Walter Russell Mead is back for an encore of not knowing what he’s talking about:
Pathetic throwback that he is, Mr. Putin used his time differently, rebuilding the Soviet Union [bold mine-DL] under the nose of a feckless and distracted West.
Whenever someone says that the Russian government is engaged in rebuilding the Soviet Union, it is a good sign that he doesn’t have the first clue about what is going on. Whatever else may be happening, the Soviet Union isn’t being rebuilt in any sense. Lazy analysts assume that this must be Putin’s goal because it is easier than paying attention to what the Russian government does and doesn’t do. The Russian government does want Russia to be taken seriously as a major power, and they want their security interests to be respected, but reviving a dead system from decades ago is not on the agenda.
Mead continues in his inimitable fashion:
Because Russia hasn’t annexed breakaway republics, many observers underestimate how successful Mr. Putin’s reassembly of the U.S.S.R. has been.
Many observers probably underestimate this because it isn’t happening. Russia could have annexed South Ossetia and Abkhazia after 2008, but Moscow chose not to do this and extended recognition to the “independent” statelets instead. This is not proof that the USSR is being reassembled. It tells us that the Russian government prefers to promote the illusion of independent separatist states rather than assume the costs that come with outright annexation. Crimea was an unusual case, and it is one that Russia is unlikely to repeat.
Mead asserts that Putin “established himself as the supreme arbiter of Kazakhstan,” but in reality the Russian-led CSTO intervention appears to have been quite brief and is already being wound down. It is a bit odd for a “supreme arbiter” to be removing his forces so soon after sending them in. Whatever this is, it is not the Soviet Union being reborn or anything like it. This is difficult for old hardliners to accept, but their way of thinking about this part of the world is hopelessly outdated. John Bolton recently claimed that “Belarus and Kazakhstan are prominent candidates for full reintegration into Russia,” which is the sort of thing that one says when one knows nothing about Belarus, Kazakhstan, or Russia.