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  • Economic Relevance of Quad as a Regional Strategic Forum

    Economic Relevance of Quad as a Regional Strategic Forum

    The QUAD, a grouping of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, began as a “Tsunami Core Group,” an impromptu group formed in response to the devastating Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. This core group brought together the four nations to swiftly mobilise and coordinate multilateral disaster relief and humanitarian assistance operations. The first meeting of the initial QUAD took place in May 2007 during the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Manila. The meeting was characterised as an “informal grouping” that discussed themes of mutual interest to the dialogue participants (Buchan & Rimland, 2020). The group was established to deal with the immediate challenges posed by the tsunami and was never intended to become permanent. However, early cooperative efforts sparked a debate about QUAD’s overarching goal. When Australia withdrew from the QUAD in 2008, it ceased to exist. It was revived in 2017 against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive Chinese posture, and the emergence of the idea of the Indo-Pacific as a single maritime zone.

    The first QUAD meeting, after its revival, happened on 12 November 2017, when the four ‘like-minded’ partners discussed seven key issues: the rules-based order in Asia; freedom of navigation and overflight in the maritime commons; respect for international law; enhancing connectivity; maritime security; the North Korean threat and non-proliferation; and terrorism (Jain, 2022). The QUAD aims to bring diverse perspectives together in a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, and it strives for a region that is free, open, inclusive, healthy, and anchored in democratic values.

    Economic Potential

    There are numerous reasons to increase economic engagement within the QUAD nations—the four countries, with a combined population of over 1.8 billion people, represent a quarter of the world’s population and over $30 trillion in GDP. In 2018, trade between the four countries totalled more than $440 billion, with nearly $6 trillion in trade with the rest of the world. QUAD intends to use both public and private resources to construct high-quality infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the MEA’s website, since 2015, QUAD partners have invested more than $48 billion in regional infrastructure development. The commitment of the QUAD to regional infrastructure development can be strengthened by integrating India into the existing ‘Australia-Japan-US Trilateral Infrastructure Partnership’ and by broadening their reach into the Indo-Pacific region (“Fact Sheet: QUAD Leaders’ Summit,” n.d.). Except for India and the United States, the remaining two countries are also Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) members. This shows that, notwithstanding territorial and security differences, trade and commerce are still the primary focus (“Economic Dimension Key to QUAD Success”, 2021). Further, the Covid-19 pandemic has harmed the global economy, including the QUAD nations, in areas ranging from employment to investment. Thus, by bolstering their economic ties for greater freedom and cooperation, the group will facilitate a faster recovery from the pandemic’s effects.

    The Indian Ocean, not the Indo-Pacific, is central to India’s vision. In the short term, India’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific framework will be primarily diplomatic and economic and will be constrained by the Indian Ocean’s strategic primacy and constraints on its sea-power projection

    QUAD and the Indian Economy

    India’s strong economic ties with the QUAD economies are reflected in its bilateral trade volume with each member. During 2019-2020, these three economies accounted for 15% of India’s total trade. The United States contributes the most with 11%, followed by Japan and Australia, with 2.15 and 1.6 per cent, respectively. Further, India already has a free-trade agreement with Japan, which was implemented in 2011, and negotiations with Australia and the United States are ongoing. India can now use this critical multilateral forum to help facilitate trade negotiations and increase economic activity with member economies (“Economic Dimension Key to QUAD Success” 2021).

    According to Lunev and Shavlay (2018), the emergence of China, the expansion of India’s economic and strategic clout, and, most importantly, the growing importance of the Indian Ocean as a strategic trade route carrying nearly two-thirds of global oil shipments and a third of bulk cargo, have entailed a shift in the security architecture from the Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific. These factors have contributed to the rise of regional stakeholders advocating for a free and open Indo-Pacific, resulting in the re-establishment of the QUAD. However, India’s maritime interests and strategies are at odds with those of the other QUAD members. The Indian Ocean, not the Indo-Pacific, is central to India’s vision. In the short term, India’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific framework will be primarily diplomatic and economic and will be constrained by the Indian Ocean’s strategic primacy and constraints on its sea-power projection.

    The South and East China Seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean are of particular concern to the United States and Japan. Unless and until these disagreements are resolved, QUAD’s effectiveness as an entity will be called into question

    Tokyo Summit 

    The Tokyo Summit is the QUAD Leaders’ fourth interaction since their first virtual meeting in March 2021, in-person Summit in Washington DC in September 2021, and virtual meeting in March 2022. The Tokyo Summit took place against the backdrop of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and its repercussions. The joint statement issued following the QUAD summit in Tokyo on May 24, 2022, is more comprehensive than the first three summits. It has attempted to clarify the broad framework for cooperation by outlining eight specific areas. These include Peace and Stability; Covid-19 and Global Health Security; Infrastructure; Climate; Cybersecurity; Critical and Emerging Technologies; QUAD Fellowship; Space; and Maritime Domain Awareness and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) (Luthra, n.d.). A comprehensive QUAD joint statement and the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) are key developments of the Tokyo summit. QUAD leaders also announced a maritime initiative to combat illegal fishing at the Tokyo summit, and a pledge to invest $50 billion in infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific to combat China’s growing power (“QUAD Joint Leaders’ Statement”, 2022).

    The QUAD has long been criticised for lacking a common purpose or a substantive agenda. Furthermore, none of the objectives cited as reasons for bringing the four states together are unique to the QUAD. Other actors and institutions in the region already exist for these purposes.  Thus, there is a need for QUAD partners to better articulate their distinct rationale for cooperation and collaborative efforts.

    India is a key player due to its naval power and strategic location, and should thus be an active participant. However, there are differences in areas of interest among the QUAD nations, complicating its effectiveness. The South and East China Seas, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean are of particular concern to the United States and Japan. Unless and until these disagreements are resolved, QUAD’s effectiveness as an entity will be called into question. While India is frequently portrayed as the holdout — and has recently been the most vocal — objections have come from other countries as well. The potential impact on Sino-Australian relations continues to make some in Australia nervous. Beijing’s reaction has factored into American caution as well, as has the preference for a trilateral format (Madan, 2017).  

    India requires investment, attractive financing for infrastructure, technology, and access to key raw materials, particularly rare earth elements, among the QUAD nations. QUAD’s other members are looking for market access and dependable investment destinations. Broadening QUAD’s current strategic focus to strengthen economic ties under the partnership’s auspices would be a win-win situation for all countries involved in such a scenario.

    Bibliography

    Buchan, P., & Rimland, B. (2020). Defining the diamond: The past, present, and future of the quadrilateral security dialogue. Defining the Diamond: The Past, Present, and Future of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue | Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved July 22, 2022, from https://www.csis.org/analysis/defining-diamond-past-present-and-future-quadrilateral-security-dialogue 

    “Economic Dimension Key to Quad Success.” 2021. The Statesman. February 23, 2021. https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/economic-dimension-key-quad-success-1502953752.html.

    “Fact Sheet: Quad Leaders’ Summit.” n.d. Www.mea.gov.in. https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/34319/Fact+Sheet+Quad+Leaders+Summit.

    JAIN, Purnendra. 2022. “India’s Changing Approach to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.” East Asian Policy 14 (01): 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1142/s1793930522000046.

    Lunev, Sergey, and Ellina Shavlay. 2018. “Russia and India in the Indo-Pacific.” Asian Politics & Policy 10 (4): 713–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.12430.

    Luthra, Girish. n.d. “Forward from the Tokyo Quad Summit and IPEF.” ORF. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/forward-from-the-tokyo-quad-summit-and-ipef/.

    Madan, Tanvi. 2017. “The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the ‘Quad.’” War on the Rocks. November 16, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/rise-fall-rebirth-quad/.

    “Quad Joint Leaders’ Statement.” 2022. The White House. May 24, 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/24/quad-joint-leaders-statement/.

    Rahman, Mohammad Masudur, Chanwahn Kim, and Prabir De. 2020. “Indo-Pacific Cooperation: What Do Trade Simulations Indicate?” Journal of Economic Structures 9 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40008-020-00222-4.

    Feature Image Credits: Resilinc

  • Hegemonic Regionalism (Indo-Pacific concept): As opposed to locally based Regional Cooperation (ASEAN and Bay of Bengal)

    Hegemonic Regionalism (Indo-Pacific concept): As opposed to locally based Regional Cooperation (ASEAN and Bay of Bengal)

    The late embracing of the Indo-Pacific concept by the United States further supports the position that it is being employed as a strategic instrument to counter a rising power and a potential challenger to its global quasi-hegemonic power position.

    Based on a consideration of capabilities, the United States is currently the only country that can be described as a potential global hegemon. Certainly, there are a number of other countries that have the potential, based on their capabilities, of being candidates to become regional hegemons. Notably, China is among them, but Japan, India, and Brazil are also potential candidates, though their individual capacities vary widely and one could argue, based on capacities, that China takes the lead among them. With the implication that China becomes the main target of the de facto global hegemon, the other potential contenders must be kept in sight, as well. While most recent academic and non-academic discussions about global power transfer are focusing on rising countries, on potential challengers to the existing global hegemon, China in particular, a focus on how the existing quasi-global hegemon, the United States, is reacting to challenges to its dominance, to preserve its leading position and influence, seems almost completely missing. This lack of emphasis constitutes a rather critical issue, because when we focus on global or regional power competition, what should be of interest to analysts is not only the behaviour and strategy of a rising county, i.e., a potential challenger to an existing hegemon, but also to analyse the response of the existing hegemon, as well. After all, when it comes to issues of global and regional stability, the actions of both the existing hegemon and the potential challenger must be taken into account.

    There is no doubt that an existing hegemon does not just ‘sit back’ and watch when its influence is challenged by a new contender for power. Even a declining hegemon will try to challenge a rising power contender, consequently, the potential for instability within the international system arises not only from a rising power but also from the actions of the country which possesses a quasi-hegemonic position, trying to defend its power position. In one of his earlier and most influential works, Mearsheimer (2001) points out that great powers always aim to maximise their share of power and are in constant competition with other power contenders, with the aim of maximising their own power. Therefore, the rise of a new competitor occurs in a dynamic context between the established and the rising hegemon. Ikenberry (2014) points out that, as the overwhelmingly global power once concentrated within the United States dispersed with the arrival of new power challengers in different parts of the world, new struggles over global rules and institutions are emerging. At the very least, as emphasised by Mearsheimer (2013), great powers do not trust one another, as they worry about other countries’ capabilities and intentions.

    Not without reason, Mearsheimer (2013) argues that the United States did not and does not tolerate peer competitors, adding that the United States has demonstrated this clearly during the twentieth century.

    For these reasons, we cannot expect that a hegemon will stay inactive when watching the rise of potential challengers. An established great power, holding an almost global hegemonic position as the United States does, has the capacity to respond to the challenges arising from power contenders, and there are clear indications, past and present, that it will act to preserve its dominant power position, even within an international system that has become more multilateral in comparison with the Cold War period. Not without reason, Mearsheimer (2013) argues that the United States did not and does not tolerate peer competitors, adding that the United States has demonstrated this clearly during the twentieth century. One just has to remember that in the late 1980s, when Japan was close to economically overtaking the United States. at the global level, various United States administrations actively worked against it, refusing Japan more decision-making rights within international organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, even though Japan had become a major donor to both organisations. Obviously, the previous Japanese challenge to the United States’ dominance was only economic. Neither will the United States allow other challengers to succeed in undermining its dominant position, even in distant regional settings. Mearsheimer (2001) reminds us that the dominant power will act at the regional level to ensure that no challenge to its own global position will take place, since the crucial task is to block potential peer competitors, even within distant regional settings.

    When evaluating the influence of a hegemon it is worth remembering that this goes beyond a focus on military capabilities, even though such capabilities are essential, and include the hegemon’s ability to disguise its ambitions and interests by pretending that it provides global public goods, which in reality satisfy primarily its own interests. More importantly, as pointed out by Griffiths, O’Callaghan and Roach (2002), all hegemonic states enjoy ‘structural power’, which permits the hegemon to occupy a central position within its own system, as well as shape other states’ preferences. As emphasised by Kupchan (2014), a hegemon also strives to generate a normative and ideological dominance, in support of its power dominance. Indeed, Gilpin, in his seminal influential work on war and change, emphasises that a major power aims to create social structures to serve its hegemonic interests, consequently supporting its domineering position with rules, institutions, and organisational principles, supporting, indeed screening and protecting, its power position with normative dominance (Gilpin 1981).

    one can also reasonably assume that when a hegemonic country introduces a new geopolitical or regional concept of space, such as the Indo-Pacific framework, will be of foremost importance to its own strategy of dominance. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific framework signals the re-mapping of geopolitical space, with little, if any, historical relevance.

    By considering these arguments describing the behaviour of a typical hegemonic power, it is rather consistent to assume that a country, such as the United States, which holds a nearly global like hegemonic position, will use its position and capabilities to support its own power position in different regional settings so as to ward off any potential competitor. For this reason, one can also reasonably assume that when a hegemonic country introduces a new geopolitical or regional concept of space, such as the Indo-Pacific framework, will be of foremost importance to its own strategy of dominance. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific framework signals the re-mapping of geopolitical space, with little, if any, historical relevance. From a historical perspective, the Indian and Pacific Oceans have been perceived as separate maritime spaces. What marries them into one geopolitical space is an invented geopolitical strategy facilitating the strategic power interests of the existing hegemon. What is more, a hegemon or hegemon-like state will not introduce or favour a new geopolitical concept if it goes against its own strategic interests.

    Indeed, from a United States perspective, the Indo-Pacific strategy not only re-strengthens, at least from a hegemonic perspective, its role within the older geopolitical concept of Asia-Pacific, but now extends this influence, from a conceptual perspective, to include the Indian Ocean, as well. One can further argue that the adoption of the Indo-Pacific approach by the United States comes at a time when we can observe considerable changes in the power configuration within East Asia (which encompasses Northeast and Southeast Asia) and to a lesser extent within South Asia. Certain changes in the regional power configuration, namely the rise of China – not only as an economic but increasingly as a military and especially as a maritime power – generate considerable challenges from the perspective of hegemonic power competition. While the strategic challenge that China, as a rising power, generates to the United States quasi hegemonic position is so far limited to a regional challenge, instead of a global challenge, still, based on hegemony theory, the existing hegemon cannot allow such a challenge to take place.

    The late embracing of the Indo-Pacific concept by the United States further supports the position that it is being employed as a strategic instrument to counter a rising power and a potential challenger to its global quasi-hegemonic power position. We may remember that the origin of the Indo-Pacific concept is associated with the previous Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ concept. Shinzo Abe mentioned it as early as 2007 when addressing the Indian parliament and began frequently restating it from 2016 onwards. This was part of his intention that Japan should take a more active role in East Asia and beyond. As such, the Indo-Pacific concept was born out of the political-strategic considerations of a regional actor within East Asia. Only later, around 2018, did the United States become considerably interested in the concept, at a time when the potential challenges from rising countries increased – not only from China; one may also consider India’s rise in this context. In 2018, the United States administration even changed the name of its Pacific Command to United States Indo-Pacific Command to highlight its changing geopolitical perspective and to address the increasing regional challenges it faced from a rising China. Not without reason was the replacement of the previous Asia-Pacific concept with the Indo-Pacific concept aimed at integrating India, another rising power in Asia, more firmly with the hegemonic interests of the United States. In academic terms, one could argue that this may represent a strategy of accommodation, in which an existing hegemon accommodates a rising power by offering political and strategic space for that country. It is a strategy the United States followed previously with China until China started to become a too fundamental strategic challenge to the United States hierarchic position. One may wonder if this may also happen to India, once India becomes too powerful to be contained within a United States hegemonic project. However, for the time being, India seems to feel quite comfortable within the geopolitical space it has been offered by the existing quasi-global hegemon. As revealed by Paul T.V (2016) the strategy of accommodation is not only quite a challenging undertaking – as the hegemon has to offer political status, leadership responsibilities, and even a sphere of influence to a rising country – but in the long run the implications are that this will weaken, if not undermine, the hegemon’s own position, thus indicating the limitation of such a strategy. After all, a hegemon is rather unwilling to give up its dominant position voluntarily, though a strategy of accommodation may buy some time and allow it to employ a strategy of divide-and-rule by offering support to a potential weaker power contender when addressing the challenges of a more powerful contender. There can be no less doubt that the ongoing border conflicts between India and China and the emerging regional power competition between them facilitate India’s readiness to become increasingly enveloped in a stronger relationship with the United States which, by the way, contradicts India’s previous entrenched national strategy of non-alignment in global power politics. Consequently, drafting India into its power orbit enhances the United States’ strategic influence in regions where it is not even a resident power, like East, Southeast, or South Asia.

    There can be no less doubt that the ongoing border conflicts between India and China and the emerging regional power competition between them facilitate India’s readiness to become increasingly enveloped in a stronger relationship with the United States which, by the way, contradicts India’s previous entrenched national strategy of non-alignment in global power politics.

    Therefore, a hegemonic state will try to manipulate even distant regional settings in its favour, to arrest the rise of potential challengers to its dominant position, even by facilitating the introduction of a new geopolitical concept, like the Indo-Pacific, which ignores local perceptions of regional cooperation dynamics, the Bay of Bengal approach or ASEAN. While there are some claims that the Indo-Pacific approach does not represent a challenge to ASEAN, a position that is widely disputed, the more specific issue is that the Indo-Pacific approach does not contribute or offer support to those local-based regional cooperation processes from a conceptual perspective. Therefore, while one has to recognise that more recent regional cooperation processes within the Bay of Bengal are less dynamic for the time being, it does not mean that such a regional cooperation process is altogether missing. As stated by Amrith (2013), Asian economic connections led to renewed interest in the Bay of Bengal as a focus for regional cooperation. Indeed, BIMSTEC[1] which was established in 1997, does provide focus on regional cooperation.

    BIMSTEC creates political space for economic cooperation by addressing common challenges like underdevelopment. Consequently, offering a strategic vision for national development to its member countries, a focus fundamentally different from the geopolitical outlook of the Indo-Pacific regional hegemonic project, with its focus on military and especially maritime power distribution. Another crucial difference is that, while the Indo-Pacific strategy is a rather recent invention, regional recognition of the Bay of Bengal as a particular and unique geographic location for regional cooperation, particularly as a centre for trade and cultural migration, goes back centuries, if not millennia. As such, the Bay of Bengal commands a rich history as a historically recognised cultural and trade-inspired region. Yet, with geopolitical concepts based on hegemonic interests, such home-grown sources of regional cooperation are not recognised or supported only if they would fit the interests of the hegemon. It is evident that the Indo-Pacific concept, from a conceptual perspective, also ignores the ASEAN regional cooperation process. As such, the Indo-Pacific approach represents an artificial strategic overlay, not linked with local beads regional cooperation dynamics, even when a regional cooperation process is very well established, as is the case with ASEAN. With regard to the Indo-Pacific concept, ASEAN’s statement on the Indo-Pacific (ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific 2019) clearly indicates that the perception of the Indo-Pacific area is a contiguous geographic space is misleading and not appropriate, even though the two geopolitical spaces are geographically connected. Indeed, while the Bay of Bengal and the ASEAN regional cooperation favour regional cooperation characterised by horizontal relationships, facilitating the cooperation of countries within the region to address common challenges, the Indo-Pacific approach represent a vertical power arrangement, where a dominant power is projecting its influence onto the regional level.

    However, it should not come as too much of a surprise that a hegemon’s regional strategy, which primarily focuses on supporting its own power interests, has little to say about regional cooperation processes initiated by the people living in that region. Indeed, a global acting hegemon has only a limited interest in the empowerment of independent regional cooperation projects, since they could signal the creation of a more independent political sphere. As Mearsheimer (2013) asserts, based on its superior standing and its need to defend this position, a hegemon has always an inclination to interfere in and re-order the political outlook of even distant regions. We may take into consideration what Mearsheimer (2013) made earlier, that the United States will ensure that it will dominate the commanding heights in Asia. For all these reasons, the Indo-Pacific approach should be recognised as the newest geopolitical strategy supporting the United States’ hegemonic position in Asia.

    Bibliography

    Mearsheimer, John J (2001) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), W.W Norton & Company: New York

    Mearsheimer, John J (2013) Structural Realism. In: Dunne T, Kurki M., Smith S (eds) International Relations Theories Discipline and Diversity, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press: Oxford. pp. 77-93

    Ikenberry, G. J. (2014) Introduction: power, order, and change in world politics. In: Ikenberry, G. J. (ed.) Power, order, and change in world politics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.1-16.

    Griffiths, M, O’Callaghan T, Roach S T (2002) International Relations: The Key Concepts 2nd; Martin Griffiths, Routledge

    Kupchan, C. A. (2014) Unpacking hegemony: the social foundations of hierarchical order. In: Ikenberry, G. J. (ed.) Power, order, and change in world politics. Cambridge, University Press Cambridge, pp. 19-60.

    Gilpin, R. (2010) War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

    Paul T.V. (2016) The accommodation of rising powers in world politics. In: Paul, T. V. (ed.) Accommodating rising powers past, present, and future. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3 32.

    Amrith, S. S. (2013) Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The furies of nature and the fortunes of migrants By Sunil S. Amrith Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific 2019, available at: https://asean.org/asean-outlook-on-the-indo-pacific/

    Notes

    [1] BIMSTEC has seven members: Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

    Feature Image credit: War on the Rocks

  • TPF Analysis Series on Russia – Ukraine Conflict #2

    TPF Analysis Series on Russia – Ukraine Conflict #2

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    The First Paper of the Series – TPF Analysis Series on Russia – Ukraine Conflict #1
    [/powerkit_button]

    What’s in Ukraine for Russia? 

    In a press conference marking his first year in office, President Biden, on the question of Russia invading Ukraine, remarked that such an event would, “be the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War Two”. [1] It has now been two months since Russia officially launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine, which the US and its allies consider an unjustified invasion of a sovereign state. The conflict in the Eurasian continent has drawn global attention to Europe and US-Russia tensions have ratcheted to levels that were prevalent during the Cold War. The conflict has also raised pertinent questions on understanding what exactly are Russian stakes in Ukraine and the latter’s role in the evolving security architecture of Europe. The second paper in this series will delve into these questions.

    The current Russian position stems from the experience that Russia, and Putin, gained while dealing with the West on a host of issues, not least of which was NATO expansion.

    The Ties that Bind

    An examination of post-Soviet history reveals that Russian preoccupation with security threats from NATO is not embedded in Russian geopolitics; instead, it has been reported that, early on, Russia was even agreeable to joining the military alliance. The current Russian position stems from the experience that Russia, and Putin, gained while dealing with the West on a host of issues, not least of which was NATO expansion. A line of argument sympathetic to Russia is President Putin’s contention that terms dictated to Russia during the post-Cold War settlements were unfair. The claim is a reference to Secretary of State James Baker’s statement on the expansion of NATO, “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction”, in 1990 in a candid conversation with Mikhael Gorbachev on the matter of reunification of Germany. [2] It could be argued that it is this commitment and subsequent violation through expansions of NATO is one of the main causes of the current conflict. 

    At the root of the problem was Russia’s security concerns – regarding both traditional and hybrid security – that ultimately led to the centralisation of power after a democratic stint under Yeltsin. Accordingly, Putin had put it in late 1999, “A strong state for Russia is not an anomaly, or something that should be combated, but, on the contrary, the source and guarantor of order, the initiator and the main driving force of any changes”. [3]

    Historically being a land power, Russia has viewed Ukraine as a strategically critical region in its security matrix. However, as the central control of Moscow weakened in the former USSR, the nationalist aspirations of the Ukrainian people began to materialise and Ukraine played a crucial role, along with the Russian Federation and Belarus, in dissolving the former Soviet Union. The two countries found themselves on opposite sides on extremely fundamental issues, such as security, economic partnership, post-Soviet order, and, not least, sovereignty. In Belovezh, in early December of 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich met to dissolve the USSR, major disagreements regarding the transitional phase and future of the republics erupted. Yeltsin expressed his desire for some sort of central control of the republics, whereas Kravchuk was vehemently opposed to any arrangement that might compromise his country’s sovereignty. Later, at the foundational ceremony of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), he stressed a common military, the most potent rejection of which came from Kravchuk. [4]

    Source: Wikimedia Commons

    The elephant in the room, however, was the status of Sevastopol, which housed the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet. Yeltsin was quoted saying that “The Black Sea Fleet was, is and will be Russia’s. No one, not even Kravchuk will take it away from Russia”. [5] Though the issue was soon temporarily resolved –with the two countries dividing the fleet equally amongst themselves, it continued to dominate and sour their relationship. Russia, as the successor state of the USSR, wanted the base and the entire fleet in its navy. Yeltsin even offered gas at concessional rates to Ukraine if it handed over the city and nuclear weapons to Russia. The issue remained unresolved until the 1997 Friendship Treaty under which Ukraine granted Moscow the entire fleet and leased Sevastopol to Russia until 2017 (later extended).

    Ukraine, under Kravchuk and, later, Leonid Kuchma, struggled to tread a tightrope between Russia and the European Union. On one hand, it was economically knit with former Soviet Republics, and on the other, it was actively looking to get economic benefits from the EU. However, soon a slide towards the west was conspicuous. In 1994, it preferred a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU over CIS Customs Union, which was a Russian initiative. Later, in 1996, it declined to join a new group consisting of former Soviet Republics ‘On Deepening Integration’, scuttling the initiative, since its purpose was to bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold. [6] By 1998, the Kuchma government had formulated a ‘Strategy of Integration into the European Union’. [7]

    Nuclear weapons were another point of contention between the two. Ukraine was extremely reluctant to give up its arsenal, citing security threats from Russia. Kravchuk received a verbal ‘security guarantee’ from the US which forced Russia to “respect the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of each nation” [8] in exchange for surrendering Ukraine’s nuclear weapons. 

    Notwithstanding the disputes, there was a great deal of cooperation between the two, especially after Kuchma’s re-election in 1999. Kuchma’s hook-up with authoritarianism distanced Kyiv from Brussels and brought it closer to Moscow. Ukraine agreed to join Russian initiatives of the Eurasian Economic Community as an observer and Common Economic Space as a full member. At home as well, his support in the eastern parts of the country, where ethnic Russians dwelled, increased dramatically, as evident in the 2002 Parliamentary Elections. [9] However, the bonhomie was soon disrupted by a single event.

    The Orange Revolution was Russia’s 9/11. [10] It dramatically altered Russian thinking on democracy and its ties with the West. It raised the prospect in Russia that Ukraine might be lost completely. It further made them believe the colour revolutions in former Soviet republics were CIA toolkits for regime change. More importantly, it made the Russians apprehensive of a similar revolution within their borders. As a result, the distrust between Russia and the West, and Russia and Ukraine grew considerably. As a nationalist, Victor Yushchenko formulated policies that directly hurt Russian interests. The two countries fought ‘Gas Wars’ in 2006 and 2009, which made both the EU and Russia uncomfortable with Ukraine as a gas transit country. Furthermore, Yushchenko bestowed the title of ‘Hero of Ukraine’ upon Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and perpetrator of the Holocaust, a decision that surely did not go well with Moscow.

    Geoeconomics: Ukraine as a Gas Transit Country

    The current war is the worst in Europe since the Second World War. Still, Ukraine continues to transit Russian gas through its land, Russia continues to pay for it, and Western Europe continues to receive the crucial resource. The war has shattered all the big bets on Russian dependence on Ukraine for delivering gas to Western Europe and has renewed the discourse on reducing European energy dependence on Russia. Since the EU imports 40% of its gas from Russia, almost a quarter of which flows through Ukraine, Kyiv has had leverage in dealing with Russians in the past. It has been able to extract favourable terms by either stopping or diverting gas for its own domestic use at a time of heightened tensions between Ukraine and Russia. As a result, the EU was directly drawn into the conflict between them, infructuating Moscow’s pressure tactics for a long.

    Moscow has made numerous attempts in the past to bypass Ukraine by constructing alternate pipelines. Nord Stream, the most popular of them, was conceived in 1997, as an attempt to decrease the leverage of the transit states. The pipeline was described as the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pipeline” by Polish Defence Minister Radoslaw Sirkosi for the geoeconomic influence it gave to Russia. [11] Another project – the South Stream – was aimed at providing gas to the Balkans, and through it to Austria and Italy. The pipeline was conceived in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution and its construction was motivated by geoeconomics, rather than economic viability. It would have led to Russia bypassing Ukraine in delivering gas to the Balkans and Central Europe, thus seizing its significant leverage, and relegating it to vulnerable positions in which Moscow could have eliminated the gas subsidies Ukraine was being provided. [12]As a result of economic unviability, the project was abandoned in 2014.

    To a certain extent, the European Union has been complicit in making matters worse for Russia. For instance, during the 2009 ‘Gas War’ – that began due to Ukraine’s non-payment of gas debt to Russia – instead of holding Ukraine accountable, the EU countries blamed Russia for the gas crisis in Europe and asked Russia to resume gas supply to Ukraine. Later, realising the importance of Ukraine as a transit country, it reached an agreement with Kyiv that “recognized the importance of the further expansion and modernization of Ukraine’s gas transit system as an indispensable pillar of the common European energy infrastructure, and the fact that Ukraine is a strategic partner for the EU gas sector”. The agreement excluded Russia as a party, which saw it as undermining the collaboration between itself and Ukraine, and injuring its influence on the country. [13] The Russian grievance becomes even more palpable when we view the significant gas subsidies it has provided to Ukraine for more than two decades. 

    Similarly, the EU countries viewed Nord Stream 2 from a geostrategic and geo-economic perspective. In December last year, German Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck warned Russia of halting Nord Stream 2 if it attacks Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was quoted saying that he would do ‘anything’ to ensure that Ukraine remains a transit country for Russian gas. [14] In fact, the pipeline – that is set to double the capacity of gas delivered to the EU – has faced opposition from almost all Western European countries, the US, the EU as well as Ukraine, which has described it as ‘A dangerous Geopolitical Weapon’. [15] The pipeline had raised concerns amongst Ukrainians of losing a restraining factor on Moscow’s behaviour. [16] However, with the pipeline still inoperable, the Kremlin has already made the restraining factor ineffective.

    The Security Objective

    The Russian Federation is a country which spreads from the European Continent to Asia. In this giant nation, the hospitable region where people live is mainly on the European side, which also comprises main cities like St. Petersburg, Volgograd and the Capital City Moscow. Throughout history, Russia has seen invasions by Napoleon as well as Hitler, and the main area through which these invasions and wars happened was through Ukrainian land which gave them direct access to Russia – due to the lack of any geographical barriers. It was certainly a contributing factor towards the initial success of these invasions. Today, we might understand these events as Russia’s sense of vulnerability and insecurity if history is any indicator. 

    The Russian Federation also follows a similar approach to ensuring its security, survival and territorial integrity. Russia’s interest in Ukraine is as much geopolitical as cultural. Since Russians and Ukrainians were intrinsically linked through their culture and language, Ukraine quickly came to be seen as Russian land, with Ukrainians being recognized as ‘Little Russians’ (Kubicek, 2008), as compared to the “Great Russians”. They were consequently denied the formation of a distinct Ukrainian identity. Putin gave substance to this sentiment as, according to a US diplomatic cable leak, he had “implicitly challenged the territorial integrity of Ukraine, suggesting that Ukraine was an artificial creation sewn together from the territory of Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and especially Russia in the aftermath of the Second World War” during a Russia-NATO Council meeting. [17]

    Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine are ethnically Russian and desire closer ties with Russia. But moving further west, the people become increasingly cosmopolitan and it is mostly this population that seeks greater linkage with the Western European countries and membership into the EU and NATO. This in addition to the Euro Maidan protests is what Putin has used to justify the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The other security consideration was the threat it faced from the likelihood of NATO establishing a base in Crimea given its own presence in Sevastopol in the Black Sea. 

    In the current scenario, the second phase of Russian Military operation in the East and South has shown us the larger vulnerabilities Moscow has which are being countered through control of certain points in the region. By liberating the Donbass region in the east, Russia plans to create a buffer zone between itself and the west to stop future aggression and keep enemies at bay. But the extension of this buffer zone all the way to Odessa is indicative of other strategic considerations. Mariupol in the south of Ukraine is one of the many extended strategic points Russia now controls leading us to ask just why Mariupol is a game-changer in this conflict?

    The port city of Mariupol is a small area geographically, but it provides the land bridge for the Russian forces in the Crimean Peninsula to join the Military operation in the Donbas region. Moreover, it gives Russia a land bridge to Crimea from the Russian Mainland. According to General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of UK Joint Forces Command, Mariupol is crucial to Russia’s offensive movement, – “When the Russians feel they have successfully concluded that battle, they will have completed a land bridge from Russia to Crimea and they will see this a major strategic success.” [18]

    Source: ISW (Assessment on 09 May, 2022)

    If the port city of Mariupol is important for the creation of a land corridor, then the Sea of Azov which is adjacent to it is even more important due to its strategic position. [19] The three geopolitical reasons why this sea is important are as follows:

    1. The Sea of Azov is a major point for the economic and military well-being of Ukraine. Proximity to the frontlines of the Donbass region where the fighting between Ukrainian forces and Pro-Russian separatists is taking place makes the control of this sea vital to the Russian military as it helps weaken Ukrainian defence in the region via control of the Kerch Strait.
    2. Controlling the Sea of Azov is strategically important for Russia, to maintain its control in the Crimean Peninsula, which allows Moscow to resupply its forces through the Strait of Kerch.
    3. Finally, it also involves Eurasian politics into why Russia needs to control this region and here the discussion of the Volga-Don canal which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov comes to the fore. Russia has always used this canal to move warships between the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea and project its power in both regions. Moreover, Russia sees this connection as a significant strategic advantage in any future crisis.

    If Mariupol and the Sea of Azov are considered the most important strategically valuable features by Russia, there also exists the crucial points of Kherson and Odessa which will give Russia complete dominance of the Ukrainian coast line, thus giving larger access and control in the Black Sea region that has the potential to be militarised in the future in conflicts with the West. Moreover, it gives Russia a land corridor to Transnistria which is a Pro-Russian separatist area in Moldova and an opening into the Romanian border through Odessa, thus balancing the build-up of NATO forces in the region. 

    Conclusion

    The Ukrainian crisis is as much the West’s doing as Russia’s and an ear sympathetic to the Russian narrative might even say that the West took advantage of Russia when it was vulnerable immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union in negotiations regarding the German state reunification and NATO enlargement.

    The bottom line is that, presently, Putin views NATO as an existential security threat to the Russian state and sees the US and its allies’ support of Ukraine as a challenge. Ukraine’s membership in the EU and NATO is a non-starter for Russia and pitting a Ukraine, that has a symbiotic relationship with Russia at all levels, against a slightly diminished but still formidable great power will have consequences for the security architecture and geopolitics of the region.  The Ukrainian crisis is as much the West’s doing as Russia’s and an ear sympathetic to the Russian narrative might even say that the West took advantage of Russia when it was vulnerable immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union in negotiations regarding the German state reunification and NATO enlargement. On some level, NATO countries recognize the fact that Ukraine and Georgia can never be allowed membership into the North Atlantic alliance because the alternative of wilfully ignoring Russia’s security and national interests is just a recipe for disaster and might just launch the region into the single biggest armed conflict since World War 2. 

    References:

    [1] The White House. (2022, January 20). Remarks by president Biden in the press conference. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/19/remarks-by-president-biden-in-press-conference-6/

    [2] Savranskaya, S., Blanton, T. S., & Zubok, V. (2010). Masterpieces of history: The peaceful end of the Cold War in Europe, 1989. Central European University Press.

    [3] Putin, Vladimir. “Rossiya na Rubezhe Tysyacheletii,” Nesavisimaya Gazeta, December 30, 1999, quoted in D’Anieri, Paul (2019). Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War. Cambridge University Press.

    [4] Ibid

    [5] Rettie, J. and James Meek, “Battle for Soviet Navy,” The Guardian, January 10, 1992

    [6] Ibid, no. iii

    [7] Solchanyk, R., Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. 2000.

    [8] Goldgeier, J. and Michael McFaul. “Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia after the Cold War”, Brookings Institution Press, 2003

    [9] Ibid, no. iii

    [10]  The comment was made by Gleb Pavlovskii, a Russian Political Scientist. quoted in Ben Judah (2013), Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 85.

    [11] Ibid, no. iii

    [12] Wigell, M. and  A. Vihma, Geopolitics versus geoeconomics: the case of Russia’s geostrategy and its effects on the EU. International Affairs, 92: 605-627. May 6, 2016

    [13] Ibid, no. iii

    [14] Harper, J. (2021, December 23). Nord stream 2: Who wins, who loses? Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-2-who-wins-who-loses/a-60223801

    [15] Ukraine: Nord stream 2 a ‘dangerous geopolitical weapon’. (2021, August 22). DW.COM. https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-nord-stream-2-a-dangerous-geopolitical-weapon/a-58950076

    [16] Pifer, S. “Nord Stream 2: Background, Objectives and Possible Outcomes”, Brookings, April 2021 https://www.brookings.edu/research/nord-stream-2-background-objections-and-possible-outcomes/

    [17] WikiLeaks. (2008, August 14). UKRAINE, MAP, AND THE GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT, Canonical ID:08USNATO290_a. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08USNATO290_a.html

    [18] Gardner, F. (2022, March 21). Mariupol: Why Mariupol is so important to Russia’s plan. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60825226

    [19] Blank, S. (2018, November 6). Why is the Sea of Azov so important? Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-is-the-sea-of-azov-so-important/

    Featured Image Credits: Financial Times

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  • Towards a New Movement of Non-Alignment: Politics of John Mearsheimer and Alexander Dugin

    Towards a New Movement of Non-Alignment: Politics of John Mearsheimer and Alexander Dugin

    Only last August, the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan in disgrace, leaving behind a destroyed country – and now they suddenly appear as the guardians of freedom, human rights and as the leading power of the West?

    Without equating Russia and the USA, they are very similar in their foreign policy behaviour. Despite all the problems under Trump, the U.S. is and remains a democracy in which human rights can be litigated. Russia is only formally an (electoral) democracy, as Putin himself once put it, a managed democracy in which human rights can hardly be claimed. Despite this fundamental difference, it is quite astonishing how the past 20 years have been forgotten in the West. Were the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya always and in every respect legitimate? Weren’t hundreds of thousands of people killed in them and by no means always only the soldiers? Only last August, the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan in disgrace, leaving behind a destroyed country – and now they suddenly appear as the guardians of freedom, human rights and as the leading power of the West? Conversely, we need to realize that while the U.S. would advocate regime change in Russia as well, does this legitimize all the actions of the Russian leadership and the Russian army?

    It is not only questionable whether Mearsheimer had the ear of the U.S. government – much more decisive is that he not only presents an analysis but in a sense naturalizes the struggle for spheres of influence and large areas. 

    And in essence, Mearsheimer can hardly hide the fact that neo-realism has models in the large-area policy of the Nazis and at least that of Carl Schmitt.

    To find an explanation for the conflict over Ukraine, two theorists are very often referred to, John Mearsheimer from the U.S. and Alexander Dugin from Russia. The defenders of Russia resort to the line of thought of the neo-realists, which was significantly influenced by Mearsheimer. And Mearsheimer argues that Ukraine is not the issue at all, but rather a global political showdown between the United States and Russia over spheres of influence. He attests that the Russian side under Putin is only reacting to a covert war of the USA – with the means at their disposal. And with countries like Sweden, Finland and even Switzerland soon to join NATO, the U.S. strategy – if the government in Washington had stuck to Mearsheimer’s indirect script – would have been extremely successful. The unity of the West under U.S. leadership has also been restored overnight. Mearsheimer is always used in this context as evidence of the true intentions of the U.S. and the real culprit in this war. However, it is not only questionable whether Mearsheimer had the ear of the U.S. government – much more decisive is that he not only presents an analysis but in a sense naturalizes the struggle for spheres of influence and large areas. For the next step, if one were to share his views, one would have to concede such a policy to the US as well? And in essence, Mearsheimer can hardly hide the fact that neo-realism has models in the large-area policy of the Nazis and at least that of Carl Schmitt.

    Dugin’s vision of Eurasia, on the other hand, is ideologically determined. But from his writings can be read the will to reconquer the Baltic states and large parts of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty after Ukraine and to achieve at least Russian hegemony in Europe.

    The same applies to the dreams of Alexander Dugin, a neo-fascist ideologue who has at times been said to be particularly close to Vladimir Putin. Just as with Mearsheimer, the government action of Russia cannot be traced to his ideologue, but there are similarities here as well. Dugin, too, starts from large spaces and, like Putin, includes in his considerations the great Eurasian project, the political-ideological linking of Asia and Europe under Russian leadership. And indeed, this perspective already exists in the Chinese New Silk Road and is being built up economically by President Xi and the Chinese leadership with billions of Yuan. Dugin’s vision of Eurasia, on the other hand, is ideologically determined. But from his writings can be read the will to reconquer the Baltic states and large parts of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty after Ukraine and to achieve at least Russian hegemony in Europe.

    What seems progressive here at first glance is the rejection of human equality – at its core, Dugin is concerned with a strictly hierarchical, estates-based society in which “white, male Europeans” are at the top.

    In this way, Dugin positioned himself as an outstanding representative of geopolitical thought as well as a mastermind of a “Eurasian” – as opposed to “Atlantic” – cultural space. This corresponds to the “fourth political theory” he postulates, which, after liberalism, fascism and communism, is most likely to ensure the survival of mankind in the age of globalization in his view. Dugin’s theoretical advisers, besides Heidegger, is the French founder of the “Nouvelle Droite,” Alain de Benoist.  All political systems of modernity are accordingly the results of three ideologies: The first and oldest, he says, is liberal democracy, the second is Marxism, and the third is fascism. The latter has long since failed, banished from history; the first no longer functions as an ideology, but as something taken for granted. The world today is on the brink of a post-political reality in which the values of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that the average person is not even aware of the effect of an ideology in his environment. Thus, liberalism threatens to monopolize political discourse, to flood the world with a universalistic sameness, and to destroy everything that makes different cultures and peoples unique. What seems progressive here at first glance is the rejection of human equality – at its core, Dugin is concerned with a strictly hierarchical, estates-based society in which “white, male Europeans” are at the top.

    a new policy of the Non-Aligned Movement is necessary, because as understandable as partisanship may be due to the suffering in Ukraine, we should not allow ourselves to be instrumentalized by either side.

    At their core, Mearsheimer and equally Dugin are representatives of a neo-colonial policy, in that they want to divide the whole world into their spheres of influence. This is what the U.S. has been trying to do since 2001 and now Russia as well. Still unclear is the role of China, which has not yet made a final decision and sees itself equally threatened by both visions. Instead of taking sides for one of the two positions, a new policy of the Non-Aligned Movement is necessary, because as understandable as partisanship may be due to the suffering in Ukraine, we should not allow ourselves to be instrumentalized by either side. Foreign Minister Lavrov had spoken of the need for a balanced world order during his visit to New Delhi. It would be of fundamental importance if Russia were to adhere to this itself. The real actors in such a balanced world order, however, would be the middle powers in a new movement of non-aligned states.

    Feature Image Credit: ipis.ir

  • The Military Situation in Ukraine

    The Military Situation in Ukraine

    Understanding the war in Ukraine is a challenge as all the available information is mired in Western Propaganda. However, there are sane voices of scholars like John Mearsheimer and a small group of excellent professionals and military veterans who provide extremely accurate analysis to ensure we get the true picture of this geopolitical contest between Russia and the US and NATO. Jacques Baud is a former Colonel of the General Staff, intelligence expert in NATO, and ex-member of the Swiss intelligence, and specialist on Eastern countries.

    In this excellent analysis, Jacques Baud brings out how the US and NATO have created conditions for the war and are using Ukraine as the sacrificial pawn in their proxy war against Russia. Jacques Baud demolishes the West’s propaganda about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24th and traces the start of the war to Feb 16th by the US and NATO.  Contrary to the American propaganda, he sees Putin as the master strategist. The end of this conflict will usher in a new multi-polar world order, in which the West may cease to be the rule maker.

    TPF is immensely happy to republish this article through the gracious courtesy of Centre Francaise de Recherche sure le Renseignement. 

    Capitulation – 1946 painting by Soviet Artist Pyotr Aleksandrovich Krivonogov, a veteran of The Great Patriotic War

     

    PART ONE: ON THE ROAD TO WAR

    For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying the war, but of understanding what led us to it. I note that the “experts” who take turns on the television sets analyze the situation based on dubious information, most often hypotheses turned into facts, and therefore we no longer manage to understand what is happening. That’s how you create panic.

    The problem is not so much who is right in this conflict, but how our leaders make their decisions.

    Let’s try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the past eight years have been talking to us about “separatists” or “independence” from the Donbas. It’s wrong. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in May 2014 were not ”  independence ” (независимость) referendums, as some unscrupulous journalists claimed, but ”  self-determination  ” or ”  autonomy (самостоятельность). The term “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.

    In fact, these republics did not seek to separate from Ukraine, but to have a statute of autonomy guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. Because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 which made Russian an official language. A bit as if putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages ​​in Switzerland.

    This decision causes a storm in the Russian-speaking population. This resulted in fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odesa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which began in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and a few massacres (in Odesa and Mariupol, for the most important). At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remained.

    At this stage, too rigid and stuck in a doctrinaire approach to the operational art, the Ukrainian staff suffered the enemy without succeeding in imposing themselves. Examination of the course of the fighting in 2014-2016 in the Donbas shows that the Ukrainian general staff systematically and mechanically applied the same operational plans. However, the war waged by the autonomists was then very close to what we observed in the Sahel: very mobile operations carried out with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of the Ukrainian forces to “trap” them repeatedly.

    In 2014, I am at NATO, responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we are trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels in order to see if Moscow is involved. The information that we receive then comes practically all from the Polish intelligence services and does not “match” with the information from the OSCE: in spite of rather crude allegations, we do not observe any delivery of arms and materials Russian military.

    The rebels are armed thanks to the defections of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units which cross over to the rebel side. As the Ukrainian failures progressed, the entire tank, artillery or anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what drives the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Accords.

    But, just after signing the Minsk 1 Accords, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a vast anti-terrorist operation (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against Donbas. Bis repetita placent: poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat at Debaltsevo which forced them to commit to the Minsk 2 Agreements…

    It is essential to recall here that the Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements provided for neither the separation nor the independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Accords (they are very, very, very few) will find that it is written in full that the status of the republics was to be negotiated between Kyiv and the representatives of the republics, for an internal solution in Ukraine.

    This is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their application while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter for Ukraine. On the other side, the Westerners – led by France – have systematically tried to replace the Minsk Accords with the “Normandy format”, which put Russians and Ukrainians face to face. However, let us remember, there were never any Russian troops in the Donbas before February 23-24, 2022. Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbas. Thus, the US intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021, does not show Russian troops in Donbas.

    In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbas. It was even comparable to that of the Swiss going to fight in Bosnia during the weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who are going to fight in Ukraine today.

    The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor Anatoly Matios said that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbas: 891 from disease, 318 from traffic accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisoning (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of safety rules, 228 from murder and 615 from suicide.

    In fact, the army is undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoys the support of the population. According to a UK Home Office report, when reservists were called up in March-April 2014, 70% did not show up for the first session, 80% for the second, 90% for the third and 95% for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of callers did not show up during the “  Autumn 2017  ” callback campaign. This does not include suicides and desertions(often for the benefit of the autonomists) which reach up to 30% of the workforce in the ATO zone. Young Ukrainians refuse to go and fight in the Donbas and prefer emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the country’s demographic deficit.

    The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help it make its armed forces more “attractive”. Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program intended to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But it’s a long process and the Ukrainians want to go quickly.

    Thus, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially made up of foreign mercenaries, often far-right activists. As of 2020, they constitute around 40% of Ukraine’s forces and number around 102,000 men according to Reuters. They are armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There are more than 19 nationalities – including Swiss.

    Western countries have therefore clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm by denouncing the Centuria project. These militias have been operating in the Donbas since 2014, with Western support. Even if we can discuss the term “Nazi”, the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic. Their anti-Semitism is more cultural than political, which is why the adjective “Nazi” is not really appropriate. Their hatred of the Jew comes from the great famines of the years 1920-1930 in Ukraine, resulting from the confiscation of crops by Stalin in order to finance the modernization of the Red Army. However, this genocide – known in Ukraine as the Holodomor – was perpetrated by the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) whose upper echelons of leadership were mainly made up of Jews. That is why, today, Ukrainian extremists are asking Israel to apologize for the crimes of communism, as the Jerusalem Post reports. We are therefore a long way from a “  rewriting of history  ” by Vladimir Putin.

    These militias, stemming from the far-right groups that led the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, are made up of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of that of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is the object of real veneration in Ukraine, for having liberated Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before perpetrating the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, in France.

    Among the famous figures of the Azov regiment was the opponent Roman Protassevich, arrested in 2021 by the Belarusian authorities following the case of RyanAir flight FR4978. On May 23, 2021, there is talk of the deliberate hijacking of an airliner by a MiG-29 – with Putin’s agreement, of course – to arrest Protassevich, although the information then available does not confirm this scenario in any way.

    But it must then be shown that President Lukashenko is a thug and Protassevich a “journalist” in love with democracy. However, a rather edifying investigation produced by an American NGO in 2020, highlighted Protassevich’s far-right militant activities. Western conspiracy then sets in motion and unscrupulous media “groom” his biography. Finally, in January 2022, the ICAO report is published and shows that despite some procedural errors, Belarus acted in accordance with the rules in force and that the MiG-29 took off 15 minutes after the RyanAir pilot decided to land in Minsk. So no Belarus plot and even less with Putin. Ah!… One more detail: Protassevich,cruelly tortured by Belarusian police, is now free. Those who would like to correspond with him can go to his Twitter account.

    The labelling of “Nazi” or “neo-Nazi” given to Ukrainian paramilitaries is considered Russian propaganda. Perhaps; but that is not the opinion of The Times of Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center or the Counterterrorism Center at West Point Academy. But this remains debatable, because, in 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them with… the Islamic State. A choice!

    So the West supports and continues to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres. But while the Swiss government has been very quick to impose sanctions against Russia, it has not adopted any against Ukraine, which has been slaughtering its own population since 2014. In fact, those who defend the rights of the men in Ukraine have long condemned the actions of these groups, but have not been followed by our governments. Because, in reality, we are not trying to help Ukraine, but to fight Russia.

    The integration of these paramilitary forces into the National Guard was not at all accompanied by a “denazification”, as some claim. Among the many examples, that of the insignia of the Azov Regiment is edifying:

     

    In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive are structured as:

    – Army, subordinate to the Ministry of Defence: it is articulated in 3 army corps and composed of manoeuvre formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).

    – National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior and is articulated in 5 territorial commands.

    The National Guard is therefore a territorial defence force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called ”  volunteer battalions” (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of ”  retaliatory battalions  “, composed of infantry. Mainly trained for urban combat, they now ensure the defence of cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odesa, Kyiv, etc.

    PART II: THE WAR

    The former head of the Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness – but not astonishment – ​​that our services are no longer in a position to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade across our screens wirelessly relay the same information modulated by the assertion that Russia – and Vladimir Putin – is irrational. Let’s take a step back.

    • THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

    Since November 2021, the Americans have constantly brandished the threat of a Russian invasion against Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians do not seem to agree. Why?

    We have to go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the reconquest of Crimea and began to deploy his forces towards the south of the country. Simultaneously, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia then conducts a few exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and show that it is following the evolution of the situation.

    Things calm down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements are interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refute the idea of ​​Russian preparations for a war and Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Minister of Defense declares that there has been no change on its border since the spring.

    In violation of the Minsk Accords, Ukraine is conducting aerial operations in Donbas using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press points this out, but not the Europeans and no one condemns these violations.

    In February 2022, events rush. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirms to Vladimir Putin his attachment to the Minsk Accords, a commitment he will repeat after his interview with Volodymyr Zelensky the next day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after 9 hours of work, the meeting of the political advisers of the leaders of the ”  Normandy format  “ ends, without a concrete result: the Ukrainians still and always refuse to apply the Accordsof Minsk, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin then notes that Macron has made empty promises to him and that the West is not ready to enforce the Accords, as they have been doing for eight years.

    Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continue. The Russian Parliament is alarmed and on February 15 asks Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the Republics, which he refuses.

    On February 17, President Joe Biden announces that Russia will attack Ukraine in the coming days. How does he know? Mystery… But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the populations of Donbas has increased dramatically, as shown by the daily reports of OSCE observers. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacts and intervenes. We will say later that this is Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries purposely glossed over the massacre of the people of Donbas, knowing that it would provoke Russian intervention.

    At the same time, there are reports of acts of sabotage in the Donbas. On January 18, Donbas fighters intercept saboteurs equipped with Western equipment and speaking Polish seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could be CIA mercenaries, led or “advised” by Americans and made up of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbas Republics.

    In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knows that the Ukrainians have begun to shell the civilian populations of Donbas, putting Vladimir Putin in front of a difficult choice: to help Donbas militarily and create an international problem or to sit idly by and watch the Russian speakers. from the Donbas being run over.

    If he decides to intervene, Vladimir Putin can invoke the international obligation of “  Responsibility To Protect  ” (R2P). But he knows that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention will trigger a shower of sanctions. Therefore, whether its intervention is limited to the Donbas or whether it goes further to put pressure on the West for the status of Ukraine, the price to be paid will be the same. This is what he explains in his speech on February 21.

    That day, he acceded to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Republics of Donbas and, in the process, he signed treaties of friendship and assistance with them.

    The Ukrainian artillery bombardments on the populations of Donbas continued and, on February 23, the two Republics requested military aid from Russia. On the 24th, Vladimir Putin invokes Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which provides for mutual military assistance within the framework of a defensive alliance.

    In order to make the Russian intervention totally illegal in the eyes of the public, we deliberately obscure the fact that the war actually started on February 16th. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbas as early as 2021, as certain Russian and European intelligence services were well aware… The lawyers will judge.

    In his speech on February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. It is therefore not a question of seizing Ukraine, nor even, in all likelihood, of occupying it and certainly not of destroying it.

    From there, our visibility on the progress of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent security of operations (OPSEC) and the detail of their planning is not known. But fairly quickly, the course of operations makes it possible to understand how the strategic objectives were translated into the operational plan.

    – Demilitarization:

    . ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defence systems and reconnaissance assets;

    . neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C3I), as well as the main logistics routes in the depth of the territory;

    . encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the southeast of the country.

    – Denazification:

    . destruction or neutralization of volunteer battalions operating in the cities of Odesa, Kharkov and Mariupol, as well as in various facilities on the territory.

    • THE “DEMILITARIZATION”

    The Russian offensive proceeds in a very “classic” manner. At first – as the Israelis had done in 1967 – with the destruction on the ground of the air forces in the very first hours. Then, we witness a simultaneous progression on several axes according to the principle of “flowing water”: we advance wherever resistance is weak and we leave the cities (very voracious in troops) for later. To the north, the Chernobyl plant is occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers jointly guarding the plant are naturally not shown…

    The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kyiv, the capital, to eliminate Zelensky, typically comes from the West: this is what they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and what they wanted to do in Syria with the help of the Islamic State. But Vladimir Putin never intended to take down or overthrow Zelensky. On the contrary, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate by encircling Kyiv. He had refused to do so far to apply the Minsk Accords, but now the Russians want to obtain Ukraine’s neutrality.

    Many Western commentators marvelled that the Russians continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations. The explanation is in the Russian strategic conception, since Soviet times. For Westerners, war begins when politics ceases. However, the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can pass fluidly from one to the other, even during combat. This creates pressure on the opponent and pushes him to negotiate.

    From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of its kind: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as vast as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht made in 1940.

    The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed in the south of the country for a major operation against Donbas. This is why the Russian forces were able to encircle it from the beginning of March in the “cauldron” between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, by a thrust coming from the east via Kharkov and another coming from the south from the Crimea. The troops of the Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (RPL) complete the action of the Russian forces with a push from the East.

    At this stage, the Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under time pressure. Their objective of demilitarization is practically achieved and the residual Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.

    The “slowdown” that our “experts” attribute to poor logistics is only the consequence of having achieved the objectives set. Russia does not seem to want to engage in an occupation of the whole Ukrainian territory. In fact, it seems rather that Russia is trying to limit its advance to the country’s linguistic border.

    Our media speak of indiscriminate bombardments against civilian populations, particularly in Kharkov, and Dantesque images are broadcast on a loop. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American who lives there, presents us with a calm city on March 10, and on March 11. Admittedly, it’s a big city and you can’t see everything, but that seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are being served continuously on our screens.

    As for the Republics of Donbas, they have “liberated” their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.

    • “DENAZIFICATION”

    In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odesa, defence is provided by paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of “denazification” is aimed primarily at them.

    For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia seeks to create humanitarian corridors to empty the cities of civilians and leave only the militias in order to fight them more easily.

    Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities in order to dissuade the Russian army from coming to fight there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything so that Russian efforts are in vain: they can thus use the civilian population as “human shields”. Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and being beaten up by fighters from the Azov regiment are naturally carefully censored here.

    On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State and subject to the platform’s ”  dangerous individuals and organizations policy  “. It was therefore forbidden to glorify him, and the “posts” that were favourable to him were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favourable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorizes, in the former Eastern European countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values ​​that inspire our leaders, as we will see.

    Our media propagate a romantic image of popular resistance. It is this image that has led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. It is a criminal act. In my role as chief of doctrine for peacekeeping operations at the UN, I worked on the issue of the protection of civilians. We then saw that violence against civilians took place in very specific contexts. Especially when weapons abound and there are no command structures.

    Now, these command structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force according to an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard fashion as is currently the case, the EU turns them into combatants, with the attendant consequences: potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms inevitably leads to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from August 11 to 13, 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. Moreover, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies(RUSI) sees no added value in these arms deliveries.

    Moreover, by delivering arms to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered as a belligerent. The Russian strikes on March 13, 2022, against the Mykolaiv airbase follow Russian warnings that weapons transports would be treated as hostile targets.

    The EU repeats the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the last hours of the Battle of Berlin. War should be left to the military and when one side has lost, it should be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must imperatively be led and structured. However, we are doing exactly the opposite: we are pushing citizens to go and fight and at the same time, Facebook is allowing calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values ​​that inspire us.

    In some intelligence services, this irresponsible decision is seen as a way of using the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This kind of murderous decision had to be left to the colleagues of Ursula von der Leyen’s grandfather. It would have been wiser to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian populations than to add fuel to the fire. It’s easy to be combative with other people’s blood…

    • MARIUPOL MATERNITY

    It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that ensures the defence of Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.

    In its summary of the situation on March 7, 2022, the Russian UN mission in New York states that ”  Residents report that the Ukrainian armed forces have expelled the personnel of the Natal Hospital No. 1 from the city of Mariupol and have installed a shooting station inside the establishment. »

    On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru published the testimony of civilians from Mariupol who said that the maternity hospital was taken over by the militias of the Azov regiment, and chased out the civilian occupants, threatening them with their weapons. They thus confirm the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.

    The Mariupol hospital occupies a dominant position, perfectly adequate for installing anti-tank weapons and for observation. On March 9, Russian forces hit the building. According to CNN, there are 17 injured, but the footage shows no casualties on the premises and there is no evidence that the reported casualties are related to this strike. We talk about children, but in reality, we see nothing. It may be true, but it may be false… Which does not prevent EU leaders from seeing it as a war crime … Which allows Zelensky, just afterwards, to claim a no-fly zone over Ukraine…

    In reality, we don’t know exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that the Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity ward was then free of all civilians.

    The problem is that the paramilitary militias that ensure the defence of cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the customs of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have re-enacted the scenario of the maternity hospital in Kuwait City in 1990, which had been completely staged by the firm Hill & Knowlton for the amount of 10.7 million dollars in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

    Western politicians have also accepted strikes against civilians in Donbas for eight years, without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered into a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law to their objective of weakening Russia .

    PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS

     As a former intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in representing the situation for a year. In Switzerland, the services have been criticized for not having provided a correct picture of the situation. In fact, it seems that all over the Western world, the services have been overwhelmed by the politicians. The problem is that it is the politicians who decide: the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen to it. This is what happened during this crisis.

    That said, while some intelligence services had a very precise and rational image of the situation, others clearly had the same image as that propagated by our media. In this crisis, the services of the countries of the “new Europe” played an important role. The problem is that, by experience, I found that they were extremely bad on the analytical level: doctrinaire, they do not have the intellectual and political independence necessary to appreciate a situation with a military “quality”. It is better to have them as enemies than as friends.

    Then, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately ignored their services to respond ideologically to the situation. This is why this crisis has been irrational from the start. It will be observed that all the documents that have been presented to the public during this crisis have been presented by politicians on the basis of commercial sources…

    Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the Security Council were only the fruit of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him  : he did exactly like Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, who thus “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were far less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.

    The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes we knew about, but refused to see:

    – on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);

    – on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;

    – and on the operational level, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian populations of Donbass for years and the dramatic increase at the end of February 2022.

    In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is to say: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees . It’s good. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who have been accumulating in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.

     

    Whether the term “genocide” applies to the abuses suffered by the populations of Donbass is an open question. This term is generally reserved for larger cases (Holocaust, etc.), however, the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply. Lawyers will appreciate.

    Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine respect the Minsk Accords, which we negotiated and endorsed, none of this would have happened. The condemnation of Vladimir Putin is also ours. There is no point in whining after the fact, we had to act before. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and as a member of the UN Security Council), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. Ultimately, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.

    The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements, on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine bombarded its own population in the Donbass. Had she done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fueling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agrees to start negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From there, the Ukrainians feel that they will not need to come to an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militias in Mariupol will even causea raise of 500 million euros for weapons .

    In Ukraine, with the blessing of Western countries, those who are in favor of a negotiation are eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he is too favorable to Russia and is considered a traitor. The same fate is reserved for Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the main directorate of the SBU for Kiev and its region, assassinated on March 10 , because too favorable to an agreement with Russia: he is killed by the Mirotvorets militia (”  Peacemaker  “). This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website which lists the ”  enemies of Ukraine”, with their personal data, address and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated  ; a punishable practice in many countries, but not in Ukraine . The UN and some European countries have demanded its closure… refused by the Rada.

    Eventually, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. Its ties with Beijing have solidified. China emerges as a mediator of the conflict, while Switzerland enters the list of enemies of Russia. The Americans must ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse in which they have gotten themselves: Juan Guaido leaves the scene definitively and the United States must pitifully reverse the sanctions imposed on their enemies.

    Western ministers who seek to collapse the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer , even calling for the assassination of Putin, show (even if they partially reversed the form of their remarks, but not on bottom!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate. Because, sanctioning Russian athletes from the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has absolutely nothing to do with a fight against Putin.

    So, therefore, we recognize that Russia is a democracy since we consider that the Russian people are responsible for the war. If not, then why are we trying to punish an entire population for the fault of one? Remember that collective punishment is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions…

    The lesson to be drawn from this conflict is our sense of variable geometry humanity. If we were so attached to peace and to Ukraine, why didn’t we encourage her more to respect the agreements that she had signed and that the members of the Security Council had approved?

    Media integrity is measured by their willingness to work under the terms of the Munich Charter. They had succeeded in propagating hatred of the Chinese during the Covid crisis and their polarized message leads to the same effects against the Russians . Journalism is stripping itself more and more of professionalism to become militant…

    As Goethe said: “  The greater the light, the darker the shadow  ”. The more the sanctions against Russia are excessive, the more the cases where we have done nothing highlight our racism and our servility. Why has no Western politician reacted to the strikes against the civilian populations of Donbass for eight years?

    After all, what makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? What sanctions have we adopted against those who have deliberately lied before the international community to wage unjust, unjustified, unjustifiable and murderous wars? Did we try to “make suffer” the American people who had lied to us (because it is a democracy!) before the war in Iraq? Have we even adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are fueling the conflict in Yemen, considered the ”  worst humanitarian disaster in the world  “? Have we sanctioned the countries of the European Union who practice the most abject torture on their territory for the benefit of the United States?

    To ask the question is to answer it… and the answer is not glorious.

     

    Feature Image Credit: Raising the Flag over Reichstag – iconic photo in 1945 by Yevegny Khaldei – kosmofoto.com 

     

  • America defeats Germany for the third time in a century

    America defeats Germany for the third time in a century

    This is a very profound article by Michael Hudson, wherein he exposes the real drivers of the conflict in Ukraine – the American Military Industrial Complex; Oil, Gas and Mining Industry; and the FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) – the three oligarchs who form the deep state or the national security state that conducts the American foreign policy. To this we can add the fourth – the Big Tech. Clearly, as Paul Kennedy identified more than three decades ago, like all empires of the past, the American Empire has entered an irretrievable imperial overstretch and the consequent decline that would accelerate post the war in Ukraine.

    TPF is happy to republish this excellently analysed article by Michael Hudson under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License. It was published earlier in MRonline.

    The MIC, OGAM and FIRE Sectors Conquer NATO

    My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and 50s: “Wars never solved anything.” It was as if they never changed anything—and therefore shouldn’t be fought.

    Herman disagreed, and made lists of all sorts of things that wars had solved in world history, or at least changed. He was right, and of course that is the aim of both sides in today’s New Cold War confrontation in Ukraine.

    The question to ask is what today’s New Cold War is trying to change or “solve.” To answer this question, it helps to ask who initiates the war. There always are two sides—the attacker and the attacked. The attacker intends certain consequences, and the attacked looks for unintended consequences of which they can take advantage. In this case, both sides have their dueling sets of intended consequences and special interests.

    the U.S. policy executed by the Clinton and subsequent administrations to wage a new military expansion via NATO has paid a 30-year dividend in the form of shifting the foreign policy of Western Europe and other American allies out of their domestic political sphere into their own U.S.-oriented “national security” blob. NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.

    The active military force and aggression since 1991 has been the United States. Rejecting mutual disarmament of the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO, there was no “peace dividend.” Instead, the U.S. policy executed by the Clinton and subsequent administrations to wage a new military expansion via NATO has paid a 30-year dividend in the form of shifting the foreign policy of Western Europe and other American allies out of their domestic political sphere into their own U.S.-oriented “national security” blob (the word for special interests that must not be named). NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.

    The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maidan regime was aimed at (and has succeeded in) forcing a showdown in response the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.

    To understand just what U.S. aims and interests are threatened, it is necessary to understand U.S. politics and “the blob,” that is, the government central planning that cannot be explained by looking at ostensibly democratic politics. This is not the politics of U.S. senators and representatives representing their congressional voting districts or states.

    America’s three oligarchies in control of U.S. foreign policy

    It is more realistic to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of the political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives do not represent their states and districts as much as the economic and financial interests of their major political campaign contributors.

    It is more realistic to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of the political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives do not represent their states and districts as much as the economic and financial interests of their major political campaign contributors. A Venn diagram would show that in today’s post-Citizens United world, U.S. politicians represent their campaign contributors, not voters. And these contributors fall basically into three main blocs.
    Three main oligarchic groups that have bought control of the Senate and Congress to put their own policy makers in the State Department and Defense Department.

    First is the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC)—arms manufacturers such as Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, have broadly diversified their factories and employment in nearly every state, and especially in the Congressional districts where key Congressional committee heads are elected. Their economic base is monopoly rent, obtained above all from their arms sales to NATO, to Near Eastern oil exporters and to other countries with a balance of payments surplus. Stocks for these companies soared immediately upon news of the Russian attack, leading a two-day stock market surge as investors recognized that war in a world of cost-plus “Pentagon capitalism” (as Seymour Melman described it) will provide a guaranteed national security umbrella for monopoly profits for war industries. Senators and Congressional representatives from California and Washington traditionally have represented the MIC, along with the solid pro-military South. The past week’s military escalation promises soaring arms sales to NATO and other U.S. allies, enriching the actual constituents of these politicians. Germany quickly agreed to raise its arms spending to over 2% of GDP.

    Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major U.S. priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline threatened to link the Western European and Russian economies more tightly together.

    The second major oligarchic bloc is the rent-extracting oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM), riding America’s special tax favoritism granted to companies emptying natural resources out of the ground and putting them mostly into the atmosphere, oceans and water supply. Like the banking and real estate sector seeking to maximize economic rent and maximizing capital gains for housing and other assets, the aim of this OGAM sector is to maximize the price of its energy and raw materials so as to maximize its natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major U.S. priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline threatened to link the Western European and Russian economies more tightly together.

    If oil, gas and mining operations are not situated in every U.S. voting district, at least their investors are. Senators from Texas and other Western oil-producing and mining states are the leading OGAM lobbyists, and the State Department has a heavy oil sector influence providing a national security umbrella for the sector’s special tax breaks. The ancillary political aim is to ignore and reject environmental drives to replace oil, gas and coal with alternative sources of energy. The Biden administration accordingly has backed the expansion of offshore drilling, supported the Canadian pipeline to the world’s dirtiest petroleum source in the Athabasca tar sands, and celebrated the revival of U.S. fracking.

    The foreign policy extension is to prevent foreign countries not leaving control of their oil, gas and mining to U.S. OGAM companies from competing in world markets with U.S. suppliers. Isolating Russia (and Iran) from Western markets will reduce the supply of oil and gas, pushing up prices and corporate profits accordingly.

    The third major oligarchic group is the symbiotic Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which is the modern finance-capitalist successor to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents. With most housing in today’s world having become owner-occupied (although with sharply rising rates of absentee landlordship since the post-2008 wave of Obama Evictions), land rent is paid largely to the banking sector in the form of mortgage interest and debt amortization (on rising debt/equity ratios as bank lending inflates housing prices). About 80 percent of U.S. and British bank loans are to the real estate sector, inflating land prices to create capital gains—which are effectively tax exempt for absentee owners.

    Internationally, the FIRE sector’s aim is to privatize foreign economies (above all to secure the privilege of credit creation in U.S. hands), so as to turn government infrastructure and public utilities into rent seeking monopolies to provide basic services (such as health care, education, transportation, communications and information technology) at maximum prices instead of at subsidized prices to reduce the cost of living and doing business.

    This Wall Street-centered banking and real estate bloc is even more broadly based on a district-by-district basis than the MIC. Its New York senator from Wall Street, Chuck Schumer, heads the Senate, long supported by Delaware’s former Senator from the credit card industry Joe Biden, and Connecticut’s senators from the insurance sector centered in that state. Domestically, the aim of this sector is to maximize land rent and the “capital’ gains resulting from rising land rent. Internationally, the FIRE sector’s aim is to privatize foreign economies (above all to secure the privilege of credit creation in U.S. hands), so as to turn government infrastructure and public utilities into rent seeking monopolies to provide basic services (such as health care, education, transportation, communications and information technology) at maximum prices instead of at subsidized prices to reduce the cost of living and doing business. And Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (viz. the Rockefeller-dominated Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).

    The FIRE, MIC and OGAM sectors are the three rentier sectors that dominate today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. Their mutual fortunes have soared as MIC and OGAM stocks have increased. And moves to exclude Russia from the Western financial system (and partially now from SWIFT), coupled with the adverse effects of isolating European economies from Russian energy, promise to spur an inflow into dollarized financial securities

    As mentioned at the outset, it is more helpful to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the complexes based on these three rentier sectors than in terms of the political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives are not representing their states and districts as much as the economic and financial interests of their major donors. That is why neither manufacturing nor agriculture play the dominant role in U.S. foreign policy today. The convergence of the policy aims of America’s three dominant rentier groups overwhelms the interests of labor and even of industrial capital beyond the MIC. That convergence is the defining characteristic of today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. It is basically a reversion to economic rent-seeking, which is independent of the politics of labor and industrial capital.

    The dynamic that needs to be traced today is why this oligarchic blob has found its interest in prodding Russia into what Russia evidently viewed as a do-or-die stance to resist the increasingly violent attacks on Ukraine’s eastern Russian-speaking provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the broader Western threats against Russia.

    The rentier “blob’s” expected consequences of the New Cold War

    As President Biden explained, the current U.S.-orchestrated military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.

    U.S. officials first tried to stop construction of the pipeline from being completed. Firms aiding in its construction were sanctioned, but finally Russia itself completed the pipeline. U.S. pressure then turned on the traditionally pliant German politicians, claiming that Germany and the rest of Europe faced a National Security threat from Russia turning off the gas, presumably to extract some political or economic concessions. No specific Russian demands could be thought up, and so their nature was left obscure and blob-like. Germany refused to authorize Nord Stream 2 from officially going into operation.

    A major aim of today’s New Cold War is to monopolize the market for U.S. shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG)

    A major aim of today’s New Cold War is to monopolize the market for U.S. shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG). Already under Donald Trump’s administration, Angela Merkel was bullied into promising to spend $1 billion building new port facilities for U.S. tanker ships to unload natural gas for German use. The Democratic election victory in November 2020, followed by Ms. Merkel’s retirement from Germany’s political scene, led to cancellation of this port investment, leaving Germany really without much alternative to importing Russian gas to heat its homes, power its electric utilities, and to provide raw material for its fertilizer industry and hence the maintenance of its farm productivity.

    So the most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices, above all to the detriment of Germany. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for U.S. oil companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy. That looms as the third time in a century that the United States has defeated Germany—each time increasing its control over a German economy increasingly dependent on the United States for imports and policy leadership, with NATO being the effective check against any domestic nationalist resistance.

    Higher gasoline, heating and other energy prices also will hurt U.S. consumers and those of other nations (especially Global South energy-deficit economies) and leave less of the U.S. family budget for spending on domestic goods and services. This could squeeze marginalized homeowners and investors, leading to further concentration of absentee ownership of housing and commercial property in the United States, along with buyouts of distressed real estate owners in other countries faced with soaring heating and energy costs. But that is deemed collateral damage by the post-industrial blob.

    Food prices also will rise, headed by wheat. (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) This will squeeze many Near Eastern and Global South food-deficit countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.

    Russian raw materials exports may be blocked by Russia in response to the currency and SWIFT sanctions. This threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel and aluminum (the production of which consumes much electricity as its major cost—which will make that metal more expensive). If China decides to see itself as the next nation being threatened and joins Russia in a common protest against the U.S. trade and financial warfare, the Western economies are in for a serious shock.

    The long-term dream of U.S. New Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its Yeltsin/Harvard Boys managerial kleptocracy, with oligarchs seeking to cash in their privatizations in Western stock markets

    The long-term dream of U.S. New Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its Yeltsin/Harvard Boys managerial kleptocracy, with oligarchs seeking to cash in their privatizations in Western stock markets. OGAM still dreams of buying majority control of Yukos and Gazprom. Wall Street would love to recreate a Russian stock market boom. And MIC investors at happily anticipating the prospect of selling more weapons to help bring all this about.

    Russia’s intentions to benefit from America’s unintended consequences

    What does Russia want? Most immediately, to remove the neo-Nazi anti-Russian core that the Maidan massacre and coup put in place in 2014. Ukraine is to be neutralized, which to Russia means basically pro-Russian, dominated by Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. The aim is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a staging ground of U.S.-orchestrated anti-Russian moves a la Chechnya and Georgia.

    Russia’s aim is to dissolve NATO altogether, and then to promote the broad disarmament and denuclearization policies that Russia has been pushing for. Not only will this cut back foreign purchases of U.S. arms, but it may end up leading to sanctions against future U.S. military adventurism

    Russia’s longer term aim is to pry Europe away from NATO and U.S. dominance—and in the process, create with China a new multipolar world order centered on an economically integrated Eurasia. The aim is to dissolve NATO altogether, and then to promote the broad disarmament and denuclearization policies that Russia has been pushing for. Not only will this cut back foreign purchases of U.S. arms, but it may end up leading to sanctions against future U.S. military adventurism. That would leave America with less ability to fund its military operations as de-dollarization accelerates.

    Now that it should be obvious to any informed observer that (1) NATO’s purpose is aggression, not defense, and (2) there is no further territory for it to conquer from the remains of the old Soviet Union, what does Europe get out of continued membership? It is obvious that Russia never again will invade Europe. It has nothing to gain—and had nothing to gain by fighting Ukraine, except to roll back NATO’s proxy expansion into that country and the NATO-backed attacks on Novorossiya.

    Will European nationalist leaders (the left is largely pro-US) ask why their countries should pay for U.S. arms that only put them in danger, pay higher prices for U.S. LNG and energy, pay more for grain and Russian-produced raw materials, all while losing the option of making export sales and profits on peaceful investment in Russia—and perhaps losing China as well?

    The U.S. confiscation of Russian monetary reserves, following the recent theft of Afghanistan’s reserves (and England’s seizure of Venezuela’s gold stocks held there) threatens every country’s adherence to the Dollar Standard, and hence the dollar’s role as the vehicle for foreign exchange savings by the world’s central banks. This will accelerate the international de-dollarization process already started by Russia and China relying on mutual holdings of each other’s currencies.

    Over the longer term, Russia is likely to join China in forming an alternative to the U.S.-dominated IMF and World Bank. Russia’s announcement that it wants to arrest the Ukrainian Nazis and hold a war crimes trial seems to imply an alternative to the Hague court will be established following Russia’s military victory in Ukraine. Only a new international court could try war criminals extending from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi leadership all the way up to U.S. officials responsible for crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg laws.

    Did the American blob actually think through the consequences of NATO’s war?

    It is almost black humor to look at U.S. attempts to convince China that it should join the United States in denouncing Russia’s moves into Ukraine. The most enormous unintended consequence of U.S. foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and other countries along the Belt and Road initiative.

    Russia dreamed of creating a new world order, but it was U.S. adventurism that has driven the world into an entirely new order—one that looks to be dominated by China as the default winner

    Russia dreamed of creating a new world order, but it was U.S. adventurism that has driven the world into an entirely new order—one that looks to be dominated by China as the default winner now that the European economy is essentially torn apart and America is left with what it has grabbed from Russia and Afghanistan, but without the ability to gain future support.

    And everything that I have written above may already be obsolete as Russia and the U.S. have gone on atomic alert. My only hope is that Putin and Biden can agree that if Russia hydrogen bombs Britain and Brussels, that there will be a devil’s (not gentleman’s) agreement not to bomb each other.

    With such talk I’m brought back to my discussions with Herman Kahn 50 years ago. He became quite unpopular for writing Thinking about the Unthinkable, meaning atomic war. As he was parodied in Dr. Strangelove, he did indeed say that there would indeed be survivors. But he added that for himself, he hoped to be right under the atom bomb, because it was not a world in which he wanted to survive.

  • Authoritarian Persistence in West Asia and North Africa

    Authoritarian Persistence in West Asia and North Africa

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    Abstract:

    The robustness of coercive apparatus in West Asia and North Africa has been a result of a culmination of factors over the years. The paper looks at three such arguments – those based on cultural and religious exceptionalism which look at Islam’s inhospitality towards democratization. Here, the author contends that such arguments overlook the fact that Islam is not monolithic, and varies too widely by context and time to remain a static, uniformed religious obstacle to democratic transition. Second, the paper looks at the framework of the rentier theory where the argument has been supported by looking at three primary features of the framework – first, the lack of taxation and the subsequent absence of democratic obligation; second, the presence of heavy security apparatus; and lastly, the lack of any credible political opposition. Finally, the paper looks at the institutional and political systems in the region where the presence of strong patron-client networks and the loyalty of the elite groups towards the regime present a considerable obstacle to the realization of democratic reforms.

    Introduction:

    The robustness of coercive apparatus in West Asia and North Africa has been a result of restrictive political participation and the lack of representative institutions. Two primary features that have come to characterize the authoritarian regimes of the region are the nature of states’ rent economy and the rampant patrimonialism and the associated patron-client networks.

    Over the years, single-party regimes in the region have been seen as more capable of containing elite fragmentation and surviving challenges caused by the economic crisis and political difficulties. Patronage-based economic liberalization in various countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia have further provided the resources necessary for authoritarian incumbents to create new bases for support. The states have witnessed the emergence of electoral and political party laws, particularly designed to undermine democracy, accompanied by limited press freedom and widespread electoral fraud. In Egypt and Iraq, democratic instincts were thwarted in the post-colonial period by the refusal of the states’ elite class to address the societies’ social needs, leading to declining standards of living and the subsequent violent protests.

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  • Divided World: The UN Condemnation of Russia is endorsed by Countries run by the richest, oldest, Whitest people on Earth but only 41% of the World’s population

    Divided World: The UN Condemnation of Russia is endorsed by Countries run by the richest, oldest, Whitest people on Earth but only 41% of the World’s population

    On March 2 of this year the UN General Assembly met in an Emergency Session to pass a non-binding resolution condemning Russia’s February 24 intervention in Ukraine.1 141 countries voted for the resolution, 5 voted against, 35 abstained, and 12 did not vote. (Reported: Guardian, Al Jazeera, iNews)

    although the war is nominally a conflict between two developed and ethnically white nations, Russia and Ukraine, this UN vote suggests the war may be viewed by much of the world as a fight over the global political and economic system that institutionalizes the imperial hierarchy, the distribution of nations between rich and poor, and global white supremacy

     

    In the absence of any reliable opinion poll of the world’s 7.9 billion people, this vote may indicate that the majority of humanity sympathizes with Russia in Ukraine. The statistics presented below show that only 41% of the world’s people live in countries that joined the U.S. in voting for the UN resolution.

    This lopsided vote is even more striking if you consider the demographics. Populations represented by governments that did not vote for the resolution are much more likely to include the world’s poorest nations, nations with younger populations, “nations of color,” nations of the Global South, and nations in the periphery of the world economic system.

    To put it another way, although the war is nominally a conflict between two developed and ethnically white nations, Russia and Ukraine, this UN vote suggests the war may be viewed by much of the world as a fight over the global political and economic system that institutionalizes the imperial hierarchy, the distribution of nations between rich and poor, and global white supremacy.

     

    The UN vote by population

    41% or 34% amounts to a resounding, humiliating defeat for the U.S. on this non-binding UN resolution. Instead it is reported in the west as a U.S. victory and an “overwhelming” worldwide condemnation of Russia.

    Of the world’s 7,934,000,000 people, 59% live in countries that did not support the resolution and only 41% live in countries that did.2 But that last figure drops to 34% outside of the immediate belligerents and their allies: Ukraine, U.S., and NATO countries, and on the other side, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, and Tajikistan (all the countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization).

    41% or 34% amounts to a resounding, humiliating defeat for the U.S. on this non-binding UN resolution. Instead it is reported in the west as a U.S. victory and an “overwhelming” worldwide condemnation of Russia.

    The UN vote and GDP per capita

    All the countries in the top third of the GDP per capita (nominal) rankings, including Japan and all the countries of Western Europe and North America, voted for the resolution, Venezuela being the only country in the top third that did not.

    Of the countries that did not vote for the resolution, most are ranked the poorest in the world, and almost none came above the approximate midpoint rank of 98. The exceptions were: Venezuela (58), Russia (68), Equatorial Guinea (73), Kazakhstan (75), China (76) Cuba (82), Turkmenistan (92), South Africa (95), Belarus (97).3

    The UN vote and the core/periphery divide

    Another way to show the wealth divide in the UN vote is by distinguishing core and peripheralcountries. In world-systems theory the surplus value of labor flows disproportionately to the core countries: “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20)

    The countries usually considered in the core are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.

    The difference here is stark. Every single core country voted for the resolution and every country that did not is either in the periphery or in some cases, like Russia or China, in the semi-periphery.

     

    The UN vote and median age

    All the countries ranked in the top third of median age rankings, from Monaco (51.1 years) to Iceland (36.5 years), voted for the resolution, with the following exceptions: China (37.4), Russia (39.6), Belarus (40), Cuba (41.5).

    Of the twenty entries with the lowest median ages (15.4 to 18.9), only half voted for the resolution.

    The UN vote and “countries of color”

    Of the 7,934,000,000 people in the world, 1,136,160,000 live in what are usually recognized as “white countries” (consistently or not) with about 14% of the world’s population. Yet “white countries,” by population, represent about 30% of the total vote in favor of the resolution. This “white vote” accounts for every one of the core countries (except Singapore and Japan). Compare: 97% of the population in the countries that did not vote for the resolution live in “countries of color.” Only Russia, Belarus and Armenia (which did not vote for the resolution) have dominant populations classed as “white.”

    Therefore “white countries” are overrepresented in the group that voted for the resolution (30% vs. 14%), and underrepresented in the group that did not (3% vs. 14%).

    Before the intervention

    What follows is a brief sketch of events leading to the February 24 Russian intervention that prompted the UN resolution. It is a history seldom mentioned in the mainstream media, though it is easily found in selected alternative and now-suppressed media. It is presented here as a possible, partial explanation of why the UN resolution had so little support measured by population.

    U.S./NATO has directed aggression toward Russia for decades, advancing NATO forces ever closer to Russia’s western border, ringing Russia with military bases, placing nuclear weapons at ever closer range, and breaching and discarding treaties meant to lessen the likelihood of nuclear war. The U.S. even let it be known, through its planning documents and policy statements, that it considered Ukraine a battlefield on which Ukrainian and Russian lives might be sacrificed in order to destabilize, decapitate and eventually dismember Russia just as it did Yugoslavia. Russia has long pointed out the existential security threat it sees in Ukrainian territory, and it has made persistent, peaceful, yet fruitless efforts over decades to resolve the problem (See Monthly Review’s excellent editors’ note).

    Recent history includes the 2014 U.S.-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, followed by a war of the central government against those in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk resisting the coup government and its policies. Those policies include a ban on the Russian language, the native tongue of the region and a significant part of the country (ironically, including President Zelensky).

    By the end of 2021 the war had taken 14,000 lives, four-fifths of them members of the resistance or civilian Russian speakers targeted by the government. Through years of negotiations Russia tried and failed to keep the Donetsk and Lugansk regions inside a united Ukraine. After signing the Minsk agreements that would do just that, Ukraine, under tight U.S. control, refused to comply even with step one: to talk with the rebellion’s representatives.

    As to why the intervention happend now, Vyacheslav Tetekin, Central Committee member of Russia’s largest opposition party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, explains:

    Starting from December, 2021 Russia had been receiving information about NATO’s plans to deploy troops and missile bases in Ukraine. Simultaneously an onslaught on the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR) was being prepared. About a week before the start of Russia’s operation the plan was uncovered of an offensive that envisaged strikes by long-range artillery, multiple rocket launchers, combat aircraft, to be followed by an invasion of Ukrainian troops and Nazi battalions. It was planned to cut off Donbas from the border with Russia, encircle and besiege Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities and then carry out a sweeping “security cleanup” with imprisonment and killing of thousands of defenders of Donbas and their supporters. The plan was developed in cooperation with NATO. The invasion was scheduled to begin in early March. Russia’s action pre-empted Kiev and NATO, which enabled it to seize strategic initiative and effectively save thousands of lives in the two republics.

    All this may have informed the world’s overwhelming rejection of the U.S.-backed UN resolution condemning Russia, which western media perversely considers a U.S. victory simply because the resolution passed. Never mind that it passed in a voting system where Liechtenstein’s vote carries the same weight as China’s.

    The Global South also knows from bitter experience that unlike the West, neither Russia nor its close partner China habitually engage in bombings, invasions, destabilization campaigns, color revolutions, coups and assassinations against the countries and governments of the Global South. On the contrary, both countries have assisted the development and military defense of such countries, as in Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran and elsewhere.

    Conclusion

    Just as the imperial core of North America, Europe and Japan does not represent the world in their population numbers, demographics, wealth, or power, neither does the imperial core speak for the world on crucial issues of war, peace, justice, and international law. Indeed the Global South has already spoken to the Global North so many times, in so many ways, with patience, persistence and eloquence, to little avail. Since we in the North have not been able to hear the words, perhaps we can listen to the cry of the numbers.

    Notes:

    1. ↩ The resolution “Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter.” (Article 2 (4) reads: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”) The resolution also “[d]eplores the 21 February 2022 decision by the Russian Federation related to the status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine as a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter.” Beyond Russia, the resolution “[d]eplores the involvement of Belarus in this unlawful use of force against Ukraine, and calls upon it to abide by its international obligations.”
    2. ↩ The population of countries voting for the UN resolution is 3,289,310,000. The population of countries voting against the resolution, abstaining, or not voting is 4,644,694,000 (Against: 202,209,000; abstaining: 4,140,546,000; not voting: 301,939,000).
    3. ↩ Here are the countries that did not vote for the resolution, with their GDP per capita rankings (the higher the GDP the higher the rank). 5 countries voted against the resolution: Russia 68, Belarus 97, North Korea 154, Eritrea 178, Syria 147. 35 countries abstained: Algeria 119, Angola 128, Armenia 115, Bangladesh 155, Bolivia 126, Burundi 197, Central African Republic 193, China 76, Congo 143, Cuba 82, El Salvador 121, Equatorial Guinea 73, India 150, Iran 105, Iraq 103, Kazakhstan 75, Kyrgyzstan 166, Laos 140, Madagascar 190, Mali 174, Mongolia 118, Mozambique 192, Namibia 102, Nicaragua 148, Pakistan 162, Senegal 160, South Africa 95, South Sudan 168, Sri Lanka 120, Sudan 171, Tajikistan 177, Tanzania 169, Uganda 187, Vietnam 138, Zimbabwe 144. 12 countries did not vote: Azerbaijan 110, Burkina Faso 184, Cameroon 158, Eswatini 117, Ethiopia 170, Guinea 175, Guinea-Bissau 179, Morocco 130, Togo 185, Turkmenistan 92, Uzbekistan 159, Venezuela 58.

     

    This article was published earlier in MRonline and is republished under the Creative Commons License 4.0.

    Feature Image Credit: Alarabianews.

    Map and Table: Wikipedia

  • CIA Director William F. Burns’ misinformation strategy: spreading the big lie that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”

    CIA Director William F. Burns’ misinformation strategy: spreading the big lie that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”

    CIA Director Bill Burns testified before the Senate Intelligence committee in early March that Russia and Vladimir Putin were “losing the information war over its war in Ukraine.

    “In all my years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances where we lost information wars with the Russians,” Burns said, but “this is one information war that I think Putin is losing…. In this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and calculations and demonstrating to the entire world that this is premeditated and unprovoked aggression built on a body of lies and false narratives”.

    George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave with Burns’ performance. While hypocritically excoriating Russia for promoting a “body of lies” and “false narratives,” Burns admitted to using the very same tactics in an information war in which both sides were twisting the truth.

    The U.S. Big Lie centers on the claim of unprovoked Russian aggression.

    As CAM has previously reported, the war was actually started by Ukraine eight years agowhen it sent troops into Eastern Ukraine in an attempt to subdue pro-Russian secessionists who resisted a February 2014 U.S. backed coup d’état.

    Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) maps showed that shelings that violated ceasefire arrangements under the Minsk accords were carried out mostly by the Ukrainian government, which had forced the people of Luhansk and Donetsk to live in underground bunkers for years.

    According to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Ukraine had massed 122,000 troops on the border with Donbass on the eve of the war. The Duma claimed to have intelligence indicating that these troops were planning an offensive into Donbass, which the Russian invasion preempted.

    Russia reported on February 21 that it had captured a Ukrainian soldier and killed five others after they crossed into Russian territory in Rostov, just over the border with Ukraine.

    Map showing Ukrainian troops concentrations on the eve of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
    Source: covertactionmagazine.com

    The U.S. further provoked the war by refusing to abide by Putin’s legitimate demand that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) not be expanded to Ukraine or anywhere further to Russia’s border—going against a promise made in 1990 by U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

    The U.S. also armed and equipped the Ukrainian military with lethal weaponry for years, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, which have shot down at least 50 tanks in the war so far, and CIA trained Ukrainian paramilitary units in sniper techniques and irregular warfare.

    Biolabs, False Flags, Chemical Weapons and Atrocity Stories

    At the heart of the current information war lies allegations about wide scale atrocities, false flag attacks and chemical warfare.

    Russia has also accused the U.S. of possessing biowarfare labs within Ukraine. Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that the latter allegation was part of a Russian disinformation operation. However, undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland admitted that bioweapons labs existed in Ukraine and that she was afraid that Russian troops would seek to gain control of them, with leaked documents showing that Pentagon contractors had access to the labs.

    Atrocities

    On March 13th, Russia was accused of bombing a maternity ward in Mariupol, killing a pregnant woman and her baby. Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London called the images “fake news,” which appears in this case to be untrue.However, the Western media made the Russians look like the only bad guys in the war by failing to report on Ukrainian atrocities such as Ukraine’s deployment of a cluster bomb in the Donetsk city center, killing dozens of civilians (including six people riding a city bus) and forcing many more to evacuate.

    The U.S. media also failed to report on how Azov battalion men dragged civilians who were trying to leave Mariupol from their cars and then shot them dead, as was captured on video. Russia was further blamed for bombing a movie theater in Mariupol where residents had taken shelter, when eyewitness reports said it was the work again of Azov militants associated with the Ukrainian army.

     

    CNN and other U.S. media blamed Russia for destroying the movie theater in Mariupol when eyewitness said it was Azov militants within the Ukrainian army. Source: thedailybeast.com.

     

    The extent to which the CIA is behind the media’s one-sided coverage of the Ukraine war is uncertain. In the past, the CIA has planted journalists and funded intellectual journals and continued to do so under the guise of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

    Burns’ statements indicate, however, that the nation’s media have been enlisted in the information war unequivocally. RT News has been shut down and mainstream publications like the New York Times parrot the State Departments’ views about the war, attributing any criticisms of U.S. policy to Russian disinformation.

    Last week, the White House went so far as to invite and brief some 30 top social media “influencers,” especially those on TikTok, a short video platform which has become very popular among the youth. Using similar material provided to mainstream news reporters, this clearly represents an extra effort by Washington to more widely propagate disinformation on Ukraine.

    In his 1928 book, Falsehoods in a Time War, Sir Arthur Ponsonby provided a blueprint of war propaganda that could be summarized as follows:

    1. We do not want war.
    2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
    3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
    4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
    5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
    6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
    7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
    8. Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
    9. Our cause is sacred.
    10. All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

    Right out of the CIA’s playbook circa 2022.

     

    This article was published earlier in MRonline. 

    TPF is happy to republish it with the permission of the author and under Creative Commons Licence.

  • From Cold War to Hot Peace

    From Cold War to Hot Peace

    In a world shaped by the iron logic of markets and national interests, Vladimir Putin’s atavistic war of conquest has mystified the “deep” strategists of realpolitik. Their mistake was to forget that under global capitalism, cultural, ethnic, and religious conflicts are the only forms of political struggle left.

    With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are entering a new phase of warfare and global politics. Aside from a heightened risk of nuclear catastrophe, we are already in a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing global crises – the pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss, and food and water shortages. The situation exhibits a basic madness: at a time when humanity’s very survival is jeopardized by ecological (and other) factors, and when addressing those threats should be prioritized over everything else, our primary concern has suddenly shifted – again – to a new political crisis. Just when global cooperation is needed more than ever, the “clash of civilizations” returns with a vengeance.

    Why does this happen? As is often the case, a little Hegel can go a long way toward answering such questions. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel famously describes the dialectic of master and servant, two “self-consciousnesses” locked in a life-or-death struggle. If each is ready to risk his own life to win, and if both persist in this, there is no winner: one dies, and the survivor no longer has anyone to recognize his own existence. The implication is that all of history and culture rest on a foundational compromise: in the eye-to-eye confrontation, one side (the future servant) “averts its eyes,” unwilling to go to the end.

    But Hegel would hasten to note that there can be no final or lasting compromise between states. Relationships between sovereign nation-states are permanently under the shadow of potential war, with each epoch of peace being nothing more than a temporary armistice. Each state disciplines and educates its own members and guarantees civic peace among them, and this process produces an ethic that ultimately demands acts of heroism – a readiness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country. The wild, barbarian relations between states thus serve as the foundation of the ethical life within states.

    North Korea represents the clearest example of this logic, but there are also signs that China is moving in the same direction. According to friends in China (who must remain unnamed), many authors in Chinese military journals now complain that the Chinese army hasn’t had a real war to test its fighting ability. While the United States is permanently testing its army in places like Iraq, China hasn’t done so since its failed intervention in Vietnam in 1979.

    At the same time, Chinese official media have begun to hint more openly that since the prospect of Taiwan’s peaceful integration into China is dwindling, a military “liberation” of the island will be needed. As ideological preparation for this, the Chinese propaganda machine has increasingly urged nationalist patriotism and suspicion toward everything foreign, with frequent accusations that the US is eager to go to war for Taiwan. Last fall, Chinese authorities advised the public to stock up on enough supplies to survive for two months “just in case.” It was a strange warning that many perceived as an announcement of imminent war.

    This tendency runs directly against the urgent need to civilize our civilizations and establish a new mode of relating to our environs. We need universal solidarity and cooperation among all human communities, but this objective is made far more difficult by the rise of sectarian religious and ethnic “heroic” violence and a readiness to sacrifice oneself (and the world) for one’s specific cause. In 2017, the French philosopher Alain Badiou noted that the contours of a future war are already discernible. He foresaw:

    “…the United States and their Western-Japanese group on the one side, China and Russia on the other side, atomic arms everywhere. We cannot but recall Lenin’s statement: ‘Either revolution will prevent the war or the war will trigger revolution.’ This is how we can define the maximal ambition of the political work to come: for the first time in history, the first hypothesis – revolution will prevent the war – should realize itself, and not the second one – a war will trigger revolution. It is effectively the second hypothesis which materialized itself in Russia in the context of the First World War, and in China in the context of the second. But at what price! And with what long-term consequences!”

    The Limits of Realpolitik

    Civilizing our civilizations will require radical social change – a revolution, in fact. But we cannot afford to hope that a new war will trigger it. The far more likely outcome is the end of civilization as we know it, with the survivors (if there are any) organized in small authoritarian groups. We should harbor no illusions: in some basic sense, World War III has already begun, though for now it is still being fought mostly through proxies.

    Abstract calls for peace are not enough. “Peace” is not a term that allows us to draw the key political distinction that we need. Occupiers always sincerely want peace in the territory they hold. Nazi Germany wanted peace in occupied France, Israel wants peace in the occupied West Bank, and Russian President Vladimir Putin wants peace in Ukraine. That is why, as the philosopher Étienne Balibar once put it, “pacifism is not an option.” The only way to prevent another Great War is by avoiding the kind of “peace” that requires constant local wars for its maintenance.

    Whom can we rely on under these conditions? Should we place our confidence in artists and thinkers, or in pragmatic practitioners of realpolitik? The problem with artists and thinkers is that they, too, can lay the foundation for war. Recall William Butler Yeats’s apt verse: “I have spread my dreams under your feet, / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” We should apply these lines to poets themselves. When they spread their dreams under our feet, they should spread them carefully because actual people will read them and act upon them. Recall that the same Yeats continuously flirted with Fascism, going so far as to voice his approval of Germany’s anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in August 1938.

    Plato’s reputation suffers because of his claim that poets should be thrown out of the city. Yet this is rather sensible advice, judging from the experience of recent decades, when the pretext for ethnic cleansing has been prepared by poets and “thinkers” like Putin’s house ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin. There is no longer ethnic cleansing without poetry, because we live in an era that is supposedly post-ideological. Since great secular causes no longer have the force to mobilize people for mass violence, a larger sacred motive is needed. Religion or ethnic belonging serve this role perfectly (pathological atheists who commit mass murder for pleasure are rare exceptions).

    Realpolitik is no better guide. It has become a mere alibi for ideology, which often evokes some hidden dimension behind the veil of appearances in order to obscure the crime that is being committed openly. This double mystification is often announced by describing a situation as “complex.” An obvious fact – say, an instance of brutal military aggression – is relativized by evoking a “much more complex background.” The act of aggression is really an act of defense.

    This is exactly what is happening today. Russia obviously attacked Ukraine, and is obviously targeting civilians and displacing millions. And yet commentators and pundits are eagerly searching for “complexity” behind it.

    There is complexity, of course. But that does not change the basic fact that Russia did it. Our mistake was that we did not interpret Putin’s threats literally enough; we thought he was just playing a game of strategic manipulation and brinkmanship. One is reminded of the famous joke that Sigmund Freud quotes:

    “Two Jews met in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. ‘Where are you going?’ asked one. ‘To Cracow,’ was the answer. ‘What a liar you are!’ broke out the other. ‘If you say you’re going to Cracow, you want me to believe you’re going to Lemberg. But I know that in fact you’re going to Cracow. So why are you lying to me?’”

    When Putin announced a military intervention, we didn’t take him literally when he said he wanted to pacify and “denazify” Ukraine. Instead, the reproach from disappointed “deep” strategists amounts to: “Why did you tell me you are going to occupy Lviv when you really want to occupy Lviv?”

    This double mystification exposes the end of realpolitik. As a rule, realpolitik is opposed to the naivety of binding diplomacy and foreign policy to (one’s version of) moral or political principles. Yet in the current situation, it is realpolitik that is naive. It is naive to suppose that the other side, the enemy, is also aiming at a limited pragmatic deal.

    Force and Freedom

    During the Cold War, the rules of superpower behavior were clearly delineated by the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). Each superpower could be sure that if it decided to launch a nuclear attack, the other side would respond with full destructive force. As a result, neither side started a war with the other.

    By contrast, when North Korea’s Kim Jong-un talks about dealing a devastating blow to the US, one cannot but wonder where he sees his own position. He talks as if he is unaware that his country, himself included, would be destroyed. It is as if he is playing an altogether different game called NUTS (Nuclear Utilization Target Selection), whereby the enemy’s nuclear capabilities can be surgically destroyed before it can counterstrike.

    Over the past few decades, even the US has oscillated between MAD and NUTS. Though it acts as if it continues to trust the MAD logic in its relations with Russia and China, it has occasionally been tempted to pursue a NUTS strategy vis-à-vis Iran and North Korea. With his hints about possibly launching a tactical nuclear strike, Putin follows the same reasoning. The very fact that two directly contradictory strategies are mobilized simultaneously by the same superpower attests to the fantasy character of it all.

    Unfortunately for the rest of us, MADness is passé. Superpowers are increasingly testing each other, experimenting with the use of proxies as they try to impose their own version of global rules. On March 5, Putin called the sanctions imposed on Russia the “equivalent of a declaration of war.” But he has repeatedly stated since then that economic exchange with the West should continue, emphasizing that Russia is keeping its financial commitments and continuing to deliver hydrocarbons to Western Europe.

    In other words, Putin is trying to impose a new model of international relations. Rather than cold war, there should be hot peace: a state of permanent hybrid war in which military interventions are declared under the guise of peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

    Hence, on February 15, the Russian Duma (parliament) issued a declaration expressing “its unequivocal and consolidated support for the adequate humanitarian measures aimed at providing support to residents of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine who have expressed a desire to speak and write in Russian language, who want freedom of religion to be respected, and who do not support the actions of the Ukrainian authorities violating their rights and freedoms.”

    How often in the past have we heard similar arguments for US-led interventions in Latin America or the Middle East and North Africa? While Russia shells cities and bombs maternity wards in Ukraine, international commerce should continue. Outside of Ukraine, normal life should go on. That is what it means to have a permanent global peace sustained by never-ending peacekeeping interventions in isolated parts of the world.

    Can anyone be free in such a predicament? Following Hegel, we should make a distinction between abstract and concrete freedom, which correspond to our notions of freedom and liberty. Abstract freedom is the ability to do what one wants independently of social rules and customs; concrete freedom is the freedom that is conferred and sustained by rules and customs. I can walk freely along a busy street only when I can be reasonably sure that others on the street will behave in a civilized way toward me – that drivers will obey traffic rules, and that other pedestrians will not rob me.

    But there are moments of crisis when abstract freedom must intervene. In December 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: “Never were we freer than under the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, and first of all our right to speak. They insulted us to our faces. … And that is why the Resistance was a true democracy; for the soldier, as for his superior, the same danger, the same loneliness, the same responsibility, the same absolute freedom within the discipline.”

    Sartre was describing freedom, not liberty. Liberty is what was established when post-war normality returned. In Ukraine today, those who are battling the Russian invasion are free and they are fighting for liberty. But this raises the question of how long the distinction can last. What happens if millions more people decide that they must freely violate the rules in order to protect their liberty? Is this not what drove a Trumpian mob to invade the US Capitol on January 6, 2021?

    The Not-so-Great Game

    We still lack a proper word for today’s world. For her part, the philosopher Catherine Malabou believes we are witnessing the beginning of capitalism’s “anarchist turn”: “How else are we to describe such phenomena as decentralized currencies, the end of the state’s monopoly, the obsolescence of the mediating role played by banks, and the decentralization of exchanges and transactions?”

    Those phenomena may sound appealing, but with the gradual disappearance of the state’s monopoly, state-imposed limits to ruthless exploitation and domination will also disappear. While anarcho-capitalism aims at transparency, it also “simultaneously authorizes the large-scale but opaque use of data, the dark web, and the fabrication of information.”

    To prevent this descent into chaos, Malabou observes, policies increasingly follow a path of “Fascist evolution…with the excessive security and military build-up that goes along with it. Such phenomena do not contradict a drive towards anarchism. Rather, they indicate precisely the disappearance of the state, which, once its social function has been removed, expresses the obsolescence of its force through the use of violence. Ultra-nationalism thus signals the death agony of national authority.”

    Viewed in these terms, the situation in Ukraine is not one nation-state attacking another nation-state. Rather, Ukraine is being attacked as an entity whose very ethnic identity is denied by the aggressor. The invasion is justified in the terms of geopolitical spheres of influence (which often extend well beyond ethnic spheres, as in the case of Syria). Russia refuses to use the word “war” for its “special military operation” not just to downplay the brutality of its intervention but above all to make clear that war in the old sense of an armed conflict between nation-states does not apply.

    The Kremlin wants us to believe that it is merely securing “peace” in what it considers its geopolitical sphere of influence. Indeed, it is also already intervening through its proxies in Bosnia and Kosovo. On March 17, the Russian ambassador to Bosnia, Igor Kalabukhov, explained that, “If [Bosnia] decides to be a member of any alliance [such as NATO], that is an internal matter. Our response is a different matter. Ukraine’s example shows what we expect. Should there be any threat, we will respond.”

    Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has gone so far as to suggest that the only comprehensive solution would be to demilitarize all of Europe, with Russia with its army maintaining peace through occasional humanitarian interventions. Similar ideas abound in the Russian press. As the political commentator Dmitry Evstafiev explains in a recent interview with a Croatian publication: “A new Russia is born which lets you know clearly that it doesn’t perceive you, Europe, as a partner. Russia has three partners: USA, China, and India. You are for us a trophy which shall be divided between us and Americans. You didn’t yet get this, although we are coming close to this.”

    Dugin, Putin’s court philosopher, grounds the Kremlin’s stance in a weird version of historicist relativism. In 2016, he said:

    “Post-modernity shows that every so-called truth is a matter of believing. So we believe in what we do, we believe in what we say. And that is the only way to define the truth. So we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept…. If the United States does not want to start a war, you should recognize that United States is not any more a unique master. And [with] the situation in Syria and Ukraine, Russia says, ‘No you are not any more the boss.’ That is the question of who rules the world. Only war could decide really.”

    This raises an obvious question: What about the people of Syria and Ukraine? Can they not also choose their truth and belief, or are they just a playground – or battlefield – of the big “bosses”? The Kremlin would say they don’t count in the big division of power. Within the four spheres of influence, there are only peacekeeping interventions. War proper happens only when the four big bosses cannot agree on the borders of their spheres – as in the case of China’s claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

    A New Non-Alignment

    But if we can be mobilized only by the threat of war, not by the threat to our environment, the liberty we will get if our side wins may not be worth having. We are faced with an impossible choice: if we make compromises to maintain peace, we are feeding Russian expansionism, which only a “demilitarization” of all of Europe will satisfy. But if we endorse full confrontation, we run the high risk of precipitating a new world war. The only real solution is to change the lens through which we perceive the situation.

    While the global liberal-capitalist order is obviously approaching a crisis at many levels, the war in Ukraine is being falsely and dangerously simplified. Global problems like climate change play no role in the hackneyed narrative of a clash between barbaric-totalitarian countries and the civilized, free West. And yet the new wars and great-power conflicts are also reactions to such problems. If the issue is survival on a planet in trouble, one should secure a stronger position than others. Far from being the moment of clarifying truth, and when the basic antagonism is laid bare, the current crisis is a moment of deep deception.

    While we should stand firmly behind Ukraine, we must avoid the fascination with war that has clearly seized the imaginations of those who are pushing for an open confrontation with Russia. Something like a new non-aligned movement is needed, not in the sense that countries should be neutral in the ongoing war, but in the sense that we should question the entire notion of the “clash of civilizations.”

    According to Samuel Huntington, who coined the term, the stage for a clash of civilizations was set at the Cold War’s end, when the “iron curtain of ideology” was replaced by the “velvet curtain of culture.” At first blush, this dark vision may appear to be the very opposite of the end-of-history thesis advanced by Francis Fukuyama in response to the collapse of communism in Europe. What could be more different from Fukuyama’s pseudo-Hegelian idea that the best possible social order humanity could devise had at last been revealed to be capitalist liberal democracy?

    We can now see that the two visions are fully compatible: the “clash of civilizations” is the politics that comes at the “end of history.” Ethnic and religious conflicts are the form of struggle that fits with global capitalism. In an age of “post-politics” – when politics proper is gradually replaced by expert social administration – the only remaining legitimate sources of conflict are cultural (ethnic, religious). The rise of “irrational” violence follows from the depoliticization of our societies.

    Within this limited horizon, it is true that the only alternative to war is a peaceful coexistence of civilizations (of different “truths,” as Dugin put it, or, to use a more popular term today, of different “ways of life”). The implication is that forced marriages, homophobia, or the rape of women who dare to go out in public alone are tolerable if they happen in another country, so long as that country is fully integrated into the global market.

    The new non-alignment must broaden the horizon by recognizing that our struggle should be global – and by counseling against Russophobia at all costs. We should offer our support to those within Russia who are protesting the invasion. They are not some abstract coterie of internationalists; they are the true Russian patriots – the people who truly love their country and have become deeply ashamed of it since February 24. There is no more morally repulsive and politically dangerous saying than, “My country, right or wrong.” Unfortunately, the first casualty of the Ukraine war has been universality.

    This essay was published earlier in Project Syndicate.