In 2012, Putin, who assumed his third term as president, began to engage has begun to intervene in the rifts of Western society, backed by a strong domestic organization. It was a military intervention in Syria in response to the US-led war on terrorism, support for Iran as it advances its nuclear program, approach to Turkey that takes distance from NATO. Also, it was a spread of manipulated information for influence the division of EU and the US political political turmoil.
The background of these intervention is the worldwide decline of democracies exhausted by globalization, China's path to becoming a great power, and the arrival of a Sino-Russian honeymoon. Authoritarian Putinism, supported by the Russian bureaucracy and intelligence agencies "Siloviki" (power factions), and military-industrial complex, is essentially the same as the absolutism of the Soviet Union and the imperial era. This has become a major dilemma for the international community.
However, compared to previous wars in Chechnya and Georgia, the current invasion of Ukraine is quite different. Putin's "special military operation requested to protect the Russian people" as the cause of the war is just a preface; in essence, he is looking ahead to a challenge to the post-Cold War world order.
The "nuclear war posture" announced at the end of February 2022, immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, symbolizes the challenge to United States' post-Cold War unipolar. It can truly be called a provocation to hold whole human as a hostages.
Russia has publicly disclosed its "E2DE" strategy, which dares to use nuclear weapons to deter the escalation of war. This idea is the exact opposite of the "nuclear deterrence theory," which was believed for a long time even after the Cold War. Putin is taking advantage of the US nuclear drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify his own nuclear threat. Preparing a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear country is nothing but an attempt to fundamentally overturn the principles of international law and justice.
Putin miscalculated on many counts. Russia failed to take control of Ukraine in the short term, pushed to expand NATO to all Scandinavian countries, and gave the NATO forces, which do not enter the battlefield, a relative advantage. Severe sanctions and exclusion for Russia will weaken the country's power in the medium term. Putin has turned to tactics of dividing the world using energy and food as weapons, and is still obsessed with world reorganization through cooperation between China and the Global South countries.
Currently, the authoritarian system is showing signs of cracking, as seen in the rebellion of private military "the Wagner" company. Ultimately, Putin's biggest mistake was allowing the Siloviki to expand their influence and interests to such an extent while suppressing democracy and freedom. On the other hand, the United States, which competes for supremacy, has begun to seek cooperation with China, and the time has come to prepare for historic changes in the dynamics of the three hegemonies of the United States, China, and Russia.
*This text was taken from the author's Waseda University Extension College's online course "Putin's Dark Battle" released in July 2023.