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President Joe Biden attracted attention earlier this year in Warsaw, Poland, when he stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power." There has been consensus across the West to oppose Russian aggression, but this statement provoked concern from surprised allies. Administration officials were quick to point out that the president was not calling for regime change. The reality is that Biden expressed what many policy makers were secretly thinking. Namely, that Putin needs to go. While this view expresses optimism that Russian leadership change would produce a less militant Moscow that is more open to the West, it is a problematic assumption that ignores history and Russia's domestic political reality.
Russia is a challenging state to govern. Its leaders have relied on a top-down leadership structure that originated under the Tsars, was recapitulated in the Soviet era, and is present today. When new leaders emerge, they need to work endlessly to consolidate their control over the state and society. Even regional specialists sometimes fail to perceive the grueling circumstances awaiting new Russian leaders who will need to employ violence strategically to maintain their rule. In the past, many people looked forward to better East-West relations when Leonid Brezhnev replaced Nikita Khrushchev following the Cuban missile crisis. This hope failed as the Soviet Union moved away from the West by adopting a more conservative and defensive orientation. Even Mikhail Gorbachev faced a serious internal fight when he gained the premiership and needed to solidify his leadership. He sought to re-forge Moscow's claim to international supremacy by rebuilding and reviving the economy—this created an opportunity for a special relationship with Ronald Reagan that led to several arm's reduction treaties and enhanced cooperation.
The Russian Federation presented similar difficulties to new leaders who were forced to use force to consolidate their position. Boris Yeltsin, for example, used violence internally to preserve his rule. Similarly, when Putin came to power, violence against the Chechens was a means for him to firm his control and consolidate his authority. Both leaders engaged in military activity against Chechnya and also targeted opponents in Russia's major cities. Anyone who succeeds Putin will have to face strong, entrenched rivals and their survivability will depend on being able to overcome this challenge. A successor would not be able to consolidate power without resorting to violence.
Russia is undergoing a demographic transition where its Slavic population is declining while its central Asian and Indigenous population is growing. Putin's replacement will face more internal opposition and will be forced to employ force to maintain rule. When Putin exits, Chechnya will again rebel and try to gain its independence. Given the growth in Muslim populations in Russia's Central Asian regions, it is likely that additional areas will also rise up and attempt to break away. The tension between Slavs and Central Asians will be so great that it is possible that a civil war may emerge—one where both parties have nuclear weapons. This nightmare scenario is a real possibility and is something that the world needs to consider.
Since his position would be predicated on using violence, the successor would immediately face Western opposition for his behavior. The circumstances will require the new leader to broadly use force and this will make it very difficult to build more constructive relations with the West.
Many Americans see Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, as a possible replacement for Putin. While Lavrov is well-liked in the West, his diplomatic background does not fit the profile of a Russian leader. A more likely scenario is that the successor will come from the intelligence community and will have ties to the actors most-opposed to Russia's re-integration into the West. It is unlikely that Putin's eventual replacement will embrace the West and be more open to compromise. The more likely possibility is that a new leader will actively oppose Washington and NATO to satisfy his base and to rally the Russian public.
Words have consequences. Jack Matlock, Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union, noted that if Gorbachev was publicly belittled as Putin has been, this would have prevented the transition that saw communism fall and the Soviet Union would still be present today. What made Reagan great was that although he detested communism, he always respected Soviet leaders and never belittled them publicly or minimized their power.
Biden's Warsaw statement further complicates life for Putin's eventual successor, who will need to prove that he is not an American pawn. The difficulties for a leader to embrace the West were already numerous before Biden's statement. The unintended consequence of the president's comment is that it increases the internal pressure on a future Russian leader to oppose the West. Biden speech did not serve to improve future collaboration and may have accomplished the opposite of what he intended.
The call to remove Putin may correspond to the desires of many in the Western security establishment, but it ignores the difficulty awaiting the world as his successor needs to consolidate leadership. The challenges arising from a civil war in Russia would be greater and more problematic than the war in Ukraine.
G. Doug Davis is associate professor of political science and the director of the master's in international relations program at Troy University. He is the author of two books on Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Michael O. Slobodchikoff is the founding director of the Center for Eastern and Central European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Troy University. He is also professor and chair of the political science department. He has written several books on Russian relations with the former Soviet Union.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
