Putin forgets his war

Vladimir Putin built his dream castle out of paper. The new foreign policy draft published by Russia’s leaders on Friday is 42 pages long. It is the symbol of Russian great power fantasies. The Kremlin boss sees himself in a major geopolitical battle with the West, as a fighter for a multipolar world and world peace. But that has little to do with reality.

The Russian president has forgotten his war of aggression, or so it seems. Because Ukraine is just a side note in the new concept. Instead, Putin draws the broad outline of foreign policy from a Russian perspective. They are the well-known stories from the Cold War era – only with Russia as a great power.

The self-imposed goals written in the draft seem to have been written by Gernegross. Putin could lose the war in Ukraine. With his invasion, he made Russia smaller in terms of power politics and completely dependent on China. Against this background, the concept now appears to be an attempt to cover up one’s own political weakness – with the well-known Russian finger to the West. The main enemy of a Russian empire is therefore the United States.

Fight against “western hegemony”

The Kremlin’s current initiative is mainly a response to the fact that many Western countries are adapting their state security concepts or – like Germany – are drawing up a draft for the first time. They see Russia as a “threat” because of the attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin is now retaliating, describing the US and “Western hegemony” as an “existential” threat to Russia and peace.

The US is the “principal instigator, organizer and executor of the collective West’s aggressive anti-Russian policies,” the document said. The Americans are “the source of the greatest risks to Russian security, international peace and the balanced, equitable and sustainable development of mankind”.

Russia will adjust its policy accordingly: Russia wants to push back Western hegemony worldwide and prevent troops from ‘unfriendly states’ from getting closer to Russia’s borders. The Kremlin wants to protect its own sphere of influence, that is, the ex-Soviet space. Moscow must become a “center” of a new, multipolar world.

He does not mention how Putin intends to achieve these goals. While the US supports Ukraine with weapons and military hardware, Washington faces a future battle with China, while Putin demilitarizes himself and grows weaker in a long war of attrition. Of course, as a nuclear power and as the largest country in the world, Russia will always play a central role internationally. But Putin is not on the same level as the US president in terms of security policy. This is his first misjudgment.

Many “unfriendly states”

“The Russian Federation intends to give priority to eliminating (…) the dominance of the United States and other unfriendly countries in world politics,” the Kremlin newspaper said. From the point of view of the Russian leadership, 20 Western countries, including the US, Germany, Britain and Poland, are “unfriendly states”. It is the states that have imposed sanctions on Russia and are providing military support to Ukraine.

But it is precisely this war that Putin does not mention. On the contrary, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that the United States is the driving force behind the world’s “anti-Russian reserves”. Washington and its allies waged a “hybrid war” against Moscow.

This is the well-known Russian story: the Russian army is fighting in Ukraine against the collective West. Above all, it is an attempt to explain Ukraine’s continued military failures. Because presenting itself as a great military power and at the same time trying in vain since the fall to take the city of Bakhmut in the Donbass – that is difficult for the Kremlin to convey. Therefore, the concept should also be a signal of strength to the Russian people and to international allies such as China.

Relations with India and China

Putin puts everything on the map of China, the People’s Republic is mentioned together with India as a “strategic partner” in a separate chapter. But that too is wishful thinking on the part of the Kremlin. Xi Jinping supports Putin, but he primarily acts on his own security policy and takes advantage of Russia’s weakness.

India, on the other hand, shows no interest in clearly siding with Moscow. New Delhi does not want to take sides and profit economically from Russia’s international isolation. They see the Russian Federation as a cheap gas station.

Putin’s reinterpretation of recent history

Many points in the paper can be seen as a result of the strategic alliance between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The power struggle with the United States is central, but “Russia does not consider itself an enemy of the West and does not isolate itself from the West,” it said.

Here, too, Putin is wrong. The Kremlin chief has isolated himself from the West with his war of aggression. But it is in Russia’s and China’s interest to divide the EU states and especially Western society. That is why Russia pretends to be interested in good relations with Europe and peace in the Eurasian region. The concept says “The use of peaceful means, especially diplomacy” is the basis for the resolution of international conflicts.

This is a masquerade. After all, Putin does not send diplomats to Ukraine, but tanks and missiles. For two decades, countries in the Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova have seen Russia destabilize them by supporting pro-Kremlin groups.

But Putin is trying to reinterpret history. From a Russian point of view, NATO is responsible for the current security crisis: the West would not accept legitimate Russian interests and, according to the document, act from an ideology of “total Russophobia”. The Kremlin, on the other hand, defends Russian-born people and Russian interests abroad, according to this story.

This is mainly about one thing: reversal of perpetrator and victim. Because the military alliance has not expanded to threaten Russia. Many former Eastern Bloc countries have fled to NATO for fear of Russia. They did not want to fall victim to Russian colonialism again. The Russian offensive war in Ukraine proves that their concerns are justified. The concept states that Russia wants to support groups of Russian descent and politically ‘integrate’ them into the Russian Federation. This is a clear threat to Moldova and Georgia.

Ancient Russian positions

So what does the new Russian concept of foreign policy mean for the West and the world? First of all, it only serves as a position paper and reflects the well-known Russian stories. And from a military point of view, the concept offers no innovations. Although Russia wants to defend its sphere of influence, it does not mention concrete steps. Putin refrains from new nuclear threats and presents himself in the document as a power that wants to prevent nuclear war – that is also a concession to Beijing.

Ultimately, the position paper is based on the hope that more states will share Russia’s view of the global political situation. In some places, Putin is courting China and India, and in several places he is referring to the heirs of Western colonialism to win over states in Africa or South America. These attempts are not new either. However, so far they have not succeeded.