The West Failed in Ukraine

     It has been a while, but I have been as many know gripped by the spectacle in the Ukraine. And on my first post back I do have to point out the quite obvious fact that I was mistaken in my previous prediction on what would happen in the month leading up to the conflict. I had foolishly thought that the Western powers knew better than to keep escalating the situation, in this case, cooler heads did not prevail in the West and the coup by the idealists over the realists in the halls of power in America and Europe has been complete, and any attempt at actual peaceful prevention of this conflict was sabotaged from the start. 

    So what did happen and how did it lead to this war? The catalyst for this conflict I would argue was not in Ukraine itself, for what had changed in the 7 years since the Russians had bloodlessly taken Crimea and propped up their puppets in Luhansk and Donetsk? The answer is not in Ukraine but to its north to the happily forgotten nation of Belarus, which for the past 20 years has been treated as a bemused footnote as the "last dictatorship in Europe". Belarus had forged for itself a niche as a bridge between the West and Russia playing off both sides to its benefit careful not to be consumed by its much larger brother to its East and not be liberalized by the hegemon to the west, and to the benefit of both sides was a Slavic Switzerland reliable in its neutrality. But all that changed in 2020 when protesters demanded democratic change after President Lukashenko had won his sixth term with around 80 percent of the vote a result not too different from his previous election victories. Tens of thousands took to the streets in major protests in what seemed like a repeat of the color revolutions that had occurred in former Soviet Republics like Ukraine and Georgia. 

    In this pivotal moment, the Western powers smelled blood in the water, greedily attempting to turn what was already a beneficial situation for them into a new conquest for democracy. The Western Powers put all of their chips on regime change in Belarus, from a realist perspective this is an Achilles heel in Western diplomacy instead of remaining neutral and respecting a beneficial status quo they are forced to gamble on regime change by the idealists. An excellent example of this is the "West Wing" episode "The Stormy Present" in which a paralyzed fictional presidential administration wrestles with the question of widespread democratic protests in Saudi Arabia and whether to support them. And while Saudi Arabia is leagues different from Belarus, one has to wonder if America will sacrifice its diplomatic reputation on the altar of the widely touted "Democracy V. Autocracy" paradigm. This Western gamble in Belarus ultimately failed when protests fizzled out in the face of calculated delay and defiance by Lukashenko who when pushed into a corner by the West found the Russian bear unconcerned with trivialities like "Democracy" and "Freedom" and so one strongman was pushed into the arms of another. 

`    This event was a breaking point for Putin, it showed him that the West had no concept of established neutrality by convention like what had existed in Belarus and what was theoretically supposed to exist in Ukraine. It confirmed to him that the West was committed zealously to the process started by Clinton and Albright, of the ruthless westward expansion of NATO and subsumption of the entire former Soviet sphere of influence and even parts of the former USSR itself. A policy that was sloppily defended recently by said President when it's clear that his policy has done more harm than good. That the West will respect no convention that doesn't suit them or allow for exploitation with their overwhelming financial and military capital. The events in Belarus while ultimately favorable to Putin in gaining a puppet in Lukashenko was ultimately too much of a risky game for him to play as it easily could have gone the other way, and a NATO army within striking distance of Moscow was a game Putin does not want to play. This was the impetus for the demand for a formal guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO.

    This demand was at the heart of the military escalation at the border of the Ukraine by Russia was the guarantee by NATO that Ukraine would never become a member. The West denied this request out of hand while pleading for negotiations on irrelevant topics such as Nuclear Arms Control, all the while the West made intelligence pronouncements on Russian troop movements and their supposed attacks as well as arming the Ukrainian military. NATO began to mass troops on their borders in response to the build-up and what followed was a high stakes game of chicken, Russia was given no true way out by the West in response to this huge build up and was faced with only two options either to back down without any concessions from the West and risk severe humiliation and loss of prestige or they could have invaded which most likely was not their first choice. In invading Ukraine, Russia followed only the rational choices given to it by the irrational actor in NATO which was not basing its decisions on reality and fact but on flimsy moral ideology by men who wish themselves to be modern-day Churchills and scorn any true attempt at peace as a repeat of Munich. 

    While the war so far for Russia has not gone according to plan with them reporting an alarming amount of casualties and having failed in their offensive on Kiev they will not go home empty-handed.  This war has cost Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars in damage as well as scores of civilian casualties, even if this war evolves into the military quagmire a la Afghanistan that the West is hoping for that might topple Putin, it will do so with the Ukrainian people having suffered the most from this failure of western diplomacy.