This vast empire comprising more than 120 ethnic groups is on an unsustainable footing and, like that famous Hemingway quote, its collapse may be gradual at first, but could quickly become a sudden, violent and uncontrollable event. If we fail to prepare for this possibility the way we failed to prepare for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it could cause enormous instability in our geopolitics. I see at least three factors that could lead to the collapse of the Federation. The first is the collapse of domestic confidence in the Russian military, which has traditionally been the core of the Kremlin’s legitimacy. Its humiliation in Ukraine is now almost complete, with the proud Black Sea Fleet still hiding behind Crimea, too scared to take action against a country that doesn’t even have a navy. And Russian men, lured by the army’s salary offers, avoid conscription en masse knowing the fate that awaits them on the battlefield. This has compounded the disproportionate recruitment of ethnic minorities from Chechnya and other nations on the Federation’s fringes – the easiest groups to use as cannon fodder – that has raised grievances that will not be easily forgotten. If some Chechen fighters decided to start another war of independence, where would Putin find the military resources to fight it now that he has devoted so much to Ukraine? He will no doubt be aware that if such a war were won quickly and decisively by the Chechens, it could spark a wave of similar uprisings across the Federation. Second, the damage to the Russian economy was too devastating to sustain a population of 144 million. The loss of energy markets, which compensated for the country’s lack of modern industries, cannot be reversed. European governments will not rely on Nord Stream 1 again, having seen how easily it can be turned off, and are already making long-term investments in domestic energy supplies. Russia has also relied on arms exports, but what country would be interested in buying its equipment or weapons now? Such an economic crisis can be sustained for months in the misguided hope that one day business will return – but even in Russia the well of stoicism has its limits. This brings us to the third factor, which is the sparse nature of Russia’s population. Because despite being 70 times the size of the UK, the Federation has just twice the population. These numbers make civic solidarity difficult to achieve at the best of times, but now, with the metropolis in a weak position, any sense of national identity could quickly deteriorate. Western sanctions will force Moscow’s elites to make difficult economic compromises. They will inevitably bail out the capital’s middle classes, who pose a more immediate threat to officials, at the expense of minority populations in the constituent nations. In this way, it is shocking how little discussion there has been of the eventual end of the Russian Federation. We should be asking hard questions now so they don’t jump out at us. For example, how would this be done in a country that has significant stockpiles of nuclear weapons and few centers of power? Who would pull the nukes? How will we avoid the leakage of weapons and fighters to the Baltic States? Is a major internal conflict inevitable or can the collapse be contained within a political framework? Combined, these dilemmas pose a very significant challenge for the West. Get it wrong and we could face disaster. Our failure to prepare for the last Russian collapse some 30 years ago, and the internal turmoil that followed, arguably led to Putin’s presidency. We cannot risk being unprepared a second time. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ben Hodges is the former commander of US Army Europe and senior advisor to Human Rights First
