By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The world is facing a humanitarian crisis if Russia is able to topple the Ukrainian government and install a puppet regime in its place.
That’s the assessment of Professor Neal Jesse, of the BGSU Political Science Department.
Now that Vladimir Putin has launched the attack, Jesse said, “he needs to show the population that he’s winning against the West. I think, and I could be wrong, he’s hellbent on overturning the Ukrainian government and turning it into a client state. That would a devastating humanitarian crisis. This would be so destabilizing.”
Jesse’s most recent book, written in 2018-2019 and published in 2020, is “Learning From Russia’s Recent Wars: Why, Where, and When Russia Might Strike Next.”
Jesse said his expectation was that Russia would target the Baltic States, particularly Estonia, with cyberattacks and a propaganda war.
“He felt betrayed by the US when Baltics nation moved into NATO,” he said. “But I did say in the book that Russia still had a desire to dominate Ukraine.”
Speaking Thursday afternoon, Jesse said that desire was playing out as Russian forces invaded Ukraine. With the invasion of Ukraine, “he’s rolling the dice that the West won’t do enough to stop him.”
This is a continuation of Russian takeover of Crimea and the support of separatists in two regions of Ukraine in 2014.
In response, Russia was hit with sanctions that did some damage “to the tune of 0.5 percent of its GDP,” Jesse said. “It didn’t get away from the fact that Russia got away with carving off a part of a sovereign country and very little has been done since 2014.”
NATO has established a cyber security center in Estonia, and increased its military presence in the Baltics.
Still more needed to be done. The NATO rapid response force should have be deployed. NATO needed to increase coordination with the European Union. More cybersecurity measures should have been put into effect. Sen. Rob Portman has been pushing for the passage of three bills related to cybersecurity. “This should have been done a year ago,” Jesse said.
NATO needed to increase coordination with the European Union.
Even now the United States has been pushing for removing Russia from the SWIFT system which facilitates the transfer of money. Some members of the EU, however, have balked at this.
And NATO needs to recognize the extent of the threat Russia poses to its mission.
If NATO was set up to insure a secure and peaceful Europe then “Russia is the enemy and Russia must be treated that way until they have a new government because Putin will never come around,” Jesse said.
NATO and the United States will not send in troops unless Russia strikes a NATO member. Ukraine is not a NATO member. With Russian and Ukraine now engaged in the largest land war since World War II, “crazy things can happen.” That’s why, given Russia is a nuclear power, NATO has been hesitant to confront it.
One argument, however, is that if the West doesn’t fight now, it will need to later over Estonia, Jesse said. But Estonia is a member of NATO and Russia will likely be deterred because they know NATO will be obligated to fight.
Providing materiel now to Ukraine to help it fight back against the Russians is necessary.
While Putin is a dictator, he does need a modicum of popular support. He cannot have people demonstrating on the street.
Russian citizens do not like seeing their countrymen coming back dead from conflicts. Putin was able to rationalize the casualties in 2014, saying they were volunteers and members of private forces. He will not be able to cover up this time. It is clearly the Russian army that invaded Ukraine this week.
Russians do not want to be isolated from the rest of the world. The United States, Jesse said, must work to get as many allies as possible, such as Singapore, Japan, and Australia, to isolate Russia as quickly as possible. China’s role is uncertain. The Chinese share Russia’s goal to lessen US power in the world, he said.
On the other hand, China may see what kind of deal it can get from the US if it supports sanctions. Their decision may depend on how long they expect Putin to retain power.
Putin has a firm grip on power thanks to the support from Russian oligarchs who rely on his continuing to allow them to steal from Russia.
Putin has contended that the Ukrainian leadership are Nazis, and he is doing the world a favor by ousting the current government. While Ukraine likeother former Soviet republics is plagued by corruption, the claim that they are Nazis is a fabrication.
Meantime, Jesse said, the Russians have been effective for a decade and a half in using propaganda and false information “to unsettle western societies and prevent them from having a coordinated defense against Russia ambitions in eastern Europe.” And that campaign culminated in this week’s invasion.
“They have effectively destabilized enough to prevent coordinated action to stop Russia from doing that it wants,” Jesse said. “They don’t need to overthrow our governments, they just need to make our governments react slower than needed or not decisively enough.”
