With the Ukrainian crisis unresolved and dangerously simmering in the middle of extended Europe, the notorious law of unintended consequences is back.
Anything could happen including the breakdown of the already fractured relations between the two nuclear behemoths. Or maybe, on the surface at least, nothing at all. But even if the threat of war, triggered by a Russian massive invasion of Ukraine, believed by Anglo-Americans to be imminent (which Russia and even the Ukrainian president deny) may somehow be avoided, the risk of a new large scale frozen conflict remains. It would run across the Slavic fault line between East and West – the vast and strategically important country once known as the breadbasket of Europe, divided by religion and contested at times, but that Russia has always considered her ‘near-abroad’.
The term “extended Europe” used above may sound alien to the current geopolitical lexicon but is far from new. It was France’s president de Gaulle who controversially opened the debate when NATO, originally born as an Atlantic pact of mutual defense against Soviet westward expansion, was transitioning into an alliance more attuned to US global objectives “out of area”. Western Europe then, with America’s initial support and in the face of Britain’s opposition, was gradually evolving from a mere common market towards a political union.
De Gaulle had different ideas. United Europe, if it was to avoid Anglo-American subservience, must avoid the mistake of following the American pattern. The “melting pot” was a utopia hardly feasible in the United States and unthinkable in Europe. Europeans instead, drawing on their history, geography and traditions, must one day create an Europe des patries: a continuum ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’ that included also European Russia.
Such a vision, given the present climate, sounds like fiction best left to future generations. But De Gaulle had a point. He saw clearly that Britain, as a fading power clinging to the US coattails, had no real interest in building a European Union, that she feared would accelerate her decline of influence in world affairs.
Global politics, as it is said of Gothic art, abhors the vacuum. Facing the far from unpredictable Ukrainian crisis, it’s not surprising that the dispute on how to prevent another war in Europe may be drifting out of control. With Europeans sidelined, while talks by remote languish inconclusively, the US-led strategy of choice of the West consists of trying to keep communication channels with Moscow and Kiev open, while at the same time providing more arms to Ukraine and threatening “devastating” sanctions if president Putin decides to invade.
The logic of this double-track tactic is distorted to say the least. It may disastrously backfire, setting off a war (or wars) that nobody wants. History books are full of conflicts started by accident. But no conflict has involved the world’s largest nuclear powers, each one with the potential of destroying the planet five times over. Granted that playing with fire is not a viable option, is there an alternative to the indefinite stand off?
A starting point to consider is that neither the United States, grappling with Covid and fiercely divided by home politics in a midterm election year, nor the economically challenged Russia, where war with Ukraine would be deeply unpopular, and even the harshest sanctions will be ineffective, are likely to emerge stronger from the Ukrainian impasse.
China, in fact, may be tempted to test America’s dwindling appetite for getting involved in Taiwan. Beijing would end up being the potential geopolitical winner. It would face a Russia relegated to the role of junior partner in the autocrats’ league and bogged down in conflict on the Western front of its Near-Abroad, with the lumbering US giant loathe to get militarily involved. As for the United Nations, with the Security Council sharply split, there is little or no scope for negotiation even if the US ambassador has belatedly requested an emergency debate.
What is left then for old-style diplomacy? Unexpectedly – or predictably perhaps, considering that the country with more to lose in the risky Ukrainian game is Russia, with Putin’s credibility on the line – a few hints of possible disengagement are now filtering from Moscow’s РСМД (Rossiyskiy Sovet po Mezhdunarodnym Delam), the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). The roots of the crisis, writes Dmitri Trenin, a former military intelligence of the Soviet army, well known also as an academic in the US, who unusually combines this background with the role of director of the American Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Moscow, can be traced with the end of the Cold War and the USSR collapse.
The US and allies, Trenin notes, created a European order based on the dominant role of America and NATO. They knew that Russia was unhappy but they ignored it since they considered Russia a waning power. “History has shown, however, that if a large, defeated power has not been incorporated into the post-war order… then over time it will begin to take action aimed at destroying that order or, at the very least, significantly altering it”.
On Ukraine Igor Ivanov, president of the Moscow foreign affairs think tank and former foreign minister of Putin before Lavrov, in another article on the RIAC journal, strongly advises against military intervention. “Are there any forces that might actually be interested in a full-blown rather than a propaganda war in Ukraine? The situation looks different here”, he writes. And after remarking that “everyone would lose in a war: including Russia.”, and that the repercussions of a major war at the center of Europe would be no less than the ramifications triggered by the Chernobyl disaster, which have persisted for almost forty years, he concludes: “The only decent way out of the current situation is for all sides to meet at the negotiating table, on mutual security guarantees. Russia, the United States, and NATO have all presented their proposals on this matter. The positions of the parties are known. Now we must come to an agreement”.
That is not going to be easy.
(c) 2022 Longitude Magazine-VNY La Voce di New York
