51 - Putin Wins Again, Scoring an Own Goal
Putin often declares that NATO, the thirty-nation alliance that has defended the rest of Europe from the Soviet Union/Russia since 1949, threatens his nation’s vital security. Now he has brought those disparate polities together, almost for the first time, forging a compact stronger than any before. When Sweden and Finland join, Putin will at last be face to face with a formidable, united, pro-democratic front stretching from the shores of the Arctic Sea to the Sea of Marmara and from Riga, right on the Belarusian border, and Helsinki near St. Petersburg (his home town), to London, Ottawa, and Washington. Well done, Putin!
A few “realist” American academic commentators supported Putin’s posture of fear. NATO’s stationing detachments in the ex-Soviet Baltic countries -- right on his border – was “provocative,” they agreed. So was reinforcing Poland’s military strength and – years ago – embracing the potential eventual incorporation of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO (and Europe).
But scholarly commentary overlooked the real reasons for Putin’s propaganda accusations against NATO. They were all smokescreen for his own long nurtured desire to expand the Russia that he inherited at the beginning of this century into something much greater resembling the Soviet Union’s lost empire. Only by regaining such a larger territorial land mass; maintaining dominant influence in the ex-Soviet Central Asian satrapies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (where Russia has troops in place), and autocratic Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan; and invading Syria and propelling mercenaries into Africa could Putin feed his personal ambitions and his clamor for enhanced world stature. He has always acted in these regards well in advance of the Russian people. They seem content to benefit from an improved consumering society and from becoming much more Europeanized before. (McDonald’s announced today that it was selling all of it outlets in Russia.)
Putin probed local opinion and dared the world’s calumny when he pulverized Chechnya and bombed Grozny into submission in 1999; invaded Georgia and Russianize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two segments of Georgia; invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea in 2014, installing Russian soldiers in disguise in the eastern sectors of the sovereign nation; and sent regiments and aircraft into Syria to shore up the tottering reign of President Bashar al-Assad, bombing Aleppo indiscriminately in 2015. He got away with these Soviet-style depredations both in the courts of Russian popular opinion, where dissent is punished, and in the forums of world opinion, where the leaders of the free world noted their displeasure, imposed some sanctions, but otherwise did too little.
His callous invasion of Ukraine finally emboldened the countries of NATO, if not NATO officially, to respond and to attempt to give the valiant defenders of Ukraine the moral, military, and supply support that pushed the seemingly hapless Russia armored detachments out of Kyiv and now, according to British and other reports, out of Kharkiv.
However the war for Ukraine develops during the coming weeks and months, Putin’s invasion successfully achieved exactly what Putin claimed he feared most, and wanted ferociously to avoid – the hardening of NATO against mother Russia. First, the invasion unified NATO. President Biden rapidly undid or smoothed over the damage that Trump had wreaked by denigrating NATO (and pandering to Putin). Germany rose to the occasion and promised to spend more on its armed contributions to the alliance. France’s President Emmanuel Macron also backed NATO after earlier wanting to create a special European force. Even Turkey, with the largest number of troops among NATO nations, cooperated. So did former Soviet satellites like Bulgaria and Romania. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Croatia have been particularly active, along with Poland and the tiny Baltic Republics.
Putin’s invasion did two more memorable things. It frightened Finland and Sweden out of 200 years of neutrality. Finland shares an 810-mile border with Russia and fought two bruising wars against the Bolsheviks in 1918 and the Soviet Union in 1939-1940. Its presidents were long skillful in keeping the big Soviet bear off Finland’s back by being usefully neutral.
Sweden has no border with Russia, but in recent months and years, Russian submarines have threatened its Baltic shores, and even Stockholm. Russian jet fighters soar near and sometimes through Swedish airspace. Sweden’s Gotland, an island 63 miles off the Swedish mainland opposite Latvia, and 119 miles southeast of Stockholm, helps to guard the exit to the Baltic Sea and sits only 214 miles from Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave port on the Baltic. Part of Russia’s fleet and lots of missiles are based there, easily menacing Gotland. Lithuania thinks that nuclear weapons are already held in Kaliningrad.
In the case of both Finland and Sweden, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “fundamentally” altered the security horizons of both Nordic nations. In other words – although the prime ministers of both countries were careful to avoid saying so – those two paragons of virtue (among the least corrupt countries in the world) are frightened. They are justifiably anxious about how Putin might lash out against them in desperation if his army continues to falter in Ukraine. They are both exposed to a Russian assault, especially Finland.
In neither case has abandoning neutrality been easy. But Finland’s decision responds in part to a decisive turn public opinion, from only 20 percent in favor of joining NATO in 2021 to 80 percent seeking to join NATO now, since the invasion of Ukraine. As Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told Putin by telephone, his country “needs to take care of the practical questions arising from being a neighbor of Russia in a correct and professional manner.” (New York Times, Sunday)
The Swedish poll numbers are less lop-sided, and the ruling Social Democratic Party was originally hesitating, but Sweden’s people are much farther ahead than their political leaders in approving an accession to NATO. Sweden may also benefit economically by abandoning neutrality. Several of its major industrial concerns, such as Saab and Bofors, specialize in supplying combat weapons and aircraft to parties at war.
As a measure of Nordic anxiety, both Sweden and Finland have asked for and received security guarantees from the West, especially from Washington and London as well as NATO for the interim period of about a year when they will be candidate members of NATO without being fully protected by Article 5 of the NATO founding document. Article 5 pledges the support of NATO and all of its members if any constituent country is attacked by a hostile power, i.e. by Putin’s Russia.
If any of Russia’s generals, securocrats, and political makers and breakers are paying attention, they will easily be aware that Putin’s army is both suffering, falling far short of its original bulls-eye objective, and compelling even the unthinkable -- Finnish and Swedish adherence to NATO. They are the new jewels in the anti-Putin crown of a Europe newly aroused, newly mobilized and motivated, and newly ready to cope with hostile autocratic pretensions.