More on Brinkmanship

 

Saw one of CNN’s advisors on military affairs proclaim what the Russian strategy would be re: the ‘peace-keeping’ forces expected in Donetsk and Luhansk. He surmised that Putin would push to expand and create a buffer zone well past the boundaries of the People’s republics.

His appraisal sent me squawking at the box and bellowing my own prognostication at my wife. As it happens, my nerves were calmed when I later saw a different military advisor whose assessment mirrored my own.

Putin’s aim with all this is to gain a corridor through Ukraine to the Russian bases on the Crimean Peninsula (that bit he stole last time from Ukraine). He is assembling troops enough to accomplish that by force of arms but that is a sort of window dressing

He’s practicing brinkmanship – the old Cold War modus operandi – by which one state threatens then backs off from the brink with a stronger negotiating hand, diplomatically speaking.

Putin is banking on the notion that Europe does not want another European war. Indeed, the UN and NATO were supposed to have eliminated expansion by conquest from the language of global politics; all but eliminating the possibility of Europe at war.

Enter brinkmanship. Think ‘Neville Chamberlain if the Sudetenland hadn’t yet been invaded’.  Think of Soviet presence in Cuba without the nuclear missiles. Think of a green gorilla in a tutu.
Sorry…

Russia’s amassing of forces along the Ukraine border, threatening military invasion, declaring prior sovereignty of territory, denying the sovereignty of an independent Ukraine, being stridently bellicose and generally operating outside of the norms of the 21^st century is Putin’s exercise in brinkmanship.

Putin was raised in the world of Real Politik and the global chessboard concept of willful domination and power. This is Putin practicing brinkmanship; Brinkmanship Putin-style.

Push can assuredly come to shove, but Putin is relying on the EU and NATO to dither, hem, haw, gather support, spell out sanctions and schedule summits, while mustering troops and setting battle plans. All of that global finagling allows for the build-up of forces to create greater tension; greater anticipation. That tension is the core of brinkmanship.

When Putin relieves that that tension by a slight draw-down or pull-back – when he backs away from the brink - he’ll be in a more favorable position to demand a corridor from the newly recognized Donetsk People's Republic to Russia’s Black Sea bases in Crimea.

That’s what Putin wants. (That and to be seen as a Stalin-esque strong man and hero of Mother Russia, restorer of the Empire.) He’ll risk the lives of thousands or tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians to attain those ends if the ploy of brinkmanship fails. 

Biden is also well-versed in Cold War shenanigans; that he’s making all of Putin’s moves public is brilliant; a stroke of genius. It takes the wind out of Putin’s sails and decreases the tension by making known what would normally be held under wraps.

The EU and NATO, according to the Cold War script, must play a kind of four-dimensional cat and mouse game; play the mouse to Putin’s cat while preparing a bigger cat to bag Putin’s rat. Deception within deception; standard fare from the Cold War. 

Germany halting the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia came as a big blow in the first salvo of sanctions. Germany’s action will force the hand of the other nations to follow suit, cutting off the flow of natural gas from Russia and the cash flow thereof as well. That, in turn, will knock the pins out of Putin’s reliance on the interminable vagaries of real politik diplomacy to prolong tension and forestall an attack order. The threat of loss of revenue to Gazpron may force Putin’s hand. Perhaps Germany should have acted more mouse-like.

We shall see.

The General Assembly is abuzz with speechifiers denouncing in the strongest terms the reprehensible, atavistic behavior of the Russian Federation. Outlaws! Gangsters! Bullies!

All true, of course, but are NATO and the EU willing to respond with a force of arms? 

Putin’s bet is that they are not. However, his bet is also that this show of strength, if it succeeds in Russian gaining some concession for a land corridor along the Ukraine coast to Crimea, will be enough to off-set the economic effects of sanctions sure to be felt by the Oligarchs and the people of Russia. 

There’s a lot riding on that bet.

Putin's Brinkmanship

 

“Brinkmanship’ is from the lexicon of the Cold War. Brinkmanship is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict. 

Brinkmanship is what Putin is doing with Ukraine. He’s pushing a posture of war, threatening an armed invasion. His stated purpose is to thwart the expansion of NATO and thusly protect Russian interests by this military threat.

The sub-text is that Putin still considers Ukraine a vassal state. Putin’s stated aim is the re-invigoration and re-establishment of the former Russian empire if not the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  This is, in short, why he snatched Crimea; to demonstrate for his nationalistic supporters that he is the strongman – the ‘Man of Steel’ – which they crave. 

As a chess player, Putin is playing to his nationalistic supporters as well as the Western powers and Ukraine. The current situation can be seen as a ‘forking move’; threatening two chess pieces with capture, forcing the opponent to choose which piece to lose. Putin is banking on the nations of NATO, being roundly averse to another devastating European war, would choose the sovereignty of Ukraine as the chess-piece that NATO will sacrifice. 

Putin bet that Ukraine would buckle when confronted with a Russian military build-up on its borders. Putin, further, has bet that the Americans – freshly withdrawn from Afghanistan – would convince its NATO allies that defending Ukraine was not worth the price of blood and treasure that would have to be paid. 

Moreover, Putin’s military display would bolster his support from the people of Russia. That is his plan; by the display of force, Putin hopes to gain politically and militarily while suffering little down-side. 

This is not to assert that Putin’s military threat isn’t real. Brinkmanship fails as a strategy if the threat of military force is not perceived as viable and imminent. Putin’s massing of forces along Ukraine’s borders in Belarus, Crimea and Russia presents a clear and present danger; of that there is no doubt. 

However, President Volodymyr Zelensky has pooh-poohed Russia’s threat and thwarted one prong of Putin’s strategy. The steadfastness of Biden’s administration and the NATO allies (specifically; Germany, France, Great Britain and Poland) have, furthermore, stymied Putin’s grander game of conquest and left him with a ‘Sophie’s Choice’. He must either back-down and show weakness or signal the invasion and suffer military and economic retribution from which he, himself, would not recover. His claims of a draw-down is a subterfuge.

He has been backed into a corner and has placed himself and the Russian Federation between a rock and hard place. (Never let it be said that diplomacy is a dull enterprise.) How Putin will play his end-game in Ukraine will be most interesting.