Onus on West to bring Ukraine war to an end

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

Commentator and author

LOVE him or hate him, but you just cannot ignore him. His comments and views merit an in-depth analysis. In a BBC interview and an article in The Telegraph, Nigel Farage of the Reform UK party (a pivotal figure of Brexit) questioned the West’s conventional wisdom: “Don’t blame me for telling the truth about Putin’s war. Facing up facts about the mistakes of the past has to be the first step towards the peaceful future we all want to see…” Farage was speaking on the genesis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.

Without mincing words, Farage called out the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine as “immoral and outrageous”. Yet, he recalled his 2014 statement in the European Parliament that “there will be a war in Ukraine” because “the expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving Putin a pretext he would not ignore”. Farage added: “If you poke the Russian bear with a stick, don’t be surprised if he responds.”

That takes us to the history as well as geography of the world and of Russia to assess the present imbroglio that the West is well aware of, owing to its past of gory wars and expansionist power politics for two centuries.

Let’s be clear about Russia’s size, location, position and vastness. The erstwhile USSR had an area of 2.26 crore square km. It lost 55 lakh square km in the 1991 breakup. Fourteen of its border provinces became independent. In one stroke, the ‘land border’ came back to haunt Russian rulers as the prime factor for the safety, security and sovereignty of mighty Moscow.

Naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory that “land powers are perennially insecure” holds true for Moscow as things have gone from bad to worse. Thus, no sooner did Russia shrink — what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do with their guns — that NATO and EU got into the expansion game, as is made clear by Farage.

After the 9/11 terror attacks, Russia unconditionally supported the US, leading to the Moscow-Washington summit of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in June 2002. However, it was followed by NATO leading the charge for the membership of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to expand its zone of political and military influence. NATO was closing in towards 21st-century Russia’s underbelly as well as routes through which Napoleon and Hitler ravaged Russia.

What happened before begs a reference pertaining to the Russian-speaking demography in Ukraine. Essentially, the problem originated because a lack of “national or ethnic homogeneity” is common to all former Soviet republics. The issue of Russian minorities proved to be the most difficult to resolve in Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.

In the December 1991 plebiscite in Crimea (which has 90 per cent Russian-speaking population), “54.2 per cent voted in favour of independence from Ukraine. It is confirmed by the election of the Crimean parliament with a majority firmly in favour of a union with Russia” (from Frontiers: Territories and State Formation in Modern World by Malcolm Anderson, 1996).

Let’s now look beyond Russia. Why did France and Germany fight for years over Alsace-Lorraine and Eupen-Malmedy? Why did Germany find it compelling to annex Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Schleswig and Holstein in the 19th and 20th centuries? Why does China object to anyone even talking about Tibet and Taiwan? Why can’t India allow any power to go near Bhutanese territory and why does it want its island neighbours not to pose a threat to Indian security? Why does Iran want the narrow and shallow Strait of Hormuz to be free of US carriers? Why did Margaret Thatcher fight the 1982 war in the Falkland Islands, which are some 10,000 miles from the British Isles? Why does Australia feel apprehensive of any non-Western nation approaching Tasmania, New Zealand and islands around Canberra? Why did the Anglo-French forces fight Egypt in 1956 over the Suez Canal, which legitimately belongs to Cairo and neither to Paris nor London? Why did the US retaliate against Japan with atomic bombs in 1945 and punish Iraq and Afghanistan over the 9/11 attacks? Why is the Levant war, instead of ceasing, showing signs of extinction of several groups which flourished for years owing to the geopolitical interests of the West? Can it be said that whereas war is the terror of the prosperous, terror is the war of the poor?

Coming back to Farage, there is no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the aggressor and Ukraine the victim. The West did provoke Putin to the point of no return. It’s, therefore, the duty and responsibility of the West to find ways to stop the Ukraine war. The 28-month-old war between Moscow and Kyiv is the longest and most destructive in mainland Europe since World War II. The entire West has been shaken to its foundations, resulting in unprecedented political, economic, social and diplomatic disarray, thereby creating a global crisis.

India is right in taking a neutral stand. Nevertheless, the increasing Western pressure on New Delhi to castigate Russia and throttle its economy must be withstood. The business of ‘sanctions’ is becoming a joke being played by the prosperous West. Russia has been the steadiest of India’s allies, both in the best and the worst of times. The bilateral relations just cannot be undermined or weakened.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Russia #Ukraine