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The Coming Geopolitical Storm: Eastern Europe Edition
It is still, of course, too soon to say what the Trump presidency heralds in geopolitics, but I thought you might find it interesting to listen to Eastern Europeans discussing what it might mean.
Hromadske.TV is an Internet television station in Ukraine. In this clip, Nataliya Gumenyuk interviews the Latvian journalist Paul Raudseps, who is simultaneously concerned and discouraged by Trump’s rhetoric, but heartened by the sight of American troops in the region:
Pauls Raudseps: None of the politicians here are willing to come out and express their concerns, but I think behind the scenes, a lot of people are worried, maybe even quite worried about what Trump has said during his campaign.
And now his inauguration speech, where he specifically said, “America first.” He will look at all issues through the prism of whether, in his opinion, it’s to the benefit of America, and the only context in which he mentioned alliances was in the fight against ISIS. It is a cause for concern, of course.
Of course, we are very heartened, and it’s very good to see, that American troops are arriving in the region; we just saw about 6000 American troops and armor, and an armored personnel carrier is being transported over the ocean, disembarked in Germany, moved over to Poland, some of them will move on to the Baltics as well. So that’s good. While they are on the ground here, it’s much more difficult to move them out. But as I said, Trump’s rhetoric is a cause for concern here.
Nataliya Gumenyuk: What are the thoughts of the public on this? What are the other top priorities/expectations of the Baltics from Trump besides prolonging the support of NATO?
Pauls Raudseps: Well, I think his consistent praise for Vladimir Putin has not gone unnoticed and that’s the second reason for concern. I mean, not only his policies of putting America first but the fact that he’s quite clearly very friendly or wants to be a very friendly toward the Russian regime and sees it primarily as an ally in the fight against ISIS, and doesn’t see all the problems that it’s causing in our region: the invasion of Ukraine, the continuing war that it’s supporting. The fact that he doesn’t seem to see that as a problem is very much a problem for us, and a cause for concern as well.
The second thing we are becoming more and more aware of is, as you know, when Trump got elected you could hear from a lot of people that he’s going to put in good advisers, people who know the world, who’ll tell him the right thing to do. That he’s inexperienced, and they’ll teach him how to act. It’s not clear whether he’ll listen to those people at all. So maybe he will and maybe he won’t pay any attention and they’ll be able to carry on the previous policies.
The appointment of General Mattis as the Secretary of Defense is a good sign. Everything that he said is something that we find very positive. The incoming Secretary of State — if he’s approved — also said positive things about NATO, although I think that his stance on sanctions was a little concerning; he wasn’t perhaps as strong on those as we would’ve wanted and I’m sure as Ukraine would want. So these are the issues of concern as well. In this context, where the Baltic States are really looking for strengthening our relationships with Nordic countries, with Poland, to look for cooperation on this front.
As Edward Lucas, a columnist journalist has written, if you look at the military budgets of the Nordic States, the Baltic states, and Poland put together, they are half as large as Russia’s whole defense budget, but the GDP is a lot higher in these countries.
So in fact, if we can cooperate, maybe there is some ground for support there. But it’s a new area and there’s a lot to do there, so it’s not something that would happen quickly. It’s a long-term project at best.
Speaking of Edward Lucas, here’s the interview mentioned above, in which Lucas explores the idea of a Baltic State alliance in a post-NATO world. Lucas is a senior editor at The Economist and one of the Putin regime’s most knowledgeable critics. He’s interviewed by Deep Baltic’s Will Mawhood. I highly recommend the whole interview, but here are some of the key points:
Will Mawhood: Do you think that the Baltic states can survive without NATO?
Edward Lucas: I think we are moving into a post-NATO environment, so we jolly well need to be able to survive without NATO. The security assumptions of the past 25 years have been fundamentally undermined by the combination of, first of all, low defence spending in Europe, and now what I call the “Trumpquake” in America. So we need to find regional and sub-regional security arrangements which will allow us to defend ourselves.
Will Mawhood: What would be a basis for such an arrangement? Would that be an alliance with other nations in Eastern Europe or something else?
Edward Lucas: The clearest thing is the Nordic-Baltic axis because, as I argued in my report “The Coming Storm”, the Nordic-Baltic-Polish economies combined have a bigger GDP than Russia’s. Nordic, Baltic and Polish defence spending combined is about 40 billion, and Russia’s is about 80 billion – and Russia has to run a strategic nuclear programme to defend itself against China whereas the NBP9, as I call them, only need to worry about defending themselves against Russia, which means they can cook with what they have in the kitchen. If we add in also a nuclear power – Britain, ideally France as well, although that may be more difficult – you’d have a really formidable North European sort of mini-NATO. But the problem is not in means; it’s the coordination of political will, which at the moment is lacking.
Will Mawhood: You’ve written about Russia as being “militarily weaker but mentally more resolute”, and that this means that it has a decisive advantage. What exactly could NATO do – or any kind of post-NATO security arrangement – that would not antagonise Russia to a dangerous point? Or do you think it’s not possible to antagonise Russia to the point where it would actually do anything decisive?
Edward Lucas: I don’t think we should run our security policy on the basis of whether it antagonises Russia or not, because it’s up to Russia whether it chooses to be antagonised, and this then means that Russia has the psychological initiative. They can complain about anything you do and say “you’ve antagonised us and therefore we’re going to react”. What we need to do is to build in very strong tripwires and speed bumps, have excellent situational awareness so that Russia doesn’t take us by surprise, have credible reinforcement plans and have a credible deterrent. I think that will actually de-escalate, rather than escalate the situation. I think that the most dangerous way we can run our security arrangements with Russia is to be weak and ill-prepared, which creates the opportunity for Russia to come in and do something unpleasant.
Will Mawhood: You’ve written a lot against criticisms of American foreign policy, using this idea that the West has a kind of moral weight. Many people would argue that bearing in mind how Western powers have behaved in many situations, many places, in the past, it has no moral weight. Why would you disagree with that?
Edward Lucas: People are entitled to believe that the West has no moral weight, but it’s a bit like people who think that Israel is a hellhole. Which other country would you rather live in? I think that for all of its faults, the West provides a very decent life for about a billion people in the world, and most young people in the world, if they had the choice, would prefer to live in the West. Another thing is that I think the Western system basically works. And I think that certainly the Western system has a self-correcting power: if we have a bad president, like President Obama, people vote him out, and they may vote him out for someone even worse like Donald Trump, but there are fundamental corrective forces, whether it’s the ballot box, the media, NGOs, the courts or public protests, all of which can be brought to bear on decision-making authorities when they make mistakes. And that’s the fundamental point about the West – in countries like Russia, none of those work. You can’t see the government, you can’t run against the government in elections, you can’t have independent media that holds the government to account, you can’t run NGOs, and if you protest, you’ll be thrown into jail and your family will be punished on your behalf. I think it’s very easy to slip into a kind of self-hating position where you see the flaws of the West very clearly, but there are also fundamental virtues and I think we shouldn’t lose sight of that. …
Will Mawhood: A lot of people have commented that with Trump as the president-elect, someone who prides himself on being a “deal-maker”, that there will be some kind of deal in the pipeline with Putin. Do you think that there is actually anything that Putin can offer America? And do you think this is a potential danger?
Edward Lucas: I certainly do, and I’ve written about it. I think that there are two big dangers from a Trump administration: one is a crisis, either the collapse of NATO or starting a nuclear war with another state, and the other is that he does a “grand bargain” – particularly because things probably won’t go very well for him at home and he will need a foreign policy success. He has an early summit with Putin and comes out with some kind of showy deal, which is very bad for the security of frontline states. So yes, I am worried about that. Putin can offer Trump cooperation on terrorism; he can offer cooperation on Syria. I think both of those are essentially nugatory, and if there was any real willingness to cooperate, they would be cooperating already, so you don’t need a grand bargain to have cooperation on that. But he can offer it; he can also offer some kind of deal on the front line: for example, taking missiles out of Kaliningrad in exchange for America cancelling its missile defence programmes, and possibly also going even further: Russia pulling troops back from its western military district and America pulling its forces out of the frontline. I think that would be absolutely catastrophic. So there are different levels of importance in this grand bargain, any of them bad.
Here, by the way, is a lecture Lucas gave last summer about the new Cold War:
He notes that the West has great means and weak will, whereas Russia has weak means and great will — and this, as Clausewitz predicted, this gives the advantage to Russia. Moreover, Putin is willing to tolerate a great deal of risk; we are not. But it isn’t hopeless, he says. We now have real European sanctions on Russia, thanks to Angela Merkel, “who can smell a Chekist 200 meters away,” and Europe is transforming its energy policy. Europe is beginning to take Russian information war seriously. NATO has been transforming itself: We now have plans to defend Eastern Europe, to get troops to the Baltics, a rapid reaction force. NATO is going in the right direction.
But we have a lot left to do, he says. We need to understand Russia better: There’s no point playing win-win with people who want to play win-lose, like Putin. We have to accept we’re in a zero-sum game. We also must accept that Putin is willing to accept a lot of pain. Putin’s first priority is to stay in power: Stop thinking of him as a rational economic actor. It’s true that Russia is a declining country, but that doesn’t mean it can’t make a tremendous mess. He’s only got a few years to achieve his goals. US allies in Asia are looking closely: “If Americans won’t stand by Europeans, what chance is there they’ll stand by us?” The whole interview is interesting.
And here’s a round-table discussion with journalists and decision-makers from Ukraine, Poland, Georgia and the Baltic countries gathered to discuss the future of transatlantic co-operation, foreign policy, human and media rights under the Trump administration:
Tangentially, here’s a roundtable hosted by Judy Dempsey about how to defeat Russian disinformation campaigns in Europe. I find these discussions fascinating, because it shows us how quickly the commitment to freedom of expression evaporates when confronted with a threat like this — as well as a tragic absence of strategic thinking.
Western governments can’t compete with Russia in the way they’re imagining. It’s not a matter of getting enough truth out there to drown out the lies, nor is it a matter of pointing out the lies. Russia has a comparative advantage in propaganda fabrication. It’s much easier and cheaper for Russia to do what it does than for the West to clean up the mess, particularly because open societies are far more legally and morally constrained about denying access to speech than closed societies such as Russia.
If Europe wants it to stop, it has to go on the offensive and cause pain to Russia in an arena where Europe has the comparative advantage. It could, for example, retaliate by banning the transfer of defence technology that’s used to develop Russian weapons; it could freeze work on Nordstream II; it could apply other harsh financial, technology, and economic sanctions; it could expand the Magnitsky Act to involve penalties such as seizure of the accused’s assets. It could accelerate construction of LNG terminals and grant tax credits to European consumers. It could freeze the assets of troll-farmers and everyone who works for RT and Sputnik. If that doesn’t do the job, it could graduate to cyber-attacks (conducted with plausible deniability, of course). If you keep interfering in Western elections, why, what do you know, the lights go out in Moscow. (No, no of course we didn’t do that. Europe categorically denies involvement … )
If you make it too painful to wage hybrid war against Europe, it will stop. How much pain will be necessary? I don’t know, but probably not that much. The appeal of this kind of campaign for Russia is that it’s relatively inexpensive, in men and materiel. Make it painfully expensive, and it will stop.
Thoughts?
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Translation: The nations on Russia’s western borders have the financial resources to set up a regional force to defend against Russia.
They just haven’t been spending the money.
Could it be they’ve been free riding off the USA? The US spends well over 4% of GDP and will continue to do so.
Could it be NATO
is obsoleteneeds revamping to meet new challenges?*I drive an obsolete car. It needs work. It won’t do a lot of stuff modern cars do. It still gets me where I want to go. Mostly.
America First means the president expects the Eurosocialists to pony up for their security. Maybe consider it a ‘right’ and add a little more tax. Rights get pricey.
What would motivate these countries is a domestic arms industry.
That’d get ’em spending!
France was over of the world’s leading arms merchants not so far back. Maybe it still is, for all I know. Don’t know if it proves or disproves your point.
I think it disproves it :-(
Partly, yes.
A constant problem for observers abroad trying to figure out what the US is up to is that much of their information comes from US news sources. Those sources are not serious journalists, or academics. So indeed they should be concerned about Trump, as are we because we don’t know what’s going on in his head and we’re influenced by our media as well. However, his appointments tell us a great deal. So then the angst is doubting President Trump will listen to people like his new Secretary of Defense. This is simply not a rational response.
“Putin’s first priority is to stay in power.”
Like all leaders especially dictators and that is powerful leverage and also reason to not be clumsy or brashly threatening. So Trump’s friendly gestures are correct until Putin slaps him in the face
“Stop thinking of him as a rational economic actor.”
He’s a totally rational actor, unlike Obama who was totally ideological following some sophomoric notions in his head about the way the world is, Putin knows what he wants and is playing his weak hand well.
“He’s only got a few years to achieve his goals”
I thought his goal was to stay in power.
Putin plays win lose, he plays zero sum.”
“America first” sounds like zero sum. Which trade is not but power tends to be.
Sounds like NATO needs exactly what Trump and his new Sec Def are saying.
Heaven forbid! Taking American interests in to account before making policy? How old fashioned. No wonder he is concerned! They may actually be forced to pony up for their own national security and interests!
This is going too far.
Yes power first but calculating interests is being rational, not ideological. What he does with the power is indeed different and may or may not be rational. Lucas was referring to rational in economic terms, but Putin’s share of the pain of sanctions is always minimal and often can work to the advantage of any authoritarian regimes, that is why sanctions have never worked except in South Africa where there was a representative government and a market economy so that sanctions that harmed the people harmed the people in power. Were told the current sanctions actually were having an effect, but I seldom see what we did to whom and how it altered their behavior or Putin’s. Military and political presence and the appearance of will is a deterrent, the threat to do economic harm is a risk Putin is obviously willing to take. Obama and NATO have been playing peace in our time again. If sanctions harm us or people in our countries with influence more than they harm specific actors in Russia, they are not sustainable and not effective. We use them in order not to take risks and to make it look like we’re doing something. We know their a fraud.
Very true.
I note that the same is true of observers in the US trying to figure out what foreign countries are up to. If one was to rely only on what The Times (let alone Teh Grauniad) or the BBC said about Britain then Brexit would be inexplicable, for example. Now, imagine trying to understand what is going on Hungary (or Romania) by relying on the BBC and CNN…
I agree with much of the criticism, I’m just looking for a moderate position. I agree politics beats economics, but economic sanctions can be crippling in America has the political will. Then again, less than crippling economic sanctions could do a good job, over time–that’s unpredictable–they can also conceal, while worsening lack of resolve. That’s true–but so can shows of force.
We need to not only oppose, but go beyond, myopic liberal-economic fantasies…
Are they? This is a question not snark. If their answer is “more solar power,” someone is going to get such a pinch…
(Okay, the third sentence was snark.)
So renewables & such have been cut repeatedly in various countries–including Germany–for the last five years or so. The dreams of moral energy are done for, for now.
Titus,
My point is just a simple one. Sanctions harm some in the target country and in the country imposing sanctions but they have not seriously affected state’s behavior except in S.A. as I mentioned. ( I’m out of date as I looked at them with some seriousness almost 20 years ago, but the economics and basic dynamics don’t change) There are a lot of reasons for this, but they are a weak tool and most often serve to allow political leaders to escape doing things that are more likely to be effective. The threat of sanctions has some use and the promise to remove sanctions does as well, but in general it’s best to avoid them and to go straight to direct action of some kind. In the case under consideration here and in the South China sea, what we need is real impregnable but non threatening presence. The alternatives are sanctions which are acts of war, or being remote and then moving forces forward to positions of greater strength which escalates in a way just being there does not. The trick is not to impose a bunch of controls on banks, and chase money around, or other actions that strengthen our governments control over us, but to find ways to strengthen each country’s defensive capabilities and ability to operate jointly and individually. Good non naive personal relationships is where to begin to be non threatening.
Exactly. I am optimistic that Trump’s stated desire to be friends with Putin and do business with Russia can be the carrot and broad-based European and NATO military buildup, military aid to the Ukraine and Georgia and targeted economic pressures as the stick. The Obama doctrine of expecting good behavior and friendship in exchange for unconditional American global retreat was always a remarkably stupid bargaining position.
Yes, and what has taken so long for Europe to get it together, especially the last 8 years? When Putin left, then decided he should run again, and we knew the last President Medvedev was just a temp, would they not have decided it’s time we boosted our economies, sought new forms of energy not depended on Russia, deal with debt, re-evaluate our defense, all the things we have to do.
I don’t think anyone, especially Trump, wants to ever see a nuclear event. It means everything to try to work things out. The Russians don’t want a war. But many have had their heads in the sand, even here. It’s absurd to criticize or praise Trump yet, or to pin all hopes on what he does or doesn’t do.
Smart drug dealers don’t use their own product.