Home - Peter B Zwack

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Defense Attaché to Moscow 2012 – 2014

Global Fellow at The Kennan Institute
Woodrow Wilson International Center

University of Pennsylvania – Adjunct Fellow

Senior Russia-Eurasia Research Fellow
National Defense University 2015 – 2019

Russia Geostrategic Primer

Russian Challenges from Now into the Next Generation: A Geostrategic Primer

05/27/2019

U.S. and Western relations with Russia remain challenged as Russia increasingly reasserts itself on the global stage. Russia remains driven by a worldview based on existential threats—real, perceived, and contrived. As a vast, 11-time zone Eurasian nation with major demographic and economic challenges, Russia faces multiple security dilemmas internally and along its vulnerable and expansive borders. Exhibiting a reactive xenophobia stemming from a long history of destructive war and invasion along most of its borders, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and perceived Western slights, Russia increasingly threatens others and lashes outward. However, time is not on Russia’s side, as it has entered into a debilitating status quo that includes unnecessary confrontation with the West, multiple unresolved military commitments, a sanctions strained and only partially diversified economy, looming domestic tensions, and a rising China directly along its periphery.

Washington still has an opportunity to carefully improve U.S.-Russia relations and regain a more stable relationship in the near term, but only if activities and initiatives are based on a firm and frank appreciation of each other’s core interests, including those of their allies and partners. In a dual-track approach, the United States and its allies must continue to work closely to deter any destabilizing Russian behavior ranging from corrosive gray zone disinformation activities—including malign cyber efforts to erode Western democracies—up to full and overt military aggression. Simultaneously, rebuilding atrophied conduits between key
American and Russian political and military leadership is imperative in order to calm today’s distrustful and increasingly mean-spirited relations, to seek and positively act upon converging interests, and to avert potential incidents or accidents that could potentially lead to dangerous brinksmanship. Notably the July 2018 Trump-Putin summit failed to bring any positive developments to the U.S.-Russia relationship; however, pragmatic efforts to bridge major and increasingly dangerous divides must continue. Perhaps most notable during the summit was the emphasis made by both sides that the weakened arms control regimen and overall strategic stability be addressed to stop a dangerous drift toward renewed nuclear weapons development and competition.

Yet in recent months, the relationship has only continued to weaken on multiple fronts too numerous to summarize, including Russian actions against Ukraine in the Sea of Azov and the end of the 31-year Intermediate Nuclear Weapons Treaty signed in 1987 by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan.

https://inss.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/1793887/russian-challenges-from-now-into-the-next-generation-a-geostrategic-primer/

Pearl Harbor and the fallacy of inevitable war: The Thucydides trap

12/07/2018

More than 2,500 years ago, Greek historian Thucydides summed up the origin of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) in a single sentence: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

I contemplated that last word — inevitable — during a recent visit to the Arizona battleship memorial at Pearl Harbor.

The deadly Japanese surprise attack on Dec. 7, 1941, was the culmination of decades of rising resentment against the United States. Japan’s first encounter with the U.S. came in the mid-1850s, when Adm. Matthew Perry boldly sailed into Tokyo Bay. At the time, the U.S. was a brash, wet-behind-the-ears global upstart; Japan was an ancient and self-isolated country. Subsequent encounters during the next 80 years fed Japan’s conviction that the U.S. was intent on curbing the island nation’s ambitions to lay claim to more territory and natural resources.

The decision in 1940 to move the U.S. Pacific fleet to Hawaii was interpreted as a direct challenge. The final straw was the U.S. decision in mid-summer 1941 to cut off Japan’s oil supplies and freeze the country’s assets in response to its occupation of Indochina during its brutal campaign in China. The precisely planned assault on Pearl Harbor occurred five months later.

My pilgrimage to the Pearl Harbor memorial came at the end of an intensive two-week visit to Russia’s Far East, a complex region where Russia, China, Japan, the Koreas and nearby Alaska all intersect.

As I peered at the watery grave of the 1,102 U.S. sailors and Marines killed when the Arizona went down, I imagined the unflinching Japanese warrior mindset of the 1930s and Japan’s fatal overestimation of its international destiny. I also pondered the seemingly similar perceptions of long-term destiny resurfacing among one or more of the players in today’s restive Pacific region. Finally, retrospectively, I’m now also wondering what was going through the mind of the young 19-year-old Ensign George H.W. Bush when his mother ship, the light carrier USS San Jacinto, arrived for the first time at Pearl in May 1944 and berthed near the wreck of the Arizona and several other lost battleships.

Economic and political factors similar to those that fueled regional conflicts in the 1930s appear increasingly evident today. China’s ambitions for growth and global influence are currently limited by the country’s inadequate natural resources. Its strategies so far include an aggressive campaign to claim islands in the South China Sea and spearhead the far-reaching Belt and Road Initiative. Meanwhile, just across the border, in Russia’s lightly guarded, demographically challenged Siberian and Far Eastern hinterlands, vast forests and mineral fields beckon — a vulnerability of which Vladimir Putin is keenly aware.

Currently these two traditionally distrustful Asian giants are pursuing a pragmatic, mutually supporting policy regarding one another. Add to the mix the latent fears perennially entertained by Japan and the Koreas about their neighbors and you have a highly combustible blend that could, literally, set the world aflame. To boot, advances in cyber, artificial intelligence, and weaponry make it easier for conventionally out-gunned nations to conduct surprise asymmetrical warfare with a high degree of initial shock as Japan did in 1941.

On the long flight back to the mainland, I had plenty of time to think about Thucydides and his observation about the inevitability of war, eloquently elucidated by Harvard University Professor Graham Alison in his prescient “The Thucydides Trap” (2017).

Surely there is a way to free the world from the fatal temptation to believe — as Sparta and Japan each did — that the best defense — in fact, the only defense — is a good offense?

I think so.

But it will require an unprecedented level of frank communication and cooperation among countries, as well as a willingness to stand firm with like-minded partners when opportunistic nations use extralegal means to claim territory or intimidate neighbors.

As a liberal and democratic nation, the United States remains vulnerable to surprise attacks; we must always be on guard. That said, we must also be sensitive to the potential for our words and actions to make a possible adversary believe conflict is “inevitable.”

What will be required is direct, quiet and patient dialog coupled with unambiguous actions that will promote mutual understanding and thereby more trust, and help humanity fend off future Pearl Harbors.

BY RETIRED BRIG. GEN. PETER B. ZWACK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —12/07/18 11:00 AM EST
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

What Pearl Harbor Still Has to Teach Us

12/07/2018

Thinking about Pearl Harbor and avoiding inevitable war, I recently revisited the solemn Arizona battleship memorial at Pearl Harbor while on a brief layover in Hawaii, after spending two enlightening weeks traveling deep within the complex Russian Far East.

Returning to such hallowed American waters and ground on the heels of my trip to Northeast Asia brought home to me the unsettling fact that events like Pearl Harbor—a carefully planned surprise attack—often grow out of an adversary’s complete and utter conviction that war is inevitable . Once that conviction takes root, it’s all too easy for a nation to interpret even unintentional slights or innocent actions as signposts on the “road to war.” In today’s lightning-fast world, a major misunderstanding or miscalculation could spell catastrophe for the planet.

In the 1930s, Imperial Japan entertained major regional ambitions in Asia that met with irritating resistance from a number of nations that included Great Britain, the Netherlands, France and the United States. Japan—certain of its superiority and destiny—viewed the United States with a mix of disdain and suspicion. Any U.S. action that appeared to be part of a strategy to interfere with Japan’s expansive plans reinforced a growing Japanese belief that going to war was just a matter of time.

In the years immediately before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bristled at several U.S. actions which were undertaken to warn the island country off of its aggressive regional adventuring, especially its brutal offensive campaign in China. When the United States moved its mighty, battleship-heavy Pacific fleet from San Diego to Hawaii in 1940, Japan viewed the decision as a direct challenge. When the United States followed the next summer with an oil embargo and by freezing Japan’s assets, the emergent Japanese military “war faction” was primed to lash out. Even Harvard-educated Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto joined in the war preparations—albeit with misgivings—planning every aspect of the surprise attack into Hawaii designed to shock its target to the core from the first second of hostilities.

With great secrecy, the Japanese First Air Fleet sortied with six aircraft carriers in November 1941 and within two weeks arrived early on December 7, about 230 miles northwest of Honolulu. They launched their air attack in two waves, catching the United States off-guard and completely shattering the battleship fleet. By sheer providence, our aircraft carriers were out of harbor and spared destruction. Simultaneously well-coordinated Japanese forces launched a massive military sweep through resource-rich British and Dutch Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the U.S.-protected Philippines.

How could a smaller, less-developed nation wreak so much havoc in such a short time? By capitalizing on a U.S misperception of Japan and by using surprise and deep study—critical elements for any nation that feels out-manned, outgunned and out-resourced as Japan did in 1941. Its military leaders studied and learned our key vulnerabilities, and then planned and brilliantly executed their preemptive surprise attack. They leveraged every possible innovation and lesson-learned. These included making the most of new carrier tactics and aircraft weapons innovation at Pearl Harbor, as well as unprecedented amphibious operations across the western Pacific. On land, Japan’s fast-marching light infantry outflanked major defended bastions such as Singapore in Southeast Asia.

At Pearl Harbor early on a peaceful Sunday morning, the underestimated Japanese Navy dramatically changed notions of naval warfare and military history by wrecking an entire battleship fleet by air attack. Well-designed airplanes with trained pilots launched from Japanese aircraft carriers dropping armor-piercing bombs and shallow-running aerial torpedoes that knifed into our helplessly-moored battleships. Photos taken at the time showed major Japanese rehearsals with Pearl Harbor mock-ups on the eve of the attack. The Japanese appeared also to take a lesson from a smaller, but effective British operation a year earlier, when torpedo-laden biplanes took aim at Axis Italy’s Taranto Harbor.

How does what happened at Pearl Harbor relate to the state of the world today? How are we being studied today? Once again we’re seeing some of the same drivers of the conflicts of the 1930s bubbling to the surface. An insatiable need for resources. Ambitions for growth. Ideologies that put the accent on nationalism and “destiny.” And rising frustration among ambitious players who resent the United States with its allies and partners standing firm against aggressive behaviors and extralegal territorial claims.

Pearl Harbor was a textbook demonstration of the powerful advantage of surprise and asymmetry when employed by a self-aware lesser power against a seemingly stronger adversary. With today’s globally deliverable weapons of mass destruction, add in a mindset that sees war as unavoidable and our world faces a recipe for disaster. Asymmetric surprise today would likely begin in a blink using cyber, artificial intelligence (AI) and other new-age technologies designed to stagger and paralyze in the initial phase of a conflict. By throwing a large adversary off-balance, this strategy would even the playing field in any major non- or pre-nuclear war…or worse. Emboldened by success, the seemingly lesser power might believe—as Japan did—that it can preemptively subdue one or more rivals or foes.

As an open, liberal democratic nation we remain prone to being surprised and therefore must always be on watch with high readiness. As such, military exercises and other defense preparations with our numerous like-minded allies and partners remain vital and non-negotiable. We must also stay attuned, however, to the drivers and perceptions that could make a potential adversary believe conflict is unavoidable. Accordingly, and especially in negatively trending relationships between major powers, firm, patient work via frank, persistent and low-publicized dialogue combined with unambiguous actions must continue even while frustrating. While no guarantee of staving off a crisis, such measures designed to chip away at core sources of deep distrust and misunderstanding could go a long away at reducing perceptions of unavoidable war as occurred within Japan before Pearl Harbor.

Such was my pensiveness while standing and thinking about what happened at Pearl Harbor just after traveling across complex and historically volatile Northeast Asia.

National Interest – Published December 6, 2018

Audio: The Andrew Schatkin Show

10/26/2018

http://schatkinshow.com/podcast-with-gen-peter-zwack/

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Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised?

09/24/2018

Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on incredibly large military exercises with China?

Russia and China’s Growing Military Interaction; Surprised?

The drums are already rolling for the upcoming Russian “Vostok” (east) wargames commencing on September 11. With its focal point in the Trans-Baikal region of eastern Siberia adjoining Chinese Manchuria and Mongolia, this is a nationwide Russian military and societal event.

Touted by Russian minister of defense Sergei Shoigu as “unprecedented in scale, both in terms of area of operations and numbers of military command structure, troops, and forces involved,” Russian state press is declaring that up to three hundred thousand troops and one thousand aircraft will be involved, with the majority from the Eastern and Central Military Districts. This would be even larger than the near-legendary Zapad-81 maneuvers held in the western USSR during the depths of the Cold War.

Announcements about this type of event are not new to me. I’ve been to several of them. In July 2014, just before I departed Moscow as the U.S. defense attaché to Russia, news began to buzz concerning the upcoming Vostok 2014 wargames in the Far East. It was a tense time. Heralding new gray zone applications of so-called hybrid war, Ukraine’s Crimea had just been illegally annexed by Russia and battles raged between unattributed Russian regulars and beleaguered Ukrainian defenders across eastern Ukraine. At that time the upcoming Asian exercise was also billed as Russia’s largest military exercise since Soviet times, though its declared numbers turned out lower than proclaimed.

One important wrinkle this year is that reportedly up to 3,200 Chinese personal with ninety vehicles, including tanks and thirty fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, will participate. Most are coming from China’s Northern Command. This will be the first time the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will take part in this formerly purely Russian quadrennial Asia-oriented exercise. The bulk of participating Chinese personal have already transited from Manchuria into Russia, escorted by Russian military police to the Tsugol training range near Chita. The Mongolians have also sent a small contingent.

“From such it’s quite evident that the trajectory of Chinese-Russian relations have certainly improved since I encountered in 1997 a former Soviet T-54 tank gunner in Spassk, an old garrison town north of Vladivostok located on the eastern shore of sizable Lake Khanka. Besotted with vodka drunk from coffee cups in a gritty railway bar, the gnarled veteran spoke of the fierce Ussuri River border clashes in 1969 near Khabarovsk where he claimed his tank destroyed several Chinese vehicles – three men in his company also died. Other citizens in a familiar refrain complained of a major cross-border influx of Chinese traders and settlers, illegal Chinese logging, illicit fishing in Lake Khanka’s fresh waters where both nations share a common aquatic border, and poaching of the region’s revered Siberian Tigers. Despite local concerns of this nature, this was a period of improving diplomatic relations between the two nations, with China on a slow upward trajectory after the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and Boris Yeltsin’s diminished Russia still struggling to regain its footing after the USSR’s break-up in 1991.”

It is important to note that Russia has no territorial claims in Asia. Rather, she is a status quo power in the Far East. With substantially fewer conventional forces along the Sino-Russian border than the Cold War, she is essentially in a strategic defensive posture. Her nuclear deterrent is her regional guarantor while a sophisticated anti-access, aerial denial network centered on the nuclear ballistic missile submarine bastion in and around the Sea of Okhotsk makes attacking the overall region a thorny proposition.

Russia’s burgeoning “strategic partner” Beijing, however, is distinctly revisionist in its behavior in Asia and the Pacific, much as Russia aggressively conducts its business in the West. A key generational question is how Russia manages the rising, resource-hungry hegemon that is looming China—one that has far-reaching aspirations throughout Asia, including its announced Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that runs in part though former Soviet Central Asian regions. China, the only “great power” with a seemingly long-term national vision, has also declared its interest in a Polar Silk Road as well.

The Russia-China military relationship continues to evolve and is a logical progression following deepening political and economic ties. Pragmaticallym the Amur-Ussuri territorial disputes were diplomatically resolved in 2004–5, enabling enhanced military cooperation though long-term generational issues remain. While Chinese-Russian military activities have in the past been mostly symbolic and representational, they appear increasingly interactive. The PLA, not blooded since its brusque 1979 defeat by Vietnam, likely hopes to learn from Russia’s newly gained fighting expertise derived since 2014 in eastern Ukraine and Syria. What is key to determine is if their interaction evolves more ominously into interoperability exercises where substantial and varied forces can operate in tandem and jointly in coordinated operations.

Dating back to 2005, Russia and China have exercised modest forces together in a mostly “counterterrorist” role in Central Asia and in Russia as part of the Chinese-driven Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Notably, SCO Exercise Peace Mission 2018, involving China, Russia and six other nations, including newly added India and Pakistan, is currently underway in Chelyabinsk (just east of the Ural Mountains). Bilaterally, they have participated in several small scale naval exercises in the Baltics (2017), South China Sea (2016) and eastern Mediterranean (2015), where they have been mostly “show the flag” operations designed more to convey sharp signals abroad and show partner support. Presaging Vostok-18, Russian air transport and elite airborne units conducted a snap readiness exercise in August in likely preparation of deployment east for the exercise. Additionally, a widely publicized Russian naval exercise in the Mediterranean to support Syria operations will be ongoing with twenty-five vessels of various sizes and likely will be included in the overall Vostok-18 personnel count.

It is important to understand that the Russians have a declared four-year cycle with long-planned exercises rotating annually between four Military Districts: Zapad (Western), Vostok (Eastern), Kavkaz (Southern) and Tsentr (Center). They are widely advertised, command major media attention domestically and abroad, and numerous international military attaches are invited as observers as I was to Kavkaz (Black Sea region) in 2012 and Zapad (Kaliningrad) in 2013. These are much different than the potentially more dangerous and destabilizing unannounced “snap” readiness exercise that have proliferated in recent years. The newly established Northern Fleet Military District focused on Russia’s “High North” also sorties assets during these exercises. The ramp-up for these major “Cecil B. DeMille” type extravaganzas are widely choreographed and involve much more than just conducting maneuvers and a big concluding firepower demonstration. They are in fact, major Russian national endeavors involving many thousands of civilians and support personnel, such as railway troops that figure into the exercise’s overall numbers. They include marshalling and moving forces and supplies over Russia’s vast railway, air and immature road networks, mobilizing reserves, organizing logistics including medical facilities, laying tactical fuel pipelines, sortieing ships and even exercising nuclear command and control as occurred in last year’s Zapad 2018. Quarterbacking the effort will be senior leaders and general staff operating within Moscow’s new National Military Command Center. Amidst heavy media coverage, President Vladimir Putin will also assuredly visit the exercise. In sum, these are society-wide efforts in which the full civil-military go-to-war apparatus of the Russian state is exercised. This does not mean Russia wants war, but is preparing for such in a way that is difficult for our more liberal-democratic societies to comprehend.

Why does Russia place such emphasis and media attention on these large set-piece exercises? Why this expensive, resource burning annual effort that unnerves Russia’s neighbors while both motivating and unsettling Russian citizenry?

One way to tackle this dichotomy is to go back to fundamentals regarding a Russia that lives through a prism of real, perceived . . . and contrived . . . existential threats. When wondering what drives the Russians to their seemingly counterintuitive and even self-defeating xenophobic behaviors, we must remember to review their geography, history and demography from which flow the nature of their regime and resultant social system and economy. Today’s resource-rich Russia, with its relatively small, western-weighted population, is set within a gigantic eleven-time zone Eurasian landmass that was mostly cut from the hide of nations and civilizations by former Czarist and Soviet rulers over the past five hundred years or so. As such, Russia has immensely long terrestrial borders . . . think of them as exposed flanks . . . with the melting Arctic widening into a northern flank as well. Its approximately 145 million citizens are about 40 percent of the population of the United States (320 million), one-third of the European Union (500 million) and about one-ninth of China (1.3 billion). China’s ground border with Russia alone runs over 2,300 miles, and while not an issue today, much of Moscow’s Far East was annexed from a weak Qing dynasty in the mid-1800s. This demographic imbalance between Russia and China is starkly apparent in the Russian Far East and Siberia, and as domestic Chinese natural resources inexorably diminish could be a major factor in the years ahead.

Again, to remind, Russia—in part due to its own imperial and Soviet expansion—has throughout its millennia of history been at war along its borders with massive loss of life. She barely survived several bouts of near annihilation including the Mongols from which some Russians organically still retain a visceral phobia of the East. Bookending this medieval horror, within the lifetime of today’s older grandparents, came the merciless Nazis from the West, from whom a staggering twenty million to twenty-six million Soviets perished. These factors clearly play in how the Russian people view external threats and how the regime leverages these perceptions to help mobilize the population. They should not, however, be used, or accepted as a pretext for aggressive revisionist actions.

Challenges regarding its smaller population and sanctions hobbled finances mean that Russia is hard-pressed to field in peace-time a one-million active duty military force. Additionally, over 30 percent of its personnel consist of difficult to manage one-year conscripts. This main force competes with robust security services and an approximately 250,000-strong National Guard. While a considerable force, Russia’s vastness, and widespread military commitments in places like Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Transnistria, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan rapidly diffuse it’s standing force, requiring major mobilization and training exercises such as this year’s Vostok-18 that will entail rapid shunting of forces across Russia’s colossal Eurasian landmass. This is a major reason Russia regularly drills as it does for potential war in a nationwide effort and why so much emphasis is put on territorial mobilization and defense.

All these factors reveal why it was absolute prudent, transactional foreign policy for China and Russia to resolve the border disputes that plagued their relations. While vulnerable to potential future problems including an increasing resource imbalance especially with oil and natural gas, both nations have bigger fish to fry, whether Russia’s issues to the west and south, and in China’s case, in the southeast Pacific, and with India to a lesser extent. Both needed calm borders and a more insulated trading relationship such as their massive $400 billion natural gas deal signed in 2014. Making increased military interaction more attractive is also the shared perception that the United States and its allies are squarely blocking their more autocratic aspirations and directly threatening their regimes. Neither have major allies or are part of a well-organized security alliance as is NATO. They are loath about being internationally isolated or contained, which explains why both, even while pursuing different agenda, are usually lockstep with each other on major security issues in the UN and other international fora.

Therefore, U.S. and allied policy regarding both Russia and China should continue to be strong and predictable focused on the specific issues that both challenge and benefit relations. Allies must be firmly defended and partners supported. Legal international boundaries and protocols must be respected and if need be enforced. What we should not do, however, is default toward treating both nuclear-tipped Russia and China as a conjoined threat thereby creating a future potential “self-fulfilling prophecy” where they could—especially if they perceive being isolated—temporally ally in some type of powerful, transactional pact. We should watch and learn from these military exercises, assure allies and partners, but not overreact to their actions and rhetoric nor appear to try to drive a wedge between them. The wedges are already there, those of the vast regions history, geography demography and resources which will inevitably play out in the generations ahead.

Brig. Gen. (retired) Peter Zwack writes from the Institute for National Security Studies within the National Defense University. He served as the United States Senior Defense Official and Attaché to Russia during contentious 2012-2014. Dating back to 1997, 2000 and 2012 he has traveled extensively throughout Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. These are his personal views and perspectives.

large National Interest 7 9 2018 0

These Are the High Stakes of the NATO and Trump-Putin Summits

07/09/2018

Trump and America’s allies must stand firm while also not sleep-walking into war.

The summit between President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin scheduled for July 16 in Helsinki is now a certainty. While all such encounters between the United States and Russia carry strategic weight, this one is crucial. The Russian meeting is preceded by Trump’s fraught attendance at the July 11–12 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit and a next-day visit to an uneasy United Kingdom. This means the Helsinki summit will climax what may prove to be the most-important six-day period so far this century. Every foreign power —not least, China—will watch closely.

President Vladimir Putin’s obvious goal is to cement and extend his remarkable strategic achievements of the past several years. America’s goals are unclear.

This is a crisis, and it’s time for both sides of America’s domestic political scene to display unity. The United States has its existential security priorities at stake. Washington needs a bipartisan approach to pursue genuine progress in relations with Russia, but also to minimize the prospect of irreparable damage inflicted by rogue behavior. Faced with a savvy, experienced and ruthless interlocutor such as Putin, the U.S. president and entire government must be on guard. Progress in spheres of mutual interest might be reassuring at home and to America’s nervous allies, but Washington dares not sweep away or minimize the core concerns regarding America’s long-term security —or that of its long-term, genuinely indispensable allies.

What occurs—or does not occur—initially at NATO will be closely monitored and analyzed on the eve of the U.S.-Russia Summit. This especially includes the atmosphere, mood, and the ability of America and its allies to continue and collectively plan for crises in long-term. The results of this assessment will inform Putin’s stance and negotiating position. Furthermore, this may be beyond the broad outlines Washington already anticipates. It certainly will play into the psychology of the meeting—the strategy and tactics of discussion, negotiation and diplomacy that go further than this one-on-one meeting. In fact, the Trump-Putin summit will inform U.S. foreign and domestic-policy over the foreseeable future.

As such, the significance of all three upcoming Trump encounters, especially NATO and Helsinki, make them now inextricably intertwined. If the President and his twenty-eight NATO counterparts can get through a surely spirited, frank but somehow collegial session it would level the playing field with Russia. This would be especially true if the NATO summit results in a message of unity and resolve, one that sends a powerful message to the Russians.

If Russia senses or worse sees publically manifested rancor and division among the NATO allies, then the Trump-Putin Summit will become inordinately perilous for NATO. The unity and steadiness of the Atlantic Alliance, one that has weathered numerous dramatic moments over its sixty-nine-year existence, would be in danger.

This is a potential bellwether, a strategic moment where much can go wrong. However, it is critical to focus on its potential benefits as well. The key is President Trump, will he stay disciplined and on message, and if he improvises, could any aspect of such be actually positive?

Right up front, any such Trump-Putin meeting must not minimize the deep issues and grievances between America and Russia. To be credible with an astute interlocutor such as Putin, at a minimum Trump must make more than a desultory mention of the 2016 electoral hacks, the war in Ukraine and the illegal Crimean annexation, corrosive cyber “gray zone” activities versus allies and America, and chemical weapons transgressions amplified by the latest Novichok nerve agent revelation in England. Furthermore, Trump should strongly reiterate the potential costs of any confirmed cyber intrusions into our upcoming November 2018 mid-term elections. In turn, he will have to be prepared to defend NATO’s peaceful enlargement, remind Putin why sanctions are in place and address phobic Russian perceptions of U.S. regime change efforts. Without addressing these, no credible discussion leading even to rudimentary transparency and minimal problem-solving can transpire on issues crying for coordinated attention such as the badly-atrophied Arms Control regimen, Ukraine, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, counterterrorism and the Arctic.

Much of my nearly four-decade career was oriented on the Soviet Union and Russia. My duty began as a young Cold War-era U.S. Army seco nd lieutenant as part of a nuclear-capable howitzer unit fixated on defending West Germany against a Soviet—Warsaw Pact onslaught (we never want to go back to that Dr. Strangelove world again!. My final posting was as the U.S Senior Military Attache to Moscow during tumultuous 2012-2014, where I have been working deeply and persistently on both hard and soft power aspects of Russia. As such I want to focus the rest of this short article on some stark security-focused aspects that beg highlighting because if America gets this wrong, both Washington and Moscow risk worse case inadvertently blowing each other and everyone else off the planet in a horrific 1914-esque “how did we get here moment?!”
It’s essential we review the fundamentals of why it is so important that these two men, the leaders of the world’s most lethal, nuclear-tipped nations, develop a relationship, as unsavory it may appear to some.

First and most frightening, heavily-armed U.S. and Russian military platforms continue to fly, cruise and face each other worldwide. This proximity, especially during tense times coupled with a dearth of military to military contacts to mitigate the dangers of a cyber-fast accident or incident risking regional or global catastrophe.

Therefore a hierarchy of pragmatic contact from strategic top to operational and even tactical down must be reestablished worldwide between America and Russia. Goodness will not flow from the bottom up but rather starts with the Presidents. Nothing of stabilizing consequence will occur without some relationship between the two. From such, the existing senior-level military contacts between Washington D.C., Brussels and Moscow could be expanded and reinforced. These conduits should be further built out to include U.S. and Russian military commanders and staffs world-wide, representing corresponding forces in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Arctic and strategic nuclear forces.

The familiarity and “de-demonization” that would come from frank, regular dialogue between these key interlocutors worldwide is especially important in an era when U.S., NATO and Russian operational leaders very rarely meet. Major changes in relationship, attitude or posture do not magically happen. Such require planned encounters between enabled interlocutors, face-to-face meetings bringing some semblance of a relationship even if stressed and distrustful. It is from such meeting that an understanding on key issues, if not agreement, can emerge along with some personal familiarity that helps to break-down this near-organic distrust. One does not want commanders who have never met trying to initially deconflict a fast-breaking crisis in distant regions far from Washington DC or Moscow.

Paradoxically these links were more robust during the depths of the Cold War. But thankfully the current deconfliction mechanism between Russia and U.S. forces in and around Syria provides a possible baseline from which to build. Looking back, as difficult as it was, we saw another example of this in mid-1990s Bosnia where U.S., NATO and Russian forces worked to contain the violence that had engulfed former Yugoslavia after its break-up.

Providing context for this discussion, I just spent two weeks in Russia visiting Moscow and two provincial cities in the hinterland. Throughout I spoke to numerous Russians veterans, thinktankers and academics, citizens and expats. The prospect of a Trump-Putin Summit was in the air but not confirmed. What I found was a proud, almost defiant Russia firmly supporting, despite occasional domestic demonstrations and flare-ups, a re-elected Putin who appears firmly and confidently in Russia’s saddle after eighteen years of power. The country was deeply absorbed in World Cup preparations, reveling in the completion of its eleven-mile Kerch Strait connector bridge from the Russian mainland to annexed Crimea, and state media was paying close attention to G7 discord and the just announced U.S. tariffs. The level of distrust toward the U.S. and West overall was even higher from my time in Moscow during 2014 and seemingly more mean-spirited too. This level of distrust and mean-spiritedness was also reflected in American views towards Russia. Particularly troubling was a discussion of potential war—amplified on late-night state-owned television—with the U.S. and the West that permeated not just through policy and political entities also through Russian society. The Russians do not want war, but are preparing militarily and societally for it in a way that it is difficult for our own distracted public to fathom.

Putin’s Russia seems to be muddling through and playing its weak economic and geostrategic hand unusually well and flexibly during these complex times. It appears to be adequately deflecting domestic backlash with its state-controlled media and constant denial of any substantive bad news and egregious acts. The sanctions regime was placed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and later transgressions. While those embargos remain quite irritating to Russian elites and slow down military modernization, they also seem no longer as convincingly coercive as they appeared between 2014–2016. Workarounds proliferate whether through foodstuffs grown locally in all-season greenhouses and Russia has increased imports from China, Central Asia, the Caucasus and even some from Europe. Russia is exercising its own resilience and, up to some difficult-to-define point, the Russian population—including the bulk of its youth—is on board and proud of their proclaimed toughness.

This is the environment in Russia and the source of Vladimir Putin’s strength and renewed confidence that serves as the backdrop to his meeting with President Trump. Moreover, Trump despite his own confidence represents a politically divided America, one that is the key member of an increasingly uncertain Alliance. The Russians were positive, in some quarters elated, when he won the Presidential election, but then disappointed when relations continued to worsen. My canvasing discerned that the Russian population, while wary, do want better relations with America and hope that Trump and Putin can achieve a favorable relationship and reduction in tensions. Notably, the Russian mainstream, perhaps as a manifestation of its totally different societies, does not fully understand the depths of American anger with its current regime, particularly over the Russian cyber intrusions into America’s cherished body politic during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In closing to borrow the famous line from Churchill, much of America’s relationship with Russia remains “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The United States must come out of this summit with at least a small fraction of the tension-reducing points outlined above. In doing so, both sides would break down perception barriers and help demystify each other. Otherwise, if the summit fails to accomplish this, America and Russia are fated to continue living in an increasingly dangerous, hair-trigger world where over-reaction based on the miscalculation of threat and intention could ruin all that is dear to us.

Brig. Gen. (retired) Peter B. Zwack writes as the senior Russia-Eurasia fellow from the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. These are his own views and perspectives. He is publishing a personal memoir of his experiences in Russia— Swimming the Volga —later this year.

Image: Belarusian military jets fly during the Zapad 2017 war games near the village of Volka, Belarus September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Grits/Pool

Originally Published: National Interest on Monday, July 9, 2018 – 21:40

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