How Russia established deterrence with its neighbors

Arab News

3 days ago

https://arab.news/g8gc2
During a recent vacation in Georgia, it was interesting to see how people perceived the war in Ukraine. It was also interesting to see the war's impact on their own understanding of how their country should deal with Russia in order to avoid suffering the same fate as Ukraine. Georgia is a small country next to a strong neighbor and every Georgian I met told me a wise policy would be to be on good terms with Russia and not to rely on the West.
Russia controls almost 20 percent of Georgian territory. It rules Abkhazia on the Black Sea and South Ossetia in the north of the country. The border between Russia and Georgia is studded with mountains. Russia wants to keep an eye on its smaller neighbor, especially as it is a candidate country for both the EU and NATO. Moscow wants to make sure that, behind that mountainous area, the West will not push for a government that is antagonistic to the Kremlin.
Last month, the Georgian parliament's speaker criticized NATO's response to Georgia's membership request, which was made in 2008, saying that the country needs more than words, it needs real protection. The impression is that the West uses countries like Ukraine as fodder to undermine Russia, while having no real interest in their well-being.
More than three years on from Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine is destroyed. It has lost parts of its territory. It will probably become a rump state and there is no real support for stopping Russia. On the contrary, facing Russian determination, the US is pressuring the weaker party, which is Ukraine, to compromise.
My tour guide told me that this goes back centuries. Whenever Georgians have had problems with their neighbors, they have asked for help from European countries but have never received any assistance. I am not sure if this is true or not, but it is certainly the prevailing perception.
The lesson is very clear: it is better for the neighbors of Russia to toe the line with Moscow rather than to butt heads with the Russian president. The West is unreliable — it will offer empty words of support but will never confront Russia to save a democracy. If Russia's neighbors are now convinced of that, then Moscow has already won. It has established deterrence.
It is important to understand the Russian psyche, which extends beyond the current president. It goes back to the Second World War. Russians believe that the West is arrogant and treacherous. They believe the US left Russia to bear the brunt of fighting the Nazis. They believe the Americans adopted a strategy of buck-passing. They let the Soviet army do the bulk of the fighting and the US intervention was deliberately delayed. The Normandy landings only happened once victory was a done deal.
Countries like Georgia understand that. They will not settle for promises from the West.
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib
Late former President Mikhail Gorbachev complained about the West's arrogance. The Soviet Union was a superpower, which the US did its best to fight economically during the Cold War. Gorbachev accepted the dismantling of the Soviet Union in return for promises from the West that it would help lift Russia economically. However, according to a well-known Russian professor colleague of mine, those promises were nothing but lies. Once the communist threat was gone, the West did not lift a finger to prevent the economic collapse of Russia and the independent states that were part of the Soviet Union.
The Russians claim that one of the conditions for dismantling the Soviet Union was to stop the expansion of NATO. However, NATO has its open-door policy and it has kept on expanding to the east.
NATO has deployed missile defense systems in Poland and Romania. When Russian President Vladimir Putin asked George W. Bush about this, the US president insisted that they were to prevent Iranian missiles from reaching Europe. Putin did not buy it.
There is deep mistrust of the West. Hence, even though the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia still wants to be sure that all its neighbors are in its orbit. Even if this means it has to cross mountains and subdue a piece of land to make sure it can keep a close eye on a neighboring government, as it did with Georgia.
Russia is also playing the minorities and ethnicities card. In Ukraine, it is using the ethnic Russian population in the Donbas to justify its invasion. However, regardless of whether the president really cares about these people, the Russians do not want NATO troops on their doorstep.
NATO's raison d'etre is to counter Russia. During the Cold War, there was a kind of military balance. The Warsaw Pact was an Eastern alliance to counter NATO. The fall of the Soviet Union led to the demise of the Warsaw Pact. Nevertheless, Russia still feels it needs to keep the states in its vicinity in its orbit to fend off any threats emanating from the Western camp. This is why it sees the war in Ukraine as an existential matter.
Western countries do not see the war in Ukraine as an existential matter. This is why Russia is ready to sacrifice far more than they are.
Countries like Georgia understand that. They will not settle for promises from the West. They need a firm commitment, which the West is unable or unwilling to provide. Until it does so, Russia's neighbors know that their security is better guaranteed by being on good terms with Moscow.
The fact that Russia was able to impose this attitude on its neighbors means it has won. Moscow has established deterrence. That is the purpose of war: to deter any current or future threats. No neighbor of Moscow wants to develop a relationship with the West that will fuel the ire of the Russian bear.
• Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II.