“We’ll go to heaven, they’ll just die.” The Russian propagandist Solovyov becomes almost lyrical when he talks about a nuclear war with the West. Fantasizing about the use of nuclear weapons is by no means new on Russian state television, but this high mass of the aggrieved is now performed almost non-stop. When that happened again this week, by Putin himself and his foreign minister Lavrov, it raised the question of whether this is a sign of Russian strength or weakness — and which variant is more dangerous.
What is certain is that the highly incendiary Russian rhetoric is also a weapon designed to deter the West and prevent it from increasing its support for Ukraine. The opposite is happening because Western countries are becoming increasingly convinced that Putin’s Russia must be stopped in Ukraine at all costs.
The alternative, according to experience in the (temporarily) occupied territories, is a massacre among Ukrainians, but also an attempt – and in line with the rhetoric in Moscow – to erase Ukrainian identity. Ukrainian babies now born in occupied Mariupol will receive birth certificates from the separatist people’s republics that Russia has recognized. Schools and media are Russian-styled, Ukrainian troublemakers disappear into torture chambers, museums are looted, Ukrainian monuments are destroyed.
Self-image cover
In everything, President Putin, his ministers and his propagandists affirm that Ukraine must be wiped off the map and, failing that, at least the east and south must be ‘reconquered’. Behavior that fits in the age-old tradition of the Russian Empire, in which borders were more often shifted or countries were swallowed or divided.
From the outside you can see a country caught up in its post-imperial frustrations. Recognizable by other European post-colonial powers, who also know how difficult it is to make the switch from self-image as an expansive empire to a country that seeks its happiness within fixed borders.
Russia is a much more complex and multifaceted country than its leaders would like to appear. Therein lies a glimmer of hope for a post-Imperial Russia after Putin. For now, western countries seem united in the belief that this imperial Russia must end in this war. Russia (the largest country in the world) also has to be satisfied with its current borders.
As the will not to give up hardens on both sides, the realization dawns that a long war is imminent. It applies to Ukraine, which is literally fighting for its life. It also applies to Western countries that have thrown off their reluctance to supply ever heavier weapons. If they accept this war – an anachronism, an old-fashioned piece of land grab – they will already have lost the international order they want to defend against China this century.
unity
For a long time too, because the party that is here rowing against the tide of history is the largest country in the world, a great military power, a power that is self-sufficient in terms of food and raw materials, plus nuclear weapons. And so a country that still has many instruments at its disposal to cling to the old reality – and to try to push other peoples into that mold as well.
But what explains this western unity (as long as it lasts) and that sudden willingness to stand up to Putin’s urge to expand? An important reason for this is that Western countries, Germany leading the way, have tried all alternatives, all variants of accommodation and turning a blind eye over the years with Putin. Not once, but again and again. They are now being ‘rewarded’ for this with the largest and bloodiest ground war Europe has seen in decades.
Standing up to Putin (except in Poland and the Baltic countries) has long been the least popular option in the West, not only in many European countries, for that matter, also in the US – even after the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Now that the alternatives have been exhausted, this one remains.
What does that mean for dealing with the nuclear threats from Moscow? That Western caution, also in rhetoric, is in order. President Putin warned this week that those who create “strategic threats that are unacceptable to us” will be dealt a swift blow. He claimed to have resources ‘that nobody has’ and to use them if necessary.
This will be a central challenge for the West: how can you maximize Ukraine’s self-defense, in terms of military support and economic measures, without crossing the border into a direct military conflict? Among other things, by not enforcing ‘no-fly zones’ over Ukraine. But do openly vented goals like Russia’s “permanent weakening” fit in?
Another question also arises: Biden speaks of ‘irresponsible rhetoric’, otherwise it remains silent about Putin’s nuclear threats. That is not a coincidence, but a conscious strategy. But is nuclear deterrence better served by Western silence or by saying something about the consequences of using a nuclear weapon? How do you curb an aggressor brandishing nuclear weapons? Putin has made the world a better place with his invasion terra incognita withdrawn. In this sense, too, the war becomes a decisive pivotal point.