“Blood and Guts” Putin Seeks Glory

Putin’s guts to persist and rivers of Russian blood

Putin’s quest for glory and the honorific “the Great” in the history books is being figuratively killed in Ukraine. Sure, Putin has a plan to finally bombard Ukraine and overwhelm it with new recruits over the winter and into the spring. But even if successful, will other ex-Soviet states get a sense of urgency to seek foreign sources of support to prevent them from being next? What if China accepts that role? What if Putin accepts that only America can help Russia survive its series of unfortunate events?

Russia’s mental health problems are an American security problem as Russia portrays its war against Ukraine in grander terms:

At stake in this fight, Putin insisted, was the right of “any civilization to follow its own path and organize its own sociopolitical system.”

This was familiar territory for Putin and, indeed, for many Russian thinkers over the years. Recent developments have made new an old idea that emerged among nineteenth-century intellectuals in tsarist Russia who rebelled against the elite fixation with the West. They argued that mimicry of Europe would only enfeeble their country. Instead, they believed that Russia was a civilization in its own right with a unique inheritance that it could not wish away. Russia’s identity was anchored in both Europe and Asia, they insisted, a complexity best represented by the Eurasian steppe, the vast grassland thoroughfare stretching from China to eastern Europe around which so many great empires came into being. Known as Eurasianism, this conviction in the fundamental difference between Russia and the West at least partly underpins the Kremlin’s ruling ideology today.

Sadly, we can’t make friends out of this version of Russia as much as I hoped we could after the Cold War. Russia is certainly free to pursue its own path. But when they mark a path across our property line, we are free to build walls and ditches with trained defenders to halt that path.

Russians should be concerned that the Kremlin’s decision in 2001 to appease China with a twenty-year non-aggression pact with China while concealing that appeasement by issuing warnings about the threat of a near-comatose NATO eager to cash in that post-Cold War peace dividend:

Concealing Russian Appeasement

Russia thought it used that time to rebuild its might and that smashing Ukraine would be a signal victory to restore Russian conventional deterrence. But that has simply created a more potent threat in Europe with a rearming NATO and exposed Russia’s military as a hollow legion.

Russia and China extended that pact for five more years, as I reported in that concealing Russian appeasement essay. That extension ends this year. When the treaty extension was reaching its limits, Xi and Putin agreed they should extend the treaty again. I have seen nothing that indicates there is any extension to sign yet. I wonder what China demands from Russia to keep the treaty going a bit longer.

I don’t know if we can persuade Russians after all their loss of blood and treasure to change paths to befriend the West. But we can exploit Russia’s other fear at the other end of their expanse of territory that defines their so-called unique civilization:

Russia has found that its first major step west has not gone anywhere near what Putin planned. Even as China looms over Russia's Far East and gains influence in Central Asia, which Russia has tried to maintain as its backyard for eventual reincorporation into the empire. If Russia believes it can cut a real deal over Ukraine to end the hostility with NATO that has gotten way out of hand from its initial purpose of concealing Russian appeasement of China, Russia could pivot to Asia with its remaining strength and prepare to deter or defeat China's drive for influence or control of large chunks of Russian or former Soviet territory.

Seriously, we can’t spread this kind of conspiracy theory?

Russia thinks they have problems now? The Russians have no idea how much worse it could get when China thinks it has squeezed every last benefit from a declining Russia that China pretends is a partner.

I’m only mostly joking when I ask when Russians will look at the destruction Putin has inflicted on Russia and conclude the Chinese sent him to Russia the way Germany sent Lenin to Russia during World War I to undermine and destroy the czarist Russian Empire.

But FFS, what else could possibly explain Putin’s record? Putin could end up hanging by his heels from a lamppost as the fanciful paranoia he has stoked about NATO circles back to hit him.

Rebuilding the Soviet Union in the face of a rearming Europe and with a record of being unable to subdue Ukraine with limited Western help should be a warning sign to Moscow that there is no reversing the result of the Era of Russian Decline in Europe:

This might be a lever more than an anchor:

When Uzbekistan celebrates 35 years of independence on September 1st, Washington should do more than congratulate its people and government. It should recognize a strategic opportunity and make Uzbekistan the anchor of its policy in Central Asia.

Uzbekistan is Central Asia’s most populous country, strategically located between Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Caspian Sea. It is opening its economy, improving relations with its neighbors, and seeking greater integration with global markets.

Russia fears losing influence in that broader former Soviet region. Russia’s destructive but so-far unsuccessful invasion of Ukraine might prompt former vassals to seek security against rather than through Russia. Could the prospect of American help there to block China in Central Asia appeal to Russia that weakens itself every day it fights Ukraine? Is there opportunity to split Russia from China in Central Asia through Uzbekistan?

Saving Russia is on Putin's survival instincts--not the West's "creativity" for rewarding Russia with a lovely parting gift after stopping its invasion and brutalization of Ukraine. Putin--or his sudden successor--has to make hard decisions to cut Russia's losses in the west and pivot east before it is too late. FFS, I resent being asked to care more about Russia's survival than Russia's leaders feel.

Russia is running out of time to move on from its delusion lest those delusions destroy Russia (as well as Putin):

The irony of Putin basing his rule on restoring Russia’s past imperial glory only to risk a third fragmentation of Russia’s empire after the Soviet empire lost Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991 is thick and delicious.

China may pick up some lost territory in the collapse.

Putin--or his successor--might be shocked do find his much-brandished nukes don’t work should China pounce.

Will nobody in the Kremlin rid Russia of its meddlesome wannabe tsar?

If Russia’s combination of European and Asian influences is so important to its soul, why is Putin so fixated on the European part? Why doesn’t Russian paranoia at least cause them to glance at China and raise an eyebrow of suspicion?

NOTE: I made the image with Bing.