by MELVIN GOODMAN
The mainstream media, particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times, promote a simplistic view of Russian history as a pursuit of an aggressive and expansionist national security policy to counter the West, particularly the United States. Accordingly, the Post and the Times have been anticipating a Russian invasion of Ukraine for the past month, and now the introduction of 2,500 Russian “peacekeepers” into Kazakhstan has led to heightened concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s immediate goals.
The fact that the Russian force includes members of the 45th Brigade, an elite special forces unit, is indeed worrisome. This unit fought in both Chechen wars in 1996 and 1999; in South Ossetia in 2008 in the five-day war with Georgia; in the abrupt annexation of Crimea in 2014; and in Syria in 2015. Nevertheless, Russia’s overall view of war, as expressed by its own writers, is one of defeat and even humiliation. Moscow lost the Crimean War in the 1850; the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905; WWI, which opened the door to the Bolshevik Revolution; the Cold War with the United States; and finally the humiliation of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Soviet demise meant the loss of two million square miles, which exceeds the size of the European Union or India. Even the so-called victory in WWII meant the loss of more than 27 million Soviets, and an economic and social recovery that took decades.
Russians know the cost of war, and Putin, who lost a brother in WWII, presumably shares that concern. His so-called adventurism has involved very short campaigns with limited risk. The short war with Georgia was typical, and in fact was brought on by the Bush administration’s encouragement of Georgian irredentism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The seizure of Crimea was quick and tidy, and returned to Moscow a territory that had been in Russian hands for hundreds of years. As in Georgia, U.S. manipulation of Ukraine’s political firmament had much to do with Putin’s decision to retake Crimea. (Politically, Ukraine is more united and stable without Crimea because of the heavy concentration of Russian ethnics in the region.)
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