Putin is on an historic mission and will not stop until he is finally defeated
Peter Dickinson’s excellent and well-argued article points to Putin’s very likely future plans, and this should not go unnoticed by the West. Here is a shortened version of the article.
Not everyone believes a victorious Putin would inevitably go further. Many remain skeptical and claim the Russian dictator is only interested in Ukraine. Others point to the Russian army’s well-documented difficulties during the current invasion as evidence that any Russian attack on the NATO alliance would amount to military suicide. These arguments reflect a fundamental failure among many in the West to grasp the true motives behind Russia’s invasion and the nature of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions.
Despite the failures of the war in Ukraine, it would be unwise to underestimate Russia’s military potential. In the past two years, Putin has placed the entire Russian economy on a war footing. Armaments factories are now working around the clock and are already comfortably outproducing the entire NATO alliance in terms of artillery shells and other key armaments. Russia may have lost hundreds of thousands killed and wounded in Ukraine, but the Kremlin still has vast untapped reserves of fighting age men who can be mobilized in time for the next big invasion.
Skeptics also tend to overlook the likely impact of victory in Ukraine on Russia’s military capabilities. In practical terms, the conquest of Ukraine would secure hundreds of thousands of additional conscript troops and a vast array of new weapons for the Russian army. Control over Ukraine would significantly enhance the Kremlin war machine by offering renewed access to a range of major Ukrainian enterprises that previously played key roles in the Soviet military industrial complex. It would make Russia the dominant force on global agricultural markets, handing Moscow enormous leverage that could be used to bribe allies and deter opponents.
Crucially, success in Ukraine would provide Putin with enormous additional momentum while simultaneously destabilizing and demoralizing the whole democratic world. Inside Russia, pro-war sentiment would be further strengthened and Putin’s messianic vision of a new Russian Empire would be vindicated. Internationally, Russia’s existing allies would feel free to increase their support, while the countries of the nonaligned Global South would rush to strengthen ties with the triumphant Kremlin. In such a favorable geopolitical climate, Putin would doubtless find it difficult to resist the temptation to escalate his confrontation with the West. Indeed, he would almost certainly see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve his historic mission.
This does not mean we should expect to see Russian tanks on the streets of NATO capitals any time soon. Putin knows he can reach his goals by discrediting NATO rather than actually defeating the alliance on the battlefield. With this in mind, the Kremlin would be far more likely to opt for the kind of hybrid tactics employed during the early stages of the Ukraine invasion in 2014. Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine unidentified Russian troops operating inside NATO territory behind a veil of barely plausible deniability.
An escalation of hybrid warfare against the NATO alliance would enable Moscow to exploit the lack of resolve and fear of escalation demonstrated by Western leaders over the past two years in Ukraine. Would the current generation of US, German, or French leaders be prepared to involve their countries in a war with Russia over an ambiguous “pro-Russian” uprising in an Estonian border town? If not, the absence of a decisive response could fatally undermine NATO’s core commitment to collective defense. The alliance might formally survive such a blow, but the loss of credibility would be catastrophic. It would not be long before individual NATO member countries started forming separate security arrangements of their own and began offering concessions to the Kremlin.
Even if Putin chooses not to test NATO directly, a Russian victory in Ukraine would transform the international security environment and dramatically increase the risk of a truly global war. European countries would be forced to rapidly rearm, with defense budgets soon ballooning to levels that far surpass the current costs of supporting the Ukrainian war effort. Those who begrudge today’s spending on Ukraine would find themselves confronted with security expenditure five or ten times higher.
Putin himself has provided ample evidence that his goals extend far beyond the reconquest of Ukraine. He makes no secret of his commitment to reclaiming what he regards as historically Russian lands, and believes he is fully justified in using military force to do so. Putin’s revisionist agenda is inextricably linked to his other great passion, namely the revival of Russia’s great power status as part of a post-Western world dominated by a handful of regional behemoths. These imperial ambitions led directly to the invasion of Ukraine and make further escalations virtually inevitable unless Russia is defeated.
Ultimately, it is impossible to predict exactly what Putin will do if he wins in Ukraine. He may initially choose to pursue low-hanging geopolitical fruit by seizing small neighborhood countries like Moldova or Georgia. Alternatively, he might seek to press home his advantage against a weakened West by embarking on far bolder military gambits targeting the Baltic states or the Suwałki Gap. Of the many possible post-Ukraine scenarios for Russia, the least likely of all is the idea that an emboldened and victorious Putin would simply stop.
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.