By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Europe needs to expose the real Russian Federation as it considers more sanctions in the narrow black-hole which has become Ukraine. It does not need to vilify the Russian people but speak to the truth of Western versus Russian values and it must do so honestly, citing its own faults and recent mistakes or abuses that have or are being resolved. This might be done in a release of a State Department finding on comparative US-Russian human rights and democracy practices based in fact, for example.
The West also needs more information operations in tandem with diplomatic efforts. Russian propaganda is a clever raging bonfire. US propaganda is an unlit matchstick.
While it is not the bastion of utopia, the Western world has most assuredly become so much closer to that ideal than any other modern state alternatives. Convincing the Russians to open back up for business must be presented through strategic communication, rather than concentric single-issue crisis diplomacy. There must exist somewhere the carrot for positive Russian actions as well as the stick.If the ultimate goal goes back to liberalizing Russia’s political system, that should be the grand strategy. If not, what is US-Russian foreign policy? Is it grand? Is it strategic?
The present diplomacy of punishment with no rewards, concessions or compromises for Russia’s loss of Ukraine as a whole will continue to fail in a peaceful resolution to the preent crisis and prematurely set off a host of larger regional and strategic conflict versus US-to-Russia influence bilateral cooperation.
Some rewards must be more worthwhile than political unification that the Russian Federation is charting out now. Devoid of this, multilateral diplomacy has failed from the beginning and drowns in wishful thinking as Russia prepares right now to take eastern Ukraine through subversion or conventional military force, or both. It will be difficult to assist with paying Ukraine’s debt to Russia in billions of dollars, keeping the country in EU’s caring hands and greater sanctions of perhaps Russians industry by industry without them wanting a guarantee of what is owed them or they have spent years taking.
Beyond this, the real argument, however, is that Ukraine presents itself as a true microcosm of a larger story that has been for some time building between Europe and Russia. Beyond the seemingly irreconcilable differences in principles, lies the greater war of socio-political ideology: liberalism versus tsarist and cultic authoritarianism and pseudo-democratic constitutional federalism.
The world wants to know: What can Russian tsarist authoritarianism offer [insert any state here] that Western liberal countries can or will not offer you in this competition for spheres of influence? Sounds vaguely familiar but with a substitution of totalitarian communism and an extremely different global reality and US-Russian contest. Russian has enough power close to its borders to make small adjustments in spite of US challenges. It lacks a great deal of regional power although it is making headway in Central Asia.Through diplomacy and information warfare, it has managed to raise a loud bark in the strategic environment as well.
But what can Russia’s sole leader really offer a state, the region or the world besides taking what they want and intimidating others to get it? Is the new answer the same as the old USSR? Is the new answer something as petty as resources like oil and food–so essential to a state’s survival? They give you oil and food but the Wet can give you money and food and makes for a far better creditor and is at least less dishonest but more distant and unreliable.
Is it the ethnic bond and the propaganda of protections against non-Russian fascists the real instigator? Thus, are not the empty words and promises of Russia the real secret to their success past and present. Speak loudly and carry heavy artillery?
Will Russia simply turn a blind eye to state corruption and human rights that is found in any struggling potential “near abroad” candidate? If so, how can the West more effectively counter this bargaining chip maneuver and offer them phased programs of democratic development for rewards? Here, previous attempts have fallen short or had the opposite result. A modern Truman Doctrine substitute enemy with USSR with Russian Federation and a Greece and Turkey for a Georgia and Ukraine?
To be sure, history plays a central part for Russians but it does not have to dictate Western actions; nor will it ever accurately describe the present.
Is the failure to Westernize a state’s readiness or maturity to develop beyond its past capacity th main factor? Are some states just not ready for more progressive identity and prosperous, peaceful, futures psychologically?
Some states remain too primitive, xenophobic and or operate on a social system of deprived realism to envision anything better. Whatever they think they know about the USA, for example, is typically originating from an insular, negative, state media propaganda which goes unchallenged. The world around them is filtered and their lives are hard while the sky is grey.
While the worst things about the Western world appear an illusion in the East, most people still live local lives and local realities engulf their world. When one is not prosperous already, or safe and secure, one has difficulty dreaming but not for want a desire to do so.
It could be a matter of humiliation that the West might approach a wounded but prideful state having large seated political difficulties. It could be a matter of distrust for outsiders or the rejection of advice and aid from others.
It could be the absence of the state in practice and the formal fascade of a state on the surface. Here, illicit transnational criminal networks, like weeds, control the “state” marked on the political map and nothing else matters but through these unofficial power-brokers and their web of connections. The greater world is unaware of the true scope of criminal networks controlling the state and so it is allowed to continue almost as if it were a front for those interests.
These would be networks of oligarchs. And like in Ukraine, these powerful oligarchs are corrupt and criminal, while having the likeness of legitimacy on the surface. Underneath, the state rulers have ties within Ukraine and throughout Russian national’s deep pockets. Whether Russian or Ukrainian by birth- loyalty becomes affixed in a revised and shared history that others cannot understand correctly and do not share outside the bilateral sphere.
It could be many factors in which the West has not been able to transform certain states and regions into a more benign and promising civilizations. Whatever the reason(s) for visible failures of the EU to take root within its Eastern EU membership and potential members, which are largely a matter of EU and domestic realities as well as Russian interference, there remains those obstacles to partnerships that go well beyond direct and indirect clashes between the West and East.
Two things from the Cold War playbook that were effective in halting the USSR’s communist totalitarianism were not the purchase of states but the purchase of loyalty and the accepted notion of having a common enemy. Money does not alone cover a multitude of sins or blunders committed by the West. Nor does money a wise superpower make.
Aside from money, and in this case the flow of NAFTA oil and natural gas through the western side of continental Europe, and the shifting of energy independence through all of the EU, the West must indirectly undermine the Russian intentions for territorial expansion. Thus investing in Europe’s future is of prime importance. Securing it with the viable military is of equal importance. This is a matter of joint investment against and security against a common threat. The same could be applied to the former Soviet satellite republics.
The Western strategy that “good” will prevail over evil without any effort as to defeat it is oblivious to reality. The Western world must remain increasingly unified beyond the Russian-Snowden attempts to divide them over breeches of trust, for example and future operations.
Moving past economic sanctions against Moscow, Western states must collectively and individually strike at the ideological heart of the Russian void in subsequent ongoing intelligence and information operations. Planting the seeds of liberalism in Russia will require a more delicate hand than previously.
Use bait and entice rather than punishment. Befriend to infiltrate and alter slowly and without the knowledge of the opponent. Too often the US and its allies play into the unnecessary mode of confrontation directly to appear strong rather than mastering the art of political manipulation.
But as America loses power, it must alter its strategic focus and become proficient in the artistry and techniques of successful political manipulation in the affairs of rogue and authoritarian regimes. This is more peaceful list of tactics, more beneficial to both states and more long-term in results. The US must play a “political” game in the future and not an “economic” one.
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