As the war in Ukraine enters its eighth day, the rationale behind Putin’s sudden swing from a diplomatic approach engaging France and Germany to a wide scale special military operation/invasion—which led to Russia’s nuclear capability put on a ‘high alert’ special regime—remains much of an enigma to all spectators. Why would a seasoned statesman and a former intelligence officer—once perceived a mastermind of international affairs and balance of power politics—undertake a doomed démarche, on political and economic accounts, in foresight? Isn’t he well too experienced to be susceptible for such a gross error of judgment; to, terribly, miscalculate; to commit a capital mistake of this magnitude that cost him and Russia, economically, dearly? More of an all or nothing (après nous, le déluge) move [politically], really?
Or, is it as the saying goes, “Sometimes, a winning strategy necessitates sacrifice?” In other words, a grand strategy underlies Russia’s behavior on the world stage.
On February 27, 2022, a formidable mind, Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), had shed some light on a ‘blindspot’ for today’s party-entertainers (i.e. politicians) [Note: ‘party’ refers to ‘political party’ herein] in a tweet:
In truth, he’s one of the very few [emphasis added] who demonstrate a fundamental understanding of the formula that “if you pray for rain, you’ve got to deal with the mud too;” and have taken that into account while formulating their opinion and analysis vis-á-vis the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Mr. Haass later tweeted today, March 4, 2022:
Oftentimes, during world events and crises of this scope, one tends to easily succumb to their intensified sentiments. Notwithstanding, for the sake of the preservation of mankind, the rational mind must preside over our judgment faculties. To that end, we must heed and apply the lessons that history has to offer.
The First World War was, to a large extent, the result of unconscious—yet, romantic—sleepwalking [refer to Christopher Clark’s (2012), “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914”] of last centuries empires; that concluded with an unrealistic and impracticable [from an economic perspective] peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles 1919. As a matter of fact, “economists like John Maynard Keynes predicted European economy would collapse if it [Germany] did [pay the hefty sum of reparations in full],” (history.com Editors). It produced a woeful economic reality for Germany throughout the 1920s; which in turn became the Nazis stepping stone to rise to power—“promising to reverse the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty,” (history.com Editors); and, inevitably, brought about the Second World War.
Paradoxically, in the aftermaths of WWII, as though fate was mocking the very enterprise of war in its face [emphasis added], the ‘Western bloc’ of the triumphant allies had perforce to revive the German industrial apparatus—the very destruction of which was a conditio sine qua non to win the war—in order to balance, contain, and rollback Soviet expansion westwards:
“Hugh Dalton, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, observed that despite having defeated Germany in the war, Britain now was paying reparations to Germany. Given that problem, which was both a domestic and a foreign policy issue, the British and Americans determined it was essential to build up the German economy [my formatting].” (Fitzgerald and Packwood 36)
To much more irony still, after decades of ‘cold’ rivalry, the United States’ first and foremost priority in the early 1990s was to ensure that the disintegration of its arch-rival, the USSR, must needs be a smooth and peaceful process—that it wouldn’t inflict irremediable damage on Russia’s core capabilities and infrastructure; let alone its pride and world status.
Thence deduced a most insightful remark, “in wars, even victory is not worth the cost paid.”
What lesson could be extracted hence? It is that in the realm of international relations—namely, with respect to great-powers and super-powers interrelations—some states have positioned themselves in a manner that the mise-en scène of the world stage is set in such a way that would make them ‘Too Big to Fail’ [emphasis added] for all stakeholders. In fine, if a ‘too big to fail’ state does fail, whether due to internal or external reasons, global security would require the other great powers to rebuild its capabilities and status—in spite of the very fact that their destruction might have come at the hands of those same great powers.
As to the question: Why did Putin undertake this move?
My wager is that, since Russia’s ‘too big to fail’ status is incontrovertible, this démarche would set the table for negotiations that would settle the most contentious of all questions, i.e. NATO’s eastward expansion, for better or worse, once and for all.
This time in WRITING!
Related Publications: “U.S.-Russian Exceptionalism: Intelligence, MAD, and Détente;” “It Is Now Bound to a Single Act of Faith: Overcoming the 1999 Kosovo and the 2014 Ukraine Syndromes;” and, “Sleepwalking back to 1914: A State of Imminent Danger of War?”
Reference
Fitzgerald, Michael R., and Allen Packwood, Out of the Cold: the Cold War and its Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2013.
History.com Editors. “Treaty of Versailles.” HISTORY, 18 Dec. 2019, www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1. Accessed 3 Mar. 2022.
