As the NATO powers and Russia continue to engage over the future of Ukraine, observers might well begin to wonder whether we are seeing the first stages of a new Cold War, over twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact which encompassed the countries of what was then called Eastern Europe. Yet Russia itself is now without the apparent benefits of military alliances with the countries which border her on the European continent. And the Russian leadership well recognizes that new relationships have to be forged with China, now a booming capitalist country which has become integrated into Western capitalism, and is trying to work out its own geopolitical relationships with neighbouring countries, of which Russia itself is one.
There can be little doubt that Russia, under President Putin, has a sense of having experienced a setback in terms of its prominence in international affairs during the decade or so after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the collapse of its Warsaw Pact and economic integration space, Comecon, which encompassed the Eastern European states that following the Second World War, Stalin had brought under institutional control.
It has become clear that for Putin, attempts by the European Union to seek to bring Ukraine, the birthplace and sometime fiefdom of Nikita Krushchev, into the integration system of the European Union, and consequently inevitably in his view, into the NATO system, has had the taste of bitter medicine. As a longtime intelligence representative of the USSR in East Germany, he has seen that space absorbed into the new post-Cold War Germany, neighbouring states like Estonia and Latvia join the EU and, more hurtfully NATO, following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For Putin, and presumably many of his associates in the government of Russia, these new geopolitical and economic arrangements on the European continent must seem to push Russia into a corner, with the USSR’s former allies, in particular Poland, seeming to wish to see his country virtually marginalized as far as developments in a new Europe are concerned.
That background, to some observers, is the canvas against which Putin has elaborated his strategy towards Ukraine, and a diplomacy which seeks to draw that state not only into an economically integrated Western European system that would obviously define the parameters of Russia’s economic engagement with the former Eastern European states and, to that extent, draw that country deeply into Western European political arrangements.
It would seem to be in that context that Putin felt forced to support an obviously incompetent and corrupt President Victor Yanucovych of Ukraine, with part of that strategy of support being to resist the integration of Ukraine into the EU, and in one way or another, as has increasingly looked the case, integration into NATO. So while it would appear that President Obama has hesitated to support the pressures on the European continent to have Ukraine integrated into NATO, it also appears to be the case that this hesitation is likely, in the medium term, to be a tactical diplomatic manoeuvre.
That, what Putin would seem to believe to be, emerging diplomatic scenario, would itself appear to place constraints on the Russian leader’s ability to resist its evolution into a future reality. The United States and the EU leaderships are as clear as Putin is, on the fact that Russia’s capitalist economy, even when organized under a somewhat less democratic system than the Western countries are accustomed to, has substantial aspects of both domestic economic and political autonomy. Putin, contrary to portraits painted of him, does not have the political autonomy of the Stalinist inheritance, and he knows, as one who has to face periodic elections, that there are limits to how the contemporary Russian domestic political system can be manipulated in a manner similar to the old days of the USSR.
But he also knows that as the EU and the US place constrictions on Russian-Western economic relations, the extent of Russia’s ability to sustain itself economically in a manner that can also sustain Putin’s domestic support, is not a straightforward matter. And though it might sometimes seem so, as Putin’s popularity has risen with his actions in Ukraine and his strategies towards the NATO powers, he is well aware that as one subject to an election process, there is a limit to the amount of economic sanctioning that his country’s population can support.
That, no doubt, is the frame in which Putin has shaped his diplomatic strategy, insisting on negotiations even while he has sought to ensure that the eastern part of Ukraine comes more under Russian influence. Putin’s objective would seem to be to persuade the major NATO powers that Ukraine should have the semblance of a neutral state between the West and Russia, with each side recognizing that populations of particular parts of Ukraine lean substantially to Russia on the one hand, and to the European Union on the other. Putin obviously does not want Ukraine as another Poland, whose leaders make no bones about their dislike and disdain of Russia.
But it is unlikely that Putin would wish a long term Cold War between the West and his country defined by the future of Ukraine, against a scenario, recognized by him as defined by the period of globalization, in which a part of Russia’s own viability will be determined by the extent of its positive economic interaction with the Western economies. Increasingly Russia is economically intertwined, through investments and contracts with major Western European powers, and it is probably an error to believe that Russia, as it is today and not in the times of the USSR, would tolerate a continuing diminution of economic strength, however strong and popular Putin appears to be at present.
So, in spite of the recent NATO talks in Wales, where some countries were urging stronger action by the major Western powers, there seem to have been some indications that the US, even while tightening sanctions, understands their limits, and was not inclined to go as far as countries like Poland would have liked.
So, contrary to appearances, the return of a new Cold War would appear to be on hold, even as Putin insists that there should be a de facto influence of Russia vis-à-vis the Ukraine, and the Europeans, with their strategy of inevitable economic integration into the European Union, insist on consolidating Ukraine on their side of the geoeconomic and political fence.
With the major Western powers increasingly preoccupied with events in the Middle East, and with China’s flexing of its military muscles in the South China Sea, Western diplomacy is being stretched on all sides. In the face of these emerging preoccupations in other parts of the world, the prospects of a gathering military confrontation, designed within a new Cold War framework with Russia, defined by an internal European conflict, can hardly be appealing to President Obama in particular.
And in some respects, the Europeans know that even in their old days of confrontations among themselves that led to what came to be referred to as world wars, some small countries took refuge in what was called neutrality. And truth be told, that would appear to be the best that President Putin can attain, knowing that he has a Russian economy to manage, in a context in which Western Europe will inevitably play a significant part.
