offline
- Pridružio: 11 Mar 2022
- Poruke: 102
|
- 11Ovo se svidja korisnicima: Shinobi, Metanoja, babaroga, the zivotinja, S2M, GrammaticalAnalysis, Dukelander, amaterSRB, Singidunumac, Griffon vulture, Iwo Jima
Registruj se da bi pohvalio/la poruku!
We are now several months into the conflict with Russia. I say “we” because we are all pretending here in the West that the real war is between Russia and Ukraine but (nod nod wink wink) if we clandestinely, in some sense, provide full support to Ukraine then maybe the Russians, foolish and backward as they are won’t notice and we can simultaneously pretend that we aren’t flirting with the prospect of a long, arduous and inconceivably destructive war. I want to say at the outset that I think what Putin has done is unconscionable; God only knows what the impact will be, as all four of the horsemen of the apocalypse are on the march again. I think that the collusion of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is even more unforgivable. Be that as it may, I also believe that the attempt to deeply understand the motive forces for this war, as it is very difficult to set things right (let alone avoid a similar future catastrophe—or even to stop this conflict from spreading) in the absence of such understanding.
I have spoken publicly (on my YouTube channel and podcast) with American policy expert Frederick Kagan, who was recommended to me by some of my conservative associates in the US—people with extensive political experience and, simultaneously, knowledge about foreign policy. Kagan is rather hawkish in his outlook and reputation, and was criticized for this (as I was for hosting him) in the social media comments sections accompanying my YouTube channel. Our joint episodes, by the way, have been viewed or listened to by at least three million people. I’m saying this just to provide evidence that these discussions have some impact in the broad public sphere.
Dr. Kagan essentially put forward the thesis that Vladimir Putin is a prototypical authoritarian, and that Russia’s foray into Ukraine might properly be viewed as an expression of the imperial expansionism that typified the Soviet Union: so, Cold War, round two. Accompanying this view is the interpretation of Putin as a thug in the Hitlerian mould, carrying a chip on his shoulder, interested primarily in self-aggrandizement, and capitalizing on Russian patriotism and an associated populist appeal to fortify his pretensions to empire and desire for an unlimited extension of personal power. This perspective, which appears to characterize what might be called the Western “patriotic” response to the Russian incursion, has its very real justifications. It appears part of uniting in response to an enemy; part of justifying what is necessarily a binary decision process: are we at war, or not? If yes, then the question arises: is the enemy bad? By definition. Otherwise the war is unpardonable—and if we believe that to be the case, we will enter the fray demoralized and compromise our chances of victory.
But one of the primary justifications for a war, perhaps, is that we have something to gain. I see that we have little to gain in the current situation, and certainly much we could lose. Russia is a nuclear power, and we run the very real risk of backing them into a corner. And that, bad as at is, is only one of many the options for disaster that currently face us.
Many people watching my exchange with Dr. Kagan suggested that I broaden my understanding by reviewing the work of Dr. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who offers an alternative interpretation: one that more specifically highlights the faults of the West. Dr. Mearsheimer’s remarkably prescient 2015 University of Chicago lecture Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? (available on YouTube, and now watched by thirty million people—an unheard-of number for an academic lecture). I was concerned that Mearsheimer might be a Russian apologist, in some relatively simple manner, although that does not seem to be the case. In a singularly lucid one hour presentation, Mearsheimer explained that NATO and EU expansionism into Ukraine (the invitation proffered to Ukraine to join the EU; the formal statement of the desirability of NATO’s extension into Ukraine) has already and will continue to pose an intolerable threat to the Russians, who view Ukraine both as an integral part of the broader Russian sphere of interest and as a necessary buffer between the Europe that has invaded Russia to terrible effect in 1812 and 1941 and that is no more trustworthy to Russian eyes now than previously. Mearsheimer compares the former element of that view to the US Monroe Doctrine, which makes the Western hemisphere sacrosanct with regards to, say, the movement of Soviet missiles to Cuba) and the latter to the stark realities of the difference in the importance of Ukraine to Russia (crucial) and to the West (irrelevant, except for the transmission of Russian natural gas and any and all current exploitation for the purposes of shallow moral posturing). Mearsheimer states, starkly (and this explains a fair bit of Putin’s potential motivation) that Russia would rather see Ukraine destroyed, razed to the ground, than comfortably ensconced in the Western sphere of influence. And he said that not last month or last week in response to the Ukraine incursion but seven years ago in 2015.
Mearsheimer also claims that the Ukraine president Yanukovych, deposed in 2014 in the aftermath of widespread pro-EU protests, was the clear favorite and choice of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who overwhelmingly occupy the southeastern section of the country, while Zelensky, the current president, and supporter of all things Western, was and is supported by the Ukrainian speakers, who live in the northeast. Add to that, as well, the fact that the Ukrainian-speaking supported government has placed increasingly draconian restrictions on the language rights of the Russian speakers in the northwest (a fact all Westerners balancing the complexities of multiple languages in their own countries should be particularly sensitive to and understanding of). All of this to say that Putin and the Russians have their reasons for concern over the situation in Ukraine.
We could reasonably add to these two theories of the conflict some observations about the energy front. Russia is a petro-giant, providing almost 15% of the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, and extremely dependent on that single resource, whose revenues make up almost 50% of the state budget and perhaps 30% of total GDP. Almost half of the Russian fossil fuels exported make their way to Europe, which has allowed itself to become dangerously dependent on such outside sources for one of its primary necessities (not least because of its faux-moral stance on issues of “the environment”). It’s not so easy for the Russians to get their oil and gas to market, partly because the behemoth country is remarkably land-locked, in a practical sense. They’ve had to build extensive pipelines to do so. The two of those that serve the European market, upon which the economy of Russia is fundamentally dependent, pass through what are now other countries. This is not convenient, to say the least, for the Russians, and has caused no shortage of conflict between them and Ukraine, specifically, and has certainly encouraged constant Russian interference in Belarus (which in some real sense is a puppet state of its larger partner).
When the Soviet empire collapsed, the huge oil fields around the Caspian sea suddenly found themselves in the hands of the new countries of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. After 1989, these resources attracted major attention from western energy companies—and untrammeled production from the new countries posed a threat to Russian domination of the European energy market. This has produced unending tension in the region, not least around Azerbaijan, which has run its own pipelines to thirsty Western markets through Georgia (invaded non-coincidentally by Russia in 2008), Turkey, and Albania, thus partially circumventing Russian control over petro export. The fact of this relative independence has also allowed Azerbaijan to move further away from the Moscow-centered sphere of influence, and sets a worrying example in the Russian view to other developing post-Soviet countries in the area. Add to that the fact that 80% of Russia’s oil and gas exports once had to pass through Ukraine—although this problem has been remediated somewhat—and the stage was and is set for trouble. This became particularly evident in 2005 with the Orange revolution and the rise of Viktor Yushenko’s overtly pro-western Ukrainian regime. Shortly thereafter, the Russians demanded that Ukraine turn over ownership of the pipeline system traversing that country to them. This request was refused. In response, and during the winter, the Russians briefly turned off the taps supplying Ukraine with the petro resources upon which that country was also acutely dependent.
It is also the case that Ukraine has immense and relatively recently-discovered (ca 2010) petro resources of its own, particularly around the Caspian sea and in the northeast—enough natural gas, for example, so that it could have become a major supplier of that resource to Europe (and thereby pose a threat to European reliance on Russian resources). Ukraine also possesses—although perhaps not after the current war—immense storage capacity for petro-resources, another asset that could limit the influence that Russia can exert over its European customers, by providing a buffer against any suddenly imposed limitations of supply. In the last decade, Ukraine has been actively pursuing agreements with ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron to develop and export their new resources. The 2014 pro-western revolution in Ukraine, toppling what was then the pro-Russian government there, did little to set Russian minds at ease. The consequent invasion of Crimea placed a substantial proportion of the new Ukraine petro reserves in Russian hands. The later invasion of the Donbass region (in the aforementioned northeast), putatively to support pro-Russian separatists there, was perhaps motivated by analogous reasons.
|
