In the latest example of judging Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage tell us that “Putin has made a strategic blunder by invading Ukraine. He has misjudged the political tenor of the country, which was not waiting to be liberated by Russian soldiers. He has misjudged the United States, the European Union, and a number of countries—including Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea—all of which were capable of collective action before the war and all of which are now bent on Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.”
These suppositions are dubious. They ignore the likelihood that the idea to invade germinated decades ago when Yeltsin appointed his sullen successor, a man driven by resentment at history. They suggest that the decision itself was in doubt, pending the outcome of western leaders’ last-minute efforts to dissuade Putin from pulling the trigger. They claim to know the judgments that the Russian leader made and didn’t make. And they assert that the countries of the world have the same goal: Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.
It’s possible, of course, that Russia’s invasion engineers believed the job to be easier than it has turned out to be. If so, it’s a problem common to all large projects, especially war, where events rarely run their course as planned. But that simply calls for more blunt force, which Russia has in abundance. If Ukrainians make it easy, good. If they don’t, no matter. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is going anywhere. At some point, the scale of Russian military resources will prevail regardless of the Ukrainian will to resist.
What the authors’ suppositions overlook is the nature of Russia’s leader. What evidence do they have that he cares what the West thinks, what Ukrainians think, or even what his fellow Russians think? The evidence we do have makes it clear that Putin and the millions of Russians who agree with him deny the existence of a legitimately sovereign Ukraine. We also know that, over his twenty years in power, he has murdered, or tried to murder, journalists and political opponents, including a Ukrainian leader (Yuschenko) not sufficiently slavish to Moscow.
That evidence is persuasive in suggesting that Putin and his government some time ago decided on a preferred outcome in Ukraine regardless of the cost. To the extent that a risk calculation was part of his thought process, it was an easy one: will the US intervene in Ukraine militarily? Once that possibility was off the table—generously articulated loud and clear by the US president before the invasion even took place—all that was left was to raise the spectre of Russia’s resorting to nuclear weapons to scare off potential meddlers.
The authors recite scenarios by which Russia “could ultimately lose” in Ukraine. They even say that the “unintended and underestimated consequences of this senseless war will be difficult for Russia to stomach”. How so? And will the “guilt and stain [really] stay with Russian politics for decades”? They even speak of Russia’s “geopolitical decline [which] will define the course of Russia and Russian foreign policy for many years to come,” though they are correct in saying that Russia “is unlikely to emerge as a pro-Western democracy” in any event.
Guilt and stain require acknowledgment. Chances of that are slim given that enough Russians believe the propaganda they’ve been fed for years. It also requires that the rest of the world force Russia to do so. Yet the authors are silent on the probability of an ongoing, long-term unified front, the essential prerequisite to an undoing of what Russia has wrought. Until Russia is compelled to vacate Ukraine, it cannot be deemed—and, critically, will never see itself—as having lost in Ukraine.
