The crisis in Europe has been going on for weeks. Nevertheless, it seems somehow unreal. As if it cannot be possible the clock is being turned back to the height of the Cold War – or even to the last global hot war, to World War II.
Though it is not familiar to most Americans, Ukraine was at the center of European politics for most of the 20th century. In the 1930s it was the site of one of the most calamitous famines in modern history. (Courtesy of Stalin.) In the 1940s it was the heart of the bloodletting during the Second World War. (Courtesy of Stalin – and Hitler.) And in the 1990s when communism collapsed and the Soviet Union fell, it was the Soviet Socialist Republic whose loss was most keenly felt by Russian nationalists.
Nor did Russian fixation on Ukraine end there. In 2014 President Vladimir Putin stole from it the Crimea; since then Russian troops have strayed into its Eastern flank. And now Russia appears to be preparing for a major invasion, even, possibly, into Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
In recent weeks nothing has so preoccupied the West’s foreign policy establishment as the question of Putin’s motives for destabilizing Europe. The answers are several – to wit what I wrote on January 5th, in my post titled, “Leaders of the Year – The Autocrats.” Putin is making trouble on Russia’s Western flank 1) because he longs to restore key parts of the old Soviet Empire; 2) because he thinks he can shore up his position at home by adventurism abroad; 3) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the United States; 4) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the European Union; 5) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis NATO; 6) because he wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis Xi Jinping; and 7) because he longs to go down in history as one of the greatest Russian leaders ever.
But for students of leadership the matter of cause is less important than the matter of effect. What interests most of us most is not the psychological genesis of what Putin does but the political consequences thereof. We cannot psychoanalyze the president of Russia. We cannot know what is in his mind, or in his heart. What we can know though, what we do know, is that one man has bent the West to his will. He has forced other leaders in other places, leaders of countries from Estonia to Romania, from the United States to the United Kingdom, to scramble to stop him. He acted. They reacted. So far therefore it is Putin who has won the war of attention. He has not however, at least not yet, won the war of attrition.