A weak hand may not deter Russia from attacking

Border between Estonia and Russia in Narva

Wars start not because at least one side has a good plan for winning it but because at least one side feels a need to fight. This is something that Western analysts often don't understand, because they are fooled by the Powell doctrine.

The Powell doctrine has become an integral  part of Western strategic thinking, but applying it to Russia will just fail. That's bad, because without anything like the Powell doctrine keeping Russia in check war between NATO and Russia becomes much more probable than people usually think.

The Powell doctrine asks a few questions and tells a country to go to war only when the answer is a "Yes" to all questions.

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted? 

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the American people?

8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Thinking according to the Powell doctrine misled the West first in Ukraine and now in Syria. In Ukraine Russia could answer affirmatively only to the 1. and 7th questions. People in the West thought that an attack against Ukraine would be foolish, because Russia would suffer a major international backlash and because subjugating Ukraine would be very complicated. They were right and Russia is now stuck in a terrible mess.

Yet Russia still attacked Ukraine. It's unlikely that they were unable to foresee all the problems that later materialized in Ukraine and that the Western analysts were able to predict. Russians just didn't care about them. All holes in their plans were filled with wishful thinking and a belief that determination is the key to success.

Now Russia has entered the Syrian civil war. After initial dismay most Western analysts concluded that Russia is getting desperate and that Russia should be let to bleed dry in Syria. The Western analysis is correct, nothing good will come out of the intervention in Syria. Unfortunately this will make Russia even more dangerous.

The parallel universe

To understand why intervention in Syria makes Russia even more dangerous one must understand the parallel universe where the current Russian leadership lives. Russians think only great powers are truly independent and capable of free will. In the Russian mind Russia, China and United States are great powers while lesser states like Germany, Poland, Turkey or Estonia are just puppets, helpless subjects of Washington.

This doesn't make sense but things don't have to make sense to be believed in Moscow. Russians managed to convince themselves that in Ukraine they were actually fighting the Americans. Every time they killed a Ukrainian soldier they saw a dead American. Every time they destroyed a Ukrainian BTR they saw a destroyed American Humvee. That's the only way they could keep fighting that war in Ukraine and still sleep at night.

Most Americans would say that American presence in Syrian war is pretty limited and in addition to local actors Hezbollah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have a sizable and maybe even bigger presence. Yet Russians only see Americans every time they look at Assad's enemies in Syria. Russians even managed to convince themselves that Islamic State is an American creation.

On the 6th of October Russian ships on the Caspian sea launched a volley of Kalibr cruise missiles to Syria. Russian media was ecstatic and rejoiced that Americans were unable to see them: “We have found a breach in the American armor.” America might find it bizarre but Russians think they are fighting Americans in Syria.

The next war

Russians entered Syria when they got stuck in Ukraine and realized that war in Ukraine is no longer going to support the popularity of president Vladimir Putin. Intervention in Syria was meant to distract everybody from the mess in Ukraine. It won't take long until Russians are stuck in a mess in Syria as well. When this happens they will be looking for new targets.

A new target could be anywhere. After all, if they intervened in Syria Russians may just as well attack whomever. Yet there is a shortlist of most likely candidates. Georgia is pro western and weak, so doing something nasty to Georgia is very appealing to Russia. Belarus is weak, tries to resist Russian encroachment and has a strategic location in Eastern Europe.

A lot of people are really worried about a possible Russian attack against the Baltic states, because this means a war with NATO. I think people overestimate the danger of hybrid war in the Baltic states and for a conventional war Russia would need to control Belarus first, Yet it doesn't mean a Russian attack against the Baltic states is unlikely. Western analysts who think that are fooled by the Powell doctrine. Most wars don't start because they fit the demands of the Powell doctrine, they start, because one or both sides sees a strong political need to fight. The story of imperial Japan's attack against Pearl Harbor is in that respect very revealing and frightening.

Pearl Harbor

In 1941 Japan attacked the United States despite overwhelming odds against Japan.

How, in mid-1941, could Japan, militarily mired in China and seriously considering an opportunity for war with the Soviet Union, even think about yet another war, this one against a distant country with a 10-fold industrial superiority? The United States was not only stronger; it lay beyond Japan's military reach. The United States could out-produce Japan in every category of armaments as well as build weapons, such as long-range bombers, that Japan could not; and though Japan could fight a war in East Asia and the Western Pacific, it could not threaten the American homeland. In attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan elected to fight a geographically limited war against an enemy capable of waging a total war against the Japanese home islands themselves.

Japan attacked the US not because it had a good plan, but because they felt they had no alternative. US president Roosevelt had declared an oil embargo against Japan and demanded that Japan must retreat from Indochina and China.

Yet the embargo, far from deterring further Japanese aggression, prompted a Tokyo decision to invade Southeast Asia. By mid-1941 Japanese leaders believed that war with the United States was inevitable and that it was imperative to seize the Dutch East Indies, which offered a substitute for dependency on American oil. The attack on Pearl Harbor was essentially a flanking raid in support of the main event, which was the conquest of Malaya, Singapore, the Indies, and the Philippines.

There are more scary parallels with modern Russia.

Japan's decision for war rested on several assumptions, some realistic, others not. The first was that time was working against Japan--i.e., the longer they took to initiate war with the United States, the dimmer its prospects for success. The Japanese also assumed they had little chance of winning a protracted war with the United States but hoped they could force the Americans into a murderous, island-by-island slog across the Central and Southwestern Pacific that would eventually exhaust American will to fight on to total victory. The Japanese believed they were racially and spiritually superior to the Americans, whom they regarded as an effete, creature-comforted people divided by political factionalism and racial and class strife.

Now, does that sound similar? Does it sound like something you hear from Moscow? Does it sound like a belief that their back is against the wall but it doesn't matter because determination is all that matters?

What to look for?

So, once we are no longer looking for signs that Russia is ticking all the boxes of the Powell doctrine, what should we look for when we try to predict Russia's next move? Well, one thing we have seen both in Ukraine and Syria is that Putin really likes an element of surprise. He truly likes to see how everyone is trying to figure out what he's doing.

One way of surprising is starting a military campaign that simply seems to have no logic. Russians know that Western analysts think according to the Powell doctrine so starting a war that makes no sense according to that doctrine is a simple way of surprising the West. Unfortunately this means that an attack against the Baltic states is more likely than is usually thought.

To add to the element of surprise that attack would look weird, unconventional. If Western analysts are scratching their heads and thinking: "What are they doing? Nobody attacks like that" then Russians are satisfied. This probably means an attack with a small number of troops and at least some of them would be irregulars, just to confuse the situation.

Russia's plan in such a war would be to keep the West surprised and thus immobilized, while Russia adds more troops to the war theater and achieves her goals while the conflict turns more conventional with every day. Nuclear blackmail would play an important part in keeping the West paralyzed.

The most likely date for the new war would be next year during the traditional European fighting season from April to October. The most dangerous period would be in August and September before Russian parliamentary elections on September 18th. The land is dry in August and Western leaders are on vacation.

There are two more things that make the next year the most dangerous during this new cold war. Firstly, 2016 is the last year when Russia has money for such adventures, because by 2017 they are probably out of money. Secondly, 2016 is the last year of president Barack Obama, whom Putin despises. His perceived weakness will probably be an important part of the war plan.

What to do?

Russia's next step is impossible to predict because Russia seems to relish the idea of a surprise and can thus act very irrationally. Instead of predicting the West must prepare for all contingencies. This means strengthening all pro-western countries next to Russia with all means, including weapons.

The countries on the border themselves have a very important role to play. Russia expects them to wait for orders from Washington and thus the main goal of the Russian plan will be to jam Washington's decision making process while keeping their forces on the advance.

Baltic states are too weak to withstand a determined Russian attack but they are probably strong enough to deal with smaller threats. Surprising the West requires an attack with a small force that the Baltic states themselves could deal with. As I said, Russia doesn't think Baltic states are independent actors and thus doesn't plan for their independent action against Russian attack. So when the Baltic states would react immediately to the crisis with a determined push to get it under control without waiting for instructions from Washington or Brussels, then Russia would be surprised.

This article was originally published at my other blog.

Criticism of realism - Stephen M. Walt in Foreign Policy

Stephen M. Walt claimed in the Foreign Policy magazine that realists would have done a better job guiding American foreign policy than liberals or neoconservatives. He doesn't have any actual success stories to tell so he mostly criticizes decisions that were made and claims that adhering to realist theory of international relations would have produced better results. Criticising Walt's claims require playing a bit with alternative history just like he does but there's a helping hand - Walt's claims don't actually fit the realist theory. It's hard to understand how exactly does he derive his policy proposals from realist theory. To criticize him I use only some really core concepts of realism like the security dilemma, absence of trust and unpredictability of the future.

1. Walt claims:

"Second, had American leaders embraced the wisdom of realism, the United States would not have pushed NATO expansion in the 1990s or would have limited it to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Realists understood that great powers are especially sensitive to configurations of power on or near their borders, and thus experts such as George Kennan warned that NATO expansion would inevitably poison relations with Russia."

That claim doesn't fit with the idea of security dilemma. In short the security dilemma means that if another country has military capabilities near your country you never know weather that country will use them only for her defence or for attacking you. So to be on the safe side one has to increase one's own power even if it means that the other side will take it as a sign of a potential aggressive plans and will increase her military capabilities as well. The security dilemma is a vicious circle, because there is no trust among the countries and they can't predict the future.

The question is, why does Walt think that in 1992 Russia would have felt happy or secure in her new borders? Yes, NATO was very far from those borders but between Russia and NATO was a belt of nations, some of them, like Poland and Ukraine were big enough to be a danger for Russia herself in a theoretical future scenario, especially when allied with another strong state like China.

As soon as 1992 Russia again started to enlarge her influence by creating frozen conflicts in Georgia and Moldova and between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia tried to reintegrate several countries (most notably Belarus) to Russia to increase her power and to deny territory and resources to a potential enemy. Even without NATO's enlargement it made sense for Russia to increase her control over foreign territories.

Yet NATO's potential enlargement would also inevitably be on the table for Russia. Moscow could never really believe promises that NATO won't enlarge so it still would mean it would make sense for Russia to behave like NATO was enlarging. This is exactly what we see now in Ukraine, when Russia sees every example of military cooperation between NATO's nations and Ukraine as a sign of NATO's enlargement even when there is none.

On the other hand, consider the situation of Poland. In the 90s Poland was in a geopolitical dream, because she was independent, Germany was friendly and Poland was separated from Russia by Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Russia's attempts to enlarge her influence would inevitably be interpreted as hostile signs and Poland would try to stop them, thus entering into conflict with Russia.

Enlarging NATO to Poland would help little because realists themselves say that one should not put too much trust in allies. Without enlargement of NATO Poland would have been left alone and Warsaw would probably have supported every anti-Russian force in the world with weapons and money to balance Russia. A conflict over Ukraine would have been especially likely because Ukraine was and still is a divided country and almost anything could have produced a conflict.

All of this would have meant a deeply unstable Eastern Europe. It was only avoided by a strong US presence in Eastern Europe which calmed some of the fears in Poland and meant that Russia had to think twice before acting. Strong US presence helps to stabilize that region.

2. Walt wrote:

"Fourth, realists also warned that trying to “nation-build” in Afghanistan was a fool’s errand — especially after the invasion of Iraq allowed the Taliban to regroup — and correctly predicted that Obama’s 2009 “surge” was not going to work."

How exactly did the realists derive from their theory that nation-building in Afghanistan can't work? The difficulties of building states were obvious for most people but realist theory really says very little about nation-building. In fact, realist theory deliberately avoids such subjects.

3. Walt wrote:

"Finally, had Obama listened to his more realistic advisors (e.g., Robert Gates), he would not have helped topple Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, creating yet another failed state in the process."

People tend to overestimate the stability of dictatorships. Dictatorships often collapse, leaving chaos behind. I'm not saying that the Libyan intervention was successful but the alternative had a downside too, because ignoring Qaddafi's brutal suppression of the revolt or even helping him would have created serious image problems for the West. Walt is worried about American image in case of Israel but doesn't seem interested about how it would affect American image if America would no longer support democracy abroad.

4. Walt wrote:

"A realist would also have warned Obama not to say “Assad must go” or to draw a “red line” about the use of chemical weapons. Not because Bashar al-Assad should be defended or because chemical weapons are legitimate instruments of war, but because U.S. vital interests were not involved and it was clear from the beginning that Assad and his associates had little choice but to try to cling to power by any means necessary. For realists, the overriding task was to end the civil war quickly and with as little loss of life as possible, even if that required doing business with a brutal tyrant."

Walt seems to overestimate US influence in Syria. In fact other actors, mostly regional, are much more important in Syria. Jon Alterman, a former State Department official, had a bleak comment about actual US influence in Syria.“U.S. allies in the Middle East are increasingly acting independently because they think the United States is too passive,” he added. “The limited nature of the U.S. response leaves people too free to feel they can act with complete impunity and they act without regard to the United States because we’ve become like part of the furniture.”

Walt made in Syria the same mistake he made in Eastern Europe - he assumed that local powers are incapable of acting on their own and the only important actors are great powers like the US and Russia. The Syrian crisis shows just how wrong such attitude is.

Walt complains that realists don't get much attention among Washington's decision-makers. His own article explains that both the media and politicians in the US are right to keep ignoring them.

Size matters - how small states try to survive in a world of destructive black swan events

"Winter war" by Finnish Army personnel - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/finland/fi01_05a.jpg – The Library of Congress. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winter_war.jpg#/media/File:Winter_war.jpg

Nassim Nicolas Taleb's book "Black Swan" introduces the concept of a black swan event. This is an unlikely event that's almost impossible to predict and that has serious real life consequences. Collapse of the Soviet Union is a perfect example of a black swan, because no one saw it coming, but it had major effects on the world.

Black swans are all around us because we just can't predict a lot of things. This concept is also very useful to start this blog for explaining politics. Taleb himself doesn't write much about politics except a few condescending remarks about the inability of politicians and bureaucrats to accurately predict things.

It may be true that the state has difficulties predicting the cost and building time of unique projects like the Sydney opera house, but the state is in fact much better in predicting things like the cost of building schools, roads or the income from collecting taxes. The state doesn't need to predict the tax revenue from every company and individual, the ministry of finance just has to predict the aggregate income from taxes. If they do their work well lower tax revenue from one company will be offset by a higher tax revenue from another. In fact, well run states are remarkably good in predicting their tax revenues. Some countries tend to be too optimistic but this is not a prediction mistake but a deliberate fraud.

Size matters

In his latest book "Antifragile" Taleb has a few good words to say about city-states but again he doesn't go any deeper to explain why they are better than large centralized states. His fondness for city-states is a bit curious because these days we don't have a lot of independent, successful city-states. Singapore and Luxembourg would be probably the only ones who are genuinely independent and that could still be called city-states.

Why is that so? Well, we used to have more city-states but most others got conquered or are independent in name only. Big states may have a lot of weaknesses but they have on crucial strength - when you are big, you can build a big army and conquer your enemies, thus becoming even bigger, which allows to build an even bigger army and conquer some more. This cycle of states becoming ever bigger is checked only by other large states or when a state becomes so big that it becomes difficult to rule areas already conquered. This last problem is called imperial overstretch and to solve it large states try various solutions that give temporary fixes but create hidden weaknesses, thus making possible a sudden collapse of the state. This collapse will come as a surprise to almost everyone, being yet another black swan event.

Taleb writes mostly about individuals and corporations, because that's where most black swan events take place. States are much less vulnerable to black swan effects because they are bigger and have more power over their environment. An example of a black swan Taleb uses a lot is book sales. Some bestsellers make their authors very rich because they sell thousands of times more than most other books. A bestseller, for instance a Harry Potter book, is not a thousand times better than an average book. It's success is mostly a matter of luck, but author of such a book still becomes rich. Now imagine the state taking a look at all the people who buy a Harry Potter book. Does it matter for the state that Harry Potter books are selling really well? Do people chop down all trees to print Harry Potter books? No. Do people impoverish themselves to buy Harry Potter books? No. Is there an effect on state revenues? No, because if people would not buy Harry Potter books, they would be buying something else and the state would still get it's taxes. The fact that people buy Harry Potter books and nothing else just has no effect for the state. One bestseller will make a few people rich but compared to the income of the state all this is paltry.

States are much less vulnerable to black swans because compared to individuals or corporations they have more opportunities for influencing their environment. States can create regulations and monitor their implementation, states can levy taxes and use force to collect them, state can punish people and corporations with fines, imprisonments and liquidation (or capital punishment) and the state has the monopoly of legitimate violence, including the right to fight a war. Big states are also considerably bigger than even the largest corporations. All this gives the state more resources to avoid black swans or to mitigate their effects.

The American giant

Most people who write about politics or economy live in the US, so the United States is implicitly their country of reference when they think about the world. Yet this can mislead them because the United States has a lot of unique features, among them the biggest economy in the world.

For the last century the US has had only some major black swan events. Two of them, attacks on Pearl Harbour and Twin Towers came from outside.  The Great Depression and the Great Recession came from structural flaws in the US economy. Yet in most cases America had more control of her destiny than most other states. United States decided to fight a more aggressive war against Japan and Islamic terrorists than was necessary - Washington made a deliberate choice to be aggressive. In case of both economic crises Americans suffered badly but several other countries suffered much more. US was simply so big that it had more choices.

On the other hand during the last hundred years when the US has been world's largest economy it has been on the providing side of black swan events for many countries. Imagine you were an Iraqi in the summer of 2001 - would you have predicted that in two years George W. Bush will invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein? Probably not. In addition to starting several wars the US has been creating all kinds of other black swans for other countries. Economic disparities between the US and most other countries are reflected in the saying "when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold".

These black swan events have been less dramatic for Americans because the United States has so many more resources than most other countries. The US is unable to save everyone from the nasty effects of black swans but it has enough to shield the American people from them.

What about small countries?

If the size of the United States gives her enormous resources against black swan events, small and marginally located countries are much more vulnerable. Finland is a good example of this.

Finland become independent in 1917 when the Russian empire was imploding, which in itself was a black swan event. In early 30s Finland also suffered from the worldwide crisis but emerged from it faster than most nations. During the World War II Finland fought two wars against the Soviet Union, both of which were major black swan events. When the cold war ended Finland suffered a serious depression because the lucrative Soviet market collapsed. Then in 2008 the Great Recession hit Finland hard, In addition to the general crisis the important paper industry was in trouble because Internet was killing the newspapers and thus the world needed less Finnish paper. Nokia also collapsed at that time, also due to foreign competition.

One notices that a country like Finland gets a lot of black swan events from abroad. When Russia and the world market leave Finland alone she's able to combine high growth rate with social stability and a good quality of life. Notice how neighboring Sweden has experienced less black swan events because it is a bit bigger, closer to big markets in Western Europe and further away from harmful influences of Russia.

The Decline and Fall of Nokia

Now let's take a closer look at Nokia to understand the limits of small and marginally located states.

David J. Cord's book "The Decline and Fall of Nokia" leaves an impression that Nokia never really had a chance. In 2006 Nokia sold 35% of all the mobile phones in the world. It was tremendously important for Finland. In 2007 Nokia paid €1.3 billion in corporate taxes, and at their peak contributed 23 per cent of all corporate income taxes in Finland. Depending upon the year, they were also responsible for about a fifth of all exports from Finland.

Within a few years it was all gone. Nokia's weakness was their small presence in Northern America. Nokia initially didn't worry much about it because the Finns were kings in rest of the world. Unfortunately Northern America was technologically the most advanced part of the world so when Apple and Google got interested in mobile phones they took the business away from Nokia within a few years.

Nokia was ambitious, it wanted to produce both handsets and software. It failed. These days practically all software used in mobile phones is made in American companies, while non-American companies have the less lucrative job of making handsets.

Southern California has several advantages compared to Finland. It has a big population and a very strong tech sector, so they have the biggest concentration of tech talent in the world. US has a huge internal market where companies can grow before going global. Finland didn't have those benefits and it has an additional disadvantage - it is far away, dark, cold and therefore had difficulties attracting talent from abroad.

What to do?

So what will you do when you are a small and marginally located country like Finland that keeps getting big black swan events from abroad? Instability of small countries is often explained by their weak institutions but Finland already has some of the best institutions of the world so strengthening them won't help.

The answer is that a country like Finland will really like the European Union, because the EU will give her additional size and thus stability. To begin with the common market is really important for countries with a small internal market because it gives them secure access to a large market, but there is more to it. EU is increasingly becoming a political union because her member states increasingly need her size to achieve their goals. These goals are often associated with stability. For instance the EU in 2014 declared sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine (another black swan event). Russian president Vladimir Putin hoped that there would be no sanctions because the EU has 28 member states and they all had to agree to sanctions. Putin hoped that at least one country with close ties to Russia (like Finland) would block the sanctions. It didn't happen. Finland knew that sanctions will hurt Russian economy and thus also the Finnish economy but they still agreed with the sanctions because they didn't want to be the only ones in Europe who stood with Putin. Finland dreaded isolation more than economic harm. Finland wanted to make sure that when she needs the size of the EU all others would line behind her.

EU keeps getting more important because member states are increasingly confronted with problems they can't solve alone. It's not just the problem of small states. In 2015 Germany, the biggest, richest and most stable country in the EU had to ask help from others to cope with a sudden influx of refugees.

In these times of instability member states increasingly want problems to be solved on a European level. This creates a lot of stress for the EU. There are many who predict the EU's demise because those very public quarrels but this view is mistaken - the current troubles of the EU show her increasing importance for all member states. All EU's member states increasingly need EU's huge size to cope with black swan events.