The Great Awakening of the West
Putin’s War in Ukraine #2
The West has awoken from the COVID-19 lethargy, the Soviet tsar beneath the façade of a regular autocrat is steadily pulling Russia back to the 19th century, and the Hague has become the capital of all-Slavic mutualism.
The war in Ukraine has already changed the parameters for thinking about security in Europe. The West—by imposing a robust variety of countermeasures short of direct military involvement—tries to remind Putin that the use of force to achieve political objectives violates the UN Charter and that his military aggression to amputate Ukraine’s sovereignty is untenable. The West does not seem to listen to Putin’s language of brute force.
Until Feb 24, the West was mostly interested in protecting its own economic prosperity and preventing the frozen relations with Russia from becoming combustible. The Russian large-scale invasion into Ukraine effectively marked the end of the 30-year long peace in Europe (bar the Yugoslav wars). After the first shock waves sent by this inconceivable Russian attack, the West quickly mustered a firm, unisono response to what turns out to be the most dangerous conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
Putin has breached international law and that matters
Territorial integrity means observing the international rule-based order. This is especially important for European peoples who got tired of weaponized border disputes and territorial claims on the crowded European continent for most of its history. Regardless of their size, European countries are displaying unquestionable solidarity with a state under a threat (Ukraine) from a major power (Russia) that is parceling its territory with force and imposing external authority to dictate its domestic and foreign policy.
By recognizing the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin showed his middle finger to the Budapest Memorandum that Russia signed in 1994 together with the United States and the United Kingdom. This document secured the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. In exchange, Kyiv allowed Moscow to relocate peacefully the left-over nuclear weapons after the break-up of the Soviet Union from the Ukrainian territory back to Russia. Of those three countries, only Ukraine have not turned completely into Russia’s feudum.
Putin wants to change that with force by imposing neutralisation of Ukraine and effectively amputating Ukraine’s sovereignty. Crimea and the eastern parts of Ukraine are not enough of a grab anymore, just like Hitler did not stop in the Sudetenland. Putin’s demands to NATO which were publicly communicated last December do not suggest that the revived Russian expansionism would halt in Kyiv. Putin’s rage about the shrinking territory under his control aims at pulling Europe back to the geopolitical universe before 1997 at least, that is before the first NATO enlargement (if the accession of East Germany in 1990 is discounted). So far, an opposite dynamic in Europe is unfolding.
Who will fall first: Ukraine or the Russian economy?
The West’s support to Ukraine, that is Europe west from Ukraine, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and even Singapore, could lead Russia into an even worse economic collapse than in 1991. The Western economic and financial sanctions are lethal. They are targeting not only Russian commercial banks but also the Russian Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves, the Russian Investment Fund, and Russian oligarchs (including their lawyers and second wives and undeclared children enjoying their lives between London and Lugano, rather than Donbas and Crimea). Contrary to a swift victory, Russian major banks lost access to SWIFT, the international payment system. The West used this economic weapon of mass destruction only against Iran and North Korea. Even Switzerland embraced the EU sanctions. Freezing Russian financial assets is an unprecedented measure for Bern that abstained from doing so during the Second World War. Neutrality is a choice, yet when neutrality favors the aggressor, the country de facto stops being neutral.
These steps have already greatly damaged Russian economy: Ruble lost one third of its value overnight, Moscow’s stock exchange stopped trading, and in case there is problem with gold as well, the Russian Central Bank will not have access to 70 percent of its assets. Russians rushed to ATMs before their credit cards stop working. Long waiting lines may have already made Putin’s dreams about the good old Soviet times come true.
The sanctions have not targeted the energy sector yet. Only the US, the UK, and Canada imposed embargo on Russian hydrocarbons, as this does not require a huge sacrifice since, for instance, the US gets only around 8 per cent of its oil supplies from Russia. Energy decoupling from Russia is more complex for Europe. Diversifying its gas supplies will be a major contribution to Europe’s energy security and should prevent Putin from weaponizing the European dependence on Russian gas. It will be painful, but Europe should be willing to endure some material discomfort when its neighbor is fighting for survival. Not only Russia’s overpriced gas exports subsidize the local gas supplies for impoverished Russians to keep the President’s approval rates high, but in this case buying Russian gas means financing Putin’s war machine in Ukraine.
Supporting Ukraine’s resistance from behind
Many individual European responses have included “firsts” and U-turns. Germany, traditionally defying the NATO defence spending pledge for years, will be spending more than 2 per cent on defence from now on, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 Bn Defence Fund to mark a new era for Germany security and defence policy. The surprised German defence industry now rushes to catch up. Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania are welcoming thousands of refugees from Ukraine. Swiss sanctions sound almost like an oxymoron.
Military-neutral countries are changing their decades-long security and defence policies overnight. The majorities of citizens in Sweden and Finland are favoring their country’s membership in NATO (though as EU members, they are covered by the collective defence clause in the Lisbon Treaty). For the first time, Sweden is sending weapons to a party in an armed conflict. Denmark is going to hold a referendum on its opt-out from the EU security and defence policy, which was a political tabu even during the launch of PESCO.
The Western military aid focuses on supplying Ukraine with military equipment with defensive purposes (anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles) and other vital supplies (ammunition, fuel), military protective material (bullet-proof vests, helmets), and humanitarian assistance (medicine, hospital treatment of wounded soldiers). The EU’s military aid also includes providing geospatial intelligence to Ukrainian forces from the EU satellite center in Madrid. In addition, the EU closed European airspace to all Russian aircraft and turned off Russian propaganda media Sputnik and Russia Today. However, the damage caused by disinformation campaigns those media parroted over the past years cannot be undone in one click.
The EU as a nascent geopolitical player
Prior to the war, for 30 years in fact, the EU’s geopolitical standing was weak. Although several European political leaders went to Moscow, with France in lead as the country presiding the EU, the US remained the main interlocutor for Russia’s grievances. After the Russian invasion into Ukraine, the EU bureaucratic giant surprised as its 27 countries bundled up and the EU refurbished its foreign and defence policy in a couple of days. For the first time, the EU is providing military aid, (funding weapons purchases for Ukraine for half a billion EUR). The Kremlin might in the end stop perceiving the EU as less hawkish than NATO.
While Ukraine cannot be NATO-ised, it can still join the EU. Kyiv’s application may be a symbolic signalling, backed especially by the Baltic and Central European countries, yet the European Parliament already voted to work towards granting Ukraine the status of a candidate to join the EU. It may be conceivable to see a special EU regime for Ukraine, in which the post-conflict reconstruction of the country would be paired with its integration into the EU. Ukraine has become the most important geostrategic partner of the EU, as Ukrainians are not fighting only for their own country, but also for the security of the whole former Soviet Bloc, most of which are now members of the European Union and/or NATO.
The European security dilemmas remain unchanged
The main long-term problem for European security remains the same one of the connected vessels. Although Russia has been trying to disinformatise NATO and the EU countries for years and now Russian armed forces have overtly attacked a sovereign European country, there cannot be any sustainable security and stability in Europe without Russia and Ukraine constructively contributing to it.
Although the West is not part of this armed conflict, it does not stand still. In line with the UN Charter, more than 30 countries are materially supporting Ukraine’s case to help Ukrainians defend themselves against the unprovoked military aggression. Right now, the West is responsible for preventing the war from escalating.
Putin lost the moment he invaded Ukraine. He lost Ukraine and he is about to lose his own country. The later is TBC. The political future of Russia is in the hands of Russians who need to evaluate whether having Putin as their leader still serves their interests, and ideally stop Putin’s tantrum. However, with no independent media, already more than 14,000 politically motivated arrestations, and a 15-year prison time for anyone calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine “an invasion”, hopes for any change from the inside remain low.
Thank you for reading Prosing on War and Peace.
This post is free and public, without borders please.
If you like it, why not share it?