When 'Stable and Predictable Relations' Mean War
By Andrei Illarionov
Newsweek, Feb 07, 2024
It was July 25, 1998, and I happened to be in the anteroom of Alexei Kudrin's office. He was the first deputy Russian finance minister, and I was discussing Russia's looming financial crisis with him, his assistants, and a few visitors when somebody entered behind my back.
I didn't see a person, but everybody turned their heads to the incomer. It became clear this wasn't a regular visitor. When he approached, I saw he was a shorter man in a very strange light green suit; unusual for a serious person in Moscow's corridors of power.
The man turned out to be Vladimir Putin, whom Russian president Boris Yeltsin had that morning appointed director of the FSB, Russia's internal intelligence service.
My presence was a sheer coincidence. It seemed Putin had come straight to talk with Kudrin, apparently his closest friend in Moscow then. Kudrin asked me to repeat for Putin what I had talked about for months-the inevitability of the ruble's devaluation. So, briefly, I did.
Putin didn't respond or react at all. Neither agreement nor disagreement. Just silence. He listened, though it was unclear if he understood. After my brief monologue, I left.
I was head of a research think tank, the Institute of Economic Analysis, that I founded four years earlier. We focused on the Russian economy during a period of turmoil and reform after the Soviet Union's collapse, and on policies to sustainably grow Russia out of its nine-year Great Depression.
At that troubled time, there was a huge shortage of economists who had some understanding of the market economy. I was among a few young economists who had professionally studied market economics and monetary policy invited into the newly formed Russian government.
I became deputy director of the government's analytical center under former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, and then, after his departure, was invited to be chief economic adviser to his successor, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
While in Moscow I heard positive news about some KGB lieutenant colonel who happened to be in the team of then St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak.
My circle of people there were mainly economists; some were anti-communists and anti-KGB Soviet dissidents. It was quite unusual to hear flattering comments about a former KGB officer from them. I was shocked, but my friends were relaxed.
He, I was told, was a different type of KGB member-a real reformer who switched camps to our side.
I continued to be skeptical. A KGB member who is a reformer? For me, that was impossible; a clear contradiction in terms. They tried to reassure me, saying I simply didn't know him and in front of other KGB agents he was a different person.
Anyway, I never met Putin before that short encounter in the Ministry of Finance building. I didn't have any contact with him again until February 28, 2000, when Putin was already acting president after Yeltsin's departure on New Year's Eve, 1999.
I sat in my institute doing research, as usual, when the telephone rang. I was invited to see Putin that evening at his dacha outside Moscow because he sought an economic adviser.
A government car collected me and when I arrived there were a lot of people, but not Putin. It was the peak of the presidential election campaign, so a busy time at the dacha. Eventually, Putin appeared and, after shaking hands with a few people, at around 8 p.m. he invited me to sit and talk.
Election day was a month away, but nobody doubted Putin's victory, so he started forming his future team. I'd been told he'd already seen about 10 candidates for the economic adviser position, but he didn't like any of them, so there was no guarantee he'd choose me.
When we sat together, at the very beginning he asked me: What would I suggest to him to do with Russia's economy?
I responded: "And what do you want?"
He was visibly surprised. It looked like nobody had asked him such a question before.
Putin was silent for quite a while.
It took him some time and effort to formulate what he'd like to happen. It seems it wasn't his idea to hire an economic adviser. Perhaps he was just told he needed one. But why did he need this toy? He wasn't clear.
I said his choice must depend on his priorities; what he wants to achieve during his four-year term. Would he like to continue an economic crisis like the previous nine years and leave Russia weak? Or to change the trajectory, to restart economic growth, and to give the Russian people a chance of prosperity?
He wasn't interested in ruling a weak Russia. Slowly, we discussed in more detail the economic problems and ways to heal the Russian economy.
It was the time of the second Russian-Chechen war. About an hour into our conversation, Putin's security assistant discretely passed him a note.
Putin read it and, after the assistant disappeared, jubilantly proclaimed the information to me: Russian troops had taken Shatoy in the Caucasian mountains, the last serious Chechen stronghold.
I used this opportunity to tell him the war he was waging, killing Chechens and Russians, was a grave crime.
He didn't expect such an affront. We shared a harsh exchange of views about the war, and it grew harsher with each minute, continuing for maybe 20 minutes.
We raised the stakes with each circle of argument, taking more fundamental positions, our voices becoming steelier, almost reaching the psychological threshold at which it would be impossible to speak to the other person ever again.
Both of us understood that one more point made in this argument would be the end not only of this discussion but any relationship whatsoever.
Putin suddenly said: "Stop. We will not talk about the war anymore."
For a minute we sat in absolute silence, cooling down.
Then he said: "Let's talk about economics."
It wasn't easy for either of us. But gradually we moved back to the Russian economy, and continued so for the remaining hour and a half. At around 11 p.m., after talking for three hours, Putin said it was late-and asked whether I would join him as an economic adviser.
I said I wasn't interested. He asked why, so I told him. I had already been in government before and I know what a bureaucratic life means, and I don't like it. Putin asked if we could meet in an unofficial capacity. I said no problem.
He asked about meeting the next day. I said sorry, but no, because I had plans to celebrate the anniversary of my wife's arrival in Russia on February 29, 1992. Every four years-the leap year-we celebrated.
And then, I added, there was another reason. Since my wife is an American citizen, could he imagine the reaction of Russian society if he, as a Russian president with a well-known KGB background, had an adviser whose wife is American?
He became silent, only his gaze fixed on me.
We shook hands.
I left, wholly convinced that it was my last meeting with him.
The next day, my wife and I went to The Seventh Heaven rotating restaurant, at 330 meters above the ground in the Ostankino TV tower, one of the last remnants of the Soviet civilization so attractive for Westerners to visit in a dynamically transforming Russia.
On March 1, when I was back in my institute, the telephone rang again in the afternoon: "Did you promise to meet your wife tonight?" I checked my schedule-there was nothing.
I went to Putin's dacha again and we continued our conversation on economic issues. Our regular meetings, sometimes each day, sometimes every other day, carried on for almost two months. He began inviting me to his meetings at the White House, the Kremlin, and to trips around the country.
Eventually, I accepted the position of his economic adviser-but I required three conditions.
One: I could call Putin at any time if I considered it necessary. Two: I could speak to anyone and travel to any place that I considered necessary. Three: I could talk and comment publicly whenever I deemed necessary without any restrictions.
I told Putin if those conditions were violated, it would be my last day as his adviser.
The next day, April 12, 2000, I was appointed Putin's chief economic adviser; the first appointment in his new administration. My market economy-oriented and politically liberal views were well known in Russia, so the appointment made shockwaves.
I told Putin I'd stay until the end of that year and then we'd see. Though I wasn't particularly satisfied with what was achieved, I stayed his adviser for almost six years.
I also became the Russian sherpa at the G7. I oversaw the Russian team that finally brought Russia into the G8 with full-fledged membership, as announced by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in Kananaskis in June 2002. It was a significant success for Russia. Objectively speaking, this G8 success should be attributed to Putin as well.
Those observers who claim he's from the 19th century and out of touch with today's life are totally wrong. The truth is entirely different. It is Putin who sometimes prefers to be seen as out of touch.
When he says something outrageous or obviously false, it is not always that he actually thinks so. He is just doing propaganda or a special disinformation operation. In most cases, he knew what the reality was.
While working in the Kremlin, I was critical both in my private discussions with Putin and in my public statements on a number of actions and policies of his government. And not only economic ones-also of Putin himself.
I was very critical of his nationalization of the Yukos oil company and of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest back in 2003; of slaughtering 333 children, their parents and teachers in the Beslan school siege in 2004; of expropriating $12 billion of government assets in the Rosneft affair. It's all on record.
Having learned about the use of tanks and flamethrowers against Beslan school's sporting hall packed with kids taken hostage, I resigned from my position as G8 sherpa. I explained to Putin I could not be his personal representative in any organization after that mass killing.
Also, having attended a Russian leadership meeting in the Kremlin devoted to how best to steal billions in public assets via Rosneft's IPO, I resigned from my position of economic adviser, explaining both privately to Putin and publicly to the world the reasoning.
The most accurate description of Putin's nature is: Calculated. He was always prepared and concentrated. He's very disciplined. He knew what he wanted. And he's very well organized.
He spent nine years planning to launch the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. In the free world, there is no one similar who would spend that length of time preparing for something, leaving aside the fact that most Western politicians never stay in power for so long.
When it came to waging war against Ukraine, Putin was planning it since at least 2003. There were 19 years between the Tuzla crisis and the full-scale invasion in 2022. Who else could spend 19 years preparing for an attack?
That speaks to who he is: Calculated, organized, detail-oriented, disciplined, and patient. He's not an average politician who might change his strategy every few weeks or months.
For the first three years of Putin's presidency, he appeared genuinely interested in joining the Western world. He became friendly with the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and his first foreign visit was to London. Blair was the first foreign leader to visit Putin in Russia.
Putin spoke more than once of Russia joining NATO. He was the first foreign leader to call U.S. President George W. Bush Jr. during the 9/11 terror attack to offer his support.
Comparing Putin back then with today, it's next to impossible to fathom the distance between the two of them. It doesn't look like the same person. What drove that change is a big question, and crucial for extracting lessons on what went wrong-with Putin, with Russia, with Russian-Western relations, and why?
Undoubtedly, the bulk of responsibility lies with Putin himself. But Western leaders should consider their own contributions. For me, the critical moment appears to have happened in 2003-when the U.S. led the operation to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq.
This helped Putin to reframe his mindset and formulate his decision to turn against the West. Putin always had an imperial streak-his background was KGB after all-but the Iraq War was a crystallizing event for him, and helped him to justify changes in his attitude.
Sure, Saddam Hussein was an infamous criminal butcher, but he was neither responsible for, nor was involved in, 9/11, nor was he in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Back then as well as today, the West's largest problem is the lack of perception of its responsibility for peace and order in the world, misunderstanding the role of power in international affairs, and faulty justifications for use and non-use of force.
In the past decades, the West has evolved significantly. Today it is not the West of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II. Nor it is the West of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill.
If the West still followed its own rules used for the four decades of Cold War, Putin wouldn't be able to become so powerful and achieve what he has. The West of today did not put up any meaningful resistance to Putin-nor did it even try.
The core of the Western civilization-its ethical system-has changed dramatically. The very ethical system that centuries ago created this unique human civilization, is under heavy stress and dismantling fast.
An example from my own personal experience illustrates this shift. In February 2000, in Moscow, I told Putin-a former KGB officer on his way to becoming a full-fledged murderous dictator-straight to his face that he was committing a grave crime by waging war in Chechnya.
I was "punished" by this would-be tyrant with an invitation to be his economic adviser. For almost six years while I was in the Kremlin, Putin never restricted me on what I said, where, or to whom-privately or publicly-even if that was harsh criticism directed sometimes against him and his people.
Yet, 21 years later, in January 2021, in Washington, D.C., I wrote in my personal Russian-language blog about what I had seen with my own eyes on the streets of the U.S. capital. The libertarian CATO Institute, in the heart of the Western world, fired me for expressing my views.
What a shocking contrast between the ethical standards of today's West and Putin, the most serious challenger to it. The current West does not follow its own old rules.
When Putin waged the Russian-Chechen war, President Bill Clinton was critical of it. Putin essentially told him: It's not your business, shut up. And Clinton shut up, while Putin got a free hand to execute Chechens on a massive scale.
In 2008, Putin launched his aggression against Georgia and occupied 20 percent of its territory. Georgians fought as hard as they could but weren't able to do much. Then, President Barack Obama said: OK, let's have a reset with Putin.
Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted business as usual with Russia and happily hit the reset button, preferring to forget Putin's crimes.
Then came 2014, and under Obama's watch Putin annexed-without any real obstacles from the U.S.-both Crimea and Sevastopol, and launched the war against Ukraine in Donbass.
Once again, the slurred response was repeated. Putin first got pompous and toothless sanctions, and the following year, in 2015, Obama indulged Putin on Syria, essentially inviting Russian troops to enter and giving him the green light to bomb Aleppo.
Then for 13 months, from January 2021 to February 2022, the Biden Administration pursued a "stable and predictable" policy of appeasement that helped entice Putin into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "Stability and predictability" turned out to be horrible war.
The continuous U.S. acquiescence to Putin's actions emboldened him for new attacks. Putin would never have launched his war against Ukraine without this weak attitude towards him.
It's worth remembering: Putin launched new wars under every coinciding U.S. president except one.
Clinton had Chechnya; Bush Jr. had Georgia; Obama had Ukraine and Syria; and Biden had the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For Putin's near-quarter century in power, only one didn't see a new invasion: Donald Trump.
During Trump's term, there was no new Putin-led war; Russia's "private" military company the Wagner Group was annihilated by the U.S.-Kurdish strikes near Khasham in Syria; U.S. missiles punished the Assad regime's air force for using chemical weapons; North Korea's Kim paused his nuclear testing; and the number of Ukrainian military personnel killed on the contact line in Donbass dropped 16 times by my calculation.
In front of Trump, Putin the wolf turned into Putin the sheep.
The solution to this puzzle might be Putin's lack of understanding of Trump. Biden isn't a secret to Putin and is fully predictable. Putin is smart enough to understand well Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton. And he uses that knowledge in his favor.
The only U.S. president he did not understand was Trump. Putin is not alone in that.
There's a chance that Trump will become president again in 2025. We don't know what kind of leader Trump might be in his second term. Trump's main feature is his unpredictability-for everyone, including Putin.
Would Trump praise Putin like he has done before, and continue his talk of their "wonderful relationship?" Would Trump launch missiles, as he did in Syria after Khan Shaykhun? Would he provide "a lot of ammunition" to Ukraine as he once promised? Would Trump resort to big threats against the Kremlin, as he did in his private conversations with Putin? Or all of this at same time? Or something else?
We just don't know. It's impossible to make any firm predictions. But this unpredictability seems to give all of us some chance for hope.
Andrei Illarionov is Senior Analyst for Russian and European Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. He is a former chief economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All views expressed are the author's own.
As told to Shane Croucher.
https://www.newsweek.com/i-putin-adviser-accused-crimes-face-1867265
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/when-stability-and-predictability-means-war/
Newsweek, Feb 07, 2024
It was July 25, 1998, and I happened to be in the anteroom of Alexei Kudrin's office. He was the first deputy Russian finance minister, and I was discussing Russia's looming financial crisis with him, his assistants, and a few visitors when somebody entered behind my back.
I didn't see a person, but everybody turned their heads to the incomer. It became clear this wasn't a regular visitor. When he approached, I saw he was a shorter man in a very strange light green suit; unusual for a serious person in Moscow's corridors of power.
The man turned out to be Vladimir Putin, whom Russian president Boris Yeltsin had that morning appointed director of the FSB, Russia's internal intelligence service.
My presence was a sheer coincidence. It seemed Putin had come straight to talk with Kudrin, apparently his closest friend in Moscow then. Kudrin asked me to repeat for Putin what I had talked about for months-the inevitability of the ruble's devaluation. So, briefly, I did.
Putin didn't respond or react at all. Neither agreement nor disagreement. Just silence. He listened, though it was unclear if he understood. After my brief monologue, I left.
I was head of a research think tank, the Institute of Economic Analysis, that I founded four years earlier. We focused on the Russian economy during a period of turmoil and reform after the Soviet Union's collapse, and on policies to sustainably grow Russia out of its nine-year Great Depression.
At that troubled time, there was a huge shortage of economists who had some understanding of the market economy. I was among a few young economists who had professionally studied market economics and monetary policy invited into the newly formed Russian government.
I became deputy director of the government's analytical center under former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, and then, after his departure, was invited to be chief economic adviser to his successor, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
While in Moscow I heard positive news about some KGB lieutenant colonel who happened to be in the team of then St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak.
My circle of people there were mainly economists; some were anti-communists and anti-KGB Soviet dissidents. It was quite unusual to hear flattering comments about a former KGB officer from them. I was shocked, but my friends were relaxed.
He, I was told, was a different type of KGB member-a real reformer who switched camps to our side.
I continued to be skeptical. A KGB member who is a reformer? For me, that was impossible; a clear contradiction in terms. They tried to reassure me, saying I simply didn't know him and in front of other KGB agents he was a different person.
Anyway, I never met Putin before that short encounter in the Ministry of Finance building. I didn't have any contact with him again until February 28, 2000, when Putin was already acting president after Yeltsin's departure on New Year's Eve, 1999.
I sat in my institute doing research, as usual, when the telephone rang. I was invited to see Putin that evening at his dacha outside Moscow because he sought an economic adviser.
A government car collected me and when I arrived there were a lot of people, but not Putin. It was the peak of the presidential election campaign, so a busy time at the dacha. Eventually, Putin appeared and, after shaking hands with a few people, at around 8 p.m. he invited me to sit and talk.
Election day was a month away, but nobody doubted Putin's victory, so he started forming his future team. I'd been told he'd already seen about 10 candidates for the economic adviser position, but he didn't like any of them, so there was no guarantee he'd choose me.
When we sat together, at the very beginning he asked me: What would I suggest to him to do with Russia's economy?
I responded: "And what do you want?"
He was visibly surprised. It looked like nobody had asked him such a question before.
Putin was silent for quite a while.
It took him some time and effort to formulate what he'd like to happen. It seems it wasn't his idea to hire an economic adviser. Perhaps he was just told he needed one. But why did he need this toy? He wasn't clear.
I said his choice must depend on his priorities; what he wants to achieve during his four-year term. Would he like to continue an economic crisis like the previous nine years and leave Russia weak? Or to change the trajectory, to restart economic growth, and to give the Russian people a chance of prosperity?
He wasn't interested in ruling a weak Russia. Slowly, we discussed in more detail the economic problems and ways to heal the Russian economy.
It was the time of the second Russian-Chechen war. About an hour into our conversation, Putin's security assistant discretely passed him a note.
Putin read it and, after the assistant disappeared, jubilantly proclaimed the information to me: Russian troops had taken Shatoy in the Caucasian mountains, the last serious Chechen stronghold.
I used this opportunity to tell him the war he was waging, killing Chechens and Russians, was a grave crime.
He didn't expect such an affront. We shared a harsh exchange of views about the war, and it grew harsher with each minute, continuing for maybe 20 minutes.
We raised the stakes with each circle of argument, taking more fundamental positions, our voices becoming steelier, almost reaching the psychological threshold at which it would be impossible to speak to the other person ever again.
Both of us understood that one more point made in this argument would be the end not only of this discussion but any relationship whatsoever.
Putin suddenly said: "Stop. We will not talk about the war anymore."
For a minute we sat in absolute silence, cooling down.
Then he said: "Let's talk about economics."
It wasn't easy for either of us. But gradually we moved back to the Russian economy, and continued so for the remaining hour and a half. At around 11 p.m., after talking for three hours, Putin said it was late-and asked whether I would join him as an economic adviser.
I said I wasn't interested. He asked why, so I told him. I had already been in government before and I know what a bureaucratic life means, and I don't like it. Putin asked if we could meet in an unofficial capacity. I said no problem.
He asked about meeting the next day. I said sorry, but no, because I had plans to celebrate the anniversary of my wife's arrival in Russia on February 29, 1992. Every four years-the leap year-we celebrated.
And then, I added, there was another reason. Since my wife is an American citizen, could he imagine the reaction of Russian society if he, as a Russian president with a well-known KGB background, had an adviser whose wife is American?
He became silent, only his gaze fixed on me.
We shook hands.
I left, wholly convinced that it was my last meeting with him.
The next day, my wife and I went to The Seventh Heaven rotating restaurant, at 330 meters above the ground in the Ostankino TV tower, one of the last remnants of the Soviet civilization so attractive for Westerners to visit in a dynamically transforming Russia.
On March 1, when I was back in my institute, the telephone rang again in the afternoon: "Did you promise to meet your wife tonight?" I checked my schedule-there was nothing.
I went to Putin's dacha again and we continued our conversation on economic issues. Our regular meetings, sometimes each day, sometimes every other day, carried on for almost two months. He began inviting me to his meetings at the White House, the Kremlin, and to trips around the country.
Eventually, I accepted the position of his economic adviser-but I required three conditions.
One: I could call Putin at any time if I considered it necessary. Two: I could speak to anyone and travel to any place that I considered necessary. Three: I could talk and comment publicly whenever I deemed necessary without any restrictions.
I told Putin if those conditions were violated, it would be my last day as his adviser.
The next day, April 12, 2000, I was appointed Putin's chief economic adviser; the first appointment in his new administration. My market economy-oriented and politically liberal views were well known in Russia, so the appointment made shockwaves.
I told Putin I'd stay until the end of that year and then we'd see. Though I wasn't particularly satisfied with what was achieved, I stayed his adviser for almost six years.
I also became the Russian sherpa at the G7. I oversaw the Russian team that finally brought Russia into the G8 with full-fledged membership, as announced by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien in Kananaskis in June 2002. It was a significant success for Russia. Objectively speaking, this G8 success should be attributed to Putin as well.
Those observers who claim he's from the 19th century and out of touch with today's life are totally wrong. The truth is entirely different. It is Putin who sometimes prefers to be seen as out of touch.
When he says something outrageous or obviously false, it is not always that he actually thinks so. He is just doing propaganda or a special disinformation operation. In most cases, he knew what the reality was.
While working in the Kremlin, I was critical both in my private discussions with Putin and in my public statements on a number of actions and policies of his government. And not only economic ones-also of Putin himself.
I was very critical of his nationalization of the Yukos oil company and of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest back in 2003; of slaughtering 333 children, their parents and teachers in the Beslan school siege in 2004; of expropriating $12 billion of government assets in the Rosneft affair. It's all on record.
Having learned about the use of tanks and flamethrowers against Beslan school's sporting hall packed with kids taken hostage, I resigned from my position as G8 sherpa. I explained to Putin I could not be his personal representative in any organization after that mass killing.
Also, having attended a Russian leadership meeting in the Kremlin devoted to how best to steal billions in public assets via Rosneft's IPO, I resigned from my position of economic adviser, explaining both privately to Putin and publicly to the world the reasoning.
The most accurate description of Putin's nature is: Calculated. He was always prepared and concentrated. He's very disciplined. He knew what he wanted. And he's very well organized.
He spent nine years planning to launch the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. In the free world, there is no one similar who would spend that length of time preparing for something, leaving aside the fact that most Western politicians never stay in power for so long.
When it came to waging war against Ukraine, Putin was planning it since at least 2003. There were 19 years between the Tuzla crisis and the full-scale invasion in 2022. Who else could spend 19 years preparing for an attack?
That speaks to who he is: Calculated, organized, detail-oriented, disciplined, and patient. He's not an average politician who might change his strategy every few weeks or months.
For the first three years of Putin's presidency, he appeared genuinely interested in joining the Western world. He became friendly with the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and his first foreign visit was to London. Blair was the first foreign leader to visit Putin in Russia.
Putin spoke more than once of Russia joining NATO. He was the first foreign leader to call U.S. President George W. Bush Jr. during the 9/11 terror attack to offer his support.
Comparing Putin back then with today, it's next to impossible to fathom the distance between the two of them. It doesn't look like the same person. What drove that change is a big question, and crucial for extracting lessons on what went wrong-with Putin, with Russia, with Russian-Western relations, and why?
Undoubtedly, the bulk of responsibility lies with Putin himself. But Western leaders should consider their own contributions. For me, the critical moment appears to have happened in 2003-when the U.S. led the operation to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq.
This helped Putin to reframe his mindset and formulate his decision to turn against the West. Putin always had an imperial streak-his background was KGB after all-but the Iraq War was a crystallizing event for him, and helped him to justify changes in his attitude.
Sure, Saddam Hussein was an infamous criminal butcher, but he was neither responsible for, nor was involved in, 9/11, nor was he in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Back then as well as today, the West's largest problem is the lack of perception of its responsibility for peace and order in the world, misunderstanding the role of power in international affairs, and faulty justifications for use and non-use of force.
In the past decades, the West has evolved significantly. Today it is not the West of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II. Nor it is the West of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill.
If the West still followed its own rules used for the four decades of Cold War, Putin wouldn't be able to become so powerful and achieve what he has. The West of today did not put up any meaningful resistance to Putin-nor did it even try.
The core of the Western civilization-its ethical system-has changed dramatically. The very ethical system that centuries ago created this unique human civilization, is under heavy stress and dismantling fast.
An example from my own personal experience illustrates this shift. In February 2000, in Moscow, I told Putin-a former KGB officer on his way to becoming a full-fledged murderous dictator-straight to his face that he was committing a grave crime by waging war in Chechnya.
I was "punished" by this would-be tyrant with an invitation to be his economic adviser. For almost six years while I was in the Kremlin, Putin never restricted me on what I said, where, or to whom-privately or publicly-even if that was harsh criticism directed sometimes against him and his people.
Yet, 21 years later, in January 2021, in Washington, D.C., I wrote in my personal Russian-language blog about what I had seen with my own eyes on the streets of the U.S. capital. The libertarian CATO Institute, in the heart of the Western world, fired me for expressing my views.
What a shocking contrast between the ethical standards of today's West and Putin, the most serious challenger to it. The current West does not follow its own old rules.
When Putin waged the Russian-Chechen war, President Bill Clinton was critical of it. Putin essentially told him: It's not your business, shut up. And Clinton shut up, while Putin got a free hand to execute Chechens on a massive scale.
In 2008, Putin launched his aggression against Georgia and occupied 20 percent of its territory. Georgians fought as hard as they could but weren't able to do much. Then, President Barack Obama said: OK, let's have a reset with Putin.
Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted business as usual with Russia and happily hit the reset button, preferring to forget Putin's crimes.
Then came 2014, and under Obama's watch Putin annexed-without any real obstacles from the U.S.-both Crimea and Sevastopol, and launched the war against Ukraine in Donbass.
Once again, the slurred response was repeated. Putin first got pompous and toothless sanctions, and the following year, in 2015, Obama indulged Putin on Syria, essentially inviting Russian troops to enter and giving him the green light to bomb Aleppo.
Then for 13 months, from January 2021 to February 2022, the Biden Administration pursued a "stable and predictable" policy of appeasement that helped entice Putin into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "Stability and predictability" turned out to be horrible war.
The continuous U.S. acquiescence to Putin's actions emboldened him for new attacks. Putin would never have launched his war against Ukraine without this weak attitude towards him.
It's worth remembering: Putin launched new wars under every coinciding U.S. president except one.
Clinton had Chechnya; Bush Jr. had Georgia; Obama had Ukraine and Syria; and Biden had the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For Putin's near-quarter century in power, only one didn't see a new invasion: Donald Trump.
During Trump's term, there was no new Putin-led war; Russia's "private" military company the Wagner Group was annihilated by the U.S.-Kurdish strikes near Khasham in Syria; U.S. missiles punished the Assad regime's air force for using chemical weapons; North Korea's Kim paused his nuclear testing; and the number of Ukrainian military personnel killed on the contact line in Donbass dropped 16 times by my calculation.
In front of Trump, Putin the wolf turned into Putin the sheep.
The solution to this puzzle might be Putin's lack of understanding of Trump. Biden isn't a secret to Putin and is fully predictable. Putin is smart enough to understand well Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton. And he uses that knowledge in his favor.
The only U.S. president he did not understand was Trump. Putin is not alone in that.
There's a chance that Trump will become president again in 2025. We don't know what kind of leader Trump might be in his second term. Trump's main feature is his unpredictability-for everyone, including Putin.
Would Trump praise Putin like he has done before, and continue his talk of their "wonderful relationship?" Would Trump launch missiles, as he did in Syria after Khan Shaykhun? Would he provide "a lot of ammunition" to Ukraine as he once promised? Would Trump resort to big threats against the Kremlin, as he did in his private conversations with Putin? Or all of this at same time? Or something else?
We just don't know. It's impossible to make any firm predictions. But this unpredictability seems to give all of us some chance for hope.
Andrei Illarionov is Senior Analyst for Russian and European Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. He is a former chief economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All views expressed are the author's own.
As told to Shane Croucher.
https://www.newsweek.com/i-putin-adviser-accused-crimes-face-1867265
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/when-stability-and-predictability-means-war/