An
Ukrainian soldier walks on the line of separation from pro-Russian
rebels, in Mariupol, Donetsk region, Ukraine on Thursday © AP My
chief difficulty with most remedies to the Ukraine crisis is that they
start by boarding a time-machine to correct long-ago events. This gives
their solutions a theological air, which address the world as it should
have been not as it is. Very few of us wish to see conflict between the
US and Russia, which together account for more than 90 per cent of the
world’s nuclear stockpile (I won’t list those I suspect are exceptions
as they don’t deserve attention. Oh, alright then: John Bolton). That
leaves almost everyone else. The dove-ish types cite a 1990 verbal
undertaking that the then US secretary of State, James Baker, gave to
Mikhail Gorbachev that Nato would not expand an inch eastward if the two
Germanies reunited. Everything that followed, notably Nato’s expansion
to include 14 former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact countries over the
following years, was thus a betrayal. This may be the case. But it tells
us little about how to act now. Moreover, Gorbachev really should have
insisted on putting that oral pledge in writing. Lots of statesmen say
lots of things in the moment. Are we to believe that had Baker not given
that undertaking the USSR would have fought a war to stop German
unification? Hard to believe. The
Russia hawks have their own Tardis which transports them to the
infamous 2008 Nato Summit in Bucharest. That was the meeting in which
Georgia and Ukraine were promised Nato membership in the distant future
when the leopard lies down with the kids etc. This was the cardinal sin
that elevated the Russian threat to the two fledgling republics without
offering them additional security. Mohandas Gandhi would have called it a
postdated check on a failing bank. According to the hawks, had Georgia
and Ukraine been admitted there and then, the Russia threats we face
today would not be happening. I also find that hard to believe. My guess
is that their admission in 2008 would have provoked a full-scale
showdown between Russia and Nato. As it happens, the same thing has been
taking place in slow motion. Russia nibbled off parts of Georgia a few
weeks later then grabbed a chunk of Ukraine in 2014. We are now entering
the third, potentially far deadlier phase. At any rate, both the doves
and the hawks start with alleged original sins that cannot be corrected. I
have one suggestion, which at this point has only slightly better odds
than a long-shot: Ukraine should be persuaded to become a neutral buffer
state. I get here by process of elimination. Letting Russia ride
roughshod over a sovereign state is unacceptable, though some argue we
should permit Moscow its sphere of interest, just as the US has always
had its own in the western hemisphere. That is a repugnant option. But
so too is reckless talk of direct western conflict with Russia, which
could threaten all of us. For an alarming example of Washington war
talk, read this.
The likelier outcome is that Ukraine will descend into a quagmire in
which the west funds a bloody Ukrainian resistance to an intensifying
Russian incursion that directly occupies Donbas and spreads westward by
means covert and overt. The west offers little match for Putin’s skill
with active measures. Sweden and Finland join Nato. The US bulks up its
military presence in Poland and the Baltics. Ukraine turns into a giant
proxy theatre for the new conflict between Russia and the west. We
would be naive to think Putin will be deterred by the threat of
economic sanctions. As my colleagues Max Seddon and Polina Ivanova reported,
Russia has built up a large sovereign wealth fund fuelled by higher oil
and gas prices and has diversified Russia’s central bank reserves away
from the US dollar (almost a fifth is now in Chinese renminbi). This is a
country that survived the siege of Leningrad and the battle for
Stalingrad. It can take economic pain. Can we stomach the higher gas
prices that are coming? Biden’s inflation antenna suggests we have
limited appetite. Which
leaves us with a diplomatic grand bargain. Here is not the place to
sketch out possible sequencing and linkages required of such creative
diplomacy. I am just flagging the urgent need for it. Ultimately, of
course, Ukraine cannot be forced to become a buffer state. It has to
want it. Rana, do you have a fourth option? I assume you would also rule
out both capitulation and war and are hoping for a modus vivendi that
lies somewhere between. Recommended reading
Part of the west’s problem, as my colleague Gideon Rachman sets out very clearly here,
is that the European Union is no closer to a common foreign policy than
before — notwithstanding its complaints about being excluded from the
Ukraine conversation.
My column this
week takes a step back from the democracy alarm that I generally
believe is warranted to suggest America may be overdosing on the
apocalypse. I nevertheless wrote this assessment of Biden’s “year of living dangerously” in the FT’s special report for the Davos virtual summit.
As a follow up to my and Rana’s last two Swamp Notes, I’d recommend Linda Greenhouse’s authoritative take
in the New York Times’ on what lies behind last week’s Supreme Court
vaccine decision. It leaves me in little doubt that this court aims to
deconstruct the administrative state.
Finally,
a professor at the Wharton Business school caused a Twitterstorm this
week when she said that more than three quarters of her students thought
the average US annual income was more than $100,000. In practice three
quarters of Americans earn less than that (the median wage is $52,520,
which is considerably lower than the $80,000 in annual Wharton fees.
This piece by the Washington Post’s Timothy Bella highlights what this tells us about America’s class ignorance.
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