The Kremlin has made a series of mistakes, much to Russia’s misfortune.
Yet, the West — as much as it is sure it will triumph — is itself mistaken in ways similar to Russia’s. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has heightened global tensions by expressing its readiness to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s right to survive. However, those who are able to overlook the hysteria understand that there are norms that govern our nuclear age. “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) has brought about strategic stability — disincentives for a nuclear first strike — by the understanding that the launch of one’s nuclear arsenal would mean that the enemy would retaliate with its own nuclear weapons, and thus the destruction of both sides. No one wins in a nuclear exchange.
Governed by this logic, nuclear missiles will remain in their silos, used as political weapons to exert pressure at best.
However, the degrading global security situation seems to have spawned a new concept that best describes the logic of 21st century great power competition: Self-Assured Destruction or SAD.
SAD is the belief that the adversary is so brittle, weak and incapable that it is bound to collapse by itself. This view is paving the path not to peace but to war. Rather than internalizing the understanding that one’s adversary has the capacity to destroy you the same way you could of them, Moscow and Washington have become so self-assured that the “other” is somehow on the verge of collapse. The fact that now, nearing 18 months since the invasion of Ukraine, neither Russia or, in Kremlinspeak, the “Collective West” have faced some kind of revolution that would precipitate societal collapse goes to show not only the resilience of Russian and Western societies, but also the ineffectiveness of sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
Recently, at the Shangri-la Security Dialogue in Singapore, Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shang-fu (李尚福) warned of a resurgent “Cold War mentality.” The Chinese are most concerned about ideological confrontation because their rise was underpinned by the West’s initial indifference toward the Chinese Communist Party and its acceptance that the hammer and sickle was to remain for the purposes of political continuity, and perhaps, aesthetics.
With the return of great power competition and its complementary ideological clashes, China will be pulled into this vortex even if Chinese President “Xi Jinping (習近平) thought” were to serve purely domestic purposes. The characterization of the war in Ukraine by US President Joe Biden’s administration as a struggle between democracy and autocracy has now divided the world upon this line.
So too has the Kremlin returned to a binary worldview it is well familiar with, one where its own civilization is locked in an existential war against the Collective West led by the “Anglo-Saxons,” and where Russia — the defender of true traditional values — is resisting what Putin has described as the “moral degradation” of the West, where rainbow flags wave and the titles “mother” and “father” have been replaced by “parent #1” and “parent #2.” The Kremlin is confident that it will triumph because the West is somehow on the verge of collapse, but none of this has happened.
Ukraine still stands, Western societies though divided (an intrinsic characteristic of a democracy) are not burning under rainbow flags. Yet, the West thought that the isolation of Russia would somehow knock the country down, as if the closure of McDonald’s would ignite the flames of revolution. Russia still stands, Coca-Colas, delivered through parallel imports from Turkey and Iran, line supermarket fridges, and new life has been given to the Russian military industrial complex.
The root of this problematic thinking is traced back to the SAD of the adversary. Just like in the Cold War, the Socialist bloc was certain that communism was predestined to succeed by the dictates of historical materialism. In their triumph after the Cold War, the West became inebriated by Francis Fukuyama’s end of history, which led many to believe liberal democracy was the destiny of all mankind. No one was right. Unfortunately, the confrontational powers of today still believe history is on their side and whatever policy choices are made, even if they turn out to be mistakes, are somehow steps toward their own new end of history. The implications of such an approach have been and will continue to be devastating. We should only expect escalation, more deaths and further destruction.
The war in Ukraine has come at great costs for Moscow and Kyiv. Though Ukraine has Western material support, Russians outnumber Ukrainians by about five to one on the battlefield. Hopes for a swift counteroffensive the likes of its summer counteroffensive last year should be tempered as Russian lines have dug in. Ukraine has to use its troops and materials wisely. As I write, the Ukrainians have launched their new summer counteroffensive. The hydroelectric dam at Novaya Kakhovka has been destroyed, with both sides blaming each other. The consequences of its destruction are considered dangerous as the water needed to cool the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is draining away. One can fathom the worst-case scenarios.
This episode illustrates just how dangerous this war has become. Already, asymmetric options have been taken: Moscow heavily bombarded Kyiv last month, while the Ukrainians attacked the Kremlin and a Moscow residential district, the first attack of its kind, with drones. Desperation will lead to escalation and the more certain we are that our enemies will somehow disintegrate on their own makes us forget that they will remember the horrors we have brought upon them.
Nigel Li publishes on his blog “A Singaporean in Moscow."
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