Sina Azodi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a PhD candidate in International Affairs at University of South Florida. Arman Mahmoudian is a lecturer of Russian and Middle Eastern Studies and a Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and International affairs at the University of South Florida (USF).
The West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was swift and decisive.
Shortly after the Russian invasion, the United States barred Russia from making debt payments using foreign currency held in U.S. banks, increasing the risk for Russia to default on its debts. In addition, seven Russian banks have been excluded from the SWIFT international messaging system, which facilitates financial transactions and payments.
These sanctions were the “largest sanctions package in [the] Union’s history,” according to Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.
To remedy the impact of sanctions on its economy, Russia has expedited cooperation with its partners, including China, India, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, to create a parallel financial system to the Western-dominated institutions. In doing so, Russia is pursuing two main objectives. In the short term, Moscow’s goal is to replace Western markets by expanding its petroleum exports to India and China, which are seemingly more reliable trade partners. The ultimate objective, however, is to create a system in which Russia and its partners can circumvent Western economic dominance.
The practicality and effectiveness of such a system remains to be seen.
The creation of a new financial system has been on Russia’s agenda for years. In fact, from the early days of the post-Soviet Union, Moscow has been trying to establish a common market with the USSR’s former republics. In this vein, the 1991 “Commonwealth of the Independent States,” an intergovernmental organization between eastern European and Central Asian nations, was created to encourage financial cooperation and mutual trade. This resulted in the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, or EEU, in 2014, a supranational institution that integrated the market of five countries – Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – into a single market.
Nevertheless, during this period, Russia remained more interested in creating a “financial hub” of its own rather than creating a “financial zone” parallel to the Western system. However, the U.S.-backed sanctions on Russia that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 demonstrated Moscow’s vulnerabilities. It is noteworthy that as a result of sanctions, the Russian currency, the rouble, depreciated by 100 percent.
This helps explain why, shortly after the annexation of Crimea, Russia began adopting its “Fortress Russia” strategy designed to detach its economy from the Western-dominated financial system and diversify its economy. Two important measures bear noting here. The System for Transfer of Financial Messages (Sisteme Peredachi Finansovykh Soobshchenii) was devised in 2014 as a Russian equivalent of the SWIFT system and was designed to reduce the risk of sanctions imposed on Russian businesses and banks.
Despite Russian declarations on the effectiveness of this system, however, SPFS has suffered from a number of shortcomings, including high transaction costs, system availability, and security requirements, which have undermined its reliability and usefulness.
Meanwhile, the MIR payment system initiated by the Russian Central Bank in 2017 is meant to serve as an alternative to the U.S.-based Visa and MasterCard. MIR has already been accepted in 11 other countries. In addition, Russia has accelerated its efforts to de-dollarize bilateral trade with friendly countries such as China, Iran and India, and has been actively redirecting its petrol exports from West to East to turn Asia into the “default market” for Russian oil.
A number of regional powers have also sought to detach their economies from the Western financial system. Since 2014, Russia and China have been strengthening their partnership. To shield their financial cooperation from potential U.S. sanctions, both nations have sought to eliminate the U.S. dollar from their trade with considerable success. It is noteworthy that in 2020, only 41.5 percent of bilateral trade has been settled in Dollars, while in 2015, 91 percent of bilateral exchanges were settled in U.S. currency.
Meanwhile, Sino-Russian cooperation entered a new stage in December 2021 when Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping held a video conference and jointly pledged to escalate bilateral efforts to set up an independent trade network to reduce their reliance on the U.S.-led international financial system. The Putin-Xi commitment was followed by the Bank of China’s decision to join the Russian SPFS in 2022. However, the Bank of China is the only non-Russian member of the SPFS, and China has not encouraged other banks to join it.
India is another potential candidate for the Russian initiative. In fact, since 2019, New Delhi has been expressing its interest in joining the SPFS and replacing the dollar with rupee-rubles transactions. The evidence suggests that both nations have made significant progress in achieving this goal, given that the use of rupee-rubles in bilateral transactions has quintupled.
The other prospective candidate for the Russia-proposed financial system is Iran, whose economy has been subject to suffocating sanctions for a decade. Iranian banks were cut off from the SWIFT system in 2012 as a result of U.S. sanctions. While Iranian banks briefly rejoined the system in the aftermath of the 2015 signing of the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), they were disconnected again as a result of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement two years later.
It is therefore no surprise that Tehran would also be interested in joining the Russian-led initiative. In this context, Mehdi Safari, Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy, told Sputnik in July 2022 that the two countries should de-dollarize their trade and build a similar system to SWIFT.
Notwithstanding the efforts to circumvent Western financial institutions, the Russian system has yet to prove effective, due to a number of factors. The number of countries willing to join or cooperate with the Russian led financial system is limited. It is noteworthy that while Turkish banks had previously adopted the MIR, they have since dropped it under pressure from the U.S. and European authorities. The Egyptians, just a few days ago, did too.
Additionally, some of the prospects for increased Russian cooperation on the financial side have more trade with the U.S. than Russia. It bears noting that China is a top trade partner for the U.S. with $521 billion worth of exports headed to the U.S. market in 2021. Meanwhile, the Chinese exports to Russia stood at $59 billion. Similarly, India’s top trade partner is the United States, and about 18.1 percent of India’s exports in 2021, worth $71 billion, were purchased by Americans, while Russia is not even among India’s top 25 trade partners.
Therefore, it would neither be practical nor feasible for India or China to trade with Russia, at the cost of antagonizing the U.S. In the Iranian case, notwithstanding the growing political and military ties between the two countries, Iran and Russia not only don’t have a compatible economy, but they are natural competitors. Both nations are oil exporting countries, seeking to grow their markets. In fact, Russia is already competing with Iran over the Chinese and Indian markets by offering oil at a discounted price.
Given the challenges discussed, and ongoing uncertainties over the readiness of other major powers to implement the Russian system, the future and effectiveness of the “fortress Russia” strategy remains unclear.
For the moment, the weaponization of sanctions as a tool of punishment has indeed created incentives for some nations to cooperate with the West. But while American dominance over the financial markets have stymied the Kremlin’s efforts to establish a parallel system, evidence suggests that dynamics are shifting as more countries are conscious of their vulnerabilities.
As the world moves toward a multipolar reality, there may be a time when alternatives are much more preferable to the U.S. dominated system. Indeed, the West should be concerned about China’s future actions, as Beijing is expanding its gigantic industrial and commercial capabilities at home and abroad. If it chooses to move closer to Russia in its quest to forge a new path, the U.S. may soon feel its own vulnerabilities in this realm.
Mr President, you took part in the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia yesterday, and the creation of a new international organisation was announced yesterday as well. How do you assess these plans and what purpose do they serve?
Vladimir Putin: We asked ourselves this question back when this organisation was being created 30 years ago, I think, and it appeared back then there was plenty of all sorts of other tools that could be used to compare notes on security issues. However, we realised today that this is not so, and these additional tools are needed and must be improved, especially for the Asian region.
This entity is the brainchild of First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. He is no longer active in this capacity, but the entity is alive, and Kazakhstan has proposed creating an organisation on its basis.
As a reminder, the OSCE was formed along the same lines and started out as a forum for discussing European security issues and then became an organisation.
I think this is the right thing to do, since there are many threats in Europe and Asia alike. I will not go over all of them, I am sure you know all about it.
So, in my opinion, it is an important and timely decision, and all the participants supported it.
Alexei Lazurenko: Good afternoon.
Alexei Lazurenko, Izvestia.
The first Russia–Central Asia Forum has ended just moments ago. Do you think Central Asian countries are still interested in Russia like before?
Vladimir Putin: I think they are even more interested now. Of course, our trade is growing and much faster than in previous years, for understandable reasons. I do not think I need to elaborate.
We are developing new logistics chains, many of which are running across this region. The regional countries are interested in this. And lastly, new opportunities for cooperation and for developing our own competencies are being created.
We are looking for ways to revive some enterprises which were shut down recently; we can do this on a fundamentally new technological basis, including in Central Asia, which would be interesting both for us and for our partners. This is the first point.
The second is that we need to decide how to do this, for example, in the financial sphere and services, transitioning to national currencies, the volumes involved, what exactly should be done, and how to organise the transfer of financial information. There are many specific issues which our Central Asian partners are certainly interested in.
That is quite apart from security issues, the fight against terrorism and, for example, the situation in Afghanistan. Yes, we discuss this at the CSTO and CIS platforms, but these issues concern above all the Central Asian republics. Therefore, we could use a separate format, which we need, in principle.
And lastly, as I said, we are working with our partners and allies at the bilateral level, but when we meet in such formats as today, five [Central Asian] countries plus Russia, we do not look at the issues on the agenda from a bilateral angle but, as I noted today, try to look for projects and spheres of cooperation that will be of interest to the region as a whole. The issue may be the same, but we look at it from a different angle that may be of interest to all of us. This is the next point.
And one more thing. For example, our colleague from Turkmenistan [President Serdar Berdimuhamedov] said that cooperation with Russia in a multilateral, Central Asian format was very important for Central Asian states, which have no access to the world’s oceans, and allows us to look together for such opportunities and channels. We are developing several projects with our other partners, which are interesting for us as well. It is very important, interesting and appropriate now to bring all this together.
Pavel Minakov: Good evening, Interfax Agency.
It is no secret that some countries within the post-Soviet space are apprehensive about the events unfolding in Ukraine. You met with your colleagues during the CIS summit and spoke informally with them. What are your impressions: amid the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine, has unity in the CIS got stronger, remained the same, or are there any negative trends underway?
Vladimir Putin: No. As you can see, all this is going on, all the formats are working, which means they are important, and our allies, our partners want to use these formats in their work. Nothing has changed in this regard.
However, we are paying attention to events related to Azerbaijan-Armenia relations and to what is going on between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. We are well aware of all that. Of course, our partners are interested and concerned about the future of Russia-Ukraine relations. True, this is being discussed, and there is nothing unusual about it. I brief our partners in detail about it and make our point of view clear to them. But this does not in any way affect the nature, the quality, or the depth of Russia’s relations with these countries.
Please go ahead.
Yuliya Bubnova: Good afternoon.
Yuliya Bubnova, TASS agency.
You held a meeting with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan yesterday. How did it go and what are the outcomes? Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: It was a constructive meeting. No doubt, when relations are in a fairly hot phase, finding common ground is not easy, but I think we succeeded in doing so. At least, we have agreed that no effort would be spared to prevent the resumption of hostilities. This is my first point.
Second, importantly, the parties will take every step necessary to have the refugees return home.
Third, and also significant – without claiming to play any mediating role (although, truth be told, we were asked to do so), we agreed that both sides would make the corresponding documents and their vision for resolving this issue available to us, and we will assess their proposals and use the documents at our disposal to find a solution, which could be the basis for reaching potential agreements. What I am saying is that Moscow might have access to more reliable information about the borders between the republics than the republics themselves. We will go over these documents and the maps, and then look for a solution in cooperation with our colleagues.
So, the meeting was useful overall.
Please go ahead.
Pavel Zarubin: Good evening,
Pavel Zarubin, Rossiya TV channel.
I have a question that many people are now pondering in Russia.
I think the role of Germany in the conflict in Ukraine has not been discussed well enough. If Chancellor Merkel took a rather reserved position, Mr Scholtz has gone rogue, so to speak. Suddenly, Germany has forgotten with amazing ease what Russia did for the unification of the German people and did not think twice before turning over some very difficult pages of the reconciliation of the two nations, and now we are seeing what was unthinkable before –Russian people are again being killed by German weapons.
You are an expert on Germany. How can you explain what is happening, and how will this affect Russia-Germany relations in the future?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: This is the choice of the people who legally came to power in a particular country, Germany in this case. They must decide themselves what is more important for them – to fulfil allied commitments, as they understand them, or to ensure the interests of their own people, their national interests.
Judging by what you said, in this case the Federal Republic has prioritised its allied commitments in NATO. Is this right or wrong? I think this is a mistake, and businesses, the economy, and the people of Germany are paying for it because it has adverse economic consequences for the Eurozone in general and the Federal Republic in particular.
However, it looks like hardly anyone takes into account its interests or else the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 would not have been detonated. Although they were not operational, they still provided an element of reliability – they could be switched on in the worst-case scenario. But this is no longer possible. Although there is a line that still seems to be in working condition, as I said in Moscow, but a decision has not been made and is unlikely to be made. But this is no longer up to us. This is up to our partners.
As for the ideas that guide the leaders of different states, this is their own business. I have set forth my version. I think it explains the gist of the problem.
Go ahead.
Maria Finoshina: Maria Finoshina, RT International.
Good evening, Mr President,
Before your trip to Kazakhstan, you met with the President of the United Arab Emirates and then with the President of Turkiye here in Astana. In what way was the situation in Ukraine discussed during these meetings? Perhaps, the leaders of these countries shared with you their insight into Kiev’s exclusive position that they are privy to?
According to the Turkish media, Ankara is trying to set up talks between Moscow and Western countries – the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany – in Istanbul. How realistic is the idea of holding this meeting today? If it takes place, how effective will it be without Kiev at the table? Does the idea to involve China and India in these talks seem plausible to you?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: We are aware that President Erdogan has played a fairly significant role in resolving a number of issues, including exchanges. He was personally involved in this work, and, as we know, got results. We are grateful to him, because we got our servicemen, including officers, back. This is my first point.
Second, he was deeply involved in organising grain exports from Ukraine. Unfortunately, this grain is not being shipped – or small amounts of it are shipped – to the poorest countries under the UN programme, but that is a different matter. I discussed it with him as well. During our talks yesterday he was in favour of structuring the grain flows and shipping grain primarily to the poorest countries. This is up to the UN Secretary-General. I am aware that he is working on it, but not everything is working out for him, either.
The United Arab Emirates are also willing to act as mediators, and the President of the United Arab Emirates is working on it, including humanitarian issues, exchanges, and so on, and not without success, for which we are also grateful to him.
India and China always talk about the importance of dialogue and peaceful resolution. We are aware of their stance. They are our close allies and partners, and we respect their position.
But we are also aware of Kiev’s position – they kept saying they wanted talks, and even sort of asked for them, but have now passed an official decision that bans such talks. Well, what is there to discuss?
As you may be aware, speaking at the Kremlin when announcing the decision on the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, I said we are open. We have always said that we are open. We reached certain agreements in Istanbul, after all. These agreements were almost initialled. But as soon as our troops withdrew from Kiev, the Kiev authorities lost any interest in the talks. That is all there is to it.
If they ever get ready for this, we will welcome it. At that point, the mediation efforts of all the stakeholders may come in handy.
Please go ahead.
Ilya Yezhov: Ilya Yezhov, Vesti FM and Mayak radio stations.
Continuing with international topics: Mr President, is there any certainty about your trip to the G20 summit in Indonesia? And if so, if you were to go there, would you be willing to hold talks with US President Joe Biden?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: You will have to ask him if he is ready for such talks as well. To be honest, I do not see the need for it. By and large, there is no platform for any kind of negotiations at this point.
The question of my going there is not decided yet. But Russia will certainly take part in this work, and we will think over the format of it. At this stage there is no question of direct talks with any of the G20 members, since we are in constant contact with some of them, as you know. We just talked about the position of Turkiye and the Turkish President – Turkiye is also part of the G20, and we are in constant contact with him, as well as with some of our colleagues. We have not discussed such issues with the President of the United States.
Please.
Konstantin Panyushkin: Good afternoon!
Konstantin Panyushkin, Channel One.
The Federal Security Service reported the other day that the explosive device that went off on the Crimean bridge was originally shipped by sea, apparently by cargo ship, from Odessa.
How will this fact affect Russia’s stance on cargo shipping from Ukrainian ports: will we, perhaps, obstruct it now? And most importantly, as for the grain deal, because after all, the agreement was to export grain, not explosive devices. Won’t this terrorist act ruin the grain deal?
Vladimir Putin: The Federal Security Service has stated that this so-called cargo, or more precisely, explosives, was probably sent by sea from Odessa, but it is not clear whether this was done with the help of grain carriers or not. This is a question, the answer to which is not yet available.
But if it turns out that humanitarian corridors for grain shipments to the poorest countries (although it does not go there, but this work was organised under that pretext) were used to commit terrorist acts, then of course this would raise a big question about the continued functioning of that corridor. But so far we have no such information.
Konstantin Panyushkin: Is a possible Russian response being worked out?
Vladimir Putin: You know what, the answer is simple: we can just shut it down and call it a day. But we must first find out for sure. There is no such information.
Please.
Alexander Yunashev: Good afternoon, Mr President.
Alexander Yunashev, Life.
Several days ago, a man was fined in Moscow for listening to Ukrainian music. This seems like a clear case of overkill, because soon the film “Only ”Old Men“ Are Going Into Battle” can be banned, because there are Ukrainian motifs there, and Gogol.
After all, just because Nazis listen to folk songs doesn’t mean the songs themselves become Nazi, what do you think? And what should the attitude to Ukrainian culture be now?
Vladimir Putin: I think we are constantly indignant at attempts to shut down Russian culture, to cancel it, and it is completely absurd. As one of our musicians said: ”Such fools.” But we must not behave in the same way. That’s first.
Second, Ukrainian is one of the official languages in Crimea. In one of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, Crimea, Ukrainian is an official language, along with Crimean Tatar and Russian. So it would be illegitimate in its own right.
Third, I think there are about three million citizens of the Russian Federation permanently residing here who are Ukrainians. How can we ban their language and culture? It is unthinkable for us.
And so I understand what this is connected with: it all has to do with the emotions of the moment. But I think that many of our families know, listen to and love Ukrainian songs and Ukrainian culture. Back in the Soviet Union, hits sung in Ukrainian were very popular. And I think that we should not be like those who, as I said at the beginning, answering your question, cancel any culture. Culture has nothing to do it.
If the current leadership in Kiev considers it possible to support neo-Nazis and support torchlight processions in the centre of their large cities, as well as people who walk around with Nazi symbols, this has nothing to do with Ukrainian culture.
Please.
Lyubov Lezhneva: Good afternoon,
Lyubov Lezhneva, Izvestia.
I have a question about mobilisation. You have already said that there are many associated problems, and now many companies do not understand which employees will be mobilised.
I would like to ask you if there will be another wave of mobilisation. Will there be total mobilisation. Is the figure of 300,000 people mentioned by the Defence Minister still up to date or not?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: To begin with, the Defence Ministry initially planned a smaller figure – not 300,000 people. This is the first point.
Second, nothing is planned additionally. The Defence Ministry has made no proposals about this and I don’t see any need for it in the foreseeable future.
As for the mess I mentioned, it is linked with old forms of accounting, which have not been updated for decades. The quality of these papers became clear only with the start of mobilisation. This database is now being updated and modernised and will be as accurate as possible. So I think the quality of this work will be improved as well.
That said I must note that this work is already ending. Now there are already 222,000 mobilised troops out of 300,000 people. I believe all mobilisation activities will be completed in about two weeks.
Go ahead, please.
Alexei Golovko: Alexei Golovko from the Rossiya. Vesti channel.
To continue the same subject. We are in Kazakhstan now. We know that there are very many people here who left after the announcement of partial mobilisation. There is a certain number of them in neighbouring countries as well.
Different things are said about them in Russia. Some people call them traitors and there were even proposals in the State Duma to impound their cars. What is your personal view of the people who left the country after September 21?
Vladimir Putin: I would prefer to base my assessment on the law, not emotion. It is necessary in each case to consider the legal implications of the actions of a specific citizen. Some left because they are scared of something, others because they want to evade mobilisation and still others for some other considerations. It is necessary to give a legal assessment in each case and take action with regard to each individual on these grounds alone. I believe it is impossible to act in any other way.
Go ahead, please.
Gleb Ivanov: Thank you very much.
Gleb Ivanov, Argumenty i Fakty.
Mr President, a follow-up question about mobilisation. The first deaths of mobilised soldiers have been reported. The Chelyabinsk Region authorities said several mobilised men had died. A Moscow Government employee who was mobilised on September 23 is being buried in Moscow today. He had no military training or military experience.
The question is: how is this possible? When the partial mobilisation was announced, it was said that all those mobilised would undergo mandatory military training. How did people end up on the frontline and die before even three weeks had passed since the mobilisation was announced? What do you think about the mobilisation process?
One more question, if I may, about the Crimean Bridge. After the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge, what can you say about the security measures at strategic infrastructure facilities like railway stations, airports, gas pipelines, or power plants? Are we able to protect them?
Thank you.
Vladimir Putin: With regard to mobilisation, I can only reiterate what I said earlier. The line of contact is 1,100 kilometres long, and it is practically impossible to hold it exclusively with the contract soldiers, especially since they are taking part in offensive operations. This is the reason for mobilisation. This is my first point.
Second, all citizens who are called up as part of the mobilisation must undergo training which is provided as follows. I said that 222,000 people are now in the army, more precisely, the formation units, where they receive initial training that lasts from five to 10 days. Then, depending on the military specialty, they go to combat units for training for a period of five to 15 days. The next step is training with troops involved in combat operations, where they undergo joint combat training.
If you look at it from the time the mobilisation started to the present day, in principle, looking at the minimum values, in general, this is possible. And it is not only possible. Like I said, 222,000 are in the formation troops, 33,000 mobilised men are already in the units, and 16,000 men are in the units involved in combat missions.
Since questions like you just asked still arise, I will instruct the Security Council additionally. There are former Defence Ministry employees with extensive experience on the Council. They are good at what they do; they are high-level specialists. I will instruct them to inspect the training process for mobilised citizens.
With regard to security, after the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge, the relevant services were tasked with stepping up monitoring in order to ensure the safety of critical infrastructure, and corresponding measures must be taken at all of them, including energy facilities of different levels and classes and at transport facilities. Our country is vast, so let us hope that the efforts in this area are effective. So far, we have managed successfully.
Please go ahead.
Andrei Kolesnikov: Kommersant daily.
Do you think Ukraine will be able to exist as a state after all this? What about Russia?
And a second question, Mr President. You don’t regret anything do you?
Vladimir Putin: No.
I want everyone to understand. What is happening today is unpleasant, putting it mildly, but we would have got the same thing a bit later but in worse conditions for us, that’s all.
So my actions were the right ones at the right time.
Andrei Kolesnikov: And what about my first question?
Vladimir Putin: Whether Ukraine will exist?
Andrei Kolesnikov: Will Ukraine be able to exist as a state? Will Russia?
Vladimir Putin: But we did not set ourselves the aim of destroying Ukraine. Certainly not.
Meanwhile, at one point they suddenly switched off water in Crimea where 2.5 million people live, 2.4 million to be precise. Troops had to enter and switch on the water for Crimea. This is simply an example of the logic behind our actions. If they had not taken this action there would have been no counteraction.
The bridge was blown up. Now we have to think hard. How important is it for the Russian Federation to ensure that Crimea is connected by land? Do you understand?
Pavel Zarubin: After the act of terror on the Crimean Bridge, massive strikes were launched on Ukrainian territory. Were they effective, and are more likely in the future?
Vladimir Putin: There is no need for massive strikes now. Other tasks are on the agenda because I think out of the 29 targets the Defence Ministry had planned to hit, only seven were not. But now they are dealing with them gradually. There is no need for massive strikes, at least for now. As for the future, we’ll see.
Is that all? Now the final question.
Sergei Dianov: Thank you very much.
Sergei Dianov, RIA Novosti.
NATO officials are saying explicitly that Ukraine’s defeat would mean the alliance’s defeat. Do you think NATO will send troops into Ukraine if the situation on the battlefield becomes disastrous for Kiev?
Vladimir Putin: You know this is a question of concepts, of legal technicalities. What does Ukraine’s defeat mean? It is open to interpretation. The fact that Crimea became a Russian region in 2014, is that defeat or what? It is necessary to understand what it is.
But in any event, sending troops into direct engagement, a direct clash with the Russian Army is a very dangerous step that could lead to a global catastrophe. I hope those who talk about this will be smart enough not to undertake such dangerous steps.
The war in Ukraine increasingly poses dangers for the entire world. Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear blackmail last week were met by hawkish Western media commentators and NATO leaders who have been insisting that the pursuit of anything less than total victory in Ukraine would mean giving in to nuclear blackmail.
For insight on the logic of past nuclear confrontations and the lessons for Ukraine today, Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic spoke to George Beebe, a longtime US intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor on Russia who today serves as director of grand strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Beebe spoke about the growing danger that mistakes and miscalculations by leaders on either side could unleash an escalatory spiral, and explained how in the Cold War, each side routinely “gave in” to the other side’s “nuclear blackmail,” but in doing so actually helped establish important norms that prevented subsequent crises from going nuclear.
BRANKO MARCETIC How alarmed should we be at what’s happening? Is there enough concern among the public, among lawmakers and officials, and other relevant stakeholders?
GEORGE BEEBE I am quite alarmed, and I think that the American people and the world are quite alarmed at the situation as it’s been evolving. To a great degree I think Americans have lost their fear of nuclear war in the post–Cold War period. I think at least subconsciously we’ve come to believe that’s an old problem, that that’s something we overcame with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. People have moved on and we don’t need to worry about that. It seems very much a thing of the past.
But in fact, the dangers of escalation to nuclear levels have gone up, not down, over the past several years. In part, that’s because we’ve become cavalier about these dangers. In part, it’s because a number of the guardrails we established in the Cold War period to manage the dangers of that kind of escalation have gone away. And finally, the most important thing, in times of crisis during that Cold War period there was direct communication between Washington and Moscow to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, to minimize dangers of misperception. We don’t have that dialogue right now. Essentially, the two sides are almost not talking to one another at all. We don’t have the kind of back channel communication that allowed [John F.] Kennedy and [Nikita] Khrushchev to find a way out of the Cuban missile crisis.
The counterpart to Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador during the Cuban missile crisis, is Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, and he is almost persona non grata in Washington. We have a serious problem right now, the kinds of things that are necessary to prevent escalation are not in place.
BRANKO MARCETIC Why is this dialogue not happening? Is it political pressures or something else?
GEORGE BEEBE There have been a lot of reasons that have combined to produce this situation that we’re in. One of them is that the United States fell out of the habit of diplomatic give-and-take during the post–Cold War period. There was no peer power we faced in the world. We were not just a unipolar power, but no one else even approached the degree of military and economic might the United States had in the aftermath of the Soviet demise. We didn’t think we really had to strike bargains, we didn’t think we had to compromise with other countries. What we tended to do was to tell them what they were going to do and when they balked, our response was, “or else.” As a result, we lost the diplomatic skills that would normally be required in a world order where there is more of a balance.
Another factor is that Russia became a domestic political issue, not a foreign policy issue, in the United States. I don’t need to go into all the particulars of why that happened, I’ll just simply state that as a fact. That’s hindered our ability and willingness to engage in dialogue with Russia.
The third factor is a belief that the problem that we’re dealing with is a deterrence problem. It’s like dealing with [Adolf] Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s and we’ve all become convinced that the best way to deal with Russia is not to appease, but to stand up, to show them we’ll fight, that we’re going to stand tall and tough, and that when Russia understands what it’s up against it will back down.
I don’t think that’s the nature of the problem we’re dealing with, honestly. We’re dealing with much more of an escalatory spiral problem, and when you deal with a spiral in that way, it actually exacerbates the situation. And that’s what I think has been going on for several years now, and it’s now reached the point where it’s acutely dangerous.
BRANKO MARCETIC What are the dangers currently? Both sides seem like they’re keen to avoid a nuclear war, but does that actually matter?
GEORGE BEEBE I do think you’re right, both sides do want to avoid nuclear war. Any sane actor would, and I still think both the United States and Russia are rational actors, more or less, in all this.
But the situation has escalated and can continue to escalate even though both sides don’t want to see this reach a crisis. And there are several ways that can happen. One is by accident, and the longer the war goes on, and the more deeply entangled the United States becomes in all of this, and it’s essentially a combatant in every way but having large numbers of troops on the ground in Ukraine right now — when you’re in that situation, the chances of accident are quite high.
The other ways that this could escalate would be through the logic of what’s going on on the battlefield. Putin could come to believe that Western intelligence and military support to Ukraine has become so instrumental in Ukraine’s battlefield successes that he could decide he has no choice but to attack that support. So far he has refrained from doing that. He has attempted on a relatively limited scale to interdict the Western military supplies going to the Ukrainian front lines. He’s not really done so on a large scale. He has certainly not attacked the sources of that support inside NATO states themselves. So that’s a step he could feel compelled to take, not because he wants escalation to some sort of nuclear confrontation, but because he might feel the alternative to that might be defeat, and I don’t think he’s at all willing to contemplate defeat in this situation.
Another possibility is that he also could become convinced that NATO plans to attack Russia, and he could act preemptively. The other possibility is that as things go bad on the battlefield for the Russians, this translates into greater and greater domestic instability inside Russia itself. Putin has long been primed to believe that sort of instability is what the United States wants to see and is in fact stoking, and that could result in a perception on Putin’s part that this instability is inspired by and fueled by the United States, and that could lead him to retaliate in what he sees as self-defense.
BRANKO MARCETIC Let’s say that the United States and Russia got into a direct conflict — for example, if the United States responded to some Russian escalation by launching a conventional strike inside Russia or by trying to assassinate Putin. How long would a conflict like this stay nonnuclear?
GEORGE BEEBE I think if that sort of scenario started to unfold in the way you describe, that would quickly escalate into strategic nuclear levels, the reason being, the Russian nuclear deterrent is meant to deter existential threats to the Russian federation, regardless of whether those are nuclear or conventional threats. And unlike the Cold War period, when really the only weapons that could pose some sort of strategic threat to the survival of either the United States or the Soviet Union — in that era it was only nuclear weapons that could do that sort of thing — that’s not true today. Today, conventional weapons can, through their precision targeting and their explosive potential, pose the kinds of threats that only nuclear missiles used to pose.
So if the United States mounts the kind of attack you’re talking about, I think the Russians would have no choice from their perspective to retaliate, and since they don’t have the arsenal of conventional weapons to match ours, I think they’d have to go nuclear to retaliate. What you’re describing is a formula for rapid escalation to a strategic nuclear conflict.
BRANKO MARCETIC What would that actually mean in practice, a nuclear war between the United States and Russia?
GEORGE BEEBE It would be very hard to keep it limited. Each side would quickly believe that it was in some sort of use-it-or-lose-it scenario. When you see an attack on the way, strikes are being detected by your strategic warning system, most likely each of the leaders involved, the US and Russian presidents, would not be content to wait to see whether those strikes would take out our retaliatory capability. What each side would very quickly believe, is that the best way to limit the damage to its side is to try to take out as many of the other missiles as possible as quickly as possible, so they can’t be used. So your incentives at that point are to go big, not to sit and wait and hope that the other side is conducting some sort of demonstration strike.
It would be a very difficult thing to handle, and with very little time to make decisions. These weapons can reach the other side in a matter of minutes. You’ve got maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes, maybe less depending on what systems are being used to make fundamental decisions. It’s just an extremely unstable crisis situation. The amount of damage something like that could cause is almost unimaginable for people. It would certainly destroy most of the United States and Russia, and almost certainly all of Europe, and it would cause grave secondary effects on the rest of the world in terms of weather, food supply, and all kinds of things. It would absolutely merit the term catastrophe.
BRANKO MARCETIC You’ve written about the danger of misreading the motivations and intentions of foreign leadership, and you’ve pointed to how the United States did so regarding Imperial Japan in World War II. Can you elaborate on that and explain how it applies to today?
GEORGE BEEBE What happened with Imperial Japan in the run-up to World War II is the United States was quite concerned by Japanese expansion in Asia during the 1930s. We became convinced this posed a grave threat to US security, and I think quite rightly, but what we attempted to do was use economic sanctions that were quite draconian, that essentially cut Japan off from its ability to have vital supplies of strategic resources, including oil, in the belief that that sort of coercion could cause the Japanese to reconsider the costs and benefits of their aggression in Asia.
What happened instead was the Japanese came to believe they were in an untenable situation, that this kind of pressure economically coupled with the potential of being encircled by hostile states, including the United States, the Soviet Union, and a revived China, was simply an unacceptable situation. They thought Japan’s survival was at stake. The United States believed in that period that Japan would retaliate in some way, but they expected it to be a somewhat limited retaliation, probably in Southeast Asia. They didn’t expect a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. That was simply too much of a roll of the dice to believe a rational actor would undertake.
One of the lessons we ultimately drew from all this was that we didn’t realize the degree to which the Japanese regarded their situation as a life-and-death matter, that they felt pressed against the wall and had no choice but to retaliate in a way the United States thought was highly risky.
I think the analogy for us today with the Russians is that, like Japan in the lead-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Russians think that what they have at stake in Ukraine is existential, that unless they defend what they perceive as a vital redline there, that Russia’s existence is at stake. And when states feel that way, they can do things that appear quite reckless to outsiders. I think that’s what we’re dealing with here with Russia. It’s a state that increasingly feels cornered and desperate, and so is doing things that appear to outsiders as enormously reckless and quite aggressive.
How you deal with that is different to the way you deal with a Nazi Germany. You’re going to have to find some way of compromising. There has to be a diplomatic exit to all this, because the alternative is you’re going to be in a direct war with a nuclear power. Had Japan or Nazi Germany had nuclear weapons in World War II, those conflicts would’ve ended in a much different way than they did.
BRANKO MARCETIC Are there enough voices, or enough pressure, in the United States and other NATO states calling for diplomacy and making that a viable political option — at least some sort of dialogue with Russia in the direction of de-escalation?
GEORGE BEEBE I think there is very little political pressure in the West right now on any of the governments involved to find some sort of diplomatic solution to this problem. That does not mean the general publics in Western states don’t favor it. Quincy sponsored a poll that suggests very strongly that American people on balance believe the United States should be supporting Ukraine’s legitimate self-defense, but also, we need diplomatic efforts to find our way out of this war. The two are not incompatible, and in fact, I would argue that both of those elements have to be present and working together in a complementary way to produce a successful resolution to this war.
But I think there is a gap, and has been, between foreign policy elites in the United States and the American people more broadly, and increasingly, the interests of the American people and the desires of the majority of voters have been having very little effect on the foreign policy behavior of the Washington establishment, and I think that’s going to have to change.
BRANKO MARCETIC The counterargument right now is that Putin won’t negotiate, and that all the sides are now too dug in anyway, so it’s useless to call for negotiations. What would you say to that?
GEORGE BEEBE I think to some degree that’s true. It wasn’t true at the beginning of this war or the early stages, but increasingly it’s accurate to say Putin is more or less giving up on the possibility of a negotiated settlement, not because he doesn’t want one, but because he believes primarily the United States is opposed to one.
I think we had opportunities before this war to find a compromise, but the United States refused to explore those opportunities. There was I think a serious negotiation effort that took place under Turkish mediation in the early weeks of this war, and it in fact made some substantial progress. The Ukrainians broke off those negotiations. The Russians have accused the United States and Great Britain of having essentially discouraged the Ukrainians from pursuing that peace settlement effort at the time. To a great degree, those opportunities have been lost. It’s going to be very hard right now to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine.
That does not mean, however, that crisis management diplomacy between the United States and Russia is impossible. I think the Russians would like that kind of dialogue to go on. That wouldn’t be about finding some sort of permanent peace settlement in Ukraine that would delineate Ukraine’s borders and all of that, but it would and could focus on preventing further escalation and moving ultimately toward some kind of cease-fire. That kind of effort is both possible and quite necessary right now. It doesn’t depend on Russia and Ukraine trying to work out their differences. It depends on the United States and Russia talking about the larger strategic context for this war, and attempting to put in place some guardrails that prevent this situation from spiraling completely out of control.
BRANKO MARCETIC And what about the issue of giving in to nuclear blackmail? Won’t that, as Timothy Snyder recently argued, create a precedent that makes future war and future nuclear war more likely?
GEORGE BEEBE In short, I think that’s nonsense. The history of the Cold War puts the lie to that belief. The United States and the Soviet Union recognized they were essentially co-hostages with each other in the nuclear era, that the security of one depended on ensuring a degree of security in the other. That you could not have circumstances in which one side clearly triumphed unconditionally over the other side. “Giving in to nuclear blackmail” did not in fact encourage new crises. It helped establish some norms, some of which were formalized, some of which were tacit about what was permissible and what wasn’t.
I’ll give you an example that’s appropriate today: the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This was a situation in which the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a proxy conflict in the Middle East, one that initially had the Israelis on their back foot — they were taken by surprise by the Egyptian and Arab attacks, and the United States put its nuclear forces on alert, in part as a signal to the Soviet Union that should Soviet proxies go too far, the United States was willing to escalate this into a genuine crisis with the Soviet Union.
Then things changed. The Israelis gained the momentum, and threatened to completely rout the Arab and Egyptian forces, and the Soviet Union signaled that they were willing to use nuclear force if things went too far. What happened was both parties, the United States and Soviet Union, restrained their allies in the region. We insisted that the Israelis not proceed with attacks and forego the opportunity to rout the Egyptian forces altogether.
That wasn’t giving in to nuclear blackmail and it did not encourage the Soviet Union to push the boundaries in future crises. In fact it established norms that ensured stability over time. That’s the kind of thing I think we need right now. This belief that the Ukrainians should press on as far and fast as they can, in the hope of not only defeating Russian forces on the battlefield completely, but also creating some sort of cascade effect that’ll result in regime change in Russia is an extremely dangerous belief. It’s likely to provoke retaliation on the Russian part that could in fact escalate to nuclear levels.
BRANKO MARCETIC Anatol Lieven has said that just as the United States has drawn red lines for Russia, we need to do so for Ukraine too. What do you think about that?
GEORGE BEEBE I don’t think the US government should put the security of the American people in the hands of the Ukrainian government. These are decisions about our security that should be made in Washington by Americans. That’s the fundamental point. We shouldn’t surrender agency to the [Volodymyr] Zelensky government on this.
As a matter of simply smart negotiating tactics, we should not threaten preemptively to cut the Ukrainians off, because that would disincentivize the Russians from making the concessions it will be necessary for them to make in any kind of negotiated settlement. Ideally, we should be talking privately to the Ukrainians, saying that we believe we need to find a negotiated settlement. And we should be warning them privately that any attempt to reconquer Crimea — as morally justified as that may be — would very likely spark a nuclear response from Russia and therefore is something the United States government strongly opposes.
September opinion polls in Russia continue to show Putin maintaining high popularity and trust ratings, despite slow progress and significant setbacks such as in Kharkiv. Nevertheless, those ratings have taken a hit in response perhaps to that taken by NordStream, and they are only likely to fall further as a result of October 7th attack on the Crimean bridge. Putin’s best opinion survey performance came in the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM) survey for September, which showed Putin’s approval rating falling from 80 percent before declaration of the partial military mobilization (September 18) to 75 percent in its immediate wake (September 25). The survey registered a fall in trust in Putin from 77 percent to 74 percent. Before the ‘special military operation, Putin’s approval and trust ratings ranged between 58 and 63 percent, according to FOM. Perhaps, most disturbingly, the percentage of Russians who expressed “concern” over developments grew from 35 percent to 69 percent (www.ng.ru/editorial/2022-10-03/2_8555_editorial.html). This latter shift means a fertile field now exists for further downward trending in Putin’s ratings. The Levada Center recorded a decline among survey respondents in Putin’s approval rating from 83 percent in August to 77 percent in September and a decline of respondents who feel Russia is moving in the right direction from 67 to 60 perrcent in the same period (levada.ru). The exception to this new downward trend was in the September 26 – October 2 VTsIOM polling, which found slight boost for Putin’s approval and trust ratings of approximately one percent to around 80 percent (https://wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/reitingi-doverija-politikam-ocenki-raboty-prezidenta-i-pravitelstva-podderzhka-politicheskikh-partii-20221007). It seems to this observer that the first two surveys are more reliable for this general period. Taking into account that this downward trend was registered before the Kerch bridge attack, we can expect perhaps a further decline to come, with the caveat that the damage to the bridge turned out to be relatively limited and failed to cut off the Crimea supply line.
However, in addition to public angst, the Russian patriotic and official intelligentsia is beyond impatient with Putin’s restrained ‘special military operation’ and slow progress on the front. Russian state television channels’ various political talks shows and the social web are now filled with angst over the troops’ slow advance, the withdrawal from Kharkiv, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines’ destruction, and the terrorist attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea with the Russian mainland. For example, during Sunday’s program ‘Evening with Solovev’, one participant argued that the country was on the verge of a wave of repressive reaction from below, as people were beginning to blame less patriotic citizens for any war failure, demanding to know ‘what have you done to bring victory and if nothing then you are not with us but against us. The participant feared that people may soon act in accordance with these feelings, and reprisals could eat the country up. The popular and elite sense is that it is time to take the gloves off, enter the Russian army’s infantry proper (not rely on Chechens, Wagner, and DPR and LNR forces alone) and mount a major combined arms offensive to destroy Ukraine’s civilian and military infrastructure and the Ukrainian army.
