© REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko

As the coronavirus was ravaging northern parts of Italy in March, Russia was one of the first countries to come to Rome’s aid, with the delivery of military medical aid. The final details were agreed during a phone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on March 21. The next day Russia’s Ministry of Defense began sending fifteen military transport airplanes to Italy, with 122 personnel and dozens of military vehicles on board. The Russian team consisted of military doctors, virologists, radiologists as well as disinfection experts, while the equipment included mobile disinfection and chemical defense units, and a mobile laboratory. 600 respirators were also delivered.

In Russia the military plays an important rolein handling all types of crises, including health-related ones, so it is not surprising that it was Russia’s Ministry of Defense that delivered the aid to Italy. As this was a military operation, Russian cargo airplanes landed in the Pratica di Maremilitary airport close to Rome, and from there they moved to the Bergamo region that was severely hit by the virus.

Russian aid was composed mostly of elements that could operate without constant cooperation with Italian medical personnel, such as disinfection units. Since they did not have to be integrated into the Italian health care system logistics were considerably easier than if Russia had sent surgeons or nurses, who would have had to work within Italian hospitals.

“From Russia With Love”

The Kremlin made sure to take the opportunity to make a witty gesture by labelling both the aid packages, as well as the military trucks sent to Italy, with “From Russia With Love” signs.

However, within days of the arrival of the first shipments the backlash started. Quoting Italian governmental sources, the influential newspaper La Stampa wrotethat 80 percent of the Russian equipment was useless, and the whole operation was aimed much more at gaining political influence than providing humanitarian aid. An expert at the Rome-based Gino Germani Institute said that some parts of the Russian deliveries could indeed be usefulbut voiced concerns about the possible presence of Russian intelligence operatives among members of the Russian team, who might have wanted to use the operation for intelligence purposes.

On April 1, a Russian medical aid shipment landed on New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. The giant Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft delivered large amounts of medical equipment, including masks, gloves, protective suits, and again respirators. Similar to the aid to Italy, this delivery also took place shortly after the countries’ leaders, Putin and US President Donald Trump, spoke. The Russian aid delivery created a sizeable scandal in the US, partially in the context of the upcoming presidential elections, and also due to the allegations about the role Moscow played in the election of Trump in 2016.

A Similar Pattern

Several problems have since arisen with the Russian aid delivery to the US. In May, the Russian government charged Washington $660,000 for the aid shipment. Furthermore, the Russian transport included equipment that was not of much use in a pandemic, such as military-type gas masks and household cleaning gloves. The 45 ventilators that were delivered also turned out to be essentially useless due to the electricity network voltage difference between Russia and the US.

To make things worse, it later surfaced that some of the ventilators Russia delivered were the Aventa-M brand, which earlier had caused a deadly fire at a St. Petersburg hospital, killing several COVID-19 patients.

From April 3 on Russia started to deliver military medical aid to Serbia, too, with similar equipment to that sent to Italy. Details were again coordinated between the countries’ two presidents. Eleven Russian military cargo planes delivered 87 military doctors and specialists, including infectologists and experts on chemical warfare and disinfection. (As there is an existing multi-layered security and military cooperation between Serbia and Russia, Moscow delivering military medical aid to Serbia is a lot less surprising than it sending such shipments to NATO countries.)

In all three cases, the deliveries followed a similar pattern: Putin made the offer directly to the leader of the given country in a phone conversation, thus partially circumventing traditional diplomatic channels. Once the agreement was reached, details were coordinated by lower level officials; though not always perfectly, as the problems with the shipment to the US revealed.

Hoping for Reciprocity

Concerning the United States in particular, Russia from the very beginning hoped for reciprocity. The Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, openly declared that the Kremlin hoped for the US would provide Russia with its own medical equipment should Russia need it.

Indeed, there is considerable evidence indicating that in all three cases the dominant motives were political. The primary objective was to get the sanctions against Russia suspended. The deliveries to Italy coincided with a Russian initiativevoiced first at the March 26, 2020 G20 summit. Russia suggested that due to the humanitarian crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, all international economic sanctions should be suspended until the end of the pandemic.

While Russian diplomats referred only to the cases of Iran and Venezuela without mentioning their own country, it was still clear that Russian diplomacy’s intention was to get the sanctions against Russia suspended. On the same day Moscow submitted a similar initiative in the United Nations. Hence, it looks as if Russia tried to use the aid deliveries to get the sanctions lifted by using a humanitarian argument, and Moscow’s own humanitarian shipments were to demonstrate the Kremlin’s good will.  In fact, the way Russia has been employing a universalist, humanitarian-oriented narrative is a good example of how the Kremlin is using Western value-based arguments against Western sanctions. However, Russia’s initiatives at both the UN and G20 were rejected.

Not giving up easily, on April 27, 2020 Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee and President of the Russian Foundation for Peace NGO wrote a letter to his Italian counterpart, Vito Petrocelli, President of the Italian Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and a member of the Five Star Movement. In his letterSlutsky asked for Petrocelli’s help in getting all international economic sanctions lifted by putting pressure on Western countries. Slutsky referred to the Russian aid delivered to Italy, and also mentioned the humanitarian situation in Iran and Venezuela.

Propaganda Campaign

Also, Russia apparently intended to demonstrate that it was able to act much faster and more decisively than the EU could. A recent report by the EU vs. Disinfo project pointed out that during and after the delivery of Russian military medical aid shipments to Italy, Russian propaganda accusing the EU of being incapable and helpless was a lot stronger than usual. Meanwhile, the same disinformation outlets portrayed Russia as a responsible power able to provide an efficient reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. Regarding Italy specifically, Russian disinformation outlets particularly emphasized the narrative that “The EU is not helping, but Russia does.” Similar, anti-EU messages were targeted also at the Serbian population, where there is already a certain receptivity for such messages.

While no great success, it is highly unlikely that Moscow will abandon this project and particularly the strategy of employing a humanitarian narrative. The next voting on the extension of the most important EU sanctions is due to take place in September 2020, during the German EU presidency. Until then Moscow is likely to continue its information campaign and other efforts to break up or weaken the European coherence behind the sanctions. The military medical aid shipments constituted a brief albeit spectacular element of this larger campaign.

The post The Political Motives Behind Russia’s Coronavirus Aid appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin appears to be going from strength to strength, restoring Russia’s global influence, be it in Syria, the Middle East or Africa. But is that assessment correct? Has 2019 really been an annus mirabilis for the Kremlin and its foreign affairs ambitions? How much is due to Russia’s strength (and strategic capabilities), and how much to US/the West’s mistakes? Is he overextending his military escapades and getting stuck in a Libyan quagmire? And by changing Russia’s constitution, has Putin secured his life-long hold on power without having to incorporate Belarus?

For a start, Russia’s resources are quite constrained, and its economy is stagnant. The Kremlin pays great attention to foreign policy to secure the legitimacy of its regime, so it is quite good at it. Unfortunately, the Donald Trump administration has offered the Kremlin inordinate possibilities to expand its power, and Europe remains weak in foreign policy.

60th in the World

By any measure, Russia is a classical declining power. Much has been written about Russia’s demographic crisis, but Russia’s population has been roughly stable around the current official number of 145 million since 1991. High levels of immigration from poorer former Soviet republics have compensated for Russians’ low life expectancy and low birth rates, and the substantial emigration of its elite to the West. At the same time, the population in the developing world is growing, so that while Russia has the ninth largest population country in the world after Bangladesh but before Mexico, several countries, such as Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, will soon overtake it.

Meanwhile, Russia’s economic standing has become slightly worse. Its GDP at the current exchange rate peaked at $2.3 trillion in 2013 and has since declined to $1.6 trillion. Much of this decrease is due to lower oil prices, but it also reflects a trend. The International Monetary Fund ranks Russia as the 12th largest economy in the world after South Korea and just before Australia and Spain. Similarly, by export volume Russia ranks 11th biggest in the world. GDP per capita is the best measure of level of economic development and in 2017, Russia ranked 60th in the world after all EU countries save Bulgaria, and just before the BRICS countries China and Brazil. Russia is a middle-income country with a GDP per capita of around $10,000 per capita.

Putin’s Cronyism

The country is an authoritarian kleptocracy, caught in an anti-reform trap. Its ruling elite, controlling the state, law enforcement, and state corporations, and Putin’s cronies have monopolized power and wealth. They would suffer from any political or economic reform, leveling of the playing field, and the opening of politics and economics to competition, while the vast majority of the population would benefit.

A serious reform would probably cause a major political destabilization, jeopardizing Putin’s policy of political and macroeconomic stability with budget surpluses, minimal public debt, large current account surpluses, and vast and rising currency reserves. Meanwhile, his regime ignores growth, efficiency, innovation, or the standard of living of the population.

When it comes to foreign policy, military power is the foremost measurement of power, and here Russia excels. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia has the third largest military expenditures in the world after the United States and China, though three other countries have similar military expenditures. Furthermore, Russia remains a superpower because of its nuclear arms, with the United States as its only competitor.

The disparity between Russia’s current military and economic powers is great and potentially explosive, and its economic regression aggravates this tension. To the Kremlin, the temptation is great to utilize its military strength, as long as it lasts. Quite logically, Russia has pursued three wars since 2014 – the annexation of Crimea, the incursion in eastern Ukraine, and the military intervention in Syria, as well as a number of minor military interventions in Africa. It would be foolhardy not to expect more Russian-initiated wars.

Putin and His Many Wars

Putin’s first two terms in power, between 2000 and 2008, can be summarized as representing political stability and a rising standard of living. Russia enjoyed a wonderful growth rate, averaging 7 percent a year from 1999-2008, but since then, it has grown at average of only 1 percent a year. During the last five years, the population’s disposable real incomes have fallen by a shocking 2.5 percent a year.

Instead of modernizing Russia during the good years, Putin consolidated his political power. Economic and political stability remains, but the Kremlin considers significant economic growth neither likely nor essential. Strange as it may sound, the low growth rate has not been a serious topic of public discussion for years, while Putin praises the economic stability all the time.

Putin’s regime is best characterized as a personal authoritarian system. Such a regime usually ends with the death or ouster of the incumbent. It has no spiritual source of legitimacy, such as monarchy, ideology, party, nationalism, or religion. Putin seems well aware of his need for another source of legitimacy beside stability. Yet he has clearly excluded political or economic reforms as too dangerous and possibly destabilizing. The Kremlin keeps itself well informed through opinion polls, and the FSB intelligence service is more focused on collecting intelligence than on repression.

An oft-quoted Russian saying runs, “We need a small victorious war.” The tsarist Minister of Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve uttered these words in 1904 before he was assassinated. The Russian foreign policy elite continues to cherish this idea, and few have embraced it more than Putin. His popularity rose on the back of the housing bombings in the fall of 1999 and the ensuing second Chechen war.

In October 2003, the arrest of the leading oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky amounted to a war on the oligarchs. In August 2008, Putin pursued a five-day war in Georgia, which took his popularity rating to a new peak of 88 percent, according to the independent polling institute Levada Center. In February 2014, he instigated the swift occupation of Crimea, and on March 18 of that year, he annexed it. This nearly bloodless action took his popularity to the same high level as in August 2008. The ensuing war in eastern Ukraine, however, has been neither small nor victorious.

The Skills of an Old Imperial Power

Russian television has turned increasingly propagandistic, and it has little good to report about the domestic situation. Therefore, news programs tend to focus on misery in other countries and Russia successes abroad, just like the Soviet television used to. As a consequence, foreign policy gains importance in the eyes of the population.

In his excellent book Destined for War, the eminent Harvard Professor Graham Allison discusses the risk of war between the United States and China, presuming that China will overtake the United States economically and militarily. A subtheme in his book is that Austria-Hungary was a declining power at the beginning of World War I. It started the war by declaring war on Serbia, and the Russian Empire, then a rising power, defended Serbia.

Today, it is Russia that is a destabilizing declining power. Its impressive military is set to decline because of its stagnant economy but, as an old imperial power, Russia possesses great strategic thinking and considerable diplomatic skills. It wants to be represented at each important international table, and it knows how to make its presence felt. The danger that Russia poses lies in its interest in aggression abroad to boost the regime’s domestic popularity, while the rulers understand that its military strength is set to decline with its economy. Therefore, the Kremlin is inclined to take ever greater risks.

Through its war with Ukraine, Russia alienated the United States, Europe, and all the former Soviet Republics. Putin seeks an evasive victory and is not ready to return to any respect of international law. The Kremlin is trying to compensate by reaching out to other countries—to China, the BRICS, the Pacific nations, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

The Gerasimov Doctrine

The Russian authorities are well aware of their resource constraints. A year before they launched their war in Ukraine, Russia’s powerful chief of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, published an article that has become known as the Gerasimov Doctrine. The author noted that, as nobody declared war any longer, the line between war and peace had been blurred. Focusing on the Ukrainian Orange Revolution and the Arab Spring, his salient argument was that “the role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of weapons in their efficacy.”

The Gerasimov Doctrine acknowledges that Russia’s economic resources are limited and military hardware is expensive. Therefore, Russian warfare has to rely more on unconventional or hybrid military techniques, such a cyber, disinformation, economic warfare, corruption, subversion, and assassinations. Especially cyber has dissolved the dividing line between war and politics, and Russia possesses particular strengths in its intelligence and special services. The Kremlin has abandoned many of the old constraints, while rationally focusing on its relative strengths. Not without reason, Gerasimov noted that the US has jeopardized many international rules—so why should Russia abide?

These factors shed light on Russia’s new foreign policy. It is highly imaginative and surprising. Neither the Russian annexation of Crimea nor its intervention in Syria were predicted. The Kremlin respects financial constraints and is anxious to keep its costs of warfare down. It uses outsourcing, just like the United States, with mercenaries, cyber war, corruption by oligarchs, and information war. Russian mercenaries seem to pop up anywhere. Modern social media and electronic means are used extensively because they are cheap and effective. The Russian security services are also keen on engaging with organized crime and using corruption as a means of warfare. Most worrisome is that Russia appears to raise its risk acceptance all the time.

Western Sanctions

The West has been slow in catching up with Russia’s new tactics. The news website Buzzfeed has suggested that no fewer than 14 people have been murdered by the Russians in the United Kingdom, starting with Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, but only after the attempted poising of the former GRU officer Sergei Skripal in March 2018 did the British authorities wake up. No less than 29 allied countries responded with expulsions of Russian diplomats that month, which certainly surprised the Kremlin.

After the Russian military aggression against Georgia in August 2008, the West did virtually nothing. Within a year, newly-elected President Barack Obama even launched his “reset” with Russia. The Kremlin took note. The Georgian war did not cost it anything. Encouraged, the Kremlin went ahead with the annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014, but now the Western attitudes had hardened. In a coordinated move, the United States and the European Union imposed substantial sanctions on the people and enterprises involved. These sanctions have remained effective, isolating Crimea economically.

The West also did something new. It sanctioned several close business friends of Putin, something that Putin reacted to quite sharply in public. He even pushed through a law allowing state compensation for oligarchs who had their assets frozen by Western sanctions. Such personal sanctions, freezing assets and prohibiting travel, are clearly hurting the Kremlin.

A Very Bloody War

Yet Russia was not deterred. It tried to arouse unrest in the eastern and southern half of Ukraine to create a “New Russia.” However, the Ukrainian armed forces reacted by getting organized with amazing speed, prompting the Kremlin to send regular Russian military forces into Ukraine in July 2014. In response, the United States introduced serious sectoral sanctions, hitting three sectors of the economy, finance, defense technology, and oil technology.

The EU hesitated, but on July 17, 2014, a sophisticated Russian missile shot down a Malaysian airliner with 298 people over rebel-controlled territory. The next day, the EU imposed the same kinds of sectoral sanctions as the United States. The Russian military attack stalled, but three percent of Ukraine’s territory in its two easternmost regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, remains under Russian-backed occupation, and a total of 13,000 Ukrainians have been killed in this very bloody war.

The West had never sanctioned such a large economy before, about three times as large as the Iranian economy. If Russia had defaulted, it could have caused a global financial crisis, a risk that prompted the West to limit its financial restrictions. Therefore, the West did not sanction Russia’s participation in the international payment system or its central bank reserves. Nor did the West sanction ordinary trade.

The severity of the Western sanctions on Russia must not be exaggerated, but they are a significant constraint on Russia. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the Western financial sanctions have cost Russia 1-1.5 percent of GDP each year.

What More To Do

A few Western countries have provided Ukraine with some military equipment and training, but all the fighting has been carried out by Ukrainians and a limited number of foreign volunteers. Ukraine has obtained its Association Agreement with the EU, but this does not envision accession to the EU. NATO has been supportive, but it has not offered any possibility of accession either.

Even before Donald Trump became US president, he made it clear that he favored Russia and Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and opposed military support to Ukraine. Yet initially his possibilities to act were constrained. In the summer of 2017, the suspicious US Congress almost unanimously adopted the Combating America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which codified the existing sanctions on Russia so that Trump could not end them. However, Trump minimized coordination of sanctions with allies and constrained new sanctions, though he did not stop them. The United States no longer drives sanctions on Russia.

Some EU countries oppose sanctions on Russia (Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, and Austria), but the majority support them and keep them going. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium have pushed ahead with Nord Stream 2, which will allow Russia to reduce the transit of its gas through Ukraine, depriving the country of about 2 percent of its GDP annually.

The West remains disorganized with regard to countermeasures on cyber, disinformation, and corruption. Much more can be done. Western retired politicians should be prohibited from working for Russian state or crony companies for a long time after leaving office. Former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has been legally bought by Putin. The same is true of several former Austrian chancellors. This should be prohibited.

The best weapon against corruption is far-reaching transparency. The fifth EU anti-money-laundering directive of June 2018 requires the public registration of the ultimate beneficial owners of all significant assets. That would do the trick in Europe. The United States is considering similar legislation. The great risk is that with Brexit, the United Kingdom will become a black hole of dark Russian money.

Countermeasures like these will help the West restrict Russia’s interference and aggression. Its small wars may be going well, but Russia, the world’s largest country, is in decline.

The post We Need a Small War appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Vladimir Putin’s Russia–or Putin himself–has often been described as hard to read, enigmatic, or even misunderstood in the West. Do you agree? Well, I’m asking the question: how was Putin’s Russia with a per capita GDP less than that of Italy, with a declining population, a crumbly infrastructure, a heavy reliance on oil and gas exports able to reposition itself as a global player? And my conclusion is that Putin definitely had a plan given his background and given his view on the collapse of the Soviet Union. He certainly believes that Russia is a great power and wants to restore it as such. But I also think he has been very adept at taking advantage of opportunities that were offered to him by a West that didn’t have a plan. He’s been in power for 19 years now and he has seen lots of Western leaders come and go, and what he was doing is having Russia in many ways act as a disruptor, go into areas where the United States or Europe is trying to accomplish something. So, I don’t think he is misunderstood but I think we aren’t very good at anticipating what his next move is.

The Russian side always insists that there’s nothing untoward in what Putin is doing and pleads ignorance as to why the West is so antagonistic. I think that’s disingenuous. I mean why would they think the West wasn’t upset about the fact that they annexed Crimea and started a war in south eastern Ukraine. Did they really think that the West wouldn’t respond negatively to that?

Is the annexation of Crimea in 2014 an example where long-term planning and short-term action came together? I think it’s not that they didn’t have plans to do such a thing, but it was clearly triggered when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled. This was the moment for them to strike. It’s probably true that the worst fear that they might have had is that Ukraine would terminate an agreement to have a Russian naval base on Crimea and that possibly you would have seen NATO ships in Sevastopol—highly unlikely, but I think that they thought that that was the moment to strike.

Once the Kremlin started the war in south eastern Ukraine, there were fears that the ambitions were even greater—a “Novorossiya” was being built all the way to Crimea to have a land connection. They tried the Novorossiya and it didn’t work. I think maybe they misunderstood the reaction in Ukraine to what they were doing and even though obviously you have support for separatism in those regions it doesn’t extend much beyond that. And I think you could make the argument that the Western reaction, the sanctions, acted also as a deterrent. Now you see what the Russians have done in the Sea of Azov, so they’re trying to deny the Ukrainians access to that body of water from which a lot of Ukrainian exports leave. We don’t know what they are going to do in the Black Sea, but it looks like they are encroaching on some of this area and then ever so often people think that they will still move on Mariupol or maybe Odessa. But the situation is more or less frozen because nothing is getting resolved.

Russia went as far as inferring in the US presidential election. Did they overreach? I think that what they probably didn’t anticipate was the American reaction to the knowledge of their interference. As a consequence of all these inquiries Russia has become such a toxic issue domestically that has made it really difficult for Donald Trump to do what he said he wanted to do which is to make a deal with Russia, have good relations with Russia, etc. He can’t do that and I think the publication of the Mueller report doesn’t change that because in the first volume it documents in great detail how the Russians went about it in the social media sphere, in the cyber sphere, interfering in the election. And so, going into the next US election, this is still going to be a major domestic topic, particularly for the Democrats. So, I think they didn’t anticipate that. But what they did was certainly help exaggerate the polarization that existed in the United States, and I think that was one of their goals. They didn’t really think at that point that Trump was going to get elected; they were as surprised as everyone else.

How successful would you say Putin’s foreign policy is overall? It’s certainly a mixed picture. One of the successes is, at least in the medium term, the relationship with China. It enabled Russia to continue doing what it does. The West obviously can’t isolate Russia—the Chinese signed a big gas deal with the Russians shortly after Crimea, and they backed the Russians up at least formally and publicly on everything. In the longer run, though—China is a rising power, and Russia isn’t. But at the moment you can say that Putin is still looking for other options both politically and economically. The other success is Russia’s return to the Middle East. Unlike in the Soviet times, nowadays it’s much more pragmatic. Russia is the only great power that talks to Iran, all of the Sunni states, and to Israel. The latter, along with Saudi Arabia, (both US allies!) hope that Moscow can use its influence to temper what the Iranians are doing in the region. I’m not sure that Russia can but it is seen as a neutral operator there. And obviously in Syria, it helped Bashar al-Assad to survive.

There also seems to be some ambition to return to Africa. Yes, and both economically and militarily. Russia is also playing a role in Venezuela, making it more difficult for Juan Guaidó to become the president. So, in all of those ways it has reappeared as a disruptor largely. But in Ukraine, for instance, this has been counterproductive. Yes, Russia is making it much more difficult for the Ukrainian government to function, but it helped really unite Ukrainians in a way that wasn’t possible before. This applies also to many other parts of the post-Soviet space. Even if you look at Belarus, the relationship with Minsk isn’t going as well as it was; and the Central Asian countries: yes, they all have strong ties, but they are wary, obviously, of what Russia might do, given what happened in Ukraine. Obviously, its relationship with the West significantly deteriorated, including with its main European partner, Germany.

What kind of future relationship do you foresee? As long as Merkel is in power, no big changes are to be expected. More and more people realize the attempts Russia made to divide the West, and they brought a NATO critic into the White House, which is quite unusual. EU sanctions are still in place largely because of Merkel’s leadership. A number of European countries—Italy, Hungary, some other Central European countries—have argued against the sanctions and would like to get rid of them. So, what you see is a more divided Europe, and I do think there’s a Trump effect, too. The extent to which the US relationship with Europe has deteriorated under Trump has also prompted some rethinking in Europe. If you find yourself between Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia, it’s difficult because the US is no longer seen as a country that is the most reliable partner, as it used to be. In other words, Russia was successful in destabilizing Europe; also, all the euroskeptic parties and groups tend to be pretty pro-Russia.

How successful can disruption be as a long-term foreign policy strategy, though? Do you foresee a future relationship between Russia and the West that is less antagonistic? I think that there’d have to be a different leadership. I don’t see that happening under Putin. He has become convinced that the US wants regime change in Russia, convinced that Europe would like to impose a value system. I think Putin hoped that the US and its allies would recognize the sphere of influence Russia should have, according to Putin, in the post-Soviet space, and that has not happened. So, the preconditions for having a closer relationship with the West would either be that the West changes its policies or that you have a different leader in the Kremlin. And even then it might take some time. I think the best-case scenario would be to have a generation coming to power after Putin that are more technocratic, that understand that Russia has to modernize its economy and its institutions, and that those kind of reforms would be much easier if there were not such antagonistic relations with the West. If you had more people like that coming to power, maybe that could change the way Russia interacts with the West.

 Angela Stent is one of the world leading experts on Russia, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and director of its Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. Her new book Putin’s World is now available in German as Putins Russland (Rowohlt).

The interview was conducted by Henning Hoff. Assistance: Melina Lorenz.

The post “Putin Has a Plan” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© US Navy/Handout via REUTERS

It was a long and winding road to get there, but in late October 2018, Europe and its allies sent one of the strongest signals yet to the Kremlin since its 2014 annexation of Crimea. More than 50,000 troops, hundreds of aircraft, and dozens of warships converged in Norway for NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise, a clear display of military might and political unity. It was the alliance’s largest live exercise since the end of the Cold War and, alongside the mobilization of 29 NATO countries, the participation of non-members Finland and Sweden highlighted how Moscow’s threatening behavior has driven its non-aligned neighbors closer to the alliance.

But while Trident Juncture was a much-needed showcase by NATO that the alliance is resilient amid the disruptions—both internal and external—of recent years, the aftermath of the exercise, in particular the Kerch Strait incident, points to a troubling new normal in the West’s relationship with Russia: while its actions since 2014 have largely eroded any soft power or goodwill that Moscow had in the West, the Kremlin is willing to pay the price for its bad behavior. That is the heart of the current standoff.

Calculated Risks

Moscow is aware of the fact that it is militarily, technologically, and economically inferior, but it still manages to largely hold its own. This is because the Kremlin has made opportunism a cornerstone of its behavior and compensated for its relative weakness by relying on disinformation, political meddling, and subterfuge. This strategy is based on taking calculated risks on incidents that come with a low cost, but still have the desired impact of signaling Moscow’s displeasure. For instance, Russia conducted missile tests near the Norwegian coast in the middle of Trident Juncture, and both Finland and Norway said Moscow jammed GPS signals on their territory during the exercise. And in bringing about the Kerch Strait incident in late November, where Russia seized three Ukrainian vessels and captured their crews, Moscow was operating on a similar expectation of a passive and muddled response from the West that would give it room to push its goals.

This is troubling for two reasons: it’s a dangerous recipe for miscalculation and misinterpretation that could see a small incident escalate into something bigger, and it’s a new normal for Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue to go after low-hanging fruit and aggressively use new tools to do so. In order to manage this unpredictable situation, the collective West needs to come up with a better strategy. Now that Europe has mostly woken up to Putin’s tactics and NATO has flexed its muscles through Trident Juncture, the West needs to figure out how to make the the new standoff with Russia more manageable.

Not Quite a New Cold War

At the heart of today’s confrontation is Russia’s quest to return to the stature and respect that it lost following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under Putin, Moscow has been projecting power around the world, deploying troops to Syria and Ukraine, using its formidable cyber capabilities to target adversaries, and searching for new allies in the process. While Moscow’s efforts have not always been successful—and sometimes even backfired—this approach forms the backbone of a strategy designed to reshape the international order around Russia’s own interests.

Russia is not the Soviet Union, but it is still a major power on the global stage and cannot simply be defeated or contained. Moscow still has sufficient power to define the security environment in Europe and has already done so. Moreover, it’s important to note that the Russian elites—not simply Putin—want the country to pursue this ambitious global strategy and have supported their president’s foreign policy adventures despite the economic sting brought by sanctions. In the end, those at the top share the geopolitical vision that is fueling Moscow’s maneuvers.

Russia’s actions in recent years have motivated and mobilized NATO in ways not seen since the Cold War. Defense spending is rising, the alliance is exercising on a larger scale, and NATO has bolstered its eastern border amid growing tensions with Moscow. But underneath these successes lies a more concerning reality. Policy disagreements between the United States and Europe, in fields from arms control and the Paris Climate Accords to the Iranian nuclear deal, are mounting, and the rift in the transatlantic alliance is growing. This is made worse by US President Donald Trump’s own troubling behavior: insulting allied leaders, imposing tariffs, and even labelling the European Union a foe.

The Trump Effect

However, amid these strains, transatlantic ties have proved quite durable. Despite the foreign policy chaos created by Trump, the US still has plenty of allies to call on for support. In contrast, Russia has no such allies to rely on. Beijing and Moscow have moved closer together since the fallout of the Ukraine crisis, but the Sino-Russian relationship is still defined by behind-the-scenes competition and riddled with mistrust. Similarly, while Belarus and Kazakhstan are Moscow’s closest partners, they are deeply suspicious of Russia’s intentions and seek to balance their relationship with ties to the West and China.

Still, the growing tensions within the EU and the US should not be minimized. They highlight that the greatest threats are largely from within. This is concerning for the wider security picture, not only because it provides deeper divisions for Moscow to meddle in and exploit for the information war that it is waging against the West, but because it is blood in the water for the Kremlin. The world order was already in the midst of a shift, but from Moscow’s perspective, Trump has put this process into overdrive. Russia is no doubt expecting this to continue and therefore has little appetite to end the confrontation while it thinks its hand will strengthen over time.

In this atmosphere of a near-total lack of trust, the risks of miscalculation and escalation are very real. Cyberattacks are difficult to attribute and have the potential of taking out infrastructure in major cities or even across entire countries. Meanwhile, much of the architecture used during the Cold War to manage the confrontation between Moscow and the West is set to expire or already gone. The US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, Trump has threatened to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and New START will expire in 2021, unless it is extended for another five years. A new arms race in Europe is not out of the question.

Strengthen NATO And Keep Talking

Against this backdrop, the West needs to shore up its lines and devise a more consistent approach to Russia. A key part of this is finding ways to pressure Russia to comply with the INF and prevent the US from leaving the arms control agreement. Sanctions, which have become the go-to policy response since the current standoff began, also need to be applied more holistically by European members. But most importantly, Western allies need to keep investing in defense and maintaining the integrity of NATO as the guarantor of European security. Trump’s criticisms of the unequal balance within the alliance have been condescending and needlessly combative, but he is not necessarily wrong in calling for stronger defense commitments from many European members.

In addition to strengthening NATO’s position and working to prevent an arms race, Western nations need to agree on a shared approach to engage in various trust-building measures and conflict-prevention mechanisms. Opening military-to-military hotlines could reduce the chances of miscalculation, and putting new energy into the hobbled NATO-Russia Council could also reduce some tensions. Dialogue at the highest levels will also be required. Meetings such as Trump and Putin’s summit in Helsinki or bilateral talks on the sidelines of other international gatherings are unlikely to lead to any kind of formal agreements or major breakthroughs, but can still help lower the possibility for misunderstanding and escalation by clarifying each other’s intentions.

America First, Then What?

The greatest difficulties toward actually being able to limit the potential for escalation will be domestic forces. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a stable hand in international affairs, has entered her twilight years in power, probably stepping down in 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has dropped, and the United Kingdom is distracted by the Brexit turmoil. In the US, Trump is consumed by Robert Mueller’s investigation, which overshadows and impedes any kind of diplomatic talks with Russia. On top of that, the disruption brought by two years of Trump’s America First foreign policy has already given the impression to European allies that they are witnessing Washington put an end to the American-led world order. A second term for Trump cannot be ruled out, and there’s also no guarantee that any new administration coming into office in 2024 will be able to significantly rebuild the international destruction they would inherit.

This has major implications for the security of Europe. The Kremlin will continue to exploit any opportunities that this chaos will produce, but the Kremlin has low expectations for Trump and is aware that US domestic politics will prevent any kind of serious conversation or policy breakthrough. This in turn fuels Russia’s own domestic forces that drive its behavior abroad. Russian policy-makers have done a good job of navigating a tough economic situation, but the barricades built to limit the fallout from sanctions have slowed economic growth.

Putin is resilient at home but not immune to a serious drop in popularity—something that is already underway. In the past, Putin has boosted falling ratings by provoking an incident abroad. Combined with Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions, this points to a deepening standoff that won’t be going away and will define the security situation in Europe for years to come. The best plan for now is to focus on better managing the current confrontation with Russia, and avoid backing into something even more dangerous.

The post Russian Opportunism appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© US Marine Corps/Handout via REUTERS

If one is trying to think of events or actors that could shake up the world in the coming year or two, then Russia does not necessarily make it to the top of the list. In a world growing ever more disorderly, Russia suddenly seems a comparatively predictable actor. Its propensity to create chaos does not compete with that of some other regions and phenomena—think, for instance, of the failing state system in the Middle East or of migration from Africa.

In the world where―to use senior Brookings fellow Robert Kagan’s catchy phrase―the jungle is growing back, Russia remains an aging, though experienced “beast” among others that are younger, fitter, and hotter-headed. Aware of its vulnerabilities, it is trying to insulate itself from global threats, to guard its self-identified backyard and maximize its leverage, so as to have a voice on questions it considers essential or existential.

One can say that Russia’s loud rebellion happened in and against yesterday’s world: the world of the post-Cold war liberal Western-led order. This is the normative arrangement that Russia first tried to join. In a second phase, it imitated its form while ignoring its essence, before finally openly rebelling against it in words as well as deeds.

But the fact that Russia’s crimes—the annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbass—took place in yesterday’s world does not make them unimportant or unnecessary to address. For one, this history is now an acute part of Russia’s relationship with the West and cannot simply be ignored. Its repercussions keep manifesting and demanding diplomatic attention―think of the question of maritime traffic in the Azov Sea and Kerch strait. Left unattended, tensions can escalate and spill over into different theaters. If the West hopes to cultivate “the jungle” and ultimately resurrect an adapted version of the rules-based order, then it is important to address past transgressions—Russia’s as well as others.

The West’s Normative Disunity

Western-Russian relations in the four years since 2014 make for a very interesting case study, not least because in the middle of that period the Western approach toward Russia changed fundamentally. In 2014, Europe and America were by and large united in their normative assessment of the situation, and they closely coordinated their policies. Since the start of the Donald Trump presidency, though, not only has coordination grown shakier, but more importantly, European and American policies toward Russia have become based on entirely different philosophical foundations. Whereas Europe is still guided by and trying to defend the principles of the post-Cold War liberal order, America’s Russia policy is now fashioned on a volatile brew of hard-nosed, unsentimental great power calculations, unrelenting domestic political combat, and President Trump’s whims.

That loss of normative unity and coordination has resulted in a fascinating interplay of the European and American approaches to Russia: sometimes their policies have reinforced one another; sometimes they have cancelled one another out, often in paradoxical, non-linear ways. While common wisdom says that in order to influence Russia, the West needs to be bold, united, and apply coordinated pressure, a close examination of the recent developments suggests that on some occasions, uncoordinated pressure may in fact work better.

Sanctions may be the most vivid case in point. While the influence these punitive measures have had on Russia’s economy is usually not disputed (though estimates of its extent may vary), the question of political influence has always been trickier—are the sanctions affecting political decision-making, and how?

At the beginning, they seemed not to have much influence. In the tense days of 2014, the Russian elites, instead of turning against Putin, rallied to the flag. But by 2017, dissenting voices started to speak out. “If we want our economy to grow, and grow smartly, then we need to improve relations with the West, and for that, also Russia has to take steps,” proclaimed the “intra-system liberal” and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin at the Primakov Readings conference in Moscow in June 2017. Many more liberal voices echoed the same line.

Turning to Europe

Paradoxically, what made that change possible was not the impact of coordinated Western sanctions itself, but their combination with the Trump presidency. President Vladimir Putin hates bowing to pressure, and for as long as he viewed the normatively united West as an existential threat, he could not possibly compromise. But the advent of the Trump presidency removed the hard ideological standoff, relaxed the political climate, and allowed pro-Western minds in Russia to speak out without fearing for their political future.

What also helped was the fact that, though he was nominally pro-Moscow, Trump was unable to resolve the Ukraine situation on Russia’s terms—even if he had really wanted to do so. Moscow certainly had some hopes on this account. “In Ukraine, Russia did not clash with the US, but it clashed with the US-led international order,” said Russian analyst Dmitry Suslov in late 2016, describing the Moscow establishment’s hopes that under President Trump’s priorities—America first, order last—a great-power deal between the US and Russia would become possible, and Europe, with its normative agenda, would be sidelined.

Instead, Trump’s Russia policy remained hostage to domestic political infighting, and this prompted Russia to turn to Europe. In September 2017, President Putin suggested deploying UN peacekeepers in the Donbass in a move that many in Moscow interpreted as a nod to Europe. At that point in time, relations with Washington were paralyzed, but Europe seemed to be in the ascendancy: it had not fallen apart after the Brexit vote; instead it had been strengthened by the Macron presidency. “It seems that in the Kremlin, a re-evaluation of Europe is happening,” said a Russian analyst in October 2017. “We need Europe’s help to manage the dangerously unpredictable America, and settlement in the Donbass would be a key to improved relations with the EU.”

A Drop in the Ocean

It is hard to say whether the peacekeeping proposal ever had a true potential to solve the Donbass issue. It might be that positions were too far apart. “Putin views the Donbass as an investment, which he is willing to sell for something tangible,” a Russian analyst told me at the time. But all that the West was willing to offer was a face-saving way out. Any accompanying perks remained either uncertain (such as a better relationship with the EU and/or US) or impossible (such as an agreement over Ukraine’s political future).

Moreover, any settlement for the Donbass would have involved a major diplomatic investment: sketching a way to resolution, with built-in guarantees for Kyiv as well as Moscow, and then steering the process toward conclusion. It could be that neither Europe nor the US had steady enough leadership for that. At least, that seems to have been the conclusion in Moscow: after some months of discussions on whether it should “sell the Donbass” to Trump or Merkel, Moscow has instead withdrawn it from the market.

And the reason for that is also clear: the new US sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections. Today, talk of Donbass peacekeeping has all but died out. Russia knows that in the conditions of the new sanctions, Donbass is not a game-changer. As said by a Kremlin adviser: “A year ago we thought that regulation in the Donbass would be a breakthrough in our relations with the West. Today we see that this would have no effect, be a drop in the ocean, hence pointless.” The US is seen to have moved the goalposts.

The conclusion from the above seems to be that while uncoordinated Western policy toward Russia may have created some openings, the West has so far failed to turn them into a decisive breakthrough. But it is questionable whether things would have been any better had the West stayed normatively united. Rather, one is inclined to assume that, in that case, Russia in President Obama’s words would have continued to be “a bored kid in the back of the classroom”―a contemptuous power happily using its disruptive potential to subvert the world order that it views as not just hostile to its interests, but also generally unviable.

On Virtues of Diversity

The Trump-era divergence between Europe and America has made the world more complicated for Moscow, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Moscow has had to reassess many of its earlier assumptions: it did not expect Europe to stick to sanctions, but Europe did; it expected Ukraine to “collapse,” but Ukraine did not; it expected Hillary Clinton to win the election and become a fiercely anti-Russian president, but she did not; it expected Trump to become a soft pro-Russian president―and that has not happened either. These reality checks should logically lead Moscow to critically question some of its own strategies. For instance, it could ask what it has won and what it has lost by interfering in the US’s (and other countries’) elections. Is the balance sheet really positive?

Or it could question whether its whole strategy in Ukraine—using the Donbass as leverage to control Ukraine’s geopolitical future—is in the end realistic at all. As Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center said, “the Minsk Agreement was a major diplomatic victory by Moscow which could not be cashed in for the simple reason that it was Moscow’s victory to which Kiev could never reconcile itself—and its Western backers were unwilling to make it accept.”

Paradoxically, the Kremlin’s reassessments vis-à-vis the Ukrainian situation would not have been possible under the conditions of the normatively united West. Only the more complex world of a West in dissolution has made this possible. By compromising now, Moscow would not be surrendering to a strong, united antagonist, but rather to the laws of nature—and acting in accordance to a realistic assessment of its own leverage.

Furthermore, the question is not just about Russia. One must not forget that there is also “the jungle,” and the West, in its Russia discussions, should remain aware of it. Not all of us are. In early 2018, the European Council on Foreign Relations organized a Russia discussion in Washington, with the intention of comparing European and American views on Russia and finding out whether there is a transatlantic rift in our approaches. And indeed there was a rift, but it was not transatlantic. Instead, it ran between participants, European as well as American, who said that Russia must to be pressured into accepting the rules-based world order, and others who asked, “What rules-based order? Where do you see it?”

A Future Full of Unknown Unknowns

It is unclear if the world has ever undergone changes as profound and multifaceted as the present ones.Not only is the global power balance changing, but globalization, migration, information technology, and gene technology are upsetting peoples’ long-held understandings of what it means to be a citizen of a country, or even a human being. This means that we are faced with years, if not decades of volatility. It also means that those in the West who want to save the liberal international order need to focus on adapting it to the emerging circumstances. Attempts to cling to the past, to recreate the international system as it existed in the 1990s, will be futile; they could even be downright counterproductive.

The chief reason why there has been no breakthrough with Russia is that Russia will not take Western rules and norms seriously until it realizes that the norms, and the West as a norm-setter, will be there to stay in the new, changed world. Getting to that point will take years, if not decades, and this work needs to start at home. The European Union can best support a rules-based order by ensuring its continuity at home. Likewise, the US―to be a global leader (not to mention the leader), it needs to first cater to its citizens and overcome domestic polarization.

To navigate through this period of chaos and volatility, the West can hardly have a strategy, as strategy implies a somewhat charted landscape, problems that are in most part known, and a notional way through. Our future, however, is full of unknown unknowns. And in such a situation, it is not actually necessarily so bad that Europe and America handle the world—and Russia—in different ways. If strategy is not possible, one relies on instincts—and a normative approach is Europe’s instinct in the same way that hard-nosed great-power calculations are Trump’s instinct, and up to a point America’s. Each approach has its flaws, but in their diversity and heterogeneity they could become a Western strength.

Or to put it another way: A chaotic jungle should be easier to navigate with a seemingly disorderly, motley crew of hobbits, elves, dwarfs, and wizards—as opposed to a uniform army under a single command.

The post Into the Jungle appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/ Piroschka Van de Wouw

Let’s start in Prague. Even for the scandal-tainted Czech prime minister, the billionaire-turned-politician Andrej Babiš, it was a bizarre turn of events. In mid-November, local media broadcast the shocking testimony of his 35-year old son, who claimed that last year, associates of his father had forced him to go on an “extended holiday” to Crimea. The purpose was to prevent him from testifying in a criminal investigation into charges that his father had committed an EU subsidy fraud. The fraud charges are part of a notorious case involving a conference center near Prague formally owned by Babiš’ children, who are now also implicated. The police want to close the investigation by the end of the year. Prime Minister Babiš has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and argues that the accusations are part of an orchestrated political smear campaign.

Amid the scandal, the opposition parties forced a no confidence vote. The social democrats, a junior partner in Babiš’ minority coalition government, decided to leave the chamber during the vote: they did not have confidence in the prime minister, but they also did not wish to vote against their own government. Their proposal to follow “the Slovak model”—in neighboring Slovakia, the discredited Prime Minister Robert Fico was replaced by his deputy Peter Pellegrini in March 2018—was vehemently rejected by Babiš. “I will never resign. Never! You should all remember,” Babiš declared in the parliament. As the Czech ruling party ANO is closely controlled by its founder and chairman Babiš, replacing him as prime minister against his will simply would not work.

Babiš had reason to be defiant. Because of the parliamentary mathematics in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies, the two extremist parties, the communists and the anti-migration party of Tomio Okamura, were always going to determine the balance of power. Babiš rode out the crisis by showing the social democrats that Okamura’s party is ready to replace them in government and that the communists will continue to support him regardless of the investigation. He was also helped by Czech President Miloš Zeman, who publicly declared that, even if Babiš were to lose the vote of confidence, he would ask him to stay on as prime minister and form another cabinet.

What Price Power?

Babiš paid for the support of both the extremist parties and pro-Russian President Zeman by granting, for instance, some minor budget handouts to organisations that are politically close to them. But what will be much more important in the medium term is the political boost they have gained from the deal: like the president, both extremist parties are pro-Russian as well as anti-EU and anti-NATO. In fact, they are proposing limits to Czech contributions to NATO missions, and insist on a tough, uncompromising migration policy.

The alleged conflicts of interest around Babiš and his business empire have become so toxic that they have not only paralyzed Czech domestic politics but also damaged the country’s position within the EU. On December 13, the European Parliament adopted a resolution expressing concern about the Prime Minister’s conflict of interest and the use of EU funds in the Czech Republic. Most allegations focus on Agrofert, Babiš’ large business conglomerate, which is now formally owned by two trust funds and continues to be a major recipient of EU agricultural subsidies in the country. These new developments are likely to push the Czech government into a corner in the ongoing negotiations about the new EU budget. Under pressure from Brussels, Babiš will now find it more difficult to pull off the balancing act by which he cultivates ties with western EU leaders while also embracing Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orbán.

Meanwhile, neighboring Slovakia was shaken by a different kind of political crisis. As in Belgium, the ruling coalition in Bratislava was deeply split on the Global Migration Pact. After 18 months of negotiations, the legally non-binding document on the treatment of migrants was agreed at the UN in July by all member states except the United States. At that time, Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák was president of the UN General Assembly. The pact was formally endorsed at the UN intergovernmental conference in Marrakesh on December 10-11, but not before several countries had publicly withdrawn their support, including EU members Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, and the Czech Republic.

“Populist Race to the Bottom”

The dispute within the three-party coalition government in Bratislava burst into the open after a junior partner, the pro-Russian populist Slovak National Party (SNS), demanded that Slovakia reject the migration pact, too. Foreign Minister Lajčák defended the document, criticizing its opponents for making false statements and leading a “populist race to the bottom.” He also threatened to resign if his opponents prevented Slovakia from taking part in the UN conference in Marrakesh. This was about the country’s credibility in Europe and its approach to multilateralism, he argued. If politicians have objections to the UN migration pact, they should allow diplomats to take them to Marrakesh.

Lajčák was hoping for political support from his own party, Smer-Social Democracy (SD), but he miscalculated. Weakened by recent country-wide protests against corruption, Smer-SD was careful not be outflanked on migration by the SNS. Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said Slovakia would “never” accept a pact that described migration as a generally positive phenomenon, a position that contradicts Slovakia’s will to distinguish between economic migrants and refugees. So the tide turned against Lajčák. After a strongly worded parliamentary resolution opposing the pact was passed—supported by Smer, SNS, and the neo-fascist Kotleba party—the foreign minister tendered his resignation on November 29.

Lajčák’s U-Turn

But it took him only one week to rescind it. He said he had received guarantees from both Prime Minister Pellegrini and Robert Fico, now the chairman of the Smer party, that Slovakia’s foreign policy will not change. The real reason for his change of heart could be something different—Bratislava is full of speculation. If Lajčák left the cabinet, Robert Fico would try to return to the government, thus threatening both the fragile balance of power and the position of Prime Minister Pellegrini. Or perhaps Lajčák is simply waiting in his post until there is a new top international job available for him—distancing himself from Slovakia’s position on the migration pact might improve his chances.

In any case, despite guarantees of foreign policy continuity, the SNS feels emboldened to pursue its agenda. Its new target is the country’s new security strategy. Having been approved by the government, it was supposed to be debated in the parliament. However, the SNS asked to change its wording by further watering down references to Russia as a threat. Pellegrini offered a procedural way out, emphasizing that, as the government has already approved the security strategy, it is bound by it even without the parliament’s confirmation.

What Europe Should Do

So, what do these recent Czech and Slovak political crises have in common?

Both show that as political elites tainted by corruption cling to power, they increasingly have to turn to the pro-Russian extremists for tactical support. This shift also has foreign policy implications. First, as the main ruling parties decline, fringe parties are going to grab more seats in the European parliament elections. Second, this weakens the more pro-European governments within the Visegrád group, which also includes Poland and Hungary. This means that Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán will gain more space within the group to expand his populist, anti-Brussels rhetoric (though he himself has come under pressure by wide-spread civic protest at home). Third, the Czech Republic in particular risks to undermine its relatively strong negotiating positions in the debate on the new EU budget and the future of cohesion policy. Fourth, if the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalates, Prague and Bratislava will become even more vulnerable to Russian disinformation.

Overall, the outlook for 2019 is more instability, as domestic politics continue to drift into turmoil. What does this mean for their partners in Europe, first of all for Germany, both countries’ most important interlocutor? As the antagonism between the EU’s East and West continues to grow, Berlin cannot take for granted that Prague and Bratislava will continue their pragmatic approach to important EU issues. While insisting that both countries address issues of corruption and conflict of interest, Germany should also enlist France’s support to anchor their governments in the pro-European camp. At this point in time, both the Czech Republic and Slovakia need help to consolidate their strategic consensus and resist both internal and external pressures for further radicalization.

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© Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik via REUTERS

The most common complaint about Russia’s foreign policy theses days is that it is becoming more aggressive and expansionist. Both US and European policymakers believe that Russia is now a serious challenge to global peace and stability. However, while this description might be accurate—Russia has already proven how dangerous it can be, especially to its neighbors—there is another phenomenon that has come to characterize Russia’s foreign policy: its absence. In its place, Russia has amassed a patchwork of interests, alliances of convenience, and grudges.

Contemporary Russian foreign policy was born in 1999, as Russian leadership—and more importantly the Russian public—began to grow deeply disillusioned with the West. At the time, the survival of Russia’s political elite depended upon both the suppression of separatism within Russia and the restoration of Russia’s global role. When Putin was elevated to the position of president, he tried to restore the country’s political relationships—not only with post-Soviet states, but also with the former USSR’s most corrupt allies. He paid visits to North Korea and Cuba during his first year in office and wrote off more than $40 billion of Soviet-era debts owed by Mongolia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Syria, Nicaragua, and other nations between 2000 and 2004. This did little to establish beneficial relationships, but these steps were quite popular inside Russia and contributed to the ascent of Putin’s approval ratings in the early 2000s.

When Putin began to consolidate his position, he used the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US to dramatically shift the country’s foreign policy. In exchange for its support for the Western mission in Afghanistan, Russia was able to improve its economic relations with both the US and Europe. Moscow founded the Russia-NATO council in 2002, with Putin calling European integration a “hope” for Russia. It seemed that Russia was briefly able to accept Washington’s special role in the world and maintain a steady rapprochement with the West.

A Short-Lived Honeymoon

The honeymoon ended in 2003 with the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq. Russia sided with Germany and France against the invasion, and for a brief time, it was possible to imagine the beginnings of a new Moscow-Berlin-Paris alliance. But it was short-lived: Moscow turned its back on Europe after the major European powers denounced its behavior towards Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004/05. With the exception of brief overtures to the West, like the ”Partnership for Modernization” with the EU and a ”reset” with the US, Russia had returned to its skepticism of the West.

This culminated in Russia’s ”pivot to the East,” as the Kremlin called its decision to rely more on a rising China to buttress Russia’s geopolitical ambitions, and ”Eurasian integration,” another response to the hardening of Russia-Western relations. The deep alienation from the West after the Ukraine crisis also led Russian leadership to develop relations with the most authoritarian regimes in the world, from Iran to Venezuela and Syria to Sudan. These connections cost money, and for a dubious rate of return: Over the last five years, Russians lent to and invested in Venezuela and Syria without achieving any foreign policy effects at all. Russia’s involvement in Syria in 2015 was meant to force the West to recognize Russia’s claims in the post-Soviet space, but neither the Americans nor the Europeans expressed any willingness to fight terror alongside a nation that was itself perceived as a terrorist power.

Thus, Russian foreign policy has come a remarkable full circle: it started with pure anti-Americanism, entered situational alliances with the United States and major European powers, then pivoted to the East, and ended by building ineffective partner-client relationships with disreputable political regimes. With Putin seeking another presidential term, extending his time as Russia’s leader to a quarter of a century, it is obvious he lacks any agenda for engaging with the world in the future.

A Domestic Imperative

President Putin might be not a very good strategic planner, but his actions are at least well thought out. Experts have been predicting his fall since 2002, but his regime remains reasonably healthy, and no organized opposition exists in the country. Putin’s foreign policy has been one of the foundations of his hold on power, and it reflects the shifting roles of Russia’s elites and its public in domestic policies.

When Putin assumed presidential power in the early 2000s, he sought popular support rather than that of the elites. This changed in 2002/03: With all the major state-owned corporations under the control of his allies and Russian businesses subdued, Putin’s major focus shifted to the interests of the elites. This is when the era of constructive foreign policy began. Until at least 2007, Russia’s foreign policy was largely underpinned by a desire to connect with the West, driven by Russian businessmen who wanted to join the global financial elite. Moscow opposed NATO and EU enlargement in the post-Soviet zone, but until the end of former President Dmitry Medvedev’s tenure, Russia cooperated productively with the US and Europe.

The decisive change came in 2011. Putin was disturbed by the implications of the Arab Spring revolutions, which had deposed a number of local strongmen, and felt his suspicions confirmed by massive street rallies held throughout Russia in response to the rigged 2011 Duma elections. In 2012, Putin won re-election with only 63.3 percent of the popular vote, a much lower margin than his 71.3 percent in 2004 and Medvedev’s 70.3 percent in 2008. He refocused his attention on the public and tried to galvanize support, especially since economic growth was faltering.

Without any vision for the future, the Kremlin decided to bet on a set of ideas for a post-Soviet reconstruction, a plan outlined in an article Putin published in the Izvestia newspaper in late 2011. These ideas failed: By the end of 2013, it was clear that Ukraine was moving westwards, and the benefits of closer ties with Kazakhstan and Belarus were negligible. In November 2013, the Levada Center recorded the lowest ever popular support for Mr. Putin—60.7 percent, compared with 85.9 percent when he allowed Medvedev to take over in April 2008. The occupation of Crimea in February and March 2014 and the subsequent war in Ukraine had far more to do with domestic concerns than global considerations. It was one of Putin’s boldest moves and it resonated strongly with the public. From this time on, Russia’s foreign policy began to vanish, replaced by an imaginary discourse meant to serve domestic political needs.

A Besieged Fortress

The Russian government has no actual need to improve the country’s relationships with the West because it derives its legitimacy predominantly from the current showdown. It also has little need to be active on other foreign policy vectors, since it simply has nothing to offer except the sale of energy resources and weapons. Welcoming international pariahs like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro or Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir should not be considered an element of foreign policy. The Kremlin simply wishes for Russia to look like a besieged fortress, under attack by the West.

And it has worked well: Putin’s approval ratings haven’t dipped below 80 percent since the annexation of Crimea, even though the economy has stagnated and personal disposable incomes have declined for the fourth year in a row. As it becomes more obvious that Putin is unable to provide Russians with improved conditions or Russia with expanding international influence, his only realistic option is to claim that only because of him, Russia is successfully withstanding growing external pressure. No one in the Kremlin wants relations with the West to improve. This would not make much of a difference to Russia’s economic landscape, and without an ”enemy” it would become much more difficult to explain why the country’s economy is performing so poorly, why military spending is so high, and why corruption is rampant.

The dismantling of Russia’s foreign policy also allows the government to change the entire worldview of the Russian people. As the country’s self-image as a besieged fortress has become more deeply ingrained, the Kremlin has tried to extend it, turning the whole history of the country into a story of defensive wars and praising the wisdom of ”strong rulers” who led the country to victory. Ivan the Terrible and Josef Stalin, the rulers who were responsible for the most brutal repressions of the Russian people in history, are nowadays the most glorified leaders in the nation’s history. For facilitating Putin’s political victories, some politicians have in fact suggested extending voting rights to 27 million people killed during World War II. More absurd initiatives are certain to follow. Books published with the support of foreign NGOs are confiscated, Russian non-profits that receive foreign grants or produce research for foreign customers are pressured; the country is being brainwashed, and its self-made isolation is a contributing factor.

To see that the Kremlin will not change its course now, one need only look at how its foreign policy actors have changed their language. Any trace of diplomatic politeness has completely disappeared. Putin described US sanction policy as ”clownery that cannot be tolerated;” Aleksey Pushkov, the chairman of the State Duma’s foreign policy committee, described the United States as a power ”approaching the point of a mental breakdown.” All of this underlines the fact that Russia’s foreign policy statements are used not to manage relations with other countries, but rather to impress a domestic audience.

A Vicious Cycle

This development could in fact be rather good for the Western powers. Many see Russia as a revisionist power that wants to change the borders of Europe and rewrite the rules that took hold after the end of the Cold War. But it has not been successful in this pursuit. Putin wanted to consolidate the post-Soviet space and keep Ukraine inside Russia’s sphere of influence, but instead of regaining Ukraine, he had to settle for Crimea; the Eurasian Union looks dysfunctional, with even Armenia disgruntled with its rules; China has not been a valuable investment partner; and the West is tightening its sanctions. In 2008 and 2014 Putin had targets he could invade and occupy without having to directly confront the West militarily, but now he does not. The country’s shift to domestic rhetoric in its foreign policy reflects the clear fact that the Kremlin realizes it has no chance of military expansion, and no means with which to respond to Western sanctions.

Under these conditions, Moscow’s only rational course is what it has already chosen: Abandoning any hope for positive change and nurturing a domestic climate of fear and hatred. This approach allows Russian authorities to both mobilize their subjects’ political and electoral support and channel hundreds of billions of rubles from the budget to fund the military and military equipment manufacturers (who represent, along with their family members, up to 11 percent of the Russian population). This strategy precludes any full-scale military conflict with the NATO countries for two obvious reasons: First, the Russian people do not want to go to war. No one was killed in Crimea, and during the subsequent conflict in Donbass the highest estimates of casualties among Russian servicemen are around two to three thousand people. In Syria, the combined losses of the regular army and the mercenaries Russia employed totaled less than 300. A single day of direct engagement with NATO forces would claim many more lives.

The second is that the Russian army isn’t fit for a full-scale war. It possesses only about a tenth of the tanks, armored vehicles, and guns that the eastern flank of NATO forces in Europe (not counting Greek and Turkish armies) can command. Even with 4.3 percent of its GDP spent on defense, Russia will need 30 to 40 years to catch up with its main opponents in just one theater. At the same time, the country possesses no means to respond to Western sanctions and nothing to offer in exchange for these sanctions being lifted. Thus, Putin is now able only to interfere with foreign elections and influence public opinion abroad by either waging disinformation campaigns or secretly funding fringe political parties. The Kremlin is stuck in its current foreign policy stance. Like a caged dog, it can only bark louder and louder.

The main challenge Putin’s regime now faces is the need to preserve its popularity within Russia while maintaining the international status quo—avoiding becoming a rogue state or attracting further sanctions. The West’s response to such a tactic should be based on a deep understanding of its own strategic superiority and the recognition that Putin’s Russia will run out of steam much more quickly than Brezhnev’s Soviet Union did. The gap between Putin’s non-existing foreign policy and his desperate rhetoric may broaden, but it will produce neither substantial benefits for Russia nor existential threats for the West.

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© REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Where do we stand as far as Russia’s relations with the West are concerned―is this a new low? Certainly for the United States, and to some extent for Europe as well, relations with Russia are the worst since before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power back in 1985.
In the US, that has been driven of late by the investigation into Russian influence in the US presidential election last year. Even if some of the media coverage is hyped up, even if some of the characters who claim to have had contact to the Trump campaign or the Kremlin did not, we know there was interference and leaks to WikiLeaks. It is the same in Europe. There have been cyberattacks in Germany on the Bundestag that have been attributed to the Russians. We know in France there was interference as well. Be it Brexit or Catalan independence, we hear about Russia trying to benefit from euroskepticism and populism. These movements already exist in the US and Europe. But the Russians certainly try to intensify both the questioning of our fundamental beliefs about democracy and the European Union and the post-war commitment to a closer Europe.
If we are asking ourselves if we need a new Russia policy, then one part of the answer is that we certainly need better and more sophisticated defenses against the kind of interference we are seeing. We have freedom of expression in the West. We don’t have one state-controlled media outlet. We cannot respond to what Russia is doing perfectly symmetrically because the government cannot tell our media what to write. But you can respond better both in terms of the messaging and preparing stronger cyber defenses.

Is this interference opportunistic or part of a deliberate Russian strategy? Even if we question how state-controlled various hackers are, the Kremlin obviously saw a vulnerability looking at the US and Europe, and they definitely have a policy of trying to influence. Russia does not like dealing with a united European Union, so anything that weakens it, why not? In the US, they listened to what Trump was saying and saw an opportunity to move beyond the sanctions. A lot of these euroskeptic parties they support across the EU would lift sanctions if they had power. And don’t forget, Russia hosts meetings with separatists and far-right groups, and we know they gave money to Marine Le Pen. All of that is deliberate and comes from high up.
There were similar efforts to influence our politics in communist times, of course. I remember in 1982 the Soviet Union was supporting the American peace movement. I think the concern now is that the Russians are so much more effective. And it comes at a time when we in the West are also questioning the moorings of our own democracies. I think the cyber aspect means we are in uncharted territory, and perhaps it is simply a question of building better tools. In Soviet times, there was a lot of Soviet television and propaganda, but we had our own response. Now the cyber tools give the Russians new capabilities.
On the other hand, a lot of Russians, or certainly those who do not like President Putin, cannot understand how we in the West are building up Russia as this monolith capable of destroying our societies and democracies. They say we give far too much credit to the Russians, that we should have some confidence in ourselves.

The EU has on the one hand implemented sanctions alongside Washington, but on the other tried to keep diplomatic channels with Moscow open. What do you make of the EU’s policy? The EU doesn’t have a single Russia policy. You have German policy and French policy that is more or less aligned, and British policy is less important now. But if you look at the so-called “illiberal democracies”, the Poland’s and Hungary’s, and then you look at the Czech Republic and Cyprus and even Italy, Spain, and Greece, there are EU member states that want to lift sanctions but cannot without German-French agreement.
US policy is very divided at the moment, but the official line that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has put forward is a three-prong policy. You resist Russian aggression where you need to; you work with Russia where you have common interests; and you try and establish strategic stability. It goes back to the old two-track policy of the 1969 Harmel Report―you engage Russia where you have common interest and try and push back in areas where you want to counter Russia. In that sense, I don’t think there is a huge difference between official US policy and German policy or EU policy.

So how do you stabilize or improve the situation? Is it time for another reset? I’m always very wary of a reset. I wrote a book about four American presidents who have done resets and they have all ended in disappointment. You have to think about what your expectations are. Russia hasn’t budged an inch on Ukraine. Do we start to normalize the relationship? Do we try to improve it and begin to lift sanctions? If you do that while Russia hasn’t changed its Ukraine policy, that sends a strong signal. If you want to try and move beyond the Minsk agreement, you would need to have all sides agree, and you would need much more active French and German engagement.
In Syria, the US has basically abandoned its leadership role, and that happened under Obama. It has now ceded that role to Russia, which has become the power broker. Putin has managed to get Turkey and Saudi Arabia to accept Russia in that role. The Saudi king was just in Moscow meeting Putin, and Erdogan, and the Iranian leadership more recently visited Sochi for talks. We have all stepped back from the position that Bashar al-Assad has to go, but we are still dealing with a humanitarian catastrophe. I think now it is up to Russia to see what they are going to do. Are they going to step back? Will there be a reconciliation process? I don’t know. But the US is no longer a main player in the conflict.
So what would be the basis of another reset, of a different Russia policy? Right now everything is suspended until the Russian presidential elections are over. Once Putin is reelected in March, certainly from my discussions with the Russians, I have no sense that there is any kind of policy change in the cards, either domestically or in foreign policy. One of the things we should be asking ourselves is: is it us that should be doing the reset? Or do we need signals from Russia, that Russia understands that it needs to take our considerations into account?
One of the problems if we talk about a new policy is sanctions. Europe could lift sanctions, but in return for what? In the US case that has become really difficult: Congress enacted very tough legislation because Republicans and Democrats were worried that Trump would lift sanctions unilaterally―and I believe he was intending to do exactly that but couldn’t. What’s more, the process of lifting sanctions is so unwieldy. It took 25 years to change the Jackson Vanik amendment of 1974 that denied “most favored nation” status to Russia. Also, the sanctions as they currently are could have far-reaching consequences for Germany because they contain language that says nobody should be building new energy pipelines, and I don’t know what will happen with Nord Stream 2―nobody does. It would be good to have the US and Europe really coordinated. I think one of the successes of the Obama administration is they did work with the Europeans very closely.
Beyond that, what would a new Russia policy look like? Some say the problem goes back to the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, where the final communiqué stated that Ukraine and Georgia would join NATO. There was no date attached, but it is very easy for the Russians to say “this is why we had to take Crimea.” So does NATO change that language to prevent another escalation? To do that without going over the heads of Ukraine and Georgia is difficult. This is an issue that the Europeans and NATO have to confront.
A new policy on Russia has to take into consideration what Russia wants from us. It’s a recognition of its sphere of influence. That influence extends at least to the border of the former Soviet states, not the borders of the Russian federation. Are we prepared to do what Putin would like, which is to re-enact the Yalta conference of 1945 with Russia, China, and the US? It is unclear where Europe comes in. There are some who argue that Russia has its historical interests in its region and is threatened by the idea of the West coming closer to its borders. Do we say: no more NATO enlargement? The reality is there won’t be anyways for the foreseeable future.
A new Russia policy that could successfully avoid producing new Russian actions would probably have to accommodate Russian interests. Other people might argue that we need a much tougher Russia policy. We need to push back more. We are already deploying more troops as a result of what happened in Ukraine. We have more US troops in Poland. But there is no consensus on a tougher response.

What does accommodating Russian interests mean―what are the Kremlin’s interests, and its long game? I think it has a particular interest in the former Soviet space, but in general its interest is to have a seat at the international table on important issues, to be one of the great powers again. In the Middle East at the moment it looks as if it has succeeded quite dramatically in the last few years in establishing itself as a major power and influencing policy there, particularly in Syria. One of the lines I use is that Russia would like the West to treat it as if it were the Soviet Union―a great power whose interests we have to respect as legitimate, one that we respect and to some extent fear. The Chinese are very clever in treating Russia as if it’s a great power and equal, even though they understand the reality.
Russia has been able to benefit from opportunities opened by US withdrawal. There are global ambitions there, but I think a lot of it is simply opportunism. And you have to remember that many of these global ambitions feed the current Russian elites’ desire to stay in power and continue to enrich themselves. A lot of foreign policy is driven by that, and obviously a concern is to not have the outside world try and raise questions via democracy promotion. The EU is not going to give up its standards, but it understands the limits. And a country like China is never going to tell Russia it has concerns about its human rights record.

Some, especially in Germany, believe extending economic relations and a “modernizing partnership” be the way forward. Could economic cooperation to help boost the Russian economy provide some leverage? Economically Russia is a raw materials exporter―oil and gas and military hardware. Those are important, but is Russia really interested in modernization? So far I think we can say there are some individuals and groups in Russia that are interested in modernization, that understand if Russia doesn’t modernize its economy it will remain a raw materials exporter while countries around it become much more formidable economic powers. But there is very little evidence that the people in the Kremlin are seriously interested, because such a program in the end would erode the basis of their own power. One of the answers to “Do we need a new Russia policy?” is that we could perhaps have one if we had different leadership in the Kremlin, one that understands modernization and is willing to undertake the kind of economic reforms that would move Russia away from being a petrol state.
There are Russians who say they don’t believe Putin will leave the Kremlin voluntarily. But there are other Russians who say he may well be preparing the path for a successor. We know he has put in power a number of younger people who could potentially be successors and who might understand the need for modernization. So in the longer run maybe such a policy would work. But right now that doesn’t look likely.

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© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Until the last moment of the German election that took place on September 24, large-scale, overt interference by the Kremlin was considered a real possibility. However, in the end Germans were spared the brazen meddling that marred elections in both the United States and France. Yet with the openly pro-Russian Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) strong showing securing its place in the Bundestag, Moscow has every reason to be satisfied with the outcome of the vote. In fact, data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), an initiative run by the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, shows that Kremlin-oriented networks engaged in low-level, covert interference in Germany. Most notably, these networks actively supported AfD online by targeting the German public with the same type of disinformation they used in the United States.

Since July, ASD has been monitoring the activity of Kremlin-oriented actors on Twitter in the United States via its Hamilton 68 dashboard. Just before the German election, ASD added Artikel 38, a similar tool that monitors the activity of Kremlin-oriented Twitter accounts in Germany. The researchers at ASD trawled through thousands of followers of Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik and used three metrics – influence, exposure, and in-groupness – to narrow the initial list down to 1,100 accounts, 600 in the United States and 500 in Germany, that consistently echo Moscow’s political line. The two dashboards now automatically monitor these accounts in real time and distill their content into an analyzable format.

The information derived from the dashboards reveals that topics and themes promoted in both countries were very similar. In both Germany and the US, Moscow amplifies right-wing content in an attempt to exacerbate pre-existing socio-political divisions. In Germany, Artikel 38 shows that the Kremlin’s messaging follows three broad axes: xenophobic coverage of immigrants; anti-“establishment” attacks, directed at Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular; and support for AfD. Together, the themes pushed by the network target the most salient vulnerabilities of German democracy.

Xenophobic content pervades the stories tweeted by the network. A third of the 122 URLs it promoted between September 13 and September 27 directed viewers to anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic content. The tweeted stories portray immigration as a security threat and seek to stir Germans’ fears of an “Islamization” of their country. Out of 37 xenophobic stories promoted by the network, 23 portray immigrants as either criminals or terrorists. One leitmotiv concerns rapes allegedly committed by refugees. Other stories imply a link between (Muslim) immigration and terrorism. For instance, one article reported that four Syrian refugees with links to the terror group Jabhat al-Nusra were on trial for murder before a German court.

Stories that appeal to xenophobic instincts are often linked to another type of coverage that criticizes the “establishment” forces responsible for the influx of supposedly dangerous and irredeemably alien refugees. Anti-establishment content primarily focuses on Merkel and on the mainstream media outlets accused of dancing to her tune. Over the studied period, 15 URLs criticize, or even criminalize, Merkel for her way of handling Germany’s refugee crisis. These posts claim that by illegally admitting large numbers of refugees, Merkel not only sacrificed Germans’ security, but also started the steady dismantlement of German democracy and rule of law. A particular link that was among the top ten stories for three consecutive days explains why “Merkel belongs behind bars.”

Other pieces focus on “Merkel’s accomplices.” Most of them target the mainstream media, accused of censoring reports critical of Merkel and her refugee policy. Two of the most retweeted stories reported that the German public broadcaster ZDF had uninvited the relative of one of the victims of the terrorist attack that occurred in Berlin last December from a show with the chancellor. Other articles pushed by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany focus on alleged instances of censorship and on cover-ups by state authorities, most notably by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

By amplifying xenophobic and anti-establishment views, the network pushes the same narratives as AfD. But the network goes further than promoting ideas; it directly promotes the radical right-wing party. Since the launch of Artikel 38, AfD has dominated the hashtags, topics, and stories promoted by the dashboard. Over the period analyzed, #afd was the most tweeted hashtag, either the most or second-most important topic discussed, and the subject of a significant share of the articles pushed by the network. These articles, 36 altogether, serve two main purposes.

Firstly, they seek to create the image of a powerful AfD. Before Germans went to the polls, the network actively promoted pieces that suggested that the party’s support base might be far greater than expected. After September 24, the network was abuzz with posts that cheered the AfD’s “triumph” and gloated at the establishment’s poor assessment of the party’s real strength. Secondly, the articles aim to “expose” what the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany calls the establishment’s “witch-hunt” against AfD. According to this narrative, before the election, the other parties, mainstream media, and other “establishment” forces were accused of using censorship, fake scandals, and possibly election fraud to prevent AfD’s inevitable triumph. Having failed at their attempts, the “establishment” now tries to downplay AfD’s victory and threatens to fight, rather than engage, the party in parliament.

Honing the Message

While Moscow’s messaging is strikingly similar in Germany and in the US, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany does have some idiosyncrasies. For instance, it plays on Germans’ strong concern for environmental issues and climate change. This is reflected in both the hashtags and topics tweeted by the network, which regularly reference issues like nuclear waste, EU regulations for the weed-killer glyphosate, and even the German recycling system. The natural disasters that recently struck the Americas were given sustained attention by the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in Germany. On September 21, six of the 10 most trending hashtags related to hurricanes Harvey, Jose, Irma, and Maria. The network exploited these catastrophes to promote conspiracy theories, while a website that accuses US research institutes of weather manipulation and of using climate as a strategic weapon is frequently among the most-tweeted URLs of the network.

Beyond the small thematic idiosyncrasies, the dashboards also reveal significant differences between the German and American information environments. Some of these differences are intrinsic to the platform monitored, with Twitter being a much more powerful public opinion influencer in the US than in Germany. In the US, Twitter is a behemoth boasting approximately 70 million active users. In Germany, the social network never really caught on, and hovers at around a million active users. Activities on Twitter thus reach barely more than one percent of Germans directly. Of course, Twitter may still have an indirect effect: while most Germans get their news from traditional media, Twitter plays an outsized role in influencing journalists, who are on the platform and sometimes amplify or repeat its content.

Not only does the platform reach a far smaller audience, it is also used far more “passively” in Germany than in the United States. This is reflected in the dashboards. In Germany, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network rarely posts more than 20,000 tweets a day, whereas in the United States, it rarely falls below the 20,000-tweet mark. This is further reflected in the fact that the content pushed by the networks sees a far smaller number of retweets in Germany than in the United States – a clear indicator that Germans interact less with messages posted by others. For instance, between September 25 and 27, the five most-tweeted posts were retweeted an average amount of 204 times in the United States versus an average of 39 times in Germany.

Another significant difference between each country’s Kremlin-oriented Twitter network is the number and weight of sources each one uses. In Germany, the content promoted by Moscow sympathizers emanates largely from a small number of single-authored fringe blogs. Large national or local media outlets are seldom referred to. To some extent, it seems that content promoted by Russia is restricted to a niche audience and is isolated from the broader public debate.

The situation is very different in the United States, where Russia has a much larger number of websites whose messages it can amplify. Small sites analogous to the German fringe blogs are more numerous and appear to draw from a larger pool of contributors. More importantly, the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network in the United States relies heavily on content from large outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News. These big organizations allow the Kremlin-oriented Twitter network to be far more embedded in the American public debate than in the German one.

Moscow adopts the same propaganda strategy on both sides of the Atlantic. It uses social media to bolster the political extremes, the far-right in particular, and extend the reach and toxicity of their divisive rhetoric. But analyzing the dashboard’s data suggests that the Kremlin’s online tactics might be better suited to the United States than to Germany. The Kremlin-oriented Twitter network reaches more people in the US, and the American public more readily engages with content pushed by Moscow. In addition, Russian online campaigns in the US can draw on large media outlets and get to people beyond the restricted confines of the far-right.

That’s not to say that Germany is immune to Kremlin interference. AfD has learned from, and largely adopted, the online tactics Moscow used to great effect in other Western democracies. Moreover, as a party in Parliament, AfD is now very likely to have a much-improved access to media channels that have real sway over the German public. If the far-right party maintains its openly Pro-Russian line in the coming months, Moscow will have a Trojan horse perfectly poised to take the German informational landscape by storm.

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© REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

At the height of the conflict in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, as tensions with Europe bubbled dangerously close to the surface, a major energy crisis emerged: Ukraine and other parts of Europe are very much dependent upon Russia for oil and gas, and there were serious concerns over disruptions to that energy supply.

Moscow’s gas and oil exporting firms jockeyed for the spotlight in an expanding political drama. But the state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, took the opportunity to reassure the world market it steers clear of politics.

“Nuclear should be out of all political discussions, all temporary disagreements, because it is a very sensitive area and first and foremost it is all about safety,” Kirill Komarov, the deputy director general, told Reuters news agency.

The company has long touted its reputation as a neutral player. Executives point to Rosatom’s global customer base and expanding network of “memoranda of understanding” – primarily symbolic agreements the state can use to preserve its place within an emerging energy market and reinforce the perception of Russia as a global power.

Yet these professions of non-partisanship have begun to ring hollow. Western policymakers and experts continue to underappreciate and underestimate the role of nuclear energy in the Russian foreign policy toolkit. Rosatom is increasingly asserting its economic clout in pursuit of the Kremlin’s geopolitical interests – both in hard and soft power.

Calculated Responses

In late 2007, Russia and Iran were locked in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. By shipping fuel to Iran’s Bushehr power plant, Moscow sought to halt enrichment of uranium and bolster its image as a responsible international player ready to shoulder its share of the global governance burden. The Kremlin would benefit by succeeding where the United States had failed.

Yet diplomatic efforts broke down and Tehran refused to provide assurances that enrichment would be halted, so Rosatom suspended its deliveries. The official explanation – widely dismissed by Russia watchers – was that Iranian authorities had failed to pay. In reality, such indiscretions were relatively common, making the timing of Moscow’s drastic move somewhat suspicious.

Almost a decade later, the same situation arose in Ukraine – twice. Following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, the Kremlin  announced an embargo on the transit of fuel through Ukraine, citing the “unstable situation” as an unacceptable level of risk. With its reactors running dry, the Ukrainian government was faced with disaster on a colossal scale. Rosatom’s chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, ostensibly refused to comply with the Kremlin’s wishes, yet two years later, Rosatom’s subsidiary responsible for the fuel cycle, TVEL, announced it would no longer import spent fuel rods from Ukraine due to non-payment. Lacking appropriate disposal methods, the fuel rods were stored in precarious makeshift shelters.

All this occurred, of course, as conflict raged in eastern Ukraine. Gazprom continued to offer relatively discounted prices to its Ukrainian customers, exercising what Adam Stulberg calls “strategic restraint” – and continuing a trend of relative leniency which made Rosatom’s assertiveness all the more puzzling.

Turkey has also found itself as the object of Rosatom’s displeasure, having downed a Russian SU-24M jet in disputed circumstances. Russia imposed an array of economic sanctions in retaliation, and Rosatom halted work on Akkuyu, Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. Akkuyu was not officially part of the sanctions package, but progress returned to normal after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a formal apology for the incident.

Soft and Hard Power

Coercion aside, nuclear energy has also been an effective tool of Russian soft power. The corporation builds, owns, operates, and occasionally transports a power plant to clients, reducing initial costs significantly and giving it a uniquely broad potential market. In this sense, Rosatom is a highly efficacious vehicle for Russian global influence, making excellent use of Russia’s comparative advantage over the West in the nuclear sector.

The “memorandum of understanding” is the central tool in this soft-power push. Such documents are signed between Rosatom and governments, competitors, and state agencies alike. Despite lacking legal force, a memorandum provides a public roadmap for areas of future cooperation: education and training programs on nuclear energy are announced and joint working groups are founded. If memoranda agreements fail to yield results, Rosatom has nonetheless helped construct an image of Russia as a global power. Such agreements play well to the domestic audience, too.

There is another, more practical, reason for these documents. Nuclear technology is generally not cross-compatible: Russian models cannot use American or French fuel without an element of risk. By training local engineers to use its reactors, Rosatom will have created a degree of path dependency. If Sudan is to invest in nuclear energy in the future, for example, its previous experience with Russian technology will likely influence its choice of partner company. Unlike natural gas or oil, nuclear energy provides a guaranteed source of influence that cannot be blocked off like a pipeline. The construction of a nuclear power plant creates a deeply asymmetrical relationship. The Memorandum of Understanding can also be a cost-efficient way of securing future deals.

The Paradox of Rosatom

The Kremlin has shown it does not respond well to perceived disrespect. By announcing that nuclear enrichment would not stop, Tehran undermined the work and status of Russian diplomats, for example. In Moscow’s view, the overthrow of President Yanukovych in Ukraine represented an unacceptable incursion by Western forces into the Russian sphere of influence.

And yet, Russia’s foreign policy establishment prides itself on its pragmatism. A realist world view dictates that perceptions of respect should not hold sway in the decision-making processes. Therein lies the paradox of Rosatom: the corporation is co-opted for geopolitical gain when Russia’s great power status is disrespected. This nebulous concept is difficult to reconcile with the realpolitik that often drives Russian policy.

The combination of pragmatism and idealism is a well-trodden path for Russian actors in international affairs. Just like Gazprom, Rosatom has shown an ability both to cooperate and coerce. By combining tangible goals with the soft-power offensive led by the memoranda of understanding, the corporation has demonstrated three of the most pertinent concepts to have characterized Russia’s international engagement in the last decade: pragmatism, speed of response, and zero-sum thinking.

The weaponization of Rosatom also allowed the Kremlin to avoid other, riskier methods of retaliation: another gas crisis in Ukraine would have angered Russia’s downstream energy customers, while open military conflict with Turkish forces would have trod dangerously close towards NATO’s Article V commitments. At the same time, Rosatom itself appears to be deployed in a restrained manner. The Akkuyu nuclear plant was not cancelled, but suspended; the corporation’s chief refused to suspend deliveries of fuel to Ukraine. It appears Moscow is unwilling to exceed the boundaries.

One thing seems to be clear: any component of the Russian state may be co-opted for political reasons. Even a corporation which argues fervently that it does not pursue political aims may be obliged to do so. If Russia views state-controlled assets as a potential weapon, it holds a vast array of policy tools at its disposal – and Rosatom may be the tip of the iceberg.

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