Vladimir Putin Outmaneuvers the U.S. Yet Again
Russian President Vladimir Putin looks at a monument of Nobel Prize-winning
author Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Moscow. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP)
Don't look now, but Vladimir Putin has racked up another win in his latest
skirmish with the West.
The victory took place Nov. 25 in the Kerch Strait, the narrow strip of
water separating the disputed Crimean Peninsula from the Russian mainland to
the east. It occurred when the Russian coast guard fired on and seized three
Ukrainian naval vessels. As always, the details are in dispute, with the
Ukrainians claiming that their boats informed the Russians about their plans
to navigate the strait but received no reply and Russia saying the opposite.
But there's no doubt as to the result. By briefly closing the strait, Russia
has demonstrated that it can restrict access at will to roughly half the
Ukrainian coastline that lies within the Sea of Azov, including the
economically vital ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk. Although Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko immediately called for Western intervention, it
also demonstrated that there is little NATO can do in response.
While expressing "full support" for Ukraine, the alliance said nothing about
Poroshenko's request that NATO ships force their way through the Kerch
Strait in defiance of the blockade. The same goes for Ukraine's call to
Turkey to close off Russian naval access to the Dardanelles, the equally
narrow body of water connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's only response was an offer to
mediate.
So while Poroshenko declared that "the only language that Putin understands
is the solidarity of the Western world," it appears that the West is solidly
behind a cautious policy of non-interference.
It's an astonishing reversal from the heady days of early 2014 when it was
Russia that was at the point of being cut off. Although the corporate media
wanted Western readers to think that the "Automaidan" revolution then
underway in Kiev was an attempt to cast off the Russian yoke, it was really
about something altogether different: NATO's unrelenting drive to the east
and its clear intention of seizing Russia's historic naval base in the
southern Crimean port of Sebastopol.
Sebastopol, Russia's main warm-water outlet since 1783, had long been a
thorn in the side of U.S.-backed Ukrainian nationalists. After Nikita
Khrushchev transferred the largely Russian-speaking Crimea to Ukraine in
1954, the port wound up in Ukrainian hands after that country gained
independence in 1991. Moscow continued to operate the base under a long-term
lease, but there was no doubt that the arrangement would come to an end once
NATO accepted Ukraine's bid for membership, as Barack Obama, George W. Bush,
and John McCain all urged it to in 2008. Conceivably, Russia could have made
up for the loss by expanding naval operations in Novorossiysk, located on
the Black Sea some 200 miles to the east. But not only would an expansion
project have been long and expensive, but Novorossiysk is distinctly less
attractive due to frequent storms and "bora" winds that, in bad weather,
force ships to leave the port and shelter on the high seas.
The loss of Sebastopol would thus have been a major blow. As a Forbes
magazine analyst wrote in 2014: "Put simply, without a naval base in Crimea,
Russia is finished as a global military power."
That was the expected outcome as a U.S.-backed coup sent Ukraine's legally
elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, packing in February 2014 and installed
a fiercely anti-Russian government in his place. Gone were the days when
Russia could use its Black Sea Fleet to pressure U.S. allies such as
Georgia, which also borders on the Black Sea and which found itself under a
Russian blockade during a brief war in 2008. The days when Russia could use
its Black Sea Fleet to shore up the Bashar al-Assad's besieged government in
Syria were waning as well. U.S.-NATO leverage was expanding from the
Caucasus to the Levant.
Or so it seemed. But then, amid the upsurge in Kiev, Putin neatly detached
Crimea from Ukraine and added it to Russia in an operation the New York
Times described as "breathtaking and so far apparently unstoppable." Warned
Putin: "NATO ships would have ended up in the city of Russian navy glory,
Sevastopol." But once annexation was complete, he was able to crow: "After a
long, hard and exhaustive journey at sea, Crimea and Sevastopol are
returning to their home harbor, to the native shores, to the home port, to
Russia!" In July 1942, Hitler's forces finally succeeded in taking
Sebastopol after 250 days of fierce fighting. Seven decades later, America's
own drang nach osten, or drive to the East, had come up short.
After years of Ukrainian harassment, Russia seized the opportunity to pour
resources into Sebastopol and beef up naval operations. It expanded its
defense shield "over the whole of the Black Sea with a potent combination of
supersonic anti-ship missiles having a range of 600 kilometers [and]
advanced warplanes," according to one analysis. It installed its newest
surface-to-air S-400 missile system and announced plans to station advanced
Podsolnukh ("Sunflower") radar, supposedly capable of detecting F-22 and
F-35 stealth aircraft. It doubled the number of soldiers stationed on the
peninsula, quintupled the number of fighter jets, and better than tripled
the number of ships. With cargo traffic to Berdyansk and Mariupol reportedly
cut in half due to Russian restrictions, the result is a profound shift in
the balance of economic and military power.
This is not the first time Putin has turned tables on his tormenters. He's
done it before, most notably in Syria in September 2015 when, to American
anger and dismay, he sent warplanes to shore up the Assad government when it
seemed to wobble after years of U.S. and Saudi-sponsored jihad.
Which leads to a question: Why is the Russian president so good at
one-upping his Western opponents? Is it because he plays chess while
Americans play checkers, as Ted Cruz once put it? Because he's super smart?
The answer is, yes, Putin is indeed a clever operator. But that's not all.
He also has the advantage of fighting on his own turf against an empire that
is over-extended militarily and enervated intellectually. In Ukraine, the
Obama administration thought it could knock over a regime it deemed hostile
merely by injecting some $5 billion in support of pro-U.S. forces. (See
speech by former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland beginning at
7:40). But as in Libya in 2011, it was unprepared for what regime change
would bring, in this case a revolt by eastern Russophones outraged by a
nationalist takeover in which neo-fascist forces were clearly in the lead-as
even the cheerleaders at the New York Times were forced to admit. Although
Western media quickly denounced the takeover as nothing less than an assault
on "the liberal world order," they forgot that the U.S. had violated the
same order in Kiev by helping to drive out a legally elected head of state.
They forgot other things too. One is that the takeover in Crimea enjoyed
overwhelming popular support, with 97 percent voting in favor in a
referendum marked by an 80-percent turnout. (A poll a year later found that
82 percent still favored annexation, with only four percent opposed.)
Another is that driving Russophones into the arms of Moscow would present
Putin with a priceless opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat
and strengthen his position on the Black Sea.
It was an offer he couldn't refuse. But this leads to another question: is
Putin's win in the Kerch Strait a positive development? After all, he's an
authoritarian whose regime is characterized by massive corruption and
decreasing room for dissent. Is there any reason to cheer now that he's
tightened his grip on the Black Sea?
There isn't. But there is reason to cheer that an even greater strong
man-the American empire-has stumbled. In one arena after another, the U.S.
has teamed up with the most dangerous forces-neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Wahhabist
jihadis in the Middle East, out-and-out fascists like Jair Bolsonaro in
Brazil, etc.-in an effort to maintain its increasingly tenuous position as
global hegemon. The more desperate the effort grows, the more threatening it
becomes to anyone opposing U.S. policies. As a captured raider supposedly
told Alexander the Great, "Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a
pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called
an emperor."
U.S. diktat dwarfs anything exercised by Russia. So it's worth at least a
small round of applause that the global bully has been checked.
Daniel Lazare
Daniel Lazare is the author of three books on U.S. politics, among them "The
Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt
Brace, 1996). He has written for a wide variety of.
Daniel Lazare
In this article:
#crimea #donald trump #kerch strait #nato #ukraine #vladimir putin
