The Ukrainian tragedy
This week, war descended upon Europe. That’s not entirely true: as a Ukrainian friend commented, war actually started eight years ago. But it drastically intensified this week, with dozens of thousands of Russian soldiers now on Ukrainian soil, in tanks, firing missiles, rockets… the full range of wartime exactions. For now, Kiev and other key cities have managed to resist to relentless assaults. The Ukrainian government, headed by President Zelensky, is staying put. People are sheltering in metro stations. For now…
It seems pretty obvious that the few sanctions decided on by the West will have little to no impact on the resolve Russian President Putin has been displaying so far. Instead, he seems intent on effectively conquering the entire country, in a strategy tragically reminiscent of the previous century. The sad thing is — he may very well get his way, given that his army is demonstrably stronger than Ukraine’s and that the only help Western countries are contributing at this point is indirect — for the most part, ammunition and equipment shipped through neighboring EU-member countries. Better than nothing, sure, but likely not enough to stop tanks.
We don’t know exactly what a Russian-occupied Ukraine would look like, but there is a fair chance it will include closed frontiers, controlled elections (if not a hand-picked government), Russian occupation forces… in short, a 21st century iron curtain. And the rest of the “Eastern bloc” may very well follow suit: Belarus is already Russian for all intents and purposes; Kazakhstan is on the verge of a civil war; Georgia lost parts of its territory back in 2008 and Ukraine already lost Crimea in 2014… now this. What we are witnessing on Twitter may very well be the beginning of a Soviet Union 2.0, that “Great Russia” that was ominously referred to in the first verse of the Soviet anthem….
Meanwhile, a country is savoring the situation more than most — China. As it happens, Russia and China signed a significant trade deal days before the invasion of Ukraine started, ensuring that the former finds a buyer other than Europe for its gas and the latter gets access to additional food supplies. This prospect is far greater still than that of a new Soviet-type union: what we are seeing glimpses of here is the possibility of a new and improved Cold War led not by Russia but China — in which the world’s biggest economy is no longer the US. What would the US do in all of this? How about the EU?
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ordered a defeated Germany to repay a debt so overwhelming that it sank the country’s economy, triggered never-ending instability, largely contributing to the eventual rise of the Third Reich. John Maynard Keynes was one of the few Western personalities who criticized that decision for what it was — eminently short-sighted. In the 1990’s, as the Soviet Union imploded before our eyes, Western countries did… nothing. Apart from East Germany reuniting with West Germany, former members of the Eastern bloc were essentially left to their own devices, which led to major economic, social and political unrest. Eventually, several of those countries joined the EU and NATO, but the planning of these extensions, as well as projected new additions such as Ukraine, was largely devised once again without taking into account the point of view of the defeated — Russia. The trauma left by the sudden end of the Soviet era was only heightened by the West’s persistent fears for a country that once was considered the “other” superpower.
And so, while NATO and the EU were laying out their plan, Putin’s Russia slowly but surely worked on its own: recreate a form of Russia-led union that would face these organizations which routinely ignored its interests, if not outright antagonizing them. The 1999 Chechen conflict, the 2008 Georgian war, the 2014 annexion of Crimea all were early signs of this counterplan. Today, we Western countries are faced with the consequences of our actions, or rather inactions. And it is not us who are actually paying the bulk of the price — Ukraine is. Tomorrow, if we do not drastically course correct and analyze other countries’ viewpoints more strategically, starting with Russia’s and China’s, we may find ourselves in a situation far worse still… with us being on the frontlines.