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Village Iyer Aff Stanford Triples
Doing Political Science (POLISCI 151A)
Stanford University
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1AC Stanford Trips
Framing
The standard is maximizing expected well-being – prefer –
1. Psychology – ends-based mechanisms since it’s more justifiable
Gino et al 2008 [Francesca Gino Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, Don Moore Tepper Business School, Carnegie Mellon University, Max H. Bozman Harvard Business
School, Harvard University “No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments”
hbs/research/pdf/08-080.pdf]
The present studies provide strong evidence of the existence of outcome effects in ethically-relevant contexts, when people are
asked to judge the ethicality of others’ behavior. It is worth noting that what we show is not the same as the curse of knowledge or the hindsight bias. The curse of knowledge describes people’s inability
to recover an uninformed state of mind (Camerer, Loewenstein, & Weber, 1989). Likewise, the hindsight bias leads people to misremember what they believed before they knew an event’s outcome (e., Fischhoff, 1975; Fischhoff & Beyth, 1975). By contrast, we show that that
outcomes of decisions lead people to see the decisions themselves in a different light, and that this effect does not depend on misremembering their prior
state of mind. In other words, people will see it as entirely appropriate to allow a decision’s outcome to determine their assessment of
the decision’s quality.
2. No act-omission distinction
Rachels ‘
[James, U of Alabama Professor. “Killing and Letting Die.” Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd edition, ed. Lawrence Becker and Charlotte Becker (New
York: Routledge, 2001), vol. 2, pp. 947-50. jamesrachels/killing.pdf] RC/JCH-PF
So what is the difference between causing and allowing? What real difference is marked by those words? The most obvious ways of attempting
####### to draw the distinction won’t work. For example, suppose we say it is the difference between action and inaction--when we cause an outcome, we do something, but when we merely allow it
to happen, we passively stand by and do nothing. This won’t work because, when we allow something to happen, we do perform at least
one act: the act of allowing it to happen. The problem is that the distinction between doing something and not doing something is relative to the specification
of what is or is not done--if I allow someone to die, I do not save [them] him, but I do let him [them] die. It is tempting to say the
####### difference between action and inaction is the difference between moving one’s body or and not moving one’s body; but that does not help. When we allow something to happen, we are
####### typically moving our bodies in all sorts of ways. If I allow you to die by running away, I may be moving my body very rapidly.
3] Moral uncertainty means we should take every step to save lives
Bostrom
1
Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know— at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes
[are moral] would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about
our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving— and ideally improving—our ability to
recognize value and to steer the future [in] accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of
humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the
probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe.
####### 1 Nick Bostrom [professor of philosophy at Oxford], July 2005 “On our Biggest Problems” ted/index.php/talks/view/id/
Advocacy
Plan Text: Respective states under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
Russian Federation ought to eliminate their nuclear arsenals in Europe and Asia- I’ve
inserted a list of specifications to check spec
Enforcement: Verification Measures and Other relevant measures determined by the Atlantic Council
Nuclear weapon: A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear
reactions, either fission or from a combination of fission and fusion reactions.
Ernie Regehr 11-9-20 18 "NATO and Nuclear Disarmament – II: It’s Time to End NATO Nuclear Sharing"
thesimonsfoundation/sites/default/files/NATO%20and%20Nuclear%20Disarmament
%20%E2%80%93%20II-It%E2%80%99s%20Time%20to%20End%20NATO%20Nuclear%20Sharing%2C
%20CDP%20-%20November%209%202018_0 (Senior Fellow in Arctic Security and Defence)//Elmer
and VHS AI
Challenging forward deployment Besides alienating national populations, critics see other major risks in forward-deployed nuclear weapons – risks of accidents and basic handling blunders, and susceptibility to terrorist attacks. Forward deployment also invites pre-emptive attacks, inasmuch as any move in a crisis to get the B61 bombs ready for use would be readily visible to an adversary, making the demonstrably alerted aircraft tempting targets for pre-emptive attack Furthermore, the European based nuclear bombs have really proven to be of questionabledeterrent value among those NATO allies most anxious about Russian intentions toward them. Baltic and other East European NATO member states tend to support forward basing, but the presence of those forward-deployed systems seems to give them little comfort, as they demand
instead the presence, close at hand, of NATO conventional forces (like the trip-wire force Canada is leading in Latvia). So, the case for removing B61 bombs from Europe remains strong. The 2012 NATO Deterrence and Defence
Posture Review was more concrete in proposing that the alliance promote conditions for “further
reductions on non-strategic nuclear weapons assigned to NATO” (para 11). It committed to exploring arrangements to
that end (para 12)19 and called for reciprocal reductions in Russia’s non-strategic weapons stockpile
(para 26). Two former US security and foreign policy officials, writing in Foreign Affairs in 2016, admittedly a very long time ago in American political years, called for an American freeze on B61 modernization and for the phased withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons from
Europe They argued that there is no longer any military rationale for US nuclear weapons in Europe and that in 2008 the US European Command ended its support for maintaining US nuclear weapons in Europe. And they did not propose any linkage between reductions in US tacticalnuclear weapons in Europe and Russia’s roughly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons – Russia sees its tactical nuclear weapons as countering NATO’s superiority in conventional military capabilities, not in countering US tactical nuclear weapons. Removing US nuclear weapons from Europe would be a limited but significant development – limited because, even with all B61 bombs removed from forward deployment, nuclear sharing would not necessarily end21 and, furthermore, three NATO members would still be nuclear weapon states, two of them continuing to maintain nuclear weapons in Europe. But it would send an important de-escalatory signal to Russia, and it would help to clear a path toward renewed East/West dialogue – a clear prerequisite for further strategic arms reductions. NATO disarmament options NATO is a nuclear alliance, but it has nonuclear weapons of its own, and that in turn means it is not a party to any arms control or disarmament agreement. NATO nevertheless is certainly involved in seeking to coordinate common positions among Alliance member countries in some multilateral negotiations (e. the 2017
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). And while individual NATO member states are obviously responsible for their own arms control policies,
there are collective disarmament initiatives available to NATO: 1) The most obvious would be for the North Atlantic
Council to accept, as it seemed prepared to do in 2010, the removal of American nuclear weapons from Europe and have them returned to the US – which would
have the added virtue of finally bringing the US and the European states hosting its weapons into compliance with Articles I and II of the NPT. 2) The Atlantic Council could also reformulate its
nuclear posture to reduce and ultimately eliminate the place of nuclear weapons in alliance defence
policy – an action that Council member states agreed to at the 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Action 5). 3) NATO should certainly be more attentive to
taking clear steps to help create security conditions in Europe conducive to reducing East/West tensions
and to helping create the conditions for further nuclear reductions in line with NATO’s stated intention to
work toward a world without nuclear weapons. The first of these initiatives is eminently doable, the best can be said about the second is that it is not imminent, and the least that must be said about the
third is that it is essential.
Advantage
NATO-Russia War inevitable now- 4 reasons
1] NATO drills escalate tensions
AP 19[Associated Press- “Russia’s top military officer airs concern about NATO drills”
militarytimes/flashpoints/2019/12/18/russias-top-military-officer-airs-concern-about-
nato-drills/ December 18th 2019] VHS AI
MOSCOW — NATO exercises near the border with Russia reflect the alliance’s preparations for a large-scale military
conflict, Russia’s chief military officer saidin remarks published Wednesday. The chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, said at Tuesday’s meeting with foreign
military attaches that NATO’s activities have heightened tensions and reduced security along the Russian
border. Asked if the Russian military sees a potential threat of war, Gerasimov said that Moscow doesn’t see “any preconditions for a large-scale war.” He added, however, that Western pressure on Russia
could trigger “crisis situations” that may spin out of control and provoke a military conflict.
Gerasimov charged that the scenarios of the alliance’s drills in eastern Europe “point at NATO’s
deliberate preparation for its troops’ involvement in a large-scale military conflict.” Russia-West ties have
sunk to their lowest levels since Cold War times following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern over the deployment
of NATO forces in the Balticsand the alliance’s maneuvers near Russia’s western border. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted Wednesday that the “continuing expansion
of NATO’s military infrastructure toward our borders raises concern.”
2] The decline of nuclear treaties
Beebe 19[George Beebe- Vice president and director of studies at the Center for the National Interest, a
nonpartisan think tank in Washington. He is also the former head of Russia analysis at the CIA, and the
author of The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe.
“We’re More at Risk of Nuclear War With Russia Than We Think U. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle
need to start addressing the danger” Politico Magazine
politico/magazine/story/2019/10/07/were-more-at-risk-of-nuclear-war-with-russia-
than-we-think-229436 October 7th 2019]
The most recent sign of American complacency was the death, a few weeks ago, of the [INT] Intermediate-
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty —a pivotal 1987 agreement that introduced intrusive on-site inspection
provisions, destroyed an entire class of dangerous weaponry, and convinced both Washington and Moscow that
the other wanted strategic stability more than strategic advantage. The New START treaty , put in place during the Obama administration, appears
headed for a similar fate in 2021. In fact, nearly all the key U.-Russian arms control and confidence-building
provisions of the Cold War era are dead or on life support, with little effort underway to update or replace them.
Meanwhile, U. officials from both parties are focused not on how we might avoid nuclear catastrophe but on showing how tough they can look against a revanchist Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. Summit
meetings between White House and Kremlin leaders, once viewed as opportunities for peace, are now seen as dangerous temptations to indulge in Munich-
style appeasement, the cardinal sin of statecraft. American policymakers worry more about “going wobbly,” as Margaret Thatcher once put it, than about a march of folly into inadvertent war. President Donald
Trump’s suggestion that the United States and Russia might explore ways to manage their differences diplomatically has produced mostly
head-scratching and condemnation.
3] NATO will escalate absent denuclearization in Russia
Reid 19[David Reid- David Reid writes for CNBC. He previously worked as a Television Producer on
CNBC’s international output. Prior to London, David was a business reporter for Radio New Zealand. He
planning attacks on the American homeland, the more vulnerable it becomes to the potential disruption of those strikes by Russian air defense systems, whether operated openly by Russians or nominally by their local partners. RUSSIA’S OBJECTIVES Mention of Putin’s objectives or of any systematic effort to achieve them almost always elicits as a response the assertion that Putin has no plan: Putin has no strategy; there is no Russian grand strategy, and so on. The other extreme of the debate considers Putin a calculated strategist with a grand master plan. The question ofwhether Putin has a plan, however that word is meant by those who assert that he does not, has important consequences for any American strategy to advance U. interests with regard to Russia. The trouble is that it is not clear what it would mean for Putin to have a plan or to lack one. We must first consider that more abstract question before addressing whether he has one. To have a plan usually means to have articulated goals, specific methods by which one will seek to achieve those goals, and identified means required for those methods to succeed. Goals, methods,and means can range from very specific to extremely vague and can be more flexible or more rigid. Specificity and flexibility can vary among the elements of this triad, moreover—goals may be very specific and rigid, methods general and flexible, means specific and flexible, or any other logical combination. When considering the question of Putin’s plan, therefore, we must break the discussion down into these four components: Does he have goals? Has he determined methods of achieving his goals? Has he specified resources required for those methods? How specific and how flexible are his goals, his methods, and the resources he allocates? Putting this discussion in context is helpful. Does a U. president have “a plan”? Not in any technical or literal sense. Every U. administration produces not a plan, but a National Security Strategy that is generally long on objectives—often reasonably specific—and very short on details of implementation (methods). Different national security advisers oversee processes within the White House to build out implementation details to greater or lesser degrees, but the actual implementation plans(methods) are developed by the relevant Cabinet departments. Those departments are also generally responsible for determining the resources that will be needed to implement their plans. The White House must then approve both the plans themselves and the allocation of the requested resources—and then must persuade Congress actually to appropriate the resources in the way the White House wishes to allocate them. This entire process takes more than a year from the start of a new administration and is never complete—the world changes, personnel turn over, andannual budget cycles and mid-term elections cause significant flutter. The one thing that does not happen is that a president receives and signs a “plan” with clear goals, detailed and specified methods, and the specific resources required, which is then executed Putin does not have more of a plan than the U. does. It is virtually certain that he also lacks any such clear single document laying out the goals, methods, and means that he and his ministers are executing. But does he have as much of a plan as Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have had? By all external signs, he does. Putin has clearly articulated a series of overarching objectives and goals for Russia’s foreign policy and national security. Putin has been continuously communicating them through various media, including Russia’s doctrinal documents, regular speeches, his senior subordinates, and the Kremlin’s vast propaganda machine for the past two decades. Russia has a foreign policy concept similar in scope and framing to the U. National Security Strategy, a military doctrine similar to the U. National Defense Strategy, and a series of otherstrategies (such as maritime, information security, and energy security) relating to the other components of national power and interest These documents remain very much living concepts and have gone through multiple revisions in the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. Through regular speeches, Putin consistently communicates his goals and the key narratives that underpin Russian foreign policy. He makes an annual speech to the Russian Federal Assembly that is similar in some respects to the U. president’s State of the Union address. Putin’s addresses tendto be even more specific (and much more boring) in presenting the previous year’s accomplishments and an outline of goals and intentions for the next year Russia’s doctrines and concepts match Putin’s speeches closely enough to suggest that there is some connection between them. Putin also makes other regular speeches, including at the UN General Assembly, the Valdai Discussion Club, the Munich Security Conference at times, and during lengthy press conferences with the Russian media. These remarks are usually rather specific in their presentation of his objectives and sometimes, some of the means by which he intends to pursue them. Such speeches are neither less frequent nor less specific than the major policy speeches of American presidents. The widespread belief that Putin is simply or even primarily an opportunist who reacts to American or European mistakes is thus erroneous. Nor is Putin’s most common rhetorical trope—that he is the innocent victim forced to defend Russia against unjustified Western aggression—tethered to reality Putin’s statements, key Russian national security documents, and the actionsof Putin’s senior subordinates over the two decades of his reign cannot be distilled into a “plan,” but rather represent a set of grand strategic aims and strategic and operational campaigns underway to achieve them. Putin has remained open and consistent about his core objectives since his rise to power in 1999: the preservation of his regime, the end of American “global hegemony,” and the restoration of Russia as a mighty force to be reckoned with on the international stage. Some of his foreign policy pursuits are purely pragmatic and aimed at gaining resources; others
are intended for domestic purposes and have nothing to do with the West. Putin has articulated a vision of how he wants the world to be and what role he wishes Russia to play in it. He seeks a world without NATO, where the U. is confined to the Western
Hemisphere, where Russia is dominant over the former Soviet countries and can do what it likes to its own
people without condemnation or oversight, and where the Kremlin enjoys a veto through the UN Security Council over actions that any other state wishes to take beyond its borders. He is working to bring that vision to reality through a set of coherent, mutually supporting, and indeed, overlapping lines of effort. He likely allows his subordinates a great deal of latitude in
choosing the specific means and times to advance those lines of effort—a fact that makes it seem as if Russian policy is simply opportunistic and reactive. But we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by this impression any more than by other Russian efforts to shape our understanding of reality. Putin’s Domestic Objectives Maintaining relative contentment within his power circle is a key part of regime preservation. Putin has a close, trusted circle of senior subordinates, including several military and intelligence officials who have been with him for the past 20 years Hispower circle has several outer layers, which include—but are not limited to—major Russian businessmen, often referred to as “oligarchs.” The use of the term “oligarch” to describe those who run major portions of the economy is inaccurate, however. Those individuals have power because Putin gives it to them, not because they have any inherent ability to seize or hold it independently. He shuffles them around—and sometimes retires them completely—at his will, rather than in response to their demands They do not check or control Putin either individually or collectively, and they rarely, if ever, attempt to act collectively in any event. Putin controls Russia and its policies as completely as he chooses. This situation is different from the way in which the Soviet Union was ruled after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. The post-Stalin USSR really was an oligarchy. Politburo members had their own power bases and fiefdoms. They made decisions—including selecting new members, choosing new leaders, and even firing one leader (Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev)—by majority vote. There is no equivalent of the Politburo in today’sRussia, no one to balance Putin, and certainly no one to remove him. Putin seeks to keep the closest circle of subordinates and the broader Russian national security establishment content, as they form one of the core pillars of his power. He thus seeks to maintain a relative degree of contentment within various layers of his power structures, including among the “oligarchs.” For example, the Kremlin offered to help mitigate sanctions-related consequences for Russian businessmen Kremlin-linked actors, in another example, reportedly embezzled billions of dollars in thepreparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia—the $50 billion price tag of which was the highest for any Olympic games Putin can still retire any of the “oligarchs” at will without fear of meaningful consequences—yet his regime is much more stable if they collectively remain reasonably satisfied. This reality will drive Putin to continue to seek access to resources, legal and illegal, with which to maintain that satisfaction. Maintaining popular support is a core objective of Putin’s policies. Putin is an autocrat with democratic rhetoric and trappings. Putin’s Russia has no free elections, no free media, and no alternative political platforms. He insists, however, on maintaining the “democratic” façade. He holds elections at the times designated by law (even if he periodically causes the law to be amended) and is genuinely (if decreasingly) popular. Nor is his feint at democratism necessarily a pose. The transformation of the Soviet Union into a democracy was the signal achievement of the 1990s Putin played a role in that achievement, supporting St. Petersburg mayor Anatoliy Sobchak, then Boris Yeltsin, in their battles against attemptsby communists to regain control and destroy the democracy, and then by an extreme right-wing nationalist party to gain power Putin has called out many weaknesses of the Yeltsin era—but never the creation of a democratic Russia. Putin has not yet shown any sign of formally turning away from democracy as the ostensible basis of his power, although he has constrained the political space within Russia to the point that the elections are a sham. However, were he to abandon the democratic principles to which he still superficially subscribes, he would need fundamentally to redesign the justification of his rule and the nature of his regime. Nevertheless, he can only maintain even the fiction of democratic legitimacy if he remains popular enough to win elections that are not outrageously stolen. He has not been able to fix the Russian economy, despite early efforts to do so. The fall of global oil prices from their highs in the 2000s, as well as the Western sanctions imposed for his actions in Ukraine, among other things, are causing increasing hardship for the Russian people Putin has adopted an information operations approach to thisproblem by pushing a number of core narratives, evolving over time, to justify his continued rule and explain away the failures of his policies. He has also grown the police state within Russia for situations in which the information operations do not work to his satisfaction. Putin’s justification of his rule has evolved over time. He first positioned himself as the man who will bring order. The 1990s was a decade of economic catastrophe for Russia. Inflation ran wild, unemployment skyrocketed, crime became not only pervasive but also highly organized and predatory, and civilorder eroded. Putin succeeded Yeltsin with a promise to change all that. His “open letter to voters” in 2000 contained a phrase fascinating to students of Russian history: “Our land is rich, but there is no order.” That phrase is similar to one supposedly sent by the predecessors of the Russians at the dawn of Russian history to a Viking prince who would come to conquer them: “Our land is rich, but there is no order. Come to rule and reign over us.” By using the first part of that line, Putin, like Riurik, the founder of Russia’s first dynasty, cast himself as the founder of a new Russia in which order would replace chaos Putin’s initial value proposition to his population was thus order and stability. He did, indeed, attempt to bring order to Russia’s domestic scene. Putin strengthened government institutions and curbed certain kinds of crime. He restored control over the region of Chechnya through a brutal military campaign. He tried to work with economic technocrats to bring the economy into some kind of order. The task was immense, however—Soviet leaders had built the entire Russian industrial and agricultural system and economic base in acentralized fashion. Undoing that centralization and creating an economy in which the market really could work was beyond Putin’s skill and patience. He largely abandoned the effort within a few years, both because it was too hard and because it seemed unnecessary The rising price of oil in the early 2000s fueled the Russian economy and filled the government’s coffers on the one hand The genuine structural reforms and innovation that were needed, on the other, also became antithetical to Putin’s ability to maintain control, as government corruption is a powerful tool of influence in Russia. Putin began to erode civil liberties in that period offering the unspoken but clear exchange: Give me your liberties and I will give you prosperity and stability. The 2008 global financial crisis collapsed oil prices, and the post-2014 sanctions regime removed the patches and workarounds Putin had used to offset his failure to transform Russia’s economy. Continuing low oil prices (and sanctions) have prevented it from recovering with much of the rest of the global economy, even as Putin has continued to eschew any real effort to address the systemicfailings holding Russia’s economy back. Putin has therefore refocused on a different value proposition: Give me your liberties and I will give you greatness. He is increasingly linking the legitimacy of his own autocracy with Russia’s position on the world stage and with Russia’s ability to stand up to American “global hegemony.”46 Putin has simultaneously erected a narrative to deflect criticism for Russia’s problems onto the West. The West, supposedly fearful of Russia rising and determined to keep Russia down, has thwarted its rightful efforts to regain its proper place in the
world at every turn. Putin claims the Russian economy is in shambles because of unjust and illegal sanctions that have nothing to do with Russia’s actions and are simply meant to keep “the Russian bear in chains.”47 Putin has also consistently fostered a complex narrative that
combines diverse and—from the Western perspective—often conflicting elements, including Soviet nostalgia, Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian
nationalism , and the simultaneous emphasis on Russia’s multiethnic and multireligious character. The importance Putin gives this narrative is visible in things large and small. He has named Russia’s ballistic missile submarines after Romanov tsars and Muscovite
princes He issued a decree in 2009 mandating the introduction of religious education in Russian schools, which began in 2012 He continues to place a major emphasis on Soviet-era achievements. Putin and his information machine take these various elements, refine and tailor them,
and produce a mix of ideas to cater to various parts of the Russian population. We can expect Putin’s narratives to continue to shift to accommodate
changing realities , but the current rhetorical linkage between Russia’s position on the world stage and the legitimacy of Putin’s domestic power is concerning. It suggests that Putin may be more stubborn about making and retaining gains in the international arena than he was in the first 15 years of his rule, as he seeks ways to bolster his popularity, which is flagging, and on which his mythos relies. Blocking a “color revolution” in Russia is the overarching justification Putin gives for the erosion
of political freedom and the expansion of Russia’s police state. Revolutions overturned post-Soviet governments in Georgia (the Rose Revolution in 2003), Ukraine (the Orange Revolution in 2004), and Kyrgyzstan (the Tulip Revolution in 2005). Putin blamed all of them on efforts by the West, primarily the U., to undermine pro-Russian governments, even though all three emerged indigenously and spontaneously without external assistance. He regarded the Ukrainian EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014 as an extension of this phenomenon The rhetoric Putin and otherRussian officials and writers use about “color revolutions” is extreme. It paints them as part of a coherent Western effort aimed ultimately at overthrowing the Russian government itself. It is quite possible that Putin believes that there is such an effort underway and that the events that rocked the post-Soviet states were a part of it. Even if he did not believe this when he started to talk about it, he may well have convinced himself of it after 15 years of vituperation on the subject. The notion of a “color revolution” conspiracy against Russia is also a convenient way for Putin todiscredit any opposition, an easy way to tar political opponents as foreign agents and traitors, to control and expel foreign non-governmental organizations, and generally to justify the erosion of civil liberties, human rights, and free expression in Russia. It externalizes resistance to Putin’s increasing autocracy while simultaneously providing scapegoats to blame for Russia’s problems. It also creates the narrative basis for casting any Western efforts to constrain Russian actions anywhere as part of a larger effort to set preconditions for a “color revolution” in Moscow. It fuels a narrative to which Russians are historically amenable: that Russia is surrounded and under siege by hostile powers trying to contain or destroy it. Putin can cast almost any action foreign states take of which he does not approve as part of this effort The net effects of this narrative are threefold. First, it tends to consolidate support behind Putin as he presents himself as the defender of Russia against a hostile world—and his near-total control of the information most of his people receive makes it difficult for many to hear and believe any other side. Second, it constantlyconfronts the West with the suspicion that someone really is trying to orchestrate a conspiracy to cause “regime change” in Russia. Although no state or alliance has had any such objective since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the negative connotations of even the idea of attempting regime change create opposition to policies labeled in this way. Third, it also creates opposition to a potential peaceful change in the nature of the Russian regime from within, as Putin has associated the idea of political change with the “color revolution” prism of chaos, destruction, and aninevitably worsening economy. Putin presents his people a simple (but false) choice between the prospect of going back to something like the chaos and poverty of the 1990s ... or Vladimir Putin. Using the bogey of the “color revolution” conspiracy theory and other narratives, Putin is expanding the already-significant state control over his people’s communications and moving to a more rigid authoritarian model. He has prevented the emergence of any significant political opposition party or leader. Key opposition figures have been murdered, imprisoned, poisoned, and otherwise attacked Putin’s regime suppresses—sometimes brutally— political dissent in the form of peaceful street protests or demonstrations, despite their small sizes The political environment in Russia today is not markedly different from that of the Soviet Union in its last decade. Putin has brought the overwhelming majority of significant Russian media outlets into line with his own desired narratives, presenting the Russian people with a coherent stream of propaganda virtually without deviation. He appears to have decided that even this level of informationcontrol is insufficient, however, and has recently begun to assert even greater technical and policy control over Russians’ access to the internet He has not yet matched these activities with recreation of an internal security apparatus on the scale needed to control the population through coercion, intimidation, and force, but he has been steadily expanding the internal security services during his two decades of rule. He has centralized some elements of the internal security apparatus under the control of a loyal lieutenant, but he would need to expand it considerably tobe able to rely on it to maintain order by force beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg In assessing whether Putin aims to shift the basis of his rule to more overt dictatorship, one of the key indicators to watch for is further expansion of that apparatus. It is also an indicator of the degree to which he sincerely believes that any sort of “color revolution” is in the offing. Expansion of the Russian economy remains an important component of Putin’s ability to sustain and grow his assertive foreign policy, popular support, and the resources subsidizing his close circle. Putin seems largely to have given up the idea of reforming the economy and has thus set about at least two major undertakings to improve it without reform. Undermining the Western sanctions regime. The imposition of major sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 has inflicted great damage on the Russian economy. Putin has launched a number of efforts to erode and break those sanctions, both in Europe and in the U. Despite repeated declarations about the ineffectiveness of sanctions, Putin clearly believes that nothing wouldimprove the economy more dramatically and rapidly than their elimination. The Mueller Report amply documents Putin’s fear of new sanctions after the 2016 elections and his efforts to deflect them or have them nullified He even went so far as to promise not to retaliate against the sanctions the Obama administration imposed, in hopes of persuading the incoming Trump administration to reverse or block them. His efforts failed, however, as Congress insisted on new sanctions and President Trump did not stop them. Russian activities in Europe have aimed in part tosuborn one or more members of the European Union (EU) to refuse to renew the sanctions imposed following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Openly pro-Russian governments in Budapest and now Rome, along with other states that have indicated greater reluctance to continue the sanctions regime, have not yet cast the vote to stop the renewal of sanctions. Putin has not given up, however, and continues to work to shape the political, informational, and economic environment in Europe to make it safe for one country to vote against sanctions renewal—and one vote is all he needs in the consensus-based EU model. The collapse of the sanctions regime and a flood of foreign direct investment into Russia could dramatically increase the resources available to support Putin’s foreign and defense efforts, even without fundamentally addressing the problems of the Russian economy. Putin would likely use those resources to return to the aggressive conventional military buildup he was pursuing before the imposition of sanctions in 2014 and to supercharge his economic efforts to establish Russian influence around the world. Developing newrevenue streams is another obvious approach to bringing cash into the Russian economy and government. Russia is at a disadvantage in this regard because of the structural weaknesses of its economy. Its principal exports are almost entirely in the form of mineral wealth—oil, coal, and natural gas, as well as other raw materials. Weapons and military training services are the major industrial export. The use of private military companies (PMCs) such as the Wagner Group is a foreign policy tool for the Kremlin, but also one of the main exportable “services.” Civilian nuclear technology is a niche expertise that Putin is willing to sell as well. Putin has worked hard to expand Russia’s economic portfolios in all these areas. He has pushed both the Nord Stream II and the Turk Stream natural gas pipelines to make Europe ever more heavily dependent on Russian natural gas and to eliminate Russia’s dependency on the Ukrainian gas transit system. His lieutenants are actively negotiating deals throughout the Middle East and Africa to sell civilian nuclear technology. This generates continuous revenue because the states that commit to using Russiannuclear reactor technology will likely become dependent on Russian equipment and expertise to keep it running Russia’s military activities in Syria can be described as a massive outdoor weapons exposition The Russian armed forces have ostentatiously used several advanced weapons systems that were not required for the specific tactical tasks at hand The Russian military staged these displays with the informational and geopolitical aim of demonstrating Russia’s renewed and advanced conventional capabilities. They also showed the effectiveness of weapons andplatforms whose export versions are for sale. Russian military hardware salesmen are active throughout the Middle East and are having success. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems committed to purchasing the S-400 air defense system, despite vigorous American and NATO opposition and the threat that the U. will refuse to complete planned sales of the F-35 stealth aircraft to Turkey The U. should certainly not deliver the F-35 to Turkey if Erdogan proceeds with purchase of the S-400. A Turkish trade of the F-35 for the S-400 would nevertheless be a significant victory for Putin in both economic and political terms. Putin’s efforts to steal arms business from the U. would also be assisted by legislation or executive decisions blocking the export of weapons systems to Saudi Arabia over the conduct of the war in Yemen. Income from such sales is a trivial percentage of American net exports, to say nothing of U. GDP, but would be much larger in the Russian ledgers, where totals are more than an order of magnitude smaller. The proliferation of Russian PMCs is another potential source of revenue—in addition to being aKremlin foreign policy tool—although it is hard to assess its significance because of the secrecy surrounding the entire PMC enterprise. The reported numbers of mercenaries deployed by various Russian PMCs are generally in the low hundreds here and there—not large enough, in principle, to suggest that the income from them would be very great. There is no knowing the terms of their contracts, however, or what other activities they might engage in while stationed in poorly governed states rife with corruption and organized crime. None of these activities is likely to generate floods of money into Russia’s coffers in the near term, which is likely why Putin remains so heavily focused on sanctions relief. Putin has no other viable options for obtaining resources on a large scale. A significant increase in the price of hydrocarbons—either oil or natural gas—would once again flood Russia with cash. But Putin has no obvious way of directly causing such an increase in the price of oil, since Russia’s share of the oil market is not large enough to allow him to force price increases on OPEC. His ability to manipulate the price he charges Europeans fornatural gas is also constrained. If he raises it too high, he could drive the Europeans to search harder for alternative sources of fuel or, given the Trump Administration’s willingness to export American liquefied natural gas (LNG), to rely on the U. instead of Russia. Such a European turn away from Russian gas would be a disaster for Russia. Without the ability to export LNG on a large scale, Russia can only sell gas where the pipelines go—and right now, they go to Europe. Russia could expand cooperation with China to create another major source of cash. Putin is very likelyaware of the long-term risks of growing Chinese influence over Russia and its neighbors, yet he still may pursue greater economic ties with Xi Jinping’s China, given the likely calculation that he can control this relationship in the near term. Even so, Chinese cash usually comes with a heavy non-cash price, and Putin is savvy enough to be wary of becoming too dependent on Beijing’s largesse. Russia’s economy is therefore likely critical but stable. None of the economic efforts Putin has put into effect will fix the Russian economy’s fundamental structural flaws. All are palliatives with half-lives. Putin lacks a meaningful plan in this sense—nothing he is saying or doing will create a stable economic basis for Russia’s future. Neither, on the other hand, is Russia heading for a crash. The current level of economic stagnation is likely stable and sustainable—a constraint on Putin’s ability to expand his conventional capabilities and use economic instruments of power abroad, but not a threat to his rule. Russia has been a relatively poor country for much of its history. Yet it has proved capable of asserting itself on the European or global stage for most of thattime. Russians are used to being a “poor power”; this is a normal state. These realities do not undercut the value of Western economic pressure on Russia; they should, rather, help set the proper objectives and expectations in applying such pressure. Retaining power constitutionally and managing a succession are the last major domestic campaigns in which Putin is engaged. Putin faces a significant watershed when his current presidential term ends in 2024, as he is constitutionally prohibited from running for re-election again in that cycle. He faced this dilemma in 2008 and chose then to allow Dmitrii Medvedev to become president while he retained effective control of Russian policy from the post of prime minister. He could pursue a similar model in 2024, but it is unlikely that he will do so. Among other things, Medvedev appears to have made at least one decision of which Putin violently disapproved—the failure to veto the UN resolution authorizing intervention in Libya against Moammar Ghaddafi—but he chose not to stop or reverse it. His ability to continue to control Russian policy and, even more, manage his succession from a positionnominally subordinate to even a puppetlike president could also become more problematic as he ages. Putin could always cause the Duma to adjust the constitution again to let him run for another term, but he has not been laying the groundwork for such an approach (although it is admittedly early days yet for such an action). He might be pursuing an effort that offers a more interesting potential resolution to the dilemma in the form of further implementation of the Union Treaty with Belarus. He has been actively “negotiating” with Belarusian President AlexanderLukashenko to create a full integration of the Russian and Belarusian armed forces and security services, bringing Belarus nearly completely back under de facto Russian control Belarus would nevertheless remain a nominally independent sovereign state. The integrated forces would function under the rubric of a union of the two states, which would naturally have a president. Putin might shift to that role, retaining full control over the security apparatuses of both states, as well as the dominance he holds by virtue of his control of Russia’s economy and kleptocracy. He could then allow a puppet to take over as Russia’s president but now in a role subordinated to him rather than nominally superior to him. External Objectives Putin has been as explicit as it is possible to be in his overarching foreign policy aims: he seeks to end American dominance and the “unipolar” world order, restore “multipolarity,” and reestablish Russia as a global force to be reckoned with. He identifies NATO as an adversary and a threat and clearly seeks to weaken it and break the bonds between the U. and NATO’s European members. Breaking Western unity is thusone of Putin’s core foreign policy objectives. Three major lines of effort support this undertaking: invalidating the collective defense provision of the North Atlantic Treaty (Article 5), weakening or breaking the European Union, and destroying the faith of Western societies in their governments and institutions. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all, with the requisite defense commitments. The provision’s activation is far from automatic, however. A member state under attack must request support from the alliance whose political body, the North Atlantic Council (NAC), must then vote unanimously to provide it. The alliance has activated Article 5 only once, as noted above, and on behalf of the United States. Putin is working to ensure that it is never activated again. Putin can achieve this by creating a situation in which one or more member states votes against a request to activate Article 5, or in which a member state under attack does not request such a vote for fear that it will fail. If a state under Russian attack does not seek or fails to secure the alliance’s support, then thecollective defense provision that is the bedrock of the alliance will have been weakened badly if it has not collapsed entirely. Putin’s efforts to secure Hungarian and also Italian support to end the renewals of EU sanctions help him in this undertaking as well, since both Hungary and Italy are NATO members. Hungary’s Viktor Orban in particular is so overtly pro-Russian that he could well seize on any doubt about the reality of a Russian hybrid intervention to refuse to vote for an Article 5 activation. Putin has acquired a potentially more interesting route to Article 5 nullification,moreover, in his entente with Turkey, also a NATO member, over Syria. His noteworthy failure to respond to the downing by the Turkish Air Force of a Russian fighter that crossed the Turkish border in 2015 has paid dividends. His efforts to sell the Turks the S-400 system are also advancing the aim of driving a deep wedge between Ankara and Washington. Erdogan’s suspicions that the U. backed the failed 2016 coup against him make very real the possibility that he would come before even Orban in refusing to vote for an Article 5 action in the case of a hybrid campaign in Latvia, for instance. The question of how much Putin seeks to destroy the collective defense provisions of the NATO treaty rather than simply to regain formerly Soviet territories should loom large in considerations of possible military scenarios. The direct deployment of regular, uniformed Russian armed forces personnel in one of the Baltic states would make it very difficult for any NATO member state to refuse to honor a request to invoke Article 5. Erdogan, Orban, or some other leader might still find a way, but the pressure to show alliance solidarity in such a situationwould be intense. A Crimea-type scenario, then, in which the hybrid war starts with “little green men” (Russian soldiers out of uniform) but then escalates quickly to the use of conventional Russian military personnel, with their equipment and insignia, is much less likely if Article 5 is the target. A better Russian approach in that case would be the model Putin used in eastern Ukraine: Russian soldiers out of uniform work with local proxies, some already existing, others created as they go along, and try hard never to show themselves overtly Russian information operations work around the clock to obfuscate emerging evidence of any Russian military presence, while the Kremlin praises the brave warriors of the Russianspeaking patriots within the target state, who are surprisingly well armed and well led. In such a case, Putin is more likely to attempt to leverage an insurgency (which he probably created) to break the government and create chaos of some sort than to move to overt deployment of conventional forces—at least until he is as sure as he can be that even such a deployment would not rouse the alliance to invoke Article 5 at the lastmoment. He might well accept or even prefer an ostensible “failure” to gain control of the target country (at that time) in return for making obvious to all that NATO is dead. After all, once the collective defense provisions of the alliance and the Western will to defend the Baltics are destroyed, Putin can pick them off at his leisure. Weaken or break the European Union. Putin has been energetically supporting Euroskeptic parties for many years—his financial aid to Marine Le Pen in France is the most ostentatious example, but there are numerous others He stands to benefitfrom weakening or breaking the European Union in several ways. First, the EU is an exclusive economic club that Russia will be unable to join in Putin’s lifetime. The corruption and opacity of the Russian economy are too deeply established for Putin to imagine a time when Russia might meet the standards for EU membership—and Putin relies on this corruption and opacity, as we have noted, for continued control over the major economic actors in Russia. Nor is he likely to desire such membership. Sitting around a table on an equal basis with Luxembourg and Belgium is not appealing to a man who aspires to be one of the poles in a multipolar world. But the EU collectively wields great economic power through its ability to control trade with the bloc and impose sanctions. Putin would do much better in a Europe where he could negotiate and pressure individual states on a bilateral basis—and a Europe that was unable to impose multilateral sanctions on him and require all member states to abide by them—and he appears to understand that. Second, the Euroskeptic parties are generally extremely nationalistic. The reemergence of nationalismwithin Europe poses an enormous challenge to the stability of intra-European relations and could even undermine the long peace that has held in Western Europe since 1945 It would likely translate into conflict at the North Atlantic Council and could well drive increased tensions between individual European countries and the United States. Putin appears to be untroubled by the prospect of a reemergence of German nationalism, even though that ideology historically has targeted Russia. He may believe that the benefit of shattering the Western bloc outweighs risks that he likely expects to be able to handle in other ways. Weakening Western will and trust in democratic institutions is another line of effort Putin is pursuing to break the Western bloc. His interference in the Western political systems and information space is intended to destroy Westerners’ trust in their governments and in the idea of democracy, as much as to bring about the election or defeat of particular candidates—if not more so He is explicit in his attacks on the Western political system: “Even in the so-called developed democracies, the majority of citizens have noreal influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power,” he said in 2016, adding that “it is not about populists ... ordinary people, ordinary citizens are losing trust in the ruling class.”66 This effort benefits from trends in Western societies that were already undermining popular faith in institutions. Americans’ confidence in institutions generally has dropped by about 10 percent from its post–Cold War high in 2004 The Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, and revelations of classified U. surveillance programs, among other things, have erodedAmericans’ trust in institutions almost across the board. The military is a remarkable exception to this trend. The massive, unauthorized release of classified materials by Edward Snowden was particularly important in this regard, as it has cemented the erroneous impression that the U. government was listening to the phone calls and reading the e-mails of all its citizens and those of many other countries. That impression has widened the wedge between some major technology companies and the government, hindering the development of a national cyber-defense capability and even the government’s ability to contract for advanced software It is not surprising that Snowden ended up in Moscow or that Putin has granted him asylum. Snowden advanced a major Russian line of effort, apparently without any orders from Putin. These negative trends in the West have created openings that Putin is working to exploit by compromising elections, supporting extremist candidates, and pursuing aggressive information operations that stoke divisions and mistrust within Western societies. Establishing Russian suzerainty over the states of theformer Soviet Union is a second major foreign policy objective. Suzerainty is “a dominant state controlling the foreign relations of a vassal state but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs.”69 It is the most precise way of capturing Putin’s aims vis-à-vis the former Soviet states and the limitations of those aims. He is not attempting to reconquer the lost territory nor to govern it directly from Moscow. He has asserted, rather, that the world must recognize that post-Soviet states have only a truncated sovereignty over their own affairs. They may not freely join alliances such as NATO or economic blocs such as the EU without Moscow’s permission, for example. Putin further claims that Russia has the right to protect Russian speakers in those states against oppression or discrimination (as defined and determined by Putin), and that it may use military force to do so. Assertion of the right to defend Russian speakers abroad is not Putin’s innovation. Boris Yeltsin’s government articulated it in the early 1990s, but Yeltsin never acted on it Opposition to NATO’s expansion also originated in the Yeltsin era, and the 1997 National SecurityConcept identified such expansion as a “national security threat.”71 But whereas Yeltsin nevertheless continued to try to work with NATO and establish a relationship with it, Putin has been frankly antagonistic toward the alliance. The actual expansion of NATO to include the three Baltic states as well as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004 was likely a tipping point in Putin’s attitudes. The critical nuance to consider is that Putin has always been more concerned about the loss of control over Russia’s perceived sphere of influence than an actual NATO threat toRussia NATO expansion coincided with the first of the “color revolutions” in Ukraine, which clearly fueled Putin’s fears that the former Soviet states were at risk of slipping entirely out of Moscow’s orbit. Putin initiated active efforts to regain control over the former Soviet states shortly after he took office in 1999-2000, but it took several years before he adopted a more combative tone and aggressive policies. Putin’s speech before the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and then his invasion of Georgia in 2008 underscored this overt turn He has clearly made it a priority to ensure that no more former Soviet states join NATO or the EU, while working to undermine the bonds linking the Baltic states to the alliance. Putin’s claims to suzerainty over the former Soviet states have been met with ambivalence in the West. Russia experts and others often defend the assertion of a unique Russian sphere of influence over those states on historical or geopolitical bases Even the seizure and annexation of Crimea has been presented as somehow ambiguous. Putin’s argument—that Soviet Communist Party secretary general Nikita Khrushchev’stransfer of the region from Russia to Ukraine was an internal matter that should not have led to the peninsula’s inclusion in an independent Ukraine—has gotten a surprising amount of traction in the expert community Examined closely, however, Putin’s claims over the former Soviet states are completely indefensible. All 15 of the Soviet Socialist Republics, including Russia, were recognized as sovereign states after the USSR collapsed, and they were admitted to the UN on an equal basis with all other UN member states. The Russian Federation recognized them all and their UN accessions without reservations. The subsequent complaints by Yeltsin’s foreign minister, Yevgenii Primakov, and then Putin, about the folly of Yeltsin’s decisions to do so does not change or invalidate those decisions The 15 former Soviet states thus have all the same rights as every other member of the UN—including the right to make such alliances and join such blocs as they choose without needing the permission of another power, and the right to govern their own people, including minorities, as they wish. It is ironic, to say the least, that Putin vigorouslydefends Assad’s right to conduct horrifying atrocities against his own people on the grounds of sovereignty, while claiming that alleged discrimination against the use of Russian language in post-Soviet states justifies his own military intervention in those states. Russia can certainly decide that the shift of post-Soviet states into the NATO or EU orbit poses such a significant threat to its security and interests that it must use force to stop or reverse it, just as any sovereign state can see threats in the actions of its neighbors and decide that it must respond with force. But theresort to force in such circumstances is aggression, not a defensive move, and must be regarded and treated as such by the international community. Accepting the Russian argument that Moscow has an inherent right to intervene, including militarily, in its neighbors based on their treatment of their Russian minorities or their intentions to join alliances is a truncation of their sovereignty that undermines the entire basis of international law and the UN Charter. Putin is actively working to establish precisely that principle as a matter of international norm and is making a distressing amount of progress. Both Yeltsin and Putin have retained Russian suzerainty over some post-Soviet states in legal and legitimate ways as well. Russian ground and air forces have remained in Armenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan almost continuously since the fall of the Soviet Union at the invitation of the governments of those states. A small Russian military contingent also remains in Moldova in more ambivalent circumstances. The government in Chisinau does not welcome its presence and the parliament has called on it to depart, but the Moldovan governmenthas not formally ordered the Russians to leave These deployments give Russia significant influence in the Caucasus, eastern Central Asia, and Moldova. The deployment in Tajikistan also creates a platform for Russian engagement and interference in Afghanistan. The situation in Belarus is the most worrisome of the legal reconsolidation efforts because of the strategic impacts it could have on NATO’s ability to defend the Baltic states (see Appendix I for a more detailed consideration of this problem). Negotiations currently underway could lead to the merging of the Russian and Belarusian armed forces and the technical subordination of the governments of Russia and Belarus to some new Union State. It is tempting, as we have noted, to imagine Putin taking control of this new combined polity after the end of his current presidential term, thereby finding an elegant solution to the constitutional problems of extending his reign. Returning Russia to the status of a global power shaping the international system is the last major external objective Putin is pursuing. Several lines of effort support this objective: Regain a global military footprint. Putinhas been working to regain parts of the Soviet global military position lost in the late 1980s. A principal aim of this undertaking is to impose increasing costs on America’s efforts to continue operating around the world as it chooses and to offset part of the huge financial deficit holding Putin back from pursuing his larger aims. It is not meant to create platforms for global or even major regional wars, still less to advance an ideology (one of the Soviet objectives in creating the footprint in the first place). Putin’s establishment of a long-term air and naval base in Syria was thefirst significant step in this effort He has also been cultivating the leaders of other states that were formerly Soviet clients and partners, including Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, and Cuba In addition, he has recently added to the list by deploying Russian mercenaries (at least) in Venezuela and solidifying an entente with Iran that the Soviet Union never had The Russian armed forces and/or mercenaries are now openly operating out of bases in Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Russian PMCs have also reportedly been operating in Sudan, Central African Republic, and Libya. Russian forces have episodically used bases in Iran as well This footprint is far smaller than the Soviets’, but is a dramatic change from Russian policies and capabilities between 1991 and 2013. Indications are that Putin intends to expand further using the sale of advanced weapons systems as the entry wedge. One major reason the U. is unwilling to give Turkey the F-35 if Ankara proceeds with the Russian S-400 air defense system purchase is that Russian technical specialists would be stationed in Turkey with its deployment. For the U., the military implications of theseefforts are complex. The Russian military does not now have the capability to deploy large enough numbers of advanced offensive conventional weapons systems to bases beyond its borders to challenge a major American military effort to destroy them. The defensive systems, especially advanced A2/AD systems like the S-300, S-400, and Bastion anti-ship cruise missile system pose much greater challenges But the U. military could defeat the limited numbers of such systems the Russians have emplaced in Syria and might emplace elsewhere if it chose to allocate the necessary resources. The most immediate consequence of the expanded Russian global conventional footprint, then, is the requirement that the U. and its allies ensure the availability of the forces that might be needed to handle the Russian systems. That resource requirement is significant. Neither the U. nor NATO has anticip
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Course: Doing Political Science (POLISCI 151A)
University: Stanford University
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