Ukraine was the heart of everything for Russia. If Ukraine was part of the Western alliance system, Russia could not be defended. Russia believed that if the Americans were as obsessed with Ukraine as they appeared to be, their intentions could only be malign. In the Russian view, those malign intentions dated back to 2004 when the US underwrote the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the same year the Baltics were admitted to NATO. The Russians reached a conclusion: The United States was not only a hostile power, but was actively seeking to undermine Moscow’s regional influence.
In 2008, seven weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed, the Russians went to war with Georgia. The issue over the security of the Caucasus was really secondary to a simple message the Russians delivered to Ukraine. Georgia was a de facto American ally, and from the perspective of Moscow strategists, US entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan meant Washington was unable to come to Georgia’s aid. The message to Ukraine: this is what American guarantees are worth. It was a warning not to stake national security on American guarantees. To a great extent, it worked, as Ukraine shifted from a neutral to a pro-Russian stance.
Starting in late 2013 and again looking at it through Russia’s eyes, the Americans resumed their attempt to subvert Ukraine by underwriting the uprising in Kiev. This time, however, it was the Russians who failed their allies. Russian intelligence clearly failed to understand what was happening in Kiev and failed to counter it. Russia “seized” Crimea officially, but Crimea was already a major Russian base by treaty and was dominated by the Russians. They changed the legal status… not the correlation of forces. In eastern Ukraine, their attempt to trigger a pro-Russian uprising failed, and the Ukrainian forces, as poorly trained and armed as they were, ultimately fought the Russians to a standstill. If 2004 was a warning to others in the region about American weakness, 2014–15 was an American warning to them about Russian weakness.
The events of 2008 led to Russia’s economic crisis of 2014. As I have written previously, the economic crisis in Europe and the United States led to the decreased appetite for Chinese exports. This in turn lessened China’s need for importing raw materials. After the markets caught up with reality, oil prices plunged, and with them the viability of the Russian economy. Behind this was a much greater problem: the failure of Russia to use oil revenues to modernize its economy. The deals Putin made to become president required the diversion of funds from that purpose to gaining political support for Putin. The state could not both manage the support base of its regime and modernize the economy. It was an economic and managerial impossibility. Thus, Russia was massively vulnerable to energy price cut offs. It also lost one of its major weapons—the ability to cut exports of gas—because Russia urgently needed that cash flow and because the Europe ans had worked hard to diversify sources of energy.
Thus, in 2014, Russia faced a dual crisis. It had failed to prevent the installation of a pro-Western government in Kiev, and its economy had been struck a terrific blow. Russia feared that, given its imbalance from the two blows, the United States would follow up with further aggressive moves. When a boxer is staggered, he goes into a clinch. In this case, the Russians understood that the Americans’ vulnerability remained an overextension in the Middle East. Russia also recalled that the overextension in 2008 had paralyzed the United States in Georgia. For Russia, the period from Sept. 11, 2001 until 2014 was a period in which the United States was so obsessed with the Middle East, it had no resources to place elsewhere. Russia’s strategy, therefore, was to prolong the American focus in the Middle East, while creating the basis for a settlement over Ukraine.
From a military sense, the Russian intervention in Syria was of little consequence. A small number of fighter planes were sent with enough troops to protect them. However, from the psychological point of view, the Russians hoped to transform their position. First, they had demonstrated the ability to project power far from Russia’s borders. Second, Moscow’s intervention was designed to make it appear that Russia had saved the Assad regime, and therefore it drove the decision. The US had no intention of overthrowing Assad while IS was the likely beneficiary.
However, the Russians made the US appear to be an equal power. This was critical to Russia both overseas and at home.
Currently, the Russians are trying to increase their influence, reaching out to Iran and to the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as talking to the Israelis. They are brilliantly creating the sense of Russia as a great power and causing the US potential grief. At the same time, the Russians have sought to minimize conflict in Ukraine. The goal is either to split Germany (which wants a settlement) from the United States, or to get the US to agree to a settlement. Such a settlement would include an agreement that Ukraine can have a pro-Western government, but that no Western military assistance or forces would be made available. Eastern Ukraine would be given some autonomy. And Crimea would return to some prior condition in which Russia is the overwhelming power, but Ukraine has some formal rights.
That would be the Russian goal. But it should be noted that Russian strategy is built on a base of sand. Syria is intended to roll back the reality of Ukraine, but nothing can roll back the reality of the Russian dependence on a deeply discounted resource for its economic survival. Russia is engaged in a massive defense buildup in the face of this economic crisis. And its deployment in Syria is far from decisive. It can reach out to Iran and others, but they are aware of the limits of Russian power.
In the long run, the Russian Federation is facing the same problem as the Soviet Union did… and will thus weaken. Its current strategy is constrained by weakness but compelled by the fact it is the only option available. A strategy of bluff follows from the reality of weakness when that weakness threatens to be fatal. Meaning that the economic and strategic weakness we see makes Russia more of a risktaker in the coming years, not less.