Let me begin with one or two categorical statements, and I stand ready to be contradicted on them.
First, Ukraine cannot win the current war with Russia. And this is not just because of Russia’s superior military capability alone, but largely because the war is being fought on Ukrainian territory! By the time the guns stop booming and the bombs no longer drop, Ukraine would lay not only in physical ruins, but its political, social and economic systems will be in tatters. War is hell, and I cannot wish it on my worst enemy, but the Ukrainian leadership allowed itself to be goaded into a clearly avoidable war. The war would have been avoided had wise counsel and cool heads been allowed to prevail instead of the hubristic grandstanding.
As is always the case, Ukraine and its people will bear and live with the consequences of the war for a long time to come. The thousands of lives that have been needlessly lost to the war can never be brought back; it will take a lot to resettle the millions who have become refugees in neighbouring countries and the internally displaced; damaged physical and social infrastructure will take time and lots of resources to rebuild before life can begin to come back to normal; the scars of the war on people will remain for long.
Secondly, neither the United States of America nor its European allies will fight for Ukraine. The hapless country has no significance for US national security or its strategic objectives other than as a pawn to be used against Russia. The NATO membership that has been dangled before Ukraine for several years now is hardly more than a mere carrot to lure the unsuspecting Ukrainians into a false sense of security. The European nations are not interested in a war with Russia –each of them for individual national reasons. All this while it should have been clear to the Ukrainians that the US does not put boots on the ground anywhere except its defined national interests are involved.
Today, all the US and its NATO allies have been doing is dumping billions of dollars of lethal weapons into Ukraine for Ukrainians to fight a senseless and unwinnable war with the Russians. Yes, it is true that Russia invaded the country, but this would not have happened in the first place if the leaders of Ukrainian had not allowed themselves to be lured into destructive grandstanding against a more powerful neighbour. Many knowledgeable voices had been warning for several years, most especially since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, that the West meant no good for Ukraine. Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer and several other intellectual heavyweights have lent their voices to this truism, but Ukrainian leaders got inebriated by Western (principally American) propaganda and fake assurances to believe that NATO membership is their right, and that Russia should have no say in that.
Shouldn’t the Ukrainians have allowed themselves to be guided by history of the US and its Monroe Doctrine, how the US was willing and ready to engage the defunct USSR in a nuclear showdown in October 1962 over the discovery of offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba? Instead, President Zelensky got intoxicated on Joe Biden’s assurances and propaganda. This is why comedians shouldn’t be leaders! (All pun intended).
Thirdly, ever since the end of the Second World War, a conflagration in which the then Soviet Union lost a whopping 25 million souls, the Soviets (read Russian leaders) had vowed that any next war would be fought on others’ territories and not Russian territory! NATO’s reckless and provocative eastward expansion since the fall of the Soviet Union amounted to poking the Russian bear in the eye, and it is only a question of time before Russia would say that enough is enough! President Vladimir Putin had warned several times in the past two decades, but the West preferred instead to demonize him as a crazy former KGB agent on steroids. NATO’s attempt to gift Ukraine its membership, which would ordinarily bring Western dagger to Russia’s jugular vein, was the last straw. Should this happen, Russia’s Black Sea fleet which had been at Sevastopol and Odessa in the Crimean peninsula since 1783, and Russia’s main access into the Mediterranean Sea, would be blocked as it becomes a NATO territory. The entire Black Sea would then become a NATO playground and Russia would lose considerable naval capability as a great power. Any half intelligent leader with some little knowledge of great power politics should have known that Russia would not sit back and allow that to happen. As it has often been stressed, and mostly demonstrated by the US, for great powers might is always right!
The role of diplomacy. As it is, serious diplomatic efforts at peaceful resolution have not been given serious attention. All of Zelensky’s appeals for Western intervention have so far fallen on deaf ears. First, the US and its Western sidekicks see the Ukrainian debacle as a suitable means to weaken Russia, its economy, power and influence, not to rescue Ukraine from the destructive war. Anti-Russian propaganda, misinformation and disinformation by the Western mass media have been ramped up; killer sanctions are being inflicted on Russia on a daily basis; so also is the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine to use against invading Russian forces. Where is the room for negotiation in a war that everyone knows that Ukraine cannot win? Surely, the Western do-gooders know that Ukraine cannot win this war. So, the question is why are they encouraging it into further destruction, instead of giving room for diplomacy? Obviously, the Western agenda for and in Ukraine does not include peace but merely to use it as a veritable proxy to fight and bring Russia to its knees. And Ukraine has just so naively handed them the opportunity they have sought for decades. Zelensky should also know that American companies would swoop in on the country after the war to obtain multi-billion dollar reconstruction contracts at Ukraine’s expense to ‘assist’ in rebuilding the destroyed country. That’s the way Americans have always prospered from everyone’s misery. Iraq is a living example.
The advice is for Ukraine leaders not to allow a total destruction of their country before they come to their senses that: the Russian bear is a neighbour they can neither wish away nor move away from; the West is not ready for a war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine that might provoke a nuclear Armageddon; that Western propaganda, loud ovations and cheers, lionizing Zelensky as heroic and brave leader, will only get him further inebriated and will not bring peace; and unfortunately, that Ukrainians are on their own. Ukraine must give room for honest external mediators to encourage diplomatic resolution. As it is, the West is a big part of the problem, and their hypocrisy will only further harden Russia’s resolve for ultimate military solution which spells doom for Ukraine. Ukrainian leaders need to bend over backwards to accommodate some of Russia’s demands, principal of which is that Ukraine must not join NATO.
- Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.