16 December 2014

Huffington Post: Putin's next throw of the dice -- Prepare for the unexpected

Falling oil prices combined with sanctions push Russia's President Putin into a corner. Do not expect him willingly to accept that. Judging his actions over recent years, it is almost certain that he will try to regain the initiative.

For a long time, indeed years, President Putin has conveyed suspicion of an American design to subdue Russia, engineer regime change or even plan a war, most recently in his State of the Union speech December 4, 2014. Belligerent statements have come from people known to be close to Putin including Foreign Minister Lavrov upholding the Russian tradition of superb diplomacy on a tactical level. The proclivity to depict Russia as an innocent victim is evident. As the message turns more and more vociferous, odds are that Putin draws the conclusion that he is not being heard, pushed aside, or misunderstood. 

The West (the U.S. and the EU) is analyzing what he is saying; we are blessed with a conveyor belt of newspaper columns, articles in journals, and analyses of various sorts. Most depict him as an aggressor determined to roll back some, but not all of Russia's losses after the end of the Cold War, dividing the Europeans, a person ready and willing to contest the existing world order, throwing out legal and moral pledges when opportune. 

If that is the case an appropriate policy answer is on the shelf however unwelcome it may be for Western democracies surmising that confrontations, conflicts, and wars belonged to the dustbin of history after the collapse of the Soviet and Russian Empire in 1991. It consists of tit for tat which is simply speaking to respond with measures on the same level forcing Putin to escalate further or back down. Economically and militarily Russia is no match for the West.

The Kremlin knows that. So Putin will blink first provided that the countermeasures are credible meaning that the West will not eschew armed conflict if so be it. Under the Cold War the communist leadership did back down every time the West responded in this way. From the textbook of history: The Berlin crises, the Cuba crisis, and the NATO Double-Track Decision in 1979 (offer the Warsaw Pact a mutual limitation of medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles combined with the threat that in case of disagreement NATO would deploy more middle-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe). It worked. Both sides behaved rationally, accepted common rules of the game, and knew pretty well where they had each other.

Full article on Huffington Post

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