50 years ago, US President Richard Nixon and his mastermind diplomat Henry Kissinger visited China to meet Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai. In making peace with a belligerent country of more than two decades, the Nixon-Kissinger duo not only turned the tide of the Cold War by outflanking Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, but also set the foundation for the greatest economic miracle in history - lifting over 800 million Chinese out of abject poverty. It was a triumph of diplomacy in testing times.
Today we see the disquieting failure of diplomacy. That may be an understatement, for war has broken out in Eastern Europe, as on 24th February, Russia began what is effectively an invasion of its neighbour Ukraine. No one could ignore the news at this point, as it dominates the headlines even more pervasively than when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out two years ago.
Initially, as the crisis was enveloping, I struggled to make sense of the extremely complex situation and felt it unnecessary to opine. However, as the crisis showed no signs of de-escalation, and as my own country Singapore has decided to slap sanctions on Moscow, I could no longer sit in the veil of ignorance. I am no expert on geopolitics and global affairs, just an observer making a relatively educated opinion. But if you already read to this point, hear me out. I did my due reading and research.
PUTIN’S FOLLY
There is little to zero doubt which party is directly culpable for the ongoing war. Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, started the war by rolling tanks into Ukraine and very clearly made the first move. This destructive course of action has directly led to bloodshed, fear, and all the other evils of war on an innocent population. In just the first four days of war, half a million refugees have already fled Ukraine, in what is becoming a calamitous humanitarian crisis.
The character presented by President Putin is one that we have known for a very long time. He came to power in 1999, before I was even born. Over the past 22 years, he has proved himself to be a formidable statesman on the world stage, widely considered to be one of the most intelligent of world leaders. Comments from him were particularly astute, while decisions reflected depth in strategic thinking. However, the invasion of Ukraine he unleashed, has dismayed me and many around the world for sure.
Even from the Russian perspective, this war - the most aggressive since the invasion of Afghanistan - will prove to be a massive mistake and lead to an erosion of Russia’s position in the world. Russia may win all the battles, and be able to restore its sphere of influence as per pre-2014, but it seems likely to lose the greater war. First, the sanctions imposed by countries the world over will isolate Russia from the international community, making the country ever more dependent on China for diplomatic and economic support. Russia was a peer to China just a decade ago, but it increasingly risks being reduced to a subservient junior partner. It is never good to surrender your fate to the pleasure of any other nation. Not even if you think they are your best friend - just ask the British how the Americans treated them after World War II. Second, there has been a global backlash against Russia as a result of this rash act of aggression, not least due to social media. This can be seen in the protests that have erupted in cities all over the world, from Bangkok to Berlin, where ordinary citizens of disparate countries wave the yellow-blue Ukrainian flag to express solidarity with Ukraine. Russia has all but lost the moral high ground, and has lost friends, as European politicians who were erstwhile friendly to Russia had to pull back their support. Even Hungary’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a critic of the West, had to condemn the invasion. There is no outright support and rightly so - Russia’s most important strategic partner China has so far only adopted a position of “pro-Russia neutrality”.
This war is unwise beyond any calculation. But I doubt any of the Kremlin’s yes-men had warned Putin and Lavrov out of this imperial delirium.
THE WEST: ABJECT FAILURE IN DIPLOMACY
Let us not be mealy-mouthed about this. While the Kremlin is responsible for the ongoing invasion and war, the West and in particular the United States is arguably even more culpable in the buildup and escalation of this crisis, not only in the past months, but extending to the past years.
Guided by Wilsonian idealism, the US has, since the end of the First Cold War, embarked on a quest to spread the wings of the Pax Americana beyonds its limits. In the Middle East, this was most manifested in the 2003 Iraq War (which only facilitated the growth of Iranian power). In East Asia, the rise of China has brought the two superpowers on a collision course. What about Europe? What has been America’s (and by extension the West’s) playbook for the past two to three decades?
They have attempted to expel Russia from Europe. This botched strategy was made implicit in the desire to incorporate every country east of the Iron Curtain into NATO and the EU - save Russia itself. Did anyone realise how little sense that made? Russia is the largest country in Europe and that is an immutable fact. As French President Emmanuel Macron has aptly pointed out, Russia is part of Europe and is simply too big, too powerful, and too invested in its immediate neighbourhood to be excluded from the European security order.
In 1991, US President George H.W. Bush led his country at the peak of its power. Though not averse to foreign adventurism, he did not seek to take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to amplify American power. Instead, when the Berlin Wall fell, he refused to strike a triumphalist tone, and just a month before the USSR’s dissolution, he even delivered a speech in Kiev to dissuade Ukrainians from seeking independence from Moscow. Bush also agreed with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, not to expand NATO east of Germany. All this ensured that America was seen as a responsible actor in the international order, rather than seeking to augment its own hegemony. But starting from Bush’s successor Bill Clinton, NATO started to expand eastwards, admitting most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. As NATO expanded, so did the EU. (The latter created problems of its own)
Today’s Western leaders are a total contrast to the pragmatism and diplomatic skill of the late George Bush. Which brings us fast forward to where Ukraine is today. Today’s Western diplomats - whether American, German or British - fail to live up to the name of their profession. Led by President Joe Biden, they have been banging the drums of war throughout the buildup of this crisis. While publicly stating their desire for “diplomacy”, their tone and rhetoric revealed their non-negotiation and anti-compromise tendencies. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, in her meeting with Sergey Lavrov, instead of trying to mend tensions to reach a solution, saw it as a confrontational session to challenge Lavrov on a wide range of issues. Her British counterpart Liz Truss was even slammed by Lavrov when he likened his dialogue with her to “a mute talking a deaf person”.
Most egregious is their behaviour not towards Russia, but to Ukraine. In America’s open provocations against Russia (It is a remarkable achievement of Obama and Biden to undo Nixon’s 1972 triumph, as Moscow is pulled ever closer to Beijing), Ukraine paid the price. Telling Ukraine that it can join NATO, then not yet, then maybe, and whatnot. The simple fact of the matter is this: No major Western power is or ever was willing to send troops to defend Ukraine militarily should anything happen. By this very definition, based on NATO’s own Article 5, Ukraine cannot join NATO. By providing Ukraine false hopes of NATO membership, provoking Moscow, leaving Ukraine in peril, and now slapping sanctions on Russia, while suggesting itself as the primary energy supplier to Europe, American foreign policy has completely lost its elan. The United States will remain the world’s superpower, and for the good of the world, its foreign policy should regain a tinge of realism, and understand its limits. For example, in 1956 and 1968 respectively Warsaw Pact forces were used against innocent civilians on the streets of Budapest and Prague, but the Americans knew there was nothing they could do about it. This did not bespeak moral indifference, but rather pragmatism - much needed in the 21st century.
IMPERIUM: WHAT DOES RUSSIA WANT?
President Vladimir Putin is a very difficult man to decipher. What is his endgame? What does Russia want? After all, how can the world negotiate and compromise with Russia while not knowing what it wants? Some say he is a modern Hitler. Some say he wants to annex all the ex-Soviet states. Some say he wants to halt NATO expansion. Some say he seeks to destabilise Western liberal democracy. And others even say he is trying to resurrect Christendom.
I would not know for sure, for if I did I would be in a much different place. But my educated guess is that Putin seeks to alter the post-Cold War security order and put Russia in a central position in a new world order. The closest analogy I could offer is that of the position of Russia during the period from 1815 to 1855, between the defeat of Napoleon to the Crimean War. This was a period known as the “Concert of Europe”. It may be an antiquated view of the world, and Putin is indeed a dyed-in-the-wool conservative on many matters. But it explains the displeasure that Putin feels when lectured by Obama about liberal democracy, when he would much prefer foreign ministers to speak to him and Lavrov like how Metternich or Talleyrand did.
While admittedly anachronistic, an order of this sort has its merits. During its day, it was a guarantor of stability and peace, albeit in defence of ultra-conservatism. What would a modernised “Concert of Europe” look like? Hear me out. As impossible as it may sound and it surely is in the context of 2022, Russia should join NATO and NATO would be enshrined with a new purpose. NATO would serve not as the military arm of the increasingly unmaintainable American Empire, but rather as the military arm of the OSCE. A NATO that includes Russia would be a guarantor of world order, and there is a far greater chance of global cooperation (including China) as opposed to the status quo or the dissolution of NATO. This organisation will, instead of engaging in old squabbles, confront the challenges where I am sure Russia, the West and China have a shared interest in addressing - from preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for jihadism to ensuring the stability of the Arctic.
Another of Russia’s end goals is, of course, to bring Ukraine back under not just the Russian sphere of influence, but a common cultural and spiritual space. (All The Russias, the title of the Romanov tsars, referred to Great Russia, Little Russia and White Russia) This has been reflected in Putin’s many speeches, and it is completely understandable. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the 1709 Battle of Poltava, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based in Sevastopol, Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia. Indeed, the two peoples are so culturally tied that the Presidents of the two warring states - Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy - share the same name, that of Vladimir the Great, Prince of the Rus.
Yet Putin’s actions are achieving the very opposite. How can he claim moral rectitude when he is attacking the very people he considers his own? In justifying his campaign in Ukraine, Putin repeatedly stresses their shared history as one nation from the 9th century. The annals of history are on his side on this one (though not condoning the use of military force) but the woeful reality on the ground is one of fratricidal enmity. Putin may not be wrong when he says the West tries to drive a wedge between the Slavic brothers, but his actions have only poured fuel to the fire. In fact, the current war could very well be the baptism of fire to the Ukrainian nation, by entrenching the Ukrainian national identity in opposition to Russia. (Similar to how the War of 1812 cemented Canadian identity in opposition to the United States) As Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote in The Guardian, nations are built upon stories, and in this war the strength of the story matters more than that of the tanks in the long term. The damage has been done and will take a long time to heal.
UKRAINE: LESSONS FOR THE WORLD
The Ukrainian experience offers several lessons for the whole world. Ukraine was a victim of great power rivalry, internal divisions and poor policymaking. The most poignant lesson of all is that of defending a nation’s sovereignty. Whether one believed Ukraine belonged to the Russian cultural sphere or not, the Kremlin’s actions were a grotesque violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and international law. So, how can small states (i.e. weaker nations as opposed to great powers, Ukraine is larger than Germany in area) secure their sovereignty? This crisis has proved again that any country that becomes a geopolitical pawn in a great power rivalry will only suffer the consequences of that, and I’m sure many countries resonate with this experience. And even as I berate poor diplomacy from both the West and Russia, the Zelenskyy government has also acted irresponsibly in the buildup and escalation. They should have known that Ukraine, with its time-honoured cultural ties to Russia, could not have possibly severed ties with Russia in the manner the Western liberals would have desired, it was completely unacceptable to Russia. Instead, they were deceived by the West and entrusted NATO with protecting its sovereignty. If Ukraine knew unambiguously from the start that NATO would not back them militarily, they would surely have tread more carefully in its relations with its more powerful neighbour. (Even in the midst of war, Ukraine decided to apply for EU membership!)
A strong nation-state must also have a strong national identity, to ensure that the forces of history and internal division cannot be used against the integrity of the state. Ukraine did not have this. It is a relatively young country, only independent for 30 years, and it did not manage to build a truly cohesive national identity that united all the different ethnic groups under the yellow-blue flag. Instead, the different groups aligned to different external forces vied for dominance at the expense of the others. Foreign powers were able to exploit these divisions, engulfing the country in civil war and reducing Ukraine to a chess piece in power politics. This hits hard back home, as my own country Singapore is also relatively young, at only 56 years since independence. A nation’s youth should not be used as a justification for foreign intervention, and we have our safeguards against that by building a strong national identity that is inclusive, not exclusionary.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
War is a horrible thing and it reveals the worst of human nature. The images are sickening and the moral repugnance of this ongoing war is deservedly condemned. The violence must end as soon as possible. The sword of Damocles hangs over the world and my heart goes out not only to the innocent civilians of Ukraine, who are sandwiched between a Russia that shares their cultural heritage but seeks physical domination through violent brute force, and a West which promises a Barmecide’s feast of “freedom” and despises Ukraine’s cultural heritage.
I also feel a tinge of sadness for the European continent, which is wedged between the behemoths of Moscow and Washington (and increasingly Beijing). The continent which was the seat of the great powers of old (Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, and yes, Russia) and home to the richest and most exquisite culture has been reduced to a playground for great power rivalry. Europe needs to entangle itself from this to properly confront the challenges of the 21st century. A first step for the European states is to reduce their reliance on the United States for security and secure energy independence from Russia by investing in nuclear power and ditching natural gas. The German Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, who was forced to resign after exasperated outpours made in Delhi on 21 January, exemplified the deep, legitimate, institutional, pan-European anxiety, on America’s competence to lead the West in the right direction, while keeping Europe’s interests at the fore. He may much like to see his country become more like its old nemesis France: independent in foreign policy and defence from the US, and not reliant on Russia for gas due to its own nuclear capabilities, giving itself a lot more room to manoeuvre in global affairs.
But as much as the news of this conflict may inundate your feed, let us not be blindsided by this. Let us not ignore all the other problems in the world which require humanity’s attention. Let us not forget climate change, the truly existential crisis that was brought to the fore at COP26 last year, though the very important findings of the latest IPCC report have failed to make headlines due to the Ukrainian crisis. Or global poverty. Or the abysmal vaccination rates in Africa. While not playing it down, we should also examine why the media gives it so much attention, justified or not. Because President Putin is a perfect enemy for a villainous caricature. Because of the inherently sensationalism of war and what that means for the media. Because the victims are white. And no, this is not a joke - in the words of Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed”. Just let that sink in a bit.
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