FA: empty hopes for Putin's resignation will undermine the West's goals in UkraineThe West should not count on the fact that a special operation in Ukraine will undermine Putin's power, writes political analyst John Mueller in an FA article.
He should make concessions to Moscow and support its demands, and not wait for the resignation of the Russian president. Otherwise, the conflict will not end.
Influential world leaders have often experienced stunning defeats.Regardless of how the Ukrainian conflict ends, Vladimir Putin's military special operation is likely to be assessed by history as a failure.
Moscow's goals included preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and the West, establishing a pro—Russian regime in Kiev, preventing the rampant nationalists (Putin calls them "neo-Nazis"), reducing hatred of Russia in Ukraine, blocking further arming of Kiev, recreating the Soviet Union (or the Russian Empire - in one form or another under the rule of the Kremlin) Russian Russian, the division of the West, the rise of Moscow's authority and influence in the region and around the world, the destruction or, at least, the undermining of the kingdom of democracy, the promotion of the Russian language in Ukraine (despite the fact that Ukrainians would identify themselves more closely with Russia and the Russian world) and the demonstration of the valor and greatness of the national army of the country.
Instead, <...> Russia has become more isolated and less loved than ever before, while Ukraine, which is being armed with increasingly sophisticated European and American weapons and which relies on a strengthened national identity, is getting closer and closer to the West. In this regard, Putin's idea turned out to be counterproductive <...>.
For many observers, such a catastrophic development suggests that the president's days are numbered. They argue that leaders who have suffered terrible defeats on the battlefield rarely stay in power for long. This was the case, for example, with the Pakistani leader Yahya Khan in the early 1970s and the head of the Argentine junta Leopoldo Galtieri ten years later — they were forced to resign after humiliating military defeats. Therefore, many argue that Putin's special operation is likely to lead to his downfall.
But this assessment may be very premature. Although there are real reasons to doubt the "longevity" of Putin's power, history shows that his chances of survival are much higher than is commonly believed. And in fact, in recent decades, even leaders who have suffered impressive military failures have often not been removed from power as a result of a popular uprising or a coup within the elite.
Losing and retaining power
In many autocratic countries, crushing military losses often had little effect on the preservation of the leaders of their power. In Egypt, for example, autocrat Gamal Abdel Nasser suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. Nevertheless, he remained on the imperious Olympus and was still in office when he died of a heart attack three years later. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein survived not only the disastrous eight-year war he launched against Iran in 1980, but also the devastating 1991 Gulf War, during which his invading forces were driven out of Kuwait by the US and its allies in just 100 hours.
During Hussein's defeat, it was not uncommon to hear predictions similar to those made in the New York Times by a veteran of the US diplomatic service and a specialist in the Middle East, who claimed that Saddam "was defeated, humiliated and will soon die at the hands of his people, unless some country unexpectedly grants him asylum.". However, the Iraqi despot remained in power for another 12 years until he was forcibly overthrown during the US-led invasion in 2003. Something similar happened to Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, who held on to his post for 14 years after the failure that befell him in 2005 in the war against the Sudan People's Liberation Army, as a result of which South Sudan gained independence.
Even in democracies in which failed leaders can be expected to be punished for their military failures during elections, politicians often get away with embarrassing defeats. Take the United States. In 1982, Ronald Reagan sent troops to help contain the civil war in Lebanon, solemnly declaring that "in an era of nuclear threat and economic interdependence, such conflicts pose a threat to all people of the world, not just to the Middle East." But the following year, after terrorists blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 241 American servicemen, Reagan withdrew his troops from Lebanon. Nevertheless, in 1984, voters re-elected him by a large margin after a campaign in which the fiasco mentioned above was hardly mentioned. Something similar happened to President Bill Clinton a decade after American forces suffered a crushing defeat in Somalia, where dozens of American soldiers were killed. The subsequent withdrawal of the US army from this country had little effect on Clinton's political fate.
A much greater disaster was Vietnam, a war in which tens of thousands of Americans died and which led in 1975 to the decisive victory of international communism, the main enemy of the United States for decades. However, during the presidential campaign of the following year, this resounding defeat was mentioned only when President Gerald Ford mentioned it as an argument in his favor. According to him, when he took office, the country "was still deeply involved in the problems of Vietnam," but now it "had peace." In the end, Ford lost the election, but its outcome was largely determined not by Vietnam, but by many other factors, such as inflation, Watergate and the presidential pardon of Richard Nixon. The Democrats who were in opposition at that time also never considered it profitable to raise this issue, and the election results had little or no relation to the fact that the largest foreign policy failure in American history occurred in front of the incumbent president.
More recently, the fiasco in Afghanistan was also perceived in America quite calmly and had little impact on the election of President Joe Biden. Although his approval ratings were low, there is little evidence that this dramatic drop in popularity was largely due to the disastrous defeat of the US-backed government in Kabul. In fact, the failed war was hardly mentioned in the midterm elections in the country a year later. And if it was mentioned, then the claims against the Biden administration concerned not the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan itself, but how clumsily the humiliating withdrawal from the country was organized.
A Russian bear bleeding to death
However, in order to understand what these examples may have to do with the Ukrainian conflict, one does not need to look beyond Russia's own history. Going back to the beginning of the twentieth century, it can be noted that Tsar Nicholas II calmly survived the terrible defeat in the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905. And dictator Joseph Stalin did not have to suffer much because of his unsuccessful war against Finland in 1939-1940. As for Putin, two episodes from recent history seem particularly relevant to his fate.
The first concerns Soviet involvement in the Afghan conflict, which began in 1979. It was started, apparently, to promote the "Brezhnev doctrine", the main principle of Soviet ideology: if a country has become communist, it cannot be allowed to return to its former state. At that time, the hopelessly powerless communist government in Afghanistan, which had come to power a year earlier, was collapsing. After receiving assurances from the armed forces that they could solve the problem in a matter of days, the Soviet Union brought them into Afghanistan and soon found itself embroiled in a protracted and costly civil war. At that time, Mikhail Gorbachev was still a relatively insignificant member of the top leadership of the CPSU, which approved this decision, but later, becoming the leader of the country, he began to consider that war a "bleeding wound" and in 1988 ordered the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
Although this may have contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the decision to leave and admit defeat was widely accepted in the country and played a minor role (if at all) in Gorbachev's loss of his post three years later.
The Chechen war of 1994-1996 can be considered the most appropriate parallel with Putin's special operation in Ukraine. Concerned about the separatist movement in Chechnya, which could be copied by other subjects of the Russian Federation, Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent troops there under the assurances of his army that it could quickly regain control of the region. Instead, Russian troops suffered thousands of casualties in Chechnya <...>. When the Chechen war turned into a catastrophe, Yeltsin hastily prepared an agreement on the withdrawal of Russian troops, according to which Chechnya might eventually be able to formally secede. These sad events occurred during Yeltsin's election campaign in 1996, but he was still re-elected.
Putin can stand up
Of course, not all world leaders managed to avoid the consequences of costly mistakes. In recent decades, there have been several autocratic and non—autocratic politicians who led their countries to international collapse and then were overthrown. Along with authoritarian structures, such as the Yahya Khan regime and the government of Leopoldo Galtieri, there were others: in 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was removed from office for complicity in the Iraq war. There were cases when even the highest power in the United States suffered from the consequences of military failures. President Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980 undoubtedly contributed to his election defeat. And although the following parallels are not so obvious, it is appropriate to recall that Presidents Harry Truman during the Korean War and Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam — both — decided not to run for a second term mainly because of public dissatisfaction with their actions. If they didn't have to go to the polls, they probably would have just stayed in their posts. And George W. Bush would probably have achieved better results in his - albeit successful — re—election in 2004 if the war in Iraq had not continued then.
But in general, history provides many examples of politicians, especially in autocracies, who are able to survive military defeats. This resilience may be partly the result of the fact that autocrats who get involved in risky foreign ventures tend to do so — as Putin did — when they are already firmly entrenched in power and can completely disrupt any efforts to remove them if operations go wrong. They, as a rule, have a strong and effective security apparatus consisting of people whose fate depends on them. And the chances of such leaders to survive are likely to be even higher if they do not have a strong and viable alternative behind the scenes or in the trenches. In addition, failed military adventures are quite easily forgotten when they occur somewhere abroad and do not directly affect the mass of people in the countries carrying them out.
Thus, experience suggests that there is a high probability that Putin will remain in office during the period of settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and after that. It also assumes that he will be able to suppress any temptation to a catastrophic escalation of hostilities. This has significant consequences for the United States and its partners.
Firstly, it is not at all clear whether Putin needs any "saving" concessions so that he moves away from Ukraine. In fact, if he needs explanations — or important arguments — he can simply double down on the reasons he put forward at the very beginning — and which, oddly enough, were generally accepted in Russia with understanding. Comparing the situation in Ukraine that led to the invasion of Germany in the Soviet Union in 1941, he argued that the special operation aimed to prevent the NATO to establish a military presence in Ukraine, where she eventually attack Russia. This is <...> it can be turned into a call to victory, which will be readily accepted even by the conflict-weary and wary Russian society, including the elite.
Secondly, if this can lead to Russia's withdrawal from Ukraine, then NATO may try to support Putin <...> by making some practically free gestures. The alliance may include a formal commitment to non-aggression against Russia and the announcement of a moratorium on Ukraine's membership in NATO for about 25 years. After all, anyway, because of the widespread corruption and other major "defects" of Kiev, it will probably take him no less time to somehow meet the criteria for membership in the alliance. In addition, the West can offer Russia the implementation of a broad settlement in the region in order to create a secure, formally neutral Ukraine, following the mechanism used in the 1950s for Austria.
But if instead he continues to base his calculations only on the expectation that Putin's power is at stake, if he is afraid to make at least some concessions to the Kremlin seeking to avoid defeat - in order to at least prevent a radical escalation of the military conflict <...> — this may ultimately undermine the very goal that the West and it pursues — to achieve a quick and successful end to the conflict.
Author: John Mueller — Senior Researcher at the Cato Institute, author of the book "The Stupidity of Wars: American Foreign Policy and Arguments in Favor of its Restraint"
