Who is the brilliant military strategist recreating an empire that once spanned 11 time zones and covered 8.65 million square miles of territory? If you guessed Vladimir Putin, you are correct. Depending on one’s perspective, Putin is either a savior of the Russian state or a modern-day Atilla the Hun ready and willing to kill and conquer to secure his “borderization” objective. Seven years ago, he ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine to seize the Donbas region. Since that time, Putin has stood firmly against NATO, the EU, and other Western democracies jointly seeking to stabilize the region by constraining the Russian leader’s behavior. The Russian leader, however, continues to engage in an aggressive foreign policy agenda as we move into the new year. Putin last week “demanded” President Biden step aside and “guarantee” the US will not support or interfere in any region that Moscow chooses to conquer, occupy, or is fighting in along Russia’s border. Putin appears unmoved by recent western calls for him to move his troops back from the Ukrainian border.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday, December 28, “We are unified as a NATO Alliance on the consequences Russia would face if it moves on Ukraine, but we’re also unified in our willingness to engage in principled diplomacy with Russia… we look forward to engaging with Russia in the Strategic Stability Dialogue on January 10th.” A week earlier, on December 22, the State Department announced the US is supporting the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) declaration regarding the “strong determination” of Ukrainian government forces and Russia-led forces in eastern Ukraine to fully adhere to the Measures to Strengthen the Ceasefire agreement of July 22, 2020. The US is following a course of deterrence and diplomacy while Putin is continuing to maneuver as he has for many years.
Ukrainian forces are better prepared today to defend the country than they were during the 2014 Russian invasion. Russia, however, also has been upgrading its military and forward staging both troops and heavy materiel along the Ukrainian border area in preparation for a possible early 2022 invasion by Putin’s military forces. According to a December special report by Defense One, in recent statements senior officials in the Biden Administration acknowledged that the US “is not seeking to end up in a circumstance in which the focus of our countermeasures is the direct use of American military force” against Russian troops. Putin the strategist appears adept at bullying the West, and President Biden in particular, while maintaining a threat level below the threshold required to ignite a military reaction by NATO and other western alliance member states.
NATO and the western alliance cannot afford to forget that Putin’s aggressive foreign policy agenda is not limited to the Ukraine. Russia and Belarus have multiple cooperation agreements. When mass demonstrations earlier this year threatened the regime of Belarus’ President Lukashenko following his questionable reelection in August 2020, Putin provided financial support in the form of cheap gas and oil and police reinforcements. Today Putin appears confident that Minsk’s economic dependence on Russia is extensive enough to keep Lukashenko from moving closer to the West camp. Thirteen years ago, in a five-day war, Russian troops invaded the small border country of Georgia to advance Moscow’s “borderization” policy. To date, Russian troops still occupy 20% of the country. As long as Putin maintains a troop presence inside Georgian territory it cannot qualify to become a member of NATO.
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The Central Asian states were once former satellite states of the Soviet Union and suffered under its leadership. Their goal today appears to be maintaining regional stability, attracting investment and, in some cases, securing defense alliances with Russia. Great power politics is complicated and heating up as 2021 comes to an end. The Biden Administration is talking with foreign leaders in Russia to try to get Putin to back down. The unanswered question is… who in the Kremlin is listening.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.