I am indebted to the scholar Victor D Hanson for giving me the idea and much of the knowledge I needed to embark on this work.
Putin the bear has never lost a war. He won Chechnya and Georgia and Crimea, and has kept his Syrian puppet on a string. The war against Ukraine will be the biggest trophy on his Kremlin shelf. Joe Biden and his puffy Euro and NATO allies have opened the gates to him: Putin has nothing to fear from them – no more than Tehran has to fear.
Beyond his ruthless campaign to put down Muslim rebels in Chechnya, Putin hived off two sections of Georgia in 2008. Without a shot fired in anger he took Crimea off Ukraine’s hands in 2014 and set up separatist rebels in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. And the day before his February 24 invasion he declared the Donbas region an independent republic.
On the battlefield in Syria where President Barak Obama supported rebel groups, and failed to enforce his red line after President Assad crossed it by dropping poison gas, Putin’s troops by contrast went in with a clear goal: keep Assad in power. And that is what Putin has done.
Putin is nuts? The appeasers’ club says so. An aide to President Macron of France called Putin’s speech before the war, “paranoid”. Bernard Guetta, a member of the European parliament, said, “I think the man is losing his sense of reality, to say it politely.” Asked by the interviewer if that meant he thought Putin had gone mad, he said “Yes”.
Appeasers would say that. Yet Vladimir Putin could not be more calculating and predictable.
When does he pounce?
1. When the oil price is high, Putin the Russian bear roars
He moves when oil revenues fill his coffers. Before going into Georgia in 2008 and into the Donbas region of Ukraine and into Crimea in 2014, Putin had the wherewithal to flex his bear muscles. He was flush. Oil prices in June 2008 were around $133. In 2014 crude oil averaged $93. Right after Putin went into Ukraine in Feb 2022 crude oil topped the $100 mark. https://www.macrotrends.net/2516/wti-crude-oil-prices-10-year-daily-chart
But at low oil prices, Putin says, ‘Not now. Now I can’t afford a military adventure’. He was in this passive mode between 2017 and 2020 when the oil price hugged the low ground: from $63 in 2017 when Trump’s energy policy had the US reigning supreme as the world’s biggest gas and oil producer, to $22 in 2020 due to Covid lockdowns.
2. When the US neglects its military, Putin the bear roars
Consider the bear’s character between 2017 and 2020 when he became Putin the teddy. There were no military escapades. US defense spending under President Trump was up on the Obama era. The defense budget of $700 billion for 2020 was $100bn higher than President Obama’s last budget.
Dollar amounts matter. But it matters more on what they are spent. Quality trumps quantity. And Donald Trump made America’s military stronger. His request for $740bn in 2021 exceeded the inflation-adjusted Cold War average (including costs of the Korean and Vietnam wars) by more than $200 billion. The US spent 40% of the global total on defense. And it was triple China’s military budget. In fairness, of course, China can concentrate its efforts in the western Pacific, whereas America has responsibilities in Europe and the Middle East.
And President Trump’s military buildup did not eat a bigger piece of the pie. Defense spending under his watch gobbled up no more than 3% of GDP compared to the Cold War average of 5% – 10%; it even cut a smaller piece of pie than the latter years of George W. Bush and the early years of Barak Obama when the defense budget stole 4% of a smaller GDP than Trump’s military buildup during an economic boom.
Trump’s buildup was qualitative. Half of all army brigade combat teams were at their top tier of readiness, a dramatic improvement from a few years ago. Tech innovation and modernization were emphasized. Key weaknesses in cyber, satellite, and missile defense systems were addressed and opportunities in hypersonic weapons and AI were pursued. The first of a new line of ballistic-missile submarines were built. Defense innovation under Trump was evolutionary.
And from Putin came a respectful silence.
3. When the West appeases, the Russian bear grows bold
Between 2009 and 2016, President Obama went on his apology tour. He cut defense spending and boasted of a new “Russian reset”. Obama begged Putin to behave until Obama got re-elected in 2012. He promised to dismantle U.S. missile defense programs in Eastern Europe and Obama left the Middle East stage for Putin to fill after a 40-year absence.
It was during those Obama years that the grizzly bear invaded Georgia, Eastern Ukraine, and Crimea. By contrast between 2018 and 2020, during the Trump White House, Putin behaved himself. In 2018 Trump’s military killed attacking Russian mercenaries in Syria. Trump exited an unfavorable missile deal with Russia in 2019, and he sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. Sanctions on Russian oligarchs were maintained.
4. When NATO is in disarray, Putin the bear beats his chest
The US and NATO bickered over Iraq and Afghanistan between 2006 and 2008. By 2009-2010 the Obama Administration was complaining that NATO members were “free riders” for not meeting their promised 2% military budgets. Germany and Turkey grew more belligerent and anti-American. But by 2020 an unpopular and tough-talking Trump had got the petulant alliance to invest $100 billion more in defense. And Trump sanctioned the Putin-Merkel Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would bind Germany to Russian energy.
And Putin stayed quiet in his lair.
5. When Europe is wimpish, Putin pounces
Donald Tusk former President of the EU, tweeted: “In this war everything is real: Putin’s madness and cruelty, Ukrainian victims, bombs falling on Kyiv. Only our sanctions are pretended. EU governments which blocked tough decisions – Germany, Hungary, Italy – have disgraced themselves.”
Italy exempted its luxury goods industry. Gucci loafers and handbags were not included in Europe’s export ban. Germany, Italy, Hungary and others – ignoring a plea from Ukrainian President Zelensky – vetoed the move to kick Russia out of the Swift network which acts as the bedrock of international trade.
6. When the West disrespects Putin, the bear roars
The post Soviet status quo in Eastern Europe was one “that Putin never accepted,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, a Russian policy journal. “It ate at him. He believes Russia was treated by the West as a second class citizen after the Soviet Union fell.”
Obama liked to ridicule Putin and the Russians. “Their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate,” said Obama dismissively. Disrespect bolstered by cowardice is guaranteed to make Putin hopping mad; Obama hadn’t the guts to sell Ukraine weapons, and implored Putin to give him “space.”
President Joe Biden is another who attacks Putin in personal terms. He called him a “bully” and a “killer.” Yet when Putin brazenly allowed Russian-affiliated hackers to attack U.S. companies, Biden asked Putin to please ask the hackers to at least make sixteen critical American entities off-limits. And after Biden slashed US oil and gas production which made prices skyrocket, he begged the “killer” to please pump more of his dirty fuel to help American commuters.
Trump on the other hand spoke with a willingness to work with Putin, especially to check China’s aggression. But his measured talk was juxtaposed with tough deterrence. Putin never knew quite what Trump might do in any given crisis. He did know what it would be: unpredictable, in America’s interest, and possibly deadly. So it was that between 2017 and 2020 Putin did not mobilize.
Winston Churchill told his Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
The Russian bear now demonstrates that he remains a Great Power. He wants Russia to command respect, and when it doesn’t then it will command fear..
Steve Apfel is an economist and costing specialist, but most of all a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, ‘Balaam’s curse,’ is followed in 15 countries on 5 continents