RUSSIA'S GAMBLE

A Russian security expert and democratic activist examines the thinking that led to his nation’s invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 was, writes Gel’man, “probably the worst decision ever made by Russia’s rulers in the country’s long history.” Yet, he adds, the question to pose does less to examine that poor decision as such but instead to ask why the invasion was done “in such a poorly prepared, outstandingly inefficient, and heavily destructive way.” The answer to that question is manifold, but an important aspect is that Russia has “outsized international aspirations” that presume that it has a place of supreme importance in the world, especially relative to the European Union, which Putin considers to be weak. Another aspect is the Russian military’s devotion to the doctrine of “small victorious war,” which so often leads to disaster, as in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and indeed Ukraine. A cult of personality is in operation, too, with the assumption that Russia will achieve that international importance because of the “strong and efficient leadership” of Putin. Regrettably for Russia, that leadership has instead led to, yes, disaster, with Russia losing more soldiers than in any other conflict since World War II, a mass brain-drain emigration, and the nation’s estrangement from the rest of the world. Gel’man ventures a few surprising observations, such as the debt that Putin’s “Ukraine is Russia” fixation owes to the writings of American clash-of-civilizations scholar Samuel P. Huntington. He also offers the thought that at least part of the blame for Putin’s rise to power and the current war owes to the West, which has offered little in the way of support for democracy within Russia and little in the way of “constraining its aggressive foreign policy.”

A small book that does much to explain the underlying dynamics of Russia’s imperial ambitions.