Why We Can Play the Long Game on Russia

Why We Can Play the Long Game on Russia

Apr 09, 2014 03:00 am | James Clad, Robert A. Manning

James Clad

Robert A. Manning

With the benefit of hindsight, the Russian annexation of Crimea shouldn’t have been a great surprise: it has been obvious to those who chose to look that for most of the last twenty years, that Russian president Vladimir Putin never fully accepted the USSR’s demise. Now, as the West agonizes over another possible irredentist feint—possibly in Ukraine proper or in Transnistria—the United States and its allies need to take a deep breath and consider the long game.
By the end of March, some accouterments of post-Soviet sovereignty had changed. The peninsula in dispute switched flags and currencies. But despite epochal foreboding, few lives had been lost; with Russian pride assuaged, the remainder of Ukraine was lurching into the European Union’s embrace—barring a Putin effort to destabilize it. The issue kicking off the crisis in the first place—Ukraine’s edging towards the EU—had now given Eurasia another tilt towards Mother Europe.
Is it possible that over the long run, much of this might come out better than feared? Putin’s Ukraine gambit may yet prove a tactical success, but a strategic failure. Even there, if Putin seeks to dismantle Ukraine, he may yet face a Ukrainian military response. The shock annexation of Crimea, itself a product of a 1954 intra-Soviet land transfer, has had another salutary effect—jolting us into reluctant awareness of the downside cost of our intrusions into the Russian periphery over two decades.
If we can accept that we too often behaved as if Russia didn’t matter, we stand a better chance of preserving Eurasian stability in the post-Crimean era.
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