From Eurasia with Love: Russian Security Threats and Western Challenges

Author(s): Stephen J. Blank

Source: Strategic Studies Quarterly , Vol. 8, No. 2 (SUMMER 2014), pp. 42-73
Published by: Air University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26270803

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 From Eurasia with Love
Russian Security Threats and Western Challenges

Stephen J. Blank

The recent Ukrainian crisis displayed the US government’s woeful in-

ability to think critically about the use of force for political and strate-
gic objectives even without resorting to combat operations. Thus, we
have ruled out deploying military forces in and around Ukraine, even as
Moscow created a sizable force that could be used to invade but whose
more likely task is to intimidate Kyiv and the West into surrendering
Ukraine’s integrity and sovereignty. Clearly the United States does not
appreciate the use of military force to deter credibly, show resolve, and
threaten aggressive adversaries who have little or no reason to engage in
actual combat to gain their objectives. It is merely deluding itself and
its allies if the use of military force to help Ukraine defend itself, deter a
Russian attack, and show credible resolve and deterrence is rejected out-
right. Certainly failure to do so means de facto acquiescence in annexing
Crimea, invasion, occupation, and the preceding acts of war. If the clas-
sic purpose of US force deployments in Europe and Asia is to deter and
reassure allies, this policy ranks as a stupendous strategic failure.1
There is no excuse for the US strategic failure in Eurasia except the
long-standing defects in strategy and policy. Under the present circum-
stances, complacency or retreat from Eurasia—predispositions that seem
to be increasingly popular—are, in fact, the last thing the United States
needs and will only worsen its current predicament. This article focuses
on threats originating in Eurasia, specifically overarching Russian de-
sires for empire manifest in the Crimea, then critiques US policy toward
Eurasia, analyzes aspects of security and sovereignty in the post-Soviet

Dr. Stephen Blank is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington and former
professor of Russian national security studies at the Strategic Studies Institute. Previously, he was associate
professor of Soviet studies at the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, Maxwell AFB,
Alabama, and taught at the University of Texas–San Antonio and the University of California–Riverside.
Dr. Blank is the editor of Imperial Decline: Russia’s Changing Position in Asia, co-editor of Soviet Military
and the Future, and author of The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin’s Commissariat of Nationalities, 1917–1924.
He holds an MA and PhD in history from the University of Chicago.

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 From Eurasia with Love

Caucus states and Central Asia, and considers threats and opportunities
concerning energy issues. This is followed by recommendations.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Ukrainian crisis of 2013–14 forces us to immediately reassess past
propositions and act urgently in defense of US, allied, and Ukrainian
interests. Russia’s invasion of Crimea shows just how inattentive we have
been to factors that have long been in evidence and how we must there-
fore change our thinking and our policies. Statements that the United
States could not have foreseen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexa-
tion of Crimea are utterly without basis, as many specialists, including
this author, have warned for years. It also appears the United States had
warning of the Crimean operation before it began in late February 2014
but could not assess it properly—another sign of a massive intelligence
and policy failure.2 Indeed, in 2008 Putin had already shown his dis-
regard for Ukrainian and Moldovan sovereignty. In late 2006, for example,
Putin offered Ukraine unsolicited security guarantees in return for per-
manently stationing the Black Sea Fleet on its territory, a superfluous
but ominous gesture since Russia already maintained Ukraine’s security
through the Tashkent treaty of 1992 (Collective Security Treaty Organi-
zation, or CSTO) and the Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine, Great
Britain, and the United States to denuclearize Ukraine in 1994. Putin’s
offer also coincided with his typically dialectical approach to Ukraine’s
sovereignty in the Crimea where he stated, “The Crimea forms part of
the Ukrainian side and we cannot interfere in another country’s internal
affairs. At the same time, however, Russia cannot be indifferent to what
happens in the Ukraine and Crimea.”3 Putin thus hinted that Ukrainian
resistance to Russian limits on its freedom of action might encounter a
Russian-backed “Kosovo-like” scenario of a nationalist uprising in the
Crimea to which Russia could not remain indifferent. Obviously, as
Reuben Johnson wrote then,
Moscow has the political and covert action means to create in the Crimea the
very type of situations against which Putin is offering to “protect” Ukraine if
the Russian Fleet’s presence is extended. Thus far such means have been shown
to include inflammatory visits and speeches by Russian Duma deputies in the
Crimea, challenges to Ukraine’s control of Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait, the
fanning of “anti-NATO”—in fact anti-American—protests by Russian groups

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 Stephen J. Blank

in connection with planned military exercises and artificial Russian-Tatar ten-

sions on the peninsula.4
Russian intelligence, military, economic, informational, ideological,
and other forms of penetration of Crimea in anticipation of an overall
nullification of Ukraine’s de facto if not de jure sovereignty over the area
have therefore been long apparent.5 Russia also augmented its capabili-
ties for such covert and overt subversion by instituting a substantial pro-
gram whereby it gives soldiers and officers in the Transnistrian “Army”
that occupies part of Moldova Russian military passports and rotates
them through elite Russian officer training courses, called Vystrel, at the
Russian combined arms training center at Solnechnogorsk. As one intel-
ligence officer in a post-Soviet republic told Reuben Johnson,
You do not try to cover up a training program of this size unless you are some-
day planning on using these people to overthrow or otherwise take control of a
sovereign government. . . . The facility at Solnechnogorsk is used by Russia to
train numerous non-Russian military personnel openly and legally for peace-
keeping and other joint operations. If then, in parallel, you are training officers
from these disputed regions—officers that are pretending to be Russian personnel
and carrying bogus paperwork—then it does not take an emormous leap of
faith to assume that Moscow is up to no good on this one.6
Similarly, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2009 told Assis-
tant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow that Putin would incite
disturbances in Crimea and then graciously offer the Ukrainian govern-
ment to take the province over to solve the problems. Saakashvili said
Putin wanted to keep pressure on Ukraine and Georgia as an object lesson
to other post-Soviet states.7
Rethinking these problems is therefore both urgent and essential for
five reasons. First, the assumption under which we have worked since
1991 that European security can be taken for granted has been shat-
tered. Indeed, the 2008 Georgian war should have shattered this com-
placency, but now it is or at least should be clear beyond a shadow of
a doubt. Second, it is clear Putin’s Russia neither can nor wants to be
integrated into Europe and European norms, thereby invalidating another
complacently assumed and long-unjustified policy axiom. But if Russia
cannot and will not be integrated into Europe, Russian power must be
contained. And just as Russia employs all the instruments of power—
diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—to further its aims,
we must do also. The invasion of Crimea also confirms that for Putin

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 From Eurasia with Love

and his entourage, their state cannot survive other than as an empire,
entailing the diminished sovereignty of all its post-Soviet neighbors and
also the former members of the Warsaw Pact.8 This quest for empire
means war, because it inevitably entails the belief that Russia’s neighbors’
sovereignty must be curtailed and their territorial integrity placed at
constant risk as Russia demands not only restoration of an empire, but
also a totally free hand to do so. In this connection we must also grasp
that Putin’s 18 March 2014 speech to the Duma constitutes a landmine
placed under the sovereignty and integrity of every post-Soviet and for-
mer Warsaw Pact state.9
Fourth, these actions confirm that Russia regards the sovereignty and
integrity of its neighbors, despite solemn agreements to which it is a party,
as merely “a scrap of paper.” Logically, this puts all agreements with Rus-
sia, including arms control accords, under a malevolent cloud.10 Fifth,
it is equally clear that unless the West—acting under US leadership and
through institutions like the EU and NATO—resists Russia forcefully, the
gains of the last 25 years regarding European security will have been lost,
and we will return to the bipolar confrontation that was the primary cause
of the Cold War. This does not mean using force preemptively but does
mean displaying credible deterrence used in tandem with all the instru-
ments of power—for the task is also fundamentally nonmilitary.
The United States must understand the recent Kerry-Lavrov negotia-
tions cannot represent a basis for resolving the crisis unless the invasion,
occupation, and annexation of Crimea is revoked and Ukraine is a full
participant in any negotiation. For moral and strategic reasons, Moscow
and Washington alone should not decide Ukraine’s sovereignty, integrity,
and fate. Since 1989 the great achievement of European security is
that it is indivisible, and as regards Eastern Europe, the principle “noth-
ing about us without us” must apply to all discussions of security there.
Putin’s proposal that Russia keep Crimea, that Moscow and Washington
jointly “federalize” Ukraine, and that Ukraine promise to be both Finland
and Switzerland but that Russia refuse to deal with and thus recognize
Ukraine must be rejected out of hand.11 This proposal attempts to make
the West complicit in the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the
creation of a permanent set of levers for pro-Russian forces in a weak state
that Moscow can eternally manipulate. The result is neither a Finland that
could defend itself, even if its reduced status was imposed by Moscow at
the height of the Cold War, nor a truly neutral Switzerland. The ensuing

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 Stephen J. Blank

result of any such accord would actually be an entity with no sovereignty

or territorial integrity that could ever be even a truly neutral or non-
aligned country in Europe. It would open the door to endless security
threats to every other European state. In any case, given the number of
international accords and treaties Russia violated in invading, occupy-
ing, and annexing Crimea, of what value are Russian guarantees? There-
fore unless Moscow is prepared to negotiate with Ukraine, no negotia-
tion, let alone an agreement on sovereignty or neutrality, should even be
considered. These are issues for Kyiv alone to decide. The United States
should remember that the existing Ukrainian constitution and laws bar
foreign militaries in Ukraine. But, the Russo-Ukrainian treaty of 2010
allowing the deployment of Russian forces in Sevastopol until 2042
broke that principle. Russia can hardly demand Finlandization even if it
had not invaded and annexed Crimea. Neither is there a need for Kyiv
to reinvent the wheel. If anything, Moscow’s actions have shown us
the value of both Russian and Western guarantees. Moreover, by virtue
of the fact that Moscow has annexed Crimea, the Putin regime has es-
sentially depleted its options, making any diplomatic resolution short of
the full return of Crimea to Ukrainian sovereignty and solid guarantees
of Ukraine’s security highly unlikely. Undoubtedly such a “retrocession”
of Crimea would now decisively undermine Putin’s position at home, a
factor making a genuine and proper diplomatic resolution of this crisis
all but impossible.

Containment and Acts of War

The United States must likewise draw the logical conclusion that if
Russia refuses to be integrated and demands a free hand to replicate or
expand its domestic system abroad, act without accounting to anyone
or any institution, and seize its neighbors’ territories when it sees fit to
do so, we must then counter and contain its power. And that counter-
ing action must, despite past rhetoric, include the use of military forces
to defend Ukraine and deter conflict while putting ever more economic
and political pressure on Russia to relinquish Crimea.12 It is essential we
understand this point, because Russia’s demand for an empire in Eurasia
means war and ultimately also presages the destruction of the Putin
system if not the Russian state. Thus Putin, without considering all reper-
cussions, has “bet the farm.” Crimea for Putin is analogous to Macbeth’s

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 From Eurasia with Love

understanding that “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade

no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er,” a position that all but
cancels any possibility of retreat and is therefore another reason why the
invasion, occupation, and annexation of Crimea must be regarded by
any available standard as acts of war.
This imperial program means war because Moscow cannot induce
consent except through force. It commands no legitimate authority be-
yond its borders; it cannot sustain empire economically, so its efforts to
do so threaten not only the peripheries’ stability, but its own internal
stability. Most importantly, the peoples and/or states it targets neither
want a Russian empire nor will they accept one. And that resistance, as
in the North Caucasus, inevitably means war. But equally important,
Russia, as we have frequently noted, begins its national security policy
from the standpoint of a presupposition of conflict with the rest of the
world and conceives itself to be in a state of siege with other states, if not
a formal state of war.
Beyond those factors, Putin’s stated belief that he has a legal-political
right to invade other countries because they allegedly mistreat Russians—
a complete and willful fabrication in Ukraine’s case—means Moscow
has embraced as its own formulations Hitler’s and Stalin’s justifications
for empire that they, if not their forbears like Catherine the Great and
Peter the Great, used to push Europe into World War II. Since Russia
knows it cannot win a war against NATO, if it still provokes one it is
due to Putin’s arrogant, yet so far validated, belief that Western leaders
are weak, irresolute, and corruptible, and that Ukrainian democracy is
a threat to Russia.13 Indeed, Russian officials have told Western figures
like Graham Allison of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that
President Obama is essentially afraid to use force.14 This delusional yet
simultaneously cynical mind-set helped lead Putin to make as reckless a
gamble as could possibly be imagined—one that must be reversed. Thus
the United States must take urgent actions now and must also under-
stand how to prevent such actions in the future beyond deterring war.

Eurasia and US Policy

If the United States is to defend and promote its interests credibly
throughout Eurasia, it must overcome the widespread belief that any inter-
vention anywhere in the world is fated to be an excessively large military

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 Stephen J. Blank

intervention led by people who neither comprehend strategy nor local

issues and is thus doomed to failure. Indeed, there is a widespread
belief that any foreign intervention, essentially if not exclusively, means
large-scale military operations as distinct from diplomatic or indirect
approaches like providing weapons or using forces to display resolve and
deter conflicts.15 Adding to this belief is the pervasive but confused idea
that any strong diplomatic-economic initiative abroad is doomed to failure
and constitutes an unwelcome and foredoomed intervention as if it were
a large-scale military operation, as in Iraq or Afghanistan. Moreover,
such interventions are also believed to be inherently futile—a maxim
that consigns the West to nothing but self-denying rationalizations while
precluding strategy and effective policymaking. In other words, when it
comes to Eurasia, the United States has not only abdicated policy; it has
abdicated strategy and a belief in the use of all the instruments of power,
including nonmilitary ones. Thus there is a current feeling that “Ameri-
can engagement in Europe [or Eurasia] is increasingly irrelevant. Or
counterproductive. Or expensive. Or useless.”16 The current Ukrainian
crisis abundantly confirms this point and also shows what the neglect of
alliance management can lead to in Eurasia. Unfortunately, the strategic
torpor that has characterized current US policy regarding Central Asia,
the Caucasus, Eastern Europe in general, and Ukraine in particular goes
far to validate this observation. Writing about the Ukrainian crisis of
2013–14, Walter Russell Mead observed, “Looking at Russia through
fuzzy, unicorn-hunting spectacles, the Obama Administration sees a
potential strategic partner in the Kremlin to be won over by sweet talk
and concessions. As post-historical as any Brussels-based EU paper-
pusher, the Obama Administration appears to have written off Eastern
Europe as a significant political theater.”17
Mead’s assessment not only applies to Eastern Europe but also to the
Caucasus and Central Asia. This author has already observed that the
United States appears to have little or no interest in either of those
regions or any policy to meet already existing, not to mention impending,
security challenges in the Caucasus or Central Asia.18 Indeed, this ap-
pears to be the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establish-
ment. A recent assessment of potential trouble spots in 2014 and the
likelihood of their “eruption” into major violence concludes that the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a “third-tier” conflict, or one that has a low
preventive priority for US policymakers. Thus, not only is an outbreak of

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 From Eurasia with Love

violence unlikely; even if it occurred it would have little impact on US

interests.19 Not surprisingly, this reinforces the conclusion, also evident
in Georgia’s unresolved conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that
conflict resolution plays no real part in US policy in the Caucasus.20 But
we know from the 2008 Russo-Georgian war that if these crises remain
in a state of suspended animation, the more likely it is they will one day
unfreeze with profound, widespread, and terrible strategic consequences
for the United States, its allies, and its partners. To paraphrase Chekhov:
if a rifle is hanging on the wall in Act 1 it must go off in Act 2.21 The
rifle has been hanging on the wall in Crimea for a long time, and we
should have been alert to the prospect of it going off.22 Worse yet, the
views that the United States should renounce an active role in conflict
resolution in particular and the Eurasian region as a whole are pervasive
among officials and color policy toward all of Eurasia. Former high-
ranking officials confirmed that not only does the United States have
no real policy for Central Asia, it is even incapable of formulating or
implementing one since all it knows about Central Asia it gets from the
New York Times or Washington Post.23 Nikolas Gvosdev of the US Navy
War College wrote in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,
The unspoken reality is that the post–Cold War generation now rising in
prominence in the US national security apparatus is no longer enthralled by
the geopolitical assessments of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman,
who posited that Eurasia is the world’s strategic axis and that an active effort
to impact the balance of political forces in this part of the world is vital to the
security and survival of the Western world. As the Obama administration is
forced to balance between sustaining the US presence in the Middle East while
laying the foundation for the pivot to Asia—the two parts of the world seen
as most important for America’s future—the fate of the non-Russian Eurasian
republics has dropped from a matter of vital interest to a preference. If Ukraine,
Georgia or any other of those countries could be brought into the Western orbit
cheaply and without too much trouble, fine—but once a substantial price tag
is attached, one that could then take away from other, more pressing priorities,
enthusiasm diminishes. The strategic calculation at the end of the day in both
Brussels and Washington is that even if Russia succeeds in binding the other
states of the region into a closer economic and political entity, a Moscow-led
Eurasian Union, while it may not be welcomed by a large number of Ukrainians
themselves, would still not pose a significant threat to the vital interests of the
Euro-Atlantic world.24
The waning US interest in these areas as a whole despite this broad
acknowledgment of the area’s criticality for US interests leads scholars

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 Stephen J. Blank

to believe the first, if not the second, Obama administration’s policy

reflected an outlook of selective commitment whereby Washington can
reduce its presence and interest in certain regions and choose carefully
what are its priorities.25 In addition,
Ukraine and Georgia have never been very high on the list of US priorities
and probably never will be. They will always fall within the ambit of broader
regional polices, whether these are directed toward Greater Eastern Europe or
the Wider Black Sea area (WBSA), or even the more vaguely defined Eurasia.
Contrary to some expectations, the WBSA, or the so-called Black-Caspian Sea
region, has not become a priority for the United States. There has been no clear
vision of US interests in the region, and Washington is not really strengthen-
ing its presence in the area in a way that one might expect. . . . The first thing
the administration does when talking to its allies is try to assess how they can
help with efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. This has automatically reduced the
relevance of countries like Ukraine and Georgia to core US interests.26
Evidently the war in Afghanistan and the Obama “reset” policy have
interacted to diminish the importance of Eurasia as a whole and, in
particular, Azerbaijan and regional conflict resolution in US consider-
ations. Widespread disillusionment with failed interventions, financial
constraints, domestic gridlock, and slow recovery from the global
financial crisis, all contribute to this disengagement from Eurasia.27 But
Gvosdev and Mead rightly argued there is no strategic will or vision that
Eurasia or its supposedly “frozen conflicts” merit sustained US inter-
vention or action.

Caucus Security and Sovereignty

The United States has essentially adopted a self-denying ordnance with
regard to Eurasia and its conflicts, whether real, potential, or frozen. But
if we have learned anything in the past it is that refusal to address the
issues at stake in so-called frozen conflicts all but ensures that they will
unfreeze and turn violent with profound international repercussions.
We saw this in the still unresolved Georgian conflicts with Abkhazia and
South Ossetia, where Western abstention from the conflict resolution
allowed Russia to plan a war using Georgian separatists. And the inter-
national ramifications of the Russo-Georgian war were plainly far-flung.
Just to give one major example of these repercussions, in 2012 President
Putin admitted he had preplanned the 2008 Russo-Georgian war since
2006 with the deliberate use of separatists.28 Putin’s admissions and his

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 From Eurasia with Love

recent speech should be a reminder that Russia does not believe in the
genuine and full sovereignty of the states in the former Soviet Union.
The evidence in favor of this assertion is overwhelming and worse, long-
lasting.29 Therefore it should evoke much greater public concern from
governments in London to Baku, as well as Washington. As James Sherr
has recently written, “While Russia formally respects the sovereignty of
its erstwhile republics; it also reserves the right to define the content of
that sovereignty and their territorial integrity. Essentially Putin’s Russia
has revived the Tsarist and Soviet view that sovereignty is a contingent
factor depending on power, culture, and historical norms, not an
absolute and unconditional principle of world politics.”30 And Putin
has used force once already to back it up. Similarly, Susan Stewart of the
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik recently wrote that Russia’s coercive
diplomacy to force its neighbors into its Eurasian Economic Union and
Customs Union undermines any pretense that this integration project
is based on anything other than Russia making other countries “an offer
that they cannot refuse.” Furthermore, its coercive behavior shows its
own nervousness about the viability of these formats and the necessity to
coerce other states into accepting it. She also notes, “Russia is more than
willing to tolerate instability and economic weakness in the neighboring
countries, assuming they are accompanied by an increase in Russian
influence. In fact, Russia consciously contributes to the rising instability
and deterioration of the economic situation in some, if not all, of these
countries.”31
In the Caucasus, the West’s failure to seize the moment invalidated
the concept of a Russian retreat but shows instead that, rhetoric aside,
Moscow has no interest in regional conflict resolution. The recent revela-
tions of Russia selling Azerbaijan $4 billion in armaments, even as it sta-
tions troops in and sells weapons to Armenia and continues to upgrade
its own military power in the Caucasus, highlights this fact. Richard
Giragosian observes that
Russia is clearly exploiting the unresolved Karabakh conflict and rising tension
in order to further consolidate its power and influence in the South Caucasus.
Within this context, Russia has not only emerged as the leading arms provider
to Azerbaijan, but also continues to deepen its miltiary support and coopera-
tion with Armenia. For Azerbaijan, Russia offers an important source of mod-
ern offensive weapons, while for Armenia, both the bilateral partnership with
Russia and membership in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organiza-
tion (CSTO) offers Armenia its own essential security guarantees.32

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