Opinion – Thomas L. Friedman: Putin tries to convert Russia into gigantic North Korea

With his annexation of parts of Ukraine on Friday, Vladimir Putin unleashed forces that are turning Russia into a giant North Korea. Russia will be a paranoid, enraged and isolated state. But unlike North Korea, the Russian version will span 11 time zones — from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea and from the border of free Europe to the Alaska shore — and will have thousands of nuclear warheads.

I’ve known a Russia that was strong, menacing, but stable — known as the Soviet Union. I got to know a hopeful Russia, potentially experiencing a democratic transition under Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and even the younger Putin. I knew a Russia ruled by an older Putin who acted like a “bad boy”, launching hacking attacks on the United States and poisoning oppositionists, yet was still a reliable and stable oil exporter and formed occasional security partnerships with the US when we, in a tight spot, needed Moscow’s help.

But none of us has ever known the Russia that Putin, now desperate and pushed against the wall, seems determined to create: a pariah Russia, a great and humiliated Russia, a Russia that has already taken away many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists. to flee by any exit they can find. This will be a Russia that will have already lost so many trading partners that it will only be able to survive as a colony supplying China with oil and natural gas — a Russia that will be a failed state, spouting instability from every pore.

This Russia would not just be a geopolitical threat. It would also be a human tragedy of gigantic proportions. The process of “North Koreanization” of Russia that Putin is pushing is converting a country that in the past gave the world some of its most renowned writers, composers, musicians and scientists into a nation more adept at producing potato chips than microchips, more famously. for his poisonous underpants than for his haute couture and more focused on opening up the gas and oil reserves of his subsoil than on stimulating the reserves of human genius and creativity he possesses.

The whole world is being belittled by Putin’s belittling of Russia.

But with the annexation announced on Friday, it is difficult to see any other way out as long as Putin remains in power. Because? Game theory expert Thomas Schelling has suggested that if you’re playing the “coward game” with another driver, the best way to win — the best way to get the other driver to swerve first, to avoid a collision — is , before the game starts, you unscrew the steering wheel of your vehicle and throw it out the window, making sure to show the other driver what you’re doing. The message conveyed to the other driver: I wish I could get out of your way, but I’m no longer in control of my car. You better dodge!

Always trying to be crazier than your opponent is a North Korean specialty. Putin has now adopted it, announcing with great fanfare that Russia is annexing four Ukrainian regions: Lugansk and Donetsk, the two Russian-backed regions where pro-Putin forces have been fighting Kiev since 2014, and Kherson and Zaporijia, occupied shortly after Putin’s invasion. in February. On Friday, in the great hall of the Kremlin, Putin declared that the inhabitants of these four regions will become citizens of Russia forever.

What is Putin trying to accomplish? We can only speculate. Let’s start with your internal politics. Putin’s base is not made up of students at Moscow State University. Its base are far-right nationalists, increasingly furious at the military humiliation suffered by Russia in Ukraine. To maintain this base’s support, Putin may have felt the need to show that, with his call-up of reservists and annexations, he is waging a real war for Mother Russia, not just a vaguely defined special military operation.

But that could also be Putin trying to maneuver to seek a favorable negotiated deal. I would not be surprised if he soon announces his willingness to declare a ceasefire and also to repair pipelines and resume gas exports to any country willing to recognize Russia’s annexation of the territories.

With that, Putin could tell his nationalist base that he gained something from his war, even if it came at a huge cost, and that he is now willing to stop. There’s just one problem: Putin doesn’t actually control all the territory he’s annexing.

This means that he cannot now make any deals until and unless he has expelled the Ukrainians from all the territory he now claims — otherwise he would be handing over areas he has just converted into sovereign Russian territory. This can be very sinister. Putin’s battered army doesn’t seem capable of taking more territory — in fact, it seems to be losing more with each passing day.

I fear that by claiming territory he does not fully control, Putin is cornering himself. And may he one day see a nuclear weapon as his only way out.

Either way, Putin appears to be challenging Kiev and its Western allies to keep the war going through the winter — when natural gas supplies to Europe will be restricted, and prices could go skyrocketing — to try to regain territory, some of which its representatives Ukrainians have been under Russian influence since 2014.

Will Ukraine and the West go astray? Will you hold your nose and strike a dirty deal with Putin to stop his filthy war? Or will Ukraine and the West stand up to Putin, insisting that he does not achieve any territorial conquest with this war, to defend the principle of the inadmissibility of taking territories by force?

Make no mistake: there will be pressure within Europe to deflect and accept such an offer from Putin. That, no doubt, is his goal: to split the Western alliance and emerge from it with a “victory” that allows him to keep up appearances and avoid humiliation.

But there is another short-term risk for Putin. If the West does not deviate, if it does not opt ​​for a deal with it, but instead bolsters its support for Ukraine, with even more weapons and more financial aid, there is a chance that Putin’s army will fall apart.

This is unpredictable. But here’s what is entirely predictable: a dynamic has been set in motion that will push Putin’s Russia even closer to the North Korean model. It starts with Putin’s decision to cut off most of the natural gas supply to western Europe.

There is only one cardinal sin in the energy industry: never, ever become an unreliable supplier. No one will trust you, ever again. Putin has become an unreliable supplier to some of his best and oldest customers, starting with Germany and much of the European Union. Everyone is now looking for an alternative — long-term suppliers of natural gas and building more renewable energy.

It will take two to three years for new pipeline networks from the eastern Mediterranean and liquefied natural gas from the US and North Africa to begin replacing Russian gas on a large scale and in a sustainable manner. But when that happens, and when the world’s supply of natural gas generally increases to compensate for the loss of Russian gas — and also when more renewable energy becomes available — Putin could face a real economic challenge. It may be that your old customers will still buy some energy from Russia, but they will never be so completely dependent on the country again. And China will pressure Putin to get energy at vastly discounted prices.

In other words, Putin is undermining his biggest source of long-term sustainable income — possibly his only source. At the same time, its illegal annexation of regions of Ukraine ensures that Western sanctions on Russia will remain or even intensify. This, in turn, will only accelerate Russia’s migration to failed state status, as more and more Russians with globally salable skills leave the country, as they will surely do.

I don’t applaud any of that. This is a time for Western leaders to be both rigorous and intelligent. They need to know when to deviate and when to force the other guy to deviate. They need to know when to leave some dignity to the other driver, even if he is behaving with absolute disregard for everyone. It may be that Putin has left us with no possible choice but to learn to live with a Russian North Korea — at least while he is in charge of the country. If that is the case, we will have to conform, but the world will be much more unstable.