Responding to Russia’s Resurgence
Not Quiet on the Eastern Front
Many observers believe that the greatest damage Russia has
done to U.S. interests in recent years stems from the Kremlin’s
interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Although there is no
question that Moscow’s meddling in American elections is deeply
worrying, it is just one aspect of the threat Russia poses. Under Vladimir Putin,
Russia has embarked on a systematic challenge to the West. The goal is
to weaken the bonds between Europe and the United States and among EU
members, undermine NATO’s solidarity,
and strengthen Russia’s strategic position in its immediate
neighborhood and beyond. Putin wants nothing less than to return Russia
to the center of global politics by challenging the primacy that the
United States has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. He has
undertaken a major military modernization designed to intimidate
neighbors and weaken NATO, and he has resorted to the overt use of
military force to establish new facts on the ground—not just in what
Moscow calls its “sphere of privileged interests,” which encompasses all
of the former Soviet republics, but also further afield, including in
the Middle East, an area where the U.S. military has long operated with a
free hand.
For some time now, “the Kremlin has been de facto operating in a war mode,” the Russia scholar Dmitri Trenin has
observed, and Putin has been behaving like a wartime leader.
Washington’s response to this challenge must be equally strong. First,
it is critical to maintain transatlantic unity; divisions across the
Atlantic and within Europe weaken NATO’s ability to respond to Russian
provocations and provide openings for Moscow to extend its reach and
influence.
The alliance has responded to the new Russia challenge by
enhancing its presence in eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and
Russia has so far not threatened the territorial integrity of any NATO
member state. But NATO must do more to bolster its deterrence by sending
a clear message to the Kremlin that it will not tolerate further
Russian aggression or expansionism. At the same time, policymakers must
remember that the United States is not at war with Russia; there is no
need for Washington to put itself on a war footing, even if Moscow has.
Dialogue and open channels of communication remain essential to avoiding
misunderstandings and miscalculations that could escalate into a war no
one wants.
OLD HABITS DIE HARD
After
the Cold War ended, American, European, and Russian strategic
objectives appeared to converge on the goal of fostering the economic
and political transformation of eastern Europe and Russia and creating
an integrated Europe that would be whole, free, and at peace. The
military confrontation that had marked relations for more than 40 years
rapidly and peacefully disappeared with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact,
the withdrawal of Soviet forces from eastern Europe, and the
negotiation of far-reaching arms control agreements. Freed from the
strategic logic of the Cold War,
governments focused their energies on transforming eastern Europe’s
command economies into functioning market democracies and on the task of
unifying the continent.
In
Russia in the early 1990s, economic “shock therapy” rapidly dismantled
the state-controlled economy of the Soviet era but failed to produce
immediate or widely shared prosperity. The Russian financial crisis of
1998 imposed significant costs on the population—including a sharp rise
in prices for basic goods as a result of the rapid depreciation of the
ruble—and helped set the stage for the emergence of a new generation of
leaders committed to stability and order even at the cost of economic
and political liberalization.
By the end of the decade, a demoralized
Russian public welcomed the arrival of a strong new leader; Putin,
the former head of Russia’s security services, took office in late
1999, promising an end to chaos and a return to stability. By tightening
his control over the state bureaucracy, Putin fulfilled his promise.
And as rising oil and gas prices filled government coffers, he also
managed to raise the standard of living of ordinary Russians. The focus
during this time was on domestic renewal rather than foreign engagement,
although Putin did indicate a desire for increased cooperation with the
United States, especially when it came to confronting common threats,
such as terrorism.
As
Russia’s confidence and wealth grew, however, the Kremlin became
increasingly concerned about what it perceived as Western encroachment
in its sphere of influence, as successive countries in central and
eastern Europe, including the three Baltic states, opted to join NATO and
the EU. Putin chafed at what he saw as Washington’s growing power and
arrogance, especially in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he
gradually abandoned any thought of seeking common ground with the West.
The
first signs of this shift came, unexpectedly, in a speech Putin
delivered at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. He railed against
NATO expansion and accused the United States of running roughshod over
the sovereignty of other countries in its pursuit of a unipolar world.
In Putin’s eyes, Washington aimed at nothing less than world domination:
“One single center of power. One single center of force. One single
center of decision-making. It is [a] world in which there is one master,
one sovereign.”
Putin
chafed at what he saw as Washington’s growing power and arrogance, and
he gradually abandoned any thought of seeking common ground with the
West.
And
it wasn’t just Putin’s rhetoric that changed. That same year, Russia
exploited internal disagreements between ethnic Russians and Estonians
to launch a cyberattack against Estonia’s government, media outlets, and
banking system. The following year saw the first overt military
expression of Moscow’s new foreign policy direction:
Russia’s war with Georgia, ostensibly designed to secure the
independence of two breakaway regions but in fact meant to send a clear
message that Russia was prepared to stymie Georgia’s ambitions to join
the West.
THE PUTIN PLAYBOOK
Although Moscow achieved its objectives in the war against Georgia,
the conflict laid bare real weaknesses in Russia’s armed forces,
including failing command and control, a woeful lack of military
training, and significant shortcomings in its military hardware. Some 60
to 70 percent of Russian tanks and armored vehicles broke down during
the five days of fighting, and although Russia’s per capita military
spending was 56 percent greater than Georgia’s that year, the heavy
armor deployed by Tbilisi was far more modern and advanced than
Moscow’s.
None
of these deficiencies went unnoticed in Moscow, and the Kremlin
immediately embarked on a massive military reform and modernization
program. Between 2007 and 2016, Russia’s annual military spending nearly
doubled, reaching $70 billion, the third-highest level of defense
spending in the world (following the United States and China). Military
spending in 2016 amounted to 5.3 percent of Russia’s GDP, the highest
proportion since Russia’s independence in 1990 and the highest
percentage spent on defense by any major economy that year. In 2011,
Moscow announced a ten-year modernization program that included $360
billion in new military procurement. At the same time, the Russian armed
forces began a wholesale restructuring and an overhaul of their
training programs.
The
effect of these improvements became clear in Ukraine six years after
the war in Georgia. As Kiev was rocked by political upheaval over its
ties to the EU, Putin—who had once told U.S. President George W. Bush
that Ukraine was “not even a state” and claimed that the Soviet Union
had given the territory of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 as “a
gift”—responded by invading and annexing Crimea in early 2014. Not
satisfied with controlling this strategically vital peninsula, Moscow
then fomented a separatist rebellion in the eastern Ukrainian provinces
of Donetsk and Luhansk, home to a predominantly Russian-speaking
population and to many of Ukraine’s heavy industries. Russia sent
military equipment, advisers, and ultimately thousands of troops to the
area in order to prevent Ukraine from securing control over its own
territory.
The thrusts into eastern Ukraine were straight out of the Putin playbook, but the Crimea operation
represented a qualitatively new effort by Moscow to get its way. Crimea
was not just invaded; it was annexed and incorporated into the Russian
Federation after an illegitimate, rigged referendum. Putin
wanted Russia’s “gift” back, even though Moscow had agreed to respect
the territorial integrity of every former Soviet republic when the
Soviet Union broke up, in 1991, and had explicitly reiterated
that commitment in a legally binding memorandum negotiated with Ukraine,
the United States, and the United Kingdom in 1994. For the first time
in postwar European history, one country had annexed territory from
another by force.
The operation in Crimea also
demonstrated a whole new form of Russian military prowess. Stealthily
deployed special forces took over key facilities and organs of the
Ukrainian state. Sophisticated cyber-operations and
relentless disinformation diverted attention from what was happening.
And the speed of the operation meant it was completed before anyone
could mount an effective response.
Russian special forces, dressed in
green uniforms without identifying patches, suddenly appeared at
strategic points throughout Crimea and effectively took control of the
peninsula. Simultaneously, a large-scale propaganda operation sought to
hide Moscow’s fingerprints by suggesting that these “little green men”
were local opposition forces that reflected the popular will to reject
the political change in Kiev and reunite with Russia instead. This, in
short, was no traditional military invasion; it was hybrid warfare in
which goals were accomplished even before the adversary understood what
was going on. It represented an entirely new threat for which neither
Ukraine nor NATO was prepared.
Moscow
justified the invasion and annexation of Crimea with arguments based on
a new form of Russian nationalism. From the outset of the conflict,
Putin had maintained that Crimea was rightly Russia’s and that Moscow
was fully within its right in retaking it. Moreover, Russia claimed that
it had to act because Russian-speaking people in Ukraine were being
attacked by a violent mob of “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and
anti-Semites” who had carried out a coup in Kiev.
Later, Putin went
further, pronouncing a new doctrine aimed at defending Russians
anywhere. “I would like to make it clear to all: our country will
continue to actively defend the rights of Russians, our compatriots
abroad, using the entire range of available means.” And Putin was
adamant that he was not talking about just Russian citizens, or even
ethnic Russians, when pronouncing this absolute right to defend them
anywhere. “I am referring to those people who consider themselves part
of the broad Russian community; they may not necessarily be ethnic
Russians, but they consider themselves Russian people.” To many, these
words echoed claims made during the 1930s that Germany had a right—and
an obligation—to protect Germans in other countries, such as Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS
Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine and the continued fighting there have exacted a
huge toll on the country. According to the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, more than 10,000 people have died since
mid-2014, nearly 25,000 have been injured, and some 1.6 million
Ukrainians have been internally displaced. Every day brings exchanges of
fire and more casualties. Yet the incursion into Ukraine represents
only one part of the expansion of Russia’s military footprint, which
stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Mediterranean in the
south.
The operation in Crimea demonstrated a whole new form of Russian military prowess.
Russia’s
military buildup is both vast in scope and strategically significant.
In the country’s far north, Russia has reopened former military bases
near the Arctic Ocean,
establishing a position of military dominance in a region where
peaceful cooperation among the Arctic powers had become the norm. From
there, Russia has bolstered and modernized its military presence in its
western territories, which stretch from the Norwegian border in the
north to the Ukrainian border in the south. Moscow has also beefed up
its presence in what is already the most heavily militarized piece of
land in Europe, the Kaliningrad exclave—just under 6,000 square miles of
Russian-controlled territory sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.
More than 300,000 well-trained troops are deployed in Kaliningrad,
equipped with modern tanks, armored vehicles, and missile batteries,
including a nuclear-capable short-range missile system—posing a
significant military threat to Poland and the three Baltic states.
A
similar buildup has occurred farther south. Since the war in Ukraine
began, Russia has sent additional brigades to the Ukrainian border and
announced the creation of three new divisions that will face in a
“southwest strategic direction”—in other words, toward Ukraine. In
addition to deploying 30,000 troops to Crimea, Moscow has positioned 30
combat ships, five submarines, more than 100 combat aircraft, and more
than 50 combat helicopters, as well as long-range antiship and
antiaircraft missile and radar systems, on the strategically vital
peninsula, giving Russia the ability to dominate the Black Sea region.
It also has deployed thousands of troops to occupied areas in eastern
Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova—as well as some 5,500 troops to Armenia,
which are there with the consent of the Armenian government in support
of its claim to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Finally, Russia
has enlarged its air and naval presence in Syria in
order to better assist the endangered regime of Bashar al-Assad,
effectively ending NATO’s uncontested control of the eastern
Mediterranean, a strategically pivotal area that includes the Suez
Canal. Although many analysts worry about the Russian threat to the
Baltic states, the more dramatic shift has been in the Mediterranean,
where Russia’s navy now boasts missiles that can threaten most of
Europe.
Russia’s
enhanced military presence has been matched by increased military
assertiveness. This trend started with the invasion of Ukraine but did
not end there. In Syria,
Russia has increased the tempo of its military operations in support of
the flailing Assad regime and employed long-range missiles fired from
naval vessels in the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. It has flown
fighter and bomber missions close to or even within the airspace of NATO
member states and other European countries. It has deployed nuclear
submarines armed with ballistic missiles from its northern ports to the
Atlantic. And it has engaged in often dangerous air and naval
activities, including buzzing NATO naval vessels and aircraft, flying
military aircraft with their transponders turned off, and intentionally
failing to monitor emergency communications channels.
Meanwhile, the
Russian military has significantly enhanced the scale and scope of its
training exercises, launching many without any notice. In 2014, days
before the invasion of Ukraine, a snap exercise mobilized 150,000 troops
near the Russian-Ukrainian border; in September 2017, Moscow conducted
its quadrennial Zapad exercise, mobilizing up to 100,000 troops in
western Russia, Kaliningrad, and Belarus and requisitioning enough rail
cars to transport 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles. At the same time,
Russia is modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad, building new
long-range missiles, submarines, and bombers to maintain a nuclear force
that is at least the equal of the U.S. arsenal.
MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERSRussian military helicopters outside Moscow, June 2015.
ALARM BELLS
Russia’s
military buildup and posturing have provided Moscow with renewed
confidence—a sense that Russia once again matters and that the world can
no longer ignore it. In the Kremlin’s eyes, Russia is again a great
global power and therefore can act as global powers do. Not
surprisingly, the buildup has caused concern in the Pentagon. Calling
Russia’s behavior “nothing short of alarming,” the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, concluded in 2015 that “Russia
presents the greatest threat to our national security.”
How should the United States and its European allies respond to this threat? To date, the combined NATO response has been impressive.
But Washington and other NATO allies must work harder to thwart the
challenge Russia poses to security and stability in Europe and beyond.
For
years, the NATO allies had been divided in their views of Russia, with
some (such as France, Germany, and Italy) insisting that the alliance
should seek a strategic partnership with Moscow, and others (such as
Poland and the Baltic states) warning that Russia still posed a threat.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine ended much of this internal debate, and
NATO responded with actions designed to leave no doubt about its
commitment to defend all its members against a possible Russian attack.
The alliance created a new 5,000-member joint task force that can deploy
within 48 to 72 hours, sent four multinational combat battalions to
Poland and the Baltic states, and established
command-and-control headquarters in all its eastern European member
states, including new multinational headquarters in Poland and Romania.
NATO has also increased the number of exercises it carries out in
central and eastern Europe, made infrastructure investments to enable
reinforcements to arrive at their destinations more quickly, and ramped
up its naval and air presence in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.
As
the alliance’s strongest and most important ally, the United States has
taken the lead in many of these activities. It heads the new combat
battalion in Poland and has added an additional combat brigade, which
deploys to Europe from the United States on a rotating basis. Beginning
this year, it will also begin forward-deploying tanks and other heavy
equipment for a combat division in order to allow for the rapid
reinforcement of NATO’s eastern territories. Annual spending on this
European reassurance initiative has risen from less than $1 billion two
years ago to a budget request of nearly $5 billion for the coming fiscal
year. Together, these steps amount to the largest reinforcement of
NATO’s collective-defense efforts since the end of the Cold War. But
they are not enough.
The
steps taken by NATO countries since 2014 to strengthen deterrence
have halted the alliance’s decline in overall capabilities, but the
response has been too slow and too limited. These steps must be backed
by real improvements in the overall capability of NATO’s military
forces, as well as significant investments in land, air, and naval
infrastructure to enable the rapid reinforcement of the alliance’s
eastern European member states. Unfortunately, for over a decade, most
European countries have cut their defense spending and failed to invest
sufficiently in maintaining, let alone increasing, their armed forces.
Meanwhile, distracted by conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East,
the United States has steadily reduced its overall military footprint in
Europe.
After
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO leaders finally agreed to stop
cutting defense spending, and all members committed to spending at least
two percent of GDP on defense by 2024. That target is hardly onerous—in
fact, it is too modest.
In 2000, just a decade after the Cold War ended, European NATO
countries were spending two percent of their combined GDP on defense; by
2014, that number had fallen to 1.45 percent. Given the magnitude of
the threat and the pressing need to demonstrate every ally’s commitment
to the collective defense of NATO’s territory, NATO should move more
quickly and push all members to reach the two percent target by 2020 at
the latest.
NO LONGER OBSOLETE
Speaking
almost a decade after Putin lambasted NATO and the United States at the
Munich Security Conference in 2007, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry
Medvedev returned to the same podium last year to lament that “we have
slid back into a new Cold War.” But the current confrontation is very
different from the actual Cold War, an ideological clash that extended
to every part of the world. Huge armies were deployed on either side of
the Iron Curtain, many thousands of nuclear weapons were ready to launch
at a moment’s notice, and proxy wars were fought as far away as Africa,
Asia, and Latin America. Today’s confrontation lacks the intensity,
scale, and ideological divisiveness of that earlier, deadlier conflict.
Moreover,
the biggest threat today is not a deliberate war, as it was then, but
the possibility of miscalculation. One worry is that Russia might
not believe that NATO would actually come to the defense of its most
exposed allies—which is why strong statements of reassurance and
commitment by all NATO countries, and not least the United States, are
so vital. Improving the military capabilities and extending the forward
presence of NATO forces are important signals of resolve, but they need
to be backed by words that leave no doubt of the intention to use
these forces to defend allies if they are attacked. That is why it was
so important for U.S. President Donald Trump to publicly recognize the
centrality of NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective defense, which
he did by noting, in April, that NATO is “no longer obsolete”—reversing
his earlier claim that it was—and by explicitly stating, at a
press conference in June, that he was “committing the United States to
Article 5.”
Another possible miscalculation could come from the failure of NATO or
Russia to understand the other party’s true motives and intentions.
Doubts are fed by snap military exercises involving large numbers of
troops near borders, a lack of transparency in deployments, and
dangerous military activities that simulate attacks and threaten the
safety of opposing forces. At a time of rising tensions, actions
like these contribute to an uncertain climate and increase the
possibility of accidents and escalation.
Whatever
the growing differences between Russia, the United States, and NATO,
they all share one crucial common interest: avoiding a major war that no
one wants. The most pressing priority is to encourage direct dialogue,
at both the political and, especially, the military level. The
NATO-Russia Council, forged in more optimistic times but still a body
that brings Russia and all 29 NATO members together under one roof, is
well suited to this task and can help devise rules and procedures that
will reduce the likelihood of confrontation. Rising political tensions
have sidelined the council and turned it into a venue for debating
differences rather than finding common ground. Yet it provides a forum
for discussing ways to increase transparency, build confidence, and
ensure communication during crises, which are all necessary to avoid
miscalculation and escalation.
Today,
Russia poses a threat unlike any the United States and its allies have
faced since the end of the Cold War. It is a challenge the United States
and its European allies can meet only through unity and strength. If
they fail to unite and bolster NATO’s defense capabilities, Europe’s
future stability and security may well be imperiled.
