Top Russian Expert at Naval War College is Pessimistic on Ukraine and Russia in Long-Term
Tuesday, March 01, 2022
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, discussed with GoLocal the war in Ukraine and the growing threat to U.S. and Russian relations - and said he is "pessimistic" about the eventual outcome.
He is an expert analyst and a commentator on television and radio including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, BBC, and C-SPAN.
In a 30-minute interview on Monday, Gvosdev said that war will result in tremendous damage and loss of life to Ukraine.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBut, Gvosdev said the long-term impact of the war may reset the global power structure, as Russia is becoming a global pariah.
Gvosdev on How We Got Here -- The Growing Putin Threat
"On the one hand, this is the culmination of long-standing grievances that Vladimir Putin had about the post-Cold War order, the position of Russia in the world, the question about NATO enlargement, the question about whether or not Russia should have a different way of governing itself that is a different interpretation, as Putin would put it, of 'Democratic standards.'” said Gvosdev, who is also the co-host of the “Doorstep” podcast.
"So in that sense, there is continuity — if you were to read his speech in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, we would see a lot of the same themes. Putin seems to have thought in 2021, it reached the outlines of a basic compromise. You might recall last spring he was deploying forces along the border with Ukraine. That got a lot of attention and thought that the British, the French, and the Germans would step in and essentially compel Ukraine to accept a peace settlement with the separatists that would more or less preclude Ukraine from ever being able to join NATO or the European Union, and that he would have certain immunity from sanctions — particularly energy sanctions. He felt that developments in Ukraine were moving in a direction where if they were left unchecked he could foresee that five, ten years down the road where a much stronger Ukraine would be in a different position [with] Russia," said Gvosdev.
"So in that sense, there’s a logic to his actions. What I think is baffling to many of us is just how reckless in many ways he has mortgaged Russia’s future by choosing to invade. I think he and the intelligence community in Russia grievously misjudged the depth to which Ukrainians — and Ukrainians that are not necessarily satisfied with their government doesn’t mean they were waiting for Russian paratroopers to come liberate them — and I think we’ve seen that in the first week of the campaign," said Gvosdev.
"And even more so, Putin — a guy who was putting retired European politicians on the boards of Russian state companies and had all this sense of economic interdependence — I think the Russian establishment’s been stunned by the speed and scope of the sanctions that have been applied against Russia…and that strikes at the social contract Putin’s had with the Russian people for the last 22 years, which is I’ll give you a decent standard of living, but you leave the politics to me. So now we’re really entering into some unknown territory," he added.
The Role of Money -- and Russian Oligarchs
"Putin’s calculation that money makes the world go round, and that people would turn a blind eye to Russian activity when there is money to be made, definitely I think has taken a challenge. We’ve seen BP and now Equinor now essentially prepared to write off billion-dollar stakes in Russian energy in order to leave — it speaks to a sense perhaps that money wasn’t indeed going to be the main determinant of how people react to what’s happening in Ukraine," said Gvosdev.
"I think that many oligarchs had hoped that they could get people to draw a distinction between the Russian government and them as wealthy individuals. I think that distinction has eroded away. The question is, what do they do about it — we’ve seen several of the leading oligarchs come out and say we really think this is a bad idea in Ukraine — whether or not that translates into political action isn’t clear yet," he added.
Post-Cold War Russia's Military "Might"
"The reality is that Russia is one of two countries in the world that has the capacity to destroy the United States. We do kind of take it for granted that for the last 30 years, the nuclear question was off the table — but you have to be very careful. The cardinal rule of the Cold War was that Soviet and American forces could never engage in direct conflict. They could fight by proxies, one side could intervene in the other by sending help, as we’ve seen now in Ukraine where they’re using western-provided military equipment. I think that Biden — who arrived in the Senate when the Cold War was definitely hot — I think he’s been prudential in not wanting to create conditions where this could escalate," said Gvosdev.
"I think we saw this after 2014…there was a sense that Russian military was ten feet tall, they can’t be stopped, they can [come] into Europe at a moment’s notice…that’s been corrected. Look, the Russian military isn’t ten feet tall, they have problems, they’re still dealing with the realities of a conscript army even though they’ve tried to move toward a volunteer force, they’re dealing with still Soviet-era equipment in some cases," he added.
"The flip side to that however is not to turn around and say there is no threat. Almost every military analyst I’ve spoken to has said that Russia had held back the full force of what it had deployed along the Ukrainian border, that we shouldn’t be drawing too many conclusions from ‘day four’ until we see how much more Russia commits to this fight. Some of this, what they sent in, was the misguided notion that Russian paratroopers would show up and folks would say thank God our Russian brothers are here and we’ll have a complete change. If you look at some of the street battles that occurred, lightly armed, poorly equipped units went in under this mistaken assumption….the next three to four days are going to be quite critical," said Gvosdev.
Gvosdev said there is a growing threat that Russia will cut off the ability for nations to deliver suppliers and arms to Ukraine via southern ports.
"This is going to be a real challenge — while folks have been focused on what’s going on around the capital, they’ve missed what’s going on in the south of Ukraine. The way that the Russian army and other forces have deployed, they’re effectively in the position to cut Ukraine off from all of its Black Sea ports. This idea that we’ll simply appropriate money and that will translate into weapons showing up could actually be a challenge. This coming week could really begin to give us a set of scenarios that maybe we haven’t thought about but are going to be having now to think through," he added.
Impact on American Sentiment -- and Post-War Prospects -- "I am Pessimistic"
Gvosdev said, "[Ukraine] has touched the heartstring of Americans but it’s also been a wake-up call that the United States for the last 30 years has more or less enjoyed a position in the world that was more or less unchallengeable; that the world — a least from our perspective — looked reasonably safe. People talked about we were in a post-historical era…fighting in Europe of this scale, we have not seen since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, which were contained. It’s a wake-up call that there are still threats and issues that can touch Americans."
He also said that the invasion and the threat of Russia have unified Americans, "This is a serious issue, and not one that should be part of our partisan football back and forth because if this is mishandled, the stakes start to go up. You have President Putin talking about nuclear responses and threats of raising its nuclear alert level — I think that begins to focus the mind on the seriousness of the issue…away from some of the things we’ve allowed ourselves to be divided on in recent years."
"I’m a pessimist — and what I see is a Russia that up until two weeks ago was a major player in world affairs is going to be reduced in economic might, and most likely going to be moving closer to China, that could have implications to us," said Gvosdev.
"You’re going to see in Eastern Europe — Russia and Ukraine both — face massive challenges in the future. I don’t think anyone comes out of this — you talk about winners on the battlefield…we don’t advance to an Eastern Europe that is safer or more secure," he said.
"In the long-run, does Russia resign itself now to basically being a junior partner to China, but bringing all that technical and resources base to augment China. The question [also] is who’s going to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction," said Gvosdev.
"Right now we’re dealing on the battlefield and the humanitarian crisis…but in the long term, this is not going to turn out well for Russia, it will be a real burden for Ukraine, and we’ll see what the rest of the international community does," added Gvosdev.
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