The war in Ukraine is about more than Ukraine. In Vladimir Putin’s view it is part of his single-minded war on the West and on the kind of free societies that thrive there. Why don’t we see that reality with sufficient urgency?
At the Rome Summit in 2002, which I chaired, as NATO’s secretary-general at the time, alongside Mr Putin, I believed that Russia wished to join the club of countries that had put the cold war behind them. So did the leaders of the 19 NATO-member countries present at the table. I wasn’t the only one who harboured the thought, or the hope, that we might have found a new way to deal with an angry country. Perhaps Russia under Mr Putin might be able to join us in our efforts for co-operative security.
“Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation state and it will choose its own path to peace and security”, declared Mr Putin that afternoon. I stood beside him as he said it. “Nothing good came from that confrontation between us and the rest of the world. We certainly gained nothing from it”, he added. It was his analysis of the previous 50 years of Russian foreign policy. As a child of the cold war, with all its tensions, risks, proxy wars and authoritarian regimes, I thought that we might be looking at a better, more ordered world. It was a fine ambition.
Sadly, Mr Putin’s increasingly personalised nationalism has undermined the chances of Russia wrapping itself in the co-operation which binds NATO nations together. I should have listened 30 years ago when a senior Russian official declared that “Russia is a graveyard of good intentions”, attributing the phrase, perhaps wrongly, to Winston Churchill. Mr Putin challenges our values, our way of life and our democratic peace.
The war Mr Putin wages against us is of a new sort: hybrid, multifaceted, under-the-radar, insidious—but it is still a war and it is time we woke up to the seriousness of it. Through disinformation, election meddling, corruption, organised crime, extra-territorial assassination, supply-chain disruption and cyber-interference, he inserts his poison. Some of it is overt, but much of it is more subtle.
So if Russia is at war with us, why are we not defending our countries as if we were under attack? Why are we acting as if there is no threat to us? We have sent money and weapons to aid Ukraine in its defensive efforts and we have sanctioned Russia and those close to Mr Putin. But by responding to warlike attacks with peacetime processes we end up damaged and compromised.
Mr Putin has a burning ambition to recreate the respect for Russia he believed was given to the Soviet Union. The emotional side of his character, which I saw occasionally across that famous long, white table, has brooded on messianic demands for equality with America and the total assimilation of Ukraine. That has led to the brutal and unprovoked invasion of his neighbouring country.
What do we need to do about this assault on our liberal values and the heroic battle for survival of the Ukrainian people?
First, we need to recognise that either Mr Putin is cowed, or we are. If he wins in Ukraine, he will not stop there. Hence, we must accelerate supplies of weapons and ammunition to the front line. Some countries have not been as generous in their support as their rhetoric would suggest. Mr Putin must be made to realise the miscalculation he has made by seeing that Ukraine will get all the help it needs: more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and other weapons and more training for Ukrainian forces.
Second, we must stand up to the dangerously loose talk from the Kremlin on using nuclear weapons. Russia, within its internationally recognised borders, is not being attacked. That means there is no required defence of the “motherland”, which might under Russian military doctrine trigger any nuclear response. This war is of Mr Putin’s making and we have no argument with the Russian people.
Third, we have to permanently wean ourselves off Russian gas—and as is less well known, Russian wheat. The slowly acquired addiction to cheap, available Russian gas is familiar. What is less acknowledged is the way in which the world has become dependent on Russian wheat. Countries must seek alternative supplies. In 2020 Russia was the world’s biggest exporter of wheat and sent out about a fifth of the world’s total exports of the stuff, some 38m tonnes.
Fourth, we need to remind the countries of the Global South that the changing of borders by force is not a European regional dispute. It is actually a fundamental issue that should have great significance to many in South America, Africa and Asia. China and India, for example, share a border where flare-ups occasionally occur. How Russia fares in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine may be of enormous interest to both.
Finally, we need to act more decisively in the war. A sense of urgency is required and domestically we need to shorten decision-making. In peacetime committees and bureaucracy slow down weapons procurement, for example, whereas on a war footing a few individuals are empowered to make choices rapidly. We should emulate such a system now. That would allow us to shore up our defences against cyber-threats, too.
We should be brutally candid with our own people that their sacrifice—through the cost of living in particular—is in the defence of our own country. Political leaders need to assert why the sacrifices are necessary. During the war in Kosovo in the 1990s, the British government held a press conference almost every day to keep the war in the public eye. The leaders of Britain, America and other countries should be doing so now in order to keep voters engaged and informed. A relentless barrage of publicity is necessary. The press covers the war, but there seems to be an inhibition among politicians about telling citizens that the struggle might take longer than they think and that energy shortages may well be worse next year.
We need to protect Western vulnerabilities that Mr Putin and his machine exploit on a daily basis through cyber-warfare, organised crime and corruption. These include critical infrastructure, such as telecoms structures and subsea cables, and electoral regulation. So long as the soft under-bellies of our democratic world are left exposed, he will attack them
George Robertson was Secretary General of NATO between 1999 and 2003 and Britain’s defence secretary between 1997 and 1999.