Russia and Great Power Politics: Winter is Coming
What’s going on with Vladimir Putin?
The media has started to beat the drums of war. Tensions between Russia and the West have been rising for some time, but recent news has taken on a different character altogether. The White House has placed 8,000+ soldiers on mobilization alert, spoken to banks about the implementation of hard sanctions, and started organizing world leaders around possible military options.
A lot of people are talking about the news and actions surrounding Russia, and I wanted to write this piece to add a little background that might explain world events a little more clearly.
Relevant History: Pax Americana
The number one concern for great powers is to secure the existence of your nation’s future. While this concern never crosses the mind of most people, that is largely due to the post WWII consensus that the USA built with its global partners. The cornerstone of this peace (Pax Americana) was built on America dissolving the large militaries around the world and providing security guarantees for free by maintaining a large military that would intervene if our partners ever needed help. This exchange was codified with some countries with the NATO treaty, and is implied when it comes to other countries.
This tradeoff has allowed countries across the world to divert resources away from their militaries and into large social safety nets. Additionally, this treaty is enforced by use of the petrodollar and the SWIFT payments system.
The Future of the Russian People
If you put yourself in Putin’s shoes, there are three main challenges that Russia will have to overcome if they do not want to break apart and collapse similarly to how the USSR failed. Keep in mind that on a historic scale, Russia has been invaded 3 times relatively recently, including by Napoleon and Hitler.
The first is geography. Rather than explain this in writing, a video is worth 10,000 words:
The second challenge Putin faces with the Russian people is demographics. In short, every year since 1990 more Russians have died than have been born. This is a demographic crisis. As the Russian people continue to age, they will have a much harder time finding the labor needed to supply scarce resources or even maintain an army large enough to defend the Russian borders.
This is a picture, but I encourage you to read the whole Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Additionally, as climate change starts adjusting climate patterns, it will be more difficult to reliably source food and other necessary resources. This does not loom large in the mind of a United States citizen because we have a huge contiguous chunk of arable land that is crisscrossed with waterways. Climate change will affect Russia and Europe to a far greater degree simply because their arable land is in smaller strips that are more sensitive to changing temperatures.
Putin thinks that he has to act now if he is going to counter these 3 great challenges and keep Russia on the map for the next 50 years. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, and Nord Stream 2 will give Russia a lot of economic leverage over various European countries.
The United States has Fallen
Part of the catalyst is that no one can now trust the American guarantee of security. It took the Taliban less than 16 hours to take back control of Afghanistan when the USA withdrew troops. We made copious guarantees to people within that country that we would not abandon them and that we would guarantee the security of the new government. However, all of those promises turned to ashes as soon as political winds changed in the USA.
An adversary looking at Afghanistan could correctly guess that the American security guarantee is not what it used to be. If America so quickly abandoned its foothold it worked 20 years to create, then what does that mean for Taiwan or Ukraine?
Additionally, Washington is no longer seen by our allies or adversaries as having pure motives. Our adventures in the middle east, and most recently in Syria, demonstrate to the world that the United States is very interested in keeping the petradollar secure and we will undermine entire regions to attain our goals.
To put a point on it, every leader saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and what is currently happening to Bashar al-Assad. The message is clear: you may not be interested in conflict with America, but America is interested in conflict with you.
Why Can’t We be Friends?
The question comes up a lot that goes something like “why can’t we assure Putin that we don’t want Ukraine?” The answer is that Putin no longer believes the United States. After decades of eastward expansion, Putin wants it codified into law that Ukraine will not join Nato and the USA will halt its expansion.
This type of treaty will never make it past the US Congress.
Additionally, the USA has had designs to supply Europe with oil for decades. The idea is to run a pipe from Saudi Arabia through Syria and into Europe. This is a direct competitor to Nord Stream 2. If the USA can wean Europe from its reliance on Russian energy, then the USA will have that much more control over what happens in Europe since we would have more leverage due to the fact that we also control their energy access.
Since Russian gas is a direct competitor to US oil, it makes a compromise extremely unlikely.
If you tie this in with the earlier events in the Middle East, it seems obvious that America is interested in maintaining its stranglehold over oil and will use military force to advance that agenda.
What Can We Do?
There are many military leaders who believe that “we are definitely headed towards a shooting war with Russia within our lifetimes.”
At this point, people need to speak up. This war with Russia has been gaining steam for over a decade, and there is a huge push to start a war while we still can. The people at the top believe that if we put pressure on Russia now, then that will be enough to strangle productivity from their economy long enough for their demographic collapse to really get going.
Obama nearly stepped up conflict with Syria over his “Red Line,” but Americans on both sides of the isle sent a message that this was a terrible idea. We need to start speaking up now. If the American government understands that there is zero political will for a needless war with Russia, right after we just lost a war in Afghanistan, then perhaps the rhetoric will be toned down and anti-war activists will be seen as an overexcited bunch.
The alternative is for the American people to turn a blind eye to Eastern Europe as the administration slowly amps up the pressure in the region until something breaks and “we have no choice” but to escalate.