Nina L. Khrushcheva - Says More…

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Project Syndicate: In June 2021, you argued that we were living in an era characterized by the same kind of “nuclear brinkmanship” that marked the 1950s and early 1960s. With Russian President Vladimir Putin issuing nuclear warnings, the risk of a devastating miscalculation that you highlighted is newly salient. What lessons from the Cold War should inform efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe today and in the future?

Nina L. Khrushcheva: I reviewed Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis last year in order to answer just that question. While nuclear brinkmanship has come to the fore with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ground was prepared in 2001, when President George W. Bush decided to withdraw the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was considered a foundation stone of strategic stability. Following that move, both the US and Russia began gradually eroding the strategic arms-control regime that had emerged in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis to prevent similar confrontations.

Fifty years later, the logic that drove the rise of that regime seems to be missing. The Cuban Missile Crisis took 13 days to resolve. Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy both recognized that the smallest miscalculation or accident could lead to a global nuclear catastrophe. We are not seeing similar concern for humanity from our current leaders, with Putin displaying a particularly cavalier, even cruel, attitude toward human life. The first step back from the brink must be recognition and appreciation of the existential nature of the nuclear threat.

PS: Weeks before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, you argued that Putin was not seeking to “reconstitute the Soviet Union” as part of a “legacy project,” but rather to bolster Russia’s status as a “special nation,” with its own sphere of influence. The invasion apparently confirmed this, though, in your view, it also showed an alarming lack of pragmatism. What threats or concessions do you believe could persuade Putin to end the violence in Ukraine? Would such concessions raise the risk of Russian aggression toward other former Soviet republics – or even toward former Soviet satellites now firmly entrenched in the European Union and NATO?

NLK: Until the very last minute, I believed that Putin would not actually start a war with Ukraine. After all, he has a long record of a certain pragmatism, biting off pretty much exactly as much as he could chew.

Take the war in Georgia in 2008. Russia moved quickly in and out of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital, after then-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili – who had made restoring the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgian control a key goal – ordered that the city be bombed. The entire conflict lasted less than two weeks, and ended with Russia recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine was another fast, largely clandestine operation.

The invasion of Ukraine – which occurred in full view of the world, after three months of very loud international conversations about the possibility – was very uncharacteristic of Putin. While Putin’s rhetoric questioning Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state had been escalating for some time, the decision to invade seemed reckless and impulsive, not least because it runs counter to Russia’s national interest.

Now that Putin has made that decision, however, there is little chance that he will give up easily. Instead, he will continue the violence until his demands are met. That means Ukraine would possibly have to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics, thereby handing Putin a land corridor to Crimea. It would also have to commit to strategic neutrality, and accept limits on its armed forces.

Whether Ukraine will agree to these rather drastic conditions is another question. But Ukraine’s leaders will need to account for the fact that Putin has little to lose. Moreover, as Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations recently observed, Putin seems far more interested in making a point – don’t disregard Russia or snub its president – than in making a deal. In any case, if the two sides do reach an agreement, it must include provisions effectively prohibiting Russia from ever trying anything like this again in its near abroad.

PS: Following the invasion, you wrote last month, Russians are pushing back against the Putin regime more strongly than they have in the past. But, while some antiwar protests have continued, the Kremlin has unleashed the full panoply of police-state tactics and severely restricted Russians’ access to independent reporting on the war. What difference could popular resistance to the Ukraine war make, and what are its limits? Is Putin’s propaganda machine faltering, as some Western media have suggested, or might he manage to use this war to enhance his domestic standing?

NLK: The Kremlin’s propaganda machine is working at full throttle, painting anyone who disagrees with Russia’s “special military operation” into an “enemy of the people.” The 2012 law that enables the Kremlin to brand perceived opponents receiving money from abroad as “foreign agents” is now being applied more broadly than ever, with any journalist or staff member of a “foreign-funded” organization receiving the designation. Now, many more thousands of people are set to be dubbed enemies of “Russianness” – a vague concept that seems to imply that “real” Russians must oppose the West.

Soon, there will be no voices left to challenge Putin’s narrative that the West is out to destroy Russia. All Russians will see are unprecedented Western economic sanctions – which are taking a toll on ordinary people – and a global boycott of Russian culture, athletics, and civil society (or what’s left of it). By forcing Russians to accept collective responsibility for Putinism, the international community, led by the US, is bolstering Putin, not destroying him. Perhaps the Russian people will rise up against the Kremlin one day, as the West seems to hope, but by then many will be dead or exiled.

BY THE WAY . . . 

PS: Russia, you’ve pointed out, is now facing greater isolation than even the Soviet Union faced under the leadership of your grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev. In 2019, you and Jeffrey Tayler published In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones, which constructed a portrait of Russia by examining a town in each of its 11 time zones. How will Russians perceive this new pariah status, not only in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, but across a country that you describe as “coherently incoherent”?

NLK: The isolation Russians are set to face will resemble that of the Stalin, not Khrushchev, era. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the borders were closed, but there were active cultural, scientific, and other exchange programs, functioning embassies, and news coverage from Western media outlets. Today, most of this has been eliminated or put in great jeopardy.

Moscow and St. Petersburg – Russia’s two truly global cities – will suffer mightily from the barriers that have now been erected. But this new global isolation will also be acutely felt in other major Russian cities: in Yekaterinburg, the city of Boris Yeltsin; Novosibirsk, a sophisticated scientific center; Vladivostok, the most cosmopolitan Russian city on the Pacific coast; and elsewhere. Smaller towns may not notice the change as much at first, but in the long run, isolation will affect them, too.

Putin says Russia doesn’t need the West, and promises that the country will thrive on its own. But those claims utterly disregard historical evidence, including Russia’s own Soviet-era experience. No country is better off when it is cut off from the world.

PS: You and Tayler conclude that Russia’s vast assets – from natural resources to ethnic diversity to educational institutions – make it one of the world’s two “indispensable nations,” along with the US. Beyond imports of energy and some other commodities, what does the West stand to lose from Russia’s isolation?

NLK: Accounting for a substantial chunk of the Eurasian continent, Russia is no North Korea or even Iran. Its size alone means that turning it essentially into an economic, communications, and information black hole – and losing access to its vast resources, including natural and human capital – will amount to a major loss. Russian culture permeated the world even during the Stalin era. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s role in the Allied victory in World War II should not be forgotten.

But perhaps the greatest potential downside of Russia’s isolation is that it will make the Kremlin even more dangerous. Once Russia is ousted from global systems and institutions – the latest suggestion, made by US President Joe Biden on his trip to Europe, is to expel Russia from the G20 – outside powers will have very little leverage left. Add to that domestic repression and the belief that Russia has been wronged, and there is no telling how the Kremlin might lash out.

PS: One question that has been raised repeatedly since Russia invaded Ukraine – including in a recent Los Angeles Times podcast on which you were a guest – is what role China might play, either in propping up Russia’s economy or pressuring Putin to end the violence. How much influence does Chinese President Xi Jinping have over Putin, and what are the most effective levers he could use if he chose to intervene?

NLK: It is possible that Xi controls more levers for influencing Putin’s actions than any other world leader, beginning with the provision – or withholding – of economic assistance. Had Xi attempted to play a conciliatory role, he could have made a real difference, not least because such a move would have been so unusual for China. But, so far, he seems to have little appetite for intervention, seeming to want neither to condone nor condemn Putin’s actions. Perhaps he wants to avoid Western retaliation, which Biden has promised. Or perhaps he has simply determined that Putin’s war is not worth risking China’s reputation.

This may yet change. But it is entirely possible that allowing the Ukraine war to rage on better serves Xi’s interests than ending it would. In comparison to Putin, Xi appears especially predictable and pragmatic. At the same time, however, Putin’s aggression sends an important message: do not push authoritarian leaders to the brink.

Nina L. Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School, is the co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler), most recently, of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (St. Martin's Press, 2019).