Putin's 2018 nuclear announcement should have alerted the West to a critical aspect of the Russian president's personality. "You will have to assess that new reality and become convinced that what I said today isn't a bluff, trust me," Putin said at the time.
Nyet means nyet. It was a simple message laid out in uncomplicated terms. Russia was not bluffing. Yet the US and Nato brushed off the Russian concerns, operating under the premise that their principle of an "open-door" policy regarding Nato membership somehow trumped Russian concerns about its national security.
Perception management overtook reality, as Nato tried to sell Russia on the notion that it had nothing to fear, since Nato was ostensibly a defensive alliance. The US and Nato shrugged off Russia's narrative, which cited Nato's bombing of Belgrade in 1999, deployment to Afghanistan in 2001, and intervention in Libya in 2011 as prima facie evidence that post-Cold War Nato had morphed into an offensively oriented military alliance whose presence on Russia's borders constituted an existential threat.
Nato membership remained on the table for Ukraine and Georgia. Moreover, Nato began arming and training the militaries of these former Soviet republics, integrating them into formal Nato exercises that transformed the Ukrainian and Georgian militaries into de-facto Nato proxies. Indeed, Ukrainian and Georgian troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan were under the Nato flag.
Russian sensitivities were heightened following the Maidan Revolution of 2014, which saw a pro-Russian president replaced by a decidedly pro-Western Ukrainian government that made Nato membership a legal mandate.
As Burns had predicted, Ukraine's push for Nato membership pushed Russia into a corner, prompting a demand by Russia, submitted to the US and Nato in December 2021, calling for written security guarantees that Ukraine would never join Nato.
This Russian demand was ignored. Russia warned that failure to provide the demanded security guarantees would result in "military-technical" responses, a euphemism for war, which Russia implemented in full on Feb. 24.
Where We Are Going
The major takeaway from this unfolding situation should be that Russia's president does not bluff and that the West would do well to listen closely to what he has to say.
As Russian troops poured across the Ukrainian border, Western diplomats and pundits proclaimed shock and dismay. But Russia had been clear about what it wanted and what the consequences of failing to get that would be. This war was predictable if only the West had listened.
The fighting rages in Ukraine. How this war will end is uncertain. The old military adage that no plan survives initial contact with the enemy applies in full. What is known is that the US and Europe are imposing a second tranche of hard-hitting sanctions designed to punish Russia.
It is important to point out that anyone who believed this second round of sanctions would compel a change in Russian behavior will be disappointed. Russia's course of action has incorporated the full range of sanctions planned by the West, not a difficult task, since there had been wide speculation about their scope since sanctions were first threatened in spring 2021.
The problem isn't the sanctions, but what follows. These sanctions exhaust the options the US, Nato, and the EU have for responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They have no follow-on plan. Russia, on the other hand, has such a plan. It has been very clear about what the future holds. Again, however, the West has not been listening.
Russia will not take this second tranche of sanctions laying down. Putin has made clear that Russia will respond in kind, using symmetrical (i.e., countersanctions) and asymmetrical (i.e., cyberattacks) actions designed to disrupt the economies of targeted nations and entities.
Russia has made no secret that this is its intended course of action, but as with its "military-technical" solution for Ukraine, the West shrugged off the Russian threat. Russia, however, does not bluff.
Russia has also made clear that its security guarantees go beyond preventing Ukraine from joining Nato and include the return of Nato's military infrastructure to pre-1997 levels.
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