The Future of Western-Russian Relations

What happens next? Tactics in international affairs should support a strategy that works to a vision as to its objectives. Currently in Ukraine we’re seeing predominately an exercise in tactics with the strategy being retrofitted around it by most of the sides involved. Arguably Kiev is the exception to this dynamic with a clear sense of a vision of pushing Russia back to the pre-February borders and kicking all other issues into the long grass.

As important as the situation in Ukraine is for its government and people, the macro issue is the future of the international system and the relationship between Western powers and Russia. This week a rise in tensions in Kosovo, as well as further restriction of Russian energy to Europe was an apt reminder of the other pieces on the chessboard.

Peace talks between Kiev and Moscow remain largely inert despite provisional successes in freeing the supply of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea. Likewise Western powers and Moscow throw barbs at each other or walk out of the rooms in international fora with both pursuing activity bilateral diplomacy against the other trying to convince the non-aligned states to see things from their perspective.

In Western circles there is very little public advocacy around engaging with Putin. President Macron seems almost embarrassed by the failure of his shuttle diplomacy in January and those who put their head above the parapet to suggest talks are shot down as offering little but appeasement.

Even veteran foreign policy operator and sage Henry Kissinger found himself in the eye of the storm when he suggested an attempt to restore the pre-February situation. He explained that; “Putin wants to win back everything that Moscow lost after 1989. But he can’t stand the fact that almost all of the territory between Berlin and the Russian border has fallen to NATO. That’s what made Ukraine such a sticky point for him”.

Describing Ukraine as a ‘sticky point’ after six months of carnage that has killed and injured tens of thousands and sent geopolitical shockwaves around the globe wasn’t perhaps the most diplomatic language that Kissinger could have used, but his perspective is of course driven by his Cold War experience. Making decisions in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon hardwires ‘the big picture’ into policy makers mind and again the macro question as to what the future relationship between the two blocs needs to be explored.

Even if Putin was to surprise us all and withdraw to pre-February lines, the threat of future action would of course remain. So spurious was the nominal trigger for the campaign against ‘Nazis’, that Russia would remain a threat to the future of Ukraine regardless and few could argue otherwise. If, as any suspect, Putin looks to further entrench Russian control in the east of the country especially through the use of referendums then the narrative around a scenario of consensus is currently virtually unthinkable.

If the West can’t currently can’t see a route to engaging Moscow what does it look from the other side? Putin’s approach, despite the disastrous early phases to the war, appears to be more predictable. Hope that interest in events in the far flung east of Ukraine dissipates in Western policy and public circles with the added option of using the weaponisation of energy supplies to accelerate a change in attitude towards Moscow, or even, as could be the case in Italy a change of leadership.

Putin surely doesn’t imagine a rapprochement with the Westto the level of attending major European diplomatic summits or sporting events, but rather one that allows him to steer the Russian economy into a new age whilst using his new found war powers to eliminate all forms of opposition to his rule. An ageing Dictator consolidating political power, the old story told so many times in human history with all the familiar tactics of nationalism, imagined enemies and levels of brutality that sometimes seem inescapable for the species.

The Russian President may find that he is wrong and that the Western perseverance continues, but if that happens his bet is that his people will pay the price and blame the West, not their glorious leader, for it. These scenarios should remind Western leaders that the onus is on them to chart a strategy that can equally withstand as many variables as the next few months and more likely years will give us, a tough challenge indeed.