As tensions rise between Russia and the Ukraine, the question for many of our nations is what, if anything, do we do about it?
With two regions of the Ukraine breaking away, and being recognised by the Russian president, war seems all but inevitable. But, is this another Czechoslovakia moment (the escalation of German aggression that many argue should have triggered war against Hitler sooner rather than later), or is it all just none of our business?
According to former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, mostly the former.
Of course, Putin is not Hitler and Ukraine is not Czechoslovakia, and these are not the 1930s, but there are plenty of disturbing parallels, including a new axis of great powers ready to disturb the peace to get what they want […]
Vladimir Putin sees himself as the new tsar, a ruler for life, determined to restore greater Russia. To that end he has invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea, occupied the Donbas, killed without compunction opponents at home and abroad, and restored Russia as a military superpower despite an economy smaller than Italy’s.
As I wrote yesterday for Insight, this is in no small part a continuation of 500 years of Russian-European psychology. Western Europe regards Russia as an aggressive, expansionist, would-be world-dominator; Russia, for its part, is suspicious to the point of paranoia about being encircled by potential invaders.
Ukraine, of course, has no great reasons to love its former Soviet master, with the Holodomor and Chernobyl still within living memory. But Western attempts to lure the former Soviet republic into the NATO fold will be viewed by Russia through the lens of centuries of history.
Ukraine is but his present target because it persists in looking West, not East; and because the 1994 Anglo-American security assurance, in return for the surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons, failed to replicate the one-in, all-in provision of article five of the NATO charter. However the stand-off ends, we can be confident Putin’s campaign will continue, remorseless, relentless, by all means up to and including all-out war, until Ukraine becomes a Russian colony. Then his attention will turn to the Baltic States, then to Poland, then to the other former Soviet satellites, until Russia is again the overlord of eastern Europe.
But then, I recall much the same arguments being made about Saddam Hussein, in the lead-up to the First Gulf War.
At the same time, back in 91, the first President Bush argued that what was also at stake was a “new world order”. Today, a new world order is being mooted — this time by the two authoritarian major powers.
A fortnight ago the Russian dictator and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, issued a declaration on international relations entering a new era. We know the type of new era they have in mind from their preposterous claim that Russia and China enjoy “longstanding traditions of democracy”. The main purpose of this Moscow-Beijing axis is to bury, they say, the “political and military alliances of the Cold War era” […]
At heart what they both reject is the US-backed world order, a liberal and humane set of understandings and arrangements that has enabled the best time in human history.
This is not all mere jingoistic alarmism. As I’ve argued before, the next decade will be crucial — because these are the years that China has left to achieve Xi’s dream of communist global hegemony. After that, China’s inexorable demographic slide will become an insuperable millstone around its neck.
A response to the dictators starts with appreciating that just because war is unthinkable to us doesn’t make it unthinkable to them […] As history shows, the best way to make potential aggressors think again is to have a contingent of allied soldiers in place so that an attack on a relatively weaker country means engaging the forces of relatively stronger ones. At the very least NATO should be ready substantially to reinforce its frontline states and to supply the Ukrainians with whatever they need to fight on. The point of this would not be to threaten Russia or China with offensive weapons; just to remind bullies of the natural solidarity that should exist between countries striving to be free.
Thus, Abbott argues, the best way to avoid war is by making clear that you’re all-too-ready to fight. This may seem paradoxical, but, as anyone who’s ever stood up to a bully knows, it works.
We have to make the war that’s unthinkable to us, for moral reasons, unthinkable to them for prudential reasons. We who shrink from war because it’s morally wrong have to make others shrink from war because they’d likely lose.
The Australian
The biggest problem is that “progressive” forces have spent the past decade doing their best to prove that the West is weak, weak-willed and divided. Just compare the recruitment campaigns for the militaries of China, Russia and the US and ask yourself: which one do you think is willing to fight and win?
The question is whether there’s time left to convince Putin and Xi that they are best served by backing off.