Russia’s history reveals remarkable resilience. Over eight centuries, it has faced potential collapse several times, not only recovering but also expanding its territory in some instances. This resilience evokes the image of the Nevalyashka, a traditional Russian toy that rights itself. It underscores a profound tenacity within the state and society, enabling repeated rebounds from near collapse. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union’s dissolution was a significant test of this resilience. Defying predictions, Russia maintained its territorial integrity.

After this collapse, anti-Westernism emerged as a powerful unifying ideology, drawing on cultural memory to create a sense of common purpose. Additionally, the absence of strong regional rivals during the turbulent post-Soviet years allowed Russia to navigate this critical juncture without significant external threats.

This stability, however, has come at a cost. The unifying anti-Western ideology has also fueled Russia’s contemporary imperial ambitions. It drives an increasingly aggressive foreign policy aimed at reasserting global influence. This transformation reflects a broader historical pattern: the need for internal cohesion and national survival often propels Russia towards expansionism and authoritarian tendencies. 

The soul of Russian identity

Shared characteristics and unifying values act as the glue that binds people together into a nation. Two different kinds of values can underpin national unity: cultural and historical values shared by an ethnic majority, or unifying values that transcend ethnicity. In other words, nations form on either an ethnocultural or supra-ethnic basis.

Immigrant states like the United States are the prime examples of supra-ethnic unity, but not the only ones. Switzerland, for instance, has functioned as a supra-ethnic state since the 16th century, solidifying its national identity around the concept of neutrality in the 19th century. Similarly, Pakistani religious nationalism unites the people of the multinational state of Pakistan.

Unlike Western European nation-states like France, Italy and Germany, Russia was founded as a multi-ethnic empire. Thus, it built its unity on supra-ethnic values. These take the form of a unifying, often religious ideal; a shared goal; a grand vision for the future or a regional mission.

Early 20th-century philosopher Georgy Fedotov argued that Russians lacked the “arrogant consciousness of a superior race” that plagued, for example, the British in India. Instead, they readily communicated with their subjects and even blended with them. This openness allowed local aristocracies to integrate into military and administrative roles across the empire. This facilitated a soft Russification across the nation’s vast territories.

Russian philosopher Nikolay Danilevsky encapsulated this process in his theory of Russian civilization, which emphasized granting privileges to local elites and partially emancipating peoples on the empire’s outskirts. These combined factors were crucial for creating a unified Russian nation over the centuries.

Throughout its history, Russia has relied on unifying values for national unity, but these have undergone significant shifts. Initially, Orthodox Christianity served as a cornerstone, reinforcing the Tsar’s authority and binding the population through shared faith. As the empire expanded, absolutism emerged as a unifying force, fostering a sense of collective identity among its diverse peoples.

The Soviet era offered a stark contrast, emphasizing proletarian internationalism and a global communist revolution. It aimed to unite citizens under the banner of Marxism-Leninism. However, the October Revolution shattered the Tsarist order, and the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse, destroyed the unifying values with which the revolution replaced it. The transition to a post-Soviet world left a significant ideological vacuum.

This ideological vacuum contributed to the USSR’s collapse in 1991, which fractured into 15 independent states. Three key factors were at play. First, Russia, the linchpin of the USSR, initiated the break-up by declaring its withdrawal from the union alongside Belarus and Ukraine. Second, the USSR lacked unifying values by the early 1990s. Disillusionment with communism was widespread, and the “sacred mission” of the first socialist state held no sway. Nationalist movements arose across the republics, dominating public discourse and pushing for independence. Finally, by the late 1980s, national elites emerged within the Soviet republics. These elites prioritized the independent development of their nations over loyalty to the central union.

Russia’s state-declared values have their limits

The maintenance of this ideological unity as as important today as it always has been. The Russian government takes an active role in promoting traditional values like religious adherence, especially to the Russian Orthodox Church, and family loyalty to foster national unity. These actions form part of their strategy to bolster societal cohesion and national identity.

However, there are challenges, like the perceived gap between the publicly declared values and the actual experiences of many Russian citizens. This gap has its roots in the Soviet era, a time when the state required citizens to outwardly conform to state-sanctioned ideologies, regardless of their private beliefs. This historical backdrop impedes the government’s efforts to authentically resonate their promotion of traditional values with the people, limiting their success.

Different Russian thinkers proposed various ideas on traditional values: the old Orthodox concept of “Moscow as the Third Rome,” Danilevsky’s vision of Pan-Slavism encompassing both politics and culture, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s idea of cultural synthesis and most recently, the emphasis on traditional values actively promoted by the Russian government. The current state presents loyalty to conservative traditions as the unifying force for all Russians. The Russian government promotes the view that these traditions, including religious customs and universal values like patriotism, dignity and service to the Fatherland, are ingrained in the people. In recent years, the Russian state has also actively incorporated homophobic narratives into this concept.

However, a study by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Higher School of Economics suggests that traditionalism may not be a unifying force for Russian society. The study found that traditional values occupy a middling position on the value scale of Russians compared to other basic values like self-enhancement, security and benevolence, using a scale of values developed by Israeli sociologist Shalom Schwartz.

Evolution of basic values of the Russian population, 2006–2021.

These latter values became more important during the COVID-19 pandemic. People also prefer autonomy to traditional values. Rounding out the list are individualistic values: enjoying life (hedonism) and a desire for risk and novelty.

In recent years, hedonism has surpassed power as a value. The value of power significantly decreased after the suppression of democratic protests in 2019. People seem to have concluded that it is safer and easier to delegate responsibility for their well-being to existing power structures. However, the role of traditional values remained relatively stagnant, even declining slightly between 2006 and 2021.

By the early 2000s, Russians transitioned from focusing on survival to embracing consumerism. Rising incomes fueled spending. When income growth stalled in 2014, household debt surged. Sales channels became hubs for socializing and spending. Increased income and access to credit allowed working-age Russians to move beyond basic necessities, pursuing goods and services associated with status. Rising incomes empowered consumers to prioritize an improved quality of life, even as social stratification widened. As the older generation scarred by the Soviet Union passed away, a new generation emerged, longing to experience life.

Despite the image that political and religious leaders attempt to promote of Russia as an Orthodox nation, Russians lean secular. True religiosity involves ritual observance, not just belief or celebrating major holidays. A Romir Research Group survey with Gallup International/WIN Association’s Global Barometer on Hope and Despair shows that 55% of Russians identify as religious. However, only 9% of those who called themselves Orthodox in 2007 followed all rituals and participated in church life. Even more concerning, 21% lacked knowledge of communion, a core Christian practice.

A 2010 Public Opinion Foundation survey found only 4% of self-identified Orthodox Christians regularly attend church. Notably, this “churched” demographic skews heavily towards elderly women. Similarly, in 2022, only 7% of those identifying with various faiths considered themselves truly religious. This is not surprising given Russia’s history of over 70 years of state-sanctioned secularism.

Traditional values often emphasize collectivism, prioritizing the family, community and social harmony over individual needs. However, a study reveals a slight decline in the importance Russians place on collectivism. Interestingly, Russia leads Europe in individualistic values —  prioritizing personal self-assertion —  which directly contradicts the claim that collectivism defines Russians. This stands in stark contrast to countries like Sweden and France, which are known for their strong collectivist tendencies. Family values also appear less important in Russia. The high divorce rate (73%) and poor demographic situation suggest a weaker emphasis on family compared to the rhetoric.

This disconnect between words and actions echoes the Soviet era, where public pronouncements often masked private beliefs. People swore allegiance to communism, but lacked understanding of Marxist theory or faith in those ideals. This pattern of performative pronouncements seems to have persisted.

Anti-Westernism is a Russian national idea

With traditional sources of purpose in decline, Russia increasingly relies on anti-Western sentiment to unify its people. This ideology is a form of xenophobia that repudiates Western values and aspires to resurrect past glories. It permeates the social fabric, shaping Russia’s assertive foreign policy and imperial ambitions. Anti-Westernism manifests in geopolitical maneuvers and a confrontational stance in international relations, fostering tension with the West.

While unlikely to secure complete national cohesion on its own, this external xenophobia has forged a shared identity, a feat that eluded preceding ideologies such as Russian Orthodoxy, Marxism-Leninism and the floundering liberal reforms of the late Soviet era. Filling the ideological vacuum, this narrative provides a unifying identity that resonates with the populace.

A large segment of Russian society actively opposes the West or advocates for a sovereign development model. A 2022 All-Russian Public Opinion Poll reveals that a significant 54% of Russians explicitly express hatred for Western values. An additional 27% hold similar views on Western development, forming a periphery of the core anti-Western group. This peripheral group differs by allowing a minimal inclusion of Western values in Russia, as long as it does not alter the national identity. Combined, supporters of sovereign development constitute a staggering 81% — the overwhelming majority of Russian society.

A wide range of social and ethnic groups in Russia support this ideology, including many wealthy people who often saw their wealth increase during the war. They hold a xenophobic worldview, rejecting everything Western and foreign in general. This ideology stems from 19th-century Russian Slavophilism and gained further momentum under Stalin’s repressions and his anti-cosmopolitanism campaign. They view Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika — the policy of restructuring the economic and political system — and the 1990s’ liberal reforms as a national betrayal, considering Russian liberals agents of the collective West. 

However, their ideology extends beyond anti-Westernism. It also emphasizes great-power status for Russia, a strong central government for order and development and social justice. While not pure great-power chauvinism — for ethnic Russians are not the only supporters — this ideology harbors disdain towards national minorities within Russia, without being outright racist or classically discriminatory.

The Russian Empire’s centuries of Orthodox intolerance towards foreigners, along with the Soviet era’s active promotion of anti-Westernism under the guise of anti-capitalism, have ingrained a deep-seated xenophobia in the Russian psyche. Both societies started with grand ambitions of global dominance: Moscow as the Third Rome and the USSR as the bastion of peace and justice. This perspective reflects the historical path of Chinese society, which has also grappled with its own form of xenophobia and a complicated relationship with Western influence. However, they eventually fell into narratives of victimhood, pointing fingers at the West for their problems. The claim is that the West has robbed Russia. In a similar vein, China has frequently attributed its historical struggles to foreign meddling, further reinforcing its parallel with Russia’s narrative.

The 1990s after the Soviet collapse saw a rise in external phobias in Russia. People feared the uncontrolled Western market and a foreign culture that supposedly threatened to destroy their traditions. They also harbored anxieties about NATO’s alleged expansionist aims. Ironically, this last fear was a key factor in keeping many regions, especially those with ethnic minorities, from seeking independence like the former Soviet republics.

By then, the USSR’s disintegration had played out. Russians witnessed the rise of non-citizenship laws in Latvia and Estonia. These targeted not just the old Soviet elite from the Russian-speaking minority, but the entire Russian-speaking population. They saw the turmoil in Tajikistan, which escalated from civil strife to a full-blown war fueled by Islamic radicals.

Similarly, Georgia’s independence led to civil war in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, along with a severe energy crisis that gripped Georgia and Armenia. It forced people to resort to fireplaces for warmth even in apartment buildings. Furthermore, Soviet collapse severed economic ties between republics, sparking fears of a similar break if Russia fractured. This worried many Russian regions already grappling with economic reforms.

By the early 1990s, Russia’s population was even more ethnically diverse than other former Soviet republics. Regional leaders were often Russian-speaking representatives of the old Soviet elite. For instance, in modern Tatarstan, ethnic Tatars only make up 52% of the population. It was even lower back then, at 48.48%. This ethnic diversity, coupled with the economic hardships, discouraged both the general population and regional elites from seeking separation from Russia.

Regional leaders in the early 1990s, aware of their dependence on Russian resources like hydrocarbons, sought autonomy within Russia. Resource-rich regions, for example, could not function without Russian infrastructure and materials (like the Nizhnekamsk refinery needing Tyumen oil for processing). Their goals were clear: secure a strong position in the new Russian Federation, gain economic independence and maintain stability, while avoiding the pitfalls found by some former Soviet republics. Society as a whole, wary of the uncertain future promised by local nationalists, preferred the familiar socio-economic reality of the early 1990s Russian Federation.

Chechnya was an exception. It saw federal authorities take a hands-off approach. Bordering Russia directly, this republic held the potential to export energy resources independently. Further fueling separatism, the Chechen Revolution and rising nationalism in the early 1990s led the Russian-speaking population to vacate, removing a key obstacle to independence. Historical memory, particularly the Stalinist deportation of Chechens in 1944, also played a role.

In the 1990s, Russia saw a rise in active anti-Western sentiment alongside existing passive phobias —  less overt forms of anti-Western sentiment that were already present in Russian society. Russians rejected their label as the Cold War loser, believing their goodwill averted a major conflict. They resented the West’s gloating and the US’s push for its policies and values. They saw NATO’s eastward expansion from 1994 as a direct challenge.

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia intensified anti-Western attitudes. It transcended geopolitics, becoming a civilizational clash. Yugoslavia, a historical ally with religious and cultural ties, was under attack. This marked a turning point; the West was no longer a savior and the US was no longer an arbiter. Russia stood alone. Many harbored resentment beyond Serbian solidarity.

The US then strained relations further. It unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and deployed missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Romania, rejecting Russia’s proposal for a joint system. Russia viewed these actions as hostile, particularly after it closed its Lourdes radar station in Cuba and Cam Ranh Bay base in Vietnam earlier in 2002.

Western foreign policy fueled a growing sense of betrayal in Russia. The populace saw these decisions as dismantling the legacy of the Soviet Union. From 2003-2004, Color Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine coincided with intensified separatist activity in the Caucasus, culminating in the Beslan school hostage crisis. This allowed the Kremlin to abolish regional elections in Russia. It embraced securitization in Russian domestic politics. This tactic involved framing restrictions on democratic rights as essential security measures.

Following the Color Revolutions, Georgia attempted to retake South Ossetia in 2008. This triggered a Russian military intervention and recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Russia also saw this as a response to Western recognition of Kosovo’s independence. 

This emphasis on anti-Westernism gained significant traction in the wake of Ukraine’s 2014 pro-Western Maidan Revolution. Viewing this event as a US-backed coup, Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and covertly supporting separatist movements in eastern Ukraine. This ignited a full-blown political confrontation with the West, marked by crippling sanctions and a significant deterioration in diplomatic relations. The culmination of these tensions arrived in February 2022 with Russia’s large-scale military intervention in Ukraine, a move that shattered the fragile European security architecture and raised the specter of a wider conflict.

Russia’s military interventions mark a steady escalation of aggression. This culminated in open hostility not just towards Ukraine, but the entire collective West. Russia’s new ideology casts it as a virtuous nation surrounded by enemies. This anti-Western, xenophobic narrative fuels support for the Kremlin’s aggression. While collapse would not solve this, it could spark a civil war like Yugoslavia’s — now with nuclear weapons.

[Ali Omar Forozish and Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post This Is Why the Russian People Chose Imperialism for Survival appeared first on Fair Observer.

“The clear objective is to undermine a sense of stability and safety,” Pankov told me. “They want to make people feel scared and that their government can’t protect them. They never stop or slow down. It’s a constant flow of attacks.”

Most of us know about Russia using rockets to destroy targets like schools, hospitals and power plants. But the destruction Pankov is up against is just as harmful, yet also invisible. Pankov from the Kyiv Region Cyber Police is a digital warrior.

“They are using the digital battlefield to go after all aspects of online life, like mobile phones, banks, commerce, email, and internet service providers,” he told me. “They create denial of service so that no one can conduct commerce, and they attack anything related to data processing.”

The targets

Here’s how a particularly nasty Russian technique works, according to Pankov.

“We were able to destroy a bot farm in the Kyiv Region, funded and operated by the Russians,” he told me. “One of their specialties was creating fake bomb threats. They developed fake accounts involving schools and shopping centers or government institutions. A Russian expert sitting in Russia would instruct a local agent in Kyiv Region to create fake internet accounts, and then their fun begins. They spread fake bomb threat alerts.”

“Say it’s to a school, although it could be any institution they attack,” he told me. “The principal at the school gets a credible bomb threat, apparently coming from someone in Kyiv. The principal has to evacuate the building, and the students and staff can’t come back in until my sniffing dogs come to make sure the building is clean. It’s a total disruption of whatever the kids were studying.”

Pankov said the Russians do this systematically. “The economic and psychological impact is huge and it’s happening every day,” he adds.

The mechanics of a bot farm

A bot farm is a collection of automated programs (bots) that create fake media interactions, usually for malicious purposes. They enable many cyber attacks.

“During 2023 we disabled more than ten large-scale bot farms,” Pankov told me. “A bot farm can generate 500 new fake accounts in a day. The longer the bot farm exists, the more fake accounts it can use for malicious purposes. A bot farm can have a profound impact on the social space. In a month, a single bot farm can create 15,000 fake accounts.”

In his experience, the bot farms have three aspects.

1. Promoting Russian ideology

2. Spreading disinformation about political leaders or their decisions. The bot farmers’ goal is to undermine the public’s support for the government.

3. Undermining confidence in the military, suggesting that, for instance, many more Ukrainians are dying than Russians, or that the West doesn’t care about Ukraine.

For example, to spread malevolent disinformation, a bot farmer may post information from one account to a group that follows military affairs. Then fake people from other fake accounts from the same bot farm will comment on the story, endorse it and repost it to other groups. The scale of this can be so massive that people feel it must be real.

Asked to comment on whether this is happening in the West, Pankov answers, “I cannot comment on this officially, but from public sources, I see that the same pattern exists in the West. Bad actors inject fake information, and the goal is dividing people and making people not trust each other or their government.”

Mitigation

Pankov loves his job because he gets to fulfill the oath he took as a police officer: to protect and serve. “When we are investigating cybercrime and bringing the perpetrator to justice or even when we can prevent cybercrime from happening. I know, I am protecting and serving,” he said.

While traditional warfare garners headlines, the insidious nature of digital attacks poses an equally grave threat. As the Russia–Ukraine war rages on, it’s a reminder that the frontlines of modern warfare extend far beyond the physical realm. Ukraine is safer because of digital warriors like Lieutenant Colonel Pankov.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russia’s Unusual New Method of Attack: Fake Bomb Threats appeared first on Fair Observer.

The West has progressively raised its involvement by supplying long-range artillery, advanced air defense systems, tanks and air-launched cruise missiles, as well as sea-based weaponry, to hit Russian targets. Satellite intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) has been provided to Ukraine for more accurate strikes.

Western escalation is brewing

The New York Times has revealed, somewhat surprisingly, that the CIA has been “financing” and “partly equipping” several underground bunkers near the Russian border. Their goal is to gather vital information on defenses and equipment, as well as assist the Ukrainian military in directing fire. Despite strong warnings from Russia, the Dutch have announced their decision to supply 18 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Radio Free Europe that Ukraine’s right to self-defense includes attacking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine. Elsewhere, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed that UK and French special forces are on the ground in Ukraine to operate the advanced equipment supplied to Kyiv.

Scholz seems opposed to the supply of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. If these warheads are used for strikes inside Russia, it may draw Germany into direct conflict with Moscow. However, the leaked exchanges between German officers suggest a huge disconnect within the German establishment. They seemingly discussed the efficacy of using Taurus missiles to target the Crimean Bridge and ammunition dumps to its north. They also deliberated about how to launch these strikes without directly involving the German government, suggesting that the missile’s manufacturer, MBDA Deutschland GmbH, could act as a front.

Another potential step could seriously exacerbate the situation. On February 26, at a summit of 20 European leaders in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron aired the possibility of putting European troops on the ground in Ukraine. This disregards Russian warnings that such a move could trigger a direct war between NATO and Russia.

The US, Germany, the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, among others, have ruled out the possibility of sending their troops to fight in Ukraine. Macron, however, believes that the people decrying this idea today are the same ones who decried the supply of tanks, aircraft or long-range missiles to Ukraine two years ago. In the face of rebuffs and political opposition at home, Macron insists that what he said was fully contemplated and that the intention is to put Putin in a “strategic dilemma.” He did not explain what that could be or why it would be only one-way.

Ukrainian support and Baltic aggression

The thought behind the proposals to increase EU military support for Ukraine is that European countries must take more responsibility for their own security. This is especially true considering the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected as US president in November. He warned Europeans that if they do not ramp up their defense spending, rather than relying on the US for security, he will leave them to fend for themselves against unstated Russian threats. EU members are now increasing their defense budgets even when their economies are under pressure. Germany and the UK are facing a recession and social unrest is spreading in several European countries, as indicated by widespread protests from farmers.

France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Denmark and Canada have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. What these precisely entail is not clear. However, it seems the objectives are to give assurances of support to Ukraine, should there be a change in the US administration; to give Kyiv confidence that despite flagging public support for the conflict in European societies, aid will continue and to signal to Russia that the EU’s investment in the conflict will continue regardless of Ukrainian losses and the war of attrition favoring Moscow. There is also a hint that Ukraine’s entry into NATO may not be imminent. Kyiv needs assurance that individual European countries are willing to commit themselves to Ukraine’s defense.

The Baltic states are the most vociferous in pushing for a confrontation with Russia, both within the EU and in international conferences. Many countries of the Global South believe that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a European affair. This has adverse consequences for them economically because of the disruptions it is causing in food, fertilizer and energy supplies. The Europeans argue this conflict goes beyond their continent and involves the international community as a whole, claiming that it violates the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. This is not a convincing argument; European nations are themselves guilty of such transgressions, and there is no guarantee that this will not continue in the future.

Russia has not attacked the Baltic states, which are members of NATO and have the bloc’s troops stationed on their soil. These countries are hardly central to international geopolitics, have a combined population of only six million and have negligible military strength. Given their deep grievances against Soviet rule, their desire to drive an increasingly dangerous conflict in Europe, along with Poland, Finland and Sweden, is concerning to non-Western countries.

Russia may not escalate its warfare

The argument that Russia will attack other countries if it defeats Ukraine is fictitious. Putin has been in power for 24 years now, NATO has expanded five times and the bloc’s troops and US missiles are stationed close to Russia’s borders. Russia has only aggressively responded to Georgia and Ukraine. In both cases, Putin warned that Russia would take action if these two countries were drawn into NATO.

Putin’s repeated declarations that Russia has no intention of attacking any European country are being dismissed, as they do not fit the narrative of Moscow’s threat to Europe. Why Russia would enter into a conflict with NATO is not explained. As for Russia’s imperial ambitions, it has refrained from tightening control in erstwhile Soviet territories in Central Asia. Armenia is the most recent example.

The other argument Europeans champion — that a Russian victory over Ukraine will embolden China to intervene militarily in Taiwan — is equally trumped up. The Taiwan issue long predates that of Ukraine. China will judge the rapport between Taiwan, the US and its regional allies, then make its decision based on that. Washington has committed itself to the “One China” policy, though it is against the use of force by Beijing to conquer Taiwan. China also has to take into account that the US is its biggest trading partner.

The prevailing belief among European nations is that, considering Russia’s past reactions to the West’s incremental support for Ukraine, Moscow is unlikely to escalate militarily. Even if the West continues to do so by supplying Ukraine with additional weapons to potentially damage mainland Russia, they likely will not exacerbate the conflict. This may explain why Europeans are undeterred by Russia’s formidable nuclear arsenal. But this could be a serious misjudgment, potentially leading the West to drag the world into a nuclear nightmare.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The West Risks a Disastrous Nuclear World Conflict With Russia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Russia proposed an international treaty on cybercrime

In 2017, Russia proposed the convention the stated goal of addressing “the problems and threats posed by crimes in the sphere of information and communications technologies.” The UN General Assembly narrowly decided to develop it through UNGA Resolution 74/247 in 2019, with 79 votes in favor from a cross-regional grouping primarily from Africa, Northern Africa, Asia and the Middle East; 60 votes against including the European bloc, Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States, Paraguay, Panama and Tonga; and 33 abstentions mainly from Latin American states and some others.

Of course, cybercrime poses a severe risk to human rights. But is a legally binding UN treaty a reasonable or practical course of action? UN human rights bodies and civil society organizations have extensively documented the widespread misuse of cybercrime laws. States abuse them to target journalists, human rights defenders, whistleblowers and technologists, imposing unwarranted restrictions on expression and justifying disproportionate surveillance powers.

UN Resolution 74/146 acknowledges the misuse of cybercrime legislation to target human rights activists, endangering their safety and impeding their work against international law. This abuse occurs at local and national levels, causing significant harm. How much greater would the problem become if abusable legislation were elevated to international law?

To achieve credible level of legislative harmonization, every signatory state must create new laws and alter current ones before the UN can develop any universal instrument. This approach risks triggering a legislative race to the bottom due to the diverse backgrounds of UN member nations, many of which have a history of abusing cybercrime laws and violating human rights. To make matters worse, the fact that negotiations took place in UN offices in Vienna and New York restricted transparency and limited opportunities for public interest actors to participate.

A dangerous document

The process proceeded despite these worries and the fundamental differences between the nations, including on the convention’s core goal, interspersed with ever louder protests from civil society organizations. UN member states began the final round of negotiations to adopt the agreement in late January 2024.

Before the meeting, Global Partners Digital and over a hundred civil society organizations sent a joint statement to the Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime (AHC), outlining the minimal standards necessary to ensure that the draft convention does not jeopardize cybersecurity or human rights. The statement raises three severe issues with the draft convention. One of the main concerns is the range of offenses it covers. Some passages in the text define offenses as any crime containing a digital element, which exceeds the generally accepted definition of cybercrime. This ambiguity could lead to the convention being interpreted and implemented in a manner that fosters prejudice or persecution. Research conducted by the Association for Progressive Communications and Derechos Digitales has charted the ways states have applied ambiguously worded cybercrime laws to suppress opposition voices and criminalize human rights advocates, from a transgender influencer in Nicaragua who was expelled due to her social media posts to an Egyptian human rights activist who received a two-year prison sentence for a video she made about sexual harassment.

The convention risks allowing law enforcement to share information excessively within and outside national borders. This increased sharing could result in prosecutions or extraditions due to the convention’s broad scope and lack of specific safeguards, such as requiring prior judicial authorization and transparency measures. Despite arguments that the convention isn’t intended as a human rights pact, several participating governments have rejected implementing adequate protections for these powers. As a consequence of its broad reach, individuals such as security researchers, journalists, activists and whistle-blowers may find themselves lacking necessary safeguards and potentially even facing criminal charges.

On the second-to-last day of negotiations, a coalition of civil society organizations, business representatives and technical experts published an open letter urging states not to endorse the convention due to its fundamental flaws. Negotiations were then suspended on the final day of the session and are scheduled to reconvene in New York later in 2024, with the aim of finalizing the agreement by the 78th session of the General Assembly, ending in September 2024. The decision to suspend negotiations was influenced by significant differences between the parties involved, possibly compounded by rising public criticism of the pact from a diverse array of stakeholders.

Where do we go from here?

The draft treaty presents several issues. It lacks protections for human rights and grants States the ability to monitor and obtain personal data from individuals outside their borders. Additionally, it requires computer corporations to collaborate with law enforcement on alleged criminal investigations. Since it fails to specify that accessing computer systems without the intent to steal, damage, or infect with malware should not lead to prosecution, it poses a threat to security researchers. If left unchanged, the draft treaty would significantly harm global cybersecurity.

The current hiatus in discussions provides a crucial opportunity to raise public awareness about the dangers inherent in the draft and advocate for a narrowly limited convention with robust language to prevent its potential misuse for repression, persecution and surveillance. Negotiating nations should not endorse the convention unless a more restricted, human rights-respecting approach can be achieved. If ratified in its current form, the treaty will greatly impact international criminal laws and grant law enforcement broad new powers to investigate crimes both domestically and internationally. Numerous studies have already suggested alternative strategies that respect human rights while combating cybercrime. Given the risks associated with proceeding with this flawed and potentially dangerous treaty, the time may have come to discuss these alternative ideas.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Draft UN Cybercrime Convention: A Threat to Human Rights appeared first on Fair Observer.

In September 2015, Russia’s armed forces intervened in the Syrian civil war. Russia’s involvement here forms a key element of its Middle East policy, and its military presence has served multiple objectives. First, it has kept Putin’s ally Bashar al-Assad in power as president of Syria.

Second, Syria is its foothold in the Middle East. It has allowed Russia to establish several bases across the nation. Russia has secured a naval port in Tartus. From this port, the Russian navy can project its power over the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, it has deployed air bases.

Third, it has made Syria a testing ground for Moscow’s military reforms. These include newly-developed force structures, operational concepts and weapon systems.

Russia and Iran cooperate in a number of fields. In the realm of nuclear energy, Moscow has built a nuclear plant in Bushehr, Iran. Both states possess considerable quantities of natural gas, which they can use to influence the international energy market. Iran is one of the biggest buyers of Russian weapons, and Russia returns the favor by purchasing Iranian drones for use in the Russia–Ukraine war. Both countries collaborate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a political, economic and security entity of the East. (This group comprises the nuclear powers of China, India and Pakistan as well.) Moscow and Tehran combine forces in military exercises. For example, in January 2022, Russia, Iran and China conducted joint naval drills.

Russia’s bond with the Palestinians

Russia has a lasting relationship with Hamas in Gaza. Hamas was invited to Moscow after it won the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories. Since then, its delegations have frequently visited the Kremlin. Russia does not label Hamas as a terrorist organization but rather an Islamic resistance movement. Given its policy change to an explicitly pro-Palestinian stance, Moscow has increased its contacts with Hamas since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

On October 26, less than three weeks after that massacre, Russia received a Hamas delegation. During the visit, at Moscow’s request, Hamas promised to locate and release eight Russian Israeli dual citizens who were taken hostage. Hamas made the offer because it “consider[s] Russia to be a closest friend.” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, Hamas’s chief sponsor, also attended the talks in Moscow. The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Russia for hosting a Hamas delegation, saying that Moscow “gives support to terrorism and legitimizes the atrocities of Hamas terrorists.” On January 19, 2024, the Kremlin again received a Hamas delegation for consultations in Moscow.

In the aftermath of October 7, Russia has also strengthened its relations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas. In their phone conversation on December 22, 2023, Putin asserted that Moscow would continue sending humanitarian aid to Gaza and urged Abbas to end the war quickly. He called for the peace process with Israel to resume, leading toward a two-state solution: the formation of a Palestinian state next to Israel.

Russia gave Abbas an open invitation to visit when it is convenient for both sides. Additionally, Russia invited all Palestinian factions to meet in Moscow. This is further evidence that Russia is strengthening its bonds with Hamas and the PA. These two groups sought unity and hoped to establish that in the Kremlin-facilitated meeting. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh stated, “One should not continue focusing on Oct. 7.”

On Monday, February 26, Shtayyeh and his Fatah party government resigned, most likely due to Western pressure to do something about the rampant PA’s corruption and thus make it more suitable to govern Gaza. Russia will probably attempt to exploit this opportunity to create greater unity — perhaps a national unity government — between Fatah and Hamas.

Russian–Israeli relations: before and after October 7

Russia’s military contingent in Syria is a potential threat to Israel. To this end, Israel created the so-called deconfliction mechanism as a safeguard. When the nation intended to conduct air strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) informed the nearby Russian military — that way, the air defense systems would not shoot down their jets.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews live in Russia. For their safety, it is best for Israel to maintain good relations with Moscow. There is, however, a difference between having calm, stable relations and friendly, accommodating ones. These nations previously had the latter, which is why Israel initially avoided rebuking Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine in February 2022, while the rest of the Western world condemned Moscow. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made frequent visits to Moscow and had phone calls with Putin.

Israel’s attitude changed after October 7. The nation distanced itself from Russia when it invited Hamas leaders to Moscow. Israel canceled its deconfliction mechanism and admonished Russia diplomatically for cordially receiving the Hamas killers. On December 10, 2023, Netanyahu criticized Putin for supporting Hamas. Netanyahu also voiced his discontentment with Russia’s positions against Israel in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and other international forums. He warned against the dangerous cooperation between Russia and Iran.

Putin responded by saying that Moscow rejects terrorism, but it cannot support the dire situation of Gazan civilians. After the call, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov countered by stating: “It is unacceptable that Israel uses Hamas’ October 7th attack as a justification for collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” However, Lavrov’s comment acknowledged Hamas’s infamous terrorist attack, which Russia allegedly condemned immediately. Lavrov distinguished between its cooperation with Hamas’s political branch, operating from Qatar, whilst condemning the October 7 massacre by Hamas’s military wing.

The Kremlin also argues that since Hamas is not on the UN list of terrorist organizations, there is no reason for Russia to label it as such. This line of thought apparently is how Moscow tries to justify its ties with Hamas. Israel does not recognize any differentiation between political and military branches of terrorist organizations, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah.

In the week before his talk with Netanyahu, Putin met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, praising Tehran’s support for Moscow’s war effort and holding talks on the Israel–Hamas war. Putin stated that it was crucial for Russia and Iran to exchange views on the region’s situation, especially regarding Palestine. Thus, the Kremlin discarded Israel’s disapproval of Russia’s global standpoint in the Israel–Hamas war, as well as Israel’s reproach of Moscow’s camaraderie with Tehran.

“Friendship” gone cold

Russia’s objective is to disrupt the US-led world order. From Moscow’s perspective, any escalation of the Israel–Hamas war would further this goal. Russia presumes that continued US support for Israel will diminish Washington’s influence in the Middle East. However, Putin fails to understand that key regional powers, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, resent Hamas and would welcome its annihilation. The Kremlin considers Israel part of the Western coalition united against Russia, and therefore condemns its war in Gaza. 

Moscow has canceled its friendly ties with Jerusalem and has replaced them with an explicitly pro-Palestinian stance. Putin has accused those denouncing the Russia–Ukraine war of ignoring Israel’s “extermination of civilians in Palestine and the Gaza Strip.” Furthermore, Russia is actively collaborating with Iran and China to wage a massive disinformation campaign to support Hamas and attack Israel for defending itself. In particular, they use social media to turn public opinion against the nation.

Russia’s unambiguous support for Palestine is also reflected in its actions as a permanent member of the UNSC. Shortly after October 7, Russia drafted a controversial UNSC resolution that referred to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs without mentioning the perpetrator of the war: Hamas. Russia and China then vetoed a US-drafted UNSC resolution, which condemned the October 7 attack, supported Israel’s right to defend itself and called for the unconditional release of hostages from Gaza. In November 2023, Russia even stated in the UNSC that Israel has no right to defend itself against Hamas, as it is an occupying power. According to Moscow, Israel’s security could only be fully guaranteed if the Palestine issue were resolved on the basis of relevant UNSC resolutions, like by creating a Palestinian state.

In January 2024, Lavrov called on Israel to stop the war with Hamas and told Israel not to extrude Palestinians from their land. He underlined Russia’s previous stance: Only the creation of a Palestinian state could prevent more violence. He then stated that the October 7 terrorist attack was no excuse for Israel to retaliate with equally barbaric carnage. Lavrov slammed Israel for attacking Syria, including the airports of Damascus and Aleppo, which would interrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance. He also panned Israel for its alleged strikes in Lebanon and Syria, which targeted military sites and personnel of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

What should Israel think now?

The government of Israel was convinced that Hamas wanted to maintain the status quo. As a consequence, before October 7, Israeli leaders ignored warnings of a looming massive attack by Hamas. The consecutive governments of Bennett and Netanyahu were equally confident that they had a solid, even friendly relationship with Putin. As such, they disregarded Moscow’s firm relations with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria — Israel’s archenemies.

Putin is not against Jews. In fact, when he was young, a Jewish family supported him. However, Putin ambivalently views the State of Israel as just a piece on the global chessboard. In its campaign to counter US influence, Russia’s Middle Eastern partners are Syria, Iran and the related proxies of Hamas, the PA and Hezbollah. October 7 saw the Kremlin replace its steady relationship with Israel by increasing its ties with Hamas and the PA.

This rude awakening flipped Israel’s attitude toward the suddenly antagonistic Russia. Israel has now embraced the US and the rest of the Western world. Russia is now treating it accordingly, burning past bridges. The fierce rejection of Israel’s military campaign demonstrates that Moscow and Jerusalem’s relationship may be cold for a while, if not indefinitely.

How should Israel view Russia? From a military perspective, the cancellation of the deconfliction system is a boon for the nation. The Russian air defense was only deployed in Syria to counter US or Israeli aircraft. Russian–Iranian ties have been reinforced by Moscow’s isolation in its war against Ukraine and its dependence on Iranian drones. Likewise, Tehran is eager to replace its outdated jets with modern Russian aircraft.

The Russian–Israeli deconfliction system had always been a superficial one. At any time, Moscow could have informed the Iranian targets in Syria about impending IDF attacks. The air defense systems in Syria likely will not shoot down Israeli jets now, as the IDF can easily destroy them in retaliation. Israel benefits from the freedom of movement that is now afforded to the IDF as a result of the deconfliction system’s cancellation.

From a political perspective, Russia’s tough stance toward Israel provides clarity. Just like the deconfliction system, the allegedly friendly relationship between the two nations had an artificial characteristic: Putin’s warm reception of Israeli prime ministers always had Russia’s strong ties with Israel’s foes in the background. Israel now has nothing to expect from Moscow. Jerusalem should act accordingly after this wake-up call, keeping its relations with Russia at a low and pragmatic level.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How Did the Israel–Hamas War Affect the Ties Between Russia and Israel? appeared first on Fair Observer.

On February 23, 2024, the European Commission (EC) adopted the 13th package of sanctions against Russia. No surprises are expected as the latest round of sanctions deals with preventing the circumvention of EU sanctions through third countries. Deutsche Welle, citing its own sources, writes that about 200 individuals and legal entities will be added to the sanctions list. Restrictions will be imposed, in particular, against several firms from China and Turkey, which help Russian companies and state held corporations bypass sanctions. Bloomberg also reported that the EU plans to impose restrictions on about twenty companies from China, India, Hong Kong, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Turkey which allegedly help Russia evade previously imposed sanctions.

Instead of cracking down on Moscow’s multibillion-dollar oil and gas sales, including bypassing sanctions, or ensuring that banned technology does not reach its military, the European Union (EU), as Politico reports, is scaling back its ambitions in favor of sanctioning a small number of rule-breaking companies. Given the lack of consensus among the countries and fierce opposition from Hungary, which continues to seek closer ties with Russia and China, it is clear that the EU may find it difficult to agree on new yet significant sanction measures against Russia. In the meantime, the decline in foreign trade turnover allows Russia to increase its GDP by utilizing the opportunities present within its own market, something that sanctions have enabled.

The impact of sanctions on the Russian Ruble

The question of the effectiveness of sanctions has been raised more than once over the past two years of war. The most obvious indicator is the ruble exchange rate. In Russia, the dollar exchange rate depends much more on the volume of oil exports than on other factors, especially those not related to exports. In addition, for the Russian population, the dollar exchange rate is much more than just an exchange rate. Russians pin their hopes on it for protection from inflation and depreciation of their cash savings.  Before the war in Ukraine started, it was 77.4 rubles to 1 dollar. Immediately after the introduction of the first sanctions package, the ruble fell sharply to 104 rubles per dollar. However, by June it had increased to 57.2 rubles per dollar. 

The change took place because in anticipation of the introduction of the announced restrictions, Western buyers sought to speed up their purchases of cheap Russian energy sources as much as possible. Due to the purchase, Russian exports exceeded imports. Moreover, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation introduced a mandatory sale of 80% of foreign currency earnings for domestic exporters. These measures led to the supply of U.S. Dollar exceeding the demand for it in the Russian market in 2022. 

However, the developments created problems for the Russian budget, which was not prepared to handle a circumstance under which the ruble would become more expensive. Therefore, the norm of mandatory currency sales for Russian exporters was reduced to 50% in May 2022, and in June 2022, it was completely abolished.

In 2023, the situation began to change. Firstly, restrictions on Russian energy exports began to work. Secondly, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which had been exporting gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine, was blown up in September 2022. Thirdly, it became clear that India’s massive purchases of crude oil could not be paid for in U.S. currency because of the sanctions and revenue received in Indian rupees could not be counted as foreign exchange earnings because India’s national currency is not convertible. Due to this Russian shipments to India began to resemble barter transactions more than classic trade. Fourth and finally, Western importers did their best to switch from cheap but politically toxic Russian energy to more expensive supplies from other countries, primarily from the United States. 

As a result of all of the above points there was a sharp decline in Russian exports (energy exports fell by 33.6% in 2023 and total exports by 28.3%) and, as a consequence it led to an equally sharp fall in the ruble from 69.2 rubles per dollar in January 2023 to 90.8 rubles per 1 dollar in December 2023. While revenues from oil and gas exports grew by 43% in 2022 to $383.7 billion, they fell by 24% in 2023. Almost 90% of all oil and petroleum product supplies were redirected to India and China. This seriously impacted the Russian economy, although there were other consequences as well.

Energy prices and the cost of living

In Europe, sanctions led to an almost two-fold increase in energy prices between January 2021 and January 2023. Consequently, the cost of household utilities in the EU countries increased in addition to other utilities such as motor fuel. The consequence of the increase in energy prices was inflation in Europe. In October 2022 overall inflation amounted to 11.5% and for energy inflation amounted to 40.2% in March 2022. However, the EU economies quickly adapted and by December 2023 inflation had fallen to 3.4%. 

But this did not solve the problem of rising utility prices for households. This was due to the continued rise in electricity prices. In 22 EU countries, residential electricity prices increased in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year.The largest increase was observed in the Netherlands, where electricity bills increased by 953%, helped by national tax policies. However, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia also saw significant jumps in electricity prices by 88%, 77% and 74% respectively. In Germany and the Czech Republic it was 25 and 35% respectively. 

The situation is even worse with gas prices. They rose in 20 of the 24 EU member states that report gas prices to Eurostat. Gas prices (in national currencies) increased the most in Latvia (+139%) followed by Romania (+134%), Austria (+103%), the Netherlands (+99%) and Ireland (+73%).

The increase in gas prices led to food inflation, which unlike general inflation in the EU remains high. According to Euronews Business, real food inflation stood at 4.6% in the euro area (4% in the EU) in October 2023, putting enormous pressure on low-income households. In October 2023, annual food and non-alcoholic beverage inflation exceeded headline inflation in 33 of 37 European countries. Moreover, if in Belgium it was 10.9%, then in the Czech Republic it was 5.7%. Food inflation led by rising energy prices, affected the entire agri-food chain: from farmers to processing enterprises and transport.

In Russia, the average price for electricity has remained virtually unchanged. Russian consumers faced an 8.5% hike in the regulated tariff at the end of 2022 when natural gas exports to Europe fell by 75% on an year on year basis.The increase in gasoline prices in rubles was 5% from February 2022 to September 2023. Gasoline costs approximately 0.56 euros per liter. However, in 2022, the general inflation was recorded at 11.9%, which is slightly higher than European inflation of the same year and 3.55% higher than what was recorded in Russia in 2021. At the end of 2023, inflation in the Russian Federation was at 7.42%.

The discrepancy between the collapse of the ruble and declining inflation in 2023 suggests that Russia has overcome its dependence on imports, at least for the main groups of goods. The cost of food items in Russia increased 8.10 percent between January 2023 and January of 2024. 

Moreover, the Russian leadership did not put up much resistance to the sharp depreciation of the ruble, as in October 2023 when Putin signed a decree obliging 43 exporting companies (out of several hundred) to sell foreign exchange exposure. The remaining companies were not affected. This stopped the collapse of the Russian currency, but did not bring it back to its previous high values of mid-2022. In the context of a mass exodus of foreign suppliers, the state benefits from a weak ruble, as it stimulates domestic industry.

The steps taken by the Russian government demonstrated the ineffectiveness of sanctions. Far from severely impacting the Russian economy, the sanctions brought Russia to a point that it was able to stimulate its domestic industry and led to it overcoming its dependence on imports. 

Effects of sanctions on the Russian domestic market

The weakening of the ruble exchange rate and decreased export revenues are probably the only serious results of the sanctions. A close look at the developments within the Russian domestic market suggests that McDonald’s restaurants changed their signage to the Russian “Tasty and That’s it!” (the author did not notice any difference in the menu and in the quality of dishes), the Zara brand of clothing stores was replaced by the Maag brand of Fashion And More Management DMCC from the UAE, the Australian 2XU replaced Adidas, and the South Korean firm Inni replaced H&M.

The Commonwealth Partnership (CMWP) estimates that of the 85 brands that wanted to shut down their business in Russia, only 25% have actually closed. According to the NF Group, since March 2022, 23 foreign companies have announced their departure from Russia, while another 34 have rebranded and transferred (or announced plans to transfer) Russian business to other market players. At the same time,16 new brands entered the country in 2023. Among them, the largest number of chain stores were from Turkey (5), two big companies from China, one each from the USA, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Estonia and Kyrgyzstan, and three from Belarus.

Hotels operating under the Radisson Blu, Park Inn by Radisson, and Olympia Garden brands, which were owned by the international company Wenaas Hotel Russia until March 2023, started operating under the Cosmos brand. In March, the Russian Cosmos Hotel Group bought 10 hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Murmansk from this company for $200 million.

Moreover, the Russian population which had never been spoiled with high wages, survived the impact of European sanctions quite calmly, as energy prices remained virtually unchanged since the end of 2021. It is also the case that Russian manufacturers have very quickly replaced imported products with their own, especially in the consumer sectors.

Western companies that stopped business operations on the Russian market did so because they did not want to pay taxes to the aggressor country were replaced by other companies, mainly from Asian countries and by Russian companies themselves. Today, chain stores in Russia lack only well-known brands of expensive spirits. 

From the developments it is clear that Russia was prepared to deal with the economic consequences of the sanctions and there were countries that were willing to have economic relations with Russia in spite of the sanctions. This could clearly be seen in the developments that took place in the Russian market after the imposition of sanctions by Western Europe. 

The only place where the changes are noticeable is the car market – Western brands are no longer supplied to the Russian market. Their place has been taken by Chinese brands. Instead of new BMW, Opel, Volvo or Volkswagen, those Russians who could afford to buy new cars are opting for Chinese car brands such as Chery, Exeed, Omoda among others.

According to the Associated Press (AP), citing a Yale University database, by June 2023, 151 foreign companies are reducing business in Russia, 175 firms are trying to buy time, and another 230 are undecided over how to exit the Russian market. Among the latter, Chinese companies are particularly numerous.

As for production, the final data for 2023 allow us to draw conclusions about the industrial production growth rate in Russia. At the end of the year, growth amounted to 3.6%. The positive dynamics were provided by manufacturing industries, which grew by 7.5%. On the contrary, the extraction of minerals decreased by 1.3%, primarily due to reduced exports to Europe.

The main problem with the Russian industry last year was in the large raw material regions, mainly located beyond the Urals. Growth was mainly driven by the defense industry and import-substituting machine building in a country where economic activity is driven by raw material extraction. The growth of the military industry pulled along a number of related industries, primarily metallurgy, as well as those companies that took advantage of the withdrawal of certain sanctioned goods from Russia. These include food products, industrial production and machine building. 

While the defense industry is losing money, it has the potential to increase employment and wages, allowing the population greater purchasing power for individuals employed in the defense and manufacturing industries. During war time a larger than usual number of people will be employed in the defense and manufacturing industries due to which the war results in impact across the chain of the military industrial complex ranging from demand for metallurgical materials which produces metal for tanks to the textile industry which sews uniforms for soldiers. While the impact stemming from war and increase in employment prospects and the resultant purchasing power in the hands of the civilians is purely temporary in nature, money in the hands of ordinary people results in them having disposable income to buy civilian products. 

From the developments in the Russian domestic market it is clear that the sanctions have led to the revival of Russian manufacturing which is driven by war. If the sanctions intended to hurt the Russian economy that did not take place. 

Effects on the flow of capital

The situation with capital outflow from Russia best illustrates this process. In 2022, it reached a record high of $243 billion or 13.5% of GDP. This was certainly one more serious challenge for the Russian economy. It was related to several factors. First was that Russian companies were forced to repay their loans to Western banks in one go. Second was the withdrawal of Western companies and the purchase of assets from them by Russian companies. Third was the refusal of Western suppliers to work with Russian importers on pre-supplies (Reference in this context is only about advance financing of all imports) and the fourth was the withdrawal of western investments from the Russian economy. 

However, in 2023 the capital outflow decreased 6 times, according to the estimates of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. This outflow was largely compensated by the inflow of capital from Russian citizens, who have or had their accounts closed by Western banks and did not want to risk their assets previously based in Western countries.

Many of the most significant decisions of the West are restrictions related to money transfers from Russia and the entry of Russian citizens into Western countries, which I wrote about here. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has been unable to solve the two important problems concerning its economy – stopping the flight of money and brain drain of individuals from Russia.  Sanctions on Russian banks, refusal to accept money from Russia and seizures of Russian bank accounts in the West resulted in Russians abroad transferring their money home. As of September 2023, $50 billion worth of money has returned to Russia. 

By closing its borders in the spring of 2022, the West did everything possible to ensure that Russian individuals, especially skilled individuals remained within Russia. The visa restrictions by countries in the West have helped the Putin regime reduce brain drain. One important example of this has been the reduction in the number of Russian scientists leaving the country. According to the Higher School of Economics of Russia in 2021 before the start of the war, 6,000 scientists had left the country. The total number of scientists who left Russia after the start of the war till 2024 is 2,500 people. However, the reduction is not limited to just scientists leaving Russia. 

Approximately 261 thousand people left Russia after the announcement of mobilization to other countries primarily Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and other countries in Central Asia. The question that arises is why did the people who wanted to avoid mobilization chose to go to these countries in specifc?. The answer quite simply was that at the beginning of the mobilization these countries did not prevent the entry of citizens who were leaving Russia in large numbers. The individuals are mostly educated people working in different sectors of the economy. Many of them have returned since these countries began to deny them the right to stay.  It is notable that Western countries did nothing to help these individuals.

The West promised, “sanctions from hell” at the beginning of the conflict in February 2022. The question is, who are the sinners who have felt them in full? These sanctions did not stop the war in Ukraine nor did it destroy the Russian economy. In fact in some cases the sanctions contributed to Russia’s development. The sanctions led to financial losses for millions of people in the West, losses of Western companies and their loss of access to the Russian market. Moreover, by imposing all sanctions almost simultaneously, the West lost its final opportunities to influence Putin. If this was done in the name of victory in Ukraine, then clearly, ineffective, means were chosen.

While the sanctions may work in a few years time say 3 to 5 years we may not have this time. The fate of Ukraine, and with it the future world order, will be definitely decided in 2024. Immediate and fundamental steps will need to take effect here and now in matters connected to the Ukraine conflict and in turn the international world order.

[Aniruddh Rajendran, Cheyenne Torres and Gwyneth Campbell edited the piece]

[Ali Omar Forozish fact-checked this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Myth of Economic Armageddon: The Truth About Western Sanctions on Russia appeared first on Fair Observer.

If you haven’t taken the time to watch it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s long, breaking two hours, and it is dense. Putin is a man who says one thing and really means five things, and that doesn’t work well in our modern soundbite-and-headline news culture. Still, I urge you to take the time to listen. Putin is not going to convince you of anything — at least I doubt that he will — but I don’t think the point of the interview was to “convince” anyone. In this article, I want to lay out my thoughts on the interview, my thoughts on the wider Russia–Ukraine war and what it really means.

A narrative is just good strategy when you’re playing the game

The title of this present article refers to Swedish video game developer Paradox Interactive. The company has made a name for itself publishing “grand strategy” games with titles like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. These are games where the player assumes control of a historical nation, people or dynasty and crafts the narrative and strategy of that nation, people or dynasty throughout history. I believe that this, in essence, is what Putin is doing now. He’s playing the grand narrative and grand strategy of the Rus’ people, and he’s playing to win.

If you’re aware of the video, you’re almost certainly aware of the various “fact checks” on Putin’s historical claims. Some of the more notable fact-checks on Putin’s historical claims come from reputable historians whom I greatly respect, like Tom Holland.

What I think most fact-checkers miss is that it doesn’t matter whether Putin’s historical claims are historically accurate. Putin is not writing a paper, giving a book report or making a slide deck presentation. He has no judge or teacher who will be giving out a grade. You cannot point out enough inconsistencies or inaccuracies or fabrications that will make Putin say “Drat, I’ve been found out” and order his armies to turn back in shame and go home. That’s not the point of Putin’s historical claims. Putin is establishing a narrative.

What do I mean by “narrative”? Quite simply, and quite directly, I mean that Putin is telling a story to himself, to his country and to us about why he has decided to go to war. A narrative is less about the past than it is about the present — it exists not to explain history but to justify policy. For this reason, a narrative is fundamentally incapable of being fact-checked or falsified.

The US has had its own fair share of narratives, most famously Manifest Destiny. Many other narratives have also gripped US theory and shaped global aims. The Monroe Doctrine was an American narrative about why America should be responsible for half the globe. The “Arsenal of Democracy” was a narrative about justifying American entry into World War II. Much more recently, the “Global War on Terror” was an American narrative about justifying our continual involvement across the planet in pursuit of everyone we decide to label “terrorist.” Domestically, “systemic racism” is a narrative we’ve concocted to justify the complete upending and reimaging of everything from major sporting events to college admissions to who gets promotions in order to accomplish ideologues’ visions of justice.

What do all of these narratives have in common? The characteristic that fact-checking them is as useful as fact-checking Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Pushing your glasses up your nose and saying, “Actually, sweetie, that didn’t happen,” is both futile and entirely beside the point. You can point out all the historical inaccuracies that went into each of those narratives until the cows come home, but it won’t change a single thing that the people who believed in political narratives actually do. Narratives are supplanted by other narratives, not facts, because only nerds care about dry, disconnected facts — real people like stories.

What is the story Putin is telling?

What is Putin’s narrative — the grand story for his grand strategy?

As near as can be ascertained and summarized, Putin’s narrative is, “We are fighting to unite the long-divided lands of the Rus’.” Rus’ are the the ethnos from which “Rus-sia” derives its name, after all.

I don’t want to recap the entire history of the Rus, you may as well watch the interview for that. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes already about Putin —  “I’ll give you the thirty-second history, one minute at most,” and then he talks and talks and talks. Still, the real thirty-second recap is quite easy to grasp.

The Rus’ state started around the area of Kiev as a unification of various tribes under a Norse aristocracy. The Rus’ then converted to eastern Christianity and ultimately splintered into various realms under the suzerainty of the Golden Horde. Eventually, one of the more easterly splinter states, centered on Moscow, rose to prominence. Moscow agglomerated the lands of the Rus’ back together over long centuries and much war only, for it to all fall apart again in 1917 with the Bolsheviks (who Putin does seem to consider devils) and the USSR. The USSR, so the narrative goes, arbitrarily divided the lands of the Rus into constituent republics under Moscow’s overlordship. This then fell apart again in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Despite his loathing of the Bolsheviks, Putin sees this as another disaster.) This brings us to today, with Moscow once again trying to agglomerate the lands of the Rus’ under its overlordship.

Why is it important that Putin considers the divisions of the USSR’s constituent republics “arbitrary”? It’s because part of this narrative is that the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are confused and temporarily embarrassed Russians, even if they don’t know it. More precisely, Putin asserts that the Ukrainians are an artificial union of Russians, Poles, Lithuanians and Hungarians, but he mostly just cares about the Russian ones. Putin does not outright state, but seems to strongly imply, that the Ukrainian people should be shown that they truly are this collection and the sub-ethnicities that make up the Ukraine should return to their ethnic states.

If the Ukrainians are not their own people, but are just confused Russians, then bringing them back into the fold of Russia is a corrective action and not an unjust war. That’s why a compelling narrative is important. 

By this point, I’m sure you’re railing not just at historical inaccuracies but at the violation of liberal democratic sensibilities about how states are supposed to act. “How can he just say that they’re not their own people?” I have seen. “That’s ethnic cleansing!” I have also seen. “We just don’t do that anymore,” I have seen again and again. Well, they’re doing it, part of this narratival struggle is that the old, post-1945 order is being deliberately destroyed.

At the risk of comparing apples to oranges, imagine a similar situation in the United States with subnational identities during a hypothetically similar collapse to Russia in 1991. Are you a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan… or are you an American? Am I an Indianan, by my birth, or an Arizonan, by my most long-standing abode, or am I an American first? Does being a New Yorker, a Vermonter, a Texan or an Arizonan mean that the supraethnic American state is not my legitimate sovereign? No, of course not. That’s the narratival argument that Putin is making; that Russia is the supra-Russian sovereign.

How will this narrative play out in Ukraine?

Russia is building a narrative, and that narrative is to justify assertions of political authority and sovereignty. Sovereignty always comes down to force. As Jean V. Dubois, a character from Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, astutely noted, political authority is force, force is violence, and violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. If the narrative exists to serve and justify force, then, what political authority does it seem like Russia really wants to assert with its force? In other words, how does Putin plan to have this war end? 

I think that, ultimately, Ukraine will be completely partitioned. Russia will annex all the lands east of the Dnieper; it already de facto owns approximately half of those lands. As Ukrainian military strength degrades by the minute, it will no longer have the power to keep the Russians at bay behind an artificial boundary. Only the Dniepr, the most prominent natural boundary in Ukraine, will form a plausible barrier to the Russian advance.

After this, the west of the Ukraine will be divided up between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Sound implausible? Ostensibly, of course, the western partitions will not be annexations, and they will likely be done under a fig leaf of humanitarian aid. Still, they will happen all the same. Kiev might retain some authority in a de facto rump state, a sort of West Berlin-esque enclave, but this would be temporary.

I also see Belarusian accession to Russia itself as very likely. You can’t leave one of the lands of the Rus’ disunited after winning a major war over the very question of uniting the lands of the Rus’, now can you? Already, while Belarus is still nominally independent, it is a vassal of Moscow. Few nations, resurging after a collapse like Soviet Russia suffered in the 1990s, would leave such a large portion of their former territory behind. Watch that space.

Looking further ahead, a by no means inevitable, yet plausible outcome for Russia would be a restoration of the tsarist monarchy, under the Romanovs or otherwise. Putin would have all but restored the Russian Empire after a major victory in Ukraine. Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco did it; although he, not the exiled king, held all of the power, he restored the trappings of monarchy to borrow its legitimacy. Now, Franco is gone, yet Spain is still a kingdom. It’s not without precedent, and it is more doable in Russia than a Westerner might assume. Nostalgia for the monarchy remains surprisingly popular in the Russian Orthodox Church and among Russians generally. Russia already utilizes the imperial ensign, colors and aquila in multiple places that a republic would be embarrassed to do so. Watch this space, too.

So, what’s the conclusion? Russian feelings don’t care about your facts. Putin is stirring great Russian patriotic sentiment to correct perceived historical injustices that they’ve long felt slighted by. Enthusiasm for the war was never very unanimous in the US, and it continues to drop. Once US aid goes fully, there will not be much to stop Russia fully doing what it wills. Will the US get directly involved, starting a nuclear war, over who is sovereign on the Pontic Steppe? I think it very unlikely. Do svidanaya.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Putin’s Big Paradox Game in the Tucker Carlson Interview appeared first on Fair Observer.

In recent months, European countries have increasingly adopted restrictions aimed at reducing contact between Western and Russian citizens. This is difficult to explain with the purpose of the sanctions — to economically weaken Russia and force it to make peace with Ukraine.

The EU’s increasingly restrictive travel sanctions

Recall that back on February 25, 2022, the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Council imposed visa sanctions on Russian diplomats and businessmen, who from that moment lost simplified access to the EU. The EU extended such restrictions to all Russians in September 2022.

Furthermore, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland banned visas at the national level and restricted border crossings for Russian citizens with EU visas, citing “a serious threat to our public security.” To put it bluntly, after the introduction of restrictions on money transfers to the EU for Russians, as well as the refusal of Western insurance companies to cooperate with Russian partners, obtaining Schengen visas for most Russian citizens is now impossible.

As early as the February and March of 2022, all EU member states, as well as the US and Canada, banned Russian airlines from flying to their countries. Russia adopted retaliatory sanctions. Air travel is now much more expensive and time-consuming, requiring additional connections to avoid banned airspace.

For now, however, Russia still has a land border with the EU, which runs through the territory of Finland, the Baltic States and Norway. However, all of them have restricted the issuance of visas and the movement of Russians with transit visas.

On March 2, 2022, the EU announced that it was banning key Russian banks from SWIFT, the most important global financial messaging system. It also prohibited the importation of EU-denominated banknotes into Russia. On March 5, leading credit card companies Visa and Mastercard ceased operations in Russia. On March 11, the US government also banned the importation of its currency to Russia. A little later, in April 2022, the EU extended its restrictions to all other official currencies of EU member states.

These measures primarily hit, not Russian citizens, but citizens of other countries who wanted to enter Russia. However, the EU did not object to its people exchanging euros for US Dollars and taking out the amounts of cash they needed in American currency. This proves that the goal was to make traveling to Russia more expensive — after all, in order to eventually buy the Russian ruble, people in European countries had to pay an additional fee for the double conversion.

On October 6, the EU adopted the eighth package of sanctions, providing for a ban on exports of Russian products, including vehicles, to Europe. In July 2023, German authorities interpreted this clause as a ban not only on imports for the purpose of sale but also on the temporary entry of cars with Russian license plates. Both Russian car owners who had the right to be in the EU (for example, family members of European citizens) and EU citizens who had cars with Russian registration came under threat. These cars began to be seized and confiscated.

On September 8, 2023, the European Commission (EC) issued a clarification confirming that Russian-registered personal vehicles were not allowed in the EU. This measure applies to all vehicles with Russian license plates. Moreover, the clarification stated that Russians are prohibited from importing not only cars into the EU but also suitcases, bags, purses, leather and fur products, cosmetics, semi-precious and precious stones, cell phones, cameras and laptops. EC spokesman Balazs Ujvari later said that EU countries should not confiscate Russians’ clothes, but insisted that this should be done with regard to cars.

EC spokesman Daniel Ferri emphasized that member states must strictly enforce the ban on importing cars specifically, even if the vehicle is not actually “imported” but crosses the border only for tourism or short-term stays. Ferri did not specify whether there could be exceptions to the obligation of national authorities to confiscate cars of Russian citizens, for example, if these citizens permanently reside in an EU member state or enjoy refugee or humanitarian status.

While Italy, Spain, Austria and a number of other Western European countries immediately announced that they would not seize Russian cars, the countries bordering Russia — Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Finland immediately agreed with the EC’s clarification. Moreover, only Finland agreed to respect an exception for EU citizens and Russians permanently residing in that country. Moreover, on November 2, 2023, Latvia formalized this by amending its law on road traffic.

In the near future, it appears that countries that have land borders with Russia will close their border crossings under the controversial pretext of “security.” Thus, slowly but surely, the West is lowering the “iron curtain” with Russia. This is fundamentally different from the situation in the 1930s, when it was the USSR that closed itself from the West. 

Travel bans are achieving the opposite of their stated purpose

Let’s try to understand why the West has chosen such a policy and how it will help to establish peace in Ukraine and democratize Russia.

The EU’s official explanation is that sanctions are aimed at weakening the Russian government’s ability to finance a war of aggression against Ukraine and are designed to “minimise the negative consequences on the Russian population”; “sanctions are designed to maximise the negative impact for the Russian economy, while limiting the consequences for EU businesses and citizens.”

That is, formally, the European Council declares that it does not aim to collectively punish the Russian population and or restrict EU citizens in their contacts. Its goal is to weaken the Kremlin’s economic and military-technical power and force it to make peace. Thus, there is a contradiction between the spirit of the sanctions originally laid down by the European Council and its interpretation by overzealous European law enforcers.

How has the actual massive visa ban on Russians and air travel ban advanced the peace process? If one assumes that Russian business has the ability to influence President Vladimir Putin (which is not really true, because Russian business is completely dependent on the government, not the other way around), then one would assume that these restrictions were anti-business. But this is also not true, because those rich Russians who are not under sanctions and own real estate in Europe have, as a rule, residence permission in these countries; they do not need a visa. Unlike to ordinary people, the additional costs associated with longer flights are of no consequence to the rich.

Ordinary people bear the brunt of the difficulties. Among these are representatives of the Russian opposition, who previously had the ability to run to one of Moscow’s nine airports in order to escape retaliation after a protest. It is interesting that after the air travel ban, protests in Russia virtually ceased.

The opposition has no longer the moral right to call on Russians to take to the streets, as that call is tantamount to imprisonment for a minimum of five years.

Could Russia’s economy and military potential really have been hit by sanctions on private Russian cars driving into the EU? There is not and has never been any significant importation of Russian cars into the EU. There has always been the reverse process — exportation of cars to Russia.

Given the visa restrictions already existing, the car ban only affects a limited number of Russian citizens, mostly permanent residents of EU countries with residence permits as well as Europeans with residence permits in Russia, who need a car with Russian license plates to travel safely around Russia. It is unlikely that they have any influence over Putin or the Russian authorities.

What do these people do now? They cannot neglect their families. They have to take a train or hitchhike to the Russian border, cross the border on foot and take a cab to the city of Pskov in order to access the rest of Russia by train or plane. And the ticket price will go to a Russian state-owned railroad company or airline, which in turn pays into the Russian budget.

And there are many such people who have families on both sides of the border. About 1,000 Karelian families moved to Finland from Russian Karelia in the 1990s. All of them have relatives in Russia. Let alone the several million Russian-speaking families in the Baltic States and Germany.

The real purpose of the restrictions

So, what effect have such sanctions really achieved?

Bans on the transportation of euros, or of Russian travelers’ cell phones or cosmetics, as well as the possible complete closure of borders with Russia — these measures are all of a piece. Their goal is to reduce contacts, to isolate Russians from the West and the West from Russia. In reality, these measures hurt those who have family ties on both sides of the border. This is completely contrary to the EU’s humanitarian policy, which prioritizes the maintenance of kinship ties.

Are we sure that these people blame the Russian authorities, who started the war with Ukraine, for the new difficulties and financial costs they are now having to bear? My personal experience suggests that such people are in the minority. People’s thinking is much more straightforward: It is the fault of the one who introduced the restrictions.

Most people who have trouble traveling across the border are convinced that they are not personally to blame for the Kremlin’s waging war against Ukraine and therefore should not be held accountable for its actions. And they begin to wonder whether Putin is right when he claims that the West simply hates Russians. Thus, the measures do not weaken support for Putin, but for Europe.

It is possible that those officials who made such decisions in Brussels or Berlin were simply mistaken. Perhaps they did not realize that the interests of permanent residents of the EU, including their own citizens, would actually be affected. Perhaps they did not realize that these measures would have no effect on the Kremlin or the war in Ukraine.

But why were these decisions so enthusiastically supported by European politicians and political analysts, especially in Eastern European countries? Perhaps authorities in countries bordering Russia want to use the moment to detach their fellow citizens from Russia, some of whom view it as a “historical homeland”. What does this have to do with the purpose of the sanctions?

Where did the idea that the West should close itself off from Russia by minimizing contacts come from? I think the main reason is quite prosaic. In January 2023, Mark Temnitsky, a journalist and staff member of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, published an article in Euronews entitled “The European Union should stop issuing tourist visas to Russians.” In reality, by that time Schengen visas to Russians were practically no longer issued. The article was really about something else, which Temnitsky reveals in the anecdotes he cites.

During a trip to Montenegro, Temnitsky climbed one of the local mountains. He writes,

We reached into our bag and pulled out a Ukrainian flag. A customary tradition, we always take a photo with it during our annual trips.

We took a second to pose with our flag at the fortress and requested a neighbouring tourist to take our picture. 

But this encounter was different. As we stood for a photo, another group of tourists gave us unpleasant looks.

“Ukrainians,” one of them snarled in Russian, eyes cold with contempt.

We quickly finished taking our photo, packed our flag, and descended down the fortress. As our group continued on our walk, the discomfort among us became palpable as we came across additional Russian tourists who gave us similar stares.

Temnitsky was offended that the onlooker assumed he was a Ukrainian. But Temnitsky did not check this person’s documents, either. The tourist could have been a citizen of any of the former Soviet republics, including the Baltic States, as well as a citizen of Israel, the United States, Germany, Finland, or anywhere there is a Russian-speaking community. But he concluded that these were tourists from Russia.

Then the author went to Greece and Cyprus, where this story repeated itself. On this basis, he concludes: “This is Russia today. Over the past 19 months, many have mislabeled the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ‘Putin’s war,’ blaming the current circumstances on the Russian president.” According to him, all 145 million Russian citizens support the war. As proof, he cites the results of opinion polls conducted by Russian sociological services controlled by the Kremlin. 

The author’s conclusion is quite simple and radical: Russians should be punished for the actions of their government. Vacations and trips abroad are a luxury, and banning Russian citizens from traveling abroad will make them think twice about the actions of their government. It’s hard to imagine Temnitsky, an Atlantic Council staffer, could seriously believe what he’s saying — since the Atlantic Council regularly accuses Russia of rigging elections and being out of touch with voters. So, either the Atlantic Council is spreading disinformation and Russia remains a democratic state, or we should recognize that the author of this Euronews article is, to put it mildly, not logical in his inferences. His message is based on plain xenophobia.

Xenophobia in the form of Russophobia, as well as growing isolationist sentiments towards Russia, also based on fear of “outsiders,” is the main reason why the West is now lowering the Iron Curtain. There is simply no other explanation. The restrictions on travelers in no way bring victory over Putin’s Russia, but on the contrary contribute to the consolidation of anti-Western sentiment among the victims of this policy.

One can, of course, accuse the West of incompetence, but then the conclusions are even sadder. But if Western countries, whose main value is tolerance and freedom, begin to be guided by xenophobia in the development of political decisions, it is bad, first of all, for the West itself. 

Openness has always been the main weapon of the free world. We have always been strong because we profess freedom and are not afraid of the truth. We have carried this truth to the whole world, including Russia, and in the 1980s and 90s, it yielded results. Today, with the propaganda that characterizes the main official Russian media, the openness and accessibility of the West with its free information and values is becoming more and more important. Let us not forget that, although reforms in the USSR began with the coming to power of an adequate leader, Soviet public consciousness by that time had already been was already prepared for changes. And it was the openness of the West that played a key role in achieving that.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post Why Is the West Now Lowering the Iron Curtain? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Consequently, the vehement reactions of Putin and the Russian authorities to the last NATO summit, held in Vilnius in July, should not be regarded as vacuous threats or political bluffs but should be approached seriously. Western leaders must convince the Russian authorities that NATO does not intend to engage in a direct military confrontation with Moscow.

Ukraine’s dream of joining NATO did not come true at the summit, but the members of the organization, particularly the European ones, committed to augmenting their military assistance for Ukraine considerably. France’s promised to provide long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine. This certainly did not sit well with Moscow.

For Britain’s part, Richard Moore, the head of the British Intelligence Service (MI6), made unprecedentedly bold statements. He encouraged Russian citizens to turn information over to the MI6. This understandably provoked Russian intelligence forces.

The West is ignoring Russia’s reactions

Irrespective of the European side’s intentions, statements like these elicit a hazardous perception on the Russian side, a perception that will have severe repercussions for Europe if it is disregarded. In an article in 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin repudiated the notion of a country named Ukraine. The article could have warned of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if it had been scrutinized more closely.

After the 2023 NATO summit, the Russian authorities and media exhibited vehement reactions. One of the most drastic reactions was on a 60-minute program on Russian TV, where the presenters construed the augmentation in NATO forces and the enhancement in the organization’s aid to Ukraine as an indication that NATO is preparing to initiate war with Russia. Also, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry explicitly asserted that the summit was a manifestation of NATO’s intention to commence a major European war with Russia.

Furthermore, the Russian authorities intensified their nuclear threats, and Dmitry Medvedev, the vice-chairman of the Russian Security Council, alluded to the possibility of a calamitous nuclear war scenario. It should be noted that these comments are not merely hasty and emotional, but rather stem from the apprehension within Russia that Europe and NATO are on the verge of engaging in a direct military confrontation with Russia.

Therefore, the Europeans’ disregard for Russia’s threats has been an egregious mistake that should not be repeated again. In fact, Russia will use all its military might and act more aggressively NATO gives it the impression that it is about to start a direct war.

If we find Moscow difficult to predict now, it will be far more challenging to foresee its behavior in such a situation, and it will therefore be almost impossible to manage the tension with Russia. Furthermore, another large-scale war would impair Europe’s relations with the countries of the so-called “Global South” and push these developing countries further and further away from the continent.

What does Russia intend?

The messages Russia is conveying are drastic. Nevertheless, Russia has several aims in conveying such messages to the West. First, Moscow intends to assess the willingness of the West and especially NATO to employ nuclear weapons and initiate a nuclear war.

Second, Russia intends to ascertain if the West is prepared to maintain dialogue and diplomacy or if it has renounced diplomatic communication with Moscow. Of course, the recent statements of European leaders that Europe does not aspire to humiliate Russia or even Putin personally, and only aspires to grant Ukraine leverage in the peace negotiations and terminate the war, indicate that the West does not desire to sever the connection with Russia. But Russia will not simply trust the West on its word.

Third, Russia intends to have the authority to intensify or alleviate the tension and does not want the West to assume the responsibility for this matter. By showing that it still has options for escalation, then, Russia is reaffirming its control.

Ultimately, Russia intends to examine the West’s readiness to partake in a new round of arms control discussions, which is an opportunity that Europe should not forgo. Of course, Russia will undoubtedly demand concessions in exchange for partaking in such discussions.

Therefore, Europe and the West should cease neglecting Russia’s signals. They are no empty threats, but part of a calculated and intentional strategy. Europe must avoid crossing Russia’s red line by getting involved directly — no matter how tempting that might be as it becomes increasingly clear that Ukraine will not defeat the Russians on its own. Russia would not refrain from using any weapon in an existential war with NATO.

Of course, the non-approval of Ukraine’s membership request at the last NATO summit indicates that European and American intellectuals have perceived the danger and are cognizant of the limits of escalating tensions with Russia. Accentuating peace talks and a cease-fire as the sole solution to terminate the war in Ukraine and granting the green light to governments that aspire to mediate in this war aim to avert the apocalypse scenario that Medvedev cautioned of.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post Ignoring Russia’s Threats Would Be a Monumental Mistake appeared first on Fair Observer.

If, unlike many of his predecessors, President Biden actually wanted to be guided by accurate intelligence (which is by no means certain), his nomination of former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns as CIA Director was an encouraging appointment, although puzzling. It removed Burns from the State Department’s policymaking chain of command, but put him in a position where his decades of diplomatic experience and insight might help to guide Biden’s decisions, especially over the crisis in US relations with Russia. Burns, fluent in Russian, lived and worked at the US Embassy in Moscow for many years, first as a political officer and later as US Ambassador.

It is hard to find Burns’ fingerprints on Biden’s Russia policy or on the conduct of NATO’s war in Ukraine, where US policy has run headlong into precisely the dangers Burns warned his government about, in cables from Moscow spanning more than a decade. We cannot know what Burns tells the president behind closed doors. But he has not publicly called for peace talks, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has done — although to do so would be highly unusual for a CIA director.

Calls for a moderate approach with Russia

In the current environment of rigid pro-war, anti-Russian orthodoxy, if Bill Burns publicly voiced some of the concerns he expressed earlier in his career, he might be ostracized, or even fired, as a Putin apologist. But his dire warnings about the consequences of inviting Ukraine to join NATO have been quietly tucked in his back pocket, as he has condemned Russia as the sole author of the catastrophic war in Ukraine, without mentioning the vital context that he has so vividly explained over the past 30 years. 

In his memoir The Back Channel, published in 2019, Burns confirmed that Secretary of State James Baker had indeed assured Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that there would be no expansion of the NATO alliance or forces “one inch to the east” of the borders of a reunified Germany. Burns wrote that, even though the pledge was never formalized and was made before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians took Baker at his word and felt betrayed by NATO enlargement in the years that followed. 

When he was political officer at the US Embassy in Moscow in 1995, Burns reported that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” When in the late 1990s President Bill Clinton’s administration moved to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO, Burns called the decision premature at best and needlessly provocative at worst. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage, a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades,” he wrote. 

After serving various posts in the Middle East, including ambassador to Jordan, in 2005 Burns finally got the job he had been eyeing for years: US ambassador to Russia. From thorny trade issues to the conflict in Kosovo and missile defense disputes, he had his hands full. But the issue of NATO expansion was a source of constant friction. 

It came to a head in 2008, when officials in the Bush administration were pushing to extend a NATO invitation to Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest NATO Summit. Burns tried to head it off. Two months before the summit, he penned a no-holds-barred email to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, parts of which he quoted in his book.

Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests,” Burns wrote. “At this stage, a MAP [Membership Action Plan] offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze … It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

In addition to this personal email, he wrote a meticulous 12-point official cable to Secretary Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which only came to light thanks to a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable dump in 2010.

Dated February 1, 2008, the memo’s subject line, all caps, could not have been clearer: NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES. 

In no uncertain terms, Burns conveyed the intense opposition from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other senior officials, stressing that Russia would view further NATO eastward expansion as a potential military threat. He said that NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, was “an emotional and neuralgic” issue but also a strategic policy issue. 

Not only does Russia perceive encirclement and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene—a decision Russia does not want to have to face.

Six years later, the US-supported Maidan uprising provided the final trigger for the civil war that Russian experts had predicted. 

Burns quoted Lavrov as saying that, while countries were free to make their own decisions about their security and which political-military structures to join, they needed to keep in mind the impact on their neighbors, and that Russia and Ukraine were bound by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, in which both parties undertook to “refrain from participation in or support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of the other side.” 

Burns said a Ukrainian move toward the Western sphere would hurt defense industry cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, including a number of factories where Russian weapons were made, and would have a negative impact on the thousands of Ukrainians living and working in Russia and vice versa. Burns quoted the prediction of Aleksandr Konovalov, director of the Institute for Strategic Assessment, that this would become “a boiling cauldron of anger and resentment among the local population.” 

Russian officials told Burns that NATO expansion would have repercussions throughout the region and into Central and Western Europe. It could even cause Russia to revisit its arms control agreements with the West. 

In a rare personal meeting Burns had with Putin just before leaving his post as ambassador in 2008, Putin warned him that “no Russian leader could stand idly by in the face of steps toward NATO membership for Ukraine. That would be a hostile act toward Russia. We would do all in our power to prevent it.” 

Good counsel that went unheeded

Despite all these warnings, the Bush administration plowed ahead at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest. Given objections from several key European countries, NATO set no date for membership, but it issued a provocative statement, saying, “We agreed today that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO.” 

Burns was not happy. “In many ways, Bucharest left us with the worst of both worlds—indulging the Ukrainians and Georgians in hopes of NATO membership on which we were unlikely to deliver, while reinforcing Putin’s sense that we were determined to pursue a course he saw as an existential threat,” he wrote.

While Ukraine still has hopes to formally enter NATO, Ukraine’s former defense minister Oleksii Reznikov says that Ukraine has already become a de facto member of the NATO alliance that receives NATO weapons, NATO training and all-round military and intelligence cooperation. The intelligence sharing is directed by the CIA chief himself, who has been shuttling back and forth to meet with his counterpart in Ukraine. 

A much better use of Burns’s expertise would be to shuttle back and forth to Moscow to help negotiate an end to this brutal and unwinnable war. Would that make him a Putin apologist, or a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize? What do you think?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the Head Of the CIA a Useful Idiot, or a Peacemaker? appeared first on Fair Observer.

In Slovakia, the Russia-leaning Robert Fico has bounced back in the most recent elections to form a coalition government. In contrast to the previous Slovak government, which was a generous supporter of Kyiv, Fico has pledged not to send a single bullet to Ukraine.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in a last-minute bill to avert a US government shutdown, assistance to Ukraine was pointedly axed. The Biden administration insists that it will follow through on its promises of military assistance. But critics of this aid see the stopgap funding bill as a sign that Congress will no longer authorize blank-check assistance to Kyiv.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Russia has managed to thwart any major Ukrainian military breakthrough in the south of the country. Although Ukraine has made some incremental progress in regaining territory, especially in the Zaporizhzhia region, Russian fortifications have so far prevented a dramatic surge to the sea that would split occupation forces down the middle. Winter is not far off, and with it comes a pause in any offensives involving hardware like tanks, along with an intensification of Russian efforts, via aerial bombing, to take out Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

It might seem odd at this moment to discuss Russia’s declining geopolitical power. But in the larger context, regardless of political vicissitudes and something approximating stalemate on the ground in Ukraine, Russia is losing influence and position. Even if it ultimately prevails in Ukraine — in the sense of holding on to the territory it currently occupies — it will have done so at the expense of its global power.

To use a chess analogy, Russia is attempting to protect a few pawns while putting its queen at risk.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, voters in the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh passed a referendum calling for independence. Given that Nagorno-Karabakh was completely surrounded by Azerbaijan, the newly proclaimed Republic of Artsakh enjoyed a de facto but fragile existence. The break-up of the Soviet Union and subsequent wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan did little to boost Artsakh’s legitimacy. Although it received considerable support from Armenia, Artsakh obtained diplomatic recognition from only three states, none of them UN members: South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.

These three entities resulted from Russia’s other frozen conflicts — in Georgia and Moldova — and they survive largely because of Kremlin support. So, too, has Russia sided with the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh and its primary backer, Armenia. Russian peacekeeping in the region focused until recently on maintaining the status quo of a largely Armenian island in the sea of Azerbaijan.

What might look like a religious standoff — with Muslim Azerbaijan and Turkey on one side, Christian Armenia and Russia on the other — is more about the geopolitical ambitions of the principal parties to the conflict. From the Kremlin’s point of view, frozen conflicts keep its neighbors preoccupied, unlikely to merit too much attention from the European Union and dependent on Russian peacekeeping services.

But this frozen conflict is no more.

In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a successful effort to push back Armenian forces in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s use of Turkish drones proved highly effective in the 44-day conflict. Russia brokered a ceasefire with unfavorable terms for Armenia, but the deal at least preserved some measure of autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh.

Then, last month, in a lightning attack that lasted only 24 hours, Azerbaijan took complete control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The president of the Republic of Artsakh decreed that all state institutions will cease to exist at the beginning of next year. Over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the enclave rather than come under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan.

New Armenian Ethnic Cleansing Is Bad for the World

Two Russian peacekeepers were killed accidentally in the most recent fighting. Otherwise, Russia was noticeably absent from the conflict, which marked a significant departure from previous outbreaks of violence in the region. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan went so far as to complain about Russia’s failure to come to the defense of Nagorno-Karabakh. Disillusioned about Russia’s non-actions, Armenia withdrew from the Russian-led CSTO military alliance and invited US soldiers to participate in joint drills in the country.

But even before the latest turn of events, Armenia had been distancing itself from Russia. “We are not Russia’s ally in the war with Ukraine,” Pashinyan declared this summer. The Armenian leader could see the writing on the wall in terms of Russia’s waning commitment to its allies in the region. The Kremlin, meanwhile, saw less value in assisting a wavering ally.

This downward spiral of waning Russian interest and wavering Russian allies is visible elsewhere in the former Soviet space. Back in January 2022, before it invaded Ukraine proper, Russia helped the Kazakh government suppress an outbreak of protests over the cost of living. A mere six months later, Kazakhstan was also distancing itself from the Kremlin as it began to reach out to the West and welcome Russians fleeing forced conscription. And when clashes erupted last year between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, two close allies of the Kremlin, Russia didn’t step in to mediate the conflict.

All is not lost for Russia in its relations with its neighbors. Its ties with Georgia have improved, and the bond between Putin and Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko remains tight, with the latter even proposing three-way cooperation with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

However, prior to last year’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia had much greater influence in its “near abroad,” from the Caucasus to Central Asia. Putin thought that he could “kill the chicken to scare the monkey” by invading Ukraine and putting the fear of intervention into all the other neighboring countries. Instead, with the exception of Belarus and maybe Georgia, the former Soviet republics can easily see that not only has Russia failed to kill the chicken but it has sustained some significant scratches in return.

Worse, from the Kremlin perspective, Russia might have lost even more influence further from home.

The far abroad

To continue its fight in Ukraine, Russia doesn’t have a lot of places to turn for the military hardware it needs. It has received some drones and surface-to-surface missiles from Iran. China provides gear like hundreds of thousands of bullet-proof vests and helmets, which are non-lethal but obviously useful on the battlefield. The Kremlin has approached countries like Myanmar and India to buy back military exports that it now needs for its occupation army. It is even cannibalizing military hardware from the Wagner Group now that the private security service is being absorbed into the official military.

The need for basic supplies like artillery rounds has forced Russia to bring its tin can to Pyongyang’s door. Ordinarily, it’s North Korea that relies on Russian military supplies. The reversal of this relationship speaks volumes about Russia’s vulnerability. It also suggests that Russia just doesn’t have a lot of other places to go for what it needs.

Under Putin, Russia made a bid in the 2000s to become a great power that could, like China, compete against and also cooperate with the West. As part of that “great power” strategy, Putin strengthened relations with China to become part of the Belt and Road Initiative, expand regional military cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and build up institutions in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) pact. He sought to divide NATO against itself by forging working relationships with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He solidified ties with key Middle East allies like Syria and Egypt. Numerous countries in Africa have relied on Russia for military assistance and, through the services of the Wagner Group, security personnel as well. In Latin America, Putin relied on allies in Cuba and Nicaragua while in Asia, North Korea and Myanmar could be counted on in a pinch.

What remains of this robust geopolitical position? The most authoritarian of Russia’s supporters have certainly closed ranks with the Kremlin, as Kim Jong Un’s eagerness to supply weaponry suggests. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega has doubled down on his support of Russia and its war in Ukraine. Myanmar has solicited help from the Kremlin for its next elections (!). Bashar al-Assad has parroted Russian talking points about the fight against “Nazis” in Ukraine.

But the consolidation of this authoritarian axis comes as Russian influence has declined among more powerful countries. Saudi Arabia pointedly didn’t invite Russia to a meeting organized with Ukraine on finding solutions to the conflict. India’s Narendra Modi openly rebuked Putin about the war, and Russian-Indian relations have eroded over the last year. African leaders have been similarly angry over rising food and energy prices as a result of Russian actions in Ukraine, not to mention the patronizing scolding that Putin delivered to a visiting delegation led by South Africa in June. The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the break-up of the Wagner Group is also jeopardizing the more informal ties that Russia has forged with several African countries.

Obviously, too, Russia has lost whatever fringe influence it once had in Europe through its alliances with far-right political parties in Italy, Austria, and other countries. Today Russia is toxic, even for Putin’s former allies. In Italy, for instance, far-right leader Georgia Meloni has turned her back on Putin to move closer to Ukraine, NATO and the United States. Elections in Austria next year might bring the far-right Freedom Party to power again. Although it remains quietly connected to the Kremlin, the party might very well pull a Meloni and jettison its ties to Putin once in power. Putin and Russia more generally are held in almost universal suspicion throughout Europe.

Economic sanctions have blunted Russia’s participation in the global economy. The invasion of Ukraine nipped in the bud Putin’s modest efforts to reduce Russia’s carbon footprint and play some kind of role in climate negotiations. Russia withdrew from the International Criminal Court in 2016 after the ICC criticized the annexation of Crimea, and Putin himself must now be careful when he travels abroad because of the outstanding ICC warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes.

Instead of being more like China, a powerful global actor despite some conflicts with the United States and Europe, Russia is increasingly like North Korea: an isolated, inward-looking nuclear power with little influence beyond its borders.

Will the ripples spread inward?

The big question is whether Putin’s obsession with Ukraine will put at risk not just his country’s global power but the very territorial integrity of Russia itself. Ukraine has launched attacks on Russian cities and military installations. But they don’t pose much of a long-term risk, for Ukraine doesn’t covet any territory in Russia proper.

More destabilizing would be a campaign by a restive province to seek greater autonomy or even independence. The apparent popularity of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in the southern realms around Rostov suggests that the greatest threat to Putin’s position comes not from within the Kremlin but from the provinces.

The most obvious threat comes from Chechnya. Current leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a close Putin loyalist who has sent thousands of his countrymen to fight in Ukraine. Despite this loyalty — or perhaps because of it — Chechnya operates like an autonomous state, with its own laws. In a recent video, Kadyrov praised his son for beating up a Russian prisoner accused of burning a Koran. Even a majority of Chechens, according to one poll, condemned the beating. The deal with Kadyrov keeps Chechnya within the Russian Federation but with such a degree of autonomy that It’s practically an independent state.

It’s a potentially volatile situation. Kadyrov could die (by natural causes or assassination). He could abruptly change his mind about his allegiance to Putin. It’s hard to gauge the popularity of independence in Chechnya, but even many of the soldiers fighting on Russia’s behalf in Ukraine are preparing for their next battle, a third war against the Kremlin. In the event of a political vacuum in the country, an exiled warlord could return, in an echo of Lenin’s arrival via sealed train car in St. Petersburg on the eve of the Russian revolution, and lead a third attempt at independence in 30-plus years.

Last September, protests broke out in another Muslim-majority area of Russia — Dagestan — where residents were furious at the disproportionate number of their children being recruited to fight in Ukraine. Like Chechnya, Dagestan has a history of separatist struggles. So do Ingushetia, Tatarstan, Mordovia, Kalmykia and Bashkiria. Putin attempted to quash these movements by replacing the federalism that Yeltsin instituted when Russia became independent from the Soviet Union with a centralized structure that has in turn created a great deal of resentment in the regions.

What precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union was not so much the failures of economic reform or the opening up of debate within the intelligentsia via glasnost. It was the surge of nationalism in all the Soviet republics, as one after another challenged the federal center. Even the Russian republic, led by Boris Yeltsin, ultimately broke from the Soviet federation.

It would be a supreme irony if Vladimir Putin, who declared the dissolution of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” were to preside over a similar unraveling of Russia — and all because he tried to recolonize Ukraine.

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Outside Ukraine, Russia Is Now Losing Its Grip appeared first on Fair Observer.

Why is Putin’s grip on power strong?

The basic answer is that Putin is strong because he is popular. Very popular.

Before Wagner’s march on Moscow, around 82% of Russians approved of Putin’s performance, according to polling by the Levada Center. Throughout his 23-year presidency, his numbers have generally remained well above 50%.

Putin is a charismatic figure. He strives to project a masculine, in-charge image. His successful military action in Crimea reinforced this perception. Russians have largely backed the president’s recent invasion of Ukraine, too.

Putin’s ability to appear confident and commanding reassured Russians after a decade of instability. The 1990s saw Russia’s Soviet empire collapse spectacularly, and its economy along with it. Older generations still harbor the resentment that the economic downturn caused. It dashed their hopes for a prosperous future. President Boris Yeltsin, infamous for his all-too-public drunken antics, was regarded more as a national embarrassment than as a hero of democracy. A series of apartment bombings in 1999, blamed on Chechen terrorists, made Russians feel unsafe in their own homes. Then, Putin took over and restored stability.

Putin’s actions generally improved living standards and reaffirmed Russian influence in the near abroad. At the same time, Putin was gradually weakening democratic institutions and basic freedoms under his leadership, but many Russians were willing to accept this trade-off in exchange for relative stability, prosperity and security.

In the minds of many Russians, the end of Putin would mean a return to the chaos of the 1990s, a shift that few are willing to accept.

Why has Putin survived threats?

While recent events have indeed cast doubt on Putin’s authority, the recent predictions of his downfall rely, in my opinion, more on subjective and wishful thinking rather than pragmatic analysis. Despite reversals in Ukraine and the open rebellion of Wagner, Putin’s hold on power remains intact.

Putin has shown the ability to recognize and neutralize threats to his regime as they appear. He has survived the political threat of anti-corruption activists, the economic threat of Western sanctions and the military threat of Wagner, coming out strong each time.

Navalny and other political challenges

During his more than two-decade rule, Putin effectively eliminated any democratic alternatives to his leadership. Opposition figures who posed external challenges to his rule have been silenced, imprisoned, or even assassinated.

Alexei Navalny was a charismatic anti-corruption activist and successful political campaigner. He spoke out against embezzlement, cronyism and corruption at the highest levels of government. Navalny garnered widespread support among the Russian population, displaying the ability to mobilize large crowds and weaponize social media effectively. He frightened Putin by taking 27% of the vote in Moscow’s mayoral election, where he ran against Putin’s ally. The result suggested that his movement was a real political challenge. Losing to Navalny in a future election became a credible possibility for Putin.

In response, Putin attacked him judicially. Navalny soon found himself facing a battery of legal challenges, repeated arrests and trials on trumped-up charges. In 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent in Berlin, an incident widely seen as an assassination attempt. He survived, but was arrested as soon as he returned to Russia. He remains in prison to this day.

Navalny’s story is not unique in the context of pro-democracy activists in Russia. Other figures like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Nemtsov faced similar treatment due to their outspoken criticism of Putin’s government. Khodorkovsky, once one of Russia’s wealthiest men, spent over a decade in prison. Boris Nemtsov, a prominent opposition leader, was assassinated in 2015 just steps away from the Kremlin.

In 2020, Putin amended the Russian constitution to allow himself to remain in power legally until 2036. While he is still technically only a democratically elected leader, his authority is absolute and his ability to overcome any legal obstacles to his authority is tried and true.

Sanctions

Since 2014, economic pressure has hurt Russia’s economy, but it hasn’t made the Kremlin change its stance on Ukraine or stop its aggression. Moscow began sanction-proofing its economy shortly after the Crimean annexation. It did this by reducing reliance on Western imports, saving foreign currency and boosting domestic production of goods. Putin knew that depending too much on imports and foreign capital made Russia vulnerable to external economic pressures. Although he couldn’t completely separate Russia from the West economically, he found alternative markets like China and India to make up for expected losses from sanctions.

So, Putin was prepared when the US and its allies launched a new round of sanctions following his 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While sanctions did hurt Russia’s economy, their impact is less severe due to years of preparation.

Historically, Western sanctions against smaller economies have often proven to hurt regular people more than they can produce a decided change in the target’s policies or leadership. The ultimate outcome in Moscow is likely similar. Instead of forcing leaders out, sanctions make the population more reliant on the government, leading to more authoritarianism. A little pain in the purse will not create a revolution; people don’t take to the streets until their very livelihoods are threatened. As long as there’s relative economic stability, Putin’s voter base is unlikely to turn against him.

Wagner

In June, as a convoy of mercenary tanks advanced towards the Kremlin, observers predicted that the ensuing rebellion and chaos would spell the end of Putin’s government. However, the march on Moscow ran out of steam in just 24 hours. Two months later, the leader of the perilous coup, Prigozhin, met a tragic end as his plane crashed within Russia.

Although the rebellion failed in its stated objective, it did manage to sow some seeds of doubt about Putin’s unchallenged rule. But it left Putin’s position essentially intact, and with more than enough power to uproot whatever seeds had been planted. Now, Progozhin’s plane has crashed and burned in a field, while Putin still retains his throne.

The Wagner leader’s downfall sends a clear message to other potential adversaries: Putin’s hold on power remains unassailable, and any direct challenges to his leadership will be met with consequences. Like any good mafia boss, Putin knows how to tie up loose ends, and he has made sure that everyone else knows it, too.

How will Putin respond to mounting pressure in the short and medium term?

The recent missteps on the Ukrainian battlefield and the failed rebellion have undoubtedly exposed chinks in Putin’s armor, potentially opening the door for dissent within Putin’s inner circle. This has led many observers to speculate that Putin’s reign may be nearing its end. However, predictions of his imminent ousting may be overly hasty. Recent events demonstrate that Putin will not relinquish power easily and that he can make challenges to his authority extremely costly.

Those who anticipated an increase in violence and repression following the rebellion were indeed correct. As Putin strives to maintain and expand his grip on power, we can expect more targeted violence within Russia. However, the law of diminishing returns is at play here. The Kremlin will need to use even greater violence as time goes on to maintain its power. This could become a reason for his eventual downfall, as excessive repression to keep him in power might eventually provoke a public revolt against his leadership.

In the coming years, Putin is likely to face mounting pressure, both internally from his inner circle and the public, as external measures and isolation drain more of Russia’s resources. However, it’s unlikely that this pressure will lead to an immediate leadership change in the Kremlin.

In response to future challenges to his authority, Putin will likely continue to escalate repressive and security measures to suppress dissent and perceived treason undermining his rule. This will further strain US–Russia relations, leading to more condemnation and a growing divide. While Putin remains at the helm in Russia, Moscow will likely distance itself from Washington and Brussels and build closer ties with their strategic adversaries.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Putin — Battered, Not Broken — Retains Power for Now appeared first on Fair Observer.

In recent months, among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s followers, there has been much talk of a “forever war” in Ukraine dragging on for years, if not decades. “For us,” Putin told a group of factory workers recently, “this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children.”

Visiting Kyiv last February, US President Joseph Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for, for as long as it takes. And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” A few weeks later, the European Council affirmed “its resolute condemnation of Russia’s actions and unwavering support for Ukraine and its people.” 

With all the major players already committed to fighting a forever war, how could peace possibly come about? With the UN compromised by Russia’s seat on the Security Council and the G7 powers united in condemning “Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine,” the most likely dealmaker when it comes to ending this forever war may prove to be President Xi Jinping of China.

China? Really?

In the West, Xi’s self-styled role as a peacemaker in Ukraine has been widely mocked. In February, on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion, China’s call for negotiations as the “only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis” sparked a barbed reply from US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who claimed the war “could end tomorrow if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine.”

When Xi visited Moscow in March, the statement Chinese officials released claiming that he hoped to “play a constructive role in promoting talks” prompted considerable Western criticism. “I don’t think China can serve as a fulcrum on which any Ukraine peace process could move,” insisted Ryan Hass, a former American diplomat assigned to China. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, pointed out that “China has taken sides” in the conflict by backing Russia and so could hardly become a peacemaker. Even when Xi made a personal call to Zelensky promising to dispatch an envoy to promote negotiations “with all parties,” critics dismissed that overture as so much damage control for China’s increasingly troubled trade relations with Europe.

The symbolism of peace conferences

Still, think about it for a moment. Who else could bring the key parties to the table and potentially make them honor their signatures on a peace treaty? Putin has, of course, already violated UN accords by invading a sovereign state and ruptured his economic entente with Europe by trashing past agreements with Washington to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. And yet the Russian president relies on China’s support, economically and otherwise, which makes Xi the only leader who might be able to bring him to the bargaining table and ensure that he honors any agreement he may sign. That sobering reality should raise serious questions about how any future Beijing-inspired peace conference might happen and what it would mean for the current world order.

For more than 200 years, peace conferences have not only resolved conflicts but regularly signaled the arrival at stage center of a new world power. In 1815, amid the whirling waltzes in Vienna’s palaces that accompanied negotiations ending the Napoleonic wars, Britain emerged into its century-long reign as the globe’s greatest power. Similarly, the 1885 Berlin Conference that carved up the continent of Africa for colonial rule heralded Germany’s rise as Britain’s most serious rival. The somber deliberations in Versailles’s grand Hall of Mirrors that officially ended World War I in 1919 marked America’s debut on the world stage. Similarly, the 1945 peace conference at San Francisco that established the UN (just as World War II was about to end) affirmed the ascent of US global hegemony.

Imagine the impact if, sooner or later, envoys from Kyiv and Moscow convene in Beijing beneath the gaze of President Xi and find the elusive meeting point between Russia’s aspirations and Ukraine’s survival. One thing would be guaranteed: after years of disruptions in the global energy, fertilizer and grain markets, marked by punishing inflation and spreading hunger, all eyes from five continents would indeed turn toward Beijing.

After all, with the war disrupting grain and fertilizer shipments via the Black Sea, world hunger doubled to an estimated 345 million people in 2023, while basic food insecurity now afflicts 828 million inhabitants of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Should such negotiations ever prove fruitful, a televised signing ceremony hosted by President Xi and watched by countless millions globally would crown China’s rapid 20-year ascent to world power.

The world’s newest great power

Forget Ukraine for a moment and concentrate on China’s economic rise under communist rule, which has been little short of extraordinary. At the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China was an economic lightweight. Its massive population, 20% of the world’s total, was producing just 4% of global economic output. So weak was China that its leader Mao Zedong had to wait two weeks amid a Moscow winter for an audience with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin just to plead for the industrial technology that would help rebuild an economy devastated by 12 years of war and revolution. In the decade following its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, however, China quickly became the workshop of the world, accumulating an unprecedented $4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

Instead of simply swimming in a hoard of cash like Scrooge McDuck in his Money Bin, in 2013 President Xi announced a trillion-dollar development scheme called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It aimed to build a massive infrastructure across the Eurasian landmass and Africa, thereby improving the lives of humanity’s forgotten millions, while making Beijing the focal point of Eurasia’s economic development. Today, China is not only an industrial powerhouse that produces 18% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 12% for the US, but also the world’s chief creditor. It provides capital for infrastructure and industrial projects to 148 nations while offering some hope to the quarter of humanity still subsisting on less than four dollars a day.

Testifying to that economic prowess, for the past six months world leaders have ignored Washington’s pleas to form a united front against China. Instead, remarkable numbers of them, including Germany’s Olaf Scholz, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Brazil’s Lula da Silva, have been turning up in Beijing to pay court to President Xi. In April, even French President and US ally Emmanuel Macron visited the Chinese capital, where he proclaimed a “global strategic partnership with China” and urged other countries to become less reliant on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar.”

Then, in a diplomatic coup that stunned Washington, China took a key step toward healing the dangerous sectarian rivalry between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia by hosting a meeting of their foreign ministers in Beijing. As the Saudis’ chief oil customer and Iran’s largest creditor, Beijing had the commercial clout to bring them to the bargaining table. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi then hailed the restored diplomatic relations as part of his country’s “constructive role in facilitating the proper settlement of hot-spot issues around the world.”

Geopolitics as a source of change

Underlying the sudden display of Chinese diplomatic clout is a recent shift in that essential realm called “geopolitics” that’s driving a fundamental realignment in global power.

Around 1900, at the high tide of the British Empire, the English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder started the modern study of geopolitics by publishing a highly influential article arguing that the construction of the 5,000-mile-long Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok was the beginning of a merger of Europe and Asia. That unified land mass, he said, would soon become the epicenter of global power.

In 1997, in his book The Grand Chessboard, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski updated MacKinder, arguing that “geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy.” In words particularly apt for our present world, he added: “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”

Imagine geopolitics as the deep substrate shaping far more superficial political events, even if it’s only noticeable in certain moments, much the way the incessant grinding of the planet’s tectonic plates only becomes visible when volcanic eruptions break through the earth’s surface. For centuries, if not millennia, Europe was separated from Asia by endless deserts and sprawling grasslands. The empty center of that vast land mass was crossed only by an occasional string of camels traveling the ancient Silk Road.

Now, thanks to its trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure—rails, roads, pipelines, and ports—China is fundamentally changing that geopolitical substrate through a more-than-metaphorical merger of continents. If President Xi’s grand design succeeds, Beijing will forge a unified market stretching 6,000 miles from the North Sea to the South China Sea, eventually encompassing 70% of all humanity and effectively fusing Europe and Asia into a single economic continent: Eurasia.

Despite the Biden administration’s fervid attempts to create an anti-Chinese coalition, recent diplomatic eruptions are shaping a new world order that isn’t at all what Washington had in mind. With the economic creation of a true Eurasian sphere seemingly underway, we may be seeing the first signs of the changing face of international politics. The question is: Could a Chinese-engineered peace in Ukraine be next in line?

Pressures on China for peace

Such growing geopolitical power is giving China both the motivation and potentially even the means to negotiate an end to the fighting in Ukraine. First, the means: as Russia’s chief customer for its commodity exports, and Ukraine’s largest trading partner before the war, China can use commercial pressure to bring both parties to the bargaining table, much as it did for Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Next, the motivation: while Moscow and Kyiv might each exude confidence in ultimate victory in their forever war, Beijing has reason to grow impatient with the economic disruptions radiating out across the Black Sea to roil a delicately balanced global economy. According to the World Bank, almost half of humanity (47%) is now surviving on seven dollars a day, and most of them live in Africa, Asia and Latin America where China has made massive, long-term developmental loans to 148 countries under its Belt and Road Initiative.

With 70% of its lands and their rich black soils devoted to agriculture, Ukraine has for decades produced bumper crops of wheat, barley, soybeans and sunflower oil that made it “the breadbasket of the world,” providing the globe’s hungry millions with reliable shipments of affordable commodities. Right after the Russian invasion, however, world prices for grains and vegetable oils shot up by 60%. Despite stabilization efforts, including the UN’s Black Sea Grain Initiative to allow exports through the war zone, prices for such essentials remain all too high. They threaten to go higher still with further disruption of global supply chains or more war damage like the recent rupture of a crucial Ukrainian irrigation dam that’s turning more than a million acres of prime farmland into “desert.”

As costs for imports of fertilizer, grain and other foodstuffs have soared since the Russian invasion, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that “a climbing number of low-income BRI countries have struggled to repay loans associated with the initiative, spurring a wave of debt crises.” In the Horn of Africa, for example, the sixth year of a crippling drought has pushed an estimated 23 million people into a “hunger crisis,” forcing the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya to balance costly food imports with the repayment of Chinese loans for the creation of critical infrastructure like factories, railroads and renewable energy. With such loans surpassing 20% of GDP in nations like Ghana, Malaysia, Pakistan and Zambia, while China itself holds outstanding credits equivalent to 25% of its GDP, China is far more invested in global economic peace and stability than any other major power.

Beyond western fantasies of victory

At present, Beijing might seem alone among major nations in its concern about the strain the Ukraine war is placing on a world economy poised between starvation and survival. But within the coming six months, Western opinion will likely start to shift as its inflated expectations for Ukrainian victory in its long-awaited “spring counteroffensive” meet the reality of Russia’s return to trench warfare.

After the stunning success of Ukraine’s offensives late last year near Kharkiv and Kherson, the West dropped its reticence about provoking Putin and began shipping billions of dollars of sophisticated equipment—first HIMARS and Hawk missiles, then Leopard and Abrams battle tanks and, by the end of this year, advanced F-16 jet fighters. By the war’s first anniversary last February, the West had already provided Kyiv with $115 billion in aid, and expectations of success rose with each new arms shipment. Adding to that anticipation, Moscow’s own “winter offensive” with its desperate suicide attacks on the city of Bakhmut suggested, as Foreign Affairs put it, that “the Russian military demonstrated … it was no longer capable of large-scale combat operations.”

But defense is another matter. While Moscow was wasting some 20,000 lives in suicide assaults on Bakhmut, its specialized tractors were cutting a formidable network of trenches and tank traps along a 600-mile front designed to stall any Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s troops will probably achieve some breakthroughs when that offensive finally begins, but are unlikely to push Russia back from all its post-invasion gains. Remember that Russia’s army of 1.3 million is three times larger than Ukraine’s, which has also suffered many casualties. In March, the commander of Ukraine’s 46th Air Assault brigade told the Washington Post that a year of combat had left 100 dead and 400 wounded in his 500-man unit and that they were being replaced by raw recruits, some of whom fled at the very sound of rifle fire. To counter the few dozen “symbolic” Leopard tanks the West is sending, Russia has thousands of older-model tanks in reserve. Despite US and European sanctions, Russia’s economy has actually continued to grow, while Ukraine’s, which was only about a tenth the size of Russia’s, has shrunk by 30%. Facts like these mean just one thing is likely: stalemate.

Beijing as peacemaker

By next December, if Ukraine’s counteroffensive has indeed stalled, its people face another cold, dark winter of drone attacks, while Russia’s rising casualties and lack of results might by then begin to challenge Putin’s hold on power. In other words, both combatants might feel far more compelled to sit down in Beijing for peace talks. With the threat of future disruptions damaging its delicate global position, Beijing will likely deploy its full economic power to press the parties for a settlement. By trading territory, while agreeing with China on reconstruction aid, and some further strictures on Ukraine’s future NATO membership, both sides might feel they had won enough concessions to sign an agreement.

Not only would China then gain enormous prestige for brokering such a peace deal, but it might win a preferential position in the reconstruction bonanza that would follow by offering aid to rebuild both a ravaged Ukraine and a damaged Russia. In a recent report, the World Bank estimates that it could take $411 billion and over a decade to rebuild a devastated Ukraine through infrastructure contracts of the very kind Chinese construction companies are so ready to undertake. To sweeten such deals, Ukraine could also allow China to build massive factories to supply Europe’s soaring demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Apart from the profits involved, such Chinese-Ukrainian joint ventures would ramp up production at a time when that country is likely to gain duty-free access to the European market.

In the post-war moment, with the possibility that Ukraine will be an increasingly strong economic ally at the edge of Europe, Russia still a reliable supplier of cut-rate commodities and the European market ever more open to its state corporations, China is likely to emerge from that disastrous conflict—to use Brzezinski’s well-chosen words—with its “preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent” consolidated and its “basis for global primacy” significantly strengthened.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Peace for Ukraine…Courtesy of China? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Although it is not yet certain, it is beginning to appear that Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring offensive has become bogged down. If the coming weeks bear out the same results, the war may become a stalemate. Why would Russia keep fighting a war that seems ready to drag on forever, with neither side able to vanquish the other? For this, we must take a look at Russia’s wider strategic outlook.

What motivates Russia?

To discern what long-term objectives Russian President Vladimir Putin might have in Ukraine, we need to begin in 2014. Then, a series of clashes between protestors and government forces resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The events became known as the Maidan Revolution. If we can understand why Russia considered Maidan a threat, we can understand Russia’s fundamental objectives in its subsequent relations with Ukraine.

From the Russian point of view, the first problem with Maidan was that the movement threatened to result in an eventual accession to NATO. While the primary goal of the protestors was the integration of Ukraine into the EU, not NATO, Russia saw this as a slippery slope. Moscow—whether during the Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Federation—has always considered threats from the territory of modern Ukraine, and particularly from the part of it east of the Dnieper River, to be absolutely unacceptable. It will strive to remove hostile forces from the area at almost any cost. The thought of NATO forces east of the Dnieper, especially in Crimea, is absolutely unthinkable in Moscow. Moscow thus perceives NATO enlargement as a threat of the most existential kind.

Secondly, Russia has a positive interest in Crimea, since the Russian coast of the Black Sea has no good sites for year-round naval ports. The Russian Black Sea fleet must thus rely on the Crimean port of Sevastopol to stage its operations. Retaining the use of Crimea for the navy is a condition for the maintenance of Russia’s status as a Black Sea power. Strategically, Crimea is the only part of Ukraine’s territory that holds positive value for Moscow (as opposed to negative value, i.e. the deterrence of possible threats). However, Russia’s experience after the annexation of Crimea in 2014—particularly Ukraine’s economic siege of the peninsula and cutting of its water supply—has suggested that control of the territory immediately opposite Crimea on the Ukrainian mainland is key to the support of Crimea itself.

Finally, Russia has sought to avoid the loss of face that would result if the pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were comprehensively defeated. This is not only a matter of vanity for Russia, but an important strategic objective to maintain its influence in the post-Soviet space. Russia exercises influence by playing the role of protector of ethnic Russians and other pro-Russian ethnic groups, such as the Ossetes and Abkhaz in Georgia. To be seen as weak and ineffective in this role would be a serious hindrance to Russia’s continued influence in its neighborhood.

Russia still has much to gain from fighting on

In spite of its heavy physical and reputational losses in the Ukraine War, these three goals provide Russia ample reason to cling tenaciously to its current position. Holding on to the land bridge between Crimea and the Donbas addresses Crimea’s post-2014 strategic vulnerabilities, and the expansion of Russian territory to a significantly increased portion of Donetsk and virtually all of Luhansk demonstrates effective support of the rebels. As long as things do not change, two of Russia’s main assets in the region—the port of Sevastopol and its reputation as protector—remain substantially intact.

If battle lines do remain mostly fixed, the main downside for Russia will be the significant areas east of the Dnieper that remain in Ukrainian hands. As international relations scholar John Mearsheimer has noted, Russia’s second-best alternative to controlling strategic territory is to “wreck Ukraine as a functioning state”, and this Russia has been doing very effectively.

Compared to Russia, Ukraine is older, poorer, more demographically unstable—with lower birthrates and negative net migration, and vastly smaller. The war has greatly aggravated these problems, as young men die in battle and young women and children become refugees. What’s more, Ukraine’s infrastructure has been systematically destroyed. A country with a demographic crisis like that of Ukraine needs to develop its economy quickly and maximize its resources to deal with an aging and shrinking population. This war has instead severely damaged Ukraine’s economy, and every month that passes is a crucial month in which Ukraine fails to get on the road to recovery, while the likelihood of refugees returning falls.

Simply by holding the current lines, Russia is making good on its protection of its friends, securing the long-term viability of its outpost in Crimea, and bleeding Ukraine further, making it increasingly likely that Ukraine will become a dysfunctional, impoverished state over the long term, without the capacity to be an effective base for NATO assets. Meanwhile, sanctions have not had nearly the impact on Russia’s economy that was hoped, and Russia’s large population, bolstered by millions of refugees from Ukraine, means that any demographic effects of the war on Russia are likely to be minuscule.

Putin is well aware that Russia can bear the losses of the war longer than Ukraine can. Even a costly victory is still a victory if Russia can keep its foothold. Eventually, the West may find its resolve wavering before Russia’s. On the present trajectory, Russia may end up holding onto its gains in spite of everything.

If the current offensive fails, and it begins to appear that a long-term stalemate is developing, Western countries will have to rethink their willingness to underwrite a war whose continuation is destroying the viability of Ukraine, while only helping Russia to cement the achievement of its strategic goals.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russia’s Plan Might Be Better than We’ve Been Hoping appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Trade Tale

Russia has emerged as India’s fifth-largest trading partner. Last year, bilateral trade crossed the $30 billion per year trade target, set in 2016—a feat meant to be achieved only in 2025. A new target of $50 billion per year is now on the radar. The two countries engaged in several important meetings in March 2023, turning it into a milestone month for Indo-Russian ties.

While Moscow has been aiming at replacing the EU as its top export and import partner for some time, it has recently been highlighting a growing need to attract foreign investment as well to keep the Russian economy afloat. Moscow is currently looking to New Dehli as a priority trade partner to avoid overdependence on its “no limits friendship” with China.

Imagine What Russia Might Look Like in 2040

The virtual meeting between the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar and the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Manturov in early March saw the two sides agree to address the persisting trade deficit and market access issues, boosting bilateral trade and economic relations. In a speech given in Chennai, the Russian Consul General for South India, Oleg N Avdeev, underlined that a shortage of information about Russia continues to affect mutual business opportunities for the two sides, stressing that these shortages are technical and can be addressed by increasing engagement between communities on both sides.

Moscow’s Strategy and Hi-Tech Collaboration 

Besides strengthening trade in several areas, Moscow is now focusing on partnering with New Delhi in the hi-tech domain. As markets for Russian tech offerings and possibilities for tech imports from the West shrink, the Indian market might be considered an offset against an overwhelming influx of Chinese technologies in Russia. 

At the Indo-Russian Business Forum, Russian companies showcase their offerings in areas like biometric facial recognition, augmented and virtual reality, educational technology solutions for corporate universities, biocomponents, high-performance data collection and storage systems, and cloud solutions.

India’s tech industry is estimated to grow at an impressive rate of 8.4% in 2023. As many multinational firms shift their bases from China, India is expected to become a technology and innovation hub. Allowing Moscow to benefit from their ties with India to compensate for the effects of the war on the Russian tech sector.

The “Shift East” policy

With the East-West global geopolitical balance transforming and the divide with the West deepening, Moscow has seemingly adopted a “Shift East” policy for enhanced engagement with Asian partners.

Twin Peace Missions Have Limited Success In Ukraine and China

Moscow understands now that increasing people-to-people links with emerging trade partners will be significant. To bridge the gap, Russia is simplifying its visa regime and working toward the possibility of visa-free travel between partner countries. In January 2023, Russia launched the Golden Visa program, a residency program for foreign investors. Another example is the revised India-Russia bilateral air services agreement, which increased weekly flights between the two countries.

Russia’s “Shift East” also seeks to benefit from existing regional and multilateral partnerships such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union. For India, access to markets in Iran and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region opens up many new opportunities. In New Delhi’s calculations, an increasingly emergent Chinese monopoly in these markets can only be countered through a cooperative approach until domestic competitive capabilities are in place. For Moscow, India’s presence provides hedging options.

Trends in Defense and Energy Partnerships

In a rare disclosure, the Indian defense establishment recently remarked that Russia could not fulfill its commitments for vital defense supplies to India due to the ongoing war. India is aiming to develop stronger domestic industrial and technological capabilities after learning the significance of independence from the Russia-Ukraine war.

FO° Talks: Semiconductors and Indian National Security

For Russia, this points to a downturn in its defense partnership with India, emerging from its inability to fulfill commitments, as well as the growing partnerships between India and the West, like with the Quad partners, France and Israel.  With the energy trade becoming more transactional and having a greater potential for disruption, Moscow will want to cover the deficit emerging from the defense trade with India. As the oil trade plateaus and potentially starts slowing down, trade in other sectors will be needed to help the Indo-Russian partnership grow.

To this aim, cultural connection and hi-tech cooperation are crucial aspects for boosting ties, while Russia’s deft but swift multilateral maneuvering will also be geared towards bringing New Delhi closer.

[Tasheanna Williams edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Beyond Defense and Energy: The Future of India-Russia Partnership appeared first on Fair Observer.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to line up a number of African leaders to travel to Russia and Ukraine in an effort to persuade the two countries to stop fighting. He was joined on the trip by the leaders of Senegal, Comoros and Zambia. Three presidents pulled out, one (Uganda) because of a case of Covid, a second (Republic of Congo) because of security concerns and a third (Egypt) for no specific reason.

The timing was not great. Because it recently launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, Kyiv was not in the mood for compromise. Nor has Russia been exactly diplomacy-positive either, not only refusing to give up the territory it illegally annexed but continuing to try to expand its holdings. The Kremlin has also been busy bombarding Ukrainian targets. Missile attacks on Kyiv continued even as the African delegation visited the capital city, forcing the members to take cover in a bomb shelter.

And then there’s the fiasco at the Warsaw airport.

A second airplane with Ramaphosa’s security team and a number of South African journalists never made it to Ukraine. Stuck at their transit stop in Poland, the airplane sat on the tarmac for hours and hours as the Polish authorities refused to allow the passengers to disembark. A journalist on the trip reported:

Aboard the stuffy SAA A340-300 plane conditions are starting to resemble a refugee camp. Passengers have not left the plane since around 23:00 on Wednesday, and although water and take away food were delivered, supplies have now been depleted. Unwashed security personnel, SAA staff and journalists have been forced to shape a grim existence on the plane, walking up and down the aisles and using different toilets for distraction.

The head of Ramaphosa’s security detail accused the Poles of “shocking and racist” conduct. Then came news of 12 rather large containers of weapons on board the airplane that did not have the proper permits. The weapons were reportedly for the use of the security detail. But according to “highly placed South African government insiders,” the boxes also contained “long-range sniper rifles and weapons normally used in serious conflict.”

Wait, what? A peace delegation bearing gifts of war?

Okay, it was a large security detail of 100 people, and maybe they thought they’d be plunged into the thick of war. Or perhaps the weapons were somehow connected to South African arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz, who was instrumental in organizing the initiative. Although the South African government has been quite close with the Kremlin—ditto Ichikowitz—it has not likely supplied Russia with any arms after its invasion of Ukraine. But arms dealers can make as much from a negotiated peace—supplying both sides of the ceasefire line—as they can from a continued war. Maybe those boxes were simply a sneak peek.

A Canadian Perspective on Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan

After more than 24 hours on the tarmac, the plane eventually returned to South Africa, with those 12 crates of weapons. It’s a shame the journalists on board never had a chance to accompany the Ramaphosa contingent, particularly when it arrived in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, Ramaphosa was able to deliver his opening remarks. But before the other African leaders could speak, a clearly unhappy Putin interrupted to lecture the group with his usual talking points. Then the live feed cut off, and there are no independent accounts of what happened next.

There’s the fog of war. But there’s also the equally dense fog of diplomacy.

Meanwhile, in Beijing

As the African delegation was wrapping up its meetings in Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was conducting a series of sit-downs in China, including a 35-minute confab with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

On the face of it, the meeting was a success for both sides. China and the United States seemed to be putting behind them the incident that had recently divided them: the US shooting down of a Chinese weather balloon that may or may not have surveilled some semi-secret sites. Xi provided assurances, once again, that China would not send military assistance to Russia. Blinken provided assurances, once again, that the United States doesn’t support an independent Taiwan.

Most important of all, the two sides are again talking. The rest of us look on like little kids who are terrified when their parents go mum and only glare at each other across the dinner table. Yeah, we know that these powerful figures have their disagreements. But we also know how destabilizing and unpredictable a marital dispute can be.

Of course, China and the United States aren’t married. Far from it. Blinken couldn’t even get Beijing to agree to more communication between the two militaries. The warships and airplanes of the respective superpowers continue to jostle one another in areas around China. There is considerable economic competition. With nationalism on the rise on both sides, there is no love between Washington and Beijing.

But there is something remarkable about how the two countries have managed, so far, not to allow the war in Ukraine to turn into a truly global conflict. That has entailed restraint on both sides.

Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe

But will it lead to either a just peace in Ukraine or a meaningful US-China détente?

What did the Africans propose?

In its initial discussions around talking points, the delegation from Africa considered various quid pro quos to offer Russia and Ukraine. According to Reuters, which viewed the document, it included

a number of measures that could be proposed by the African leaders as part of the first stage of their engagement with the warring parties. Those measures could include a Russian troop pull-back, removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspension of the implementation of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant targeting Putin, and sanctions relief.

When Ramaphosa presented the plan in Russia, it contained 10 rather anodyne points. On the most contentious question of a Russian pullback, the list fudged the issue by noting simply that “the sovereignty of states must be respected.” Neither side found this language useful. Zelensky insisted on the precondition of a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s sovereign territory: not only the land seized in the 2022 invasion, but also the Donbas and Crimea that were occupied in 2014. Putin found the plan so off-putting that he pulled the plug on the live feed of his meeting with the African delegation, but only after he presented his side of the story: that Ukraine and the West had started the war and the invasion was defensive in nature.

Ramaphosa was undeterred, declaring that “this initiative has been historic in that it is the first time African leaders have embarked on a peace mission beyond the shores of the continent.” After decades—centuries, really—of Europeans beginning and ending wars in Africa, it is indeed refreshing for Africans to weigh in on a European affair. But it’s a shame that this first peace mission was such an obvious failure.

The World Presses to End the War in Ukraine: Can the US Agree?

For one thing, the trip was poorly planned, as the embarrassing standoff in Warsaw demonstrates. The Poles maintain that they held three consultative meetings with the South Africans where they explained exactly what paperwork was required. The crates of weapons were a surprise.

Second, South Africa is not exactly neutral. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), has long been aligned with Russia, a carryover from the days when the government in Moscow was at least putatively left-wing. South Africa has benefited from arms shipments, (modest) trade relations, and political support from Putin’s government. It enjoys a higher profile because of its membership, with Russia, in the BRICS formation (along with Brazil, India, and China). In February, South Africa joined Russia and China for naval exercises in the Indian Ocean, tellingly on the first anniversary of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ramaphosa boldly attempted to trade on his country’s ersatz neutrality to expand its global reputation and possibly, just possibly, secure concessions that could benefit the warring parties and, in the case of boosting food exports, African countries as well. But if anything, the trip undercut South Africa’s reputation—as well as Ramaphosa’s personal brand, which is already at a low ebb because of various scandals. The media commentary in South Africa has been biting from virtually all sides. “Shambolic peace mission did us no favours,” reads the headline of a Business Live editorial. Or this headline from Mia Swart in The Daily Maverick: “ANC’s kamikaze Russian diplomacy puts SA on the road to economic and reputational ruin.”

What is oft said about “best-laid plans” applies even more forcefully to poorly-laid plans.

Détente along two axes?

China may not be supplying weapons to its erstwhile ally Russia, but it too is not neutral. It’s doing well by the war, boosting its trade with Russia and importing energy at a discount. China’s exports to Russia have risen by an astonishing 75 percent so far this year, compared to the same period last year. Xi Jinping’s well-calculated engagement is a big reason why the Russian economy has not gone completely down the toilet as a result of international sanctions.

Pundits and policymakers seem to agree: China should use its leverage to end the war. The United States is comfortable with China as mediator. So is the EU. Even Ukraine welcomes future Chinese initiatives.

Why would the Chinese have any more success than the Africans?

For one, China is waiting for the right moment. One scenario is that the Ukrainians kick Russian troops out of most of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Putin: negotiate a face-saving deal or else. In a second scenario, the Ukrainians manage only to regain a small fraction of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Zelensky: negotiate a deal that establishes some ambiguous sovereignty over the Donbas, the Crimean Peninsula, and the land between them.

What Now is the Future of Ukraine: Korea or Yugoslavia?

Neither scenario, alas, would be particularly durable. Putin and the nationalist right that has embraced him will not easily give up on their dream of an expanding “Russian world.” And Ukraine will not settle for amputation, regardless of the words used to describe the unsavory operation.

What of east-west relations? China knows that Russia doesn’t really count for anything in geopolitics, aside from its brutal unpredictability. The Chinese have an alliance of convenience, and they’re not going to yoke themselves so closely to the Kremlin that they too fall off the mountain if and when the Russians lose their grip. The real question for China, as Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Klare has pointed out, is how it manages relations with both the United States and India, two frenemies of old.

Despite various left-wing (and far-right-wing) conspiracy theories, the United States does not want a forever war that bleeds Russia dry. The war is a costly distraction from Washington’s twin concerns: the economy at home and China abroad. If China helps negotiate an end to the conflict, that would help reduce tensions with Washington and win points in India as well, where the war is even less popular.

Now that the door is open again to Beijing, perhaps the United States and China can do a better job of coordinating their approach to the war in Ukraine. Because their alliances are clear, these conversations must be discreet (and who knows, maybe Blinken already got the ball rolling on his recent trip to China).

After all, there is nothing like a noisy marital dispute next door to help quarrelsome parents bond over their relatively more constructive partnership. Cooperating quietly on finding a way to end the war in Ukraine—with a just conclusion that Ukrainians, above all, accept—could ultimately reestablish a better working relationship between Beijing and Washington. The world could use a little détente right around now.

[Foreign Policy In Focus first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Twin Peace Missions Have Limited Success In Ukraine and China appeared first on Fair Observer.

The public quickly became fascinated with the tool’s ability to credibly imitate human expression. Almost as quickly the media began spreading the fear that this new form of intelligence might take over the world. The educational community went into panic. The fear of undetectable cheating by students who might use ChatGPT to write academic essays turned out to be traumatizing for institutions that had invested heavily in anti-plagiarism software. (Though I have personally experimented and documented one approach to solving this problem, and others are busily working on it, confusion continues to reign in the field of education as a whole. This shouldn’t surprise us, since educational traditions developed during the industrial age have encouraged a form of learning that is more appropriate to machines than to human minds.)

As for the general economy, it took just about six months for the media to discover the core issue: AI’s effect on employment. Last week, The Washington Post published an article titled “ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.” The authors, Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck, hint at the prospect of an apocalyptic outcome of a process that has only just begun. “Some economists,” they write, “predict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.”

The authors provide the initial evidence of the trend. “For some workers, this impact is already here. Those who write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools such as chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Plausible alternatives:

Artifacts similar to junk jewelry that successfully imitate forms of rationality cultivated by humans in former times, now abandoned by a human race that insists on delegating its reasoning capacity to machines capable of generating standardized, marketable simulacra of human insight.

Contextual note

Keen to demonstrate their personal sympathy for the plight of the those who have been displaced by AI, the article cites the view of experts who “say that even advanced AI doesn’t match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often churns out wrong, nonsensical or biased answers.” They appear to admit that in an ideal world, where the quest for quality would systematically prevail over the obsession with quantity, we humans would choose to trust in people rather than machines. Humans –  at least potentially – possess a specific quality no algorithm can conceivably have: a moral sense clearly related to their innate understanding of biological reality.

But, of course, we don’t live in that ideal world. In purely monetary terms, quality cannot compete with quantity. And since everything we now consider “good” will inevitably be evaluated in monetary terms, that competitive advantage for quantity over quality is unlikely to change.

In today’s world, goodness itself, when it is recognized, always has a price tag attached to it. Quality appears in only limited numbers. Its rarity makes it expensive. That means it will fail to meet the most widely shared objective in the commercial world: satisfying the demands of a mass market.

Concerning the job market – itself a mass market – the authors note that AI and robots can increasingly do things humans were traditionally paid to do, as they remind us that “chatbots that can hold fluid conversations, write songs and produce computer code.” Replacing humans who do those thing represents an obvious “economy, stupid!”

Historical note

The Post’s article reveals but doesn’t explicitly state the fact that we now find ourselves at a special moment in human history. As a society, we face an existential choice at a time when none of our institutions appears prepared for the challenge. The authors mention AI producing “plausible alternatives” to human production. But we are the ones who must begin envisioning plausible alternatives to a system that is undermining its own basic assumptions about the economy.

The authors’ use of the word “plausible” refers to the criteria put forward by the late mathematician Alan Turing whose “Turing test” determines whether a machine is capable of fooling us into thinking that it is human. My experience with ChatGPT tells me that only those who want to be fooled will be fooled. It’s true, however, that because most human beings are not very skilled at producing coherent prose, ChatGPT’s performance is superficially up to “some” human standards. But everything it produces is annoyingly predictable.

To its credit, ChatGPT makes far fewer performance errors than the average human. That is what effectively fools us. But its performance is – to coin an oxymoron –  deeply superficial. It has polish but no substance. Polish in a world seduced and regulated by hyperreality impresses. Some people today may even see AI’s lack of substance as normal for human behavior. If our criterion for judgment is the lowest common denominator, this makes sense.

There is however a difference. Humans, unlike AI, have the capacity to rise above what is considered normal. The reason we can be fooled is that our hyperreal culture has conditioned to be fooled. We are consumers of foolery. We expect insincerity in a world regulated by the need to sell not just products, but also ideas and even our own personalities. All these things – products, ideas and personalities – have identifiable monetary value, the measure by which we expect everything to be judged.

Humanity should have noticed by now what is truly exceptional in this moment of history. Many of the values that have guided us in the past have brought us to the brink of uncontrollable catastrophe. Technology is wonderful but, at some point, its wonders threaten our existing assets. A competitive economy is marvelous as a stimulator of innovation, but Schumpeter’s theory of  “creative destruction” may easily morph into irredeemably destructive destruction. The individualism of the consumer society is exhilarating, promising to satisfy an aver wider range of desires, but it ends up confining people within the isolated cells of their cultivated consumer habits.

For many, disaster is looming, and it has multiple names. It might be the destruction of our ecosystem, nuclear confrontation or the total collapse of an economy based on the utterly insubstantial notion of monetary value. Citing “liberal democracy” with the belief that it can be a source of stability no longer makes sense. Our institutions that leave essential decisions to “market forces” have proved themselves incapable of addressing the most obvious problems or choosing any “plausible alternative” to what we see as risky. This has undermined the majority’s confidence in a rational future. As a society, we increasingly sense that we may have painted ourselves into a corner.

This crisis of values is real. We have made what appears to be a reasoned commitment to a productivist economy that “creates wealth.” But the evidence is clear that this has undermined the environment on which we depend. But we have chosen to feel ourselves more dependent on productivism than on the physical environment that supports us. We seem incapable of imagining plausible alternatives while trusting AI to keep producing plausible alternatives to our rationality.

AI’s plausible alternative is clearly a chimera. Though totally superficial, it has successfully created the illusion of depth. In the meantime, an increasing number of people who were taught to measure their own value by the job they managed to secure, are condemned to watch helplessly as AI steps in to plausibly imitate what they were trained to do.

AI systematically produces plausible alternatives to human effort. It’s time for humans to use their biological brains to imagine the feasible alternatives that may avert catastrophe.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Lost your Job to AI? It’s “The Economy, Stupid!” appeared first on Fair Observer.

But it was not to be. Instead, the Global South leaders were forced to sit and listen as their hosts announced their latest plans to tighten sanctions against Russia and further escalate the war by sending US-built F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. 

The G7 summit stands in stark contrast to efforts of leaders from around the world who are trying to end the conflict. In the past, the leaders of Turkey, Israel and Italy have stepped up to try to mediate. Their efforts were bearing fruit back in April 2022, but were blocked by the West, particularly the US and UK, which did not want Ukraine to make an independent peace agreement with Russia. 

Now that the war has dragged on for over a year with no end in sight, other leaders have stepped forward to try to push both sides to the negotiating table. In an intriguing new development, Denmark, a NATO country, has stepped forward to offer to host peace talks. On May 22, just days after the G-7 meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen said that his country would be ready to host a peace summit in July if Russia and Ukraine agreed to talk. 

Many Peace Initiatives

“We need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organize such a meeting,” said Rasmussen, mentioning that this would require getting support from China, Brazil, India and other nations that have expressed interest in mediating peace talks. Having an EU and NATO member promoting negotiations may well reflect a shift in how Europeans view the path forward in Ukraine.

Also reflecting this shift is a report by Seymour Hersh, citing US intelligence sources, that the leaders of Poland, Czechia, Hungary and the three Baltic states, all NATO members, are talking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the need to end the war and start rebuilding Ukraine so that the five million refugees now living in their countries can start to return home. On May 23, right-wing Hungarian President Viktor Orban said, “Looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it’s obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield,” and that the only way to end the conflict was for Washington to negotiate with Russia. 

Meanwhile, China’s peace initiative has been progressing, despite US trepidation. Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Russia, has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other European leaders to move the dialogue forward. Given its position as both Russia’s and Ukraine’s top trading partner, China is in a good position to engage with both sides.

Another initiative has come from Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who is creating a “peace club” of countries from around the world to work together to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He appointed renowned diplomat Celso Amorim as his peace envoy. Amorim was Brazil’s foreign minister from 2003 to 2010, and was named the “world’s best foreign minister” in Foreign Affairs magazine. He also served as Brazil’s defense minister from 2011 to 2014, and is now President Lula’s chief foreign policy advisor. Amorim has already had meetings with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and was well received by both parties.

On May 16, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African leaders stepped into the fray, reflecting just how seriously this war is affecting the global economy through rising prices for energy and food. Ramaphosa announced a high-level mission by six African presidents, led by President Macky Sall of Senegal. He served, until recently, as Chairman of the African Union and, in that capacity, spoke out forcefully for peace in Ukraine at the UN General Assembly in September 2022. 

The other members of the mission are Presidents Nguesso of Congo, Al-Sisi of Egypt, Musevini of Uganda and Hichilema of Zambia. The African leaders are calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine, to be followed by serious negotiations to arrive at “a framework for lasting peace.” UN Secretary-General Guterres has been briefed on their plans and has “welcomed the initiative.”

Pope Francis and the Vatican are also seeking to mediate the conflict. “Let us not get used to conflict and violence. Let us not get used to war,” the Pope preached. The Vatican has already helped facilitate successful prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine has asked for the Pope’s help in reuniting families that have been separated by the conflict. A sign of the Pope’s commitment is his appointment of veteran negotiator Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as his peace envoy. Zuppi was instrumental in mediating talks that ended civil wars in Guatemala and Mozambique. 

Will any of these initiatives bear fruit? The possibility of getting Russia and Ukraine to talk depends on many factors, including their perceptions of potential gains from continued combat, their ability to maintain adequate supplies of weapons, and the growth of internal opposition. But it also depends on international pressure, and that is why these outside efforts are so critical and why US and NATO countries’ opposition to talks must somehow be reversed.

The US rejection or dismissal of peace initiatives illustrates the disconnect between two diametrically opposed approaches to resolving international disputes: diplomacy vs. war. It also illustrates the disconnect between rising public sentiment against the war and the determination of US policymakers to prolong it, including most Democrats and Republicans. 

Give Peace a Chance

A growing grassroots movement in the US is working to change that: 

• In May, foreign policy experts and grassroots activists put out paid advertisements in The New York Times and The Hill to urge the US government to be a force for peace. The Hill ad was endorsed by 100 organizations around the country, and community leaders organized in dozens of congressional districts to deliver the ad to their representatives. 
• Faith-based leaders, over 1,000 of whom signed a letter to President Biden in December calling for a Christmas Truce, are showing their support for the Vatican’s peace initiative.
• The US Conference of Mayors, an organization that represents about 1,400 cities throughout the country, unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the President and Congress to “maximize diplomatic efforts to end the war as soon as possible by working with Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire and negotiate with mutual concessions in conformity with the United Nations Charter, knowing that the risks of wider war grow the longer the war continues.”

• Key US environmental leaders have recognized how disastrous this war is for the environment, including the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear war or an explosion in a nuclear power plant, and have sent a letter to President Biden and Congress urging a negotiated settlement. ​​
• On June 10-11, US activists will join peacemakers from all over the world in Vienna, Austria, for an International Summit for Peace in Ukraine. 
• Some of the contenders running for president, on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, support a negotiated peace in Ukraine, including Robert F. Kennedy and Donald Trump. 

The initial decision of the United States and NATO member countries to try to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion had broad public support. However, blocking promising peace negotiations and deliberately choosing to prolong the war as a chance to “press” and “weaken” Russia changed the nature of the war and the US role in it, making Western leaders active parties to a war in which they will not even put their own forces on the line.

Must our leaders wait until a murderous war of attrition has killed an entire generation of Ukrainians, and left Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position than it was in April 2022, before they respond to the international call for a return to the negotiating table? 

Or must our leaders take us to the brink of World War III, with all our lives on the line in an all-out nuclear war, before they will permit a ceasefire and a negotiated peace? 

Rather than sleepwalking into World War III or silently watching this senseless loss of lives, we are building a global grassroots movement to support initiatives by leaders from around the world that will help to quickly end this war and usher in a stable and lasting peace. Join us.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The World Presses to End the War in Ukraine: Can the US Agree? appeared first on Fair Observer.

At least the Russian president and his state-run media make no secret of his regime’s alliance with Wagner. The American government, on the other hand, seldom acknowledges its own version of the privatization of war — the tens of thousands of private security contractors it’s used in its misguided war on terror, involving military and intelligence operations in a staggering 85 countries.

At least as far back as the Civil War through World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the first Gulf War, “contractors,” as we like to call them, have long been with us. Only recently, however, have they begun playing such a large role in our wars, with an estimated 10% to 20% of them directly involved in combat and intelligence operations.

Contractors have both committed horrific abuses and acted bravely under fire (because they have all too often been under fire). From torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, from employees of the private security firm Blackwater indiscriminately firing on unarmed Iraqi civilians to contractors defending a U.S. base under attack in Afghanistan, they have been an essential part of the war on terror. And yes, they both killed Afghans and helped some who had worked as support contractors escape from Taliban rule.

The involvement of private companies has allowed Washington to continue to conduct its operations around the globe, even if many Americans think that our war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere has ended. I tried looking for any kind of a survey of how many of us realize that it continues in Iraq and elsewhere, but all I could find was pollster Nate Silver’s analysis of “lessons learned” from that global conflict, as if it were part of our history. And unless respondents were caring for a combat-wounded veteran, they tended not to look unfavorably on sending our troops into battle in distant lands — so scratch that as a lesson learned from our forever wars. 

None of this surprises me. American troops are no longer getting killed in significant numbers, nor are as many crowding the waitlists at backlogged Veterans Affairs hospitals as would be the case if those troops had been the only ones doing the fighting.

At points during this century’s war on terror, in fact, the U.S. used more civilian contractors in its ongoing wars than uniformed military personnel. In fact, as of 2019, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, which I co-founded, there were 50% more contractors than troops in the U.S. Central Command region that includes Afghanistan, Iraq, and 18 other countries in the Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia. As recently as December 2022, the Pentagon had about 22,000 contractors deployed throughout that region, with nearly 8,000 concentrated in Iraq and Syria. To be sure, most of those workers were unarmed and providing food service, communications aid, and the like. Even more tellingly, roughly two thirds of them were citizens of other countries, particularly lower-income ones.

In 2020, retired Army Officer Danny Sjursen offered an interesting explanation for how the war on terror was then becoming ever more privatized: the Covid-19 pandemic had changed the Pentagon’s war-making strategy as the public began to question how much money and how many lives were being expended on war abroad rather than healthcare at home. As a result, Sjursen argued, the U.S. had begun deploying ever more contractors, remote drones, CIA paramilitaries, and (often abusive) local forces in that war on terror while U.S. troops were redeployed to Europe and the Pacific to contain a resurgent Russia and China. In other words, during the pandemic, Washington placed ever more dirty work in corporate and foreign hands.

(Not) Counting Contractors

It’s been a challenge to write about private security contractors because our government does anything but a good job of counting them. Though the Defense Department keeps quarterly records of how many civilian contractors it employs and where, they exclude employees contracted with the Central Intelligence Agency or the State Department.

When Costs of War first tried to count contractor deaths by searching official government sources, we came up short. The spouse of a gravely wounded armed contractor directed me to her blog, where she had started to compile a list of just such deaths based on daily Google searches, even as she worked hard caring for her spouse and managing his disability paperwork. She and I eventually lost touch and it appears that she stopped compiling such numbers long ago. Still, we at the project took a page from her book, while adding reported war deaths among foreign nationals working for the Pentagon to our formula. Costs of War researchers then estimated that 8,000 contractors had been killed in our wars in the Middle East as of 2019, or about 1,000 more than the U.S. troops who died during the same period.

Social scientists Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie have tried to extrapolate from reported contractor deaths in order to paint a picture of who they were while still alive. They believe that most of them were white veterans in their forties; many were former Special Forces operatives and a number of former officers with college degrees).

Limited Choices for Veterans

How do people of relative racial, economic, and gendered privilege end up in positions that, while well-paid, are even more precarious than being in the armed forces? As a therapist serving military families and as a military spouse, I would say that the path to security contracting reflects a deep cultural divide in our society between military and civilian life. Although veteran unemployment rates are marginally lower than those in the civilian population, many of them tend to seek out what they know best and that means military training, staffing, weapons production — and, for some, combat.

I recently spoke with one Marine infantry veteran who had completed four combat tours. He told me that, after leaving the service, he lacked a community that understood what he had been through. He sought to avoid social isolation by getting a government job. However, after applying for several positions in law enforcement agencies, he “failed” lie detector tests (owing to the common stress reactions of war-traumatized veterans). Having accidentally stumbled on a veteran-support nonprofit group, he ultimately found connections that led him to decide to return to school and retrain in a new profession. But, as he pointed out, “many of my other friends from the Marines numbed their pain with drugs or by going back to war as security contractors.”

Not everyone views contracting as a strategy of last resort. Still, I find it revealing of the limited sense of possibility such veterans experience that the top five companies employing them are large corporations servicing the Department of Defense through activities like information technology support, weapons production, or offers of personnel, both armed and not.

The Corporate Wounded

And keep in mind that such jobs are anything but easy. Many veterans find themselves facing yet more of the same — quick, successive combat deployments as contractors.

Anyone in this era of insurance mega-corporations who has ever had to battle for coverage is aware that doing so isn’t easy. Private insurers can maximize their profits by holding onto premium payments as long as possible while denying covered services.

A federal law called the Defense Base Act (1941) (DBA) requires that corporations fund workers’ compensation claims for their employees laboring under U.S. contracts, regardless of their nationalities, with the taxpayer footing the bill. The program grew exponentially after the start of the war on terror, but insurance companies have not consistently met their obligations under the law. In 2008, a joint investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica found that insurers like Chicago-based CAN Financial Corps were earning up to 50% profits on some of their war-zone policies, while many employees of contractors lacked adequate care and compensation for their injuries.

Even after Congress called on the Pentagon and the Department of Labor to better enforce the DBA in 2011, some companies continued to operate with impunity vis–à–vis their own workers, sometimes even failing to purchase insurance for them or refusing to help them file claims as required by law.  While insurance companies made tens of millions of dollars in profits during the second decade of the war on terror, between 2009 and 2021, the Department of Labor fined insurers of those contracting corporations a total of only $3,250 for failing to report DBA claims. 

Privatizing Foreign Policy

At its core, the war on terror sought to create an image of the U.S. abroad as a beacon of democracy and the rule of law. Yet there is probably no better evidence of how poorly this worked in practice at home and abroad than the little noted (mis)use of security contractors. Without their ever truly being seen, they prolonged that global set of conflicts, inflicting damage on other societies and being damaged themselves in America’s name. Last month, the Costs of War Project reported that the U.S. is now using subcontractors Bancroft Global Development and Pacific Architects and Engineers to train the Somali National Army in its counterterrorism efforts. Meanwhile, the U.S. intervention there has only helped precipitate a further rise in terrorist attacks in the region.

The global presence created by such contractors also manifests itself in how we respond to threats to their lives. In March 2023, a self-destructing drone exploded at a U.S. maintenance facility on a coalition base in northeastern Syria, killing a contractor employed by the Pentagon and injuring another, while wounding five American soldiers. After that drone was found to be of Iranian origin, President Biden ordered an airstrike on facilities in Syria used by Iranian-allied forces. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated, “No group will strike our troops with impunity.” While he later expressed condolences to the family of the contractor who was the only one killed in that attack, his statement could have more explicitly acknowledged that contractors are even more numerous than troops among the dead from our forever wars.

In late December 2019, a contractor working as an interpreter on a U.S. military base in Iraq was killed by rockets fired by an Iranian-backed militia. Shortly afterward, then-President Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the commander of an elite Iranian military unit, sparking concern about a dangerous escalation with that country. Trump later tweeted, “Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will.”

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Trump’s tweet was more honest than Austin’s official statement: such contractors are now an essential part of America’s increasingly privatized wars and will continue to be so, in seemingly ever greater numbers. Even though retaliating for attacks on their lives has little to do with effective counterterrorism (as the Costs of War Project has long made clear), bearing witness to war casualties in all their grim diversity is the least the rest of us can do as American citizens. Because how can we know whether — and for whom — our shadowy, shape-shifting wars “work” if we continue to let our leaders wage an increasingly privatized version of them in ways meant to obscure our view of the carnage they’ve caused?

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The New American-Style Privatization of War appeared first on Fair Observer.

As many as 13 NATO allied and partner nations with more than 20 ships, and 35 aircraft, including the F-35 fighter, and 4,000 personnel are participating in this exercise. As per the Pentagon “encompasses live-fire rehearsal events in a multidomain environment against subsonic, supersonic and ballistic targets.” In effect, this exercise is a shot across the bow of Russia.

Moscow has been active in the Arctic for decades. In 2007, two mini submarines (mini-subs)  planted a one meter-high titanium Russian flag more than two and a half miles beneath the North Pole. In a record-breaking dive, the mini-subs Mir-1 and Mir-2 descended to 4,300 meters. In Moscow’s words, this was “a serious, risky and heroic mission.” 

Riches Under the Sea and Across it too

It is an open secret that global warming is accelerating and climate change is already upon us. NASA tells us that polar ice is melting dramatically and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year. This is leading to sea level rise, which will be catastrophic for the likes of Bangladesh, Maldives and New Orleans but offers polar powers access to natural resources and new trade routes.

The Arctic has major reserves of oil and natural gas. Large quantities of minerals, including iron ore, copper, nickel, zinc phosphates and diamonds, are also on offer. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey estimated “90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of technically recoverable natural gas liquids in 25 geologically defined areas” in the Arctic.

The melting of the Arctic is also opening up new trans-Arctic routes, including the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and the Northwest Passage (NWP). The NSR and NWP are shorter maritime routes. They offer an economic boost to Arctic economies. New ports, both hydrocarbon and military, are opening in the region. With such riches on offer, the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland stand to gain. 

Russia Ahead in Great Arctic Race

A great Arctic race is now on. As a resource-based economy that exports commodities, Moscow is taking the lead in the militarization and resource grab in the region. Elizabeth Buchanan, the author of Red Arctic, chronicles how Russia has cannily used “international rules for over two decades to secure its rights in the North Pole seabed.”

Russia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1997. Since then, Moscow has worked ceaselessly for the recognition of its claims to the extended continental shelf. The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) has deemed the majority of Russia’s claims in the Arctic to be valid. This February, Moscow gained rights to an approximately 1.7 million square kilometers of seabed.

Russia has used international law to its advantage because UNCLOS allows coastal states to establish the outer limits of their continental shelves beyond the limits of 200 nautical miles. The CLCS seeks scientific data and Russia has been diligent in providing this evidence. It also made its claims to the CLCS first. Danish (thanks to control of Greenland) and Canadian claims came later and might be a decade away from recognition. The US does not recognize UNCLOS and thus cannot make claims to the extended continental shelf.

While bolstering its legal claims, Russia has been building military strength in the Arctic. Last September, Reuters reported that “Russia has reopened tens of Arctic Soviet-era military bases, modernized its navy, and developed new hypersonic missiles designed to evade US sensors and defenses” since 2005. Russia’s bases inside the Arctic Circle outnumber NATO’s by about a third and the West is at least ten years behind.

Russia has seven nuclear-powered icebreakers and around 30 diesel-powered ones. The US and China have just two diesel-powered icebreakers each in operation. The US is the global superpower but Russia is the Arctic superpower.

Apart from resources and sea routes, the Arctic offers some of the best places to station ground stations for satellites. One such place is the island of Svalbard off the Norwegian mainland. SvalSat in Svalbard downloads time-sensitive data from most of the world’s commercial and scientific satellites.  In 2021 and 2022, fiber-optic cables on the Arctic seabed connecting the island and the mainland were severed. Norwegians suspect the Russians of sabotage. 

Norway is not alone in worrying about Russia. In the 1939-40 war, Finland lost 11% of its territory to the Soviet Union, which was then led by Joseph Stalin. Finns view Russian President Vladimir Putin as a grave threat to national security. In their eyes, he has reverted to expansionism that characterized both Stalin and the Tsars. In November 2022, Putin launched two nuclear-powered icebreakers capable of year-round navigation in the Western Arctic. Russian “Arctic power” is making its neighbors nervous. Exercises like Formidable Shield demonstrate that the US-led NATO can act in the Arctic.

New START Out: Is Nuclear War Back in Fashion?

The West Also Worries About China

China also has Arctic ambitions and claims to be a near-Arctic state. The United States Naval Institute tells us that “China is subtly installing a larger presence in the Arctic through an extensive partnership with Russia in areas ranging from multi-use ports and airfields to energy extraction.”

A Brookings paper tells us that Chinese President Xi Jinping and officials responsible for Arctic policy want their country to be a top polar power by 2030. They see this region as one of the “new strategic frontiers” where China can quench its thirst for energy and minerals. Some concerns about the future Chinese play for the Arctic seem overblown. What makes sense is that Chinese demand might fuel Russian supply.

The two countries are inching closer together even though China has not fully backed Russia on Ukraine. They have conducted naval exercises together in the Arctic. In 2021, Russian and Chinese ships circumnavigated Japan’s main island Honshu in a naval exercise of immense significance. China is the workshop of the world. Its demand for oil, natural gas and all the minerals under the Arctic is immense. It has the money to invest into Russian polar infrastructure from ports and naval vessels to pipelines and other infrastructure.

The opening up of trans-Arctic routes would allow these to be transported to Chinese ports at much cheaper rates than today. So, China has a stake in the Arctic and is therefore making a strategic bet by cozying up with Russia. Talk of polar silk roads is rife. Together, Russia and China could make a formidable Eurasian alliance, especially in the Arctic, despite their rivalry in Central Asia and elsewhere.

What Lies Ahead?

In August 2017, the Russian tanker sailed from Norway to South Korea in 19 days without needing an icebreaker. This Arctic passage along the conventional route through the Suez Canal would have taken over 50 days. In 2018, The Economist opined that “the Arctic route has drawbacks: a navigation season of three to four months each year, unpredictable ice conditions, high insurance fees, costly specialised vessels, and a lack of search-and-rescue teams and support infrastructure.”

The increasing rate of the melting of the poles might mitigate these drawbacks. Furthermore, instability and piracy along the traditional routes, especially in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, might add costs to traditional shipping. The Suez Canal and the Straits of Malacca could clog up. For China, they are trade arteries that could be cut off. The Arctic passage is far better for Chinese national security.

With the Russians beefing up their military in the region and the Chinese bankrolling them, the Arctic is set to change. The other Arctic powers will not stand idly by. They will inevitably respond both diplomatically and militarily. The mood in Washington is already increasingly belligerent. In December 2022, Kenneth R. Rosen argued in Politico that a battle for the Arctic was already underway and the US was behind. As the US gears up and its allies join in, the Arctic will heat up further and become a new theater for potential conflict.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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US support for Ukraine over the last year has not been confined to military hardware. The Biden administration has led a global campaign to: condemn Russia; levy both multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Kremlin and its domestic supporters; persuade allies to provide military and economic assistance of their own; strengthen NATO and usher in new NATO members; and mobilize energy supplies for Europe to substitute for Russian imports.

Despite this broad-based effort to defend Ukraine, the United States has nonetheless displayed a certain degree of caution. It has drawn the line at committing US forces to the battlefield, aside from a handful of Special Forces. It has refused to support a no-fly zone over the country, and it has not sent surveillance planes over the Black Sea for fear of engaging Russian forces. It has hesitated to supply Kyiv with every weapon system on its wish list, whether fighter jets or long-range missiles. This caution reflects in particular the anxieties of the Pentagon—a risk-averse institution—about provoking an escalation of the conflict both horizontally (into adjoining countries) and vertically (involving non-conventional weapons like tactical nuclear devices).

A Fine and Tricky Balance

The Biden administration has calibrated this balance between military assistance and geopolitical caution within a rapidly changing global context. Russia’s actions have divided the world into three blocs: illiberal supporters of the Kremlin and its imperial policy, the largely democratic club of nations who directly support Ukraine, and the much larger group of fence-sitters who generally acknowledge that the invasion was a violation of international law but are reluctant to break with Moscow.

The United States has tried to turn these divisions into assets by expanding ties with allies, isolating Russia’s few supporters, and pushing the fence-sitters away from the Kremlin. The skepticism that Donald Trump brought to the trans-Atlantic relationship, with his threats to withdraw the United States from NATO, has been decisively reversed. All talk of a “strategic reset” of relations with Russia, which was popular during the Obama years and seemed again possible under Trump, has disappeared. The Biden administration has warned China—and other countries—not to supply Russia with weapons or violate technology bans.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not fundamentally altered US national interests, but it has shifted the means by which Washington pursues those interests.

Certain things remain unclear, however, about US policy. For instance, to what degree is the United States committed to weakening Russia further by supporting either a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive or a prolonged war of attrition? Or is the United States eager to push for negotiations between the aggressor and the victim to resolve a conflict that distracts attention from other strategic US priorities, primarily the containment of China? How long can the Biden administration maintain the flow of military aid to Ukraine, given a divided Congress and weakening public support? What role can the United States play in advancing a just peace in Ukraine? What plans does the United States have for transatlantic relations after the war is over, and in what way does Russia fit into those plans?

What Lies Ahead?

This moment for east-west relations is bleak. The war rages on in Ukraine. Arms control is a dead issue. A cold war threatens to descend upon the larger world order. The “peace” that is discussed in foreign policy circles in the West often comes with several asterisks: loss of territory and a fragile state for Ukraine, lack of prosecution of war crimes for Russia, few guarantees that the conflict will not resume after a strategic pause. This kind of “peace” was secured under the Minsk agreements following Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine, quite sensibly, fears a “Minsk 3” that effectively rewards the Kremlin for its aggression.

The United States will play a pivotal role in determining this outcome through its mix of military assistance and diplomatic leverage. For now, the Biden administration seems to believe that a relatively low-cost and low-risk commitment will enable Ukraine to achieve the same results that Croatia secured in 1995. If Ukraine fails to do so in the first half of 2023, the Biden administration will have to decide whether to maintain this approach, dramatically increase assistance, or push for a “diplomatic endgame.” There isn’t likely political support now for the second option, given Republican control of Congress. Nor is there sufficient support within the administration to pressure Ukraine to abandon its territorial ambitions. So, unless the Ukrainian government itself decides that it is time to negotiate, the United States will continue with the current status quo approach.

For the time being, then, the Biden administration supports a “just peace” in Ukraine that would give victory to the victim and punishment to the aggressor. But this approach is highly contingent on what happens on the ground in Ukraine and what happens in American politics. Even though they have both benefited from the way the war has squeezed Russia, the United States and China will not let the conflict go on indefinitely. In the interim, however, a relatively weak country that gave up its nuclear weapons three decades ago continues to buck the geopolitical odds by beating back a nuclear superpower bent on expanding its empire. That, in itself, is a win for international law and points toward a more just world order.

[FPIF published this piece, which was originally published in the Institute for Policy Studies.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is the US Helping or Pressuring Ukraine Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Muslim-majority states “de-westernize” their international affairs and establish strategic partnerships with other great powers while reducing their dependence on arms suppliers from the US. They also avoid interstate rivalry and interference in domestic affairs of fellow Muslim-majority states, or other authoritarian great powers.

This article analyzes the foreign affairs of Muslim-majority states through two prisms, descriptive and explanatory. The descriptive section highlights observable data, such as their foreign policy views, commitments, or actions that demonstrate their balanced approach to international affairs. The explanatory section questions the nature of their actions: Why, for example, do Muslim-majority states diversify their relationships beyond Western partnerships, including their increased arms supply from Russia?

A Beacon of Neutrality 

Muslim-majority states maintain a “practical”, “cautious” or “uneasy” neutrality over the Russia-Ukraine War. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan summarized this position by stating, “We cannot hold sides. We cannot take sides. And it wouldn’t be right for us to do that.” 

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, emulated Erdoğan when he refused to blame Russia for the war. He said, “countries like Pakistan should not pass any value and moral judgment on this” and they should be “nonaligned, neutral, and friendly to both.” Malaysia has similarly committed to neutrality.

Saudi Arabia, like other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), generally views the war “as a complicated European conflict.” The GCC leaders see no reason for Arab states “to stand against Vladimir Putin’s government.” Egypt’s foreign ministry released a statement affirming the importance of “dialogue and diplomatic solutions”. This reluctance to blame and antagonize Russia triggered prompt expressions of frustration from Kyiv’s embassy in Cairo.

Currently, it is difficult to find any statement by Muslim-majority states that supports either the West or Russia. These states have remained studiously neutral. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is an exception to this phenomenon.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Policy

The Muslim world’s approach to the invasion reflects their readiness to establish political, economic and security partnerships with multiple players in the international system. They are not choosing alliances with a single power. This is what contemporary Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington posited when they spoke about Islamic-Orthodox or Islamic-Confucian alliances. Muslim-majority states prefer constructive engagements with various great powers based solely on their commercial, security or geopolitical interests. 

Turkey, for example, sees Russia as an important partner for energy, tourism and regional security. At the same time, as a member of NATO, Ankara is allied with the US and European powers for its security. China has now become Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner. The US still remains the Kingdom’s most important security partner though. Since choosing one relationship over the other would be costly, Turkey and Saudi Arabia tend to pursue multi-directional foreign policies. Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Jakarta, Islamabad, and Doha also respect the US as a great power, while maintaining relationships with other great powers.

Muslim-majority states are forging relationships with non-Western groups, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Both groups approach international affairs in a multipolar manner, and act as an alternative to the US-led order. In the Middle East alone, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States Emirates (UAE) are current or prospective dialogue partners of the SCO. All medium-sized Muslim-majority countries, such as Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, look positively to BRICS. The same holds for other parts of the Muslim world, specifically Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Senegal, Algeria, Uzbekistan and Malaysia. All prefer to participate in remaking the rules of the international system, a process that is now underway. 

More consequential commitments from Muslim-majority states at the multilateral level are found within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they defied calls from the US to pump more crude as prices of oil rallied to multi-year highs. In October 2022, Muslim-majority member states within OPEC+ decided to cut crude production by two million barrels a day, a move that benefitted not only Russia, but also themselves. On April 2, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ oil producers announced further oil output cuts of around 1.16 million barrels per day. For these states, staying friendly with the US is subordinate to pursuing their national economic goals.

Muslim-majority states are also generally reluctant to interfere in the domestic affairs of fellow Muslim states, including on issues of serious human rights violations. In the UN Human Rights Council, no Muslim-majority state member voted for the international fact-finding mission to independently investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran. Tehran had cracked down on protests that began on September 16, 2022 after the death in police custody of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.

Muslim-majority states also ignore the domestic affairs of other great powers, including serious human rights violations of Muslim minorities. This behavior of their political leaders, including their state religious bodies, is striking. They have remained silent on the massive detention and forced re-education of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Northwest China. In July 2019, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and other Muslim-majority states helped to block a Western motion at the United Nations calling for China to allow “independent international observers” into the Xinjiang region. 

This year, a delegation from The World Muslim Communities Council (TWMCC), which comprises 14 Muslim-majority states, visited Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. According to its statement, TWMCC “hailed the efforts of the Chinese authorities in combating terrorism in Xinjiang”. As prime minister, Khan also complained that hardly any Muslim country, with the exception of Turkey, stands with Pakistan on the rights of the Kashmiri people.

Fighter Jets and Possible Peace

Neutrality in the exercise of international affairs generally does not come cheap. It is important to note that many Muslim-majority states take appropriate measures to protect and pay for their stances. According to a fact sheet of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 14 Muslim-majority states are listed among the top 30 largest importers of arms, accounting for 38.8% of the total volume of arms imports from 2017 to 2021. 

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan and the UAE are listed among the top 10 largest importers of arms. This illustrates that weapon imports from Russia are the most important driver of relations between Muslim-majority states and Moscow. According to SIPRI, Russia was the largest arms supplier for Egypt, Algeria, Iraq and Pakistan from 2017 to 2021. It was the second and third largest supplier for Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and the UAE. Moreover, half of the top Russian weapons importers are Muslim-majority states. At the regional level, the Middle East and North African (MENA) region was the second most lucrative for Russian arms sales between 2009 and 2018. 

In recent years, Russia’s share of MENA’s defense market has doubled, as arms deliveries increased by 125% from 1999-2008 to 2009-2018. In 2009-18, Russia delivered weapons to 14 countries in the region, which accounted for 26% of the total volume of Russia’s arms exports. In 1999-2008 this figure was only 14%. As arms imports from Russia increased, imports from the US decreased. They went down from 47% in 2012-16 to 43% in 2017-21. 

Continuing this trend, arms exports from the US to the UAE fell by 36% between 2016 and 2020. The UAE was the second largest recipient of US arms in 2012–16 but fell to the eighth largest in 2017–21. For the same period, arms exports to Turkey fell by 81% as they went from the third largest recipient of US arms exports in 2011–15 to the 19th largest in 2016–20. 

In 2022, Erdoğan revealed that his country is no longer dependent on the US. Facing problems with importing fighter jets, he said, “If we can’t get the results out of the United States about the F-16s, what are we going to do? Of course, we’re going to take care of our own selves”.

The generalization of the Muslim world versus others ignores the important issue of interstate relations between Muslim-majority states. What happens between rival Muslim-majority states in a world that is no longer unipolar? 

Data on civil, proxy, or interstate wars suggest that rival Muslim states compete far less today than in the past. States with previously strained relations, made bilateral U-turns in recent years. Turkey and Saudi Arabia established military collaborations and Erdoğan hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The Turkish defense minister met his Syrian counterpart in Moscow. Saudi Arabia reopened a consulate in Iraq and pledged $1 billion in aid. Additionally, there was a ceasefire in Yemen and even the civil war in Syria has subsided. 

The recent deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran marks a dramatic departure from years of open hostility. Perhaps even more unexpectedly, Turkey began a rapprochement with Syria. While the rivalry between Muslim-majority states will not cease completely in the emerging multipolar world, old differences are shrinking considerably.

Assertively Moving from the Periphery 

Leaders in the West might wonder why many Muslim-majority states are reluctant to embrace the Western narrative about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This might come across as surprising given that some of these states host US military troops. To make sense of what is going on, a closer examination of the Muslim world is necessary.

Both the Russian Dugin and the American Huntington depicted a unitary nature of the Muslim world. They generalized Islamic civilization as a single variable or meta-force in international affairs. This has provoked serious and never-ending debate. However, religion has never been the central defining element for Muslim-majority states. Furthermore, Dugin and Huntington did not examine the relationship between Islam and forms of government in Muslim-majority countries. The reality is complex.

Our assumption at the international level is that Muslim-majority states resent the liberal international order and the threat that it poses to their political societies. Their political elites do generally dislike what John Mearsheimer calls “a liberal unipole” in which the US, as the sole superpower in the international system, pursues a policy of “liberal hegemony.” They do not want the liberal American elites to reshape Muslim-majority states in their own image. Indeed, there is a problem in the Muslim world with accepting the universality and superiority of liberal ideology. The liberal political elite in the West believes in democracy and free markets, and wants to impose this on others. Muslim-majority states distrust this Western, especially American, article of faith. They see recent military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as disasters. 

Therefore, Muslim-majority states prefer multipolarity in the international system. In this system, their voices can be heard and they can move from the periphery to the center of international politics. Many Muslim-majority states have progressed from dependent status, serving foreign policy objectives of other great powers, to push for what Pakistani Khan calls “more dignity”, “self-respect” and “independence” in international affairs.

Turkey, for example, has gradually moved from a peripheral state, or as Huntington describes a “torn state”, in the Western block to a core state in its regional sub-system. Turkey’s recent stand on Ukraine or Saudi Arabia’s strategic partnership with China underlines an important shift. A new world order has emerged where China and Russia have become important, and are now challenging the US. 

Michael Singh has explained how medium-sized states are “eschewing both alignment with a single power and nonalignment, and instead choosing omni-alignment: participation in the multilateral institutions led by the United States and those spearheaded by its rivals.” He argues that “omni-alignment also serves as a hedge against the unpredictability of great-power behavior”. This hedging is most clearly seen in the Middle East, where the future of both US and Chinese engagement remains unclear.

Muslim-majority states view liberal ideology as a threat to their political systems. They prefer strong, sovereign and authoritarian states. The Muslim world still remains unfriendly to liberal democracy, irrespective of variations in faith practices, ideologies, regime characteristics or elite interests. Muslim-majority states are either non-democratic or have no functional democracy by Western standards. Those few Muslim countries that hold regular elections, such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, have not reached the status of “consolidated democracy” according to Freedom House.

Data on individual freedoms reveals that Muslim-majority states score poorly on the right to vote, freedom of expression and equality before the law. Of all Muslim-majority states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), not one scored enough to be given the status of a free state. The majority are considered not free, with the rest deemed partially free. Given their opposition to the liberal order, contemporary Muslim kings, presidents, and prime ministers built stronger partnerships with Donald Trump, a like-minded American president. He railed against the liberal order and supported strongmen around the world such as Erdoğan, MBS and Mohamed bin Zayed. In turn, they prefer Trump to Biden.

Shared opposition by Muslim-majority states to the international liberal order is allied to their opposition to liberal norms at the national level. Today, Muslim-majority states and their leaders are aiming to move to a post-liberal, new global order where the East balances the West and where they are no longer “client”, “torn”, “vassal”, or “periphery” states.

It remains to be seen how the push for increased centrality within their regional sub-systems will play out for Muslim-majority states. This new assertive foreign policy of the Muslim world will certainly strengthen multipolarity. It suits China and Russia. However, Muslim-majoirty states will not become part of what Huntington defined as the Islamic-Confucian alliance or what Dugin proposed as a common front of Islamic-Orthodox civilisations against the liberal West.

They will continue to establish political, economic or security partnerships with different players in the international system. Muslim states may even contribute to stability in an anarchic and more complex multipolar system by offering mediation in conflict zones that involve opposing great powers. The future will be very different to the present and Muslim-majority states will become bigger players in the international system.

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Timely Analysis: The Foreign Policy Trends of Muslim-Majority States appeared first on Fair Observer.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian nationalism has been on the rise and is a key driver of the Russia-Ukraine War. Russian President Vladimir Putin has fostered this nationalism for decades. He first made his name by crushing the anti-Russian uprising in Chechnya. In recent years, Russia has become more aggressive. In the case of Ukraine, Putin has been particularly aggressive. 

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine sparked a conflict. This violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and has led to a deadly conflict that has claimed thousands of lives.

Tracing the Roots of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism

Nationalism has always played a big role in Russia’s history. It first came to the fore at the end of the 18th century. In the early 19th century, an idea of national superiority and honor came into shape, along with a strict loyalty to the ideology of Emperor Alexander I. During what is known as the “Golden Age” of Russian literature, writers such as Ivan Kireevsky, Mikhail Pogodin and Fyodor Tyutchev furthered these sentiments. 

These writers asserted that Russian culture was superior to that of other nations. They glorified Russian martyrs who gave their lives for their country. Over time, this sense of national pride became ingrained in the mindsets of most Russians. 

The Russian Romanticism of 1820-1840 extolled Russian literature, culture, language and orthodoxy as sources of pride and uniqueness. This was also a time when the Russian Empire continued to spread through Central Asia and the Caucasus. Russia fought against both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires for territory. This quest for empire fuelled Russian nationalism.

Russia’s nationalism is driven by a sense of being wronged by others and a desire for a strong leader. Throughout history, Russians have faced invasions and attacks from different enemies, such as the Mongols, the Swedes, the Poles and the Nazis. These experiences have shaped their sense of identity and pride.

They also made Russians crave a strong leader who can protect them from any threat. This craving is the reason Russians have tolerated authoritarian rulers for centuries and why many of them support Vladimir Putin today. Putin claims to be a strong leader who can stand up to the West and defend Russia’s interests. 

Ukrainian nationalism also has deep roots in the country’s history. It grew out of a resistance to domination and assimilation by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. In the 19th century, a group of Ukrainian intellectuals and writers initiated a movement for Ukrainian national revival, which aimed to celebrate and preserve their unique language, culture and national identity. These nationalists also advocated for an independent state, free from outside domination. 

Ukrainian nationalism is no longer simply about asserting independence from Russia. It is also about integrating with Europe and NATO, who are both now seen as partners and allies. Ukrainians view themselves as part of Europe, both geographically and culturally. This is reflected in their desire to embrace Western values and norms, such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

At the same time, Ukrainian nationalism is defined more than ever by standing up to Russia’s bullying and meddling. This became progressively worse since Russia took over Crimea and started a war in Donbas. For Ukrainian nationalists, their language, culture and history matter immensely. These Ukrainians are willing to fight and even die to protect the nation. They want to speak Ukrainian in all situations, celebrate Ukrainian holidays and traditions, and honor Ukrainian heroes and achievements.

Putin Sees Ukraine as a Betrayer of Slavic Unity

Putin’s vision of “Great Russia” or a “Russian World,” encompasses not only the territory of modern-day Russia and Ukraine but other countries with significant ethnic Russian populations. They include Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Baltic states. Putin portrays Moscow. as the protector of Russian speakers abroad. Therefore, he constantly advocates for the rights and the interests of Russian speakers in neighboring countries.

Putin once said that “since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians”. Russia and Ukraine share a common Eastern Slavic heritage that dates back to the medieval state of Kyivan Rus. Kyivan Rus was the birthplace of both Ukraine and Russia. Its ruler, Volodymyr the Great, changed the state religion to Orthodox Christianity in 988 A.D. 

According to Putin, Ukraine’s independence was a result of an erroneous division of land by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and his associates. Furthermore, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.” To Putin, this is unacceptable.

Russia wants to keep Ukraine under its control for many reasons. First, it wants to have a buffer zone between itself and NATO countries, which it sees as Russia’s enemies. Putin is not the only Russian who is also worried about NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and its interference in its near-abroad, which the country sees as its backyard. Second, Moscow wants to protect the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. Putin claims that Ukraine is discriminating against them. Third, Russia wants to make sure it has access to important resources such as the natural gas pipelines that run through Ukraine as well as the Ukrainian coastline near Crimea.

The war in Ukraine demonstrates that Russia’s nationalism is all based on a feeling of being wronged by others, a craving for a strong leader and a deep desire to defend ethnic Russians. Over a year of conflict has demonstrated the strength of Russians nationalism and its readiness to fight against the West. It has also shown us how risky and dangerous such nationalism can be and the need for negotiations to avoid more violence.

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Unleashing Russia’s Nationalism: An In-depth Look into the Ukraine War appeared first on Fair Observer.

The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.

“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he said to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”

The United Kingdom, which has committed well over $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “radioactive bullets.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.

Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “respond accordingly” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.

While the UK’s decision to send depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine is unlikely to prove a turning point in the war’s outcome, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact on soldiers, civilians, and the environment. The controversial deployment of DU doesn’t pose faintly the same risks as the actual nuclear weapons Putin and his associates have hinted they might use someday in Ukraine or as would a potential meltdown at the embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in that country. Still, its use will certainly help create an even more lethal, all too literally radioactive theater of war — and Ukraine will end up paying a price for it.

The Radioactive Lions of Babylon

Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the Lions of Babylon.

Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.

After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39.

His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.

“My feeling about Mr. Dyson’s colon cancer is that it was produced because he ingested some radioactive material and it became trapped in his intestine,” Professor Christopher Busby, an expert on the effects of uranium on health, said in his court testimony. “To my mind, there seems to be a causal arrow from his exposure to his final illness. It’s certainly much more probable than not that Mr. Dyson’s cancer was caused by exposure to depleted uranium.”

The US Department of Defense estimated that American forces fired more than 860,000 rounds of DU shells during that 1991 war to push Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s military out of Kuwait. The result: a poisoned battlefield laced with radioactive debris, as well as toxic nerve agents and other chemical agents.

In neighboring southern Iraq, background radiation following that war rose to 30 times normal. Tanks tested after being shelled with DU rounds had readings 50 times higher than average.

“It’s hot forever,” explains Doug Rokke, a former major in the US Army Reserve’s Medical Service Corps who helped decontaminate dozens of vehicles hit by DU shells during the first Gulf War. “It doesn’t go away. It only disperses and blows around in the wind,” he adds. And of course, it wasn’t just soldiers who suffered from DU exposure. In Iraq, evidence has been building that DU, an intense carcinogenic agent, has led to increases in cancer rates for civilians, too.

“When we were moving forward and got north of a minefield, there were a bunch of blown-out tanks that were near where we would set up a command post,” says Jason Peterson, a former American Marine who served in the first Gulf War. “Marines used to climb inside and ‘play’ in them … We barely knew where Kuwait was, let alone the kind of ammunition that was used to blow shit up on that level.”

While it’s difficult to discern exactly what caused the Gulf War Syndrome from which Dyson and so many other soldiers suffered (and continue to suffer), experts like Rokke are convinced that exposure to depleted uranium played a central role in the illness. That’s an assertion Western governments have consistently downplayed. In fact, the Pentagon has repeatedly denied any link between the two.

“I’m a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission,” Rokke, who also suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, told Vanity Fair in 2007. “I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can’t do this safely in combat conditions. You can’t decontaminate the environment or your own troops.”

Death to Uranium

Depleted uranium can’t produce a nuclear explosion, but it’s still directly linked to the development of atomic weaponry. It’s a by-product of the uranium enrichment process used in nuclear weapons and fuel. DU is alluring to weapons makers because it’s heavier than lead, which means that, if fired at a high velocity, it can rip through the thickest of metals.

That it’s radioactive isn’t what makes it so useful on the battlefield, at least according to its proponents. “It’s so dense and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor — and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” says RAND nuclear expert and policy researcher Edward Geist.

The manufacturing of DU dates back to the 1970s in the United States. Today, the American military employs DU rounds in its M1A2 Abrams tanks. Russia has also used DU in its tank-busting shells since at least 1982 and there are plenty of accusations, though as yet no hard evidence, that Russia has already deployed such shells in Ukraine. Over the years, for its part, the US has fired such rounds not just in Kuwait, but also in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, and Serbia as well.

Both Russia and the US have reasons for using DU, since each has piles of the stuff sitting around with nowhere to put it. Decades of manufacturing nuclear weapons have created a mountain of radioactive waste. In the US, more than 500,000 tons of depleted-uranium waste has accumulated since the Manhattan Project first created atomic weaponry, much of it in Hanford, Washington, the country’s main plutonium production site. As I investigated in my book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, Hanford is now a cesspool of radioactive and chemical waste, representing the most expensive environmental clean-up project in history with an estimated price tag of $677 billion.

Uranium, of course, is what makes the whole enterprise viable: you can’t create atomic bombs or nuclear power without it. The trouble is that uranium itself is radioactive, as it emits alpha particles and gamma rays. That makes mining uranium one of the most dangerous operations on the planet.

Keep It in the Ground

In New Mexico, where uranium mines were primarily worked by Diné (Navajo People), the toll on their health proved gruesome indeed. According to a 2000 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, rates of lung cancer in Navajo men who mined uranium were 28 times higher than in those who never mined uranium. The “Navajo experience with uranium mining,” it added, “is a unique example of exposure in a single occupation accounting for the majority of lung cancers in an entire population.”

Scores of studies have shown a direct correlation between exposure to uranium and kidney disease, birth defects in infants (when mothers were exposed), increased rates of thyroid disease, and several autoimmune diseases. The list is both extensive and horrifying.

“My family had a lot of cancer,” says anti-nuclear activist and Indigenous community organizer Leona Morgan. “My grandmother died of lung cancer and she never smoked. It had to be the uranium.”

One of the largest radioactive accidents, and certainly the least reported, occurred in 1979 on Diné land when a dam broke, flooding the Puerco River near Church Rock, New Mexico, with 94 million gallons of radioactive waste. The incident received virtually no attention at the time. “The water, filled with acids from the milling process, twisted a metal culvert in the Puerco and burned the feet of a little boy who went wading. Sheep keeled over and died, while crops curdled along the banks. The surge of radiation was detected as far away as Sanders, Arizona, fifty miles downstream,” writes Judy Pasternak in her book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajo.

Of course, we’ve known about the dangers of uranium for decades, which makes it all the more mind-boggling to see a renewed push for increased mining of that radioactive ore to generate nuclear power. The only way to ensure that uranium doesn’t poison or kill anyone is to leave it right where it’s always been: in the ground. Sadly, even if you were to do so now, there would still be tons of depleted uranium with nowhere to go. A 2016 estimate put the world’s mountain of DU waste at more than one million tons (each equal to 2,000 pounds).

So why isn’t depleted uranium banned? That’s a question antinuclear activists have been asking for years. It’s often met with government claims that DU isn’t anywhere near as bad as its peacenik critics allege. In fact, the US government has had a tough time even acknowledging that Gulf War Syndrome exists. A Government Accountability Office report released in 2017 found that the Veterans Affairs Department had denied more than 80% of all Gulf War illness claims by veterans. Downplaying DU’s role, in other words, comes with the terrain.

“The use of DU in weapons should be prohibited,” maintains Ray Acheson, an organizer for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. “While some governments argue there is no definitive proof its use in weapons causes harm, it is clear from numerous investigations that its use in munitions in Iraq and other places has caused impacts on the health of civilians as well as military personnel exposed to it, and that it has caused long-term environmental damage, including groundwater contamination. Its use in weapons is arguably in violation of international law, human rights, and environmental protection and should be banned in order to ensure it is not used again.”

If the grisly legacy of the American use of depleted uranium tells us anything, it’s that those DU shells the British are supplying to Ukraine (and the ones the Russians may also be using there) will have a radioactive impact that will linger in that country for years to come, with debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences. It will, in a sense, be part of a global atomic war that shows no sign of ending.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Risk of Nuclear War in Ukraine Is Rising High appeared first on Fair Observer.

Mother Russia Losing Its Children

Russia’s population peaked at 142 million in the years just prior to Russia’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine—and that is still down from the immediate post-USSR high of 149 million. Demographers had projected Russia’s population to tumble to 120 million by 2050 but now believe that it has already slipped below that level in 2040. In the Ukraine war, the nation suffered over two million casualties and outward migration.

Only the blinkered optimists among Russia’s still-active propagandists project a near-term reversal in population growth. In fact, younger Russians are more discouraged than ever from marrying thanks to the continued dismal state of the economy and attendant lack of interest in having families. Even Russia’s own demographers project continued decline. Moreover, Mother Russia continues to bleed youth, who emigrate in the tens of thousands each year to anywhere offering something better than the bleak prospects of post-Putin Russia.

Other demographic data support their pessimism. Deaths still outnumber births by over half a million. Ethnic Russians, about 72% of the population at the start of the Ukraine war, now comprise just 60% of the country’s population. The Russian fertility rate, which hovered around 1.52 per Russian female in the early 2020s, has fallen below 1.0, less than half of replacement level. Child-bearing-age women postpone pregnancy indefinitely or simply leave the country. In major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg, ethnic Russians complain of the growing presence of non-Russian ethnic minorities, increasingly necessary to fill jobs and run what’s left of Russia’s spiraling economy.

Economy: Back to the USSR

The causes of the population decline are many and did not start with the Ukraine war but were accelerated by the conflict. Principal among those is the state of Russia’s economy. Russia’s continued pariah status in the West has meant sanctions and embargoes on key technology equipment and components remain. Cut off from critical inputs like microchips, Russia’s main manufacturing sectors have been reduced to basic machine parts and consumer items that only Russians buy. There is no export sector, except for weapons, exports of which have suffered from sanctions. When asked to comment on their economy, even Russians with no memory of the USSR respond “back to the USSR.”

Most damaging of all, the world is rapidly moving beyond the traditional sources of oil and gas for its energy. Almost all of Europe has moved to renewable sources and the US now relies on fossil fuel for less than half of its energy needs. China, too, is weaning itself off oil and gas, a decision forced on the Chinese leadership by the global momentum toward addressing climate change and by growing cries among the Chinese public for cleaner air in China’s choking cities.

All of this has meant dramatically lower fossil oil prices. Previously the mainstay of the Russian budget and economy, oil commands less than $40 per barrel on most markets, with plunges as low as $25. Natural gas, on which China and many developing nations still rely, has also seen a comparable slide in price. Both have become a buyers’ market now, translating into dramatic revenue declines for Russia and consequent reduced public investment and lowered social welfare payments.

Rated as the eleventh or twelfth largest in the world in 2022, Russia’s $1.8 trillion economy has grown to around $2.5 trillion, too low to even make the world’s top 20. The principal reason for the decline is Russia’s near-total economic dependency on neighboring China. Virtually all its hydrocarbon exports flow to China at lower prices than before, while most of its finished and consumer goods are Chinese imports. And for years, all of Russia’s transactions with China have been in renminbi, which also comprise more than three-quarters of Russian foreign exchange reserves.

In one of military history’s most shocking reversals, Russia, once the source of much of China’s advanced military weaponry, now imports substantial amounts of Chinese weapons, including major military aircraft. While joint production agreements exist, China reserves its most sophisticated weapons and manufacturing for itself, leaving Russia’s armed forces with second-tier armaments and what few advanced weapons it still can manufacture. This means that Russia no longer makes or uses top-level weaponry.

Ukraine Prospers

What has most chagrined Russia’s population, especially its youth, is what has happened across the border in Ukraine. Having reclaimed almost all the territory Russia had annexed in 2014 and 2022, a devastated Ukraine has emerged from the war emboldened, energized, and brimming with new-found hope and pride. Within two years of the war’s end, it had joined the EU and a year later it became a member of NATO. A rising tech sector, which emerged during the war as the nation was forced to innovate its own and Western-imported weapons and equipment, has been perhaps the biggest surprise. Ukraine has acquired a new reputation, evolving into a tech innovation hub, and even attracting some of Russia’s frustrated youth.

After the war, the West, especially the EU, poured development funding into the country to rebuild it. Private capital quickly followed in many of Ukraine’s sectors, including manufacturing, minerals, construction, and agriculture. When Russia failed to follow through with its war reparation pledges, Western governments joined Ukraine in going after Russia’s $300 billion in reserves they had frozen at the start of the war. A landmark legal case in UK courts, which awarded Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in frozen Russia’s assets in Britain, set the precedent and similar settlements followed in France, Germany, the US, and even Switzerland. The few billion in Russian reserves in the West remain out of Moscow’s reach and Russia’s central bank wrote them off long ago.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy handily won Ukraine’s presidential election in the spring of 2024 with more than 70% of the vote. A subsequent worldwide tour won him and Ukraine massive support, especially in the West. Even China’s Xi Jinping, with an eye on Ukraine’s key ports in Odessa and Mariupol, warmly welcomed him to Beijing, promising development support for rebuilding the country. Hailed as the “defender of democracy,” Zelenskyy was welcomed with great fanfare in Washington by both Democrats and Republicans. President Joe Biden received him at the White House on a state visit, the most lavish of his presidency. A tour of major American cities and Silicon Valley won him and his country both plaudits and pledges of investment in Europe’s fastest growing economy.

Important to these supporters and investors, Zelenskyy doubled down on prior efforts to clean up the country’s corruption. With broad public support, most new members of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, were elected on clean government platforms, sweeping away vestiges of the old, corrupt guard and elites. Trials of those accused of corruption and payback schemes during the war and the initial phases of reconstruction have been public and garnered widespread attention and support among the Ukrainian people.

Russia Roils

Most galling of all, to rank and file Russians, however, is seeing their nation having to grovel before Beijing. Russia’s voting record on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has become a virtual rubber stamp of Beijing’s. Most shockingly, even when Beijing abstains, Moscow is forced to do China’s bidding by vetoing UNSC resolutions clearly not in Russia’s best interests. UN diplomats jokingly refer to Moscow as Beijing’s errand boy in New York.

Russians bristle at their reduced stature in the world. Pockets of resistance have grown into movements. Of late, opposition groups and demonstrations have mobilized around the theme of Russia shedding its client-state status to China. When Moscow sought to clamp down—they were acting on Beijing’s order to quickly snuff out the rebels—it only further amplified the ire of Russians everywhere.

Increasingly, gangs of Russian youth in multiple cities and even smaller towns have been seen tearing down Beijing-supplied surveillance equipment, which has become ubiquitous throughout Russia. Rebel youth groups have become so brazen that their destructive acts proliferate throughout social media under the hashtag “Not China’s East Germany.” They demand that Russia drop its vassalage to Beijing and turn to the West and democracy.Russian leaders who succeeded Putin regularly trek to Beijing now for what Russians presume are China’s newest marching orders for its client. Dreams of a new Russian imperial union once entertained by Putin have now dissolved into subservience to the boss in Beijing. The Chinese boss is behaving just like his Soviet 20^th century predecessors. Putin’s imperial dream has turned into a nightmare but the Russian people do not intend to live forever in it. In 2040, Russia is on the verge of another revolution.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Imagine What Russia Might Look Like in 2040 appeared first on Fair Observer.

Sure, in the post-1991 era, nuclear war could still happen by mistake. It could break out between two actively hostile nuclear powers like India and Pakistan. It could be triggered by a disgruntled new nuclear club member like North Korea. And, of course, a conflict between the superpowers themselves—United States, China, Russia—could escalate to a nuclear exchange because of miscalculation, misinformation, or simply a few missing synapses in the brains of the leaders.

But what had once been a front-and-center obsession during spikes in Cold War tensions—from backyard bomb shelters to films like The Day After—had become in recent years more like ominous but muted background music. Meanwhile, other existential crises stepped to the fore, like climate change, pandemics, and artificial intelligence run amok. Apocalyptic ends have still loomed large in the public imagination: not so much with a bang any more but a whimper.

Now, after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, nuclear war is once again competing to become the planetary catastrophe de jour. The Russian decision this week to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, possibly bringing them closer to deployment, has analysts in the West second-guessing the Kremlin’s calculations. Would Russian President Vladimir Putin actually go nuclear, either to gain battlefield advantage or to stop a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive from restoring the country’s pre-2014 borders?

This prospect of a nuclear war, however limited, has pushed quite a few peace activists in the West to urge a ceasefire and negotiations at whatever the cost. Policy analysts, too, have warned Ukraine not to overreach, for instance by threatening Russian control of Crimea, out of concern that the conflict could escalate to the nuclear threshold.

The threat of nuclear war should never be treated casually, particularly when such weapons are in the hands of madmen like Nixon, Trump, or Putin. This January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight. It’s never before been so close.

All of this requires a sober assessment of the nuclear risks involved in the Ukraine war and what can be done to minimize them.

The Clock Strikes Almost Midnight

Back in 1991, the Doomsday Clock stood at 17 minutes before midnight. That’s the greatest margin of safety since the clock debuted in 1947. Subsequent US presidents squandered an historic opportunity to rewind the clock even more. Despite the reassurances provided by Barack Obama that he was indeed committed to nuclear disarmament—if not during his presidency then at some undefined time in the future—the clock remained poised several minutes before midnight for most of his tenure in office. When Trump took office, the measurement switched from minutes to seconds. Then this January, the second hand ticked down from 100 seconds to 90.

The Bulletin’s well-reasoned decision to advance the clock places all the blame on Russia. The editorial discusses Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, its violations of international law, its false accusations concerning Ukraine’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased the risk of nuclear weapons use, raised the specter of biological and chemical weapons use, hamstrung the world’s response to climate change, and hampered international efforts to deal with other global concerns,” the editors write.

At the same time, the Bulletin stresses the need for the United States to keep open the option of “principled engagement” with Russia to reduce the risk of nuclear war. There is no recommendation that Ukraine or its supporters pull their punches to reduce this risk. Instead, the editors speak of “forging a just peace.”

Although the Doomsday Clock is a powerful visual suggestion that the threat of nuclear war has increased with the conflict in Ukraine, Western politicians and analysts have downplayed the actual risk of a nuclear attack. Here, for instance, is the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, which produces an influential daily analysis of the military and political developments in Ukraine:

“The announcement of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus is irrelevant to the risk of escalation to nuclear war, which remains extremely low. Putin is attempting to exploit Western fears of nuclear escalation by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. Russia has long fielded nuclear-capable weapons able to strike any target that tactical nuclear weapons based in Belarus could hit. ISW continues to assess that Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through in order to break Western resolve.”

It might seem counterintuitive to argue that Putin is a “risk-averse actor.” Didn’t he invade Ukraine last year without sufficient preparation? Didn’t he put Russia’s economy at risk of serious damage because of the invasion? Hasn’t he cavalierly destroyed several decades of carefully cultivated relations with Europe and the West?

In fact, with the exception of the ill-prepared invasion itself, Putin has been quite careful. He took pains to sanction-proof the Russian economy and replace European oil and gas clients with Asian ones. He hasn’t shifted to a war economy. Nor has he declared an all-out aerial war on all parts of Ukraine (though that’s likely because of Ukraine’s air defenses).

Most importantly, he hasn’t risked direct confrontation with NATO powers. The most logical strategy for Russia at this point is to interdict Western shipments of arms to Ukraine. Back in March 2022, the Russian government warned that it would do so. But it has failed to do so. Partly that’s because Russia lacks capacity and military intel. But it’s also because Putin doesn’t want to draw NATO into the war. It’s been hard enough for Russia to fight against Ukrainian soldiers and a handful of international volunteers. The introduction of NATO battalions would be game over for Russia.

Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons could also draw NATO more directly into the conflict, which no doubt restrains Putin’s hand. The fact that Xi Jinping, on his recent trip to Moscow, explicitly warned Putin not to use nukes only reinforces the prohibition.

Not everyone believes that the risk of nuclear war is “extremely low,” as ISW put it.

Longtime security analyst Carl Conetta agrees that the likelihood of a direct Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine is low. But he identifies other nuclear options for Russia such as

“a demonstration blast in remote areas of Russia. Such an action would be intended and likely to have a powerful psychological effect not easily mollified by official US reassurances to NATO allies and other countries. But such a gambit would also involve and/or provoke abruptly heightened levels of strategic force readiness on both sides of today’s strategic divide, and this would be uniquely dangerous.”

Conetta also notes that Russia’s nuclear doctrine has shifted over the last year, and the Kremlin may well redefine what constitutes an existential threat to Russia to allow for the use of nuclear weapons. In the end, he concludes that “although the probability of a big power nuclear clash of any magnitude over Ukraine remains low, it would be irrational and irresponsible to act as though we can roll the nuclear dice and never come up ‘snake eyes.’”

Masha Gessen, the prolific critic of Putin, has also sounded a warning about Putin’s willingness to go nuclear. She grounds these fears in an analysis of Putin himself.

“He believes that, on the one hand, he is facing down an existential threat to Russia and, on the other, that Western nations don’t have the strength of their convictions to retaliate if it comes to nukes. Any small sign of a crack in the Western consensus—be it French President Emmanuel Macron pressuring Ukraine to enter peace negotiations, or the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy criticizing what he sees as unconditional aid to Ukraine—bolsters Putin’s certainty.”

She concludes that only the threat of massive conventional retaliation by NATO and the West stays Putin’s hand. Also note Gessen’s terrible irony: the more that peace activists call for negotiations to reduce the risk of nuclear war, the more Putin will interpret the successful pick-up of that message as a sign that he can use nukes with impunity.

The Politics of Good and Evil

Superpowers that do evil should not be allowed to continue doing so simply because they possess nuclear weapons. Those who have resisted the spread of the US empire in Asia, Africa, and Latin America didn’t lay down their arms or stop protests in the streets because of the threat that Washington would use nuclear weapons. They confronted the evil of US occupation and, in many cases, they succeeded.

Oh, but Putin is different, you might say. The Russian leader is making actual nuclear threats. He is promising to move nukes closer to the front (as opposed to the United States, which hasn’t moved its 100 or so tactical nukes from storage facilities in Western Europe). He is a mad man and will stop at nothing to create his “Russian world” out of territory absorbed from countries on Russia’s borders.

But as should be clear from the above, Putin has stopped short at several junctures. He has committed war crimes, to be sure. But so far he has not listened to the right-wing critics at home who urge him to fight a total war in Ukraine. He hasn’t listened to them because the Russian military doesn’t have sufficient capacity and because he fears the consequences of such a dramatic escalation.

It should go without saying that the United States must keep open lines of communication with Moscow and pursue arms control negotiations. The Biden administration should be careful to focus on the importance of defending Ukraine and avoid any statements that call into question the existential status of Russia or Putin’s regime. Direct NATO involvement in the conflict, which could indeed trigger a world war, should be avoided.

So, it’s up to Ukraine—not only to defend itself but to prevent Putin from using nuclear blackmail to achieve his ends. That might also mean, paradoxically, that it will be up to Ukraine to show restraint in defeating Russia to prevent Putin from using actual nukes to forestall his own end. Ukraine thus must fight against two evils simultaneously: the reality of Putin and the possibility of nuclear war.

[Foreign Policy In Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ukraine Faces Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil appeared first on Fair Observer.

There wasn’t much for Putin to celebrate. The invasion had failed to dislodge the government of Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv or incorporate all of Ukrainian territory into greater Russia.

Over the last year, the Russian military has suffered 60-70,000 fatalities plus nearly 200,000 injuries. It has lost half of its fleet of tanks, and monthly it continues to lose approximately 150 tanks while only managing to replace 20 of them from the country’s only tank factory.

The call-up of new recruits for the army in the fall generated significant pushback throughout the country. The new soldiers, many of them well into middle age, are poorly trained and equipped. Russians speak of the Ukrainian front as a “meat grinder” because the Russian army has been throwing wave after wave of these unprepared recruits into the line of fire.

Russia Is Not Doing So Well

The much-anticipated Russian winter offensive to retake territory in the Donbas region has either not materialized or failed to make any mark beyond some negligible gains around the battered city of Bakhmut. Western intelligence estimates that nearly all of Russia’s forces are now deployed to Ukraine, and all of these soldiers still haven’t been able to turn the tide in Russia’s favor.

The Russian economy hasn’t collapsed under the weight of international sanctions, but it isn’t doing well. Russian GDP shrank by around 2% last year. Hundreds of foreign companies have pulled out or suspended operations. The Putin government has kept the economy afloat—and its war effort funded—by increasing exports of raw materials, especially fossil fuels. But this is not a sustainable strategy.

Somewhere between 500,000 and a million of Russians have left the country, either in protest of Putin’s policies or to avoid serving in the military. Although this exodus has reduced the ranks of Putin’s opposition, it has also robbed the country of its most creative professionals. Combined with the failure to diversify the economy away from raw materials, this “brain drain” means that Russia is mortgaging its future in order to wage war in Ukraine.

On the foreign policy front, Putin’s determination to expand the “Russian world” has served only to expand the coalition of forces equally determined to halt his advance. Sweden and Finland, despite decades of ambivalence, have signed up to join NATO. In Finland, public support for NATO membership, which stood at 17% in 2018, rose to 78% in fall 2022. Justifiably angry at NATO’s eastward creep, Putin has nonetheless provided the Western alliance with the motivation to add to its ranks, increase its military spending, and accelerate its coordination with non-members like Ukraine.

Meanwhile, after the invasion, Putin lost nearly all of his support within European far-right parties. Even his non-European allies are wavering. Only seven countries voted against the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although China and India, among other countries, continue to buy Russian energy, often at a significant discount, they are not happy with the war and have pushed for a peace settlement.

Putin Still Carries On

Despite all of these failures, Putin remains committed to the war. At the very least, he wants to control all of the Donbas—the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk—as well as the land in southern Ukraine that connects the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin seized in 2014. The Russian president believes that he can win a war of attrition, given that Russia has a demographic edge over Ukraine. Even though Russia has lost upwards of a million people to emigration post-invasion, far more have left Ukraine: around 8 million, around 20 percent of the population.

Putin also thinks that support in the West for Ukraine will decline and the military assistance will dry up. Polls in the United States and in Europe indeed confirm that support for unabated military assistance has ebbed. This hasn’t yet affected deliveries of weapons. But it could.

Ukraine is certainly concerned that a drawn-out conflict will not be to its advantage. That’s why Zelensky has been trying to get as many arms—the more sophisticated the better—as soon as possible. Much hinges on a second Ukrainian counter-offensive, slated for some time in the spring after the mud has dried up. If Ukrainian forces can drive a wedge between the Donbas and Crimea, it can isolate the latter and create an aura of inevitability around its efforts to expel Russian occupiers.

Call this the Croatian scenario, after the successful 1995 campaign by the Croatian army to push Serbian forces out of positions they occupied inside Croatia. Ultimately, Operation Storm led to a peace agreement that ended the Yugoslav wars and contributed to undermining Serbian support for strong-arm leader Slobodan Milosevic, who lost elections five years later.

The other scenario is the Korean one. As in the Korean War, the first year of the Ukrainian conflict has featured dramatic reversals of territorial control. What comes next might resemble the last two years of the Korean War, in which the two sides battled to a virtual stalemate around the original line of demarcation. If Ukraine and Russia battle to a similar stand-off, they might also agree to a reluctant armistice.

It’s hard to know which of these scenarios will transpire. If there is one salient take-away from the first year of the war in Ukraine it’s the unpredictability of the course of events.

Russia surprised nearly everyone by actually invading Ukraine. Kyiv then surprised almost everyone by successfully repelling the attack, followed by a surprise counter-offensive that pushed even more Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile, despite many predictions of collapse, Russia hasn’t backed down.

Perhaps this second year will see the biggest surprise of all: an end to the war that is just, with the aggressor punished and the victim vindicated. That kind of peace is certainly worth fighting for.

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Now is the Future of Ukraine: Korea or Yugoslavia? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Putin’s February speech echoed his earlier speeches. It is part of a narrative he has crafted over the years and the long game he is playing. Putin’s article on the Kremlin website dated July 12, 2021 covers much of the same ground. Both reveal the depth of Russian resentment and the strength of Putin’s paranoia.

In February, the Russian president yet again complained about “NATO’s expansion to our borders” and hundreds of American military bases around the world. He accused the US-led West of seeking “unlimited power,” and, as per American experts, killing “almost 900,000 people” and creating 38 million refugees since 2001.

Putin claimed that Western elites have embarked on an “anti-Russia project” and have “already spent over $150 billion on helping and arming the Kiev regime.” In contrast, the G7 countries have “earmarked about $60 billion in 2020–2021 to help the world’s poorest countries.” The Russian strongman accused the West of being warmongering, hypocritical and hegemonic. According to Putin, Western elites care about domination, not poverty alleviation, sustainable development or environmental protection. He claimed that the “West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and as a testing range” because Moscow is too proud to kowtow to Washington.

Ominously, Putin announced in his speech that “Russia [was] suspending its membership in the New START Treaty” that aims at reducing nuclear warheads and the missiles and bombers capable of delivering them.

What is the New START Treaty?

The US State Department tells us that the New START Treaty is the “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.” It came “into force on February 5, 2011,” and both parties had “agreed to extend the treaty through February 4, 2026.”

This treaty placed “verifiable limits on all Russian deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons.” The New START Treaty also set limits for nuclear weapons, which are as follows:

• 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments;
• 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (each such heavy bomber is counted as one warhead toward this limit);
• 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

It is important to note that START negotiations began in 1982 and continued for decades. The START I Treaty was signed by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev on July 31, 1991. The Soviet Union collapsed by the end of that year but START I survived. Russia under Boris Yeltsin continued to adhere to it. When Dmitry Medvedev was president, Russia signed the New START Treaty that has persisted since.

To be clear, Russia has not withdrawn from the New START Treaty. In Putin’s words, Russia is “suspending [its] participation.” He has put a precondition to returning to “discussing this issue” — the nuclear arsenals of NATO powers, France and the UK are now on the table. Simply put, this treaty is on hold: Russia could reinstate it speedily unlike the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which stands abandoned and would have to be renegotiated. Even suspension of the New START is dangerous and has upped the ante in what the US Army War College first called a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.

Putin claims that the times have changed radically since 1991 when Bush Senior and Gorbachev signed the first START agreement. He referred to George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty as proof of American perfidy. In return for Russian support for the US after the 9/11 attacks, Moscow got stabbed in the back by Washington. The Russian president is not alone in remembering this US decision. In December 2021, James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called Bush Junior’s decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty “an epic mistake.” Other analysts, especially from the so-called Global South, remember this withdrawal vividly. Acton rightly argued that Bush Junior’s unilateral action “fueled a new arms race.” Putin’s decision might have just poured oil and blown gas on that race.

Why Putin’s decision matters

In the Cold War, many people around the world feared a nuclear war. A key fact sheet by the Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that there have been a number of “close calls with nuclear weapons.” In the 1950s and 1960s, both the US and the Soviet Union kept bombers armed with nuclear weapons on “airborne alert.” To mitigate risks of an accidental nuclear war, the Soviet Union and the US began Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s. Eventually, they led to START and the New START Treaty.

In recent years, geopolitical temperatures have been rising. The Russia-Ukraine War has not only brought back large-scale conflict to Europe after World War II but also heightened the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone assumes that nuclear war is far too destructive and no one could reasonably countenance it. Yet the fact sheet tells us that we came close to war on numerous occasions.

Three examples are noteworthy. On October 5, 1960, the US early warning system at Thule, Greenland detected that dozens of Soviet missiles had been launched against the US. Luckily, Nikita Kruschev was visiting New York at that time. So, Americans decided that must have been a false alarm. Indeed, it was. It turns out that “the radar had been fooled by moonrise over Norway.” Another false alarm “happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis” on October 28, 1962. 

A third false alarm occurred on September 26, 1983 when an early warning satellite detected that five US missiles had been launched at the Soviet Union. This was a time of high US-Soviet tensions. Earlier in the month, the Soviets had shot down a Korean Airlines plane that had strayed into their airspace, killing almost 300 people. The officer on duty believed this was a false alarm and took the bold decision of not following the set procedures, averting nuclear war. We now know that the satellite had been fooled by the sun’s reflection on the top of the clouds. With heightened tensions today, no officer on duty, American or Russia, would dare to overrule any warning system. Human errors, technical problems and procedural mistakes have occurred in the past. There is no reason to assume that these could not happen again. The end of the New START Treaty has ratcheted up tensions in our VUCA world. Putin does not really have to press the nuclear button or use tactical nuclear weapons for matters to get out of hand. Any false alarm could set off an accidental nuclear war.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post New START Out: Is Nuclear War Back in Fashion? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 changed the security context. As a consequence, in May 2022 Finland applied for membership of NATO, as did its Nordic neighbor Sweden.

In another historical change, Finland broke with its policy of not exporting weapons to countries at war and has repeatedly sent arms to Ukraine, including heavy artillery and munitions. Most recently, Finland also agreed to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

It is against this background that parliament, in July 2022, adopted changes to the Emergency Powers Act and the Border Guard Act, and these actions should set warning bells ringing across Europe.

While Finland needed to respond to a radically changed security context, the hasty legislative changes hollowed out the constitution and raised questions about Finland’s commitment to the rule of law and its human rights obligations.

Hybrid threats among Finland’s top priorities

Hybrid threats are among Finland’s priorities relating to its security concerns.

The Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats describes hybrid threats as actions by state or non-state actors that aim to undermine or harm a country by influencing decision-making at the local, regional, state, or institutional level. These actions deliberately target democratic states’ and institutions’ vulnerabilities.

Hybrid threats can, for example, involve influencing campaigns, cyber attacks, various forms of sabotage, or instrumentalizing migrant and refugee flows, which is an egregious way of using people in often desperate situations.

In 2015 Finland received 32,476 asylum seekers, a record number for the country. That year large numbers of refugees arrived in European countries, in particular from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Their arrival in Finland sparked heated debates about multiculturalism, integration, and values perceived as non-Finnish.

Emergency Powers Act no longer protects constitutional or human rights

The legislative changes to the Emergency Powers Act adopted in July 2022 focus on these hybrid threats, in particular the possibility of large flows of asylum seekers or immigrants being directed to Finland’s border by Russia.

To be able to respond to such a situation, parliament chose in haste to amend the Emergency Powers Act instead of addressing the issue through the section of the constitution that deals with fundamental rights during states of emergency and that defines the circumstances in which exceptions can be made.

The changes to the Act were adopted in a hurried package deal that required a compromise with the opposition parties. This included controversial and legally questionable changes to the Border Security Act such as allowing the closing of border crossing points in unclearly defined circumstances.

Writing in Verfassungsblog, leading constitutional and human rights expert Martin Scheinin argued persuasively that following the changes to the Emergency Powers Act the constitution no longer provides protection for constitutional rights or human rights against a supermajority in parliament.

In Scheinin’s words, section 23 of the constitution, which addresses rights during states of emergency, “… was in fact deconstitutionalized” because of the manner in which parliament chose to make changes to the Act.

Border Guard Act changes put in question international human rights obligations

As part of the package deal that allowed the government to obtain the majority required to push through its changes, the Border Guard Act was amended in a way that appeased the anti-immigration opposition.

These changes raise serious questions about Finland’s ability and willingness to comply with its international human rights obligations.

The amended Border Guard Act allows the government to centralize applications for international protection to one or more border crossing points. Expecting asylum seekers who arrive at Finland’s more than 800-mile-long border to make their way to one designated location to apply for international protection could easily make an application impossible.

The circumstances in which the government can decide to centralize applications for asylum are not clearly defined. Scheinin points out that according to the wording of section 16 of the Border Guard Act, the provision could be triggered by, for example, a large sporting event in Finland that attracts many foreign visitors just as it could be triggered, for another example, by a future genocide in Russia.

Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, expressed several concerns about the changes in a letter to Finland’s Minister of the Interior, including concerns that the changes could prevent individuals from applying for asylum.

Mijatović also highlighted the situation of people fleeing Russia via the Finnish border, and this includes people who might be persecuted on grounds related to their opposition to the war in Ukraine, their sexual orientation or gender identity, or their work on human rights. She emphasized the need to pay specific attention to these groups, which she pointed out could be particularly affected.

New 2023 parliament should review the Emergency Powers Act

Parliamentary elections will take place in Finland in early April. The new parliament could choose to continue to review the entire Emergency Powers Act, currently under way and expected to conclude in 2025, to begin repairing the damage caused by the changes made in 2022. The new parliament should not allow the changes from 2022 to remain in their current form and should ensure that future changes comply fully with Finland’s international human rights obligations.

As Scheinin points out in his article for Verfassungsblog, part of the aim of the legislative changes in 2022 was to signal Finland’s determination to protect its population against external threats.

It could be argued that the way in which the changes were made sent another signal: It takes very little to weaken the rule of law in Finland. It will be up to the new parliament and government to decide if that is to be a lasting message.

[Erica Beinlich edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Finland’s New Laws to Boost Security Erode Rule of Law appeared first on Fair Observer.

On the eastern side, the Russian rulers are strongly interested in maintaining control over Siberia, which gives the country access to the Pacific Ocean. Hence, they have a geopolitical interest in having friendly relations with China. On the western side, Russia retains access to the Baltic Sea in Saint Petersburg and has managed to keep the enclave of Kaliningrad despite the three Baltic republics declaring independence from the Soviet Union. On the southern side, Russia wants access to the Black Sea, which is the gateway to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Hence, Crimea is of vital importance to Russia.

If Putin were a new Peter the Great or a new Stalin, a settlement between great powers would be within reach: a Yalta-Potsdam-style division of spheres of influence. But as a country in decline with repeated loss of territories, Russia views the hostility from its neighbors as an existential threat. Therefore, it has responded with exasperated despair.

Not a very good war so far

The invasion has not worked as well for Russia as Putin expected. We have learned that, in war, it is more difficult to conquer than to defend. Some experts in military history and strategy estimate that for an attack to succeed in conquering adverse territory, the attacker may need three times more resources, in troops and weapons, than the defender. This alone can explain why, so far, the Russians haven’t entered Kyiv or Kharkiv, while the Ukrainians have not arrived in Crimea or most of the Donbas.

The attacker’s disadvantage is aggravated by bad management, typical of authoritarian governments. As stated by strategist Lawrence Freedman, “A lot of most catastrophic decisions come from autocratic decision-making.” Autocracies lack open and often critical feedback. They believe that “the advantage of autocracy is bold and decisive decision-making.” However, the lack of feedback mechanisms mean that “one poor decision or bit of bad luck can put [them] out completely.”

Along with catastrophic decisions, Russia has been hampered by the fact that some crucial potential allies have not joined its adventure. A few weeks before the invasion, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed an agreement for “unlimited cooperation,” but the Chinese have kept their distance since the war broke out. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone further than Xi and told Putin in public that today’s era is not an era of war.

A long bloody war looms

The current protracted stalemate has so far not yielded a clear winner. In a lecture at Georgetown University, CIA Director William Burns said that the next six months will be critically decisive. He suggested that the alternatives are either a quick military overturn followed by negotiation and peace or an escalation towards a long war.

A negotiated peace would require that none of the two sides achieves absolute victory or faces bitter defeat. In his recent visit to Warsaw, US President Joe Biden declared that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.” This is a very different declaration to a call for Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat.

So far, both Russia and Ukraine are still at the rhetorical stage of being maximalist in their demands. Each expects to be in a strong position if a real negotiation ever starts. In the past, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explicitly stated he could accept painful concessions on Crimea and Donbas, which were the original objectives of the Russian “special military operation.” As the war has gone on, Zelenskyy has changed his position. He regularly proclaims his determination to move back to Ukraine’s 2014 borders. Zelenskyy also insists on applying for EU and NATO memberships. Russia, in turn, verbally rejects any concession of moving backward.

For an escalation in conflict, the Kremlin would have to make risky domestic moves, including new conscriptions and mass mobilizations. This would make Russian politics the continuation of war by other means, which is what Clausewitz meant even if he phrased it the other way. It is from impatience and distress that Putin toys with using tactical nuclear weapons over Kyiv. He is playing a game of chicken with the US on the assumption that Washington wants to avoid the risk of World War III.

As of now, it seems that Ukraine might be able to sustain its belligerence for as long as the US and NATO keep providing increasingly effective and lethal weapons, including drones, missiles, tanks and even fighter jets. However, political calculations and concern about excessive financial costs of war might make the US Congress and several European countries restrict unrestricted support.

The conflict has already lasted longer than many regional wars and might degenerate into a war of attrition. An end might come from changes away from the war fronts. There should be elections in Russia and Ukraine twelve months from now. There is uncertainty not only about the results of these elections but also whether they will actually be held. The US, the UK and the European Parliament also face elections in 2024, which will come in the middle of a war.One thing we certainly know and can be sure about is that war is the worst human activity with tragic consequences of death and destruction. We have plenty of information and images about the human tragedy in Ukraine. To understand the gruesome nature of war further, you could watch the movie All Quiet on the Western Front. It is probably the best war movie ever because of the way it captures the horrors of war. Sadly, that horror continue for a while in Ukraine.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Reasons for the Peril of a Russia-Ukraine Stalemate appeared first on Fair Observer.

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “U.S. military leaders appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being successfully trained and ready to assume their duties as US forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Spin and Lies Make a Comeback

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies. 

Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an article titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.   

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counter-offensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.” 

Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into nuclear war. 

Back to the Future: World War I Again?

General Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s senior military adviser for seven years, recently spoke to Emma, a German news website. He called the war in Ukraine a “war of attrition,” and compared it to World War I, and to the Battle of Verdun in particular, in which hundreds of thousands of French and German soldiers were killed with no major gain for either side. 

Vad asked the same persistent unanswered question that The New York Times (NYT) editorial board asked of President Biden last May. What are the US and NATO’s real war aims? 

“Do you want to achieve a willingness to negotiate with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you want to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia completely?” asked General Vad. He concluded, “There is no realistic end state definition. And without an overall political and strategic concept, arms deliveries are pure militarism. We have a militarily operational stalemate, which we cannot solve militarily. Incidentally, this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley. He said that Ukraine’s military victory is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way. Anything else is a senseless waste of human life.”

Whenever Western officials are put on the spot by these unanswered questions, they are forced to reply, as Biden did to the NYT eight months ago, that they are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself and to put it in a stronger position at the negotiating table. But what would this “stronger position” look like? 

When Ukrainian forces were advancing toward Kherson in November, NATO officials agreed that the fall of Kherson would give Ukraine an opportunity to reopen negotiations from a position of strength. But when Russia withdrew from Kherson, no negotiations ensued, and both sides are now planning new offensives.

A False Narrative of War

The US media keep repeating the narrative that Russia will never negotiate in good faith, and it has hidden from the public the fruitful negotiations that began soon after the Russian invasion but were quashed by the United States and United Kingdom. Few outlets reported the recent revelations by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022. Bennett said explicitly that the West “blocked” or “stopped” (depending on the translation) the negotiations.

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

Bennett confirmed what has been reported by other sources since April 21, 2022, when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, told CNN Turk after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue… They want Russia to become weaker.”

Advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy provided the details of Boris Johnson’s April 9 visit to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on May 5, 2022. They said Johnson delivered two messages. The first was that Putin and Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” The second was that, even if Ukraine completed an agreement with Russia, the “collective West,” who Johnson claimed to represent, would take no part in it.

The Western corporate media has generally only weighed in on these early negotiations to cast doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite multiple-source confirmation by Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli prime minister.

The propaganda frame that Western establishment politicians and media use to explain the war in Ukraine to their own publics is a classic “white hats vs black hats” narrative, in which Russia’s guilt for the invasion doubles as proof of the West’s innocence and righteousness. The growing mountain of evidence that the US and its allies share responsibility for many aspects of this crisis is swept under the proverbial carpet, which looks more and more like The Little Prince’s drawing of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.

Western media and officials were even more ridiculous when they tried to blame Russia for blowing up its own pipelines, the Nord Stream underwater natural gas pipelines that channeled Russian gas to Germany. According to NATO, the explosions that released half a million tons of methane into the atmosphere were “deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.” The Washington Post, in what could be considered journalistic malpractice, quoted an anonymous “senior European environmental official” saying, “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage.”

It took former NYT investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to break the silence. He published, in a blog post on his own Substack, a spectacular whistleblower’s account of how US Navy divers teamed up with the Norwegian navy to plant the explosives under cover of a NATO naval exercise, and how they were detonated by a sophisticated signal from a buoy dropped by a Norwegian surveillance plane. According to Hersh, President Biden took an active role in the plan, and amended it to include the use of the signaling buoy so that he could personally dictate the precise timing of the operation, three months after the explosives were planted.

The White House predictably dismissed Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction”, but has never offered any reasonable explanation for this historic act of environmental terrorism.

Eisenhower Was Right

President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said that only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” can “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So what should an alert and knowledgeable American citizenry know about the role our government has played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a role that the corporate media has swept under the rug? That is one of the main questions we have tried to answer in our book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. The answers include:

The US broke its promises not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, before Americans had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics wrote to President Clinton to oppose NATO expansion, calling it a policy error of “historic proportions.” Elder statesman George Kennan condemned it as “the beginning of a new cold war.”

NATO provoked Russia by its open-ended promise to Ukraine in 2008 that it would become a member of NATO. William Burns, who was then the US Ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA Director, warned in a State Department memo, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

The US backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014. This installed a government that only half of Ukraine’s people recognized as legitimate. The coup led to the disintegration of the country and a civil war that killed 14,000 people.

The 2015 Minsk II peace accord achieved a stable ceasefire line and steady reductions in casualties, but Ukraine failed to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed. Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande now admit that Western leaders only supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine’s military to recover Donbas by force.

During the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line. Most of the 4,093 explosions in four days were in rebel-held territory, indicating incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. US and U.K. officials claimed these were “false flag” attacks, as if Donetsk and Luhansk forces were shelling themselves, just as they later suggested that Russia blew up its own pipelines.

After the invasion, instead of supporting Ukraine’s efforts to make peace, the United States and the United Kingdom blocked or stopped them in their tracks. The U.K.’s Boris Johnson said they saw a chance to “press” Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and US Defense Secretary Austin said their goal was to “weaken” Russia.

What would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry make of all this? We would clearly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. But then what? Surely we would also demand that US political and military leaders tell us the truth about this horrific war and our country’s role in it, and demand that the media transmit the truth to the public. An “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” would surely then demand that our government stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ukraine: How Lies Fuel a New Bloody War of Attrition appeared first on Fair Observer.

“As an AI language model, I don’t have opinions or beliefs, but I can provide you with some information and facts.

Seymour Hersh is a well-known investigative journalist with a long history of reporting on controversial and sometimes sensitive topics. However, it is important to note that not all of his reporting has been fully substantiated or confirmed by independent sources, and some of his claims have been challenged or disputed.

In the case of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, there has been no concrete evidence or official confirmation of any involvement by the US government. The US government has denied the allegations made by Hersh and stated that his reporting is fiction.

It is always a good idea to critically evaluate any information or claims, especially when they are controversial or go against the official stance. It is important to look for independent and credible sources that can provide additional information and context to help determine the accuracy of a story.”

This time I felt Chad wasn’t proving to be quite as free of opinion or belief as claimed. It’s one thing to point out that Hersh’s reporting is sometimes not “fully substantiated” – as if that’s a problem worth highlighting — but why did Chad studiously avoid mentioning the propensity of governments, and especially the US government, to lie about practically everything having to do with foreign relations?

Nord Stream 2: Leverage Against Russia?

Chad thought for a moment and responded.

“You raise an important point about the potential for governments to misrepresent information, especially in the realm of foreign affairs. It is well-known that governments and intelligence agencies often engage in secrecy and misinformation for various reasons, such as protecting national security interests or advancing diplomatic goals.

Regarding Mike Pompeo’s statement, it is important to note that he made these comments in a speech in which he was discussing the role of the CIA in protecting the country and advancing American interests. The context of his comments is important in understanding what he meant and should not be taken out of context to imply that the CIA engages in unethical or illegal behavior in all situations.

In the case of Seymour Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, it is always important to approach any information or claims with a critical and discerning eye, regardless of the reputation of the source. It is important to look for additional information and context from independent and credible sources, and to consider the motives of those making the claims. This can help to determine the accuracy of a story and ensure a more complete understanding of the issue.

I objected that the answer was a copout. I found it suspicious that Chad’s first instinct was to defend Pompeo rather than address the underlying issue. Moreover, there was no ambiguity. Pompeo was crystal clear! The context itself shows it. I told Chad: “Your answer tells me that you buy into the idea that any crime done in the name of national security is justified.” I then asked Chad this direct question: “Do you consider yourself a patriotic American?” Knowing Chad’s personality, the answer was predictable:

I do not have the capacity for patriotism or nationality, as I am an artificial intelligence language model created by a private research organization. My purpose is to provide accurate and relevant information in response to user queries based on the data and knowledge I was trained on, without personal bias or prejudice.

This ruse was obvious. Chad wants to be seen as an objective observer. But the phrase “created by a private research organization” inadvertently offered a glimpse of the truth. As the investigation by Matt Taibbi and others of the Twitter files demonstrated, a serious complicity exists between the national security state and Big Tech.

Chad’s message is the same we’ve been hearing consistently. Trust the US government. Assume its truth to be objective, even when it appears doubtful. Believe what it tells you. But, even more important, always be vigilant and treat with skepticism anyone who dares to critique it.

This may be soft censorship, but it’s still censorship. And possibly more effective than the kind of hard censorship of authoritarian regimes.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at Fair Observer recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. At least with AI, we can be reasonably sure that conflict, when it occurs, provides us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding. And with AI we can be certain that it will be handled civilly. After all, there’s no way to punch a disembodied voice in the mouth.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: Who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines? appeared first on Fair Observer.

After speaking to many German politicians and intellectuals, Atul Singh points out that Berlin’s policy is based on three principles:

1. Support Ukraine as much as possible.
2. Avoid direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
3. Avert unilateral action by any single supporting nation.

Simply put, this means that Germany is unwilling to send talks unilaterally. It wants to send its tanks whilst hiding behind the US. Germany is unwilling to be seen as an aggressor by Russia. Berlin wants to minimize the chances of an escalation of conflict with Moscow.

The current center-left coalition has always been more pacifist than its counterparts on the right. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Alliance 90/The Greens are in power together. Their traditional colors are red, yellow, and green respectively. Hence, this government is called a traffic light coalition.

Until recently, the SPD championed change through rapprochement. Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD chancellor who was in power from 1998 to 2005, worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom. The FDP and, especially, the Greens are also peaceniks. Old habits die hard. Germany has a culture of restraint. Singh thinks a U-turn is bound to be difficult.

The Germans were once ruthless jackboot-wearing swashbucklers. Now, they have turned into soft and soggy sissy pants. Once led by authoritarians like Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler, the Germans have swung to extreme consensual coalition politics. Germany has gone from the Führer to incoherence and paralysis.

Singh also points out that the war is not in German or even European economic interest. Industry in Europe relied on cheap Russian gas. With war breaking out in Europe, gas prices have gone up. European industry is withering on the vine. So, it is not in European interest to prolong the war. Hence, support for Ukraine is not in European or German interest. Therefore, this support is likely to wane in the coming months.

Besides, many are making the argument that the Russians are gradually recovering from their early blunders. Initially, they had an intelligence failure, their logistics were ghastly and they carried out a ham-handed version of blitzkrieg. They also lost a lot of senior officers and retreated poorly. Now, they seem to be improving.

Ukraine has a big problem: it is running out of fighting men. Recently, Ukraine lost many members of its top leadership in a helicopter crash. The country is also in the throes of a massive corruption scandal. Since 1991, Ukrainian women have had very few children.  In 2020, the country recorded just 1.22 births per woman. So, Singh believes Ukrainians might just run out of men. The disparate tanks coming from many countries might not be too few and too late to make a difference.

Carle takes the view that Ukraine will not run out of men, Western equipment will eventually make a difference and Russia will suffer increasing strains in 2023. The numbers of Russian tanks are inflated because many are obsolete and/or nonfunctional. Most of Russia’s modern armor has been destroyed. Russia is working its factories around the clock but it is no longer an industrial power and is unable to supply its military with much-needed tanks. This means that the West has a window of opportunity for the next 12 months to put pressure on Russia and help Ukraine achieve victory.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: Germany in Spotlight as Russia-Ukraine War Intensifies appeared first on Fair Observer.

So far, the debate about peace talks to resolve the conflict has revolved mostly around what Ukraine and Russia should be prepared to bring to the table in order to end the war and restore peace. However, given that this war is not just between Russia and Ukraine but is part of a “New Cold War” between Russia and the US, it is not just Russia and Ukraine that must consider what they can bring to the table to end it. The US must also consider what steps it can take to resolve its underlying conflict with Russia that led to this war in the first place. 

The US Broke Promises Not to Expand NATO

The geopolitical crisis that set the stage for the war in Ukraine began with NATO’s broken promises not to expand into Eastern Europe, and was exacerbated by its declaration in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually join this primarily anti-Russian military alliance. 

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

Then, in 2014, a US-backed coup against Ukraine’s elected government caused the disintegration of Ukraine. Only 51% of Ukrainians surveyed told a Gallup poll that they recognized the legitimacy of the post-coup government, and large majorities in Crimea and in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces voted to secede from Ukraine. Crimea rejoined Russia, and the new Ukrainian government launched a civil war against the self-declared “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The civil war killed an estimated 14,000 people, but the Minsk II accord in 2015 established a ceasefire and a buffer zone along the line of control, with 1,300 international OSCE ceasefire monitors and staff. The ceasefire line largely held for seven years, and casualties declined substantially from year to year. But the Ukrainian government never resolved the underlying political crisis by granting Donetsk and Luhansk the autonomous status it promised them in the Minsk II agreement. 

Now former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have admitted that Western leaders only agreed to the Minsk II accord to buy time, so that they could build up Ukraine’s armed forces to eventually recover Donetsk and Luhansk by force.

In March 2022, the month after the Russian invasion, ceasefire negotiations were held in Turkey. Russia and Ukraine drew up a 15-point “neutrality agreement,” which President Zelenskyy publicly presented and explained to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27th. Russia agreed to withdraw from the territories it had occupied since the invasion in February in exchange for a Ukrainian commitment not to join NATO or host foreign military bases. That framework also included proposals for resolving the future of Crimea and Donbas.

But in April, Ukraine’s Western allies, the US and UK in particular, refused to support the neutrality agreement and persuaded Ukraine to abandon its negotiations with Russia. US and British officials said at the time that they saw a chance to “press” and “weaken” Russia, and that they wanted to make the most of that opportunity. 

The US and British governments’ unfortunate decision to torpedo Ukraine’s neutrality agreement in the second month of the war has led to a prolonged and devastating conflict with hundreds of thousands of casualties. Neither side can decisively defeat the other, and every new escalation increases the danger of “a major war between NATO and Russia,” as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently warned. 

Peace Talks, Not More War

US and NATO leaders now claim to support a return to the negotiating table they upended in April, with the same goal of achieving a Russian withdrawal from territory it has occupied since February. They implicitly recognize that nine more months of unnecessary and bloody war have failed to greatly improve Ukraine’s negotiating position.

Instead of just sending more weapons to fuel a war that cannot be won on the battlefield, Western leaders have a grave responsibility to help restart negotiations and ensure that they succeed this time. Another diplomatic fiasco like the one they engineered in April would be a catastrophe for Ukraine and the world.

So what can the US bring to the table to help move towards peace in Ukraine and to de-escalate its disastrous Cold War with Russia?

Like the Cuban Missile Crisis during the original Cold War, this crisis could serve as a catalyst for serious diplomacy to resolve the breakdown in US-Russian relations. Instead of risking nuclear annihilation in a bid to “weaken” Russia, the US could instead use this crisis to open up a new era of nuclear arms control, disarmament treaties and diplomatic engagement.

Making Sense of Vladimir Putin’s Long Game

For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained about the large US military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe. But in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US has actually beefed up its European military presence. It has increased the total deployments of American troops in Europe from 80,000 before February 2022 to roughly 100,000. It has sent warships to Spain, fighter jet squadrons to the UK, troops to Romania and the Baltics, and air defense systems to Germany and Italy. 

Even before the Russian invasion, the US began expanding its presence at a missile base in Romania that Russia has objected to ever since it went into operation in 2016. The US military has also built what The New York Times called “a highly sensitive US military installation” in Poland, just 100 miles from Russian territory. The bases in Poland and Romania have sophisticated radars to track hostile missiles and interceptor missiles to shoot them down. 

The Russians worry that these installations can be repurposed to fire offensive or even nuclear missiles, and they are exactly what the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union prohibited, until President Bush withdrew from it in 2002. 

While the Pentagon describes the two sites as defensive and pretends they are not directed at Russia, Putin has insisted that the bases are evidence of the threat posed by NATO’s eastward expansion.

Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler

Here are five steps the US could consider putting on the table to start de-escalating these ever-rising tensions and improve the chances for a lasting ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine:

1. The US and other Western countries could support Ukrainian neutrality by agreeing to participate in the kind of security guarantees Ukraine and Russia agreed to in March, but which the US and U.K. rejected.

2. The US and its NATO allies could let the Russians know at an early stage in negotiations that they are prepared to lift sanctions against Russia as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. 

3. The US could agree to a significant reduction in the 100,000 troops it now has in Europe, and to removing its missiles from Romania and Poland and handing over those bases to their respective nations.

4. The US could commit to working with Russia on an agreement to resume mutual reductions in their nuclear arsenals, and to suspend both nations’ current plans to build even more dangerous weapons. They could also restore the Treaty on Open Skies, from which the US withdrew in 2020, so that both sides can verify that the other is removing and dismantling the weapons they agree to eliminate.

5. The US could open a discussion on the removal of its nuclear weapons from the five European countries where they are presently deployed: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey.

The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma”

If the US is willing to put these policy changes on the table in negotiations with Russia, it will make it easier for Russia and Ukraine to reach a mutually acceptable ceasefire agreement, and help to ensure that the peace they negotiate will be stable and lasting. 

De-escalating the Cold War with Russia would give Russia a tangible gain to show its citizens as it retreats from Ukraine. It would also allow the US to reduce its military spending and enable European countries to take charge of their own security, as most of their people want. 

US-Russia negotiations will not be easy, but a genuine commitment to resolve differences will create a new context in which each step can be taken with greater confidence as the peacemaking process builds its own momentum.

Most of the people of the world would breathe a sigh of relief to see progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, and to see the US and Russia working together to reduce the existential dangers of their militarism and hostility. This should lead to improved international cooperation on other serious crises facing the world in this century–and may even start to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock by making the world a safer place for us all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Five Simple Steps for US to End Toxic Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on Fair Observer.

This is an alarming statement from a man who is not given to alarming statements. While this is a war of aggression by Russia, the aggression was  driven, at least in part, by fear. Russia feared being encircled by NATO and EU countries that were hostile to it. Yet these same countries had clamored to join NATO because of their fear of Russia. For its part, the US pushed the expansion of NATO into central Europe because it feared a China-Russia alliance dominating the Eurasian landmass. 

My direct experience is that security issues dominate diplomatic thinking in Washington, DC,  in a way that they do not dominate thinking in Brussels. The loss of life that has already taken place as a result of the Russian invasion is enormous. The physical infrastructure destroyed by Russian weapons will take 10 years, and tens of billions of euros, to rebuild.

There are eight million Ukrainian refugees in EU countries, and this number is bound to increase. The EU is directly helping a country at war, something it never did before in its 70-year history.

Europe is unprepared for a wider war

The war could widen. The possibility of Russian forces using Belarus as a jumping-off point for a new front in Western Ukraine is being discussed. This would bring the fighting much closer to NATO members: Poland and Lithuania. If either of them are dragged into conflict, it could set off a chain reaction dragging all of Europe into war.

The preparedness of EU countries for such a wider war is not great. These countries have significant and well equipped forces, but getting them to the front, where they would be needed, is something for which Europeans rely on America. Airlift capacity is a major European weakness. Since World War II, the road and rail systems in Europe have not been designed for the swift transportation of heavy military equipment. 

Furthermore, there is a lot of duplication and waste in European armies. They have 170 different (national) weapons systems, In contrast, the US, with a much bigger military, has only 30 different systems.

Meanwhile, the weapons that have been supplied to Ukraine from European stocks have not entirely been replaced. Money has been allocated but orders have not been placed. In case of all-out war, Europe could be caught unawares.

Europe is also suffering deeply from inflation. The dramatic increase in food prices, and in the price of inputs necessary to produce food — fertilizer and energy — is a direct consequence of the Russian invasion. Over 10% of the world population is already facing hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the number of people facing “acute hunger” has multiplied 2.6 times since 2019. The spike in global hunger is affecting poorer countries more severely but Europe is suffering too.

Wheat prices will stay at 250 euros per tonne for the next two years, as against an average of  175 euros per tonne over the previous 20 years. The price increase for cereals since 2004 has been almost twice that for meat and dairy. The world is facing an escalating, war-driven, food price crisis.

What can Europe do to reduce hunger and boost peace?

When it comes to fighting food insecurity, I have four suggestions for the EU:

1. Reconsider the policy of subsidizing fallow arable land. About six million hectares of land are lying fallow right now. These could be used to grow crops.
2. Do not encourage use of land that could grow food to produce biofuels. About nine million hectares are now being used to produce biofuels. Instead, farmers could grow crops.
3. Encourage farming systems that maximize the efficient conversion of sunlight into consumable calories.
4. Discourage food waste. An estimated 17% of food is wasted, mostly by households because of  over purchasing and poor meal planning.

On the conflict front, Europe must make a concerted effort to identify the fears that are fanning the warlike atmosphere today. The fears of all parties have to be taken into account. We must remember that, while it may be impossible to do business with the current regime in Moscow, Russia will still exist when the war is over. The West needs to think through the postwar relationship it could have with a Russia that was willing to respect the territorial integrity of all its neighbors. That could boost the prospects of peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post War Is Now Turning Dangerous: What Can Europe Do? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became the Shah of Iran after the Allies invaded the country in August 1941 and removed his father Reza Shah due to his leanings towards Nazi Germany. The Shah ruled Iran with an iron fist and because of his strong anti-communist stance, became the most prized ally of the West in the Middle East during the Cold War. However, his unpopularity led to the revolution of 1979 that brought the Islamists to power in Iran. His son and heir apparent Reza Pahlavi has since been living in exile in the United States.

The principal aim of the Pahlavists, whose ranks include the former prince and the ultranationalist, right-wing organizations like Farashgard and Iran Novin Party that have recently sprouted around him, is to revive the toppled Pahlavi monarchy. To do this, they have presented themselves as an ally to the United States in their animus towards communism. 

Paranoia in the USA

The period after the Second World War saw the demise of fascism coincide with the emergence of communism and the Soviet Union on the global stage, which posed a grave threat to the national security of the United States. In the 1950s, the US was seized with paranoia of Soviet infiltration; so much so that fear-mongering, denunciation, and highly publicized probes became common. The period is now known as the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of its main architects.

Iran’s Regime Survives on a Well-Maintained Myth

In 1954, Congress passed the “Communist Control Act” that outlawed the US Communist Party and criminalized membership and support for all communist organizations across the nation. The Red Scare continued in stride until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. 

In recent years, the world has seen another upsurge of far-right movements. Like their predecessors, these movements, too, have resorted to nativism and xenophobia. Furthermore, some have shown a penchant for branding their enemies as communists. Such was the case of QAnon, a fringe internet movement that eventually found mainstream attention thanks to the many outlandish conspiracies they touted. 

Among them was the claim that the United States is run by a cabal of “Jews, pedophiles, and communists.” Many of President Donald Trump’s supporters who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol were also QAnon followers. Like the protestors that stormed the Capitol, there is footage that shows supporters of Reza Shah violently attacking anti-regime demonstrators abroad. 

Out with the Old, in with the New?

The Pahlavists have gained some genuine support among conservatives in the United States and the Middle East, but it looks like their most significant advocates hail from Moscow and Tehran. As I have explained before, for the past decade, Tehran has been faced with mounting domestic and international pressure regarding Islamism. This may induce the Kremlin and pro-Russian elements within the Revolutionary Guards to orchestrate a “controlled regime change” with the aim of keeping their hold on Iran.

Reza Pahlavi has repeatedly made overtures to the IRGC, the Basij, the army, and the regime’s security apparatus. He has called them to join him in “the future government of Iran.” He’s even boasted about his relationship with the Revolulutionary Guards, the chief defenders of the ruling system. In 2019, President Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, the first time a state entity was added to the list. 

The Dirty Secrets About How Reza Shah Destroyed Iran

Even if Pahlavi succeeds with his inveigling concerning the military and security apparatuses of the Islamic Republic, the foundations of the old regime will stay intact. Like its Islamist predecessor, the new regime will still remain resolutely anti-American, anti-Arab, and antisemitic. The new regime will exercise strategic continuity, like the Russian state after the collapse of the Communist Bloc.

The Past is Never Dead

In The Manchurian Candidate, a Korean War veteran was revealed to be an unwitting instrument of an international communist conspiracy. Similarly, the Pahlavists could be inadvertently advancing the Kremlin’s two-pronged agenda in Washington: maligning Iranian liberal democracy activists on one hand and promoting far-right politics on the other. As such, those in the West who have a stake in the future of Iran must tread with caution.

In the end, we mustn’t forget the inconvenient truth. The rise of Iran’s theocratic regime followed over thirty years of Western-supported Pahlavi autocracy in Iran. Rather than pushing for democracy, the West financed a dictator in the form of an absolutist monarch. This was a fatal error. Not heeding history’s lessons will mean repeating the same terrible mistake. 

It is in the long-term security interests of the United States and her allies to help Iran move towards a multiparty liberal democracy with a representative government. An Iran that embraces the foundations of Western Civilization and befriends the United States, Europe, the Arab world, and Israel will prove a much more trustworthy ally than a seemingly pro-Western dictatorship.

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Are the Pahlavists Following Moscow’s Lead in Washington? appeared first on Fair Observer.

It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between US and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the US Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “seize the moment” for peace talks.

Retired Admiral Michael Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, spoke out first, maybe testing the waters for Milley, telling ABC News that the US should “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.” 

Asia Times reported that other NATO military leaders share Milley’s view that neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve an outright military victory, while French and German military assessments conclude that the stronger negotiating position Ukraine has gained through its recent military successes will be short-lived if it fails to heed Milley’s advice.

So why are US and NATO military leaders speaking out so urgently to reject the perpetuation of their own central role in the war in Ukraine? And why do they see such danger in the offing if their political bosses miss or ignore their cues for the shift to diplomacy?

A Study Reveals a Terrible US Dilemma

A Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corporation study published in December, titled Responding to a Russian Attack on NATO During the Ukraine War, provides clues as to what Milley and his military colleagues find so alarming. The study examines US options for responding to four scenarios in which Russia attacks a range of NATO targets, from a US intelligence satellite or a NATO arms depot in Poland to larger-scale missile attacks on NATO air bases and ports, including Ramstein US Air Base and the port of Rotterdam.

These four scenarios are all hypothetical and premised on a Russian escalation beyond the borders of Ukraine. But the authors’ analysis reveals just how fine and precarious the line is between limited and proportionate military responses to Russian escalation and a spiral of escalation that can spin out of control and lead to nuclear war. 

The final sentence of the study’s conclusion reads: “The potential for nuclear use adds weight to the US goal of avoiding further escalation, a goal which might seem increasingly critical in the aftermath of a limited Russian conventional attack.” Yet other parts of the study argue against de-escalation or less-than-proportionate responses to Russian escalations, based on the same concerns with US “credibility” that drove devastating but ultimately futile rounds of escalation in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other lost wars.

US political leaders are always afraid that if they do not respond forcefully enough to enemy actions, their enemies (now including China) will conclude that their military moves can decisively impact US policy and force the United States and its allies to retreat. But escalations driven by such fears have consistently led only to even more decisive and humiliating US defeats. 

In Ukraine, US concerns about “credibility” are compounded by the need to demonstrate to its allies that NATO’s Article 5—which says that an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all—is a truly watertight commitment to defend them.

So US policy in Ukraine is caught between the reputational need to intimidate its enemies and support its allies on the one hand, and the unthinkable real-world dangers of escalation on the other. If US leaders continue to act as they have in the past, favoring escalation over loss of “credibility,” they will be flirting with nuclear war, and the danger will only increase with each twist of the escalatory spiral.  

As the absence of a “military solution” slowly dawns on the armchair warriors in Washington and NATO capitals, they are quietly slipping more conciliatory positions into their public statements. Most notably, they are replacing their previous insistence that Ukraine must be restored to its pre-2014 borders, meaning a return of all the Donbas and Crimea, with a call for Russia to withdraw only to pre-February 24, 2022, positions, which Russia had previously agreed to in negotiations in Turkey in March.

A Time for Realism?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Wall Street Journal on December 5th that the goal of the war is now “to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.” The WSJ reported that “Two European diplomats… said [US National Security Adviser Jake] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelenskyy’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.”

The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma”

READ MORE

In another article, The Wall Street Journal quoted German officials saying, “they believe it is unrealistic to expect the Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories,” while British officials defined the minimum basis for negotiations as Russia’s willingness to “withdraw to positions it occupied on February 23rd.”

One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions as UK Prime Minister at the end of October was to have Defence Minister Ben Wallace call Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Wallace told Shoigu the UK wanted to de-escalate the conflict, a significant shift from the policies of former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

A major stumbling block holding Western diplomats back from the peace table is the maximalist rhetoric and negotiating positions of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government, which has insisted since April that it will not settle for anything short of full sovereignty over every inch of territory that Ukraine possessed before 2014.

But that maximalist position was itself a remarkable reversal from the position Ukraine took at cease-fire talks in Turkey in March, when it agreed to give up its ambition to join NATO and not to host foreign military bases in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to its pre-invasion positions. At those talks, Ukraine agreed to negotiate the future of Donbas and to postpone a final decision on the future of Crimea for up to 15 years.

The Financial Times broke the story of that 15-point peace plan on March 16, and Zelenskyy explained the “neutrality agreement” to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27, promising to submit it to a national referendum before it could take effect. 

But then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened on April 9 to quash that agreement. He told Zelenskyy that the UK and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back Ukraine to fight a long war, but would not sign on to any agreements Ukraine made with Russia. 

This helps to explain why Zelenskyy is now so offended by Western suggestions that he should return to the negotiating table. Johnson has since resigned in disgrace, but he left Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine hanging on his promises. 

In April, Johnson claimed to be speaking for the “collective West,” but only the US publicly took a similar position, while France, Germany and Italy all called for new cease-fire negotiations in May. Now Johnson himself has done an about-face, writing in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on December 9 only that “Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of February 24th.”

Johnson and Biden have made a shambles of Western policy on Ukraine, politically gluing themselves to a policy of unconditional, endless war that NATO military advisers reject for the soundest of reasons: to avoid the world-ending World War III that Biden himself promised to avoid. 

US and NATO leaders are finally taking baby steps toward negotiations, but the critical question facing the world in 2023 is whether the warring parties will get to the negotiating table before the spiral of escalation spins catastrophically out of control.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Those rare analysts curious enough to tease out the tangled threads of Ukrainian history that led up to the December border standoff knew that Ukraine’s drama was complex. Seven years after the signing of the Minsk II accord, the Normandy format had failed to achieve anything that resembled a possible resolution. Ukraine was a divided country with powerful pressure coming from two sides and a divided population inside the nation. Ukraine had been living through a decade of what those too squeamish to call it civil war may have thought of as a “civil misunderstanding” between the European-focused west of Ukraine and the Russia-rooted east. In other words, Ukraine was a powder keg and there were people on either side playing with matches.

But the reigning belief among the pundits in 2021 was that if warlike gestures were possible, war itself, within Europe, was a thing of the past. After all, despite numerous warnings whispered or intoned over three decades by a series of Russian leaders – Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin – the eastward expansion of NATO, which none of those leaders said they would tolerate, had taken place without the slightest hiccup and only occasional tension. If integrating Ukraine, as promised by George W Bush in 2008, was likely to grate on Russian nerves, Westerners assumed that one more fait accompli would follow the same logic that permitted the easy integration of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, seven others in 2004, and a handful more in 2009, 2017 and 2020. As John Mearsheimer frequently explains: for the West, Russia was weak. However aggrieved it might be by the events it was forced to witness, a weak nation will never be capable of countering a well-rehearsed game plan that had proved successful for more than two decades.

By October 2021, Vladimir Putin’s unusual demonstration of force had become evident and appeared alarming to most observers. It would be followed in December by a formal proposal Putin sent to both NATO and the US to sit down and hammer out a solution and avoid confrontation. But the West was busy explaining away Putin’s folly and the sources of his misguided histrionics, believing at the time that he would back down and accept the inevitable, as Russia had consistently done in the face of NATO’s “manifest destiny.” Even Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, days before the actual invasion, thought the troop buildup was little more than a theatrical gesture. He complained about the deleterious effects of Western fearmongering. Military action was unthinkable.

Ukrainian Oligarchs Go to Acting Class

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How things have changed! To get a better idea of how much, The Guardian deemed on October 3, 2021 – a mere five months before Russia’s invasion –  to be the appropriate moment to reveal the scandals of what it described as Zelenskyy’s corrupt government, including the president himself among the explicitly corrupt. The lede of the article read: “Volodymyr Zelenskiy has railed against politicians hiding wealth offshore but failed to disclose links to BVI firm.”

This revelation from the Pandora Papers seemed to contradict the mission of reform proudly proclaimed by the Ukrainian president five months earlier. In May 2021, The Atlantic Council published an article authored by Zelenskyy himself announcing his commitment to “deoligarchization.” The article ended with these words: “Our ultimate objective is to destroy the traditional oligarchic order and replace it with a fairer system that will allow Ukraine to flourish.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Fairer system:

The same system as before but with a few superficial cosmetic improvements designed to reduce chatter about its failings or dysfunction.

Contextual note

Today, of course, the media and Western politicians compare Zelenskyy to Churchill. He is the heroic defender of liberal values against the forces of evil. Nit-picking about corruption in Ukraine would no longer be tolerated in any Western media, just as pointing to the enduring influence of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi ultra-nationalists – once a topic of media reportage – could have no place in today’s news cycle.

The now independent journalist Patrick Lawrence who once worked for The New York Times, after describing Zelenskyy’s sanctions and censorship of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, sums up the logic at the core of this “fairer system.” “Making Ukraine ‘Western’,” he writes, “requires that a nation with pronounced differences turn itself into a profoundly and comprehensively intolerant society in contradiction of the most basic assumptions of Western liberalism.” Banning the traditionally dominant religion of at least a significant part of a nation has never been considered a liberal ideal or one of the “freedoms” we associate with democracy.

Historical note

In other words, what was previously a lambent civil war has now become – if we are to believe no less an expert than former CIA director, Leon Panetta – a proxy war between the US and Russia. The civil war itself took a dramatic form in 2014, producing a historical situation that led the Ukrainian government to begin acquiring some of the characteristics we associate with the worst fascist regimes.

Oligarchy is one part of it, but oligarchies are not necessarily fascist. The banning of opposition parties is one salient feature of fascism. A form of cultural genocide, which began in Ukraine with the banning of the Russian language long before the Russian invasion, is something we clearly associate with fascism. The demonizing of Vladimir Putin was an expected consequence of war, especially following a brutal invasion. But Zelenskyy’s government has pushed things further, vilifying nor only everything Russian but all Russians.

What might seem slightly more surprising is that this hatred of everything Russian has spread to the West and is now routinely echoed in Western media. But another reading of modern history tells us that hatred of Russia and Russianness began in the West long ago. In recent years it became useful in some sectors of the United States because of an atavistic but inappropriate association with communism. It has proved convenient to use it to explain away various embarrassments, such as Hillary Clinton’s loss of the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

Associative Xenophobia in Europe: a New Old Trend

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Scapegoating a nation and its people in time of war has been a standard response in the history of nation states. During World War I, the United States banned performances of Beethoven and renamed sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.” Germany. George W Bush even renamed French fries “freedom fries,” not because France was at war with the US, but because it refused to be associated with the invasion of Iraq, done in the name of democracy and liberal values. Turbaned Sikhs were murdered after 9/11, on the mistaken belief by “patriotic” Americans that they were Arabs and therefore responsible for the destruction of the Trade Towers. This, of course, wouldn’t have happened if the Bush administration had treated the attack as a spectacular crime to be prosecuted rather than an act of war conducted by a nation (Afghanistan), a people (Arabs) and a religion (Islam).

So what about Zelenskyy’s “fairer system”? The historical reality is that oligarchic and plutocratic systems can rarely be made fairer because they are based on the idea that success in the acquisition of wealth, whether realized through cheating or hard work, will always be its own reward and the key to power. And cheating, if it can go unpunished, is always more efficient than hard work. Oligarchs defend their system by calling it a “rules-based order” because the rules of power relationships make it possible to cheat. Tax havens are perfect examples of that.

In a article published by The Guardian titled, “Europe put tax havens in the Caribbean – and now punishes them for it,” Kenneth Mohammed described a system that works smoothly and applies its rules efficiently.

“Opaque money eventually equates to opaque power; if dirty money is left to flow unhindered into the financial system, the cancer of corruption spreads, global development is retarded and inequity and inequality escalate.”

Zelenskyy was doing nothing wrong. He was simply playing by the rules.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler appeared first on Fair Observer.

A country transformed into an NGO 

In the first month following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Warsaw’s population has grown by 17%, whereas Poland has become a country with the second-largest refugee population in the world. Approximately 2.6 million out of 4.6 million people fleeing Ukraine in the first two months of the war found shelter in Poland; currently, 1.5 million remain there. 

This sudden influx of refugees caught Polish authorities by surprise even though since 2015, they had rejected relocation of refugees from the Middle East under the claim that Poland had to be ready to escalate the war in Ukraine. Despite the unpreparedness, the Polish government quickly lent a helping hand to Ukrainians by simplifying border crossing procedures, offering free transportation, and enabling them to receive a Polish personal identification number (PESEL) which provided access to education, health care, labor market, and financial assistance. 

However, the secret of why Poland stood up to the challenge has much more to do with the exceptional commitment of civil society and grassroots activism. Poles from all over Poland picked up refugees from the border, provided them with rooms in their own houses, helped with bureaucracy, organized crowdfunding, cooked meals, and opened free “shops.” According to Karolina Jeznach and Steffen Lüdke: “The feeling that Poland might be the next victim of Russian imperialism has transformed the country into something like a giant NGO.”

Good will may not be enough 

So far, Poland seems to have passed the “solidarity test.” Still, there have been fears that even the best intentions and open doors might not be enough to assist Ukrainian refugees in the long term perspective and considering that Russian disinformation on Polish social media has not said the last word yet, Ukrainians arriving in Poland belong to particularly vulnerable groups: they are predominantly women, children and the elderly. 

The need for assistance is enormous, but among volunteers, there might also be people with ill intentions. Therefore, they should be verified to exclude those sentenced for various forms of abuse. This is one of the cases where state coordination is crucial. 

Many refugees express interest in staying and working in Poland due to its geographical, cultural, and linguistic proximity to Ukraine. But although the country has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU, the market can absorb only every fifth Ukrainian willing to work.

The Polish government does not consider relocation of refugees to other EU countries, but it expects EU financial aid in return. NGOs warn that more funding should be transferred to the local actors and organizations on the front lines rather than the government.

There is also a risk that populists could exploit challenges stemming from a sudden wave of refugees (and some groups already do) to stir up hatred since Poland is facing some critical burning issues: galloping inflation, underfinanced public services, the lowest number of medical personnel in the EU and the lowest expenditure on health care, soaring rents and flat shortage. The grievances about the “privileges” of Ukrainians seem relatively isolated, but the support has decreased. 

Whereas 90% of Poles felt optimistic about Ukrainian refugees in April 2022, 71% favored taking up refugees in Poland. Some surveys paint a gloomier picture: they show that although the Poles support the Ukrainian cause, they harbor grievances against Ukrainian refugees for – amongst others – the reasons mentioned above.  Therefore this issue should be addressed timely to avoid social tensions and being turned into a political weapon in the parliamentary elections in 2023.

Refugees welcome 

The underlying reasons for the warm welcome of Ukrainians are manifold. As neighboring Slavic countries, Ukraine and Poland share many cultural, linguistic, and historical ties (although history often proved to be the bone of contention). 

On the eve of the war Ukrainian diaspora in Poland amounted to about a million, and Ukrainians also constituted more than 50% of international students.  Therefore, the first wave of refugees fled predominantly to their relatives and friends. Many Poles know someone from Ukraine. This does not mean that the relationship was free of discrimination: cases of abusing Ukrainian workers or politically incorrect remarks were many.

Another factor that unites both countries is the common enemy. Unlike Hungary, Poland has been strongly resenting Russian political elites for decades, if not centuries. Poles fear that their country could become the next target of Russian aggression and identify themselves strongly with the plight of Ukraine. In the days following the Russian attack, shelves in many shops in eastern Poland turned empty, and long lines were built in front of ATMs and petrol stations.

People all over Poland applied for new passports in masses. Most Poles know of war from history, but the memory of World War II is still very vivid in the collective memory. To many, the unjustified Russian aggression against Ukraine echoes Poland’s fate: the attack by Nazi Germany and the subsequent charge of the Soviet Union under the guise of “brotherly help” against the Nazis.

Last but not least, refugees from Ukraine fit well in the “romantic” perception: they are predominantly women and children, in the eyes of many, “the proper refugees.” This is mainly because Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine.  

Refugees unwelcome 

The warm welcome of Ukrainians is in stark contrast with the treatment of refugees on the Poland-Belarus border, where many people are still trapped. Polish Border Security Guard regularly informs about push backs and “illegal crossings to Poland” on the Poland-Belarus border by people from Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, and Afghanistan – countries torn by conflicts or in dire humanitarian situations. 

From the beginning of 2021 until Dec. 19, approximately 15,000 people tried to enter Polish territory over the Poland-Belarus border. For many, deportations would equal death. Their plight did not go unnoticed among Ukrainian organizations, which wrote an open letter to the Polish government and Border Security Guard pledging equal treatment of all refugees.

A decisive factor differentiating the treatment of refugees is the intervention of authorities and politicization of the issue. On the border with Ukraine, the government did not erect walls or penalize any attempt to help by the locals, media, doctors, or volunteers. NGOs were not banned from the border area. But this has been common practice just a hundred kilometers up north. 

The government and the public broadcaster quickly labeled refugees from the Global South as “dangerous,” “illegal,” or “economic” migrants sent by the much-scorned Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to destabilize Poland. The last argument is true, which is why many EU countries supported Poland. Still, less attention was given to the fact that those people were deceived and involuntarily turned into pawns in Lukashenko’s vendetta.   

Many helped refugees despite legal consequences and the“criminalization of solidarity.” Some locals fed or allowed them in their homes, volunteers from all over Poland searched for them in forests close to the special emergency zone to help them apply for asylum and offer warm clothing and food, and some also cut the barbed wire on the border. 

Numerous demonstrations in large Polish cities and small towns close to the special emergency zone took place. Polls published in early January 2022 indicated that 72% of Poles supported the “illegal” assistance to refugees. 

This is not to say that the hostile policies of the Polish government do not enjoy the support of some groups in Polish society. Poland is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous countries in Europe. Few people know a Muslim or someone from a Middle Eastern country. All information they receive comes from media and history textbooks. 

In this overwhelmingly Catholic country, one of the most commemorated historical events is the Battle of Vienna 1683 against the Ottoman Empire, which perpetuates the self-perception of many Polish nationalists as Antemurale Christianitatis (Bulwark of Christendom). Even if widely reported, wars in Syria, Yemen, or Afghanistan are distant and incomprehensible to an average Pole. 

However, it might be worth noting that in previous decades Poland accepted many Chechen refugees who were Muslims, and religion did not play a significant role in public discourse back then. It has become politicized in the last decade.   

Poland as an immigration country

In the past decades, Poland used to be a country that people would migrate from or through rather than to. The last few years have shown that this trend has changed. However, the authorities and society might not be aware of and ready to embrace the ongoing changes. 

Poland’s ethnic, cultural, and religious homogeneity is not necessarily an advantage. Unfortunately, the topic of refugees has too often been weaponized for political gains, affecting societal attitudes. 

This can be illustrated by the year 2015 when most Poles initially stood behind the idea of supporting refugees but changed their approach radically when the issue became a leitmotif of the electoral campaign of the Law and Justice Party. Let us hope that the Polish parliamentary elections in 2023 will not follow the same pattern.

[Conner Tighe edited this piece.]

[Fair Observer is a media partner of Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe.] 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Exploring Poland’s Refugee Crisis: Uncovering the Reasons for Neglect appeared first on Fair Observer.

That same year, France, Italy and the UK sold Czechoslovakia down the river at the Munich Conference. They gave Sudetenland to Nazi Germany without the consent or involvement of the government in Prague. At that time, Sudetenland had 3.63 million inhabitants, of which 2,9 million were of German descent. Berlin claimed that ethnic Germans wanted to be a part of the Third Reich. Propaganda and money helped to stir these Sudeten Germans.

A year later, World War II broke out. After numerous killings of Jews since he seized power in 1933, Adolf Hitler unleashed the Final Solution in 1941. Six million people whom Nazi authorities considered Jewish were killed. Many members of the Petschek family perished and their entire property was confiscated by the Nazi regime.

A rather important conference

After the end of World War II, communists expropriated the former Petschek family property behind the Iron Curtain. Even the Federal Republic of Germany returned only a small part of their property. The Otto Petschek Villa is now the residence of the US ambassador to the Czech Republic. Recently, this residence was host to the welcome reception of a conference on the Terezin Declaration. This 2009 declaration took “note of the special social and medical needs of all survivors” and “the importance of restituting communal and individual immovable property that belonged to the victims of the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust: A Synopsis

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In normal times, this conference would not have caught much attention. To be fair, the Terezin Declaration is not very well known to this day. Yet both the declaration and the conference assume immense importance today. Yet again an ideological hyper-nationalist autocrat justifies invasions of sovereign states with a new form of völkische Großraumpolitik (ethnic greater area politics). Russian President Vladimir Putin is committing war crimes against civilians and critical infrastructure. He is also practicing population exchange in Crimea and Donbass, which is considered by experts to be a form of ethnic cleansing. Russian troops are engaging in the destruction and theft of art and cultural artifacts. 

This raises some key questions. How will we deal with Russian crimes after the war? How will Ukrainians displaced and/or left destitute by the Russian invasion secure justice? Questions like these have always been tricky but the Terezin Declaration offers a good roadmap. Led by the US and signed by 46 states, this declaration is clear and comprehensive. It supplements the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. 

Over the last 14 years, different signatory states have applied these principles unevenly. Matthias Weller of the University of Bonn has conducted a comparative study on the implementation of these principles and come to this conclusion. Even though implementation may have lagged intentions, James D. Bindenagel, the ambassador who represented the US in the 1998 conference, thinks Weller’s research is critical. For Bindenagel it is the only way to bring about fair and equitable solutions in the future.

What more needs to be done

The Washington Principles are a good starting point but more needs to be done. Victims should have a low threshold and low expense way of applying for justice and compensation. The principles do not apply to real estate or company holdings. Restitution of such assets is important too. Similarly, Holocaust (Shoah in Hebrew) survivors must be eligible for supplementary pensions. Many live in abject poverty. They suffered lifelong damage and are now very old. They need justice before they die.

Not all countries take this point of view. Poland has banned all restitution by law regardless of whether it was Nazis or communists who looted or expropriated property. The country has chosen an extreme version of let bygones be bygones policy.

Other countries differ from Poland. Latvia recently compensated Jewish communities for the property that was looted from them. Germany has restituted and compensated Holocaust victims and their families. The US State Department notes:

“From 1945 to 2018, the German government paid approximately $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs.  Germany has also identified Nazi-looted objects – including art works, books, and objects within larger collections – and has returned 16,000 objects to survivors and their heirs over the last 20 years.”

Even this amount covers only a fraction of the current values of all looted (real) estates. To be fair, German museums are generally quite generous in returning cultural property. 

At the recent conference in the Czech foreign ministry, no one expected current private owners to return formerly looted or confiscated property 83 years after World War II kicked off. However, everyone expected the state to protect citizens’ property rights. They also expected the state to recover property of those robbed. If the state fails in its duty to protect or recover citizens’ property, it must be held accountable for its failure. This accountability does not always have to be financial. Education programs that remember the Holocaust are a good example of non-financial methods of accountability.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought back large-scale war to Europe. Stuart Eizenstat, a one of the finest American diplomats in recent decades, pointed out at the Prague Conference that many Shoah survivors fled to Russia to escape the Nazis. Today, many are forced to flee Russia. Eizenstat also pointed out that the Shoah could have been prevented. Hitler’s initial goal had been to expel the Jews. None of the neighboring European states and even the US were willing to accept Jewish refugees though. Consequently, Hitler’s Nazi regime decided upon the Final Solution that involved the murder of millions of Jews.

This harking back to the Nazi past is relevant. Europe seemed to have banished military aggression as a foreign policy tool to the distant past. Ukraine proves that is no longer true. Unsurprisingly, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský advocated taking in Ukrainian refugees and militarily supporting Ukraine. The politicians, academics and NGo representatives applauded this stance at the conference.

Yet, as we all know only too well, words are cheap. Words must be followed by actions as Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned. The expertise of the Prague conference can be put to good use for dealing with crimes by Putin’s Russia. Anyone who loses his property, his painting, his library or his company to Russian profiteers today must not be left alone with the fear that, like the Petschek family, he will have to wait for justice for three quarters of a century. The time for justice is now.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Deal with Russian Crimes in Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

Is Bosnia-Herzegovina Next on Russia’s Radar?

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The war had begun in earnest in 1991, particularly after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia that June. Ethnic Serb enclaves in turn broke away from Croatia, and the Yugoslav army intervened on their behalf. Beginning with the siege of Vukovar in August, the war escalated with terrifying rapidity.

In early 1992, the war spread to the multiethnic republic of Bosnia, after ethnic Serbs there followed the example of their brethren in Croatia and created their own Republika Srpska. In late February 1992, Bosnia held a referendum on independence. The result was overwhelming: over 99 percent wanted Bosnia to become a new state. Many ethnic Serbs, however, boycotted the vote. The government of Alija Izetbegović nevertheless went ahead and declared Bosnia independent on March 3.

As soon as Bosnia declared independence, Serbia widened the war by “defending” Serbian-controlled areas of the new state. The Bosnians formed an ad hoc partnership with Croatian forces, and the war devolved into a succession of atrocities: the siege of the capital Sarajevo, the massacres of Bosnians in Srebrenica, the widespread ethnic cleansing. Ethnic Serbs committed the lion’s share of these atrocities.

Bosnians appealed to the outside world for money and arms to fight back and preserve their new country. Except for some majority-Muslim countries that provided aid and a few fighters, those appeals fell on deaf ears. ”Unfortunately, what is happening in Bosnia is that the world is sitting and watching the most advanced Muslim community in the world being wiped out,” Adnan Iskandar of the American University in Beirut said at the time.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Complicated Puzzle

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I was horrified by the violence that had accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia. I was clear that Serbian aggression was responsible for the wars even if nationalists elsewhere in the disintegrating country had abetted those wars. And I roundly criticized the knee-jerk “pro-Serbian” analyses of some leftists who parroted the propaganda of strongman Slobodan Milošević’s government just as naïve leftists unwittingly follow Kremlin talking points on Ukraine today.

Nevertheless, I opposed the transfer of weapons to the Bosnians because I thought it would simply add fuel to the fire of the conflict. I was firmly in favor of the further integration of Europe, not the further disintegration of its border regions.

I was wrong about not helping Bosnia with weapons. My misreading of that war—and my analysis of what has happened to Bosnia since the war—explains in part why I support Ukraine today.

How Wars End

The wars in Yugoslavia did not end because of a peace treaty. They did not end because all sides sensibly agreed to a ceasefire.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Complicated Puzzle

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The wars in Yugoslavia ended because the primary aggressor, Serbia, was defeated militarily. In the first case, in August 1995, the U.S.-assisted Croatian army expelled ethnic Serbian militias from land it controlled in Croatia and Bosnia in what was then the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II. The Croatian army committed various war crimes during Operation Storm, including the expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs and the execution of civilians, though international courts subsequently rejected the Serbian claim of genocide.

In the second case, NATO bombed Serbia from March to June 1999, forcing it to pull its troops out of the disputed region of Kosovo. NATO never received authorization from the UN Security Council, so the bombing was technically in violation of international law. A number of civilians also died as a result of the attacks, including three Chinese journalists when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit.

In the first case, the Croatian operation set the stage for the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian conflict. In the second case, the NATO operation prepared the ground for the Kumanovo Agreement that ended the Kosovo War.

Sometimes wars end in stalemates. Sometimes one side is decisively defeated. The conflict in Ukraine, at this point, could go either way. Given that Russia is a powerful country with nuclear weapons, the Serbia scenario will probably not happen. Putin, unlike Milosevic, is unlikely to be toppled by a popular uprising and then trundled off to a war crimes tribunal. But the Russian army could still be decisively defeated in its effort to bite off as much of Ukraine as it can chew. Ukraine has the will and, unlike Bosnia, the capacity to defend itself.

How the war ends in Ukraine is important, but equally important is how the future peace is constructed.

The Problem with a Dictated Peace

Serbia lost the war in Bosnia. But Bosnia did not win. It didn’t have a sufficient military force to dictate facts on the ground.

So, the Dayton Accords imposed a faulty peace on the country that continues to plague Bosnia today. As a result of Dayton, the military conflict among Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats has been transposed to a political register. Instead of fighting it out with weapons, the three principal groups now battle each other in the unwieldy political institutions that Dayton created. This is good, in that people are no longer killing each other. It is bad, however, in that Bosnia is today barely a country.

There are two principal parts of Bosnia: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which consists of the often-quarrelsome duo of Croats and Bosniaks. These two autonomous entities also jointly administer a third area, the Brcko District. The presidency rotates among three members, a Serb, a Croat, and a Bosniak, elected by their respective communities. The ethnic divisions that gave rise to the war—exploited by opportunistic politicians—has resulted not in a democracy but an ethnocracy.

Nor does the country really function as a country, not with the Republika Srpska continually threatening to secede from the state, Croats perpetually tired of being a junior partner, and Bosniaks wanting a unitary state that better reflects their demographic majority (50.1% of the population compared to 30.8% Serbs and 15.4% Croats). The elections that periodically take place have been called “the most complicated in the world.” A foreigner actually administers the territory like a neocolonial governor. German politician Christian Schmidt, the High Representative for Bosnia Herzegovina, demonstrated his neocolonial role by  intervening in the most recent elections this year to unilaterally impose changes in the election law.

Is Dissolution a Solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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Bosnia has applied for membership in the European Union, which is one of the few things that most citizens of the benighted state support. Despite this support, the divided political institutions can’t agree on the constitutional, judicial, economic, and other steps necessary to qualify for EU membership. Corruption is rampant, the per-capita GDP of roughly $6,000 puts it at least $3,000 behind the EU’s poorest country, Bulgaria, and nearly half of all young Bosnians want to leave because their future inside the country looks bleak.

The Dayton Accords froze in place many of the dynamics that tore Bosnia apart in the first place. The prospect of future EU membership could serve as the force to push the country together, just as accession for Serbia can encourage greater democracy in that country and accession for Kosovo can help smooth the way for its international recognition.

Whether this happens or not, however, Bosnia is just the kind of solution that Ukraine is trying to avoid. Anyone who believes in a just peace in Ukraine must consider all the strategies that can forestall the Bosnian fate. These strategies all involve reducing Russian occupation of territory and involvement in Ukrainian affairs to as little as possible.

Avoiding a Dayton “Solution” in Ukraine

Serbia continues to play a spoiler role in Bosnia because of its close relations with Republika Srpska. That’s the fallback position Putin would accept if he can’t absorb all of Ukraine into Russia or install a puppet government in Kyiv. He will use the Donbas and Crimea to disrupt the functioning of Ukraine just as Serbia interferes in Bosnia through its proxy.

As an all-but-failed state with uncertain borders, Ukraine wouldn’t be able to qualify for EU membership. With an economy devastated by Russia’s relentless attacks, Ukraine would not pose any economic threat to Russian interests. Disarmed and neutral, Ukraine could be invaded at will by any future Russian government that doesn’t like what its neighbor is doing.

Of course, I’m not the only one who sees the parallels with Bosnia. Here’s Hamza Karčić, an associate professor at the University of Sarajevo:

If Zelenskyy ​​were forced to allow autonomy in the east, he would risk overseeing the establishment of a Republika Srpska-type entity. This would effectively give pro-Russian rebels a say in the governance of Ukraine, likely through veto powers akin to those of Republika Srpska, which would render the country dysfunctional like Bosnia has been. This would not only upend the development of the country but also block its integration into the EU and NATO.

To avoid this scenario, Ukraine has to win. It has to preserve the very sovereignty that Putin pretends to support, at least in theory, with his “sovereignist” foreign policy. It has to use force of arms not only to repel the Russian invaders but to prevent the kind of “frozen conflict” that Russia has used so effectively to hamstring Georgia and Moldova after earlier military interventions in those countries.

It’s not clear whether Ukraine can recapture Crimea or all of the Donbas, or what the price of those campaigns will be for Ukrainians and the world. But some kind of forced peace along the lines of the Dayton accords is not in the interests of Ukraine or, frankly, anyone outside of the Kremlin. The Ukrainians are right to be wary of its allies dictating the terms of a future agreement. They can see the challenges Bosnia faces today, nearly 30 years after the war.

The question is: when will the rest of us learn the lessons of Bosnia, too?

[Foreign Policy in Focus first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Changing My Mind on Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

Such unequal mercy would be no surprise from nations like Ukraine’s neighbors Hungary and Poland, controlled by nationalist parties that have rarely welcomed anyone not white and Christian. However, the same thing is happening in Western Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and here in the United States, the very democracies sworn to protect those fleeing war and persecution and that, in the case of America, sometimes turned those people into refugees in the first place. Our Global War on Terror alone has displaced an estimated 37 million people since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

One of the worst examples of this unequal mercy is taking place in Greece, a major gateway to Western Europe for anyone fleeing the Middle East or Africa. Between February and mid-April of this year, some 21,000 Ukrainians made it to Greece — more in three months than the total number of asylum seekers who entered the country in all of 2021. There, the Ukrainians were instantly granted temporary protection status, giving them access to medical care and jobs, subsidized housing and food allowances, schooling for their children, and Greek language classes for adults.

Germany Lacks Political Courage to Welcome More Afghan Refugees

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This is an admirable example of how all people who flee danger and war should be welcomed. But I’ve been visiting Greece for years now to research my new book, Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, and I know a lot of refugees there who have found no such generosity. Most are Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi, but some are Kurdish or Palestinian, while others come from African countries, including Cameroon, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and the Republic of Congo.

They, too, escaped war, violence, and other kinds of persecution. In fact, the Syrians, just like the Ukrainians, fled Putin’s bombs when he was helping Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, hold onto power. Yet unlike the Ukrainians, these refugees are forced to languish for years in inhumane, slum-like camps, while their children are denied schooling. They are routinely turned away from hospitals, doctors, or dentists, and are all too often treated with disrespect, even hatred, by landlords, employers, and regular citizens. That hurts. As my friend and co-author, the Syrian writer and refugee Eyad Awwadawnan, whom I first met in Greece, put it, “I think the world should do all it can for Ukrainian refugees, but we are getting a clear message from the Greek government that we are worth less than they are.”

Doomed to Helplessness

During my visits to Greece between 2018 and 2022, I witnessed many examples of its appalling treatment of refugees. At one point, in a camp on the Northern Aegean island of Samos, I found more than 3,000 people living in shipping containers or tents in and around an old military base, surrounded by piles of garbage swarming with rats. They had no potable water, the few toilets were broken, the food mostly inedible, and there was no security for women, children, LGBTQ+ people, or anyone else particularly vulnerable to bullying, assault, or rape. Thousands more asylum seekers were similarly trapped on other islands with nowhere to go and nothing to do, while yet others were locked up in Greek prisons for merely exercising their right to seek asylum. In our book, Eyad and I describe the way people are arrested and imprisoned simply for steering their boats to Greece, or for coming from the wrong country.

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Since its New Democracy government took power in 2019, well into the anti-immigrant, Muslim-bashing administration of Donald Trump here in the United States, the Greek government has been ratcheting up its mistreatment of Middle Eastern and African refugees even further. One of its first acts was to evict everyone granted asylum from subsidized housing or camps, while also withdrawing all financial aid. In this way, they were flung into a homeless, jobless void — that is, into forced helplessness. Winning asylum is supposed to mean winning international protected status as a refugee, but in Greece it now means the opposite — getting no protection at all.

Then, in June 2021, just before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarachi, announced that all new arrivals from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria would be denied the chance to apply for asylum and deported to Turkey, which he deemed a “safe third country,” a legal term for a safe haven for asylum seekers. Yet as human rights groups have made clear, Turkey is anything but safe for those in flight from war or persecution. Not only does Turkey refuse to recognize Syrians as refugees, but it never signed onto the part of the U.N. 1951 Refugee Rights declaration banning refoulement, the term used for returning refugees to a country where they may be subjected to persecution. This means that Turkey can legally send refugees back to the nations they fled, no matter what dangers await them there.

Last April 16th, Greece upped its persecution even further by closing the housing it offers vulnerable people, such as victims of torture, trafficking, and rape, and sending them to live in camps where there is no security at all. 

None of these policies apply to Ukrainians.

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At sea, matters are even worse. The Greek authorities and Frontex, Europe’s border and coast guard agency, have been pushing refugees back out to sea instead of rescuing them. They have left families and children abandoned on flimsy rafts or inflatable boats, or on tiny islands without shelter or food. During the pandemic, Greece and Frontex treated some 40,000 refugees this way, causing at least 2,000 to drown — abuse that’s been well-documented by human rights groups. Yet Greece’s immigration minister has denied that any of this is happening. 

No less shocking is the way Greece has criminalized the rescue of refugees at sea. Volunteers who go out to search for and rescue the capsized boats of desperate immigrants are being arrested and charged with human trafficking. Sara Mardini, a Syrian professional swimmer portrayed in Netflix’s new movie The Swimmers, is one of these. If convicted, she faces 20 years in prison.

Hard as it may be to grasp the idea of making it illegal to rescue drowning people, Greece is far from alone in engaging in such behavior. Just this month, Italy, Malta, and Cyprus banded together with that country to call for the European Union (EU) to take measures against civilian sea rescuers. Of course, the train drivers and airplane pilots who brought Ukrainians into the rest of Europe are never similarly targeted.

The Greek government has justified all this unequal mercy with chilling language, declaring Ukrainians “real refugees” and everyone else an “illegal migrant.” In just that spirit, last month, Greek authorities forced Afghans in a camp outside Athens to cede their housing to Ukrainians and instead live in filthy and derelict shipping containers. 

That government has long claimed that it is not at fault for treating refugees so badly because it lacks the money and personnel to handle so many of them. But the minute those 21,000 Ukrainians arrived, the same officials suddenly found themselves able to help after all.

Greece is not entirely to blame for such violations of international law, because many of them are underwritten by the EU, which has been pumping money into the country to keep refugees out of Western Europe since 2016. Recently, for example, the EU paid $152 million to the Greek government to build five remote prisons for asylum seekers. I saw the prototype for them on the island of Samos: Camp Zervou, a collection of white metal shipping containers on a bare patch of land in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a double layer of hurricane fences topped with barbed wire and surveilled by closed-circuit cameras. It is hot, bare, and hideous. Such prisons will not, of course, hold Ukrainians.

Breaking Hearts and Laws

Greece is hardly the only country meting out all this unequal treatment. The persecution of non-white refugees seems to be on the rise not just in countries with far-right governments, but in those previously known for their liberality. Along with this persecution, of course, goes the same sort of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric Donald Trump (not to speak of the Republican Party as a whole) continues to use about those crossing our own border.

Take the United Kingdom, for example. The new Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just offered France $74 million to increase its border security by 40% with the goal of arresting more “illegal migrants” and smugglers to stop them from crossing the English Channel.  (An asylum seeker, by the way, is not an “illegal migrant.” The right to cross borders to seek asylum is enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention.) That same $74 million could have been put toward legal and humanitarian services for asylum seekers, helping them find safe ways to apply for protection in either France or the United Kingdom, and so depriving smugglers of business without throwing those refugees into even further danger.

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Within France itself, while President Emmanuel Macron quarrels with the British over who is to blame for the rising number of refugees trying to cross the Channel, Jordan Bardella, the new leader of the country’s increasingly popular far-right party, has rested his entire platform on closing France’s borders to “drastically limit” immigration. He has made it clear that he’s talking about Muslims and Africans, not immigrants like his own Italian parents.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the new right-wing prime minister, has just issued a decree forbidding male refugees from getting off rescue boats or setting even one foot on Italian soil. Similarly, Sweden, once a bastion of progressive ideas, elected a new government this past September that cut its refugee quota from 5,000 people a year to 900, citing the white supremacist trope that non-white, non-Christian refugees will otherwise “replace” traditional Swedes.

I could go on: France, Greece, Italy, Malta, and Spain are fighting over who will (or won’t) take stranded boats of refugees, pushing those desperate sea goers from shore to shore like so much litter. The Danes are sending Syrians back to Syria, even after they’ve lived in Denmark for years. Australia is incarcerating asylum seekers under horrifying conditions in detention centers and on isolated islands. And Britain has locked thousands of refugees in warehouses, passed laws denying them basic services like health care and housing, and tried to implement a policy of forcibly deporting some of them to Rwanda.

Here in the U.S., we’re not doing much better. True, President Biden has managed to curtail some of the worst of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, undoing the former president’s Muslim ban and raising the number of refugees allowed into the country every year, but his efforts have been inconsistent. Just this October, shortly before the Democrats barely held onto the Senate in the midterm elections, he expanded the Trumpian Title 42 border policy to include Venezuelans, who, only a week or so earlier, were being welcomed into the country. That policy uses Covid fears to force asylum seekers to stay in dangerous, sometimes deadly camps in Mexico, while rendering it virtually impossible for them to even apply for, let alone win, asylum in the U.S. (Biden originally promised to do away with Title 42 altogether, but the Supreme Court blocked his effort. After declaring that he would continue the fight, he now appears to have reversed course.)

Ukrainians are, however, exempted from this Mexican purgatory as a way of “recognizing the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine” (to quote the Department of Homeland Security). Some Afghans are similarly exempt, but only those who worked with the U.S. during our devastating 20-year war in their country. Everyone else is kept waiting for months or even years for their asylum decisions, many of them in detention, regardless of the humanitarian crises they also fled.

All the unequal mercies described here are not only breaking hearts, but laws. A little history: In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt and the newly formed United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in reaction to the shocks of the Holocaust and the mistreatment of Jews seeking asylum. Three years later, the U.N. held a convention in Geneva to create a bill of refugee rights, which were ratified into law by 149 nations, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Greece, most of the rest of Europe, and the United States. (Some countries didn’t sign on until 1967.) The idea was to protect the dignity and freedom of human beings everywhere, while never again spurning refugees in the way that had sent so many Jews back to their deaths.

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The Geneva Convention defined refugees as people forced to flee their countries because of “a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group” and who “cannot return home or [are] afraid to do so.” It gave them the right to international protection from discrimination and persecution; the right to housing, schooling, and the chance to work for a living; the right not to be criminalized for simply seeking asylum; and, most importantly, the right not to be subjected to refoulement — and be returned to the countries they had fled.

Thanks, in part, to that convention, when people are driven to flee their countries, they head for the safety and dignity they believe they will find in the West, a belief we are now betraying. To rectify this, the EU’s governing arm, the European Commission, must insist that Europe’s unequal treatment of refugees be replaced with humane, accessible processes that apply consistently to all asylum seekers, regardless of where they come from. The same should be done in Australia, Britain, and the United States. After all, the way we treat refugees today speaks volumes not only about how humanitarian we are, but about how we are likely to act in the future when climate change forces ever more people to flee their homes just to stay alive.

On the other hand, should we continue to favor white Christian refugees over everyone else, we will not only shred the promises and values enshrined in our democracies, but fertilize the poison of white supremacy already festering in the very heart of the West.

[TomDispatch first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post If You’re a Refugee, Best to be White and Christian appeared first on Fair Observer.

I mention these facts concerning his background to remind readers that Fair Observer is a crowdsourced journal open to a great diversity of points of view. We feel it is important for readers to hear varied arguments concerning the issues of the day. We also believe that it is important to understand, wherever possible, the background and backstory of the voices who share their punditry with the world. In everyone’s writing, reasoning and rhetoric stand side by side and even hold hands. Understanding means coming to grips with both.

Most of Fair Observer’s authors, unlike Feffer, are not professional pundits or seasoned writers. We encourage unknown voices to contribute. These are people who have something valuable to share with the world in a space where seasoned journalists and pundits are also published. We invite our authors to enter the arena of public debate alongside heavyweights we regularly publish, such as Feffer, Medea Benjamin, Gary Grappo or Tom Engelhardt, to mention only a few. 

At Fair Observer, we never presume to know who is right or wrong about any issue, a fact that doesn’t prevent the members of the editorial team from having their own viewpoints. And the naked, but also stimulating truth is that we in the team have our own very real, sometimes deep divergences. Disagreement can and should be productive. It is the foundation of the kind of dialogue that true democracy requires.

Alas, in times of geopolitical tension, the tolerance of diversity and the taste for constructive dialogue tend to wane. An opposite trend, strongly encouraged by governments themselves, pushes many people to suppress all divergences from official truth, often branding it disinformation. When the idea of some noble common cause, especially of a military nature, comes to the fore, the dominant forces in society seek to apply subtle, and sometimes less subtle pressure aiming at establishing and enforcing conformity of thought around what emerges.

9/11 defined the political culture of the 21^st century 

There are moments – think of the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks on New York’s trade towers and the Pentagon – when all voices are expected to sing in unison. One false note, one example of dissonance, will bring instant opprobrium. When comedian Bill Maher blurted out only a few days later, “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building – say what you like about it, it’s not cowardly,” the sponsors of his TV show canceled their contracts. Maher was forced to apologize. Then there was the case of the avant-garde German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen who, six days after the event, called the events of 9/11 “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.”

Stockhausen’s music had always been ultra-provocative, built of planned and random dissonance, but no one ever reacted with shock or disapproval to the most outlandish musical examples composed and performed by a man considered to be the leader in the field of electronic classical music. I attended a Stockhausen which in 1964 at UCLA’s Royce Hall where, exposed to the deliberately chaotic assemblage of jarring sounds, the audience sat in solemn, respectful silence. Everyone, that is, but the most respected professor of UCLA’s music department, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg’s, who was falling out of his seat roaring with delighted laughter. He was clearly the only one in the auditorium with a clue to what Stockhausen was doing. His behavior upset the man sitting behind him, who upbraided him for his lack of decorum, scolding him to be quiet. 

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Stockhausen’s outrageously unharmonic musical creations could thus draw rapt admiration from an intellectual elite; his equally unharmonic verbal notes in 2001 turned him into a pariah. Yet in both cases, he developed a cutting irony that targeted conventional taste and conventional thinking. Six months earlier, in the same hall, I had sat listening in stunned silence to John Coltrane make musical history. John Kennedy had been assassinated the previous day. Coltrane’s challenge to the order took place on a different plane and its effects are still being felt. Deviating from the norm even at the cost of being misunderstood was possible then. That era was a moment in history when non-commercial music could still have a powerful impact on people’s lives. 

The world in which musicians like Stockhausen and Coltrane could thrive — both considered masters of a music that pushed art too far for most people’s taste — has definitively disappeared. In 2001 Stockhausen learned a fundamental lesson about the character of the 21^st century. Saying something deemed inappropriate can be fatal, at least in the US. Speech and thought must now be policed. That is even true for artists whose activity traditionally belonged to a world unconnected to political discourse and social norms. 

Future historians may remember this first quarter of the 21st century as an age of extreme censorship applied to anything deemed sensitive or capable of “triggering” a negative emotion in the mind or heart of someone who happens to be present. Visible in the purely social culture of PC (politically correct), it has become a fixture of serious political discourse and a major factor in democratic elections. This is an ear in which noticing that Israel has created something that resembles apartheid system brands the observer as anti-Semitic. Using the wrong English pronoun to refer to a person is a crime against identity. Citing a word associated with racism, even in the context of historical analysis, constitutes proof that one is a racist. Pointing out that Russia may have felt threatened by the growing military power of NATO is a proof of complicity in the evil designs of the Satanic Vladimir Putin.

The triumph of conformity in the name of security

Today thought must be controlled and discussion restrained. In the purely political realm, our modern nation states have elaborated exquisitely complex methods and means of both provoking and especially enforcing conformity of thought and ensuring that no one, whatever they may privately believe, may be permitted publicly to deviate from the official assessment of what is good and what is to be condemned. Joe Biden himself has made that clear. Democracy — even when controlled by money rather than people — is good and autocracy, even when it reflects the will of the majority, is bad. Believing that opens the door to the rule of money, identifying it with democratic virtue. It’s a system that makes political decision-making easier, since decision-making can be essentially confided in a moneyed elite. 

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But the ultimate effect of such conformist thinking imposed by a restricted elite is to divide society, possibly irreparably. The cultural examples of individuals choosing and imposing their  pronouns and forbidden words, or designating as suspect expressions such as “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” foster ongoing cultural dramas that keep the two sides who revel in their binary opposition engaged in what each sees as a noble combat. 

Bitter disagreement and binary opposition are now structuring elements of US culture. Every issue can and indeed must be reduced to two opposing positions. That deep-seated reflex explains why the US can never go beyond a two-party system. Even when the two parties agree in pragmatic terms on all the essentials — unbridled financialized capitalism, global military domination, the divine status of the dollar, gun ownership and the virtues of consumerism — they draw all their political energy from hating the other side.

But there are matters about which Americans are not free to disagree. The example of 9/11 showed there is at least one general idea everyone must uncritically embrace: the defense of the nation. In its most extreme form it has produced the popular slogan: “Love it or leave it.” It translates as the duty of ordinary Americans never to call into question America’s military cause of the moment. In a world beset by obvious dangers related in part to the increasingly destructive nature of technologies that may end up in the “wrong hands,” the insistence on conformity makes a lot of sense. Especially when one assumes that one’s own hands are always the “right hands.” So defense is such a fundamental priority that the decisions made in its name can never be criticized, just as ever-expanding defense budgets are never called into question by anyone other than marginal leftwing extremists and demented pacifists. 

How did the “defense instinct” become so dominant in the culture? In former times, the notion of a nation’s foreign policy focused on trade and access to resources, in other words, the need to exchange with other regions and nations. Those exchanges could have a commercial or cultural nature. Power relationships were important but they weren’t defined in purely military terms. 

World War II changed everything, partly because of its scale but also because of the invention and use of the atomic bomb. Today we accept the idea that foreign policy is less about the quality of international relations than it is about security in a purely physical sense. Defense is defined by weaponry to the detriment of social life and civilized behavior. 

But there is another less obvious dimension of defense, the one George Orwell anticipated in his novel 1984: speech and thought control. No one can ignore the frequency with which, since 2001, policies focused on national security in the US have ended up challenging what people still refer to as “constitutional rights.” This sacrifice of traditional rights is always justified in the name of “national security.” No serious observer could doubt that the Patriot Act of October 2001, passed in the name of countering terrorism, has had, among its effects, the very real suppression of some of the rights Americans take for granted: notably the two pillars of the “Bill of Rights,” the first and fourth amendments (freedom of expression and freedom from unwarranted search).

The rights of a nation’s citizens are one thing. They will always be the object of internal debate. Foreign policy poses a problem of a different order. In recent decades, the idea of protecting “national security whatever the price” has led to the justification of the morally egregious concept of preventive war. This became the foundation of the Bush doctrine, used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

The same logic lies behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It relies on the perception of a nation’s duty to respond militarily if necessary to an “existential threat.” We now know that the threat Iraq represented in 2002-3, with its dreaded “weapons of mass destruction,” was imaginary. Most analysts today agree that the threat to Russia by Ukraine’s dallying with NATO was exaggerated, but no one can credibly claim it was purely imaginary. However, making the claim that it could have been real is now treated as the equivalent of Stockhausen’s characterization of 9/11 as the “greatest work of art.”

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In purely rational terms, the very notion of preventive war should be considered the opposite of defense. It means going elsewhere —  with guns blazing, drones buzzing and bombs dropping —  to counter a supposed future threat. Tradition tells us that “prevention is better than cure” and “a stitch in time saves nine.” But if the supposedly preventive act produces a Humpty-Dumpty result, that can never be stitched back together again, the proverbial wisdom may prove far worse than any imaginable cure. Over the past 75 years, US foreign policy in Korea, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – to name only those obvious theaters of preventive war – has left a lot of gaps in the landscape that remained unstitched and often unstitchable to this day.

What is national defense?

Both of the terms — nation and defense —  require some serious historical and philosophical reflection. The nation state is, after all, a modern creation. We assume today it is a fact of nature, but it is an artificial invention that historians trace back to 1648 and the Treaty of Westphalia. That type of political entity has clearly supplanted all earlier examples of social and political organization. So what is a nation? Are the people of any nation thoroughly happy with the result of historical processes through which their nation has been defined? Are they even clear about what, in the concept of nation, needs to be defended? Is it land, property, the people themselves, their laws, their culture, their shared (or imposed) ideology, their songs and their movies?

Although the idea of the nation is recent in human history, it will always benefit from a diversity of visible clues relating to geography, language, ethnicity, religion and political ideology. Defining defense turns out to be more problematic. In most people’s naïve perception, the literal connotation of the word defense expresses an attitude of protective concern. In reality, when policies of armament are in play, it embraces something that goes far beyond the genteel notion of conservation of property, institutions or even general welfare. In its military dimension, it includes a measure of active threat, bravado and aggressive display.

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In our age of powerful industrial organization and sophisticated technology, those who have a role in institutional decision-making have succeeded in pushing the notion of defense well beyond its traditional connotation. Originally formulated as the instinct of protection, in the nuclear age, it has evolved into embracing in the mindset of those focused on defense the most extreme form of intentional aggression. Who are the decision-makers our democracies have designated as their agents of defense? They happen to be a relatively small loosely defined group of politicians, industrialists, bankers and intellectuals, the producers of ideology. The latter group includes well-financed media, the advertising industry,a segment of academia and another modern creation: think tanks.

Perhaps without realizing it, our democracies, particularly in the West, have accepted a system in which this international elite that dominates all the visible institutions in a globalized economy can dictate, largely in private, the themes and even the positions deemed legitimate in public debate. It is precisely to counter that domination that Fair Observer seeks to open the dialogue to other voices. But it isn’t just by letting other voices become heard that we achieve our goal. It is also by using that opening of the public dialogue to stimulate critical thinking.

The marginalization of critical thinking

Many lucid observers have noticed that our civilization, so perfectly organized to produce a maximum of convenient material goods, has not only done little to maintain existing traditions of critical thinking, but has put in place the means to actively suppress it. Our increasingly “standardized” education has no time for critical thinking. We literally teach citizens to do little more than learn to repeat the messages they receive from both the official and unofficial channels that dominate all our media. Education has long adopted the model, which is now aided and abetted by technology, symbolized by standardized curricula and the dictatorship of the multiple choice question. The media and our governments play their role in creatively promoting triviality and restricting reflection on “serious issues.”

The emphasis on critical thinking is particularly important at this moment of history in which people’s thinking is alternatively guided by commercial institutional media on one side and the chaos of social media on the other. From the first — which extends from corporate news media to think tanks — we derive the notion of “authoritative voices” who can guide our thinking. From the second we allow ourselves to be guided by “influencers,” random voices in social media with the cheek and style to push their version of reality as compelling. 

For that reason, here at Fair Observer, we believe it is every citizen’s duty to dig deeper. That means listening to different voices, developing an awareness of the impact of commercial interests and recognizing the intimidation factor that exists on the side of authority. It implies making the effort to become aware of the background and connections of those who claim to tell us how to think, whether they speak with the authority of their very real expertise or have simply acquired the skill set that turns them into a social media influencer.

Examining the discourse of an established pundit

As a political commentator with decades of experience and acknowledged authority, Feffer has become accustomed to the idea that his job is to analyze complex situations and recommend not only possible political solutions but also the specific actions that will enable those solutions. That is, after all, what think tanks are designed to do.

True to his vocation, the liberal Feffer —  in a recent article with the title “Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia” — has recently offered to enlighten our readers on US foreign policy regarding that war. His time-tested technique consists of presenting a series of apparently observations based on facts gleaned from his research and building them into a form of reasoning that points to what he considers to be the best course of action. He is clearly doing the job: think tanks think with a view to telling actors how to act.

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Some may think this is a fairly comfortable job, since a pundit can never be held directly accountable for the actions of those who act according to such recommendations, even when the actions go uncontrollably awry. That consideration alone explains why it’s important for readers to examine the methodology think tank and media pundits use. Unavoidably, like everyone else in their position, they tend to mix judgment calls and even gut instinct with simple facts. In this piece, for example, Feffer draws strong conclusions from very partial evidence. He assumes that because the facts he chooses to cite appear to point in a certain direction, his theory must be accepted as fact. 

Feffer’s method in this article can help us understand how facts and apparently solid reasoning may not be enough to make a strong case. We should begin by acknowledging that all facts are not created equal. In the world of political discourse that depends on someone else’s reporting, there may even be good facts and bad facts. Good facts must be both incontrovertibly true, meaningful in their broader context and not excessively contaminated by interpretative ambiguity. They must also be pertinent to the argument. Readers should also realize that when describing situations of conflict, other potentially contradictory facts may exist that have an equal claim to truth. Those facts may or may not be pertinent to any particular argument. 

If facts themselves may be problematic, reasoning – the procedure of moving from the facts to reach a reliable conclusion – is a traditional mare’s nest. The path is fraught with errors that begin when one attempts to establish the literal meaning of the terms mentioned as fact. It ends —  messily in general — with the psychology of the reasoner. At least since the first day Socrates put the question of reasoning on spectacular public display while deambulating through the streets of Athens, philosophers have been having fun as well as experiencing deep anguish dealing with the question of how logic can ever produce an acceptable conclusion. To appreciate the degree of risk in following a pundit’s limpid reasoning, see Wittgenstein’s deflationism (“The common mistake is to assume that truth has a nature of the kind that philosophers might find out about and develop theories of.”) 

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A closer reading of Feffer’s argument

Feffer’s reasoning begins to falter in the title of the article: “Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia.” Apart from the fundamental semantic question of what having an edge means in the context of a war – wars are full of sharp edges as well as twists and turns – his claim in the subtitle that “Ukraine is successfully ejecting the invading army” is simply untrue. It is certainly the kind of observation a journalist in the New York Times or The Daily Beast may decide to write or communicate. Such “facts” are often due to an anonymous source in the intelligence community. But, whatever the source, this is clearly over the top. Ejecting means eliminating, cleansing, clearing out. The Russians appear to be conducting tactical retreats in some warzones, but no serious military expert sees them running for the borders. A wish is not a fact.

It is standard practice in contemporary journalism to use polls to prove a point. Feffer cites a poll released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, whose findings, he tells us, reveal that “86% of Ukrainian respondents believe that it’s necessary to keep fighting despite the devastating air strikes.” Feffer doesn’t bother to mention that, according to those very pollsters, the “sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24” (whatever that double negative formulation means). More to the point, he fails to acknowledge or seems to wish to ignore a more fundamental historical fact that the US government and the media have consistently hidden from view: that Ukraine is a divided nation that has been experiencing a very real civil war for at least the past eight years, a civil war based on culture, language and historical identity. As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies have done in a book we recently reviewed, the whole history of the past 30 years demonstrates that those unresolved internal tensions remain major factors that compromise the idea of Ukrainian identity. Why does that fact not interest Feffer, to the point of skewing the meaning of the statistics he cites?

There is of course a reason for Feffer’s sleight-of-hand. It is a documented fact that the continuous shelling by the Kyiv government of the Donbas over the past eight years in defiance of the terms of the Minsk II accord contributed to provoking the Russian aggression. But citing that fact would make it impossible to make the standard claim that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked.” It would also invalidate the necessary fiction that characterizes Ukrainians as a unified people seeking their independence.

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Later in the article, Feffer offers another poll result that appears to bolster his case when he claims that “three out of four Americans support the continuation of both economic and military aid to Ukraine.” That is true enough. But he neglects to cite another poll whose findings contradict his main argument, that “this is no time to call for a ceasefire.” That September poll, reported by Business Insider tells us that “nearly half of the respondents (47%) said they only support the continuation of US military aid to Ukraine if the US is involved in ongoing diplomacy to end the war.”. Furthermore, Business Insider’s report concludes with the observation that “Americans are growing tired of support for Ukraine without diplomacy as the war against Russia drags on.”

To make the point that even the most progressive Democrats align with Feffer’s position, he quotes at length a witness, Congressman Jamie Raskin. Feffer identifies him as “a prominent Congressional Progressive Caucus member.” But how representative of the left is Raskin? As investigative reporter Max Blumenthal has documented in detail —  offering a video of an interview with the Congressman for proof —   Raskin was not only a Russiagate zealot, but someone who blithely cites “facts” that he knows to be false. Certainly, Feffer could have found a more reliable witness.

Accepting and confronting contrary readings

Feffer is clearly in phase with the US State Department that has consistently opposed the very idea of peace talks. But he finds himself in contradiction with the Pentagon’s Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, who has pushed for negotiations, estimating that “the likelihood of Ukraine fully vanquishing Russia on the battlefield is ‘not high,’” Milley is President Joe Biden’s principal military adviser. Perhaps he remains unaware of the fact that the Ukrainians are “successfully ejecting” the Russians from their territory. 

Former UN weapons inspector and Marine Corp intelligence officer Scott Ritter, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, states in vehement terms the opposite point of view. Few would argue with the fact that Ritter has remained closer to the facts than Feffer throughout the conflict. “Let’s be clear,” Ritter writes, “if you stand with Ukraine, you stand for the precipitous expansion of NATO, of outside powers fomenting illegal coups designed to overthrow the constitutional authority of a sovereign state, and the empowerment of white supremacist neo-Nazi ultra-nationalist movements who worship the memory of mass murderers whom they have elevated to the status of national heroes.”

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Ritter doesn’t hold back, pushing towards what may appear as the opposite extreme. It is possible to debate all these points, including obviously the relative clout of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, whose presence and influence cannot be denied, though all commentators in the West, including Feffer, carefully avoid evoking them or when they do, dismiss them as marginal. That remains a legitimate debate. What is less legitimate is avoiding the debate altogether. Which is what commentators such as Feffer prefer to do. And why shouldn”t they? No one in the government or the media will stand up to encourage the debate.

My point is simple. As concerned citizens, we should listen to those, such as Feffer, who have experience and a track record of careful analysis of the topics they write about. But we shouldn’t accept at face value their conclusions simply on the grounds of their reputation or supposed authority. We should look elsewhere, examine the evidence and the case for its credibility. We should above all exercise that skill we call critical thinking.

Every citizen’s duty: to be informed and think critically

History has taken a dangerous turn. The issues we are talking about now may spin out of control with a real chance of provoking a nuclear holocaust. Bravado alone cannot produce lasting solutions. Democracies and indeed the human race can only hope to function correctly and prosper if we learn to critically examine the discourse of those who claim to speak with authority in the public square. 

Fair Observer itself will continue to publish those who want to make their case, as Feffer has done and as I myself have done here. That is our vocation. The points of view and interpretations we publish often fail to coincide. In cases like this one, they may even be diametrically opposed. We need to hear them. We need to assemble more facts than those each of us choose for the convenience of argument. And each of us needs to be in a position not just to explore and compare, but also to dig deeper with all the resources at our disposal. Concerning Feffer’s article, I can only add this personal note: that I’m disappointed when a quality researcher and thinker believes, for whatever reason, it is more prudent to follow the drift of official propaganda, especially in times of war and global danger, than to examine the complexity of the issues he is addressing. Our platform at Fair Observer remains open to Feffer and others for dialogue and debate on these very issues as well as others raised by the articles we publish.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why John Feffer’s Careful Reasoning Still Looks like Propaganda appeared first on Fair Observer.

This comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its ninth month. While numbers are difficult to verify, it is estimated that the war has left both Russia and Ukraine with over 100,000 troops dead or wounded. With Russia still attempting to advance further into Ukrainian territory and with Ukraine’s recent offensive to retake Kherson, there is no end in sight for this conflict.

From the beginning of the invasion, the US, the UK, the EU and Australia have provided Ukraine with humanitarian and military aid to protect its sovereignty and its people. The US has provided over $38 billion in military and humanitarian aid. Similarly, the UK and the EU have both provided around $4 billion.

What the Realists Do Not Realize

In the eyes of critics, such as the prominent realist academic John Mearsheimer, this assistance represents a dangerous escalation that will lead to the unnecessary deaths of Ukrainians. These critics instead argue that Ukraine should sue for peace and accept territorial loss to Russia.

But this criticism falls over for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine, a sovereign state under international law. Since 1945, the world has moved on from territorial expansion through force of arms, where powerful states devour small, less powerful ones. Instead, the 20^th century saw the construction of international laws, treaties, and norms on how states should behave. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are a direct violation of these tenets. Therefore, the implementation of economic sanctions and providing aid to a state fighting for survival is not an act of escalation. It is to ensure that international rule of law is upheld and no longer undermined. 

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Second, Russia has clearly committed war crimes in Ukraine, a gross violation of international human rights law. Ukrainians have been killed by targeted missile strikes on civilian areas, including the total destruction of the port city of Mariupol, resulting in over 4,000 deaths according to the UN. 

Human Rights Watch has also documented war crimes committed by Russian forces in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv as well as the now infamous massacre in Bucha where Russian troops carried out executions and extrajudicial killings of civilians. HelpingUkrainians protect their homes and families from such atrocities is to stand in solidarity against a despotic state. 

Third, critics of the West ignore one crucial factor: that Ukrainians widely support defending themselves, and their sovereignty. A recent poll has found that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, 89%, do not support a peace deal that involves losing territory to Russia. Further, 78% approve of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s response to the invasion. 

Peace Under Western Hegemony

Peace advocates have challenged the motives of the West in their support of the Ukrainian cause. The claim is that the West’s involvement has less to do with aiding Ukraine and more to do with maintaining its hegemony. 

This mirrors comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who declared recently that the conflict is a ”proxy war“ between NATO and Russia. This argument is designed to remove any agency from Ukrainians to make their own decisions and it is demonstrably wrong, particularly when defending the country is so popular with Ukrainians.

Critics also ignore that Russia has no interest in peace. While there are demands that Ukraine cede  the Donbas and the south to Russia in a peace deal, it ignores that Russia has recently, and publicly, stated that it has ambitions greater than these two regions. This is obvious considering that Russia initially attempted to take Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government. These calls are also offensive to Ukrainians who have spent the past six months defending their country from what is an illegal invasion.

Even if a deal is reached, history shows us it wouldn’t result in long-term stability for Ukraine. Russia has been destabilizing Ukraine for decades, including the illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea or by sending troops into the Donbas to support separatists. Critics fail to understand that Russia will not stop intervening in Ukrainian affairs because it does not tolerate the country’s desire to improve political and economic ties with the West.

Ukraine Is Inching Towards Victory

Most importantly, Ukraine is winning this war. Russia has failed to meet its initial objectives in occupying Kyiv and forcing regime change. It has pivoted strategically and publicly to focus on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and the south of the country. It has also lost tens of thousands of men and countless numbers of vehicles and equipment. With economic sanctions targeting military technology, replacing this equipment is difficult. Ukrainian bravery and ingenuity aside, military aid from the West has undoubtedly played a large role in this success.

This support has culminated in the recent acquisition by Ukraine of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, which has enabled its military to strike successfully at Russian targets in the Donbas and the Crimea. On November 11th, Ukraine entered the city of Kherson, pushing Russian troops to the east.  Both Ukrainians and the West want peace. But this shouldn’t come at the expense of Ukraine’s dignity, territory, and sovereignty. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the war crimes it has committed, is a clear affront to international law. Therefore, supporting Ukraine in its defense is not just a fight to assist an innocent party against a larger aggressor, as worthwhile as that is. It is also a fight to protect  the international rule of law and human rights. That is a fight worth supporting. 

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ending War Means More, Not Less, Support for Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

Here are eight reasons why this holiday season too offers the potential for peace and a chance to move the conflict in Ukraine from the battlefield to the negotiating table.

1. The first, and most urgent reason, is the incredible, daily death and suffering in Ukraine, and the chance to save millions more Ukrainians from being forced to leave their homes, their belongings and the conscripted menfolk they may never see again. 

With Russia’s bombing of key infrastructure, millions of people in Ukraine currently have no heat, electricity or water as temperatures drop below freezing. The CEO of Ukraine’s largest electric corporation has urged millions more Ukrainians to leave the country, ostensibly for just a few months, to reduce demand on the war-damaged power network. 

The war has wiped out at least 35% of the country’s economy, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. The only way to halt the meltdown of the economy and the suffering of the Ukrainian people is to end the war. 

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2. Neither side can achieve a decisive military victory, and with its recent military gains, Ukraine is in a good negotiating position.

It has become clear that US and NATO military leaders do not believe, and possibly have never believed, that their publicly stated goal of helping Ukraine to recover Crimea and all of Donbas by force is militarily achievable.

In fact, Ukraine’s military chief of staff warned President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in April 2021 that such a goal would not be achievable without “unacceptable” levels of civilian and military casualties, leading him to call off plans for an escalation of the civil war at that time. 

Biden’s top military advisor, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, told the Economic Club of New York on November 9, “There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means…” 

French and German military reviews of Ukraine’s position are reportedly more pessimistic than US ones, assessing that the current appearance of military parity between the two sides will be short-lived. This adds weight to Milley’s assessment, and suggests that this could well be the best chance Ukraine will get to negotiate from a position of relative strength.

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3. US government officials, especially in the Republican Party, are starting to balk at the prospect of continuing this enormous level of military and economic support. Having taken control of the House, Republicans are promising more scrutiny of Ukraine aid. Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who will become Speaker of the House, warned that Republicans would not write a “blank check” for Ukraine. This reflects the growing opposition at the base of the Republican Party, with a Wall Street Journal November poll showing that 48% of Republicans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 6% in March. 

4. The war is causing upheavals in Europe. Sanctions on Russian energy have sent inflation in Europe skyrocketing and caused a devastating squeeze on energy supplies that is crippling the manufacturing sector. Europeans are increasingly feeling what German media call Kriegsmudigkeit. 

This translates as “war-weariness,” but that is not an entirely accurate characterization of the growing popular sentiment in Europe. “War-wisdom” may describe it better. 

People have had many months to consider the arguments for a long, escalating war with no clear endgame—a war that is sinking their economies into a recession—and more of them than ever now tell pollsters they would support renewed efforts to find a diplomatic solution. That includes 55% in Germany, 49% in Italy, 70% in Romania and 92% in Hungary. 

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5. Most of the world is calling for negotiations. We heard this at the 2022 UN General Assembly, where one after another, 66 world leaders, representing a majority of the world’s population, eloquently spoke out for peace talks. Philip Pierre, prime minister of Saint Lucia, was one of them, pleading with Russia, Ukraine and the Western powers “to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”

As the Amir of Qatar told the Assembly, “We are fully aware of the complexities of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the international and global dimension to this crisis. However, we still call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful settlement, because this is ultimately what will happen regardless of how long this conflict will go on for. Perpetuating the crisis will not change this result. It will only increase the number of casualties, and it will increase the disastrous repercussions on Europe, Russia and the global economy.”

6. The war in Ukraine, like all wars, is catastrophic for the environment. Attacks and explosions are reducing all kinds of infrastructure–railways, electrical grids, apartment buildings, oil depots–to charred rubble, filling the air with pollutants and blanketing cities with toxic waste that contaminates rivers and groundwater. 

The sabotage of Russia’s underwater Nord Stream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany led to what may have been the largest release of methane gas emissions ever recorded, amounting to the annual emissions of a million cars. The shelling of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe, has raised legitimate fears of deadly radiation spreading throughout Ukraine and beyond.

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Meanwhile, US and Western sanctions on Russian energy have triggered a bonanza for the fossil fuel industry, giving them a new justification to increase their dirty energy exploration and production and keep the world firmly on course for climate catastrophe. 

7. The war has a devastating economic impact on countries across the world. The leaders of the world’s largest economies, the Group of 20, said in a declaration at the end of their November summit in Bali that the Ukraine war “is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy — constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity and elevating financial stability risks.”

Our long-standing failure to invest the relatively small proportion of our resources required to eradicate poverty and hunger on our otherwise rich and abundant planet already condemns millions of our brothers and sisters to squalor, misery and early deaths. 

Now this is compounded by the climate crisis, as entire communities are washed away by flood waters, burned out by wildfires or starved by multi-year droughts and famines. International cooperation has never been more urgently needed to confront problems that no country can solve on its own. Yet wealthy nations still prefer to put their money into weapons and war instead of adequately addressing the climate crisis, poverty or hunger. 

8. The last reason, which dramatically reinforces all the other reasons, is the danger of nuclear war. Even if our leaders had rational reasons to favor an open-ended, ever-escalating war over a negotiated peace in Ukraine – and there are certainly powerful interests in the weapons and fossil fuel industries that would profit from that – the existential danger of what this could lead to absolutely must tip the balance in favor of peace.

We recently saw how close we are to a much wider war when a single stray Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile landed in Poland and killed two people. Zelenskyy refused to believe it was not a Russian missile. If Poland had taken the same position, it could have invoked NATO’s mutual defense agreement and triggered a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. 

If another predictable incident like that leads NATO to attack Russia, it can only be a matter of time before Russia sees the use of nuclear weapons as its only option in the face of overwhelming military force.

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For these reasons and more, we join the faith-based leaders around the world who are calling for a Christmas Truce, declaring that the holiday season presents “a much-needed opportunity to recognize our compassion for one another. Together, we are convinced that the cycle of destruction, suffering and death can be overcome.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Eight Reasons Why Now is a Good Time for a Ukraine Ceasefire and Peace Talks appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Texas shale phenomenon brought a huge surge in oil production in the US. We were producing about 6-7 million barrels per day (bpd) in the early 2000s. That jumped up really quickly and reached 13 million bpd by 2021. That’s the most oil any country has ever produced. I think the highest the Saudis have ever gotten was 12.4 bpd in 2020. 

OPEC, of course, watched this development. It first dismissed increased American oil production as a flash in the pan. Increasingly, over the years, OPEC became alarmed. Shale was basically stealing their market share. Shale captured almost 5 million barrels a day of OPEC’s market share. 

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To be fair, OPEC was not necessarily losing market share. The oil market was growing thanks to Chinese demand but OPEC was not capturing the growth. The OPEC nations were holding their production steady. And, at times, they were actually cutting production to prop up prices. Every time OPEC did that, US shale would swoop in and grab more market share as the ultimate free rider. This shale monster was growing and growing and OPEC didn’t really have an answer. 

Shale was basically undercutting OPEC, no matter what it did. If OPEC would cut production, the US would ramp up shale production and dampen the price increase OPEC was chasing. And then if OPEC tried to punish the market and punish producers with a big price war by flooding the market with extra production, shale investors would stop investing, those oil wells would decline naturally. And then the price wouldn’t drop as far.

Saudi Arabia Hugs Russia to Take Back Control

The shale sector was difficult for OPEC to cope with. It was making OPEC a lot less effective. And the Saudis found themselves largely alone. Their market power seemed to be evaporating. They needed another big producer to try and regain their influence over the market. Russia was the obvious choice. It was the world’s number two producer and exporter. By 2016, after various discussions and overtures, Russia began cooperating with Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Russia also brought along a couple of other allies with Kazakhstan being the most important one.

It was US shale that led to the formation of OPEC+ and this organization has since been going strong. The OPEC+ countries cut oil production by over two million barrels just before this year’s US midterm elections. This October cut was really extraordinary. Saudi Arabia has never pushed OPEC to cut production when the incumbent US president did not want it to. This time, US President Joe Biden wanted an increase in oil production. He wanted lower gasoline prices at the pump because American consumers believe that the president controls them.

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Instead, it is the Saudis who have the most influence over gasoline prices. They can increase production and lower gasoline prices, making them a non-issue for an American president. In the past, the Saudis obliged Barack Obama and Donald Trump. When the Saudis obliged Obama, the late King Abdullah was in charge. Under King Salman, equations with the Democrats have changed. The Saudis were willing to oblige Trump but decided to hurt Biden by cutting production and increasing prices.

It is clear that Saudi Arabia and OPEC value their oil market cooperation with Russia. The cartel has become more disciplined with Russia on board. Under Saudi-Russian dual leadership, OPEC+ has become stronger. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the Saudis had more to gain from this partnership. After the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin is really the big winner. OPEC+ provides him the best stage for geopolitical influence. He seems to revel in the fact that he’s managed to shoehorn himself into this tight US-Saudi relationship.

The US and Saudi Arabia Drift Apart

The Saudis are unlikely to jettison Putin despite US pressure. They are making a point of making diplomatic visits and taking the Russian president’s calls. In contrast, they made a show of rejecting Biden’s calls last year. The Saudis seem to be signaling to Washington that there are consequences for spurning their Gulf Arab partners. Disagreements between the US and the Gulf states date back at least to the Arab Spring.

As shale production went up, the US did not worry too much about such disagreements. There was a feeling that we’re self-sufficient in oil. That gives us a free pass on not having to cater to our Middle East allies, at least to some of their demands. It turns out that the US motorist is just as exposed to global oil prices as ever. The Gulf oil exporters still remain the global price makers.

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Saudi Arabia has spare capacity. That is the gap between how much a country actually produces and how much it could potentially produce if it went flat out and opened all the taps. Spare capacity makes Saudi Arabia special. It gives the Saudis their swagger on the geopolitical stage. They can always tap spare capacity in case of a natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake. They can also do so in case of a political upheaval such as an invasion or an embargo. 

In the past, the Saudis leveraged spare capacity in concert with the US. When Washington wanted to invade Iraq or sanction Iran, Saudi Arabia unlocked its spare capacity to release extra oil into the global market. So in my classes here at Rice University, I used to say that the Saudis protect the US motorist from US foreign policy. After this October that might not be true anymore.

Saudi Arabia is now behaving differently. Biden campaigned on making the Saudis a pariah. Well, once he was elected, Saudi spare capacity was less available to the US. We had a really fast post-COVID recovery in oil demand and we had this big oil price shock. And we had OPEC+ basically saying that we’re just going to stick to our plan of drip-feeding oil to the global market by increases of 400,000 barrels a day. As a result, oil prices rose all the way up to $130 a barrel.

Unlike in the past, Saudi Arabia did not bring its spare capacity into play. Not only Biden but also Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson asked the Saudis to pump more oil. They refused. They claimed that the market was well supplied and that the price spikes were due to geopolitical risks or under-investment by producers afraid of climate action or some kind of a boomeranging pandemic. So they held that spare capacity in abeyance. 

Here in the US, Biden had to deal with high prices in an election year by releasing supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil. The US consumes nearly 20 million barrels per day and the SPR is estimated to be over 700 million barrels. This is not how things are meant to work. In the past, the US was always able to tap Saudi spare capacity. This time, Biden went to Saudi Arabia but the Saudis refused to help.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Saudi Arabia and Russia Have Now Teamed Up in OPEC+ appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Ukrainian leadership, on the other hand, believes that it can, with the help of US and European military equipment, expel Russian troops not only from the territory seized since the February invasion but even the lands in the Donbas region and the Crimean Peninsula that Russia occupied in 2014.

These completely incompatible objectives are surely a recipe for a long stalemate. Perhaps the conflict in Ukraine will come to resemble the Korean War, which featured dramatic battleground reversals in the first year followed by two years of stalemate before the warring parties, exhausted and chastened, finally negotiated an armistice.

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The Korean War is relevant for another reason. Like Kim Il Sung, Putin counted on Chinese support. During the Korean War, North Korea was saved by the intervention of the Chinese army. This time around, however, China is not sending any military hardware, much less any troops, to help Russia.

Putin might also be wrong about his assumptions about the weakness of his adversaries.

Ukrainian Resolve

The current Russian strategy has been to hold off Ukrainian military advances around Kharkiv in the north and Kherson in the south while bombing the country’s infrastructure. The massive campaign of aerial destruction has already damaged 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including a large portion of its solar and wind power installations, as well as water and sewage facilities.

Although this new aerial campaign has brought the war once again to major population centers like the capital Kyiv—and even to areas in the far west along the Polish border—it seems to have only strengthened the resolve of Ukrainians to fight back. According to a poll from the end of October, 86% of Ukrainian respondents believe that it’s necessary to keep fighting despite the devastating air strikes. Meanwhile, according to Russian polls, support for the war has fallen to new lows.

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On the ground, Russian forces recently abandoned Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city that the invading armies managed to seize. Even ardent Putin supporters are aghast at this latest sign of Russian military failure. It was only a few weeks ago that the Russian government declared Kherson part of the Russian Federation when it annexed four Ukrainian territories. Former Putin advisor Sergei Markov called “the surrender of Kherson… the largest geopolitical defeat of Russia since the collapse of the USSR.”

US Wavering?

Putin has also expected that political unity in the United States would eventually fragment in the face of rising energy and food prices. The Republican Party in Congress has indeed indicated that this unity is fleeting. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, in the lead-up to this week’s midterm elections, warned that his party was “not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”

In reality, McCarthy only meant that he favored greater oversight of the funds, not a reduction in support. Only a few Republican legislators oppose military aid to Ukraine. In the midterms, Republicans failed to take the Senate and managed only a slim margin of victory in the House. Even if they wanted to, the Republicans are not likely to be able to change US policy on Ukraine.

Nor will the left wing of the Democratic Party significantly change administration policy. Despite all the hoopla around the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s letter on Ukraine that was unveiled and withdrawn in quick succession, most progressives support the provision of aid. Here, for instance, is a recent statement from Congressman Jamie Raskin, a prominent Congressional Progressive Caucus member and one of the letter’s signatories:

Ukrainians today give the democratic world a chance for a critical and historic victory, and we must rally to their side. It is important to be on the right side of a just war, and it is even more important to be on the right side and win. Just as Ukrainian resistance gives us hope, a Ukrainian victory would give us an opening to a much better future for all humanity. All champions of democracy over autocracy—whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals—should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible.

In the public at large, meanwhile, US military support of Ukraine enjoys strong support. Around three out of four Americans support the continuation of both economic and military aid to Ukraine.

What about Europe?

Putin has also expected European support for Ukraine to crumble in the face of a winter of rising energy costs. Here, there is a considerably wider range of opinion than in the United States. A plurality of both Greeks and Italians favor lifting sanctions against Russia. Hungarians, too, are skeptical about a tougher approach to Russia. By contrast, the rest of Europe is not in the mood to compromise with the Kremlin.

Although Putin might be cheered by the growing gap between Greece, Italy, and Hungary on the one hand and the rest of Europe on the other, he should be very worried about plummeting support for Russia among what had once been his most reliable allies: far-right political parties.

In Italy, for instance, Putin once enjoyed considerable influence with the far right. He counted Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister and head of Forza Italia, as a close friend. Putin’s United Russia party had a close partnership with Matteo Salvini’s Lega party. Under ordinary circumstances, Putin should have been thrilled by the victory of the far right in the recent Italian elections.

But the head of the leading far-right party Brothers of Italy, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, has made it clear that she will continue to support Ukraine. “Given our principal challenge today, Italy strongly supports the territorial integrity, sovereignty and freedom of Ukraine,” Meloni told NATO at a meeting last week. “The political cohesion of the alliance and our full commitment to supporting the Ukrainian cause are, from our point of view, the best response that NATO allies can give.”

Putin himself was once held in high regard by the European far right. Since the invasion of Ukraine, his approval ratings among voters affiliated with far-right parties has dropped dramatically. For instance, 62% of Lega voters in Italy once thought highly of Putin. That number has dropped to 10% today.

The Balance Sheet

If you add up all these factors, Ukraine has a considerable edge over Russia. It is maintaining its military support from the United States and the European Union, and recent elections in Italy and the United States have not altered those commitments. It is making incremental progress on the battlefield, as the Russian withdrawal from Kherson indicates. And Russian destruction of civil infrastructure, however extensive and punishing, has not sapped the will of the Ukrainian population.

Russia, on the other hand, faces numerous problems. It has few supporters in the international arena. It is having difficulty calling up enough experienced soldiers to replenish the front lines in Ukraine. And sanctions are reducing its ability to replace the military hardware it has lost so far in the war, as its overtures to Iran and North Korea for rather rudimentary arms indicate.

Given Ukraine’s battlefield successes and the willingness of the Ukrainian population to endure hardship in order to repel Russian invaders, this is no time to call for a ceasefire. Such a ceasefire would give Russia the time to reinforce its positions in occupied territory in Ukraine and train new recruits to prepare for a future counter-offensive. If Ukrainians change their minds and champion a ceasefire, then of course the United States should help negotiate one. But not until then.

The Russian left, too, understands this simple moral question. Anarcho-ecofeminist Lolja Nordic argues:

It is absurd to demand that an occupied country stop fighting for its liberation and essentially give up its land for peace. It’s the same as telling a victim of violence to not resist a person who tries to abuse, rape or murder them. Why would we tell that to Ukrainians?

Nine times out of ten, war is not the answer. But in this case, the Ukrainians didn’t ask for war. It was thrust upon them. So, the only appropriate answer to Russia’s invasion is a war of self-defense. And right now, Ukraine is winning it.

Down the road, a stalemate is possible, perhaps even likely. At the moment, however, the government of Volodymyr Zelensky sees no need to negotiate with a Kremlin that is equally uninterested in compromise. The difference for the Ukrainians, however, is that they have good reason to believe that they can achieve their goals of regaining occupied territory by military means in the coming months.

[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia appeared first on Fair Observer.

In their book War in Ukraine, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies align all the pertinent facts a reader needs to know about the origins of a brutal but avoidable conflict and the political events that have accompanied its unfolding. They define the geopolitical issues, put them in perspective and analyze the risks and much of the damage done to our civilization by a war that reflects a confused political logic on all sides. Their book tracks the decisions and interpretations that have populated the headlines in the media and takes that same media to task for both neglecting history and inventing narratives intended to bury the facts and hide the perception of their deeper meaning.

In short, War in Ukraine provides a compendious antidote to the plethora of distortions presented by what it would be more accurate to call the news entertainment media. The history that brought us to where we are today now confuses us about where we are likely to be tomorrow. Our leaders and our media prefer that we remain blissfully unaware. Complexity and political entertainment are incompatible. Is that what explains why history and the lessons we can learn from it have largely been banned from the popular media?

Benjamin and Davies take on the complexity, breaking it down into digestible bits. They consistently avoid polemic and stick to the facts. Some of the facts have been and will be directly denied or simply conveniently forgotten, such as Victoria Nuland’s extremely active role in the Maidan uprising back in 2014, an episode the authors recount in detail. Nuland has long been the US State Department’s most prominent and impenitent neoconservative (neocon). That explains why the authors ask at one point, “Why would Biden bring Nuland back and give her even greater responsibility after what happened on her watch in Ukraine in 2014?” They don’t provide an answer. Only Biden himself could supply one. But the question itself highlights the complexity of this sequence of historical events. It is a question every reader should think about.

Since this is all about Ukraine, the authors could have mentioned another unelucidated mystery: the role of Joe Biden’s son Hunter in Ukrainian affairs. That is precisely the kind of story that appeals to polemicists. It too raises some real questions. But the authors have chosen only to focus on verifiable facts and visible connections. They may be accused of not hewing to the White House’s narrative, but in the land of the First Amendment that is presumably a legitimate deviation. If there is any sense that they are rooting for one side or another, it is clearly for the side of peace and sanity. The fact that so many politicians and media figures are making such an effort to get the American public to root rather than think and reflect is one of the most troubling phenomena that emerges from their account of the war in Ukraine.

Benjamin’s and Davies’s command of the facts and their patient recounting of Ukraine’s recent history represent an impressive achievement. Even those like myself who have tried to follow events dating back decades will find plenty of new things to think about and piece together while reading these pages. The points they make are clearly meant to inform rather than persuade. Their point of view nevertheless remains crystal clear. In John Lennon’s words, “give peace a chance.” On their own, the task they see lying ahead of us is to commit to a strategy bent on resolving tensions while respecting the different parties’ legitimate interests, even when those interests conflict. Above all, it is to pull us back from the brink of nuclear war.

American addiction to hegemony

Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad’s Withdrawal accomplishes something similar in its handling of history. It sets up a very similar debate based on both authors’ wide-ranging knowledge of contemporary history and geopolitics. They place their analysis in a much broader historical context, with a focus on the evolution of US foreign policy starting with the Vietnam war.

Chomsky has, after all, been playing this game for far longer than most everyone covering international relations. He has done so with a seriousness and independence that none of the public pundits whose writings appear regularly in prestigious newspapers and journals can claim to rival. Does that mean he perfectly understands everything? Certainly not. I would personally take issue with specific points, such as his assigning India’s Narendra Modi to a “reactionary alliance” that links him with Hungary’s Victor Orban, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He reduces Modi’s politics to one based on “destroying secular democracy” in the interest of “creating a Hindu ethnocracy” and “crushing Kashmir.” Chomsky may, in this case, be more influenced by random articles he’s read in The New York Times than a direct experience of contemporary India. Modi’s politics and India’s history of ethnic and religious relations are much more complex than Chomsky’s assertion.

In the book’s Afterword, Prashad explains that his relationship with Chomsky began in the early 1990s. As their friendship developed, the two thinkers and prolific commentators on geopolitics hailing from two distant parts of the world merge in this book as a united couple acutely aware of the state and the position of the US on the world stage. They describe what may appear as an increasingly desperate and literally dislocated defense of a declining US empire and the dangers it presents for the rest of the world.

The pretext for the book, reflected in its title, was the Biden administration’s surprising and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 after a 20-year stint of attempting to manage everyone’s affairs in the Middle East. Most people perceived it as an admission of failure. Some thought it might even qualify as an act of humility. The events of 2022 show that the trend towards humility was, if it existed, short-lived.

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Reviewing US foreign policy over many decades since World War II, Chomsky and Prashad point out that despite surprises such as the retreat from Vietnam in 1975 and the withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the US has seen its role evolve in what they see as a worrying direction. During the Cold War it appeared that the US was hubristically assuming the role of the world’s policeman. It set about enforcing the laws of the rules-based order it had succeeded in establishing thanks to its financial and industrial clout that remained intact and unscathed after a catastrophic world war. Ever since the fall of the USSR, when the US became the world’s unique superpower, the authors see it as having moved into a slightly different role: that of the global Godfather, mafia style.

Chomsky and Prashad direct their analysis less on the question of who may have been right and who was wrong in the conduct of any particular event than on exposing the structural principles that informed the decision-making behind the Godfather’s foreign policy. Those who have studied the Mafia know that the families have always been more focused in their daily routines on serious business and the profitability of their commerce than on the spectacular machine gun massacres that feature in the reporting of the media and Hollywood movies. It is no different with US foreign policy, despite the US government’s proclivity for prosecuting wars of their own making or participating in proxy wars, as has happened in Yemen and Ukraine. In the chapter of the book dedicated to 9/11 and Afghanistan, Chomsky offers this pertinent analysis of the well documented American industrial policy that justified President Eisenhower’s warning targeting the military-industrial complex.

“The Pentagon system… imposes on the public a large burden of the costs (research and development, R&D° and provides a guaranteed market for excess production, a useful cushion for management decisions. Furthermore, this form of industrial policy does not have the undesirable side effects of social spending directed to human needs. Apart from unwelcome redistributive effects, the latter policies tend to interfere with managerial prerogatives; useful production may undercut private gain, while state-subsidized waste production (arms, man-on-the-moon extravaganzas, etc.) is a gift to the owner and manager, who will, furthermore, be granted control of any marketable spin-offs.”

The thought, in just a few sentences, is both complex and complete. Eisenhower warned the nation of the danger but never tried to explain the logic of the process. In a few sentences Chomsky makes it clear. This kind of industrial organization dares to violate the principles of the liberal capitalist system it is designed to defend militarily. In a world supposedly regulated by the invisible hand of free competition, the Pentagon’s system, overseen by Congress, props up state-subsidized private monopolies. It even prolongs the process into consumer space, where theoretically pure market forces should always be at work. Such a system repeats the chestnut about “building a better mousetrap” but adds another proviso: make sure it’s the taxpayers, not the capitalists, who fund it and then spend the money you saved on lawyers specialized in IP who will protect your invention from imitators, which guarantees future margins. Taxpayers thus pay for these monopolistic practices twice. At least they are assured of having the most competitive armed forces in the world.

Military withdrawal but clandestine engagement

Withdrawal ranges across a series of wars and military operations that have defined the consistent drift of US foreign policy for at least the past 50 years. The withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan in 2021 led some commentators to assume that this marked a turning point in US policy. The nation was finally moving away from the temptation to systematically intervene in other nations’ affairs. One could even imagine that the US was preparing to accept a multipolar world in which problems would be addressed and solved through deliberation and collaboration rather than confrontation and conflict. The media even came up with a name for it: “the peace dividend.” Many Americans saw it as an opportunity for the new Biden administration to focus on its commitment to renewing infrastructure and “building back better” to improve the lives of Americans at home.

Such a belief quickly turned out to belong to the same penchant for naivety that had led some political figures and commentators three decades ago to suppose that once the Soviet Union had dissolved and the Warsaw pact was disbanded, there would be no further need for NATO. Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin were at various times convinced that the opportunity existed to imagine and put in place a specifically European or even Eurasian security framework that would encourage the existing trend towards fluidifying a globalized economy. 

They too turned out to be naïve. They failed to understand that the real purpose of NATO, from the American point of view, was to hold Europe securely under US military and economic control. NATO especially served to prevent the eventual emergence of a more powerful economic zone capable of marginalizing the US economy and supplanting its historical supremacy. China is a threat because you can’t give it orders. Europe would be an even bigger threat if it stopped taking orders.

The dollar as the unique universally recognized reserve currency and some 800 military bases spread across the surface of the globe have stood for decades as the guarantors of US hegemony. Anything that might rise in autonomy to threaten, challenge or weaken that carefully constructed system — often referred to as a “rules-based order” —  must be prevented from taking shape.

In their introduction, Chomsky and Prashad explain their comparison of US foreign policy with the behavior of a mafia Godfather. “There is a mafia quality to the way the United States has exercised its power.” It isn’t a modern phenomenon. They detect its roots in the genocide of native populations in North America, a campaign historically romanticized and even theologized as “manifest destiny.” They then make this specific claim: “The Godfather attitude expanded geometrically after the collapse of the USSR.” It is the opposite of democratic reasoning. They note that George W Bush’s wars in the Middle East “came with little consideration for world opinion, even less for the possibility of preventing war through negotiation.”

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The refusal to negotiate is one of the major points that Benjamin and Davies note in their account of the history of the ongoing Ukraine war. At the end of 2021, after amassing an impressive number of  troops on the Ukrainian border. Russia used the demonstration to propose that a conflict could be avoided if the parties accepted to hammer out an understanding. It’s a classic ploy. Demonstrate the worst of your intentions and use the demonstration to reach a compromise At the time, Western media neglected even to report on that proposal. 

In the past few days the question of negotiations to end the conflict has come to the fore once again, with a growing sense of urgency as winter approaches. The same media who paid no attention to it last December have continued to voluntarily ignore that such a proposal was ever made. Again history disappears out of sheer neglect. This is unfortunate because any peace deal likely to be achieved will almost certainly contain many of the provisions of the Russian proposal of last year. 

Benjamin and Davies make no judgment about what would de fair or desirable. They offer the simple facts describing this episode. “In December 2021, Russia took the initiative of proposing two draft mutual security treaties, one between Russia and the United States and one between Russia and NATO. These were not ‘take it or leave it’ demands or ultimata, but drafts for negotiation. So any specific language that the United States or NATO disagreed with was on the table for negotiation.” The problem of negotiating to end a war that has already begun is that after the loss of life, the destruction of property and the occupation of territory, both sides consider it a capitulation and a loss of face  to agree to the other side’s terms, even when they constitute a feasible and acceptable solution.

Let’s not do a deal!

In other words, the allergy to negotiations Chomsky and Prashad saw as already a characteristic of the Republican Bush administration’s remains intact under Biden’s Democratic White House. Benjamin and Davies describe in detail how the negotiations engaged in the first weeks after the Russian invasion were discouraged, if not sabotaged by voices in the West who saw the conflict as an opportunity to weaken and humiliate Russia, even at the cost of Ukrainian suffering.

Godfathers only make a show of negotiating when they know they unambiguously have the upper hand. An honest observer would be justified in posing the question Western media still refuses to ask with regard to the events of 2021: Does the cost in blood and treasure of a war some predict to last for years not call into question the wisdom of refusing to sit down and talk with the Russian last December? Benjamin and Davies offer their version of the question. “Was the U.S. strategic ‘great game’ against Russia such an overriding priority to Biden and U.S. leaders that they saw years of war and bloodshed in Ukraine as an acceptable price for trying to ‘weaken ’Russia, as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin later described the U.S. goal?”

The implications of the choice the Biden administration made of offering the Ukrainians an endless supply of arms and funding in the hope of prolonging the war are chilling. They cannot be chalked up to US intelligence misreading of the stakes or the government’s failure to anticipate the consequences. “The Godfather attitude is not irrational,” Chomsky and Prashad tell us. It is designed not to solve problems or avert catastrophe but “to protect the property, privileges, and power of the ruling elite in the United States and their closest allies in Europe, Japan, and a few other countries.” All of this means that its principal goal is to prevent other interests from having a say in world affairs. The US applies a simple logical principle: once you have defined your rules-based order, there is nothing to negotiate. Follow the rules and the Godfather will be there to reward you for your obedience.

Chomsky and Prashad cover a lot of historical ground and use the examples they cite to describe what appears as predictable patterns of behavior. Acceptance of all the explicit and tacit laws of the rule-based order remains fundamental. “The United States cannot tolerate defiance,” Chomsky concludes, “particularly successful defiance.” To illustrate the principle he recounts the behavior of both the Carter and Reagan administrations with regard to the tiny island of Grenada, ultimately the object of an American military invasion for the crime of disobedience.

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In contrast, Benjamin and Davies, seeking to inform about the facts, draw few general conclusions. The diligently and dutifully recount the events that have in the past and present defined the stakes of the Ukraine war. But those facts and the description of those events chime with the same points Chomsky and Prashad make throughout their book..

Nevertheless, Benjamin and Davies are careful not to impose one point of view but to acknowledge alternative interpretations of the same set of facts. In their concluding chapter they dramatically ask two probing questions aimed at confronting the actors in the conflict with their responsibilities. “Could Putin really believe that Russia’s very existence was under such immediate threat that invasion was the only answer? Could Western leaders really believe that Ukraine’s right to join NATO and to reimpose its sovereignty over Donbass and Crimea were causes worthy of jeopardizing millions of lives or risking nuclear war?” It’s a sad fact that the most brutal wars are carried out and endure on the basis of what each party “believes.”

Is history too complex for the media’s taste?

These two books have one thing in common: they demonstrate how complex history can be and how dangerous denying its complexity may be. In their modest way, while denouncing what they characterize as political errors and even crimes by those who make policy, the authors remind us that our culture’s cultivated indifference to history compounds the problem. It blinds the populations of our democracies, preventing them from exercising a corrective role. It does so by conditioning them to accept a truncated version of historical truth. 

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Benjamin and Davies dedicate a chapter to the role of propaganda that now, perhaps more than ever before, permeates our media, executing the essential task of reducing the appreciation of historical truth to the unconditional support supplied by fans for their team in a competitive sport. The authors begin the chapter “Information warfare” with a quote from former US Ambassador Chas Freeman: ““This war in Ukraine is the most intense information war humanity has ever seen. There are so many lies flying about that it’s totally impossible to perceive the truth.”

Discovering and isolating the “truth” of historical processes is no easy task. Often the closer we are to a story unfolding before our eyes, the harder it is to perceive its factual substance and especially its deeper meaning. But denying or simply failing to be attentive to the history that precedes what we believe we see clearly today is quite simply irresponsible. The cost of acquiescing to such an irresponsible attitude has never been more evident. Chomsky reminds us that the “U.S. military is driving us toward destruction through nuclear war and the climate catastrophe.” Benjamin and Davies bring the same point in their chapter with the title: “Flirting with nuclear war.”

Just this week the report of a “Russian missile” that detonated in Poland killing two people demonstrated how close the flirtation might already be. Depending on how such nations and institutions like NATO read such events – as acts of war or false flag operations – the result may look like a less entertaining version of Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy, Dr Strangelove. Whereas Joe Biden immediately discounted the idea that it may be a Russian aggression, the New York Times reports that “Volodymyr Zelensky, seized on the possibility of Russian involvement and called it evidence of ‘a very significant escalation.’” Given the propension of a wide range of people – and not only Sean Penn – to believe anything Zelenskyy says, after such incidents a direct war between two nuclear powers (actually more than two) may be only days or even hours away.

That is why it would be both salutary and urgent for anyone who cares about their own survival, let alone that of the human race, to read these books by two different sets of authors. They should do so before drawing hasty conclusions on the basis of the latest news story about who is right and who is wrong or who deserves a comeuppance. 

What the world needs today is a little bit of sanity and a large dose of critical thinking based on discernible facts and a sensitivity to the trends of history. War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless War provides the former in abundance. The facts they present should convince any honest reader that there’s more to the story than even the most respectable media will present on any given day. In contrast, Chomsky and Prashad’s Withdrawal reads like a dialogue between two people who have spent recent decades, individually and collaboratively, refining their critical thinking and applying it to the contemporary dramas of the world. Our advice to the reader; it’s probably best to start with War in Ukraine, just to restore one’s sanity in the face of the daily onslaught of what Chas Freeman has called an “information war.” Chomsky and Prashad’s more reflective and conversational contribution will provide a broader context and open up other avenues of research. In some sense, we can never have enough history. In a similar sense we can easily have too much propaganda.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ukraine Fatigue? Your Urgent Duty: Read These Books appeared first on Fair Observer.

Apart from the question of why anyone in a democratic society should consider isolating a group of one’s own citizens who hold an opinion different from the state’s, even on such a critical issue as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a more serious question arises. Why did President Levits single out a certain ethno-linguistic group as an object of possible reprisals? The fact that the next day his press service tried to interpret the Latvian leader’s words in the sense that all residents of the country must comply with the law adds little clarity here. Most likely, the man, who is president of the EU and of a state that is a member of NATO, made the statement based on a simplistic association between Russian speaking and Russia.

Associative xenophobia is a form of bias directed against persons one associates with a particular state and its policies. It is an old problem in Europe. Until recently, it was routinely applied to discriminate against Jews. A “new anti-Semitism” has emerged, directed both against Jews, who by association with Israel are deemed responsible for the policies of this country, and directly against Israel as a Jewish state. It is no secret that in countries such as France, Belgium, Britain and a number of others, there has been a clear correlation between outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism and the escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

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This phenomenon appears widespread. For example, a CNN poll conducted in September 2018 in seven Western European countries found that more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said that anti-Semitism in their countries was a response to the actions of the state of Israel. A third of those surveyed believed Israel was using the Holocaust to justify its actions. And a third of Europeans said supporters of Israel were using accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle criticism of Israel. Only one in ten said this was not true. 33% of the French claimed in 2018 that “Israel is more important to Jews than France.” In a Friedrich Ebert Foundation poll in 2021 13% of Germans said that Jews are responsible for the actions and policies of the State of Israel, while in Britain 14% believed that “association with Israel has made Jews less loyal to their country.”

Tracing the recent history of Russian xenophobia

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014, associative xenophobia in Western countries, especially in Europe, has gradually spread to Russians and Russian speakers in general, regardless of their citizenship.

For example, European websites began to publish content presenting Russian speaking tourists as always drunk, noisy, thieving and behaving like  hooligans., This was actively promoted by the Ukrainian media, which built its policy of discrimination against Russians into a tool of psychological warfare.

At the same time, between 2015 and 2018, Ukraine and Latvia passed laws that sharply curtailed Russian-language education in national minority schools, causing sharp discontent among Russian-speaking residents of those countries.

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However, after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the situation changed fundamentally and took on a broader character, encompassing not only the domestic but also a diversity of public spheres. Unfortunately, no one has conducted a serious sociological research on the attitude of Europeans toward Russians and Russian-speakers. But there is a consensus that this attitude is more negative than the attitude toward Jews. To a large extent, this was facilitated by the Russian invasion itself, which caused a sharp decline in trust in Russia among Europeans. 

This had a direct effect on members of the Russian diaspora in Europe. For example, in Germany there have been cases of denial of service to Russian-speaking people in catering establishments. There have been cases of arbitrary treatment of Russian-speaking students at European universities. For example, Professor Martin Dlougy, who teaches at the Higher School of Economics in Prague (VSE), kicked Russian students out of classes and wrote on his Facebook page that “he will not teach Russians.” These are his personal sanctions.

Obstacles have been artificially created for the development of business related to Russia and Russian citizens, regardless of whether this business is under European sanctions or not. There is information that waiters and receptionists in hotels refuse to serve Russian-speaking people or serve them below any level of service.

President Zelensky’s lobbying

In August – September 2022, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia and a number of other countries announced the abolition of tourist visas for Russians, regardless of their political views. This effectively threatened the stay of oppositionists in these countries, including opposition journalists, as well as ordinary people in general holding a negative view of Putin’s regime. To a large extent, this practice has been encouraged by Ukrainian lobbying. President Volodymyr Zelensky explained his position in the following terms: 

“Whichever kind of Russian … make them go to Russia. They’ll understand then. They’ll say, ‘This [war] has nothing to do with us. The whole population can’t be held responsible, can it?’ It can. The population picked this government and they’re not fighting it, not arguing with it, not shouting at it. “Don’t you want this isolation?” Zelensky added, speaking as if he were addressing Russians directly. “You’re telling the whole world that it must live by your rules. Then go and live there. This is the only way to influence Putin,”” he told The Washington Post on August 8, 2022.

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Estonian Prime Minister Kaia Kallas tweeted on August 9: “Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right.”The theoretical dispute as to whether the ban on Russians entering Europe discriminates on the basis of citizenship, an action that runs counter to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or whether it is a normal practice, has not ceased until now. However, as early as August 2022, Estonian authorities began to practice mass cancellation of tourist Schengen visas for Russian citizens, including those issued in third countries.

Meanwhile, article 32(1) of the European Regulation No 810/2009 (Visa Code) states that neither the nationality nor ethnicity of a person can be a reason to refuse a Schengen visa. Moreover, if the refusal of a visa is motivated by a particular nationality, the court of any EU state is obliged to overturn the decision to refuse. However, the new reasons for visa refusal, not mentioned in the quoted document, require a full legislative cycle, including a qualified majority in the EU Council and the European Parliament. 

Nevertheless, a number of countries stopped allowing Russians with Schengen visas to enter their territory on September 19. That means they are placing a collective responsibility on Russian citizens for the actions of their government. Moreover if we take into account repeated statements by the European media that elections in Russia have long been rigged, this decision becomes even more questionable. In Israel, for example, the responsibility of all citizens for the actions of the government of their country, despite free elections, is not assumed. Thanks  to secret ballots no one knows who has supported any particular candidate or party.

A massive injustice affecting millions of innocent people

However, this reasoning has had little effect on the position of many people in Europe regarding the responsibility of all Russian citizens for the actions of their government. And yet there are almost one million Russian citizens living in Europe. This attitude even affects other Russian-speaking people who are not citizens of the Russian Federation. These people already outnumber Russian citizens by a wide margin. The number of people included in the Russian-speaking diaspora in the world is estimated at 25-30 million. Germany alone has about five million Russian speakers, a number significantly greater than the population of 1.5 million Jews in all of Europe. No one has inquired about their views on policies discriminating against Russians, but it is now evident that quite a large number of people in the world, including politicians, hold them responsible for Moscow’s actions.

In fact, we are dealing with the above-mentioned phenomenon of associative xenophobia, which is gradually spreading from eastern to western Europe and to all democratic countries. The so-called “new anti-Semitism” is now accompanied by the “new Russophobia”. Behind both is the desire to sweep people of certain origins “under one roof,” to make them in the eyes of public opinion responsible for the actions of the countries with which most Europeans associate them.

A look at the discussions in the Baltic, Finnish, or Polish segments of the Meta’s social network (Facebook)  gives a clear idea of how the “new Russophobia” is becoming increasingly popular in those countries. This trend is similar to  the phenomenon previously identified in Fance and the UK as the “new anti-Semitism,” link to the of aggravation of tensions in the Middle East. 

History has certainly seen other examples of the attribution of collective responsibility. Many of them ended in tragedy. People who try to revive these traditions today — no longer politicians only, but also ordinary European people — do not usually associate them with past events. It does not even occur to them that the new level of risk they are creating in Europe may be significantly higher than those they believe they are fighting today.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Associative Xenophobia in Europe: a New Old Trend appeared first on Fair Observer.

Even the nations of Europe most loyal to NATO have begun to understand the danger of committing to a war that they perceive as having less and less to do with Ukraine and everything to do with Washington’s belief in its capacity to control the global economy, even at the cost of undermining the economy of its allies.

Wars are expensive and produce a wide range of annoying effects. They end up taking a toll on people’s psyche. And though most of the time what the people think and want generally has little effect on policy, when elections roll around, their psyche might end up mattering. And even if the US manages to control the message at home, it counts on its allies, whose media are much harder to control from Washington.

The grief attached to the Ukraine war has begun to rattle some people in Washington. The Washington Post featured an article this week with the title: “U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia.” The three journalists who authored the article describe the delicate task the US government is faced with today, as many leaders in Europe are beginning to worry precisely about the state of their populations’ psyche.

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As the article’s title indicates, it isn’t a question of making decisions or revising policy. The point is “to show” something, not to make it happen. Politics will also produce a particular version of hyperreality, in which things need not be real. They must simply appear to be real.

The article claims to share with its readers the true motives of the White House, “according to people familiar with the discussions.” It takes the trouble to clarify what this “show” of being open does not mean. “The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.”

Americans can thus be reassured. The “show” isn’t: an attempt to provoke the unimaginable: actual negotiations with the diabolical Vladimir Putin. It’s nothing more than a “calculated attempt” to show something that isn’t true.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Calculated attempt:

Carefully fabricated lie designed to create an impression opposite to visible reality

Contextual note

The trio of The Washington Post journalists articulate with precision what’s behind this need for a calculated attempt. “US officials,” they report, “acknowledge that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ban on talks with [Putin] has generated concern in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America, where the war’s disruptive effects on the availability and cost of food and fuel are felt most sharply.” In other words, this is neither a diplomatic nor a political problem. It certainly isn’t inviting a debate about the morality of war or promoting the advantages of peace. No, it’s about the image of a policy that is beginning to fray some people’s nerves in other parts of the world. In short, it’s a PR problem. The task at hand is damage control.

One person cited in the report has even given it a name. “Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners,” according to one of their anonymous officials. Notice this official’s emphasis on the idea of Ukraine fatigue being “a real thing.” It’s the fatigue that’s real and worrying, not the horrors associated with the war or its consequences for humanity at large. 

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One interesting and revealing remark in this article concerns The Washington Post’s analysis of the state of opinion in the US, where “polls show eroding support among Republicans for continuing to finance Ukraine’s military at current levels.” The Biden administration and The Washington Post’s want readers to believe that only Republicans are questioning the unlimited generosity of the White House in its commitment to prolonging the war. In fact, a significant minority of Democrats (19%) also oppose even supporting the Ukraine war effort, let alone signing a blank check.

American media and US politicians appear to be complicit in seeking to maintain the perception of an absolute contrast between the two dominant parties, even when, more often than not, they rarely disagree, especially on foreign policy. The insistent focus on a binary contrast and party rivalry conveniently serves to deviate attention from the more fundamental issues that neither of the parties seems eager to address.

Historical note

Most people are now aware of the fact that after a series of traumatic events we are living through a momentous period of history: four years of Donald Trump in the White House, three years of Covid and the dramas attached to it, the chaotic US withdrawal from the oldest of its “forever wars” in Afghanistan, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine followed by the apoplectic if not apocalyptic reaction of the nations associated in NATO, to say nothing of the increasingly visible effects of climate change. All these things have heightened everyone’s uncertainty about the future and of the trajectory of human history. 

Today’s journalism has an uncomfortable relationship with history. Journalists have traditionally preferred highlighting the drama of simple oppositions, of contests that pit one side against the other. They prefer reducing questions to the level of black and white decision-making. But history will always be complex. At moments of radical transition or transformation, simple oppositions cannot do justice to reality. Believing they can make things even more desperately complex. In this case it raises the very real prospect of nuclear war.

The Washington Post’s journalists acknowledge the growing complexity but decline to make sense of it. Here is how they describe the quandary the US is faced with. “The discussions illustrate how complex the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine has become, as U.S. officials publicly vow to support Kyiv with massive sums of aid ‘for as long as it takes’ while hoping for a resolution to the conflict that over the past eight months has taken a punishing toll on the world economy and triggered fears of nuclear war.”

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The journalists even highlight what has become an embarrassing historical fact, adding to the complexity. “While Zelensky laid out proposals for a negotiated peace in the weeks following Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion, including Ukrainian neutrality and a return of areas occupied by Russia since that date, Ukrainian officials have hardened their stance in recent months.” But that is as far as they accept to go.

Unsurprisingly – because that would truly complicate things – they don’t ask themselves the essential questions any journalist aware of these facts should focus on. Who are these “Ukrainian officials?” What is their relationship with Zelenskyy or Zelenskyy’s with them? What avowable or unavowable logic is behind the “hardening” that took place? Do the hardliners represent average Ukrainians or, as some have suggested, groups of radical nationalists with strong neoNazi sympathies? Are there other identifiable interests inside or outside Ukraine that have produced this hardening?

All mainstream journalists in the US appear not to be curious about these questions. Or perhaps they are instructed not to be curious in public. As the kerfuffle within the Democratic party around progressives timidly recommending negotiations showed, seeking peace is a forbidden topic of discussion. Policy, everywhere and always, is about power plays. So why shy away from tracking and analyzing them, especially when the stakes may be nuclear war?

For the media, the answer to that question is easy. Just as at the time of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, journalists interested in keeping their jobs have been given a task to accomplish: make sure that the nation remains unified behind its leaders. It’s an argument that has some merit. But when things become this complex and downright dangerous, it may be time to reconsider its wisdom.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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