Relations between Russia and the United States, already at their lowest point in decades, have deteriorated precipitously over the past week. In just a few days Moscow took several steps specially designed to raise tensions with Washington. It ended nuclear cooperation with the United States, simultaneously delivering an ultimatum demanding an end of sanctions and compensation for the economic damage inflicted by those sanctions themselves as well as by Putin’s food import restrictions on his own people. Then, Russia openly challenged the United States in Syria, bombing civilian targets, effectively threatening to shoot down American military planes and ratifying a treaty giving it a permanent air base in Syria. Finally, harking back to the days of the Soviet Union, it mooted reopening its military bases in Vietnam and on Cuba.
It has been said that we must go back to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to find comparable levels of open hostility between the two nations. It’s actually worse. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the superpowers established safeguards that were meant to prevent an accidental nuclear war. That system was mostly dismantled after the end of the Cold War on the assumption that the two nuclear superpower would henceforth maintain friendly ties. Thus, Russia’s far-flung adventurism in a very real sense puts the human race on the brink of extermination.
Why is Russia so blatantly provoking the United States? Has Putin gone nuts? Not at all. Putin has a plan – even though it is one that involves considerable risk.
What America’s foreign policy establishment doesn’t seem to realize is that all these Russian escapades have a single source: Crimea. Putin wants the United States and its allies to accept his annexation of the peninsula. He was probably taken aback by the dogged refusal of the international community to condone his actions in Crimea – especially since no one had protested too vociferously in 2008, when Russia lopped off a piece of Georgia. After mid-2014 Putin was willing to give up the two self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” in eastern Ukraine if Washington recognized Crimea as part of Russia. But Obama didn’t bite.
That was when Putin moved into Syria, sending a signal to the White House that it would need to talk to him if it wanted to end the conflict. Americans showed themselves willing to work with Russia on that issue, but no more than that. They were firm about keeping Crimea and Ukraine out of the equation. Small wonder that endless rounds of talks between Lavrov and Kerry have been so useless. Putin has no interest in making peace in Syria. He wants Obama to recognize Crimea and Syria is merely a chip on the negotiating table.
Now Putin has raised the ante again and broadened the scope of his aggression. He obviously thinks that the more mischief he makes in more places, the more likely he will be to persuade the United States to hold comprehensive talks. Other hostile actions are likely to follow in short order. For instance, trouble may be stirred in the Baltics. Or fighting in Donbas may intensify. There may also be other border skirmishes, now that Russia has massed its forces around Ukraine once again.
Why is this happening now?
The timing was not chosen by accident. The Obama Administration is a lame duck and the White House will have a new occupant come January 2017. Putin doesn’t believe that Obama, who has been leery of foreign entanglements in the best of times, will want to call Russia’s military bluff in his last three months in office. So Putin is initiating a bunch of major and minor confrontations with the United States all over the map, so that the incoming president will have to deal with them immediately.
Secondly, Putin appears to have lost hope that Donald Trump can win in November. Most Russians support Trump out of inclination: he is the kind of charismatic leader they seem to like. Not surprisingly, ex-Soviet emigres in the United States are voting for Trump by a wide margin. But Putin probably also thinks that he can do business with Trump. Trump and his surrogates on the campaign trail have expressed support and admiration for Putin and Trump has indicated that he would be give Putin a free hand in Ukraine. How Putin and Trump will get along if Trump is elected is an open question – after all, Trump stiffed every partner he has ever worked with – but their presidential bromance is unlikely to ever be tested. After a series of highly damaging revelations about his taxes, business acumen and views on women, Trump’s chances of winning have become pretty slim.
And that brings us to the third reason why Putin is stirring trouble now: Hillary Clinton is a woman and he is determined to test her mettle.
Much like his buddy Donald Trump, Putin has a fairly strange attitude to women and an apparently dysfunctional relationship with them. A couple of years ago, his former wife Lyudmila gave a fascinating account of his courtship and their married life. Just by recounting unadorned facts, she painted the portrait of someone who likes to humiliate, subjugate and inflict psychological wounds on his loved one. Lyudmila doesn’t criticize the man she still reverentially calls Vladimir Vladimirovich, but she shows him to be a man of troubled and troubling sexuality, who prefers to assert himself at the expense of his wife.
Since summarily divorcing her in 2014, Putin has been ostensibly single, even though he has been linked to various women, including a Russian gymnast and the former wife of publisher Rupert Murdoch.
On the political arena, Putin clearly likes to play games with women leaders – especially strong and powerful ones. He reportedly brought his dog to a meeting with Angela Merkel, precisely because he knew that she was panicked by dogs. He constantly tells her stupid off-color jokes, looking every bit like a middle school student trying to outrage his teacher.
Putin clearly doesn’t respect women and doesn’t believe that they can challenge him. While Merkel is certainly no pushover – and nor is Theresa May, the new United Kingdom prime minister – Putin’s view of Europe as a weakling may stem in part from the fact that women are prominent in many European governments.
Lately, Putin has been fearful of a coup or assassination attempt coming from his immediate entourage. He has been reshuffling his security personnel and his inner circle, promoting those whom he thinks he can trust. After all, paranoia is a professional disease of dictators. This may be a reason why in these uncertain times he has also elevated a number of women both to his government and to the Duma.
All this suggests that Putin regards Clinton’s likely victory in the election as an opportunity. At least he will try to get her off balance, to put her down, to intimidate her with his alpha-male macho swagger and, ultimately, to force her to negotiate with him over a wide range of issues, including the most important one, the recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Whether or not Hillary will be up to the challenge, this assumes that Obama will leave her to sort out the worldwide mess Putin is busily creating. He may not. The United States has started to give a tougher response to Putin’s provocations. Over the past week, Washington suspended cooperation on Syria, called for Russia to be investigated for war crimes and accused the highest echelons of Russian government of complicity in hacking US computers and interfering with the US presidential election campaign.
It is still possible that Obama will decide act as an old-fashioned gentleman and as one of his last presidential actions give a big black eye to a street goon trying to harass a woman.
