The Russian Damn Cracks

The Prigozhin putsch was a crack in the Russian dam, the dam being the Russian state.  So far, the dam is holding.  But behind it are the swirling, dirty currents of Fourth Generation war, in the form of all the non-state loyalties and entities that will flood over Europe and Asia if the dam falls.

The proximate cause of Wagner Group’s march on Moscow was an ultimatum to submit to the Russian state.  The June 26 Wall Street Journal reported that:

A key trigger was the June 10 defense ministry order that all volunteer detachments would have to sign contracts with the government by July 1, a move to bring Wagner under formal military control.  Prigozhin refused.

This alone shows how the authority of the Russian state has been undermined.  But the WSJ reported further that:

Prigozhin made his move after state support that once flowed to Wagner was diverted to a new private mercenary group established by state-owned companies such as Gazprom.

So now we see the Russian state is so weak that it must turn, not to the state’s armed forces, but to other mercenary units as alternatives to Wagner.

Then, when major elements of the Wagner group advanced on Moscow, covering about 500 miles with only 100 left between them and the Kremlin, they met almost no opposition from any state security forces.  Neither the police nor the Russian army intervened.  They were met with only a few attacks from the air, to which they responded by shooting down some helicopters and a jet, killing 13 Russian airmen.  And for that, President Putin was constrained to grant them amnesty from prosecution.

President Putin’s popularity within Russia is based on his restoration and maintenance of a strong state after the chaos of the Yeltsin years.  The Prigozhin putsch and the state’s weak response to it have undermined his reputation as a guarantor of order.  The June 26 New York Times quoted Sergei Markov, a Russian political expert and advisor, as saying,

What he (Putin) always took pride in is the solidity of Russian statehood and political stability.  That’s what they loved him for.  And it turns out that it doesn’t exist.

The blob and its NATO counterpart can’t wait for President Putin to fall.  But who or what will replace him?  He has no anointed successor waiting in the wings.  Nor does Russia have a political process that is clear, clean and widely accepted by which to find a new leader.  It is quite possible that if the man who has run Russia for almost a quarter-century falls from power, the succession process will bring chaos.  That, in turn, runs a risk of the RUssian state itself failing.  

I cannot emphasize enough how disastrous a failure of the Russian state would be.  We would face nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach America in the hands of, well, who?  The answer is anyone who can grab them.  It is not difficult to imagine a criminal enterprise getting hold of ICBMs, lobbing one minus its warhead at American soil, then telling us to hand over all the gold in Ft. Knox or they would take out one American city every week until we complied.  As a gang, they would have no return address.  The U.S. has no reliable missile defense, despite spending more than 100 billion dollars trying to build one, a scandal for which some people in the Pentagon and in the defense industry should go to jail.

To head off the catastrophe of Russia falling into the sort of stateless chaos we see in Syria or Libya, the U.S. and NATO need to act now to support the RUssian state.  What Russia needs most is a golden bridge over which it can retreat from its botched war in Ukraine.  That means Russia has to get something out of it, at least international recognition that Crimea is Russian and probably also the Donetsk and Luhansk regions held by pro-Russian statelets before February of last year.  Stupidly, Washington has said it will not accept any peace terms rejected by Kiev, which itself cannot agree to the loss of any territory.  This faces Russia with two unpalatable choices, continuation of the war or a humiliating peace.  The last time Russia faced this choice, in 1917, the result was civil war and a Bolshevik takeover.

After the war ends, we need to do what should have been done in 1990 after Communism fell in Russia, namely reintegrate Russia into the Concert of Powers.  This is what Metternich did with France after 1815, and it gave Europe a century of relative peace.  It is late in the game to do this with Russia, but perhaps it is not too late.  Henry Kissinger is the right man for the job, and at just 100 years old, I think he would say yes if asked.  No one knows better than he the price state collapse, like that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, can bring.