The long-term political consequences of Mr. Putin

Regardless of how the Ukraine-Russia war ends, there would be, I believe, inevitably serious geopolitical consequences for Russia. And they would be due to the way that Mr. Putin had decided to initiate and to prosecute this war.

The first consequence that many people focus on is the long-term break in political and economic relations between Europe and Russia. This is indeed a big loss for both sides because through their different economic structures and resource endowments they are natural economic partners. Both parts of the Eurasian continent were gaining from economic collaboration. Theirs is not just a standard case of Ricardian comparative advantage but even more compelling case of Smithian absolute advantage because in the production of some primary goods Russia was absolutely more efficient than the European Union while on the other hand, in the industrial areas and in some forms of advanced technology (avionics, fast trains, pharmaceuticals), Europe possessed absolute advantage. A commerce based on gas and oil on one hand and industrial products on the other hand, would be, and was, mutually beneficial. That commerce will not be revived for any foreseeable future and surely not in the magnitudes which existed before the war.

The cultural proximity between Russia and Europe, which was in existence for at least three hundred years, will be much weaker. That would have a cost principally for Russia because it would exclude it from European intellectual developments. Russia is indeed a big country and it does have its own intellectual tradition but one cannot nowadays intellectually grow just by looking at what is happening in his own backyard. Russia has been, since at least Peter the Great, ideologically influenced by European intellectual fashions and mores, was always keen to learn, and then to apply it in a new and unique manner. This has produced writers, composers, philosophers, painters and scientists of worldwide caliber. The loss would be Europe’s too. Europe without Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Prokofiev and Mendeleev is not exactly the same Europe. And similarly other, new Dostoyevskys etc. would be less likely become known and to influence Europe because of the break-up in political, academic, cultural and sports (not the least important) relations. Here too both sides are losers.

However, I would tend not to overestimate the economic and political loss (to the difference of the intellectual) because while it is true that Russia aimed under Gorbachev and Yeltsin to become an integral part of Europe or to participate in what Gorbachev called a “single European home”, supposed to stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals and further, the idea always appealed more to Russians than to Europeans. Under Gorbachev, Europeans pretended to be excited with it, mostly to extract more concessions from the Soviet Union and please Gorbachev (as they are now trying to flatter Trump)—but just in order to reject the idea later.

The economic loss is also less than it seems because of the relative economic decline of Europe. Russia’s forced turn towards the East and the South may not be as detrimental for her economy as it would be if Asia were not becoming the center of global economic activity. Russia can have (and is already having) close economic collaboration not only with China but also with India, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia. In fact, within the China-India-Russia triangle, Russia has an advantage of having better relations with the other two partners than what they have with each other. This places Russia in a politically advantageous position. The forced reorientation towards the South and the East will not be therefore as onerous, as some critics of Putin’s policies believe.

The second loss is quite obvious and it has to do with the expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia. Before the war on Ukraine, Russia did not have on its borders any NATO country save for the countries that were surrounding the Kaliningrad exclave (the not-contiguous part of the Russian Federation) and a very small contact between Norway and Russia in the Arctic.* Moreover, Norway officially undertook never to station armed forces close to that border. That changed rather dramatically with the entry of Finland and Sweden in NATO and also by a much more Russophobic and belligerent role taken by the rest of Europe and Switzerland. The latter, in defiance to its traditional neutral posture (maintained scrupulously even in the Nazi-ruled Europe), has decided to seize official and private Russian assets. These frozen assets, including also assets seized elsewhere, amount to $600 billion (equal to almost a year of Pentagon’s expenses), and they are yet another big loss that will never be compensated. That money would be used as formal reparations for Ukraine, or most likely to pay Western companies investing in Ukraine or Western consultants advising Ukrainian government. One can imagine that large chunks of that money, nominally called “aid to Ukraine”, will end up in the pockets of London consulting firms.

If Russia had an independent prosecutor such a gratuitous waste of national treasure could be used as a very strong indictment of Putin for dereliction of duty, namely to have started the war precipitously without seriously considering the situation of Russian assets held abroad and to have through such negligence imparted serious losses to the welfare of the country. One does not begin a war while keeping all of one’s assets in enemy’s pockets. A more prudent political leader would not have allowed this to happen.

The third loss comes from the long-term effect of the war on the Ukrainian-Russian relations. It is quite clear that we are witnessing the war of Ukrainian independence and statehood and as such it would be celebrated as long as Ukraine exists; the same as happens with every country in similar situation. It will be shown in public songs, monuments, discussed extensively in laudatory styles in textbooks, books, or memoirs. The monuments would be erected on many squares, in villages, towns, and cities. Whoever has seen the number of monuments that exist in the Soviet Union to commemorate the Great Patriotic War should not be surprised that similar monuments may soon decorate many places in Ukraine. Streets would be named after the people who fell in this war; school, creches and national holidays will be celebrating the soldiers who died for Ukraine. The war will become (or already is) the definitional moment of Ukrainian statehood. Moreover, the war has exposed civilians for about two years to all kinds of mistreatment and abuse with aerial bombardments that make their ordinary life impossible. This will become a family lore where for years family members would tell each other how they escaped the bombing or how they spent two weeks without water or heat in the middle of a winter. (The same type of family lore that Putin is keen to tell others about his parents and brother during the siege of Leningrad.) These family stories would be propagated over generations and they would resonate with the hatred towards the invader. I often think how only three months of similar infrastructure-destroying NATO bombing of Serbia remains so strongly imprinted on the Serbian psyche. Bombing of Ukraine which in the duration is probably by now ten times as long cannot not have the proportionally greater effects on the Ukrainian attitude towards Russia. By this long-term hatred Mr. Putin will have achieved exactly what he originally claimed he wanted to prevent, namely that Ukraine should not become an anti-Russia. But in effect the results of this war unambiguously show that Ukraine, in whatever form it exists, will be an anti-Russia.

Some people believe that this hatred may not be permanent and might subside with passage of time. That is quite possible because the same intensity of hatred cannot be carried over many generations that have different experience. But as we see in today’s world (China vs Japan; Algeria vs France) such hatreds might even become more expansive with time. So we have to be cautious. An example of reduced enmity is the Franco-German reconciliation. Indeed the World War I was in terms of the victims much bloodier for both France and Germany than is the current war for Ukraine and Russia. But what one should not forget is that there were very strong intellectual connections between the French and German elites. French students and top intellectuals studied and admired German philosophy, modern art, literature; Germans likewise always had admiration for French intellectual and political genius. This is not exactly the case between Ukrainian and Russian elites. They latter does not particularly care about Ukrainian intellectual contributions and tends to despise Ukrainian language or works of art created in that language. On the other hand, Ukrainians who were before the war mostly Russophone would tend systematically to reduce the influence of Russian language (by among other things the burning of Russian-language books) and to replace it, as the current Zelensky administrations is in the process of trying, with English in the administrative functions. And the intellectual elite will gladly switch towards the West that is also is more intellectually challenging and interesting than Russia.

Another example of reconciliation one might think of is that between Vietnam and the United States. The Vietnam war was in innumerable ways much more brutal than the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Simply remembering the napalm bombing or intentional civilian targeting (to kill) of cities like Hanoi and Haiphong is enough. The reconciliation in this case comes from the fact that Vietnam has had a very high population growth so that in the past 50 years since the war ended there were three new generations. With fast population growth there are large differences in experience between different age groups and the original hatred associated with the older group may gradually dissipate. Additionally, recent Vietnam-US relationship is cooperative because they share the aim of checking the greater influence of China. This could happen theoretically in the future in the case of Russia and Ukraine if there was a power that would threaten both. The two would then be forced, despite their mutual distrust and complicated history, to collaborate, at least implicitly if not openly. While this is not impossible one does not see any such power on the horizon and consequently reconciliation seems less likely than it was in the case of Vietnam and the United States.

In conclusion, there were three big geopolitical losses inflicted by Mr. Putin on Russia. Economic, political and ideological loss of relations with Europe; reduced national security due to the presence of NATO on Russia’s borders and willful disregard of national treasure; and finally, the creation of a Ukraine that, by its very construction, will remain an anti-Russia for a very long time. While the war was justified by arguing that it would improve Russia’s geopolitical situation it achieved the opposite.

• I made a mistake there. After Baltic countries joined NATO in 2004, Estonia and Lithuania (and thus NATO) also bordered Russia.