"Voluntarism" 2.0

Lost wars often lead to revolutions and other political perturbations. The Russian war against Ukraine has not yet been completed, but Putin’s foreign policy defeat is obvious. The question is what it will turn out for him and his regime. It was exactly what the Kremlin sought to avoid: the strategy for driving wedges between the USA and Europe failed, which was considered necessary to achieve an almost sacred goal - building a multipolar world. Despite the discrepancies regarding specific measures of opposition of Moscow expansion, the Western countries are one in the fact that this expansion must be stopped.

NATO again found Raison d'any. The prospect of the emergence of large contingents of the troops of the alliance countries near Russian borders was the real prospect of the emergence of large contingents. The position of Russia in the post -Soviet world has radically worsened. Ukraine, with everything for that basis, sees the enemy in Russia and seeks to ensure its safety in strengthening military-political ties with the West. The idea of reconstructing the Russian Empire seemed to Kremlin dreamers six months ago: without Ukraine, any options for "Eurasian integration" are simply meaningless.

Minsk and Astana once again realized the threats emanating from Russia and are trying in different ways to protect their sovereignty, although so far they do not risk openly challenge Moscow. And behind the Kremlin wall, in turn, they make a good mine with a bad game. They say, in particular, that Putin’s visit to China has become a foreign policy victory of Russia. But in the final document on the Kremlin, the issue of the Kremlin, Ukraine, is repeated evading the Chinese position: calls for restraint, national dialogue, and the search for political decisions. At the same time, interference in internal affairs, “unilateral sanctions”, financing and encouragement of “activities aimed at changing the constitutional system of another state” and so on are condemned.

All this fully applies, for example, to Russian intervention in the Donbass and the requirement of federalization of Ukraine. The economic results of the Shanghai visit of Putin also do not give grounds for victorious relations. Russia can receive 25 billion dollars from China and spend at least 30 billion of its own dollars in order to master the deposits by the end of this decade and build a pipeline for the sole purpose of supplying gas to China, and at the limit of profitability. It is not clear how Moscow is going to reduce the negative balance in trade with China, which has been on average $ 16 billion in the last four years annually.

In other words, having driven himself into humiliating international isolation, Putin is trying to get out of it, going to large concessions to Beijing, the consequences of which for Russia can be very painful. All these circumstances are discussed in detail in the media independent of the Russian authorities; Therefore, there is no need to dwell on them in detail. But you can ask the question: is the game worth the candle?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, scheduled for the very beginning of May 2014, was stopped by the threat of a tough response of the West

Prochrevsky propagandists console both the population and the power that “our Crimea”, Russia got up from the knees, and “we finally showed them.” The Russian military turns the peninsula into an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” to threaten neighboring countries. But this is a weak consolation: it is necessary to spend tens of billions at all extra dollars for the maintenance of Crimea. And the extension of the military potential of Russia in the Black Sea basin will be neutralized by the strengthening of the military presence of NATO members on land and at sea. This is the nature of the new strategic relations of Russia and the West. But the most nasty is that, making key foreign policy decisions that affect the fate of the country, neither Putin nor his immediate environment - in the past of the middle hand, the KGB officers are not able to foresee even the closest consequences of their actions, and their ideas about the world are far from reality.

Putin, explaining the annexation of Crimea by the fear that a certain “NATO Fleet” would be based in Sevastopol, perhaps he himself was sincerely confident in this. But this is either a flagrant misunderstanding of world politics, or already obvious paranoia. If the United States really needs a naval base in the Black Sea, then it is much easier to arrange it not in Sevastopol, but in some Romanian, Bulgarian or Turkish port. But this simple consideration of the inhabitants of the Kremlin for some reason does not occur to the head.

Further - more. It seems that the Kremlin was sure that the West was not able to resist Russian aggression. The desired was issued as real. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, scheduled for the very beginning of May 2014, was stopped by the threat of a tough response of the West. The Minister of Defense of Russia Shoigu was not accidentally called the growth of the activity of the US and NATO armed forces at Russian borders at the end of April "unprecedented." Andrei Illarionov, who analyzed the events of that time, writes that this activity stopped "a flywheel of a new war in Europe non -stop until then."

Apparently, in the USA and Europe they realized that Moscow understand only the language of power, and would speak with it in this language. Of course, we do not know what exactly means the "unprecedented" growth of the activity of NATO troops. But it can be assumed that in the event of a new aggression against Ukraine, the Eagle Guardian plan in Poland and the Baltic countries, near St. Petersburg, would have been put into effect, nine full-blooded divisions and several squadrons of the NATO shock aviation countries appeared. And 40 thousand Russian soldiers, almost all the combat -ready units of the Western and Southern Military Districts, would be bogged down in Ukraine. Russian generals could not cause such a prospect of optimism. Another example is the EU actual ban on the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline, which in the Kremlin is given paramount strategic significance.

Until the very last moment, the Russian leadership was confident that the European Commission would make concessions and bring this gas pipeline from the requirements of the third EU energy package. But in Brussels they decided differently. One can only guess how many such surprises are preparing in Washington and European capitals. The Ukrainian adventure has not yet affected neither the lumpenized majority of the population, nor the middle class of Russia. The latter for the most part rejoices in the annexation of Crimea, curses the Ukrainian " Bes " and ... continues to pleasantly conduct vacations and holidays in Europe. But here is the establishment, at least part of it, cannot ignore the fact that the highest and uncontrolled power in Russia was in the hands of a narrow group of persons who are unable to anticipate the consequences of their decisions guided by absurd and paranoid ideas about the world. This gives rise to the most important threat to both the Russian establishment and the population, and Russia as a whole - the unpredictability of the authorities and its tendency to make irrational decisions.

In Soviet times, this was called "voluntarism." The Voluntarist Khrushchev in October 1964 was overthrown from the Kremlin throne. One of the reasons is to initiate the Cuban crisis, which miraculously did not lead to a nuclear war. It is difficult to get rid of the impression that Stalin’s stroke was not quite natural: the Kolitburo associates were unlikely to approve of preparations for the new tour of mass repressions and the Third World War. The “glorious joke” comes to the mind of the demons de steel that “the reign in Russia is autocracy limited by the luck.” History is often repeated. Russian establishment both before and now there is something to lose.

Yuri Fedorov - foreign policy expert