Douthat: Vladimir Putin’s clash of civilizations
Ross Douthat
Wed, March 2, 2022, 5:55 AM·4 min read
When the United States, in its hour of hubris, went to war to remake the Middle East in 2003, Vladimir Putin was a critic of U.S. ambition, a defender of international institutions and multilateralism and national sovereignty.
This posture was cynical and self-interested in the extreme. But it was also vindicated by events, as our failures in Iraq and then Afghanistan demonstrated the challenges of conquest, the perils of occupation, the laws of unintended consequences in war. And Putin’s Russia, which benefited immensely from our follies, proceeded with its own resurgence on a path of cunning gradualism, small-scale land grabs amid “frozen conflicts,” the expansion of influence in careful, manageable bites.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to St. Petersburg's governor Alexander Beglov during their meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 1. [ALEXEI NIKOLSKY, SPUTNIK, KREMLIN POOL PHOTO via AP]
But now it’s Putin making the world-historical gamble, embracing a more sinister version of the unconstrained vision that once led George W. Bush astray. And it’s worth asking why a leader who once seemed attuned to the perils of hubris would take this gamble now.
I assume that Putin is being sincere when he rails against Russia’s encirclement by NATO and insists that Western influence threatens the historic link between Ukraine and Russia. And he clearly sees a window of opportunity in the pandemic’s chaos, the U.S.’ imperial overstretch and an internally divided West.
Still, even the most successful scenario for his invasion of Ukraine — easy victory, no real insurgency, a pliant government installed — seems likely to undercut some of the interests he’s supposedly fighting to defend. NATO will still nearly encircle western Russia, more countries may join the alliance, European military spending will rise, and more troops and material will end up in Eastern Europe. There will be a push for European energy independence, some attempt at long-term delinking from Russian pipelines and production. A reforged Russian empire will be poorer than it otherwise might be, more isolated from the global economy, facing a more united West. And again, all this assumes no grinding occupation, no percolating anti-war sentiment at home.
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