Russia’s Options Before the War in Ukraine

“War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means”. This famous quote by General Clausewitz is one of the most important quotes in the history of political and military science. He accurately defines war as a tool of policymaking and, therefore, as a contextually embedded form of coordinated behaviour at the societal level. With the ongoing conflict in East Ukraine, we once more have a suitable example that illustrates what Clausewitz expressed some centuries ago. The Russian government had specific policy goals that they could no longer achieve through the application of other tools of statecraft. Therefore, another approach was resorted to, which, in this case, was to take direct military action by invading the Eastern and Northeastern parts of Ukraine. The layman may be irritated by this summary of the conflict that is, like all wars, often described in emotional terms. However, our perception and assessment of what is happening does not affect reality. In essence, the Russian government utilised this specific policy tool, named war, to achieve something that it was unable to accomplish without the use of war. This does not mean that the use of war was the only, or best, possible way to achieve its goal or goals objectively seen, but rather that the Russian government at that time perceived this to be so. In this analysis, I am challenging this perception, outlining a more efficient, and in the long run potentially more beneficial, foreign policy strategy that Russia could have adopted.

The Political context

The main argument in favour of the military intervention in East Ukraine brought forward by the government of Russia is that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (hereinafter: NATO) towards the Russian borders was perceived as a multi-layered security threat. As a military alliance, NATO members are legally bound to support fellow members militarily in case of foreign aggression towards a member state. Most importantly, however, the members of NATO are normatively congruent in their political systems approach and also share a common understanding of core social and legal policy principles, tying them together at the immaterial level. Born out of the context of the Cold War, which describes the period of little more than 40 years of bipolarism in the international state system, NATO embodied one side of this bipolar global order. The Warsaw Pact of the Soviet Union, led by Russia, posed the counterweight at the other end of the spectrum. For this analysis, the content of the ideological orientation is unimportant and even interchangeable with other contrasting positions. What is important, however, is that the consolidation of those ideologies in their core territories reached beyond the dissolution of the Soviet Union. To this day, the ideological differences persist, though adapted to the contemporary political and economic landscape. That being so, the political climate remained characterised by distrust and competing policy interests. With the NATO expansion to the East and Russia’s more defensive stance on foreign policy matters, has been perceived by Russia as a diplomatically offensive foreign policy. Among the measures taken by NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are the enlargement of this defence alliance by adding nations within the physical sphere of Russia, such as the Czech Republic (1999), Hungary (1999), Poland (1999), Bulgaria (2004), Estonia (2004), Latvia (2004), Romania (2004), Lithuania (2004), Slovakia (2004), Slovenia (2004), Albania (2009), Croatia (2009) and Montenegro (2017). Recently, North Macedonia (2020) and Finland (2023) joined, with Sweden being about to join NATO soon. With the expansion of member states, those nations also received significant sums in military budget and aid in military capacity-building.

The Goals

Surely, those nations, all being relatively small and weak nations, have an inherent interest in securing international survival, and with alliance partners, such as Türkiye, England, Italy, the United States of America (hereinafter USA) and Germany, their membership in NATO is a great success. On the other hand, the security aspect for those bigger members is relatively small from a mechanical perspective. Neither the Baltic nor the Balkan members can tilt the needle in favour of their allies in a war situation with generally equal partners. However, building military capacity through the transfer of knowledge and armament supplies does have a deterring effect. With no real other competing state in sight, Russia is the only political entity these enlargement rounds are direct political messages towards Russia. Translated from the diplomatic language, it means that the foreign policy goal of the core NATO states is to limit Russia’s international policy options. Having spillover effects on other policy realms, the strengthening of diplomatic ties, especially through such authoritative agreements, such as defence alliances, naturally also negatively affects trade relations and cultural exchange between nations. NATO’s enlargement is a classic example of an international isolation policy.

The policy actions outlined above are all results of non-devletist policymaking directed towards improving the power position of a political entity, NATO, towards another, Russia. Surely, Russia, also being a non-devletist state, has similar policy goals but it remained passive in improving its power position towards the NATO bloc. Supporting Syria during the Arab Spring and invading Georgia in 2008 were largely indirect and ineffective foreign policy moves. Also, the annexation of Crimea was rather limited in improving Russia’s international position, although giving it an important infrastructural addition by gaining the port of Sevastopol. Further, the annexation of Crimea sent a warning to the world that Russia would not shy away from physical contact. Putting it into context, Russia’s foreign policy agenda was rather characterised by securing a certain status quo internationally. It perceived the offensive expansion of NATO as a threat but was unwilling to actively push against it. Efforts to halt the expansion were mainly limited to diplomatic means and economic pushbacks. Sometimes, a combination of both was applied. Building strong infrastructural ties with Germany over the energy supply routes was one way of creating economic dependency to exert diplomatic influence on NATO through Germany. All of the policy actions indicated that Russia merely wanted NATO to stop moving its borders to the East and establishing military bases close to Russia, giving NATO significant intelligence advantages. Being isolated and limited by such a strong alliance, led by the ideologically imperialist USA, meant a constant threat of invasion and normative pressure on domestic politics. The invasion of Ukraine was ultimately triggered by renewed membership talks of Ukraine for NATO and the European Union. Having one of the largest borders with Russia, a tense socio-cultural history and a weak and corrupt political system, Ukraine’s alliance with ideologically opposed nations still poses great political and economic dangers to Russia. Warring with Ukraine means that those membership considerations are off the table for the duration of the conflict because if Ukraine suddenly becomes a NATO member, all member states would be obliged to attack Russia, triggering a devastating war. Russia, then being massively overwhelmed, would very likely resort to the use of nuclear weapons, which would ultimately lead to the collapse of the European continent. Russia’s policy goals, therefore, centred around stopping NATO expansion, and with the invasion of Ukraine, it achieved that and substituted this large-scale war with a smaller one.

Alternative Policymaking

Before the possible alternatives, that were available before the war in Ukraine started, are explained, it is important to underline that the war can be labelled as a successful policy course in the light of the outlined goals. Also, Russia’s economic capacity was very limited in the aftermath of the collapse of its former Soviet Union. It is no surprise that most of the NATO expansion came shortly after the dissolution of the former union and the Warsaw Pact. Weakened economically, politically and, most importantly, ideologically, Russia’s policy orientation lost much of its attraction. Additionally, the domestic political climate was characterised by uncertainty and a lack of morale after the turbulent 1990s. Beginning with the 2010s, however, Russia’s foreign policy could have been much more proactive in the socio-cultural realm. Knowing about its weakness, the ambition to reach parity on the military plane in a short time was unrealistic. Even if that was to be achieved, the mobilisation of domestic economic capacities was never serious enough to shoulder the pursuit of such ambitions. Diplomatically, Russia tended to display greater strength than was available. This is generally not a wrong approach but during the same time, its competitors leaped forward, leaving Russia glaringly behind. Therefore, the most effective and preventive approach would have been public diplomacy.

Public diplomacy is the term that nicely depicts the exertion of influence on the population of foreign nations. It can also be called shaping of public opinion or propaganda. In short, Russia should have tried to do to Europeans what the USA successfully did over the past three decades. North American cultural goods, such as movies, music and social media, penetrated Europe in a fashion that even domestic problems found their way into the European public. For example, Europeans protested against violently acting police forces and discrimination against black people as a response to domestic developments in the USA. The public diplomacy efforts by the USA, primarily through media, are so effective that the socio-cultural proximity is increasing by the day. Especially as the English language based on North American slang is established in various European nations, a common normative understanding emerges. Russia could have adopted the same approach. Using Germany as a suitable entry point to the heart of the European society, Russia could have targeted the German population by firstly strengthening the prestige of Russian expats there. Rough and probably outdated estimates from 2018 show that there are more than 3,5 million Russian-speakers in Germany. Investing in strengthening their visibility in media and pop-culture would have increased the popularity of Russians and steadily created climate of positive connotation around Russia. The same could have been applied to other European and North American nations. Institution-building to keep Russians connected and organised in those nations would have helped to coordinate their public appearance in the media. By doing so, a better understanding of Russian culture would have developed, as well as a positive trend towards the nation. Within this positive climate, politics could have picked up more official channels to place the cultural goods of Russia in Europe. It would have been necessary to also underline clearly through structural communication that this was not to infiltrate the European culture, just like the North Americans.

Another important pillar of reducing fraction with NATO members could have been bolstering the national image of Russia from within to utilise it for extracting concessions diplomatically. One of the major points Europeans have regarding Russia is its illicit policymaking regime. Historically, Europeans are very limited in their capacity to understand that cultural differences exist and that those differences are also displayed in the respective political system. Even more so, are they limited in understanding that other political systems and people are not inferior to the European ones. Knowing that, this limited perspective can be exploited to shape public opinion by displaying those features of political and economic policymaking, Europeans, including neo-Europeans from North America, want to see. Dismantling the oligarchy accusations by increased transparency and the emphasis on welfare measures to underline social justice are just some examples. It does not mean that Russia was to change its politics to the taste of the Europeans but rather that the critical points needed to be structured in a way that the negative narrative had no grip on Russia. Coupled with efforts to redirect the dialogue towards Europe, Russia could have avoided constant scapegoating and established a superior normative position. China, for example, is a great example of the success of this approach. For one, China pushed its economy through rough auditing over the last couple of years, eliminating grave corporate governance problems. In terms of dialogue, China ignored negative offensives and positively responded to friendly diplomatic efforts. Also, China proactively reaches out to many nations, supporting them infrastructurally. Due to lacking funds, this capital-intensive approach is not suitable for a weak post-Soviet Russia. However, the public diplomacy approach that emphasises the targeting of the European society, rather than the industry, was much more promising.

Conclusion

In hindsight, everything is easy to analyse. Moreover, the general public lacks crucial but classified information on the drivers of this conflict. Therefore, the analysis above is bound to its informational limits. Further, we must acknowledge that the invasion of Ukraine did successfully bring Russia closer to its policy goal of stopping NATO expansion and retaining room for foreign policy. However, the question of the sustainability of this situation will inevitably arise as the conflict continues. The European nations are currently on bad terms with Russia. Surely, this can change in the future but considering the historic context of those two actors, truly cooperative relations are rather unlikely. Russia, therefore, could have exploited the societal weaknesses of the Europeans. Their belief in superiority and leniency to follow cultural trends are perfect preconditions for large-scale public diplomacy efforts. It would have created an environment of productive diplomatic relations and increased possibilities to place Russian interests in the European societal discourse. Surely, this approach is also connected with risks. What if the response to those efforts is not as effective as hoped? What if the North Americans still outpaced the Russians in winning the European minds? What if the improved diplomatic climate was merely superficial? Well, then Ukraine could have still been invaded.