Insight
Will courting Putin always end in tears? by Ian Bond 3 March 2020
Putin is good at persuading Western leaders that bad relations with Russia are their fault. They should defend their interests better, but also keep talking to Russia. For most of the last 20 years, various Western leaders have tried and failed to establish mutually beneficial relations with Russia. Relations were worse when Tony Blair left office in 2007 than when he was the first Western leader to visit then acting President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg in March 2000. And they are even worse now, as Angela Merkel comes to the end of her time as Chancellor, than when she took power in 2005. European and American leaders have come and gone; the constant factor has been Putin. Putin is a master of gaslighting. He has persuaded many of his Western colleagues that bad relations are the fault of their predecessors (or of other Western leaders): they enlarged NATO and the EU, interfered in Russia’s neighbourhood (broadly defined), and did not respect Russia’s views on issues such as Western intervention in Libya. He ignores the tensions caused by Russia’s murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, its invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, and its repeated violations of international arms control treaties. The West is at risk of being taken in by Putin again. This year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC) saw French President Emmanuel Macron arguing that no-one in the West is prepared to be “brutal” and make Russia respect boundaries, so renewed strategic dialogue is the best alternative. And a group of former senior politicians, officials, think-tankers and military officers from Europe, Russia and the US published a 12-point plan for peace in Ukraine on the MSC website, without mentioning that there would have been no conflict there if Russia had not annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. Putin and his allies see Russia as a ‘besieged fortress’ (to use Lenin’s term), surrounded by enemies, and have responded with a twin-track approach. One track is strengthening Russia. In every year but one from 2000-2010, Russian GDP grew by more than 4 per cent; that enabled Putin to launch a major programme of military renewal, following a decade of neglect after the break-up of the Soviet Union. He has justified the increase in Russia’s military power as a response to NATO’s expansion. CER INSIGHT: Will courting Putin always end in tears? 3 March 2020
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