The crisis confronting Europe, over the fate of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin has deep roots, going back centuries. But it is based, also, on the reactionary nationalist politics and thuggery by which Putin has kept himself master of Russia for the past twenty-two years. The historical roots need to be understood. They leave open, in principle, constructive solutions to the current tensions. Putin’s thinking and actions are another matter.
In 2005, a year after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Putin made a remarkable statement that takes us to the heart of how he sees Russia and geopolitics. ‘It should be recognized’, he declared, ‘that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. For the Russian people, it became a real drama. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration also spread to Russia itself.’
At times, it is suggested that, an ex-KGB officer himself, Putin seeks to rebuild the Soviet Union. But it’s not that simple. In fact, he has declared that anyone who sought to do such a thing would be brainless. Rather, as Steven Lee Myers pointed out in 2015 (in The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin), he seeks to restore ‘something much older, richer and deeper: the idea of the Russian nation, the imperium of the ‘third Rome’’. That’s a notion that took shape in the Russian heartland after the fall of Constantinople and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In that sense, the mind of Putin is comparable to that of reactionary, populist political leaders and demagogues elsewhere. His problem is that a less reactionary, more democratic nationalism inspires those in Ukraine, the Baltic states and small countries like Georgia to want to protect their independence from Russia. He and his followers may believe in the great mission of Moscow to dominate the Slavic lands and their peripheries. A great many others wish to be free of precisely that Russian chauvinist dream. And NATO has been fostering those wishes. That’s what is in play right now. As a consequence, things are finely balanced and Europe – Old Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld used to condescendingly dub it – is on the brink of war.
The deep historical background is, therefore, important to recall at this juncture. Moscow, or the Duchy of Muscovy, as it used to be called in pre-Romanov times, is just over a thousand years old. But a thousand years ago it was not the dominant state in what would later grow into the Russian Empire. Between the ninth century and the thirteenth, that state was Kiev Rus, a state with its capital in Kiev (the present capital of Ukraine), which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania took its place and was, at its height, the largest state in Europe.
Though steadily shrinking, it lasted until 1795, like Poland, when it was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In its heyday, it included present day Lithuania, Belarus, parts of Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Moldova. Putin and his Russian nationalist followers may dream of Russia as the natural cultural and geopolitical leader of the Slavic world. Others have different histories and dreams. The peoples of Ukraine and Lithuania are among them.
But the problem with Putin is not simply his overweening nationalism. It’s not his ideology that’s the most objectionable thing about him. Russia, after all, does have a rich culture and a proud past. The problem is that he rules as both a kleptocratic despot and a menace to everything the liberal democracies put in place after the Second World War, in an effort to prevent a recurrence of fascism and the catastrophic upheavals in triggered, between the 1920s and the 1940s. There is a great deal about Putin that is redolent of 1930s fascism.
Unfortunately, with Russia as with China, the liberal democracies have been very slow to wake up to how serious the challenge to their order and expectations has become. Ukraine has become a test case of the willingness and capacity of NATO and the EU to stand up when it counts. Putin is calling their bluff and has been working assiduously for years to undermine their unity, their confidence and their nerve. He has also been defending his dominance in Russia itself through the suppression of all meaningful opposition and the assassination of critics, at home and very brazenly abroad – as Heidi Blake documents in From Russia With Blood: Putin’s Ruthless Killing Campaign and Secret War on the West (2019).
Putin has already pulled Georgia and Belarus into his orbit. He has annexed the Crimea from Ukraine by force and fraud. He has been blatantly interfering in and pressuring Ukraine and the push-back from the West has been equivocal and half-hearted. Given the disarray in Washington in recent years, the detachment of the UK from the EU, the decay of resolve in Germany to remain the backbone of NATO and its dependence on Russian oil and gas, things are now at a precarious point.
Meanwhile, Xi Jinping has suppressed the democratic movement in Hong Kong and is threatening Taiwan. Moscow and Beijing behave in similar ways and are talking closely about how to break the US-led world order. There is growing speculation that they may coordinate their moves and invade Ukraine and Taiwan simultaneously, catching the over-stretched and war-weary United States and its wavering allies in disarray. That’s how troubling the geopolitical situation has become, only thirty years after the end of the Cold War.
It seems that every generation must learn once again that the price of peace is vigilance and collective security. Winston Churchill observed, in the Preface to his history of the Second World War, that that war was quite unnecessary, had the Western allies only had the vision and strategic will to enforce the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and prevent the remilitarization of Germany. But the twenty years between the First and Second World Wars were, instead, squandered. Hitler was appeased in the name of ‘peace with honour’. The consequence was dishonour and then war.
The current Netflix drama Munich: The Edge of War, a fictional account of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia for the sake of ‘peace with honour’, captures rather nicely the kind of situation in which we now find ourselves with regard to both Ukraine and Taiwan. Jeremy Irons plays Neville Chamberlain wonderfully well and with great empathy. The central issue then was how to understand and negotiate with or defeat the mind of Adolf Hitler. Right now, in Europe, the challenge is the mind of Putin.
Some may object that analogies with the 1930s are overdone and that Putin is surely not Hitler. Even Stalin once remarked, to Milovan Djilas, ‘The West think I’m the new Hitler, but I’m not Hitler. I know when to stop.’ Putin is neither Hitler nor Stalin. But he is canny, ruthless and ambitious. That makes him a mortal threat to his critics and neighbours. It isn’t yet clear where he intends to stop or what would induce him to do so. The question is how to keep him in check without triggering a war that would be disastrous for all concerned.
Globally speaking, Xi Jinping is the bigger problem. But Putin is destabilizing Europe, with major implications. For those who believe that 1930s analogies are overdrawn, another historical analogy might be useful: the rise of Macedon and its conquest of the Greek city states (and then the Persian Empire) under King Philip II and his son Alexander III (the Great) between 359 and 323 BCE. The Macedonians built a powerful military, subdued their immediate neighbours while the Greek city states squabbled, then conquered Greece itself with Philip’s crushing victory in 338 BCE at Chaeronea. Distinguished classical historian Adrian Goldsworthy, in 2020, encouraged us all to revisit this fascinating piece of ancient history in Philip & Alexander: Kings and Conquerors. It’s a rich analogy, with many indirect lessons to offer.
In both cases, however, the key lesson is: you must hang together or you will assuredly hang separately. Philip II, in Goldsworthy’s words, ‘reshaped Macedonia, making it bigger, stronger and more united and also created the army from scratch and even the plan to attack Persia’. Putin set about rebuilding and reshaping Russia, after the humiliations and debacles of the 1990s. He sought, briefly, to reach an understanding with the West, after 9/11, but the ruthlessness and corruption of his rule and his hostility to the democratic and NATO-aligned states on Russia’s periphery soon made this impossible. What is not impossible, right now, is that he will impose Russian dominance on Ukraine, with troubling implications for the rest of Europe.
How, therefore, to keep him ‘honest’? We have failed to keep Xi Jinping ‘honest’ in Hong Kong and Xinjiang and the jury is still out regarding Taiwan. Putin, on the other hand, has fewer cards to play than Xi. Russia is not a superpower in any way, except for its possession of a massive nuclear arsenal – an inheritance from the Cold War. If NATO and the EU were willing to stand up to him, there are at least four things that could be done:
The threat of sanctions against him, his cronies and his regime if he invades Ukraine.
Relieving Germany of the need to import Russian oil and gas.
Arming Ukraine with anti-tank, anti-aircraft and anti-personnel weapons of sufficient quality and quantity to make Putin think twice about invading it.
A clear commitment by NATO and the EU to collective security and buttressing their capacities to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Baltic states and the countries of Eastern Europe.
The first has been threatened by President Biden. The second is something the Obama administration began to do. It is now taking place at least to some extent. The third is happening at least modestly. The fourth is not in evidence. Putin may still think that he can prevail by a combination of bluff and incremental rather than open aggression. It’s not clear that he is mistaken.
We have a new ambassador in Australia right now, who understands all too well, the danger that Putin represents. Darius Degutis, the first ever Lithuanian ambassador to Australia, has been here just three months. His mission is to engage with Australia regarding the threats posed by Putin and Xi. Lithuania has recently established embassies, for the first time, in Seoul, Singapore and Taipei, as well as Canberra. Its Foreign Minister will be here early next month. Things are moving, as with AUKUS. But much depends on coherence and decisiveness. Both are still deficient and the clock is ticking.
Paul Monk, a specialist in international relations and former senior intelligence analyst, is the author of Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China (2005) and Dictators and Dangerous Ideas (2018), among many other books.