As Putin descends into a thermobaric barbarism in Ukraine, we must grasp the truth that our work to welcome post-Soviet Russia into the global community has failed and what is now required is a strategy of 'aggressive recontainment'. Without it, Putin will rampage into the new and fragile democracies of Eastern Europe and swallow them whole into a new Russian empire.
We have of course been here before. The rationale for Containment of the Soviet Union was famously set out in 1947 by George Keenan writing under the pseudonym X in Foreign Affairs. “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union,” Kennan wrote, “must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
Now of course some will baulk at this return to the past. After all, Russia is a nation with a landmass that spans 11 time zones, it boasts some of the world's biggest oil and gas providers and the planet's biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads.
But the brutal invasion of the Ukraine is hardly a first offence. In fact, the long arc of Russia's post war foreign policy is littered with malign misadventures into its neighbourhood from the isolation of West Berlin, to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the invasions of Georgia and Crimea. Now President Putin seems hell bent on re-imperialising the free states of the former Soviet Union. As Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, explained in the House of Commons today, the Iron Curtain is dropping once more across Europe. And the nations of eastern Europe are fighting to be on the side of light, on the right the new divide. But that means, as Tsikhanouskaya put it, ‘democracy will need teeth’.
In fact ‘Recontainment’ will mean three things;
re-fortifying what is a new NATO frontline with Russia;
a strategy for re-supplying Ukrainian forces and
a hard headed determination to repress Russia's economy by decoupling the West from Putin's regime.
Refortifying NATO'S frontier will mean shifting quickly from a posture of deterrence to a posture of defence and intensifying NATO partnership discussions with Finland, Sweden, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Georgia. Crucially we have to speed up Nato modernisation. This should be the most important strategic result of President Putin's gamble. Since NATO's Wales summit, NATO allies have increased defence spending but the alliance's capability to deploy large-scale strength at pace is too weak. NATO's Non-US active personnel have declined by 40% since the Cold War and reliance is heavy on UK, French, and German capabilities. During the Cold War, NATO could field 360 combat battalions in Europe. More recently it was a challenge to stand up four battalions in the Baltic. NATO is punching below it's weight and that's simply not something we can afford any more.
Second, re-supplying Ukrainian forces may require a new lend-lease agreement on defensive and lethal arms as some have argued . If we cannot supply compatible airframes like Polish MiG fighters the least we can do is offer Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (drones) with air to surface or air to air missiles.
Even if Putin prevails in the short term - and it's a big if - he will fail in the long term. Putin's commanders have debated long and hard how destructive their campaign can be and still keep alight any hope of governing the nation they subdue. But Putin has made four big mistakes. He underestimated the unity of the West; he left €300 billion in western central banks which has now been frozen; his military has badly underperformed and fourth the likelihood of any part of Ukraine accepting some sort of quisling ‘Vichy-Ukraine’ government is close to non-existent.
So, Russia's leaders now appear to have settled on what Tacictus described as 'making a desert and calling it peace'. This will fuel a generational Ukrainian resistance. There are few enough histories of successful occupations as it is; Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan (twice) and Iraq were all lessons in how hard it is to hold territory in the face of sustained resistance. And, Ukraine, surrounded as it is by four NATO countries - Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - will be easy to resupply - perhaps easier than it was to run US support for the mujahideen and supplies to Iraq's Kurds before 2003.
Decoupling our economies will need both a determination to persist with big financial sanctions in the short term, and the resolve to drive through energy independence from Russia as soon as it can be achieved.
Sanctions don't always work and rarely work fast. Presidents Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Maduro of Venezuela both presided for years over economies of ruin. But there are examples of sanctions inducing a change of behaviour, most notably in Iran where a radical sanctions package forced Iranian leaders to sign up to a nuclear control deal, albeit with flaws.
Russia goes into this round of sanctions in poor shape; economic growth has averaged just 1% since 2009 and Russia's economy shrank by 3.1% in 2021 as Covid ravaged the country. Much of that harvest, such as it was, has gone to those at the top; the oligarchs who have burgled the wealth that rightly belonged to ordinary Russians.
The West has now united to drive through a comprehensive package of sanctions that has cratered Russia's currency, reserves and markets. But these sanctions could go further. Right now, our sanctions still fall short of what is imposed on Iran. For instance, all Iranian state owned firms including the National Iranian Oil Company are under full blocking sanctions plus 'secondary sanctions' prohibit transactions with sanctioned entities.
Sanctions hurt Russia more than us. No EU country sends more than 20% of its exports to Russia. Yet Russia sends half of its exports to Europe. And that is a vulnerability for Russia if and only if we push energy independence - which will take time.
It was Senator John McCain who described Russia as a gas station masquerading as a country and it remains a simple truth that real impact on the Russian economy will come from Europe securing energy independence from Putin. That will be easier for some than others. But the sooner we start the sooner we will finish; Europe takes 40% of its gas from Russia but some take more than others. Half of Germany's supplies are from Russia. And in Poland the figure is 80%. So, European nations now need a rapid plan to diversify their gas supplies, dial up investment in green energy and some, like Germany, may need to revisit the timetable to phase out nuclear power.
This is no longer just an era of change. This is now a change of era. No-one can forecast quite how and when President Putin's regime will fall. But it is now doomed. And we can speed that along.
Great stuff Liam