War is that rare game best played when not played at all.
Western nations are in a state of dense irritation by what will likely occur today in Crimea, the Russian-backed breakaway province of Ukraine. A plebiscite will hold. Minus a jarring surprise, the result is foregone. Crimea will vote to reintegrate into Russia.
This will be a sharp, voluble rebuke of Western diplomatic pressure to quell Russia’s obvious engineering of the Crimean secession. Western capitals and the international media houses that serve them have been unsettled by Russian contumacy. They are perplexed Russia has not backtracked to take its hands off Crimea. They thought Russia would eventually succumb to the avalanche of criticism that it was in breach of their holy book of international etiquette, becoming an unregenerate along the way.
They overestimated Russia’s need for their approval or goodwill. The man in the Kremlin evidently concluded that, in acquiring and maintaining power, he could better secure his place at the international table. He would command and own the legitimacy of power. His personal history and that of his country instructed him the legitimacy of power is a more reliable shield and redoubt than that of good intentions and goodwill when it comes to the fluid and uncertain relations among states. He surmised should he do what the West told him, the West would keep telling him what to do. Considering himself the helm of a great power that defines its own way independent of the vocabulary of the West, Russian Premier Vladimir Putin would not strap himself to such a bridle. That the West would seek to control him as he sought to control another nation confirmed his worldview: Power not only rules, it writes the rules.
Faced with Russian obduracy, the West has pitched a fulsome fit. Self-righteous to a fault, the West claims Putin is acting imperially, even against the wishes of the Russian people and was stoking a return to the Cold War. No doubt, Russian action has come with a hard hand and steel heart. But this is no worse an incursion against a lesser nation than Western action against Iraq or, more recently, Libya. Russia’s usurpation of Crimea has been more surgical and done with less carnage than Western adventurism in the two abovementioned nations. Russia may owe a profound apology to the people of Ukraine but it owes no such apology to the West which has a greater penchant for military trespass and bloodlust than Russia has shown in the recent years.
During these rare episodes when nations openly act recalcitrant to its wishes, Western nations self-righteously resort to speaking on behalf of the “international community.” In so doing, they commit the same offense of which they accuse Russia regarding Crimea. They believe their power gives them the right to speak as if they are right and to speak on behalf of those with whom they have not bothered to consult. Had they talked frankly to nations beyond their elite club, they would likely find much of the world disapproves of the hard tack Russia has taken. However, people also understand Russia’s concerns, realize Russia historic interests in Ukraine and are devilishly pleased Russia now stands up to the West’s artificial high-mindedness. The views of the genuine international community are more nuanced and sympathetic to Russia than the West dares to allow.
The West is partially right in drawing a historic analogy to Russia’s current actions. However, the West errs in drawing the wrong link to the wrong period. They claim Putin is an unrepentant Cold Warrior pining to return to that era. Implicitly, they claim Putin aches for a fight and will lunge at any pretext to invade former soviet republics. Because he has publicly trashed their script, Western leaders now cast him as the greatest threat to world peace besides the lunatic of North Korea. The facts vitiate this depiction.
The Cold War was a time where America and the Soviet Union wrestled in ceaseless geo-political confrontation. There was no spot on the globe immune from the game.
Putin has not acted in such grandiose, global fashion. He has been fairly discriminating in deploying Russian power. When the West sought to deracinate Qaddafi’s regime, Russia did not lift a finger to help him. Russia gave the West a green light to recreate Libya in its own image. That the West turned that dessert nation from an orderly house ruled by a madman into a madhouse cannot be blamed on Russia. Likewise, Russia has given the West a free pass in Africa. Russian assistance to traditional allies in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba and Venezuela, has been minimal.
However, Russian saw vital sea lanes and other interests threatened in a nation with which it has a strategic alliance, Syria. Here, Russia thwarted perceived as Western overreach into its traditional sphere of influence. When Russia promulgated anti-gay legislation, Putin stood firmly against vociferous Western condemnation. As a patriot, he thought he had the right to define his nation as he saw fit. The propriety of his actions is susceptible to debate. However, talk that he dreams of another Cold War is dangerous claptrap. Instead of demonizing the leader of a vital nation, the West would further the cause of peace by better understanding him.
Putin has shown himself to be nothing more or less threatening than a shrewd practitioner of balance of power geo-politics. Here a brief primer is warranted. Spheres of national influence represent the geo-political equivalent of gravity. Just as every material object has gravitational pull, every nation has a sphere of influence. The small and weaker the state, the more modest its sphere. The obverse is true in similar proportion: the greater the “mass” of a nation, the larger its sphere. Every nation’s strategic interests involve the element of extraterritoriality. Assets important and essential to that nation’s maintenance will lie well beyond the country’s borders. For example, a strategic piece of foreign land in Cuba (Guantanamo Bay) is more important to America’s defense than capital of the state of Utah.
As a corollary, the older and more established a nation, the more discernible its sphere should be to itself and others. Sadly, humans are fallible, and the ambitious among us are the most wrong-headed of an imperfect lot. Thus, ambitious leaders often err by overestimating their sphere while underestimating that of another country. Upon these miscalculations, wars have been fought and lost. Thus, we should discern which side, Russia or the West, seems more awry in calculating the balance of power.
To argue balance of power considerations should no longer apply is to argue subjective morality and not the reality of how things are. If humanitarian morals and not calculations of power and strategic interests governed international conduct, Western nations would have ended wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia which have endured for generations and costs millions of lives. We must live or die with the fact that nations operate according to their own interests and do so most prudently when they do so without encroaching upon another strong nation’s sphere of influence.
To argue that morality dictates an end to these calculations is a disingenuous artifice used by those who have encroached onto another’s sphere yet do not want to defend that encroachment in the customary way – by force of arms. It is a hair-raising gambit to think a nation can cajole another to cede important interests without an expenditure of limb or lucre.
If we objectively view Putin’s actions, we see those of a tough Russian nationalist. The farther afield another nation, the less interest Putin gives it. Thus, he left Libya to the wolves. Conversely, Crimea has been integral to Russian history for centuries. More to the point, it is the headquarters of Russian’s Black Sea Fleet. This is Russia’s only guaranteed warm water port, its vital entry into the Mediterranean Sea and a conduit of influence to Syria and the Middle East. This is Russia’s backyard. You do not go shouting insults in a strongman’s back yard without expecting his dog to growl and the man to fetch his weapon.
The seeds of this crisis were planted twenty years ago when America committed a grave strategic overreach precipitated by its victory in the Cold War. That this crisis would sprout would be as inevitable as death. The only question was how long would false peace last before reality erased it.
The Cold War did not end with an explicit treaty allocating specific fruits to the winner and a menu of bitter herbs to be suffered by the ruptured empire. Even if it had ended with an explicit treaty, such a formal nicety would be of no lasting avail. As soon as the actual balance of power on the ground changed, the party favored by that amendment would seek to amend the treaty, not by rewriting its terms through negotiations but through its actions on the ground fueled by its renewed strength.
When the Cold War ended, America thought it had been handed the world on a platter. It believed it had the right and power to rewrite the entire global system in its own image. For America, it was the final end to the final global competition. This was a naïve view held by a strong nation remarkably ignorant of the arc of world history. Blinded by its own power, America was unable to contemplate it would ever have to engage in balance of power calculations again, particularly on the European continent where its interests in Western Europe were many and vital.
Consequently, America extended NATO to the very doorstep of then prostrate Russia. Some form of NATO membership was offered all European nations save Russia. However, America would disclaim Russia as the implied adversary. This was nonsense. To invest so much in a nearly pan-continental treaty without an adversary is superfluous. Everyone understood what Russia’s exclusion meant. Weak Russia would bide time until strength was regained.
Russia was a remnant of a global empire but it remained a strong nation with a proud military history, a large land mass, vast resources and a traditional sphere of influence. At some point, its vigor would return. The nation found its footing and regained power. As this happened, it would naturally seek to reestablish the sphere of influence it held prior to the advent of the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were to give way to a smaller Russia, so be it. If Russia were to stand, then let it stand as Russia had always stood, with its sphere of influence intact and recognized.
Consequently, there would be inevitable tension between the dimensions of NATO-EU expansion into Eastern Europe and the Kremlin’s reclamation of its traditional sphere of influence. There is not enough space for both sides to win. Either the West’s expansion eastward or Russian expansion westward would be thwarted. The answer is found in which side finds its expansion to be more vital. That side will use whatever means necessary, including force. The other side will talk but balk when it comes to muscular action.
That crisis came to Ukraine was not accidental. The West has been trying to pull Ukraine from Russia’s orbit. The proposed EU deal was just one of many enticements. While the media downplays this point, the EU deal would have downgraded Ukraine’s relationship with Russia. By its very provisions, the deal forbade Ukraine to accept certain assistance from Russia.
The West dangled money to finesse the Ukrainian government away from Russia’s shirttail. When that did not work, it funneled more money, this time to fuel the political opposition. According to a senior American diplomat, America channeled five billion dollars to the opposition to promote “regime change.” That is a very hefty investment to make in another nation, particularly in an opposition movement. This sum can purchase many street protests. It did. Thus, the protests aired by electronic media have been presented to you as spontaneous and home-grown; to a significant degree, they have been orchestrated and foreign-funded.
Russia was cognizant of these Western machinations and decided to protect its interests the best way it knew. Unable to match the West ruble for dollar, Russia decided to use force, correctly believing the West would not reply in kind. It was a calculated risk but, since core interests were at stake, a risk worth taking for the Kremlin.
This raises another basic precept of geo-politics. The nation willing to use force generally bests the nation willing to go no further than spend money. Gun diplomacy usually beats money diplomacy. That the U.S. missed this lesson is remarkable given America uses the same strategy to stymie Chinese financial diplomacy in Africa, particularly South Sudan.
In the end, the Ukrainian crisis is not a battle of democracy versus despotism. It has distilled into a war of Western money and propaganda against Russian arms. The objective has been to recalibrate the balance of power in Eastern Europe. Given this perspective, the West is the initial aggressor but subtly so because it used only money and words. Russia is the respondent but is deemed the aggressor because it upped the ante by resorting to force. China anxiously watches the outcome because America now seeks to isolate China in much the same fashion it has tried against Russia.
I leave you to determine on which side morality lies, if it lies on any side of the matter. The more important issue is that we learn to see thinks for ourselves and not accept the version fed us. If your mind is to be bent one way or the other, then you should be the one bending it in a manner than suits your interests. Never allow someone to shape your mind and its thinking in a way that does you less good than it does them.
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