Russia and the Nightmare ScenarioThoughts in and around geopolitics.By: George Friedman
I recently wrote an article that raised the question of whether the Russian government was united or even functional. The basis for the article was that the Russians have been bogged down in the city of Bakhmut for more than six months, have not retreated or regrouped, and have been unable to advance. Russian forces there are so deeply divided between the regular armed forces and the Wagner Group, the private military company that has been carrying much of the load, that the Russian military has refused to provide artillery rounds to Wagner. Withholding ammunition from this force in Bakhmut would not be rational. Some have argued that the military is short of artillery shells, which raises the question of how that was permitted to happen. On the surface, it seems there is a political battle going on between the regular army and Wagner. Regardless of the cause, the fundamental question is why the civilian government, namely President Vladimir Putin, has not intervened and imposed the necessary steps, such as producing more shells or shifting some of the inventory, to solve the problem. Put differently, a tense struggle is taking place within the Russian army, and the president of the republic has not imposed his power on the forces and commanded solutions. The question is whether Putin has the will or, more important, the power to do something about this problem. I obviously have no direct knowledge of the inner workings of the Kremlin, but I discern that this is a major obstacle for the government based on the public utterances, the military’s performance and the fact that the high command and the political leaders have not acted. This raises the possibility that Ukraine and its allies could be winning the war against a crippled Russia. That should be all for the good if true, but it also raises a more frightening scenario. In 1991, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, the major issue was the status of nuclear weapons. The fear was that elements in the Soviet government who resisted collapse or thought they might reverse events would obtain parts of the Soviet arsenal and threaten the West with it. Others worried that if the Soviet control system had broken down, individuals would gain access and perhaps fire a missile. How to gain control of the Soviet Union’s arsenal very rapidly became an overarching concern. Anxieties were eased when an arms control agreement was reached with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet Union was unstable but had controls. The degree of control in Moscow today is unclear. That means that the 1991 nightmare could rear its head again. If the military and political leadership are as fragmented and unpredictable as they appear to be to me, the end game might not be paradise but a deep crisis. This is all vastly hypothetical, but a conventional defeat of a major nuclear power carries with it uncertainties about just how far the defeated might go. Perhaps the Russians will throw in their chips, perhaps they will bluff some action, and perhaps they will try to redress their defeat. The likelihood of the final option may be infinitesimal, but the stakes are too high to ignore the possibility when nuclear weapons are concerned. Defeating a nuclear power whose command-and-control system broke down – and whose president has already threatened nuclear action – is a very difficult business. The reality of a counterattack has kept nuclear war at bay since 1945. Even so, if the government collapses, the actions of the Russians can’t be known. Frankly, it’s not in the interest of the United States or Ukraine to absorb the risk. I am certain that intelligence and the military are playing out the war games that might reveal the truth. But my understanding of the situation leads me to the conclusion that it is not in the interest of the U.S. to defeat Russia, and that even if the Ukrainians can threaten a victory, they should settle for an agreement. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq could be treated casually after they ended because they were not nuclear powers. But if Russia loses in Ukraine, what will be its next target? Protecting Ukraine is a strategic necessity in my mind, since the Russian threat increases if Moscow wins in Ukraine. But either way, the Russian appetite will not dissolve. If my concerns about Russia’s stability are wrong, we still gain by thinking this through. We will reach the negotiation stage at some point, and then the great uncertainty will become whether Moscow is in control of its nuclear weapons and whether the government could order their use. As I have said, this is possible though a most unlikely scenario, but it will psychologically haunt peace talks. Defending Ukraine was an imperative not because of the centrality of Ukraine but because of what would come next from Russia if there was no resistance. Russia’s next move will not be to invade Poland, but we cannot dismiss the possibility of convincing nuclear gestures. I do not think the nightmare will be nuclear war. Rather, it will be Russia’s use of the threat of nuclear war to shape negotiations. Any threat would have to be taken as credible, and a credible nuclear threat, even if it never transpires, is a nightmare. |