Features
The Ukraine tangle and the lessons of modern European history
The world is on tenterhooks as Russian military activity intensifies on the Ukraine-Belarus border. The worrisome question is whether the path is being paved for a Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Western reactions to the massing of some 100,000 Russian troops a stone’s throw away from the Ukraine as ‘hysterical’ but the lessons of World War 2 are unlikely to have faded fast in the collective memory of the West, when German dictator Adolf Hitler’s expansionist ambitions cost the world very dearly. Besides, unless simple-minded, Western political leaders are unlikely to have come to terms easily with the underlying policy of appeasement, among some sections of the world, that seemed to greet the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimea in 2014.
US President Joe Biden too is on record as calling for a diplomatic solution but he has been unambiguous on the point that a Russian invasion would be ‘a giant mistake’. However, Biden has hitherto spoken only of firm economic reprisals against Russia but not of reactions of a military kind.
The question that arises is, what kind of construct the Russian political leadership would place on Western responses of this nature. Would they be construed as suggestive of a policy of appeasement on the part of the US President? Would the Western leadership be seen as weak in the face of its military moves by Russia?
These are prime issues the West would need to grapple with. And as they grapple with these questions, it would be relevant to point out that peace in Europe would depend on how well and insightfully Western political leaders think through these issues. If they are realistic, they would recall to mind that a policy of appeasement on the part of the West in the late thirties of the century past, emboldened the Hitlerian regime in Germany to invade and acquire territories from countries of the West which the regime thought belonged to them.
The relevance of raising these issues could be gauged from the fact President Putin sees the Ukraine and the Crimea as inseparable parts of Russia, regardless of their formal status today in International Law. Accordingly, the West would need to be mindful of the message it sends to the Russian political leadership. A weak-kneed approach by the West is likely to encourage Russian military adventurism.
May be, President Putin is intent on impressing on the West that his issues regarding the Ukraine need to be addressed by them urgently. If that is so, the West needs to intensify its diplomacy with Russia, firstly, with a view to heading off a military confrontation between the sides in the Ukraine and secondly, finding a comprehensive political solution to the issues at hand.
Both sides would need to be guided by the sobering thought that a military confrontation would result in a huge humanitarian catastrophe which would be too hard to be borne by them. In all probability, both sides would emerge bad losers from the adoption of a militaristic approach to the crisis. The urgent need for the international community at present is to help head off a military conflict and help save lives.
It is habitual for the world to turn to the UN for constructive intervention to defuse crises of this kind. But to what extent would the UN prove helpful in these circumstances? The UN General Assembly is bound to take up the position that a diplomatic solution should be given a chance but it is the UN Security Council (UNSC) that finally decides on questions of war and peace.
A consensual decision by the UNSC to resolve the Ukraine tangle by peaceful means would be hugely helpful but what are the chances of the key members of the UNSC arriving at a political solution on which there would be reasonable accord among their total membership? This question is of prime importance in view of the fact that the US and Russia, major parties to the Ukraine conflict, are foremost members of the UNSC.
The challenge for the UNSC would be for its Permanent Members to reach agreement on the major terms of a political settlement for the Ukraine. However, right now Russia and the West are far apart on some of the gut issues in the crisis. For example, a Russian demand is that the Ukraine should not be granted NATO membership. The West finds this an impossible demand considering that Ukraine enjoys the sovereign right, as an independent state, to join any international organization of her choice. Likewise, Russia demands that NATO not only stops her expansion in Eastern Europe but removes its military presence from its member states in the region. These are demands that are anathema in the ears of the West. The US has dismissed these demands out of hand as impossible to even consider.
Given that Russia and the West differ almost irreconcilably on most of the above core issues, observers cannot be faulted for taking the view that there is no peaceful solution to the Ukraine tangle at present. On the other hand, the international political cleavages growing out of the crisis are widening steadily. For example, against the backdrop of the crisis, Russia and China are growing increasingly closer on a range of questions. Discussions between President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing recently, for instance, bore this out. Among other things, there was agreement among them to uphold ‘global strategic security and stability’.
Thus, in some respects, we seem to back in Cold War times, except that there was constructive dialogue to some extent between the US and the USSR then on issues relating to the arms race, for instance, which helped contain East-West tensions. The hope of peace-builders the world over is likely to be that focused and earnest talks between the antagonists would bear some fruit in the Ukraine context as well.