‘Punishing’ Russia

The US-led west and Russia have been at loggerheads over Ukraine since 2014. Of late, the former has used escalating rhetoric and military deployments and weapons supplies to Eastern European countries (some former parts of the Soviet Union) in response to what it says are Russian plans to invade Ukraine. The west’s argument is based on the military exercises Russia has been conducting on its own soil across the Ukrainian border.

The US Congress is discussing a sanctions bill to ‘crush’ Russia’s economy. The UK, always a loyal follower of the US, is preparing its own sanctions package, described by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as a move that would leave Russia with ‘nowhere to hide’. Although talks and a diplomatic solution to the crisis are still hoped for, the situation is arguably the tensest since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries declared their independence.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Russia wants good, equal, mutually respectful relations with the US but does not want to remain in a position where Russia’s security is infringed daily. Citing the NATO encroachment near its border, often referred to as ‘NATO-creep’, Russia has demanded that NATO not admit new members, especially Ukraine, the US refrain from establishing new military bases in ex-Soviet countries, and NATO forces deployed to Eastern European and ex-Soviet countries that joined the western alliance after the Cold War ended be pulled back. Lavrov pointed out that NATO’s line of ‘defence’ continues moving eastward, has come very close to Ukraine, which he asserted, was not ready to join NATO.

The crisis has produced a flurry of diplomatic activity amongst the western allies and with Russia. Not all the European allies are as gung-ho about pillorying Russia as the US and UK because they are on the verge of completing the gas pipeline from Russia that will allay their energy shortages. Germany is quoted as the main sceptic in this regard. Ukraine is resorting to mixed messaging, with its President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on the west to avoid stirring ‘panic’ in the face of the alleged Russian troops buildup while his Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, says it is important to remain ‘firm’ in talks with Moscow.

How have things reached such a pass? After all, the world expected after the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of the Cold War that the west and Russia no longer would be at loggerheads. Russia had taken the turn from socialism (howsoever flawed) to capitalism. After the disastrous years under Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has succeeded in putting Russia back on its feet. In fact, astute observers argued that since the US, as the leader of the western alliance, exhibited more and more of the characteristics of a Colossus with feet of clay, a reference to the dominant military might but faltering political and economic perception of the US, the world was witnessing a tectonic shift of power from the west to a newly restored alliance between recovered Russia and a China rising after embracing capitalism. To the naïve and uninformed, it seemed that since all three of these major global centres of power were wedded to capitalism, their mutual relations would be friendly and smooth from now on.

However, history teaches that conflicts between established powers and new, rising (or restored) powers are the pattern in mankind’s past. Add to this version of the Thucydides trap the inherent competition between major capitalist powers that led to two world wars in the 20th century and you have the strange spectacle of China’s rise through an embrace of capitalism and Putin’s restoration of Russia’s pre-eminent position evoking, as time went by, the kind of hostility that we thought had been buried with the end of the Cold War. Since military conflict between the contending parties is now overshadowed by the presence on both sides of nuclear weapons, the ‘rivalry’ or competition is fought out through proxies or indirectly.

In this general context, Ukraine’s crisis is a case of Russia’s angst at the US-led west reneging on its promises and commitments to refrain from NATO’s eastward expansion after the Soviet collapse. Instead, ‘NATO-creep’ has been at work ever since, which essentially rests on including Eastern European and ex-Soviet countries in the military alliance that seems an anomaly after the end of the Cold War, while western intelligence services indulge in subversive activities in those countries (dubbed the ‘colour’ revolutions) to wean them away from Russian influence and attach them to western aims. These aims are essentially to prevent the centres of global power in Russia and China from competing with the dominant US-led west. This western hegemony is sought in political, economic and strategic terms.

The Ukraine crisis dates from 2013-14, when a ‘popular’ protest movement against pro-Moscow leader Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to resist an agreement that would bring Ukraine into the European Union’s orbit resulted in his ouster and the installation of the present pro-western regime. Two immediate consequences followed. One, Russia, that had ceded Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 (Khrushchev), invaded and occupied it, later holding a referendum confirming the largely Russian population of Crimea endorsed the move. Of course the west rejected the referendum for having been held under the shadow of the occupying Russians’ guns. Crimea’s strategic importance to Russia lies in its providing access to warm water seas. Two, the Russian populated eastern Ukrainian areas of Donetsk and Luhansk (known as the Donbas), allegedly with backing from Russia, declared their ‘independence’. Conflict has been simmering ever since between the current pro-western Ukrainian government and the Donbas self-proclaimed republics. It has so far taken a toll of 14,000 people killed, with regular breaches of the ceasefire under Russian-Ukrainian agreements signed in Minsk in 2014 and 2015.

‘NATO-creep’ is the inherent logic of aggressive capitalism and imperialism, even against competing rival capitalist powers like Russia (and China). The result is the world being treated to the spectacle of what has been dubbed a new Cold War. The world needs peace and development, tackling the planet’s ecological crisis, providing a better future for humanity as a whole. If capitalist imperialism is allowed to hold sway once again, humanity stands threatened.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2022