Cipher Brief expert Robert Dannenberg is a 24-year veteran of the CIA, where he served in several senior leadership positions, including chief of operations for the Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the CIA’s Information Operations Center. Post CIA, he worked as Chief of Global Security for Goldman Sachs.
OPINION — Last week, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced it had unanimously agreed to ban Russia from major international sporting competitions, including the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo; the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the World Cup. The ban, which was imposed for four years, was issued over doping non-compliance. The WADA report establishes that in 2018-2019 the doping samples of 145 athletes were manipulated and that attempts were made by Russia to hack the doping data base and associated systems. Russian state officials did not meaningfully cooperate with WADA investigators and offered active disinformation.
The WADA report and judgement comes only a few months after the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), responsible for investigating the downing of flight MH-17, named four men responsible for bringing the missile into eastern Ukraine and charged them with the murders of 298 passengers and crew. The men charged include a former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel, an employee of the Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU), a former GRU special forces soldier, and a Ukrainian National. The JIT’s initial report from May, 2018 concluded that the Buk missile system used to bring down flight MH-17 in 2014 belonged to a Russian brigade and that Russia was responsible for downing the aircraft.
The WADA report also shortly followed the announcement that Germany had expelled two Russian diplomats in retaliation for the August murder of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili by a Russian special services operative in Berlin’s Tiergarten park.
What these incidents and a host of others (Skripal, Litvenenko, various cyber manipulation incidents, et al) indicate is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is firmly committed to the course of making Russia a rogue nation, and violating every convention of civil interaction between nations. He has certainly given up any aspiration of rebuilding or normalizing relations with the West- if indeed he ever had such aspirations. The pariah state that Putin has created should no longer be welcomed into the conventions and gatherings of the family of nations. The civilized world is long overdue in recognizing the malignancy of Putin’s Russia. The people of Russia should be encouraged and assisted in choosing another path for their country. This should be a consideration for the U.S. President and leaders of all states in future interaction with Putin’s Russia.
In a Kremlin interview with the Financial Times in June 2019, Putin said “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.” Putin said this on the eve of the G-20 meeting in Osaka. OECD meetings are a gathering of the top 20 economically developed countries. The economy Putin has led for the past 20 years is in the second rank of the OECD (11th of 20, just ahead of South Korea and behind Canada). According to estimates from the Russian government, presidential administration and Central Bank, Russian economic growth is not expected to reach global average economic growth between now and 2024 (the end of Putin’s current term as President).
The last time the Russian economy grew by 3% was in 2012 and Russia is now in its 11th year of average annual GDP growth of less than 1%. In addition, according to recent data from the Russian State Statistics Service Rosstat, Russia’s population decline will set an 11 year record this year, with deaths outnumbering live births by 259,600. Moreover, trends in “human capital emigration” are not encouraging, and per Russian polling data from August 2019, 44% of Russian 15-29-year-olds polled said they would like to permanently relocate to another country. And this is a Russian President comfortable declaring liberal democracy obsolete?
Apparently, Putin has no shortage of arrogance. Immediately following the announcement of the WADA decision, the Russian president participated in the latest meeting in Paris of the so-called “Normandy Group” created as a forum to discuss the situation in Ukraine. During the meeting, Putin reportedly had a tense exchange with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin, after which Putin made a thinly-veiled reference to cutting off gas to Europe, saying “a u nas Gaz v kvartiere, a u vas?” (So, we have gas in our apartment, how about you?) At the conclusion of the meeting and after his one-on-one with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the Ukrainian press and went into some length about how “very difficult” he found his discussions with Putin, and explained that he realized how very different he is from Putin as a person. Zelensky expressed skepticism over whether anything could be agreed with Putin.
Although Zelensky has only been President of Ukraine since May, he seems to have a sophisticated understanding of the nature of his principal adversary. Putin is a product of KGB training and a key principle of KGB thinking is that the ends justify the means. Putin’s desired end, now that he has achieved substantial personal wealth and has become the longest serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, is to preserve his regime and create chaos and division in the ranks of his geopolitical opponents.
Internally, Putin presents events like the WADA report as the continuation of “anti-Russian hysteria.” This argument is wearing thin with his domestic audience, especially Russia’s youth. Unfortunately, decisions by the world community to continue to deal with Putin lend him credibility. An example of that is President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent decision to receive Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Washington last week in the wake of the WADA report et al, sends exactly the wrong message. Meetings with representatives of a country you simply cannot trust are a mistake. They only contribute to the image of “parity” or superpower “equality” that Putin presents to the Russian people as the singular achievement of his reign.
There is only one solution to the problem of Putin’s Russia and that is to deny to Putin the “achievements” so important to his image. He has made Russia a pariah state and he should be treated as such. Russia will soon assume the 2021 chairmanship of the BRICs Group and the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). Let those be the only fora in which he and Russia are received and let him be otherwise shunned. Moreover, sanctions are not enough, and the West should move diligently and forcefully to support regime opponents such as Alexis Navalniy and to expose the pervasive corruption and oppression of Putinism. This might require the resurrection of Cold War approaches in terms of defense and propaganda. The oligarchs and their dirty money upon which Putin’s system rely, should also be shunned in the family of civilized states. It is Putinism, not liberal democracy, that is on the wrong side of history and it is about time we acted like it.
Putin faces some challenges in his domestic situation. Recent years have shown manifestations of discontent ranging from demonstrations to disappointing electoral results for his party United Russia, especially in recent major Duma elections (eg, Moscow). For Putin to remain in power past the end of his term in 2024, the Russian constitution must be amended. This requires an absolute majority for United Russia in the Duma (301 seats of 450). Such a result is unlikely without major “tricks” and electoral engineering. This presents an opportunity to turn the tables for Putin and give him some payback for cyber manipulation of U.S. and other elections around the world. The opportunity should not be lost.
Read more expert national security insights, perspectives and analysis in The Cipher Brief
Join Cipher Brief experts March 22-24 in Sea Island, GA for the fourth annual Cipher Brief Threat Conference. This is an invitation-only event for public and private security and national experts. Our 2020 focus is Future Threats and how the public and private sectors need to work together to address them. Seating is extremely limited. Request your seat today.
