This, however, was not the way things looked from the Kremlin. In his 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference, President Putin strongly denounced US post-Cold War global dominance and vowed to resist it. The five-day war between Russia and Georgia in 2008 sent a chilling message that the safe limits of NATO’s enlargement to the east had been reached. The reset in US–Russian relations which followed in 2009–10 during Barack Obama’s first presidential term was useful, but shallow and non-strategic – thus reversible. At the same time, the power of Russian patriotism and nationalism, subdued and suppressed in the first post-Cold War decade, began to surge. Vladimir Putin became its standard bearer, seeking to consolidate both his hold on power and the unity of the country at large.
The relationship with the United States meanwhile stagnated, and then began rapidly to deteriorate. In 2014, push came to shove. A conflict broke out over Ukraine, which, in the words of Robert Gates, was a “monumental provocation” to Moscow. Historical connections between Russia and Ukraine, going back over a thousand years, were ignored; Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s warnings that US support for regime change in Kiev would destroy US–Russian relations were brushed off.[3] The US–Russian showdown could have happened in a different place and at a different moment, but the fact that it occurred over a country which was so important for Russia made it certain that it would be very serious, very painful, and last a very long time.
The Ukraine crisis was not the first war in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1999, NATO air forces bombed Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, for seventy-eight days to make the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević back down in Kosovo, a majority-Albanian province which as a result proclaimed independence. The Kosovo crisis was preceded by three years of war in neighboring Bosnia, which claimed 200,000 lives, and which also saw NATO aerial engagements on behalf of the Croats and Muslims and against the Serbs. The Balkan conflicts, however, were safely insulated: they were fought by the locals, managed by the West, and – because of Russia’s material weakness and its still continuing effort at adjustment to the new realities – did not lead to a great-power stand-off. Europe was burning at the edges but felt basically safe, having had to cope only with the stream of refugees, which seems small and orderly by today’s standards.
Ukraine, fifteen years later, was different. Russia proceeded swiftly first to secure the Crimean peninsula, help stage a popular referendum there, and then to annex it. The success of the Russian military operation stunned outside observers. The enlargement of Russian territory evoked neighbors’ memories of the past. Using the techniques dubbed hybrid warfare by the Western media, Russia supported an armed rebellion in the Donbass region in the east of Ukraine and prevented Kiev from crushing it.
By sending its warplanes close to NATO countries’ borders, and allowing them to fly close to Western aircraft and ships, Russia sent a clear message to Western countries that, unlike in the Balkan wars, they would not be able to sit it out and watch Slavs kill one another. In the event of an escalation of the conflict, the Kremlin appeared to be saying, NATO countries too would be affected. To make the message even clearer, Putin publicly mentioned later that he had been considering putting Russia’s nuclear weapons on high alert. Russia and the West came closer to a head-on collision than had been the case in at least three decades: 2014 was the most dangerous year in Europe since the 1983 Able Archer exercise, if not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
2015 put a freeze on the conflict in Donbass, which reduced the dangers of dangerous escalation but made the Russia–NATO stand-off permanent. Following the Wales summit of September 2014, NATO’s contingency planning was revised to take account of a Russia now seen as hostile. Western and Russian forces began to exercise close to each other’s territory, and NATO’s eastern members – Poland, the Baltic States and Romania – received token Western troop deployments and some heavy weapons. The NATO secretary general’s 2016 annual report referred to resurgent Russia as a major security challenge to the alliance. Senior US military commanders and defense officials began to refer to Russia as an adversary, which soon became routine. Ashton Carter, the US defense secretary, named Russia as the number one security issue to the United States, ahead of China, North Korea, Iran and ISIL.[4]
On the Russian side, there was no dispute as to who was the principal adversary. The National Security Concept adopted on New Year’s Eve 2016 referred to the US and NATO actions as a security threat. To the Russian General Staff, however, the “moment of truth” about the United States and other nominal Western partners had already taken place years ago, over Kosovo.
In 2015, Russia made another step to challenge the US-led order by intervening militarily in Syria and hitting in the process some of the groups supported by the United States and its allies. The Russians not only broke the US monopoly on global military intervention. By inserting themselves in the midst of a war which had already involved a US-led coalition, they complicated the Western operations in Syria and Iraq, made common cause with Iran, raised the prospect of a war by proxy, briefly evoked the possibility of a quasi-alliance with France, caused a political collision with Ankara when Turkey downed a Russian bomber, and forced Washington to treat Moscow as an indispensable party to both the war and peace in Syria. Forcing his way to the high table, and making others deal with him out of necessity if not of choice, has become Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic trademark in his relations with US leaders.
This combative foreign policy is being waged against the background of an unmistakably authoritarian Russian domestic regime, which prides itself in following the conservative tradition and publicly rejects some of the latter-day European values, particularly on the issues of gay rights, family, religion, migration, and the role of the state. It is supported by a competent and effective information/propaganda apparatus that contributes to the massive approval of Putin’s ratings at home and reaches out beyond Russia’s borders. Even though Russia’s global popularity is low, which is hardly surprising given Western global information dominance, some of Moscow’s themes find an audible echo in many parts of the world, from China to Latin America to the Middle East to Europe.
So, a blunt and cheerful “no” to the question in the title of this book looks both naïve and irresponsible. Surely, adversarial relations with a major power always carry risks. If the country in question is a major military power, with a huge nuclear arsenal, the risks are so much higher. If it is an authoritarian country whose decision-making is ultra-centralized and secretive, whose policies are sometimes hard to read, and whose actions are designed to catch others off guard, anxieties can turn to fears. This is precisely Russia’s image in the public mind. Fear, however, is a poor guide to sound policies, or even to proper understanding. Fear could also be a problem in itself.
I begin this book with an analysis of existing Russia-related fears: their causes, their roots and their rationality. I will examine closely the things which make Westerners fear Russia and try to assess the proper dimensions of the factors behind the concerns, anxieties and worries. The conclusion from the opening chapter, I can tell even now, is that, while most fears need to be put to rest, the Russian challenge to the US-dominated/led world order is real, serious and long term.
4
Remarks by the US secretary of defense Ashton Carter at the Economic Club, Washington, DC, February 2, 2016.