Marvin Kalb - Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

He is creating his own realityhis own sort of world.

JOHN KERRY

Putin is, in many ways, I think, delusional about this.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, history is back, in a dizzying mix of Byzantine deception and Cossack adventurism. Some, with playful wit, have called it the Soviet spring.

In late February 2014, shortly after the Sochi Winter Olympics, which succeeded in projecting the image of a sleek modern Russia, President Vladimir Putin suddenly sent his army, masked and minus insignia, into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which sits in the blue waters of the Black Sea. Save in the Kremlin, everyone, everywhere, seemed surprised, even shocked. In Western chanceries, protests were drafted and sanctions threatened. Within days, Crimea was occupied, and within weeks it was the Potemkin-like backdrop for a faux referendum, providing the legal pretext for its swift annexation by Russia. Barely a shot had been fired. For the first time in decades, a European border had been crossed, a nation's sovereignty violated, and diplomats and political leaders began to wonder whether they were witnessing the rebirth of the cold war.

This takeover immediately raised questions about Russian policy and intentions. Among the most pressing:

Is Crimea just the beginning of a new expansionist policy for Russia?

Will Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine be next, or will it be the odd sliver of Moldova called Transnistria?

Or, worst of all, is it possible that Russia will test the cohesion of NATO by invading Latvia or Estonia on the Baltic?

It all came down to the decisions of one man: Putin, a one-time KGB lieutenant colonelcunning, manipulative, and ultranationalisticwho was president of a severely vulnerable Russia and determined to right the wrongs he saw in postcold war Europe. Another question quickly arose: Was Putin representative of Russia's rising political elite, or was he someone special? Put another way, had there been no Putin, would Russia still have annexed Crimea and triggered the subsequent crisis in eastern Ukraine? We shall never know for certain. Russian history does march to its own libretto, orchestrated in the Kremlin, where one person generally calls the tune. Crimea was juicy, available, low-hanging fruit. If it were not Putin, then another Russian leader might very well have swooped in and snapped it up, when he needed an easy victory. To make sense of the current Ukrainian crisis, one must first make sense of Putin and Russia's long and often troubled history.

Putin on a Couch

Searching for explanations, expertsRussian and non-Russian alikehave put Putin on the kind of couch often found in a psychiatrist's office. A number thought his adventure in Crimea proved he had lost his diplomatic marbles. German chancellor Angela Merkel confided to President Barack Obama that in her judgment, Putin was in another world. Or, as Secretary of State John Kerry observed: He's creating his own realityhis own sort of world. It doesn't make any sense, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright confessed. Putin is, in many ways, I think, delusional about this. And, if Putin was not in another world, or creating his own reality, or delusional, he was, according to Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under President George H. W. Bush, a person full of venom, suggesting he could not think rationally about Ukraine.