The defeats of the empires usually bring chaos; but if Putin wins he can serve as an inspiration and support for other autocracies. And what about the negotiation? It can also be conflictive by bringing deep divisions between Europeans.
If Vladimir Putin wins his Ukraine war, bad. If he loses, too, for very different reasons. But they all have to do with the deep-rooted Russian imperial idea. Tsar Putin is reminiscent of Nicholas I, who was tsar from 1825 to 1855, in many negative ways, including his illiberalism, his Russian traditionalism, his support for a conservative Orthodox religion, and his brutal use of repression and military weapons.
Let’s not go into here to define precisely what it means to win and lose. Winning is dominating. It has to do, after the initial failure of the conquest of kyiv to install another government, with conquering territory in the East and South of Ukraine and perhaps beyond, guaranteeing that Crimea remains in the hands of Russia and that Ukraine – or what is left of it she – does not enter NATO (although the Alliance, at its recent meeting in Bucharest, has reiterated its support for kyiv’s wish). And, of course, to win is to preserve Putin and his regime. To lose is to regress in these aspects.
If he wins, Putin and his regime will be strengthened. And with him, other autocratic regimes in the world. He might be tempted to go further in his obsession with reclaiming a part of the Soviet (and Russian) empire lost first with the end of the Cold War in 1989, and then with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which the Putin himself described in 2005 as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” If he wins, Europe would be divided into a new cold war with Russia, not just in Europe, but with ramifications in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia. This division would add to the more important tension between the US and China, the other cold war of a very different character, with Moscow and Beijing as unequal partners or even allies, and could reinforce some extremist populisms in Western democracies, admirers of Putin, although now more silent or critical about it.
Without going into the important question of the temptation to use the nuclear weapon, if Putin loses, several things can happen. That he has to leave power, but under conditions in which he or those who replace him can be even tougher inside and out. The internal or external opposition still seems little capable of promoting democracy and renouncing the empire. The two things are irreconcilable, as Zbigniew Brzezinski saw long ago. But as Orlando Figes rightly points out in his excellent The history of RussiaRussia has never existed without empire.
«If Putin wins, Europe would be divided in a new cold war with Russia, not only in Europe, but with ramifications in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia»
A defeat against Ukraine/the West could open a more or less long period of instability and violence within Russia. The Russian Federation, despite its name, remains an empire, smaller than the Soviet one, that goes back far into history. The fall of empires almost always causes conflicts and violence, often complex, that can extend for decades. Robert Kaplan, among others, has explained it well in a Article titled “The negative side of the imperial collapse”. For this analyst “the empire is highly despised by the intellectuals, but the imperial decline can lead to even bigger problems.” It is not a question of defending the Russian empire, but of analyzing and foreseeing possible consequences of this war. Without leaving Europe and its vicinity, this happened with the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (with consequences that lasted well after the end of World War II). It did not happen, however, with the Soviet Union, in 1989-1991, whose end was quite peaceful. But the Yugoslav wars, starting in 1991 —Ukraine has not been the only war in the “garden” of Europe, to use the non-historical terminology of the high representative, Josep Borrell— had to do with the end of the cold war and the weakening and disappearance of the USSR, although Yugoslavia was not part of the Warsaw Pact. Perhaps this collapse of the federation/empire is what some in Washington, in kyiv, in the Baltics and in Poland, among others, are looking for. Its consequences could generate instability in Europe as a whole and especially in the EU.
It is not a speculation. Some things are moving. In May the first Forum of the Free Nations of Russia in Warsaw, and in July the second in Prague. Thus, a first “post-Russian” forum was born, although it was essentially made up of exiles from three dozen Russian regions (national republics and oblasts), from the Volga, Siberia, the North Caucasus, and North-West Russia, and formally organized by Ukrainian, Polish, and Lithuanian non-governmental organizations. At the last meeting, the Declaration on the Decolonization of Russia. It should be remembered that Stalin, although born in Georgia, spoke of “non-Russian nationalities”, which he forcibly Russified even more after World War II, considering that it was the Russians who had really won the Nazis.
Pro-independence movements or uprisings could be added in Chechnya and other places – the list would be long -, even in Crimea, in addition to what may happen in the periphery of the Russian Federation (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, and even in the Balkans), before a weakening or power vacuum in Moscow, with the thawing of “frozen conflicts” by Russia. It would be the continuation of the 1991 collapse of the Russian-Soviet empire.
One conclusion is that, seen from this part of Europe, it is convenient to negotiate a truce and a peace agreement between Ukraine/the West (the decision, despite what is said, will be in the hands of Washington rather than kyiv) and Russia . It will not be easy to achieve, and will depend on the military situation on the ground. All parties, even if they prefer not to admit it yet? openly, they know that unless they go to a Korean-style frozen conflict, such an agreement will imply that both sides give up something, which Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky flatly rejects.
Faced with this perspective of negotiation, deep divisions between Europeans will emerge – or re-emerge. Predictably between the New Europe (without Hungary), in favor of Putin’s defeat, and the much more cautious Old Europe looking to a horizon, probably distant, in which Russia will have to be incorporated, without Putin, into an order or a framework paneuropean. As the Bulgarian analyst foresees Ivan Kratsev, “the war in Ukraine will end, and that is when we will see the real tensions in Europe.” And in the Russian empire, it should be added.
