Ukraine crisis widens cracks in US-Russia ties

In 2003, the then Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Headquarters (UNHQ), Sergei Lavrov, was taking a puff in one of the erstwhile smoking areas of the UNHQ. Security personnel warned him that smoking was prohibited as per the new rules. Ambassador Lavrov reportedly replied that the ‘Secretary-General can by all means tell his underlings what to do, but not members of diplomatic missions.’

Lavrov, famous for his wry humour, has been the Foreign Minister (FM) since 2004 and is the Russian face for the rest of the world as it waits with bated breath to see whether Russia will invade Ukraine or not. The US, along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), claims that the current Russian deployment in areas bordering Ukraine is the highest since the Cold War. The US officials have publicly stated that a Russian attack is imminent and that Russia will use a pretext, including the possible use of fabricated graphic propaganda video, to attack Ukraine. Russia has challenged these claims as FM Lavrov is keeping the lines of communication open with his Western interlocutors, including his ongoing reported exchange of written proposals with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to de-escalate.

In a nutshell, Russia wants the West to promise that Ukraine will not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) though as a negotiating tactic, also demanded that the US withdraw troops from other East European countries.

Since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union, American hegemony has shaped the world affairs for better or worse, depending on the context. This began to change more than a decade back. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and parts of Georgia in 2008 while instability and armed conflict hit the Donbas region, formerly fully controlled by Ukraine and now de facto independent, allegedly supported by Russia. The recent UNSC meet on January 31 to discuss Russia’s troop build-up resorted to a heated exchange between the two camps. The real or perceived Russian threat to annex Ukraine with a population of nearly 42 million comes in the context of enhanced international fragility whose varied contours needs to be better understood.

First, Russia is consistently asserting its redlines with regard to protecting its idea of sphere of influence. The post-1991 period paved the way for incremental incorporation of several East European countries, which were earlier in the Soviet camp, into the Western bloc. In 2004, Baltic states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were earlier part of the Soviet Union, also joined the NATO. However, a number of attempts by the US to enhance its influence in five Central Asian countries didn’t yield much dividends as facts on the ground asserted. Because of their geographical proximity and the political system, Russian language still enjoys the de facto status of national language in some of these countries, the political leadership in Central Asia generally avoiding hurting their equities with Russia. Ukraine and Georgia are considered by Russia as important in terms of sphere of influence and the claimed historical ties, though locally in both these countries, particularly among the young generation, there is presently a strong ethnic nationalism which is virulently against any outside domination.

In 2022, the appetite of the US, the architect of NATO, for fighting foreign wars by deploying boots on the ground is limited and publicly it has just committed to support Ukrainian forces with arms and weapons like other allies such as the UK. While the US diplomatic language remains anchored in an era of overall dominance, the facts on the ground, with respect to limitations of military projection, reveal a different reality. President Obama’s approach to curtail the excessive US military overreach seems to continue under President Biden. The quick withdrawal from Afghanistan is a signifier to the internalisation of this trend within the US policy apparatus.

Second, the claims of the US and Western Europe power elite to establish a rules-based international order based on equity and compassion has given way to cynicism within the global South in the context of Covid-19 response. Doctors Without Borders had estimated that 10 high-income countries, including the US, UK, Germany and France would be holding 870 million excess doses by the end of 2021 even after boosters have been administered for high-risk groups. This has potentially boosted Russian confidence which has repeatedly invoked these realities in the last two years. These lessons have not been lost with the domestic political elite in the global South.

Third, the factor of domestic US turbulence continues, which includes the threat of White supremacist terrorism, a constant pointer to the vulnerabilities of the US polity to the outside world. The polarisation of the American political system, which keeps the current Biden administration on its toes, prevents a response from the current administration, based on collective national resolve. Russia is aware of the existing deep-seated fault-lines in the American political landscape. It sees the present times as the most opportune and current political environment, an effective leverage to create a precedent for future.

While Russian assertion of its redlines is a derivative of the context, the situation is not completely in its favour. Russia’s economy is still vulnerable and it cannot completely damage its equities with wealthier European countries like Germany, which too is treading cautiously. Even the future potential of the much-publicised meeting between President Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, as both sides reportedly opposed further enlargement of NATO and blamed the Indo-Pacific strategy of the US for fomenting regional tensions, needs to be seen from a realist lens. China’s economic heft is felt in Russia’s vicinity as it has to compete with it in Central Asia. Other countries such as India with which Russia had time-tested relationship during the Cold War are reluctant to take sides. Their economies are now strongly linked with the US and Western Europe while continuing to massively import cheaper and lesser strings attached military hardware from Russia. The present round of tensions may escalate or de-escalate, though this is not exactly a return to Cold War. But the recent developments reinforce the fact that the new vectors of the international system are progressively altering the three-decade great power equation and engagement.