Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Biden isn't going anywhere for now
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. The topic everyone is discussing, of course, is what is the state of play in the US election for President Biden's reelection campaign in particular? What's going to happen? What are the outcomes?
Well, what's going to happen at least for the near term, is that Biden isn't going anywhere. He would have to decide, to stand down. He certainly is not prepared to do that. His team would have to tell him strongly that they feel like he's making a mistake. They're not prepared to do that, either. And this is something we've seen on a few occasions. Remember, Biden has been serving at high levels in Foreign Office for decades as vice president for eight years, in addition to president for almost four and senator including running the Foreign Relations Committee for decades and decades. And so the people around him, they are very loyal. They have a lot of experience. And they've been on and committed to Team Biden for a very long time. They absolutely are willing to give him advice. And they execute as well as they can, on his directives. But they are very unwilling to challenge him, particularly when he feels strongly about an outcome.
And we've seen this play out on Russia-Ukraine, Biden was unwilling to talk about moving towards a negotiated settlement as the Ukrainians were doing better and better. They were kicking it down the road. They weren't having the difficult decision because no one was willing to really challenge it. And then the situation for the Ukrainians started getting worse, and it was “they'll manage reasonably well,” the tactical on the day to day. And you have a strong coalition that the Americans are leading. But at no point are you making the big sudden change. It's very cautious. It's very conservative. and it tends to kick the can on big, controversial potential decisions.
I've seen the same thing in the war in the Middle East. A lot of people feeling like Biden should have been tougher and stronger against Prime Minister Netanyahu much earlier, especially as he was taking his own whacks against Biden. Biden unwilling to do that. They kept kicking the can. And so you got incremental decision making, very cautious, very risk averse, very conservative. Every one of the tactical decisions were pretty well executed.
But willingness to take big bets and risks, much much less so. And now we see the same thing playing out on the election. For the last year, it's been very clear to anyone that has met with Biden. And I've said this, certainly publicly, and I've heard it from all sorts of leaders, whether it's CEOs or leaders of the G7 or the G20 or the big multilateral organizations, that Biden is not someone that is capable of strongly leading the country for another four years through 86. The age of 86, too frail, too slow, losing a number of steps, since he was running back in 2020. But at no point was someone around Biden willing to have the tough conversation. And Biden himself, wasn't willing to hear it. And so you kick the can, you kick the can, you continue to manage it until it becomes a bigger problem. And that's where we are, right now. And it is certainly true that the leadership of the Democratic Party, and the top leaders of the House and Senate and the top governors, none of them are straying from the party line.
They are rallying around the president and saying, “yeah, he had a bad debate, but he can still do this.” But there are a lot of people, that certainly matter, for the president, in terms of the mainstream media, as well as in terms of senior leaders in the former Obama camp that are saying that this guy needs to step down. And I do think it matters when the paper of record for the center left, The New York Times, has not just their individual columnist, but the editorial board writing that he needs to stand down. And I think it matters when respected advisers to Obama, like Axelrod, Favreau and a number of others are saying you need to step down. Now, Biden doesn't trust those people. In terms of the Obama folks, he thinks that they're the ones that gave it to Clinton as an opportunity, when it should have been his, passed him over. If Obama said that to him personally and strongly directly, it would be taken differently. But certainly, Biden and his senior team won't accept a recommendation for them, and they won't accept a recommendation from the mainstream media.
I mean, if you look at the seven stages of grief, they are through shock. They're through denial. They're roughly in the anger phase. But they're not yet in depression. And they certainly aren't engaging in bargaining. So, I think we're very far from Biden actually stepping down. Now, having said that, there's still five months before the election, and that's a long time for an 81-year-old that has bad days. And, you know, the fact that you now do have, for the first time, some damaging information from inside the administration, for example, the Axios piece that said that he's pretty strong, and being able to engage from 10 am to 4 pm. That's an indictment for someone at 81 that would need to govern until he's 86. And that's the kind of thing that would not have been shared with the media six months ago. And now it is. And when you see members of the family and senior friends and formal advisers to Biden blaming the senior team of staffers for not prepping him well during the debate, that again, we haven't seen that kind of internal animosity.
And if you start to see senior members of the team turning out against either anonymously or not, Biden sticking around because they think he can't win, that becomes much more dangerous. So I think this gets harder to manage. It's easy to manage right after the debate when everyone recognizes that he's not prepared to step down. But as this story continues to play, and yes, they can try to manage him and limit the time that he spends with the public. But this is going to be the focus for all of the media going forward over the coming months, and of course, is a very easy thing for the Trump team to run on running against Biden, as opposed to running on Trump's deficiencies, is a much better place for them to be. We are in a horrible place in terms of the state of this US election.
I'm sure many of you have seen the CBS YouGov poll over the weekend that shows that over 70% of registered voters believe that Biden is not cognitively capable to stand, and run the country for four years. They think he should stand down. 50% of registered voters believe the same about Trump. That number is way too high. It's too high for Biden. It's too high for Trump. We have never been in an environment where the American people feel so badly about both candidates. And yes, of course, there is an enthusiasm gap and Trump supporters are much more willing to forgive Trump's unfitness or even to paint Trump's unfitness as a positive, than team, than the people around Biden.
And that is a problem. You're more likely to see a bumper sticker, or a cap for Trump among his supporters than for Biden among his supporters. And in an election where turnout matters, the fact that large numbers of Democrats are now questioning the fitness for office of their own candidate, I think does make it more likely that Trump is going to win. I had very, very low confidence going into the debate about what the outcome of the election would be. I still have low confidence, but it is higher than it was before the debate. This is a major inflection point in my view. And it makes it more likely that Trump is going to win. And it would put more pressure on the Biden team to consider alternatives.
I do believe that if they wanted to go the alternative route, alternatives exist. First of all, at this stage, given Biden's age and given the way he is likely to appear over the coming five months, I don't think that Kamala Harris is a worse choice, is less likely to win than Biden. So simply stepping back, continuing to campaign. But Kamala becomes the candidate, I would say at this point, and I wouldn't have said that six months ago, she is likely to take the election as Biden would be, both in my view, on balance, likely to lose. But I also think that the potential of bringing in somebody else in the convention, and there are a lot of strong candidates out there.
Gina Raimondo would be certainly towards the top, especially because she is actively a very trusted part of the Biden cabinet. So it's less of a transition. Pete Buttigieg, outside, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, there are a number, that are strong that is also, of course, a big risk because here, not only are you pushing aside Kamala Harris, which will antagonize a lot of her supporters, and there are many, but also would be putting up someone who does not have a significant track record in national politics. And that reminds me of Ron DeSantis. So many anti-Trump Republicans were all in for DeSantis. This guy was going to be the golden child for the Republican Party, take out Trump. And he was an absolute nothing lightweight on the national stage and got pasted by Trump. And that, of course, is a danger. So I understand that tactically, when you have a team that is oriented towards consensus around Biden, that on any given day, putting your head up and saying, “I think it's time for you to go, sir,” is not a great strategy.
And of course, that leads to many, many, many, many days of kicking the can until the point when it is a lot harder and the dangers are a lot greater than they were if you had had that conversation, say, a year ago. Also keep in mind that when Biden first won the election in 2020, became president 2021, literally no one around him thought he was going to run again. So, I mean, they did think this is a one term president. He trounced Trump. there'll be somebody else on the Republican side, probably because he's too old too, Trump is unfit. And Biden will have one term and then it'll go on to somebody else. But of course, if you're unwilling to make those plans on any given day, you end up in a non-optimal place.
And that is where the Democrats are right now. The Republicans are in a non-optimal place for very different reasons. They're also facing someone who they certainly would much rather be running with someone else because they'd have a much higher chance of winning if this were Biden at this age versus Nikki Haley, the likelihood Haley would win would be, I think, a layup or a slam dunk. It's not where we are, even now with Trump, because so many people think that Trump is problematic and for very good reason, to run. But the likelihood that Trump, of course, will be removed, zero. Despite all of that, and he does control the Republican Party to a much greater degree than Biden controls the Democratic Party. And you can say, well, that's unfair. And they aren't the same standards, but, you know, what you would like to happen is not where we are. Where we are, is that Biden is the one that has to make this decision. And it's going to get harder for him over the course of the coming months.
That's it for me. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
The future of globalization
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to get us kicked off this Monday morning. I thought I'd go a little macro today and talk about the future of globalization, because I hear so many people talking about the last 30 years of being this unprecedented period of goods and services and people and ideas and capital moving faster and faster across borders all over the world. And now, not anymore. Now, it's all about my country first and it's nationalists and it's insourcing and it's decoupling. And so we've hit this tipping point. Or have we? I don't quite buy this narrative that globalization is over. Rather, I think it's not being driven. I think people are angry about it and it's being fought over, but that's very different from saying that spikes are being put into it.
And let me explain what I mean. I do think that the era of globalization, where the United States as a singular country with its allies was driving, actively leading, and driving a system where tariffs were being reduced and institutions were being created to ensure freer and more efficient trade. That was unique. It was something that we experienced in the world, basically from the seventies, picking up momentum through the nineties, with the Chinese particularly getting much, much bigger, with the Soviets then collapsing and most of those economies getting integrated into a more global order.
Right up through the last, say, 10 years, that let's say almost half a century if you look at global human development indicators like expansion of lifespan or reduction of infant mortality or education rates or average income levels, just an unprecedented improvement across the world. And most importantly, if you were an alien looking down on the planet, what you'd see is the emergence of a global middle class. And you'd see immense reduction in human poverty.
Now, the fact that a lot of that within the United States and other countries driving it was also accompanied with policy failures, with a lack of change of institutional reforms inside the countries, with social safety nets that were eroding meant that there was much greater levels of inequality, of outcome and of opportunity inside those countries and a lot of people got angry and angrier with globalization. At the same time, over the last few years, post the 2008 financial crisis, post the pandemic, with increasing impact globally of climate change and now with the Russia-Ukraine war, all of those things are driving much greater instability and inequality, not just in the advanced industrial economies, but in the developing world as well. And that's creating a lot more anger and pushback against the process of globalization.
Where I want to be clear is that's not suddenly making the Americans turn against globalization. Rather, it's making the Americans not sure where they want to go. It means that the United States aren't leading further globalization going forward, and no one really is. So you had 30 to 50 years where the Americans and increasingly everyone on that boat were saying, "Yes, let's push hard to have more and more open markets." And now you have governments all over the world saying, "We're not really sure what we want, where we want to go." That's very different from the idea of deglobalization.
Deglobalization would be the United States stands up and says, "We're going to tear down these institutions. We actually don't want to be as engaged in international trade. We're going to pull out of existing trade agreements." That's not what's happening. Not under Trump, not under Biden. I mean, in fact, you'd say the record is mixed. Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that was a new multilateral trade organization the US would've joined to increase globalization, to increase integration. But actually, the overall record under Trump with the US-Mexico-Canada agreement, with the US-South Korea agreement, with a first phase US-China trade deal, but then no second deal, not full implementation, increased tariffs, on balance, you'd say under four years of Trump, the US globalized a little bit more, but not much more, and certainly wasn't driving or leading globalization anymore.
And you'd say the same thing under Biden. You could point to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which has marginal increase in economic integration on rules and standards. For example, you can talk about "Build Back Better", which isn't really funded, but provides more outreach of the United States towards international investment together with allies around the world, some reduction in tariffs between the United States and Europe. Not yet between the United States and China, though it's fairly likely. Again, the US isn't leading globalization anymore, but it's not unwinding globalization either. And "Make America Great Again", as well as a new foreign policy for the American foreign middle class, which is sort of the Trump headline and the Biden headline. If you say, "Well, what are the takeaways?" The takeaways are not a lot of policy that's actually really moving towards insourcing production. A little bit of a shift away from the promotion of more globalization, and on balance, a little more globalized than before now.
The big hit, of course, in the last two years has been the pandemic, which stopped people from traveling, and which really shut down a lot of international supply chain for a period of time that largely has gone away in most of the world. China's the big exception because of zero-COVID, but even there, they're working hard to try to get through zero-COVID relatively quickly. And I expect they will be mostly there by the end of 2023, because it's such a drag on Chinese growth, but it's a blip. It's a blip from a longer term environment where what we see between the United States, China and the Europeans and the Japanese and the developing world is kind of a bit of a drift.
In the same way that NATO has been adrift over the last 20 years without much of a mission, now we're seeing globalization is drifting. It's not falling apart, but no one's driving the bus. And there is some decoupling that's going on, most notably between the G7 and Russia. So Russian's being forcibly cut off from the advanced industrial economies. And of course, some of that is sticky, like gas between Russia and Europe. And that diversification is taking time and the Russians are threatening to shut it down.
Then you have some decoupling happening at the national security level between the United States and China, but it's limited. It doesn't affect most US-Chinese trade. TikTok. It's what all the young kids are on. That's Chinese, by the way, right? No one's about to shut that down. And other countries around the world don't want a cold war between the US and China, and they're ramping up their investment in exposure to the US and to China. And then you also have some level of growing protectionism in countries around the world saying, "We want more support for our workers," but it's halting, it's stagger step. And it's also in fights inside these countries with business interests and financial interests that want more exposure to global markets.
So the point here is not the end of globalization. The point is that globalization is at drift. The point is that globalization is now being fought over. It's become a political football. And where that's going to go? The answer is, it's messy. It's complicated. Maybe that's not the easy headline answer that people want, but maybe that's why my Quick Takes take 10 minutes as opposed to two.
Anyway, that's it for me at the start of this week. Something to chew over for a few days. Hope everyone's doing well. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
Russia-NATO confrontation is coming: Putin will escalate
There’s not an off-ramp in sight, and that’s a problem. More than 60 days into the conflict in Ukraine, Ian Bremmer believes the chances for a negotiated settlement are looking slim.
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and your Quick Take. And got to talk about Russia-Ukraine.
We are 62 days now into this war and on pretty much every front, we continue to see international relations deteriorate. You kind of hope that there would be some kind of off-rampin terms of a negotiated settlement, in terms of freezing the conflict, but it really doesn't look that way at all. Some of that's good news. Some of that is the Ukrainian government being able to really inspire the advanced industrial democracies around the world to win the information war against the Russians. As a consequence, getting an enormous amount of support and holding off the Russians. Certainly, Zelensky in much stronger position today than he ever was since he's been elected president and his regime is not about to be overthrown.
Leaving that aside, the level of direct conflict and indirect conflict with the Russians is only picking up. And what do I mean by that? Well, first on the economic side, we continue to see a move towards oil embargo being discussed now by the French, after the elections, by the Germans as well. By the end of this year, you kind of expect to see that. You also had the Polish government saying they're going to cut off gas. And after that, the Russians said, "Well, you know what? We're not going to send you any gas starting now." Same with Bulgaria.
The Europeans are unhappy about this, but they've also declared economic war against the Russians. So it's not a surprise to anyone. The only reason there's any gas still going is because the Europeans need it. Otherwise, they would've cut that off too. And so the fact that the Russians are now starting to squeeze the one economic lever they have left against the Europeans, or at least some of them. Particularly, let's be clear, the Poles and the Bulgarians are the East Europeans who have been strongest in their desire to help Ukraine push back the Russians, provide more advanced military capabilities, squeeze the Russians harder economically. So I mean, there's a lot of tit for tat going here, but the point is that this relationship is really being severed and, if anything, that's only speeding up. It's not slowing down.
Then you have the fact that the Finns and the Swedes are now saying that they will go to apply NATO together in May. That will get approved by the end of June at the Madrid summit. Again, a much worse position for the Russians to be in than they would have been before they invaded Ukraine, if they hadn't chosen to invade Ukraine. Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, very unhappy about all of this and saying that this is becoming dangerous in terms of a potential World War III, potential nuclear escalation.
The Russians have said that now on no fewer than six or eight occasions that I can count over the last couple months. I don't take it at face value, I don't take it literally, but I do take it seriously in the sense that Russia-NATO confrontation is coming. And I think that is true because the Russian economy is going to be permanently in a state of free fall. And that's going to squeeze Putin to a degree. I say it in part because the Europeans are going to be continuing to treat Russia as enemy number one. That includes lots of military capabilities, arrayed at Russia.
And I also believe that because Zelensky himself will be this international hero for the West, running a country that the Russians do not see as legitimate, that Putin doesn't see as legitimate. And the idea that Zelensky is going to be there with maximalist aims against Russia, because they've invaded his country, saying, "Give us more military support, give us more political support, more economic support," and getting it. That's an unacceptable outcome for Putin.
Now I'm not sympathetic to Putin's position at all. I want to be clear about this, not one iota. The Russians are 100% responsible for this invasion that is continuing to go on two plus months in, but I am saying that the Russians' capabilities in terms of destabilizing, not just Ukraine, but also a lot of countries across the transatlantic relationship is real and hasn't yet been experienced or really even tested. And I fear that we are going to be testing that going forward.
Final point on this, I'm someone who didn't really like the idea that the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Lloyd Austin was saying that the goal of the United States is to really hit, to diminish, to degrade Russian military capabilities. I understand that the Americans are happy to have that happen. I understand the moral outrage, but the goal is really to get Ukraine back to the status quo ante, certainly before the invasion on February 24th, ideally before the Russian invasion in 2014.
That is different from saying, "We want to hurt the Russian military so much that they'll never be able to attack Ukraine again." Number one, I think that's unrealistic. Number two, I think that's incredibly dangerous for a country that spends 10x, what Ukrainians spend on defense and have all sorts of military capabilities, not just to hit Ukraine, which they are deploying, but also to hit NATO, which they largely are not deploying, whether it's space weapons or cyber weapons and the rest. And the idea that the Americans are going to try to hit the Russians so hard that they can't do this again, implies that Putin's response will be escalation against NATO.
And if I were advising the Biden administration, and I do talk to them, of course, informally, my view is that public statement is farther than the Americans should actually be going right now. And this is after a couple of months of leading a NATO coalition quite strongly, with the recognition that NATO supports Ukraine, but their interests are not identical to Ukraine. For Ukraine, you want to absolutely get rid of every Russian that you can find. You want to destroy their military capabilities. Of course, Ukraine wants to do that, the United States and NATO, not Ukraine. If they were, if those interests were aligned 100%, Ukraine would've been in NATO in any case. And they're not. They're not going to be.
So that's it for me. Hope everyone's well, better than the Ukrainians, at this point. Talk to you all soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
Risks of Russia losing: Putin, Ukraine, and potential for escalation
Hi everybody. Happy Monday. Ian Bremmer here and I have your Quick Take going back to Russia and Ukraine. We're almost two months into this war and I continue to be very pessimistic about where we are heading. Over the last few days, the biggest headline, I think, has been the sinking of the Moskva. This is Russia's carrier, its flagship of its Black Sea fleet. It is the worst naval combat loss that Russia has experienced since World War II at the hands of Ukraine, a country that doesn't even have a navy.
Initially, the Russian government said that it was just on fire. It was an explosion, but not that it was attacked. Then they pivoted quickly to saying it's attacked. But if you watch Russian state television focusing more on NATO and not Ukraine, "how could the Ukrainians with the Ukrainian missile take out this extraordinary Russian ship? No, it must be that we're fighting NATO itself. " And this has been a shift that we've seen from the Russians over the course of the last few weeks. The war is taking much longer than they had expected. Their initial efforts to, of course, take Kyiv, to overthrow the Zelensky government have all failed. And what you're seeing is a shift away from, "we're fighting Ukraine and denazifying that regime," and instead towards "the reason it's taking so long is because we're fighting all of NATO, that the West as a whole is fighting against us. And they're sending troops on the ground that they're not really admitting to. They're sending all this military equipment," which, of course, they are trumpeting. And indeed that the attack on this cruiser, which was purely at the hands of the Ukrainian military, nonetheless, the Russians are saying NATO is behind it.
Look, I mean, there is something to this. It is certainly true that NATO is providing a hell of a lot of weaponry now. And the level of weaponry has been increasing every week, both the amount, almost $3 billion in defense support, just from the United States and a lot from almost every corner of NATO. And also increasingly offensive weaponry.
So we're now talking about Switchblade drones, we're talking about helicopters, we're talking about tanks coming from a lot of different NATO countries and that plus intelligence support real-time on the disposition of Russian forces is making it easier for the Ukrainians to beat back the Russian invaders, both outside of Kyiv, but also even in terms of in the Black Sea and in Southeast Ukraine. The Russians are going to adapt their military strategy.
They've fought for 50 days now. But you'll remember, the war against Finland was 100 days before they won it. The Russians have staying power and willing to send more troops into the fight. And I think that the danger here is that the Ukrainians and the West increasingly believe that the Russians can indeed lose, but that only works, and obviously it's the outcome everyone would love to see, leave aside Putin, aside from the fact that he's not prepared to accept it. I mean, if he's not going to capitulate, if he's only going to continue to escalate, then what you really want is to freeze the conflict as opposed to force him into a corner and try to defeat him militarily because full defeat of Russia, militarily vis-a-vis Ukraine is really not doable.
Now what the Russians want right now, what they're looking for militarily on the ground in Ukraine, really, four things. First, they want to take all of the Donbas that they've recognized as independent. That is, frankly, two-thirds more territory than they had been illegally occupying from 2014 until the invasion started in February. They want a land bridge that they've, more or less, taken and this is why Mariupol is so strategically important for them. They continue to fight six weeks on, building to building inside Mariupol a land bridge between the Donbas connecting it with Crimea.
They want this city of Kherson, which is critical because that is what allowed the Ukrainians to cut off all the water to Crimea from the mainland once the Russians illegally annexed it. If they control Kherson, they'll have the control of that infrastructure. The Ukrainians will not. And finally some buffer territory to hold all of that territory comfortably. That's what the Russians are trying to accomplish in this phase two of their special military operations as they call it, a war, certainly.
Whether or not they can accomplish that by May 9th, which is Victory Day, increasingly I am skeptical. Increasingly I think they can only accomplish some of it. They'll have most of Luhansk, but probably not most of Donetsk at that point. And it's not clear whether they will be able to declare sort of victory, even in this second phase of battle by May 9th. Increasingly the Ukrainians are getting much more capacity and their morale is, of course, very high.
Then you also have the international front where it's much worse for the Russians on every front, because they're cut off economically from all of the advanced industrial democracies, which is where so much of the trade and export has gone, because there is so much expansive defense spending, as well as support of Ukraine, the Ukraine that is still held not by Russia, which is the vast majority of it. Because you're going to see so much more willingness to advance to forward deployed troops in the Baltic states, in Poland and Romania, Bulgaria, of course, Finland and Sweden, soon to be joining NATO.
All of this means that internationally Putin is losing and losing badly. So the big question is, therefore, you want Russia to lose, but how badly do you want them to lose? Or should I say, you want them to lose how badly? Do you want them to lose all the territory that they've taken in Ukraine from 2014? Because if you do, what happens if that makes them much more likely to use scorched earth tactics against Ukrainian cities and a lot more Ukrainian civilians die? What if it makes them much more likely to use chemical weapons or even tactical nuclear weapons as we've heard from President Zelensky himself warning over the weekend. Internationally, how much do you want the Russian economy to be destroyed given the actions that are being taken?
None of this is easy. I'm simply saying that it seems clear from a geopolitical position you obviously didn't want the Russians to take Kyiv. You didn't want them to overthrow Zelensky. But it's not clear that pushing them into a position where the only choices they have are capitulation or lashing out is a much more stable outcome, certainly for NATO. I understand why it's a more stable outcome potentially for Ukraine.
We're moving towards that scenario. Towards one where Putin has to make increasingly difficult and dangerous decisions and everything we've seen so far implies that he's willing to do that. In part, because there's very little downside for Putin himself. If his country's already been cut off economically by the G7, if he's already an international pariah from countries that aren't going to invade him directly, they are going to be deterred in terms of his nuclear capabilities from attacking Russia. But short of that, they'll do everything. Well, then what then prevents Putin from doing everything he can to ensure that Ukraine is not a viable country going forward?
That's a very good question that needs to be asked strategically by everyone in NATO that is engaged in this fight right now. I'm deeply sympathetic to providing enormous amounts of support to Ukraine, especially because this is not a proxy war that's being fought over Ukraine. This is Ukraine was invaded. They desperately want to defend their territory and they are begging the West for more support. So I get the ethical reasons to give the Ukrainians everything you can to help them keep their country.
But at some level there is a greater amount of risk that's taken if it looks like the Russians are in a position that they might actually "lose" and Putin doesn't have a backdown, Putin only has an escalation button. Anyway, something we're going to be watching closely over the course of the next several weeks as we near “Victory Day”, May 9th, which is going to be anything but for Putin, and as we see what this dynamic looks like, both between Russia and Ukraine and also between Russia and NATO more broadly.
So that's a little bit from me. Hope everyone's having a good week and I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com
Help us win a Webby Award for Ian Bremmer's Quick Take series! Vote here before April 21.
- “Crimea river”: Russia & Ukraine's water conflict - GZERO Media ›
- Don't bet on Russia backing down - GZERO Media ›
- Putin, Ukraine, and the Rat Story - GZERO Media ›
- As Russia balks, NATO might gain two strong Nordic recruits ... ›
- What's wrong with Russian soldiers? - GZERO Media ›
- Russia escalates in Donbas in push to take eastern Ukraine - GZERO Media ›
- The dangers of Russia losing badly - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer: power of the "Goldilocks crisis" - GZERO Media ›
- Putin would rather die than admit defeat in Ukraine, says former Croatian president - GZERO Media ›
- Russia struggles in Ukraine, Putin escalates - GZERO Media ›
- Nuclear weapons could be used; Russia's war gets more dangerous ›
- Putin bombs Ukraine - GZERO Media ›
- How to avoid World War III - GZERO Media ›
Russia-Ukraine war: How we got here
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and happy Monday to you all. Plenty going on. Of course, still very much focused first and foremost, on the war in Ukraine, the Russians continuing to fight, shifting the battle ground primarily to the southeast around Donbas but of course, engaging in bombing and artillery all over the country and negotiations frankly nowhere close to resolution.
But I wanted to talk a little bit about how we got here, why this happened. And it goes without saying, but still needs to be said that of course, the direct responsibility for this invasion is on President Putin 100%. There was no justification, you could not remotely claim that Ukraine's government needed to be denazified. There was no act of genocide being committed against Russians on the ground in the occupied territories. This was all fake and Putin is responsible for the atrocities on the ground for the damage to the Ukrainian economy, for the incredible loss of life we see happening across the country, including to his own forces. He's responsible for all of that.
But how did we get here? Why did it happen? And if you want to have that conversation, you can't just talk about Russia, you have to talk about the West. And I think it's worth spending a little time on that.
First of all, and perhaps the biggest point is that historically the Russians were ignored after the Soviet Union collapsed. Keep in mind that there was a European Union for all of these former East European Warsaw bloc aligned states. And indeed, the EU expanded dramatically, and that meant full integration into those institutions, an incredible wealth that they would be able to develop. And it's been a great success story for most of them. Look at where the Polish economy is today compared to where it was in 1989. It tells you almost everything you need to go. There have been some political successes, there have been others that have been somewhat less so. Look at Hungary and look at Viktor Orbán being able to solidify his win in an only somewhat free and not particularly fair election. But overall, that's been extraordinary. NATO too expanded and allowed all of these countries right up to the Russian border to have national security, to be engaged in a collective security process where their militaries would be trained properly, where they would be defended by the entire alliance if they were unjustly attacked.
What did Russia get? And the answer is not very much. They got shock therapy, they got a bunch of Western economic advisors that were willing to go in and say, "Here's the way you should restructure and reform your economy." Some of which was intelligent, some of which was theoretically correct, but had no recognition of the realities on the ground. Certainly, when I think about all of the auctions that occurred and just how corrupt and incapable the Russians were to actually privatize large areas of the society that instead got wholly ripped off by a bunch of oligarchs, there was no Marshall Plan for Russia. There was no strong effort to integrate Russia into global institutions and architecture even when Yeltsin was president, who was strongly aligned with the United States and had a cabinet around him that really wanted to be a part of that. Instead, you got the NATO-Russia joint council, which was never really anything other than meetings that the Russians could attend but with no intention or effort to try to integrate them. Then you got the G7 plus one. What's a plus one? It's not your spouse, plus one's a date. Next time you come, you'll bring a different plus one. It was very clear to the Russians that there wasn't a lot of interest.
Now, why not? Why didn't the Americans and the Europeans try after end of the Cold War, when the Americans won and the Democrats won, why didn't they do with the Russians what they did after World War II with the defeated Germans and the Japanese? And I think a big piece of it is because the Americans didn't fight a war, because the win basically fell into our lap. And the reality is that if you have this peace dividend, you have to be willing to spend a fair amount of it to keep it. And instead, it was basically treated as free money. It was treated as, this is a great success for globalization and the Russians will eventually find their way in. So, I think that was an enormous missed opportunity. And it was basically, if the Russians were going to fail well, it wasn't the American's responsibility or the allies' responsibility to do a lot about it.
Furthermore, when the Russians getting angrier then started to take steps to redress a global order that they felt increasingly left behind and humiliated from, the West didn't pay much attention and furthermore didn't uphold their own principles. So, the US opened NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine back in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit. They promised that both of those countries would be able to join, but they didn't really have any intention of how they'd bring that about.
And when Russia then invaded Georgia just a few months later, it was August if I remember correctly because a lot of these things happened in August, nothing. I mean very... There was a discussion internally in the Bush cabinet and Dick Cheney was angry and said, "We've got to defend these guys." But the reality was nothing was done. There was no intention to have crippling sanctions against the Russians that would destroy their economy or provide weapon systems to Georgians. Very much a democracy led by someone who was a bit of firebrand that wasn't trusted very much in the US, Mikheil Saakashvili, much in the way that Zelenskyy by the way was felt about, was responded to in the United States before the war in Ukraine. But of course, we didn't have social media back then, you didn't have the global perspective of what was happening on the ground and the United States basically did nothing.
Then in 2014 when the Russians invaded Ukraine, and not only annex Crimea, but also took and denied taking territory on the ground in the Donbas in southeast Ukraine, what did the Americans do? And the answer is not very much. Again, not providing weapons, not providing much support, limited sanctions. And in fact, in 2018, when the Russians held the World Cup, a lot of you remember this, and they're still invading, they're still occupying this Ukrainian territory, active fight is still going on across the line of conflict, a bunch of European leaders actually fly to Russia to meet with Putin and attend the World Cup.
I mean, so obviously not many consequences for all of this. And so as a consequence of all of that, the Russians, I think themselves had good reason to believe that they could get away with engaging in and redressing what they felt was an unjust humiliation and the West wouldn't do much about it. Now, more recently you have a people that did indeed feel increasingly humiliated. The Russian economy not doing very well, you'll remember when President Obama said that Russia wasn't a great power, a regional power and they're in decline. Now by the way, analytically, I agree with that. But if you're president of the United States, why do that? When you are winning, why do that? You never punch down.
It reminded me of Obama when Trump was there at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And by the way, Obama had plenty of reasons to be very angry with Trump? Keep in mind this was the guy that started the birther movement against Obama and said that he's born in Kenya, born in Indonesia, prove it, show your passport, show your birth certificate. And it became a really big deal. So if you're Obama, you absolutely have personal animus against Trump. But then you're president of the United States and you're up there giving a speech of the WHCD, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and there's Trump in the audience and the right thing to do as president is nothing. The right thing to do as president is be graceful. You've made it. Never punch down. And Obama couldn't help himself. Took a victory lap, stuck his thumb down. He made Trump look like an idiot. You could see the humiliation and the anger on Trump's face. And in retrospect, was this something that probably motivated him more to take on politics, motivated him more to go after Obama on every single occasion when he could and undo everything Obama had done when he became president? Yeah. Yeah. That's the kind of thing that I think someone like Trump would absolutely take personally.
And does Putin take it personally against the United States for decades of what he sees to be as not only not paying attention, but stick in your finger in and saying, "These guys are no good, these guys are worthless"? Absolutely. So I think that there is a bunch of that. And also from the Russian perspective, the United States itself is hypocritical, doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
When Russia annexed Crimea, a lot of the language that they used to justify the annexation was taken from the American decision to recognize the independence of Kosovo, which again, from a human rights perspective, the Americans had a lot of reason to do it. But in terms of international law, was actually a breach of international law. There's no justification for it so the Russians say, "Well, see, the Americans can do it, we can do it too." Let's keep in mind the Americans promised international law to defend Ukraine in 1994, signed an agreement together with the UK and the Russians. The Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons, we're going to ensure that we defend their territorial integrity. Wasn't worth the piece of paper it was printed on because when the Russians invaded 2014, the Americans don't even talk about this document. Well, why would they care in 2022? It's a big question.
Iraq, Afghanistan, these are wars of choice, massive human rights abuses by the United States. So is it just that the Americans call themselves, ourselves, I'm an American, the leader of the free world. If you're Russia, you say, "Look, this is all just moral relativism, everyone's equally bad, no one's telling the truth so I should be able to get away with whatever I can do from a power position"?
Again, I want to be clear. Putin is the one supporting and committing war crimes. And no, I refuse to compare what he is ordering against the democratic country that has done literally nothing but want to govern itself. And there aren't Nazis running the country, that's insane. No, this isn't the Taliban chopping off heads and hands, the most abusive country in the world towards women, harboring bin Laden. No, it's not Iraq with a massive human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein historically, after they invade Kuwait and the Americans come back and attack them.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose American history of intervention and unjust war. That is not the same thing as what the Russians are doing right now to the Ukrainian people. But we do need to be accountable for how we got here. And if we want to be honest with ourselves about that, well, then we have to broaden the conversation beyond just the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
So that's a little bit for me.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Will Putin eat the world's bread? - GZERO Media ›
- Putin, Ukraine, and the Rat Story - GZERO Media ›
- Putin past the point of no return - GZERO Media ›
- Is Putin still Soviet? Wrong question - GZERO Media ›
- Russia’s war heads for a deep freeze - GZERO Media ›
- Putin punishes Ukraine to avoid looking weak - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer: power of the "Goldilocks crisis" - GZERO Media ›
- 6 months of Russia's war in Ukraine - GZERO Media ›
- UN chief: We must avoid the mistakes that led to World War I - GZERO Media ›
- Russian Black Sea Fleet commander still alive despite Ukraine's claims - GZERO Media ›
- Two years of war in Ukraine: Power players at the Munich Security Conference weigh in - GZERO Media ›
- A Russian victory would end the global order, says Yuval Noah Harari - GZERO Media ›
- AI and war: Governments must widen safety dialogue to include military use - GZERO Media ›
- Russia-Ukraine reality check - GZERO Media ›
- UK far-right riots and Elon Musk's role - GZERO Media ›
- Why Ukraine invaded Russia - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Will Ukraine ever negotiate with Russia? - GZERO Media ›
- Ukraine's Kursk invasion complicates Putin's war efforts - GZERO Media ›
- Why Canadians are tired of Justin Trudeau - GZERO Media ›
- Why Giles Duley advocates for the forgotten victims of war - GZERO Media ›
- The future of war: James Stavridis on China, Russia, and the biggest security threats to the US - GZERO Media ›
- Europe's biggest concerns about Middle East, one year after Oct. 7 - GZERO Media ›