Putin’s Motives Rooted in History Remain a Mystery Abroad
By Nicole Gaouette Mar 18, 2014 11:21 AM ET
As tensions between Russia and the West grew more heated with Vladimir Putin’s rapid move today toward absorbing Crimea into Russia, his actions and motives remain opaque to U.S. officials.
Some in the U.S., including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have dismissed the Russian president as “delusional” or intent on recreating the Soviet Union. Others, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, see President Putin taking his strategic cues from Adolf Hitler’s 1930’s playbook to undermine Eastern European stability and the post-Cold War order.
Current and former intelligence officers, such as Eugene Rumer, say the keys to understanding Putin’s decision-making lie in Russian history and in his mission to create a Eurasian Union. Rather than rebuilding the Soviet Union, they say Putin is acting on a long-standing goal to create a buffer zone to counter the encroaching West, an ambition that suggests Crimea may be just an initial step. They warn that he may see Western attempts to punish Russia as further provocations.
“After several rounds of NATO expansions, after the U.S. developing extensive relations with some other countries in the Soviet Union, Russia feels it has every reason to push back and expand its sphere of privileged interests, primarily in the territory of the Soviet Union,” said Rumer, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia who’s now at the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington policy group.
‘Compliant Satellites’
“The idea isn’t to recreate the Soviet Union, but to surround Russia with a series of compliant satellites, and there is no greater prize in that pursuit than Ukraine,” Rumer said.
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-17/putin-s-motives-rooted-in-history-remain-a-mystery-abroad.html