Why ageing revolutionaries in Eastern Europe hate migrants, cyclists and vegetarians

Jaroslaw Kaczynski Photo: Piotr Drabik

Eastern Europe recently got a lot of bad press in the West because authoritarian and anti-liberal politicians won elections in one country after another and started rolling back the liberal political order, often with little opposition from the society. Then Donald Trump happened in the US and suddenly Eastern Europe doesn't look so bad. Yet it still needs an explanation why are we seeing such a backlash to a liberal, globalized world in Eastern Europe.

What we have here is a conflict between globalization and political transformation in Eastern Europe. After the Berlin Wall fell Eastern Europe experienced a transformation from communism to capitalism, from autocracy to democracy and from a closed society to an open society. The digital transformation also took place at the same time. Yet the most important transformation taking place in Eastern Europe now is one of globalization. The anti-liberal movement in Eastern Europe is mostly an anti-globalization movement.

The anticommunist revolutionaries in Eastern Europe probably didn't imagine that after communism their countries would become part of a globalized world. They often wanted to resurrect a pre-war conservative, agrarian society as they imagined it. This imagination was often very romanticized. Those revolutionaries also thought that their country should be a part of a wider Europe, but their understanding of that Europe was also very romanticized. Their knowledge of Western Europe often came from literature, like the Agatha Christie novels.

The post-communist reality came as a shock. The old, pre-war agrarian Eastern Europe didn't come back from the dead. The globalized, multicultural Western Europe also wasn't what the revolutionaries in Eastern Europe imagined it would be. Yet the revolutionaries, now in power, thought that they can strive to achieve Western level of prosperity without copying parts of their societies they didn't like. The revolutionaries said to their people that "we don't need to copy their every folly" and tried to forge a special path for their countries.

Yet over time weird things started happening in Eastern Europe. Young people started going to Africa to work as volunteers. One vegetarian restaurant was opened after another and they were followed by vegan restaurants. Young men started growing ridiculous looking beards and started cycling. Western follies started arriving to the East.

The aging revolutionaries started striking back. Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told the German newspaper Bild:

The previous government carried out a leftist programme there (in the public media). It was as if the world was according to a Marxist model which has to automatically develop in one direction only - a new mixture of cultures and races, a world made up of cyclists and vegetarians who only use renewable energy and fight all forms of religion.

Waszczykowski railed against cyclists and vegetarians because they were already in Poland. He and his friends consider it to be a foreign, non-Polish import that has to be stopped. It's a culture war between a conservative and a globalized world.

In this culture war the Eastern European conservatives get most of their inspiration from American conservatives. Much is talked about Vladimir Putin's Russia's attempts to influence Europe with his anti-globalization, anti-liberal initiatives, but Russia's actual influence isn't that great. US has managed to supplant Russia's intellectual position in Eastern Europe in only a few decades. Eastern Europe is still influenced by old conservative ideas like dislike of homosexuality or anti-Semitism, that stem from the communist or pre-war time, but even there one can find similar influential ideas that stem from the US.

In 2015. the refugee crisis made anti-globalization the main issue in Eastern Europe. This region has won a lot from opening up to the world but the scope of change is just too fast for too many. The anti-globalization crowd is often described as the people who didn't get a piece of the growing prosperity of Eastern Europe. That's only partly true. While some people did lost big during the transformation, most people in that part of Eastern Europe that is now part of the European Union have now a much higher standard of living than 30 years before. That is also true of pensioners and low income workers.

The biggest reason for this anti-globalization movement is the cognitive difficulty of understanding modern world. The people who are now 50+ in Eastern Europe grew up and got their education in a very different world. After the transition they had to learn how to get by in a capitalist democracy. They had to learn to use computers, to speak English and to acquire all kinds of skills needed to thrive in this new world. For a grown-up this was hard, but most people managed to do it sufficiently well.

Yet their societies, instead of slowing down, started changing even faster. Instead of laying back and enjoying what they had achieved these middle-aged people were forced to witness discussions about gay marriage and accepting foreign refugees. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for those discussions. It looked like big change in society and previous experience had shown that big change in society is often problematic and sometimes outright dangerous. Being suspicious and resisting change seems for them like a wise stance.

For young people it's very different. They were raised in a new world and often know very little about communism. Young people have difficulty understanding why their societies are so much more conservative than Western societies. The young are impatient to move on much faster so that their societies would not only be as rich as the West, but also as liberal as the West. Of course that also means bicycle lanes, vegetarian restaurants, craft beer, other cultures, renewable energy and gay marriage. For the young, the East must have everything that the West has.

Not all old people in Eastern Europe are not conservative and not all young people are liberal, but there is definitely a serious generational fight taking place in Eastern Europe right now. This conflict gets very little coverage in the West, which is a pity, because the existing analysis in the West too often turns to some old atavistic impulses to explain Victor Orban or Jarosław Kaczyński.

Seeing the current turmoil in Eastern Europe as a fight of generations also tells us how it will end. The young, who are liberal, will win. No matter what the conservatives say - there is no deep cultural tradition behind conservative ideas in Eastern Europe. It's just a reaction to the world that is changing too fast.

Baltic states are bigger than you think

"Small", "tiny" or even "minuscule" are the adjectives often used to describe the Baltic states separately or even all of them together. It's true that in most respects those adjectives are correct, but when it comes to military defence, Baltic states are much bigger than you think.

Are Baltic states defensible, analysts often asked prior to their NATO accession. Recently two studies, one from Sweden and the other from Finland, raised the same question and they didn't think the Baltic states can defend themselves and neither can NATO help them. Nevertheless, I think they are too pessimistic. 

There is one nightmare scenario frightening everyone -- Russia suddenly attacks all three Baltic states, swiftly suppresses resistance, establishes a land connection to its Kaliningrad enclave and takes defensive positions against Poland in Southern Lithuania and in the Baltic coast against NATO navies. This would present NATO with a fait accompli, allowing Moscow to start negotiations from a position of strength.  But how likely is this scenario?

So how big are the Baltic states?

Russia has to invade suddenly to have a chance. This presents a serious problem for Russia. It has long borders and thus has to keep a large part of its forces in the Far East and in the Caucasian mountains. Only a part of its forces can be in Western Russia. But due to its huge size even the forces in Western Russia have to travel a long road before reaching Baltic borders. Logistics will be a big issue for Russia.

On the other hand Baltic states are much bigger than any war theater where Russia has fought during the last 20 years. Russia fought two difficult wars in Chechnya, but Baltic states have a combined population that is 6 times bigger that that of Chechnya and a territory 10 times as large. South Ossetia has the population and territory of a larger Estonian county, no more.

Occupying a region of about 6 million (mostly hostile) people requires plenty of infantry. To have one soldier for 100 inhabitants requires 60 000 troops and this is just for keeping the territory under control. Russia probably could gather this army, but it will take time and it's impossible to do it discreetly. 

So Russia can attack only with troops in the vicinity of Baltic states. We are talking about some brigades here, the amount of infantry that Russians have at their disposal is limited, but they have attack helicopters, earth-to-earth missiles, artillery, etc. Russians have plenty of firepower to overpower Baltic armies in a desert fight, but not enough to effectively control Baltic states for the initial days or even weeks.

How the Baltic states intend to defend themselves

But Baltic states are anything, but deserts. In fact, Estonia and Latvia are very wet places, full of swampland and thick forests. There are only some major roads and they often pass through forests, severely limiting the maneuverability of Russian armor. But without armor Russians don't have anything. Lithuania has a more open terrain, but in Lithuania population centers are bigger.

So even if there would be no resistance, Russians could only establish a few bases in all three countries, while most of the countryside and even some large towns would remain outside Russian control because Russians just don't have enough infantry to properly occupy these countries. Troops to establish Russian presence in smaller towns and villages have to be transported from other parts of Russia or even mobilized and it may take several weeks until they arrive.  

Armies of the Baltic states are not very strong, the three countries have made little actual plans for mutual defence and their defense solutions are also different. For example, Latvia is not really planning serious defence of its territory, Latvian soldiers don't even have suitable uniforms for Latvian climate, but use desert uniforms that are meant for Afghanistan. Estonia on the other hand is preparing mostly for defending its territory and has kept conscription, to allow swift mobilisation of soldiers in case of war. Official numbers are somewhat exaggerated, but Estonia still has the capacity to mobilize some 10-15  000 men, maybe up to 20 000 men. Their training and motivation are better than that of Russians, but there may be a shortage of both modern weapons and ammunition. 

I'm now assuming that Russians win all battles, but I still claim that victory won't be easy. Baltic states are just too big to be invaded rapidly. Blowing up bridges, laying mines and making small ambushes will be enough to slow Russian advance and to inflict casualties. The shortest roads from the Russian border to Tallinn and Riga are about 200 kilometers, and as I said before, there are only a very limited number of roads Russians can use. This makes stalling and blocking their advance quite easy without ever winning a battle. Clearing minefields, removing obstacles and fighting the defenders while they do it may take several days even if Russians win all battles.

There is of course the possibility of sending an air-born or sea-born invading party to take control of strategically important places like government offices in Tallinn or Riga. Nevertheless, Russians still have to establish a land connection to the invading force because otherwise they may remain stuck and get wiped out by local troops. And taking over some government quarters in capitals don't give power over the countries because all three countries are covered with units of local paramilitary organizations Kaitseliit, Zemessardze and KASP. These are also different in all countries, but they do establish a certain military presence in all corners of the Baltic states, making occupation of Baltic states very complicated. 

So let's imagine that after the Russians have reached Tallinn and Riga Estonian and Latvian troops manage to stop Russians for a few days. Russians will soon need to get more ammunition and supplies from Russia and to send the wounded and dead back to Russia. But the supply line is 200 kilometers long and in hostile territory.

This is where the importance of the paramilitary forces really become obvious. They are usually considered an auxiliary force by most foreign analysts, but local military planners give them a much more important role, and recently in Estonia also more money and better weapons.

Kaitseliit in Estonia has a penchant for small unit, guerrilla warfare not because military commanders want it (they don't), but because this is what the volunteer fighters prefer. But having plenty of small units of local men who know each other, terrain and are well armed is not something a foreign commander wants in its rear. Paramilitary units have the potential of making resupplying of troops fighting near Tallinn or Riga a very complicated business. Russians have a very limited amount of roads they can use, there are plenty of forests for paramilitaries to hide and plenty of bridges Russians have to protect. And the defensive units become themselves targets for paramilitaries, so those units can't be too small. It's anybodies guess how many troops Russians would need to secure the 200 km road from Narva to Tallinn, but believe it or not, we are already talking about strategic depth here.

How fast will help arrive?

There are some pessimistic estimates about how fast NATO could send help to Baltic states. One month, maybe even three months are the guesses. But it's probably too pessimistic. It may take a month or more to send a big military unit to Baltic states, but the Baltics are mostly in need of a strong navy and plenty of air-power.

Sweden has promised to help the Baltic states in case of an attack and from Swedish airfields allied jets could engage the Russians in a matter of days, maybe even hours. The same goes for Swedish navy and German navy isn't that far either. If allied jets and ships would clear the sky and the sea from Russians, then that would be pretty much the end of the war. This would allow the resupplying the Baltic troops and there would be little need for land troops, except maybe for some tanks.

Poland in the south

Estonia intends to fiercely defend itself, but the most important battles will take place in Southern Lithuania. Russians need to establish a land corridor from Kaliningrad to Belarus and there is only one road in Southern Lithuania for it. They need to capture it. In the town of Mariampole this road from Kaliningrad to Belarus crosses the only road from the Baltic states to Poland. Therefore, Mariampole is  strategically the most important point in the Baltic states.

But Mariampole is quite close to Poland. There's little doubt that the Polish would come to the aid of the Baltic countries and they have the military capabilities that far exceed anything the Baltic states have. So Russians also have to find resources to take on Poland. And all that without getting caught before they attack.

Frankly, I don't see how Russia could swiftly occupy the Baltic states and present NATO with a fait accompli. Baltic states are just too big for it.

This article was originally posted at my other blog in 2011. 

So what if Russia can conquer a few roads in the Baltics within a few days?

Estonian army firing a Javelin anti-tank missile. Photo: mil.ee

Another bleak assessment of NATO's ability to protect the Baltic states from a Russian aggression was published today. Foreign Policy has a short version of it, Rand Corporation has published a longer one.

This analysis gets the basic geopolitics right. It assumes Belarus will remain neutral and thus an attack against Lithuania is unlikely. It also assumes Sweden will allow NATO to use her territory but won't get involved herself. Now the weak part.

What about Kaliningrad?

This analysis doesn't see Russia establishing a land corridor to the Kaliningrad enclave. Yet establishing that corridor would be a major goal of any Russian attack against the Baltic states. If this analysis saw that Russia can't establish that corridor then they have just established that Russia has a big unsolved problem when they think about attacking the Baltic states.

Russia inevitably has to think about Kaliningrad in such a scenario. What if NATO tries to conquer it? Or simply to bomb all the infrastructure in Kaliningrad to rubbish while defenders run out of ammo? And how will they solve the long term supply problem of Kaliningrad if Lithuania remains independent and hostile to Russia and NATO rules the Baltic sea?

Baltic states are bigger than 3 roads

Now, let's look more closely to what is Rand predicting. Rand's analysis assumes that Russian forces can get to the outskirts of Tallinn and Riga within 60 hours or faster. That's actually not very much. There are few major Latvian or Estonian city's on those roads. Large areas of Estonia and Latvia would remain effectively outside Russian control even then. I'm not talking about isolated villages but about cities with hospitals, factories, ports and even small international airports.

Estonia and Latvia have a combined territory of more than 100 000 km2. Rand doesn't specify how big those 22 Russian battalions are but let's assume they are 1000 men each. That's 22 000 men to control a territory of more than 100 000 km2 with more than 3 million people. There's no way Russians can establish anything similar to an occupation regime with such a small force even when there would be little resistance. Rand actually stops that analysis halfway because in addition to conquering the capitals Russians have to move 200 more kilometers to Ventspils and Liepaja, while they have 300 km of hostile territory to conquer between the roads that lead to Riga and Tallinn. Do you see on the map below the large unconquered territories in Southern Estonia and Western Latvia? Russia would need large additional forces to capture those territories.

Russian attack as seen by the Rand Corporation

Local conditions and defences

Rand criticizes the Estonian and Latvian battalions which are "extremely light, lack tactical mobility, and are poorly equipped for fighting against an armored opponent". So why haven't the Baltic states invested more in armor when they know they have to face heavily armored Russian army?

This is partly so because 10 years ago NATO told the Baltics to get rid of conscription and stop planning for a war against Russia that NATO considered impossible. Latvia and Lithuania did exactly that and now Latvia especially is militarily much weaker than the size of her population and GDP would allow. 

The other reason is that the Baltic states have developed armies meant to fight Russia in local terrain in local conditions. This means Baltic armies are not much worth in a fight in a Middle Eastern desert but on home terrain they are much stronger. 

Firstly, it's hard to understand why anyone would call them poorly equipped for fighting against an armored opponent. All Baltic armies have powerful anti-tank weapons: Estonia and Lithuania have Javelins, Latvia Spikes. Recent years have brought large additional purchases of powerful anti-tank weapons. 

What about limited mobility that led to destruction of whole units in that war game? The study notices that the terrain in the Baltic states is varied with open terrains, forests and wetlands. What they don't notice that the Baltic states are not a random patchwork of fields, forests and wetlands but that forests and wetlands tend to cluster in some areas, thus creating choke points where attacking armored units don't have much space to manoeuvre. 

One such choke point is in Eastern Virumaa where Russians can cross the Narva river only in a 10-km stretch of land north of Narva because to the south of Narva there are large wetlands on both sides of the river. The other is in Tartu, where two large lakes, a river, two large wetlands and a city create a large defensive barrier. Tallinn is bolstered to the east by a 200km belt of forests and swamps. In Latvia crossing the river Daugava would be a serious challenge. 

One should not forget that the Baltic states are not in a desert. Forest plays an important part in the defences of the countries. I have always seen Estonian army training defence either in forest or with their backs against forest. The logic is simple - armored units struggle in a forest so defenders can always simply escape to the security of the forest to avoid destruction. These local conditions have convinced the local commanders to prefer light infantry units with powerful anti-tank weapons over small armored units. 

Paramilitaries

All three Baltic states have paramilitary units. Western analysts often don't seem to understand why they are necessary, while Estonia is prioritizing them. NATO has almost no similar units to Estonian Kaitseliit but NATO know well a similar organization - Afghanistan's Taleban. Estonia's Kaitseliit has pretty much the same goal as Taleban - it is a force that is made to deny the opponent control of the territory. In fact Estonia has already done most of the things Rand advises in another policy paper on unconventional defense. 

Kaitseliit is a decentralized organization units of which are meant to function in isolation if necessary. Yet it has much better weaponry than Taleban ever had, for instance Kaitseliit is promised to get at least some Javelin missiles that Estonia recently bought. It is also meant to decentralize the question of war and peace. Rand's study questions whether the Baltic states should keep fighting after the initial Russian success. Yet in war the different units of Kaitseliit are meant to be almost independent of the central control so they will cease to fight when they want it, not when the government in Tallinn orders them. 

Conclusion

Rand's study is right to say that the balance of forces in the Baltic region is not in NATO's favour but I'm not sure if it's so clearly in Russia's favour as they say. Baltic states need support but they need advanced weapons more than large land units. If NATO can guarantee dominance in the air and in the Baltic sea that in itself would be an almost decisive advantage. Additional anti-aircraft and armored units would also help but I doubt if it actually takes 7 brigades to secure the Baltic states. 

Russia is indeed strong in the Baltic region but I'm not sure if it is right to call the current situation Russian superiority. It would be more correct to call it an absence of balance. We really have no idea of knowing how a war in the Baltic states would develop. 

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.