Endgame Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has incurred the reputation of an international monster and outlaw since he launched his country’s invasion against neighbouring Ukraine penultimate Thursday, almost renascent of how the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 to trigger the Persian Gulf War. But there will be no global war – the touted World War III – resulting from this invasion. Much as the Russian aggression has been trailed by moralist babble and fury, it is playing out within international realpolitik and will be sorted out ultimately within that context. At the end, all parties will be losers and there will be no winners. But the realpolitik will hold up, take my word.

By his invasion of Ukraine, Putin returned for an encore of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from the same country in 2014: another motif in the wider Russo-Ukrainian War that has dragged on through geopolitical history. Only that he will stop short of annexing or occupying Ukraine, even if he gets the upper hand in the present encounter. He can’t afford to because the aftermath will be too unwieldly for Russia to manage. Actually, he will neither annex the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk that he recognised just before launching the invasion of Ukraine, like he did with Crimea. Oh, Putin doesn’t reason commonsensically, you might say. Truth, however, is: he is a master of deft commonsensical manoeuvres. Ukraine and her Western allies misjudged that factor to get to where we are now, they underestimated how bullish Putin could get to press a point. But he also has his limits. So, what is the realpolitik governing the present conflict?

• Russia

Many suspected and have accused the Russian strongman of expansionist ambition; but expansionism isn’t the core motivation of the present aggression, protectionism is. Against the backdrop of the Minsk agreements having failed to restore peace in eastern Ukraine, Putin’s instigation for the present aggression is Ukraine’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a body created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the defunct Soviet Union. Ukraine is located within the sphere of the former Soviet bloc and is a frontline adversary of Russia, which is the current torchbearer of that bloc. That is so, maybe for just reasons. Ukraine is a sovereign nation and should be at liberty to choose her friends. Besides, with Russia being the sponsor and abettor of the Donbass separatists against the authority of Kyiv, Ukraine apparently wanted a strong, deliberately confrontational counterpoint against Russia. But ‘sphere of influence’ is a legitimate principle of international relations in this bi-polar world, and it stands to reason that Moscow would not stand a NATO base on its front porch – not when the Warsaw Pact that was sealed in 1955 as the Soviet bloc’s own defence treaty disintegrated in 1991 to herald the collapse of the Soviet Union, whereas the NATO Treaty subsists. 

The expansionism of NATO has needled Russia over the years, and its move towards Ukraine must have been the last straw. For instance, former East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact and Russia sought a guarantee that the territory would somehow be spared by NATO following the collapse of the Iron Curtain and integration of the East and West Germanies in 1990. But, of course, today’s Republic of Germany of which former East Germany is a composite part is a strong member of NATO, and that to apparent chagrin of Russia. In one of his media encounters ahead of the Ukraine invasion, Putin alluded to this as an irritating affront by NATO. Give the fella a break: NATO coming to his doorsteps through Ukraine’s membership is like taking the affront from his eyeview to his nose tip! And he warned against it. Indications that Ukraine wasn’t backing down was the major trigger of the present conflict.

“At the end, all parties will be losers and there will be no winners. But the realpolitik will hold up.”

Is the assault on Ukraine justified to make that point? No! Putin is unmitigatedly a fascistic aggressor. His objective apparently is to stop Ukraine’s NATO bid either by the extreme option of effecting a regime change in Kyiv (which was implied in his instigation of Ukrainian forces to take back their country at the onset of the current invasion), or at least compel a change of heart by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Once either of these objectives is achieved, he would be done and wouldn’t dare take over Ukraine. He’s smart enough to know the average Ukrainian hates Russia and it would be unwieldy to manage a deeply resentful population as an occupation overlord. But even after Putin gets his way, he’ll emerge from this conflict a loser. Since the invasion began, Ukrainian forces have managed to slow the advance of Russian troops on Kyiv and exposed them to be less indomitable than was widely presumed. As at last weekend, the Ukrainian resistance was pushing Russian troops to the verge of desperation, such that they were reported taking aim at Ukraine’s nuclear facilities. That image of vulnerability isn’t what a country desiring to be regarded as a world power would be happy to live with.

• Ukraine

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy is one rookie in international geopolitics. He was insensitive to the ‘sphere of influence’ principle and also overstacked expectations of benefits from picking friends in the West, which are now not coming through. But reality is dawning only in the thick of a conflict that is taking a huge toll on the Ukrainian citizenry: as it were, it is the Ukrainian population that is embattled, not the Russian population. Zelenskyy apparently expected that Western allies would put boots on the ground in Ukraine if Russia invaded. Now, he knows better that Ukrainians will have to fight their own battle. The Western allies have refrained from promising military action; even the military assistance – financial aid, weapons et al. – that they promised has been slow in coming. Western allies will not put boots on the ground in Ukraine because the leaders can’t explain to their respective citizenry why they should pitch their compatriots in harm’s way on the doorsteps of Russia.

At the end, Ukraine will not join NATO and her losses from this conflict will be sheer waste. Actually, Ukraine will not be easily admitted into the European Union (EU) if she ever is. On the heels of Russia’s invasion, Zelenskyy called on the EU to waive all protocols and immediately admit Ukraine, but wasn’t obliged. His request that NATO impose a no-fly zone on Ukraine was also rebuffed. Ukraine is inevitably a neighbour to Russia and will have to learn to live with Russia.

• United States and the Western Allies

The United States and other Western powers have racked up all sanctions they fancied against Russia, but those have not had the effect of hamstringing Putin from Ukraine’s invasion. Following the outbreak of hostilities penultimate Thursday, China mocked that sanctions were ineffective against Putin. Unlike the solitary ranging by former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden of the US has succeeded in coalescing and arrow-heading an alliance against Russia, but the response to Ukraine’s invasion has been measured because these powers are never going to hazard frontal confrontation with Russia. Biden last week celebrated the United Nations General Assembly resolution against the Russian aggression as an indication of global consensus; but that was after efforts to make the UN Security Council, whose resolutions have the force of action, take a common position fell through on account of disalignment by China, a veto power. Russia herself is a veto power in the Security Council.

Besides the hard sell to their respective population, America and the other Western powers will not go into direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine because they recognise the hypocrisy of doing so, since they implicitly subscribe to the ‘sphere of influence’ principle. The US upholds the Monroe Doctrine till date and has over the years resisted Communist flirtations by Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Haiti, among others. American policy towards Latin America at the turn of the century explicitly justified unilateral intervention, military occupation and transformation of sovereign states into political and economic protectorates, just so to defend U.S. economic interests and an expanding concept of national security. The United Kingdom went to war with Argentina in 1982 over British dependent Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Pray: how different from all these is Russia’s current disposition on Ukraine?

Eventually, the Western powers will lose as well from this conflict because Putin will ultimately have his way over Ukraine’s NATO bid, and the present fudging shows them up as treacherous allies in the heat of battle.