One Chechnya Does Not a Donbass Make
During the 1990s, Moscow came close to being sanctioned by the West for its military operations in Chechnya and ever since the beginning of Russia’s military operations against Ukraine in 2022, some have suggested that Ukraine’s industrial heartland resembles the case of the Caucasus separatists. After all, if Russia can crush an insurgency, why does it reject Ukraine’s right to do the same?
Indeed, Chechnya was the main source of friction between Kremlin’s diplomats and their western counterparts due, allegedly, to human rights violations. Moscow was determined to fight the separatists as best it could because the breakup of the USSR was not meant to be an open invitation to secession. The administrative borders of the soviet republics were legally codified and were transformed into sovereign borderlines with any minor disputes being ‘frozen’ by Moscow peacekeepers. To have allowed the Chechen precedent would have opened the Pandora’s Box of Russian minorities across Russia’s frontiers – not to mention that the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic which was short lived, was characterised by internal tribal conflict, islamic radicalisation and, eventually, border disputes with Russia proper.
Sadly, the Kremlin had only the soviet created army as an instrument with which to solve the problem. The Russian army of the 90s was an army mired by corruption, it was cash strapped, one whose morale was in the doldrums after Afghanistan and finally an army whose tactical doctrine was based on numerical advantage. An army built on mass conscription and equipped to fight in the westphalian plains against a technologically advanced foe, was wholly inadequate to combat radicalised insurgents in the Caucasus. As a consequence, the soviet army fared badly and was initially bruised, being subsequently forced to resort to mass artillery devastation in order to dislodge the rebels from urban areas. Adding to this the corruption of high officials, long-established soviet totalitarian methods and the inexperience of the common soldier, and the effect on human rights was brutal.
In some ways, the Russian army which fought in Georgia against the Saakashvili government, was still an unprofessional army and bled in order to dominate the smaller Georgian force. Nevertheless, after the consistent investment throughout the past two decades as well as the Serdyukov reorganisation, the Russian army is today a more professional army than even its western counterparts. It is more well equipped and it is well trained, benefiting in addition from deployments to theatres such as Syria. In spite of this, both via ignorance and propaganda, many still imagine the Russian military to be the struggling conscript force of the 90s.
Georgia’s regime was not a reasonable one since it expected to be able to win a war against Russia with western help, during all time high oil prices. Yet, the Georgian state did not suffer Russian agression against its territorial integrity until it chose to unfreeze the conflict by killing Russian soldiers. The Russian army could have moved to conquer additional territory, take the Georgian capital and change the government but it was content to ensure that the secessionist territories were made safe, and withdrew. Ukraine is different.
The main problem with Ukraine is its danger for Russian strategic doctrine as well as its revisionist revolutionary regime. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow was clear in demanding neutrality from Ukraine and Belarus in exchange for a consented independence. Kiev and Minsk were simply too close to Moscow and too integrated into Russian defence structures, to possibly integrate security arrangements other than Russian ones. It might not be the ideal solution but it was certainly a perfectly palatable one, especially considering that neither Ukraine nor Belarus had ever existed as sovereign states. Alas, Kiev’s actions have finally broken the fiction and not only will Ukraine cease to exist in its original 1991 form but Belarus too, will be further incorporated into Russia.
Apart from Ukrainian territory being too close to Russia for Russian anti-missile defences to be as effective, Ukraine has since 2014 transformed into a radical revisionist regime, and one antagonistic to Russia, at that. Kiev persecuted and purged the pro-Russian opposition, it forced the ukrainian language on its russophone citizens, began to revise topography (moving even to attempt to rename Russia as ‘Muskovy’ internationally), it chose to excise the Russian Orthodox Church out of Ukraine and established security pacts with anti-Russian states such as Poland, trying its best to adhere to NATO. At the height of the war with Russia, Kiev proscribed Russian literature and music, moving to either destroy Russian books or reclassify its artists as Ukrainian, as well as inviting jihadist chechens to integrate its military ranks and recognising Chechen independence – this to not mention all the human rights abuses and persecutions carried out by its nazi faction since 2014.
When Russia decided to crush the Chechen rebellion, Moscow was not seeking to prevent Chechens from being muslim, it was not attempting the rename the topography and its goal was not to erase Chechen history. In fact, by severing the ties between Grozny and the Arab sultanates, the Russian State may very well have salvaged Chechen heritage from Salafi fundamentalists.Then and now, Moscow acts as a conservative power seeking only to reestablish the status quo. Had the Salafi Chechens won independence, they would not have stopped at Chechnya and Ingushetia but would have, eventually, engulfed the entire Caucasus in war. Similarly, the cost of a Ukrainian victory in the Donbass would be a defeated Russia being surrounded by a reinvigorated NATO which would, in time, lead to world war. Russia’s goal of reestablishing Ukraine’s neutrality is in fact an attempt at preserving the buffer between Moscow and the Atlanticists – a policy prescription sure to preserve stability for the benefit of both parties.
Conversely, if the Minsk Agreements failed and the independence of the Donbass became inevitable, it was by no means a likelihood that other Ukrainian regions would follow – especially considering the regime’s heavy handed policies enforced by its nazi groups – but the opposite was true of Chechnya. Minsk itself is evidence that Moscow sought a negotiated settlement for the conflict whereas the Chechen rebels did not and neither did Kiev, ultimately. Moscow offered Ukraine a way out of the secessionist conflict but no one ever extended the same courtesy to Moscow, even when Moscow lost de facto control of the Caucasus republic.
Crimea and Kosovo are also precedents worthy of mention. Russia only moved to capture Crimea and aid Donbass separatists after the revolutionary regime itself chose to mobilise the military against the pro-Russian easterners. Months earlier, when the pro-Atlanticists had taken over police stations and army depots in the West, the Yanukovych government had faced such actions with complacency. As for the Maidan shootings, it is well established that both sides fired their weapons …whereas only one side counted nazis in its midst… In short, the Kremlin merely reacted to gradual western escalations, it did not initiate them. Kosovo is an additional example of an escalation on the part of the West; one which Russia fully retaliated against with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In part, the annexation of Crimea, Donetsk, Lughansk, Zaporozhia and Kherson, takes place precisely because Moscow does not wish to stretch its support for separatism and because the West – in its hypocrisy – would never consent to recognise their independence, anyway. Russia does not pursue revisionist policies but it does take full advantage when the West opens precedents.
Similarly, Russia’s goals in Ukraine have consistently been modest and conservative. Putin has acted so as to salvage the status quo ante of 2013, not to redraw the map of Europe. This, however, is very much not the objective of the western Atlanticists who have moved to overthrow regime after regime in eastern Europe, who have politicised the state bureaucracies of the West with equally ideological agendas and plan the dissolution of Russia at this very moment. It was the West that prevented the Kiev regime from negotiating peace with Russia at the outset of the conflict and it was Moscow that made sure to always recognise Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine and negotiated with his government from day 1. As much as it pains the West, the neocon project of a League of Democracies under US tutelage is as much an extremist folly as the Caucasus Emirate.
All these points are not to obviate from pointing out that Russia is a much larger wealthier more advanced power than Ukraine and that Kiev should have studied Thucydides: “to succeed best one must not yield to one’s equals, [one must] keep terms with one’s superiors and be moderate towards one’s inferiors”. To provoke Russia is a mistake, to provoke it while inferior is terrible judgement but to do so while Russia is at its financial and military height, can only be interpreted as a death wish.
The analogy between Chechnya and the Donbass ends at them being anti-separatist campaigns. The legal, political and strategic differences are too many and too wide for the argument to hold any basis.
Red Lines Aren’t For Everyone
The conflict in Syria has raised many questions about international intervention. Critics from the right and left alike have berated President Obama for staying America’s hand and thus preventing any form of intervention. Indeed without US capabilities, as much as other states like France and the UK would like to intervene, they are unable to.
The Obama administration came under media fire especially when its self-imposed catalyst for intervention was reached: the use of chemical weapons by the regime. Obama’s red line was discovered to be more hazy than expected and the press cartoonists had a field day.
However, it is not unusual for democracies to display incoherent foreign policies given the political representatives’ dependence on popularity with the public. Other countries do not face the same level of scrutiny and Russia has been particularly coherent throughout the length of this conflict and even throughout the past decades. Vladimir Putin has himself drawn lines in the sand before, the difference being he tends to keep them. The West might want to borrow a few lessons from Putin’s playbook.
Chechnya
The first indicator of such an attitude was Chechnya. In the primordial days of Vladimir Putin’s top level political career, the PM was touted by President Boris Ieltsin as a prodigal son to bring order to Russia. The most distinctive legacy of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s first stint as PM was undoubtedly the 2nd Chechen War. Under his premiership Russia adopted a very clear policy of rejecting any secession that was not based on the territorial precedents of the USSR administrative divisions. The Russian Federation itself, while the self-proclaimed successor state of the SU, based its legitimacy for independence on self-determination for all the Soviet Socialist Republics.
Until then there was no consensus or doctrine on where the limits for self-determination should be drawn and Moscow had even briefly recognised the Chechen Republic. At the end of the first Putin government, Chechnya was subdued and Russia’s territorial integrity was no longer a matter for debate.
Missile Defence
With the internal front consolidated, Putin turned to foreign affairs. Unlike what Russian leaders had always pleaded, NATO progressively encroached into Eastern Europe by extending membership and similar agreements to central and Eastern European states. Russian leaders claimed that Eastern Europe should be left as a neutral buffer zone but Moscow was politely ignored and given the NATO-Russia Council as a reassurance.
In the 2000s, with Putin now President and Russia reeling in considerable oil profits, the tone changed and soon enough so did the actions: NATO’s plans to establish a missile defence system for Europe which was partly based in Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania met with considerable Russian resistance and counter-pressure. Russia still maintains its Cold War nuclear armed intermediate-range missile deterrence, which makes Russian diplomatic outrage somewhat bewildering (as NATO’s limited systems could never hope to best Russian capabilities) but even if only motivated by Moscow’s preference to keep Eastern Europe as unimportant for NATO as possible, this has however been a battle that Vladimir Putin has chosen to fight.
L-39s seem to be a weapon of choice in small scale civil wars and certainly prominently featured in the Arab Spring in both Libya and Syria
It is difficult to assess whether it is being won since NATO’s system is yet to be made operational but officially the deployment continues. Will Russia’s threat to redirect the targeting of its own ballistic devices towards Eastern European sites be fulfilled and will it persuade NATO to recede? It would seem Moscow is attempting to put forth objections to further fading of the geostrategic neutrality of Eastern Europe but given these countries inclusion into NATO, it is too late for that.
Georgia
Another important red line was that drawn against the colour revolutions which Putin has now succeeded in reversing in practically every country they struck: the Orange coalition is out of power in the Ukraine, the Tulip revolution’s leaders were driven from Bishkek and then there was Georgia, the original sin. The Rose revolution was the first in which a Russophobe pro-Western regime came to power through civil society pressure. Saakashvili wasted no time in switching allegiances and soon found himself at loggerheads with Moscow. These tensions would eventually culminate in the 2008 Ossetian War, trade embargoes declared against Georgia, Russian occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and finally Saakashvili’s own defeat in Georgia’s national elections.
Moscow was thus conveying a clear message: while Russia’s advanced Warsaw Pact buffer zone was now lost, the new buffer’s politically neutral integrity is sacrosanct. In other words, regardless of regime or leadership, no European state east of the ‘near abroad’ curtain – east of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova – has permission to adopt an anti-Russia geopolitical positioning.
The US, the French and the Germans understood and backed off; Georgia’s and Ukraine’s accession to NATO was indefinitely postponed. It is not as if they could do much seeing as how their forces were not only tied in the Middle East but the campaign in Afghanistan actually depended on Russian air routes.
So far Putin has successfully drawn 2 out of 3 red lines against the West. There are those who would criticise Putin for his anti-Western stance and actually accuse him of anti-Western bias. Secretary Brzezinski notably stated as much last April in Bratislava, outraged that Moscow cannot see its interest in cooperating with the West against more dangerous foes like China. Putin however is flexible and has a keen strategic mind. Putin only cooperates with China as long as it is the West trying to encroach on Moscow’s sphere of influence; China on the other hand, attempts nothing of the kind. Putin probably does not believe that Russia can rely and trust in Beijing ad eternum, or even that Russia’s culture should be viewed as Eastern rather than Western, he however understands that were China to make any menacing moves towards Siberia, it would be as much a Russian interest to fight back as it would be a Western interest in general.
Syria
Syria is Putin’s latest attempt at drawing a line in the sand. This time Putin is not securing its domestic legitimacy or its hegemonic sphere of influence, this time Russia is claiming back a chief role in world affairs. Russia would never attempt something similar in Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia. The Mashreq though is of vital importance to a number of Russian strategic and geoeconomic interests. Russia is then drawing a line in which world affairs it perceives itself to be too weak to influence and those where it simply cannot allow its stakes to be overlooked by ultra-voluntaristic Western forces.
If Putin succeeds it will have proven once again that the new Russia is not to be trifled with. If he doesn’t, he will understand he overstretched his country’s projection abilities.
For the time being however, Russia’s actions cannot be criticised since the West rhetorically entrapped itself into being unable to negotiate with the Syrian regime. The time to negotiate was when the regime was on the defensive, but last year the West was too busy making arrogant demands for Assad to step down and surrender unconditionally. Now it may be too late.
If Putin can be accused of making mistakes, then the S-300 delivery to Syria would be one of them. If this actually takes place rather than being used as a bargaining chip, then Putin will be escalating the strategic implications of the conflict by risking that Syria delivers such systems to its patron Iran. This would incur the rightful wrath of both Israelis and Westerners and would unnecessarily broaden the conflict.
One reason why the US has stayed its hand is because Barack Obama prioritises Iran and China over small sideshows like Syria. While defeating Assad would deal Iranian projection a severe blow, it would do nothing against the Iranian regime and its nuclear programme. Syria is also very much a regional power game rather than a global one. For the US to intervene would be to ask the Chinese to drop their cooperative diplomatic attitude in the UNSC.
Democracy is Geostrategy-adverse
One of the sad conclusions of the whole ‘red lines’ affair is once again that democracy does not deal well with long term planning. In a way, it is precisely because Russia has kept the current leader in place for over a decade, that such red lines can be drawn and successfully implemented. As much as liberal democracies would like to do the same, their emphasis on soft power undermines their red lines, as do their ever-changing geopolitical doctrines. There is much to be said for stability and coherence. Putin is not a firebrand, quite to the contrary he has remained remarkably steady in the course he set for himself and for Russia, and done so in the face of explosive interventionism by the West as well as unforeseen shifts like the Arab Spring.
The Westphalian Post 