Ukraine: where next?

Were the situation not so serious the total incomprehension between the West and Russia would be risible; neither side seems to have the slightest notion of where the other is coming from, and yet it is simple. Their respective positions are almost identical.  They are united in mutual misunderstanding.

 

The West sees Russia as revanchist. After Georgia, the Crimea and now Ukraine; where next? Bulgaria, where Putin already seems to be putting a bit of stick about? The Baltic states? Putin sees the West in almost identical terms, with the EU muscling in on his sphere of economic influence and NATO parking its tanks on his lawn, not that the parlous state of NATO forces will make him lose any sleep. NATO clearly signalled its lack of serious intent by its lukewarm reaction to Obama’s call for increases in defence spending. It is nonsense to suggest that fear of NATO pushed Putin into the ceasefire. It was Ukraine’s doing because it had been defeated.

 

Western policy is a shambles. The recent NATO hot-air-fest in Wales has already been consigned to history. It decided nothing and formed no plan. The members have failed to give any commitments to bring their defence budgets up to2% of GDP, and appear to have no intention of doing so.

 

‘So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years …… for the locusts to eat’. 

 

Drawing comparison with 1914 or the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Hitler is infantile politics. Putin’s ambition is not to recreate the USSR but to restore Russia as a world power, respected,  influential and  listened to in international councils. The one shared factor with 1936 is that it will end in appeasement.

 

The initiative is with Russia. The big question is what will Putin do now? Ukraine has lost the military conflict, hence the phony ‘cease-fire’. Putin’s strategy is probably to turn Ukraine into a client state utterly separated from the West and dancing to whatever tune the Russian bear chooses to play. The danger is uncertainty. Putin has by no means escaped unscathed. The downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane was a public relations catastrophe for Russia, evoking memories of KAL 007. There was no damage-limitation response from the Kremlin. Had it been a US carrier………..! And up to a point he has painted himself into a corner and this could make him dangerous. But his approval ratings remain  sky-high, more than 80%.

 

The EU now proposes more feeble sanctions. They will not work for the simple reason that they never do. They were applied to Russia on several occasions during the Cold War. In recent years they have been imposed on 32 countries. They were judged to  be effective in only one case. They will have some effect but not nearly enough to change Russia’s Ukraine policy. The rouble is falling; the self-imposed sanctions on food imports will cause prices to rise (and fall in Europe, such the Law of Unexpected Consequences), inflation could rise to 8% which is bad but hardly crisis level.  Rosneft needs $40 billion to refinance its short-term debt. A few ‘oligarchs’ have been inconvenienced, although when the EU telegraphed its intentions the fat-cats had plenty of time to make other arrangements.

 

The main effect of sanctions so far has been to rally the people around the regime. The Russians will tighten their belts until they cut themselves in half before they give in. They are accustomed to suffering.

 

The key question is ‘What vital Western interests are involved?’ To the people of Western Europe and the US, the Ukraine is a far-away, irredeemably corrupt place of no value or interest.

 

It will  end in ‘an historic agreement’, or, as the Americans would say ‘All smoke and mirrors’.

 

Perhaps then the West can concentrate on the clear and present danger –the conflagration in the Gulf and Middle East.