While Russia establishes itself in the Crimea and aggressively pursues the destabilization of Ukraine, President Obama and the European Union engage in their own predictably weak responses. Loud, empty rhetoric, empty threats and visa restrictions hardly amount to much. The Russian general staff can’t take their families to Epcot for spring break. What a brutal punishment!
Obama’s actions are just more of the same when it comes to his foreign policy. On the rare occasions when he engages internationally (or, more accurately, is forced to), Obama is alternately timid and utterly conventional. Two actions – ejecting Russia from the G8 and impending economic sanctions – demonstrate a geostrategic failure and a conventional, but useless response to Putin’s aggression.
To restrain Putin, Obama and his foreign policy team need to think about and implement policies that truly affect Putin, not actions that only serve domestic public relations purposes. In the near-term that means inviting China into the G8 and mostly forgetting about economic sanctions.
The G8 Geopolitical Failure
Cancelling the G8 Sochi summit and dropping Russia from the group was an inevitability (Although, it does mean Obama will miss a chance to directly confront Putin on Russian soil, physically towering over the Billy Barty-statured Putin and outnumbering him seven-to-one). But simply excluding Russia from the G8 is not much of a punishment on its own. The only people who think it’s a big deal are those who think not being invited to an Obama cocktail party is the end of the world.
The bold geopolitical act would be to replace Russia with China. Being thrown out of the G8 by the West is a badge of honor for Putin and plays into nationalist xenophobia. Being replaced by China would be a humiliation. For centuries China has been second fiddle to Russia on the world stage. China in the G8 not only reflects political and economic reality (China, as the second largest economy in the world, should be in the G8 already), it embarrasses Putin.
Geopolitics is about creating international blocs of power to counter your political opponent and doing so in strategically important parts of the world. Like all coalition politics, one must keep your coalitions together and isolate your opponents. In the world today that means keeping Russia and China apart – and preferably at odds. It’s time for Obama to act like Nixon internationally, not just domestically.
The Chinese could conceivably decline entry, but that seems unlikely as membership in the G8 brings with it the prestige of international recognition that China is a first-rank country. Declining entry would also imply China follows Russia diplomatically. I hardly think the Chinese want that impression in the world. If China does decline entry, it would tell America and the world quite a bit about the future direction of Chinese foreign policy.
The second step to upset Putin’s desire to partner with China would be to use China’s rising nationalism against Russia by throwing a little poison into that relationship. Throughout the 19th and 20th century, China was subject to increasing foreign domination – a history that is still a significant irritant to the Chinese. Starting with the British, French and Russians, later joined by the Germans and the Japanese, these foreign powers imposed by force and intimidation a series of humiliating treaties, seizing territory, forcing economic concessions and giving their citizens special legal status.
The communist takeover in 1949 swept away these treaties and drove the Europeans into two tiny enclaves: Hong Kong and Macau. By the start of the 21st century, even these small territories had been incorporated into China.
The only territory seized from China in the 19th century still in foreign hands today is the Russian Amur region. Since Putin is making such a big deal about the Crimea’s “rightful” and historic place in Russia, why not point out that Russia is occupying Chinese territory taken in 1860? While China has officially accepted the Russian occupation of this territory, the fact remains that the West and Japan have withdrawn all territorial, legal and economic claims while Russia has kept its territory. In the current political climate, what does the United States have to lose by stirring the pot?
Sanctioned Failure
Instead of making any bold or imaginative geopolitical moves, Obama is headed down the predictable, conventional sanctions path. There’s just one problem with sanctions – they rarely work. Research from the Peterson Institute and many academics show that economic sanctions tend to work when the initiators of sanctions have a clear and relatively narrow goal, when the target is more democratic, and when sanctions are extensive – impairing as much of the target’s economy as possible. Lastly, sanctions need to cost the target more than the initiator. So, modest sanctions against a semi-authoritarian kleptocracy with a hazy end goal are a recipe for utter failure.
Obama’s security team and a clutch of foreign policy analysts hopefully point to falls in the Moscow stock market and capital flight as evidence that Russia is paying a severe price for its behavior. They claim imminent economic sanctions will exacerbate Russia’s problems. The unstated implication is that these economic costs will enable the West to put the Russians on a short leash. Unfortunately, that thinking is delusional. It is based on the idea that what matters to the West is what matters to Putin.
For a developed democratic economy, stock market collapses and capital flight are a big deal. Much of the public is invested in the market. Large investors and the finance industry are influential politically. An open democratic system allows room for all interests to make their complaints known and exact a political cost.
None of these features apply to a semi-authoritarian kleptocracy like Russia. Putin and his security team rule the roost. There is no real democracy, where different interests can influence policy. There is no independent media. The Russian professional class was politically neutered when Putin faced down their protests in 2011. Putin showed the oligarchs that he was unmistakably in charge with the arrest and imprisonment of Khodorkovsky. The Russian stock market could fall to zero and there wouldn’t be a peep from the oligarchs. What’s a few billion compared to imprisonment and total asset confiscation?
In a non-democratic country like Russia, the leadership has the ability to impose the cost of sanctions on its internal opponents and the politically marginalized, while leaving the security services and important political constituencies unaffected – which is exactly what Iran and North Korea have done. Putin just needs to feed the Russian welfare state and the security services. Perhaps his personal wealth and that of his apparatchiks falls, but for a man who controls the Russian state, what does it matter if his checking account takes a $1 billion hit.
While there is a need in a democracy like America to satisfy public opinion, which makes some sort of symbolic set of sanctions necessary, it would be a pointless waste of effort and expense. Obama needs to make shrewd geopolitical moves and attack Russia at its weakest point. In an earlier opinion piece in the Daily Caller I explained in detail how the price of oil is critical to Putin and Russia. Sanctions, on the other hand, should be treated for what they are: symbolism.
Where Are We with Obama?
Putin has continuously had the jump on Obama. And, it boils down to two facts. First, Obama’s inability to think like Putin leaves him bereft of an effective strategy. Obama is simply unable to discern what policies will actually affect Putin. Second, his focus on his own personal political advancement has left foreign policy and American international security an afterthought. When security issues arise, Obama is unwilling to pay a domestic political price and he is so conventional and unimaginative that he cannot outwit America’s opponents. With no sign of intellectual growth or increased political courage by Obama, the prospects for containing Putin look grimmer by the day.