Tuesday, 1 March 2022

The Unexpected

 As I write, Russia is about seven days into its invasion of Ukraine - a venture that, until seven days ago, most people thought could not possibly happen. They tied themselves in knots trying to explain away the build-up of tens of thousands of Russian troops all the way along Ukraine's northern and eastern borders. War? In Europe? It couldn't happen.

Of course at present we have little idea what will actually happen. The Ukrainians have put up an incredibly brave and determined defence, and the Western newspapers are delighted. Unprecedentedly severe sanctions have already brought the Russian currency and economy to their knees.

The problem is: whether Russia achieves or misses its objectives in Ukraine, whatever those may be - where on earth do we go from here?

Do not forget that, on paper, Russia has enormous military superiority over Ukraine - and an itchy nuclear trigger-finger that makes any counterattack impossible. Even if Ukraine inflicts such heavy casualties on the Russians that they are forced to fully retreat - an extremely optimistic contingency - it cannot press its advantage by taking to the offensive, as Putin would almost certainly obliterate it. I assume here that Putin would rather start a nuclear war, than give up power, leave office of his own free will, admit defeat, and accept that he stirred up a war in which there could never be a victor, and apologise to Ukraine.

 It also defies credibility that there is a path to lasting peace for Ukraine while that particular reactionary tyrant remains in power - no matter whether or not Russia "wins" the war against its closest cousin. If Putin is in power and retreats, he will rebuild his strength and refuse to admit he started the war for purely irridentist ambitions. If Putin is in power and overthrows Ukraine, Ukraine will either be utterly oppressed under direct Russian rule, and/or be in a long-term state of armed uprising; or a puppet regime will be installed which will be vulnerable to extremely similar threats. Meanwhile it will become poorer and poorer, and consequently even more political unstable than it has been (remember the last revolution in Kiev was only in 2014).

And what of NATO and Europe? Russia has made barefaced threats against Finland and Sweden if they attempt to join NATO. Given how everyone has now seen Russia behaves towards countries that are not in NATO, these EU countries are now seriously considering that they may have no choice but to do so. Russia also now appears to have been granted indefinite leave to park its armies in Belarus. Although the Baltic states never enjoyed this condition anyway - there will now be effectively no buffer region between NATO and Russia's sphere of domination, at any point along the border.

Finally, let us consider - last but certainly not least - the US. The US underpins NATO and European security and there is little reason to believe Russia would hesitate for a moment from invading NATO countries if they were no backed up by the US. France and the UK may be nuclear powers, but their conventional forces are limited and, frankly, they do not have the habit of defending Europe from tyranny any more - and possibly not the stomach for a fight without US backing. We last saw what happened when major European military powers - who were very close to being evenly matched - went head to head in WW2. At the time, nobody had nukes.

The problem with the US is that, despite President Biden's remarkably clear and strong leadership, it does not really care about Europe any more. The US wants to pivot towards China, the real great power rival of the 21st century; the foresighted among them know it will take every ounce of Washington's energy, focus and guile to prevent China from supplanting them as the world's dominant power. And even then there would be no guarantee.

Biden could well be the last European-oriented US president. We should consider a real possibility that Donald Trump will be re-elected in 2024 - or some other smaller-minded, populist Republican following in his footsteps with an America First-style agenda, that cosies up to Putin and does not think twice and trampling international agreements and laws whenever it is expedient.

Europe needs to get its shit together. We have seen one or two promising signs that it is belatedly starting to take the deteriorating strategic picture more seriously, notably with Olaf Scholz's commitment to beef up Germany's military capabilities - long the elephant in the room in matters of European defence complacency.

But it will take more than that to present Putin with a compelling deterrent from attacking NATO when the US, inevitably, is forced to focus on China. Europe cannot afford to wait for the EU to work out how it wants to do military integration: France, Germany, Poland and the UK need to seriously integrate their defence capabilities now. The smaller countries will follow. NATO's nuclear guarantee may be just about plugging the strategic gaps for now, but the risk of the US pulling the plug on it in two, six or ten years time is not going to go away. NATO was built for the last century. Peaceful, democratic Europe cannot afford to wait for it to fail before it starts thinking about how to credibly protect itself from an erratic, authoritarian, militarist Russia.

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