Nadin Brzezinski
The defeat of the Russian Federation will have geopolitical consequences. The defeat of Russia will also have some obvious dangers for the West, but mainly for the global order. This is a look at this from the very big picture level; you might say the 10,000 feet level. So it is, by it’s very nature, filled with generalities.
Russian defeat is coming
The defeat of Russia on the battlefield is getting closer. Granted, most nations would not be doubling down as they lose over 100,000 plus soldiers in the span of ten months. However, Russia is, partly because Vladimir Putin can’t face the reality of defeat at the hands of a country he considers inferior or nonexistent. There is also another reality. Even amid this pain, large majorities of Russians still support the war. However, there is a slowly building resistance that is becoming more adept at sabotage.
Russia has a nationalist far right that believes in the mission. They know they are fighting NATO, not Ukraine. They believe this war is one of survival for the state. Whether these are Duginists, Rushist (this is a Neonazi formation), or the Russian Imperial Movement, they believe in the expansion of Russia geographically and influence. One reason for this is to secure more defensible borders within Europe.
Russia also lost a lot of influence after 1991 and many Russians, not just the far right, believe the fall of the USSR was a mistake. There is a revanchist mood and a desire for empire. However, not everybody does, and as the consequences of the war grow, resistance will continue to grow.
Internal consequences
The war's first and most obvious consequence is a direct effect on the economy. People are removed from factories and other productive work within the economy. Even without sanctions, this will affect the ability to produce goods and services. We know that the heart of the economy is extractive industries, chiefly petroleum and minerals. Russia is now under a price cap for its oil with the west.
Russia has also mostly abandoned hard currencies for its national fund, instead holding them in Yuan and gold. This ties Russia to China in more ways than they will be comfortable with. Russia has a tiny economy when compared to China. Putin is tying Russia to China as he tries to build a multipolar world where Russia is a great power. That Russia will emerge with a greatly diminished influence has not yet dawned on most Russians.
This is not a world where Moscow is the senior partner. It’s not the 1950s when Beijing depended on Moscow for a lot of help. In time, Even with information control, it will. One way it’s starting is the green ribbon movement and the halting beginnings of Zamisdat. While Russians still support the war, I believe that support will not continue forever.
Russia is a totalitarian state. Therefore polling, even by the respected Levada Center, is fraught with fear. But the general mobilization is breaking the social contract. Remember, it was I sat on the couch and did not become political as long as you let me live my life however I want to. This is over. And as more Russians face the reality of a grisly death at the front, more and more will become political.
I am not talking about the far right, which never left the political stage. To their credit, many of them have willingly joined the army. This is about the comfortable middle-class Russians or even the working class who don’t care about politics. They are fully depoliticized, but this is likely changing. When they learn that Artem, who worked in a factory, got mobilized and did not come home, that starts the process.
For the moment, Russia has been careful to mobilize mainly people with military training. In the Federation, only they get roped in for conscript service, and the comfortable types bribe their way out. That’s not going to continue for long. Soon they will not be able to bribe themselves away from the army. All the St George Ribbons and cult of the Great Patriotic War now become real service in an army that does not care about its personnel.
To be clear, the Russian army never has.
Putin will likely lose power
This brings me to the next reality. When the war is lost, Vladimir Putin will not survive as leader. There is a long history of Russian Tsars not enduring significant defeats. For the moment, oligarchs continue to die in strange circumstances. It’s so bad that a joke online explains that buying a Russian advent calendar is interesting. Every time you open a window, an oligarch falls out. It’s grim, but critics have indeed been dying in mysterious circumstances.
Putin is familiar with the fate of those who are defeated. In 1905 reforms were forced. In 1917 the Romanov Tsar and his family died. Nikita Khrushchev lost power after the stand down to the US during the Cuban Missile crisis. While Mikhail Gorbachev survived, he was despised within Russia while respected in the West. The whole political persona of Vladimir Putin comes from the end of the USSR. That is his identity. So is expanding the reach and influence of the Russian Federation to the former glory and borders of the Soviet Union.
There is discontent among the top leadership, and the Oligarchs, in particular, are not too happy. They have lost billions of US Dollars and access to villas in Italy or apartments in London. Worse case, if their military-age children are still in Russia, they may not avoid a military funeral. These people are not apolitical. But they are not fools either. A recent story from the Washington Post pointed to the patterns we all have seen on Telegram channels.
Internal conflict
This brings me to the fight for power inside the Russian Federation. We are facing the collapse of Russia. This is the third collapse in just over 100 years. First, it was 1917, and it was a revolution. This led to the end of the Romanov dynasty. It was followed by a civil war and the rise of Joseph Stalin. The Stalin era was followed by forced industrialization, the gulags, purges, and the Holodomor. It also led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which led to Poland's split in 1939. In 1941 Stalin was betrayed by Germany with Operation Barbarossa.
It likely would have faced defeat without help through American Lend-Lease. However, the Soviet Union emerged from World War Two with full control of Eastern Europe and the maximum expansion of Russia. It reached from the pacific to Berlin.
The command economy of the Soviet system was not resilient or able to cope with the population's needs. In time it became sclerotic. The reforms that Gorbachev introduced were late to save the empire. This led to the second collapse of Russia in 1991.
The withdrawal from Eastern Europe, starting in Berlin in 1989, came partly from troops that had not been paid for months. You might also remember the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to a large group of war veterans mostly despised in their own country. They had trouble reintegrating. Ukraine War veterans will likely face the same fate.
Unlike the 1917 collapse and revolution, 1991 was a more pleasant affair. The west also helped. This is from the New York Times archive from 1991:
The United States delivered 75 tons of food left over from the Persian Gulf war to the hungry Moscow region today, part of a relief effort that American and Russian officials said they expected to continue through the winter.
The food, flown in through the snow on two military cargo planes from a supply base in Pisa, Italy, was to go directly to hospitals, orphanages and homes for the elderly.
The delivery from Sheremetyevo Airport in Russian trucks was observed by Americans, including embassy dependents, and by Russian and Red Cross officials, to make sure that its contents were not stolen and put on sale by Russian black marketeers.
The flights had a paradoxical quality: The American military, after decades of cold war training to fight a hot war against the Soviet Union, arrived here to help this country feed its hungry. An Echo of World War II
What we also did was send economists to help a transition to a more western economy. The problem is that the reforms were neoliberal and led straight to the first generation of oligarchs and the gang wars of the 1990s.
This brings me to the next point. In 1991 the Baltic States, Ukraine, and some central Asian republics voted to leave the Soviet Union and become independent states.
New successor states
Under the present Russian constitution leaving the Federation is more complex than just doing a referendum. It was under the USSR. This is likely going to lead to regions leaving regardless. We have the noise of this in Dagestan and Tatarstan, for example. Ramzan Kadyrov may decide it’s time to turn on Russia. His father fought for independence in the 1990s, but in the end, he turned against that effort, and Kadyrovites became strong allies of the regime in Moscow.
There is also a Chechen battalion fighting for Ikhteria (Chechnya) on the side of Ukraine. As things devolve, it may become the heart of a force fighting for independence. It would be the third Chechen war in two generations.
In my view, control of the Far East will become harder, given military losses. However, this war has also been used to dispose of potentially problematic first peoples, such as Buryats, who have suffered incredibly high losses—more on the Far East below.
I believe some regions will take advantage of this central weakness and declare independence. Some of these new states may look at the more democratic rule. Some, like the 1990s, will become dystopias.
This brings me to the geopolitics of this, and again this is a 10,000-foot overview. It’s not very detailed, and at this point, it’s an informed guessing game.
Loose nukes
This is the fear of the west. While Russian nukes may or may not work at this point, we all need to assume they do. However, this was a worry in the 1990s and will be again.
The nightmare is that a group like Al Qaida might get their paws on a device. This could be a dirty weapon going off somewhere in the west. It could also be a Russian group set on revenge for the Empire's destruction. Or, for that matter, successor states may get nuclear weapons.
This was the reason for the Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine’s security in exchange for surrendering the nuclear arsenal on her territory. Because of the present war, I don’t expect any successor state to surrender strategic weapons willingly.
Geopolitical consequences
Russia's defeat will not just be limited to her territory and Ukraine. It will have genuine consequences globally. Remember, this is a high-level overview.
The Middle East
Russia has had its hands in the Middle East since World War Two. It supported the Nasser Revolution, and the Israeli-Arab wars were proxy wars with the United States.
At this point, her influence is already greatly diminished. The Arab Spring may have failed, but Arab states have still turned West and increasingly recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Russia still has a naval base at the port of Latakia. She still supports Bashar Al Assad. The west allowed both Assad and Putin to use chemical weapons during the hot phase of the civil war because the west was unwilling to confront Russia. Why? We all thought they had an active military, but chiefly it’s the strategic arsenal.
When Russia is defeated, she might withdraw her forces from Syria. I almost expect it. This includes the port of Latakia. Especially if Russian regions start declaring independence. Russia is facing economic collapse. Unlike in the 1990s, I think we all have lost that fear of the Russian bear.
This means that both Israel and Turkey will grow in influence. If the ongoing Iranian revolution succeeds, many more Islamist groups will also lose support. Russia’s defeat may help that process along.
Latin America
Think Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. These are Russian allies in the region. A defeat of Russia could lead to a similar economic crisis Cuba faced in the 1990s. Venezuela is a basket case, less so Nicaragua.
Without the support of Moscow, Cuba might transition away from the revolution. Internal forces are pushing for this anyway. Venezuela is already selling oil to the west. Nicolas Maduro may be in the process. Chevron has returned to the market. His economy is a basket case with a refugee flow that is quite large, chiefly to Colombia and some to the United States.
There is a history of mistrust of the United States that is very justified. Why some regimes turned towards the Soviet Union starting in the 1950s, but a second Russian collapse might mean that this resistance lessens.
However, the modern form of globalization might be over, and Latin America might finally form a trading block to increase its economic power. Climate change will also change many of those commercial and population dynamics.
Africa
Like Latin America, Africa turned to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It has increased its influence since many African states, like Angola or the Central African Republic, were not directly colonized by Russia.
These days it gets complicated. Wagner is used precisely for this and to guard extractive industries. This is particularly the case in Mali.
The collapse of Russia will mean Yevgeny Prigozhin will have to recall the troops home. There will be no money to pay him. I also foresee his lucre soldiers as active combatants in a possible Russian civil war.
China
Here we come to the real beneficiary of a Russian collapse. It is not the United States. It is China. First, let me go to the obvious. The Far East is contested by China. Over the decades, there have been firefights by the border. As far as China is concerned, the city of Omsk is China.
This is a recent piece on this from Forbes, but the history is long:
While there’s no way to know what Xi is thinking, China’s long-established pattern of behavior suggests that, as Russia redirects border security units to a grinding conflict in Ukraine, it is worth considering if China might be mulling expansionist contingencies to the north, along the sprawling and sparsely held 2,615 mile Russian frontier.
On the other hand, on both the Indian frontier and in the South China Sea, China moved into sovereign territory with little advance notice. In both cases, China’s expansionism was opportunistic, taking advantage of an administrative or military vacuum to suddenly “change the facts on the ground.”
China wanted that territory, not just because it controlled it in the 19th century. This was the Amur annexation of the 19th century. But because this territory is rich in natural mineral resources, China wants it for its growing economy. It also would provide a safety valve for her population.
But let’s look beyond the Far East. China is building a new Silk Road and influencing operations in Africa and Latin America.
All these are areas where Russia, or whatever remains of Moscow, will have to withdraw from. So the big winner in a Russian collapse will be an ascendant China. I will add this since Russia is making the Yuan part of its national wealth fund, it will become dependent on Beijing.
Putin wanted a multipolar world and to finally defeat the main adversary. We may still get a multipolar world. One where the United States, China, and India may play critical roles. While I did not mention India in this piece, she is also becoming a focus of power.
In this list, Russia is nowhere to be seen. Part of this is that she is facing yet another collapse. In this case, I do not think the west will help much. However, like in 1991, we might still see American cargo planes with food on the way to Russian cities. This is mainly to slow down the process of social collapse. In other words, we might try to manage that.
However, given how much the far right in Russia blames us for all their ills, there is a danger in doing that which did not exist in 1991.
