A basic part of state craft is the cultivation of problems on the periphery of other orders - be this the geographical periphery or the periphery of the order itself. Sometimes, in fact a lot of times, this doesn’t turn out to be detrimental to the targeted order. I have had suspicions that this would be the case with the Ukrainian war.
The way I try to look at things is through the framework I outlined in a book I penned a while ago. Applying this to Russia at the start of recent hostilities made me think that if Russia didn’t suffer a serious collapse, the war would force a number of clearly very much needed changes.
Firstly, despite the way Russia was portrayed prior to the war, it was not a very centralized order. What was worse was that what government institutions it had were obviously inept and laughably corrupt. Symptoms of this included Putin having to resort to PMCs like the Wagner group, the oligarchs’ strength, the excessive use of criminal groups for foreign policy objectives, and the need to employ frozen conflicts in border states like Georgia, etc.
When faced with a myriad of problems of this kind, it is usual for a central power to tread water and do as little as needed to keep things ticking along. Reform is hard and deeply dangerous. To force a central power to get up and do the needed house cleaning requires significant external pressure - you need geopolitical danger. Russian history is littered with examples. Serfdom was only abolished in the wake of the disastrous Crimean War (serfdom itself was initially created to subsidize the nobles as a fighting force.) Tsar Nicholas II’s various reforms prior to WW1 (which led to the Russian Revolution) were a result of geopolitical pressures from Germany and Japan and other rapidly industrializing states. Soviet land reforms, likewise, were not ideological in nature, but were due to profound geopolitical weakness and the need to force agricultural produce onto the market (the farmers were refusing to sell crops, and instead acting like communists and distributing it among themselves.)
This last example of the soviets is one which I had in my mind because like with Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war, Soviet Russia was considered, at the time of the revolution, to be deeply weak, yet it embarked on a series of reforms which, whilst being conducted in a ham-fisted way at times, brought it back to a level of strength that allowed it to fight off Germany and then to vassalize vast swathes of the world. If the Western powers had intervened conclusively in the wake of the Russian revolution and balkanized Russia, it would have been a different story, but they didn’t and the Soviet government centralized.
Are we seeing a similar thing with Russia, albeit in a lot less of a severe way? and could it end up being beneficial for Russia in the medium to long term? I think so.
One example of this is in the field of military equipment. It seems clear to everyone that expensive and complex fighter jets are largely obsolete and that drones are the future. That seems to have been hammered into the Russians and they have moved over to drone warfare in a big way, something which they would have probably not done under peacetime conditions.
Another area of obsolescence is the surface fleet. Large battleships are an incredible drain on resources and manpower and the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet was almost destroyed by drones in the harbor of Sevastopol. The intervention of Elon Musk in switching off Starlink access for the Ukrainian drones was the only thing which seems to have saved the fleet. As of writing this, the Russian fleet has been withdrawn to the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Ukraine seems to have managed to lift the blockade without having a navy. Some estimate put the Black Sea Fleet’s loses at close to 50%. But is this a bad thing for Russia? These ships seem to have all been obsolete and pretty much ready for scrapping.
The Black Sea Fleet is a case in point. Of its 45 surface ships, the only ones built after 1990 are three Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates. The fleet flagship, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, dates back to 1983. A guided missile destroyer, the Smetlivy, dates to 1969, and two guided missile frigates were built in 1980 and 1981. This is what has given rise to the epithet “more rust than ready.”
Getting rid of these wastes of resources in normal periods of government would probably have been a major headache, but now the Ukrainians are wasting their time and munitions doing it for them.
Another area of benefit is that of institutional competence. Russia has been incompetent in many areas for a long time, and one thing to Putin’s credit is that he has been quite successful in forcing (some) competence into existence. It seems quite an uphill task with the Russians, but he does have precedent. The Second Chechen War is an example of Putin managing to improve on affairs. In the first war, Russian incompetence in both strategy (failing to surround Groznyy) and tactics (basic urban warfare incompetence) were addressed and Chechnya was conquered. As with equipment, a problem with reforms of institutions is that they require a lot of effort and face a lot of obstacles, but war and the threat of being paraded through the street and hung by an angry mob à la Gadhafi tends to focus the mind and will. The dealing with of Yevgeny Prigozhin who died in a very timely aircraft “accident” along with the spread of seemingly contagious defenestration indicate that pruning is occurring.
Another area in which geopolitical pressure forces long term beneficial actions can be seen in the removal of “easy” forms of governance which aren’t ultimately beneficial, In its place, we see longer term and more deep seated forms. Again, with the example of Wagner, the usage of PMCs was a cost effective way of employing military forces which didn’t require the internal resources of the state to be tapped. Economic relations with the West was another example as it allowed for easy income to be obtained from selling gas and oil. Cutting this off forces deep changes in the Russian order that would not have otherwise occurred. A good example of this is the difference between early modern France, England, and Spain. Spain, the far more powerful of the trio, did not continue a process of centralization and reorganization of its core Spanish territories that it had pioneered because it was able to rely on income from the gold and silver trade from the New World. France, and England, meanwhile, had to develop and cultivate their own population and taxation structures (something which England exceled at), to meet the Spanish threat. The long run winner of this particular race was not the Spanish.
The Ukraine war could be dragging the Russians into the 21st century before everyone else.
FWIW, it looks like the US, UK, and France aren't shying away from direct front participation learning, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRYj6JZV1cI&t=7m31s
From what I read, Musk didn't turn anything off, just refused to turn it on for that area. It largely has the same meaning, but some difference.
All of us know he's in regular contact with US intel and is even a contractor for them. What's kind of interesting is that the Russian military also sometimes talks to him and did some time before Ukrainian agitation to empower an assault on Crimea.
"the Russian fleet has been withdrawn to the eastern coast of the Black Sea"
And the drones apparently can still reach them.