Putin Is Making a Historic Mistake
By Madeleine Albright
Dr. Albright served as the U.S. secretary of
state from 1997 to 2001.
In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet
with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia. We in
the Clinton administration did not know much about him at the time — just that
he had started his career in the K.G.B. I hoped the meeting would help me take
the measure of the man and assess what his sudden elevation might mean for U.S.-Russia
relations, which had deteriorated amid the war in Chechnya. Sitting across a
small table from him in the Kremlin, I was immediately struck by the contrast
between Mr. Putin and his bombastic predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
Whereas Mr. Yeltsin had cajoled,
blustered and flattered, Mr. Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect
Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my impressions.
“Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” He
claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to fall but had not expected the
whole Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his
country and determined to restore its greatness.”
I have been reminded in recent months
of that nearly three-hour session with Mr. Putin as he has
massed troops on the border with neighboring Ukraine. After calling Ukrainian
statehood a fiction in a bizarre televised address, he issued a decree
recognizing the independence of two separatist-held regions in Ukraine and
sending troops there.
Mr. Putin’s
revisionist and absurd assertion that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia”
and effectively robbed from the
Russian empire is fully in keeping with his warped worldview. Most disturbing
to me: It was his attempt to establish the pretext for a full-scale invasion.
Should he invade, it will be a historic
error.
In the 20-odd years since we met, Mr.
Putin has charted his course by ditching democratic development for Stalin’s
playbook. He has collected political and economic power for himself — co-opting
or crushing potential competition — while pushing to re-establish a sphere of
Russian dominance through parts of the former Soviet Union. Like other
authoritarians, he equates his own well-being with that of the nation and
opposition with treason. He is sure that Americans mirror both his cynicism and
his lust for power and that in a world where everyone lies, he is under no
obligation to tell the truth. Because he believes that the United States
dominates its own region by force, he thinks Russia has the same right.
Mr. Putin has for years sought to burnish his country’s
international reputation, expand Russia’s military and economic might, weaken NATO and divide Europe (while
driving a wedge between it and the United States). Ukraine features in all of that.
Instead of paving Russia’s path to
greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his
country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically
vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.
He’s already set that in motion by
announcing on Monday his decision to recognize the two separatist enclaves in
Ukraine and send in Russian troops as “peacemakers.” Now he
has demanded that it recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and
relinquish its advanced weapons.
Mr. Putin’s actions
have triggered massive sanctions, with more to come if he launches a
full-scale assault and attempts to seize the entire country. These would
devastate not just his country’s economy but also his tight circle of corrupt cronies — who in turn
could challenge his leadership. What is sure to be a bloody and catastrophic
war will drain Russian resources and cost Russian lives — while creating an
urgent incentive for Europe to slash its dangerous reliance on Russian
energy. (That has already begun with Germany’s move to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural
gas pipeline.)
Such an
act of aggression would almost certainly drive NATO to significantly reinforce
its eastern flank and to consider permanently stationing forces in the Baltic
States, Poland and Romania. (President Biden said Tuesday he was moving more troops to
the Baltics.) And it would generate fierce Ukrainian armed resistance, with
strong support from the West. A bipartisan effort is already underway to craft
a legislative response that would include intensifying lethal aid to Ukraine. It would be
far from a repeat of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014; it would be a
scenario reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s ill-fated occupation of
Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Mr.
Biden and other Western leaders have made this much clear in round after round
of furious diplomacy. But even if the West is somehow able to deter Mr. Putin
from all-out war — which is far from assured right now — it’s important to
remember that his competition of choice is not chess, as some assume, but
rather judo. We can expect him to persist in looking for a chance to increase
his leverage and strike in the future. It will be up to the United States and
its friends to deny him that opportunity by sustaining forceful diplomatic
pushback and increasing economic and military support for Ukraine.
Although
Mr. Putin will, in my experience, never admit to making a mistake, he has shown
that he can be both patient and pragmatic. He also is surely conscious that the
current confrontation has left him even more dependent on China; he knows that
Russia cannot prosper without some ties to the West. “Sure, I like Chinese
food. It’s fun to use chopsticks,” he told me in our first meeting. “But this
is just trivial stuff. It’s not our mentality, which is European. Russia has to
be firmly part of the West.”
Mr.
Putin must know that a second Cold War would not necessarily go well for Russia
— even with its nuclear weapons. Strong U.S. allies can be found on nearly every
continent. Mr. Putin’s friends, meanwhile, include the likes of Bashar
al-Assad, Alexander Lukashenko and Kim Jong-un.
If Mr.
Putin feels backed into a corner, he has only himself to blame. As Mr. Biden
has noted, the United States has no desire to destabilize or deprive Russia of
its legitimate aspirations. That’s why the administration and its allies have
offered to engage in talks with Moscow on an open-ended range of security
issues. But America must insist that Russia act in accordance with international
standards applicable to all nations.
Mr.
Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, like to claim that we now live
in a multipolar world. While that is self-evident, it does not
mean that the major powers have a right to chop the globe into spheres of
influence as colonial empires did centuries ago.
Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its
neighbors happen to be. In the modern era, great countries accept that, and so
must Mr. Putin. That is the message undergirding recent Western diplomacy. It
defines the difference between a world governed by the rule of law and one
answerable to no rules at all.