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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) February 28, 2023; *update August 15, 2024: Earlier in February 2024, Ukraine clarified that its numbers for Russian military casualties included wounded as earlier use of the term liquidated led many to believe the running total given included only killed and not wounded; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request.

SILVER SPRING—Much has happened in this momentous yet cataclysmic past year, and almost a year ago, shortly after Putin launched his escalatory invasion, I wrote the following and absolutely still stand by it today:

After well over a year of isolation induced by the COVD-19 pandemic, it seems Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has become so detached from reality with his wild Ukraine gamble that he may finally have adventured too far, stumbling into a trap entirely of his own making.  Surprising as it is, this time it is distinctly possible his aggression, ultimately, will not provide him with any way to save face: no “offramp,” as the media seems to love to refer to a possible endgame that leaves him comfortable and not in a weak and unstable position at best (for him) or ousted at worst (obviously, the latter would be ideal for us)…

…I’m optimistic like never before that Putin’s end is coming and coming soon even as that optimism is surrounded by the dread of an increasingly bloody and lawless conflict.  I truly think this is the last gasp for a very long time of the Great Power conflicts on European soil, of the major wars that have been constant on the continent since the ancient Greco-Persian wars through today, with the two main exceptions being the Pax Romana and the Pax Americana; this war in Ukraine will either be the end of the Pax Americana in Europe or the one great interruption of it for some time to come.

I have expanded on this feeling, that Putin has absolutely violated the implicit social contract he made with his people—give up their democracy in exchange for strength, stability, and respect from the world—that this this war really has doomed him, that Russians know who has been in charge for years and who created the system that produced this disastrous performance on the battlefields of Ukraine and will eventually appropriately blame Putin, that even the military may revolt against him, and that revolution is going to come because Putin will destroy the Russian military and economy if he is not stopped since he will not give up his losing war effort that cannot succeed, that Putin has finally bitten off more than he can chew and will choke on his hubris.  And from the Russo-Japanese War to World War I to Afghanistan, Russian defeats in war tend bring about serious consequences domestically for Russia of the revolutionary type.  So in the first days after the one-year-anniversary of Putin’s escalatory invasion, it is fitting to contemplate a world without Putin and how much better it will be.

There are three key reasons to suppose this idea…

1.) Russia under Putin is by far the most powerful bad actor in the world, constantly working to undermine the U.S.-led rules-based international world order in place since the end of World War II

It is no exaggeration to say that Russia under Putin is easily now and by far not only the chief antagonist of the United States and the West, but is also the largest impediment to global cooperation and world stability.  And this has been the case for a solid decade-and-a-half.

Apart from the obvious example of Ukraine, Russia has also for some time been supporting some of the worst factions and adding to instability in a series of regional and local interventions.  Militarily, most notably with its occupation of Transnistria in Moldova and its intervention to support dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria but also the “private” military contractor Wagner Group (really an extension of the Russian military and the Kremlin’s will) also in Syria and throughout Africa, especially (including Libya, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Mali, and Sudan, though Wagner is also intervening in less-militarily-explicit ways in other African countries).  Politically, Russia has interfered to support the very worst of the far-fight throughout Europe, the U.S., and Canada, whether movements, individual figures, or political parties, movements that often not just brush up against fascism but veer headlong into it.  In the same places, Russia is also fostering far-left movements (the kind that try to tear down the part of the left that can actually do something).   It is even pumping up secessionists movements, from Catalonia and Scotland to Texas and California.  I have discussed much of this in detail—citing many, many sources—before.  And, of course, there are Russia’s cyberwarfare campaigns—including disinformation and what I termed in 2016 the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar—related to all of these, which I have also discussed at length and before most others would, as far back as July 2016; even now, Russian propaganda accounts are buying up blue checkmark status on Twitter from Elon Musk, just another example of how Musk clearly doesn’t give a damn about actually policing actual misinformation

As I argued long ago, it is time to get even tougher with Russia, which has for a decade-and-a-half clearly been a bad-faith and faithless actor on the world stage, that fighting back isn’t escalation but merely long-overdue defense against such rampant aggression, that countries voluntarily joining alliances with the West is not aggression but Russia actually invading countries to dismember them and annex their territory is.

We are rivals with China but not enemies, but Russia under is clearly our enemy and acts like it. 

2.) Russia under Putin now is incredibly isolated, and there is little reason to think other major powers would follow Russia’s example after Putin is finished; most notably, China will likely be more cooperative and less oppositional

Russian Isolation

While countries like the U.S. and Ukraine have many friends that actually admire them on immensely deep levels, Russia does not even understand these concepts: Russia has a few alliances of interest and convenience, but that is really it: Russia has no real friends—and only has itself to blame for that.

But let’s take a look at the nations supposedly close to Russia, just to drive down how pathetically isolated it is internationally.

Putin’s big “ally” in this war has been Belarus, formerly a part of the Soviet Union and led by its quite unpopular and buffoonish dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who was weakened by massive domestic protests in 2020-2021 after he stole an election to stay in power and has now let Russia use Belarusian territory to base troops and launch attacks against Ukraine (he has notably declined to deploy his military alongside Russia’s in Ukraine, as that could very well be the end of his deeply unpopular regime).  Polling tells us Belarusians are against Russia’s invasion and that Russia’s war of aggression is very unpopular; indeed, there are Belarusians fighting for Ukraine against Russia, Belarusians in Belarus sabotaging logistical systems used by the Russians, and, just a few days ago, it was apparently Belarusian partisans that critically damaged an expensive Russian military aircraft on an airbase outside of the Belarusian capital of Minsk (an A-50U Mainstay—one of seven in Russian service and modern upgrades of the A-50, with only nine of those A-50s “in service” for a total of “sixteen” of these types of aircraft “operational” for Russia—likely fewer with Russian maintenance woes—planes with advanced detection equipment that are essential to monitoring enemy aircraft in the battlespace and in preventing surprise air attacks, essentially the counterparts to the U.S. E-3 Sentry AWACS).

And as far as “friends” and allies, for Russia, Belarus is as good as it gets.

What about China?  Shortly before Putin’s February 24 invasion, China declared “friendship…has no limits” with Russia but has very much set limits on this friendship, refusing so far to support Russia’s military with lethal military aid or vote with Russia in key United Nations votes on the Ukraine war.  At most, China has helped Russia with some economic and technical support and on the one-year-anniversary of the invasion offered a piece of paper with a twelve-point “peace” plan paying lip service to some Russian talking points but offered no concrete military aid to Russia in its war effort (I’m sure Putin was hoping for much more than a piece of paper; so much for “friendship…[with] no limits”).

What about Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic and the government of which Russia helped by deploying troops to quell a massive series of protests just the month before Putin launched his escalatory invasion?  How has Kazakhstan responded after this help from Russia?  By breaking from Russia and Russia’s positions on Ukraine and the war, sending aid to Ukrainian civilians, giving sanctuary and shelter to over 100,000 Russians fleeing conscription/mobilization into Putin’s war and/or persecution, and also not voting with Russia at the United Nations.  Other former Soviet republics long-deferential to Russia even after the fall of Soviet Union are now beginning to finally distance themselves from or to assert themselves publicly against Putin or are seeking patronage from elsewhere, including America.

What about Iran?  Iran has provided drones that have been used against Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure (yet are ineffective against Ukrainian military targets and Russia may be even running out of those drones) while Iran has thus far declined Russian requests for more powerful missile systems and has also declined to vote with Russia at the United Nations.

In reality, Russia is incredibly isolated: in five key United Nations votes on the Russia-Ukraine war—including the latest one on February 23, 2023, demanding Russia withdraw from Ukraine, 141 countries voting for it, only seven including Russia against, and with thirty-two abstentions; also including a General Assembly vote on October 12 of 143-5 against Russia, a 10-1 Security Council vote against Russia on September 30, a March 2 General Assembly vote of 141-5 against Russia, and an 11-1 Security Council vote against Russia on February 25, 2022, right after Russia’s escalatory invasion—China has refused to vote with its supposed BFF; instead, it has chosen in each instance to abstain.  Kazakhstan abstained in those three General Assembly votes and Iran and has behaved the same way with two of those General Assembly votes (including the latest February 23 vote) and did not vote in a third.  That means no country of any significant power or clout has stood by Russia diplomatically: 141 to 7 most recently (Russia along with Belarus, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, and Nicaragua; that’s it) and similar results from the other General Assembly resolutions, plus Russia being the only veto on the two Security Council resolutions described, tell you a lot about what you need to know about Russia’s standing in the world after its Ukraine invasion.

With “friends” like this, Russia really doesn’t need enemies, but it has them in a Ukraine that is smashing Russian dreams of imperial conquest and a West that is happy to aid Ukraine not just diplomatically and economically but, unlike China with Russia, militarily in its fight for freedom and self-determination.  And Even if the Biden Administration sometimes gives lip service to the general concept of eventual negotiations, it knows full well and has stated that Russia is not a party it can ask Ukraine to negotiate with because Russia does not act in good faith.  So think about this, then: both U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are shunning the idea of talking to Putin or his Russian government, that doing so is pointless, that Putin is not worthy of direct engagement at this time.

Essentially alone in their war against a Ukraine with many steadfast and true allies and friends, 2022 for Putin and Russia was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year and, as I have been arguing, 2023 will only be worse.

China’s Conundrum on Russia and the West as It Ponders Its Path Forward

Considering this dramatic isolation, I am a big believer that, without a Putin running Russia to stand next to, or even hide behind, that China would take a different, more cooperative approach on the international stage.  That is not to say that everything would be great between the U.S. and China and they would not have fierce disagreements still.  Yet if Russia were to stop being a rogue nation, but a responsible, good-faith actor instead that is not knee-jerk opposing the West but seeks cooperation over confrontation, peace and trade over war, democracy over autocracy, human rights over oppression, China would not want to look like a lone spoiler, isolated as some sort of pariah among the major nations.  With Russia at its side, it can avoid this, but with a Russia under a different, more sensible leader, it cannot.

Another thing to consider is that China and Russia do not have a shared culture and history, do not have any deep-seeded shared values.  China’s tepid “support” for a full year of Russia’s escalatory invasion of Ukraine after proclaiming “friendship…[with] no limit” just before that invasion tells you how deep that relationship goes.

Indeed, apart from neo-Marxist-educated, Chomsky– and Gramsci-devoted disciples of anti-Westernism and their students, fans, and offspring—the crowd Christopher Hitchens described as the “masochistic…Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein quarter”—not many people will really miss Putin’s Russia (and, as I have explained before, most of the people who do are, sorry-not-sorry, too stupid to know the difference between Putin’s Russia and the Soviet Union—the latter opposed fascists and the former is fascist).  These people are so myopically trapped in Cold War-era thinking that they have not realized their ship has sailed, their train departed, their flight taken off; they fail to see how the world has adapted and changed, how the postcolonial-rebellion era is now over, how Putin’s Russia is not an anti-imperialist nation fighting against empire and colonialism but is, in fact, a neoimperialist and neocolonialist empire, the only major power to be doubling down on such a backwards, long-expired ideology.

People try to argue (rather unconvincingly) that the U.S. just another old-school empire, China has an economic empire, and while there are obviously various dimensions, I’d argue that influence and alliances and mutual agreements are not the same as empire: there’s no substitute for empire-empire: actually stealing land by military conquest with the intent of annexation and colonization.  Say what you will about America’s Iraq War and War in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era, but neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were ever going to be the fifty-first or fifty-second state or a U.S. Territory.

The tsarist era is calling, Vlad, and it wants its ideology back.  This chauvinistic ethnic Russian “Eurasianism” is moving Russia backwards in time, and the totality of its former vassals that have broken free are having none of it, with even the people of Belarus disgusted by it as they are of their own cartoonish dictator, Lukashenko.  Few states of any stature are going to look at how Russia’s horrid war of revanchist imperialist and colonialist expansion goes and will want to imitate it, with Putin’s failing and sooner-rather-than-later to be failed war—itself the last gasp of such anachronistic justifications—to leave an even greater distaste for such thinking and behavior than before he embarked on his futile folly.  Hopefully, this war will be the last hurrah of old-school imperial wars, this war the last imperial war, at least for several generations.

If anyone will truly miss Putin’s Russia, it will be China, but not out of any love; rather, it will simply be that Russia constantly made China look good.  Sure, China can be pretty awful—just look at its genocidal treatment of its Muslim ethnic minority Uighurs—but people could always point to Russia and say “see, at least China isn’t that bad” when it came to international behavior beyond its borders.  To quote a RAND report title: “Russia Is a Rogue, Not a Peer; China Is a Peer, Not a Rogue,” i.e., China has a considerable amount of economic power that Russia does not even approach (in 2021, China’s GDP was nearly ten times Russia’s and U.S. GDP was nearly thirteen times larger than Russia’s) and China does not seek to destroy the current international order, just to shape it more in its own image and offer competition with and an alternative to the U.S. even while generally operating within the system’s rule (the big exceptions being trade, intellectual property theft, and maritime borders).  Conversely, as noted, Russia is relatively weak economically and cares little to nothing for the rules, even seeks to destroy that rules-based international system.

China loved having Putin as the lighting rod to absorb most of the West’s ire even while China moved as a force often opposing the West, making China the “good one” of the two major autocracies.  China enjoyed a position where it could be both an ally to Russia but also present itself to the West as a more moderate country than Russia, as a country that could be a mediator and interlocutor between the West and Russia that was still happy to have Russia as another major pole in the multipolar world order aligned against the West, a with which China enjoyed a much better relationship than Russia with which China has far, far larger economic ties than it does with Russia.

It’s not even close, as the charts below show (The Observatory of Economic Complexity’s excellent visualizations are deeply revealing and they were kind enough to provide me with the latest data free of charge; 2019 and 2020 data is available without a subscription, but I have provided images of some of the 2022 data; in datasets, OEC counts both Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate trading partners and I am counting Taiwan as Western since it is de facto independent and a Western democracy, whereas Hong Kong is de facto and de jure part of China).

In 2022, Russia was just the sixteenth-largest partner (2.12% of the total) in China’s export market (compared to 16.1% for the U.S. at number-one); excluding Hong Kong (second-place) as part of China, the top three Chinese export recipients are firmly Western, as are six of the top ten and eight of the fourteen ahead of Russia; for comparison, in 2019 before the pandemic, Russia also ranked sixteenth but at a lower overall percentage: 1.87%; the U.S. was still first but at 16.4%.  Russia was only the seventh-highest importer to China, with 4.14% total of Chinese imports; the U.S. was significantly higher, in third place at 6.54%, and the top five importers were firmly in the Western alliance and the sixth was actually China reimporting to itself; for comparison, in 2019, Russia was the eighth-largest importer to China (3.7%) to America’s third-ranked spot (6.56%).

Russia has not been releasing important elements of its economic data for most of 2022, hoping to hide the effect of sanctions, but the incomplete data we do have tells us that in 2022, China was by far Russia’s largest export destination and import source, with the value of Russian exports to China apparently sharply increasing from 2019.  Back then, China was also by far Russia’s top export (14% of all Russian exports) and import (20.6% of all Russian imports) partner.  For the U.S. in 2022, China is its third-largest export destination (7.39%) and its largest source of imports (16.7%); China was also similarly third for U.S. exports in 2019 (6.82%) and first that year in imports (18.1%).  Despite some rising tensions, Chinese-American economic ties remain indisputably strong and profoundly stronger than Chinese-Russian economic ties.

Simply put, Russia needs China way more than China needs Russia, then.

Even in this context, China calculated that it still made sense to align itself in politically in general with Russia, and, in this spirit, it backed Russia just before Russia’s nightmarish disaster of an escalatory invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022.  China probably thought like many others that in a few days, weeks, maybe a few months, Russia would triumph in Ukraine: the war would be over quickly and China’s relationship and substantial economic ties with the West would not really come into play or be too strongly negatively affected.

But to China’s dismay, a year later Russia’s war is failing and the Russian pole in the multipolar order is now shattered, Russia having exposed its weakness, China obviously having buyer’s remorse and knowing it has backed a loser and now a pariah, not at all what Chinese President Xi Jinping had bet would happen.  With Russia desperate for help, China is still clearly declining even now after an entire year of massive military escalation to send Russia any weapons or direct military support.  China appreciated having Russia as a useful pole bent away from the West (and its utility is now fast diminishing), but it’s not like it likes Russia.  If it liked Russia, it would be doing far more to help Putin’s war effort, like just about all of the West and even places like Morocco are helping Ukraine (yes, Morocco has offered more military support for Ukraine than China has offered Russia).

Some “no-limits” “friendship.”

Instead, China must feel like it has hitched itself onto the Titanic and does not want this Titanic to ruin its far stronger, far more important economic ties with the West at a time when the economy and COVID policy in China have the domestic situation there faltering, and, in reality, it is obvious China has been and is considering all of this heavily or it would already have been voting with Russia at the United Nations and been sending it weapons to help crush Ukraine if it really, truly believed in its alliance with Russia as a true alliance and not an alliance of mere convenience.  Sure, China could technically still throw a lot more support behind Russia, but why would it risk a major economic fight with the West now after a whole year of keeping its distance from Russia’s war when Russia is clearly losing that war and at a time of increasing domestic woes in China?  It would be highly irrational for China to do so and would not further China’s national interests.

In fact, Xi and the Chinese leadership have to be looking at Russia and seeing the dreaded potential for what they fear most in their own country: revolution.  The Chinese Communist Party has already lived through the demise of one communist regime based in Moscow in 1991 and has to see the similarities between then and now in Russia as well as with the 1917 revolutions in the midst of another major war for Russia, revolutions that brought down the Russian tsar and ushered in communist Bolshevik rule followed by the terrible years of the Russian Civil War.  The point is, if—in my view, when—Putin goes, the Chinese will have had some time to think about how they will adjust, and they will know that increasing their isolation and following Putin’s path will not be in their interests.

I asked one Brookings scholar at a live event in early February what she thought of this scenario, and her answer was that China would likely look to replace Russia with others.  Except there is no replacing Russia with any other state of similar stature because all those states, even if not fervently pro-Western, are not really anti-Western and enjoy playing both the West and East off each other for their own advantages and interests, even while still overall being closer to the West: we’re talking the rest of the BRICs, that is, Brazil and India, along with a number of other nations in the Global South of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  Neither India nor Brazil neither wants to be or be seen as anti-Western.  The other large non-Western G-20 economies of Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia do not want to be anti-Western with the possible exception of Turkey (at least to talk that talk but less so walk that walk), but even NATO-member Turkey has been and will very likely try to play both sides rather than veer so far as to be anywhere near as anti-Western as Russia (even less anti-Western if would-be Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can finally get voted out of office in May).  Outside the G-20, there are non-Western states of Iran, Thailand, and Nigeria to round out the top 30 economies in the world, and with the obvious exception of pariah Iran, they do not want to be anti-Western.

So China’s best bet for a new BFF to replace Russia is…Iran?  Meh.  Maybe Turkey?  Doubtful even if possible.  While both Muslim-led countries have been conspicuously and relatively silent on China’s genocide against the Muslim Turkic Uighurs to try not to rock their relationship with China too much, that hardly means Turkey will want to become the new anti-Western power to replace Russia and China is not going to be thrilled about cozying up too much more to an isolated Iran pursuing terrorism and nuclear weapons and even it likely won’t end up supporting Putin’s war against Ukraine dramatically more than it is already, save for another weapons system or two added to the so-so drones it has already supplied.

With Putin’s Russia out of the mix and is led by a different person, then, frankly, China just doesn’t have any good options but to become less antagonistic and more cooperative with the West.  That hardly means that China cannot compete and fight for its interests with the United States, that China must be subservient to the U.S. or cannot pursue its own path and oppose American policies, sometimes sharply and persistently.  It just means that all this talk of two major blocs opposing each other, one led by the U.S. and Europe, the other by Russia and China, that has gripped analysts for years will be a thing of the past.  Sure, China could go it alone among major world powers in pursuing a sharply anti-American path, but then China will suffer from some of the same problems that are bringing Russia down today.

In short, it just doesn’t make sense and isn’t likely for China to become the next Russia in terms of anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism, to take up the flagging banner now being dragged by Russia though the mud and blood of its Ukraine war.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has united the U.S. and Europe even more intensely than before, the narcissism of its small differences always being exaggerated (even now, the coverage of the recent Leopard/Abrams tank tussle reminds me of the coverage of Biden’s infrastructure bill debate in the U.S.: the commentariat highlighted the differences, then myopically did not properly appreciate the success of those differences being overcome), so China’s hope of driving a wedge between Europe and America must be fading fast.

3.) When Putin is finally finished—dies, is killed, or deposed—it will be because Russians—the Russian people, the military, and the elites around Putin in the Kremlin—are absolutely exhausted and have learned the hard way that a different course is needed

I have encountered numerous commentaries stating we may very well end up with someone worse than Putin if Putin is taken out, but I don’t buy that.  Maybe temporarily and briefly someone worse ends up in charge, but when the dust settles and leadership stabilizes after Putin is overthrown/replaced, I think it is far likelier we would see someone better than Putin running things than someone worse.  When Putin is gone —and I am saying when because I cannot think of a time in recent centuries when a leader of a major state fails so badly in a major war and just stays in power with no major consequences, and I am convinced Russia has already lost this war, it’s just a matter of how much longer and how many more dead—it will absolutely be a reflection of a national exhaustion with Putinism.  By Putinism, I mean the man himself, his stooges, his system, his war, all of it; Russia will not be looking for more of the same and will certainly not be wanting to double down a failing war that has already cost hundreds of thousands of casualties, including, by Ukraine’s credible estimate, nearly 150,000 killed and wounded*, and who knows how many more ruined in mind and spirit.

There is also the reputational damage.  The nation of Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, and Pajitnov is being led barbarians who have created a barbaric culture that has created a barbaric army that is behaving more like ISIS than a respectable army (this is not meant as some kind of hyperbole: the atrocities happening throughout this war are exhausting to consider and massive in scale, pure barbarity of the terroristic variety—as I discussed with Ukraine’s 2022 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Oleksandra Matviichuk—atrocities in line with centuries of atrocities committed against Ukraine by Russia, centuries I summarize here) and yet, somehow instead of being truly fearsome, these barbarians are only good at killing innocent civilians and fare far less well against the Ukrainian military.  Thus, the Russian state’s military that so many feared for so long has exposed itself an object of ridicule when it comes to actual military prowess, the Russian Army getting slaughtered to advance mere miles in months while losing far more territory and the overhyped Russian Navy and Air Force largely cowed by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and air defenses, respectively.

Russia is a pathetic state with a pathetic military, pathetically losing a war handily to a former part of its empire that is far weaker and much smaller than it.  Every single day this war drags on is additional humiliation not only for Putin but for all of Russia and all Russians.  This is one of the greatest military upsets in world history, no doubt about it, and it is hard to think of many parallels for a mighty nation to have lost its reputation so rapidly (France in 1940 and Persia in last few years of the 330s BCE are two that come to mind). 

Then there’s the economic costs.  The international sanctions ensuing from Putin’s invasion, while not bringing Russia to its economic knees in a matter of months, are still hurtling Russia’s economy into a prolonged era of pain.  Despite extreme, unsustainable measures taken by the Kremlin to hide and minimize the very real effects of the sanctions (basically, don’t trust Russia’s official numbers), Russia’s economy is, in fact, struggling and will only be degraded more over time.  With more sanctions just imposed and more sure to come, the substantial effects are already widespread in Russia and are shrinking Russia’s role in the global economy, with an energy revolution (one I called for some time ago) rapidly unfolding in Europe and fundamentally altering and diminishing Europe’s relationship with Russia (please feel free to consider the sources above in this paragraph as rebuttal-central to the idea that the sanctions are “not working”).

While regular Russians will feel the economic pain the most, Russia’s elites—including those staffing the Kremlin and in Putin’s inner circles as well as social and economic elites—are also worse off for this war and will hardly stand by Putin forever, especially as things will go from bad to worse; indeed, the process of them despairing and turning on him has already begun, and I have argued this before, with this paragraph of mine worth quoting here:

It is clear that the Russian military—rank-and-file and officers alike—are more aware of Putin’s failures than anyone as they wade through their own blood.  But this war is not just affecting them and regular Russians: the lifestyles of the elites—powered by luxury goods and lavish vacations—are also suffering; nobody in Russia is benefitting from this war and nobody will.  And nobody knows how bad things are going more than the very people surrounding Putin in the Kremlin, not just those closest to Putin, but the layers of bureaucracy underneath them.  When those types of mid-level government officials gave up on the Soviet system, they were happy to dismantle it from within to find some power to grasp onto amidst the system’s collapse and did not work to preserve it but to preserve themselves, one of the fatal five reasons Stephen Kotkin gives for the Soviet Union’s collapse.  Thus, the spawn of the crisis of legitimacy in Moscow that Mikhail Gorbachev faced in the late 1980s and early 1990s is ready to return with a vengeance, this time targeting Putin and his regime.

And as I read the new book (Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921) of another great historian, Antony Beevor, I am relearning how the same happened in Russia 1917 as Tsar Nicholas II’s autocratic regime gasped its last spasmodic breaths in its final months and days.  Russians successfully resisted the powerful tsar and the dreaded Soviet state; they can handle the weaker Putin when they are of a mind to do so.  And today, there is already dissent and resistance, active resistance in Russia that is only going to grow over time, however small or ineffective it seems now.

This is all hitting Russians hard both psychologically and materially and, again, goes a long way to destroying the tacit deal Putin made with Russians to Make Russia Great Again if Russians just let him take their freedom.  Since he is failing miserably to uphold his end of the bargain, since in one year he has undone everything, he has accomplished in two decades of holding power and with the worst yet to come, Putin has outlived his usefulness for Russians even if many or even most do not realize it yet.  But at some point—when Russia suffers more major defeats and Ukraine takes more and more territory back from Russia up to perhaps all of it if it gets to that point or even maybe when Ukraine has driven Russia out fully from its sovereign international recognized territory and Russian counterattacks against the Ukrainian border fail and fail and fail repeatedly (scenarios I laid out several times), sometime around that point or before with some good fortune—enough Russians will realize this Putin product is expired, hazardous, and must be tossed into the garbage, like a piece of rotting food that is stinking up the refrigerator and will make anyone foolish enough to still try to consume to retch it back up the hard way.

Putin is, simply put, a disease not only in the Russian body politic but the global body politic.  The sooner the Russians realize this and do something collectively about it (or the sooner one brave person or a few brave people around Putin do a great patriotic duty, perhaps inspired by growing public unrest), the fewer dead Russians, the less damage to Russia’s economy and reputation, and the sooner Russia can begin building a better future for itself, for all Russians, and for Russia’s long-abused and weary neighbors, most of all Ukraine.

All nations and people’s have breaking points, and Putin is well on the way to pushing Russia and Russians to theirs.

So when this man is finally ejected from a decision-making capacity for the Russian state, yes, I am highly confident Russians will not opt for a Putin wannabe or anything close, not someone to his right who will raise the stakes even further and force even more Russians to keep fighting a losing war, no.  Russians by then will want to envision a future where they become a part of the world again, travel without drawing contempt, buy the things they were used to buying, be with relatives and friends who are alive and not buried in some crater in Ukraine or a cemetery in Russia of living in exile in foreign lands, begin the path to becoming accepted among the nations of the world again not as monsters but as peaceful and friendly good-faith people.  They will not want to continue the war but will want the war to end, as they did during World War I and the Soviet-Afghan War.  They will want to move in the opposite direction into which Putin had dragged them.  They will want to transcend this horror and start anew.

Even if someone like Putin or someone worse came to power immediately after Putin’s fall from grace, that person would not last long.  That person would not command the loyalty of the army or government officials, let alone the people.  Putin was the singular force above all others and there is no one approaching him in terms of that stature, yet his failure will mean those most closely associated with him will be horribly tainted even as not one can truly fill his shoes in his role as it has been up to now.  Likely the only outcome most people will accept, from the insiders to the common folks, will be an end to the war and the killing as well as the repression, something approaching free and fair elections in its place, and the ability to breathe a big sigh of relief, maybe shed a few tears, and begin to move on the only way possible: one step at a time, with the desire for it to be one free step at time.

It won’t be easy—it never is—and yes, freedom was scary in the 1990s, but better to try again after the alternative has produced the current nightmare of a reality that is now consuming all of Russia and ruining a proud nation and a proud people so that they have little left of which to be proud.  Something other than that will probably find it close to impossible to impose its will on the Russian project overall. 

Still, there may be some instability and fighting over what comes next.  There may even be some separatist movements that gain (further) steam within the Russian Federation, given how awful its history of its treatment of minorities is, how minorities are disproportionately being used as cannon fodder in this war (as imperialist and colonialist as anything about this war), and that some minorities are concentrated in particular regions.  And yet, I do not see some prolonged civil war: in the end, it should not take terribly long for a consensus—of the public, the battered military, and the elites who are souring even now on the current regime—on a more peaceful, stable, and cooperative way to engage with the wider world to emerge.  And when that happens, Russia will have to focus on remaking and rebuilding itself, leaving China without any major partner to carry any sort of anti-Western banner.

A lot of people are understandably bearish and quite cynical when it comes to betting on the Russian people, and I get it, especially with Ukrainians.  But history can be our guide here, as I have mentioned; and if the credulous, ignorant, superstitious peasant masses can turn on the tsar in the early twentieth century, if the masses of relatively better-educated Russians choking on Soviet totalitarianism can turn on Soviet communism, then, yes, you better believe Russians today can turn on Putin and the war as a whole, you better believe it is more likely than not that what will finally settle into and run the Kremlin after Putin will be better and not worse.

The Future Looks Better

When you take out the trash, the air is clearer, smells nicer.  Such will be the case for the world with Putin, with a man at the head of a state with a large nuclear arsenal that wields (irresponsibly and often alone) a veto on the United Nations Security Council, a state that is a declining power with a bad addiction to revanchism, and, for the reasons outlined above, the tone and tenor of major-power statecraft will be redefined for the better with his absence.  That doesn’t mean Xi or China can’t and don’t make mistakes—clearly more so presently than before—but China is very likely going adjust in a way that is best for China, and, as argued, that will not be fighting and being confrontational with the West even more than now while alone among major powers in a post-Putin world: it will mean confronting the West less—significantly less—paving the way for a new era of relative cooperation, perhaps at a level never seen before in human history.  The unipolar moment after the end of the Cold War was brief, but this emerging era should be a lot longer than a moment.  And together—especially without the Russian knee-jerk veto at the United Nations Security council—the great powers of the world can accomplish so much more working together than opposing each other.

A quick Taiwan aside: even if China were to invade Taiwan—and that, of course, would be a disaster on so many levels—given the differences between China’s and Russia’s imperial history and the far, far larger scale of Russian revanchism that does not end with Ukraine, whereas China’s (excepting some nearby tiny islands and reefs) would seem to end with Taiwan, I do not think that would doom the world to another dysfunctional era of the type Putin wants to create.  That is not to say war over Taiwan is likely—and I would argue Russia’s performance in Ukraine and the Biden-led West’s response to it makes that far less likely)—just that I would expect more norm-abiding and normalcy from China relative to Putin’s Russia even after such an horrible potential event, given time for the dust to settle.

In conclusion, I will not-so-humbly proclaim that one year after Putin’s massive escalatory invasion of Ukraine, the world is one year closer to a post-Putin world and, therefore, a better world.  Let’s keep up and keep increasing support for Ukraine to ensure Putin falls on his face and falls on his face sooner, as I know Russian leaders doing so in Russian history can often find themselves falling “into the dustbin of history,” a phrase made famous by communist Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky just days before the 1917 Bolshevik October Revolution when he shouted “You are miserable bankrupts.  Your role is played out.  Go where you belong from now on: into the dustbin of history!” at the leader of the rival Menshevik communists, Julius Martov, as he and his crew walked out of a meeting of the Second Congress of Soviets and into irrelevance.  That was the fate of the backwards tsardom, the backwards Soviet Union, and it will be the fate of Putin’s backwards regime, as Putin is doing so much to advance himself and his regime down a similar path: “into the dustbin of history.”

Brian’s Ukraine analysis has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commanding general, U.S. Army Europe; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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(Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, March 19, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook); excerpted and slightly adapted from his March 8 Small Wars Journal piece The Beginning of the End of Putin? Why the Russian Army May (and Should) Revolt (featured on March 9 by Real Clear Defense, The National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) Democracy Digest, and SOF News) and related articles excerpted and slightly adapted from that piece:

• March 9: A Look at Putin’s Disgraceful, Heartless, Barbaric Treatment of Russian Soldiers and Their Families
• March 11: On Casualties Counts in Russia’s War on Ukraine
• March 13: How Best to Penetrate Putin’s Media Iron Curtain in Russia? Dead Russian Troops
• September 16: I Saw This War Could Be Putin’s Undoing All the Way Back in Early March

Also see his earlier article The Utter Banality of Putin’s Kabuki Campaign in Ukraine published by Small Wars Journal the morning of February 21 and featured by SOF News on February 26; see related articles excerpted and slightly adapted from that piece:

• February 21: Why Is Putin Doing All This Now?
• February 25: How to Lose Nations and Alienate People, by Vladimir Putin
• March 1: Putin’s NATO Narrative Is Bullshit
• March 16: Putin’s Zombie Russian/Slavic Ethnonationalism Is Utterly Banal

WASHINGTON and SILVER SPRING—I noted before that the betrayal of Russian soldiers and their families was being weaponized by Ukraine and should be weaponized by the U.S.-led international community, including NATO.  But most importantly, these injustices must all be seized upon by the Russian soldiers and the Russian people themselves.

The Time Is Ripe for the Russian Army and the Russian People to Reject War, Reject Putin, and Rebel

Despite Putin’s totalitarian-ish crackdown on media and the flow of information, social media (ironically so often the vehicle for the dissemination for Russia’s own disinformation) and, especially, certain messaging apps (e.g., Telegram), are too powerful to be easily silenced fully, and it is hard to stop text exchanges.  Especially among the country’s young people, information will keep trickling in past Putin’s Media Iron Curtain through these means, and with enough holes emerging, the truth will light the way for more and more inside Russia as time marches on.

As this far more accurate and convincing information reaches the Russian people, we can expect some of the “yes” to war and most of the undecideds of the CNN poll mentioned earlier to switch to “no.”  With many of their lives being ruined under sanctions and international isolation, Russians will turn to the people they should blame most of all: introspectively, themselves for being duped by Putin’s propaganda and empowering him, and externally, Putin and his inner circle themselves, who made themselves monstrously wealthy and treated Russia, its resources, its industries, and its military as their personal playthings.  Protests will erupt in Russia in ways not seen since the fall of Soviet Union.

All the devastating Ukraine revelations have happened incredibly quickly, and it will take time for things to filter into enough Russian minds, so expect a gap, but when at least some of the truth does become apparent to a certain critical mass of Russians, expect Russians to revolt from within.

In response to understanding the precariousness of its standing with its own people, in the crackdown alluded to above, Putin’s regime is censoring, (partly?) blocking, banning, or even criminalizing the work of major Western news outlets, independent Russian news outlets, protests, and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter: reporting the truth inside Russia of Putin’s war in Ukraine is now illegal.  Other platforms—such as YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and text messaging—remain.  It is inevitable, then, that word of what is happening in Ukraine and the awful treatment of Russian soldiers will continue to spread among the Russian population, members of which are increasingly taking to the streets in protest despite at least some 4,600 protesters being arrested throughout Russia just on Sunday, March 6, according to the Russian human rights organization OVD-Info, with about 13,000 arrested in total since February 24, some of them tortured.  Among those arrested was Yelena Osipova, a nearly-eighty-year-old woman who survived Nazi Germany’s epic Siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during World War II.  The protests have the backing of that perennial political martyr and thorn in Putin’s side, Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent dissident opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, currently jailed himself for ridiculous fake “crimes” and facing new state-initiated indignities.

Russian people, businesses, and celebrities (even Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of Putin’s main spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov) are speaking out and warning their countrymen, customers, and fans of the mendacity and killing that is afoot because of their government and its autocratic leader holed up in the Kremlin.  A Russian senator even complained publicly during a Federation Council meeting that conscripts were being coerced into signing contracts and that, in one unit, only four survivors out of 100 soldiers total returned alive from fighting in Ukraine.  Such acts knock chunks out of the wall of Putin’s Media Iron Curtain.

Soldiers, indeed, whole military units disgusted with their mission—being forced to become murderers and war criminals—will get wind of the massive outrage and civil unrest at home as protests in Russia grow in number, frequency, and intensity.  And these protests will include these soldiers’ mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, romantic partners, children, and friends hitting the streets, even leading the protests.

Hopefully, enough of these troops, their officers, and commanders will realize and collectively decide as whole military units that there is a more important mission than destroying and subjugating Ukraine: to march on Moscow, join the people for whom they should be fighting, and realize that when the military and people are united, Putin is defenseless.  Russia can end an era of gaslighting, delusion, criminality, and kleptocracy through the actions of the Russian people themselves.  Russian soldiers wising up to their abuse and taking a stand, sometimes a stand that echoed throughout history and helped bring down the Russian government at the time, is not unheard of in Russian history, especially in the twentieth century.  Thus, this would hardly be unprecedented.

It is already occurring to Ukraine’s government that Russian soldiers and their families are very much worth engaging, as it is already appealing directly to them and has set up that aforementioned hotline to help reunite Russian soldiers with their families, but there should be a concerted information warfare campaign to coopt Russian soldiers and citizens directed not just by Ukraine but by the entire NATO Alliance and the rest of the democratic world.  The prolific hacking group Anonymous has already gotten into the action, including with a major hack March 6 of all Russian state television stations and several Russian streaming services that put footage of Russia’s Ukraine war, suppressed in Russia, on screens for the whole of Russia to see.  Other hacking groups and tens of thousands of volunteer cyberwarriors from around the world are engaging in similar efforts on behalf of Ukraine (perhaps even including U.S. Cyber Command).  Such acts will do much to lift the veil of gaslighting draped by Putin over many a Russian’s eyes, and should dramatically increase opposition to the war and Putin’s regime over time.

As I have noted time and time again, Putin’s information warfare against the West has been relentless.  Now, let us turn the tables on him, but use truth as our weapon instead of the disinformation so favored by Putin as we give him a coordinated taste of his own medicine.  In turning the tables of cyberwarfare on the Kremlin, NATO should even explicitly add cyberwarfare—including disinformation—to NATO’s collective defense Article 5 in addition to engaging in this targeted information warfare offensive.  And if NATO states adjust Article 5 in this way—as I formally recommend last year—they can even collectively declare Article 5 in response to Russia’s years-long sustained cyberwarfare against NATO and carry out this offensive information warfare campaign as the first cyberwarfare-related invocation of Article 5 and just the second-ever invocation in the Alliance’s history, the only one so far being a response to the 9/11 attacks.

History Has Its Eyes on All of Us

Barely a fifth into the twenty-first century, Great Power autocracy in Europe has reared its ugly head again, ready to destroy Western democracy and the precious post-World War II order of European—and relative global—peace and stability, sometimes referred to as the “Long Peace,” or Pax Americana.  I must admit, when I wrote almost exactly six years ago an article warning of Western democracy being tested like no time since World War II, I did not imagine a major land war in Europe in 2022.  But make no mistake about it, Putin at the helm of Russia has forced this upon us and seeks to drag Europe and the world centuries backwards, with China watching, waiting, and taking notes.

Let’s make sure we provide China a clear set of lessons by encouraging and demonstrating the high cost of actions like Russia’s and encouraging a Russian soldiery at its breaking point, abandoned in so many ways by its Kremlin, to march on Putin in Moscow in support of the Russian people and their shared Motherland.  Not through NATO military forces, but through the Russian people themselves—soldier and citizen joined together—can Russia, now more than ever, seize the moment and rid itself of Putin and Putinism.

And then, having freed themselves from tyranny, Russians would find—should they want to reach out—open arms and extended hands from the West.

Should a Russia free of Putin clasp hands with and embrace the West, the future will be a world in which there is no challenge that Russia, Europe, and the United States working together cannot overcome.  And in such a world, China will not want to be left out.

But for such an era to come about, the first and necessary step is for Putin to be gone and for Russia to no longer be a menace on the periphery of Europe and the free world but to be a partner of both as part of both.  For NATO to attempt to do this itself is the path to World War III, perhaps nuclear war and the destruction of humanity and the world; it is for Russians to remove Putin, but if they do, they will find the same level of global support Ukraine has found.

Under the threat of Putin and the leadership of U.S. President Joe Biden, the West and the free world have awoken and realized they are strong, stronger than Putin and in a position to stare down his challenges to freedom, democracy, and that singular international order set up in the wake of the Second World War.  And they will gladly support the Russian people of a post-Putin Russia in a quest to rejoin the family of nations as a good-faith constructive partner for an era of unprecedented global cooperation.  This support would match the amazing energy present in the current solidarity being expressed for Ukraine, but it is up to Russians to decide if they are willing to fight for a better future for themselves as Ukrainians clearly have.  And by far the best way for this to happen is for the Russian Army—the weakest link in Putin’s current imperialist plans—to become Putin’s worst nightmare.

Putin began his reckless campaign by dangerously overplaying his hand in Ukraine, and now we see him dangerously overplaying his hand at home in Russia.  At the heart of this all are some of the people most wronged not just by his regime in general, but most especially during his Ukraine fiasco: the rank-and-file Russian soldiers fighting—and dying—on the front lines and their families back home in Russia.  The Russian people owe nothing to this orchestrator of the betrayal of those soldiers and their families, but they owe a great deal to the Russian soldiers and Ukrainians being treated as disposable pawns for the geopolitical ambitions of the dictator they empowered.  Only by removing Putin themselves can they restore Russia, in time, to true greatness, but going along with their Dear Leader’s insane playbook will only result in the opposite.

For too long, Russians have fed Putin’s maniacal, anachronistic ambitions; now is the time for them to act—for soldiers to inspire citizens and citizens to inspire soldiers—to free the world of a madman; waiting may prove fatal for the Ukrainian state and far too many Ukrainians and Russians fighting in the current tragedy created by Putin.  This war in Ukraine is not the first tragedy foisted upon the world by Vladimir Vladimirovich, but let us all—especially the Russian Army and people—ensure it will be his very last.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 2022 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 8th, 2017

Mohamed Al-Bakour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

AMMAN — I had originally titled this piece “Time to Put Up or Shut Up, Donald.” As I continued to write, though, reports that Trump was considering military strikes against Assad’s government for his horrific recent chemical weapons attack on civilians designed to terrorize his own people surfaced on Tuesday, April 4th; that ensuing Thursday, April 6th, it was time for your author here to (finally) have some fun and go to a party, and by the time I got home, when I had already thought the odds of Trump eventually hitting Assad were greater than those of him not hitting him, the strikes had already been launched, necessitating something of a reworking of my article.

There is a lot to digest here.

*****

Can Trump Succeed Where Obama Failed?

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama twice and enthusiastically but I would say the biggest mistake of his presidency was backing away from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used them to barbaric effect against his own people back in the fall of 2013. At that time, Assad and his forces were reeling and U.S. military action targeting his forces, especially the Syrian Arab Air Force, would have been decisive in changing the trajectory of the Syrian Civil War, especially since a robust Western entry and enforcement of no-fly zones would have prevented Russia’s subsequent robust entry in the fall of 2015.

Now, in the spring of 2017, the situation is quite different: Assad has obliterated many of the rebel strongholds, most notably (and most tragically) Aleppo, and ISIS, too, has been severely weakened, facing its final days in Mosul, Iraq, one of its two last major strongholds, and in the process of being encircled in its other stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, its “capital;” furthermore, not only does Assad’s government have the active of support of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and of Iran’s military on the ground (among other Shiite militias), but it also enjoys the robust military support of Russia and its vaunted air force. And even though Assad’s military has been whittled to down a shell of its former self(even his Syrian Arab Air Force is running low on parts and serviceable craft and can ill afford aircraft losses), with his allies, he is in far stronger position now than he was when Obama backed away from striking Syrian forces in 2013, even if heavily dependent on these allies.

And still, the most powerful military force on the planet—that of the United States, which in 2015 spent more on its military than Russia and the other six largest military spenders in the world combined—can easily make a huge impact, and let those who employ the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or support those who do, know that there will be a costfor such actions. And it seems a warning shot has now been fired to that effect.

Before backing away from striking Assad, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden  on August 31st, 2013, asking a question:

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

His words ring just as true today.

Obama sadly, and rather pathetically, did not put serious action behind his eloquent words about why we needed to support an international system where the use of such weapons of mass destruction as well as mass killing were not tolerated. The Republicans later skewered Obama for backing away—even as most of them hypocritically criticized his proposed military action at the time (many even signing a formal letter stating he needed authorization from Congress to act) before he backed away from it, a decision Obama made in part because they would not support him; Trump himself tweeted at Obama not to attack Syrian forces back then.

Since then, Republicans proceeded to criticize Obama for having a weak strategy even while offering precious few specifics that differed from Obama’s strategy, as did Trump, who, just as hypocritically as the others in his newly adopted Republican Party, also repeatedly asserted Obama’s weakness was responsible for the horrors in Syria up through his recent April 4th press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan that took place just hours after the recent Syrian government chemical attack in the Idlib area of Syria.

I figured that Trump, ever the narcissist, values his public perception as much as anything, and after beating up on Obama’s weakness for years, and given a chance to show himself to be the more “decisive” and “macho” “man” in a situation that had no choice but to be compared to Obama’s waffling in the fall of 2013 , would most certainly at least be tempted to reverse his pro-Russia and somewhat pro-Assad policy and to act to punish Assad where Obama declined to do so. As I watched him speak on the issue over the past few days, Trump even seemed genuinely moved by the horrific images of dying babies and other civilians coming out of Idlib.

And putting aside these considerations of personality here, there are very good reasons for Trump to have done what he did.

*****

Why Trump Was Right

Before Trump fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Assad and his Russian backers were clearly feeling they could do anything they want and get away with it and feared no U.S. intervention; impunity would be their modus operandi, there would be no political settlements, no “peace negotiations;” no, Assad and his backers were going to continue to systematically exterminate any whiff of opposition, city by city, town by town, corpse by corpse. Concessions? To rebels? To terrorists? To “terrorists?” One must simply ask: why would he need to comply with the demands of the international community? What pressures existed that would actually constrain Assad or extract any concessions, especially when Russia—one of the most powerful nations in the world and with the most centralized power structure at the top of any major world power—would just lie and claim “terrorists,” not at the Syrian military, were to blame for whatever atrocity Assad (or Russia) had perpetrated, or that the atrocity in question had not happened at all, as it has for years? Does anyone think rhetorical flourishes from the West, Turkey, and Arab League members would change anything? When Russia has vetoed seven different United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Assad regime, with Russia’s ground, naval, and air forces (along with Iran and Hezbollah and other Shiite militias) inside Syria energetically empowering Assad to operate knowing there would be no substantive consequences no matter what atrocity he committed—even if he killed hundreds of thousands of people with indiscriminate attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians, even if used outlawed chemical weapons to kill his own people—what on earth is left to compel Assad to even feel the need to negotiate, let alone stop his mass slaughter of civilians?

The sad answer in our real world as it exists today is clear: one thing, and one thing only…

Military force exerted by the United States of America. 

Especially with Russia operating in Syria supporting Assad, only the United States could lead any kind of military force to challenge the above status quo. Nothing else could give Assad pause or cause him to consider restraint. But the United States showed Assad that even with the Russian military there, his forces were not safe if President Trump, the U.S. Military’s Commander in Chief, decided to strike at him, which he did. And for all of Russia’s tough talk, its military and air force are far inferior in quality and numbers to their American counterparts, so the idea that Russia would risk a serious military confrontation with the United States over Syria is ludicrous because it would only result in devastating defeat at the hands of the United States with no chance of saving face and only a high cost as a result, much worse than any cost that could be inflicted on the U.S. After all, Putin is not stupid enough to engage in a nuclear war that would destroy both nations and likely the world over the likes of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, what was also demonstrated for the world to see how little Russian protection actually meant for Assad in the face of U.S. military might.

In this situation, there were two options: do nothing serious and allow a regime that has no interest, inclination, or reason in its mind to negotiate or concede anything to continue to kill anyone it pleases and destroy anything it wants anytime it pleases while facing no consequences, or the United States can hit back, send a message, and force Assad to bend to the will of the world by behaving less barbarically towards his own people or face serious consequences, from warning punitive strikes to major degradation of his armed forces to exile and/or the fall of his government.

And contrary to what you might hear, this can be good for mitigating the conflict overall. After all, as I wrote three years ago, the current dynamics are clear: with Assad and ISIS both waging war on the people of Syria, nothing will stop the flow of refugees that risk destabilizing Syria’s neighbors that include multiple major U.S. allies—a flow that has helped spur an explosion of right-wing insanity in both Europe (where Russia is “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to damage the EU) and America, a right wing insanity that feeds the rise of radical Islamic extremism even as the war in Syria does the same—unless the war stops and/or safe zones are established, as nothing will convince the more than five million Syrians who have fled Syria (and that number only counts those registered by the UN: Jordan alone is estimated to have around 800,000 unregistered Syrians, compared with only 633,000 registered ones; this doesn’t even get to the more than 6.3 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, inside Syria) to return home as long as an impudent Bashar al-Assad feels he can kill at whim and will while the world makes noise but ultimately shrugs its shoulders. These dynamics also feed the growth in violent Islamic extremism in a vicious feedback loop.

I hear and read too many “experts” present a false Sophie’s choice: either we let Assad win or ISIS wins/the war doesn’t end. Well, in case you’re missing it, ISIS is on the verge of having its “caliphate” destroyed—thanks to a slow but steady strategy of Obama’s that was clearly coming to penultimate fruition even before Trump was sworn in (a fact that won’t stop Trump from taking credit for it)—and history shows that non-intervention in brutal wars involving mass killings (e.g., Cambodia and Rwanda) can allow killing to continue unabated for a long time and can lead to genocide, while well-executed intervention (e.g., WWII, Bosnia, and Kosovo) stops or at least partially halts mass killing. 

Now, of course, there is a possibility that the intervention will fail or make things worse—a possibility exaggerated by the recent memory of Iraq, more of an aberration of Western intervention in its relative mass incompetence than the post-Cold War norm—but any attempt to solve any problem in life risks making that problem worse, so that possibility is, by itself, an illogical reason to not intervene, a total cop-out, and a path to inhuman nihilism.

As one man—Kassem Eid—who survived the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that nearly prompted Obama to attack Assad noted yesterday:

If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please, help us stay in our country… we don’t want to become refugees, we want to stay in our country, help us establish safe zones…please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities.

The United States and its allies are more than capable of doing just that, and if Trump’s action is not a one-off—and let’s be honest, this ego-driven narcissist with authoritarian, even fascistic tendencies has had his first real exercise of power and he will love it, not in the least because he has earned global praise for it (and only it), so it very likely will not be a one-off—the likelihood is more than not that this is all going to be mainly handled by professionals in the U.S. military, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis is no Donald Rumsfeld. As detestable and anti-refugee as Trump is, because of his decision, there is now a greater chance than at any time since 2013 for the much-needed establishment of safe-zones protected by the international community.

It will also teach Russia that its recent run giving the West the finger has not empowered it as much as it thinks actually and makes Russia even weaker, with Russia unable to prevent American intervention in Syria even with its military there and seeing its investment in expanding its power there destroyed, exposing its troops to risk while supporting a WMD-using thug and making it even more so one of the most hated countries in the world and especially hated by a Sunni Muslim population (most of Alawite/Shiite Assad’s victims are Sunni Muslims) with a tiny fringe more susceptible to violent radicalization than any other group at present, keeping in mind that Russia has an oppressed Sunni Muslim population that has produced a notable number of anti-Russian terrorists and terrorist incidents since Russia’s conflicts in the Russian republic of Chechnya, the Caucasus overall, and the country of Afghanistan before that). As I wrote before, Russia intervened from a position of desperation and weakness, and Russia’s weak hand has only improved marginally for all its efforts but has also saddled it with more responsibility.

Trump’s strike will certainly make Iran question the cost of its support of Assad along with helping to limit the expansion of Hezbollah’s power.

Also, as was I pointed out also back in 2013, there is still little risk to the U.S. and a high-probability of success in striking Assad’s air power, military bases, or heavy weapons, which are difficult or impossible to hide. Hezbollah, Assad, and ISIS have enough on their hands to devote much to any “response” to the U.S.

Finally—and again, I will repeat I thought Obama’s inaction (and the Republican-led Congress’s vocal lack of support) were a mistake in 2013—there is an important difference between now and 2013. Back then, as I noted above, Assad’s forces were being pushed back and U.S. intervention may have led to the toppling of his government, and this not long after the disillusionment of the experience of Libya’s post-NATO-intervention problems (although I still would say that the intervention was successful in saving many lives preventing a civil war from being prolonged, but more on that another time); no other major power had intervened in Syria and thus owned the conflict, to speak, and that was another solid argument Obama could have put out on the side of non-intervention, even if non-intervention was still the weaker overall argument. Today, Russia is heavily involved in Syria, far more than the U.S., and it is hard to imagine Putin simply pulling out and letting the situation devolve into chaos, a result that would be blamed in large part on Russia and that would hurt Putin’s prestige and his own credibility when it comes to Russia intervening anywhere. With another great power invested besides America, unlike in 2013, the idea that the toppling of Assad would result in anarchy and a terrorist safe haven is less of a likelihood, since now two great powers will be heavily invested in the outcome if the U.S. becomes more heavily involved and actions lead to Assad’s ouster or weakening.

If you let your justifiable hatred of Trump get in the way of your support of even someone like him doing more than anyone has yet to help the long-term situation of Syrian refugees—if you refuse to understand that these strikes may be the first step in creating paths for Syrians to safely return to Syrian soil—you care more about your personal feelings and personal politics than actually helping refugees at worse, or are incredibly myopic at best.

*****

Causes For Concern

Don’t get me wrong: there are things about this that worry me. 

I respect the U.S. military and Mattis and have faith in both of them, and it’s virtually impossible for a president to micromanage a major U.S. military operation without massive influence from his secretary of defense, and as awful as Trump is, at least in a situation like Syria today, I’d be more worried about a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld combination than a Trump-Pence-Mattis combination (though unquestionably Bush is better individually than Trump), and I think Mattis will impress Trump with his competence as any operations unfold and will gain more influence in this way. 

Having said that, I’m also scared about a Trump that gets a taste of military success, and am especially terrified with a North Korea now acting up when military aggression as a U.S. response on the Korean Peninsula would initiate a bloodbath that would make Bush’s Iraq invasion look mild in comparison, and especially so if Trump feels military adventurism is a preferred course when he is having a miserable time in domestic politics, which could lead to who knows what down the road.

I also worry that Trump being seen as the savior of Syrian refugees would make people forget about how awful his refugee and immigration policies are. I’m further worried that this will make people lose interest in his Russian scandals and make the Republican Party feel it will have cover again to obstruct and distract from the investigation after such actions (see the drama of Devin Nunes) had cost them. And I’m worried that this action may partly legitimize Trump and his dangerous program when, apart from this action, he and his program are not worthy of legitimization, only opposition and resistance.

So I will continue to vigorously oppose Trump and his agenda overall. But because I care passionately about human rights, stopping mass killing and genocide, and seeking a long-term situation for refugees and the Syrian Civil War, I will support his efforts to to go against Assad.

Political Considerations

But the move made a tremendous amount of sense for Trump and his administration for political reasons, and the chance Assad gave him to act was also something of a political gift from heaven.

For one thing, Trump has had a miserable first few months on the domestic front, without a single major accomplishment he could take credit for thus far and nearing the end of his 100 days, with self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound resulting in likely the worst first 100 days of any president.

In other words, Trump might be looking at no chance of a major accomplishment whatsoever during his first 100 days; a domestic accomplishment still seems a remote possibility, leaving only the realm of something dramatic in foreign policy, which before Assad’s chemical attack, and during a week in which his team had signaled acceptance of Assad’s rule over Syria, there had seemed few openings of this type either. Acting against Assad would credibly give Trump a big “win” at a time he desperately needs one and might even be his only chance for one.

Speaking of desperate, Trump’s approval-rating average had dipped below 40%, a historic low for so early in a presidency; this opportunity was one of the only ways on the horizon for Trump to be able to bring his poll numbers up anytime soon.

He was also about to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when his administration was a disgrace and after months of bashing China; Trump’s strike immediately allowed him to move from a position of humiliation to one where he could project power while hosting Xi, who expressed private empathy for Trump ordering the strikes even as China did not offer public support. It will be interesting to consider what effect if any this will have on North Korea and on America’s efforts to enlist Chinese aid in dealing with North Korea.

And, of course, the elephant in the room for the entirety of Trump’s presidency so far has been the Trump Campaign and Trump Administration’s deeply disturbing ties to Russia, Putin, Russian money, and Russian organized crime, including Russia’s obvious efforts to help Trump defeat Clinton in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar. Striking the Assad regime, Russia’s only true in-power ally outside of the states of the former Soviet Union, while Russia’s forces are actively engaged in supporting Assad has provided Trump with an excellent opportunity to take some of the heat off of him and his people as well as to demonstrate he is not beholden to or being controlled by the Russians amid hardly-purely-speculative accusations and suspicions be might be. In other words, Trump could go on offense in his weakest area, deflecting attention away from his biggest scandal—and possibly the biggest scandal in American history—and acting in a way that could reassure some of his less strident critics and give his supporters some much needed-assistance and cover to be able to, in turn, provide cover for him (though, substantively, nothing he has done here does anything to address the possible realities of past issues with ties to Russia, but perception is very powerful in politics and this move certainly affects perception in Trump’s favor).

In other worse, Trump personally had so much to gain and so little to lose with competently executed, limited strikes at this stage. 

In addition, at least some of Trump’s people must realize that the Democratic Party is still far less extreme that the Republican Party; unlike the Democrats, who said no to a takeover by the Bernie Sanders wing, the Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists for years, and, as I have noted, Democrats have been far more bi-partisan in their support of presidential foreign policy and national security than Republicans, so there was a good chance many Democrats would support this move in addition to Republicans and it seems that this is the case thus far.

Thus, politically, it was the best move Trump could have made with no other good options in sight. In some ways, it could even be called a no-brainer. If I were one of Trump’s political advisors, I would definitely have recommended this action.

*****

Apart from the political considerations, the far more important considerations involve the actual policy and substantive non-domestic-political considerations and the human lives affected by this strike. And as someone who truly hates Trump and sees him as the threat to democracy and the world order that he is, it is here that as a student of policy and a person who cares about saving lives and preserving international norms that it is easy for me to support this action enthusiastically, despite my misgivings for the man calling the shots behind it.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

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