Putin on the March. Douglas E. Schoen
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Indeed, a quailing Obama basically outsourced US Syria policy to Russia by declining to enforce his red line on chemical-weapons use; during Trump’s presidential campaign, he eagerly followed suit, seeking to enlist Putin as some kind of regional policeman, especially on ISIS, to keep us out of Syria. This refusal to act is a serious abnegation of the US leadership role in the world, suggestive of a deep isolationism born of populist disgust with elite foreign policy after Iraq.
The refugee crisis and the Western paralysis and disagreement over Syria have fostered deep divisions and instability in the Western Alliance. An EU official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, called it “Putin’s year,” and said that the Russian leader was “looking at a divided Europe”—just what he wants. The EU official was deeply concerned because the “United States for the first time is providing no counterbalance to [Putin].”4 Indeed, the election of Donald Trump has tested the stability of the alliance. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump spoke critically of NATO and other traditional Western alliances, to the dismay of many; at one point, he even suggested that the durable postwar alliance was “obsolete.”5 (More recently, he retracted that judgment.) No previous presidential candidate had ever questioned the centrality of the Western Alliance. Trump is a patriot, but his skepticism—and, in my view, his naiveté—about the vital role of the Western Alliance plays into Putin’s designs.
Under Putin, Russia forged a strong partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran, just as Tehran was finalizing its nuclear deal with the United States—a deal almost entirely on terms that will benefit the mullahs, not Washington. Along with its Syrian achievements, Russia’s new closeness with Iran makes it the new superpower of the Middle East. And just to make that point clearer, Putin has even reached out to Israel, which, after eight years of getting back-of-the-hand treatment from the Obama administration, was receptive to overtures from the Russian president.
Putin also continues to deepen his historic alliance with the People’s Republic of China. What I have called the Russia-China Axis is the fundamental anti-Western, antidemocratic, anti-American force in the world today. And we remain ill equipped to deal with it, largely because we do not seem ready even to acknowledge its existence, its active moves around the world, and the implications it presents for our foreign policy.
Putin’s victories have provided positive propaganda for his antidemocratic, anti-Western model of governance. With China and Iran as his partners, he is exemplifying a different model than the democratic, free-market framework, which has been reeling for more than a decade from the shocks of war, financial instability, inept leadership, and economic stagnation. Putin offers antidemocrats around the world new hope that there is another way to do things. His is a bleak and depressing model—but it is gaining ground, and not just in non-Western precincts. A portion of the right wing in Western democracies finds Putin’s nationalist brio, social conservatism, and contempt for opposition appealing and even inspiring.
Finally, Putin is also having a huge impact right here at home in the United States—as everyone knows. As this manuscript goes to press, Congress and the Justice Department are still conducting investigations into the contacts between Russia and members of the Trump administration—with suggestions of potential collusion between the two during the 2016 presidential campaign. US intelligence agencies have confirmed that during the campaign, Russian hackers were responsible for the leak of thousands of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee. Russians were also identified as the source of “fake news” stories, such as the rumors about Hillary Clinton’s health. The Russian role in the election was so prominent that it has set the always-warring political parties at each other’s throats yet again, this time arguing over whether the process was legitimate or fatally compromised by the chicanery of an international foe. If it does nothing else, the Russian hacking scandal has succeeded in dramatically weakening Americans’ already-shaky faith in our political system—but the story, of course, is far from over, and it might yet result in a full-blown, Watergate-level constitutional crisis.
Many believe that the United States is undergoing a period of discord and division not seen since at least the late 1960s; others, sounding more dire warnings, believe that the country is coming apart. A primary perpetrator in both critiques is Russia and the role of Russian influence. And this represents a Putin victory, too.
“President Trump talks about winning? Right now, Putin is winning,” said former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge in March 2017. Ridge was talking about the investigations into Putin’s election meddling happening in Washington. The goal for Putin, Ridge said, is “destabilization”—and he is achieving it. “Let’s create chaos, let’s create uncertainty, let’s destabilize the political environment,” Ridge said. “[The Russians] have done a wonderful job. If that was their goal, they have done it.”6
It is indeed one of their goals, and has been for years. But it’s only one front on the battlefield on which Putin operates.
A year ago, I coauthored a book with Evan Roth Smith called Putin’s Master Plan: To Destroy Europe, Divide NATO, and Restore Russian Power and Global Influence. We wrote it as a warning to readers and, I hoped, to our political leaders that the Russian leader had a grand vision and a determined plan to execute it. Moreover, we warned, the plan was far from some abstract design: on the contrary, it was an active, ongoing reality, with some setbacks along the way but, for the most part, hard-earned, substantial successes. And we warned that the United States simply didn’t have its eye on the ball in regard to Russia, and that, unless this changed, Putin would continue to gain.
Our warnings have been borne out. I’m hard-pressed to identify an important assertion that we got wrong. I say this not to boast but to underscore the gravity of the situation we face. The sobering truth is that Putin is meeting with sustained success in the three key areas in which he needs to prevail: foreign policy; control of Russian internal politics; and keeping the United States and our Western allies off balance, demoralized, and even destabilized.
Putin has done everything in his power to reclaim Russia’s lost command of its traditional sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and its lost glory as a superpower. Those who dismiss what he has done as unsustainable, ill-advised, or reckless seem to willfully overlook one fundamental truth: he is getting away with it, and the more he is able to get away with and the longer he can do so, the stronger he becomes—especially as the Western democracies grow more fractured, both from their own internal problems and from the lack of a consensus on how to respond to him.
It is a fact that Putin has won in Syria. The West (and the Syrian people) has lost, in no small part because the countries refused to fight. Ceasefire talks don’t even bother to include the United States or other Western powers. The game is over: Assad has prevailed because Putin was willing to put blood and treasure on the line to preserve his rule—and was willing to bet, wisely as it turns out, that the West would do nothing to stop him.
Putin, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, left the Obama administration’s presumptions in tatters. “The mantra out of this administration always was, ‘You can’t solve a civil war militarily,’” Krauthammer said. “The answer is, you can.”7 Indeed, Putin used force to achieve a clear objective: Save the Assad regime, and, as a collateral goal, discredit the West. He achieved both ends.
In December 2016, as the ceasefire was being negotiated without American participation, Moscow informed Washington that any US bombing strikes on Syrian targets without Russian approval would be met with force. The Russians put down a marker. They had a marker down from the beginning in Syria. They stand by their friends and allies. The Americans do not. Remember Hosni Mubarak in Egypt? President Obama let him be deposed—showing for all that the United States would stand by as an allied regime on which it had spent trillions twisted in the wind. Not Putin; when the chips were down and seemingly the whole world stood against Assad, and, by extension, Putin, the Russian leader did not waver. Four years later, he has won in Syria, pushed the United States out of any role in what happens next, and greatly strengthened the Russian hand. And all for an effort that wound up costing the Russians