The well-fed is foolhardy to fight a hungry man over a slice of bread.
n the human mind, fantasy and myth can hold the same place of respect as ascertainable fact. Man can believe what he ought to reject with equal force as what he should embrace. While myth may becloud the mind and distort the eye, it does not alter reality’s landscape. That the leaders of a nation believe a fable does not mandate that reality distort itself to fit the false tale. Herein, the seeds of folly are sown.
While leaders may chart their course by myth, the real world is not obligated to fit nicely into their design. A powerful nation may try to impose its will on reality. However, the brash ultimately finds that, at best, they occupy the weaker side in a sobering negotiation. Reality will have its way. The closer you align your thoughts and policies to it, the wiser you are. The more the outcomes of your actions will accord with your purposes.
After two years of bumbling in Ukraine, America and its NATO allies should have learned this lesson in its fullness. Instead, they persist in arm-wrestling with a reality they seem unable to comprehend or to match it in strength. Should they continue in this way, they may do irreparable harm to Ukraine, Europe and beyond. Through their error, the Cold War may escape the past to break upon tomorrow.
This results from a dire misreading of history, primarily by American leaders and their NATO allies. These leaders have become inebriated on the myths they crow about themselves. Unilaterally or through platforms like NATO and the EU, they believe their role is to impose their version of the political economy on the rest of the world. They seek to liberate the world by bringing it within the grip and embrace of American power and ideology. Nations should be governed through electoral democracy, through representative elections that only feature servants of the rich contesting as candidates against each other. No matter the outcome, the deck is stacked that the rich shall win. The economy should be in the hands of the local financial elite, themselves satellites of global Money Power. A person may be elected president or prime minister. But on all accounts, the dollar shall be king and the American military its muscle, its strongly armed underwriter.
This was how America bullied the Caribbean and Latin America during the last century. During that period, America intervened militarily in numerous countries. Many of these occupations lasted several years with American economic interests taking control of prostrate governments’ revenues and economic policies. In addition to direct intervention, the United States government authored coups and funded insurgencies against governments deemed hostile to American hegemony. Haiti is the nation that came under the American lash the harshest and for the most years. We can see how awfully Washington’s assistance has benefitted that nation.
Feeling the full breadth of its status as the lone superpower, American conservatives seek to export American hegemony to the four corners of human civilization. Before, the Monroe Doctrine was a rationale for supremacy limited to the American continents. Now, the conservatives who define American foreign policy hope to share the Monroe Doctrine with the rest of the world.
This gives rise to a few sticky problems. The histories of other regions have given rise to actors with significant wealth, power and interests. These actors are great nations in their own right. They see no need to cohere to Washington’s designs. Just as Washington does, they have their designs some of which include measures to protect their traditional spheres of influence from Washington’s encroachment.
Nowhere is this clash more poignant and dangerous than in the standoff between America and Russia concerning the Ukraine.
America continues to instigate conflict in Ukraine although an objective mind would find itself at a lost to identify America’s vital interest in this nation that once belonged to Russia. If Ukraine were suddenly stricken from the map, Ukrainians would deem it an extreme act of ill-humor. They would be sorely put off. European economies would be hurt and Russia would be crippled. America would merely yawn.
Consequently, America action in Ukraine has no connection with how nations traditionally define their interests. Instead, it has more to do with how America defines its status as a global superpower and self-appointed leader of the both the free world and the rest of the world that needs to be freed. For Washington, Ukraine is about putting Russia in its place. The sad thing is that Russia already is in its traditional place. It is the policies of the United States that have become disjointed.
In mid-February, Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France executed the second Minsk Protocol. Among other things, the plan established a cease-fire that tentatively holds and paves the way to a political solution. While America eagerly funded the 2014 Maidan take-over from the elected Yanukovych government, it refused to participate in the Minsk agreement. While the Minsk quartet talked peace, the hawkish Washington establishment was urging the Obama administration to provide lethal military equipment to the Kyiv government. (Rest assured America is already handing weapons to this client government under the table. The current debate’s portrayal as a decision whether or not to originate arms is inaccurate. Arms have been provided for some time. The real issue is whether America now equips Kyiv openly or continues to do so in the hidden places that everyone already knows exist.)
As long as the fighting is stalemated or leaning toward the eastern Ukrainian federalists that Russia supports, America hopes to prolong the battle until the tide turns. This is dangerous. At American insistence, the Kyiv government launched an offensive against the federalists. Government forces suffered grave defeat and lost ground. The more they fight, the more they seem to lose. Yet, American hawks believe they can will the losing side to win. This is the hubris that locked America into Vietnam.
Without measuring the possible costs before entering the dangerous gambit, America believes the battle over Ukraine is the Cold War in miniature. If they won the historic Cold War, they can easily take this small dustup. They strap themselves to the wrong historic analogy and will likely get a result reflecting this error.
Current American leader thump their chest that their nation defeated the USSR to end the Cold War. In reality, the U.S. did not defeat the USSR as much as it outlasted it. The USSR fell of its own internal inconsistencies. The Soviet empire had extended its reach beyond its ability of sustain the heavy costs of a far-flung empire. In truth, the Soviet Union lost the Cold War at the inception of the rivalry. Apart from Germany, the USSR was the nation most devastated by WWII. Such a broken economy had no business entering into a global race with the American economy that was the by far the most powerful in human history and which had emerged unscathed and more robust than ever after the war. It was a feat of obdurate pride that the Soviets maintained the competition for so long. It would cost them in the end. All America had to do was to have its economy keep pace with the aims of its war machine. That war machine would become an integral part of the economy without deflating the rest of the economy. This would assure the Soviets could never make up the vast space separating the two economies as long as it focused on geopolitical and military expansion. Due to the relatively modest scale of the Soviet economy, it could not expand the empire and sustain domestic prosperity at the same time. Trying to do both, its leaders ultimately achieved neither.
The Cold War erased the USSR just as it gave rebirth to Russia. Russia’s worldview is more compact and defensive than the Soviet version. Moscow’s geopolitical strategy is to establish a “near empire,” insulating the heartland by creating a buffer zone of friendly client states whose primary relationship is with Russia.
This stance is derived from equal parts ambition and apprehension. As with most strong nations, Russia seeks to shape the way of adjacent nations. But fear also informs its actions. Since the days of Napoleon, Russia’s existential military threat has been invasion from the west. Russia suffered the most civilian and military casualties of any nation in both World Wars, again due to conflict with nations west of it. In WWII, it lost roughly 25 million people. America lost approximately 500,000. Despite the array of Hollywood movies extolling American heroism (such heroism was authentic), the brunt of that war was fought on the eastern front by the Russians.
Based on this history, Russia will go to extreme lengths to protect its western flank. It will pay a high cost for this objective because it fears a higher cost will be exacted should that flank is left unattended and visible to the hostile eye.
For American foreign policy to discount this history and to discount Cold War pledges not to expand NATO eastward is a dangerous thing. It abuses its economic and military superiority to heighten tensions in an area where its vital interests are absent yet Russia’s are foremost. This unnecessary display of supremacy tramples traditional notions of geopolitics and balance of power. Herein resides the great danger of the Ukrainian escapade. It is an attack that would alter the European balance of power at a time when that balance accurately reflects the politico-military and economic realities on the ground.
To adjust the power equation would require the American government to invest more in Ukraine’s military than America’s interests should allow. It would also call for Russia to underestimate its interests in the matter. This combination of decisions is unlikely to occur. If America begins to openly arm the Kyiv government, a fretful dynamic begins. The conflict then becomes a patent test of wills between Washington and Moscow. National pride and international credibility would be at stake. With the world watching, neither side would be willing to blink first. In such a scenario, accident or error might result in fiery calamity.
We should never forget the presence of nuclear weapons. Russia inherited the Soviet arsenal. While inferior to America’s, the damage it can still cause remains unbearable. That one side has the ability to destroy the other three-four times over is of no solace when the other side can also annihilate the first. In the game of utter destruction, once is as effective as thrice.
The current machinations over Ukraine bring to remembrance the Cuban Missile crisis over fifty years ago. The crisis brewed when the Soviets recklessly parked nuclear weapons in Cuba. A dagger was pointed at Washington’s throat. It was an intolerable breach of the American security curtain. Invasion of Cuba was threatened. A blockade was instituted. At the eleventh hour, the crisis was averted when the Soviet leadership accepted a face-saving measure allowing it to pull the nuclear warheads from the island nation.
During this crisis, a naval incident little known to most people occurred. But for the courage of a single Soviet naval officer, the fate of mankind might be different. After the American blockade was established, a tense encounter took place between an American destroyer and a Russian nuclear submarine. With depth charges exploding around his vessel, the Russian commander concluded that war had begun. He prepared to launch his nuclear payload. Only the calm, wise counsel of a fellow officer prevented him from an act that would have forever made his name a proverb for catastrophe.
Events in the Ukraine are not nearly as intense as the Cuban Missile scare. Yet, as that historic example teaches us, mistakes in policy can cause things to spin quickly out of control. Events can take on a momentum so strong that decision makers become more slave to, than shaper of, them.
We all should pray this dynamic does not take hold between Washington and Moscow. While Ukraine is far away, policy moves regarding that nation have already affected Nigeria and Africa. The drop in world oil prices is, in part, an instrument meant to punish oil-producing Russia. The harm to Nigeria’s economy is counted merely as collateral damage to those who evoked this policy. While the economic damage to Nigeria may be collateral to them, it is of central importance to you. Yet, even greater harm may be in store unless America stops this radical breach of traditional geopolitics.
More than which side holds greater influence in Ukraine could be at stake. No nation has the right to increase the risks of major conflagration when the only interest it is pursuing is an overinflated view of its role in the world. Reducing the exaggerated role will reduce global risk and maintain the greater peace. This is the right path if a nation truly wants to be a leader and have the rest of the world respect and just not fear it. The other way is fraught with risks and dangers to mankind that are better left unexplored.
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