Beginning to imagine how the war in Ukraine might end.
Featuring better informed people than I.
Sam Greene’s substack, TL;DRussia is one of my favorite source for insight about Russian politics (as is his Twitter feed). Sam is an exceptionally smart and well-informed scholar and analyst, who helps me make better sense of what’s going in Russia (to the extent that anyone can) than any other commentator.
This week, Sam wrote about what regime change in Russia *could* look like. To be clear, he’s not making any predictions. He’s just providing a useful framework, as he always does, for considering various possible futures.
Sam and his co-author, the great Graeme Robertson (a leading scholar of Russia and my other favorite source for insight about it), were on a podcast yesterday discussing the revised edition of their terrific book, Putin vs The People:
Here’s Sam summarizing some of that podcast’s discussion of how Putin’s regime might end:
Russia’s post-Soviet elite…inherited a set of expectations about the man in charge, chief among which is the expectation that he rules in their interest. This war has broken that bond ….
The problem, as Graeme and I tried to explain, is that dissatisfaction on its own isn’t enough to create political change. People need to believe, (a) that an attempt to remove the leader is possible, and (b) that whatever comes next will be better, or at least not appreciably worse. Putin, of course, maintains a security apparatus attuned to point (a), but point (b) has been at least as important when it comes to keeping him in power. Up to now, every member of Russia’s elite has been a winner in this system, even if individual fortunes have waxed and waned. Change will create winners and losers, and no one can know ahead of time who will end up in which category. The powerful incentive, then, is to sit tight.
Sam reminds his readers that when Soviet elites grew tired of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, specifically his (non-lethal) purges and the uncertainty his leadership forced them to live under, they sent him packing. But they only did so when they were confident that they had a successor in mind who would not disturb their prerogatives, who would leave them free to bilk the system in relative peace. Leonid Brezhnev was that man, and he enabled oligarchic rule for eighteen years. So, until Russia’s elites feel that they both have the means and opportunity to remove Putin, *and* a viable successor they’re confident won’t be even more of a problem than Putin, we’re stuck at square one.
Sam also points us toward a compelling article by Eleanor Knott, a scholar at the London School of Economics, on what she describes as “existential nationalism.” Knott argues that while it’s common to observe that Ukraine is fighting an existential war (which it is), it’s a misunderstanding to view Russia’s invasion only as a war of choice. Knott’s point is not to excuse Putin’s behavior at all (she emphatically does not). Rather, Knott tries to explain that Putin’s claim that Ukraine is an inextricable part of a greater Russia has led him to launch a war that is also existential, given his conception of what Ukraine means to Russia.
Knott observes that in Putin’s distorted view of Ukraine past, Ukraine’s claims to independence are themselves a denial of Ukraine’s shared history with Russia and, hence, a denial of Russia’s own territorial, cultural and historical integrity. Knott notes that this existential framing has led to a war in which “Russia is now killing civilians in Ukraine who are as likely ethnic Russians as they are ethnic Ukrainians and as likely Russian speakers as they are Ukrainian speakers” and whose “inhabitants are being shelled, not ‘rescued” by Putin.’”
It’s an interesting and provocative perspective for making sense of this senseless and vicious invasion.
Finally, the political scientist Dan Drezner offers a framework for at least imagining how political leaders might begin the process of bringing about the beginning of the end of the war.
Drezner writes:
…speeches by Western leaders articulating Russia’s pathway back to a pre-2022 existence (and not saying that the goal of the war is to weaken Russia) seem an intrinsically good idea.
Such speeches should make it clear that borders cannot be redrawn with gunpowder. No one will recognize Russia’s 2022 annexations of Ukrainian territory, just as no major country recognized Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. At the same time, the West should make it clear that it will not support Ukrainian annexation of any Russian territory. This might sound like a silly statement, but the point is that Russia’s worst-case scenario still leaves it a nuclear power with a U.N. Security Council veto, the largest country in the world by geography, and the potential to reform itself and become the great power it wants to be.
If the message is, “We oppose Russia in Ukraine; we do not oppose Russia’s existence,” it takes the sting out of Putin’s hyperbole. It should be something that is said as part of the daily discourse of Westerners opposing Russia in Ukraine.
Will this work? At a minimum, it might create a wedge between Putin and the rest of Russia’s national security community. For all the loose talk about how Russia views the war in Ukraine as an existential conflict, the objective reality is that this is not true. It’s an existential conflict only in the mind of Vladimir Putin.
When Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin was asked yesterday about a way out of the conflict, she responded “the way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine.” That viral response reflects the fact that anything that even hints at a conciliatory gesture toward Putin is anathema to many people outside of Ukraine, let alone in Ukraine itself. And I get that. But that’s not what Drezner is suggesting here. Drezner is, first and foremost, concerned with how to make as remote as possible the prospect of the deployment of nuclear weapons by Russia. Beyond that, if we are going to imagine a future beyond the war, it will be one in which Russia,as Drezner says, continues to exist as a large country, with nuclear weapons, in possession of a large amount of territory. Recognizing that fact is not a concession to anything except to foreseeable future reality. But if it at least provides some space for dampening Putin’s own existential claims, that’s worth something.
Thanks for bringing in all these angles. I am no Russia expert, but I have been following Russia over the past 7 years while teaching a class on political approaches to international conflict. I do think Drezner is overly optimistic if also overly fatalistic. If there is one lesson we've learned from the history of big power confrontations, it is that some powers have to be cut down to size before they finally behave, notably Germany. One big problem with Russia is that it has never "lost". I am not saying that the defeat of Russia should or even can be the goal, but rather that as long as Putin is in power, he leaves the West no choice but to try to wreck him. The nuclear sabre rattling is frightening, but if he's made a decision to use them there is nothing the West can do to stop that. This is the fundamental problem with realists like Mearsheimer who blamed the West for Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and swore up and down that Putin was too smart to invade Ukraine. If anything, the West needs to be more aggressive. That means not only sending long-range missiles and anti-ballistic missile batteries to Ukraine but also attacking him on all fronts to restore the status quo ante of 1991. That means arming and training Georgia to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia; doing the same with Moldova with Transdniestr; and reigniting the civil war in Syria to drive out Assad. As long as the West doesn't hit Putin in every possible weak spot, he will continue terrorizing the world. Germans in Nazi Germany didn't lose faith in Hitler until the war was literally at their doorstep. Russia should not be invaded, but that means that Russians will never give up on Putin. Thus, the only way out is bringing enough military pressure that the Russian military itself falls apart and has to retreat from all areas it occupies abroad.
"No one will recognize Russia’s 2022 annexations of Ukrainian territory, just as no major country recognized Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. At the same time, the West should make it clear that it will not support Ukrainian annexation of any Russian territory. This might sound like a silly statement...."
I kind of do think this sounds kind of silly - or at least incomplete. What Russian territory - and I mean, really Russian territory has anyone suggested that Ukraine might wish to annex? Has anyone on either side hinted that a victorious Ukraine might take a slice of the Belograd region as a buffer zone? Maybe a bridgehead on Rostov on the Don? Have I missed something? Are imagined Ukrainian territorial ambitions in Russia something Russians actually fear? Maybe, but I don't think so.
Oh, but wait - Crimea! Right. Is Drezner actually suggesting here - without saying it - that the West should signal to Moscow it won't support Ukraine taking back Crimea? It's not clear. But that's the only territory whose future is a question mark. Any Western assurances that it won't support Ukrainian annexations of Russian territory will surely be understood - or made to be understood - that it means Crimea. And that could, if we want to get all "realist" about things, be the face saver Putin, or even a post-Putin government, would need to take from a future negotiating table: recognition of its 2014 annexation. Russian aggression would thus have been rewarded. But if things keep going the way they are, Ukraine taking back Crimea no longer seems - especially after this weekend - a bridge too far. And could the West, which never recognized Russia's illegal annexation in 2014, tell Ukraine it shouldn't? They have every right - legal and moral - to take it back, and by force of arms, even more so after the barbarism visited upon them this year by Russian forces. Just because we all know how problematic that would be in terms of finding an end to the war and avoiding a nuclear escalation doesn't diminish Kiev's legitimate claim on this stolen region.
I just think if experts are going to offer advice like this - especially about setting Russian minds at ease - they probably need to address the post-war future of Crimea head on. Given recent events, it's more relevant than ever.