Putin's Master Plan. Douglas E. Schoen
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of foreign direct investment in Russian infrastructure, especially in oil-rich Siberia. Chinese president Xi Jinping was Putin’s guest of honor in Moscow during the 2015 Victory Day celebrations, where the two signed approximately $6 billion in infrastructure deals to knit the economies of the two countries closer together.60 The relationship between Russia and China is mutually beneficial and pragmatic: Putin denounces American power and promotes a multipolar world, while China cheerily trades with all that approach it. In return for pulling the weight of China’s strategic interests and playing the bad cop, Putin gets to ride shotgun on the Chinese economic bandwagon. Putin delivers China-funded infrastructure projects to his constituents, and the Chinese get improved access to the abundant natural resources of the Russian hinterland.
The formal vehicle for coordinating relations between China and Russia has been the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also has as members most of the Central Asian states. In July 2015, India and Pakistan announced plans to join the SCO as full members.61 India, perennially on edge about the behavior of its traditional rival, Pakistan, and concerned over growing Chinese power, is also a major customer of Russian arms. As in the Middle East, Putin is happy to sell weapons to both sides of a conflict, so long as the checks don’t bounce. A similar motivation applies to Putin’s unseemly relationship with North Korea and its murderous Kim dynasty. In March 2015, Putin welcomed North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to Moscow and pronounced a “year of friendship” between Russia and North Korea.62 Putin’s plan for Asia obviously doesn’t discriminate against Stalinist dictatorships.
CONCLUSION
Vladimir Putin’s master plan is designed to make the twenty-first century a Russian century. His vision reaches from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates, from Korea to Kyrgyzstan. He is unleashing hybrid warfare against Russia’s immediate neighbors in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics, and has fired warning shots at the Scandinavians and the Finns. Putin backs pro-Russian populist political parties in Central and Western Europe, thereby disrupting continental politics and threatening to undermine NATO and the EU. In the Middle East, Putin is backing Iran’s bid for regional power, but he also has no problem selling arms to disillusioned American allies. Putin is integrating Central Asia into a Russia-centric political and economic system, pursuing an ever-deeper strategic partnership with China, and backing the North Korean regime. Taken together, this amounts to a comprehensive strategy to break apart the world order that has governed the last twenty-plus years of global affairs, which will be much to the benefit of Russia’s regional and global positioning. And so far, it’s working.
How NATO Is Failing Itself, Europe, and America
America’s commitment to collective defense under Article 5 of NATO is a sacred obligation in our view—a sacred obligation not just for now, but for all time.
—VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN 1
The Russians will keep probing until they meet resistance. If we don’t stand up to small provocations, eventually they will reach Article 5.
—SENIOR EUROPEAN DIPLOMAT 2
There is a high probability that [Mr. Putin] will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5.
—FORMER NATO SECRETARY GENERAL ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN 3
The core mission of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had always been to defend Europe from Russian aggression. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it appeared that this mission had been a success, and that Russia would no longer pose a military threat to Europe. Indeed, in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, NATO has invented new missions for itself, from attempting to mitigate the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s to its more recent operations in Afghanistan and Libya. But a resurgent Russia, invading its neighbors and threatening the security of NATO members, means that NATO must return to its roots: deterring and defending against Russian aggression. Unfortunately, NATO, in part because its members are more preoccupied with Islamic terrorism, has failed to address the Russian threat and has put the safety of Europe and the United States in jeopardy as a result.
It is clear that Russia poses a direct threat to NATO countries. The cross-border raid in Estonia may be the only time, at least that we know of, that Russian ground troops entered NATO ground territory, but Russian violations of NATO airspace are far more frequent and just as alarming. In 2014 alone, NATO members scrambled jets 442 times in response to Russian activity. Russian fighters and bombers have flown into Norwegian and Polish airspace,4 been intercepted over the English Channel,5 and were caught forty miles off the coast of California on the Fourth of July.6 These threats are not idle: Russian bombers can carry nuclear weapons capable of killing hundreds of thousands with a single strike. When Putin directs these planes into Western skies, he sends a clear message: “I can get to you, and hurt you, whenever and wherever I want.” It is NATO’s job to prove otherwise. But so far, Russia has been given no reason to discontinue these sorties.
During a private meeting in August 2015, a senior European diplomat who oversees his country’s policy on Russia and Eastern Europe put it simply: “The Russians are back on stage, and they are here to stay.” When we pressed him on what has changed in Russia’s stance in the last few years, he contended, “After the end of the Cold War, there was an abnormal twenty year period when the Russians did not have the resources or capabilities to achieve their desired level of influence in Europe and the world.”7 That period has come to an end. Russia’s renewed capabilities are plainly evident every day that Russian arms flow to separatists in eastern Ukraine, Russian jets crisscross Western airspace, or Russian troops kidnap NATO military officers. What is not evident is NATO’s ability to respond effectively to these actions and guarantee the security of its member states.
Alarmingly, NATO has become so impotent that some member states are taking steps to build defense and security relationships outside of the alliance. In Northern Europe, NATO members Denmark, Iceland, and Norway are meeting and directly coordinating security policy with nonmembers Sweden and Finland.8 These new mutual-defense arrangements are directly driven by Russian aggression in the Arctic and Scandinavia.9 Latvia and Lithuania, two countries toward which Putin has shown considerable hostility, are set to begin joint weapons acquisitions in order to encourage “development of joint military capacities,” according to Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite and Latvian president Raimonds Vējonis.10 Poland and Estonia, two countries with much to fear from Russia, may also join the arrangement. Lithuanian defense minister Juozas Olekas has made it clear that “regional defense cooperation of the Baltic states is more critical than ever, [and] our security assurance is our solidarity.”11
The Western powers show a clear lack of willpower when it comes to confronting Putin. But there is also the looming possibility that NATO may not be able to do enough to stop Russia’s naked military adventurism even if it tried. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his interference in other Eastern European states has put NATO’s capabilities to the test, and they have been found wanting. In recent years, NATO has been more concerned with counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan or cruise-missile strikes in Libya than the threat of conventional war with Russia. The American military, once the guardian of the free world and the bulwark against Soviet aggression, is now more prepared to take on ragtag terrorists than Russian tanks. Even if NATO politicians wake up to the military threat that Russia poses, it will take years to refocus its budgets, procurement, training, and strategic preparedness on Russia and to bring NATO militaries up to speed.
NATO’S ABDICATION
NATO has done little to deter Russia in Ukraine. President Obama infamously responded to Ukraine’s request for aid against Russia with Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, the preprepared food rations issued to US troops.12 Ukraine had asked for arms, ammunition, and intelligence support. Instead they got chicken fajitas, and Putin ate Crimea for dinner. The Western European countries have