Russia-West conflict of interest over Ukraine

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

Commentator and Author

The world is facing the “biggest global peace and security crisis”, says UN chief Antonio Guterres on the Ukraine-Russia stand-off. Indeed, but who created it? Is Russia solely responsible for the war of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD)? Is Russia’s monopoly the spoilsport in the midst of traditional gunboat diplomacy and an expansive Western world whose out-of-area land-grabbing was universally despised and resisted, from Cape Town to Calcutta, Syria to Singapore and Tunisia to Tasmania, till recent times?

To a perceptive observer, the 24x7 high-decibel media reportage projecting Moscow as the criminal is difficult to accept and hard to believe. True, Russia is culpable and responsible for the escalating violence. But the responsibility of the US-led NATO also is no less than that of an agent provocateur. All in need of land, gas, resources, cash and containment of Russia, smarting since the ignominious break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the giant landmass with its formidable military collapsed like a house of cards, wherein the role of the West too remains questionable.

That the latest Russian act of unilateral political recognition to two portions of Ukraine and the invasion has created an avoidable crisis is undeniable. Whether this act is right or wrong depends on who belongs to which side. Suffice to recall that another similar, if not graver, crisis —the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 — almost brought the world to the brink of the ‘third World War’ between the then Soviet Union and the US.

Contextually, however, in a bigger and broader frame, it’s not Russia versus Ukraine on Crimea, but Russia versus the entire West. The genesis can be traced back to the Second World War, when Russia was the worst sufferer with the highest fatalities of 30 million and incalculable economic ruin along the area extending almost up to Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. Yet, Russia has been the eternal “enfant terrible”. In adversity, Moscow is the implacable adversary and even when starving, Russia is ‘Satan’, not those creators of wealth through war.

To India, however, the maverick/pariah ‘Muscovite’ was the sole friend and saviour in the greatest and grandest 1971 military-cum-political victory. Hence, whatever be the ‘internal’ or ‘bilateral’ Kiev-Moscow ties, India’s neutral diplomatic position today deserves appreciation. Both Kiev and Moscow have a Delhi bond, deserving respect, and should not act rashly at the behest of those who may have other aims.

Coming back to the October 1962 missile crisis, the US rightly confronted the Soviet Union owing to the latter’s military/missile intervention in Cuba, the backyard of the US, 90 miles off Florida’s coast. Moscow’s act was certainly wrong and overambitious because it fell under the US “zone of interest”, like exclusive economic zone-cum-territorial water.

Unsurprisingly, Moscow in 1962 had to retreat, thereby vindicating the US stand. Six decades on, why then is the US resorting to misadventure with destructive consequences? If the Cuban island is the backyard of the US, what should the contiguous land of Ukraine/Crimea be referred to vis-a-vis Moscow? Further, when did Cuba belong to the US? Didn’t Ukraine/Crimea constitute an inalienable and inviolable part of the Soviet Union till 1991?

It’s clear that owing to the collective failure of the West to face the economic juggernaut of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the US and its allies are now desperate to cobble up an economic/financial coalition, to at least contain and curb the steady inroads Moscow too has been making into the European heartland through one of the most lucrative exports — natural gas. Russia alone was enough to meet the energy needs of the overlapping politico-economic geography of the European Union and NATO nations.

Today’s Second Crimean War, however, implies a sudden shift of the US-led West’s focus from the Indo-Pacific pivot to the familiar, fertile and fratricidal soil of Europe, which holds the record of killings, conquests and catastrophe across the globe for more than three centuries.

The US-led West started feeling the pinch in a two-front economic-cum-military resurgence. China as a rising sea power from the Far East of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s waterfront, and Russia replicating Mackinder’s Euro-Asian heartland with an assertive stance of “thus far and no further”, owing to her dismemberment in 1991. Aside, with declining demography and economic uncertainty gripping the West, global economy struggling with inflation, supply-chain snarls and rocky recovery from the pandemic leading to less growth and lesser power to influence the traditional non-West spanning from Gibraltar to Hong Kong and South Africa to Sakhalin, agonising tension was building up fast and furious on all sides. Russia has never been accepted as a European power and has always been despised and looked at with suspicion. That’s what the then German Navy Chief Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach had pointed out in Delhi two months ago: “What Putin wants is respect. Giving respect is low cost, even no cost.”

The Crimean War of 2022 is about geography and zone of influence/interest, which beyond a point, can hardly be kept under the carpet. Thus stands out the 1982 UK-Argentina war over the Falkland Islands. The latter are located in the South Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles off Argentina’s coast and 15,675 km from the UK port of Southampton. Once with Argentina, these islands have been ruled by the UK since 1833. Yet, for the retention of this remote archipelago, London fought the war with Buenos Aires. Soldiers were killed, ships sunk and aircraft downed, all owing to its being a zone of national interest and sovereignty for the distant but powerful Europe’s UK prevailing over a non-European state in South America. The Cuba Missile Crisis, on other hand, was taken up head-on by the US on the grounds of proximity. In India, the zone of national interest lies in the whole of the south of the Himalayas and the proximate island territories up to the equator. Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh are inalienable and inviolable parts of India; yet large portions thereof are under the illegal occupation of Pakistan and China. Can this area, therefore, remain peaceful till eternity? So, what Putin today has done, and is still doing, is incorrect no doubt, but the question is: why did he do this?

National “self-interest” is a convenient word, used by the rich and powerful States at the drop of a hat to justify each aggression since the era of imperialism. The West forgets that Russia’s land power extends almost half way around the globe. And as land powers are “perennially insecure”, without seas to protect them, they axiomatically either expand or succumb. Russia’s land is an asset and a liability — an asset during peace and a liability when neighbours are hostile. Russia has been attacked from Napoleon to Hitler; and Moscow too threatened smaller states like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the Balkans. Today, however, the lingering loss of territory and power in 1991 constitutes the fulcrum of Moscow’s ill-conceived Second Crimean War. Avoidable provocation, America! Avoidable aggression, Russia! Hope, it’s not a big power game with tacit understanding.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Russia #ukraine crisis