Putin's War on the West

How Ukraine became a battleground between Russia and NATO.

Vladimir Putin has presented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against the West. “Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations,” the Russian president complained. “Nothing can be further from the truth.” But Putin himself is no stranger to great power politics. Five American presidential administrations have dealt with this Russian adversary over the past few decades. 

Collapse of the Soviet Union

When Reagan was in the White House, Putin was a KGB officer in the then-Soviet Union. Stationed in Germany, he was trained to fight the US. With the collapse of the USSR, the Cold War came to an end. Reagan’s successor, President George H.W. Bush, declared the defeat of the Soviet Union to be a major triumph. He called it “a victory for democracy and freedom” and “for the moral force of our values.” From Putin’s perspective, this was a national humiliation. Putin regarded the West’s talk of human rights as a pretext for its own global hegemony. 

The new Czar

As Putin rose to the Russian presidency, he was determined to restore his country’s strength and empire. President Bill Clinton made a visit to Moscow, where he met the new Russian president. Clinton was skeptical of Putin. He felt the Russian leader was not serious about bringing democracy to the country. But despite his reservations, Clinton endorsed Putin. “I think he is fully capable of building a prosperous and strong Russia, while preserving freedom and pluralism and the rule of law,” the American president told the press in front of Putin. At the Kremlin, Putin consolidated autocratic powers. Nevertheless, the US continued to express optimism about the new Russian leader. George W. Bush came into the White House on the promise to restore relations with a post-Soviet Russia. Bush and Putin met at a summit in the former Soviet state of Slovenia. Putin attempted to ingratiate himself to President Bush by appealing to his Christian faith. The Russian leader shared an emotional story about how, after his dacha burned down, his mother’s cross was preserved. The two men bonded quite nicely. Bush described Putin as “straightforward” and “a man deeply committed to the best interests of his country.” In an oft-quoted statement, Bush expressed how he had seen Putin’s “soul,” and gotten a glimpse of who the Russian leader really was. Bush was impressed with what he saw, but that would not last very long. 

American Empire

Despite the initial warmth of the friendship, Putin’s Russia was alienated by the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in March of 2003. Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was quickly deposed in a sweeping American military intervention. Putin, being an autocrat himself, was very uncomfortable with Bush’s decision to spread democracy. This became known as the Bush Doctrine, or the Freedom Agenda. But to Putin, the Iraq War was an aggressive, muscular assertion of American dominance at the expense of all other powers. Putin was repulsed by the idea that the Americans would invade a country and depose leaders it did not agree with. For Putin, this was an unspoken challenge to his regime, which had its own disagreements with the West. In the wake of the Iraq War, popular democratic uprisings broke out across the world. Among them were the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. Putin was very skeptical. He assumed that the democratic movements were orchestrated by American intelligence services, for the purpose of maintaining American hegemony abroad. At a security conference in Munich, Putin vented his frustration to American leaders. He accused the US of overstepping its boundaries, and violating the sovereignty of other nations. From Putin’s point of view, America’s robust foreign policy was threatening and destabilizing to the international order. Putin’s opposition to the US-led world order went beyond his rhetoric. He began to arm Russia with long-range nuclear bombers. The Russians launched a devastating cyberattack against Estonia in 2007. It would be a turning point in US-Russian relations, as Putin grew increasingly restless and aggressively anti-Western. 

Bucharest Summit

Bush simply ignored Putin’s growing animosity to the West. In April of 2008, Bush encouraged the two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine, to join NATO. Putin rushed to Bucharest to confront Bush. He crashed the dinner of the NATO members. In a later meeting, Putin was adamant that Georgia and Ukraine were in the Russian sphere of influence. For Putin, it was a red line. Just four months later, the Russians poured tanks and armored vehicles into Georgia. Putin’s forces captured and held nearly 5,000 square miles of Georgian territory. It was an audacious display of brute force. By chance, Bush and Putin attended the Olympics in Beijing on the same day. The American president discreetly brought up the Georgian issue with Putin, but the Russian leader was far from receptive. President Bush was very discouraged by this turn of events. He recognized a palpable change in Putin’s policies. Despite this, the Bush administration did not seek to escalate any confrontation with Putin’s Russia. It gave the wrong message. To Putin, it showed that Russia could challenge the West’s hegemony without any consequences. 

Annexation of Crimea

Less than a year after invading Georgia, Putin spoke with the newly elected President Obama in a face-to-face meeting. The two men had very different personalities. Their friendship was visibly cold and aloof. Putin did not appear to respect Obama, and often monologued his grievances in an audacious way. So an irritated Obama handed over Russian affairs to his vice president Joe Biden. Biden approached the Russian question with deep skepticism and mistrust. He saw Putin as an authoritarian thug who was untrustworthy. He traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin. Putin was very argumentative, while Biden treated his Russian counterpart with much suspicion. Biden recounted his meeting in his autobiography Promise Me, Dad. “‘I’m looking into your eyes,’ I told him, smiling. ‘I don’t think you have a soul.’ He looked at me for a second and smiled back. ‘We understand each other,’ he said. And we did,” Biden wrote. The vice president spoke to a group of Russian students, urging them to expose government corruption and push for democracy. Putin took this as a threat. Later that year, protests were held right outside the Kremlin. Putin was taken aback by the tens of thousands of Russians who opposed his regime. He blamed the West, and cracked down fiercely. Russian police arrested hundreds, possibly thousands. Searches, arrests, and detentions became the norm. Opposition leaders were persecuted and harassed in the media. Many of Putin’s political opponents either fled or died in very suspicious circumstances. Some of these were thinly veiled assassinations. In 2014, Putin took a more audacious step than ever by invading Ukraine. Unmarked Russian troops poured into the Crimean region. It was the first military annexation of territory since World War Two. He opened a second front in Ukraine’s east. As had happened in Georgia, Putin calculated that the West would do nothing about Ukraine. The Obama White House was horrified and paralyzed. On the phone, Obama confronted Putin. The cunning Russian head of state simply denied the presence of any of his troops in Ukraine. But it was a bold-faced lie. Vice President Biden urged a tough response, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The Pentagon called for arming Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles. But Biden’s hawkish stance was rejected. Obama instead chose to impose sanctions. Obama felt that the Russian crisis was an unnecessary distraction. He did not want to get bogged down into it. 

Trump Era

Putin got even bolder. In 2016, he attempted to interfere in the US presidential election. Russian hackers broke into the computer servers of leading Democratic Party operatives. Hillary Clinton’s emails were leaked to the press. Fake users, automated bots, and targeted advertisements flooded Facebook and Google. The Russian efforts were designed to discredit Hillary and promote her rival Donald Trump. Trump campaigned on a promise to end the failed project of nation-building. The Republican front runner expressed his skepticism about the ability to export democracy to other countries. Much of Trump’s rhetoric resonated with Putin’s Russia. In an upset victory, Trump won the White House. Trump’s election was accompanied by an eruption of social upheaval and protest. America’s electoral system came under deep scrutiny. At a summit in Helsinki, Trump met with Putin. He became the fourth American president that the Russian autocrat would deal with. Putin quickly realized that The Donald was a totally unorthodox president. For two hours, without any aides or cameras, the two national leaders spoke privately. After the conference, Trump and Putin spoke to the press. Trump congratulated Putin for the World Cup. When asked point blank if he believed the Russian president over US intelligence agencies, President Trump reiterated Putin’s vehement denial of election interference. Trump got along very well with Putin. The two leaders were said by the media to have a bromance. Trump felt there were many points of agreement with Putin’s Russia. The American president called for an overhaul of the NATO alliance. He criticized Ukraine’s government for its corruption. Trump called for a rapprochement with Russia, and planned to continue his America First agenda into a second term. When Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Trump and his supporters fiercely contested the results. A riot broke out at the Capitol on January 6. America appeared more divided and weaker than ever. 

Invasion of Ukraine

Putin met with Biden at Geneva in July of 2021. The two men deeply distrusted each other. To Putin, Biden was an extremely weak president, who lacked the support of at least half the American populace. To Biden, Putin was a KGB revanchist with ambitions to re-establish a Russian empire. Biden’s primary objective was to deter an invasion of Ukraine. But Putin was determined to challenge Western hegemony in his most audacious move yet. Russian troops flooded around all three borders of Ukraine, those shared with Belarus, Russia, and Crimea. Biden invoked an emergency meeting. It became clear that Putin was planning an invasion. Despite Biden’s confrontations, Putin continued to deny any imminent aggression against Ukraine. In February of 2022, Putin made his bold decision to invade Ukraine. 190,000 Russians poured into Ukraine’s borders. To kick out the Russians, Biden supplied weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. Putin underestimated the strength of his own Russian army, and the resolve of Ukraine’s people. Undeterred, he doubled down. Troop numbers surged to 300,000. He threatened to completely cut off Europe’s gas and oil supply over the winter. Worst of all, the Russians raised the threat of nuclear weapons. Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is a massively significant development in international relations. It is part of a larger trend toward an increasingly multipolar order, which includes a resurrected Russian power in Eastern Europe. It is an audacious and dangerous challenge to the global hegemony of the Western democracies. Worst of all, the Russian invasion has reignited the hostilities between the Western and former Soviet Blocs, with the cataclysmic threat of nuclear war looming over all. 

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