The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

Step by step and on all fronts, the United States sought to drive Russia into irrelevance, accompanied by the European Union in the process. The overreach came in 2013-2014 in relation to events in Ukraine.

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Russian intelligence services penetrated public and private, military and civilian computer networks in the country for months. This occurred while U.S. attention was focused on trying to protect its electoral system from Russian electronic interference. In fact, the 2016 presidential election showed evidence of an unprecedented level of Russian interference through the manipulation of social networks by way of a systematic hacking operation designed to favor Donald Trump. All that is expressive of an increasingly belligerent Kremlin.

To better understand Russian behavior, we would have to go back to the unification of Germany and its incorporation into NATO. To compensate for the heavy geostrategic blow that this implied for Moscow, for whom Germany represented its best defense, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker gave guarantees to Mikhail Gorbachev that this would be the limit of NATO’s expansion into areas formerly controlled by the Soviets. With the Soviet Union having disappeared and with a weakened Russia, the United States felt free from any ties.

This feeling ignored the fact that from the start of the 18th century, Russia had been a leading global power, as well as a superpower between the end of World War II and 1992. George H.W. Bush fully understood that wrestling with an injured, but still powerful animal required special treatment. According to a member of his staff, “dealing with a wounded rival was just as complex as dealing with a strutting one.” Bush’s successors did not accept this common sense acknowledgment.

One after the other, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia were incorporated into NATO. Offers were also made to Georgia and Ukraine. Contradicting the guarantees made to Gorbachev, Russia’s neighborhood was transformed into a hostile sphere of foreign influence.

The bombing of Belgrade and NATO’s occupation of Serbia, as well as the subsequent recognition of Kosovo’s independence, which completely disregarded strong Russian opposition and sentiment, all fall within this chapter. The support for color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, part of the so-called freedom agenda promoted by Washington, also find their place here.

Along the same lines, the United States promoted the construction of oil and gas pipelines between the coastal states along the Caspian Sea that were part of the Soviet Union and Europe. In clear defiance of the region’s geography, this represented an extremely costly process meant to separate the countries involved from Russian influence, and diminish Russia’s centrality in terms of hydrocarbons. Simultaneously, Washington withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, installing an anti-ballistic shield in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in its place. This was aimed at handicapping Russia’s nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, attempts were made to undermine the U.N. Security Council, the only space where Moscow continues to share equal status with Washington. From Iraq to Libya, the Security Council’s resolutions were either circumvented or manipulated, reducing the importance of the Russian voice. Over the course of 18 years and until its accession in 2012, Russia fought to be accepted into the World Trade Organization in what was the longest period of negotiation the WTO had ever carried out. The delay was caused by objections that Washington submitted pursuant to the Jackson-Vanik amendment against Russia, a Cold War relic that was only repealed in 2012.*

Step by step and on all fronts, the United States sought to drive Russia into irrelevance, accompanied by the European Union in the process. The overreach came in 2013-2014 in relation to events in Ukraine. The desire to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence eventually provoked a reaction from the Russians. John Mearsheimer, the leading exponent of the realist school of international relations, explained the reasons for this reaction: “Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West,” Mearsheimer said. (“Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014).

From that moment on, Moscow assumed the posture that “the best defense is a good offense” as its founding strategic premise. A subtle offense, but implacable nonetheless.

*Editor’s note: the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 denied permanent normal trading relations to non-market economies that restricted emigration and other human rights.