Art as in Life: The Asymmetry of Vladimir Putin

Does he look “asymmetric”? While viewers of the George W. Bush paintings may find that an amusing question, the oxymoron of overt-covert asymmetry employed by Vladimir Putin’s perplexing powerplex is itself asymmetric.

The word “asymmetric” was recently used by the Kremlin to describe its retaliation against the West should deeper sanctions bite after the Crimean coup. Now, as NATO and the West seem to not be taking Russia seriously enough, a short review of events surrounding the Putin international agenda is due.

Chechnya was Putin’s bloody self-assertion that Russia could win a conflict as if to redeem itself after the retreat from Afghanistan and the dissolution of the USSR. At the same time, Chechnya signaled to opponents and would-be opponents at home and abroad that Putin had the willpower, ruthlessness, and potency to avenge wrongs against Russia, perhaps including the one that helped put Putin the strongman in power: the NATO-wrapped Clinton Administration bombing of Serbia. As such, Russian journalists who poked their penlights into the collateral damage facts of Chechnya wound up dead, including the Russian journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya.

The 2006 radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko (polonium-210) was a turning point in Putin’s covert methods of eliminating his opposition and personal enemies. With it, Putin signaled his willingness to use Soviet-like fiat to strike personal opponents not only at home, but abroad, including NATO members’ sovereign territory. This also may have ended the life of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. With these exploits it seemed Vladimir Putin was intimating to the world what he would do on a larger scale when it suited him. Yet a bevy of Soviet scholars continued to analyze Putin’s Russia as if it would behave consistent with the former Soviet and Russian historical profile, thinking that sympathy would cool the KGB-run regime. Perhaps the thinking was that they would be won over to Western ways beyond return.

However, Putin was, and is not a continuation of Soviet leaders, which seemed at some point to accept two or three poles of power in the world. Putin was and is a new founder of a new Soviet state, using a militant, not ideological, approach to taking what he wants to restore the glory of a different kind of Russian empire. He ratcheted up his power in 2008 by slicing Ossetia from Georgia with little or no opposition. Georgians were in no position to defend themselves, and NATO refused them membership such that their defense by NATO could be triggered. Spheres of influence and other balance-of-power jargon was used to rationalize Georgia’s humiliation.

However, when an entire Polish government administration (mostly aligned against Putin’s regime) died near a former Soviet landing strip at Smolensk, conspiracy theories arose that fit within the rule that not-all-conspiracy-theories-are-equal. The ongoing theory, given Putin’s background, and his record for implying hostility against opponents whose bodies piled-up over time, took hold when this very early, authentic, homemade video was uploaded to YouTube hours after the crash by a resident of Smolensk:

You can find English translated subtitled versions, enhanced, and analyzed versions. I remember viewing the original myself. I was struck by the eeriness of it, and its consistency with the press photos of the wreckage site. Believe what we may about that video, the context could not have been better engineered.

Vladimir Putin had invited only the Kremlin-friendly members of Polish government to attend the ceremony admitting Stalin’s responsibility for the historic massacre of Polish military and civilian leaders in the Katyn Forest. This disparate treatment set the stage to marginalize and upstage the administration of Polish President Lech Kaczyński, the majority bloc. For if President Kaczynski failed to attend the Katyn memorial ceremonies while the opposition did, he would at once appear rigid, archaic, and insensitive on several levels regarding Katyn and Russia, thereby jeopardizing future elections. Thus Putin prepared the political bait for the Polish delegation to insist on hastily arranged travel to Smolensk aboard a Russian-made and maintained TU-154 airliner, putting the president and 90-plus high level government civil and military executives of Poland at-physical-risk. The presidential plane had been made and most recently upgraded at the Aviakor plant in Samara, Russia. That plant was owned by Oleg Deripaska’s company Basic Element, which Russian oligarch had served Putin for years as a charming Russian business-envoy to the West. Deripaka’s leashed-loyalty was ultimately rewarded with a contract to build the Olympic Village in Sochi.

Anyhow, the spurned Polish presidential delegation, determined not to lose a PR battle, attempted to land at a less-than-updated landing strip near Smolensk under foggy conditions, crashing into the forested lowlands shy of the runway. Shortly thereafter, the above video showed up on YouTube with the sounds of shouts and gunshots. Many maintain that Russian agents shot the crash survivors. Retired-CIA Cold War veteran Eugene Poteat’s analysis was a minority voice at the time, with the US too dependent on Russian support for supply of Afghanistan operations to make a stink about it. Still, Poteat’s view was posted by the families of the Smolensk / Katyn victims.

In 2012, the issue came alive again when Rzeczpospolita, a top Polish newspaper claimed the existence of a report showing explosive residues, namely TNT and nitroglycerine, in the wreckage.

Now, in 2014, after Russian forces coerced a Crimean referendum to secede from Ukraine, NATO members considered intensifying sanctions. During the exchanges, Vladimir Putin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened “asymmetric measures” by Russia, prompting many to wonder what that meant. James Rosen and Luke A. Nichter discussed this as a possible psychological leveraging trick once employed by the Nixon Administration against North Vietnam and the USSR. Rosen and Nichter note that the word “asymmetric” usually modifies non-state terror, or guerrilla warfare.

As the NATO allies have begun to make public their military analyses of Russian capabilities and intentions to further invade Ukraine, there is that old mood of brinkmanship reminiscent of the Cold War, complete with appearances of standing-down without standing-down. Yet ethnic Russian control of the homeland could also be at stake here, with each annexation an acquisition of Russian ethnic populations in-place, complete with the geographic resources beneath them. The objective? To help bolster the shrinking ethnic Russian population in post-Soviet Russia’s population and to continue to reverse the overall population decline.

As Putin continues a clear expansion agenda, to what length would his regime go to divert and preoccupy NATO? Is Putin interested in Russia’s survival, or does he want to reverse fortunes with the United States? Increasingly, the reversal of fortune argument is gaining ground. The sentiment of his propaganda seems to be consistent with this old KGB officer’s prognostication for the U.S., that it will break-up and be divided among world and regional players:

 

Link to Wall Street Journal resources.

Some contemporary voices subscribe to the view that Russia has long waged an “asymmetric” war against Europe designed to drive a wedge between the traditional NATO allies.

The upshot from here: To remain politically well, NATO powers, the EU, and the U.S. must take seriously the written, spoken, and enacted goals of Putin’s Russia in concert with the clear mission of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which includes Russia, China, and developing nation states aligned in dependence on them. As the SCO reaches into the American future with ambition, Western policy-makers must marshal their many strengths in unity against these regimes without lumping their populations together with the regimes themselves. For with subtle turns and change, and perhaps natural, ecologic, and geologic forces adversaries could be driven together to common interest.

Finally, every developing world event that could distract, divide, paralyze, or preoccupy the Western powers and allies should be analyzed in the context of the ambitions of the power cults and politburos still operating in the world. Our leaders must remember that to be divided comes before being conquered. While security against terrorists remains important, security must resume against those great powers with deep inroads into Western economies — Russia into the EU’s and China into the US’s. To have a commonwealth in which to prosper, accountability and checking are warranted. Time for the North Atlantic allies to wake-up and adapt to all that has happened, overcoming internal and external challenges to leadership, autonomy, and freedom at once. Meanwhile, old and new friends along the Pacific rim must be recruited for the difficult times ahead in dealing with literal tectonic and climatic changes that will affect the basics of food and energy supply.

It is a tall order, but all the parties at the table have overcome worse odds. Considering what the world faces, old political wranglings look more and more like eternal follies.

Reality Checks: Russia, Crimea, Ukraine, Europe, the U.S. and Congestive Heart Failure Risk

The Manifest Destiny mood is in full swing this Russian Spring, and it reminds me of congestive heart failure. The heart of a formerly massive empire enlarges again, yet not in a good way. Omega 3 oils may benefit the body, but is an expansion of an empire powered by non-renewable crude oil sustainable by the Russians?

The new Russo-Soviet Empire expands toward Europe and Asia Minor. She also sets sights on the Arctic. In that spirit I believe, a Russian-flagged opponent in online chess wrote to me the other day: “Alaska is Russia!”

After typing back the laughing-out-loud acronym, I realized it was only a placeholder, not a scoff, while I thought over the meaning of the chess player’s nationalist sentiment in the context of Russian state actions these past fifteen years.

From murder-by-Polonium 210 to the misty outcomes surrounding Katyn (which the Malaysian flight story could bring to mind), to Georgia’s de-Ossetiazation, to the Crimean plain-wrap rollover, Vladimir Putin has put the West on notice, counting on the West to acquiesce at every incremental rollback rooted in Andropovian chauvinism.

As if named the executor of the old-school Communist strongman Yuri Andropov’s last will and testament, Vladimir Putin is using his Teflon domestic credit card, petro-rubles, and his infamous international personality to boldly go where former Soviet despots have gone before. Adroitly, this time, Putin has remade Sovietism as Russian Orthodox Church friendly, however, not so much Georgian and Ukrainian Orthodox friendly, since apparently those culture mixes cannot apparently be trusted with their own nation states.

To see this problem accurately admits that Russia has her own long memory of invasion and incursion, but it would be inaccurate to see perimeter defense as the first goal of the current expansion. The real need is for more ethnic Russian citizens, however, with the real estate from which to draw funds to support them. Hence the land grabs from Georgia and Ukraine.

There is little real fear of European or even Eurasian mass land war, but there is more fear of an internal disintegration of Russian ethnic control over the fluctuating empire while a death by a million guerrilla cuts causes gangrene throughout the Federation. Putin sees himself, I believe, as the savior of Rus from Islamic militancy and from a secularized West. I think Putin believes that Islam would dominate Russia, rename it, and stamp-out Russian ethnic culture and existence while fearing that the West would acquire his country, break it up into parts, and sell it. In Putin’s view, only former KGB officers are entitled to do these things.

Today’s Russia is still run by ethnic Russians, however, the population of Russia is rapidly increasing among other ethnic groups, mostly Muslim. Some years back a Rand population study predicted that Moscow’s majority would be Muslim by 2050. Europe has seen similar trends.

Much of this takes place as U.S. forces withdraw and downsize from region to region in the Eastern hemisphere, no longer providing lightening rod and security services for Russia and China in Eurasia. The regions spanning Russia’s immense southern flank pose a challenge to Moscow that is not going away. The iron grips that Beijing and Moscow traditionally hold on dissent and protest will not encourage willing hosts for more expansion either. In the future, the SCO powers will have to provide their own security for mercantile and ethnic acquisitions. Such policing is expensive, and Soviet lessons of imperial congestive heart failure will echo loudly each time the Kremlin writes checks spent abroad.

Recent Pentagon defense policy purposes U.S. military might for domestic national defense more than global interest-defense, by appearances anyhow. That is overdue. Prolonged warfare, as read at West Point from General Sun-Tzu, will exhaust the state treasury. Other powers wait at the flanks. The U.S. has undertaken prolonged warfare since 1988, and the SCO powers wait at the flanks. The U.S. is far behind in building and rebuilding internal strength via infrastructure; domestic investment; civil engineering renewal; infrastructure security; more elegant, timely military spending adaptive to how that military itself has changed the security risk in the world; and in fulfilling the basic promises supporting the American way for U.S. citizens, including her sacrificial veterans.

To illustrate this refocusing, U.S. convictions filled the air against Russian troops taking Crimea this month, yet when asked by Ukraine for arms and intelligence support, the chin-rubbing, policy parsing began. It was the same with the invasion of Georgia. Still, I am persuaded that if the Pentagon won’t tell the American people that the NSA et al. is monitoring their LOL’s, Tweets, and Likes, neither will it tell the world that it is supporting the Ukrainians with measured intelligence product. Measured because the Ukraine is compromised by Russian agents who would pass it on as quickly as Tweets proliferate about cute pets.

As Crimean ground erodes under Russian troops, treads, and tires, FSB operatives run amok there. Helping Ukraine with intelligence and arms without military support would be like giving advice from the corner to an untested fighter against a recent heavyweight title holder in his home town. That heavyweight has been in training for some time now, underwritten by Gazprom and China’s 270 billion dollar bid for Russian oil last summer, plus the lucrative European gas trade. That’s not even mentioning arms sales. So force seems off the table before the start.

Even U.S. sanctions over the Ukraine were surgically considered, not wishing to broadside the entire Russian Federation with collateral economic damage and feel the reverberations through Europe and Russia’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization partner, China. Which brings us to the end of this broad perspective and review, and to the prescriptive cap. Putin himself has said the West is too interrelated with his country for the West to wisely to impose sanctions. Have we been sleeping with the enemy? When she slaps the children of democracy around (Georgia and Ukraine) do we turn a blind, numb eye?

How did we get here? The Russian Federation has been working seriously with China and others to supplant U.S. power in the world since the U.S. bombed Serbia within Russia’s former zone of influence, hitting the Chinese embassy in the process, and continually spoiling China’s will for Taiwan. They have been keeping their enemy (the US) close ever since. That US decade of projection woke the ghost of Andropov which then possessed Vladimir Putin throughout his bloody survival and rise to run the Kremlin.

Since, the Kremlin has flattened the usual suspects, China has rolled-over Tibet, used Burma, and infiltrated Nepal. In these events we see something not altogether unwelcome to Western security planners: a consolidation of power under formerly more predictable empires. Such consolidations provide impetus and justification for a new U.S. military build-up while increasing economic reasons why the larger empires would not choose to decimate their gains by engaging in a world war with Mutually Assured Destruction.

In heated agreement, the U.S. winks at slogans like “Alaska is Russia!” and chuckles at radical theories by retired KGB professors squinting through tinted square glasses under the influence of Cuban cigars and Vodka, fantasizing about the U.S. breakup and future auction to Russia, Canada, Mexico, and China. Yes, I can see how tolerance would then reign on the American continent between those parties.

Here is a reality check for Moscow’s more enthusiastic nationalists. The U.S. is making the right moves to bring troops home, and get busy rebuilding and revitalizing the homeland. Meanwhile, young nationalists in Russia will need to get busy defending the homeland as their leader invokes more immediate regional rancor toward the age groups who do the fighting and dying. I don’t relish that for anyone, and would consider it in part a tragic outcome of Putin’s desire for glory days that weren’t really so glorious for most Russians.

In due time, the fruit of U.S. efforts will ripen as they did in the 2oth century, with improvements on the old mistakes to the betterment of life in the world. While a new economic and intellectual-propertied resurgence happens in the U.S., it appears that Russia and China will have their hands full grappling with old questions of identity. Will they have the vision to do what works, or will they usher in what they fear by trying old ways of dealing with it?

U.S. domestic renewal and reinvestment will benefit the free world, and it will make the US more productive, educated, and secure.

In the meantime, Congress must re-evaluate the involvement of foreign state-owned and state-run organizations seeking admission to U.S. equities and futures exchanges through IPOs as if they were free market businesses. These entanglements tend to leverage despotic government investments in U.S. markets against sound foreign policy based on human freedom and republican democracy.

As the detritus of tsunamis and human irresponsibility glows in the Pacific trash vortex, the US, China, Russia, and the rest of the Pacific powers have a lot more on their plates than traditional ethnic rivalries and archaic balance of power games. But you wouldn’t know it by the news, would you?