On Christ­mas Eve in 1979, the Sovi­et mil­i­tary launched an inva­sion of Afghanistan to extend its sphere of influ­ence and con­trol along the USSR’s south­ern bor­ders (which are now the nation states of Uzbek­istan and Kazakhstan).

On Christ­mas Eve in 1991, my hus­band and I sat with my Mom in our child­hood home in Man­ches­ter-by-the-Sea and watched the Russ­ian ham­mer and sick­le flag low­ered and the Russ­ian tri-col­or raised over the Russ­ian Parliament.

This sym­bol­ic event marked the end of sev­en­ty-four years of com­mu­nist rule over the Sovi­et empire and the begin­ning of some­thing new for the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and the Russ­ian people.

Here we are, Christ­mas present, thir­ty years lat­er. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has been exe­cut­ing a grad­ual mil­i­tary force build-up on Russia’s bor­der with Ukraine. Unit­ed States intel­li­gence offi­cials start­ed track­ing Russ­ian mil­i­tary deploy­ments toward the bor­der last February-March.

Will he or won’t he order anoth­er inva­sion of Ukraine?

Spheres of influence, spheres of control

Defin­ing spheres of influ­ence and estab­lish­ing spheres of con­trol are at the core of Russ­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy and mil­i­tary strategy.

What­ev­er hap­pens between Rus­sia and Ukraine in the com­ing days, weeks or months, it’s going to come down to this: Putin’s cal­cu­la­tion of the exis­ten­tial threats to his own pow­er and Russia’s influ­ence on the world stage.

Through all his­tor­i­cal peri­ods and under all polit­i­cal lead­ers – from the tsars and tsari­nas to Lenin to Stal­in, Krushchev to Andropov, Yeltsin to Putin – Rus­sia has sought to secure itself against invasions.

That’s been true ever since the Vikings estab­lished the Rus Land in mod­ern-day Kyiv (Ukraine) in 800 A.D. It was true four hun­dred years lat­er, when the Mon­gol Hordes swept from the Far East­ern steppes across Siberia into the Rus region, destroy­ing and occu­py­ing cities in Rus­sia and Ukraine.

It was true in the 1800s, when Napoleon was Emper­or of France, and before World War II, when Hitler’s Reich signed a nonag­gres­sion pact with the USSR, and dur­ing the Cold War that fol­lowed the Allied victory.

And it’s true now.

Putin has spent his life fight­ing per­ceived and actu­al threats to his nation:

• Groomed as a Sovi­et for­eign intel­li­gence oper­a­tive in the Sovi­et KGB (Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty), now known as the Russ­ian FSB (Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Service)
• Sta­tioned in the KGB offices in East Ger­many when for­mer Sovi­et Pres­i­dent Mikhail Gor­bachev end­ed the Sovi­et Union’s alliance with the War­saw Pact and with­drew Sovi­et forces out of the East Euro­pean countries
• Wit­ness to the wave of protests lead­ing to the col­lapse of East Euro­pean com­mu­nist regimes across East­ern Europe and the Novem­ber 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the final phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­er pro­tect­ing the Sovi­et Union’s west­ern bor­ders from a U.S.-NATO attack
• Still sta­tioned in East­ern Europe on Christ­mas Eve, 1989, when the bru­tal Roman­ian dic­ta­tor Nico­lae Ceaus­es­cu and his wife were exe­cut­ed by fir­ing squad in Bucharest

The col­lapse of the Sovi­et empire and the loss of bor­der pro­tec­tions on its west­ern flanks infu­ri­at­ed Putin.

Ever since assum­ing the reins of pow­er from Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin on Decem­ber 31st, 1999, Putin has held one goal: restore Rus­sia as a great pow­er, one to be feared and respect­ed on the world stage.

Putin on edge

Decem­ber days in Rus­sia are cold, dark, short, and snowy.

Putin enters 2022 still in pow­er after twen­ty-two years, still wag­ing wars against his ene­mies, both for­eign and domestic.

Poi­son­ing adver­saries, mar­shal­ing troops, orches­trat­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns and autho­riz­ing cyber attacks: Putin wields pow­er through espi­onage, cyber attacks, and the threat and actu­al use of mil­i­tary force.

Mean­while, Russia’s pop­u­la­tion shrinks. The pan­dem­ic rages through­out the coun­try. Russia’s Arc­tic regions are melt­ing. Siber­ian forests are on fire.

Putin throws down the gaunt­let to warn against NATO expansion.

He poi­sons and jails domes­tic critics.

He declares – as if say­ing it makes it true – that Ukraine and the oth­er for­mer Sovi­et Republics are in Russia’s sphere of influ­ence in perpetuity.

But regard­less of which coun­tries are mem­bers of NATO, there are no defens­es or bor­der pro­tec­tions against the rav­ages of glob­al pan­demics, cli­mate dis­as­ters, and waves of human refugees flee­ing civ­il wars and per­se­cu­tions by bru­tal dictators.

If Putin invades Ukraine again, an inva­sion will not reverse these forces of dis­rup­tion and desta­bi­liza­tion at work inside Russia’s own borders.

Thirty years from now

Vladimir Putin address­es the sev­en­ti­eth ses­sion of the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 28th, 2015. (Pho­to: Unit­ed Nations)

Pow­er pol­i­tics work dif­fer­ent­ly in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry than they did dur­ing the Cold War.

Lead­ers no longer con­trol the forces wreak­ing hav­oc inside nation­al borders.

Lead­ers no longer can use weapons of war to pro­tect their peo­ple against the kinds of inva­sions that are hap­pen­ing every sin­gle moment: dis­ease, cli­mat­ic destruc­tion, and eco­nom­ic hard­ship borne by those who have no power.

Putin is on the edge. His sphere of influ­ence is dimin­ish­ing. His sphere of con­trol is con­tract­ing. Will he lash out against Ukraine to teach the Unit­ed States and Euro­pean nations a les­son? Will he sim­ply sus­tain the threat of using mil­i­tary force, just as he’s been doing for most of 2021? Or will he con­clude that a frontal assault on Ukraine will back­fire on his own polit­i­cal future?

As Putin pon­ders his choic­es, Amer­i­cans and Euro­peans need to regroup and reflect. A reflex­ive and reac­tive resort to tit-for-tat mil­i­tary force may just esca­late the risks. The Cold War alliance mod­el is not working.

We need a new mod­el or mod­els to pro­tect region­al secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty from author­i­tar­i­an regimes like Putin’s.

Putin is on edge because his sphere of influ­ence and sphere of con­trol are over­whelmed by threats that know no borders.

The world is on edge because 7.9 bil­lion peo­ple have been under assault from a pan­dem­ic for two years and reel­ing from cli­mate dam­age for decades.

Nuclear weapons and threats of nuclear war hang over our col­lec­tive heads like a mon­ster from a post-nuclear holo­caust while peo­ple on every con­ti­nent are suf­fer­ing from oth­er kinds of holo­causts every day.

Putin per­ceives threats to his pow­er through the prism of a for­mer KGB operative.

What­ev­er his next move, the peo­ple who have pow­er and influ­ence in the Unit­ed States, Europe, Asia, the Mid­dle East, Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and South Amer­i­ca need to think three moves beyond Putin.

How we shape pol­i­cy to advance a more sta­ble, secure future for our peo­ple is on the line right now. It is the right time to re-eval­u­ate and evolve the secu­ri­ty struc­tures and rela­tion­ships designed dur­ing the Cold War.

Our spheres of con­trol are inher­ent­ly con­strained and unpredictable.

But our spheres of influ­ence are more agile and adapt­able to con­tend with diverse threats and pro­tect peo­ple regard­less of where they live.

If Putin is on the edge, then what’s our move?

Putin looks around and sees new lead­ers and polit­i­cal tur­moil in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Japan, with British Prime Min­is­ter Boris Johnson’s gov­ern­ment seem­ing­ly on the ropes. Maybe Putin per­ceives an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exploit the dis­rup­tions asso­ci­at­ed with these lead­er­ship transitions.

Now is the time to show how demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments expand our spheres of influ­ence. These are the deep, dark days of Decem­ber, but a new year with new promise is with­in reach. Can we give Putin a rea­son to step back from the edge?