Understanding Russia’s threat perceptions

The Russian military build-up against Ukraine is making headlines in the Western media. Intense diplomatic activity so far has failed to work out a modus vivendi, much less a breakthrough. At least one analysis in the US has somewhat portentously likened the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Western media reports and assessments continue to depict Russia’s actions as villainous. The United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has called on Russia to “end its malign activity and adhere to international agreements it freely signed up to.” After a NATO-Russia Council meeting on January 12, the Alliance’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said at a media briefing that “Allies on their side [have] reaffirmed NATO’s Open Door policy [and] the right for each nation to choose its own security arrangements.”

Last year, the Sherpas hoped that the situation might be ameliorated after US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke twice, first on December 7 and then on December 30. But the calls ended with Biden warning Putin against any “military escalation” with Ukraine and Putin telling Biden in the second call that any sanctions against Russia over Ukraine would be a big mistake.

A White House statement on the call also said that Biden “made clear” to Putin “that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine.”

Two lower-level meetings, one in Geneva (Jan 11) and the other in Brussels (Jan 12), have ended with no progress. The third, which involves the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), will be held in Vienna on Thursday (Jan 13), before the writing of this article. But it is unlikely to resolve the fundamental differences between the two sides. What are those differences?

Leaving aside analyses in the western media about Russia’s system of government, which is decidedly oppressive, and its malignancy (Truss’ comment), it is instructive, in a realist framework to analyse Russia’s threat perceptions and the consequent play. As John Mearsheimer wrote in 2014, “the prevailing wisdom in the West” about the Ukraine crisis is “wrong”. In an article titled, Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West.” This goes to the heart of the problem, as does what Mearsheimer called “the liberal delusions that provoked Putin.”

Mearsheimer is not the only one to argue against deepening Russia’s threat perceptions. Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor, recommended in a 2014 article for Foreign Policy that “NATO should strike a deal with Ukraine and Russia that enshrines the status of Ukraine as a non-aligned buffer state.” From Russia’s perspective, the unraveling of the Soviet Union and Washington’s decision in the early 90s to expand NATO, has undermined the balance of power that existed in Europe during the Cold War. This has instilled deep insecurity in the Kremlin. While many in the West think Putin is acting out as an offensive realist, a case can be made, given Russia’s weaknesses, that he is acting as a defensive realist in line with the logic of balancing the threat. If the international is a realm where there is no central authority and the threat of war is a constant, then it is logical to assume that every state must be responsible for its security. How best to do that if not by maximising it?

But these views are exceptions and, quite frankly, voiced by a minority. The predominant view weds realism to liberalism and seeks ends that Mearsheimer called the “ideal template for the failures of U.S. policy.” A May 2021 report by Chatham House is a good example of the prevailing view in the West about how to deal with Russia seeking to deter “Russian aggression abroad and ultimately securing a less adversarial relationship with Russia without compromising principles of sovereignty and security and the values on which they are based.” That balance of power might just be the way to secure a less adversarial relationship is lost on the report’s 17 authors.

Russia’s threat perceptions — which guide its actions — are clearly presented in the demands (there are 8 articles) it put out on December 17, 2021 under the title, “Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees”. Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to be admitted to NATO, wants the US to stop eastward expansion of NATO, which essentially means denying “accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”.

Russia has also demanded that the US/NATO “not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.” Other articles deal with deployments of heavy bombers and surface warships that can carry nuclear or non-nuclear payloads.

To be certain, some of these demands by the Kremlin push the envelope beyond the point it can be pushed. But that is the essence of negotiations. Begin with a maximalist position to extract concessions on the central optimal demand. That is Ukraine; the rest is icing. The current military build-up began after Russia-Ukraine talks collapsed. As an International Crisis Group report indicates, “The Kremlin is frustrated with Kyiv’s reluctance to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, which call for it [Kyiv] to reabsorb two separatist-controlled regions while affording them ‘special status’ – measures that Ukraine argues would compromise its sovereignty.”

The special status refers to Point 4 in the Minsk II deal, signed in February 2015. It reads: “To start a dialogue on interim self-government for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in accordance with Ukrainian law, and acknowledge their special status by a resolution of parliament.” Like Minsk I, signed in September 2014, the provisions of Minsk II also remain unimplemented. Kyiv maintains that the Kremlin has failed to honour Point 10 of the deal which requires “Withdrawal of all foreign armed formations, military equipment and mercenaries.”

Russia denies it has any presence in the eastern regions of Ukraine. It also insists that it is not a party to the conflict and, therefore, not bound by the terms set out in Minsk II. This is ingenuously disingenuous. There’s enough evidence of its use of what have come to be called the “little green men.” But the Kremlin’s position is consistent both with its threat perceptions as well as its policy of keeping up the pressure on Ukraine and, by extension, other former SSR states like Latvia and Lithuania.

What is unfolding is not just post-NATO expansion or post-Cold War; neither does it extend back to 2014. It goes back centuries and relates to Russia’s history, geography and also its constant struggle to retain its internal cohesion. As the late Robert Berls, decidedly one of the foremost American experts on Russia wrote, “Russia’s location on a vast plain made it vulnerable to invading forces from both the east—most consequentially by the Mongol Tatars in the 13th to the 15th centuries—and the west by the Poles, Swedes, French, and twice by the Germans. Those frequent invasions greatly enhanced Russia’s sense of insecurity and played a major role in how Russia’s leaders approached the challenges of ensuring the survival of the Russian state.”

This sense of history and geography continues to determine how Putin’s Russia operates. Putin has worked hard to address Russia’s internal weaknesses, sought to maintain stability — often through repressive means — modernise Russian military by making it tech- rather than labour-intensive and extend the influence of the Kremlin in the former Soviet Republics. This, as noted above, is in line with a rational conception of a world where the threat of war is a constant.

To be sure, Russia wants to have buffer states between itself and any threat. That means projection of power in its near-abroad. But that is realism. The US has done the same and continues to do that, sautéing realism in liberalism.

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies