Page 73 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine October 2024

bne October 2024
Opinion 73
Importantly though Putin recognised this as an existential battle for the survival of his regime, and it’s prime defence was attack – to subvert the system of Western Liberal Market Democracy from within, by using Russian money as a corrupting influence to corrupt our systems from within – backing far right and far left parties in the West, promoting centrifugal forces within the West, and buying influence
in politics, academic, sport, the media, business, et al. For Putin it was the West or him, which is very different I think from the threat to the West from China. Xi loves the global status quo, he is happy for the two systems to exist side by side, as he still sees globalisation and international trade
as the means to eventually secure hegemony with the US. For China it is a symbiotic relationship – and he has/had no desire to kill of the system (the West) that China fed off. But Putin saw his survival in killing off Western Liberal Market Democracy. I don’t think Biden, Blinken or Sullivan ever got this, and still don’t. I dont think they ever understood the stakes in the game, or how far Russian subversion of our system had got – I would argue that already in the 2016 presidential election, or Brexit, in the same year, Russian political technologies were already deployed to devastating effect in support of Russian interests and the ultimate victory of kleptocracy/sovereign democracy over Western Liberal Market Democracy. One might well ask is it already too late given the rise of the Afd, and Le Pen, et al, and potential for Trump to return to finish the job in the US.
True, I think the Biden administration finally woke up to
the threat from Russia, at least to Ukraine, with Russia’s military build up over the course of 2021, and then with
the full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Outing Russia in its mission to invade Ukraine was a brilliant PR move by the US – it was the last hope perhaps of averting the invasion, but by this time it was perhaps already too late, as years of cow towing to Moscow at the expense of backing Ukraine’s defence meant that Ukraine was by then woefully underequipped to deter the inevitable Russian invasion.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 because Putin fundamentally did not accept Ukraine’s right to exist, and Ukrainians’ identity separate from Russians – and the Nato enlargement threat was the bluff/excuse/smokescreen. But Russia invaded also because it could, because Putin expected no Western response and assumed a speedy Ukrainian defeat because Moscow had seen the timidity from the West in failing to supply Ukraine with the weapons to defend itself. Indeed, Russia and the West, and perhaps the Ukrainian leadership itself, did not think Ukraine could fend off a Russian invasion. The widespread assumption was that the war would be over in weeks, and result in an overwhelming Russian victory. The only defence for Ukraine was deterrence, but the West had left Ukraine brutally exposed there with little real signalling to Russia as to the real negative consequences of such an invasion. Putin invaded because he expected a speedy victory and little international consequences. That was a seismic and catastrophic failure of Western leadership.
Thank god for the bravery of Ukrainians – they were the deciding factor in the early weeks of the invasion, plus the arrogance and incompetence, corruption, etc of the Putin regime.
But the West still did not learn, even with the Ukrainians appealing for advanced weaponary to defend their country. Yes, there were real concerns at this point as to the willingness of Putin to escalate – did he have escalation domination, and was he willing to do literally anything to take Ukraine? Quickly we learned though that he did not, by going through the gears of supplying more javelins, manpads, then T72s, Mig29s, HIMARS, Lepards, ATACMS, and eventually F16s, that Putin set red lines but did not keep to them. There was a worry that Putin would resort to WMD around the time of the siege of Azovstal, but he did not, and I think the West should have learned two things from this, which demonstrated Putin’s own constraints:
First, on WMD, and broader escalation, I think that Putin values the relationship with China. And herein, Xi I think
was discomforted with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as it risked destabilising global markets and by so doing the globalisation driven ascent to economic hegemony that China so desired. So I think Xi set constraints in Russia of no first use of WMD, or any sanctions response which would have potentially destabilised global markets. Indeed, in response to aggressive Western sanctions, Russia had an array of options across commodities to cause strain on global markets, but failed to use its leverage. And China’s leverage here is that ultimately
“One can see the failures very early on from the Biden administration, and particularly from its national security leadership in continuously failing to read Putin”
the Russian economy depends on markets in China for its commodities. Russia was not willing to go against the ultimate strategic interests of its paymaster, China.
Second, I think we learned in Nato going thru the gears of weapons supply to Ukraine that Putin is actually scared of
a direct conventional war with Nato. And I think here he realises that because of Nato’s huge technological superiority (as evidenced through the war in Ukraine), that Russia would lose any such war very quickly. Perhaps he realises that in any such war, a speedy conventional Russian defeat would see it forced to fall back on the nuclear defence but then capped by constraints from China. There are obviously stories that the West warned Putin in 2022 of a massive Nato conventional strike in Russia in response to a first use of WMD in Ukraine – perhaps here it is a combination of the threat from Nato
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