This Week’s Highlights

• The Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven, writing in Time, argues for some form of Western compromise to allay “Russian fears about the expansion of a potentially hostile military alliance” to its borders—one possibility being “internationally guaranteed autonomy for a demilitarized Donbas within Ukraine. … Failing at least initial moves toward such a compromise, it does indeed look likely that there will be some form of new Russian attack on Ukraine, though by no means necessarily a large-scale invasion.” In a separate essay, he cautions against rhetoric about the unacceptability of changing borders by force, noting that since 1945 there have been at least a dozen such changes either initiated or quietly accepted by the West: “Western virtue in these cases has in fact always been highly negotiable, and the rest of the world knows this very well.”
• It is clear, the Brookings Institution’s Angela Stent writes in Foreign Affairs, that “even if Europe avoids war, there is no going back to the situation as it was before Russia began massing its troops in March 2021. The ultimate result of this crisis could be the third reorganization of Euro-Atlantic security since the late 1940s.”
• Two military analysts recommend that the West consider ways to make concessions to Russia on intermediate-range missiles. Maj. Brennan Deveraux argues in War on the Rocks that by “demonstrating how seriously it perceives the missile threat” Russia is “providing an achievable demand” that addresses “one of its significant security concerns.” Retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, meanwhile, suggests that Russia could “destroy [its] disputed Iskander 9M729 cruise missiles and NATO would decommission two Aegis Ashore launch sites,” while “both sides would agree not to deploy medium-range missiles between the Urals and the Atlantic.” As Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center sums up: “When Putin threatens war on a neighbor because he doesn’t like the loss of empire and the post-Cold War order, the consequences for arms control are resoundingly negative.”
• Some observers have gone so far as to argue that “a failure to respond to military action against Ukraine would weaken American credibility and invite an attack on Taiwan by … China. Put simply, this is lazy analysis,” Hoover Institution fellow Kharis Templeman writes for War on the Rocks. “[T]he differences between Ukraine and Taiwan are far more important than their similarities—and linking together the security threats that the two countries face can make both situations worse.”
• Several analysts examine Sino-Russian ties against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis, including Nikkei’s Tetsuro Kosaka who describes recent changes in bilateral military cooperation, adding that: “With little experience of modern warfare, Chinese forces need help from their Russian counterparts to sharpen their capabilities and meet the challenge of a battle-hardened U.S. military.” Research scholar Elizabeth Wishnick, meanwhile, notes that Beijing’s responses to Russia’s military buildup are worth watching closely: Despite being Moscow’s strategic partner, China relies on Ukraine for sizable agricultural imports and, more importantly, has viewed Ukraine “as a critical entrepôt for its Belt and Road Initiative ambitions.”
• In a round-up of Ukraine-related polls by FiveThirtyEight, the authors note research by political scientist Olga Onuch, whose survey data show “that support for joining NATO [among Ukrainians] has increased substantially, from around 30% in May 2014 to 55% in January 2021”—reaching a majority for the first time. Meanwhile, surveys conducted by professors Gerard Toal and John O’Loughlin found that in “all but western Ukraine, opposition to NATO exercises near Russia outstripped support”; with 39% of respondents in western Ukraine in favor vs. 8.3% in the south and 7.1% in the east, the “extent of the regional disparities on this question are unusually large.”

 

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

“Why Is North Korea Suddenly Launching So Many Missiles?” Choe Sang-Hun, The New York Times, 01.25.22. The author, the Seoul bureau chief for the news outlet, writes:

• “Kim Jong-un … has launched six ballistic missiles in four weapons tests since Jan. 5, almost as many missiles​ in one month​ as North Korea launched in all of last year. On Tuesday, the South Korean military confirmed that the North had fired two cruise missiles in its fifth test of 2022. The message was clear: The North Korean leader feels he is being ignored and wants to push the Biden administration to re-engage and pay attention to his economically ailing nation.”
• “Individually, the tests may not amount to much—they involved missiles that have already been tested or weapons that are still under development. But taken together, they signal that Mr. Kim plans to use 2022 to jolt the Biden administration out of its diplomatic slumber.”
• “Mr. Kim needs Washington to engage ​with him on economic concessions​ so that he can fix his country’s devastated economy. Over the years, he has learned that the best way to grab the attention of an American president is with weapons. And that the best time to do it is when the world can least afford the instability.”
• “During a Politburo meeting last Wednesday, Mr. Kim suggested that his government might once again begin testing long-range missiles and nuclear devices after suspending such tests before his 2018 summit meeting with President Donald J. Trump.”

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Ukraine crisis could produce an unexpected winner: Iran,” James M. Dorsey, Responsible Statecraft, 01.30.22. The author, a senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and a syndicated columnist, writes:

• “An imposition of tough U.S. and European sanctions in response to any Russian incursion in Ukraine could … make Russia more inclined to ignore the fallout of violating U.S. sanctions in its dealings with Iran.”
• “Russian and Iranian leaders … met last week during a visit to Moscow by Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi. It was the first meeting between the leaders of Russia and Iran in five years.”
• “[T]he road to increased Russian trade, energy cooperation and military sales [with Iran] … would [not] be obstacle-free. Mr. Putin would still have to balance relations with Iran with Russia’s ties to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

Great Power Rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

“Parsing the Evidence: Will Russia Invade Ukraine?” RM Staff, Russia Matters, 01.27.22. With government officials and experts on both sides of the Atlantic disagreeing about the likelihood that Russia will send troops into Ukraine, the website’s staff have summarized the work of several analysts who back their prognoses about Moscow’s military interventions with copious evidence. Two sets of authors lean toward the “likely to invade” camp, and two toward “not likely”; among most analysts, caveats abound, and rightly so.

• Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute “argues in a detailed analysis for FPRI that a ground invasion of Ukraine is likely because, over the past year or so, the Kremlin has come to see its neighbor ‘as a permanently hostile country’ that has been increasing both its military capabilities and its defense cooperation with NATO in a way that poses long-term security risks for Russia. … Lee describes several factors that have altered Moscow’s threat perception … [and] focuses more than most analysts on the particulars of Russia’s objectives, military options and military capabilities … [which] are clearly linked: ‘The more ambitious the goal, the more force necessary to change Kyiv’s and NATO’s cost-benefit calculus.’”
• “In a RAND report on Russian military interventions, the authors [Samuel Charap, Edward Geist et al.] analyze 25 interventions Moscow has undertaken since 1991 in an attempt to identify their drivers, patterns and ‘signposts.’ The report was published in September 2021, before the current build-up on Ukraine’s border. Nonetheless, when its four key findings are matched against some of the evidence provided above and elsewhere, the results suggest an invasion is likelier than not.”
• RM founding director Simon Saradzhyan has made a “multi-year effort to ascertain what conditions are necessary and sufficient for Putin’s Russia to intervene (or not)” and has identified “three conditions that all had to be present for Putin to authorize military action abroad.” The third of these—that Putin had to have run out of non-military (i.e., less costly) options of responding to a perceived threat to Russia’s vital interests—does not yet seem to be present in the current standoff with the West over Ukraine.
• Eugene Chausovsky of the Newlines Institute has also “studied Russia’s record of past military interventions and interprets it as showing that an invasion, in late December at any rate, was unlikely. ‘Russia’s use of military force in the Putin era,’ he writes, ‘while often appearing aggressive and erratic, is actually rather conservative and risk-averse, with a strong cost-benefit analysis taken by the Kremlin in each particular case.’”

“War May Loom, but Are There Offramps?” David Sanger, New York Times, 01.24.22. The author, a White House and national security correspondent for the newspaper, writes:

• “[In the current conflict between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine,] as in all conflicts with roots in the Cold War and its aftermath, the subtext of any negotiation includes how the world’s two largest nuclear-armed states manage their arsenals—and use them for leverage.” 
• “It is possible that Mr. Putin’s bottom line … is straightforward: that he wants to stop Ukraine from joining NATO and get an assurance that the United States and NATO will never place offensive weapons that threaten Russia’s security in Ukrainian territory. On those two issues, it would seem, there is trading space. … Mr. Biden has been clear. ‘The likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely,’ he said … [Jan. 19], giving voice to a previously unspoken truth. ‘So there is room to work if he wants to do that.’”
• “Russian disinformation campaigns have suggested that Washington’s real goal is to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Administration officials say the United States has no such plans—and some kind of agreement should be, as one official said, ‘the easiest part of this,’ as long as Russia is willing to pull back its intermediate-range weapons as well.”
• “In the past week, Mr. Putin has been on the phone—not just to his old allies, but to the leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Some Russian news organizations have said the topics might be what Mr. Putin likes to call a ‘military-technical’ response to the Ukraine crisis. … Russia could consider placing nuclear weapons back in the Western Hemisphere, within easy, short reach of American cities.” 
• “Putin’s motivation is clear: If the United States won’t remove its weapons from Europe—even aging tactical weapons that need to be dropped from airplanes—he is determined to put American cities at similar risk. … The fear, now as then [during the Cold War], is escalation.”

“Russia Has Been Warning About Ukraine for Decades. The West Should Have Listened," Anatol Lieven, Time, 01.25.22. The author, a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:

• “[T]he existing crisis with Russia has origins that go far beyond Putin. … [F]rom the very beginning of NATO expansion in the mid-1990s, Russian officials and commentators—including liberal reformists—warned that an offer of NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine would bring confrontation with the West and an acute danger of war. These warnings were echoed by George Kennan … as well as by Henry Kissinger and other leading American statesmen.”
• “Russian fears about the expansion of a potentially hostile military alliance to Russia’s borders should be understandable to any American who has heard of the Monroe Doctrine. … None of this is intended to justify Russia’s actions, which have often been stupid as well as criminal—as with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, they are hardly unusually so in the context of the fall of empires and their aftermath.”
• “There are three possible elements to a compromise with Russia, two of which the West has in effect already conceded. The first is either a treaty of neutrality or a moratorium of 10 or 20 years on Ukrainian membership of NATO. The West loses nothing by this, since it is clear that Ukraine cannot in fact join NATO with its conflicts with Russia unresolved. In any case the U.S. and NATO have made it absolutely clear that they cannot and will not defend Ukraine by force.”
• “The second element is a return to the (Adapted) Conventional Forces in Europe Agreement limiting NATO forces in eastern Europe and Russian forces in contiguous territories. And the third is internationally guaranteed autonomy for a demilitarized Donbas within Ukraine, according to the Minsk II agreement … Failing at least initial moves toward such a compromise, it does indeed look likely that there will be some form of new Russian attack on Ukraine, though by no means necessarily a large-scale invasion.”

“Chicken Kiev or Chicken Little? Agreement with Russia over post-Soviet empire borders and realities doesn’t mean that the sky will fall on our heads,” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 01.28.22. The author, a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes:

• “A standard trope of Western rhetoric concerning Russia’s pressure on Ukraine is that to change borders by force is ‘unprecedented since the Second World War’… This is either historically illiterate or deliberately mendacious. There have in fact been … [at least a dozen] such changes since 1945. Sometimes the United States and its allies have themselves initiated these changes. Often they have acquiesced in them. Only very rarely indeed have they determinedly and successfully opposed them.”
• “[A]ttention may be drawn to the invasion, in particular, of Cyprus in 1974 by Turkey—a NATO member that was neither expelled nor suspended from the alliance as a result of its action, nor was it placed under Western sanctions. Nor was Armenia sanctioned for its de facto annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nor has the United States ever allowed its responses in these cases to be dictated or even influenced by the views of majorities in the United Nations.”
• “To put the various disputes in the former Soviet Union in context, … all the cases that I have mentioned have one thing in common: They were all the consequence of the fall or dissolution of empires… [whose] collapse is generally extremely messy and leaves innumerable conflicts in its wake.”
• “[T]here is one huge difference between the West European empires … and the Soviet Union… The former were maritime empires. That meant that when empire ended, the imperial countries could go home and put hundreds or thousands of miles of ocean between themselves and their former colonies. The USSR … was a land empire. This means that the successor states … have had to deal with post-imperial problems and conflicts on their borders, [and] on their own territories.”
• “An attempt at universal legal rules is only of very limited help. In the end, if you ask why Kosovo can secede from Serbia, but the Serbian enclave of Mitrovica cannot secede from Kosovo, the honest answer is ‘because the West says it can’t.’” 
• “We have to manage these post-imperial conflicts as best we can for the sake of our own interests and international peace—not run around like Chicken Little legalists squawking that any sacrifice of our supposedly sacred principles will lead the sky to fall. Western virtue in these cases has in fact always been highly negotiable, and the rest of the world knows this very well.”

“Are We on the Brink of War? An Interview With Dmitri Trenin,” Carnegie Moscow Center, 01.09.22. In this interview with the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center:

• “Are we on the brink of an actual military conflict? In the immediate future, say, the coming month, I think the answer is no.”
• “So you are ruling out the possibility that the United States and its allies could in some form agree to Russia’s demand to guarantee NATO non-expansion?  There will be no legally binding agreement on non-expansion. Nor will there be written political guarantees … that Ukraine and Georgia will ‘never ever’ be admitted to NATO. The question is how Russia will act when it becomes completely clear that the demands that Russian officials have frequently described as an ‘absolute imperative’ will be rejected by Western states.”
• “What do you see as possible scenarios for how the situation might develop? The first scenario is ostensibly a logical one. There will be an announcement that we didn’t actually expect them to agree… We are sensible people and understand everything perfectly, but we had to break the impasse … and demonstrate our seriousness to them. And we managed to get something out of it. As for the second scenario, it assumes that things have actually gotten way too serious, and we’ve reached the point when new politics have come to replace the old ones in Russia.”
• “Are you talking about creating spheres of influence? ... I have a feeling that Russia has been looking for a new starting point around which to reassemble territories in the post-Soviet space. … In any event, the use of force scenario won’t be similar to what happened in Crimea.”
• “Do you believe this [use of force] scenario to be at all probable? I think it’s unlikely. It’s fraught with many negative consequences, and great human and financial losses. … If we look back at history, it’s obvious that if, after any large-scale confrontation—be it ‘hot’ or ‘cold’—the losing side is not included in the new security arrangement on conditions it finds acceptable, its pride will be wounded and it will not be prepared to give up on its sovereignty. Then, having gained strength 20-30 years down the line, it will demand respect for its national interests. And now that time has come? Yes, I think that time has come.”

“The Putin Doctrine: A Move on Ukraine Has Always Been Part of the Plan,” Angela Stent, Foreign Affairs, 01.27.22. The author, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes:

• “[I]t is clear that even if Europe avoids war, there is no going back to the situation as it was before Russia began massing its troops in March 2021. The ultimate result of this crisis could be the third reorganization of Euro-Atlantic security since the late 1940s. The first came with the consolidation of the Yalta system into two rival blocs in Europe after World War II. The second emerged from 1989 to 1991, with the collapse of the communist bloc and then the Soviet Union itself, followed by the West’s subsequent drive to create a Europe ‘whole and free.’ Putin now directly challenges that order with his moves against Ukraine.”

“Taiwan Is Not Ukraine: Stop Linking Their Fates Together,” Kharis Templeman, War on the Rocks, 01.27.22. The author, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes:

• “Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. …While these developments appear only to affect European security, American commentators have been quick to draw parallels to Taiwan.”
• “Some observers have even gone so far as to argue that their fates will be linked: a failure to respond to military action against Ukraine would weaken American credibility and invite an attack on Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China. Put simply, this is lazy analysis. In the current geopolitical moment, the differences between Ukraine and Taiwan are far more important than their similarities—and linking together the security threats that the two countries face can make both situations worse.”
• “[F]irst consider the history of U.S. involvement with each country. American security support for Ukraine is recent, limited, and subsumed under broader concerns about Russia’s challenge to the post-Cold War European security order. In Taiwan, however, American interests run deep. … [A] long history of engagement means that America’s global reputation and influence have far more at stake in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan than a Russian one on Ukraine.”
• “Next, consider the adversaries. Russia’s interests, strategies, and tactics on the world stage are all fundamentally different from China’s. As a declining power ruled by a single strongman since 2000, Russia under Vladimir Putin has had a weak hand to play. Putin’s aggressive foreign policy actions have been motivated primarily by the need to bolster his domestic standing, not to enhance Russian security. … By contrast, China is a rising power, and its leaders have reason to believe that time is on their side.
• “The range and depth of American interests in Taiwan also dwarf those in Ukraine. … America doesn’t need to fight Russia in Ukraine to save Taiwan from China. … It would help both Taiwan and Ukraine if more of America’s foreign policy commentators would also notice the difference, and stop linking their fates together.”

“Is There a Way Out of the Russia-NATO Talks Impasse? Andrey Kortunov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 01.25.22. The author, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, writes:

• “Few can have been surprised by the outcome of the recent talks between Russia and the West, in which the latter … rejected Russia’s demands to close NATO’s doors to new Eastern European members and restore its military infrastructure to where it was at the end of the twentieth century.
• “So what steps should Moscow take next, now that its ostentatious diplomatic blitzkrieg has come to nothing? … Russia … needs to establish its priorities. It can either try to inflict maximum damage on what it sees as an intractable and hypocritical West, taking revenge for the defeats and unilateral concessions of the 1990s, or it can try to strengthen its own security as far as possible amid the limitations of the current geopolitical situation.”
• “To find a way out of the impasse of uncompromising stances being taken by both sides, it would first seem reasonable to disentangle the U.S.-Russian strategic weapons agenda from issues of European security. … Any confidence-building measures, however modest—creating a buffer zone limiting military activity along the line of contact between Russia and NATO, resuming the work of the NATO-Russia Council and including a military component, possibly reviving the Open Skies Treaty in some form—would help to stabilize the volatile situation on the ground.”
• “If Moscow believes that the main security threat it faces is NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia’s western borders, it would make sense to focus on the infrastructure itself, rather than the theoretical possibility of NATO expansion. … Russia should also be working with other neighbors that have been eyeing NATO membership. … Moscow should focus on finding alternative security mechanisms for those countries to reduce their interest in coveted NATO membership.”
• “As for Ukraine, it is hard for Moscow to press Kyiv to fully comply with the Minsk agreements… Without taking this issue off the table, it would be useful to concentrate on the first three points of the agreements, which call for stabilizing the situation along the line of contact in Donbas.”

“There is no NATO open-door policy,” Michael O’Hanlon and Stephen Van Evera, The Hill, 01.27.22. The authors, the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science in MIT’s Security Studies Program, write:

• “While Russia should not be allowed to veto Ukraine’s hypothetical membership in NATO, there is, in fact, no NATO open-door policy—at least not on the unconditional terms that are often implied when that concept is invoked. Nor is there anything in the 1945 United Nations Charter that provides countries any automatic rights to join security organizations of their choosing; that treaty only ensures membership in the United Nations.”
• “It is true that, after the Bucharest summit of 2008, NATO leaders promised that, someday, Ukraine and Georgia would be invited into the alliance. But no schedule was proposed, and no interim security guarantees were offered. Crucially, no legislature was consulted, either.”
• “[H]istory shows we did not expand NATO much when it was focused on the core mission of deterrence—and maybe that should be a valuable guideline for today, too. It is difficult to see how adding Ukraine to NATO could enhance the region’s security. More likely, it would further antagonize Russia and increase, rather than reduce, the risks of some type of conflict.
• “None of this is to suggest that we concede Ukraine, Georgia or any other country to a Russian-dominated sphere of influence. We need not foreclose the idea of NATO membership for these former Soviet republics, unless and until Russia works with us to create alternative security structures that verifiably protect the safety of those sovereign states. In undertaking such a discussion, however, we do need to remember the core fact that NATO does not have anything like an unconditional open-door policy—nor should it.”

“Keep NATO’s Door Open to Ukraine: Washington Shouldn’t Grant Putin the Sphere of Influence He Wants,” Eric S. Edelman and David J. Kramer, Foreign Affairs, 01.31.22. The authors, former U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy and former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor in the George W. Bush administration, write:

• “[A] sphere of influence is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks. Some Western analysts seem to be taking his side, arguing that NATO should close its door … and no longer follow through on the pledge it made in 2008 that Ukraine, along with Georgia, will ultimately become members of the alliance. Ukraine is not going to join any time soon anyway, these analysts argue, so why not make this concession to Putin in the hope it would reduce the possibility of a Russian military attack?”
• “These arguments are flawed and should be rejected once and for all. To follow their recommendations would be to reward Putin for his aggression and assign blame for the current state of affairs not to the Russian leader, where it belongs, but to the enlargement of NATO, which has helped stabilize the European continent for more than seven decades.”
• “Putin invokes NATO enlargement as a convenient excuse when his real fear is the emergence of successful, democratic, Western-oriented countries along Russia’s borders—especially Ukraine. … To focus on other countries’ interest in joining NATO as the cause of Putin’s aggression gets it backward: Russia’s neighbors feel the need to look to the West, including to NATO, because of Putin’s revanchist aggression.
• “Above all, it is a mistake to assume Putin would be assuaged by assurances that NATO membership for Ukraine (and Georgia) is off the table. On the contrary, concessions would likely lead him to up the ante, as he would view such pledges as a sign of weakness and could raise the stakes to include no European Union membership either. After all, it was closer ties to the EU, not NATO, that led to Putin’s intervention into Ukraine in 2013 and 2014.”
• “The fact that additional countries want to join NATO is a testament to the costs of Putin’s aggression and to the alliance’s success … Closing the door to NATO, especially now, would demoralize Ukraine, make it more vulnerable to Putin’s designs, and split the alliance.”

“Ukraine crisis revives NATO debate in Finland and Sweden; Politicians from across the spectrum in both Nordic countries insist on ‘freedom of choice,’” Richard Milne, Financial Times, 01.25.22. The author, a correspondent for the news outlet, writes:

• “President Vladimir Putin has insisted during the crisis over Ukraine that NATO should stop its encroachment toward Russia’s borders. But his demand is having unintended consequences in Europe’s far north, reviving talk of whether Finland and Sweden should join the military alliance.”
• “Russia has threatened a sharp response should NATO expand further by including the two countries around the Baltic Sea. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in December that Sweden and Finland joining NATO ‘would have serious military and political consequences that would require an adequate response from the Russian side.’”

“Is Putin bluffing on Ukraine? Allies in the U.S. and Europe are divided,” Adam Taylor, The Washington Post, 01.25.22. The author, a reporter for the news outlet, writes:

• “When it comes to assessing the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a major geopolitical divide. … Germany has been particularly resistant to the prevailing wisdom in Washington and London. … There are many reasons for the divide, but one key difference is in views of the Russian president and his intentions, according to Liana Fix, an expert on Russia at Berlin’s Körber Foundation. Many in Europe think Vladimir Putin is bluffing, she said.”
• “There are plenty of officials and experts who believe that Russia does not seek a conflict and its military buildup is a ploy designed to force concessions from the West. However, there is disagreement on whether his [Putin’s] demands, which include an end to the eastern expansion of military alliance NATO, should be met.”
• “But others believe exactly the opposite: That it is the offers of diplomacy, not the threat of war, that is the bluff. Writing for the website War on the Rocks on Monday [Jan. 24], Michael Kofman argued that Russia’s demands simply could not be met by the United States and its NATO allies.”
• “Bluffs are made to be called. … ‘By backing away from a military escalation, Putin would risk being accused of failing to secure serious concessions on Ukraine or from NATO. He would be seen as a man who talks a lot and threatens but, when faced with a tough response from the other side, eventually backs down,’ British historian Timothy Ash wrote for the Atlantic Council this week. … Fiona Hill, formerly a top Russia official for President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, has said roughly the same … ‘If we call his bluff, he has to do something, because otherwise none of his threats are credible,’ Hill said.”
• “If an attack does happen, those who thought Putin was bluffing will have been shown to be wrong. Historically, countries like Germany had hoped that closer economic integration and dialogue with Russia would ensure peaceful relations. As Fix put it: ‘This is a litmus test for Germany’s approach toward Russia.’”

“Shutting out Russia from SWIFT system would not be a surgical strike,” Jonathan Guthrie, Financial Times, 01.31.22. The author, an associate editor with the news outlet, writes:

• “Atomic weaponry is the only genuine—but unthinkable—nuclear option in a war. Some politicians and pundits nevertheless regard expelling Russia from the SWIFT payments alliance for banks as one in the West’s arsenal. It would fall short for more than definitional reasons.”
• “SWIFT’s full title is The Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication. That highlights the satisfying ostracism involved in expelling Russia. But it also hints at flaws… Firstly, SWIFT is not a full-blooded payments network. Nor is SWIFT, as sometimes claimed, a mere messaging system. … But these messages embody something grander: mutual trust based on common standards. Expelling Russia from SWIFT would not isolate Russia financially, as proponents imply. Nor would it be as futile as opponents imagine.”
• “The sanction would have ‘a chilling effect,’ in the words of Harley Balzer, emeritus professor at Georgetown University … discouraging some Western banks from Russian dealings. Others would continue to send and receive payments with Russian counterparties. Russia’s own payments messaging system remains largely domestic. Cross-border dealings would probably involve emails, or anachronistic telexes or faxes. Russian businesspeople say this would be fiddly, slow and insecure, but would work much of the time.”
• “The second issue underscored by SWIFT’s full name is that it is a cooperative based in Belgium, not a U.S. bank or state entity. It is obedient to EU law and its own members, not to Joe Biden or Congress. The U.S. would need to lever Russia out of SWIFT through pressure on the EU and SWIFT’s non-Russian members.” 
• “If any sanction is analogous with a nuclear option, it would be cutting off Russian transactions in the almighty dollar via institutions with U.S. links. That would cause serious economic damage… Ordinary Russians would suffer more than Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, there can be no surgical financial strike against him and his associates. In the sanctions war, the only financial bombs are dirty ones.”

“Ideas for US/NATO Response to Russian Security Guarantee Proposals,” Kevin Ryan, European Leadership Network, 01.21.22. The author, a former U.S. military attaché in Moscow and a senior fellow with the Intelligence Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes:

• “The U.S. and NATO should combine the two Russian proposals and counter it with a united proposal that addresses Russia’s concern about NATO expansion, rolls back Russia’s own expansion in its near abroad and creates stable and successful states in the space between NATO and Russia. And the countries at the center of this negotiation, Ukraine and Georgia, should be parties in signing the agreement.”
• “The U.S. and NATO should propose a five-year moratorium on new NATO members: a moratorium that automatically extends itself until Russia, the U.S. or NATO withdraws from the agreement. This technically would not violate NATO’s charter to remain open to new members, but it would address what the Russian leadership clearly claims is its central concern.”
• “In exchange, NATO and the U.S. should demand that Russia’s second pillar in its proposals, expressed in Article 4 of the Russia-NATO Proposal, guide further negotiations. … If Article 4 were strictly applied, Russian troops deployed after 1997 into Abkhazia, Ukraine and ‘additional’ troops in Ossetia and Crimea, as well as any troops deployed to other former Soviet Republics, would have to be withdrawn. … Russia would have to remove Iskander missile units from Kaliningrad… [and] cease large-scale snap exercises … in its western areas.”
• There could also be “exceptions from the 1997 status quo,” including: “an internationally monitored vote … to determine [Crimea’s] allegiance”; Russia would remove troops from Abkhazia, Moldova and Ossetia, “while NATO would remove temporary bases in Romania and Bulgaria”; “Russia would destroy disputed Iskander 9M729 cruise missiles and NATO would decommission two Aegis Ashore launch sites (both sides would agree not to deploy medium-range missiles between the Urals and the Atlantic)”; both sides would agree to limit major military exercises and to negotiate ‘cyber rules of the road.’”
• The author offers an additional 10 ideas the U.S. and NATO can consider in offering Russia “a substantial counterproposal addressing the larger picture of both sides’ needs, if they are to find a diplomatic solution and avoid armed conflict.” These include U.S./NATO agreement to “not deploy any new Aegis Ashore launch sites in Europe or third countries bordering Russia” and the verifiable closure of Aegis Ashore launch sites in Poland and Romania.

“Robert Gates: Putin has overplayed his hand on Ukraine,” Robert Gates, Financial Times, 01.21.22. The author, who was head of the CIA in 1991-1993 and secretary of defense in 2006-2011, writes:

• “Putin’s problem is that, as dictators are wont to do, he has overplayed his hand. His aggressive threats against Ukraine have galvanized NATO and reaffirmed its clarity of purpose.”
• “The 18th-century French diplomat Talleyrand is meant to have said: ‘You can do anything you like with bayonets except sit on them.’ Putin must use those troops soon or face the humiliation of withdrawing them without achieving anything except pushing Ukraine closer to the west. In either case, he has placed himself in a difficult position at home and abroad. The U.S. and its allies must do what they can to exacerbate his difficulties.”

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“Ukraine conflict shines light on deepening ties between Beijing and Moscow,” Kathrin Hille and Leo Lewis, Financial Times, 01.30.22. The authors, a China correspondent and Asia business editor with the news outlet, write:

• “‘If war [in Ukraine] happens, it will be a huge distraction for the U.S. For China, that would be an opportunity of the same magnitude as 2014,’ said Alexander Gabuev, a China expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center… Between 2013 and 2021, China’s share of Russia’s external trade doubled from 10 to 20%. Analysts believe that if the U.S. and Europe follow through on threats to impose sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine again, Moscow would become even more dependent on Beijing.”
• “But the most significant questions looming over China’s potential role in a Ukraine conflict relate to its political and military partnership with Russia. Although the two countries insist that they are not in an alliance, military collaboration in some areas has reached a level that rivals that between traditional allies.”
• “‘There is no ceiling on the development of our relationship, no limit,’ said Zhao Mingwen, a former Chinese diplomat and Russia expert … ‘You could say we are even more allies than allies.’ Zhao added that Russia and China would support each other in conflicts that they viewed as provoked by external powers. ‘If China were forced to unify Taiwan by force and the U.S. intervened, I believe Russia would not sit by idly,’ he said.”
• “If Russia sought Chinese support in a Ukraine war, Beijing might be in a position to help. Alexander Korolev, an expert in the Russian-Chinese security relationship at the University of New South Wales, said ever more frequent and substantive joint exercises, collaboration on weapons development, regular consultations on military and security issues and long-running military personnel exchanges are enabling the two militaries to jointly operate in real wars.”
• “Moscow and Beijing support each other most strongly when they share the goal of countering the US, he added. If China views the Ukraine crisis as part of that global struggle, it could exploit it to erode US power, although observers said Beijing would not attack Taiwan.”

“China-Russia drills near Japan hint at burgeoning military ties,” Tetsuro Kosaka, Nikkei, 01.29.22. The author, a senior staff writer for the news agency, writes:

• “Two Chinese and two Russian bombers flew southward over the northern part of the Sea of Japan on Nov. 29 last year, surprising Japanese and U.S. defense officials, who saw the sortie as an anomaly. While this was believed to be the third such group flight … the route the planes took differed significantly from the earlier flights. … [T]he Chinese bombers flew directly over land from northern China into Russia's Far East, where they met up with their Russian counterparts before flying over the Sea of Japan.”
• “Military exercises sometimes serve as a rehearsal for an emergency. If Moscow has begun allowing foreign military aircraft to enter its airspace, relations between China and Russia can be said to have moved from military cooperation to a de facto military alliance.”
• “In another unusual move, the two countries' navies deployed 10 ships last October for an exercise in which they sailed through the Tsugaru Strait between [the Japanese islands] Honshu and Hokkaido and into the East China Sea.”
• “A former intelligence officer with Japan's Defense Ministry said the joint exercises are ‘part of a strategy to keep U.S. forces and Japan's Self-Defense Forces away from the northern part of the Sea of Japan.’"
• “With little experience of modern warfare, Chinese forces need help from their Russian counterparts to sharpen their capabilities and meet the challenge of a battle-hardened U.S. military. Russia cannot refuse requests for joint exercises: It sustains its economy by selling natural resources and weapons to China.”
• “Decades of support to North Korea from China and Russia are partly intended serve as bait for the U.S. If North Korea creates a crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. military would have to focus its attention there. That would give Beijing and Moscow a freer hand to pursue their national interests elsewhere… When China and Russia conducted their naval exercise last year, North Korea fired missiles as if it was cheering them on.”

“Ukraine: China's Burning Bridge to Europe?” Elizabeth Wishnick, China’s Resource Risks blog, 01.31.22. The author, an associate professor of political science at Montclair State University and a research scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, writes:

• “As the world monitors Russia's military buildup on the Ukrainian border, the actions of Russia's strategic partner in China are worth watching as well. China … views Ukraine as a critical entrepôt for its Belt and Road Initiative ambitions. Agricultural exports from Ukraine have also become important for China in the wake of the U.S.-China trade war, yet Chinese officials have supported Russia—or at least have felt obliged to do so—up to a point.”
• “In the first half of 2021, agricultural trade between China and Ukraine had increased by 33% over the same period in 2020. … Ukraine began selling corn to China in 2013 and by 2019 had become its largest supplier, accounting for more than 80% of Chinese corn imports. … Also in 2013, China's Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps … signed an agreement with Ukraine's KSG Agro to lease 100,000 hectares … of agricultural land for cultivation and pig farming over a 50-year period.”
• “When Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, Ukraine acquired new importance as a transit hub and market for Chinese goods. Unlike Russia, China saw Ukraine's 2017 trade agreement with the EU as an opportunity… Chinese companies have been investing in Ukraine's ports… [and seeing] opportunities in Ukraine's energy sector. … Nevertheless, Ukraine's economic ties with China remain modest. Trade turnover in 2021 amounted to $15.4 billion and China has only invested $127 million in Ukraine since 2015, compared to $42 billion in Kazakhstan, another key BRI partner.”
• “This may change as Ukraine's economic options narrow. … [A Chinese-Ukrainian infrastructure agreement signed June 30, 2021] raised alarm bells among some observers who noted that, just before its signing, Ukraine withdrew its signature on a United Nations Human Rights Council document demanding an independent investigation of China's treatment of the Uyghurs. … With the disbursement of a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund stalled over good governance requirements, Ukraine also may have borrowed as much as $1 billion—12% of the country's total budget deficit in 2020—from China … leading to questions about Ukraine's potential for economic dependence on China.”
• “China is unlikely to tie its core interest in what it calls reunifying Taiwan to Russian President Vladimir Putin's opaque maneuvering in Ukraine. In 2014 Russia's takeover of Crimea put China in a difficult position. A longstanding advocate of territorial integrity, China opted to abstain on the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Russia's action. China has never officially recognized the Russian annexation and Chinese high-level officials are barred from traveling to Crimea, though some investments have proceeded under the radar, with minimal publicity. “

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

“Why Intermediate-Range Missiles Are a Focal Point in the Ukraine Crisis,” Brennan Deveraux, War on the Rocks, 01.28.22. The author, a major in the U.S. Army currently attending the School of Advanced Military Studies, writes:

• “In seeking to explain why there are currently 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, commentators have invoked everything from the role of NATO expansion in the 1990s to the history of Kievan Rus in the 9th century. But a more recent development deserves discussion as well: America’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019. … If nothing else, Moscow has been eager to highlight this factor. Russia’s proposal for ending the current crisis stipulates that the United States ‘not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach [Russian territory].’”
• “By bundling an arms control agreement with its proposal for ending the Ukraine crisis, Russia has forced a conversation on the subject. But does this mean that it is seriously looking for an agreement? Michael Kofman, the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analysis [now called simply CNA], argues it is not.”
• “But there is an alternative reading. Russia could be demonstrating how seriously it perceives the missile threat. By providing an achievable demand in its negotiations, Russia can secure a minor diplomatic victory and compromise on the ‘non-starters,’ while still addressing one of its significant security concerns. Russia has created room for the West to make concessions, and thereby potentially give Russia the opportunity to defuse the situation without appearing to ‘back down’ from the West.”
• “While NATO expansion may very well be the primary driver of Russia’s actions toward Ukraine, the return of these strategic missiles is also a factor that the United States should consider. … [A] potential arms agreement concerning the formerly banned missiles is not only a realistic goal, but it is something that all parties have expressed a willingness to work toward. In this context, if successful negotiations occur, missiles will be the likely focal point. Consequently, the United States may have to concede the tactical and operational benefits that theater-support missiles could provide in Europe for the potential strategic victory of defusing the tensions on the Ukraine border.”

“Ukraine and the Future of Arms Control,” Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk, 01.24.22. The author, co-found of the Stimson Center, writes:

• “What’s unfolding now in Ukraine and perhaps later with respect to Taiwan clarifies even more – as if further clarification were needed – the utter wrong-headedness of waging an extended war in Afghanistan and a war of choice to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq. … Ukraine is another fine mess that the George W. Bush administration has gotten the United States into.”
• “Bush championed the entry of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, an alliance that had already expanded beyond coherence. … Putin wouldn’t have been satisfied with the situation in Ukraine even if the Bush administration had refrained from going overboard with NATO expansion. Bush’s democracy project has, however, made the stakes higher, and contributed significantly to Putin’s over-the-top reaction.”
• “When Putin threatens war on a neighbor because he doesn’t like the loss of empire and the post-Cold War order, the consequences for arms control are resoundingly negative. … The size, composition and readiness levels of nuclear forces will not affect the outcome of a small or larger war on Ukrainian territory, which will be determined by the fortitude of the contestants and the pain that can be inflicted upon them by far more prosaic means.”
• “One nuclear signaling option for Putin, as Pavel Podvig has written, is to take a page from the old Soviet playbook and reintroduce ground-based, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. … This old-school move doesn’t merit an old-school response. The currency of NATO connectivity with the United States is now measured in defensive, not offensive, ground-based missiles.”
• “Where, then, does all this leave us in terms of arms control? In a holding pattern, at least for now. … Everything will be a hard slog, but there will be new opportunities for dialogue, beginning next month on space debris caused by anti-satellite testing. The key norms of no use, no testing and nonproliferation can be extended, whether in darkness or in daylight.”

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

“Zombie diplomacy and the fate of Syria’s constitutional committee,” Steven Heydemann and Karam Shaar, Brookings Institution, 01.24.22. The authors—respectively, a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy, plus chair of Middle East Studies at Smith College, and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, write:

• “[T]he so-called Geneva process [to negotiate a political settlement in Syria] has become little more than zombie diplomacy, kept alive not by any expectation that it will produce a result but by the absence of alternatives and the reluctance of the United States and European Union to let go of the only negotiating framework accepted by all members of the U.N. Security Council.”
• “Russian officials have expressed frustration that they have not been able to wring a more accommodating posture out of their client in Damascus. Simultaneously, regional states have begun a gradual process of normalization—establishing diplomatic ties to the Assad regime and initiating discussions about bolstering trade and investment.” 
• “Assad … was never interested in any part of the political process. He once described Syria’s membership in the U.N. as ‘a game we play.’ … Nor did Russia’s military support for Assad translate into political leverage. … [H]e has consistently treated the Geneva process with derision…—an object lesson in the ability of weak clients to resist pressure from influential patrons. … Recently, Moscow seems to have given up on Geneva entirely.”
• “What is painfully clear from both Russian and Syrian regime statements is the belief that Geneva is no longer needed as a pathway to normalization for the Assad regime.”
• “What ending the Geneva process will do, therefore, is shift the landscape of Syria diplomacy. Such a step would remove a framework that has become a counterproductive obstacle to progress. It would move to the fore alternative means for the U.N. and other actors to shape the outcome of the Syrian conflict.” 

Cyber security:

“The Next Russian-Western Battleground Is Online,” Eugene Chausovsky, Foreign Policy, 01.27.22. The author, a nonresident fellow at the Newlines Institute, writes:

• “The West is likely to utilize creative machine-learning techniques to take the information fight against Russia beyond Russian borders and into the former Soviet space. Social media has been an effective tool that the United States has used against Russia, not only in terms of helping to facilitate opposition groups within Russia but also against pro-Russian governments in the former Soviet Union. This was most notably the case during the 2014 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine.”
• “However, Russia has pushed back against the use of these social media tools for political purposes, and Moscow is helping pro-Russian regimes in countries like Belarus and Kazakhstan fight back against this as well. Russia has tightened control of mobile internet connectivity.”
• “Kazakhstan is considering laws to restrict social media companies similar to those in Russia ‘to protect children’s rights.’ The same techniques used to aid the opposition in Russia could be useful in these countries too.”
• “In such ways, competition over the information systems space is likely to increasingly shape the broader geopolitical contention underway between Moscow and the West, regardless of how current tensions shake out. While all eyes are on the military battlefield today, the battle for control of the internet could be no less important in impacting and transforming this standoff in the months and years to come.”

Energy exports from CIS:

“Russia Isn’t a Dead Petrostate, and Putin Isn’t Going Anywhere,” Meghan L. O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff, The New York Times, 01.27.22. The authors, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and a co-dean of the Columbia Climate School, write:

• “Fears are mounting that Europe may be about to face a far worse energy situation as Russia threatens military action in Ukraine. The United States is exploring ways to get more natural gas to the continent. And for good reason. The European Union typically relies on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas, making it by far the continent’s largest supplier.”
• “Some may see Russia’s actions as the last gasp of a fading petrostate before the energy transition robs the country of geopolitical power. But that would be wishful thinking. The transition to a clean energy economy may actually empower Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and other petrostate leaders before it diminishes them.”
• “In a world that is ‘net zero’ on its carbon emissions, major fossil fuel producers—especially Russia—will be greatly diminished in their power, assuming they do not find a way to remake their economies in the interim. But in the next 10 to 20 years, the energy transition will make opportunities for petrostates to wield significant geopolitical and economic power. There are at least three reasons this is the case.”
• “First, this period will be marked by significant price volatility, which will give a very limited number of producers with the ability to supply more oil or gas in short order extra geopolitical influence. … Second, as oil and natural gas production shifts away from large, Western, publicly held oil and gas companies, oil companies owned by the countries in which vast resources are found will be able to flex their muscles more. … Third, even in a net-zero global economy, substantial amounts of oil and gas will still be required in the energy mix.”
• “[I]t is increasingly clear that if climate ambition comes into tension with energy reliability or affordability or the security of energy supplies, climate ambition will lose. As energy prices soar, preparing for crises in which state-controlled energy suppliers are able to exert outsize geopolitical and economic clout must be a priority for Western leaders.”

“What Happens if Russia Cuts Off Europe’s Natural Gas?” Stanley Reed, New York Times, 01.25.22. The author, a London-based journalist, writes:

• “Russia supplies about one-third of Europe’s natural gas, and its prominence as a supplier has grown as the continent’s domestic output has declined. … Putin might cut off all or a large portion of Russian gas flows to Europe in response to still unspecified economic sanctions that the United States and other Western countries have pledged to impose in the event of an invasion [of Ukraine].”
• “Some observers think that Mr. Putin would be wary of taking such drastic steps against what are his most important customers. Doing so would put a key source of revenue at risk. ‘While Europe is hugely dependent on Russian gas, Russia is hugely dependent on the European market and can’t easily substitute for it,’ said David Goldwyn, who was the special envoy for international energy affairs in the Obama administration.”
• “[W]hile storage levels remain low and prices are high, Europe has not run out of the fuel. Market forces are working, if belatedly. An armada of giant ships has been bringing cargoes of liquefied natural gas … lured by high prices and cajoling from the Biden administration. … The surge has been significant: In January, flows of liquefied natural gas to Europe have actually exceeded those of Russian gas. These shipments, along with a relatively mild winter so far, have at least temporarily eased fears of a shortfall.”
• “Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president for gas at Wood Mackenzie, a market research firm[,] … said that another reason for January’s decline in Russian gas flows to Europe is that European utilities, at current high prices, are choosing to sell what gas they do have in storage, rather than buy from Russia.”
• “Whether liquefied natural gas shipments could offset a complete shut-off of Russian gas to Europe is doubtful. Liquefied natural gas tankers require special terminals, and Europe probably does not have enough receiving terminals to match such enormous losses.”

“Europe Isn’t Prepared if Russia Turns the Gas Taps Off,” Robbie Gramer and Christina Lu, Foreign Policy, 01.27.22. The authors, a diplomacy/national security reporter and an editorial fellow at Foreign Policy, write:

• “The Biden administration is scrambling to help European allies find alternative sources of gas supplies as tensions between the West and Russia flare up over Moscow’s amassing of troops on Ukraine’s borders. Yet there are few alternatives to Russian gas for U.S. and European officials to turn to, … industry experts and Western diplomats concede … —an uncomfortable fact the Kremlin could use in its favor if the crisis worsens. Few big gas exporters have excess capacity they can send to Europe, which in any event lacks a well-developed infrastructure for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), especially where it’s most needed in Central and Eastern Europe.”
• “‘The only thing we can do that’s really relevant and useful is to use this tough learning experience to rethink how you organize energy security in the long run,’ [Robert] McNally [founder and president of Rapidan Energy Group] said. ‘I know that’s not a lot of help for the freezing cold Belgian consumer in the coming weeks, but the brutal reality is there’s not a lot you can do for those folks beyond pray for warmer weather. What you can do is rethink your longer-term energy security strategy.’”

“Russia’s Oil Weapon May Be More Potent Than Gas Blackmail,” Meghan O’Sullivan, Bloomberg, 01.28.22. The author, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, writes:

• “As has been pointed out, should the West hit Russia with severe new sanctions, President Vladimir Putin could cut off natural gas exports, leaving the continent shivering through midwinter. Yet there is another potential weapon of Russia’s that’s been less discussed and might be very effective: An ability to disrupt global oil markets, which would directly hit U.S. consumers.”
• “The global market for oil is extremely tight right now, made apparent by rising oil prices even in the face of an economy feeling the weight of the omicron variant. … Russia could unilaterally drive up global prices if it cut its current oil production of 10 million barrels per day by even a relatively small amount.”
• “An oil-price spike would directly affect the U.S.—and a Biden administration understandably sensitive to gasoline prices. While there no doubt would be a full-court press on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to produce more oil immediately, it is not entirely clear how Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would respond to such entreaties, especially given Biden’s unwillingness to speak with him since taking office.”
• “Russia might even find a move to curtail global oil supplies to be revenue-neutral. Given the inelasticity of demand for oil, a sudden sharp move reducing supply could drive prices up to a level at which Russia brings in more money from lower exports.”
• “Of course, just as with cutting off natural gas to Europe, tampering with oil markets would not be without costs for Russia. … A spike in oil prices would displease China, straining Beijing’s support for Russian efforts to rewrite the rules of the international order, beginning with the European security architecture. Playing the oil card could also cause a significant rift between Russia and Saudi Arabia. … For these reasons, Russia might well disguise a retaliation-through-oil strategy, claiming an explosion on a pipeline or an environmental disaster. Russia has allegedly curtailed its oil exports under dubious circumstances in the past.”

Climate change:

“Did We Miss Biden’s Most Important Remark About Russia?” Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, 01.25.22. The author, a columnist for the news outlet, writes:

• “Pretty much every crucial line in President Biden’s recent marathon news conference has been dissected by now—except one, the one that may turn out to be the most prescient. … It was when Biden told President Vladimir Putin that Russia has something much more important to worry about than whether Ukraine looks East or West—namely, ‘a burning tundra that will not freeze again naturally.’”
• “I’m pretty sure this was the first time a U.S. president ever tried to persuade a Russian leader to get out of his neighbor’s front yard and focus instead on saving his own backyard—because as Siberia is affected by climate change, it will threaten Russia’s stability a lot more than anything that happens in Ukraine.”
• “This is just the beginning of a whole new kind of power struggle within and between countries based on who is leading with resistance and who is leading with resilience. … Let the games begin.”

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Prematurely sanctioning Russia will accomplish nothing,” Daniel W. Drezner, The Washington Post, 01.24.22. The author, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, writes:

• “For sanctions to work, there have to be two credible commitments. The first is that sanctions will be imposed if the targeted actor does something. If the target thinks the sanctioner is bluffing, there is not much of a deterrent threat. The second is that the sanctions will be lifted/not imposed if the targeted actor reverses course. If the target thinks the sanctioner will impose and maintain sanctions no matter what, then they will view bargaining as a pointless endeavor; nothing they could do would alter the sanctioner’s behavior.”
• “Prematurely sanctioning bolsters the first credible commitment but sabotages the second credible commitment (a problem that has bedeviled recent U.S. sanctions). This would exacerbate the problem that Dmytro Razumkov, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, told Ignatius [about]: ‘What I am concerned about is that Russia is putting itself in such a position that it can’t step back.’ That concern seems valid… Preemptively imposing sanctions simply offers up additional pretext for Putin to strike Ukraine.”
• “If the Biden administration wants to rely only on economic statecraft as its means of deterrence, then the solution is not to impose sanctions now, but ratchet up the cost of the threatened sanctions.”
• “The United States has imposed more punishing sanctions on Iran after 2018 than anything being contemplated toward Russia in the present moment. Everyone now acknowledges that the sanctions on Iran have failed. Why should anyone expect sanctions to stop Russia—a state that has amassed far greater reserves and capacity for resistance—from pursuing what it believes to be its core interest?”

 

II. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Putin should beware the cost of war with Ukraine,” Sergei Guriev, Financial Times, 01.26.22. The author, a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris, writes:

• “Whether or not Moscow invades Ukraine, it is already distracting the world—and ordinary Russians—from growing problems such as stagnating incomes, corruption and the catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny strongly believes this is the motivation for Putin’s current foreign policy ‘spectacle.’ … [W]hile we do not know whether the war will actually happen, the prospect of conflict has already damaged the Russian economy.”
• “On Jan. 24 alone, the stock market fell by 7% in ruble terms; this drop was accompanied by the weakening of the ruble and sovereign bonds. Since the beginning of the year, the dollar-denominated RTSI index lost almost 20%. It is back to its pre-pandemic levels—even though oil, Russia’s main export commodity, is worth a third more than it was back then. Jan. 24 was also unprecedented for Russia’s Central Bank move to support the ruble.”
• “[M]arkets believe that the worst is yet to come. The invasion has not yet happened, but neither has it been ruled out—and a war would mean new, severe sanctions. It is unlikely that the West will impose an oil and gas embargo on Russia, as it did on Iran. Russia is a top oil exporter (second only to Saudi Arabia) and an essential supplier of gas to Europe. However, NATO allies have the power greatly to harm Russia’s financial system.”
• “In the event of an invasion, it is likely that Russia will be suspended from the SWIFT payment system, that its largest banks will be placed under full sanctions and the assets of its richest citizens frozen. While Russia has substantial reserves and its own national (albeit imperfect) SWIFT substitute, it will experience further financial problems, and bank failures, with an impact on the purchasing power of ordinary citizens.”
• “The markets’ reaction to Putin’s brinkmanship already suggests a real war may cost him much more than he is able to bear.”

Defense and aerospace:

“Russia’s Military, Once Creaky, Is Modern and Lethal,” Anton Troianovski, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 01.27.22. The authors, journalists with the news outlet, write:

• “In the early years of Vladimir V. Putin’s tenure as Russia’s leader, the country’s military was a hollowed-out but nuclear-armed shell. … Two decades later, it is a far different fighting force that has massed near the border with Ukraine. Under Mr. Putin’s leadership, it has been overhauled into a modern sophisticated army, able to deploy quickly and with lethal effect in conventional conflicts, military analysts said. … And they still have the nuclear weapons.”
• “Today, it is the overhaul of the conventional forces that has provided leverage in the Ukraine crisis. … Kremlin thinking has also evolved over the size of the armed forces. The military relies less on a dwindling number of conscripts and more on a slimmed-down, well-trained core of roughly 400,000 contract soldiers.”
• “What is new is not just Russia’s upgraded equipment, but the evolving theory of how the Kremlin uses it. The military has honed an approach that Dmitry Adamsky, a scholar of international security at Reichman University in Israel, calls ‘cross-domain coercion’—blending the real or threatened use of force with diplomacy, cyberattacks and propaganda to achieve political aims. That blended strategy is playing out in the current crisis around Ukraine.”
• “For all its strides in recent years, Russia’s military retains a critical weakness of its Soviet predecessor: the civilian side of the country’s economy, nearly devoid of high-tech manufacturing and corporate investment in research and development.”
• “Russia possesses few new weapons systems fully created from the ground up, analysts say. Much of its modernization consists of refurbishments of older equipment. But individual weapons systems are less important than the military’s innovative use of knowledge gained in each of the engagements of Mr. Putin’s tenure, said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who was NATO commander when war broke out in Ukraine in 2014.”

“Russian Perceptions of Military AI, Automation and Autonomy,” Anna Nadibaidze, FPRI, 01.27.22. The author, a PhD research fellow at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, writes:

• “Russian leadership is visibly interested in strengthening its capabilities in terms of AI, autonomy and automation in the Russian armed forces. These elements are associated with a mix of external and internal motivations, including strategic advantage, domestic factors and broader ideological beliefs about Russia’s place in the post-Cold War world order.”
• “While the main objective [of this report] was not to present policy recommendations or assess the quality of these efforts, it is possible to draw some conclusions based on this analysis.”
• “First, Russian discourse still features contradictions and ambiguities on the trust towards machines and whether they should function with full autonomy. Some, including President Putin, seem to be distrustful towards the capabilities of AI, and reflect this in Russia’s official position in international debate at the U.N., even though they oppose a ban on ‘killer robots.’ Others in the military community, including the defense minister, openly announce, predict or even encourage the reduction of human involvement in weapons systems control and data analysis.”
• “Russian officials are also observing developments in other countries, especially the United States, where they can perceive some pressure to diminish the human role in warfare and the push to invest in AI. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, for instance, has called for the U.S. government to ‘embrace the AI competition.’”
• “In some ways, Russian and U.S. officials face similar questions on autonomous weapons, which maintains a vicious competitive cycle. At the same time, the development of AI and autonomy does not have to be inevitable, as some rhetoric suggests. There is no certain path that technology takes inevitably: It is about how policymakers decide to employ it based on various factors that are part of the debate on the spectrum of autonomy in weapons systems.”

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

 

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

“‘Global Britain’ seeks to show its military worth in Ukraine,” Laura Hughes and Henry Foy, Financial Times, 01.25.22. The authors, correspondents for the news outlet, write:

• “From dispatching weapons to Ukraine to its warning of a possible Kremlin-backed coup in Kyiv, the U.K. is seeking to put itself at the forefront of Western efforts to forestall what Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called the risk of a ‘lightning war’ in eastern Europe.”
• “Over the past week, Ben Wallace, the defense secretary, has lambasted what he called Putin’s ‘ethnonationalist’ provocations and announced that the U.K. would send anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. The U.S. and Baltic states have also sent weapons. Liz Truss, foreign secretary, then took the unusual step on Saturday [Jan. 22] of declassifying intelligence from MI6 … which claimed Russia was plotting to install a pro-Moscow leader in Kyiv. Then, on Monday [Jan. 24], Johnson, in response to rising fears of a potential Russian attack on Ukraine, warned Moscow that any such invasion would be a ‘disastrous step.’”
• “Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has agreed to meet his U.K. counterpart Wallace in Moscow. Truss is also expected to visit Moscow and Kyiv in the coming weeks for diplomatic talks. Perhaps the most important element of those talks will be if Britain can contribute meaningfully to a détente … such as by ‘helping give Moscow a ladder to climb down, even if there is some military action’ as well.”

“Why are Germany and France at odds with the Anglosphere over how to handle Russia?” Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 01.26.22. The author, the newspaper’s diplomatic editor, writes:

• “Quite why Germany takes such a stubbornly forgiving, or optimistic, approach to Putin fills libraries and the most recent offering, titled ‘Germany’s Russia Problem,’ written by John Lough, details the full extent of the networks—commercial, political, cultural and intellectual—between German and Russian elites. It also explains how Putin plays on German war guilt and refuses to repay German forgiveness.”
• “The examples Lough raises include how in the wake of Russia’s intervention in Georgia in the summer of 2008, the then German Social Democrat (SPD) foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned Europe against sanctions that he said would shut doors to rooms it wanted to enter later.”
• “Although Merkel’s response to the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was firm, Steinmeier … went to Moscow and proposed an economic partnership… At the same time, three former chancellors of Germany … all warned Merkel not to isolate Moscow. Within a week of the invasion, the chief executive of Siemens was in Moscow.”
• “This German-Russian relationship, a recent Chatham House paper argues, has been shaped by two factors. First, Ospolitik, which refers to the ‘change through rapprochement’ … strategy toward the Soviet Union [in the 1970s] … that tried to overcome hard lines by focusing on joint interests. … Second, the mutual dependence deal between the two countries that dates from the 1970s, when the Soviet Union and Germany agreed to exchange natural gas from the USSR for German pipes and steel.”
• “‘[T]hose who trade with each other do not shoot each other’ … remains the dominant thinking inside parts of the SPD. The current economics minister, Robert Habeck, whose ministry is responsible for sanctions, is opposed to cutting off Russian access to the SWIFT payments system. … However, in recent weeks the compromises inherent in Ostpolitik have come under challenge from a younger generation… [like] Michael Roth, the SPD chair of the foreign affairs committee … [and some] ministers. … All this leaves Scholz in a different position with his U.S. interlocutors, none of it made easier by his alliance with a Green foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who wishes to inject values into German foreign policy.”

“On Russia, NATO Allies Need More Answers from Germany,” Liana Fix and Steven Keil, The National Interest, 01.31.22. The authors, a resident fellow and a fellow in security and defense policy at The German Marshall Fund, write:

• “Germany’s new government is under fire for its Russia policy during one of the worst crises in European security since the Balkan wars. … Is Germany reverting to its weaker stance on Russia from before the country invaded Ukraine in 2014? Or, even worse, is Germany returning to its historical Mittellage, moving to the middle between Moscow and Washington?”
• “[I]t’s too early and too counterproductive to write off Berlin and jump to the conclusion that Germany looks East rather than West. … Every effort now should be made to reinforce a unified front and pressure Berlin to do more than the bare minimum.”
• “The status quo is confusing. An array of messaging came from German officials … [in] its multiparty government, making it difficult to distinguish which voices represent Germany’s official position and which are a … casualty of coalition governance. … However, Germany’s SDP chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as well as its Green foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, both explicitly underscored that all options are on the table in reaction to a Russian escalation. That includes ending the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline… Finding the right answer on arms transfers is more difficult, as Berlin perceives these types of transfers as contributing to escalation rather than to deterrence.”
• “Despite all the criticism, there is no indication that Germany wants to be responsible for fracturing the U.S.-led approach. French president Emmanuel Macron’s European-centric proposal to resolve the crisis has gone unanswered by Berlin. … Germany sees [the Normandy format] as a diplomatic necessity to bring Russia back to the negotiation table and away from military escalation.”
• “If anything, Russia’s first intervention in 2014 demonstrated how Putin’s behavior can catalyze a significant shift in German policy and the perception of Russia. Germany under the leadership of Angela Merkel broke with its old ‘Ostpolitik’ paradigm and shepherded Europe toward a common sanctions policy toward Russia. … An honest initial assessment of Germany’s response to the most significant European security crisis in decades is sobering. But the jury is still out regarding Berlin’s performance in the long run.”

“Kazakhstan unrest shows Erdogan that Putin is still the regional ‘big boss,’” Laura Pitel, Financial Times, 01.25.22. The author, Turkey correspondent for the news outlet, writes:

• “[T]he decision by Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to ask Vladimir Putin for help in suppressing protests that rocked his country has dealt a blow to Erdogan’s dreams of forming a bloc made up of Turkey and ‘brotherly’ nations in the former Soviet Union. ‘The fact that Tokayev called Russia and Putin and not Turkey and Erdogan is proof that the big boss [in the region] is still Russia,’ said Bayram Balci, director of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.”
• “Asked to respond to the Turkic world map that Erdogan was given last year, the response of Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was pointed. ‘Our Turkish partners are cherishing the idea of Turkic unity, and it is normal,’ said Peskov, a fluent Turkish speaker. ‘But the only thing I regret is that this map doesn’t have a big red star in the center of the Turkic world.’ Such a star, he added, should be marked on the Altai Republic, the legendary home of the Turkic race. It is a part of modern-day Siberia.”

Ukraine:

“As West Warns of Russian Attack, Ukraine Sends Different Message,” Michael Schwirtz, The New York Times, 01.25.22. The author, an investigative reporter for the news outlet, writes:

• “Russia’s military buildup on the Ukrainian border is easy to see. … And yet despite the buildup … Ukraine’s leadership is playing down the Russian threat. That posture has left analysts guessing about the leadership’s motivation, with some saying it is to keep the Ukrainian markets stable, prevent panic and avoid provoking Moscow, while others attribute it to the country’s uneasy acceptance that conflict with Russia is part of Ukraine’s daily existence.”
• “But as the Kremlin and the West square off, Ukrainian officials are projecting an air of calm. Already this week, Ukraine’s defense minister has asserted that there had been no change in the Russian forces compared with a buildup in the spring; the head of the national security council accused some Western countries and news media outlets of overstating the danger for geopolitical purposes; and a Foreign Ministry spokesman took a swipe at the United States and Britain for pulling the families of diplomats from their embassies in Kyiv, saying they had acted prematurely.”
• “There are different reasons for the disconnect in messaging between Ukrainian officials and their American counterparts, analysts say. Mr. Zelensky must be deft in crafting a message that keeps Western aid flowing, does not provoke Russia and reassures the Ukrainian people. … And after eight years of war with Russia, experts say, Ukrainians simply calculate the threat differently than their Western allies.”
• “Not everyone in the country agrees with the current government’s approach. Last weekend, the leaders of Ukraine’s varied and often raucous political opposition pressed Mr. Zelensky to set aside calls for calm and prepare the country for war. A collection of Parliament members from different parties, as well as the former president, prime minister and foreign minister, signed a communiqué calling on Mr. Zelensky to mobilize Ukraine’s forces to confront ‘the deadly threat from Russia that is looming over Ukraine.’”

“How Russia Has Turned Ukraine Into a Cyber-Battlefield,” Dmitri Alperovitch, Foreign Affairs, 01.28.22. The author, co-founder and chair of Silverado Policy Accelerator and co-founder and former CTO of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, writes:

• “Any Russian attempt to take over Ukraine is unlikely to be confined to traditional military domains… It will probably also play out in cyberspace.”
• “In the event of a full-scale invasion, Russia is likely to conduct three types of campaigns in cyberspace to support its military objectives: intelligence gathering operations, operations aimed at disrupting or deceiving the Ukrainian military and psychological operations against the Ukrainian public.”  
• “What can Ukraine do to shield itself from a possible Russian cyber offensive? Unfortunately, not very much this late in the game. When it comes to cyber defense, the best time for preparation is yesterday. If Russia has already laid the groundwork for a campaign of cyberattacks against Ukraine, it is probably too late for Ukraine to completely defend itself.”
• “At this stage, Ukrainian military and civilian leaders should focus on making the country better able to weather cyberattacks—for instance, by making plans for the government and the military to fall back on noncomputerized systems in the event that Russian cyberattacks disrupt their networks.”

“War With Russia Has Pushed Ukrainians Toward The West,” Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Jean Yi, FiveThirtyEight, 01.28.22. The authors, a senior writer and a politics intern at the news outlet, write:

• “Ukrainians held very positive feelings toward Russia as recently as 2008. But all of that changed when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and began a long, grinding war on the country’s eastern border. According to data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia got much more negative around the time of the invasion of Crimea, and haven’t recovered since.”
• “Meanwhile, as the war on the country’s eastern border has dragged on, Ukrainian views toward NATO have gotten more positive, according to Olga Onuch, a political scientist at the University of Manchester who studies Ukraine. Survey data from Onuch and a group of colleagues shows that support for joining NATO has increased substantially, from around 30% in May 2014 to 55% in January 2021. Other surveys show similar trends.”
• “Ukrainians aren’t sure, though, that the war is about to escalate. According to a recent KIIS poll, just under half (48 percent) of respondents say they believe Russia will attack.”
• “According to weekly YouGov surveys that have been conducted since 2017, the share of Americans who see Russia as an enemy has increased from 60% to 75%. A Pew Research Center poll conducted from Jan. 10-17 … found that 49% of Americans see Russia as a competitor to the U.S. and 41% see Russia as an enemy.”
• “A YouGov poll conducted on Jan. 24 found that Americans were divided on whether the U.S. has a responsibility to protect Ukraine: 35% said that it does, 33% said that it doesn’t and 33% were unsure. … [T]he Pew poll … found that most Americans don’t see the Russian buildup near Ukraine as a sizable threat to U.S. interests: 26% said it was a major threat and 33% said it was a minor threat.”

“Ukrainians in our survey weren’t enthusiastic about NATO exercises close to Russia,” Gerard Toal and John O’Loughlin, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, 01.19.22. The authors, professors at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively, write:

• “The key takeaway is that across Ukraine [our study of] support for NATO exercises near Russia showed only 21% in favor, with 53% opposed, 24% unsure and 2% who refused to answer the question. But like almost all political questions in Ukraine, there are large differences across regions and by self-identified nationality.”
• “In all but western Ukraine, opposition to NATO exercises near Russia outstripped support. In the western regions, 39% of respondents were in favor—they were five times more likely to support NATO exercises than respondents in the south and east (8.3% and 7.1% respectively). The extent of the regional disparities on this question are unusually large.”
• “The gap in views on NATO between those who self-identify as Ukrainian and those who self-identify as Russian in Ukraine was also large. While 22.8% of Ukrainians supported NATO exercises close to Russia, just 11.8% of Russians did—a gap that (though sizable) is still eclipsed by regional differences.”

“The empire returns: Russia, Ukraine and the long shadow of the Soviet Union,” Serhii Plohy, The Financial Times, 01.28.22. The author, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, writes:

• “[D]oes Vladimir Putin want to re-establish the Soviet Union…? Not really. His goal is rather to reinstate or maintain the Kremlin’s control over the former Soviet space more efficiently by creating dependencies, preferably ruled by autocrats, in place of the former Soviet republics—an imperial power structure with him as the ruler of rulers at the top.”
• “The current crisis is a reminder that the dissolution of the Soviet Union … [is] a process rather than an event. … [T]he end of the competition between Moscow and Washington never included a political settlement concerning the post-Soviet space. The U.S., having sought to prevent the disintegration of the USSR as long as possible, ultimately decided to recognize and support the independence of the former Soviet republics. Russia, for its part, never accepted anything but the conditional independence of the former republics, predicated on an alliance with Moscow and belonging to Russia’s sphere of influence.”
• “Russia’s invasion of 2014 became the driving force behind Ukraine’s insistence on joining the [NATO] alliance. … [I]n February of that year, the new Ukrainian leadership declared that it had no plans to join NATO. But the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas brought the majority of Ukrainians into the pro-NATO camp. … Russia’s current demand to bar Ukraine from NATO forever may very well backfire, leading ultimately to the opposite result.”
• “Russia today is following in the footsteps of former imperial powers … who lost political, financial and cultural capital the more they clung to their imperial possessions. … And if history shows us one thing, it is that eventually every empire must fall.”

“Putin’s Wager in Russia’s Standoff with the West,” Michael Kofman, War on the Rocks, 01.24.22. The author, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA and a fellow at the Kennan Institute’s Wilson Center, writes:

• “A large war in Europe is likely in the coming weeks. … Ukraine, whose fate hangs in the balance, may be at the center of the crisis, but Moscow has a greater goal in mind: the revision of Europe’s security order.”
• “Russia’s military retains operational surprise and could launch an assault on short notice. There will not be further strategic warning ahead of an offensive. … Prediction is always a fraught business, but it seems plausible that Russian forces would seize Ukraine’s eastern regions, as well as the southern port city of Odessa, and encircle Kyiv. The Russian goal would be regime change, perhaps via constitutional reform, and a settlement that would secure Russian influence over Ukraine.”
• “An expanded invasion of Ukraine may not herald a prolonged occupation, but Russia appears prepared for that contingency. Russian force posture can enable a range of choices, but it is difficult to see how Moscow accomplishes any lasting political gains without having to resort to maximalist options.”
• “Russian demands for legally binding guarantees raise questions. … [W]hy pursue such agreements with urgency when he [Putin] believes that Washington may just bin them one day anyway? … [And n]o U.S. Congress … is likely to ratify a legally binding agreement with Russia based on such demands. … Russia’s demands … [also] won’t secure a say over Ukraine’s domestic policy, or even get Russia out of the current sanctions regime.”
• “The diplomatic effort appears improvised… Serious negotiations are usually done behind closed doors. By publicizing its demands and refusing to unbundle them in ways that might achieve compromise, Russia has made its diplomatic effort appear more performative than genuine. … Putin may see diplomacy as a last-ditch effort to avert war, but Russia’s [force] posture suggests that he is leaning toward a unilateral solution.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Will Russia’s Intervention in Kazakhstan Come at a Price?” Temur Umarov, Carnegie Moscow Center, 01.28.22. The author, a research consultant at Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

• “The hypothetical scenario of Moscow edging out the West from Kazakhstan would not necessarily mean that Russia could step into the resulting vacuum. It’s more likely that Moscow would simply be helping China to shore up its influence in Central Asia.”
• “It’s far more likely, therefore, that Russia will not attempt to establish any new advantages over Kazakhstan in addition to those it already has. Just as before, minor disagreements can be expected between the two countries—over the status of the Russian language, for example, which remains an official language in Kazakhstan despite attempts to promote the Kazakh language—but nothing more serious.”
• “Kazakhstan is wealthy enough as a nation to be able to determine its own foreign policy. Much has already been made of the signals Tokayev is giving through his staffing appointments: Askar Umarov, the new minister for information and public development, is notorious for his Russophobic comments, while at the same time an ethnic Russian—Roman Sklyar—has been appointed to the influential post of first deputy prime minister for the first time in two decades. This balance suggests that there will be no changes to Kazakhstan’s foreign policy in this new chapter of the country’s history: the alliance with Russia is stronger than ever, but it does not cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s sovereignty.”