Slobodan Milosevic’s high point was his paean to Serb national feeling on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje on June 28, 1989. Putin’s will turn out to be his speech of March 18, 2014, with its eagerly received hymn to past and future Russian greatness. As Milosevic claimed the right to speak for Serbs beyond the Yugoslav Republic he headed, so did Putin for Russian speakers everywhere. As Milosevic organized mobs in other Republics to enhance Belgrade’s reach, so has Putin for Moscow. Milosevic, as does Putin, relied at home on the crowd and on self-glorifying propaganda, backed up by criminal violence where necessary.
For a time, it seemed to work for Milosevic. He was not from the outset seen as a villain by the Western powers. I remember him answering my reminder of what happens to those who live by the sword, at our last interview in October 1989, with the claim that his people were grateful to him for restoring and maintaining order. Stability has been a watchword for Putin too. Milosevic was unable to sustain the order he claimed to have achieved because it was founded on narrow interests, and because of his overreach into other Yugoslav Republics. Russian claims that Milosevic lost power because of Western intervention over Kosovo have limited validity. He failed to establish Serb dominance over the rest of Yugoslavia, or in entrenching the lesser aim of securing a Belgrade hold over Bosnia or Kosovo. His rule was under siege before the West took military action, and it was the Serbs who dismissed him in the end.
It is of course risky to be guided too far by personal memories. Parallels that strike some as apt strike others as contentious. But what happened to Serbia under Milosevic should prompt us to think about where Russia is headed now that Putin’s response to Ukraine has fixed him into a clear mold. To state the obvious for the record, this is not to suggest that Western military action against Russia is at all probable. Nor is it to suggest that those Russians are right who allege that Western powers or agencies aim at regime change in Moscow. In point of fact, those same allegedly malevolent powers negotiated with Milosevic up to the end. Nor did the West desire the break-up of the Soviet Union. George H.W. Bush’s Chicken Kiev speech has been mocked since it was delivered, but it was not just policy; it was the only sensible policy available at the time. The risks of unstructured change in Moscow are still too clear for an apocalyptic Western approach to be practicable, or even conceivable.
That said, however, Putin’s reckless gamble over Crimea, and Russia’s irresponsible sponsorship of violent anarchy in southeastern Ukraine, bind Moscow to a course likely to lead to disaster for Russia. A President with his country’s national interests more truly in mind would from the beginning have been ready to work for a stable Ukraine. Putin instead tried to buttress Yanukovych, who was bent on brutality but unable to emulate Lukashenko. In betraying his word to the West (not least to President Obama and Chancellor Merkel), and in proclaiming a mission to protect the interests of Russian speakers wherever they may be, Putin has shown to the most obtuse that his words and promises have no worth. Even if he is right to judge Western leaders as too weak to deal with him, or his neighbors from formerly Soviet countries as too scared, these insights won’t save him. Some degree of trust is an essential element in international relations. No one trusts a liar.
Worse than that, Putin has betrayed his own people by offering them the false god of restored greatness, basely defined as power over others. Like Milosevic, he aspires to control more than Russia can. Crimea is one thing—and expensive and troubled even as a particular instance—southeastern Ukraine (“NovoRossiya”) quite another. Moscow has succeeded in undermining Kiev’s ability to rule the area but has not succeeded, as presumably it expected to, in invigorating popular support for its effective separation from Ukraine, let alone its incorporation into the Russian “Federation.” Those reflecting a genuinely popular cause do not have to wear balaclavas or intimidate critics. Should Donetsk, Lugansk, or even Kharkov move clearly under Russian control, Moscow would have the problem of dealing with such armed bands, together with the expense and social problems that would arise from the gathering of these particular lands. What might look good on a television map would be hard to translate into a real asset for a Russia already burdened with problems of its own.
Some have argued that Putin’s immediate aim is sufficiently to destabilize Ukraine so as to prevent Presidential elections being held on May 25. There are parallels here with Milosevic’s efforts to bring disorder to other Yugoslav republics so as to bend them to his will. Putin may have more fortune than did Milosevic, but it is just as hard in his case as it proved to be in Yugoslavia to see such disorder turning into effective power for the long term. Frustrating the nascent order in Kiev is a tactic, not a policy.
Putin’s trouble is that he has now boxed himself in. Russia’s economic prospects were already disappointing before his seizure of Crimea. Nationalist exhilaration in March was a major boost, and shattering for the opposition in Russia. But even then there were doubts, notably among those in Russia whose faith in the future is critical for the country’s prosperity. Such doubts continue to be reinforced by the fear that the suppression of the traitors and fifth columnists Putin spoke of on March 18 will be further increased as Russia’s economic difficulties mount. The penalty of that for Russia will be that it will become even less able to deal with its mounting problems. The perception is growing that Putin is accountable to no one but himself, but that he has no coherent idea of how to recharge Russian growth, and probably no clear idea of what exactly he can reasonably expect to achieve in the post-Soviet space. Creating enemies cannot work unless fear rules their hearts. Putin has few friends left.