The End of the Russian Decline Era

Between the Cold War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia's decline took place. That event defines the "post-Cold War" placeholder name more accurately

We are completing the era between the end of the Cold War beginning in 1989 when the Soviet empire started to fragment and the Winter War of 2022 when Russia’s power was proven to be hollow for a country with great power ambitions. The Era of Great Power Competition already proclaimed will develop with the reality that the era with the placeholder name of the “post-Cold War era” was really the Russian Decline Era.

America is in an era of Great Power Competition. The latest intelligence agency threat assessment demonstrates this priority:

Several major state actors present proximate and enduring threats to the United States and its interests in the world, challenging U.S. military and economic strength, regionally and globally. China stands out as the actor most capable of threatening U.S. interests globally, though it is also more cautious than Russia, Iran, and North Korea about risking its economic and diplomatic image in the world by being too aggressive and disruptive. Growing cooperation among these actors expands the threat, increasing the risk that should hostilities with one occur, it may draw in others.

The Cold War was largely focused on the Big Bad, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that extended the reach of the old Russian Empire to the heart of central Europe. Moscow’s best military units were poised about a hundred miles from the Rhine River on NATO’s central front inside Germany’s divided territory. The collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR itself following an abortive hardliner coup in the USSR ended the Cold War without a shot being fired. Not literally, of course. But the Big One—World War III—with all the risks of global thermo-nuclear warfare was avoided.

The Persian Gulf War was the starting point of the post-Cold War era in defining that new era as one of the Soviet/Russian decline by contrasting Russia’s path with America’s ascendant role unmatched by any other possible coalition of powers:

The Persian Gulf War was more than the liberation of Kuwait. We learned we beat a second-rate military power, but by smashing a scaled down replica of the Red Army, America really beat the USSR by proxy. The Gulf War was the military victory that confirmed the end of the Cold War as a decisive Western victory. With the obvious domination of American ground and air power culminating in the 100-hour ground war, no revivalist Russian nationalist can argue that the West did not really beat the Soviet Union.

Victory also reassured Americans that we won the Cold War--we did not merely falter last in an exhausting struggle between two teetering systems. Victory made America a "hyper power" feared or envied. Without the military victory of the Persian Gulf War, we may have viewed ourselves as lucky survivors of that struggle rather than the victors who dominate the globe.

Although the War on Terror was escalated and wound down during this post-Cold War period, it was really just another series of campaigns in the real war to defend the post-World War II system that America built to our benefit:

We simply don’t need to clearly win every war on the battlefield if the war is really defending the global system America established after World War II:

The Security Council - the five permanent members of which are China, France, Russia, the UK and the US - has long been criticised for representing the realities that prevailed at the end of World War Two[.]

Thanks Captain Obvious.

Within that framework, the smaller wars we’ve waged since 1945 are battles or campaigns in an effort to defend the existing system. Countries can choose to prosper within that system or challenge it. Or like China, both.

This changes how we evaluate America’s record, no?

Americans are so used to the benefits derived from the global system that we forget that we need to defend it because we created it:

The model of international economics to which we are accustomed emerged from the Cold War. The economic component benefited Washington. Russia was poor and had lost much more than the United States had in World War II, while the U.S. was rich and further enriched by the war. Military power was important, but economic power was in the hands of the U.S., which shaped its economic national security to gain global power. It used trade relations to rebuild Europe to its own benefit, and in the ensuing proxy battle for the so-called Third World, it took much of the imperial territories previously held by Europe. It was a powerful tool that was necessitated by the invisible hand of geopolitics and was also predictable.

Yes, allies benefited, too. But it was designed to sustain America’s dominant position. And Russia could benefit, too. And our allies were uninterested in the traditional geopolitical strategy of coalescing against the new hyper-power America after the defeat of the USSR because of our common democratic freedoms and, perhaps more importantly, our distance across the Atlantic that made it unthinkable that America would use its new overwhelming power to turn against our allies. Indeed, America’s withdrawal from Europe that is still ongoing in large measure demonstrates that America was no threat to Europe, notwithstanding European freakouts over an uncensored X/Twitter available to Europeans.

Russia bizarrely forfeited its opportunity to break its link with the Soviet Union and make peace with and within the West. The idiocy is astounding:

Ukraine’s borders were established in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed into fourteen new countries. Three years later, anxiety over Ukraine possessing some Soviet era nuclear weapons caused Russia, Ukraine, Britain and the United States to mutually agree that if Ukraine got rid of its nuclear weapons these four nations would guarantee that Ukrainian borders would remain the same and that Russia would never attack. After all, why would Russia attack its neighbor? The end of the Cold War in 1991 meant an economic bonanza for Russia, which could now import western technology freely and work with western firms to upgrade the Russian economy to the more modern and efficient western standards. Everyone was interested in demonstrating the benefits of dissolving the Soviet Union and opening up these former communist ruled territories to western investment and technology.

Then, 23 years later after fourteen new countries arising from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, Russia decided that a mistake had been made and the Soviet Union had to be restored to its former size, starting with Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was begun in high hopes in Moscow as a demonstration that Putin had made Russia great again:

Putin pines for Soviet glory days. Putin's threats to use his military give Russia more stature than its status as a regional military power with continents-spanning defense needs justify. Just like Mussolini enjoyed--until he used his military and exposed it for the sham it was.

The era featuring Russia appeasing China would be brought to a clear cut end with both a message to NATO that it could not stop Russia; and a message to China that its path to vassalage was decisively ended.

The road to restoring the former Soviet Russian empire that Putin had declared a great geopolitical catastrophe would be declared open. History books would know doubt bestow the honorific “the Great” when recounting his rule.

The notion that a disarming but larger NATO that welcomed former Soviet vassals into the alliance for protection provoked Russia into becoming hostile is bizarrely wrong. Russia chose to revive the Soviet hostility to the West rather than make a break from their evil Communist past. The dissolution of the Soviet Union by Russia was a Golden opportunity to move on, yet the old thought patterns dragged their leaders back in to confrontation with a rapidly disarming NATO.

Well, no longer disarming. Bravo.

Russia’s choice to be hostile to the West while appeasing China bought Russia time to rebuild its military to cow NATO to be free to deter China. A short and glorious war against Ukraine would be the victory to raise Russia’s stature and allow Russia the space in Europe to pivot to Asia to draw a line in Far East against Chinese goals to restore China’s past imperial greatness at Russia’s expense.

But Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on, barely beyond the pre-war boundary and not at all along long stretches of the border. Indeed Ukrainian forces operated inside Russia in strength; and in cooperation with on-the-ground sabotage, its missile and drone force conducts strategic warfare on Russia’s energy and logistics infrastructure as well as Russia’s air power.

As the geopolitical analyst who rightly notes America created the post-World War II system observes about the war:

The end of the Cold War, validated by the outcome of the war in Ukraine, has changed the status quo.

That’s close, I believe. But I don’t think Russia’s failure to win a short and glorious war against Ukraine validates the end of the Cold War. I think the Persian Gulf War validated the end of the Cold War. I think Russia’s battlefield failure in Ukraine defines the post-Cold War era by validating the period as the Russian Decline Era. Russia is fully exposed as a regional power with continents-spanning security needs. Indeed, I was amused when Obama pointed this out:

Russia, as I've said, is really a regional problem. Other than lots of nukes and memories of the Soviet Union, Russia is not a capable military power against anything but smaller foes. But the region they are a power in is important to us.

So I got a chuckle out of this remark by President Obama:

"Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness," Obama said.

I liked that. Putin surely didn't like that dismissal of his strength. Don't inflate Putin by talking about Russia like they are a rebuilt superpower.

As I further noted while acknowledging the rise of China and the ongoing jihadi threat:

Russia is the biggest active geopolitical foe we have. And operating in an arc that starts at the North Pole and heads south to the Baltic, goes across to the Black Sea, and continues curving through the eastern Mediterranean and across the Middle East to Afghanistan, Russia's "regional" ability to harm us is a very real threat that must be faced.

Russia may technically win the war against Ukraine, which at least would confirm they have power even if only regionally.

But the ambition of ending Russia’s slide into full satrapy status under a rising China will collapse as Russia faces an alarmed and rearmed Western Europe, regardless of America’s future role. Without cowing NATO using the club of conquering Ukraine, Russia cannot afford to pivot sufficiently to Asia to face China. That wouldn’t be a problem if Russia had maintained the friendship with the West that allowed Russia to trade freely with it. But Putin essentially declared the F**k-Up Fairy to be an ethnic Russian and welcomed him into the Kremlin as a senior foreign affairs advisor.

Ah, making Russia grate again.

China will leverage its willingness to set aside (for now) the existence of Russia’s vast tracts of land stolen from China in the Century of Humiliation into concessions from Russia. Whether it is in resource exploitation in the Russian Far East, displacement of Russia’s population with Chinese colonists, or a more formal role in exploiting and garrisoning the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

Russia’s tactical nuclear deterrent force will be insufficient to fully deter Chinese aggression in the Far East because European Russia remains the core of Russia, which must be protected. Sacrificing the core for even large portions of the important Far East would be national suicide. Escalation to strategic nuclear warfare to protect portions of the Pacific Far East will risk the complete destruction of Russia by China’s expanded nuclear arsenal that deters Russian nuclear escalation options:

Maybe China wants to deter someone else that sees nukes as its ultimate territorial defense. Which is more pronounced now that most of Russia's shattered army is fighting Ukraine.

And this is the best-case scenario for Russia. Will the losses and humiliation of failing to defeat far smaller Ukraine in a lightning campaign lead to a Time of Troubles 2.0? Will Russia’s decline continue until it is effectively—if not formally as many black holes of power with a UN seat are today—simply the Grand Duchy of Moscow?

The exact definition of what region Russia remains a power in remains to be fully defined, and Russian foreign policy choices will affect that. Continued hostility toward the West is a risk. And openly resisting China is a risk. How will Russia cope with that other than by trying to engineer a major war between America and China?

So we have our labels for modern history. We had the Cold War. We now have the Era of Great Power Competition. And between those eras we had the Russian Decline Era.

NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.