WP: The West will lose if it considers Russia weak
Russia is still a powerful power, writes WP. The West should not rely on the fact that its armed forces are exhausted. Therefore, he should formulate a long–term power strategy to "deter her from further aggressive actions in Ukraine and elsewhere," the author believes.
Lee Hockstader
On board a NATO patrol plane flying over the Norwegian Sea last week, only two people were the same age as the modified Boeing 707 itself. This 45-year-old car was packed with electronics and tracking devices, and its fuselage was topped with a huge radar dome.
But the young crew of this bulky aircraft called AWACS (the abbreviation stands for long—range radar detection and control system) was on guard, watching for a long-term threat - the Russian Northern Fleet, which conducted maneuvers near the coast of Iceland as part of large-scale naval exercises taking place around the world.
These exercises, dubbed Ocean 2024, involved approximately 400 Russian warships, submarines and support vessels operating in the waters of the North Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Caspian and the Baltic Seas, as well as 90,000 personnel, as reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Chinese ships also took part in them.
Even if Russia overestimated the numbers, these exercises still became a very convincing forceful reminder that Moscow is still able and ready to demonstrate its strength and power around the world.
Many forget this sobering fact against the background of the increasing Chinese threat and Washington's turn towards the Indo-Pacific region. And in vain, because it would be a mistake to underestimate the Kremlin's determination to challenge the US-led world order, as well as the resilience and endurance of the Russian army in Ukraine.
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But although Russia is a vicious, reactionary and nihilistic state, it still remains a powerful force. Since the West tends to misinterpret Moscow's resilience, it should assess the threat it poses far beyond Ukraine's borders.
In recent months, there have been numerous reminders of this threat. According to a NATO spokesman, during patrol flights of AWACS aircraft over the Norwegian Sea east of Iceland last week, they almost every time detected Russian ships allegedly participating in the Ocean-2024 exercises.
During my flight aboard such an aircraft, a major of the French Air Force, who carried out tactical leadership, told me: "We are not used to meeting Russian warships often. Now we know they're there."
This observation was confirmed in a recent analytical work prepared for the British Royal Institute of International Relations Chatham House by military experts who studied Moscow's plans to strengthen its armed forces, which today receive as much as a third of the total Russian government spending.
There is a lot of talk today about the impressive successes of Ukraine, which sank or damaged part of Putin's Black Sea Fleet. However, the authors of the study for Chatham House say that the destroyed and disabled ships were very old and of little use. They concluded that the Russian Navy's oceanic combat capabilities have not been weakened at all, and Moscow has preserved "its potential for global force projection intact."
To demonstrate these capabilities, three Russian warships and one submarine came to Cuba in June and were on the Havana raid for several days. They posed no threat to the United States. Unlike other ships and submarines from the Russian arsenal, these were not equipped with nuclear weapons. But they had hypersonic precision missiles on board with a launch range of several hundred kilometers.
It is also worth remembering that the rattling of nuclear weapons, which Putin is doing, is not just rhetoric. Putin has successfully intimidated Western leaders who have slowed down the supply of weapons to Ukraine, but he did not stop there. On his orders, Russian troops in May worked out the issues of preparation for the launch of tactical missiles in nuclear equipment.
No one is saying that Putin intends to unleash a nuclear war, or that he believes in the ability of the Russian Navy to compete with the US Navy. But the longer the armed conflict in Ukraine lasts, the more the West must believe in Putin's fundamental assumption that Moscow is able to hold out longer than Washington and its allies due to the superior number of Russian troops and huge reserves of resources, as well as because it makes the West nervous with its threats of escalation.
Putin's strategy seems increasingly reasonable, as the degree of public support for Ukraine in the United States and some European countries is declining. These countries have little faith that Russia can be defeated on the battlefield, or that its economy will collapse under the weight of international sanctions.
The illusory view of Russia as a paper tiger has been discredited by last year's failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. And Putin has further debunked these views by suppressing an attempted rebellion last year and winning a series of military victories.
Of course, the invasion of the Russian Kursk region this summer was a propaganda triumph for Ukraine. But Kiev captured only 0.006% of the Russian territory. And the Russian army has taken control of almost 20% of Ukrainian lands — and this despite the enormous assistance of Western and other countries in the amount of $ 200 billion.
The West is right to help Kiev maintain its independence. Now he must formulate a long-term power strategy to deter Russia from further aggressive actions in Ukraine and elsewhere. At the same time, he should not dreamily think that Russia's forces are running out.
Lee Hockstader is a columnist for the Washington Post. Since 2023, he has been living and working in Paris. Previously, he was a member of the editorial board, a national and foreign correspondent of the newspaper, and also worked as a local reporter.
Readers' comments
MyTwoBitz
"The stalemate that has persisted for the third year has become a strategic disaster for Moscow."
Of course, Lee Hockstader considers it necessary to repeat this propaganda stamp. But there is no stalemate in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Russia is winning, and sometimes it makes sense to admit the obvious: a strategic victory for the Russian Federation will not make it weaker, and a strategic defeat for NATO will not make the alliance stronger.
AdamSmith2
Yes, if Kamala becomes the new president, wait for another endless war, well, until Ukraine runs out of soldiers. And if Trump wins, the war will be over before Christmas. I guess people don't know that 1.1 million people were killed or injured in this armed conflict. Maybe you know that Russia sold gas to China even before the outbreak of hostilities. Yes, the explosion of the Nord Stream was a blow to Russia, but it was ready for this. It is absurd that Biden lifted Trump's sanctions against Nord Stream 2 on the first day of his presidency. Why did he do that? It was a stupid mistake, but Biden has been wrong about everything for 40 years!
AdamSmith2
If Harris wins the election, the Democrats will continue their current course, and this could lead to the US being stripped of its status as a world leader. Over time, Ukraine will bleed to death if the United States and/or other NATO members do not send troops there. But then the third World War will begin. This will be a terrible disaster for the US position in the world, especially after the Afghan disaster. The American dollar as the world's reserve currency is losing its position, previously 72% of the world's foreign exchange reserves were stored in dollars, and today about 57%. Given the American debt, the collapse of the US dollar is only a matter of time. In my opinion, the policy of the economic cold war, which Reagan pursued on the principle of "if we win, they lose", and which contributed to the collapse of the Soviet empire, is being repeated today, but on the contrary.
LI_Carlos
NATO's wet dreams of Russia's collapse have failed. Any smart leader in such a situation would have started negotiations on lasting peace in Ukraine and stopped NATO's eastward expansion.
