TO HAVE AND TO HOLD PUTIN’S QUEST FOR CONTROL IN THE FORMER SOVIET EMPIRE Ieva Be¯rzin¸a • Ja¯nis Be¯rzinsˇ • Keir Giles • Agnia Grigas Dmitry Gorenburg • Michael Kofman • David R. Marples Vladimir Podhol • Mihai Popsoi • Paul Stronski Andrew Wilson Edited by Leon Aron AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE To Have and to Hold Putin’s Quest for Control in the Former Soviet Empire Ieva Be¯rzin¸a • Ja¯nis Be¯rzin¸sˇ • Keir Giles • Agnia Grigas Dmitry Gorenburg • Michael Kofman • David R. Marples Vladimir Podhol • Mihai Popsoi • Paul Stronski • Andrew Wilson Edited by Leon Aron March 2018 A MERIC A N E NTERPRISE I NSTITUTE © 2018 by the American Enterprise Institute. All rights reserved. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) edu- cational organization and does not take institutional positions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the author(s). Cover photo: Double-headed eagle of the Romanovs, Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, by Flickr user Richard Mortel, Creative Commons, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ prof_richard/37048877101/. Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 Leon Aron I. ESTONIA .................................................................................................17 1. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment ...............................19 Agnia Grigas 2. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ....................31 Keir Giles II. LATVIA ..................................................................................................43 3. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment ...............................45 Ieva Be¯rzin¸a 4. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ....................53 Ja¯nis Be¯rzin¸sˇ III. MOLDOVA ............................................................................................59 5. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment ...............................61 Mihai Popsoi 6. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ....................71 Mihai Popsoi IV. KAZAKHSTAN ........................................................................................79 7. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment ...............................81 Paul Stronski 8. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ....................93 Dmitry Gorenburg iii iv TO HAVE AND TO HOLD V. BelARUS ..............................................................................................101 9. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment .............................103 David R. Marples 10. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ..................115 Vladimir Podhol, translated by Wesley Fox VI. UKRAINE ............................................................................................123 11. Domestic Vulnerabilities and Threat Assessment .............................125 Andrew Wilson 12. The Potential Modes and Venues of Russian Aggression ..................137 Michael Kofman CONCLUSION ............................................................................................151 Leon Aron ABOUT THE AUTHORS ..............................................................................159 ACKNOWleDGmeNTS ................................................................................161 Introduction Leon Aron ladimir Putin’s Russia presents the United States with a policy dilemma V of enormous political, diplomatic, and military consequence: Will con- tinuing economic hardships and diplomatic pressure lead to greater restraint in Russian foreign policy? Or will Russia continue to escalate its current activ- ist foreign policy, a key component of which has been the attempted recovery of control over the former Soviet domestic empire?1 Should Putin continue an interventionist foreign policy toward his neighbors, planning the US response will have to start with answering three questions: What would propel him in this direction? Which of the post-Soviet states are the most likely targets of aggression? And how, in each individual case, is Putin likely to proceed? A year into the new administration, predicting the potential threats to US interests posed by Putin’s revisionist Russia—and planning the US response to it—already appears at the top of the White House agenda.2 Russia’s economic challenges, combined with diplomatic pressure applied by the US and its European allies, could conceivably make Moscow more inclined to accommodate the West in order to concentrate attention and resources on improving its domestic investment climate by undertaking much-needed liberalizing institutional reforms and attracting foreign capital. On the other hand, Russia could double down on its attempts at destabili- zation in its near abroad through direct and indirect military intervention and territorial conquest as it has over the past eight years in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, and southeastern Ukraine. Obviously, the West would welcome the former choice with an outpour- ing of good will, gradual removal of sanctions, and diplomatic and economic rewards. Yet what would motivate Putin to reject this option and continue his activist and revisionist foreign policy? Which post-Soviet nations are most likely to be on his target list? And how might he proceed operationally? 1 2 TO HAVE AND TO HOLD While in one form or another these issues have long been within the pur- view of scholars and experts inside and outside the US government, this vol- ume for the first time integrates them into a single narrative and explores all three components of the worst-case scenarios for which the United States must be prepared in depth: the motivations behind a potential attack on a post-Soviet country, the Kremlin’s criteria for choosing target countries, and a country-by-country examination of operational implementation. Drivers of Putin’s Foreign Policy Regarding the drivers of Putin’s foreign policy and the goals they dictate, three broad and often overlapping themes3 have emerged: Russian national tradition, Soviet patriotism and post–Cold War revanchism, and immediate domestic political imperatives.4 Russian National Tradition. In this perspective, Russia’s foreign policy is viewed as a largely uninterrupted process of imperial expansion and coloni- zation along its borders. Unlike in Western Europe, the argument goes, Russian empire-building occurred simultaneous to, not after, state-building.5 Conceptualized and legitimized in a variety of ways throughout the centuries, the expansion was justified as the spread of Russia’s unique and messianic Orthodox faith, then as the embrace of Pan-Slavism championing the mythical greatness of the Russian people, and finally as the advance of Communism. In this framework, Putin is merely the latest Russian ruler to embrace Catherine the Great’s mantra that “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”6 As a recent Rand study concluded, “the tendency to dom- inate its periphery is an essential backdrop for understanding contemporary Russian foreign policy.”7 Soviet Patriotism and Revanchism. To other analysts, the roots of Putin’s foreign policy are far more contemporary. To them, he is not a Russian patriot, but a Soviet one. They contend that Putin sees the world through a Cold War framework as a zero-sum game.8 Putin has declared the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” and has made it INTRODUCTION 3 his mission to recover at least some of the geopolitical assets lost in what to him was a profoundly unjust denouement, argues the principal investigator Leon Aron.9 This profound sense of injustice and devastation at the collapse of the Soviet Union is almost certain to have prompted Putin to view at least some of post-Soviet states as largely bogus entities and their borders as dubious at best and utterly illegitimate at worst. As Putin famously told George W. Bush, “You have to understand, George. Ukraine is not even a country.”10 Domestic Political Imperatives. The third analytical perspective considers Putin’s activist foreign policy as a (if not the) key component of the regime’s legitimacy that, after the decadelong run of economic growth from high oil prices, has become more difficult to maintain. Proponents of this theory stress the immediate pressures of producing foreign policy wins to stay in power: “The Kremlin sees an adversarial relationship with the West as . a further pretext for its assertive foreign policy and tightening of domestic control.”11 In this narrative, upon his return to presidency in 2012, Putin began to shift the foundation of the regime’s legitimacy away from economic growth and rapidly growing personal incomes to national pride from foreign policy successes. Falling oil prices sapped the regime’s ability to sustain itself on eco- nomic growth alone. Instead, Putin shifted the base of his regime’s legitimacy to “patriotic mobilization.”12 Far from limiting Putin’s adventurism, Russia’s economic problems may make Moscow more inclined to act out.13 A struggling economy and pro- longed Western sanctions could help the regime create an “us-against-them” siege mentality in the Russian people,14 and prolonged low oil prices could pressure Putin to gamble in adventurism abroad.15 In the end, whether it is the national tradition of Russian authoritarian- ism, Soviet patriotism and the desire to right the historic wrong and avenge the fall of the Soviet Union by recovering for Russia at least