Alan Judd

Disputes over Putin

Mark Galeotti argues that the Russian President is an opportunist rather than strategist, simply seeking stability at home and recognition abroad

These two refreshingly concise books address the same question from different angles: how should we deal with Russia? Mark Galeotti focuses on Vladimir Putin himself, his background, aims, tactics and strategy (if any).  Andrew Monaghan takes a wider approach, analysing Russia’s strengths and weaknesses, its self-image, its perceptions and misperceptions of us, ditto ours of it. Both argue that relations between Russia and the West suffer because we are sometimes prisoners of our own preconceptions.

Monaghan describes what he calls the two-part security dilemma, a problem firstly of interpretation and secondly of response.  The interpretive problem is partly the automatic assumption that Russia is an expansionist threat, as evidenced by its incursions into Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, and partly our exaggerated idea of its power and capabilities.

He concedes that it does indeed pose a ‘major challenge to the Euro-Atlantic community’, but argues that this originates not from an aggressive strategy but from a series of ‘policy disagreements… emphasised by different understandings of today’s international environment’. We see threats and provocations in Russia’s extra-territorial incursions, along with the 2007 cyber attack on Estonia, the build-up of its armed forces, its constant cyber interferences and the murders and attempted murders of expatriates in the UK.

Russia, on the other hand, sees itself as responding defensively to the allegedly broken promise not to enlarge Nato following the collapse of the Soviet Union; to Nato’s 1999 Serbian campaign; to the subsequent US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty; to the western appetite for regime change (Iraq) and to alleged western support for Ukrainian anti-Russian groups and Chechen terrorists. Regardless of the justification for these beliefs, they are widely accepted and emotionally asserted.

As for Russian power and capabilities, Monaghan points to persistent economic problems, a leader whose writ runs only where and while he focuses his spotlight, and an annual defence budget — despite a ten-year boost — smaller than just the increase in US defence spending instigated by Donald Trump.

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