Book Review | Warmonger: Vladimir Putin's Imperial Wars

Alex J. Bellamy‘s Warmonger considers the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in the context of other conflicts Putin has orchestrated or supported, from Chechnya and Crimea to Georgia and Syria. According to Chris Featherstone, Bellamy’s book is an incisive look at Putin’s use of aggressive military strategies to secure his own power, and the impact of this approach on Russia’s international relations.

Warmonger Vladimir Putin’s Imperial Wars. Alex J. Bellamy. Columbia University Press. 2023.

In a short, yet impressively comprehensive work, Professor Alex J. Bellamy sets out to put the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a broader context of Vladimir Putin’s approach to war. To achieve this, Warmonger explores Vladimir Putin’s background, linking Ukraine to key moments from his political career before and during his time in the Kremlin.

Bellamy sets out to put the Russian invasion of Ukraine into a broader context of Vladimir Putin’s approach to war.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, analyses of Putin’s thinking on Russia’s security and position in the world abound. Several have looked at the role of NATO and the EU in impacting this thinking. Others have sought to examine the role of Covid-19, and the isolation required to combat it, on Putin’s worldview. What many of these accounts lack is the broader political context to demonstrate some derivations of ideas that they theorise have influenced Putin’s thought processes. Bellamy’s account addresses this lack in two ways. Firstly, by exploring Putin’s personal political history and his understanding of the need for war to secure Russian interests, and secondly, by exploring the history of “Putin’s Wars”, scrutinising all military conflicts into which Putin has ordered the Russian military.

The book presents a coherent analysis of what we know of Putin’s background and early career, showing how themes from this background relate to his future career. Bellamy succinctly explains this to the reader, showing how Putin’s career in the KGB (the Russian-language abbreviation for State Security Committee) developed, and how Putin entered Moscow politics. From this, Bellamy engages with the idea of the epithet in the title to the book, “warmonger”.

For Bellamy, ‘Putin’s presidency was forged on the anvil of Chechnya’, evidencing how important these conflicts are to understanding Putin’s leadership style.

For Bellamy, “Putin’s presidency was forged on the anvil of Chechnya”, evidencing how important these conflicts are to understanding Putin’s leadership style. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Chechens united around a charismatic independence leader, fighting and winning what Bellamy calls “de facto independence”. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government regained interest in Chechnya, sending 40,000 troops to invade, hoping for a short nation-uniting war. After weeks of brutal indiscriminate violence, the Russian military took control of the capital, which started a brutal Chechen insurgency. Putin initiated a second Chechen war in 1999, after a Chechen terrorist attack (which as Bellamy asserts, could have had some Russian security force involvement).

Bellamy argues that in the 1990s, the fear of Chechen terrorism shaped a demand for a new form of political leadership in post-Soviet Russia. Putinism both satisfied this demand, but also fed and fuelled it. Putin projected an image of youth and strength within the experience of the war in Chechnya, establishing a new relationship between Russians and their state. Importantly, whilst Bellamy shows how the war in Chechnya was crucial to Putin’s creation of a new image of leadership, he also highlights how the conflict did not go all in Putin’s favour. Over 4,000 Russian troops died, and over 13,000 troops were injured. The war also led to an increase in Chechen terrorism in Russia, and the infamous Dubrovka theatre siege in 2002.

The book’s analysis highlights the roots of the conflict [with Georgia in 2008] in the politics of the Soviet collapse, and the similarities between the Russian campaign in Georgia and the contemporary war in Ukraine

Bellamy’s analysis of the 2008 conflict in Georgia and Putin’s military actions there illuminates their relevance to our understanding of his contemporary military action. The book’s analysis highlights the roots of the conflict in the politics of the Soviet collapse, and the similarities between the Russian campaign in Georgia and the contemporary war in Ukraine. As was the case in Ukraine, the military invasion was preceded by a destabilisation campaign, both political and military. Bellamy highlights two different perspectives that are crucial to understanding the Russian-Georgian War: the Russian and the Georgian. For Georgia, their narrative highlights the importance of their post-Soviet experience of authoritarianism and civil war. For Russia, the military aggression in Georgia stemmed from the wish to maintain a “zone of privileged interest”, a narrative that Bellamy highlights in Putin’s 2007 Munich speech. This “zone of privileged interest” refers to a ‘sphere of influence’, typically associated with the former Soviet bloc. Bellamy draws on this speech to interpret Russia’s objectives from their “Shadow Wars”. These are threefold: maintain control and influence over a self-determined sphere of influence, limit external (western) influence, and exert influence outside this sphere.

Putin has walked a delicate tightrope in his relations with the international community since he first became Russia’s President

This book provides crucial insight into Putin’s approach to conflict and how he uses these wars to solidify his leadership within Russia. One area where the arguments here could be further developed would be by demonstrating how Putin perceived and interacted with the international community whilst pursuing these wars. Putin has walked a delicate tightrope in his relations with the international community since he first became Russia’s President. At times Putin stayed close with Western leaders, for example during the early years of the War on Terror, and at times challenged Western Hegemony (for example, in his involvement in the Syrian civil war). The analysis here could be further developed by showing how Putin’s leadership style and his use of these wars to further Russian aims relates to or works against his relationship with the international community and Western hegemony.

Bellamy provides comprehensive insight into Putin’s wars, demonstrating how these conflicts were crucial to Putin’s rise and his ability to reshape the relationship between Russians and the State.

Within this book, Bellamy provides comprehensive insight into Putin’s wars, demonstrating how these conflicts were crucial to Putin’s rise and his ability to reshape the relationship between Russians and the State. Whilst this book is not exhaustive, the analyses of each conflict provides a helpful introduction to the key background of the wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Drawn together, they effectively show how Putin’s leadership has developed over the course of Russia’s wars and the relationship between these wars and Putin’s approach to Russia’s place in the world.

This review first appeared at LSE Review of Books. Image credit: Marco Iacobucci Epp on Shutterstock. Please read our comments policy before commenting. Note: This article gives the views of the reviewer, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.  Shortened URL for this post: https://wp.me/p3I2YF-eio