How Russia uses the south to beat the West
The Ukraine battlefield is the hottest part of Russia’s war on the West, but not the only one. The Kremlin is betting that sabotage, intimidation and other sub-threshold attacks will make Ukraine’s allies so distracted, scared and tired that they cut their support to Kyiv. Meanwhile Russia’s political warfare is reaping rewards in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The widening fronts in this global conflict are ably depicted in a new book, “We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West” by Hanna Notte. The Berlin-based, Oxbridge-educated Russia expert unpicks Kremlin influence operations in a dozen-plus countries. Her reporting is meticulous, the descriptions vivid, and the conclusion bleak: Russia is using the West’s own weakness to beat us.
One paradox is globalisation: the West’s main project since the collapse of communism, but which now undermines its sanctions efforts. China, North Korea, Iran and other countries in what Notte calls the “Eurasian roundabout” help Russia export and import what it needs to keep its war machine running. Hard-headed shipping magnates in Dubai will not stop dealing with the “shadow fleet”, any more than Indian energy tycoons will shun cheap oil. It’s just business, they tell her.
But not only that. Many in the mis-named “Global South”, instinctively despise Ukraine as an American proxy. The irony is head-spinning: Ukraine is treated as a pariah for its ties to a supposed patron that has now all but abandoned it. As well as exploiting anti-Americanism (whatever that means these days) Russia also draws on deep historical sympathies that are all but incomprehensible seen from the former captive nations of Europe.
Many influential Africans, for example, have bitter first-hand or inherited memories of US treatment of their continent in the cold war, including support for apartheid-era South Africa. They also have a rose-tinted view of the Soviet Union, which supported their liberation struggle. Some studied there. That Ukraine is the victim of a revanchist imperialist Russia makes no sense to them; interviewed by Notte, they struggle to see it as a real country. Elsewhere in Africa, China may have economic muscle, but Russia has geopolitical sizzle, offering dictators a toolbox of repressive measures, plus diplomatic support, in return for mineral deals. A brutal model, but it works better than the Western one.
This strategy is not universally successful: the Kremlin botched the Middle East, notably in Syria. But given the mess that Western countries are making in that region, such setbacks are scarcely decisive. More broadly the burgeoning BRICS grouping, now with 11 full members and another 10 partners, shows how attempts to isolate Russia diplomatically have failed. From the diplomatic stage in Vienna and New York, Notte paints a gripping picture of showdowns and standoffs in multilateral negotiations on issues such as nuclear non-proliferation. Russia’s rigid negotiating approach may be counter-productive on occasion, but it has created a serious counterweight to Western dominance of the international agenda. Again, the fragmentation of the West, and especially the Trump administration’s contempt for all UN bodies, makes it far harder to resist Russia’s efforts.
Then there’s the nukes. A new Financial Times investigation shows how Kremlin cronies sent panicky messages to their American friends in 2022, signalling that Putin might use nuclear weapons in the face of battlefield setbacks. The Americans thought that by creating a back-channel, via the ex-Stasi officer and Putin pal Matthias Warnig, they were preventing Armageddon. More likely, the nuclear threat was empty, and the intended (and successful) effect of the operation was to blunt US support for Ukraine.
Like greed and cowardice, naiveté will feature on the West’s death certificate.
Edward Lucas is a British writer, journalist and security specialist
Photo credit: Shrinidhi Holla