How long will the West ignore Putin’s threats?

The Russian media have been talking up war for some time, but it has now reached new heights of warmongering. Dmitry Kiselev, a television journalist known for his close ties to the Kremlin, keeps threatening the West with nuclear weapons. Another ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, the voluble ultranationalist party leader Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, recently declared that if Hillary Clinton were elected, it would mean World War III. Clearly, the Kremlin is deliberately creating a sense of impending war by having its own media insist that Nato has put Russia under threat — from the military alliance itself and its democratic ethos. Ominously, Putin loses no opportunity to extol the Russian people’s wartime virtues of heroism and martyrdom.

Most recently, the war scenario moved from talk on television to Russian city streets. From Oct. 4 to 7, a Russian civil defense drill reportedly involved 40 million civilians and 200,000 civil defense experts who instructed citizens in schools, factories and offices. The government-controlled media rhapsodized that the bomb shelters were found to be in good order, as the people drilled in what to do during a nuclear, chemical or bacteriological war.

In one Moscow district, local authorities posted fliers asking residents to contribute money to hasten construction of a bomb shelter “because of the growing international tensions, particularly the expected nuclear aggression against Russia by the unfriendly countries,” clearly a reference to the United States and its allies. Maybe all that these fliers signify is pandering to the Kremlin by local bureaucrats eager to impress the authors of a propaganda blitz. But there is no denying that such announcements are strengthening a genuine bout of war hysteria, emanating from the Kremlin.

Could this be just theater intended to intimidate the West at a time of insecurity in Europe and strong suspicions in the United States that Russia is meddling in its election? Or is it meant for an audience closer to home — yet another cynical ploy with which to distract Russia’s own citizens from their economic woes by directing their anger into the proven channel of anti-Americanism?

No doubt it is both. But that only deepens its significance, since the consequences of falsifying reality in order to manipulate fears are difficult to control. Too often in history, incendiary rhetoric has fed into dangerous policies and catastrophic miscalculations. by both its perpetrators and its recipients.

Russia’s militarisation and President Putin’s nuclear chest-thumping did not start yesterday. Since 2012, Russia has been rapidly modernizing its military, and by 2015 had increased its military budget by 40%. Its level of announced military spending last year stood at 4.5% of Russia’s gross domestic product, and most independent experts estimate that the real number is 5.3%. By contrast, China’s military spending stands at 2.1% of G.D.P., and the United States’, while still the largest in real dollars, is at 3.5%.

Still, Russia’s military budget remains a priority despite a backbreaking national deficit. Last week, the government announced a $12.7 billion increase in the so-called black budget usually assigned for security and military matters. The money came from a special fund that the government had created by delinking pensions from inflation rates. Spending also had been cut for social services, health care expenses and education.

In recent years, Russia has frequently sprung surprise military exercises along its borders with its western neighbors. After its invasion of Ukraine, news of NATO fighters’ intercepting Russian bombers flying perilously close to other European airspace has become routine. Recently the Kremlin moved a modified S-300 antimissile and antiaircraft system into Syria, deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region on the Baltic Sea, withdrew from a treaty on the disposal of plutonium, and effectively abrogated a treaty limiting land-based missiles.

The Kremlin’s modus operandi is simple: spread fear and uncertainty through provocative military moves and unrelenting propaganda at home and abroad. Most experts agree that the most dangerous part of this approach has been Putin’s unprovoked escalations. Indeed, he behaves like a child in a sandbox who makes mischief repeatedly until he gets the attention of the adults. Similarly, the more the West ignores his provocations, the more he escalates.

Putin often evokes his tough childhood to explain his philosophy of life. “Hit them first and hit them hard” was the lesson, and his adult career in the K.G.B. didn’t change that. But this worldview follows the time-honored expansionist ambitions of Russian autocracy under czars and Communist leaders alike. For centuries, the Russian Empire advanced at the expense of its weaker neighbors until it met determined resistance or faced a war it could not win. The West must now send Moscow an unambiguous message that the price for future misadventures like the ones in Ukraine and Syria would be unacceptably high. And someone should remind Putin that one reason the Soviet Union collapsed was an arms race that it couldn’t afford. — Michael Khodarkovsky, a professor of history at Loyola University, is at work on a history of the Russian Empire.

— The New York Times

Since 2012, Russia has been rapidly modernising its military, and by 2015 had increased its military budget by 40%

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