Meditations on American Foreign Policy – II Russia

The Soviet Union at its height was indeed an impressive threat, with an army numbering between 4 and 5 million throughout the Cold War and a vast nuclear arsenal that peaked at an estimated 45,000 warheads. Fortunately the leadership of the Soviet Union was risk averse, because had they elected to invade Western Europe it is not clear the West would have prevailed. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union though Russia has become little more than a declining regional power. The Russian military collapsed completely during the 1990s, but under President Putin the military has begun to modernizer and reconstitute itself. In the 2000-2010 period, when crude oil prices were in the $80-$120/barrel range, Russia was able to invest heavily in new weapons systems, but since then oil prices have dropped to the $40-60/barrel range (probably permanently because of the shale revolution) and the Russian economy, heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, can no longer support such heavy investment.

Russia is a vast land of immense natural resources, but hobbled by a thoroughly inefficient and antiquated industrial system inherited from the old Soviet Union. President Putin had a small window of opportunity, while oil prices were high, to invest heavily in modernization of his industrial base and begin to remedy that problem. But he didn’t, and in fact he probably couldn’t have, because he needed to divert so much of that money to the military and to the oligarchs who support him and keep him in power.

The Russian political system is a kleptocracy, and wildly corrupt. Putin is more a Mafia boss than a dictator, and depends on keeping his elite well off to stay in power. But he is a brilliant Mafia boss, and has consistently outmaneuvered American presidents and punched well above his weight in world affairs. But much of what he does and says, like his boasting about Russian’s new “superweapons”, is more for domestic political purposes, to keep public support, than for international consumption. Our issues with Russia aren’t the result of Putin. If Putin were to die tomorrow he would probably be replaced by someone very like him, It is not the leader that shapes Russia; it is its whole culture and system.

America handles Russia badly both because our ruling political elites don’t understand its culture or its paranoia and because they haven’t yet grown out of their Cold War mentality. We may not like the Russian system of government, but realistically that is what we have to deal with. There is no prospect that it can be converted to an America-style democracy, however much naïve neocons may wish that. Given Russia’s vast size and many ethnicities, it probably takes an authoritarian government to hold it together, and given the number of nuclear weapons it still has we should vastly prefer an authoritarian state to a failed state with poor or no control over those weapons.

In fact we do have some common interests with Russia, like restraining China and Iran and radical Islamists, and Trump’s instinct to try to find a working relationship with Russia, much as we may dislike their government, is correct. The current Democratic witch hunt to try to find “Russian collusion” with Trump is short-sighted hardball politics, not a rational response. And in fact when Obama was president the Democrats tried exactly the same thing (the so-called “Russian reset”), though it was an inept attempt and failed miserably

Russia of course is paranoid about invasion from the West, perfectly understandable considering its history, including most recently invasions by the French under Napoleon and by Germany under Hitler. Historically its defense has been to try to maintain a buffer of pro-Russian states on its largely indefensible western border. The expansion of NATO right up to its western border, into the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), and into Poland (and coordination and joint training with NATO by Finland, which is technically neutral) has produced predictable alarm, and explains why President Putin felt it necessary to retake the Crimea, the site of Russian’s only Black Sea naval port, and to try to destabilize a western-leaning Ukraine to render it at least neutral, if not actively pro-Russian.

There is no question but that the best of Russian weapons scientists and engineers are quite good, and in fact modern Russian ships, airplanes, missiles, and heavy weapons are about as good as those of the West, but the Russian economy and the Russian industrial system is simply incapable of building, supporting and maintaining very many of them. Nor is their economy, industrial capacity, transport systems and logistics systems capable of supporting a major war for any extended period.  And their current military doctrine accounts for that, being focused on preparations for very short military actions with limited objectives and small, highly trained special forces, preferably below the level that invites a military response from the West (as was the case, for example, with the “little green men” in the Crimea).

But at root Russia is faced with a severe demographic problem. Put simply, the Russian nation is dying out. Russian couples are currently producing 1.75 children per couple, well below the 2.1 replacement rate. Alcoholism is rampant (about 1/3 of Russian deaths these days are from alcoholism). Russia has the worst HIV epidemic in Europe or Asia, and Russian male life expectancy has declined to 58 years, the lowest of any developed country. Within a decade or two there won’t be enough youngsters in the 20-35 range to maintain the army and the factories, and non-Russian ethnics will begin outnumber Russians in many areas, producing predictable separatist movements probably leading to more breakups within current Russian territories.

So in the long run Russia is most likely going to continue to decline, and perhaps break apart further. And in fact recent polls in Russia show growing public discontent with empty store shelves and falling wages. That doesn’t mean that President Putin can’t continue to be a spoiler around the periphery of Russia (as his is currently being, for example, in Syria) for the next decade or so, but it does mean that Russia is highly unlikely to be an existential threat to America, or perhaps even to Western Europe, despite the pathetic weakness of NATO defenses absent the US.