Official US intelligence threat assessment on how Russia views Ukraine
Branko Marcetic got a little salty on Twitter about the official assessment of the US intelligence community on how Russia’s leadership sees Ukraine.
This is the relevant paragraph in the report (emphasis in original):
Moscow will continue to employ an array of tools to advance what it sees as its own interests and try to undermine the interests of the United States and its allies. These are likely to be military, security, malign influence, cyber, and intelligence tools, with Russia’s economic and energy leverage probably a declining asset. We expect Moscow to insert itself into crises when it sees its interests at stake, the anticipated costs of action are low, it sees an opportunity to capitalize on a power vacuum, or, as in the case of its use of force in Ukraine, it perceives an existential threat in its neighborhood that could destabilize Putin’s rule and endanger Russian national security. Russia probably will continue to maintain its global military, intelligence, security, commercial, and energy footprint, although possibly in a reduced role, and build partnerships aimed at undermining U.S. influence and boosting its own.
John Mearsheimer has become a lightning rod for New Cold War hawks because he has been saying for years that Russia perceived Ukraine alignment with NATO as an existential threat. (Or, as the DNI report puts it, “an existential threat in its neighborhood.“) Mearsheimer wrote in 2014:
Putin's actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow's mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscow's position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia-a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear. …
Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putin's behavior might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression.1 [my emphasis]
This following observation of Mearsheimer’s in 2014 is also relevant to the Director of National Intelligence’s official assessment in 2023: “History shows that countries will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents an exception to this rule.“ (my emphasis)
And so is this one:
Sticking with the current []2014} policy would also complicate Western relations with Moscow on other issues. … in the summer of 2013, it was Putin who pulled Obama's chestnuts out of the fire by forging the deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons, thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened. The United States will also someday need Russia's help containing a rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow and Beijing closer together. [my emphasis]
Mearsheimer, John (2014): Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault. Foreign Affairs 93:5, 77-89.