Warmonger: Vladimir Putin's imperial wars

Putin's Russia, from Georgia and Crimea to the South Caucasus and Syria.While you should never judge a book by its cover, the title gives away the central narrative of Bellamy's argument.Oxford Dictionaries define a warmonger as someone who 'encourages or advocates aggression towards other countries or groups', and there has been plenty of war since Putin came to power back in 1999.However, it is unclear from the book whether Putin is a warmongering president or whether Russian presidents warmonger.What is much clearer is the toll of the wars Putin has overseen.His Chechen offensive killed up to 8,000 civilians in its initial bombing alone.Prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine had already cost 10,000 lives, and, although Russia was only one of the belligerents in the Syrian conflict, the death toll there is estimated at over 500,000 casualties.In a narrative that chronicles the conflicts around the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bellamy admits that casualties in the pre-Putin era, in Afghanistan (up to a million) and Chechnya (20,000 killed in 1995) were far higher.The book is short and tends to touch on subjects rather than grapple with them in detail.For instance, the author describes Russia as an 'intensely violent society', with atrocity being 'one of the defining features of the Russian way of warfare', but only backs up the statement with a comparison of murder rates in other countries that feels oversimplified (p.5).Instead of a personal focus on Putin, who still comes across in most books about him as quite a nondescript figure, the story that Bellamy tells is one of Russia becoming the cauldron for a potent mix of the forces of nationalism, pride and imperialism.Putin has embodied this formula and has become a vessel for a post-Soviet reimagining of what the country once was.As Bellamy writes, 'he was strong and so was Russia ' (p.44).This perception of strength contrasted with the Soviet collapse that pushed 85 per cent of Russians into poverty and saw people freeze to death on the streets.Bellamy argues that war made Putin and it allowed him to set a new social contract in the country, prioritizing the collective over the individual and bringing an end to independent media.Authoritarian, populist and imperial Russian nationalism was fuelled by the presence of enemies.An economy buttressed by cheap gas and oil allowed Russia to aggressively pursue its interests in its 'sphere of influence' referred to as Russkiy Mir Russian world.Using the everpresent enemy of the expansionist West, Putin did not see all the various colour revolutions as unique phenomena, but instead as part of a wider western campaign.Interestingly, Bellamy describes Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an effective foil to Putin, as he too was willing to use the military to achieve political aims and to use brinkmanship to do so.Yet, it was Russia's involvement in Syria that allowed Moscow to 're-establish its own position at the top table of international diplomacy', making Russia an essential power despite efforts to marginalize and isolate the country following its seizure of Crimea in 2014 (p.118).