In The Arena We Need to Get Serious about Russia, Now Everyone should listen to Gen. Dunford’s warning of an ‘existential’ threat to the U.S.

Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.

We are at a crucial juncture in the conflict over Ukraine and the West’s relationship with Russia. Obama’s restraint has been wise at one level, but Washington’s tendency has been to move this issue to the back burner and hope it stays there. Yet there is little reason to think that it will—and also little reason to believe that a new U.S. president in 18 months, who will probably be harder-line in dealing with Vladimir Putin than Barack Obama has been, will be able to fix the situation either.

As Gen. Joseph Dunford, the incoming Joint Chiefs chairman, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing last week: “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I would have to point to Russia. … If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming,”


Meanwhile the current crisis over Greece and the Eurozone—which is not likely to end soon, if ever—is only likely to further undermine Europe’s resolve and induce it to turn inward, allowing Putin to breathe easier. Or at least, the Russian president might get that impression.

So the United States and its NATO allies need to get serious about the situation now, and complement their existing policy approach with new ideas—some of them to show resolve and firmness towards Putin and Russia, others to offer him a way out of this crisis should he wish to take such a path. But this is not a time for drift; the longer the Kremlin senses irresolution in the West, the more it is likely to assume that its new “order” in the east is a fait accompli. There is also a risk it could become yet more aggressive, even towards the NATO-member Baltic states, in some way.

The context of the situation was well summarized in a recent poll, released June 10, that the Pew Research Center conducted over the previous several months. It underscored that the West has a number of strengths in dealing with Putin—but also a number of serious vulnerabilities that will not get better just by ignoring them. The survey, led by Bruce Stokes and Katie Simmons, found that majorities of citizens in a number of key NATO states would not favor the use of force to protect another alliance member in the event of Russian aggression against them. That would seem, on its face, to ignore Article V of the NATO alliance’s founding charter, the Washington Treaty of 1949, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all, and should be treated accordingly.

This may appear to some as tantamount to an invitation to renewed Russian aggression. It seems to raise the scenario of Vladimir Putin again employing his patriotic cyber attackers and “little green men,” not just in Crimea but perhaps in Latvia or Estonia—former republics in the Soviet Union turned independent nations and, since 2004, members of NATO. Each also has significant populations of Russian speakers that Putin can claim want to be reunited with the motherland; each is too far east for NATO easily to mount a military defense in any case. Are such parts of the Western alliance, and perhaps other countries like Poland, now vulnerable to Russian aggression?

In fact, it would be a mistake to reach this conclusion based on the Pew survey or any other recent polling. While there are indeed some troubling findings in the Pew results, on balance what emerges is the picture of an alliance that still provides the West with considerable cohesion, and considerable leverage, in addressing the problem of Putin.

Before trying to make sense of the poll results, it is important to summarize not just the headline-dominating findings noted above, but several other key results from Pew:

The NATO publics have negative views of Russia and Putin. They seem to have little doubt of who is primarily responsible for the crisis in relations of the last two years, dating to the immediate aftermath of the Sochi Olympics when protests in Ukraine forced out the country’s previous leader, President Yanukovich.

Five of eight NATO countries surveyed (the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany) oppose sending weapons to Ukraine to defend itself in the current crisis.

NATO countries remain more than willing to employ sanctions against Russia over its behavior. This was true in every alliance member-state that was polled, including Germany, the most pro-Russia NATO state that was included in the polling.

Indeed, although just 38 percent of Germans favored a military response in the event of a hypothetical Russian attack against another NATO member, they remained in favor of sanctions against Russia. Only 29 percent favored a loosening of the current sanctions, unless Russia’s behavior were to change. This helps explain why the EU just reauthorized sanctions against Russia, with even Greece in support.

Putin remains extremely popular in Russia, with favorability ratings approaching 90 percent; Russians currently blame the West, and falling oil prices, for their current economic woes, and not their own government or its policies.

Forebodingly, most Russians believe that eastern Ukraine, where the current fighting rages, should not remain part of Ukraine but should either become independent or join their country.

Two more key points are crucial to remember. First, the type of hypothetical Russian attack against a NATO country that formed the premise for the Pew question about Article V was not clearly specified. Perhaps respondents were in some sense wondering if a takedown of several Latvian or Estonian computer networks really needed to be met with NATO tanks? For most western publics, the advisability of a major military response might well, understandably enough, depend in detail on the nature of the perceived Russian attack as well as the other options available to the alliance.

Second, and relatedly, it is important to remember that Article V does NOT demand an automatic, unconditional military response by each alliance member. It says, rather, that an attack on one should lead to a response by all—involving whatever means the individual states determine. This ambiguity may risk complicating deterrence, to be sure—but it worked during the Cold War and, if NATO leaders are sufficiently clear in their dealings with Putin, it can and should work now.

These results collectively suggest the following path ahead:

The United States and other NATO member states should adopt the Pentagon’s recent proposal to station modest amounts of equipment in the easternmost NATO countries—a proposal that is harder to oppose at this juncture given Putin’s continued stirring up of the conflict. Ideally, equipment from NOT ONLY America BUT also other NATO countries would be part of the initiative.

The sanctions tool remains powerful and should still be employed. As they pursue Russian compliance with the so-called Minsk accords, which Moscow agreed to this past winter, and which would allow autonomy for Ukraine’s eastern provinces in return for verifiable Russian withdrawal from those same regions and an end to hostility by separatists, western policymakers can and should keep up the economic pressure.

A grand solution should also be proposed to Moscow. As a complement to the Minsk concept and the continuation of economic sanctions, the West should offer a proposal for a new Central European security architecture for non-NATO states that Russia would be asked and expected to co-guarantee, if it wishes that countries like Ukraine permanently forgo pursuit of NATO membership. This should not weaken Ukraine’s formal sovereignty; no long-term “Hong Kong handover” solution is needed. But all would understand that Ukraine would not formally join the West in geostrategic terms, though it certainly could accept western help out of its current economic malaise once the right policy foundation was established.

So far Putin has managed to convince Russians that their economic predicament is not his fault, but over time, he may not be able to maintain the charade. The Pew poll suggests that Western publics are firmly united behind this sanctions-based approach—and that modern democracies, while wary about the use of force, are a far cry from the paper tigers their critics sometimes purport them to be. But our policies are far from adequate to the task at hand and need to be improved now—before the situation escalates further and reduces our room for maneuver, and before the 2016 U.S. presidential race reduces Washington’s room for maneuver as well.

