Can Russia Remain a Great Power?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The Ukraine war drags on with no end in sight. At first, western observers assumed Moscow would gain a speedy victory. When that failed, prevailing opinion did a complete about turn, and began to predict a Ukrainian win. That also now looks like wishful thinking.

President Vladimir Putin won’t withdraw troops from the regions that Moscow has claimed as its own and he demands Ukraine drops its aspirations to join NATO.  Otherwise, Russia refuses to end the conflict.

That’s because Russians consider this a defensive war against a Western alliance seeking to end Russia’s status as a great power – or worse still, to dismember it. For them, Putin provides a patriotic response to western abuse.

Putin has also warned that Russia could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory. He reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Andrei Tsygankov, a professor in the Department of International Relations at San Francisco State University, in his article “Irreplaceable Russia: Fortresses and Bridges of the ‘Russian Idea,’” published in the October/December issue of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, has written about Russia’s conception of its mission in the contemporary world.

“Understanding Russia as a fortress defending itself (and the world) from alien --primarily Western -- expansion,” he writes, “is characteristic of Russian thought since its emergence” as a state.

Russia continues to aspire to great power status and so is averse to relations with Western nations that would make Russia a “junior” partner. It seeks friendship with like minded countries who challenge the Western alliance, such as China.

“Faced with strong pressure from the West, Russian thought has often prioritized protection against the expansion of Western civilization,” Tsygankov asserts. While Russia is dwarfed by NATO in conventional forces, Russia nonetheless pursues “red lines” with Western nations; in particular, the exclusion of Ukraine from Western alliances.

Russia does not seek direct confrontation with Western nations as it is aware of the conventional imbalance. Russia prefers relations with individual nations and political parties rather than organisations like the European Union or NATO.

Russia encourages Euroskeptic nations like Italy, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovenia, and supports nationalist parties like the Rassemblement National (National Rally) in France and the Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) in Germany. Through its ties to these groups, Russia encourages internal discord within Western countries themselves.

Russian-Western relations now hinge on the situation in Ukraine and seem unlikely to improve. Tsygankov also speculates that the United States and Western allies may have to move beyond their current economic containment policy to deter Russia.

So what comes next? The historian Stephen Kotkin, now a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, outlines several possibilities.

In his piece “The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next,” in the May/June 2024 issue of the influential periodical Foreign Affairs, he reminds us that western countries, including the United States, have learned the hard way that they “lack the levers to transform places such as Russia and, for that matter, China: countries that originated as empires on the Eurasian landmass and celebrate themselves as ancient civilizations that long predate the founding of the United States.”

One possibility Kotkin presents is “Russia as France.” A nation with deep-seated bureaucratic and monarchical traditions, France also has a fraught revolutionary tradition. “For centuries, France’s rulers, none more than Napoleon, threatened the country’s neighbours.” But this is no longer the case.

Russia, too, possesses such a tradition, one that will endure regardless of the nature of any future political system. But it may cease being a threat yet retain its memories “as a source of inspiration.” This is Kotkin’s preferred scenario.

Less palatable is “Russia Retrenched.” Some Russians might welcome a transformation into a country that resembles France, but others would find that outcome anathema. Nonetheless, Russian nationalists may come to realize that Putin’s policies have led the country into a self-defeating trajectory. Historically, “such realizations have precipitated a change of course, a turn from foreign overextension to domestic revitalization.”

Defiantly pro-Putin Russian elites boast that they have developed an option that is better than the West: the Chinese-Russian bond. But, Kotkin points out, “The great and growing imbalance in the relationship has induced analysts to speak of Russia as China’s vassal.” This “Russia as Vassal” outcome is not one most Russians would endorse.

Even worse is the idea of “Russia as North Korea.”  This would see a country that has become “domestically repressive, internationally isolated and transgressive, armed with nuclear weapons, and abjectly dependent on China but still able to buck Beijing.”

And finally, there is “Russia in Chaos.” Past Russian states have disintegrated in the twentieth century, both times unexpectedly yet completely. Tsarist Russia fell apart in 1917, the Soviet Union in 1991. “There are many plausible hypothetical causes for a breakdown in the near future,” Kotkin contends. “Countries such as Russia with corroded institutions and legitimacy deficits can be susceptible to cascades in a sudden stress test. Chaos could well be the price for a failure to retrench.” The reverberations from such a worst-case outcome would be immense and would be felt across the world.