NATO AFF-NEG UPDATE****



****NATO AFF-NEG UPDATE****NATO: AffirmativeHegemony Adv: UniquenessUnipolarity is gone – need accomodate Russia to manage the transitionG. Diesen (2020), National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, “Narrowing the Deepening Division Between the West and Russia”. In: Grigoryev L., Pabst A. (eds) Global Governance in Transformation. Springer, Cham. accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**This chapter explores the widening political gap between the West and Russia and how this gap can be narrowed. The unipolar order has come to an end, yet a new order that reflects the multipolar distribution of power has not yet emerged. The failed efforts to establish multilateralism in a unipolar system were the main cause of the post-Cold War conflicts, and the transition towards multipolarity is now causing major disruptions and resistance. The West and Russia hold diametrically opposing views concerning how to define the post-Cold War era, why the current order is failing and what type of order will or should emerge. Although Russia’s rejection of the unipolar order is the principal cause for the deterioration of relations, it must continue to reject this order if it hopes to reorganise cooperation and competition in a multipolar order. The ‘post-Cold War order’ has been a weak and ambiguous concept because it merely alludes to what no longer exists rather than defining the characteristics of the world order that arose after the Cold War—and that is now coming to an end. The West’s reference to the post-Cold War era as the liberal international order reveals an interpretation consistent with liberal theory, while Russia’ reference to the same international system as a malevolent unipolar order divulges an interpretation consistent with realist theory.A post-mortem of the world order of the last three decades indicates that the West succumbed to a liberal delusion that conflated maximum power with maximum security. The mistakes began immediately after the Cold War, when US power and ideals were unchallenged. Washington’s relations with major powers such as Russia and China were good, democracies were proliferating around the world, and there were no major conflicts. Under the pretext of establishing a liberal hegemony, policies ranging from open-ended NATO expansionism to relentless regime change have committed the West to perpetual war in the pursuit of perpetual peace. Voltaire famously stated that the Holy Roman Empire failed because it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Similarly, the liberal international order is neither liberal, nor international, nor orderly. Neglecting the balance of power logic has produced policies inconsistent with liberal ideals. The liberal order is not truly international because major powers like Russia were never accommodated and not orderly because it dismantled international laws and norms. And yet, the ideology is pervasive and the delusion about the international liberal order persists despite a string of failed wars and the negative results of reckless expansionism. The rapidly changing international distribution of power is nonetheless undercutting the foundations for liberal hegemony and creating a new reality.As the multipolar distribution of power gains momentum, the Western-centric format for global governance will become increasingly incapable of managing the resulting disorder. Global governance is based on a set of compromises between key actors to establish political cooperation and common rules. Global governance after the Cold War was largely defined by a skewed balance of power in which the West could dictate its collective will, rendering compromises and diplomacy obsolete. Yet, institutions are only effective to the extent that they reflect this international distribution of power. And, as the balance of power shifts, the West will have increasing incentives to gravitate towards multilateral global governance in a multipolar framework to maximise security. Difficult compromises await because the West will need to cooperate with nascent Eurasian structures for global governance.Liberal Order doomedJohn J. Mearsheimer (2019) is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order”, International Security, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Spring 2019), pp. 7–50, accessed 8/24/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**It would be a mistake, however, to think that the liberal international order is in trouble solely because of Trump’s rhetoric or policies. In fact, more fundamental problems are at play, which account for why Trump has been able to successfully challenge an order that enjoys almost universal support among the foreign policy elites in the West. The aim of this article is to determine why the liberal world order is in big trouble and to identify the kind of international order that will replace it.I offer three main sets of arguments. First, because states in the modern world are deeply interconnected in a variety of ways, orders are essential for facilitating efficient and timely interactions. There are different kinds of international orders, and which type emerges depends primarily on the global distribution of power. But when the system is unipolar, the political ideology of the sole pole also matters. Liberal international orders can arise only in unipolar systems where the leading state is a liberal democracy. Second, the United States has led two different orders since World War II. The Cold War order, which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a “liberal international order,” was neither liberal nor international. It was a bounded order that was limited mainly to the West and was realist in all its key dimensions. It had certain features that were also consistent with a liberal order, but those attributes were based on realist logic. The U.S.-led post–Cold War order, on the other hand, is liberal and international, and thus differs in fundamental ways from the bounded order the United States dominated during the Cold War.Third, the post–Cold War liberal international order was doomed to collapse, because the key policies on which it rested are deeply flawed. Spreading liberal democracy around the globe, which is of paramount importance for building such an order, not only is extremely difficult, but often poisons relations with other countries and sometimes leads to disastrous wars. Nationalism within the target state is the main obstacle to the promotion of democracy, but balance of power politics also function as an important blocking force. Furthermore, the liberal order’s tendency to privilege international institutions over domestic considerations, as well as its deep commitment to porous, if not open borders, has had toxic political effects inside the leading liberal states themselves, including the U.S. unipole. Those policies clash with nationalism over key issues such as sovereignty and national identity. Because nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet, it invariably trumps liberalism whenever the two clash, thus undermining the order at its core.In addition, hyperglobalization, which sought to minimize barriers to global trade and investment, resulted in lost jobs, declining wages, and rising income inequality throughout the liberal world. It also made the international financial system less stable, leading to recurring financial crises. Those troubles then morphed into political problems, further eroding support for the liberal order. A hyperglobalized economy undermines the order in yet another way: it helps countries other than the unipole grow more powerful, which can undermine unipolarity and bring the liberal order to an end. This is what is happening with the rise of China, which, along with the revival of Russian power, has brought the unipolar era to a close. The emerging multipolar world will consist of a realist-based international order, which will play an important role in managing the world economy, dealing with arms control, and handling problems of the global commons such as climate change. In addition to this new international order, the United States and China will lead bounded orders that will compete with each other in both the economic and military realms.2Hegemony Adv: Link / SolvencyNATO is a trap preventing shift to global governance because prioritizes exclusive blocG. Diesen (2020), National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, “Narrowing the Deepening Division Between the West and Russia”. In: Grigoryev L., Pabst A. (eds) Global Governance in Transformation. Springer, Cham. accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**Support for the UN as the arbiter of international law has also been challenged by the EU and NATO, which claim to represent the community of liberal democracies. States that advocated democracy at the domestic level and claimed responsibility for promoting it ignored proposals for democratising decision-making within international institutions (Hurrell 2003: 42). The more ‘democratic’ international organisations claim to be, the more the self-proclaimed leaders of democracy proclaim their responsibility to dominate the institutions to protect the liberal values from the control of the majority (Herz 1950: 165). By proclaiming Euro-Atlantic institutions to be the guardians of liberal democracy, liberal democratic values become both a constitutional principle and an international hegemonic norm. As historical precedent has shown, efforts to apply international law and global governance unravel when exclusive alliances are prioritised above inclusive collective security institutions.The assumption that the durability of a liberal rules-based order depends on preserving the collective leadership of liberal democracies is a paradox because the solidarity of the alliance must necessarily trump both values and the consistent application of rules. To ensure that solidarity, Moscow must always be in the wrong whenever there is a dispute between Russia and an EU/NATO member or its ally. In his address to the UN in 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lambasted the Western demand for a ‘monopoly on truth’ and the ‘revival of the archaic bloc thinking based on military drill discipline and the erroneous logic of friend or foe’. The rhetorical commitment to maintaining solidarity to a bloc creates a trap in which states have the incentive to instigate tensions to obtain international support. Frequent British accusations or Ukrainian claims against Russia are not subjected to due process and the burden of proof. Instead, the liberal international order depends on instant and unconditional solidarity. Similarly, the requirement to blame the Syrian government for every chemical attack incentivises their use by anti-government fighters and jihadists to trigger a Western military intervention on their side. The need for alliance solidarity also undermines the protection of liberal principles within the Western bloc. Russia’s criticism of human rights in the Baltic States—where Russian-speaking citizens are denied such basic rights as voting or working in government—is dismissed as interference in their domestic affairs. Likewise, the purported goal of developing good governance in Ukraine is obstructed by the inability to criticise the attacks on the freedom of speech and political opposition, and the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ against rebels in the Donbas in cooperation with far-right militias. NATO members generally go to war when they deem it in the interests of the alliance, rather than basing that decision on international law or democratic debate. Exceptions tend to prove the rule, as Germany’s abstention from the voting on intervention in Libya caused resentment from its allies. As Herz (1942: 1046–1047) cautioned more than seven decades ago, ‘Exclusive institutions can replace a state’s right to make war with a duty to make war’. The confidential cables released by Wikileaks also provided insight into how Washington was able to overturn Norway’s opposition to missile defence and concern for nuclear stability. The US ambassador to Norway claimed that Oslo would no longer be able to ‘defend its position if the issue shifts to one of alliance solidarity’ (Diesen 2016: 148).Russia Adv: NATO Causes WarNATO’s current deterrence strategy risks miscalc and escalation with Russia.Joshua Shifrinson 17. Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University. PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Time to Consolidate NATO?" The Washington Quarterly. 4-26-2017. **NCC Packet 2020-21**If anything, the main function of NATO deployments has been to antagonize a Russia that has far more at stake in Eastern Europe for geographic and historical reasons than the United States.24 To be clear, NATO expansion in and of itself did not cause East–West relations to deteriorate.25 However, U.S.-backed efforts to expand NATO eastward and subsequently deploy military forces to the region have been met with Russian pushback—Russian overflights of NATO airspace, diplomatic obfuscation, and military deployments have all accelerated in recent years.26 Assuming NATO efforts in Eastern Europe continue, Russian leaders are prone to respond with further bellicosity that generates further strains in NATO–Russian relations.27 Paradoxically, the resulting insecurity spiral increases the likelihood that efforts to deter Russia will result in deterrence failure.28 Combined with the possibility that a NATO–Russia crisis may see Russia escalate the confrontation in order to de-escalate the situation, the risk of miscalculation is clear.29 Collectively, this situation simultaneously invites Russian actions designed to discredit the United States in the eyes of its allies, gives threatened allies incentives to force events with Russia to tie American hands and deepen the United States’ involvement, and increases the risk of an action-reaction cycle.30The net result is a dangerous standoff. To deter aggression, NATO relies on a collective security promise ultimately capped by the pledge that the United States will risk its own survival by putting its nuclear forces to use on behalf of its allies. For the Baltic states, Poland, and—potentially in the future—NATO’s other post-Cold War additions, this pledge is no longer realistic on strategic or military grounds. The steps the United States and its allies are taking to reassure the most vulnerable members of NATO, however, increase the odds of a NATO–Russia crisis. Yet if and when a crisis erupts, the clarifying effect of a prospective nuclear exchange is apt to cause cooler heads to prevail and encourage U.S. efforts to restrain the dogs of war—revealing that American security guarantees to Eastern Europe were not credible in the first place. The more the United States continues pretending that its commitment to all NATO members is created equal, the more it risks creating a situation that will reveal the shibboleth of the U.S. commitment.NATO commitments create a tripwire that causes war with RussiaMartin Zapfe ’17, head of the Global Security Team at the Center for Security Studies, holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Constance, Germany, “Deterrence from the Ground Up: Understanding NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 59:3, pgs. 147-160, **NCC Packet 2020-21**The conventional realm is the conceptual comfort zone of the EFP, which has been organised with an eye to conventional conflict scenarios – the feared ‘land grab’ by Russian forces. Even in conventional scenarios, however, the integrated nature of Russian cross-domain coercion, and its targeting of Western political cohesion, affect the deterrence value of conventional forces, and thus expose the potential shortcomings of the Warsaw compromise.Firstly, NATO’s Baltic battalions constitute a tripwire, not a speed bump. In the absence of prepared and agreed-upon contingency plans, backed up by credible and ready forces with sufficient authority already delegated to operational and tactical commanders, any engagement by the EFP would guarantee only that NATO is affected, and that its political decision-making process would start to work. It would not necessarily determine how, nor even whether, NATO would react. In the absence of agreed-upon contingency plans, the necessity for unanimous decision-making could well block NATO forces from acting decisively, leaving open the possibility of one or more allies choosing to act outside of the NATO framework.While the conventional deterrence value of the EFP below the nuclear level lies mostly in its prospective conventional reinforcements, most analyses express doubt that the prime military instruments foreseen to support the EFP – including NATO’s ‘first wave’, the VJTF – could realistically be expected to fulfil that role.20 While the competences of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) have been broadened and include the staging and preparation of forces,21 especially with regard to activating the VJTF to support its forward battalions, any significant step beyond these measures, let alone an entire campaign to support and relieve the EFP, would require a unanimous vote of the North Atlantic Council.22 Current and former high-ranking NATO commanders have explicitly or implicitly expressed serious doubt that NATO’s political decision-making processes would be up to the task.23Beyond the VJTF, NATO has placed its faith in its ‘second wave’ force, the Enhanced NATO Response Force (eNRF). In addition to principled doubts concerning the viability of multinational forces in high-intensity conventional warfare, the same weaknesses that plague the concept of the VJTF caution against counting on the eNRF to come to the rescue should the tripwire be disturbed. The force’s ground element is meant to be provided by three brigades, one of which will be the current year’s VJTF, while the other two will be formed by the Spearhead Forces of the preceding and following year.24 While undoubtedly a sound concept for force generation, this also means that NATO’s primary combat force will be only as agile as its slowest component. NATO assumes this to be between 30 and 45 days from notice to movement for the additional brigades – as opposed to deployment or employment in theatre, which will take even longer.When faced with these doubts over NATO’s prime military instruments, officials from the Baltic states and Poland unofficially, yet unequivocally, allude to the Alliance’s ‘silent conventional deterrence’ – bilateral deployments from selected allies (the US, the UK or Denmark, among others), which are expected to intervene independently of, and earlier than, the VJTF and eNRF. Unburdened by the need for allied consensus, and with potentially faster decision-making processes, willing allies could well play a pivotal role in making NATO’s EFP militarily effective. However, three factors urge caution here. Firstly, the bilateral shortcut depends on the credibility of the US in times of crisis. Under President Donald Trump, this credibility, and the American commitment to its Alliance obligations, has been far from rock solid. Secondly, the involvement of allied troops outside of NATO’s command structure and contingency plans would raise serious questions concerning conflict stability and inadvertent or accidental escalation implicating the whole Alliance. Thirdly, it is worth asking what message such bilateral deployments would send at a time when Alliance cohesion appears vulnerable to political threats, particularly if there is deadlock within the North Atlantic Council. Would a unilateral US intervention be seen as a sign of the Alliance’s strength, or just of its most potent member state? What would it mean if such an intervention were to take place against the explicit objections of other major member states? Thus, while the reliance on an intervention of NATO members outside of the NATO framework is a realistic and important factor in the calculations of any adversary, as long as NATO’s official conventional answer to any challenge of its EFP rests on its multinational, rapid-response units, those units must be prepared to respond by themselves to any alarm bells.Secondly, despite increasing calls to further reinforce the Baltics, NATO will not be able to ‘out-presence’ Russia in that region.25 While most debates on the EFP tend to focus on its optimal size – with the RAND Corporation issuing an attention-getting call for up to seven brigades26 – this question will quickly become irrelevant if NATO cannot maintain its access to the Baltics. Should a small force (such as a multinational battalion) be deployed, it would be vitally reliant on reinforcements. And even if NATO decided to deploy a large, heavy, multinational force designed to credibly defend the Baltics against a Russian attack – assuming that such a deployment would be logistically feasible, which is doubtful – it would still be dependent on joint and combined support from air and naval forces outside the immediate theatre. Thus, the EFP necessarily falls short of addressing the military challenge as a whole. A military presence in the region is a necessary condition in all of the plausible scenarios, but is sufficient in very few of them, and in all cases assured access is still required.Thirdly, even within conventional scenarios, the EFP carries with it the risk of potentially dividing allies. For the first time in NATO’s history, Russia will have the ability to target a select group of troop-contributing nations within the allied defence posture. Russian conventional advances could be directed against those areas and allies judged by Moscow to be less likely to fight or to opt for escalation. While such an approach would be time-limited and come with very high risks, Russia might well succeed in exploiting NATO’s political fault lines to undermine allied cohesion and to sabotage the political decision-making and military planning in Brussels and Mons.Such an approach was practically impossible during the Cold War. Facing the multinational force posture under Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), the famous ‘layer cake’ of largely national army corps, the Soviet Union had little hope of opening a limited war in the sector of a single corps. At the flanks, the Allied Mobile Force (AMF), the conceptual precursor of today’s VJTF, included all major NATO allies. And in Berlin, any Soviet advance would have met soldiers from NATO’s nuclear powers. It would have been a very risky bet by the Kremlin to assume that an attack on any of these forces would not escalate into a general war with NATO. Not so today. Disunity among the allies could well lead Russia to believe that a limited conventional war with NATO is a realistic possibility.These considerations imply that the EFP does not necessarily protect against limited Russian invasions, as the allied battalions could, quite literally, be outflanked. This is a function of geography – a single battalion can only be at one place in a vast country – but also a question of how these battalions will be integrated into NATO’s defence plans, and how closely they will interact with the armed forces of their host nations. In military terms, the operational relevance of a single battalion in, say, Estonia, in the face of a limited fait accompli by Russia, is close to zero: whether the battalion was present in the country would not matter militarily. Here, NATO decisions since Warsaw are promising, as it seems the EFP battalions will be integrated into host-nation brigades, which in turn will fall under the command of SACEUR. While NATO will still only exercise limited control, its actions tightly restrained by the member states, this will nevertheless increase the Alliance’s ability to respond more flexibly to limited Russian moves. Still, this does not address the question of size: it might actually be possible for Russia to attack a Baltic country without encountering a single multinational battalion for a considerable time. It would be difficult to overestimate the effect on allied cohesion if NATO troops stood by helplessly while Russia called its bluff.Russia Adv: Not RevisionistRussian so -called revisionism is modest – prevent Western domination not conquer Western territoryRichard Sakwa (2020), Professor School of?Politics and?International Relations, Rutherford College, University of?Kent, “Greater Russia: Is Moscow out to subvert the West?”, International Politics accessed 8/23/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**In sum, the fundamental post-Cold War process in the Russian view was to be mutual transformation, whereas the Western view envisaged a straightforward process of enlargement. In the context in which the main antagonist had itself repudiated the ideology on which it had based its opposition to the historical West since 1917, and which in 1991 disintegrated as a state, the Atlanticist pursuit of expansion and its accompanying logic of dominion was understandable (Wohlforth and Zubok 2017). Victory in the Cold War and the disintegration of the historic enemy (the Soviet Union) not only inhibited transformative processes in the historic West but in the absence of a counter-ideology or an opposing power system, encouraged the radicalisation of its key features (Sakwa 2018a). The original liberal world order after 1945 developed as one of the major pillars (the Soviet Union was the other) within a bipolar system and was initially a relatively modest afair, based on the UN Charter defending the territorial integrity of states (although also committed to anti-colonial national self-determination), multilateral institutions, open markets that was later formulated as the ‘four freedoms’ of labour, capital, goods and services, accompanied by a prohibition on the use of force except in self-defence. After 1989 the liberal world order, as the only surviving system with genuinely universal aspirations, assumed more ambitious characteristics, including a radical version of globalisation, democracy promotion and regime change.The framing of the ‘historic West’ against a putative ‘greater West’ repeats the recurring Russian cultural trope of contrasting ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Europes or Wests, ‘with which Russians can seek to make common cause in domestic power struggles’ (Hahn 2020; see also Neumann 2016). As the historic West radicalised, it also enlarged. On the global scale its normative system, the liberal international order, made universalist claims, while its power system (dominion) in Europe brought NATO to Russia’s western borders and drove the European Union deep into what had traditionally been Russia’s economic and cultural sphere. This would be disruptive in the best of circumstances, but when it became part of the expansion of an Atlantic power system accompanied by the universalising practices of the liberal international order, it provoked a confrontation over Ukraine and the onset of a renewed period of confrontation that some call a New Cold War (Legvold 2016; Mastanduno 2019; Monaghan 2015). In the absence of ideational or institutional modifcation, let alone innovation, after 1989, there was ‘no place for Russia’ (Hill 2018, p. 8 and passim) in this new order.Does this mean that Russia has become a revisionist power, out to destroy the historic West? Russia’s ambition has in fact been rather diferent, but in the end no less challenging: to change the practices of the power system at the core of the historic West. Once mutual transformation was no longer an option and the idea of a greater West receded (although it remains a residual feature of Russian thinking), Russia turned to neo-revisionism, a rather more modest ambition to change practices rather than systems (Sakwa 2019). This was the culmination of an extended thirty-year period of experimentation. Contrary to the view of the Russian power system as some immutable and unchangeable malign force (Lucas 2008, 2013), the frst and second models outlined above, foreign policy and more broadly Russia’s engagement with the historic West since the end of the Cold War has evolved through four distinct periods. Periodisation is an important heuristic device and in methodological terms repudiates the view that there is some enduring essence to Russian foreign policy behaviour, with ‘active measures’ seamlessly transferred from the Soviet Union to post-communist Russia. It is important to note that the periodisation outlined here is layered. In other words, each phase does not simply give way to the next, but builds on and incorporates the earlier one, while changing the emphasis and introducing new elements.The first period in the early 1990s was characterised by an enthusiastic Westernism and embrace of liberal Atlanticism (Kozyrev 2019). In conditions of catastrophic social and economic conditions at home and assertions of US hegemony and dominion abroad (although exercised rather reluctantly in Bosnia and elsewhere at this time), this gave way to a more assertive neo-Soviet era of competitive coexistence, masterminded by the foreign minister from January 1996, Yevgeny Primakov, who between September 1998 and May 1999 was prime minister. His assertion of multipolarity, alignment with India and China (the beginning of the RIC’s grouping) and foreign policy activism received a harsh rebuf in the NATO bombing of Serbia from March 1999. Putin came to power in 2000 in the belief that the two earlier strategies were excessive in diferent directions, and through his policy of ‘new realism’ tried to fnd a middle way between acquiescence and assertion. Gorbachev-era ideas of ‘normality’ were revived, and Putin insisted that Russia would be a ‘normal’ great power, seeking neither favours from the West nor a privileged position for itself (Sakwa 2008). This strategy of positive engagement was thrown of course by the expansive dynamic of the Atlantic power system, including the war in Iraq in 2003, NATO enlargement and the Libyan crisis of 2011. As for Russia, the commodities boom of the 2000s fuelled an unprecedented period of economic growth, accompanied by remarkably successful reforms that transformed the Russian armed forces (Renz 2018). These fed ideas of Russian resurgence and appeared to provide the material base for a more assertive politics of resistance.When Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012 the new realism gave way to the fourth phase of post-communist Russian foreign policy, the strategy of neo-revisionism. Already in his infamous Munich speech in February 2007, Putin (2007) objected to the behaviour of the US-led Atlantic power system, but in substance the fundamentals of the new realist strategy continued. Now, however, neo-revisionism challenged the universal claims of the US-led liberal international order and resisted the advance of the Atlantic power system by intensifying alternative integration projects in Eurasia and accelerating the long-term ‘pivot to Asia’. By now Moscow was convinced that the normative hegemonic claims of the liberal international order were only the velvet manifestation of the iron fist of American dominion at its core. Russia, and its increasingly close Chinese partner, stressed the autonomy of international governance institutions, insisting that they were not synonymous with the universal claims of the liberal international order. This, in essence, is the fundamental principle of neo-revisionism: a defence of sovereign internationalism and the autonomy of the international system bequeathed by the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945. This is accompanied by a rejection of the disciplinary practices of the US-led hegemonic constellation, including democracy promotion, regime change, humanitarian intervention and nation building (what Gerasimov identified as Western hybrid warfare) (Cunlife 2020). In efect, this means a rejection of the practices of US-led international order, but not of the system in which it operates.Putin defends a model of conservative (or sovereign) internationalism that maps on to a ternary understanding of the international system. On the top floor are the multilateral institutions of global governance, above all the UN (in which Russia has a privileged position as permanent member (P5) of the Security Council); on the middle floor states compete and global orders (like the US-led liberal international order) seek to impose their hegemony; while on the ground floor civil society groups and civil associations try to shape the cultural landscape of politics (such as groups trying to push responses to the climate catastrophe and nuclear threats up the global agenda). Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, condemn the liberal order for not living up to its own standards. As Lavrov (2019) argued, ‘How do you reconcile the imperative of defending human rights with the bombardment of sovereign states, and the deliberate effort to destroy their statehood, which leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of people?’.This is the neo-revisionist framework, which exposes the gulf between hegemonic principles and practices of dominion. It is revisionist to the degree that it repudiates the application of US dominion to itself, but is willing to work with that hegemony on major international issues as long as Russia’s status as an autonomous diplomatic interlocutor is recognised (Lo 2015). Neo-revisionism is the natural culmination of a policy stance torn by two contradictory positions. The revisionist impulse seeks to reassert Russia into an international system in which great power diplomacy after the end of the Cold War in 1989 had given way to a hegemonic universalism that by definition repudiated the traditional instruments of great power diplomacy, such as spheres of influence, great power summitry and grand bargains. On the other side, Russia remains a conservative status quo power intent on maintaining the post-1945 international system, which grants it the supreme privilege of P5 membership as well as providing a benign framework to advance its model of sovereign internationalism. This is a model of world order favoured by China, India and many other states, wary not so much of the hegemonic implications of the liberal international order but of the power hierarchy associated with the practices of dominion. This is the framework in which Russia (and China) can engage in globalisation but repudiate the universalist ambitions of the power system with which it is associated.With the USA under Trump withdrawing from multilateral commitments to focus on bolstering its ascendancy in the world of states (the second level), Russia (and China) inevitably stood up in defence of multilateralism, in which they have such a major stake. This is far from a revisionist position, and instead neo-revisionism defends the present international system but critiques the historical claim of the liberal international order to be identical with the multilateral order itself (Sakwa 2017a). Of course, the US-led liberal order has indelibly marked international society, but this does not entail a proprietary relationship to that society (Dunne and Reut-Smith (2017). Russia emerges as the defender of the international system as it is presently constituted, but at the same time advances an alternative (non-hierarchical) idea of how it should operate. On occasion this may entail revisionist acts, such as the annexation of Crimea, which from Moscow’s perspective was a defensive reaction to a Western-supported putsch against the legitimate authorities in Kiev (Treisman 2016), but they are not part of a consistent revisionist strategy. Both at home and abroad Russia is a status quo power. Putin railed against the West’s perceived revisionism in both aspects, but the main point of resistance is the element of dominion at the heart of the Atlantic power system. In both respects there is no evidence that Russia seeks to destroy the international system as presently constituted.This structural interpretation, in which incompatible models of international politics contest, is overwhelmingly rejected by the partisans of what can be called postCold War monism. From this perspective, there is only one viable order, the one generated by the USA and its allies. There can be pluralism within that order, but not between orders. This monist perspective is challenged by some recent international relations literature (Acharya 2017; Flockhart 2016) and of course by states defending a more pluralist understanding of the international system (for example, English School approaches, Buzan 2014). In practical terms the monist imperative, when couched in liberal order terms but rather less so when applied in the language of Trumpian ‘greatness’, renders Russia the structural equivalent of the Soviet Union, or even the dreaded image of Tsarist Russia.This leads to a fundamental category error. Russia is not a ‘revolutionary power’ in the sense defined by Henry Kissinger (2013, p 2), a country that can never be reassured of its security and consequently seeks absolute security at the expense of others. Napoleonic France or Hitlerite Germany were determined to overthrow the international systems of their times to create one more suited to their needs. Russia today is a conservative power, alarmed by the way that the international system that it had helped create at the end of the Second World War became radicalised after the end of the Cold War. Critics argue that this radicalised version of liberal hegemony was ‘bound to fail’, since its ambitions were so expansive as to classify as delusional, and which in the end provoked domestic and external resistance (Mearsheimer 2018, 2019). Russia’s neo-revisionism after 2012 sought to defend the autonomy of the multilateralism inaugurated by the victorious powers after 1945 and was ready to embrace the ‘hegemonic’ goals of the liberal order as presented in the Cold War years, but came to fear the revisionism implicit in the ‘exceptionalist’ ideology of the post-Cold War version of the liberal order, especially when it was accompanied by what was perceived as the aggressive expansion of the dominion of the unipolar Atlantic power system.Perceptions of Russian revisionism are part of the security trap of an uncompromising liberal orderRichard Sakwa (2020), Professor School of?Politics and?International Relations, Rutherford College, University of?Kent, “Greater Russia: Is Moscow out to subvert the West?”, International Politics accessed 8/23/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**Russia has returned as an international conservative power, but it is not a revisionist one, and even less is it out to subvert the West. Russia certainly looks for allies where it can find them, especially if they advocate the lifting of sanctions. When Macron (2019) argued that it was time to bring Russia out of the cold, arguing that ‘We cannot rebuild Europe without rebuilding a connection with Russia’, his comments were welcomed in Moscow, although tempered by a justifiable skepticism. The Putin elite had earlier welcomed Trump’s election, but in practice relations deteriorated further. The foreign policy establishment is deeply skeptical that the EU will be able to act with ‘strategic autonomy’. Above all, Russo-Western relations have entered into a statecraft ‘security dilemma’: Currently, we are again faced with a situation in which mutual intentions are assessed by Washington and Moscow as subversive, while each side considers the statecraft employed by the other side as effective enough to achieve its malign goals. At the same time, each side is more skeptical about its own statecraft and appears (or pretends) to be scrambling to catch up (Troitskiy 2019).In the nineteenth century, Russia became the ‘gendarme’ of Europe, and while Putin repudiates the country assuming such a role again, Russia has undoubtedly returned as an international conservative power. Maintenance of a specifically historically determined definition of the status quo is the essence of its neo-revisionism: a defence of traditional ideas of state sovereignty and of an internationalism structured by commitment to the structures of the international system as it took shape after 1945. Russia resents its perceived exclusion from the institutions of Atlantic dominion (above all NATO); but is not out to destroy the international system in which this competition is waged. Thus, Anton Shekhovtsov (2017) is mistaken to argue that Russia’s links to right-wing national populist movements are rooted in philosophical anti-Westernism and an instinct to subvert the liberal democratic consensus in the West. In fact, the alignment is situational and contingent on the impasse in Russo-Western relations and thus is susceptible to modifcation if the situation changes. Moscow’s readiness to embrace Trump in 2016 when he repeatedly argued that it made sense to ‘get on’ with Russia indicates that Western overtures for improved relations would find the Kremlin ready to reciprocate. In 2017 the Kremlin sent Washington various ideas on how to move out of the impasse in US-Russian relations, but given the ‘Russiagate’ allegations, the White House was in no position to respond. The same applies when in 2019 Russia was invited to resume full voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which the Kremlin embraced even though powerful domestic neo-traditionalist and Eurasianist voices counselled against.Russia is not out to subvert the West but seeks to change it. For the defenders of monist enlargement, this is just as bad. Resistance at home and abroad to the post-Cold War Western order has exposed unexpected fragilities and insecurities, hence the turn to the language of ‘resilience’ (for example, EU Global Strategy R. Sakwa 2016). Given its strategy of resistance, Russia in turn becomes the object against which resilience is tested, becoming one of Federica Mogherini’s ‘five principles’ (2016), creating yet another barrier to normal diplomatic relations. In fact, the structural model outlined in this paper suggests that Russia does not seek to create a greater Russia through subversion let alone physical enlargement, although all leaders since the end of the Cold have tried to make the country a great power. This raises the fundamental and still unresolved question: is Russia still interested in joining a transformed West? Or has it realised that the only way to retain great power status and sovereign decision-making is to remain outside the West? Joining the transformed West meant the attempt to create a ‘greater Europe’, what Gorbachev had earlier termed the common European home. For defenders of the existing West, this is perceived as threatening its existing values, norms and freedoms, and perhaps more importantly, also the existing hierarchy of international power; but for Russia, it is a way out of the perceived geopolitical impasse and offers a common developmental strategy.The West is faced by a choice ‘between containment and engagement on mutually agreed terms’ (Trenin 2016, p. 110). Incompatible understanding of the political character of the historical epoch provokes an intense barrage of propaganda from all sides, with mutual allegations of political subversion and interference. The interaction of hegemony and dominion on the one side and multiple layers of identity on the other provides fertile ground for incomprehension and the attribution of sinister motives, provoking the statecraft ‘security dilemma’ indentified above. Russia maintains a neo-revisionist critique, but this does not mean repudiating improved relations with a post-dominion West. The country increasingly pivoted to the East and strengthened its alignment with China, but this does not mean that Russia seeks an irrevocable break with the West (Monaghan 2019). This is why it seeks improved relations with the EU and the USA if a satisfactory formula for restored contact can be found. Moscow’s support for insurgent populist movements in Europe and disruptive forces in America will always be tempered by larger strategic concerns and are certainly not unequivocal. The greater Russia envisaged by the Kremlin elite is one whose sovereignty is defended and whose great power status is recognised, but it is not one that seeks more territory or to subvert the West and sow discord. The West can be trusted to do that without Russia’s help. The West’s response to Russia’s neo-revisionism has been neo-containment and counter-subversion strategies, but if the analysis proposed in this article has any validity, then new forms of engagement may be a more productive course.Russia Adv: Threatened by NATO / U.S.Russia’s perception of NATO as a threat is historically locked in – even if tries not to be threatening will be perceived asAndrei P. Tsygankov (2018), Professor Department of International Relations and Political Science, San Francisco State University, “The sources of Russia's fear of NATO”, Communist and Post Communist Studies 51 (2018) 101-111, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**This paper considers the Russian side in the progressively deteriorating relations with the Atlantic alliance. I argue that Russia's fear of NATO resulted from a historically enduring perception of the alliance as a key security threat and from the alliance's actions that played into reviving such perception in Moscow following the end of the Cold War. The alliance's leaders consistently refused to recognize Russia as a power with important stakes in European security. The Kremlin's protests over NATO's expansion were ignored, while alliance continued to include new members and build new military infrastructure on territories bordering Russia. Along with the United States' global regime change strategy and growing criticism of Russia's human rights record, these developments gradually built the perception of NATO as serving hegemonic ambitions of the Western civilization in general and the United States in particular. Civilization is defined as a system of politically and culturally distinct values, or beliefs about appropriate organization of human institutions and foreign policy. Initially Russia viewed NATO's expansion as a mistake driven by the organization's inertia, but the more recent perception by the Kremlin betrays fear of the alliance as an offensive military organization employed to meet the larger objective to dismantle Russia's political regime and system of values (Patrushev, 2015b). Western civilization is centered on competitive political system and individualism, whereas Russia and other non-Western societies continue to rely on a highly concentrated authority of the executive (Hale, 2014; Tsygankov, 2015). Today, institutions responsible for defending Russia from external threats are also charged with the task of political security and prevention of destabilization through a “colored revolution”.The constructivist theory of international relations assists us in understanding Russia's perception by pointing to the significance of “the other” in the process of forming self-identity (Doty, 1996; Neumann, 1999, 2017; Hopf, 2002; Pouliot, 2010). For Russia and the West the Cold War proved too recent to transform their perception of each other as potential threats. Constructivism views perception as a social, rather than objective phenomenon. Perception is defined by historically enduring beliefs and repetitive social practices and is rooted in the self-other interactions. Allies for only the brief period of the Second World War and enemies for almost half a century, the two sides did not overcome some of the old perceptions and stereotypes. The United States continued to mistrust Russia and insisted on reshaping the world according to the American image by promoting neo-liberal institutions and NATO-centered security policies in Europe. Russia too displayed mistrust to the West, acting on the old phobias over the West's intentions and seeking to contain the United States' “global hegemony.” As early as in 1997 the country's National Security Concept recommended that Russia maintains equal distance in relations to the “global European and Asian economic and political actors” and presented a program for the integration of CIS efforts in the security area (Shakleina, 2002, 51e90).Other theories of international relations are helpful yet insufficient to explain Russia's perception of NATO as the main threat. Realists may find it puzzling that in the 1990s the Kremlin did not see a serious military threat coming from the alliance viewing it largely as a political organization with an insufficiently reformed perspective on the post-Cold War challenges. In addition, even after NATO has officially announced its view of Russia as the main threat and the decision to build up its military capabilities in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states, the alliance could hardly be qualified as the most important threat to Russia's security. The four proposed NATO's battalions on rotation basis did not present a serious challenge, and military analysts recognized that the alliance was not an effective deterrent should the Kremlin choose to attack the identified East European states.3Liberals or those stressing Putin's regime insecurities are correct that NATO is a convenient threat to exploit for domestic stability purposes, yet liberals misunderstand the regime's intentions and the timing of nationalist domestic mobilization. The contemporary level of Russia's military preparedness and the willingness of the Kremlin to take a high risk, as demonstrated by dangerous incidents involving Russian and NATO's military planes and sea vessels (Ian Kearns and Raynova, 2016), indicate that Moscow views the alliance as a serious security threat. In addition, the argument about the Kremlin's diversionary tactics applies only to post-2012 developments as related to Putin's entrenched politics of nationalism, antiAmericanism, and information war against the West.Constructivist theory best explains Russian actionsAndrei P. Tsygankov (2018), Professor Department of International Relations and Political Science, San Francisco State University, “The sources of Russia's fear of NATO”, Communist and Post Communist Studies 51 (2018) 101-111, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**The notion of threat plays a central role in international relations theory; yet different schools approach threat differently. While liberals tend to stress subjective and political nature of threat and foreign policy formation, depending on preferences of leaders and regime's internal characteristics (Doyle, 2016), realists define threat “objectively”, in terms of calculations of military capabilities, offense-defense balance, alliances, and international system's structure.4 Constructivists view threats in social terms, stressing historical experience of relations between the “self” and the “other”. Over time, some nations or cultural communities emerge as more significant, and it is through these significant “others” that “selves” define appropriate character and types of actions (Neumann, 2017; Oren, 2002). The significant “other” establishes the meaningful context for the “self's” existence. However, the “self” is not a passive learner and is not likely to accept a vision that undermines its own historically developed system of perception and cultural meanings.5 The “self's” assessment of the “other” is subject to variations, depending on the “other's” willingness to accept the “self's” influence. Depending on whether such influence is read by the “self” as own extension or denying of “self's” recognition, it may generate either hope or resentment and perception of threat, thereby encouraging or discouraging the “self” to act cooperatively.At the heart of the Kremlin's current view of NATO is the securitized perception of the alliance as reflecting the eternally expansionist drive of Western civilization and its desire to undermine Russia as the alternative other with distinct values and international priorities. The primary factors explaining such view of the alliance are the historically built perception of NATO and the alliance's policies following the Cold War. Russia has historically sought to be recognized by the Western other but Russia's cultural lenses are different from those of Western nations, and in the absence of external recognition, the reformminded leadership in the Kremlin historically runs into opposition from advocates of more defensive and assertive foreign policy (Tsygankov, 2012).The underlying factor that has initially defined Russia's perception of NATO has to do with Russia's experience of security interactions with Western nations. Before the Cold War, Russia at times cooperated with the West, but the two also fought multiple wars. The experience of multiple defensive wars resulted in Russia's defense mentality or the entrenched fear of being attacked from the western direction (Fuller, 1992; Wohlforth, 2006). The Soviet experience exacerbated the problem of insecurity by adding to it the dimension of ideological confrontation and struggle for existential survival. To Russia, the Cold War was about sovereignty and independence from foreign pressures. In Russian narrative of independence, the country successfully withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. NATO was viewed as yet another threat to Russia's independence and Soviet statesmen, such as Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, proposed the mutual disbandment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact as the way to establishing new security foundations. Russia's post-Soviet leaders too insisted that NATO had become obsolete and many in Russia viewed the expansion of NATO as a process that would deprive Russia of its own voice in the new world order.The second factor has to do with NATO's and the U.S.’ policies following the end of the Cold War. While the history of security interactions defines the foundation of Russia's perception of the alliance, the more recent policies of the West help to explain the revival of NATO-threat perception and the dynamics of its escalation. Initially, following the Cold War's end such perception was weakened by what seemed to be a new era of building constructive relationships between the two sides, but the threat-perception did not disappear entirely. Moscow sought to integrate with Western economic and political institutions, but soon stumbled over the West's decision to expand NATO eastward. The decision brushed aside Moscow's hopes to transform the alliance into a non-military one and strengthened the sense that Russia was not being accepted by the West. The West's military interventions in Yugoslavia and elsewhere exacerbated Russia's historic fear of the alliance and gave rise to aggrieved sense of national pride, prompting the Kremlin to mobilize anti-Western sentiments at home.6 That the Russian public was prepared for revival of the image of Western threat was evident from victory of Vladimir Zhirinovsky in November 1993 parliamentary elections by party lists. Zhirinovsky demanded that the state provided a greater support for the military and toughen relations with the West. Russia's liberal foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, had to respond to growing domestic pressures by proposing to rebuild Russia's military presence in Eurasia, supporting the war in Chechnya, and declining participation in the NATO-devised Partnership for Peace. President Boris Yelstin too sought to improve his relations with the army and security services and eventually appointed the leading critic of the West, Yevgeny Primakov, as the Russian second foreign minister. However, NATO was still not taking Russia seriously dismissing the Kremlin's fears as unfounded and not worthy of attention.In response to the sense of growing humiliation by the West, the Kremlin changed from cooperative to increasingly defensive and then assertive policy posture. In the 1990s and early 2000s, due to domestic disorder and poverty, Russia lacked confidence and could not engage in assertive actions. It was too weak to prevent the policy of enlargement and was working to engage NATO in security projects of common significance such as counter-terrorism. In the late 2000s, the Kremlin emerged as more confident and willing to take actions in response to perceived upfront on Russia's values and interests. As the Atlantic alliance continued to expand and used force, including against Russia's historically and culturally close Serbia the Kremlin's perception grew more militarized. Following the U.S. strategy of global regime change, Russia's leaders developed the view that through NATO the West seeks to dismantle Russia's political system and values.Views of encirclement drive Russian regime consolidationAndrei P. Tsygankov (2018), Professor Department of International Relations and Political Science, San Francisco State University, “The sources of Russia's fear of NATO”, Communist and Post Communist Studies 51 (2018) 101-111, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**This perception by Russia found its expression in official documents. The new military doctrine approved by the Security Council on December 19, 2014 named among main threats: “strengthening of military potential by NATO; its assumption of global tasks and attempts to solve them in violation of international law; and expansion of NATO's military infrastructure toward borders of Russian Federation, including by increasing the alliance's membership” (Gordeev, 2014). In addition, the document identified as leading threats development and deployment of MDS, global extremism (terrorism), and “establishment within states bordering Russian Federation of regimes threatening interests of Russian Federation including by overthrowing legitimate bodies of state power.” The latter point reinforces the view that in the Kremlin's mind, Western political and military activities were now viewed merely as two sides of the same process of the West's civilization expansion.15 The renewed National Security Strategy (2015) also identified as the main threats NATO's military activities and attempts by the United States and the West to preserve world economic, political, and military dominance. The new Concept of Foreign Policy (2016), signed by Putin on November 30, 2016, stressed the importance of defending the country's cultural distinctiveness in the context of new international challenges and attempts by the United States to preserve global dominance. The document posited Russia's “right for a tough response to unfriendly actions including by strengthening national defense and implementing symmetric and asymmetric measures.”Russia's military preparations were consistent with the identified perception of threat and sought to contain what was viewed as the further encroachment by NATO and the West. While the Atlantic alliance worried about protection of the Baltics from the Kremlin's potential attack, Russia feared for security of its enclave in Kaliningrad. Responding to NATO's military build-up in Poland and Lithuania, attempts to pull in the neutral states such as Finland and Sweden, and additional MSD deployment in Europe by the U.S., Russia indicated that it considered deployment of advanced nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad and Crimea (Osborn, 2016). Rather than challenging NATO in the Baltics, Russia concentrated its troops in its southern and western regions (Starchak, 2016). In response to what it viewed as highly provocative military exercises and air patrolling, Russia conducted massive exercises of its own and engaged in bold asymmetrical behavior testing the West's patience. There were numerous dangerous incidents between Russia and NATO planes since March 2014 including “violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs and other dangerous happenings” (Kearns and Raynova, 2016). In several cases, Russian planes flew unusually close to Western warships running a high risk of casualties or direct military intervention. In September 2017 Russia conducted a major military exercise in western part of Russia and Belarus Zapad-2017, involving the largest yet amount of troops and combat vehicles (Myers, 2017).On the diplomatic front, Russia sought to prevent future expansion of the Atlantic alliance and relax Western pressures by issuing conciliatory statements, developing bilateral contacts with European states, and engaging the United States in joint actions in Syria and elsewhere. In particular, the Kremlin sought to reassure European non-NATO members explaining Russia's response to the alliance's actions as defensive and calling for development of a collective security system globally and in Europe (Putin, 2016). In October 2015 Russia intervened in Syria and began to scale down its rhetoric on Ukraine in order to engage with the United States. During 2016e2017, Putin made multiple statements expressing his desire to work with the United States despite Western sanctions against Russia and investigations of the Kremlin's hacking activities in the U.S. Nevertheless, the issues of Crimea and Ukraine remained key obstacles for improvement of the relations.Acting on the perception of encirclement by the Western civilization Russia sought to defend itself not just on military and diplomatic grounds, but also in the area of regime consolidation. The Kremlin began to position Russia as a power with its own special characteristics since the mid-2000 introducing restrictions against Western NGOs, political organizations and state-critical media. These developments got consolidated following Putin's return to presidency in March 2012 and especially following the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine. The Kremlin now presented Russia as a special civilization, committed to defending particular values and principles relative to those of the West. In one of his speeches, Putin (2015a) declared “the desire for independence and sovereignty in spiritual, ideological and foreign policy spheres” as an “integral part of our national character.” The incorporation of Crimea too was framed in terms of consolidating Russia's centuries-old “civilizational and sacred significance” (Putin, 2015b). The Kremlin became especially alarmed by a perceived expansion of Western values and could no longer be satisfied with defensive steps, but increasingly took the fight to the West's political and media space. In order to protect Russia's “spiritual sovereignty”, Moscow also began to advocate its own version of information management and established an infrastructure to influence formation of Russia's image in the world (Forsberg and Smith, 2016). At home, the Kremlin tightened control over domestic media and information space. Moscow also developed closer ties with those movements and politicians in the West that were critical of the EU and the U.S. policies across the world (Laruelle, 2015) and indicated openness to working with Donald Trump, a tough critic of the U.S. establishment and its worldview.Overall, Russia's efforts to signal its willingness to find a new mode of coexistence with the West do not mean that the Kremlin's perception of NATO and Western governments improved. The fear of the alliance in Russian political and social circles remains deeply entrenched and will take a long time to change. Progress in the relationship, if it is to be made, is likely to be slow and incremental.NATO: NegativeEntanglement AnsEntanglement doesn’t explain US security policy---the Aff doesn’t make war less likely.Michael Beckley 15. Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts University. "The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts". International Security 39:4. Spring 2015. **NCC Packet 2020-21**In sum, the empirical record shows that the risk of entanglement is real but manageable and that, for better or worse, U.S. security policy lies firmly in the hands of U.S. leaders and is shaped primarily by those leaders’ perceptions of the nation’s core interests. When the United States has overreached militarily, the main cause has not been entangling alliances but rather what Richard Betts calls “self-entrapment”—the tendency of U.S. leaders to define national interests expansively, to exaggerate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention.188 Developing a disciplined defense policy therefore will require the emergence of prudent leadership, the development (or resurrection) of guidelines governing the use of force,189 the establishment of domestic institutional constraints on the president’s authority to send U.S. forces into battle, or some combination of these.190 Scrapping alliances, by contrast, would simply unleash the United States to act on its interventionist impulses while leaving it isolated diplomatically and militarily.To be sure, certain alliances may need to be revised or dissolved as circumstances change. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and U.S. entanglement risk may shift over time. For example, China’s development of antiaccess/area-denial capabilities may substantially increase the risks to the United States of maintaining alliance commitments in East Asia.191 Conversely, U.S. allies may be able to use similar capabilities to defend themselves and thereby allow the United States to maintain alliance commitments while limiting risks to U.S. forces.192 This study does not account for such emerging trends and, therefore, cannot rule out the possibility that the U.S. alliance network will need to be revised in the future.What this study does suggest, however, is that such revisions should be modest. The historical record shows that allies often help keep U.S. troops at home not only by bearing some of the burden for U.S. wars, but also by encouraging the United States to stay out of wars altogether. Large-scale retrenchment would sacrifice these and other benefits of alliances while doing little to compel U.S. leaders to define national interests modestly or choose military interventions selectively. How to accomplish those goals will continue to be the subject of debate, but those debates will be more productive if they focus on domestic culprits rather than foreign friends.Measuring the risk of entrapment is too difficult to be causally significant.Alexander Lanoszka 17. Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Waterloo. "Tangled up in rose? Theories of alliance entrapment and the 2008 Russo-Georgian War". Contemporary Security Policy. 12-18-2017. **NCC Packet 2020-21**ConclusionCritics charge that NATO has been reckless in its outreach to countries like Georgia and Ukraine. In so doing, it has encouraged those countries to behave more aggressive towards Russia, risking war in such a way that implicates NATO members against their own interests. The dangers of entrapment abound.This article analyzes the different causal pathways and variables that scholars have invoked to describe how entrapment risks arise. According to the international relations literature, four broad sources of risk exist. The strength of the commitment given to the ally—actual or potential—is an institutional source. The greater the commitment, the more perverse incentives it creates for the ally to behave recklessly. System polarity and the offense-defense balance are systemic factors insofar as no one country can manipulate them. Multipolarity raises the value of allies for maintaining the balance of power, whereas the offense-defense balance affects how a defender might manage its ties with its ally. Reputational sources of risk arise when an ally exploits the defender’s interest to defend its commitments for intrinsic reasons. Finally, entrapment risks can have ideological sources: An ally strategically appeals to the ideological prejudices of its defender, thereby reshaping the defender’s own sense of strategic interests on favorable terms. Some of these arguments regarding how entrapment unfolds have already been subject to criticism on empirical and logical grounds. Besides organizing these arguments typologically, I demonstrate how uncovering clear evidence of entrapment is a difficult enterprise, even when the theories themselves seem straightforward.The main problem concerns counterfactuals. The factors that allegedly generate entrapment risks can be so wide-ranging that imagining a world in which they operate differently would require changing other variables, which in turn can make war more or less likely. Alternatively, they might not exclude other factors that could lead to the same violent outcome. After all, conflict drives both alliance formation and the likelihood of war. States join alliances because they assess that the possibility of war is non-trivial. Similarly, a defender might be receptive to the overtures of an ally precisely because it has a pre-existing desire to see conflict with the adversary of that ally. In social scientific parlance, endogeneity problems are pervasive when trying to understand whether entrapment has occurred or is at risk of occurring. The case of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War is instructive by revealing these ambiguities. Many NATO members—especially those in Western Europe—were lukewarm towards Georgia’s bid to become a treaty ally, arguably because they recognized that Georgia posed certain entrapment risks. The United States was the most supportive of Georgia, but it might have overstated its support to Georgia in order to gain a bargaining chip with Russia. It might have even done so because Western European countries were so hesitant, thereby ignoring Saakashvili’s non-democratic tendencies. But by this very token, the United States limited its response to the outbreak of hostilities between Georgia and Russia in August 2008. The Georgian case suggests that states do not forge alliances mindlessly nor do they follow their allies off the cliff thoughtlessly. One cannot by definition want to be entrapped.The Russo-Georgian War of 2008 illustrates the need to disentangle the factors that push states to fight wars and to seek alliances while carefully investigating the mechanisms through which alliances fuel wars. As noted, some baseline probability of war had already existed between the two former Soviet republics when Saakashvili became President. Their conflict centered on an unresolved dispute regarding the political status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Neither could commit to a durable settlement. Moreover, territorial concessions and submission to salami tactics could have signaled Georgian weakness, thereby encouraging new or more assertive territorial demands. Georgian leaders might have also faced domestic incentives to stand firm towards Russia—incentives that would have existed independent of NATO. To the extent that alliance politics mattered from Georgia’s perspective, Saakashvili might have cherry-picked information that confirmed his beliefs regarding Western support. Nevertheless, these factors are idiosyncratic because they stem directly from his personality. In a counterfactual world where NATO was not a factor, he could have had these and other cognitive biases that would have elevated the likelihood of war.By undertaking this sort of counterfactual analysis, scholars thus must take care to isolate the effect of an alliance commitment—to the degree that it exists—from the underlying propensity of war. Georgia bears a methodological and analytical lesson for thinking about entrapment: Just because NATO was an issue for Georgian security in 2008 does not mean the alliance was causally responsible for the war. Future research on alliances and war must not only identify correlations between alliances and conflict, but also sort out various causal mechanisms that connect different causal factors with war.Carefully disentangling the factors that could lead to entrapment matters not only for theory and methodology but also for policy. If entrapment concerns are real, then defense planners must have a clear idea as to where they come from. Some entrapment risks can be attenuated with active policy measures. Conditioning a political or military commitment when dealing with a risk-acceptant ally is one example. But doing so might not matter if we have reason to think that systemic forces make that ally more aggressive. Strong commitments could even make seemingly jumpy allies more secure. And so, armed with a better understanding of what drives entrapment risks, defense planners would be more confident in modulating political and military commitments appropriately. As such, critics of NATO expansion and American foreign policy may be overstating their case. NATO might bear some indirect responsibility for the Russo-Georgian War, but its culpability lessens when we consider the other factors that increased the likelihood of war: misperceptions, overconfidence, and the commitment problems underlying the territorial disputes themselves. If anything, the key policy challenge is for NATO to determine whether prospective partners like Saakashvili have psychological traits or cognitive biases that would make them unjustifiably optimistic about the level of support that they would receive.Relations: DoomedImproving relations impossible under Trump – structure of US politics means Russia just pocketsCui Heng 8/20/20, post-doctorate researcher from the Centre for Russian Studies, East China Normal University, “Trump unable to change rocky US-Russia ties”, Global Times, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**But the situation will not turn out as Trump wishes. Trump himself cannot change the course of US-Russia relations. The political infighting in the US has made Trump's efforts to improve US-Russia relations into a vain exercise. As US presidential election looms, the Democratic Party will certainly object to any moves by Trump. Even Trump invites Putin to the US with his presidential power, the US' Russia sanction bill still stands as the biggest block in US-Russia relations. Moscow is well aware of the structural contradictions with Washington. It knows that Trump's personal will is not enough to change the confrontational status between the two countries. Even if Putin visits America, this does not necessarily mean any changes will occur in bilateral ties.Moreover, Russia is clear that since the US launched its anti-China campaign, the US has taken all possible means to sow discord between China and Russia. Since the Ukraine crisis began six years ago and Western sanctions were imposed on Russia, the sustained China-Russia relationship has helped Russia survive one of its most diplomatically and economically difficult periods. Russia clearly understands that China-Russia relations support Russia's present major power status. Therefore, Russia has supported China on a number of international agendas since the Trump administration launched the anti-China campaign. It is worth remembering that Russia under Putin's rule sticks to a pragmatic foreign policy and prioritizes national interests. If Trump invites Putin to visit the US with the aim of extending the New START, Putin would be willing to go. But this does not mean changes will occur in US-Russia relations, nor that will Russia choose to side with the US. China should hold its strategic resolve as China-Russia relations will remain stable despite complex international dynamics.Russia: NATO Prevents WarRussia is emboldened absent the U.S.Valasek 18—(director of think tank Carnegie Europe and former ambassador of Slovakia to NATO). Tomas Valasek. How Trump and Putin could kill NATO. July 11, 2018. . **NCC Packet 2020-21**If so, we enter uncharted territory. Such a move would reduce the fear in Russia — whether irrational or not — that NATO is planning an offensive. But its positive effects would be limited. European countries would continue their military exercises because they remain concerned, for good reason, about Russia’s expansionist agenda and do not want to be caught unprepared. NATO’s eastern border will remain tense. Without the backstop of U.S. firepower, it would likely become a more dangerous place, as Russia would be emboldened by its heightened odds of prevailing in a conflict, and thus less likely to exercise restraint.There’s no EU fill in – NATO collapse takes them with it. Collapse of European alliances causes extinction.Zack Beauchamp 18, senior reporter at Vox, where he covers global politics and ideology, and a host of Worldly, Vox's podcast on covering foreign policy and international relations, “How Trump is killing America’s alliances”, Vox, **NCC Packet 2020-21**How the weakening of American alliances could lead to a massive war There has never, in human history, been an era as peaceful as our own. This is a hard truth to appreciate, given the horrible violence ongoing in places like Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar, yet the evidence is quite clear. Take a look at this chart from the University of Oxford’s Max Roser. It tracks the number of years in a given time period in which “great powers” — meaning the militarily and economically powerful countries at that time — were at war with each other over the course of the past 500 years. The decline is unmistakable: [[TABLE OMITTED]] This data should give you some appreciation for how unique, and potentially precarious, our historical moment is. For more than 200 years, from 1500 to about 1750, major European powers like Britain and France and Spain were warring constantly. The frequency of conflict declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the wars that did break out — the Napoleonic conflicts, both world wars — were particularly devastating. The past 70 years without great power war, a period scholars term “the Long Peace,” is one of history’s most wonderful anomalies. The question then becomes: Why did it happen? And could Trump mucking around with a pillar of the global order, American alliances, put it in jeopardy? The answer to the second question, ominously, appears to be yes. There is significant evidence that strong American alliances — most notably the NATO alliance and US agreements to defend Japan and South Korea — have been instrumental in putting an end to great power war. “As this alliance system spreads and expands, it correlates with this dramatic decline, this unprecedented drop, in warfare,” says Michael Beckley, a professor of international relations at Tufts University. “It’s a really, really strong correlation.” A 2010 study by Rice’s Leeds and the University of Kentucky’s Jesse C. Johnson surveyed a large data set on alliances between 1816 and 2000. They found that countries in defensive alliances were 20 percent less likely to be involved in a conflict, on average, than countries that weren’t. This holds true even after you control for other factors that would affect the likelihood of war, like whether a country is a democracy or whether it has an ongoing dispute with a powerful neighbor. In a follow-up paper, Leeds and Johnson looked at the same data set to see whether certain kinds of alliances were more effective at protecting its members than others. Their conclusion is that alliances deter war best when their members are militarily powerful and when enemies take seriously the allies’ promise to fight together in the event of an attack. The core US alliances — NATO, Japan, and South Korea — fit these descriptors neatly. A third study finds evidence that alliances allow allies to restrain each other from going to war. Let’s say Canada wants to get involved in a conflict somewhere. Typically, it would discuss its plans with the United States first — and if America thinks it’s a bad idea, Canada might well listen to them. There’s strong statistical evidence that countries don’t even try to start some conflicts out of fear that an ally would disapprove. These three findings all suggest that NATO and America’s East Asian alliances very likely are playing a major role in preserving the Long Peace — which is why Trump’s habit of messing around with alliances is so dangerous. According to many Russia experts, Vladimir Putin’s deepest geostrategic goal is “breaking” NATO. The member states where anyone would expect him to test NATO’s commitment would be the Baltics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — small former Soviet republics that recently became NATO members. We can’t predict if and when a rival like Putin would conclude that America’s alliances seemed weak enough to try testing them. Hopefully, it never happens. But the more Trump attacks the foundations of America’s allies, the more likely things are to change. The absolute risk of a Russian invasion of a NATO state or a North Korean attack on the South is relatively low, but the consequences are so potentially catastrophic — nuclear war! — that it’s worth taking anything that increases the odds of such a conflict seriously. The crack-up of the West? The world order is a little like a game of Jenga. In the game, there are lots of small blocks that interlock to form a stable tower. Each player has to remove a block without toppling the tower. But each time you take out a block, the whole thing gets a bit less stable. Take out enough blocks and it will collapse. The international order works in kind of the same way. There are lots of different interlocking parts — the spread of democracy, American alliances, nuclear deterrence, and the like — that work together to keep the global peace. But take out one block and the other ones might not be strong enough to keep things together on their own. At the end of the Cold War, British and French leaders worried that the passing of the old order might prove destabilizing. In a January 1990 meeting, French President Fran?ois Mitterrand told British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that he feared a united Germany could seize control of even more territory than Hitler. Some experts feared that in the absence of the external Soviet threat, Western European powers might go back to waging war with each other. Thankfully, those predictions turned out to be wrong. There are multiple reasons for that, but one big one — one that also helped keep relations between other historical enemies, like South Korea and Japan, peaceful — is a shared participation in US alliance networks. The US serves as the ultimate security blanket, preventing these countries from having to build up their own armaments and thus risk a replay of World War I. But if American alliance commitments become and remain less credible, it’s possible this order could crack up. America’s partners aren’t stupid. They understand that Trump is the product of deep forces in American politics, and that his victory might not be a one-off. If they think that this won’t be the last “America First” president in modern history, depending on America the way that they have in the past could quickly become a nightmare. The worst-case scenarios for a collapse in the US alliance system are terrible. Imagine full Japanese and German rearmament, alongside rapid-fire proliferation of nuclear weapons. Imagine a crack-up of NATO, with European powers at loggerheads while Russia gobbles up the Baltic states and the rest of Ukraine. Imagine South Korea’s historical tensions with Japan reigniting, and a war between those two countries or any combination of them and China. All of this seems impossible to imagine now, almost absurd. And indeed, in the short run, it is. There is no risk — zero — of American allies turning on each other in the foreseeable future. And it’s possible that the next president after Trump could reassure American allies that nothing like this could ever happen again. But the truth is that there’s just no way to know. When a fundamental force for world peace starts to weaken, no one can really be sure how well the system will hold up. Nothing like this — the leader of the world’s hegemon rounding on its most important allies — has ever happened before. What Donald Trump’s presidency has done, in effect, is start up another geopolitical Jenga game. Slowly but surely, he’s removing the blocks that undergird global security. It’s possible the global order survives Trump — but it’s just too early for us to say for sure. Given the stakes, it’s a game we’d rather not play.Russia: Yes RevisionistRussia strives to undercut U.S. primacyKagan et al. 19 [Frederick W. Kagan, Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Nataliya Bugayova, Research Fellow on the Russia and Ukraine Portfolio at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Jennifer Cafarella, Research Director at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). “CONFRONTING THE RUSSIAN CHALLENGE: A NEW APPROACH FOR THE U.S.” June 2019. ] **NCC Packet 2020-21**Russia poses a significant threat to the United States and its allies for which the West is not ready. The West must act urgently to meet this threat without exaggerating it. Russia today does not have the military strength of the Soviet Union. It is a poor state with an economy roughly the size of Canada’s, a population less than half that of the U.S., and demographic trends indicating that it will lose strength over time. It is not a conventional military near-peer nor will it become so. Its unconventional warfare and information operations pose daunting but not insuperable challenges. The U.S. and its allies must develop a coherent global approach to meeting and transcending the Russian challenge.The Russian ThreatPresident Vladimir Putin has invaded two of his neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, partly to stop them from aligning with NATO and the West. He has also illegally annexed territory from both those states. He has established a military base in the eastern Mediterranean that he uses to interfere with, shape, and restrict the operations of the U.S. and the anti-ISIS coalition. He has given cover to Bashar al Assad’s use of chemical weapons, and Russian agents have used military-grade chemical weapons in assassination attempts in Great Britain. Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons, even in regional and local conflicts. And Moscow has interfered in elections and domestic political discourse in the U.S. and Europe.The Russian threat’s effectiveness results mainly from the West’s weaknesses. NATO’s European members are not meeting their full commitments to the alliance to maintain the fighting power needed to deter and defeat the emerging challenge from Moscow. Increasing political polarization and the erosion of trust by Western peoples in their governments creates vulnerabilities that the Kremlin has adroitly exploited.Moscow’s success in manipulating Western perceptions of and reactions to its activities has fueled the development of an approach to warfare that the West finds difficult to understand, let alone counter. Shaping the information space is the primary effort to which Russian military operations, even conventional military operations, are frequently subordinated in this way of war. Russia obfuscates its activities and confuses the discussion so that many people throw up their hands and say simply, “Who knows if the Russians really did that? Who knows if it was legal?”—thus paralyzing the West’s responses.Putin’s ProgramPutin is not simply an opportunistic predator. Putin and the major institutions of the Russian Federation have a program as coherent as that of any Western leader. Putin enunciates his objectives in major speeches, and his ministers generate detailed formal expositions of Russia’s military and diplomatic aims and its efforts and the methods and resources it uses to pursue them. These statements cohere with the actions of Russian officials and military units on the ground. The common perception that he is opportunistic arises from the way that the Kremlin sets conditions to achieve these objectives in advance. Putin closely monitors the domestic and international situation and decides to execute plans when and if conditions require and favor the Kremlin. The aims of Russian policy can be distilled into the following:Domestic ObjectivesPutin is an autocrat who seeks to retain control of his state and the succession. He seeks to keep his power circle content, maintain his own popularity, suppress domestic political opposition in the name of blocking a “color revolution” he falsely accuses the West of preparing, and expand the Russian economy.Putin has not fixed the economy, which remains corrupt, inefficient, and dependent on petrochemical and mineral exports. He has focused instead on ending the international sanctions regime to obtain the cash, expertise, and technology he needs. Information operations and hybrid warfare undertakings in Europe are heavily aimed at this objective.External ObjectivesPutin’s foreign policy aims are clear: end American dominance and the “unipolar” world order, restore “multipolarity,” and reestablish Russia as a global power and broker. He identifies NATO as an adversary and a threat and seeks to negate it. He aims to break Western unity, establish Russian suzerainty over the former Soviet States, and regain a global footprint.Putin works to break Western unity by invalidating the collective defense provision of the North Atlantic Treaty (Article 5), weakening the European Union, and destroying the faith of Western societies in their governments.He is reestablishing a global military footprint similar in extent the Soviet Union’s, but with different aims. He is neither advancing an ideology, nor establishing bases from which to project conventional military power on a large scale. He aims rather to constrain and shape America’s actions using small numbers of troops and agents along with advanced anti-air and anti-shipping systems.Russia is revisionist. Maintaining primacy is key to deterrence.Daalder, 17 - President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013. (Ivo, Responding to Russia's Resurgence; Not Quiet on the Eastern Front, October 18th, Foreign Affairs, LexisNexis) **NCC Packet 2020-21**Many observers believe that the greatest damage Russia has done to U.S. interests in recent years stems from the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Although there is no question that Moscow's meddling in American elections is deeply worrying, it is just one aspect of the threat Russia poses. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has embarked on a systematic challenge to the West. The goal is to weaken the bonds between Europe and the United States and among EU members, undermine NATO's solidarity, and strengthen Russia's strategic position in its immediate neighborhood and beyond. Putin wants nothing less than to return Russia to the center of global politics by challenging the primacy that the United States has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. He has undertaken a major military modernization designed to intimidate neighbors and weaken NATO, and he has resorted to the overt use of military force to establish new facts on the ground-not just in what Moscow calls its "sphere of privileged interests," which encompasses all of the former Soviet republics, but also further afield, including in the Middle East, an area where the U.S. military has long operated with a free hand. For some time now, "the Kremlin has been de facto operating in a war mode," the Russia scholar Dmitri Trenin has observed, and Putin has been behaving like a wartime leader. Washington's response to this challenge must be equally strong. First, it is critical to maintain transatlantic unity; divisions across the Atlantic and within Europe weaken NATO's ability to respond to Russian provocations and provide openings for Moscow to extend its reach and influence. The alliance has responded to the new Russia challenge by enhancing its presence in eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and Russia has so far not threatened the territorial integrity of any NATO member state. But NATO must do more to bolster its deterrence by sending a clear message to the Kremlin that it will not tolerate further Russian aggression or expansionism. At the same time, policymakers must remember that the United States is not at war with Russia; there is no need for Washington to put itself on a war footing, even if Moscow has. Dialogue and open channels of communication remain essential to avoiding misunderstandings and miscalculations that could escalate into a war no one wants. OLD HABITS DIE HARD After the Cold War ended, American, European, and Russian strategic objectives appeared to converge on the goal of fostering the economic and political transformation of eastern Europe and Russia and creating an integrated Europe that would be whole, free, and at peace. The military confrontation that had marked relations for more than 40 years rapidly and peacefully disappeared with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from eastern Europe, and the negotiation of far-reaching arms control agreements. Freed from the strategic logic of the Cold War, governments focused their energies on transforming eastern Europe's command economies into functioning market democracies and on the task of unifying the continent. In Russia in the early 1990s, economic "shock therapy" rapidly dismantled the state-controlled economy of the Soviet era but failed to produce immediate or widely shared prosperity. The Russian financial crisis of 1998 imposed significant costs on the population-including a sharp rise in prices for basic goods as a result of the rapid depreciation of the ruble-and helped set the stage for the emergence of a new generation of leaders committed to stability and order even at the cost of economic and political liberalization. By the end of the decade, a demoralized Russian public welcomed the arrival of a strong new leader; Putin, the former head of Russia's security services, took office in late 1999, promising an end to chaos and a return to stability. By tightening his control over the state bureaucracy, Putin fulfilled his promise. And as rising oil and gas prices filled government coffers, he also managed to raise the standard of living of ordinary Russians. The focus during this time was on domestic renewal rather than foreign engagement, although Putin did indicate a desire for increased cooperation with the United States, especially when it came to confronting common threats, such as terrorism. As Russia's confidence and wealth grew, however, the Kremlin became increasingly concerned about what it perceived as Western encroachment in its sphere of influence, as successive countries in central and eastern Europe, including the three Baltic states, opted to join NATO and the EU. Putin chafed at what he saw as Washington's growing power and arrogance, especially in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he gradually abandoned any thought of seeking common ground with the West. The first signs of this shift came, unexpectedly, in a speech Putin delivered at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. He railed against NATO expansion and accused the United States of running roughshod over the sovereignty of other countries in its pursuit of a unipolar world. In Putin's eyes, Washington aimed at nothing less than world domination: "One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision-making. It is [a] world in which there is one master, one sovereign." And it wasn't just Putin's rhetoric that changed. That same year, Russia exploited internal disagreements between ethnic Russians and Estonians to launch a cyberattack against Estonia's government, media outlets, and banking system. The following year saw the first overt military expression of Moscow's new foreign policy direction: Russia's war with Georgia, ostensibly designed to secure the independence of two breakaway regions but in fact meant to send a clear message that Russia was prepared to stymie Georgia's ambitions to join the West. THE PUTIN PLAYBOOK Although Moscow achieved its objectives in the war against Georgia, the conflict laid bare real weaknesses in Russia's armed forces, including failing command and control, a woeful lack of military training, and significant shortcomings in its military hardware. Some 60 to 70 percent of Russian tanks and armored vehicles broke down during the five days of fighting, and although Russia's per capita military spending was 56 percent greater than Georgia's that year, the heavy armor deployed by Tbilisi was far more modern and advanced than Moscow's. None of these deficiencies went unnoticed in Moscow, and the Kremlin immediately embarked on a massive military reform and modernization program. Between 2007 and 2016, Russia's annual military spending nearly doubled, reaching $70 billion, the third-highest level of defense spending in the world (following the United States and China). Military spending in 2016 amounted to 5.3 percent of Russia's GDP, the highest proportion since Russia's independence in 1990 and the highest percentage spent on defense by any major economy that year. In 2011, Moscow announced a ten-year modernization program that included $360 billion in new military procurement. At the same time, the Russian armed forces began a wholesale restructuring and an overhaul of their training programs. The effect of these improvements became clear in Ukraine six years after the war in Georgia. As Kiev was rocked by political upheaval over its ties to the EU, Putin-who had once told U.S. President George W. Bush that Ukraine was "not even a state" and claimed that the Soviet Union had given the territory of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 as "a gift"-responded by invading and annexing Crimea in early 2014. Not satisfied with controlling this strategically vital peninsula, Moscow then fomented a separatist rebellion in the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, home to a predominantly Russian-speaking population and to many of Ukraine's heavy industries. Russia sent military equipment, advisers, and ultimately thousands of troops to the area in order to prevent Ukraine from securing control over its own territory. The thrusts into eastern Ukraine were straight out of the Putin playbook, but the Crimea operation represented a qualitatively new effort by Moscow to get its way. Crimea was not just invaded; it was annexed and incorporated into the Russian Federation after an illegitimate, rigged referendum. Putin wanted Russia's "gift" back, even though Moscow had agreed to respect the territorial integrity of every former Soviet republic when the Soviet Union broke up, in 1991, and had explicitly reiterated that commitment in a legally binding memorandum negotiated with Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom in 1994. For the first time in postwar European history, one country had annexed territory from another by force. The operation in Crimea also demonstrated a whole new form of Russian military prowess. Stealthily deployed special forces took over key facilities and organs of the Ukrainian state. Sophisticated cyber-operations and relentless disinformation diverted attention from what was happening. And the speed of the operation meant it was completed before anyone could mount an effective response. Russian special forces, dressed in green uniforms without identifying patches, suddenly appeared at strategic points throughout Crimea and effectively took control of the peninsula. Simultaneously, a large-scale propaganda operation sought to hide Moscow's fingerprints by suggesting that these "little green men" were local opposition forces that reflected the popular will to reject the political change in Kiev and reunite with Russia instead. This, in short, was no traditional military invasion; it was hybrid warfare in which goals were accomplished even before the adversary understood what was going on. It represented an entirely new threat for which neither Ukraine nor NATO was prepared. Moscow justified the invasion and annexation of Crimea with arguments based on a new form of Russian nationalism. From the outset of the conflict, Putin had maintained that Crimea was rightly Russia's and that Moscow was fully within its right in retaking it. Moreover, Russia claimed that it had to act because Russian-speaking people in Ukraine were being attacked by a violent mob of "nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites" who had carried out a coup in Kiev. Later, Putin went further, pronouncing a new doctrine aimed at defending Russians anywhere. "I would like to make it clear to all: our country will continue to actively defend the rights of Russians, our compatriots abroad, using the entire range of available means." And Putin was adamant that he was not talking about just Russian citizens, or even ethnic Russians, when pronouncing this absolute right to defend them anywhere. "I am referring to those people who consider themselves part of the broad Russian community; they may not necessarily be ethnic Russians, but they consider themselves Russian people." To many, these words echoed claims made during the 1930s that Germany had a right-and an obligation-to protect Germans in other countries, such as Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the continued fighting there have exacted a huge toll on the country. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 10,000 people have died since mid-2014, nearly 25,000 have been injured, and some 1.6 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced. Every day brings exchanges of fire and more casualties. Yet the incursion into Ukraine represents only one part of the expansion of Russia's military footprint, which stretches from the Arctic in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. Russia's military buildup is both vast in scope and strategically significant. In the country's far north, Russia has reopened former military bases near the Arctic Ocean, establishing a position of military dominance in a region where peaceful cooperation among the Arctic powers had become the norm. From there, Russia has bolstered and modernized its military presence in its western territories, which stretch from the Norwegian border in the north to the Ukrainian border in the south. Moscow has also beefed up its presence in what is already the most heavily militarized piece of land in Europe, the Kaliningrad exclave-just under 6,000 square miles of Russian-controlled territory sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. More than 300,000 well-trained troops are deployed in Kaliningrad, equipped with modern tanks, armored vehicles, and missile batteries, including a nuclear-capable short-range missile system-posing a significant military threat to Poland and the three Baltic states. A similar buildup has occurred farther south. Since the war in Ukraine began, Russia has sent additional brigades to the Ukrainian border and announced the creation of three new divisions that will face in a "southwest strategic direction"-in other words, toward Ukraine. In addition to deploying 30,000 troops to Crimea, Moscow has positioned 30 combat ships, five submarines, more than 100 combat aircraft, and more than 50 combat helicopters, as well as long-range antiship and antiaircraft missile and radar systems, on the strategically vital peninsula, giving Russia the ability to dominate the Black Sea region. It also has deployed thousands of troops to occupied areas in eastern Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova-as well as some 5,500 troops to Armenia, which are there with the consent of the Armenian government in support of its claim to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Finally, Russia has enlarged its air and naval presence in Syria in order to better assist the endangered regime of Bashar al-Assad, effectively ending NATO's uncontested control of the eastern Mediterranean, a strategically pivotal area that includes the Suez Canal. Although many analysts worry about the Russian threat to the Baltic states, the more dramatic shift has been in the Mediterranean, where Russia's navy now boasts missiles that can threaten most of Europe. Russia's enhanced military presence has been matched by increased military assertiveness. This trend started with the invasion of Ukraine but did not end there. In Syria, Russia has increased the tempo of its military operations in support of the flailing Assad regime and employed long-range missiles fired from naval vessels in the Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. It has flown fighter and bomber missions close to or even within the airspace of NATO member states and other European countries. It has deployed nuclear submarines armed with ballistic missiles from its northern ports to the Atlantic. And it has engaged in often dangerous air and naval activities, including buzzing NATO naval vessels and aircraft, flying military aircraft with their transponders turned off, and intentionally failing to monitor emergency communications channels. Meanwhile, the Russian military has significantly enhanced the scale and scope of its training exercises, launching many without any notice. In 2014, days before the invasion of Ukraine, a snap exercise mobilized 150,000 troops near the Russian-Ukrainian border; in September 2017, Moscow conducted its quadrennial Zapad exercise, mobilizing up to 100,000 troops in western Russia, Kaliningrad, and Belarus and requisitioning enough rail cars to transport 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles. At the same time, Russia is modernizing all three legs of its nuclear triad, building new long-range missiles, submarines, and bombers to maintain a nuclear force that is at least the equal of the U.S. arsenal. ALARM BELLS Russia's military buildup and posturing have provided Moscow with renewed confidence-a sense that Russia once again matters and that the world can no longer ignore it. In the Kremlin's eyes, Russia is again a great global power and therefore can act as global powers do. Not surprisingly, the buildup has caused concern in the Pentagon. Calling Russia's behavior "nothing short of alarming," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, concluded in 2015 that "Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security." Russia is revisionist --- Putin’s psychology, domestic and foreign actions, and official state documents prove.Natsios 18 --- Andrew S. Natsios, Executive Professor and Director of the Scowcroft Institute at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University, 2018, ("Introduction: Putin's New Russia: Fragile State or Revisionist Power?"?South Central Review?35, no. 1 (2018): 1-21. ) **NCC Packet 2020-21**UNDERSTANDING PUTIN'S FOREIGN POLICY John Mearsheimer, the international relations scholar, argues Russia's aggressiveness towards its neighbors stems from western efforts to extend NATO membership to former members of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. According to this view, traditional national interest drives Russia's behavior, and NATO extension has been seen by Putin as a threat to Russia's vital national security interests. As a result, he is responding to that perceived threat through territorial aggrandizement, aggressive ultra-nationalist ideology, and confrontation with the West. From this perspective, the western democracies helped create Vladimir Putin's Russia by impinging on its "sphere of influence" along its borders; thus, Russia is not what international relations scholars call a "revisionist power"—one which seeks to overthrow the existing international order—but a traditional state protecting what it sees as its equities and vital national interests. Other analysts, such as Anne Applebaum, argue Putin's policies are not part of a grand strategy, but are evidence of an improvised foreign policy. Thus, Russia's aggression in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and its threats to the Baltic States, may be seen not as a carefully designed and executed strategy of conquest, but as symptomatic of Putin's ad hoc, opportunistic foreign policy. He probes for Western weakness, irresolution, and indecision, and then, if there is no resistance, he intervenes to extend Russia's reach by absorbing more territory. The limitation of these views is that they ignore what we know of the mindset in the Kremlin, the worldwide reach of Russian cyberwarfare and black operations, and the grievances which Putin himself has expressed multiple times against the Western democracies. These grievances are rooted, among other factors, in his personal experience in East Germany. [End Page 4] He and other mid-level operatives were traumatized as the USSR and its satellite Communist states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia collapsed in 1990 and 1991. The population of the Soviet Union shrank by more than 50% from 290 million to 142 million people in a matter of months. The borders of the Russia state Vladimir Putin inherited resembled Russia before the reign of Catherine the Great in the second half of the 18th century rather than Russia of the 19th and 20th century, Tsarist or Communist. Russia's Warsaw Pact occupied "allies" in Central and Eastern Europe threw off Soviet control in a chain of uprisings which swept across the region in little more than a year. Most of these states eventually joined the NATO alliance and the European Union as newly independent democratic capitalist nations. Vladimir Putin and fellow KGB operatives watched with horror as their world disappeared almost overnight; they destroyed their police files in East Germany; and fled the country. In his memoirs, Putin wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the "greatest geostrategic catastrophe of the 20th century," an extraordinary, if not bizarre, statement given the other events of the century. Putin has sought to return Russia to great power status by weakening other competing powers or annexing neighboring states rather than risking reforms that could be destabilizing in the short term, but would strengthen Russia as a nation state over the long term. The immediate objectives of Russian foreign policy are not mysterious if one examines Putin's government's public rhetoric, its published documents, and its actions. One of Putin's greatest strengths has been the aggressive and systematic pursuit of these strategic objectives which include: ? efforts to regain military parity with the United States (they are nowhere near achieving this) ? the neutralization, or at least weakening, of the NATO alliance ? the end of the European Union as one of the most powerful economic blocs in the world ? the creation of an alternative anti-liberal, authoritarian, reactionary governance model of statehood for which Russia is trying to gain adherents among far right and far left parties wing in Europe (not only are the far-right wing parties of Europe pro-Putin, so too is Jeremy Corbyn, the hard-left Labor leader in the U.K., and the Syriza Party elected to power in Greece in January 2015 which is dominated by Communists) ? the reconstruction of the historic Russian sphere of influence through annexation of parts of neighboring states, or at least their realignment out of NATO and the European Union into Russia's orbit of influence, and the projection of Russian power to other regions of the world such as the Middle East and Afghanistan [End Page 5] (CNN reported on July 25, 2017 that the Russians were arming the Taliban in Afghanistan). Over time Putin has ruthlessly pursued these objectives with great discipline, using some of Russia's vast natural resources to rebuild the Russian military and create a powerful cyber-security capacity to pursue asymmetrical warfare against the West and vulnerable countries on the periphery. The Russian Euro-Asian land mass contains perhaps a third of earth's minerals, oil, and natural gas reserves. This represents an extraordinary treasure and source of national power, if only they had been efficiently and entirely used to increase economic productivity, build modern infrastructure, and construct a knowledge-based economy. But they weren't. Putin's ability to use these resources has been curtailed since 2014, when oil prices collapsed from $117 a barrel to $27 at the beginning of 2016 before rising in 2018 to $68. Because of this price collapse, Russia suffered a significant drop in state revenues between 2014 and 2017 due to the decline in oil prices and western economic sanctions imposed because of the invasion of Ukraine and Crimea. The ongoing demographic decline of the country, cuts in social services and pensions because of the revenue drop, and Russia's isolation from international markets by Moscow's deliberate design has constrained Putin's ambitions. Does Russia face a new threat from the Western democracies? U.S. military presence in Europe (approximately 30,000 combat troops at the end of 2016) was at its lowest level since before World War II, down from a high of 400,000 during the peak of the Cold War. Even more significant than any real or imagined threat Putin sees coming from the United States, is that the American military is going through its most painful retrenchment since the end of the Vietnam War. The U.S. defense budget by the end of the Obama Administration had been cut by nearly $150 billion. The Trump Administration's first budget does request an increase of over $50 billion in defense spending, but Trump also declared his intention to improve U.S. relations with Russia. European countries' military forces have scaled back to such a degree they have undertaken virtual unilateral disarmament. Putin's Russia's expansionary strategy with the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, its rapid increase in its defense budget, the annexation of Crimea, the rebuilding of its nuclear arsenal, and its military intervention in Syria, has all been undertaken with no self-evident threat to Russia's survival or vital national interests. Furthermore, China is Russia's only real ally in its competition with the West, at least at this writing. If Putin's strategic objective was to minimize or reduce external [End Page 6] threats to Russia, the invasion of Ukraine was a major strategic blunder as it has slowly begun to mobilize the previous docile and distracted Western Alliance to counter the new threat. NATO officials have now begun publicly raising the alarm bells. Sweden and Finland which never joined NATO are now engaged in a public discussion about joining the Alliance, which has broad public support. In the last year of the Obama Administration, the U.S. redeployed an armored brigade to Europe which will rotate among Eastern European and the Baltic NATO members as a response to Russian aggression. DOMESTIC PRESSURES DRIVING PUTIN'S BEHAVIOR The Russian foreign policy riddle may in fact be better explained, per some essays in this issue, as a response to the power dynamics within the country rather than by any particular national security doctrine. These dynamics are internal, not external threats to Putin's rule, certainly not to Russia as a nation-state. Moscow's policies may be driven by the insecurity and illegitimacy of the small circle of Oligarchs and former KGB agents surrounding Putin who fear their own people more than they fear any outside threat, a fear which is evidence of profound, if disguised, weakness.3 After it appeared that Putin had rigged the 2012 Presidential elections to ensure he returned to power (he would likely have won anyway), hundreds of thousands of Russians took to the streets of major cities in protest, which lasted several months. His relative restraint (protest leaders were arrested and some tortured but no massacres on the streets took place) in suppressing the popular uprising may have had more to do with his fear that the internal security forces might not carry out an order to crush the protest through brute force rather than any ethical qualms he had about a bloodbath in the streets. Or, it may have been that Putin wanted to avoid the embarrassment such a solution to the street uprising would have caused him internationally. This suggests Putin fears another public uprising, which is why he has taken control of the public's sources of information. Putin gradually emasculated the electronic major media outlets, tried to block internet access to the worldwide web, and has suppressed dissent. He has been accused by his critics of allowing or ordering the assassination of prominent journalists, civil society leaders, Oligarchs who have fallen out with Putin, and political opponents. Accounts differ on the number of journalists who have been murdered since Putin took power in 1999. They range from 12, according to a professional association of journalists, to 25, according to an article [End Page 7] in the New Yorker. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered on a bridge in sight of the Kremlin the day before he was to release a report with evidence that Russian troops were fighting alongside separatists in the Ukraine. Few analysts have argued that Putin himself gave orders to assassinate Nemtsov, but the five men convicted of killing him and sentenced in July 2017 in a Moscow court were Chechens with ties to Chechnya's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, who is an acolyte of Putin's.4 PUTIN'S GRAND BARGAIN WITH THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE: SURRENDERING FREEDOM FOR GUNS, BUTTER, AND THE DREAM OF LOST RUSSIAN GRANDEUR Putin's legitimacy as a ruler has been based on a tacit agreement with the Russian people that trades individual freedom, democracy, and the rule of law for economic security. Since the severe economic contraction after mid-2014, that tacit agreement ended. Putin has now reformulated the grand bargain with the Russian people. He is promising to bring back the glorious days of the Soviet Union and earlier Tsarist Empires in exchange for the Russian public's acceptance of his autocratic rule and a lower living standard.5 Since the drop-in oil prices beginning in the summer of 2014, the central government has been shoring up the fragile banking system. Despite the balance sheet's visual appeal, Russia under Vladimir Putin faces a much greater risk of internal implosion than many in Western capitals understand. This is due to the cuts in public services and pensions, growing unrest among the Russian elites with Putin's policies, and the Russian military's discomfort with Putin's strategic gambling in Ukraine and earlier in Georgia.6 To avoid this collapse, Putin has redirected the Russian people's attention to his foreign policy adventures and away from his domestic mismanagement and policy failures, but that has not changed the Russian government's balance sheet. In fact, those adventures have made that balance sheet more precarious. The Soviet Union collapsed for many reasons in 1990, but one immediate cause was its bankruptcy. During the West German-Soviet negotiations over the reunification of East and West Germany, Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, repeatedly asked Helmut Kohl, the West German Chancellor, for billions of dollars in loans because of the Soviet Union's internal financial crisis (which the German government provided).7 One of the leading energy economists, Daniel Yergin, argues that oil prices have been recalibrated to a lower price level, and thus we will not see [End Page 8] $100 a barrel again in the foreseeable future.8 This has created a gap between Vladimir Putin's strategic objectives and his ability to achieve them. His frustration may encourage him to take more and ever greater tactical risks which could result in unintended confrontation with NATO or the United States directly. Anne Applebaum argues in her essay that Putin has either infiltrated, co-opted, corrupted, intimidated, or shut down most of the nascent institutions of Russian democratic pluralism that developed during the 1990's and early 2000's such as non-governmental organizations, religious institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church, think tanks, and universities. He has done this to ensure he faces no competing centers of power in Russian society, which has made him stronger personally, even as he has made Russian society weaker. This has set back Russia decades from joining other advanced countries, all of which share several critically important characteristics—a vibrant civil society (which constrains governmental abuses that would otherwise go unchecked), an independent judiciary to guarantee the rule of law, and a free press and media. Putin has now undermined all of these nascent institutions. Russia has neither rule of law nor an independent court system, and its police are corrupt and a tool of repression rather than law enforcement. Russia has evolved into what Russians call a "managed democracy," a democracy in appearance, not reality.9 Russian institutional weakness may be found in the retarded level of internal development and the dysfunctional characteristics of its governance structure. Douglass North, the Nobel-prize winning economist, argued that what distinguishes wealthy, advanced, and stable countries from those in the developing world is the density, legitimacy, resilience, and robustness of its governmental, private sector, and civil society institutions.10 By any measure, Russia has a weak private sector of formally incorporated businesses, a declining number of independent and increasingly fragile civil society organizations, and a massive state sector controlled by a small oligarchy in Moscow. During the Cold War, some Western analysts described the Soviet Union as a third-world country with the bomb because of its primitive health care system, poor infrastructure, lack of a consumer economy, and an inefficient collectivized agricultural system and industrial sector. Many of these same weaknesses continue to hold Russia back from developing into an advanced industrial democracy. Russia's current social, health, demographic, and economic indicators show a country in what could be permanent and irreversible decline, as documented in Nick Eberstadt's essay. Russia is neither a western nor even a middle-income country, but a fragile state that has more in common [End Page 9] with the poorest developing countries than middle income countries. These weaknesses suggest Russia is a declining power, and certainly not a rising power such as China.11 Paul Collier argues in his book, The Bottom Billion, that abundant natural resources can be a curse more than a blessing in a country with fragile institutions. In such a country, these resources will corrupt and undermine the legitimacy of the state and hamper the development of accountable institutions. The evidence suggests Russia is a poster-child for Collier's "resource curse" and thus its resources are a source of weakness, but, they are also simultaneously a source of strength because they allow Putin to do things he could not otherwise do. Some of this wealth has been squandered on mismanaged show and tell projects such as the $51 billion spent to prepare for the Sochi Olympics.12 And a portion of the oil and gas infrastructure revenues have been siphoned off to enrich Putin's inner circle of former KGB agents who now control perhaps a third of the oil and gas wealth of the country.13 Some of this oil and gas wealth, which makes up about 50% of the Russian government's revenues (another 15% is generated by mineral revenues), has been used by Putin to ensure pension and paychecks have been paid on time after the chaos of the 1990's. However, those pensions are now in danger as oil revenues can no longer support their current benefit levels. That oil and gas wealth also provides Russians with stable government jobs in exchange for the public's tacit acceptance of Putin's growing centralized, autocratic power, but they do little to transform Russia into an advanced economy.14 RUSSIA'S MILITARY AND CYBER WARFARE BUILD UP One of the few elements of Russian national power now on the ascendency is its military. Putin had been rearming Russia at a rapid rate until 2017 when revenues could not support the increases. The Duma recommended a 27% cut in military spending for 2017 because of the depressed oil prices, while Jane's reported a 25% cut. In fact, the reduction in the Defense Ministry operational budget was about 7% according to an analysis in the National Interest.15 This analysis argues that the Russia military industrial corporations were heavily indebted and the Defense Ministry decided to relieve this debt on a one-time basis, which made the defense cuts larger than they actually were. Putin has invested in the modernization of Russia's nuclear arsenal and the development of new and more advanced conventional weapons, even as Russia faces a depressing demographic future with high rates of drug addiction and alcoholism among young men.16 [End Page 10] Perhaps the greatest risk to Putin's strategic buildup may be this dependence on oil, gas, and mineral revenues. To minimize the effect of declining revenue on the defense buildup, Moscow has made a series of strategic decisions to choose guns over butter: cutting back public services such as education, health, and pensions. Disposable income for the average Russian family declined by 15% between 2014 and 2016, even as the military budget has been increasing. At the end of 2016, for the first time in seven years, Russian families were spending more than half their income on food and "the percentage of Russians who had any savings fell from 72% in 2013 to 29% in 2016," reported the Washington Post.17 The rising Russian military threat was on display in Putin's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, but he miscalculated in several critical respects. According to Moscow, a corrupt and illegitimate government had taken power through street demonstrations while Putin's democratically-elected ally in Kiev was driven from office by mob rule funded by billionaire George Soros and western civil society groups. Putin expected to be greeted by at least half of Ukraine as a Slavic liberating hero because eastern Ukraine has historically been more oriented towards Russia. Instead, Russia met Ukrainian resistance, and united what had been a divided country now mobilized to oppose the Russian invasion.18 Multiple independent surveys of Ukrainian public opinion show at least 90% of the population opposes the Russian invasion and wants Russian troops to leave the country. The Russian military showed its strengths and weaknesses in the Ukrainian crisis. Its conventional weapons systems were substantially superior, eventually overwhelming the Ukrainian army, but its strategic planning was weak, its manpower pool for its army seriously constrained, and its command and control problematic.19 Russia's new cyberwarfare capabilities were on display in 2016 in a highly visible way during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the Dutch and French elections, and German parliament hacking incidents. Perhaps the most authoritative public document describing Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections may be found in the indictment submitted in federal court by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on February 16, 2018 against three Russian corporations and 13 individuals employed by or affiliated with those corporations. One of these Russian corporations, Internet Research Agency, owned by a close associate of Putin, Yevgeny Progozhin, sought to manipulate American voters by creating social media pages that made it appear to be controlled by U.S. political activists and focused on divisive political issues such as immigration, race, and religion. Starting in 2014, Internet Research Agency's employees created false personas on Facebook, Twitter and [End Page 11] other platforms to post on these pages. The company also purchased advertisements online to direct individuals to these pages (funded through U.S. bank accounts and PayPal accounts established under stolen American identities), and posed as U.S. grassroots organizations to stage political rallies. Closer to the election, employees were instructed to post material to support Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and to disparage Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Even after the election, the company coordinated rallies to protest the election results and stir up political discord. It was an effort to use America's open society, open information, and public discourse against itself, not simply to support one candidate over another but to disrupt American society and turn one group against another. One of the statutes which the Russian operatives were accused of violating was the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law enacted in 1938 to investigate Nazi propaganda efforts in the United States. The use of this anti-Nazi law to charge the Russians is one more indication of how much of a threat this is viewed by the U.S. justice system, and the state of Russian-American relations. Leaving aside the question of whether President Donald Trump or his campaign managers collaborated, intentionally or not, with Putin's operatives, the indictments have placed a bright public spotlight on Russian espionage activities in the United States. During the Cold War, the KGB undertook similar activities as did other Great Powers, so espionage is not new nor particularly shocking. Adolph Hitler undertook similar espionage tactics in the United States in the 1930's, which is why the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act was passed in the first place. What is new is that it is happening now, at this moment and what the reaction has been in the United States and Europe. More than any other single effort since Vladimir Putin, his oligarchs and operatives took power, Russian election espionage to disrupt U.S. and European elections have convinced a rising body of public and elite opinion in the western democracies that Russia under Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs is an enemy, not simply a rival. Perception is often reality in politics. The first Trump Administration National Security Strategy released in December 2017 identified the two central geostrategic threats to the United States as China and Russia, not ISIS, not terrorism, not North Korea or Iran. This assertion was made in a document signed by Donald Trump, who wished months earlier for a very different relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin. Putin's clumsy old-style KGB efforts to muck around in American politics has unintentionally ignited a new Cold War which the American and European publics, until this point, had not wanted to believe or had ignored. If that was Putin's goal, he was successful, but [End Page 12] it is very unlikely he intended this at all because it now means western governments will marshal their very considerable instruments of national power and focus them on Russia which Putin can ill afford given the fragility of the country. Some media reports stated that Putin blamed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the street demonstrations against the 2012 rigged election, that he apparently believed she organized through Russian civil society organizations. Putin, perhaps anticipating public hostility to the election corruption, expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission in Moscow months before the 2012 elections. He correctly believed USAID was responsible for helping build Russian civil society over the previous two decades. It had been funding U.S. democracy NGOs such as the International Republican Institute and the Democratic National Institute to help strengthen Russian political parties and election processes for the 2012 elections. USAID has done this openly and consistently in countries around the world since these democracy programs were created in the 1980's and is not directed for or against any particular parties or candidates. While it was certainly the case that USAID, along with European aid agencies, helped support a nascent civil society in the post-Soviet years (something most western aid agencies do across the globe), there is no evidence of any conspiracy in the U.S. government to mobilize these groups to protest. Later, Russian cyber-warfare agencies hacked into the Democratic National Committee email system and accessed Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta's emails. Several weeks before leaving office, President Obama retaliated against the Russian hacking by imposing limited sanctions on Russia and expelling a few diplomats. He was six months late in imposing these sanctions as the Washington Post has documented. The Post reported the CIA presented President Obama a detailed account in June 2016 of how the Russian government intended to interfere in the U.S. election, but the President, took no serious actions to stop Russia until late October, and then modestly. THE IDEOLOGY AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE PUTIN STATE Putin has positioned himself and Russia as a culturally and religiously conservative alternative to western secular liberal democracies. This world view is described in Project Russia, which is a curious, if alarming, collection of essays published in five-volumes as a semi-official government publication that describes the political ideology of the State, the [End Page 13] Orthodox Church's religious vision, geographic determinism, and social analysis shared by Putin and his circle of oligarchs who rule Russia. These essays form a strange amalgam of anti-democratic, reactionary, ultra-nationalist attacks on western democratic values, combined with an unhealthy dose of conspiracy theories, paranoia, xenophobia, and a defense of autocratic government and dictatorship.20 One view of Project Russia is that its publication simply reflects Putin's understanding as a former KGB agent that a great power must have an ideology to defeat and undermine its rivals in propaganda battles. But a more sinister and alarming view is that the five volumes are Putin's blue print for Russia's grand strategy, evidence of a revisionist power seeking to overthrow the existing international order. If this interpretation of Project Russia is correct, it suggests a greater level of future conflict with the western democracies and international institutions. If Project Russia is a blue print and not just a propaganda tool, the risk of an accidental global conflagration between Russia and the NATO alliance is a serious potential scenario. Vladimir Putin must find ways of explaining to the Russian people why the country is so far behind the western democracies, as did his predecessors in the Soviet Union. Putin continues to pursue the Soviet strategy of keeping the memory of World War II alive to stir up Russian nationalism among the population, but also as an explanation for Russia's underdevelopment. The evidence suggests that this strategy faces increasing hurdles. The Soviet Union's epic and extraordinary sacrifices during World War II – approximately 11 million soldiers and 9 million of their civilians having died – no longer have much resonance with the younger generation, who know little about the war, and the older generation, who tire of a war 70 years ago being used to explain Russian inability to match Western living standards today. Thus, what had been a powerful historical experience of collective suffering and sacrifice during World War II, has now become a fading memory which lacks the magnetic power it held over the Russian people during the Cold War.21 Undoubtedly, one of the motivations behind Putin's attempt to regain Russia's lost stature in the world, expand its sphere of influence, attack western democratic institutions, and annex the territory of its neighbors is driven by a need to avenge the supposed "secret conspiracy" among the Western democracies to collapse, destroy, and humiliate Russia.22 The Russian electronic media and Project Russia continue to propagate this view. The Russian government's arming of the Taliban, reported by U.S. intelligence sources and by CNN, may be a response to U.S. military intervention in Syria against the Assad Government, an ally of Russia, but it could also be payback for the CIA's arming of the Mujahedeen fighting [End Page 14] against the Russian military in Afghanistan during the 1980's.23 (Some in the Reagan Administration saw the arming of the Mujahedeen as U.S. payback for Soviet support for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.) The Cold War certainly involved the arming of U.S. and Russian client states against each other, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. policy changed to one of facilitating the integration of Russia into the international system and its conversion into a democratic capitalist system. Both the U.S. and Europe spent billions of aid dollars in programs in Russia from 1991 to 2012 to support these political and economic reforms. If they intended to destroy Russia permanently, why would they have made these large investments? It is also the case that President George H.W. Bush went to great lengths to avoid dancing on the grave of the Soviet empire as it collapsed to avoid giving fodder to Mikhail Gorbachev's critics.Solvency: Shift TurnEmpirically troop shifts trigger Russian aggressionConnor Murray 8/22/20, reporter Vox, “Is pulling US troops from Germany really a “gift to Russia”?”, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**Shortly after a similar force realignment, when President Barack Obama withdrew some US combat brigades from Germany in 2012 and 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014.Solvency: TrumperPlan fails – Trump distorts messageConnor Murray 8/22/20, reporter Vox, “Is pulling US troops from Germany really a “gift to Russia”?”, accessed 8/22/20 *tog **NCC Packet 2020-21**This would relocate about 5,600 troops to Italy and Belgium, with the rest returning to the United States to conduct rotational deployments to Europe, according to the Washington Post. The Pentagon says the plan is intended to strengthen NATO and deter Russia. But Trump — whose explanation has contradicted his own defense officials — says it’s because Germany is taking advantage of the US by not paying enough for its own defense. ................
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