The Ukraine Situation

    

                                                              

     Russia is in a pretty poor state if the best it has is the incompetent Putin, I must admit I drank from the Putin is playing 4D chess Kool-Aid for several years, convinced that his geopolitical maneuvering was something more substantial than the foolish decisions they seem to be at face value, but seemingly his only saving grace is that he can rely on the Western powers to be more incompetent than he. The Ukrainian situation highlights these two clumsy powers fighting for supremacy. 

    There are two converging stories at play in the current Ukraine situation, the first is of the West and the EU. After the victory of the United States and friends in the Cold War the end of history really seemed to be taking shape as the Eastern bloc countries threw off the shackles of communism to replace them with those of liberal democracy. With Russia in chaos and even flirting about joining the EU there was no obstacle to the Western expansion of both that bloc and NATO which gobbled more and more of the former Soviet sphere of influence.

     Those three words “sphere of influence” is the key to all this, a staple in diplomacy as far back as the Romans and Parthians arguing over Armenia and ever further back. Spheres of influence have been essential in the diplomacy of the great powers. America who had famously declared both the Americas to be within its sphere of influence in the Monroe doctrine had taken the concept further, with its victory in the Cold War the entire world was its backyard from the Balkans to Kuwait to the South China Sea the will of Uncle Sam extended everywhere and that the UN charter which guaranteed every member state the right to choose whichever form of government it so desired under the principle of self-determination was de facto void and in its place was an American/EU chorus of liberal democracy everywhere always (Saudi exceptions notwithstanding). Of course, this has meant that diplomacy takes a backseat to idealism, the relevant example of Belarus comes to mind, ever since Lukashenko came to power in 1994 his primary motivation has been his survival and that of his fledgling state, the key to this was playing the great powers off of each other and making Minsk into a second Geneva as a respected neutral ground between east and west. All of this came crashing down in 2020 when democracy protesters rocked his government, of course, the West like sharks drawn to blood actively helped the protestors and when Lukashenko looked for help Putin was there to save the day effectively losing what could have been a potential ally against Russia for the sake of putting on moral bluster.

    The foreign policy of Russia toward Ukraine has been erratic and reactive at best, the policy had been benevolent neutrality ever since the breakup of the USSR, the wounded and shrunken Russia was content to have a Ukraine that was bound economically and that was constitutionally neutral and would not be host to a foreign presence on its borders. The main foreign policy goal of Russia ever since Stalin in that regard has been to create as much room from Moscow to any potential invading army, the more west Russia goes the safer it will be, the Russian psyche has so been affected by the Second World War that they are determined never to have a repeat. 

    All of that changed with the ousting of Pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych who had withdrawn from a Treaty of Association with the EU and was obviously wanting closer relations with the bear next door. A Revolution later and Ukraine finds itself with a very pro-EU and anti-Russian government, so what does Russia do? It seizes the Crimea which alienated the entire civilized world especially after Russia had signed a friendship treaty affirming Ukrainian territorial integrity, it also completely alienated a Ukrainian public which turned extremely hostile toward Russia, even those Russian speakers who had previously voted for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions were aghast. Then, further, in an attempt to destabilize Ukraine, Russian soldiers moved to create and fight an insurgency in Donetsk and Luhansk, which failed in its objective in capturing the two cities and evolved into a costly quagmire that has siphoned tremendous amounts of money from Russia not to mention the sinkhole named Crimea. These actions have tainted Russia in the mind of any patriotic Ukrainian as a vile repugnant oppressor.

    These interventions have brought us to where we are now, Russia is playing the tried and true game of the Great Power in the style of the 19th century while the West plays the new game of being an impervious moral power for good that is unable to taint itself with the ugly deals that defined the post-Vienna system one can only hope that this cognitive dissonance between the two powers doesn't lead to unnecessary confrontation and destruction. 

    What we now have is a Ukraine that is fiercely aligned to the West and has forsworn its constitutional neutrality, the Western Powers oblivious to the security concerns of the Russians and with a commitment to self-determination (as long as it suits them), to them it would be a moral failure reminiscent of Munich to sign away the fate of a third-party state. Yet that’s what’s most likely going to happen, I don’t believe Russia is going to intervene again instead they’re going to leverage their bargaining chips in exchange for private guarantees that don’t officially infringe on Ukrainian sovereignty and the crisis will lay dormant for another few years its really a wait to see which power will blunder first after that.