Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State between 1997 and 2001, died on Wednesday at the age of 84. The following article was published on February 23, the day before the start of the war in Ukraine, in the American newspaper The New York Times.
In early 2000, I became the first senior US official to meet Vladimir Putin in his new role as interim president of Russia. We in the Clinton administration didn’t know much about him at the time—we only knew that he had started his career in the KGB. I hoped the meeting would help me form an idea of ​​the man and appreciate what his sudden rise could mean for US-Russia relations, which had deteriorated with the war in Chechnya. Sitting across from him in the Kremlin, with a small table between us, I was immediately struck by the contrast between Putin and his bombastic predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
While Yeltsin used persuasion, bravado and flattery, Putin spoke emotionlessly and without resorting to notes about his determination to revive the Russian economy and quell the Chechen rebels. On the plane, heading home, I took notes of my impressions. “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold he’s almost reptilian.” He claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to come down, but said he did not expect the entire Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.”
Over the past few months, as Putin has been amassing troops on the border with neighboring Ukraine, I have been reminded of that nearly three-hour meeting with him. After calling the Ukrainian state a fiction in a bizarre televised speech, he issued a decree recognizing the independence of two separatist-controlled regions of Ukraine and sending troops to both.
Putin’s revisionist and absurd statement that Ukraine was entirely created by Russia and, concretely, stolen from the Russian empire, is entirely in keeping with his distorted worldview. What was most disturbing to me is that this was his attempt to stitch together a pretext for a full-scale invasion.
If he proceeds with this invasion, it will be a historic mistake.
In the 20-odd years since we met, Putin has charted his course from abandoning democratic development to following Stalin’s playbook. He amassed political and economic power for himself, co-opting or crushing potential competitors, while at the same time striving to re-establish a sphere of Russian rule in parts of the former Soviet Union. Like other authoritarian leaders, he equates his own well-being with that of the nation and equates opposition with treason. He is certain that Americans mirror both his cynicism and his lust for power and that in a world where everyone lies, he is under no obligation to speak the truth. Because he believes the United States dominates its own region by force, he thinks Russia has the same right.
Putin has sought for years to improve his country’s international reputation, expand Russia’s military and economic might, weaken NATO and divide Europe (while also creating a divide between Europe and the United States). Ukraine is part of it all.
Rather than paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine will guarantee Putin’s infamy, leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger and more united Western alliance.
Putin has already put that into action, announcing on Monday his decision to recognize the two separatist enclaves in Ukraine and send Russian troops there as a “peace force”. Now he has demanded that Ukraine recognize Russia’s right to annex Crimea and give up its advanced weapons.
His actions have triggered massive sanctions, with more to come if he launches a full-scale attack and attempts to take over the entire country. These sanctions will devastate not only his country’s economy, but also his close circle of corrupt allies, who, in turn, could challenge his leadership. A war that is sure to be bloody and catastrophic will drain Russian resources and cost Russian lives — while creating an urgent incentive for Europe to reduce its dangerous dependence on Russian energy. (This has already started with Germany’s decision to suspend certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.)
Such an act of aggression will almost certainly lead NATO to significantly strengthen its eastern flank and assess the possibility of permanently stationing forces in the Baltic states, Poland and Romania. (President Biden announced on Tuesday that he would send more troops to the Baltic countries.) And it would generate fierce Ukrainian armed resistance, with strong support from the West. A bipartisan effort is already underway to prepare a legislative response that includes an increase in arms shipments to Ukraine. It won’t be a rerun of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea; will be a scenario that harks back to the ill-fated Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Biden and other Western leaders have already made that clear in round after round of furious diplomacy. But even if the West somehow manages to prevent Putin from launching an all-out war, something that is far from guaranteed at this point, it is important to remember that Putin’s favorite competition is not chess, as some suppose, but judo. We can predict that he will continue to look for an opportunity to increase his influence and attack in the future. It will be up to the United States and its allies to deny him that opportunity, maintaining strong diplomatic resistance and increasing economic and military support for Ukraine.
From what I know of Putin, I don’t think he will ever admit that he made a mistake, but he has already shown that he is capable of being patient and pragmatic. And he is certainly aware that the current confrontation has made him even more dependent on China; he knows that Russia cannot prosper without some ties to the West. “Of course I like Chinese food. It’s fun to eat with chopsticks,” he told me on our first date. “But this here is mere triviality. It is not our mentality, which is European. Russia needs to be a firm part of the West.”
Putin certainly knows that a second Cold War would not necessarily have a positive ending for Russia, even with the nuclear weapons it possesses. There are strong US allies on almost every continent. Meanwhile, Putin’s friends include the likes of Bashar Assad, Aleksandr Lukachenko and Kim Jong-un.
If Putin feels cornered, the only person to blame is himself. As Biden has already pointed out, the United States has no desire to destabilize Russia or deprive it of its legitimate aspirations. That is why the US administration and its allies have offered to engage in dialogue with Moscow on an unlimited range of security issues. But America needs to demand that Russia comply with international standards applicable to all countries.
Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, like to claim that today we live in a multipolar world. While this is self-evident, it does not mean that great powers have the right to divide the globe into spheres of influence, as colonial empires did centuries ago.
Ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty, no matter who its neighbors are. In the modern era, the big countries accept this, and Putin also has to accept it. This is the underlying message of recent Western diplomatic efforts. It defines the difference between a world governed by the rule of law and a world that does not obey any rules.
