The wise man knows the limits of his power but the powerful man rarely knows the limits of his wisdom
Presidential elections took place in Ukraine last week. The elections did nothing to quell the growing unrest. If anything, the elections exacerbated the tension between Kiev and the eastern region. The nation has graduated from the stage of violent protests to open fighting between government forces and eastern insurgents that have all the trappings of incipient civil war. The new president, a manufacturer of confections, seems destined to have his administration defined by the sourness of war. Meanwhile, the United States and other Western democracies oppose the quest of the easterners to seek greater autonomy or liberty from a central government that they believe means them no good. On the other hand, Russia, never known to be gentle in its conquests, now bristles at the Kiev government’s strong-arm methods to impose its will on the easterners. All along the battlements, irony abounds.
I have written extensively about the Ukrainian predicament because it conglobates the major currents in the global political economy into one rotund mess. While the crisis plays out in the Ukraine, it has much to do with how the world order will be defined in the coming years and thus has much to do with all of us. This global dimension makes Ukraine the most important and, potentially, the most dangerous of our day’s conflagrations. While other conflicts stand more violently, this particular dispute is freighted with deep consequences the others can never portend.
First, this is a battle of large powers for influence and control over a rich, and fertile but weaker nation. Second, it is a contest to reestablish the contours of a balance of power in Eastern Europe. A balance of power is only required where there are two or more rival powers. Implicit in this new reality is that Russia now asserts her traditional role as the Czar of Europe’s eastern reaches. However, this affronts the American/Western European myth of the Cold War permanently resolving the issue of a European balance of power in their occidental favor. For Russia to challenge this is to unfairly challenge the verdict of history, the West believes.
These nations arrogant assume a fortuitous chain of events is to forever be recognized simply because those events placed advantage in their hands. They want every other nation and their peoples to believe history should now and forever stand still. They fail to understand as long as man exists, history will be made and unmade, not necessarily in their preferred image.
Third, this is a battle to dominate the flow of oil and gas on the Eurasian land mass. Fourth, it is a battle whether America can continue to exploit the dominance of the dollar not only to control economic matters but to reverse the strategic foreign policy of another sovereign nation via imposition of sanctions. From the Russian viewpoint, it is an attempt to free itself from American “dollarism,” plotting a course where it and other nations begin to conduct their international transactions without absolute reliance on the dollar as the means of global exchange.
Fifth, and most importantly, this is a battle whether the world will remain a “unipolar” one dominated by the lone superpower or will it revert back to the more historically-common multipolar constellation where several powers hold sway over their geographically limited (regional) spheres of influence. Again, America seeks to overrule the normal dynamics of history by demanding that history stand still and that other nations acquiesce in this static appointment for history. In this, American policy makers regrettably mistake the exceptional but transient factors leading to its global dominance as evidence America shall forever be the sole global power.
America’s rise to power was an incident of history. Protected by two oceans from the incessant conflict of the old world, America developed economically in relative peace. It then uses its access to those two oceans, in combination with its colossal economic power, to spread its economic tentacles far and wide. While Europe and Asia destroyed themselves in two gruesome World Wars, distant America entered both conflagrations late. It was able to obtain the fruits of victory without experience the devastation of fighting a protracted war on its own soil. The power and wealth differential between America and the rest of the world was a vast expanse as a result of these global wars. America stubbornly insists the gap should be maintained. In this, it fights the futile fight. In the long-run, the power differential must decrease.
The factors that led to America’s ascendance are no longer operative to the same extent. Moreover, no country has an overriding concentration of human genius and industry to justify such a gap in perpetuity. Many these rival powers own an enviable history of achievement, progress, prowess and power. Some of these nations were major contributors to world history for centuries. In the case of China, for several millennia, before America was a glint of an idea in the eyes of its rebellious founding fathers. As irony would have it, America now occupies a place similar to the British Empire against which it rebelled.
Today, America uses its might to stop other nations from rebelling against its global domination. In the end, America cannot win this battle; it cannot hope to simultaneously contain the ambitions of Russia, China, India, Brazil and others. Implementing such a policy against an amalgam of nations with populations and landmasses several fold larger than America’s will be exorbitant madness born from ignorant arrogance. Yet, at this stage, America attempts this impossible feat. Ultimately, it will resign itself to the futility of the objective. This may take awhile. As the world awaits this prudent enlightenment, America may do much damage to itself and other nations in the process of trying to hold to an exalted yet intrinsically fleeting global position.
In trying to simultaneously thwart numerous rivals, America ironically accelerates its own diminution by compelling these nations to cooperate with each to a degree that would not have been achieved had America embarked on a more nuanced strategic policy. Due to Ukraine, Russia has angled closer toward China, moving fast to establish a strategic partnership challenging America’s geopolitical, military and financial might.
As intriguing as all this is, much of it lies in the uncertain future. The building blocks of that future are now being shaped in Ukraine.
From the limited perspective of holding an election, the West gained a victory of sorts with the election of their acolyte, Petro Poroshenko, as the next president of this self-embattled nation. The election lends greater legitimacy to the government in Kiev. Weeks ago, Presdient Obama referred to the then government I Kiev as elected. His statement was a lie when made. If made today, it would be true. However, this change may be more semantic than substantive, for, on the larger chessboard, where grand strategy is played, the West continues to be outwitted by the Russian leader.
The Western-backed coup that overthrew the elected Yanukovych government ignited unrest in eastern Ukraine to the extent that the Crimea seceded from Ukraine to cohere to Russia. Obviously, Russia helped instigate this move. The change served Russian interests all too well for Moscow to have left such a thing to chance. In one quick grab, Russian regained a peninsula that it previously owned. Russia also preserved its Black Sea fleet, instrumental in projecting power into the Balkans and beyond the Dardanelles into the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean where the Syrian coast lies.
Often what is not readily seen is the most important thing. By snatching Crimea, Russia more than doubled its shoreline on the Black Sea. Under the murky waters of that sea are great oil and gas deposits. Those deposits that once belonged to Ukraine are now, by virtue of the Crimean secession, Russian assets. The deals Western oil companies where to strike with the Ukrainian government are no longer to be unless the secession is reversed.
The West thought the coup strengthened its hand against Russia. Instead, the coup strengthened Western influence in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, but weakened the West’s influence over how Russia would react to events in Ukraine. To regain its leverage, the West has embarked on a dangerous policy that can no longer pretend to be anything but anti-Russian. Western policy is two-fold. First, impose sanctions to weaken the Russian economy with the thin hope this will undermine Putin and begin the process of his demise. Second, cause such havoc and violence in eastern Ukraine that Putin is forced to intervene militarily to protect the Russian-speaking populace of that region. If they can entice Putin into the snare, they will inflict grievous sanctions on Russia and flood military help into Ukraine. The desire is to heap such an inglorious defeat on Putin that the walls of his Kremlin will crack from within and without.
Understanding the limits of his power and the extent of his nation’s interests, Putin refused the bait. Again, the West miscalculated. They believed Putin craved eastern Ukraine so much that he awaited the slightest pretext to annex the region. They thought his annexation of Crimea had revealed unrepentant land lust. However, the strategic, economic and historic importance of Crimea is vastly greater than eastern Ukraine’s.
Putin does not want to own eastern Ukraine. He would rather have it as a buffer between him and the West. To seize eastern Ukraine resolves no strategic question for him. All it would do is to draw a stark dividing line between EU/NATO Europe and Russia. This would be a line of friction, compelling Russia to devote tremendous resources to that border. It is more advantageous to have a buffer state between Russia and the West’s sphere of influence. Provided Russia maintains influence, such a buffer insulates Russia from Western provocations. It provides Putin breathing room.
The West hoped Putin would salivate over Eastern Ukraine and leap at it like a starving man at a buffet table. He did not bite because he realized the meal was not for him. The more the West goads him, the more he backs away. He removed troops deployed at the border so that a border incident could not be manufactured. Then he asked the eastern provinces to suspend their autonomy/secession plebiscites. The regions proceeded with the referenda notwithstanding the lack of formal Russian imprimatur.
Certainly, Putin did not try to bring the anvil down on the eastern secessionists in a way that they would be forced to terminate their insurgency. Additionally, he has likely looked the other way as Russian irregulars join to aid their kinsmen in eastern Ukraine. All this is allowed because the eastern Ukrainians are allies who serve his purposes. But he does not want them under his roof. He would like them in the outer tent. Putin would rather Ukraine remain whole, but in an unsettled condition, with the eastern region looking to him as its benefactor. In this way, he always has a hand in Ukrainian events while maintaining the buffer between him and EU/NATO. This scenario secures his interests better than expanding his border westward only to abut a rump western-leaning Ukraine completely in the EU/NATO orbit.
This is not to say that all Western nations are as seized with confrontation as America. While German Chancellor Merkel maintains a public face of solidarity with the American policy, German officials are unhappy with America’s hardnosed policy. They feel it is bellicose. German newspapers have carried stories of German intelligence leaks revealing that hundred of America intelligence, security and military operatives have clandestinely been inserted into Ukraine to help Kiev suppress rebellion in the eastern region.
This help may have come with unjust and lethal results. During unrest in Odessa, groups of peaceful anti-Kiev protestors ran into a government building to hide from marauding pro-government skinheads. As police and army stood aside and watched, the skinheads tossed Molotov cocktails into the building until it was alit. Dozens of innocent people were killed in the ensuing fire. While trying to escape the flames, others were shot by the vigilantes. All of this was captured on videotape. No one was arrested for the gruesome massacre of people simply exercising their right to protest against government. The West did not issue a diplomatic protest or make a peep.
This incident raises an interesting point. The West fervently accuses Putin of orchestrating eastern events. This could well be. However, justice requires that the West is measured by the same stick by which Putin is judged. If so, then the West must be complicit in fomenting trouble since the presence of American clandestine operatives has been revealed by one of America’s staunchest allies.
Here, something must be said of mainstream electronic media. Their beating the drums of war has become shameless. They have abandoned all objectivity in the matter. They have carried the storyline of the American government as if they were America’s private-sector Ministry of Information. When the Odessa massacre took place, international television stations had the information about culprits. Yet, they purposely distorted their reporting so the
general public would be confused as to who did the dying and who did the killing.
Beware of what you see on television regarding the Ukraine. So much is at stake; the controlling powers will not leave world opinion to be shaped by the truth. That would leave too much to chance. Instead, they have rigged their news accounts to direct our minds to an appointed end. There was even a CNN report lambasting Putin for purportedly being friendly with the “Italian Scandal,” former PM Berlusconi. Such a report would seem scurrilous and not even worthy of comment except that this is the same negative rollout deployed against Libya’s Gaddafi before sending him to another realm.
However, Putin is not Gaddafi and Russia is a much heavier load than Libya.
We must keep our eye on Ukraine. It is a cautionary tale for nations seeking to ply the path of independence in their foreign policies. If a nation opposes western foreign policy, the West’s reaction may be a muscular, military one although the offending nation never issued a threat of a martial nature. The present crisis also reveals a dilemma in the concept of democracy. Is it equally important to have democracy and equality between nations as within nations? The West has mastered the ploy of attacking its international foes on the grounds that these nations are undemocratic. In claiming to promote democracy within nations, America and its allies seems to have scotched the notion about democracy and equality among nations. Instead, if a nation does not behave as they wish, they are primed to toss sanctions or worse until that nation repents. Thus far, Putin has danced around their clumsiness to avoid major confrontation. Should he maintain such poise, he will deserve a peace prize that he will never get. Should he misstep, he will have war instead.
Against this backdrop, Ukraine trembles as potentially the most dangerous spot on earth. While Russia plays the traditional amoral game of power politics, America and its allies claim a moral superiority that affords them the right to do whatever they wish, including the incitement of violence in one nation to set a trap goading another nation into war. Through such machinations are great wars started. Conservative American militarists would like nothing better than fight Russia in order to finish through firepower what the Cold War partially accomplished by attrition – the destruction of Russia as a competitor. However, the disastrous Afghan and Iraqi military campaigns demonstrate that, for all her power, America is not very good at finishing wars that it starts. More importantly, there is nothing great about war except the enormity of the destruction it visit on the unarmed and innocent.
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