By Dmitri Simes, The American Conservative, 6/13/22

Sanctions against Russia are a blessing in disguise, according toAlexey Butrimov, the general director of BJet, a Russian aviation company. Although he readily admits that the new restrictions have created significant complications for businessmen such as himself, he is confident that in the long-term, they will provide Russia with the much-needed stimulus to revive its long-dormant aviation industry. 

“On the one hand, we look at all the problems caused by sanctions with sadness, but we also understand deep down inside that we can finally resurrect our aviation,” he said. “When times are good, you don’t have much incentive to develop anything quickly. But now that we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t have anything, the only path forward is to build up our own aviation system.” 

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision in late February to send troops into Ukraine, Russia has quickly surpassed longtime pariahs such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria to become the most sanctioned country in the world. Almost overnight, the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia moved to freeze nearly half of Russia’s financial reserves, severely restrict Russia’s access to their financial and technological systems, and ban Russian planes and ships from entering their airspace and ports. Simultaneously, hundreds of multinational corporations have either suspended or downsized their operations in Russia since the start of the conflict. 

The Biden White House has vowed that as a result of these new sanctions, “Russia will very likely lose its status as a major economy, and it will continue a long descent into economic, financial, and technological isolation.” Meanwhile, on the political front, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CBS News in April that sanctions were meant “to make it harder for [Russia] to fuel their war machine,” and thereby overtime help “improve Ukraine’s position at the bargaining table and make an outcome of this war that Ukraine wants to see more likely.” 

So far at least, sanctions have done little to alter Putin’s geopolitical calculus or undermine his domestic support. The Biden administration’s most dire predictions for the Russian economy have also not been borne out, at least not yet. Although Western-led sanctions undoubtedly initially caused the Russian ruble to plummet and many ordinary Russians to visibly panic, over three months later, the economic situation in the country appears much calmer. 

None of this is to say that tumultuous waters are not ahead for the Russian economy.

Following three decades as part of the globalized economy, Russia will have to completely restructure its supply and production chains away from the West and do so rapidly. Even more dauntingly, it will have to find ways to promote technological innovation despite having its ties with many of the world’s leading scientific powerhouses severed. 

Russia has spent years trying to sanctions-proof its economy. Since 2014, when the U.S. and European Union first imposed major sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin promoted import-substitution and greater economic ties with Asia as a way of reducing Russia’s dependence on Western technology and trade. At the same time, Moscow built up its financial reserves to $640 billion in order to have a significant cushion in the event of a crisis. Finally, Russia slashed its foreign debts and began cutting back its use of the dollar for trade settlements or as a reserve currency. This laid the groundwork in Russia for a potential sudden economic decoupling from the West. 

But that’s much easier said than done. Despite the Kremlin’s import-substitution push, many sectors of the Russian economy still remained heavily dependent on the West. A study by the Higher School of Economics, one of Russia’s top universities, published in April found that the U.S., Canada, and E.U. accounted for half of Russia’s foreign value added, including components for machinery, medications, and cars. 

Likewise, although Russia succeeded in accumulating vast financial reserves over the past eight years, it stored nearly half of that money in Western and Japanese banks. Consequently, when Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, those reserves were quickly frozen. It’s not clear when, if ever, Moscow will be able to recover them. 

Oleg Buklemishev, director of Moscow State University’s Center for Economic Policy Research, explained that notwithstanding the growing political tensions over the years, most of Russia’s trade outflows, ports, railroads, and financial infrastructure were oriented around the West. Consequently, many Russian business people opted to continue doing business as usual even as the Kremlin urged them to localize production or pivot to Asia. 

“My hypothesis is that 2014 convinced the Russian elite that it was possible to live under sanctions and that what new sanctions will be imposed won’t be critically important,” he said. “There seems to have been the expectation that the West would rattle its sabers as usual, but that business would prevail at the end of the day.” 

Therefore, when the West imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia over its decision to send troops into Ukraine, the initial economic shock was unsurprisingly immense. In late February and early March, the Russian ruble lost almost 30 percent of its value against the dollar, prompting Biden to boast that the currency had been reduced to “rubble.” This rapid devaluation of the ruble caused many Russians to scramble to safeguard their finances. I personally observed long lines at banks and ATM machines in Moscow, as ordinary people tried to withdraw any foreign currency they could. At the same time, instances of panic buying were reported all across the country, with Russians seeking to stock up on everything from buckwheat to electronics. 

Interestingly enough, however, this wave of economic insecurity appears to have had little impact on the Kremlin’s political support. The Levada Center, Russia’s leading independent polling agency, found that Putin’s approval rating jumped from 71 percent in February to 82 percent in April, his highest mark since the start of his fourth presidential term back in 2018. At the same time, 74 percent of Russians expressed support for Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine compared to 19 percent who opposed it. When asked whether Russia should make any concessions to the West in exchange for lifting sanctions, 80 percent of respondents said no. 

A similar consolidation process is visible among Russian elites. To date, only two high profile officials have resigned: Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin’s special envoy for climate change and infamous architect of Russia’s privatization reforms during the 1990s, and Boris Bondarev, a veteran diplomat at the Russian mission in Geneva. 

Sergey Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a research group that advises the Kremlin, told me that Russian elites increasingly viewed the Ukraine crisis as an existential struggle for the future of their state. “A majority of people understand that a failure to achieve victory could undermine the regime’s stability and lead to the repetition of February 1917 or 1991,” he said, referring to the downfall of Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union. “The biggest fear for Russian elites is collapse, so they will fight until victory and if necessary, will pursue any escalation in pursuit of that goal.” 

Karaganov added that sanctions had further weakened the influence of Russia’s oligarch class, the faction within the Russian elite most closely affiliated with the West. “What happened with the oligarchs showed everybody that you should not do business with the West under any circumstances,” he said. “For decades, Russia’s wealthy classes have invested their wealth abroad with the expectation that they will spend their old age in Europe. That has now come to a rapid halt.” 

More than three months after sanctions were imposed, life in Russia has a surprising air of normalcy. Following its initial plunge, the ruble has recovered all of its pre-war value and then some in recent weeks thanks to a combination of high global energy prices and the Russian government’s strict capital control measures. Some of the early signs of economic anxiety have also appeared to dissipate: Moscow’s restaurants, cafes, and bars are as packed as ever. Although grocery prices have noticeably increased, supermarkets are still fully stocked with a wide range of products, including foreign snacks. The biggest difference can be seen in shopping malls, where some Western-owned stores have closed their doors. Nevertheless, local and Asian brands are continuing to work as usual and appear to have a fair share of clients on any given day. 

Are these signs that the Russian economy is quickly stabilizing or is it merely the calm before a storm? Buklemishev of Moscow State University suggested that it was closer to the latter option. He told me that the ruble’s recent appreciation showed that the Russian economy’s longtime dependence on hydrocarbon exports had reached “new absurd proportions,” since the currency’s current value is primarily driven by the fact that although imports have dropped steeply, energy sales continue to bring significant foreign currency revenue into Russia. Under the current capital controls regime, however, exporters are forced to convert a majority of their foreign currency earnings into rubles.

“There are not a lot of outward signs of economic problems, in Moscow at least, but we are beginning to see rising prices, a gradually disappearing assortment on shelves, and the closing of stores and factories,” he added. “What we are seeing now are probably the final days of a happy, calm existence. Going forward things will be different.”

Buklemishev is not the only one who is warning that hard times are ahead. In April, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin admitted that Russia was facing its most difficult economic situation in three decades. Russia’s Central Bank has forecast that the country’s GDP could decline by 8 to 10 percent in 2022, while annual inflation is expected to reach 18 to 23 percent. Similar figures have been put forth by international observers, with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank projecting Russia’s economy to shrink this year by 8.5 percent and 11.2 percent respectively. 

During a press conference in late April, Elvira Nabiullina, the head of Russia’s Central Bank, warned that the new trade and logistical restrictions would make it substantially more difficult for Russian consumers and manufacturers to acquire a wide range of finished goods and components. Even highly localized industries of the Russian economy would be affected, she explained, since all it takes is to have one small but key component missing to disrupt production. Nabiullina predicted that Russia would begin to meaningfully feel the sting of sanctions in the second and third quarters of this year, as existing stockpiles begin to run down. Economic recovery, she said, would largely depend on how quickly Russian businesses will be able to establish new production and supply chains. 

The E.U.’s recent decision to ban 90 percent of Russian crude oil before the end of the year could further complicate matters for Moscow by potentially depriving it of a major source of revenue. 

To better understand the new challenges posed by sanctions, I spoke to several Russian entrepreneurs across different industries about how their life had changed and what they expect going forward. To my surprise, I discovered that many of them expressed confidence that they could not only adjust but even thrive in their new reality. 

“Sanctions have activated and mobilized the Russian business community,” said Nikolai Dunaev, the vice president of Opora Russia, a national association of small and medium business owners that counts its membership in the hundreds of thousands. 

“Over the past three months, almost everyone we talk to has found some ways to adapt,” Dunaev explained. “Some have found alternative suppliers in China, India, Turkey, and the Middle Eastern countries, while others have had to temporarily lower production or change the assortment of goods they produced. However, the important thing is that everyone is finding solutions to their problems, one way or another.” 

Some entrepreneurs have even reported that sanctions are providing their businesses with an unexpected boost. Valentina Andreeva is the owner of Mrs. Ruby, a Moscow-based premium furniture company. She told me that over the past five months, her business had already generated an entire year’s worth of revenues. “Right now we can’t process new orders because our current production capacity is just not enough,” she said. “We are expanding our productive capacity to meet this growth in demand because new orders are coming on every day.”  

Andreeva explained that previously, domestic luxury furniture producers such as herself faced stiff competition from Italian brands, which had expended substantial resources over the past few decades to establish a strong foothold in the Russian market. Following the imposition of sanctions, however, the logistical and financial chains connecting Russia and Italy were quickly severed. At the same time, sanctions helped to spark a “wave of patriotism” among wealthy Russians, causing them to flock to domestic brands as a sign of defiance. 

“For people in Russia who have become accustomed to exquisite furniture, there is nothing in the world that will cause them to turn away from this luxury,” Andreeva said. “And since the money is still there, they continue to order new furniture. The only difference now is that they buy it from Russia instead of Italy.” 

Andreevna predicted that even if sanctions are removed over the next two years and Italian brands can return to Russia, they will struggle to regain their previous market share. After all, why go through the extra trouble and risk of ordering something from abroad when you can just as easily buy that good closer to home? 

“If Russian producers can demonstrate that they can produce as well as Italy, then no one will order from Italy in the future because there are numerous barriers involved,” she said. 

Butrimov of BJet is similarly confident that sanctions will benefit his industry in the long run. That is undoubtedly a bold position considering that aviation is widely regarded as one of the sectors of the Russian economy that is most vulnerable to sanctions. Butrimov admits that it will be difficult for airplane manufacturers to find replacements for certain Western imports, especially high-tech components such as advanced engines and electronics. However, he believes that Russia will be able to develop its own alternatives over the next five years. 

In the meantime, Butrimov contended that Russian manufacturers had ways to “simplify” their designs without meaningfully sacrificing quality or safety. “For example, if you have a cockpit with electronic monitors, nothing is stopping you from temporarily installing an older solution,” he explained. “Yes, we will have to take a few steps back technologically, but once we are able to develop and produce our own monitors, that will help us make a major jump forward.”

According to Butrimov, one of Russia’s biggest advantages is that it possessed its own well-developed aviation industry just a few decades ago. During the Soviet era, the country not only designed its own aircraft but also fully controlled their production cycle. Although much of that capacity was degraded in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Butrimov told me that Russia still retained a large cohort of well-trained engineers and the ability to produce workable models.  

“Russia still has factories for the production of military airplanes, and in the current situation all we have to do is to expand the production of military aircraft to the civilian sector,” he said. “For example, we are still releasing the Il-96 and Il-76 airplanes. Nothing is preventing us from boosting our output of the Il-96, but this time with an upgraded engine and new avionics.” 

Butrimov already sees some signs that the Russian aviation sector has begun adjusting to its new realities. “We are seeing the emergence of new small companies that produce key components and the government is trying to promote the manufacturing of Russian equipment,” he said. “So on the one hand you have problems, but on the other hand these problems have finally kicked off the process of import-substitution, the result of which Russia will no longer be dependent on everyone.” 

Over the long run, perhaps the most important question is to what extent Russia will be able to continue producing technological innovations while under sanctions. The Russian economy certainly has enough natural resources and industrial know-how to survive, but can it thrive in a world where advanced technologies increasingly reign supreme? As I discovered, the answer to that question is very much up in the air at the moment. 

Sergei Abramov is the director of the Institute of Program Systems at the Russian Academy of Sciences, but he is perhaps best known for his work as the chief designer of Russia’s “SKIF-Aurora” supercomputer. Abramov told me that as a result of financial sanctions against Russia, his institute could no longer pay for services such as IP addresses, telecommunication infrastructure, servers, and even apps like Zoom or Dropbox. “You previously didn’t think about these issues,” he admitted. “All of us were so used to the fact that we could easily pull up a browser page or write a line of code, that we didn’t really think about the services that make these simple actions possible.” 

The more pressing issue for Abramov, however, is the danger of Russia falling technologically behind as a result of sanctions. As he explained to me, developing cutting-edge technologies in the Internet age is only possible through international cooperation since innovation requires large financial, technological, and knowledge resources. Abramov noted that when his institute developed the “SKIF-Aurora” supercomputer, it formed an alliance with Intel and Italy-based Eurotech company, both of whom significantly contributed to the final product. 

“Could we do this all without international cooperation? No, we could not,” he said. “Even though we had some solutions that were technologically cutting-edge, they were not enough to create the final product. A supercomputer requires hundreds of cutting-edge solutions, and that is very difficult to develop completely yourself.” 

Sanctions also created other barriers to innovation, Abramov warned. In addition to restricting technological imports, sanctions threatened to force the Russian economy into a prolonged slump, which would mean that other sectors will have fewer resources to order solutions from the IT industry. Perhaps even more worrisome, the difficulty of working under sanctions could push many talented Russian IT specialists to seek better opportunities elsewhere. Abramov said that of his five best students, four had left Russia. 

“The IT sector will continue its work and there will be some domestic solutions in software and hardware, but all of this work will be monstrously complicated,” he said. “Under such circumstances, it will be very difficult to talk about Russia developing products with competitive superiority.”

The mass exodus of IT workers since late February has sparked fears that Russia could soon face a major brain drain, although the exact scale of the problem is up for debate. The Russian Association for Electronic Communications caused a sensation when in March it reported that 50,000 to 70,000 specialists had fled the country and that another 100,000 were expected to leave the following month. 

By contrast, a study published in late May by the Russoft software developer’s association estimated that only 40,000 IT workers had moved abroad so far this year. Perhaps even more significantly, the Russoft study concluded that up to half of those specialists could return to Russia before the end of the year.

Valentin Makarov, the head of Russoft, told me that there are several reasons why he expects so many Russian IT workers to return home. First, the influx of well-paid Russian professionals to neighboring countries has caused real estate prices in those places to sharply increase, making long-term relocation far more costly. Second, many Russians who moved abroad reported experiencing hostility from locals. Finally, Makarov believes that the Russian government’s new package of incentives for IT companies and workers, which includes exemptions from taxation and military service, could help entice many back to Russia.

“Losing 20,000 specialists is of course very bad, but it’s not enough to seriously affect the quality of the industry’s work,” he said. Looking ahead to the future, Makarov argued that although adapting to the new post-sanctions reality would undoubtedly be difficult, the Russian IT sector was up for the challenge. He noted that some Russian companies had seen their sales increase by 2-8 times in recent months, fueled by a growth in demand for domestic IT solutions following the exodus of Western tech giants from Russia. The next step, according to Makarov, is to look for opportunities to expand into the markets of developing countries, which he says accounts for 40 percent of the total global IT market share. 

While Makarov conceded that it would not be possible to fully compensate for the loss of access to Western advanced technologies, he contended that Russia could join forces with companies in emerging tech markets such as China, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia to develop their own cutting-edge innovations. Makarov believes that geopolitical independence from the U.S. could be a powerful selling point for Russia, especially when it comes to establishing closer technological cooperation with Beijing.

“China is obviously more economically integrated with the West than with Russia, but geopolitical confrontation between China and the US is not going anywhere anytime soon,” he said. “On the contrary, as more and more sanctions are imposed against China, it will need to find new partners in technological development and all other areas. Since both Russia and China have very strong programmers, it makes sense for us to work together in building a new technological space rather than remain dependent on the United States.” 

In just three months, Russia’s relationship with the outside world has been completely upended. The post-Soviet era of globalization, in which Russia sold natural resources to the West in exchange for key components, technologies, and finished goods, is likely gone for good. But what comes next is far from certain. Will Russia find a way to defy the odds and retain its status as a major global economy? Or is it doomed to become an international pariah that will increasingly find itself technologically left behind? I suspect that we will have a definitive answer to that question only in a few years’ time.

Dimitri A. Simes has written for the National Interest and Nikkei Asia, and was a 2020 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.

By Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy, 6/13/22

The political scientist Robert Gilpin once wrote that “no one loves a political realist.” His lament seems especially apt today, as the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine has spawned an uptick of realism-bashing. A small sample: Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, Columbia University professor and fellow FP columnist Adam Tooze in the New Statesman, University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky, and Michael Mazarr of Rand Corp. Even Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who is consistently one of the most insightful observers on U.S. and global policy, recently opined that “the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy … has had a terrible press recently, most of it richly deserved.”

Much of this ire has been directed at my colleague and occasional co-author John J. Mearsheimer, based in part on the bizarre claim that his views on the West’s role in helping to cause the Russia-Ukraine crisis somehow make him “pro-Putin” and in part on some serious misreadings of his theory of offensive realism.

Another obvious target is former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose recent comments urging peace talks with Moscow, a territorial compromise in Ukraine, and the need to avoid a permanent rupture with Russia were seen as a revealing demonstration of realism’s moral bankruptcy. As I explain below, Kissinger is an outlier within the realist tradition, but he’s still a convenient foil for its critics.

The irony here is hard to miss. Realists of various stripes repeatedly warned that Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine would lead to serious trouble, warnings that were blithely ignored by those who claimed that NATO’s open-door policy would lead to lasting peace in Europe. Now that war has broken out, lives are being lost, and Ukraine is being destroyed, you would think proponents of open-ended NATO enlargement would have set aside their idealistic illusions and think about these issues in a hard-nosed, realist fashion. Yet the opposite has occurred: The people who got it right are singled out for attack, while those who believed that enlarging NATO would create a vast zone of peace in Europe are insisting that the war continue until Russia is totally defeated and greatly weakened.

This phenomenon isn’t all that surprising, insofar as realism has never been popular in the United States. It is recognized as an important tradition in the study of international relations, but it is also the object of considerable animosity. In 2010, for example, University of California, San Diego professor David Lake’s presidential address to the International Studies Association criticized realism and other paradigms as “sects” and “pathologies” that divert attention from “studying things that matter.” Back in the 1990s, when many believed liberal values were spreading around the world, the political scientist John Vasquez published a lengthy article in American Political Science Review claiming that realism was a “degenerative” research program that ought to be discarded.

So why do so many people dislike realism so intensely? I might not be the most objective judge on this issue, but here’s what I think is going on.

Realism is a rather gloomy perspective on politics, even in its more benign versions. It assumes that people are irredeemably flawed and that there is no way to eliminate all conflicts of interest among individuals or the social groups they form. Moreover, all versions of realism highlight the insecurity resulting from the absence of an overarching global authority that can enforce agreements and prevent states from attacking one another. When violence is a possibility, human groups of all sorts—be they tribes, city-states, street gangs, militias, nations, states, etc.—will look for ways to make themselves more secure, which means they will be strongly inclined to compete for power.

Contrary to what some critics maintain, realists do not see these features as iron laws that determine every move a state might make. Nor do they believe that cooperation is impossible or that international institutions are of no value, and they certainly don’t think that humans lack agency or the ability to make different choices as they strive to protect their interests. Realists simply maintain that international anarchy (i.e., the absence of an overarching central authority) creates powerful incentives for rivalry and competition among states—incentives that are difficult to manage or overcome.

It’s not hard to understand why many people are reluctant to embrace such a pessimistic view of the human condition, especially when it appears to offer no clear escape from it. But the real question is this: Is this is an accurate view of international politics? When you consider the conflict and strife that have occurred throughout human history and continue to this day, and the tendency for states to worry about their security, the prima facie case for realism is strong.

Second, realism’s emphasis on power politics leads many people to assume its proponents as overly fixated on military power and inclined to favor hawkish solutions. But this view is simply false: Apart from Kissinger (who was a hawk during the Vietnam War and backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), the most prominent realists have generally leaned dovish. George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz were all early critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and their scholarly successors were among the more prominent voices opposing the Bush administration’s march to war against Iraq in 2003.

Third, realism is also seen as indifferent or even hostile to ethical or moral considerations. There is a grain of truth in this charge, insofar as realism’s theoretical framework does not incorporate values or ideals in any explicit way. As the name implies, realism tries to engage with the world “as it really is,” not as we might like it to be. Yet as Michael Desch and others have pointed out, most realists are also guided by profound moral commitments, and they are conscious of both the tragic nature of international politics and the importance of trying to act morally despite the pressures to act otherwise. For realists, noble aims and good intentions are not enough if the resulting choices lead to greater insecurity or human suffering.

Fourth, realism is unpopular in the United States because it runs counter to the widespread belief in American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is uniquely moral and always acts for the greater good of humanity. For realists, the need to remain secure and independent in a world lacking a central authority often leads states with very different characteristics to act in strikingly similar ways. The United States and the former Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, political ideologies, and economic systems, for example, but the pressures of competition during the Cold War led each to form and lead large alliances, promote their respective ideologies wherever they could, build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, intervene in many other countries, fight destructive proxy wars, and assassinate foreign leaders. Locked in competition, these two very different countries produced rather similar foreign policies.

To be sure, realists recognize that domestic politics are not irrelevant and that there are important differences between, say, Nazi Germany on the one hand and Edwardian Britain on the other. But where idealists are quick to divide the world into “good” and “bad” states—and to blame the world’s problems almost entirely on the latter—realism recognizes that even well-established democracies will do horrible things to others when they believe their vital interests are at stake.

Back in the 1960s, for example, the Johnson administration was so worried that South Vietnam would become part of the communist world that it sent nearly half a million troops across the Pacific to fight there; 58,000 of those soldiers didn’t return. The U.S. military used napalm and Agent Orange and dropped some 8 million tons of ordnance on the country. When that didn’t work, the Nixon administration invaded Cambodia, undermining its fragile government and unwittingly helping the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to gain power. Vietnam was a weak country and more than 8,000 miles from the continental United States, yet its leaders managed to convince themselves these actions were necessary for U.S. national security.

In July 1979—less than a decade later—the Carter administration became alarmed when a popular uprising in Nicaragua toppled pro-American dictator Anastasio Somoza, much as the Maidan uprising in Ukraine toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. When it came to power in January 1981, the Reagan administration responded by organizing and arming a rebel army—the Contras—much as Russia has backed separatist militias in Ukraine. Nicaragua was a poor country with a population of barely 4 million people, yet U.S. officials saw it as a serious threat. Some 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War—equivalent to losing approximately 2.5 million Americans as a percentage of the country’s population.

These examples of past U.S. misconduct do not justify what Russia is doing today in the slightest. If we are consistent, all these actions (to include the invasion of Iraq) should be roundly condemned on both strategic and moral grounds. Nonetheless, they are a reminder that governments of all types will do brutal things when they feel threatened, even if their fears are sometimes illusory. But in a country like the United States, which sees itself as uniquely virtuous and where top officials rarely admit mistakes or accept responsibility for them, reminding people that U.S. leaders have sometimes acted much as Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting today is probably not be the best way to win them over.

This phenomenon is especially powerful in wartime, when the understandable desire to rally popular support encourages governments to describe their own cause as wholly just and to portray their opponents as the embodiment of evil. To suggest that prior U.S. actions might have had something to do with the tragedy in Ukraine does not excuse Putin’s decision to invade or the conduct of the Russian armed forces, but it is bound to trigger a harsh reaction from those seeking to frame the conflict as a simple morality play between a brutal aggressor and an innocent victim and the latter’s well-intentioned and equally innocent friends.

Realists recognize that evil acts occur and that some states behave worse than others, but they also understand that all states compete for security in an imperfect world and that no country’s conduct is beyond reproach. For this reason, realists see diplomacy and compromise as critical tools for managing disagreements and resolving differences without the use of military force. By contrast, if evil leaders or regimes bear sole responsibility for all the trouble in the world—as liberals, neoconservatives, and other idealists maintain—the only solution is to eliminate the evildoers once and for all. The problem, alas, is that trying to get rid of governments you deem evil tends to get a lot of people killed. And in some circumstances—like the current war in Ukraine—it could lead to a wider and more dangerous conflict.

Finally, realism tends to be unpopular because its proponents have an annoying tendency to be right. Not all the time, of course, because foreign policy is a complicated activity in which uncertainty is pervasive and the various theories that can help guide policymakers are crude instruments at best. For example, most realists—myself included—were surprised that NATO survived and expanded beyond the Cold War.

But realists were right about NATO enlargement, dual containment in the Persian Gulf, the war in Iraq, Ukraine’s ill-fated decision to give up its nuclear arsenal, the implications of China’s rise, and the folly of nation-building in Afghanistan, to note just a few examples.

That’s not a bad record, especially when compared to realism’s many critics. But I doubt it will make realism more popular, even if most states continue to act more or less as realism depicts.

By Gilbert Doctorow & Nicolai Petro, The National Interest, 6/11/22

Conflict in Ukraine is going to be with us for a long time. What we need right now is a framework that will entice the parties to make this a peaceful, rather than a military competition. The period of separation for Novorossiya, followed by a status referendum, might be the solution.

Current Western strategy in Ukraine is not conducive to peace because it does not deal with some essential aspects of the current conflict. It does not deal with the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, and it does not address the thirty-year failure to set up a pan-European security system that includes Russia. Both are issues of primary importance to Russia. The relationship between them may not be obvious to many in the West, but for Russia they illustrate a mindset of promoting Western interests and values at the expense of Russia’s.

It is precisely because of this mindset that the West was caught flat-footed when Russia suddenly seized the initiative, and decided to assert its interests through military means.This has left the West in a quandary, with few palatable options. Its preferred means of coercion—economic sanctions—are bound to become less and less effective over time, just as they have been in other countries, which have always found workable substitutes to dependence on the West. The importance of Russia in providing the world with essential commodities, such as oil, gas, grains, and fertilizer, give it even more economic clout.

At the same time, the political isolation that West has sought to impose, while it has a certain public relations appeal, further limits the West’s ability to get Russia to cooperate on other issues of vital importance to the West, and forces Russia into new alliances that will, invariably, be much more anti-Western. Henry Kissinger has recently argued that institutionalizing such animosity would be historically unprecedented, and should be avoided at all costs.

Meanwhile, despite the rhetoric from Kiev, the war has not brought Ukraine itself any closer to a resolution of its own internal conflicts. The rise of Ukrainian patriotic fervor is quite real, yet it often reflects the same regional disparities that have divided Ukraine since its independence. No matter how the military conflict ends, therefore, old resentments are likely to resurface, with Russian-speakers once again being blamed for their supposedly divided loyalties. As the popular Ukrainian journalist Mikhail Dubinyanski recently put it, “it took but a moment for the front lines to stabilize, for the traditional internal hate to re-emerge.”

A lasting settlement must recognize that this conflict will not end with the withdrawal of Russian troops. It must therefore address three vital aspects of the conflict simultaneously, or it will not last. First, the competition between Russia and the West over Ukraine, which is clearly not going to end after the fighting stops. Second, the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian elites over their respective national and cultural differences, which is only going to intensify after this war. Third, the conflict between Ukraine’s Western and Eastern halves, which current patriotic enthusiasm has temporarily masked.

Our proposal does not seek to end these conflicts, which are endemic, but rather to shift the competition from the military arena, with its concomitant dangers of escalation, to the arenas of economic well-being and soft power. In essence, this is the kind of competition that the West was engaged in with the Soviet Union during the heyday of détente, after it decided that coexistence was preferable to mutual assured destruction..

In exchange for the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of its military forces, Russia would be obliged to not annex the regions it currently occupies and agree to hold a status referendum there under international supervision, some 10-20 years from now. Ukraine, for its part, would accept its temporary loss of control over Novorossiya (the regions of Donbass, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, and Nikolayev), with the proviso that their status will be ultimately determined by the outcome of this referendum.

In addition, NATO would formally pledge not to consider Ukrainian membership. In deference to Ukraine, however, there would be no formal pledge of Ukrainian neutrality. This would permit Ukraine to receive a wide variety of defensive military assistance and training from other countries, short of permanent foreign bases and weapons systems capable of striking Russian territory. Ukraine’s security concerns would be further allayed by a formal pledge by Russia that it will not object to EU membership for Ukraine, opening the door to the multi-year assistance with investments and reforms that Ukraine will desperately need to recover.

Russian security, meanwhile, would be bolstered by international recognition of Novorossiya (some of the mechanisms used to defuse the dispute over the Free Territory of Trieste and Saarland might apply). A de-militarized zone on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border could be created, and security further enhanced by the commitment by several key states to ensure the borders of both Ukraine and Novorossiya.

Some sweeteners for Ukraine (bitter pills for Russia):

A Ukraine state that is able to pursue the post-2014 nationalist agenda. To obtain Western security guarantees, Russia will have to give up its goal of fully de-Nazifying Ukraine;

The firm prospect of EU membership in the foreseeable future. Russia may draw some scant comfort, however, from fact that the regime that will be built in Ukraine will then be Europe’s headache (as some are beginning to realize);

Multi-year aid and defensive weapons assistance for Ukraine;

The possibility that these regions now lost could eventually rejoin Ukraine, if it provides them with appealing reasons to do so. This will, of course, depend on the policies that Kiev adopts toward those regions, but Ukrainian authorities will have the better part of two decades, and significant Western assistance, to make their case.

Some sweeteners for Russia (bitter pills for Ukraine):

The loss of Ukrainian territory—Crimea permanently, Novorossiya perhaps only temporarily;

No NATO membership for Ukraine;

Western sanctions lifted on Russia, Belarus, and Novorossiya. One can reasonably assume that the regions within Novorossiya will more naturally be drawn to Russia. The EU should therefore not repeat the mistake that it made in 2013 of forcing Ukrainians to choose between European and Eurasian economic integration. This time around, everything should be done to create a free trade zone that encourages these regions to become a vital bridge linking both;

Finally, there is the possibility of Novorossiya eventually choosing to join Russia, should it prove to be more appealing and successful than Ukraine. No doubt, the West will do everything in its power over the next two decades to ensure that this is not the case.

The West should welcome such a shift in the focus of competition, since it regards economic success and soft power as areas of traditional strength. Russia too should also welcome it, since it argues that at heart Russians and Ukrainians share a cultural and spiritual bond that goes much deeper than economics. This would be a chance to prove or disprove this argument. Ukrainian nationalists should also welcome it, since it would give them two decades in which to build a broad base of support within Ukraine for their view that Russians and Ukrainians have nothing in common, and to propagate this view through cultural ties and exports to Novorossiya. Moreover, they will be able to do so among a much more homogenous Ukrainian population, with the blessing and financial support of the West.

Finally, there is the not inconsiderable security advantage that Europe and the world would derive from establishing a framework in which Russia and the West can compete in ways that would be potentially mutually beneficial, rather than assuredly mutually destructive.

It will be objected that such a settlement rewards Russian aggression. In an imperfect world, however, the morality of punishing Russia (without, mind you, ensuring its withdrawal) must be weighed against the morality of allowing further suffering in Ukraine, especially when the alternative not only stops the bloodshed, but offers a mechanism whereby, under more auspicious conditions, Ukraine can potentially regain its territories. Time, however, is of the essence. The longer that settlement negotiations are delayed, the more territory that Ukraine is likely to lose to Novorossiya.

Another likely objection will no doubt be that Russian officials cannot be trusted to keep their word. Not now, not ever. Those who feel this way have a ready-made objection to any form of negotiations, and not just with Russia. The only thing we would point out is that, by putting the status referendum a good way off into the future, the means of its implementation will be negotiated not by those who unleashed this war, but by a post-Putin Russian leadership. The type of relationship we will have with those future Russian leaders, is still very much in our hands to determine.

Gilbert Doctorow completed a Ph.D. in Russian history at Columbia, followed by a 25 year career in international business focused on the USSR/Russia. His two-volume Memoirs of a Russianist, published in 2021-22, has been reissued in translation in St Petersburg.

Nicolai N. Petro is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island (USA). During the collapse of the Soviet Union he served as Special Assistant for Policy in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. He was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine in 2013-2014, and is the author of the forthcoming book,  The Tragedy of Ukraine.

By Craig Murray, Antiwar.com, 6/9/22

I was in Turkey to try to further peace talks, as an experienced diplomat with good contacts there, and as a peace activist. I was not there as a journalist and much of what I discussed was with the understanding of confidence. It will be probably be some years before I judge it reasonable and fair to reveal all that I know. But I can give some outline.

Turkey continues to be the center of diplomatic activity on resolving the Ukraine war. It is therefore particularly revealing, and a sign of Western priorities, that I did not come across a single western journalist there trying to follow and cover the diplomatic process. There are hundreds of Western journalists in Ukraine, effectively embedded with the Ukrainian authorities, producing war porn. There appear to be none seriously covering attempts to make peace.

There was a sea change two weeks ago when Ukraine shifted to a public stance that it would cede no territory at all in a peace deal. On 21 May, Zelensky’s office stated that “The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Previously while they had been emphatic that no territory in “the East” would be ceded, there had been studied ambiguity about whether that referred to Donbass alone or also the Crimea.

The new Ukrainian stance, that there will be no peace deal without recovering the Crimea, has ended for now any hopes of an early ceasefire. It appears to be a militarily unachievable objective – I cannot think of any scenario in which Russia de facto loses Crimea, without the serious possibility of worldwide nuclear war.

This blow to the peace process was a setback in Ankara, and I should say that every source I spoke with believed the Ukrainians were acting on instructions conveyed from Washington to Zelensky by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who openly stated he wanted the war to wear down Russian defense capabilities.

A long war in Ukraine is of course massively in the interest of the US military industrial complex, whose dripping roasts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have gone rather off the heat. It also forwards the strategic objective of severely damaging the Russian economy, although much of that damage is mutual. Why we live in a world where the goal of nations is to damage the lives of inhabitants of other nations is a question which continues to puzzle me.

Turkey has for now turned towards the more limited goal of ensuring that grain supplies can be shipped out from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus. This is essential for developing nations and essential for world food supplies, which were already under pressure before this war began. Turkey is offering to clear sea lanes of mines and to police the ships carrying grain from the port of Odessa, which is still under Ukrainian control. Russia has agreed to the deal.

Ukraine is objecting to this plan to export its own wheat, because it objects to the removal of the mines, which I should be clear were put down in the sea lanes by Ukraine to prevent amphibious attack on Odessa. There is monumental hypocrisy by the West on this, blaming Russia for preventing the export of the grain while it is actually blocked in by Ukraine’s own mines, which they currently refuse to allow Turkey to remove.

On 19 May this was the headline of a UN press release:

Lack of Grain Exports Driving Global Hunger to Famine Levels, as War in Ukraine Continues, Speakers Warn Security Council

As it states, Ukraine and Russia together account for one third of world grain exports and two thirds of world sunflower oil exports. Many of those who die from this war are likely to do so in developing countries, from hunger. The decision of the EU and US to target Russian and Belarussian agricultural exports for sanctions displays an extraordinary callousness towards the very poorest human beings on the globe, who cannot afford rising food prices.

Well, the headline here is that the USA and EU are pushing Ukraine to block any food deal, based on a number of objections including the reduction in the security of Odessa and the claim that Russia will sell looted Ukrainian grain. The view in both Ankara and the developing world is that the big picture, of millions facing starvation, is being lost.

The experience has made me so cynical that I am left wondering if the interests of the powerful agricultural lobbies in both the EU and USA are influencing policy. High world food prices benefit some powerful interests.

I blame Putin for starting a war that does nothing to redress Russian long term security concerns. But the truth is that politicians in the West are equally keen on this war. Boris Johnson yesterday was blatantly promoting it for his own survival. Anybody who makes any effort to stop the killing – Presidents Macron and Erdogan in particular – are immediately and universally denounced by the “liberal” media.

Yet what is the end result that the liberal warmongers wish to achieve? When we reach the stage that Henry Kissinger is a comparative voice of sanity, the political situation is indeed dire.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster, human rights activist, and former diplomat. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. The article is reprinted [by Antiwar] with permission from his website.