TheEconomistFebruary26th 2022 BriefingWarinUkraine 23feel more robust than sanctions but not at
the level of firing missiles.” And then there
is support for missiles, and other weapons,
fired by a Ukrainian resistance. Ukraine is
awash with guns, and American special
forces have been training potential parti
sans in eastern Ukraine. Poland and Roma
nia would probably allow their territory to
be used to get arms and communications
gear over the border. Other states might
provide supplies. Yet no one knows wheth
er an insurgency is viable.
In the 1940s there was significant resis
tance to Soviet occupation in the territo
ries Stalin had added in the west of the
country; but there the terrain is hilly. The
parts Russia is interested in today are the
plains of the east and the centre, less well
suited to a rural insurgency in the style,
say, of Afghanistan’s mujahideen, or those
who slink into villages and towns by night,
ambushing enemy convoys. Samuel Cha
rap, a former State Department adviser
now at the rand Corporation, a think
tank, says that he would imagine some
thing along the lines of the provisional
ira, referring to the nationalist paramili
tary group which waged a prolonged cam
paign of largely urban terrorism in North
ern Ireland and mainland Britain from the
1970s to the 1990s.
Such an insurgency would invite Rus
sian reprisals against its backers—as
would cyber attacks. “If you start going
against Russian networks, then the Rus
sians may well be well placed to do similar
things on usand allied networks,” says Mr
Willett. Mark Warner, who chairs the intel
ligence committee in America’s Senate,
warns that norms of cyberdeterrence and
escalation are poorly understood. He
paints a scenario in which a Russian cyber
attack causes deliberate or inadvertent
harm to civilians in Europe, prompting na-
toto retaliate.
Russia might be expected to be hesitant
about the use of such cyberattacks, and
even more so of physical strikes on resis
tance bases and networks beyond
Ukraine’s borders, lest it draw the West fur
ther into conflict. But mistakes get made.
And the forces ringing Ukraine, along with
the annexation of Belarus, have already
brought Russian and natofirepower into
worrying proximity.
In recent weeks America has rushed to
reinforce eastern Europe with thousands
of troops and dozens of warplanes. The na-toResponseForce,a40,000strongunit
builtarounda highreadinesslandbrigade
thatcanbeputintothefieldintwotothree
days,maybedeployed,forthefirsttimein
itshistory,inthecomingdays,thoughthat
requirestheconsentofall 30 allies.Jamie
Shea,a formernatoofficial,sayshethings
themilitaryhotlinebetweenTodWolters,
nato’stopgeneral,andValeryGerasimov,
Russia’schiefofgeneralstaff,maywellbe
needed“topreventincidentsspirallingin
toopenconflict.”It getsworse
ForAmericaandEurope,MrPutin’swar
marksthedecisiveendtoaninterregnum:
theapparentlybenignperiodbetweenthe
endofthecoldwarandthereturnofopen
militarycompetition,andconfrontation,
betweengreatpowers.Theprocessbegan
witha combative speech thatMr Putin
gaveattheMunichSecurityConferencein
2007.Now itis complete.That has far
reachingconsequencesfortheWestinar
easrangingfromenergysecuritytonuc
learstrategyandbeyond.Italsomakesyet
harderAmerica’scommitment to seeing
theIndoPacificastheareamostimportant
to its future.
If the transformation to confrontation
is complete, though, the conflict could still
escalate. Though the target of Mr Putin’s ti
rade on February 21st was Ukraine, the for
mer Soviet republics now in nato, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania, have cause for alarm
over his irredentism
Russia’s effective absorption of Bela
rus—troops that went there for exercises in
February have either moved into Ukraine
or stayed put—means it has a lot firepower
on the edge of the “Suwalki gap”, a strip of
land which connects Poland to the Baltic
states. “If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he
might decide that he needs a landbridge to
link Kaliningrad to Belarus,” warns Ste
phen Hadley, who served as America’s na
tional security adviser between 2005 and2009. As such a landbridge would have to
go through either Lithuania or Poland,
“That would mean a war between Russia
and nato.”
Western officials play down the idea
that Mr Putin would attack nato—a very
different proposition from invading Uk
raine, not least because it contains three
countries with nuclear weapons. But they
have to face the possibility that Russia has
gone through a deep change. Mr Rogov ar
gues that the country has always had two
ways of seeing itself: as lagging behind the
West and needing to catch up; or as sub
jected to Western attempts to hold it back.
In the modernising mode the West attracts.
In the paranoid mode it repels. To the Putin
regime, now in fullon repulsive mode,
isolation and confrontation reinforceeach
other, says Mr Rogov.
It is far from a stable dynamic.n
190,000troops
nearUkrainian
border
(USestimate)800 UStroops
totheBaltics20,000
activetroopsMoscowRomeKyivAnkaraVolgogradOdessaBlack
SeaBalticSeaUKRAINEBELARUSSWEDENKaliningradPOLANDDENMARKGERMANYCZECH
REP.HUNGARYSLOVAKIAROMANIASERBIAMOLDOVABOSNIAAUSTRIABULGARIA
NORTH
MACEDONIAITALYCROATIASLOVENIAALB.MONTE-
NEGROTURKEYLITHUANIALATVIAESTONIARUSSIACrimeaControlledby
Russian-backed
separatistsNordStream2 pipelineGEORGIA
AZER.
ARM.AbkhaziaSouth
OssetiaMinskLuhanskDonetskSuwalkigapDonbasBerlinWarsawUkrainianterritory
annexedbyRussiaKhersonDniproKharkivMazyrEstimated troop numbers
By country, Feb 2022 3,000,000
RussiaUkraine
USNATO**Foreign Sources:NATO;BloombergMembers
BasesNATO250 kmOnline we are publishing a range
of commentaries on the Ukraine
crisis by authors ranging from
JensStoltenbergtoYuvalHarari→ By invitation“After two years of self
isolation there is a tending
towards tunnel vision”
Alexander Gabuev“Leaders are often enslaved
by popular mythology
that they themselves
have promoted”
Andrei Zorinhttp://www.economist.com/by-invitation