BOOK REVIEW: ‘Putin’s Master Plan’

OPINION:

PUTIN’S MASTER PLAN: TO DESTROY EUROPE, DIVIDE NATO, AND RESTORE RUSSIAN POWER AND GLOBAL INFLUENCE

By Douglas E. Schoen

With Evan Roth Smith

Encounter, $23.99, 200 pages

A day or so after Soviet Communism collapsed into a pile of rubble, I had a phone chat with a longtime pal, Herbert Romerstein, who knew — and hated — Communism with a fervor unsurpassed in Washington (or perhaps anywhere else).

As dedicated Red-baiters, we gloated a few minutes, then Mr. Romerstein quietly opined, “Before we shall cheer .”

I knew what he was thinking. Could a society constructed by a power-mad dictatorship undergo a permanent reformation? Or, in due course, could we expect more of the same from whoever ended up running Moscow?

The answer, via the book at hand, is one of the more frightening works I have read in years. It convincingly documents how Russian President Vladimir Putin is well into a planned power grab that extends far beyond his stated goal of “restoring Russia as a player on the world stage.”

Shockingly, his ongoing subversion of other states, including the military occupation of Crimea and portions of Ukraine, is going unchallenged save for fluttering dissents by such “leaders” as our soon-to-be-former President Obama.

Author Douglas E. Schoen is best known to the media as a Democratic campaign consultant and a co-inventor of overnight polling. His consulting also puts him into frequent contact with heads of state in more than a dozen countries. What he writes obviously reflects concerns he has heard around he world. Evan Roth Smith also has done extensive work abroad.

Mr. Schoen contends, convincingly, that Mr. Putin “has plunged Europe into a perilous state of conflict and turmoil not witnessed since the darkest days of the Cold War.”

He feels that Mr. Putin has no intention of “saving the west.” Rather, he “aims to shatter the internal European consensus that has brought about the longest period of peace and prosperity since the Roman Empire.” Anyone with the scantiest knowledge of European history surely recalls the blood that saturated the Continent during incessant wars waged by the likes of Napoleon, Bismarck and Frederick the Great.

Mr. Schoen sees Mr. Putin as pursuing a “brand of neo-Tsarist authoritarianism,” bent on creating discord and distrust with the goal of disrupting NATO. The much-reduced American military presence in Europe is no solace. Indeed, he writes, “There are fewer American forces in Europe than there are cops in the NYPD.” And as the Obama administration made repeated cuts, Mr. Putin was directing a 20-fold increase in Russian military spending.

Strikingly, NATO allies — including the U.S. — have ignored Ukraine’s pleas for aids to ward off Russian incursions. “Ukraine had asked for arms, ammunition and intelligence support,” Mr. Schoen writes. The U.S. sent blankets and military prepared food (Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs). Scorn drips from Mr. Schoen’s pen as he writes, Ukraine “got chicken fajitas, and Putin ate Crimea for dinner.”

In another area, Mr. Putin seems to be dusting off an old KGB playbook in seeking out alliances with dissident factions in several European countries. In France, the Le Pen insurgency. In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik Party, whose leaders have denounced the U.S. as “the deformed offspring of Europe.”

Astoundingly, Mr. Putin has encouraged breakaway factions that are attempting to have four states secede from the United States. The New York Times reported in September on a Moscow workshop billed as “The Dialogue of Nations, which attracted what reporter Neal MacFarquar saw as “an oddball, global troupe of liberation movements” from Iran, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Ireland and Catalonia. A fellow from “the Texas Nationalist Movement” said fellow citizens wanted the state “to express their own foreign policy.” A graphic on a Russian website displayed Texas’ beloved Lone Star flag cleaved away from banners of other states.

In another not-so-subtle poke at the U.S., Mr. Putin in 2015 signed an economic pact with North Korea — $17 billion in aid, $10 billion in debt forgiveness, cash that enables the country to ignore U.N. sanctions because of its nuclear arms.

Oil profits gave Mr. Putin the financial sources for much of his meddling. Given that much of Europe depends upon Russia for energy, he has used oil as a weapon to compel compliance. “Black Gold Bullying,” Mr. Schoen termed this tactic.

Now that oil prices are in a global slump, the Russian economy has cratered. Birth rates are down, as are wages and the standard of living for the average citizen (members of Mr. Putin’s kleptocracy have no financial worries, to be sure.)

So what should be done? Mr. Schoen would resume the deployment of bomber-borne nuclear weapons in NATO countries that would host them. He would scrap the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (which the Russians have flaunted) and deploy land-based missiles.

So, what attitude will President-elect Trump take toward Mr. Putin? Coming times, as is often said, could be mighty interesting.

• Joseph C. Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military affairs.