As you all know, there’s currently a war raging in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s regime has invaded the country by military force and is in the midst of a bloody, excruciating advance towards the nation’s major cities - most importantly the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. By overwhelming account, Ukraine has put up a much better fight than expected. Under President Zelensky’s leadership, the Russian advance has been bogged down and consistently pushed back. The Russians have made gains and taken a number of population centers but at significant economic and military cost. The fate of Ukraine as a democratic nation is still uncertain, and I’m sure many of you (like me) have questions. To give us informed and articulate answers to some of these questions, I recently had the opportunity to interview R.P Eddy. R.P is a former member of the U.S National Security Council and former United Nations Senior Diplomat and currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the CEO of Ergo, a geopolitical intelligence firm, and, among many other titles, he is a Brunswick dad. My full interview with him is transcribed below.
Cliff: Historically, Russia and Ukraine have had an uneasy relationship ever since Putin took power. Putin has made it pretty clear that he believes Ukraine should properly be a part of Russia, going back to 2014 when he sent forces into Crimea and started administering it as part of the Federation, as well as the conflicts in the Donbass. So my question is: why do you think Russia has decided to launch the full scale invasion of Ukraine now? What is his reasoning behind it and to what extent do you think the earlier conflicts in Crimea and the Donbass were rumblings of what was to come?
RP: Pretty loaded question, but a very good question. Putin has a number of motivating factors, one of which is his role in restoring the Russian Empire to his perception of historic greatness. He thinks that is his mission in life, and his vision of a restored great Russian Empire is opposite to the geopolitical realities of Russia today. Russia, right now, is a declining middle power. It’s nowhere near a superpower or an empire, and that’s a difficult place for him to be. Pre-Ukrainian invasion, Russia had declining life expectancy, declining wealth, declining freedom, declining influence - all of the things that you would measure as greatness in a nation were small to start and declining. Yet, in his brain, he wants to be Peter the Great “the second”, and restore Russia to its greatness as an empire. Tough spot to be in. So, if you want to get invited to the big boys’ dining table, and you’re sitting at the little kids’ table, the only way you can do that is to chop down the legs of the big table, and that’s effectively what he has to do.
Here’s a footnote on the economic dynamic of Russia. John McCain called Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country.” They’re obviously very rich in natural resources; they produce a lot of oil, gas, and coal. But the other thing that’s interesting is that when they create geopolitical tension and upheaval, what goes up in price? Gas, oil. So they’ve actually had this perverse incentive to create global consternation because the price of oil goes up and therefore their GDP goes up. That’s a footnote to keep in mind… but back to Ukraine.
Putin wants to be Peter the Great II and restore the greatness of the Russian Empire, but there’s no greatness to restore.
You can’t do it.
What do you do?
To cut the table down, you’ve got to get Crimea, you’ve got to get Ukraine. There were these nationalistic, almost theologians in the Russian Empire who described Ukraine as the necessary component for Russia to have greatness. Putin has to have Ukraine absorbed or as a vassal state, and that difference becomes very important. So that’s his motivation. He also has some other motivations which are a little less messianic. One of them is that he claims to have concerns about NATO on his doorstep. The problem is, it already is on his doorstep in Estonia, Latvia and other places, so it’s not like Ukraine is dramatically different, and NATO has never been anything but a defensive organization. But I do think he did see it as a bridge too far—visually and emotionally—for Ukraine applying for membership to NATO.
It’s an interesting thing… NATO, of course, is NOW an anti-Russia organization. NATO was an anti-Soviet institution, but it didn’t have to be an anti-Russia institution. In fact, there were moments when people talked about Russia joining NATO. It wasn’t an anti-Russia group, and if you didn’t have a leader like Putin, then you wouldn’t have these problems. In fact Russia probably would be able to meet more and more of the visions of greatness if it had integrated more into Europe instead of being a perennial aggressor. So that’s his vision, and that’s why Ukraine matters.
Cliff: It’s no secret that Ukraine has dealt with corruption over the years. Based on their CPI, they ranked 122nd out of 180 countries on Transparency.org. To what extent do you think this long-standing corruption in Ukraine can color our thinking of the conflict? Do you think it plays in at all with what has transpired?
RP: The quality of governance of a nation probably shouldn’t be a measure of the acceptability of it being invaded by an aggressive neighbor. It probably shouldn’t be correlated. Because a country is corrupt, it shouldn’t mean that there is any justification for invasion. Now, there are other things that poor governance can lead to that can justify an invasion, like genocide in Rwanda or a complete collapse of the government as in Somalia.
Yes, Ukraine has an embarrassing history of corruption. Of course some of the most corrupt Ukrainian leaders who would have contributed to the corruption score you mentioned were Putin lackeys. Some of the corruption was of Russia’s making, by the way.
The see-saw of who’s in power in Ukraine and if they bend the knee to Russia or they don’t, that vacillation clearly shows an underlying weakness in the nation of Ukraine, but that weakness was fertilized by Putin. He literally poisoned leaders of that country who weren’t supporting him, so to a certain degree there is instability there. One is instability due to corruption, but there is also instability due to the degree to which they are lackeys to Putin. But, I don’t know that it plays into this invasion.
Here’s what’s very interesting: why have so many of the Russian military units failed so ridiculously in this invasion? Where is the corruption now evident? If you now look at results vs. hypothesis, I think it’s pretty clear that there is unbelievable corruption and bad governance in the Russian military. There is a long history in totalitarian states where the military leadership lies to the leader about the capability of the military; it is absolutely a long part of the history in Russia. That’s a form of corruption and includes siphoning money off, as in “go buy me a mobile anti aircraft system” but then putting the cheapest Chinese tires on it, and charging the state for Michelins. There’s real corruption in action.
Cliff: That’s a great point, considering how well Ukraine is doing and how poorly Russia is in the context of corruption.
RP: I don’t want to overstate it, but I think there’s an interesting lesson here. What can the performance of the Ukrainian defenders on the battlefield vs. the poor performance of the Russians on the battlefield show us about different systems of government, systems of management, and even national cultures? There’s an interesting narrative to draw there.
Autocratic governments make mistakes, in the most general sense, more than democracies for obvious reasons. The autocrat, an individual, is not as powerful as a meritocratic, collective, iterative group of thinkers, right? It’s just an obvious reality. There are times when autocracies absolutely have the advantage over slow moving democracies. For example, I would point you to China’s social media policy vs. America’s, which is amazing. Chinese Tik Tok, if you’re 14 or under, shows you patriotic videos, scientific videos, entrepreneurship videos. That’s what Tik Tok shows in China. But that’s not what it shows here. So that’s an example of totalitarianism leading to potentially better outcomes.
But we’re certainly not seeing that on the battlefield. I would argue that one notable cause of Russian military collapse in Ukraine is a non-meritocratic and deferential organizational culture leading to this total tactical ineptitude, beyond a lack of adaptive initiative at the small unit level. The U.S. military during the Vietnam era discovered that a more efficient way to win on the battlefield is to teach and empower lower level soldiers with simple decision making and initiative, to push decision making as low as can be done well inside the overall mission orders. Small unit commanders are given a certain degree of ownership and flexibility. Platoons and lieutenants are given more freedom, captains and majors are given freedom to the point that all these little units are allowed to make their small decision loops, inside the overall mission orders, on the battlefield. And again, these soldiers are trained to make better decisions, to experiment, to be flexible, and to seize the initiative. They are trained to have liberal decision-making processes and to think for themselves. Think about the words “experimentation,” “liberal,” “flexible,” “freedom to decide,” “individual initiative,”—they can refer to politics or battlefield decision making. But in every context, in an autocratic nation that worships a macho guy riding around shirtless on a horse, they are not about liberal; they are not about experimentation; they are not about pushing initiative and decision making to the units on the lines. They’re about highest level deference and centralized decision making. So, the Ukrainian battlefield may prove that liberal (small l) leaders and cultures engender more effective decision making.
To be clear, I’d say the primary reason Putin’s military got ravaged is that Putin deeply underestimated the will of the Ukrainians to fight and thereby embraced, and didn’t correct, the wrong strategy for his invasion. The enemy Putin thought they’d find is not the enemy they found. They came in prepared for riots and not for warfare, so they got mowed down. While that’s the primary reason, it works hand in hand with the poor decision making of a macho autocrat—everyone else is a wussy, right? The Ukrainians, the Europeans, the Americans? According to Putin’s demagogic rhetoric, we are all weak kneed, gender fluid lambs, and only he, Peter the Great II, can lead the lions of Russia to their greatness. It's a spiral of self-delusion.
Cliff: This is another loaded one: how do you think China views the invasion? How durable do you think Putin’s and Xi’s relationship might be in the future; and what are the implications, if any, of Putin’s actions in relation to China’s own expansionist mindset?
RP: It’s a very important question, and it’s a part of the $98 trillion question, which is the size of the global economy. The first question you have to ask is, so far as a future or current threat to America, how much do we have to think of Russia or China or Russia and China? Is it a unified threat, or is it a bifurcated threat? I think we have to think of it as a unified threat. The Xi-Putin bromance is super real; they really, really like each other. They have very different decision-making styles. Putin is an autocratic thinker whom I’d describe as an ideological and narcissistic decision maker, whereas Xi and the CCP and the Politburo do still work in a collective. Xi is not an absolute ruler like Putin is. The Chinese in general are much more methodological, pragmatic, strategic, and they tend to have a much higher quality of bureaucrats—more meritocratic. Chinese bureaucrats are super talented and highly trained; [they use] national exams and pick the smartest kids in the region—there are ridiculous geniuses running that country. So, they are probably going to make decisions very differently. But, both of them stand for the same kind of totalitarian surveillance state ideology, and that’s worth noting.
I think right now, China is tactically very disappointed with Putin, but there’s potentially a big strategic win here for China. Tactically, I think they’re disappointed that he’s doing this. It looks embarrassing, and I think they realize his military clearly is garbage, so they hold him in lower regard. They’re probably unhappy with what’s going on, but they also realize that if they materially support Russia on the battlefield, it could cost them a tremendous amount of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) from the West. Chinese diplomats are telling me confidentially to “watch what we do, not what we say,” meaning we are not going to support them materially. Strategically, this is an interesting opportunity for China. The thing that has held back China’s growth more than anything is access to energy. They’ve got everything else, but they don’t have a lot of access to energy. They’re building solar fields, hydro power, everything they can. Russia’s got more energy than they know what to do with. If you’re Chairman Xi right now, this could be a big strategic win because you can get your hooks further and further into Russia to get more and more energy cheaper than before. I don’t know that this will happen, but to some extent, ironically, as Putin tries to make Ukraine into a vassal state and fails and thereby grinds his country down, is he empowering China to make Russia its vassal state? We’ll see, but the Chinese have to be thinking about that.
Cliff: That would be interesting!
RP: Even if it doesn’t happen, the tentacles of Beijing into Moscow will be stronger.
Cliff: Expanding on the whole energy topic, reliance on Russian energy is a major issue for Europe right now. The U.S. could possibly fill that void, but the infrastructure would cost a ton, and it’s not in place and will take time to create, so what do you think is the best immediate solution for Europe energy-wise?
RP: Well, we couldn’t fill the whole void. America is the largest oil producer in the world, but we’re also the largest oil consumer in the world, and we don’t export much. There’s a little bit of confusion about oil export numbers: why do we export oil at all? The answer is we largely export refined products, so it’s not just raw oil. We have specialized refining capacities here that allow us to make certain petroleum products that we then export. It’s important to know that oil is a fungible market, almost like online cloud storage. So, if you’re a buyer of a bunch of online cloud storage and AWS costs $1.00/unit and Microsoft costs $0.90/unit, if you’re set up properly, you can arbitrage back and forth between those and get your cheapest amount. Whoever has the lowest price of cloud storage then sets the price. Whoever has the lowest price of oil sets the price of oil—that’s a fungible market. The import/export stuff is confused by those two factors: one is the refining issue, and two is that it’s a fungible market. America does not have enough excess capacity to fulfill the European market. We produce about as much as we use, about 16.5 million barrels a day, roughly.
But, the U.S. does have LNG it could export to Europe. As do countries around Europe.
What does Europe need to do? They made a huge mistake getting off nuclear. They should probably go back to that, but it takes forever. Nuclear takes a very long time. There are native energy assets in and around Europe that aren’t Russian that could be redirected to take care of Europe without Russian energy, which is obviously what they have to get to. LNG is what can help get Europe independent of Russia. Add some demand reduction (everyone can wear a sweater indoors next winter), and the math can work. If you look at what happened in Germany, the social democrats (SPD party), the ruling party under Scholz (Ed: Olaf Scholz, German chancellor), have pivoted and did 30 years of political change in three hours. They became a very different country all of a sudden when faced with this Russian threat. They’re starting to do all sorts of new things. You know, America pushed against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for a long time; that’s the last pipeline between Russia and Germany. I never understood why the Germans were doing that, but what that proved to me was that I didn’t natively understand the German view, fear, and closeness to Russia…The American view of Russia is very different from the European view because they have to do business with these people. They have to buy their heating oil from them. They’re there. It’s very easy for Americans to be angry at the Russians and hate them and throw sticks at them, but the Germans have to live with them. So do the Italians and the Poles and the Hungarians. We don’t. Anyway, they have to get off Russian energy, and they can do it. People say “fusion,” but that’s 15-20 years away. Nuclear will take forever, fusion will take forever. More green energy is always good, and they have internal resources they can shift. They can do it. maybe even by next winter.
Cliff: How effective do you think the international sanctions on Russia are, and will continue to be, and do you think they can truly cripple Russia’s capabilities or really jeopardize Putin’s position of power?
RP: A couple of definers. Sanctions don’t ever change a government’s behavior. They’re meant to do a couple of things. One: to deny resources. We’re obviously not going to sell defense material in Russia. That would be an example of sanctions. They’re designed to punish, to some extent, and to strategically denude an adversary. The sanctions that the U.S. and the West put on Russia are amazingly powerful and painful but nonetheless won’t crush the Russian economy. The standard of living in Russia will probably go down about 15% because of the sanctions. The ruble is already back up, which seems amazing, as the restrictions on the central bank of Russia were basically economic nuclear warfare… that was a huge deal… but understand that Russian petroleum exports bring in a huge amount of currency to defend the ruble
The harshest sanctions definitely got Putin’s attention, but 70% or more of Russians still support the war. Right now, inside Russia, they talk about “in a month theory,” as in “this will be over in a month.” There is a theory that Russians are more willing to take the pain from Mother Russia than many other nations are for theirs. They support the war; they are feeling some economic pain but it’s not as much as you’re led to believe; and they’re kind of happy to take it. It’s not going to crush the spirit of the people. It will absolutely not crush their love of Putin, which is real, anytime soon—say over a year.
But the bigger economic issue for Putin isn’t the sanctions. Putin has now destroyed the opportunity for any future Russia that isn’t deeply reformed to integrate with the Western world again. They’ve isolated themselves for generations by virtue of this war crime, and they have clearly removed any hope of Ukraine being a helpful partner, ally, or vassal state. The Ukrainians for generations are going to hate Russians all of a sudden. That’s called “soft power,” and soft power is super real. That is a humongous soft power cost.
Cliff: Soft power meaning essentially the hate of the public?
RP: Yes, soft power is a type influence. Like how much you like, respect, fear, want to emulate another nation, or conversely don’t care to win their affection. To pick an example, if President Obama had called up the leader of Sweden and said, “I want you to do something,” they would bend over backwards to do it, not because they fear our force—Obama had a ton of soft power influence with the Swedes. If Trump called them up, they would hang up the phone. Different people have different degrees of influence; different nations have varying amounts of influence from different nations. America has a lot of soft power through our history, our quest for equality, Hollywood, academics, science, sports—people respect us. Soft power is real, and Russia’s soft power is now garbage.
Cliff: Do you think NATO membership is the best answer to deter Putin from doing something similar to bordering countries? Would joining NATO be their best bet not to be interfered with?
RP: Yeah, it would be the best bet for Ukraine—it’s not the best bet for NATO. Remember, America has military defense treaties with 50 nations. We have a defense treaty with the Philippines, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea and NATO. NATO is 30 countries. But the Americas and Southeast Asia treaties haven’t seen much exercise and may be seen as mushy. A mutual defense treaty is a big, dangerous, expensive piece of paper; remember WWI. Here’s a great example. When America was attacked on 9/11, all of the NATO countries responded by voting to evoke Article 5: the declaration of mutual defense to a member under attack. It was the only time Article 5 was evoked in NATO’s history! Invoked to defend America! That works both ways. So, if Narva, Estonia is invaded by Russia, American soldiers could be dying to protect Narva, Estonia. How many Americans could find Estonia on a map? You’ve got to understand that these treaties are a really big deal. It would be a great thing to be a member of NATO. The U.S. to protect you?? That’s awesome! Who wouldn’t want that?! We don’t want everyone else in NATO. We don’t want Ukraine in NATO; let’s be honest. Before this happened, the reason Ukraine wasn’t in NATO was because we didn’t want Ukraine in NATO. That’s why the whole Putin thing is such a pile of garbage. “Oh, we have to join NATO”—well, you aren’t going to join NATO—we aren’t going to let you join NATO. If we didn’t care that much about them before, then why are we defending them now? Now, when America’s radar is so high, and we’re all watching Ukrainians being killed on social media, people are criticizing America. “How do you not do a no-fly zone?” “Why aren’t you protecting them?” “Why aren’t you in there?” Some Americans are criticizing this choice now that the killing is real. We wouldn’t have had 5% of those people saying that before the invasion.
Cliff: Exactly. The Kremlin announced on March 25th that the first phase of the “special military operation,” AKA the invasion, in Ukraine was over. It seems as though they have sort of given up on regime change or annexation of Ukraine and are now focused on the Donbass. What do you think this conflict means going forward? Is Russia basically admitting defeat, or could they revamp their assault?
RP: Great question. What Russia wants us to believe is that the voyage of the Titanic was actually intended to be a small boat party to look at icebergs. They want us to believe that this is what they had in mind the whole time, which is farcical. Putin’s military is getting absolutely crushed; it’s an embarrassment. They’re a hollowed-out military with poor doctrine. Who has ever lost six or seven generals in three weeks?! It’s because the decision making is centralized, the comms don’t work, and generals are among the small group of people who care enough to run up to the front lines and try to move people around, and they’re getting killed. It’s not that there are magical snipers in the Ukrainian military picking off Russian generals from 10,000 yards. They’re running up to the front lines because no one is doing the right thing.
Cliff: I was wondering about that.
RP: They’re underequipped; they’re underarmed; they’re poorly trained; they have very low morale, very low will to fight; they are doing the devil’s work; they are getting killed in extremely high numbers; and it’s a huge deployment already of the entire Russian military. Putin has something like over 60% of his military in Ukraine. That’s not a healthy place to be when you’ve got conflicts in Georgia; you’ve got to protect islands from Japan; they’ve got issues all around that big huge land mass. In fact, one of the reasons Ergo was so confident in our prediction that Putin was going to invade Ukraine was that he had moved defensive military battalions to what’s called “off-axis,” other parts of Russia where he needed to defend against potential Western invasion. He thought he was going to roll in, that the Ukrainians were going to bend over like they did in Crimea and the West did then, and when he entered Georgia, he would all of a sudden have a vassal state. It proved to be the opposite. Putin doesn’t have any more capacity to project armor. He just doesn’t. He has the capacity to do indiscriminate firing of artillery, missiles, and airplanes, which he continues to do, until he runs out of artillery, so he’s going to fall back to the Donbass and try to build a land bridge to Crimea with Mariupol, the problem city for him that’s right in the middle of that. The reason he wants a land bridge is that, sure it’s good to have a land bridge, but also because the second largest natural gas field in Europe is in the land bridge, and that extension out to the sea gives them exposure to huge fields of energy offshore. It’s a big energy heist. It's thievery at the same time.
I think he’s tactically falling back, tactically regrouping. He’s going to try to get Zelensky to take the neutrality pledge and to give him Donbass and the land bridge in Crimea in perpetuity, and he will probably ask for some kind of constitutional change to prove they’re neutral, something like that. Zelensky, right now, is not scared. Look! Zelensky has attacked inside Russia! He has attacked, with helicopters, an oil depot in Russia. You think Zelensky is going to say “you can have half of my country?” No.
So this is the hard part, Cliff. What does Putin do? One statement we made at the beginning is: one of the worst short-term outcomes is if Putin doesn’t get what he wants.” You don’t want a caged animal losing right now, one who has chemical and nuclear weapons and who has shown us over and over he’s willing to create problems. So, I think we have to be concerned about the use of WMD, chemical and nuclear, possibly ex-atmospheric launch of a tactical nuclear weapon, which would be a very scary thing. Or the use of chemical weapons. That’s a possibility. This evil guy hasn’t suddenly turned into a happy negotiator. He’s going to fall back, see what he can get, and he’ll keep killing as many Ukrainians as he has to to get Zelensky to give him what he wants, and then that’s just a pause.
Russians love ongoing stalemate wars. It’s good for them, and he’ll have another one here. And then, over time, he’ll try to get Ukraine destabilized as much as he can, back to that original goal we mentioned at the beginning of Ukraine as a vassal state.
Cliff: Just for context, does Russia love the ongoing stalemate wars mainly from an economic perspective?
RP: Remember, more geopolitical tension = higher price of oil; that makes their check registry higher. That’s definitely one thing. A stalemate war is also good for them because it destabilizes [other countries]. They don’t mind putting non-Moscow, non-St. Petersburg conscript soldiers out there and having them killed. They don’t mind spending the money—they’ve got a big war chest. They don’t mind showing their military armaments on the field so they can sell them later. That wasn’t the entire reason they fired hypersonic weapons, but part of the reason was that they can now go sell hypersonic weapons to the North Koreans and others and show they’re “battlefield tested;” they work. Sure, they’re happy with the stalemate, because the other nation is destabilized. It costs Russia little… and that’s what they want.
Cliff: So it sounds like a regime change or the toppling of Kyiv is pretty much off the table, as of now.
RP: For now. Unless he decides to go to WMD. But then you get back to your initial question about corruption. What Putin will continue to do is run dirty tricks in campaigns inside Ukraine to corrupt them, corrupt their politicians, and assassinate politicians. This guy used bioweapons and chemical weapons throughout England; he’s going to do the same thing in Ukraine.
Cliff: Thank you so much for talking with me today. It has been fascinating.
Comments