The Economist magazine has an excellent leader on Russia and Putin in their February 14th edition. The take-away, which needs repeating, is that Russia is not, in its political leadership or economic make-up, similar to the West, and cannot be thought of as equivalent.

This needs repeating, because Russia has been a blind spot in Western political thought. After the Cold War, most Americans and West Europeans breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated on domestic issues. Sure, there were still attempts to “integrate” our former foe, whether economically or with mutually beneficial initiatives such as the program to secure nuclear warheads, but the focus the USSR/Russia had played in geostrategic thinking fell away. This was a mistake.

Russia is not so complicated as Churchill’s “enigma wrapped in a mystery” quote might have us think, but it is not quite an open book either. In fact, Russia (And to a certain extent our other peer rival, China), is a society fundamentally different from the West in its very outlook on life. Basically, it is a closed society, while the Western nations are open societies. Yes, there are lacks of freedom in the West too for certain individuals and groups, but the difference between our failings on that front and those of the post-communist nations is orders of magnitude smaller. This basic outlook of closed or open colors every interaction between the West and Russia, and leads to misunderstanding and miscalculations when not kept in the forefront of mind.

Russia does not reward political expression from any but the elites. It does not reward innovation, efficiency, or originality of thought. Control is top-down, and the political and economic spheres are bound together to such a degree that they are practically indistinguishable. In the long run, this will lead inevitably to an economic hollowing out, a process which is already well under way. As Western nations have transitioned to an information economy, and China and India (Two developing countries who have decoupled economics and politics to some degree) are stepping up the developmental ladder from manufacturing to a degree of intellectual value-add in their products, Russia is completely stagnant. Quick, name one single Russian product which has been successful on the international market. Apart from weapons, vodka and oil (Or natural gas), there is nothing which Russia produces that anyone anywhere in the rest of the world wants to buy. And neither vodka nor oil is a product which demands any degree of intellectual capital to produce. Weapons alone are Russian products which are knowledge-intensive and exportable, and this is more a legacy of the Soviet Union’s massive investment in that capacity on the one hand, and Western inefficiencies in weapons production (Particularly the US DoD’s ridiculously mismanaged procurement system, with plenty of blame going to Congress and its pork-barrel mentality) on the other. This means that Russia’s leaders, from Putin on through the rest of his coterie, have no understanding of what a modern economy needs to survive, much less compete, in the global economy.

Since Putin and his fellows have no understanding of economic development, it’s not so strange that he would see politics, both international and domestic, in terms of “strength” above all. This is the Russian tradition of the Vozdh, and with certain occasional forays into top-down attempts at liberalization such as the reign of Peter the Great and Alexander II, it has been the default setting for how Russians approach leadership. Western leaders have been naïve in the extreme to ignore the strength of this subconscious outlook on life. When “we” say something that to us seems self-explanatory, such as that economic liberalization depends on a strong civil service and independent judiciary, an unsophisticated, non-international Russian hears an attack on his centralized power base. When “we” say that human rights matter, because it is self-explanatory that individuals won’t create value in the economic sphere without a chance of reaping rewards, a Russian leader hears an attempt to foment attacks on his centralized power.

We should not be so smug, either, as to believe that simply because our societies produce better products, services and quality of life, that these are somehow innate qualities. There has never been, and does not exist now, a genetic disposition to a better society or culture. The West is currently benefiting from institutions built up over centuries, from the Magna Carta on, which are independently strong enough to survive attacks from individuals who seek to subvert them for personal gain. Arrogance or schadenfreude at Russia’s economic flailing is misplaced. We too, need to be vigilant and keep tending to our own economic garden, lest it fall to the entropy of naked greed.

This big picture overview of cultural differences may all be very well, but what, exactly, does it mean? Particularly when Russia is carving out parts of Ukraine simply to prove a point? The point being, of course, that Russia has its Great-Power sphere of influence in the “near abroad” and everyone needs to keep out. What options does the West have in trying to influence events?

First and foremost, the West needs to hold fast to the fact that despite the differences between the US and Europe, we share far more with each other culturally, economically and socially than we do with Russia. This is a point which from the American perspective cannot be over-emphasized. While Europeans might well look across the water to the West and see a nation of cowboys, from our perspective Europe has failed dismally when it comes to the necessary application of force, whether political or, in particular, military. Europe’s track record does not inspire confidence.

When Yugoslavia imploded, unpleasant ancient German prejudices surfaced and led to the premature recognition of Croatia, hastening the rise of Milosevic and thence to the horrors of Srebrenice and the rest. It took years of waiting for “Europe” to do something before the US stepped in and ended the slaughter in the Balkans. Not completely successfully, but at least to a degree. When the EU talked of expansion as a way to project peace and economic development, one of the gobsmackingly stupid things that led to was the ascension of Cyprus as a full EU member, despite no formal peace between the Greek South of the island and Turkish North. This insanely stupid piece of non-diplomacy led incidentally to the rise of Cypriot banks as funnels for the swaths of cash that flowed out of the former Soviet Union. It’s not a stretch to say that if Cyprus had never joined the EU, Putin and his coterie would not have been nearly as personally successful in amassing their fortunes. Was Cyprus and its back-door banks an inside job? Did a bunch of the European technocrat elite get paid off for this betrayal? Who knows. Europeans themselves have never addressed it. And the continuation of such underhanded financial shenanigans led as well to parts of the City becoming Londongrad, a daggar of Russian corruption placed right at the center of the Western financial system. This unseemly scramble for crumbs from the oligarchs’ table has been far from Great Britain’s finest moment.

To counteract Russian aggression and short-term thinking the West must do a far better job of integrating their financial, diplomatic and military response. Since it is the Russian elite centered around Putin which is the problem, personally directed sanctions, aimed where it hurts (at their wallets), are effective and should be continued at the least or even expanded. Diplomatically, there is absolutely no reason to keep pretending Russia is a real nation that should be treated as such in talking shops such as the G8. Militarily, in Ukraine in particular, the situation is trickier. Putin’s ultimate aim is to decouple the US from Europe, which means at the least weakening NATO, and at best (from his perspective) making NATO completely ineffective. Ukraine is just a start. The ultimate goal would be to attack a geographically close, small NATO member, such as Estonia or Lithuania, and force them out. This would be done with just enough visible military force so that it is obvious that Russia is imposing its will, but not so much that a unified Western response is politically unavoidable. In other words, it would not be a Russian blitzkrieg of tank divisions rolling into Vilnius or Tallinn, but a concerted propaganda campaign lamenting the suffering of ethnic Russians, coupled with black ops that target local centers of possible resistance, whether institutions or individuals. Closed societies prefer working in the shadows, and the Russians take an inordinate pride in their maskirovka, or ability to mislead. Westerners should pay attention not to words, but deeds. When prominent Estonians or Lithuanians start dropping dead from heart attacks or getting run over in hit and run accidents, it really shouldn’t even be on the agenda to engage with whatever propaganda Moscow uses to try to set the debate. The West, and Europe in particular, needs to toughen up and understand what we’re dealing with. To that end, further build up of forces in Poland and the Baltics should be a priority. In particular, Washington must bite the bullet and commit ground and air troops. The sad fact is that Europe alone doesn’t have the capacity or recent history to scare off Putin.

Finally, coming full circle is the question of Ukraine itself. While the cowboy wing of American foreign policy demands immediate shipment of offensive arms, it’s not quite so simple. The Ukraine military is not even in the neighborhood of that of Poland, say, or France, let alone the US military, when it comes to actual ability. They have an astounding lack of capacity when it comes to logistics and support of frontline troops, even now, after a year of continuous fighting. Sending arms without addressing the structural problems in the Ukrainian military would be like pouring water into a bucket with a hole at the bottom. In the question of creating capacity among our allies the US can legitimately be criticized. Our own track record is, frankly, abysmal. In Iraq, we trained, supplied and equipped a local force without ever addressing the political problems which made such training and equipment meaningless. What good is giving shiny new tanks and guns to troops who abandon them as soon as there’s conflict because, with all the justification in the world, those troops don’t trust their local leaders? In Afghanistan, we enabled corruption at the outset of our campaign, buying short-term warlord “allies” but setting the seeds for developmental failure in the long run. Going further back, the withdrawals from Beirut after the barracks bombing, the withdrawal from Mogadishu after the Black Hawk down incident, and the Iran-Contra scandal itself shows that within Washington DC, at the very highest levels, there is an ignorance, lack of planning, and short-term domestic political stupidity which can subvert our own intentions better than any enemy action. Overall, we’re far from being strategic geopolitical geniuses. Still, we’re the only ones who can realistically take on the Russian military.

For this reason, any attempt to provide military aid should be considered far more carefully than current domestic political discourse suggests. It’s not just about sending APCs, missiles and tanks. Far more important is the question as to whether any such aid actually would be useful. Are the Ukrainian troops well-led? Is their morale high, or constantly undermined by knowledge of profiteering from small-time fat cats back in Kiev? What is the political settlement that will lead, in the event of military “victory”, to stability in East Ukraine? If we give Putin a bloody nose in Ukraine, have we covered our bases when it comes to what he might do in the Baltics? None of these questions have easy, glib, answers. However, if something is to be done, it comes down to the US. We can muddle along in a incoherent way like we’ve done for the past decade, or we can actually identify goals, formulate a strategy to reach them, identify the tactics that will allow success, and finally maintain the will and strength of purpose to achieve those ultimate goals.

It shouldn’t be difficult, except that it is.