EZRA KLEIN: Putin, feeling backed into a corner, has raised the stakes. Last week, he called the West’s sanctions akin to an act of war and has put Russia’s nuclear arsenal on alert. And the global wave of support for Ukraine has made it increasingly difficult for Western leaders to de-escalate. In the fog of war, it isn’t hard to imagine an accident or miscommunication that triggers a World War III-like scenario.
So what does a settlement here look like? What does Putin want? What
would Zelensky accept? What will Europe and the U.S. sign onto? Is there
any deal that could work for all the players?
If there is to be an off ramp in Ukraine, a deal, something to stop the fighting here, it’s going to need to be something that Putin, Zelensky, and the West can all agree on. And as hard as that kind of deal was to imagine a month ago, it is harder now, because — think about how all of the actors and factors here have changed...."
"Players", "actors": Those become important for the discussion below....
FIONA HILL:...Putin remains a strategic thinker. He’s certainly got strategic goals that he’s trying to fulfill, irrespective of whether we might think that those are mad goals from our perspective. These are goals that he has put forward for quite a period of time, including about Ukraine, but also about the rollback of NATO, and what he sees as some kind of monumental struggle with the United States for Russia’s right to exist in the world.
Are we, the West, strategic thinkers? If so, what is our strategy?
... for him, the state and Vladimir Putin have become fused together. And what I fear about, when you get to the state of his mind, then, is that he sees himself as infallible — because he’s decided to do something, therefore, it should be done.
...
[Putin] wanted, actually, to have Russia recognized as a viable part of the G8, [Absolutely] as it was then, and perhaps on track to be the fifth largest economy in the world...And then somewhere along the line, we can probably point to a period around 2007, which is on the eve of the global economic crisis —They’re starting to build up the military.
Putin then sort of makes a decision that Russia isn’t just going to sit idly by on the world stage, that it wants to — he wants to restore Russia’s great power. He makes the infamous Munich Security Conference speech, basically saying he’s not going to put up with a unipolar world anymore, and certainly not the expansion of NATO. He’s putting the world on notice. And then in that period afterwards, after we’ve had the kind of blow up of the international financial system, he makes some decision along the line to probably take advantage of what he sees as a growing weakness of the West, and his frustration with the West, to go in a different direction on Ukraine.
And he comes back into the Russian presidency in 2012 against the backdrop of major protests against him...And he starts to make all of these pronouncements around that same time about Ukraine and Russia being one and the same country.
And this becomes the prelude for a decision to go in a completely different direction with his presidency, from being someone, as you say, focused on economics and all the other things that you’ve laid out, to someone focused on regathering the lands of the old Russian Empire, not just the Soviet Union. So it’s a flip somewhere in that time frame.
So 2007, no unipolar world; 2012, Ukraine.
...
...he sees the United States and NATO as the present manifestation of centuries of European powers...that have been after Russia, and the Russian Empire, and all the czars and czarinas...everything thing that we see today just underscores that Putin believes that we’re literally out to get him. The more that we talk about crushing the Russian economy...This just feeds in to this mentality that Russia is always under siege...Every time he looked at something that happened, for example...you saw Muammar Gaddafi shot by rebel forces in what looked like a drainage pipe. And we hear stories that Putin played that image to himself over and over again, working himself into more of a state of paranoia. The overthrowing of Saddam Hussein and his hanging in Iraq, this is what Putin thinks about. He thinks that the United States is in the business of regime change.
...always, throughout history, there’s been some malevolent force — mostly coming from the West...who is out to basically push change in Russia, subjugate Russia, and basically install its own version of Russian power. So unfortunately, right now, even all of the events of the present are feeding into that kind of mentality.
She is in favor of "all of the events" at present that are reinforcing Putin's paranoia. (As am I, for the most part.)
EZRA KLEIN:...I’ve been thinking a bit about this narrative by the political scientist, Samuel Charap, who has been arguing that you can’t understand Russia’s actions in the region without understanding this is a...contest [between the U.S. and Russia] for influence in Ukraine.
We’ve done a lot over the past 15, 20 years to try to bring [Ukraine] closer to us, not just opening NATO...training a generation of military officers, actually arming them, integrating them into E.U. licensing and trade and regulatory regimes. And so he sees that there’s being a genuine, constant expansionary pressure from us that he’s now trying to beat back. Is there a validity to that view?
FIONA HILL: Well, sure. I mean, that’s the way that Putin definitely sees things. And, you know, for many people in the United States, elsewhere, see that too, as that kind of competition. ...But what that does is totally deny any agency on the part of Ukraine...with all due respect to all my colleagues who do this from the IR perspective.
Pause: Klein asked if the narrative by Charap has any validity, that is objectively, not just subjectively in Putin's head. Hill answers "that's the way Putin sees things," and many people in the U.S. do too. "But what that does is totally deny any agency on the part of Ukraine..." No, it doesn't deny that, nobody I know of argues that Ukraine's moves toward Europe were without its will, it was a push-pull. Hill denies any agency on the part of the EU and NATO. There is also no doubt about that. Ukraine's push toward Europe is an IR (international relations) issue. It is not just Ukraine deciding I think I'll dress like this today, it's Ukraine deciding, I want to join this family. Unpause.
...A lot of what’s happening now is a kind of a post-colonial, post-imperial impulse on the part of Russia, this kind of feeling that it can’t possibly be lands and peoples want to go their own way.
[T]here must be some other malevolent force there. And when a country makes an appeal to another country for association, or [a] different international franchise — let’s put it that way — and wants to be part of that...be it NATO or the European Union...— those countries are acting with malevolent force to pull them away.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Ms. Hill, was NATO an anti-Soviet alliance? "Yes." Was NATO not headed by the United States and intended to be a "malevolent force" toward the Soviet Union? Has NATO continued to exist and in fact expanded after the Soviet Union disappeared? "Yes." Did the individual European states "go their own way" after the breakup of the Soviet Union? "No, they didn't want to. They wanted to join Europe." Okay, that is them exercising their "agency", that's fine. Is that not an international relations issue, though? Weren't they deciding they didn't want to have relations with Russia any longer, they wanted to have relations with Europe? And apart from joining the EU, wasn't NATO's open invitation to any country in Europe that met its membership criteria (democratic or moving that way; centralized military command) a push-pull by Ukraine and NATO, that is, both had "agency"? And isn't Ukraine wanting to join a military self-defense collective that had been aimed at the Russian predecessor state an international relations issue for Russia?
So what Putin can’t make sense of — in fact, most people are looking at it seem to not be able to make sense of — the people of Ukraine actually kind of want to live like people of Ukraine, in their own state, and make their own decisions. If they want to associate with the European Union and NATO offers their security,
Pardon the interruption, Ms. Hill, "offers their security", hmm. Yes, there was an offer by NATO. An offer is "agency". I make an offer of marriage to a woman (or man (in my case just woman)), that is my agency. The woman can except my offer (if she's a fool) or reject it. That's her agency. This offer was a "security" offer against a foreign threat. Who was NATO's offer of security against? Lithuania? Poland? The U.S.? Sorry, continue.
then a lot of that is their decision as well.
Absolutely! Ukraine's decision, "as well" as NATO's.
So when we frame it that way, we completely and utterly negate the opinions and the beliefs and the aspirations of the people on the ground.
Oh, not at all, Ms. Hill. Not. At. All. We, I join here, do not negate the wishes of any "people on the ground"--there are just a lot of "players," "actors and factors", "people on the ground" with opinions, beliefs and aspirations to consider! You concede that NATO has some agency here, we must consider the "aspirations", and etc. of the NATO nations collectively. And of Russia--at whom NATO is now aimed!
That’s what Putin is trying to do all the time. ...to get this framed as a conflict, a proxy conflict between Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO for Ukraine — well, why do we want Ukraine? People keep asking that. We don’t want Ukraine. The United States does not want Ukraine. Just to make it very clear, we don’t want to annex Ukraine. It’s not going to become like Puerto Rico, you know, like an additional state.
We’re not annexing part of it. This is not World War II or the Cold War. We are not occupying Europe anymore.
EZRA KLEIN: There’s something he’s been emphasizing that seems to me to be very much part of that idea, which is — I think we’re comfortable in a geopolitical moment, like this talking about security interests, Ukraine and NATO, Ukraine and the E.U., Ukraine and Russia, arms, training. Something that Putin has emphasized in a number of speeches is identity.
FIONA HILL: Yes.
EZRA KLEIN: Language, ethnicity —And with that they get off the subject of security interests. PISSES me off. They come back to a point related to security which I will have to pick up in a subsequent post.
