At the beginning of his presidency, Vladimir Putin tried to pursue a flexible and moderate policy. In the early years, his foreign policy course was as pro-Western as possible under the circumstances. But his pro-Western policy pursued during 2000-2003 was unappreciated by the United States, which regarded Moscow’s policy as evidence that it was well on its way to becoming a U.S. satellite. Washington drew the conclusion that Russia would always have to accept, unconditionally, any and every decision made by the West.

Contrary to the popular but simplistic Western narrative, the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western foreign policy course in the 1990s had nothing to do with “Russian grievances against the West.” The real reason involved a fairly rational assessment of the pros and cons of various foreign policy alternatives by the Russian political elite and the public in general.

To summarize, NATO enlargement was instrumental to the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western foreign policy course in the 1990s. And the year 2003 saw another wave of NATO enlargement: The alliance admitted the three Baltic states. It also launched efforts to secure Ukraine’s and Georgia’s accession at some point in the future. To that end, the West energetically supported the “color revolutions” in the two countries in 2003 and 2004. By doing so, it turned Ukraine into a nuclear time bomb in Russian-Western relations.

Meanwhile, President Putin continues to pursue a moderate, centrist and evasive foreign policy in an effort to preserve what little common ground still remains between Russia and the West. Despite saber-rattling by Russian hawks, he decided against a full-scale invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The Western mainstream, however, paints Putin as the devil incarnate and the leader of the world’s autocrats, hellbent on “undermining global democracy”.

That demonization of Putin ignores fundamental problems in Russian-Western relations and pretends that all would be well between Russia and the West were it not for Putin’s personal role. It also feeds into the mass, Western delusion that these problems can be resolved or ameliorated once Putin is out of the way. It is, after all, crystal clear that the main goal of the successive waves of Western sanctions against Russia is the deposal of Putin and a regime change in Moscow.

The truth is that the NATO enlargement has made any potential pro-Western foreign policy agenda in Russia impossible for decades to come. Any attempt by a Russian government, whatever its orientation, to make significant concessions to the West would quickly and inevitably run up against the question of Ukraine’s admission to NATO and the inevitability of U.S. troops and missiles being deployed a mere 500 kilometers from Moscow.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, no settlement is possible without Ukraine itself becoming a reliably neutral state, but the United States would never allow that. Further, any attempts at normalizing the broader Russian-U.S. relationship would also fall foul of the Ukraine problem and of Washington’s resolve to indefinitely maintain sanctions against Moscow as an instrument of pressure on a broad range of issues. Many among the Russian elite are already resigned to the idea that “the United States will never lift the sanctions, no matter what we do.” Washington’s rhetoric and actions only serve to reinforce that conviction.

As a result, the scenario of Russia reverting to its former position of a U.S. satellite is almost completely unrealistic for the foreseeable future, regardless of who succeeds Putin at the Russian helm. The foreign policy and domestic costs of the “satellization” course would quickly become unbearable for any Russian government. As a result, even the most “democratic” regime would sooner or later follow the same trajectory as the Yeltsin and Putin administrations did: from attempts at “friendship” and “partnership” with America to an inevitable new confrontation and the same kind of rhetoric we are hearing now.

A normalization between Russia and the West (which essentially means with the United States) would only become possible if the United States concedes to Russia a place in the U.S.-led global order that would satisfy key Russian security interests, probably in return for Russia relinquishing any claims to “a sphere of influence.”

Right now, the political elites in both countries lack such a vision of Russia’s place in the world order. Besides, the U.S. elite sees no need for granting such a place to Russia among its own satellites. It still entertains the delusion that once Putin is deposed and Russia “capitulates,” the Russian problem will be resolved automatically. That is the very same delusion that existed in the U.S. establishment in the early 1990s.

As a result, there is no realistic model of a Russian integration into the Western community in the foreseeable future, and the ongoing crisis between Russia and the West will continue unabated for a very long time.

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

One of the distinctive features of the modern Western political narrative with regard to NATO is an almost total misunderstanding of how the alliance is perceived in Russia. First and foremost, the Western political establishment seems blithely unaware of the fact that the issue of NATO is the main stumbling block in Russian-Western relations, and that any detente is impossible while that obstacle remains unresolved.

In Russia, NATO is generally viewed as part of the American war machine and an instrument of U.S. global dominance. That view is shared by almost the entire Russian political spectrum. In fact, the same view also prevails among NATO members from eastern Europe, where the alliance is seen as an instrument of U.S. influence and U.S. defense assurances.

That is why Russia is utterly baffled by U.S. accusations that the Kremlin — and President Vladimir Putin specifically — are trying to “drive a wedge between NATO partners.” No one in Moscow has ever regarded NATO as an independent entity that exists separately from the United States. There is a deep conviction in Russia that NATO is nothing more than an instrument of U.S. military policy, and that Washington will always be able to ram any decision through the NATO governing bodies, regardless of what its Western European partners might think of that decision.

That explains why any NATO enlargement is automatically regarded in Russia as a ruse to deploy U.S. forces in close proximity to Russian borders; NATO’s own role in that ruse is seen as a cover story — nothing more. The ongoing deployment of NATO forces in eastern Europe with the ostensible purpose of “containing and deterring Moscow” is seen in Russia as another piece of evidence to confirm that view. These new deployments are conducted under direct U.S. leadership, and most of the new forces deployed are American. The military presence of other NATO members in places such as the Baltic states is insignificant and purely symbolic. Washington and NATO describe these deployments as a “clear signal to Moscow.” In Moscow itself, that signal is read as clear evidence that all the Russian criticisms and concerns about NATO have always been entirely justified, and that the moderate Russian reaction to NATO’s enlargement in the 1990s and early 2000s was a colossal strategic blunder.

The Russian hawks have always insisted that the only reason for admitting the Baltic states to NATO was to give the United States a new forward-staging post for military deployment against Russia. It now turns out that the hawks were right all along. That is why Russia is now determined not to make the same mistake again; it will do all it can to prevent any further NATO encroachment into former Soviet territory — namely, into Ukraine and Georgia. It’s only a matter of time until this unspoken “red line” drawn by Moscow becomes an official stance.

The West does not realize that Russia views NATO enlargement as a threat of U.S. forces (potentially including missile systems) deployed ever closer to critical Russian targets. As a result, Western decision-makers underestimate the strength of the Russian national consensus on this issue. There is a popular opinion in the West that Russia opposes NATO only because of President Putin’s personal animus. That opinion is a gross and primitive misreading of the situation.

The Russian political elite was actively opposed to NATO enlargement even during the era of former Soviet and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That opposition was solidified by the hostile U.S. and Western reaction to the first Chechen campaign of 1994-1996. That reaction convinced Moscow that the West has no intention of accommodating Russian interests even on the most fundamental national security issues, including the protection of territorial integrity and the fight against terrorism.

It became clear that the Western approach to Russia was radically different from the approach to Germany and Japan after World War II: Those two nations were turned into U.S. satellites in exchange for U.S. security assurances and a recognition of their right to self-defense. But when the Chechen crisis broke out in Russia in the 1990s, Moscow realized that Washington had no intention of offering it any security benefits or recognizing its right to self-defense, even as a theoretical proposition. Russia was required to become a loyal U.S. satellite without receiving anything in return. What is more, the situation gave rise to a deep and widespread Russian suspicion that Washington is seeking to assure Russian status as a loyal vassal by means of further disintegration, weakening and decline of the Russian state.

The gradual conversion of the Russian elites to such a view in the 1990s was the main reason for the collapse of Russia’s pro-Western orientation in the 1990s. The proponents of a pro-Western Russian policy (which essentially implied Russia becoming a U.S. satellite) have since been completely marginalized because they cannot explain what tangible benefits such a course would bring Russia to outweigh the inevitable losses for Russian national security and statehood in general.

Even now, the few remaining Russian liberals tend to avoid any discussions on foreign policy and national defense issues. Much to the disappointment of their Western “friends,” they make it clear by doing so that a well-articulated, pro-Western political platform has essentially ceased to exist in Russia.

Russia’s efforts against NATO enlargement are a result of the foreign policy consensus that had coalesced even before the arrival of President Putin. Ever since the first Chechen crisis, the United States has come to be seen as a potential threat to the very foundations of Russian statehood, and as a foreign power that has no interest in supporting that statehood, even in return for Russian loyalty. That is why the deployment of American proxy forces in the shape of NATO are seen as a threat when they move ever closer to Russian borders without any security assurances being offered to Moscow.

Meanwhile, Washington never had any intention of offering Moscow any such assurances. It believed that sooner or later, Moscow would become a U.S. satellite in any case; it also wanted to preserve a certain freedom of maneuver with regard to Russia. Such a stance served only to deepen Russian suspicions and reinforce the vicious circle of mutual distrust.

As a result, NATO came to be seen by most Russians as a deeply hostile, anti-Russian military coalition long before the current crisis. Russians believe that NATO’s sole task is to maintain a state of confrontation with Russia, and most would subscribe to the idea that “without Russia, there would be no NATO.”

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

As a result, Russia’s domestic and foreign policy course is set to remain unchanged for many years to come; no one is in any doubt that one way or another, Putin will remain in charge even after his current presidential term runs out in 2024. In fact, most Russians perceive that continuity and stability of Putin’s course as his main achievement because he has been instrumental in the steady improvement of the Russian economy, prosperity, and law and order. Putin has basically put into practice the famous strategy formulated by the early 20th century Russian Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin: “Give me 20 years of calm and you won’t recognize Russia.”

In that sense, by voting for Putin, the Russian electorate votes primarily for a continued “calm” that is fundamental to the country’s modernization. The success of that modernization, the rapid growth in Russian prosperity and the impressive improvement in the Russian infrastructure were amply demonstrated by the success of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Outlook 2019: World leaders and analysts speak on the state of global security and the defense industry

Putin and his administration still remain a powerful engine of Russia’s Western-style modernization. In that sense, we can only admire the president’s determination to maintain the country’s pro-Western course — which is especially impressive given the ongoing foreign policy confrontation with the West.

In the West itself, Putin is portrayed as an architect of an anti-Western approach, a leader of the global anti-Western forces and a man determined to undermine Western democracy. It is clear, however, that in the Russian context, Putin is far more liberal and pro-Western than most of the Russian public or the majority of the Russian elites.

According to opinion surveys and election results, most Russians are far less liberal and far more populist, or socialist-minded, on economic issues than their president. They also advocate a far more forceful and conservative domestic and foreign policy course. In that sense, Putin embodies Alexander Puskhin’s 200-year-old dictum that “the government are the only Europeans in this country.”

The authoritarian nature of Putin’s rule enables the Russian government to pursue a sensible and responsible financial policy, taking unpopular measures — such as the recent rise in the retirement age — when the situation calls for it. As a result, Russia’s macroeconomic indicators remain sound, despite the growing pressure of U.S. sanctions.

In his domestic policy and on matters of defense, Putin is likely to carry on with the cautious approach that aims to minimize the costs of the confrontation with the West. A case in point is the draft federal budget for 2019-2021, which includes real-term defense spending cuts. (Based on our own estimates, defense spending will remain flat thanks to various budgetary chicanery, but there will certainly be no increase.)

Russia will continue to pursue a cautious and conservative program of bolstering its military capability, with an emphasis on gradual technological modernization — including a continued buildup of forces stationed along the border with Ukraine in order to give Moscow more instruments for intervening in the course of the Ukrainian conflict. At the same time, Moscow will desist from any tangible military buildup in the European (northwestern) theater, despite the mutually belligerent rhetoric by NATO and Russia, and the growing U.S. military presence in Europe.

Judging from the new State Armament Program for 2018-2027, which Putin signed off in December 2017, many of the most ambitious and expensive aerospace and naval weapons programs have effectively been pushed back to the mid-2020s or even beyond 2027.

In Syria, Putin will keep trying to convert the military success of the Russian intervention into political and diplomatic gains, but he will be hampered by the growing Syrian involvement of the United States. Unlike Moscow, Washington has no constructive agenda in Syria, which gives the Americans a greater freedom of maneuver.

The growing U.S. pressure in recent years, including the constant ramping up of anti-Russian sanctions, has led the Russian political elite to believe that there are no tangible prospects for any political normalization with the United States anytime soon, and that the sanctions are here to stay. It is now the general opinion in Russia that even if Moscow were to capitulate on all the key foreign policy fronts, there would be no tangible easing of U.S. sanctions — and the sanctions themselves would be vindicated as an effective instrument of pressure.

As a result, the Russian public opinion is increasingly determined to endure a long-term confrontation with the West and with the United States in particular. Long-term stability of the Russian economy and society will be crucial if Russia is to emerge relatively unscathed from that confrontation.

In fact, Russia can probably survive 10 to 15 years of such confrontation without too much damage to itself. It is believed, however, that the West will gradually become weary of that confrontation in the absence of any ideological underpinnings for it. That Western weariness — as well as the changing global balance of power, reinforced by the growing Sino-U.S. confrontation — will eventually open up a window of opportunity for Moscow to achieve a normalization with the West without relinquishing any of its key holdings (such as Crimea and the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics).

In the eyes of the Russian people, Vladimir Putin is the ideal leader to steer their country during such a period of confrontation.

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

Two years on, it is safe to say that Syria has not become a repeat of the Soviet Union’s failed campaign in Afghanistan. The Russian intervention has all but achieved all of its key goals. The military and political situation of the Assad regime, which seemed almost hopeless in the summer of 2015, has radically improved. The Syrian government is now in control of over 90 percent of the country’s territory. The self-proclaimed Islamic State is on the brink of extinction. Many other radical Islamist groups have been left in a severely weakened state. The more moderate anti-Assad opposition, which receives massive military assistance from the United States and Gulf monarchies, is not doing much better, either. Weakened, fragmented and militarily isolated, it has all bust lost any chance of winning the civil war. President Bashar Assad’s political future is no longer in any doubt.

Outlook 2018: Perspectives from global thought leaders

The greatest surprise is not the success of Russia’s intervention in Syria but the very limited forces and assets that have proved sufficient to achieve that victory. Moscow did not deploy any large numbers of troops on the ground. Its losses in Syria have been negligible. The Russian expeditionary force has remained very small throughout the entire campaign ― a few thousand men at the very most, including military police and personnel operated by private military campaigns. No more than a few hundred of them were involved at any one time in any single operation. The amount of military hardware Russia has deployed in Syria is also very limited. By all accounts, the price of the Russian campaign in Syria has proved very affordable, both financially and in terms of the losses of Russian personnel, which remain well below 100 men.

The Russian Air Force group in Syria is not very large, either. It was estimated at various periods at 30-50 combat aircraft and 16-40 helicopters. The number of sorties per aircraft, however, has been impressively high. By late August 2017, Russian planes and helicopters had flown more than 28,000 missions in Syria and attacked approximately 90,000 targets, with a loss of only one Su-24M plane. Let us recall that during the campaign in Afghanistan, the Soviet forces lost an average of one combat aircraft for every 750 sorties. Meanwhile, the Russian UAVs deployed in Syria have flown more than 14,000 sorties.

The success and affordability of the Russian military intervention in Syria contrast sharply with the U.S. record in many parts of the globe. That success can be ascribed to several key factors.

First, Russia has managed to foster a very productive symbiosis between its expeditionary forces and Syrian government troops. It has taken effective steps to rebuild the fighting ability of the Syrian Army. The revitalized Syrian units were often bolstered by a small but highly capable contingent of Russian support personnel and elite Spetsnaz troops. Even more importantly, high-ranking Russian officers were not limited to advisory roles. They led Syrian troops on many important stretches of the front, bringing in much-needed military experience and expertise. Many of the key Syrian units are led by Russian generals. The 5th Volunteer Assault Corps, which has been the Syrian Army’s main assault unit over the past 12 months, is equipped with Russian hardware and formed and led by Russian commanders, who also hand-picked the unit’s Syrian personnel. This approach may lack political correctness, but it has proved highly effective.

Second, Russia has managed to obviate the need for deploying large numbers of troops on the ground by bringing in private military companies. These companies consist of well-paid mercenaries, most of whom are retired Russian servicemen. The difference from the similar practice in the United States is that the Russian private military companies are not relegated to supporting roles. They are used as highly capable assault forces, and their personnel are often embedded with Syrian units to augment those units’ fighting ability. This approach has proved very useful both militarily and politically, as it minimizes the political cost of direct military intervention. The Russian public has proved completely indifferent to reports of the losses suffered by the mercenary companies, rightly believing that “these people are highly paid, and knew what they were getting into.” As a result ― and contrary to Western expectations ― Russian losses in Syria have not led to any negative domestic repercussions for the Putin administration.

The West tends to ignore the success of the Russian military intervention in Syria, and pays little attention to the various aspects of Russian military activity in that country. Clearly, this is not a pleasant topic for the Western political and military observers whose predictions that Putin would get bogged down in Syria have proved wrong. Nevertheless, the victorious Russian military campaign has major implications for the future course of the Russian military machine.

At just over two years, the campaign in Syria has not been very long, but almost all senior Russian military commanders have been involved in it on a rotational basis. According to a November 2017 statement by the chief of the Russian General Staff, Army Gen. Valeriy Gerasimov, “all the commanders of the military districts, combined-services armies, and Air Force and Air Defense armies, as well as almost all divisional commanders, and more than half of the commanders of combined-services brigades and regiments” have had a stint in Syria. All these officers have gained valuable, real-life experience of complex modern warfare in a remote theater, in a campaign where air power and high-precision weapons have played a major role, and where complex supply and logistics challenges have been largely resolved.

The availability of these experienced commanders, a record of a successful and victorious military campaign, and the lessons learned from using air power, modern technology and special operations forces will provide a major boost to the Russian military machine for years to come. Additionally, the confidence gained by the Russian military in Syria may steer Russian foreign and military policy toward a more assertive and interventionist course.

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a think tank dedicated to studying the defense industry and arms trade.

Russia is engaged in a very delicate balancing act in Syria, waging war on Islamic State forces and the moderate opposition to the Assad regime at the same time. The goal here is to defeat them all and prop up the friendly regime in Damascus. There is also another goal: to demonstrate that Russia has reemerged as a global power and force the West to work with it, breaking the foreign policy isolation imposed on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.

Outlook 2017: Perspectives from global thought leaders

After more than a year of the Russian military intervention in Syria, the results so far are not an unalloyed success. The forces deployed in Syria remain fairly limited, and the losses have been small. For the Russian military machine, the campaign in Syria is like a large drill; it does not put much strain on the resources, while at the same time providing an opportunity to field-test new weaponry and equipment. Meanwhile, the Russian public doesn’t really see the point of the military involvement in Syria — but there is no great public anger or rejection of it, either. It mostly serves to stoke up the patriotic sentiment to some degree, and those who expected Syria to become another iteration of the disastrous Soviet campaign in Afghanistan have been left disappointed for the time being.

Nevertheless, from the military point of view, it is clear that the original goals of the intervention have not been achieved. Russian military assistance has been crucial in inflicting some painful defeats on ISIS (such as the liberation of Palmyra) and on the anti-Assad opposition (the siege of Aleppo). It has stabilized the regime’s situation — but there has been no turnaround in the Syrian war. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have proved too weak to win any decisive victories; all they can do is firefight crisis after crisis on individual stretches of the front. To win the war, Assad needs large reinforcements on the ground — and those are nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, continued Russian involvement in Syria inevitably gets Moscow ever deeper into commitments to its Syrian allies, complicating any future attempts to extricate itself from the entire situation.

The foreign policy balance of the Syrian campaign is even less in the Kremlin’s favor. The intervention has damaged Russia’s relations with many powerful, regional actors, the bust-up with Turkey being a case in point. Even though Putin managed to put an end to hostility with Ankara much quicker than many expected, this was achieved at the cost of Moscow’s acquiescence in Turkey’s own military intervention in northern Syria, which clearly runs counter to the interests of both Russia and Assad.  Meanwhile, the Russian campaign in Syria has driven relations with the West to a new low. In the second half of 2016 there was an outpouring of Western condemnation on humanitarian grounds; there was even talk of new sanctions. For the first time in decades, a direct military confrontation between the Russian and U.S. forces became a distinct possibility, especially if Washington had gone through with plans for establishing a no-fly zone in Syria, which some US politicians had been advocating for years.

As a result, by late 2016 Moscow had found itself facing a set of growing risks in Syria. Military logic dictated the need for ramping up the scope of the Russian intervention — but that could lead to even more serious complications on the foreign policy (and at some point, on the domestic) front.

The election of Donald Trump as the next US president can bring about radical shifts in the situation in Syria. It appears that in many respects, Trump will be a typical Republican president — but his foreign policy instincts are very unusual for the Republican establishment. First, he has a clear proclivity for isolationism. Second, he seems to be a cynical, business-minded pragmatist who cares little for promoting US values on the international arena, exporting democracy or fighting for human rights. And third, he appears to have a strong anti-Islamic streak, making little distinction between the “radical” and “moderate” Islam and mistrusting anything coming out of the Islamic world.

This sets the stage a major change in US policy in the Middle East, despite the pressure put on the president-elect by proponents of the traditional interventionist views in the Republican Party. Trump has already made a U-turn on many of his most controversial campaign promises on internal American issues — but in his interview with The New York Times on Nov. 20, he reiterated his intention to seek cooperation with Putin on Syria and once again expressed his distrust of the Syrian opposition, which continues to enjoy Washington’s backing for the time being.

This opens up a window of opportunity for Putin on Syria. The key question now is whether Trump will stick to his current stance on Syria after his inauguration and whether Moscow will be able to make use of it. It is quite clear that if Putin is genuinely determined to strike a deal with the incoming new administration in Washington, he will have to offer some major concessions and be prepared to meet Trump halfway. The Syrian problem could become the key to a broad normalization of US-Russian relations — or it could trigger their further deterioration and a new upsurge of international tensions.

Ruslan Pukhov is the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow.