American Deterrence: A Cold War Scenario

On April 28, the United States and the European Union announced that they will impose more sanctions on Russia to compel it to back away from its policy on Ukraine. The new American sanctions cover seven Russian figures closely connected to President Vladimir Putin and 17 Russian companies connected to blacklisted individuals. Among those individuals added to the American blacklist are Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin; head of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee, Aleksey Pushkov; CEO of Rostec Corporation, Sergey Chemezov; and CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. Among the individuals on the European blacklist are Russian armed forces Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Director of Military Intelligence Igor Sergun.

Some Russian circles think that Washington is being more extreme than Brussels with regard to the sanctions against Moscow because the American administration has also imposed restrictions on the exportation of advanced, dual-use technology products to Russia. Additionally, information indicating that President Obama’s policy is, ultimately, to make the Europeans leave the Russian technology market and stop importing Russian gas is leaking through the Russian media. But this is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future because at least six European Union countries depend completely on importing Russian gas, while the rest import at least 50 percent of their gas from Russia.

We can see an increase in the military buildup around Ukraine in anticipation of Russia’s response to the American and European sanctions. Romania has moved military divisions through the capital, Bucharest, toward Constanța, a city near the Black Sea, and the country’s eastern border to perform joint military maneuvers with the United States. Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Estonia have all requested an increased NATO and United States military presence within their territories against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, reconnaissance aircraft stationed at the NATO base in Germany have been conducting daily flights above southern Romania to spy on southern Ukraine, Moldova and Crimea. At the beginning of this year, NATO officially moved the functions of the Pentagon’s Manas Transit Center at the Kyrgyz airport to Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu International Airport, where they will help move troops and cargo for the military campaign in Afghanistan. Similarly, Romanian authorities asked Washington to deploy a squadron of American fighters to Romanian territory and keep it there until 2017. Romania seems ready to move its forces into Ukraine’s Odessa and Chernivtsi regions — in which some Romanians live — should the Ukrainian state become incapable of maintaining public order in these areas.

Among these military movements are those uncovered by Russian satellites: a large buildup of Ukrainian troops and military equipment around Sloviansk and the buildup of about 15,000 Ukrainian troops and more than 400 military vehicles, supported by artillery and rocket launchers, near the border with Russia — a response to the presence of around 40,000 Russian troops near the same border on the Russian side. Ukraine’s military movements can be linked to the arrival of American and NATO ships in the Black Sea. Also attracting attention is the newspaper Izvestia’s report that Free Zone, a Georgian NGO, and the United National Movement, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s party, are recruiting volunteers and mercenaries to be sent to Ukraine to fight against Russian speakers in Ukrainian territories who are calling for federation. And Izvestia reports that Russian experts, aware that the Right Sector (a Ukrainian extremist right-wing organization) has not surrendered its weapons and that protesters in southeastern Ukraine are now armed, are expressing their fear that Ukraine will become another Syria, where foreign fighters are flocking to join the battle.

When we follow America’s policy on Russia in the Ukrainian crisis closely, we find that it is very similar to the “policy of deterrence” that Washington used against the former Soviet Union, even though the Soviet state disintegrated 23 years ago. The substance and goals of the deterrence policy against communist Moscow were first presented in 1947, virtually the beginning of the Cold War. They were based on the idea that the Soviet Union was an adversary in the political arena that needed to be dealt with using long-term plans to inhibit its expansionist disposition. The policy was reflected in the Truman doctrine of 1947 and the establishment of NATO in 1949, and included the use of an economic blockade against the Soviet Union and establishing a network of military bases around it. This closely resembles Washington’s behavior today towards capitalist Moscow: Waves of economic sanctions are following one another, and America and NATO’s military presence around Russia is expanding.

On April 20, the American media announced that the White House plans to isolate Russia economically and politically within the next two years. If true, this means that Washington’s goals have moved beyond the scope of the conflict in Ukraine to forming a long-term policy for dealing with Russia. In our view, this policy constitutes a modernization of Cold War strategy, specifically the strategy of deterrence. Rumor has it that President Obama recently concluded that even if a solution to the Ukrainian crisis is found, he will not have “constructive” relations with President Putin. It seems that during the next two years, Washington will apply more pressure on Moscow and create something like a climate of war around Russia in the Eurasian political arena, a climate that may pressure Europe to gradually stop cooperating closely with the Russian nation. In this context, accelerating the deployment of American and NATO missile defenses in Eastern Europe might play an important role in America’s modernized deterrence policy. But these American plans hinge on Russia’s political, economic and military response, and on the United States itself, which seems to be retracting from global leadership.