact that may suggest their relative standing in Putin's mind. Even more important, one of Poroshenko's original patrons in Ukrainian politics was Viktor Medvedchuk, an oligarch who represented the rebels in early peace talks with the government in Kyiv and ran against Poroshenko in the March 2014 presidential elections in Ukraine. Even though Poroshenko had broken with Medvedchuk long ago (and indeed he was put on the 2014 U.S. sanctions list), Medvedchuk popped up again at the so-called Minsk II negotiations in February 2015-this time (in a surprising turnabout) representing the Ukrainian state and its security service, the SBU.26 The reason this matters is because Putin is not merely an old friend of Medvedchuk, Putin is the godfather of one of Medvedchuk's daughters. In other words, beyond whatever substantive conflicts lie between Putin and Poroshenko, there also hangs an emotional whiff of personal networks and their betrayal.

Given this, we should expect to see Russian personalization of interactions beyond the post-Soviet space, with a heavy load of emotional weight and expectations. Putin's relations with U.S. leaders have certainly had an unusual tenor. New York Times reporter Peter Baker reports that Putin was overwhelmed by George W. Bush's invitation to visit him at home on his Texas ranch, because he had never been to the home of a foreign leader before. Putin even tried to cut side deals with Bush, offering Bush's friend and campaign supporter Don Evans a position in the Russian oil industry.27 But while Medvedev got along well with Obama, happily eating cheeseburgers with him on a visit to Washington, Putin's relations with the Obama administration have been consistently frosty.

One obvious sign of this was the terrible way that U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul was treated when Putin resumed the Russian presidency in mid-2012. McFaul and his family were hounded by the press as well as the security forces in an extraordinarily undiplomatic way during their two years in Moscow, and Putin tolerated this, whether or not he was personally responsible for it.28 The negativity extended even further in Putin's personal interactions with Obama. Putin has consistently seemed to look down on Obama, portraying him to the Russian press in 2012 as a weak leader who could not control his own government, and who might therefore not represent a reliable negotiating partner.29 Putin was reportedly "infuriated" when Obama called him out publicly, and said that Putin looked "like the bored kid in the back of the classroom" in their negotiations over Syria.30 A month later, Putin retaliated with what many found to be a patronizing opinion piece in The New York Times, scolding Obama over U.S. exceptionalism on the twelfth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.31 As NPR's Alan Greenblatt noted, "For all the tension that existed between them, Leonid Brezhnev never tried to pants Richard Nixon in quite this way."32 We can predict that Putin will prove especially likely to avoid giving in to Western demands over Ukraine that come from President Obama's office.

A third prediction about how leaders should act in patron-client systems may seem, at first glance, to make little sense given Putin's actions in Ukraine- leaders who must focus on providing patronage and protection to their clients should avoid taking actions that risk major losses, especially losses to the core economic interests of their personal networks. We might have expected Putin to speak and act with an aggressive swagger in order to demonstrate his power, but to avoid rash behavior that risked damage to his personal image and stature as well as his network's well-being. In fact, the hope that Putin's rashness in Ukraine would lead to his downfall appears to be one of the engines of the Western sanctions regime, explaining why his personal network has been directly targeted by both the United States and European Union.

But Putin may actually have believed that he was taking low-risk actions in Ukraine. The takeover of Crimea was almost bloodless. In eastern Ukraine, creating a frozen conflict with the help of informal militias followed a model used successfully in other post-Soviet cases, as noted earlier. Putin might reasonably have calculated that Western attention would turn away quickly, as it had following Russia's 2008 Georgia war, and that the sanctions regime would never last, given divergences in U.S. and European economic interests and what he saw as the disarray of Obama's control in Washington.

If this is correct, then Putin's seeming errors in this case may be explained by two events that could not have been foreseen in advance and that lay completely beyond Putin's control. First was the shocking and horrifying decision of a local militia commander in Donetsk to fire an anti-aircraft missile at a Malaysian civilian airliner in July 2014. This appears to have been a mistake on the commander's part. Twitter posts that were later deleted seemed to show that Igor Girkin (a Russian citizen who went by the nom de guerre "Strelkov," or Rifleman) believed he had hit a Ukrainian military jet.33 It was this event-and the fact that a majority of the passengers on the flight were Dutch citizens-that helped propel the unexpected unity and longevity of EU sanctions that fall.

The second unexpected event was the sudden plummet of global oil prices in late 2014, after what had earlier been a more modest long-term decline. The sharp drop magnified the effects of sanctions on the oil export-dependent Russian state budget, and provoked a collapse in the value of the ruble. Putin was quick to accuse the United States of orchestrating oil prices in order to harm Russia. But the evidence indicates that the price dive was due to the decision by Saudi Arabia and its partners in the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) not to limit their own production levels in the face of expanding global market supplies. OPEC members apparently decided that lower prices might drive out competition from higher-cost U.S. shale and other "tight oil" sources, allowing them to retain their market share. If there was any broader political target of their actions beyond U.S. shale oil, it may have been Islamic State (IS) extremists, not Russia, since IS funding at that point came largely from captured Iraqi oil wells.

It remains to be seen whether Western pressure, either from sanctions or from whatever comes next, will be sufficient to cause Putin's coalition to crack. But it is worth exploring the logic of what such a crack would require.

Regime Change in Russia?

Patron-client systems can be very stable over long periods of time. Henry Hale's analysis of post-Soviet regime elections and constitutions explains why this is so: the act of transferring group loyalty from one leader to another requires overcoming a difficult collective action problem.34 Members of various (and potentially competing) sub-networks must agree that not only is it time to switch their allegiance away from their former chief patron, but must also agree on the new replacement patron. This requires sending and receiving clear signals about who that stronger and more capable individual might be, at a time when the declining patron is applying all possible mechanisms to try to remain in power.

In any patron-client system, this is risky business. The current patron (in this case, Putin) is a known entity who has demonstrated over many years his ability to continuously distribute resources to a wide variety of clients, while keeping their various internal competitions in check and in balance. Making a mistake in selecting the new patron, or in failing to convince the entire networked system to move in sync, could lead to a permanent decline in the fortunes of mid-level leaders who also must signal their own wisdom and strength to keep lower-level personal networks in line. In the worst case, the result could look like a chaotic mafia war, with rival groups fighting violently for control.

In Russia, the situation is even more perilous, because Putin and his closest supporters are tied to KGB and FSB networks. This means that they have access to information (and can easily create false information) that could destroy any potential rival, either through public humiliation or through prosecution and imprisonment. As was recently shown in the case of anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalnyi, whose brother was sentenced to three years of hard labor in a case that seemed fabricated for political reasons, these weapons can be used not only against opponents but against their family members.35 We know from Soviet history, especially during the blood purges of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, that members of the security services did not hesitate to use the weapons of the state against each other.36 It would take a brave challenger indeed to take on Putin, and the rival would need enormous competence to signal the move successfully, and then hold on to powerful Russian networks the way Putin has done.

What about the possibility of popular revolt? Toppling a police state requires an even greater concentration of collective action, this time across a huge swath of the population. The recent events of the Arab Spring in Egypt show how even a seemingly successful revolt can be parlous. If the security forces disapprove of a newly installed leader, their inaction in providing basic law and order could allow a new version of the old regime to return, after large numbers of citizens are killed in the process of even peacefully agitating for change. As scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan argue, popular protest can serve as a very successful method of regime change-but only when it is meticulously organized. It succeeds best in cases like Poland, where the Solidarity movement established an entire parallel institutional structure, ready to assume the burdens of governance when the old regime crumbled.37 Such well-coordinated private action is highly unlikely in the current Russian police state-especially since the majority of the Russian population, especially the kind of ordinary people who backed Solidarity in Poland, seems still to favor Putin and his strong-arm tactics.

Analysts are never good at forecasting sudden change. Witness the inability of anyone to predict the end of the Cold War, or the onset of the Arab Spring. But the logic of patron-client systems means that no one should count on the collapse of Putin's regime anytime soon. The incentive structure does not favor it, unless the Russian economy tanks so badly over the long term that risky action becomes profitable. (Rising oil prices in early February instead provide fodder to those who think that Russia's troubles will only be temporary.) And given the growth of ugly ethnic nationalism in Russia, there is far from any assurance that whoever replaced Putin would be a liberal democrat. We should remember that the last time a coup attempt occurred in Moscow-against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991-it was led by KGB officers; and that Russian President Boris Yeltsin waged a bloody battle against violent nationalists in October 1993, winning only because he called in the army on his side.

The Western Response

What does this analysis lead us to conclude about future Russian actions toward the crisis in Ukraine, and the effects that the United States and the broader Western community might have on those actions? First, Putin is highly unlikely to give up anything he and his supporters have already achieved. It is virtually unimaginable that he would change his mind about Crimea being a constituent part of Russia, after his triumphal March 2014 speech to the parliament. Nor is it likely that he would allow the insurgents of Donetsk and Lugansk to be defeated, now that he has portrayed the conflict in Ukraine as a struggle against NATO encroachment on Russia. Kyiv can likely hope for is a stalemate. Insistence that Russia roll back its presence, or even at this point that rebels retreat to the territorial lines of the Minsk agreement, will likely be a non-starter. Putin will not back down.

Second, the West should not assume that more pressure on Putin will convince him even to stop his forward movement in Ukraine. Sending new weapons to Ukraine, for example, will most likely lead him to ramp up countering support for the Donbas rebels, as he would interpret such a move as a new challenge to Russia's place in the world that demanded a response. He could even use such an escalation, in combination with his recent rhetorical shift, to explain to the Russian public why open Russian military intervention in Ukraine is now necessary to preserve Russian sovereignty against NATO expansion on its borders. This would likely result in a more intense war of attrition on Ukrainian territory. This also means that any stepping up of sanctions against Russia-for example, the possible removal of Russia from the SWIFT system of international transfers communication between banks-would become in its own way a war of attrition, too. In that case, the question would be who could last longer, the global economy without Russia, or Putin without the global economy.

Third, as long as hope remains in Russia that Western pressure is temporary-as long as it seems possible that the European Union will fall into discord over sanctions, or that big Western petroleum companies will successfully lobby for their removal-regime change is highly unlikely. The difficulties facing collective action in Russia at both the network and the public level are immense, and the personal risks of such action are enormous. Even if Putin himself were overthrown, the KGB/FSB network he elevated would likely come roaring back, without any guarantee of the foreign policy direction it would take in the future.

Of course, Putin is full of surprises, so he might shock the world with sudden cooperation with the West. And the opacity of the Russian system may mean that a liberal-democratic cabal is busy cooking up plans for a successful coup that no one will see coming. But under the assumption that both of these things are unlikely, what can we predict about events in Ukraine?

Unfortunately, this analysis implies that the most likely peaceful solution to the current situation in Ukraine is both politically and ethically unpalatable: to recognize Russian and pro-Russian territorial gains as permanent, and to provide Putin with the assurance that he can keep what he has gained without punishment. U.S. and other Western leaders would have to admit that Putin will get away with breaking international law in his seizure of Crimea and his destabilization of the Donbas, and watch as Putin crows at home about his victories. It is unclear that the rest of Ukraine would remain at stable peace if this were to occur, since pro-Western nationalist militias would have every incentive to try to unseat Poroshenko's regime if Kyiv approved this arrangement. The West would certainly have to provide at least an implicit security guarantee to Kyiv in any case, so that Putin (or his replacement) had no temptation to go even further into Ukrainian territory-and as of yet, neither the United States nor NATO as a whole has seemed willing to do this.

The only clear alternative for ending the grinding low-level conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas would be to wage a Western proxy war in Ukraine, using imported weapons and military advisers. Such a war would prove immensely costly in both dollars and lives. It would be such a significant and controversial event in the heart of central Europe that it would risk permanently breaking apart the NATO alliance. (That would suit Putin just fine.) If the costs of waging such a war were eventually to destabilize the Russian leadership, we must also recognize that extreme nationalists in Russia would portray this as an existential threat to Russia's continued survival. The threat of nuclear escalation might be a real possibility if Russia started losing, more than fifty years after we thought both the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis were behind us.

Finally, whatever happens in Ukraine, an understanding of who Putin is- and of the KGB/FSB network standing behind him-makes it vitally important for the United States to send the strongest possible signal that the NATO mutual defense pact will not falter. Washington must make clear that the U.S. nuclear umbrella will maintain the borders and security of the Baltic states and Poland in particular.

It is a sad reality that a new version of the Cold War in Europe-this time without ideology38-will stay with us for the foreseeable future, and that Ukraine as a unified sovereign nation will likely face a tragic fate. But that is the upshot of the Russian system under Putin's reign.

Notes

1.             North Atlantic Treaty Organization, "NATO Enlargement," June 12, 2014, http:// www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49212.htm.

2.             John J. Mearsheimer, "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin," Foreign Affairs (September/October 2014), https:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault.

3.             Philip P. Pan, "Ukraine's Extension of Russian Base's Lease May Challenge U.S. Goals in Region," The Washington Post, April 28, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp­dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042703887.html. The Ukrainian language text of the agreement is reprinted in "Dogovir Yanukovicha i Medvedeva pro Bazuvaniia Flotu do 2042 roku. Tekst dokumentu," Ukrainska Pravda, April 22, 2010, http://www. pravda.com.ua/articles/2010/04/22/4956018/.

4.             The Russian phrase he used was "iskonno russkaya zemlya." In an interesting twist, the official Kremlin English translation of the speech substitutes the word "historical," which normally uses a very different word in Russian, for what is properly translated as "primordial, immemorial." See Vladimir V. Putin, "Address by President of the Russian Federation," official Kremlin-translated transcript, March 18, 2014, http://eng.kremlin. ru/news/6889, which can be compared to the Russian original at http://kremlin.ru/ transcripts/20603.

5.             Ibid.

6.             In retrospect Leon Aron claimed that the shift began with Putin's statements in 2012 that Russian language and ethnic contributions played the major role in defining the cultural state of Russia. Leon Aron, "Why Putin Says Russia Is Exceptional," Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-putin-says-russia-is­exceptional-1401473667. Putin's 2012 statement, however, was not tied to any apparent foreign policy aims. Putin, "Address to the Federal Assembly," official Kremlin translation, December 12, 2012, http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/4739.

7.             State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001, http:// 2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/.

8.             Neil MacFarquhar, "Putin Lays Out Proposal to End Ukraine Conflict," The New York Times, September 3, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/world/europe/ukraine­russia.html.

9.             Vladimir V. Putin, "Meeting with Students at the Mining University," official Kremlin-translated transcript, January 26, 2015, http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/23526.

10.           "Military-clad English-speakers Caught on Camera in Mariupol Shelling Aftermath," RT, January 25, 2015, http://rt.com/news/226079-ukraine-foreign-military-mariupol/.

11.           Michael Schwirtz, "Putin's Tips for What to Do When Negotiations Collapse," New York Times, October 7, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/world/europe/ 08putin.html.

12.           Geoffrey Ingersoll, "Putin Ditches Car, Security, Takes Long Walk Following Funeral Of Judo Coach," Business Insider, August 10, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/ putins-alone-walk-funeral-2013-8.

13.           Simon Shuster, "Vladimir Putin's Billionaire Boys Judo Club," Time, March 1, 2011, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2055962,00.html.

14.           Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer, "Putin Buddy Gets $7 Billion of Deals for Sochi Olympics," Bloomberg, March 19, 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 2013-03-18/putin-buddy-gets-7-billion-of-deals-for-sochi-olympics.

15.           "Putin Ally Arkady Rotenberg to Build Crimea's Kerch Bridge," The Moscow Times, January 30, 2015, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/putin-ally-arkady­rotenberg-to-build-crimeas-kerch-bridge/515150.html.

16.           Paul Starobin, "The Accidental Autocrat," The Atlantic, March 2005, http://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/03/the-accidental-autocrat/303725/.

17.           Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2013).

18.           For in-depth discussions about what sets post-Soviet networks apart, see Rasma Karklins, The System Made Me Do It: Corruption in Post-Communist Societies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), and Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

19.           Henry Meyer and Irina Reznik, "The Chilly Fallout Between Putin and His Oligarch Pals," Bloomberg News, January 22, 2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 2015-01-22/putin-said-to-shrink-inner-circle-as-ukraine-hawks-trump-tycoons.

20.           Jessica L.P. Weeks, Dictators at War and Peace (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). For an example of this elsewhere, see Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, "Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside," Foreign Affairs 85, no. 3 (May/June 2006): pp. 2-26.

21.           For important examples, see Robert F. Daniels, "Soviet Politics since Khrushchev," in The Soviet System under Brezhnev and Kosygin: The Transition Years, ed. John W. Strong (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971); T.H. Rigby, "Political Patronage in the USSR from Lenin to Brezhnev," Politics 18, no.1 (May 1983): pp. 84-89; Edward Keenan, "Muscovite Political Folkways," Russian Review 45, no. 2 (Apr. 1986): pp. 115­81; and J. Arch Getty, Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

22.           Henry E. Hale, "Formal Constitutions in Informal Politics: Institutions and Democratization in Post-Soviet Eurasia," World Politics 63, no.4 (October 2011): pp. 581-617; and Hale, Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

23.           Marcus Warren, "Putin Lets Nato 'Recruit' in Baltic," The Telegraph, June 25, 2002, http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1398379/Putin-lets-Nato-recruit­in-Baltic.html.

24.           Angela E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

25.           Vladimir Putin, official Kremlin transcript, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, October 24, 2014, http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/23137.

26.           David M. Herszenhorn, "Close Friend of Russian Leader Takes Role as a Negotiator for Ukraine," The New York Times, February 11, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/ world/europe/friend-of-putin-assumes-role-of-negotiator-in-ukrainian-conflict.html.

27.           Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (New York: Doubleday, 2013). Also see the excerpt in Baker, "The Seduction of George W. Bush," Foreign Policy, November 6, 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/06/the-seduction-of­george-w-bush/.

28.           Timothy Naftali, "George Kennan, Michael McFaul, and Their Paranoid Hosts: The Perils of Serving as Ambassador to Russia," Foreign Affairs, April 17, 2012, https://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2012-04-17/george-kennan-michael-mcfaul-and­their-paranoid-hosts.

29.           Vladimir Putin, "Interview to Russia Today TV Channel," September 6, 2012, http:// eng.kremlin.ru/news/4367.

30.           Steven Lee Myers, "Putin's Silence on Syria Suggests His Resignation Over Intervention," New York Times, August 28, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/ 29/world/middleeast/putin-on-syria.html.

31.           Vladimir V. Putin, "A Plea for Caution From Russia: What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria," New York Times, September 11, 2013, http://www.nytimes. com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html.

32.           Alan Greenblatt, "Frenemies Forever: Why Putin And Obama Can't Get Along," NPR, September 12, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221774010/frenemies­forever-why-putin-and-obama-cant-get-along.

33.           Ankit Panda, "Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 Shot Down Over Donetsk, Ukraine," The Diplomat, July 18, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/malaysian-airlines­flight-mh17-shot-down-over-donetsk-ukraine/.

34.           Henry E. Hale, "Correlates of Clientelism: Political Economy, Politicized Ethnicity, and Postcommunist Transition," in Herbert Kitschelt and Steven Wilkinson, eds., Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 227-50; and "Formal Constitutions in Informal Politics: Institutions and Democratization in Post-Soviet Eurasia," World Politics 63, no.4 (October 2011): pp. 581-617.

35.           David M. Herszenhorn, "Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Is Spared Prison in a Fraud Case, but His Brother Is Jailed," The New York Times, December 30, 2014, http://www. nytimes.com/2014/12/31/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-convicted.html?_r=0.

36.           Many such instances are described by Getty, Practicing Stalinism.

37.           Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, "Drop Your Weapons: When and Why Civil Resistance Works," Foreign Affairs (July/August 2014), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/libya/2014-06-16/drop-your-weapons.

38.           Robert Legvold, "Managing the New Cold War," Foreign Affairs (July/August 2014), https:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-16/managing-new-cold-war.

[return to Contents] 

 #3
The Washington Quarterly
http://twq.elliott.gwu.edu
Summer 2015
Toward a ''Reaganov'' Russia: Russian Security Policy after Putin
By Clifford Gaddy and Michael O'Hanlon

Clifford Gaddy is Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, Brookings Institution. An economist specializing in Russia, Gaddy is the co-author of "Bear Traps on Russia's Road to Modernization" (Routledge, 2013). His earlier books include "Russia's Virtual Economy" (Brookings Institution Press, 2002) and "The Siberian Curse" (Brookings Institution Press, 2003). His current book project is entitled "Russia's Addiction: The Political Economy of Resource Dependence," and is set to be published in 2015. Gaddy is also the co-author of the recently released second edition of "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin" (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow and co-director with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force and American foreign policy. He is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His most recent book, co-written with James Steinberg, is Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Russia's military annexation of Crimea in early 2014, and the ensuing crisis in its relations with neighboring countries and the Western world, brought to the fore an age-old question that had faded from the central attention of policymakers: what are Russia's long-term foreign policy ambitions and military grand strategy? U.S. policymakers are more concerned at the moment about Vladimir Putin's immediate goals, and the associated possibility of further trouble in eastern Ukraine or elsewhere. That issue is clearly important. But for longer-term U.S. security policy planning, it is also essential to ask about broader underlying trends.

Where is Russia headed, now that it has regained some of its economic power and political confidence (despite the country's recent economic troubles) that was shattered at the end of the Cold War? For the foreseeable future, perhaps another decade, this question will be largely indistinguishable from the personal proclivities of Mr. Putin, who could remain president until 2024. But it is also useful to try to disentangle the differences, if any, between Putin and the broader Russian strategic culture in which he operates. This will be crucial for long-term U.S. strategic planning-and for setting realistic expectations about what we can anticipate, and work toward, in the Western relationship with the Russian Federation.

Russia's 21st-Century Roller Coaster

The decade of the 1990s was one of Russian decline. Putin is infamous in the West for calling the dissolution of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.1 Clearly, that is a huge exaggeration by any fair standard. But for Russian nationalists, the 1990s were not only the decade in which the Warsaw Pact fell apart and the Soviet Union then dissolved; they also represented a period of extreme state weakness. The country's population was cut nearly in half; its military forces declined by two-thirds in size and four-fifths in funding; the economy went into free-fall. The Western world became more concerned about Russian weakness, possible state collapse, and loose nuclear materials than about any new aggression initiated by Moscow. The Chechen war raged off and on as well, and other parts of the former Soviet empire sometimes took up arms too, notably Armenia and Azerbaijan against each other. And of course, NATO expanded, not only up to the frontiers of the former Soviet Union, but right up to the Russian border, when the Baltic states were incorporated into the Western alliance in 2004.

Nonetheless, the early years of the new century brought a greater sense of stability inside Russia, as well as hopefulness in relations with the West, especially after the 9/11 attacks seemed to give Washington and Moscow common purpose. George W. Bush famously looked into Putin's eyes and liked what he discerned about the former KGB official's soul. Many people welcomed Russia's economic recovery and acknowledged the importance of its energy resources in an era of Persian Gulf instability.

Russian military recovery in the first instance meant fewer terrible accidents like the 2000 tragedy aboard the attack submarine Kursk (which sank with all hands after an explosion during a naval exercise), less danger of loose Russian nukes winding up in terrorist hands or of a brain drain of underpaid Russian weapons scientists heading for rogue nations, and stability (however brutally achieved) in Chechnya. The potential downsides of this Russian recovery seemed manageable, especially since Russia was now a democracy that limited Putin to two consecutive terms and enjoyed a civil society increasingly interested in working with the outside world in pursuit of common goals.

But towards the end of the decade, this narrative began to break down. The Georgia conflict of 2008 may have been the first unambiguous sign of trouble. This was followed by Putin's return to the Russian presidency, after a four-year stint as prime minister, and then the Ukraine crisis. A growing suppression of dissent and political debate at home, an ambitious military buildup, and then intense acrimony between Moscow and the West over Libya and Syria all reinforced this. To be sure, the Obama administration's Russia reset policy seemed to achieve certain specific successes in its early years, including greater logistical access to northern entry points into Afghanistan to support the NATO war effort there, cooperation in sanctioning Iran and North Korea, as well as the conclusion of a New START Treaty in 2010. But the trendline was never clearly favorable, and the entire momentum of the reset clearly dissipated after the events of 2014. Nor can we pin the problem exclusively on Putin. His extraordinary popularity at home, symbolized by the happily tearful reactions of Russian parliamentarians when he explained the logic behind his actions in Crimea, showed that both resentments and aspirations run deep within Russia.

Given this environment, what comes next? In this paper, we seek to chart plausible future courses for the Russian state in its strategic and military dealings with the outside world. Our focus is not entirely on the immediate crises of the day, but just as much on the time period of the 2020s, when underlying realities about the Russian polity will likely dictate the behavior of the state and when Putin will eventually have to step down from power, if he has not already done so. Our approach is first to identify and explain eight notional and distinct Russian mentalities, worldviews, and foreign policy paradigms in conceptual terms. We then try to select from this list the most plausible grand strategies that the Russian state might follow in the years and decades ahead, and then ask what consequences these choices might have for Russian military power. We conclude, finally, with implications for Western policy, including how the outside world might try to influence the choices that Russia makes in the years ahead.

For analytical purposes, we arrange these eight distinct models of possible future Russian grand strategy along a single axis, reflecting varying degrees of relative liberal and peaceful thinking on one extreme, or degrees of nationalist and potentially assertive policy and action on the other. It is not a perfectly linear progression for all purposes, but as a rough first approximation it can serve as a helpful guide. Specifically, we would propose the following taxonomy:

Post-Westphalian Russia. This model would see Russia behave as a liberal European state like Switzerland or Austria, disinterested in power politics and focusing its security policy narrowly on territorial self-defense.

NATO Russia. With this paradigm, Russia would effectively seek to join the West.

Pro-Western Russia. With this model, Russia would not join NATO but might associate more closely with the West in other types of security arrangements, such as a strengthened OSCE or a new type of Euro-Atlantic security community.

Minimalist Russia. A minimalist Russia might not have the pro-Western outlook of the above possible strategies, but could still conclude that its own interests dictated a modest and restrained security policy as the state sought to maximize power through economic strength-with nuclear weapons constituting the main, relatively inexpensive linchpin of national military strategy.

"Reaganov" Russia. A Reaganov Russia would be highly patriotic, and engage in military buildups and perhaps a certain degree of nationalist rhetoric, with a central goal of reasserting traditional military forms of state power-but with the twin goal of not employing that military power unless absolutely necessary. Just as Ronald Reagan rearmed the United States and gave the country a boost of confidence at home and on the world stage, with increased defense spending also providing at least a temporary economic lift, this vision for Russia would seek to establish and advertise Russian power without frequently sending forces into combat.

Besieged Russia. This concept for the country's future would be akin to the Reaganov model, but focus less on patriotism or prestige and more on settling scores with enemies and adversaries, both real and perceived. Its means might be covert and coercive as much as violent, but it would not be a particularly friendly nation. It might be a less confident, less forthright, more devious, and in some ways more dangerous Russia than the possible Reaganov type. It is perhaps not unlike Russia under Putin in 2014 and 2015 to date.

Greater Russia. This paradigm would continue in the same Reaganov spirit but go even further. It would seek specific opportunities to employ state power to reconstruct part of a greater Russian empire and demand a certain amount of influence with neighboring states-a Russian sphere of influence in a more classic, hard-power sense, akin to aspects of tsarist times. This might logically extend to lands where Russian speakers are in a majority, as with the eastern parts of Ukraine and the Baltic states. It could extend to sea as well, notably in the Arctic region. It might be thought of as "worst­case Putin."

Brezhnevian Russia. Even more ambitiously, this model of possible Russian behavior would hold as its ultimate goal a return to the power, status, and grandeur of Soviet times. Every effort would be made to maintain parity with, or leadership over, the United States in nuclear, missile, and space weaponry, while at the same time attempting to project power and influence. Regionally, this Russia would seek direct dominance of neighboring states where possible. While it would not in any medium-term vision literally adopt the "Brezhnev Doctrine" of ensuring that any country once controlled by Moscow would always remain within Russian sway, it might go beyond Crimea and parts of Georgia to seek greater Russian control, through direct military power or through nonmilitary coercion, in the central Asian republics, all of Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and even the Baltic states.
 
Three Visions that Russia will Reject

Of these choices that Russia will make in the years to come, we would argue that three are particularly implausible-those at either end of the spectrum of possibilities, namely the Post-Westphalian Russia, a NATO Russia, or a Brezhnevian Russia. Russians will not endorse a post-Westphalian model for their country or its future foreign policy because, in short, virtually none of them believe in such a progressive concept. The notion that nation-states are becoming consistently and steadily less relevant in international relations is a construct that is popular only in certain strata of Western thinking. Arguably, it had its heyday in Western Europe in the heady days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the European Union inspired great hope among many elites and publics alike. But as the EU, European economies, and European foreign policies have struggled in recent times, the idea that the nation-state system is weakening has taken a back seat even in much of liberal, prosperous, democratic Europe. It never held much appeal within Russia.

Russians are proud of their history, their nation, and their state. They also tend to think that the state is still very relevant for ensuring their security. They see a rising China to their east, a highly assertive United States and its allies to their west, and trouble to their south. They also have felt embarrassed and anxious over the decline in their nation's cohesion, power, and standard of living after the Cold War. They are not a people who will quickly dismiss the importance of the state; nor do they have many natural partners in building any post-Westphalian system, since they do not feel particular kinship to any other bloc of nations. Putin may exemplify this attitude most conspicuously, but his 85 percent average approval rating since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis,3 the generally favorable reaction of normal Russians to his assertiveness in the Crimea, and the general weakness of civil society and independent media within the country as a whole suggest that it is widespread.

A Russia within NATO might have been an option soon after the Cold War.4 Even though it was of course a Western creation, the moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall offered an opportunity for NATO to fundamentally redefine itself, with the possibility of transforming into the quintessential Eurasian- Atlantic security community. But after two decades, including NATO's wars in Kosovo and Libya-both badly viewed within Russia-and a prolonged period of acrimony over missile defense, together with the alliance's expansion up to the Russian doorstep (even giving consideration to inviting Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance), that day is gone. The alliance is seen as largely anti-Russian in membership, character, and purpose, again not only by Putin, but by most Russians.5

And finally, on the other end of the taxonomy, a Brezhnevian Russia is simply too ambitious and costly even for most Russian nationalists. Even if it somehow worked and achieved its goals, it would saddle Russia with several countries that are basket-case economies at present.6 It would risk war with the West and, at a bare minimum, a sustained period of renewed cold war and economic disengagement with most of the world's major economies, ones that would certainly sanction Russia severely over the aggressions that would come with this type of grand strategy. And while the Russian people still can constitute a proud, nationalistic, and perhaps even somewhat imperialistic polity, they are no longer communist, with the ideologically driven expansionism that characterized Soviet history.

Five Plausible Paradigms for Russian Grand Strategy

If these three worldviews are out, we submit that all five of the others may vie for popularity and support within future Russian debates. We can expect all to have at least some pull on the greater collective Russian consciousness, as they are models and visions that Russians already understand and discuss, if not necessarily with the labels we employ. The more hardline variants are more consonant with Putin's recent behavior, and as such will surely have some influence in the years ahead. But they will not go unchallenged, and therefore we also discuss other outlooks on the world that may influence the future Russian polity. For our money, the Reaganov vision or something resembling it may offer the most likely scenario-and one with which the West can in fact coexist. That reality should help set our expectations about what kind of future to expect, and seek to promote. But first consider each in turn.

Pro-Western Russia

Even if it is unimaginable that a future Russia would seek to join NATO- whether or not NATO would have it as a member, itself an unlikely proposition -it is not beyond belief that a post-Putin Russian state could look to mend fences and develop fundamentally compatible interests with the Western world, even as it remained somewhat aloof and separate. Several motivations could drive Russians toward such an outcome. Russia could seek to maximize its interactions with the outside world largely for the sake of economic growth and prosperity. It could also see a strong association with the EU or NATO as a useful hedge against Islamist extremism and China's rise. Put differently, to reach this mindset, Russia would not necessarily have to abandon all security fears, real or imagined, but would have to conclude that the greater dangers came from the south or east (or within) and could be more effectively checked with Western help. It would reflect a decision that may seem obviously correct to Western observers but is much harder at present for Russians, given the common view that NATO broke its word and took advantage of their weakness after the Cold War.

NATO expansion may someday be a more distant memory. If the Western world in conjunction with Russia can find a solution to ensuring Ukrainian and Georgian security (and that of other former Soviet republics not currently in the Western alliance) without offering NATO membership to them, it is possible that future generations of Russians will be able to declare a truce in this geostrategic competition (as many Americans probably assumed they already had, prior to the events of 2014) and move beyond it. Time may heal some wounds.7

The essence of this kind of policy would be a return to the calmer days of NATO-Russian relations of the 1990s or the early Putin years- yet in the context of a confident and stable Russia. This dynamic could create new institutional mechanisms, or continue existing vehicles such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), NATO- Russia council, and UN Security Council (as well as a possible Russian return to the G8). Nuclear arms control might resume, missile defense negotiations could become less acrimonious, and strategic cooperation on issues like Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan could outweigh disputes over any ongoing problems like Syria. The blocs might cooperate on peacekeeping missions and would presumably strengthen counterterrorism cooperation as well.

Minimalist Russia

A "minimalist Russia" might not be so pro-West. And yet, it might still wind up fairly benign in the international arena. If it concluded that it was not likely to be attacked or otherwise threatened, it could perhaps get by with a modest-sized army, navy, and defense budget, coupled with a substantial nuclear arsenal (something that seems a given under any plausible future scenario).

This Russian strategic outlook might receive momentum first and foremost from economic policy technocrats and business elites. The pragmatic emphasis would be on developing a competitive economy and improving the Russian quality of life-and, ultimately though implicitly, Russian national power as well. Russia would not act as a giant Switzerland in attitude or outlook. But it could resemble one in its military restraint, largely out of self-interest-however unlikely that might seem at present.

The belief that Russian security was threatened less by foreign foes and more by internal challenges could help motivate this paradigm. Since the National Security Strategy for Russia of 2009 emphasizes the importance of everything from economics to healthcare to the environment in its list of national security priorities, there is a predicate in modern Russian thought for leavening the importance given to more traditional measures of power and security.8

Reaganov Russia

What might be termed a "Reaganov Russia" would represent a proud, nationalistic state that in the Russian context might strike many as aggressively motivated and inclined. But if in fact the Russian state could take pride in reestablishing itself as a successful status-quo power, it might not see the need for revanchism or other aggression-at least not on a large scale.9 It could pragmatically weigh its own interests across a wide range of policy options, often concluding that it should cooperate with the West on key strategic issues for its own well-being. Freed by greater self-confidence and pride from the kind of anger and pettiness that might come with the besieged Russia discussed below or that we have seen recently, it could make clear-minded and good decisions on matters where the West really needed its help-and about which there was no rational reason for a divergence of positions between Moscow and Western capitals.

Our use of the "Reaganov" label is not intended as a commentary on Ronald Reagan's overall legacy in the United States. Our point is merely that if one reduces Reagan foreign policy to its component parts-a strong military, but rarely used; a confident United States that struck some as arrogant, but which was led by a generally affable leader and that became collectively more comfortable in its skin as the decade progressed; and an economically successful nation with strong industries in various key strategic sectors-that could offer an analogy to a future Russia. If it channeled its patriotism into relatively benign actions like improving its armed forces and advancing in economic and scientific realms, the effect of such a Russia on the region and the world could be relatively innocuous.

This framework for the future Russian state might envision the defense sector providing technological innovations which could spin off to revive the Russian scientific and manufacturing sectors more broadly. The idea is Reaganesque in the U.S. tradition (though spinoffs from the defense world were perhaps even more notable in the United States in the decades just before Reagan). But it is also an idea advanced by defense official Dmitry Rogozin in today's Russia.10

Besieged Russia

We perhaps need to say the least about this possible future path for Russia because it may most resemble the current mindset of President Putin. The notion here is that the wounds to Russian pride may be even deeper, and bitterness even more entrenched, than many have appreciated. Particularly if Vladimir Putin is able to get away with additional adventures in Ukraine, and if Russian economic growth does not suffer unduly, Russian voters and strategists may decide that there is room to make further mischief in the near abroad for many years to come. It could feel besieged itself-and seek to make others, especially smaller neighbors, feel the same way.

By this vision, Russia would not relent, even though it could make various tactical adjustments and show restraint when temporarily expedient. It could at some future time pursue opportunities for expansion or at least seek to reestablish a strong sphere of influence in much of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Georgia, while pursuing potentially hostile policies toward the Baltic states and perhaps Poland and other Central European states. The facts that Vladimir Putin may remain in office a full decade more, and perhaps also shape the selection of his successor, provide further grounds for believing that we cannot easily dismiss this model of a future Russia.

It is also possible that latter-day notions of a great-power Russia could reinforce this mindset. Harkening back to traditions of Russian thought that glorify its role as the great Slav nation, the heart of Eurasia, the bridge between East and West-this kind of Russia could be inspired by pride as well. It would build on the traditions of earlier Russian leaders like Peter the Great and Alexander II, and the thinking of intellectuals such as Alexander Dugin, Eduard Limonov, and Elgiz Pozdnyakov.

Such a worldview would not look fundamentally unlike what we describe in the Reaganov vision of the country. But it could be less benign in this case, as it would be intertwined with a sense of aggrievement. Dmitri Trenin describes this outlook as "post-imperialist" rather than imperialist or neo-imperialist, still quite assertive in goals even if different from traditional forms of great-power behavior in the means employed. Militarily, its signature behavior might be exemplified by the special operators in unmarked outfits in Crimea in early 2014 -the "little green men"-in contrast to the classic infantry or tank invasion forces of earlier epochs.11

Greater Russia

This concept takes the idea of a besieged Russia one step further. It postulates a Russian state that seeks not only to gain revenge and restore dominance over near-abroad states but to maximize national power in the traditional, imperialist sense more generally.

This could imply even more blatant and aggressive actions against the former Soviet republics in Europe. It could further include Russian expansionism into the Central Asian republics, where there are some significant ethnic Russian populations that could provide a Putin-like leader with pretexts for aggression.12 It could also feature greater use of Russian naval power in the state's exclusive economic zones and beyond, to extract economic benefits through means such as mineral and hydrocarbon exploitation, extensive fishing, and dominance of Arctic shipping lanes as they open up due to global warming. (Indeed, some of this is happening already under Putin, with the September 2013 occupation of the New Siberian Islands in the northern regions above Russia, and increased military maneuvers in northern seas as well.)13

This type of worldview and competitive international approach could also include further efforts to impede international collaboration on projects of importance to the West such as nonproliferation efforts against Iran and North Korea.

Implications for Russian Military Power and Defense Strategy

Some of these conceptual frameworks for Russian grand strategy imply a larger and more costly military posture for the Russian state; others would be less demanding. It is not axiomatic that the larger, more expensive Russian military would always be the more dangerous outcome for Western interests; what matters most for the West is arguably how Russia behaves internationally, and less so how it arms itself in peacetime, even if the subjects are clearly related.

We would identify two possible outcomes or endpoints for Russian military policy. Of course, as with the above conceptual paradigms, actual decisions might reflect a combination of the two, or a compromise between them, but it is still helpful to identify two distinct possibilities:

Muscular Russia, with a military budget of perhaps 3 to 4 percent of GDP. This would be one of the higher spending ratios in the world. Russia would also retain a strong defense industry and commitment to excellence across many domains of conventional military capability.

Nuclear-First, "Porcupine" Russia. Moscow would likely retain the goal of nuclear parity with the United States (just as in the muscular model) and ensure it was stronger than any state on its borders besides China (including with special and cyber forces). But it could otherwise adopt elements of what might be called a "porcupine" defense posture, in which the goal was less to have an offensive capability or even a robust defense for all national territory, and more of an approach to prevent any country from successfully seizing chunks of the state.
 
Muscular Russia

By a more militarily ambitious vision of its future, Russia would aim to have the strongest military in Eurasia by as many measures as possible-and stay as close to both China and the European elements of NATO as it could, even in areas where it could not predominate. There are multiple potential motivations for this. Among our five most credible Russian national security visions, they would most closely align with the Reaganov Russia or the Greater Russia paradigms.

Relative to existing military plans, this approach would not require a dramatic increase relative to what was planned before the economic shock of 2014. It would imply sustained funding for an existing Russian military modernization agenda, with possible further increases for strategic nuclear modernization among other items not yet fully resourced in existing plans.

This approach might, as noted, imply spending at least 3 percent of GDP on the nation's armed forces. That could imply a total of perhaps 5 percent or more on all security capabilities including internal defense, an area of recent emphasis as well, in light of various internal challenges.14 This level of effort would exceed that of any major Eurasian power, and in fact would also exceed projected levels for the United States, as a percent of national economic output.

Because Russia's economy will remain so much smaller than that of the United States, China, or even Japan and Germany under any realistic extrapolation from today, such a higher level of military spending as a fraction of national economic power would not elevate Russia to general superpower status. But with this approach, Moscow would probably be able to retain its position as the world's third-highest military spender after the United States and China. And it may be able to create a sense of military momentum-over a period when U.S. and other Western defense spending may continue to decline -that Russia can seek to translate into favorable strategic outcomes, at least close to home.

Notionally under this approach, U.S. military spending in 2020 might total around $500 billion to $550 billion. China might tally around $300 billion. Russia, depending on what has happened to its economy in the interim, might range from $100 billion to $150 billion annually, with several major U.S. allies and India ranking next on the list in the range of $50 billion a year apiece.

With all of that money, Russia would still be hard pressed to maintain a military with full capacity to secure all its land borders through conventional forces alone. It would, of course, remain incapable of recreating the kind of military that the Soviet Union once possessed. A million-man force, up modestly from today's in size, would be a realistic ceiling on the total active-duty strength of the armed forces even with the resources presumed in this scenario.

But Russia could nonetheless aspire to several capabilities that would likely be within its grasp. Its nuclear forces, at least in size and megatonnage, could remain equal to the United States'. Its navy could grow big enough to challenge any neighbor in coastal waters, exclusive economic zones, and those parts of the Arctic where the United States was not asserting itself. Its special forces, of the type seen in Crimea, could remain well-trained and well-equipped (as they might in the other option, too). Its aerospace sectors could receive enough funding to well endow Russian air and space forces, as well as make Russian companies competitive in many international arms export markets.

Maintaining adequate ground forces for this strategic posture from a modest and declining (and generally unhealthy) population would cause great troubles for the Russian state. A robust defense capability for Siberia would be out of the question. And to the extent Russia believes that NATO poses an overland threat, maintaining a strong defense in the European parts of the nation would also prove challenging when measured against the three-million-strong NATO militaries. As Americans, we find the idea of a serious NATO threat to Russia unimaginable. But that is our perspective as Americans, and may not accord with future Russian views.

Realistically, however, Russia would have options short of robust forward defense in the West and the East. It could probably sustain several divisions of strong maneuver forces that could seek to contest and counterattack any hypothetical foreign invasion force that tried to move significantly into Russian territory. Given the logistical challenges of invasion, even a huge Chinese military would for the foreseeable future have great difficulty sustaining a large fraction of its total armed forces in a distant locale in a place like Siberia. Only the U.S. military is truly capable of such long-distance power projection at scale today, and as noted, we would consider the idea of a U.S. threat to the Russian mainland unthinkable. Therefore, while a robust perimeter defense of the country may not be viable, Russia may be able-if it shares our assessment of plausible threats-to build a conventional military capability good enough to counterattack any hypothetical invasion force, particularly from China. When all the pieces are put together, this more expensive and capable Russian military may hold appeal to future voters and policymakers.

Under this vision for Russia's future military, the nation would remain a nuclear superpower and establish itself as the world's third-strongest military power writ large. It would retain considerable sway over strategic events near its borders. It would possess a strong arms export industry that, while not quite up to U.S. standards, could likely hold its own with many other nations for decades to come. And it might even elect to cooperate with China on some security matters, further reducing any perceived need to protect its Siberian borders.15

Nuclear-First "Porcupine" Russia

The above vision for a well-armed future Russian state will probably hold considerable appeal to the nation's future imagination. It accords well with many aspects of the country's history, outlook, and national sense of pride and purpose. But it would also be very expensive. And this for a country with enormous problems: a shrinking and poorly educated workforce, a slipping status among the world's major scientific powers, and limited economic assets except in the realm of natural resources. Indeed, Russia is having trouble keeping the size of its military near the goal of 1 million active-duty troops today, partly due to demographic reasons.16 A large military would pose a serious strain on a state that continues to face major challenges.

It is entirely plausible that Russian military capability might become smaller and less expensive if that were seen as consistent with the country's core interests. Indeed, such a military would be perfectly consonant with not only the Pro-Western Russia or Minimalist Russia discussed earlier, but even certain variants of a Besieged Russia. By maintaining a viable nuclear force, good (if small) special forces, and modest conventional forces, Russia could still do many things on the broader regional stage. If content to pick on the likes of Ukraine and Georgia-countries with military budgets measured in the single billions of dollars per year-then Russia would have no particular need to work so hard at being the world's #3 military power. Spending the rough equivalent of $50 billion or so a year, depending on the exchange rate-around say 1 percent of likely future GDP-might suffice. (To see why, note that even the United States, with far higher personnel and other costs, spends less than $10 billion a year on its special forces and some $15-20 billion annually on its offensive nuclear forces.17 Russia could excel in these areas of military power for a combined price tag of perhaps $20 billion a year, leaving $30 billion to fund a less excellent but hardly insignificant conventional military force.)

With that type of military spending level, Russia could maintain a military of around half a million troops or a bit more, a nuclear force with 1,000 or more strategic warheads, a modest navy (in each of four main ports according to the historical norm), and enough capacity for high-tech weapons production to keep alive at least a moderately healthy and advanced defense industrial base. With this model, Russia would still be a nuclear superpower. It could still have a larger army than any NATO European state. If it felt confident in its relations with China or at least confident in the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent vis-a`-vis Beijing, this kind of posture might seem adequate. And it could still assert itself in northern waters simply by using a mid-sized navy to patrol and protect seas that are within its exclusive economic zone as reflected in the Law of the Sea Treaty.

There is much to like about this kind of strategic posture for Russia as well. Future Russian strategists and politicians can be expected to consider and debate it, even if one cannot predict with any confidence that it will become the consensus choice.

Predictions, Implications, and Possible Responses

In light of all the above, which scenarios are most likely for future Russian policy? Our goal is to look beyond the immediacy of Vladimir Putin's 2015 thinking-recognizing of course that his influence will remain very powerful for some time to come in Russia-and gauge more structural and ideational factors that are likely to influence future Russian leaders as well. The point is not to imply that Putin does not matter, or that history is shaped only by forces larger than individual leaders. Clearly, Putin has single-handedly changed much about the world and Russia's relationship to it, especially in recent times, and he remains a force to be reckoned with. But we are interested as well in which elements of Russian thinking this domestically popular leader is simply personifying or highlighting-and which might therefore endure beyond him.

A Russia that might seek to join NATO, or that might reflect a post-Westphalian outlook toward the nation-state, seems a very remote possibility at best. That type of outcome reflects a liberal worldview that has fewer adherents than ever, perhaps, within Russia today, and the trend seems due to far more than just Mr. Putin. On the other extreme, an expansionist Russia echoing elements of Brezhnev's Soviet Union offers far too little benefit for the likely costs and risks.

As for the remaining options-a Pro-Western Russia, a Minimalist Russia, a Reaganov Russia, a Besieged Russia, or a Greater Russia-it is harder to be so confident about which will weigh most heavily in the Federation's future strategic culture. But a genuinely pro-Western state seems an increasingly remote possibility, certainly for the relatively near future, given the rallying around Putin since 2014. A Minimalist Russian national security strategy seems a likely outcome only if Russia, a proud and ambitious nation, decides to seek status and respect through excellence in economic and other nonmilitary spheres, rather than risk self-destruction through excessive militarization. A Greater Russia would cut itself off from the world, through even deeper economic sanctions than have been imposed since the Ukraine crisis of 2014, and seems rather remote as a prospect, even if not entirely out of the question.

As such, our money is on the remaining two options: 1) a state whose foreign and security policy outlook resembles a Reagan-era United States, characterized by a high degree of patriotism, a degree of favoritism for the nation's armed forces in national policymaking, and yet restraint in the actual use of military force as an instrument of foreign policy; and 2) a besieged Russia that generalizes and sustains the kind of approach to foreign policy showcased by Vladimir Putin in 2008 and again since 2014, opportunistically rather than as part of a consistent strategy of neo-imperialism (as a Greater Russia model might imply).

Of these two options, the Reaganov option-while it may not lead to a lower level of military spending-is in fact more benign. It implies a more self-confident and self-satisfied, and therefore less truculent, outlook toward the world by Moscow. It suggests a national outlook that would seek to calculate its interests abroad rationally and reasonably, and make decisions accordingly.

This could be good news, and a desirable result, for Washington. The West and Russia would appear, in objective terms, to share most global interests on matters ranging from nuclear nonproliferation to counterterrorism to shaping China's rise in benign ways. Thus, a Russian strategic perspective that cleared away emotional baggage and allowed a relatively clear-eyed assessment of when and where to cooperate with outside powers should produce a Russia that was easier to deal with. If highly sensitive issues like NATO expansion and missile defense could be managed, this could lead to a world in which the Russian state retained a distinctly different character than Western nations-and one that seemed off-putting and somewhat unappealing to many liberal perspectives- but one too with which core interests could be mutually pursued. It may just be the best we can hope for.

Notes

1.         "Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, speech by Vladimir Putin, April 25, 2005, http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/04/25/ 2031_type70029type82912_87086.shtml.

2.         The Military Balance 1989-1990 (Oxford, England: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1989), pp. 32-37; and The Military Balance 2014 (Oxfordshire, England: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2014), pp. 180-186.

3.         "Approval of Vladimir Putin," Levada-Center, http://www.levada.ru/eng/.

4.         Angela E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 264-265.

5.         For one perspective on Russia and Kosovo, see Strobe Talbott, "Validimir Putin's Role, Yesterday and Today," The Washington Post, March 21, 2014, http://www. washingtonpost.com/opinions/vladimir-putins-role-yesterday-and-today/2014/03/21/ 3d2b34c6-af85-11e3-95e8-39bef8e9a48b_story.html; for some of Putin's views on missile defense, U.S. conventional force modernization concepts like prompt global strike, and the broader correlation of forces, see "Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly," speech by Vladimir Putin, December 12, 2013, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/19825.

6.         See Robert M. Gates, "Putin's Challenge to the West," The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023037254045794601838545 74284.

7.         For a similar argument about the importance of the passage of time in Russia, albeit one written before the crises of 2014, see Jeffrey Mankoff, "Russia, the Post-Soviet Space, and Challenges to U.S. Policy," in Timothy Colton, Timothy Frye, and Robert Legvold, eds., The Policy World Meets Academia: Designing U.S. Policy Toward Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010), p. 49.

8.         Gudrun Persson, "Security Policy and Military Strategic Thinking," in Jakob Hedenskog and Carolina Vendil Pallin, eds., Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective - 2013 (Stockholm, Sweden: FOI, 2013), p. 72.

9.         See James Sherr, Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia's Influence Abroad (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2013), p. 57.

10.       Dmitry Adamsky, "Defense Innovation in Russia: The Current State and Prospects for Revival," IGCC Defense Innovation Briefs, University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, January 2014, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0s99052x.

11.       Robert Legvold, "Russian Foreign Policy During Periods of Great State Transformation," in Robert Legvold, ed., Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century and the Shadow of the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 109-121.

12.       John E. Herbst, William B. Taylor, and Steven Pifer, "When Sanctions Aren't Enough," Foreign Policy, March 31, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/31/when­sanctions-arent-enough/.

13.       Stephen J. Blank, "Enter Asia: The Arctic Heats Up," World Affairs (March/April 2014), p. 23, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/enter-asia-arctic-heats

14.       Stephen J. Blank, "Introduction," in Stephen J. Blank, ed., Politics and Economics in Putin's Russia (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2013), pp. 1-34; and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community," by James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 29, 2014, p. 23, http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/testimonies/ 203-congressional-testimonies-2014/1005-statement-for-the-record-worldwide-threat­assessment-of-the-us-intelligence-community.

15.       Leslie H. Gelb and Dimitri K. Simes, "Beware Collusion of China, Russia," National Interest (July/August 2013), pp. 5-10, http://nationalinterest.org/article/beware­collusion-china-russia-8640.

16.       Marta Carlsson, Johan Norberg, and Fredrik Westerlund, "The Military Capability of Russia's Armed Forces in 2013," in Hedenskog and Pallin, eds., Russian Military Capability, pp. 37-39.

17.       See Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget Estimates, FY 2015 (Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, April 2014), http:// comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/FY15_Green_Book. pdf; and Michael E. O'Hanlon, The Science of War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 15.

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