Četrtek in petek sta bila dneva samospraševanja komentatorjev v Washington Postu o tem, kakšno strategijo naj ZDA uberejo po tem, ko se jim je izjalovila strategija poodcenjevanja Rusije. Kljub temu, da so komenatorji prišli do teh dveh pomembnih spoznanj (1. da se je ameriška politična elita uštela v strategiji podcenjevanja Rusije in 2. da ameriška politična elita nima plana B, strategije, kako nadaljevati po izjalovitvi prve strategije), pa še vedno ostajajo ujetniki preživele fantazme po koncu hladne vojne: da je svet (še vedno) enopolaren in da so ZDA še vedno dominantna globalna velesila, in da ZDA lahko kakorkoli Rusijo z novo hladno vojno, z osamitvijo prek sankcij spravijo na kolena.
Toda vmes se je svet drastično spremenil, Kitajska je gospodarsko in tehnološko prehitela ZDA, Kitajska si je z modro strategijo gradnje infrastrukture in z izgradnjo trgovinske in kapitalske prepletenosti ustvarila dominantni vplivni položaj v državah globalnega juga, Kitajska in Rusija sta se povezali v strateško gospodarsko in vojaško zavezništvo, Kitajska in Rusija ter ključne države globalnega juga so se povezali v gspodarsko zavezništvo BRICS+, ki obsega 45 % svetovnega BDP in kontrolira večino energentov in ključnih surovin. Dejansko so ZDA tiste, ki so ostale osamljene v svojem zahodnem milnem mehurčku minule hegemonije. ZDA danes težko še koga osamijo, saj se je njihov vplivni krog skrčil na dobrih 40 zahodnih držav, ki jih vse daje razvojna in demografska skleroza. Preostalih 170 držav si je pragmatično izbralo zaveznici v Kitajski in Rusiji.
Robyn Dixon & Michael Birnbaum:
And that means one of the most deeply vexing questions facing Western leaders — including Biden and whoever succeeds him next year — is what to do about it.
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On each side of the Atlantic, there is uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with the man who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
That fear — and the inability, even of Western diplomats with decades of experience dealing with the Kremlin, to see a viable path forward — has revived calls for Cold War-style containment: restricting contacts with Moscow to essential issues and bracing for conflict by boosting Europe and Ukraine’s military capacity.
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As Putin builds a militarized Russian society geared to confront the West for decades — revamping the education system, monopolizing culture, reshaping women’s roles and indoctrinating youth — he regularly boasts of a victory in Ukraine that would signal the defeat of American global power.
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Kurt Volker, who was the U.S. ambassador to NATO when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, contends that Putin and other autocrats — China’s Xi Jinping, Iran’s leaders and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — perceive America to be stumbling, and see an opportunity to reject democracy and promote autocracy.
“The way we respond to one informs the others. Are we serious? Do we have resolve? Are we not serious? And I think that they have all concluded that the West is now weak and divided and it’s a good time to go on the offensive,” Volker said. “So they’re doing that, and they’re cooperating with each other.”
That exercise, dubbed Ocean 2024, involved some 400 Russianwarships, submarines and support vessels in the North Atlantic and Pacific, as well as the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas, along with some 90,000 military personnel, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Chinese vessels also participated.
Even if Russia’s figures are inflated, the operation was a muscle-flexing reminder that Moscow remains plenty equipped to project power across the globe.
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That sobering fact often gets lost amid China’s rising threat and Washington’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific. It shouldn’t, because it would be a mistake once again to underestimate the Kremlin’s resolve to challenge the U.S.-led global order, or Moscow’s staying power in Ukraine.
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Yet if Russia is a corrupt, retrograde, nihilistic power, it remains a power. Given the West’s pattern of misreading Moscow’s resilience, it’s worth taking stock of the menace it still poses far beyond Ukrainian borders.
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On the flight I was on, the tactical director, a French air force major, told me: “We didn’t used to encounter the Russian navy very often. Now we know they are out there.”
That observation was reinforced in a recent paper for Chatham House, a British think tank, by a half-dozen military specialists who surveyed Moscow’s plans for regenerating its military, now the recipient of an eye-watering one-third of all Russian government spending.
Much has been made of Ukraine’s impressive success in sinking or crippling a chunk of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet. But with a couple of exceptions, the Chatham House study said, the ships destroyed or disabled were “very old or limited” vessels. The Russian navy “has lost none of its blue-water combat capability,” the paper concluded, and Moscow’s “global power projection capabilities are undiminished.”
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That is not to say Putin intends to launch a nuclear war, or that he believes Russia’s fleet could go toe-to-toe with the U.S. Navy. But the longer the war in Ukraine grinds on, the more credence the West should give his bedrock assumption — that Moscow can outlast Washington and its allies through the sheer mass of Russian forces and resources, and by keeping the West off balance with threats of escalation.
Putin’s strategy seems increasingly sound, as public support for Ukraine has softened in the United States and parts of Europe. There, hopes have receded that Russia can be defeated on the battlefield, or that its economy will crumble under the weight of U.S.-led sanctions.
The wishful view of Russia as a paper tiger has been discredited by the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, and by Putin’s ability to shrug off an attempted mutiny last year and repeated military setbacks.
Granted, Ukraine’s invasion of the Russian region of Kursk this summer was a propaganda triumph. But it has given Kyiv control of just .006 percent of Russia’s landmass. By contrast, Moscow’s forces occupy nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory — despite the infusion of $200 billion of Western military and other aid.
The West has been right to help Kyiv retain its independence. It needs now to formulate a muscular long-term strategy that deters future Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere — without starry-eyed assumptions that Moscow is a depleted force.
DAMIJAN blog 