Putin's Unintended Realignment of the World Order

Just a few years ago during the misrule and sabotage campaign of Der Trumpenfuhrer, NATO looked less than unified and Donald Trump - who I believe has shown himself to be a Russian asset - was doing all that he could to destroy the alliance.  In retrospect this effort by Trump was likely on Vladimir Putin's instructions.  While Trump lost his reelection bid, Putin likely believed that America was so divided and that NATO and the European Union were so lacking in resolve, that democracies on both sides of the Atlantic would not stand up to Russian aggression. This likely belief - combined with Putin's delusions of restoring the Rusian empire of the tsars - may be what led Putin to invade Ukraine.  However, as several pieces lay out in The Atlantic, the reaction of the West and largely the rest of the world (save China which has put itself in a tight spot signing a new alliance with Putin) has not been what many would have predicted.   Yes, there is much to fear with Russia making threats involving its nuclear weapons, but hopefully time will show the magnitude of Putin's miscalculations.  Indeed, this near world wide anti-Russia reaction and the financial santions placed on Russia have already caused one economist to describe Putin's Russia as a "Potempkin superpower" that save for nuclear weapons is weaker than many believed.  Here are some of that writers highlights: 

Beware, Vladimir Putin: Spring is coming. And when it does, you’ll lose much of whatever leverage you had left.

Before Putin invaded Ukraine, I might have described the Russian Federation as a medium-size power punching above its weight in part by exploiting Western divisions and corruption, in part by maintaining a powerful military. Since then, however, two things have become clear. First, Putin has delusions of grandeur. Second, Russia is even weaker than most people, myself included, seem to have realized.

It has long been obvious that Putin desperately wants to restore Russia’s status as a Great Power. . . . . he apparently wants to recreate the czarist empire. And he apparently thought that he could take a big step toward that goal with a short, victorious war.

So far, it hasn’t worked out as planned. Ukrainian resistance has been fierce; Russia’s military has been less effective than advertised. . . . Russia is looking less and less like an advanced nation.

The truth is that I was being generous in describing Russia as even a medium-size power. Britain and France are medium-size powers; Russia’s gross domestic product is only a bit more than half as large as either’s. It seemed remarkable that such an economically underweight state could support a world-class, highly sophisticated military — and maybe it couldn’t.

And Russia is starting to look even weaker economically than it did before it went to war. . . . Before the invasion it was common to talk about how Putin had created “fortress Russia,” an economy immune to economic sanctions, by accumulating a huge war chest of foreign currency reserves. Now, however, such talk seems naïve. What, after all, are foreign reserves? They aren’t bags of cash. For the most part they consist of deposits in overseas banks and holdings of other governments’ debt — that is, assets that can be frozen if most of the world is united in revulsion against a rogue government’s military aggression.

[W]inter will soon be over — and the European Union has time to prepare for another winter without Russian gas if it’s willing to make some hard choices.

As I said, Putin may well take Kyiv. But even if he does, he will have made himself weaker, not stronger. Russia now stands revealed as a Potemkin superpower, with far less real strength than meets the eye.

As noted, The Economist has several pieces that lay out how the world Putin thought he understood has transformed with amazing speed.  The first piece looks at the sharp change in Germany's position on multiple facets.  Here are excerpts:

From Washington, it can be hard to appreciate just how big the shifts are that we are witnessing in Germany, and so it helps to look back at where the country has come from.

As the German diplomat Thomas Bagger eloquently explained in 2019, Germany emerged from the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, and the collapse of the Soviet Union convinced that it had finally landed on the right side of history. Democracy was sweeping across Eastern Europe, chasing authoritarian strongmen from power. What Vladimir Putin—a KGB agent living in the East German city of Dresden when the wall fell—has described as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century was a rebirth for Germany

Then came Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the growing realization that “Wandel durch Handel ”—Germany’s mantra of change through trade—was not working so well after all. China was still snapping up German cars and technology, but it had turned into an authoritarian surveillance state with global ambitions, as well as a formidable economic competitor.

But as Harold Macmillan once said during his tenure as British prime minister, “events, dear boy, events” have a way of challenging leaders in ways they could not have imagined. Scholz’s initial reaction to Putin’s saber-rattling was to play it down. Nord Stream 2, the Russian pipeline to Germany that had long faced fierce resistance from EU partners and Washington, was an apolitical “business project”

Scholz’s sudden about-face over the past week, as Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, was in part a reaction to the overwhelming pressure his government had come under—both within Germany and among Berlin’s closest allies—after weeks of foot-dragging. . . . . The moves are an acknowledgment that the world has indeed changed, that Germany must invest heavily in its own defense, that it must pay an economic price to defend its values, that it cannot remain a larger version of Switzerland in a world of systemic rivalries. In making them, Scholz has gone against the tide of his own party, that of the German business establishment, and what many assumed to be the preferences of the broader German population. And yet the parties in his coalition have backed him, and the German media are hailing his boldness. On the same day Scholz made his announcements, more than 100,000 people converged on Tiergarten, next to the Bundestag, to show their solidarity with Ukraine.

[T]he die has been cast. “Peace and freedom in Europe don’t have a price tag,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said last week. It is freedom over prosperity after all.

This type of transformation is not confined to Germany as laid out in a second piece in The Atlantic and now Russia finds its naval vessels blocked from exiting the Black Sea while once nuetral Switzerland has joined in the freezing of Russia's bank accounts.  Here are some article highlights:

Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion has not simply elicited a resistance among Ukrainians that is inspiring the world. It has also triggered a set of geopolitical shifts that are astonishing in their scale and rapidity. The world is not the same today as it was last week, and while the course of Putin’s invasion and Russian policy remain uncertain, there will be no full reversion to the global status quo ante. The post–Cold War era that began in 1991 may have just ended.

Just days ago, Russia was widely seen in Washington, D.C., and major European capitals as a sullen and revisionist power, led by a president discontented with his country’s place in the world, but who generally chose pragmatism and opportunism over blundering savagery. This sentiment has transformed overnight, and Moscow is now viewed by Western leaders as a clear and present danger.

The world’s economies, save China, have combined to inflict harm on the Russian economy with remarkable speed, fomenting a financial crisis and enacting restrictions on Russian imports that will touch all of its citizens. The sanctions on Russia’s central bank alone may well force the country into a default on its sovereign debt. Previous worries about risks that could hurt countries pulling out of COVID-induced recession have been cast aside. So too have concerns that economic upheaval could provoke unrest inside Russia, with unknown implications.

Germany’s long-underweight military role and low defense budgets are also things of the past. . . . “We must put a stop to warmongers like Putin,” Scholz said. “That requires strength of our own.” In security terms, this may well mark the birth of a new, post–post–Cold War Germany.

Neutrality is on the wane, too. Finland and Sweden are firmly aligned with the West and against Moscow, and the invasion may tip them into NATO membership. Policy makers in both countries are openly discussing the possibility—hence Moscow’s preemptive threat—and for the first time a majority of Finns favor joining the alliance.

Even neutral Switzerland—Switzerland!—will freeze Russian assets as a result of Moscow’s aggression. “Russia’s attack is an attack on freedom, an attack on democracy, an attack on the civil population, and an attack on the institutions of a free country,” the country’s president, Ignazio Cassis, said over the weekend. “This cannot be accepted.”

The sudden shifts extend beyond Europe. The sanctions now imposed on Russia are global, with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and more joining the anti-aggression bloc. Turkey, which previously maintained warm relations with Russia, has denounced Moscow’s “unjust and unlawful war” and will block the passage of Russian warships through to the Black Sea. The UN General Assembly will convene an emergency session, for the first time in 40 years, to discuss the crisis.

With Putin demonstrating the brutal steps he is prepared to undertake in that pursuit, Beijing is now badly exposed. As numerous wealthy, powerful, and unified countries oppose Moscow’s aggression, China has sided with a reckless Russia that will be more and more isolated and impoverished.

The global treatment of Russia may well mark the most profound of all of these shifts. It’s the world’s largest country by geography, an oil-and-gas powerhouse with the globe’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nevertheless, a curtain is descending around it, disconnecting Russians from globalization’s benefits, such as trade, travel, finance, and technology. The result will be a poorer, more isolated, and weaker Russia. Governments are no longer trying to alter Russian behavior but are instead trying to diminish its ability to project power.

Lenin reportedly once said, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” This is one of those weeks.