President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of Russia is determined to draw a New Iron Curtain across the European continent, essentially returning to the days of the Cold War.  With his prolonged drama over Ukraine and now full invasion, he has dramatically upped the ante, but he has done nothing really different from the regular pronouncements he began to utter during his first presidential term in office early in this century when he proclaimed that the independent nations that were once Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union are part of Russia’s special sphere of influence.  Occasionally, he upped that ante to proclaim these new countries as part of Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. 

But those new countries never saw it that way.  To one degree or another, they all practiced what came to be called multi-vector foreign policy in which they sought to balance their international relations with Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union.  They chose to be their own countries, fully bowing neither east nor west.

What Putin made explicit during the prolonged negotiations over his threat to invade Ukraine is that he has become hell-bent on drawing a New Iron Curtain across the European continent to separate his (and Russia’s) sphere of influence from the West and where he would allow those countries to have only minimal contact with the West.  This is essentially a throw-back to the days of the Cold War when the United States and Russia stared each other down with daggers drawn.

By declaiming that Ukraine doesn’t really exist – or exists only with the permission of Russia – Putin is trampling international custom and law that have existed since the end of World War II in which the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of independent nations are not subject to the whims of their neighbors or more powerful partners.

Putin is now doing to Ukraine what he did to the independent nation of Georgia in 2008 when he recognized the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and sent in Russia troops as “peacekeepers.”

Even more broadly, what Putin is doing in Ukraine falls well within what he has done over the years elsewhere in the former Soviet Union with the so-called prolonged conflicts:  Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, and the Donbas region of Ukraine that has now exploded into Donetsk and Luhansk.  By refusing to resolve each of these historic conflicts, but by sending troops “to stabilize the situation,” Moscow ensures that each of these countries will remain dependent on Russia and not feel free to seek European Union or – God forbid! (as Russia sees it) – NATO membership.

In the midst of the current crisis, we need to pay closer attention to an event that happened in January in Kazakhstan.  For the first time ever in its history, Putin allowed the deployment of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to help stabilize President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s government during the attempted coup d’etat that was centered in the commercial capital of the country, Almaty.  The CSTO is a military body that Putin has employed to stand against NATO but that had never in its history been actually deployed, let alone to quell an internal uprising in a member state.

None of this is to dismiss the current crisis in Ukraine.  Putin has made it crystal clear that he sees the independent nations of the former Soviet Union as his vassal states.  This means that their international diplomatic choices are now more limited than they have ever been in the past 30 years, simply because, to the degree that they can tolerate, they will have to do the necessary to keep the Big Bear from rampaging in their own countries.

One thing that Putin is likely to demand is that the countries on “his side” of his New Iron Curtain cease their fairly low-level and largely symbolic training programs with NATO known as Partnership for Peace.  Most of those countries are likely to do so simply to placate Moscow – and in the greater scheme of things, that will not be a catastrophic loss.  What more Putin will demand of them remains to be seen.  For example, will he demand that American embassies and the various assistance programs they administer be scaled back?  Of equal importance, we need to wonder if the countries themselves would agree to such a move.  Once again, it’s important to recall that they have been deploying multi-vector foreign policies – not just to satisfy the other world powers of China, the United States, and the European Union, but for the real advantages they gain from such relationships.

What, specifically, should the Biden administration in Washington be doing for these countries?  Perhaps more than anything else, these young nations value the visibility of high-level visits, both from Washington and to Washington.  And yet, in recent years, high-level visits by leaders of these countries to Washington have been relatively rare, and high-level visits to these countries by the most senior officials in Washington have been rarer still. 

Part of the problem has been that at least since the George W. Bush administration, Washington has, to a degree, kept these countries at arm’s length because of their inherent problems with democracy and human rights.  No one could ever deny that those problems do exist.  But at this moment in history, it’s time for Washington to exercise realpolitik.  The easiest way to begin to do that is with reciprocal high-level visits that will make clear that the United States does not recognize, let alone accept, Moscow’s New Iron Curtain.

U.S. policy for the independent nations that were once part of the Soviet Union has not wavered since their independence 30 years ago:  to support their independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.  It’s time for Washington to put action with its words to make crystal clear that we do not accept now, nor will we ever accept, Putin’s New Iron Curtain.