The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.
—President Vladimir Putin
Barely had I been seated before Vladimir Putin told me that NATO no longer had any purpose and should be dissolved. “After the end of the Cold War, we dissolved the Warsaw Pact. Similarly, you should dissolve NATO. That is a relic from the Cold War,” he said.
While he was speaking, I observed his contentious body language. He likes to be seen as a strong man, and at that moment, he seemed to be looking for a fight. We all recall the macho posturing of Mr. Putin with a judo black belt, Putin riding horses and fishing in wild rivers, often shirtless, or Putin in helicopter rides with camera crews over the wide gray tundra, looking for tigers and bears. He claims to have an ascetic and modest mode of life, with just a spartan apartment and a couple of cheap cars declared as his official fortune. Characteristically, he—in contrast to the Soviet-era leaders—has had neither statues erected nor ships or streets named after him. In a way, I think he feels a bit bored in the grandiose and ornate halls of the Kremlin, but on the other hand, they are also a potent symbol of power and a strong, powerful man. This is how he would like to be seen.
I knew Putin from many previous meetings, so I was prepared for a very direct conversation. I told him that my ambition was the exact opposite of his: namely, to strengthen NATO as the bedrock of Euro-Atlantic security. Then we embarked on a quite rigorous and detailed discussion about missile defense and arms control in Europe. The date was December 2009; it was my first visit to Moscow as NATO secretary-general and chairman of the NATO-Russia Council, a cooperative body the NATO members and Russia had founded in 2002. Putin was prime minister at the time, and I also had the opportunity to meet President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Upon taking office as secretary-general in August 2009, I made it one of my priorities to strengthen cooperation between NATO and Russia, and that included visiting Moscow just a few months into the job. I hoped that Medvedev, the newly elected president—a younger, more liberal, and more Western-oriented politician—would infuse more positivism and dynamism into the NATO-Russia relationship. But while Medvedev was polite, Putin was brusque and dismissive. I realized it would be uphill work to make any progress.
Since then, things have gone downhill. Russia, which began the millennium with such great promise as a partner and colleague of the Western democracies, has turned aside from that path. Instead, it has taken the path of autocracy at home and aggression abroad, trampling on the Russian people’s rights to democracy and the rule of law, and bullying the international community with threats, blackmail, and outright violence. Russia is not the greatest power in the world—it is not even a superpower—but its actions make it the greatest threat to the proper working of the international order. China is the superpower of the future; Europe is America’s indispensable partner of the future; but Russia is the future’s problem child, and the next US president will have to find a way of dealing with it.
It did not have to be this way. Indeed, I regard it as one of the great tragedies of the post–Cold War period that Putin evolved from a pro-Western democratic reformer to an anti-Western autocrat. The first time I met him was on May 28, 2002, in Rome, on the occasion of the NATO-Russia summit, which took place at the Pratica di Mare Air Base, in an impressive setup prepared by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In Rome, we met a very pro-Western Putin. I still remember his speech during our working lunch, where he made the case in strong terms that Russia and the West should strengthen cooperation, and he looked forward to working closely with NATO on an equal footing. I left Rome very optimistic, and convinced that we were now entering a new era of cooperation between Russia and our Western organizations, NATO and the European Union.
But six years later, in stark contrast to the spirit of Rome, I met a very angry, hostile Putin in April 2008 at the NATO-Russia summit in Bucharest. He almost lost his temper, accusing NATO of encircling Russia, warning Ukraine and Georgia against joining NATO, and declaring that if Ukraine were to join NATO, it could bring the state to the brink of dissolution. In the animated exchange that followed, he also claimed, “Kiev remains the mother of Russian cities.” He left Bucharest in a fury, and a few months later, in August, he sent an unmistakably clear signal to the West by invading Georgia and occupying the two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
What happened between 2002 and 2008 to make such a difference? First, what made Putin so Western-oriented in 2002? At the summit in Rome, we made the groundbreaking decision to found something very special—the NATO-Russia Council—as a mechanism for consultation, consensus-building, cooperation, joint decision, and joint action. NATO’s member states and Russia would work as equal partners on a wide spectrum of Euro-Atlantic security issues of common interest. This was a remarkable step in the relationship between Russia and the transatlantic alliance, and it made the NATO-Russia relationship truly unique, because Russia is the only country outside NATO with which we have such a council. After the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a decade of searching for a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture, we took a visionary step forward, inviting Russia to join us in a close partnership.
Leading up to the Rome summit, the relationship between the United States and Russia had seen huge progress, not least in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States. President Putin was one of the first foreign leaders to call President Bush, express sympathy and solidarity, and declare strong determination to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. President Bush pursued an engaged personal diplomacy with Putin, culminating in a joint declaration in May 2002 on a “new strategic relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation.” I still remember my first meeting with President Bush in March 2002. Bush said to me, “I know that some of our folks in the Pentagon still consider Russia an enemy, but I have looked into the eyes of Putin, and I saw a friend.” Even in retrospect, I think that was an accurate picture. At the time, President Putin pursued pro-Western policies. He even hinted at a possible future Russian membership of NATO, when asked by the BBC if it would be possible for Russia ever to join NATO, saying, “Why not? I do not rule out such a possibility—I repeat, on condition that Russia’s interests are going to be taken into account if Russia becomes a full-fledged partner.” On October 4, 2001, he elaborated further in the Moscow Times under the headline, “Putin Softens Stance on NATO.”
The tragic events of 9/11 were a stark reminder of the need for comprehensive and coordinated action to respond to common threats. In a joint statement on September 12, 2001, NATO and Russia expressed their shared anger and indignation at the barbaric attacks on the United States and called on “the entire international community to unite in the struggle against terrorism.” The allies and Russia were quick to recognize and seize the opportunity to boost NATO-Russia cooperation. Two meetings between President Putin and NATO secretary-general George Robertson, and meetings of NATO and Russia foreign ministers, paved the way for the important decisions at the summit in Rome.
So, in 2002 it seemed that Russia and the West were on the path to engage in close and positive cooperation. However, events in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003–4 dramatically changed the cooperative environment. So-called color revolutions in the two countries brought new, democratic, and pro-Western leaders to power in Tbilisi and Kiev. In Georgia, the Rose Revolution led to the election of the young, energetic Mikheil Saakashvili as president, and in Ukraine, the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko became president after the Orange Revolution. In Moscow, President Putin followed these events with great anxiety. He was convinced that the West in general, and the United States and the CIA in particular, had instigated and orchestrated these revolutions, and that the ultimate goal was to pave the way for similar regime change in Moscow. He saw conspiracy everywhere, and from that moment he changed his strategic calculations and turned increasingly anti-Western.
The upheavals in Georgia and Ukraine were truly revolutionary—modern revolutions based on hope and optimism, not blood and torment. On November 23, 2003, the president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, was forced to resign. After disputed parliamentary elections, he had attempted to open the new parliament. Two of the main opposition parties considered the session illegitimate. Led by Mikheil Saakashvili, supporters of those two parties burst into the session with roses in their hands (hence the name “Rose Revolution”), interrupting a speech by President Shevardnadze and forcing him to escape. The next day, the president announced his resignation, new elections were held, and Saakashvili became the new president of Georgia.
The Orange Revolution was a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of a presidential election that was alleged to have been marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation, and direct electoral fraud, and in which Putin had campaigned personally on behalf of one of the candidates, Viktor Yanukovych. Nationwide protests succeeded when the results of the original elections were annulled and a revote ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court. Viktor Yushchenko was declared the official winner of the new elections, and with his inauguration in January 2005 in Kiev, the Orange Revolution ended.
The pro-Western governments of Georgia and Ukraine aspired to become members of NATO. As a first step, they applied for a Membership Action Plan (MAP) and pushed for it to be granted at the NATO summit in Bucharest on April 2, 2008. Their pro-Western governments saw the MAP as a counterweight to the pressure from Moscow. After some deliberations in the Washington interagency process, President Bush decided to support their applications for the MAP: “If these two democratic states want MAP, I can’t say no” was his principled stand. As prime minister of Denmark at the time, I supported that position, and so did the United Kingdom and the eastern members of our alliance. The Central and Eastern European states felt strongly about this issue and saw the NATO response as a litmus test of the West’s will to defend the interests of the former Soviet territories.
But approval required unanimity, and both Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France were skeptical, in particular because they were worried that NATO could be drawn into a conflict with Russia due to the tensions between Moscow and the two countries. They were also concerned about corruption and the lack of political stability in Georgia and Ukraine. Both concerns were relevant. However, I still think Russia would have been less likely to engage in aggression if these countries had been on the path into NATO. As for the governance issues, a step toward membership would have encouraged Georgia and Ukraine to clean up corruption and improve governance. My experience of several rounds of NATO and EU enlargement has shown that the possibility of membership acts as a powerful incentive for reform.
When the summit started, this crucial issue had not been resolved. It is rare that such important matters are not worked out beforehand, and it made the summit charged from the beginning. It ended up as one of the most intense and engaging summits I have ever attended. Usually, our officials have precooked the items on the agenda, and as political leaders we can focus on the overall strategic perspectives and finally nail down the agreements. But this meeting was different. I will never forget the interactive negotiations in the meeting room, when we suspended the formal meeting and Chancellor Merkel called the Central and Eastern European leaders over to a corner of the room. Raised in East Germany, she knew well the sentiments of the former Communist states. She was sensitive to the legacy of Germany and felt a special responsibility to facilitate the process toward a Europe united, free, and at peace. She did something quite remarkable and savvy: She sat down in the middle of the group of leaders and did concrete drafting of a possible summit agreement, word by word. Finally, we agreed on a compromise. We would not grant Georgia and Ukraine MAPs in Bucharest, but we would issue a statement announcing that they were destined for future membership in NATO: “Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO,” it said. In a way, it was a paradox: A MAP is no guarantee of future membership of NATO, but having denied them a MAP, we nevertheless stated that they will become members of NATO in the future.
This statement added to President Putin’s anger. In the NATO-Russia meeting, he made statements that, seen in hindsight, were a forewarning of the later Russian aggression against Georgia in August 2008 and against Ukraine in 2014. He started out by expressing concerns about the NATO enlargement policy in general, and then addressed Georgia and Ukraine in particular. He emphasized that Georgia was involved in a centuries-long ethnic conflict with the Abkhazians and South Ossetians, and that these ethnic conflicts would not be solved if Georgia were to enter NATO, and he more than hinted that Russia would approach these ethnic conflicts the same way that the West had handled Kosovo—that is, it would eventually recognize their independence. On Ukraine, he was even more aggressive. He declared that Ukraine is a complicated state due to the fact that one-third of the population is ethnic Russian. Ukraine was created by receiving huge territories from Russia in the East and from Poland and Romania in the West. He indicated that Ukrainian membership in NATO might lead to the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. He also made some comments on Crimea that we did not take sufficient notice of at the time. In Crimea, he said, 90 percent are Russians, and he suggested that the 1954 decision to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine was illegal because that decision was merely made by the Communist Party Politburo without following formal state procedures.
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But Putin’s eventual drive to autocracy and aggression was not caused solely by the revolutions next door. In his annual State of the Union address in 2005, he declared, “First and foremost, it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This statement reflected what gradually evolved to become Putin’s ultimate goal: to restore Russian greatness. A key element is to establish a zone of Russian influence in the “near-abroad,” which is more or less equal to the former Soviet Union.
There are three myths that, in a decisive way, affect the thinking of Putin, as well as those in the Kremlin and Russians in general: the humiliation, the betrayal, and the conspiracy.
First, many Russians felt humiliated by developments in the 1990s—the loss of land in the Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, but especially Ukraine, and the economic chaos and political turmoil during the Yeltsin years. While most Russians did not miss Soviet Communism, the events of the 1990s are not remembered for a positive opening of society after decades of dictatorship. Instead, they are remembered with shame as a period when Russia allowed herself to be humiliated.
Second, there is the feeling of betrayal. It is a widespread myth in Russia that the West made a pledge in 1990 during negotiations on the reunification of Germany. According to the Russians, Western negotiators promised that NATO would not expand eastward. The truth is that such a promise was never delivered. The documents from these negotiations have been declassified recently, so we can see clearly what was said, and what was not said, during the negotiations. The question of any subsequent enlargement of NATO was not discussed. Indeed, the subject was not even raised, and there was no logical way it could have been, simply because the Warsaw Pact still existed and was not dissolved until the year after. In fact, it was the existence of NATO and the continued German membership of NATO that eventually convinced the Russians that the reunification of Germany would not constitute a threat to Russian security interests because the new Germany would be tied in to a multilateral organization and not have any reason to rebuild the offensive military might of the past. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, then Russian president Boris Yeltsin even flirted with the idea of a future Russian membership in NATO. Nothing indicates that Russia, at that time, considered NATO, or even a potentially larger NATO, as a threat to Russia. Nevertheless, this myth of betrayal is deeply rooted in a lot of Russian thinking.
Third, many Russians feel there has been a conspiracy. It is hard to understand, but the inner circle of the Kremlin is firmly convinced that Russia is the subject of a conspiracy, by external enemies, that aims to weaken Russia. Russian government propaganda dismissed the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine as CIA operations that used the promotion of democracy for achieving geopolitical goals. At a minimum, this was to diminish Russian influence in the near neighborhood; at most, the goal was to use Tbilisi and Kiev as staging grounds for extending the revolutionary movement into Moscow and effecting regime change there as well. Also, according to the Russian state propaganda, the protests in Russia in the wake of Putin’s reelection as president in 2012 were sponsored by the Americans. The state-controlled media identified an ever-growing list of fifth columns hostile to the state, that allegedly were also encouraged and inspired by the decadent West: homosexuals, nongovernmental organizations, activists, artists, and foreigners. Similarly, the Maidan protests in Kiev in the winter of 2013–14 were initiated and sponsored by the CIA, according to Russian propaganda. The annexation of Crimea was sold to the Russian people as a defense of ethnic Russians against neo-Nazi Ukrainians and an expansionist NATO, which allegedly would establish military bases on the peninsula. Even the decline in oil prices is seen as an American plot to weaken the Russian economy. The message is clear: Russia and the Russian way of life are under threat from hostile foreign forces, so you should rally around your leader.
In fact, the United States and Europe have done a lot to reach out to Russia and make Russia an integrated part of an inclusive Euro-Atlantic security and economy architecture. NATO and Russia adopted the Founding Act in 1997; this allowed Russia to establish a kind of embassy or permanent representation at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In 2002, the NATO-Russia Council was established. The European Union organized regular frequent summits with Russia and developed cooperation with Russia in four “common spaces”: the space of economy; the space of freedom, security, and justice; the space of external security; and the space of research, education, and culture. In parallel, the United States adopted cooperation agreements with Russia, including the “strategic framework declaration” of April 2008, in which the presidents, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, declared, “We reaffirm that the era in which the United States and Russia considered one another an enemy or strategic threat has ended. We reject the zero-sum thinking of the Cold War, when ‘what was good for Russia was bad for America’ and vice versa. Rather, we are dedicated to working together, and with other nations, to address the global challenges of the 21st century, moving the U.S.-Russia relationship from one of strategic competition to strategic partnership.” Nevertheless, Mr. Putin grew steadily more anti-Western, and in August 2008, just a few months after the US-Russian declaration of partnership, he attacked neighboring Georgia.
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Since then, the Russian struggle with the West has increasingly become an ideological battle, with three dominant features: Eurasianism, “Russkiy Mir” (“the Russian World”), and religious orthodoxy.
Eurasianism is the idea of a unique, Russian-led civilization that is neither European nor Asian, but should be seen as an alternative to the Chinese civilization in the East and the European-American civilization in the West. The idea is particularly inspired by three Russian philosophers: Ivan Ilyin, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Vladimir Solovyov, who lived in the latter part of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries. All three were looking for a uniquely Russian identity that would allow them to cement Russia’s control of its sprawling empire at a time when it was falling behind the German, Austrian, British, and Japanese empires around its borders; all three expressed a belief in a religious, nationalist, autocratic system. Putin often quotes the three philosophers, and their key writings are compulsory reading material for regional governors.
In recent times, Eurasianism has especially been promoted by the philosopher and sociologist Alexander Dugin, who outlined the idea in several of his works, including The Eurasian Way as a National Idea. In another work, The Geopolitical Future of Russia, he very accurately summed up the idea that Putin has now made into his vision:
In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland, Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution. . . . The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: The rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the U.S.A., and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.
The second strand is “Russkiy Mir,” which means “the Russian World.” The idea behind this thinking is that Russian civilization goes well beyond Russia’s formal borders. To promote this idea, a Russian World Foundation was established, and according to its mission statement, the Russian world is much more than the territory of the Russian Federation and the 143 million people living within its borders. The millions of ethnic Russians, native Russian-speakers, their families and dependents scattered across the globe make up the largest diaspora population the world has ever known. The Russkiy Mir concept is meant to reconnect the Russian diaspora with its homeland, through cultural and social programs, exchanges, and assistance in relocation.
As the third strand of its new autocracy, the Kremlin has established strong ties with the Russian Orthodox Church; indeed, Patriarch Kirill has become an integral part of the ideological mobilization. On several occasions, he supported the concept of “Great Russia,” based on religious conservative nationalism. In an address at the grand opening of the Third Assembly of the Russian World in 2011, Patriarch Kirill said, “Today, too, we face a no less crucial task: Through our joint efforts, we must preserve the Russian world, dispersed in various corners of the planet, so that we do not lose the values and way of life that our forebears prized, which guided them in creating, among other things, a Great Russia.”
These ideological currents gave birth to a number of concrete political initiatives. The idea of Eurasianism fed the Kremlin’s political endeavors to establish the Eurasian Union, which aims at balancing China in the East with America/Europe in the West. The concept of the Eurasian Union is to create a cluster of regional states, led by Russia, that are loyal and willing to serve Moscow’s interests. A key Russian goal is to make sure that Ukraine joins these structures: This would create a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. The idea of the “Russian World” and the concept of cultural influence that underpins it led to the foundation of the Kremlin’s English-language television station Russia Today and the Sputnik information (or disinformation) service, and to the Putin doctrine that Russia has the right to intervene in other countries to protect what Russia perceives as the interests of Russian-speaking communities—including military intervention. And through the Church, Putin has built a springboard to influence audiences in other countries where the Eastern Orthodox Church plays a dominant role, including in the Balkans and in some EU and NATO countries. Indeed, Putin’s political party has established links with conservative nationalistic parties in Europe, playing on antiliberalism, religious orthodoxy, and conservative patriotism in an attempt to create a split within NATO and the European Union. Thus, Putin’s strategic goal appears to be to create a historical hybrid—a blend of the Soviet Union’s superpower status with the Russian Empire’s tsarist rule, built on Eurasianism, the Russian diaspora, and the Orthodox Church. To achieve that strategic goal, the Russian leaders will primarily use three instruments: arms, energy, and a divide-and-rule approach to the West.
First, Russia is conducting a rapid military buildup, including modernizing both its nuclear and its conventional forces. Defense spending increased at an average rate of 18 percent a year from 2007 to 2014. Despite the economic difficulties caused by falling oil prices, Russia is expected to continue increasing its defense spending in the coming years and to reinforce its military presence in Central Asia, the Arctic, and the eastern part of the Mediterranean. According to the official Russian military doctrine, published in late 2014, the West, and especially NATO, is regarded as “a danger.” In their larger exercises, the Russian military simulates attacks on NATO member states, including nuclear strikes. And Russia’s geopolitical ambitions go beyond Europe. The Russian military intervention in Syria serves both the tactical purpose of supporting a partner, the Assad regime, and the strategic aim of ensuring Russia a seat at the table where decisions about world affairs are made.
Second, Russia has long been using the supply of energy as a weapon to subdue those neighbors that are dependent on Russian oil and gas, and thereby force them into the Russian sphere of influence through energy blackmail: low gas prices in return for supporting Russia (as in the case of Armenia), high energy prices for those who go against Russia (for example, Ukraine). At particularly tense moments, Russia has interrupted, or threatened to disconnect, the energy supply, something that has repeatedly happened to Ukraine. Ukraine gets the greater part of its oil and gas from Russia and owes Russia’s energy monopolies so much money that the debt challenges Ukraine’s financial independence, and thus its real independence. In addition, Russia has consistently, and sometimes successfully, opposed the creation of alternative pipelines to Europe that would bypass the Russian monopoly and could give its neighbors more independence through larger energy supplies from the European Union.
Third, the Russian leadership is trying to weaken the cohesion of NATO because they see NATO as an obstacle to their strategic interests. Through a divide-and-rule policy of developing bilateral relations with selected NATO countries, particularly the largest, at the expense of others—in particular the former Soviet states and former Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe—they are trying to create a split, or at least a weakened unity, within NATO. Incessantly, they raise doubts about the alliance’s viability and seek to weaken the alliance’s role and influence in decisions on security policy. So far, NATO has maintained its unity on key issues, especially the security of those NATO members closest to Russia; but Russia’s pressure is unrelenting.
These geopolitical ambitions stand in stark contrast to the weakness of the Russian economy. Indeed, Russia is a country in decline. Its current economic problems are caused by the decreasing oil prices and the Western sanctions against Russia. But more fundamentally, Russia is struggling with an outdated economy and negative demographics. Russia has a “one-crop economy,” an economy that is extremely reliant on one single commodity, namely, energy, primarily oil and gas. Fuel sales accounted for more than two-thirds of Russia’s export revenues in 2013, based on data from Russia’s Federal Customs Service. This overreliance on oil and gas has left the country vulnerable to fluctuations in energy prices, and the lack of diversification in the business sector has contributed to low competitiveness and poor productivity. For each hour worked, the average Russian worker contributes $26 to Russia’s GDP, while the average for American workers is $67. The Russian economy is too static and lacks innovation, not least due to the low number of small and medium-sized companies. Smaller firms are the foundation of any strong and well-diversified economy. They spur innovation and respond effectively to changing times, technologies, and consumer behavior. But for years, the Kremlin has supported and protected large, state-owned companies at the expense of the small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, the investment climate is extremely bad. In recent years, Russia has undertaken some economic reforms, but bureaucracy, corruption, and uncertainties about the rule of law have sent negative signals to investors, and foreign investments in Russia remain very low, while, at the same time, domestic savings are invested abroad rather than domestically. Consequently, Russia does not have access to the cutting-edge technologies its companies would need to modernize their businesses, not least the energy sector.
Overall, Russia is not a friendly country for business, domestic or foreign. This is confirmed by several international rankings. In the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index of 2015, Russia is ranked 119 out of 168 countries. In 2015, Freedom House gave the country a score of 6.75 on its corruption scale, close to the maximum corruption level of 7 for “most corrupt.” Over several years, these poor scores have remained unchanged or have even deteriorated. On top of these fundamental structural economic problems, Russia suffers from negative demographics. For decades, the population has been declining, and this trend is forecast to continue, primarily because of high mortality among men, declining birth rates, and, in general, massive health problems. Furthermore, well-educated Russians are leaving their country to seek better opportunities abroad. This falling population will remain the biggest political, economic, and social challenge for Russia in the coming decades.
While Russia is a country in decline, the Russian leadership will still have the potential to create huge geopolitical problems. In fact, historically we have seen that declining empires can be dangerous political spoilers. Think, for example, of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire a century ago: They collapsed in the end, but they dragged the world into the abyss of World War I before they expired. A great nation in decline will fight against its waning and fight for a place in the sun. It may be willing to take the risk of military adventurism to achieve its geopolitical goals. That is how the leaders of a declining Russia are acting right now.
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Rival countries have wrangled over territory in the South China Sea for centuries, but tensions have steadily increased in recent years. China lays claim to almost the whole body of water, based on a poorly defined historical claim known as the “nine-dashed line.” It has backed its expansive claims with military muscle, building sunken reefs into artificial islands, siting military bases on top of them, and then saying that the existence of these “islands” gives it exclusive rights over massive areas of the surrounding sea, in violation of international norms.
This aggressive activity has pitted China against most of the other littoral states of the South China Sea. Vietnam hotly disputes China’s claims; the other major claimant in the area is the Philippines, which has gone to international arbitration over China’s policy. Malaysia and Brunei also lay claim to territory in the South China Sea.
In the first instance, the dispute is over territory and sovereignty over ocean areas and two island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys, claimed in whole or in part by a number of countries in the region. Alongside the fully fledged islands, there are dozens of rocky outcrops, sandbanks, and reefs. Although largely uninhabited, the Paracels and the Spratlys may have reserves of natural resources around them. There has been little detailed exploration of the area, so estimates are largely extrapolated from the mineral wealth of neighboring areas. The sea is also a major shipping route and home to fishing grounds that supply the livelihoods of people across the region. Thus, the claim of sovereignty over these largely uninhabited rocks could have major economic implications.
But China’s actions are also causing friction with the United States, which has bilateral security agreements with a number of littoral states. The United States argues that claims of exclusive rights to the sea and air space around the islands, artificial and man-made, violate the international principle of the freedom of navigation. The United States has been careful to say that its position applies to all parties, but it is widely seen as being aimed chiefly at China. Indeed, US and Australian ships and aircraft have already publicly flown and sailed across the limits that China claims as its own, arguing that such moves are an exercise of the right of freedom of navigation. So far, these moves have not been met with violence; but with the world’s two greatest superpowers maneuvering so close to each other, the potential for a local flash point to become a global crisis is enormous.
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While Russia is burning the bridges to the West, President Putin has launched a “pivot” to Asia, or, more precisely, to China. Within the last few years, he has intensified contacts with China in an effort to establish a global counterweight to the United States. Chinese president Xi Jinping has received the Russian overtures politely, but the relationship between Russia and China is clearly marked by suspicion, and it is obvious that China is acting from a position of strength while Russia is acting from a position of weakness.
The political leaders in Moscow and Beijing share an authoritarian kinship that binds them together in an attempt to counterbalance American global hegemony. They detest what they perceive as a US-led, Western democratic missionary activity. In China there is a certain responsiveness to the Russian resistance to the West, its attempt to retake lost territories, and its passion for conspiracy theories. Therefore, Russia and China often act together in the UN and in other international forums to create a multipolar or bipolar world, a counterweight to the United States and its allies. Although China watched the Russian aggression against Ukraine with deep suspicion, it would also be convenient for China if Russian aggression in Europe were to distract the United States from pivoting to Asia. China is Russia’s biggest trading partner and imports Russian arms and military equipment. The Chinese have been quick to exploit Russian weakness by concluding profitable agreements on gas supplies and infrastructure investments: In a desperate attempt to turn Russia’s energy exports from West to East, President Putin has signed contracts with his Chinese counterpart that will ensure supplies of cheap energy to China and lucrative contracts for Chinese infrastructure builders to construct facilities including refineries and factories in Russia.
However, rivalry in Central Asia will be the greatest strategic obstacle to an alliance between Russia and China due to a gigantic project launched by the Chinese leadership. That project aims to expand China’s presence in Central Asia and to strengthen its economic ties with the Middle East and Europe. More than two thousand years ago, the Chinese established a network of trade routes through Central Asia that connected China and India with the Middle East and Europe. Derived from the significant trade of silk carried out along its length, this trading network was called the Silk Road. Inspired by this ancient network of trade routes, the current Chinese leadership has launched an ambitious twenty-first-century Silk Road project. Under the motto “One Belt, One Road,” China aims at creating an economic land belt that includes countries on the original Silk Road through Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as a maritime road that links China’s port facilities with the African coast, pushing up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean.
The Chinese Silk Road project is a direct challenge to Russia’s influence. If successful, it would give Central Asian countries alternative export markets, reducing their dependence on Russia. The Central Asian countries are in desperate need of investment capital, and as the Russian economic slowdown weakens the traditional economic ties between Russia and Central Asia, the Central Asian countries are welcoming increased Chinese investment. Trade between the Central Asian countries and China has seen explosive growth. According to IMF data, trade between China and the five post-Soviet Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—increased from $1.8 billion in 2000 to $50 billion in 2013. This means that China has overtaken Russia to become the region’s single largest trading partner. The Central Asia–China gas pipeline, opened in 2009, has provided the region’s energy-rich economies an export route that is not controlled by Russia.
This development means that China is becoming more and more economically and politically dominant in Central Asia, a region that also plays a central role in President Putin’s ambitions to create the Eurasian Union. President Xi’s plans to revive the Silk Road, enhancing Chinese influence in Central Asia and strengthening Chinese economic relations with Europe, are at odds with President Putin’s ambitions. China’s activities in Russia’s backyard will remain an obstacle to an alliance between the two countries. On the contrary, we will see toughened competition between Russia and China. Nevertheless, in light of Russia’s geopolitical isolation, we will see vehement Russian efforts to develop a strategic partnership with China. Occasionally, the Russian leadership will succeed in forging ties with China when the Chinese find it opportune. But while a partnership with China is a must-have for a declining Russia, a partnership with Russia is no more than a nice-to-have, when convenient, for a rising China.
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President Putin wants to be seen as a strong man. He loves the geopolitical game of major powers. He likes the direct engagement with leaders of other big countries but is not sensitive to the fate of smaller nations. On the European side, many Western European countries attach the utmost importance to a good relationship with Russia and tend to give that the highest priority. I saw that play out myself during the Danish presidency of the European Union through the second half of 2002.
The overall goal for the Danish presidency was to conclude an agreement on the enlargement of the European Union through the accession of eight Central and Eastern European countries, together with Cyprus and Malta. In that respect, we had to solve a problem related to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Poland and Lithuania were among the applicant countries, and once they joined the EU, the small Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, located on the Baltic Sea, would be squeezed in between them and be surrounded by EU territory. Around a million Russian citizens would be cut off from traveling to and from Russia without a visa; in other words, Russian citizens would have to apply for a visa to travel from one part of Russia to another. Therefore, we had to find a way for Russians to get access to and from Kaliningrad through Lithuania without a visa, and we had to do it at the EU-Russia summit that I was to chair; otherwise, it would not have been possible to go on and conclude the EU’s historic enlargement.
Many ideas were floated, including innovative ideas of trains whose doors would be locked during the passage over Lithuanian territory, and high-speed trains that would not stop in Lithuania. In concrete terms, we negotiated a special transit link, a railway, through Lithuania, and the terms for using that train. The Russians were very demanding, and in fact used this issue to push for a general visa-free travel between Russia and the European Union. We feared that, in a choice between a good relationship with Russia, and Lithuania as a fully fledged member of the EU, some EU leaders would give priority to the relationship with Russia. Some of them expressed an understanding for the Russian sentiments about not being able to travel unhindered from one part of the country to another. In that big-power game, Lithuania risked being treated as a small and insignificant piece. On the other hand, Lithuania could not become a full member of the EU, including being part of the free mobility of people on the internal market, unless the problems of border controls and visas were solved.
The Lithuanian people feared that they would once again be sacrificed in the great-power game, as they had been so often during their history. A Lithuanian political magazine published a front-page illustration where a great-power corridor had cut the country in half. At one end of the corridor stood Vladimir Putin in Moscow; at the other end stood Adolf Hitler in Germany—very clear hints at the detested and felonious Nazi-Soviet Pact of the 1930s that paved the way for the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union. I was sensitive to such historical connotations, and the independence and sovereignty of the three Baltic states and their membership in NATO and the European Union had, all the way through, been one of Denmark’s top foreign-policy priorities.
Leading up to the EU-Russia summit, the Russians had pursued a special negotiation strategy: Whenever they got concessions, they pocketed them and presented new demands. I decided to put a stop to that. Much to the anxiety of some camps within the EU, I was very tough with President Putin over Kaliningrad—tougher than the Russians expected, and tougher than important groups in both the European Commission and the Council of EU member states considered appropriate. I knew that Putin, a former KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti; English, Committee for State Security) agent, had a reputation for being detail-minded, so I had prepared myself thoroughly, having studied both concrete negotiating texts and maps in advance. I even knew the detailed tracing of the proposed railroad, and I had prepared contingency notes for all eventualities, including how to stave off any attempts by the EU institutions to soften the hard line.
At the opening of the EU-Russia summit, I made clear that we had to find a solution at this meeting, based on the documents that were then on the table. Putin, however, demurred, and seemed ready to walk away with no deal rather than the text on the table. While the Russians had realized that the enlargement of the EU was going to become a reality, they also tried to complicate and delay the process as much as they could. Unaffected by President Putin’s general demurrals, I started to go through the draft agreement paragraph by paragraph, asking him if he could clarify the Russian grievances and demands in detail. The president was clearly not prepared to dig so deeply into the details, but, assisted by his delegation, he defined eight or nine elements in the draft agreement that he considered not satisfactory. Most of them were of minor significance, so I took the chance and identified and isolated the three issues that I considered to be the most important for the Russians. I suggested giving our negotiating teams an hour to solve the outstanding issues, but added, “It is a precondition that you cannot raise new demands if these three problems are resolved,” and I asked Putin, “Can you agree that this is the exhaustive list of wishes and demands, and if they are solved, there will be no new demands and we have an agreement?”
“Yes, this is the final list,” Putin replied.
I said, “Okay, I think we can find a compromise on this basis.” I suggested letting our negotiators go into a separate room to dive into the details while we proceeded with the other topics on the agenda.
After a little more than an hour, our negotiators came back and presented their compromise. As a result, a few very small changes were made to the text, and we concluded the EU-Russia agreement on how to solve the issue of transit to Kaliningrad. We were therefore able to remove yet another impediment to the enlargement process, but first and foremost, we had defended and protected the sovereignty of Lithuania and ensured that the country would enjoy a fully fledged membership in the European Union.
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This was my first political encounter with Putin, and it was a success: By paying attention to detail, and by paying attention to his own personality, I managed to achieve a historic result. Since then, I have seen him on many occasions, in both good and bad phases of his relationship with the West. Having studied the way he operates, I believe I understand how his personality influences his overall approach to other countries and his negotiation tactics. Based on that, I strongly recommend three strategies in dealing with President Putin and the Russian leadership.
First, it is of utmost importance to keep unity within the Western organizations, notably NATO and the European Union. Putin loves to play one nation or group of nations off against others, thereby weakening his counterparts. When he realizes that he is up against a strong, united front, it is easier to get him to engage constructively.
Second, it is crucial to demonstrate firmness. Putin is a straight talker himself, and as much as he likes to cultivate his strongman image, he also respects firmness and clear talk when he meets it. Indulgence and appeasement are considered weaknesses he can exploit.
Third, it is imperative to negotiate from a position of strength. Putin respects power above all else. If he realizes that he is dealing with invincible Western economic, political, and military strength, he will more easily appreciate the need for cooperation rather than confrontation. The tragic reality is that Putin has to be made to appreciate that need, because he cannot, or will not, see it himself. Russia’s current leaders seem not to want an open Russian society living in peace with their neighbors and the world; instead, they seem to want a closed and defensive society based on the chauvinist myth that Russia has the right to dominate a special sphere of interest, and anyone who disagrees is an enemy. It is that mentality that led Russia to support breakaway regions in Georgia and Moldova, to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, to breach Russia’s international commitments, and to annex Crimea at gunpoint through a so-called referendum that was illegal and illegitimate.
The Russian attack on Ukraine was the biggest disappointment of my five-year mandate as secretary-general of NATO because, fundamentally, I think that Russia and the West have a shared interest in cooperation and partnership. We are very much dependent on each other, and we in the West have made enormous efforts to build a constructive relationship. Economically, the European Union is Russia’s number one trading partner, accounting for more than 40 percent of all trade. EU countries get most of their energy imports from Russia. European countries import more than 80 percent of Russia’s oil exports and about 75 percent of its natural gas exports. Nor is this just about Europe: The United States imports about 5 percent of Russian oil, and it is the leading investor in Russia, followed by Germany and France. All in all, Europe and North America represent approximately 90 percent of the foreign investments in Russia, and the bulk of Russian investments abroad have Europe and North America as the destination. So economically speaking, partnership means profit: The more Russia and the West work together, the more we earn together.
And the same goes for security. Economic cooperation brings economic benefits; security cooperation brings security benefits. A genuine partnership between Russia and NATO would improve Euro-Atlantic security. Our allies would be reassured that they had nothing to fear from the east, and Russia could focus its limited resources on real threats from the south, including the North Caucasus. Russia has, like Western countries, suffered from terrorism, some of it homegrown. We have a strong, mutual interest in combating terrorism. That is why, since the end of the Cold War, we in the West have put a huge amount of effort into developing a partnership with Russia.
I am often asked, “Wasn’t that a bit naive? Wasn’t the idea that Russia really wanted a partnership with NATO and the EU just a dream?” My answer is: “We were not dreamers. We gave it a try with open eyes.” And I still think we did the right thing. After the end of the Cold War we had a generational duty to strive for a better future; to create a Europe whole, free, and at peace for the sake of future generations. It was the smart thing to do and the right thing to do, and that’s why I am deeply disappointed by Russia’s actions, because those actions show that Russia’s current leaders do not share our vision.
But just as our eyes were open when we launched the NATO-Russia Council, we have to keep them open now; and if we look at Russia’s actions with open eyes, we can see what could be called “twenty-first-century revisionism”: attempts to turn back the clock, draw new dividing lines on our maps, subdue populations, rewrite the international rule book, and use force to solve problems, rather than the international mechanisms that we have spent decades building. This is happening today in the heart of Europe. It is a wake-up call for all of us. We had thought that such behavior had been consigned to history, but it is back. It is dangerous. And only the united power of the democracies of the world, led by the United States, will be strong enough to preserve the global order and consign such behavior, once more, to history.