AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
Following the downfall of the USSR in December 1991, Moscow’s primary objective has been to continue to exert Russian influence over the old Soviet republics. But Putin’s war in Ukraine has revealed that mission to be a failure and has furthered the collapse of Russia as a great world power.
The history of post-Soviet central Eurasian politics helps clarify the stakes of the Russia-Ukraine war. Once the Soviet regime fell, the immediate question became what would happen to Russia, which had always been the predominant cultural and political force within the USSR.
The Clinton administration, which came into office just one year after the Soviet Union’s collapse, adopted a policy of supporting the Russian state in an attempt to preserve some stability in the region – particularly given Russia’s status as a nuclear power. According to one advisor to former President Yeltsin, President Clinton saved Russia’s status as a superpower by granting it rights to be the only nuclear-armed state of the former Soviet Union. With The Highly-Enriched Uranium and Low-Enriched Uranium program (HEU-LEU) U.S. taxpayers financed the Russian nuclear industry for 20 years. The U.S. paid Russia approximately $17 billion for 14,446 tons of low-enriched uranium up through 2013.
This fact was a great concern for a few Russian specialists, including the former National Security Agency Director for President Reagan, Lt. General William E. Odom. In Fall 2001, General Odom stressed that the West’s generosity and kindness toward Russia was pointless, since it was highly unlikely Russia would ever become a great power aligned with the West. “Treating it like one is neither in Russia’s interests nor the West’s,” he prophetically stated. But Odom’s opinion was rather isolated at that time, since most Western security “experts” mostly praised Russia, although its foreign policy was supported by expansionary wars.
For Russian leaders, however, the chief priority was always continuing to exert influence in the old empire – by force if necessary. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia created the Commonwealth of Independent States, promising to protect former republics and be a judge in often-heated border disputes like those between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The goal was to establish Russia as the predominant power in the region to stave off Western encroachment.
Ukraine, which has many cultural and historical bonds with Russia, was a centerpiece of this strategy. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin told his Ukrainian counterpart that Kyiv will always be in “the system of Russia’s strategic interests.”
This Clinton administration’s approach, which was largely adopted by the Bush and Obama administrations, led to years of Russian provocations in places like Crimea, as well as proxy wars with the West in places like Syria. It was only President Donald Trump who broke with conventional wisdom on Russia. Unsurprisingly, he became the first U.S. president in the 21st century under whom Putin did not seize more territory. Unlike Washington bureaucrats, Mr. Trump became a classic business problem solver: first by recognizing Ukraine’s right to Crimea, secondly by arming Kyiv with modern anti-tank missiles, and thirdly by supporting Russian-Ukrainian negotiations.
But despite heightened tensions throughout the last several decades, Russian political and military leadership had also recognized the major risks associated with embroiling Russia in a major prolonged armed conflict with one of its neighbors – particularly Ukraine. Devoting a significant amount of resources to such a war, they feared, would cause Russia both to lose influence in other areas and provoke a harsh backlash from the West.
A strategic advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev, observed that if Russia decided to wage war against Ukraine, “it would be its last war that would result in the country’s disappearance from the political map for decades.” A month before the current war, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, chairman of the All-Russian Officers Assembly, said that, according to international law, Russia “might be punished with the loss of statehood for an invasion of independent Ukraine.”
But in recent years that dynamic began to shift, to where Putin began to view an invasion of Ukraine as a show of strength to prevent post-Soviet states from falling out of Russia’s sphere of influence. Subsequent U.S. administrations had artificially preserved Russia’s great power status, but a weakened economy had also left Moscow feeling vulnerable. As a result, Putin apparently felt incentivized to invade Ukraine to preserve Russian influence in central Eurasia.
The warnings of prior Soviet leaders have proven prescient, however. With its focus on Ukraine, Russia has failed to fulfill its treaty obligations to other countries like Armenia, leading its Prime Minister to conclude that Russia’s military presence in the country threatens Armenia’s security.
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan’s relations with Moscow have changed forever after they joined Turkic Council, with headquarters in Istanbul and opposite priorities from those of Russia, including capitalization and fortification of their borders.
Even the Russian state has become unstable. The Republic of Tatarstan, officially part of the Russian federation but with a predominantly Muslim population of 3.5 million, is now demanding more autonomy from Moscow. Last month, the Tatarstan Parliament replaced the president’s title with the historic name of an Islamic leader. The Kremlin had previously granted Tatarstan privileged status since it was their bridge to other Islamic-dominated regions, but now fractures are beginning to show.
Similarly, Dagestan in Kavkaz and Buryatia in Siberia, the regions that have suffered the most significant losses of servicemen in the war against Ukraine, recently demonstrated more resolve, denying Moscow further military recruitment of its young people.
Amid this bubbling turmoil, analysts have started to discuss potential scenarios of Russia’s complete downfall. Dr. Janusz Bugajski, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, has urged American policymakers to prepare for the imminent collapse of the Russian Federation. “We are witnessing an ongoing revolution in global security for which Western policymakers are unprepared,” he says. Similarly, analysts at the European Parliament anticipate Russia’s fall.
There is also concern inside Russia about this potential scenario. An independent Levada Center poll indicated in December that 82 percent of Russians were highly concerned or somewhat concerned about the Ukraine war. Nearly 50 percent expected unrest in Russia in 2023.
Most scenarios presented by experts presume that Russia falls into totalitarianism, with Soviet-style ideological control over citizens and a hyper-centralized government that will inevitably be unable to make informed decisions.
If this occurs, Western leaders should, as General Odom wisely recommended, not make the mistake of treating Russia as a great power again. Instead, they should let the Soviet empire die once and for all.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
