Tag Archives: RUSSIA

Nuclear Signaling, the Need for New Guard Rails

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Published in the Hindu on August 4, 2023

The conflict in Ukraine and the recourse to nuclear rhetoric have revived concerns about nuclear escalation management between the major nuclear powers. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States-Russia nuclear rivalry had taken a backseat. Instead, North Korea, Iran and India-Pakistan got attention with many analysts getting nostalgic about ‘nuclear stability’ during the Cold War. But as is becoming clear now, in today’s changed political environment, the escalation management lessons of the Cold War no longer seem to work for the U.S. and Russia.

Deterrence failure

In June 2021, U.S. and Russian Presidents, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin met in Geneva. Nuclear arms control was a high priority item on the agenda but no progress proved possible. As concerns grew about Russian troop presence in Belarus on the Ukrainian border, Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns flew to Moscow in November to spell out the consequences of aggression. In January 2022, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva to reiterate the message. On February 24, Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine. U.S. attempts to deter Russian aggression had failed.

Even as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) leaders met to decide their response, Mr. Biden made it clear that the U.S. was determined to avoid a Third World War or allowing the conflict to escalate into a NATO-Russia conflict. After freezing of Russian reserves and a slew of financial, energy-related and political sanctions, other elements of military assistance, lethal and non-lethal began to take shape. Intelligence sharing and restoring Internet connectivity was the first step. The second was the supply of ammunition and some weapon systems with which the Ukrainian forces were familiar. NATO deepened its military involvement by providing gradually more and more sophisticated weapon systems, beginning with Javelin and Stinger missiles, and moving on to Patriot missile defence batteries, long range Himars, Storm Shadow and Scalp long range missiles and now F-16s. Russian attempts to deter NATO involvement had failed.

On February 7, 2022, Mr. Putin warned that “if Ukraine attempts to take back Crimea, European countries will be in conflict with Russia, which is a leading nuclear power superior to many NATO countries in terms of nuclear force.” Annual nuclear exercises, normally scheduled for autumn were announced for February 17, with Mr. Putin personally witnessing them. Announcing the launch of “special military operations”, his words of caution were, “whoever tries to hinder Russia will face consequences never seen in history.” To drive home the threat, on February 27, Russian nuclear forces were placed on a “special combat readiness” with leave for all personnel cancelled.

Even as the U.S. issued blunt warnings to Russia against using tactical nuclear weapons, in the first week of March, NATO decided against a no-fly-zone and Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria announced that they would not be sending MiG aircraft to Ukraine on account of Russian threats against their airfields from where these aircraft were to take off.

Russian officials tried to downplay the nuclear threat by pointing out that Russia would resort to nuclear use only if faced with an existential threat while U.S. officials tried to convey reassurance to their European allies that while Mr. Putin’s threats be taken seriously, there were no indications of unusual activity at nuclear sites.

President Biden declared on April 24, “We are neither encouraging nor enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders’, and adding that the “U.S. was not seeking regime change in Russia.” In short, the U.S. objectives were to support Ukraine, bolster NATO unity and avoid any direct conflict with Russia. Ukraine is not a NATO member and so does not have the security of the nuclear umbrella provided by U.S. policy of ‘extended deterrence.’

Russia’s resort to nuclear rhetoric failed to deter NATO involvement though it influenced its pace and timing. Therefore, both Russia and the U.S. are operating in a grey zone, taking turns at escalatory rhetoric even as they probe each other’s red lines. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union engaged in multiple proxy wars, Vietnam in the 1960s and Afghanistan in the 1980s, but these were in distant theatres.

Cold War lessons

Deterrence is fundamentally based on the assumption that both adversaries are rational enough to judge when costs outweigh the benefits of the act. Nuclear deterrence adds a conundrum. With their huge arsenals that provided for assured second strike capability, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union had an incentive to try a surprise first strike. This realization was crucial in shaping nuclear deterrence theory.

Thomas Schelling, whose writings during the 1960s and 1970s shaped nuclear deterrence thinking (he won the Economics Nobel in 2005) concluded that nuclear weapons were not usable but had political utility in terms of preventing a war with another nuclear power. Clearly, Schelling was looking at the situation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union which had no territorial dispute.

Schelling also concluded that even though any use was “irrational,” the nuclear threat had to be “credible” in order to deter. This introduced a degree of uncertainty into the equation. Using his economics training, Schelling interpreted the uncertainty as risk that could be analysed in terms of probabilities. Risk was intended to induce rationality in the adversaries. Realizing the conundrum, Schelling concluded that the key to making nuclear deterrence credible is through escalation and raising the risk, that in the final analysis, “leaves something to chance.”

This, along with the lessons of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis kept the U.S. and Soviet rhetoric in check during the Cold War even as they engaged in proxy wars outside Europe, and away from NATO and Warsaw pact territories. Today, there is no Warsaw Pact and NATO has expanded to include a number of former Warsaw Pact members. The Ukraine conflict has persuaded Sweden and Finland to give up their long-standing neutrality and seek security under NATO’s nuclear umbrella.

Probing for red lines

Russia’s nuclear doctrine issued on June 2, 2020 specifies two conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons – “…in response to the use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it/or its allies” and “in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.” Mr. Putin has declared more than once that Ukrainians and Russians are one people with a shared history; Russia therefore doesn’t see Ukraine as entirely ‘sovereign’.

Second, there is the oft-cited escalate-to-deescalate approach that implies using tactical nuclear weapons to overcome a stalemate on the battlefield, thus forcing a termination of hostilities on favourable terms. In its 2022 National Security Strategy, the U.S. rejected this by declaring that first use would not lead to de-escalation on Russian terms “but alter the nature of conflict creating potential for uncontrolled escalation.”

U.S. caution is reflected in calibrating supply of more sophisticated weapons by continuously probing Russian red lines even though Ukrainian demands continue to grow. Meanwhile, it suits Russia to increase ambiguity. It is also likely that since Russia failed to achieve its military objectives, its thresholds are evolving.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s path breaking studies in economics showed that humans often tend to double down on bad bets because of ‘loss aversion.’ The Cold War escalation management lessons applied to a different world; today, the U.S. and Russia no longer enjoy parity and Russia’s red lines are fuzzy.

Nuclear signaling today is taking place in uncharted political territory. New guard rails are necessary if the nuclear taboo has to be preserved.

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Global Implications of Erdogan’s Historic Win

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Published in Hindustan Times on June 12, 2023

Last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won his second term in the most contested election in the last two decades, and cemented his place in Turkish history by becoming its longest-serving ruler. So far, that distinction belonged to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic and its first president from 1923 till his death in 1938.

The 2023 election took place against two negative developments. First, a weak economy, with inflation running at over 40% and a weakening lira that has depreciated by 80% since 2018. The second was the devastating earthquake in February this year that claimed 50000 lives and exposed that building codes had been violated with impunity by the contractors and builders because of widespread corruption.

For the first time, six Opposition parties came together determined to end to Erdogan’s autocratic rule. The emerging opposition front led by the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) evidently rattled Erdogan, and the government revived an old case against Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul.

After considerable political manoeuvrings, 74-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, became the Opposition candidate. A soft-spoken former civil servant who entered politics in 1999, he made it clear that his goal was to transition Turkey to a parliamentary system and restore independence and integrity of institutions like the central bank and the judiciary.

In the run-up to the elections, opinion polls gave a slight edge to Kilicdaroglu. But in the first round on May 14, Erdogan led with 49.4% of the vote with Kilicdaroglu trailing at 45%. Since Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) coalition retained its majority in parliament, Erdogan made it clear a Kilicdaroglu victory would only lead to political paralysis. In the run-off on May 28, Erdogan maintained his lead, obtaining 52.2% of the vote.

Even though Erdogan controls 90% of the print and audio-visual media, leaving the opposition to rely on social media, Kilicdaroglu was able to push Erdogan to a second round for the first time in the last twenty years. His votes came from the major urban areas, the developed coastal areas in the south and the west and the Kurdish areas in the east. His open acknowledgement that he is an Alevi and fighting on a liberal platform failed to make a dent in the rural majority Sunni heartland that remained Erdogan’s stronghold. The result is a polarised country with deep divides, on issues of Western influence and traditional culture, religion and secularism, values and identity, manifest in growing nationalism.

Erdogan’s nimble foreign policy during in recent years helped him establish an image as a nationalist. Even as he expanded Turkey’s influence in the areas that were once part of the Ottoman empire, he balanced concerns with his North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies, with traditional rivals like Russia and Iran, while seeking a pole position in the Islamic world. It required brinkmanship but that appeals to the nationalist sentiment that cuts across the political spectrum.

Erdogan is closer to China and applied to join SCO but also criticised its treatment of Uighurs; is a member of NATO but bought the Russian S-400 missile defence system; seeks to improve ties with Russia but opposes it in the conflicts in Libya and Armenia-Azerbaijan; created an Organisation of Turkic States reflecting shades of neo-Ottomanism; maintains close ties with Qatar and after a downturn in ties with Saudi Arabia on the Adnan Khashoggi murder, successfully restored ties with the Arab world.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have bailed him out by providing $5 billion each to the central bank and Russia postponed a gas payment of $600 million to 2024 while agreeing to fund a $10 billion Akkuyu nuclear power plant.

Now that Syrian President Assad has beaten back resistance and is there to stay, Erdogan’s major diplomatic challenge is to reconcile with him. However, his real challenge is to stabilise the economy that has been rocked by his upside-down policies. To tackle inflation, he has been lowering interest rates and pumping in dollars to lower the Lira’s decline but reserves are trending into negative territory. He appears confident of Western support since he managed to broker the Black Sea grain export deal between Ukraine and Russia and curbed the flow of refugees into Europe.

Historically, relations with India have been low-key, with Turkey sympathetic to Pakistan on Kashmir, and countering UN Security Council expansion in the permanent category by proposing an expansion only of the non-permanent category. Despite the personal empathy between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Erdogan, borne out shared experiences of their struggle to get to the top, their recourse to nationalism and invoking a grand past, a deep religiosity and exceptional communication skills, given each leader’s current challenges, the bilateral relationship is likely to remain low-key.

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A New Model of Nuclear Arms Control is Needed

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Published in Hindustan Times on March 1, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered the State-of-the-Nation address last week. Coming two days before the first anniversary of the Ukraine war, Kremlin watchers expected to hear about a new war strategy. Instead, Putin shocked everyone by announcing that Russia was suspending its participation in the US-Russia New START (a 2010 agreement for further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms). Putin’s announcement made it clear that the 20th century model of nuclear arms control was dead. 

New START limited each country to 1550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 launchers (heavy bombers and long-range missiles). In reality, each has more than three times as many warheads, categorised as reserves and those awaiting dismantlement. In addition, Russia is estimated to have over 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and the US, a few hundred. These two still account for over 90 percent of global nuclear arsenals.

New START, the sole bilateral nuclear arms control agreement in force, was to expire in February 2026. It would have lapsed in 2021 because Donald Trump was determined to bring China into the negotiations, a suggestion Beijing rejected. President Joe Biden’s election enabled the five-year extension but discussions on a follow-up treaty have proved elusive.

On-site inspections (each state is allowed 18 annually) under the treaty had been suspended since 2020, initially due to COVID-19 and then the Ukraine war. Last November, Russia postponed the scheduled meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission.

Putin claimed that his decision was a result of the US wanting to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia and under the circumstances, the idea of nuclear inspections was ‘a theatre of the absurd’. He blamed Ukraine for mounting drone attacks against Russian airbases that host nuclear capable strategic bombers, aided by NATO intelligence. At least three such strikes have taken place in December 2022 at Engels and Dyagilevo bases, though no significant damage was reported. Putin also hinted that the US was preparing to resume nuclear testing and declared that Russia would soon follow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has stated that Russia will continue to abide by the (numerical) restrictions. This has quelled apprehensions that Putin was triggering a new nuclear arms race with the US. However, since compliance mechanisms stand suspended and trust is at an all-time low, both states will now be willing to believe the worst about the other. Both are engaged in extensive nuclear modernisation programmes exploring hypersonic missiles, glide vehicles, and low yield warheads. Offensive cyber capabilities and AI developments create new risks for the integrity of nuclear command and control systems.

So far, China had been content with a minimum nuclear deterrent of approx. 300 warheads. In recent years, it is shifting to a more robust deterrent. Satellite imagery has revealed the existence of four new missile silo sites. It has tested hypersonic glide vehicles and a ‘fractional orbital bombardment system’, indicating that it now seeks to manage nuclear escalation in order to blunt US’ nuclear coercive edge. In 2021, Pentagon concluded that Chinese arsenal will cross 1000 warheads by 2030, now a widely accepted view. The expectation is that as China enhances its early-warning satellite capabilities, it will transition from its current no-first-use posture to a launch-on-warning mode.

Last year, North Korea accelerated its missile programme, undertaking nearly 90 launches, unveiling the Hwasong-17, with an estimated range of 15000 kms. Activity at the testing site has led to speculation that North Korea may be planning to undertake a seventh nuclear test. Meanwhile, media reports indicate that in Iran, IAEA inspectors have discovered traces of uranium enriched up to 84 percent that is just short of the 90 percent level used to produce a nuclear bomb. Iran has denied enrichment beyond 60 percent and blamed IAEA for media leaks and unprofessional conduct.

New START is not the first casualty. In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with USSR which limited deployment of ABM systems thereby ensuring mutual vulnerability, a key ingredient of deterrence stability in the bipolar era. In 2019, the US accused Russia of violating the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and declared its withdrawal.

Today’s political disconnect is also evident in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the most successful example of multilateral arms control that has become a victim of its success.  It succeeded in delegitimizing nuclear proliferation but not nuclear weapons. This is why NPT Review Conferences in recent years have become increasingly contentious and fail to reach any consensus. Another multilaterally negotiated agreement, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was concluded in 1996 but has failed to enter into force even after a quarter century.

Major power rivalry is not new but the difference is that it is no longer a bipolar world and the old model of nuclear arms control established during the Cold War, shaped by the bipolar politics of two nuclear superpowers is untenable in the 21st century nuclear multipolar world. There are multiple nuclear equations – US-Russia, US-China, US-North Korea, India-Pakistan, India-China, but not strictly stand-alone. Further, nuclear rhetoric is on the rise raising the spectre of growing nuclear risks.

During the bipolar era, there was a perception that with the advent of nuclear weapons, wars between major powers were disincentivised. The real problem is that nuclear weapons did not create any incentives for conflict resolution. Putin’s speech is merely a reflection of this reality.

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The Old But Relevant Script of the Cuban Missile Crisis

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Published in the Hindu on October 28, 2022

“Tell me how it ends”, is the common refrain of generals and leaders when in the middle of a war. The Ukraine war is no exception. Neither President Volodymir Zelensky or his Western partners, nor his Russian adversary, President Vladimir Putin, can predict how the war will end.

Earlier assumptions have been upended – Russia’s short ‘special military operation’ to ‘de-Nazify and de-militarise’ Ukraine is already a nine-month-war, and likely to extend into 2023; trans-Atlantic North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) unity under U.S. leadership despite visible internal differences hasn’t collapsed; President Zelensky’s emergence as a wartime leader is surprising; and, poor Russian military planning and performance, a shock. For the present, Russia is too strong to lose and Ukraine, despite NATO support, too weak to win; so, the war grinds on with no ceasefire in sight.

Yet, there is one outcome that must be prevented – a breakdown of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945 and a global conscience has sustained the nuclear taboo for over 75 years. None of the three principals in Ukraine would want the taboo breached. However, escalation creates its own dynamic.

Lessons from Cuba

It is time to revisit the sobering lessons of the Cuban Missile crisis that brought the world to the edge of nuclear Armageddon in October 1962, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. On October 16, 1962, U.S. President John F Kennedy was informed that the U.S.S.R. was preparing to deploy medium and intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba. After deliberating with his core group of advisers, President Kennedy rejected the idea of an invasion or a nuclear strike against Moscow, and on October 22, declared a naval ‘quarantine’ of Cuba. Simultaneously, he authorised his brother Robert Kennedy to open a back-channel with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. 

The crisis defused on October 28; based on assurances conveyed through the back-channel, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev announced that Soviet nuclear missiles and aircraft would be withdrawn in view of U.S. assurances to respect Cuba’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. What was kept a secret by both leaders was the fact that reciprocally, the U.S. also agreed to withdraw the Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey.

Yet, there were plenty of unforeseen events. On October 27, a U.S. surveillance flight strayed over Cuban airspace and was targeted by Soviet air defence forces who were deployed. Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down, the only casualty. This happened despite Kennedy having counselled desisting from provocative surveillance and Khrushchev not having authorised the engagement. Both sides kept the news under wraps till the crisis defused when Major Anderson’s sacrifice was recognised and honoured.

A day earlier, a Soviet nuclear armed submarine B-59 found itself trapped by U.S. depth charges, off Cuban waters. The U.S. was unaware that the submarine was nuclear armed and Captain Valentin Savitsky did not know that a quarantine was in operation. He decided to go down fighting but his decision to launch a nuclear bomb was vetoed by Captain Vassily Arkhipov. The Soviets followed a two-person-authorisation-rule and unknown to Kennedy and Khrushchev, a potential Armageddon was averted.

The most shocking revelation emerged decades later when the U.S. learnt that unbeknownst to them, over 150 warheads for FKR-1 Meteor missile, short range FROG missile, and gravity bombs were already present in in Cuba. These were intended for defence in case U.S. launched a repeat of the 1961 failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Despite Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s opposition, Premier Khrushchev insisted on withdrawing these too, conscious that these could provide the spark for a future escalation.

The key lesson learnt was that the two nuclear superpowers should steer clear of any direct confrontation even as their rivalry played out in other regions, thereby keeping it below the nuclear threshold. Deterrence theorists called it ‘the stability-instability-paradox’. With their assured-second-strike-capability guaranteeing mutually-assured-destruction, both U.S. and U.S.S.R were obliged to limit the instability to proxy wars. Nuclear war games over decades remained unable to address the challenge of keeping a nuclear war limited once a nuclear weapon was introduced in battle.

Russia’s nuclear signalling

The Ukraine war is testing the old lessons of nuclear deterrence.  Russia sees itself at war, not with non-nuclear Ukraine, but with a nuclear armed NATO. President Putin has therefore engaged in repeated nuclear signalling – from being personally present in mid-February at large scale exercises involving ‘strategic forces’ to placing nuclear forces on ‘special combat alert’ on February 27.

He raised the stakes again on September 21 when he ordered a ‘partial mobilisation’, announced referendums in the four regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, accused the West of engaging in nuclear blackmail and warned that Russia has ‘more modern weapons’ and ‘will certainly make use of all weapon systems available; this is not a bluff’. He cited U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 as a precedent.

In recent days, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has spoken to his counterparts in a number of countries including defence Minister Rajnath Singh that Ukraine may be preparing to use a ‘dirty bomb’. India’s response was that any use of such weapons would be against “the basic tenets of humanity”.

However, Russian nuclear use makes little operational sense. In 1945, Japan was on the verge of surrender and only the U.S. possessed nuclear weapons. Use of a tactical nuclear weapon will only strengthen Ukrainian national resolve; NATO response is unlikely to be nuclear but will be sharp. International political backlash would be significant and Mr. Putin may find himself increasingly isolated. Many countries in East and Central Asia may will reconsider nuclear weapons as a security necessity.

Role for global diplomacy

During the next few weeks, the fighting in Ukraine will intensify, before winter sets in and the weather freezes military operations till spring. This raises the risks for escalation and miscalculations. Right now, the goal of a ceasefire seems too distant, though eminently desirable. The United Nations appears paralysed given the involvement of permanent members of the Security Council. Therefore, it is for other global leaders who have access and influence, to convince President Putin that nuclear escalation would be a disastrous move.

Indonesia is the G-20 chair and President Joko Widodo will be hosting the summit meeting next month. India is the incoming chair; Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending the summit. Both Indonesia and India have refrained from condemning Russia, keeping communication channels open. In a bilateral meeting with President Putin in Samarkand last month, PM Modi emphasised that “now is not the era of war”. In the run-up to the G-20 summit, President Widodo and PM Modi are well placed to take a diplomatic initiative to persuade President Putin to step away from the nuclear rhetoric. This means emphasising the deterrent role of nuclear weapons and not expanding it; to reiterating Russia’s official declaratory position that restricts nuclear use for “an existential threat”.

Such a statement would help reduce growing fears of escalation and may also provide a channel for communication and open the door for a dialogue that can lead to a ceasefire. The lessons of the Cuban Missile crisis remain valid 60 years later.

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Ending the Ukraine War in an Imperfect World

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Published in the Hindu on July 8, 2022

The war in Ukraine has been underway for over four months. What began as a European conflict has had global repercussions. Of course, Ukraine and its people have borne the maximum brunt. More than five million Ukrainians have left the country and over eight million are internally displaced. Rising casualties and large-scale destruction have set back the country by decades. Recent estimates for rebuilding the destroyed cities and infrastructure are as high as $750 billion.

During 2020-21, most economies that could afford to, provided generous financial support to its citizens in the form of direct payments and subsidised food to tide over the economic hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chains suffered disruptions, aggravated by politics. Economic recovery has generated demand creating inflationary pressures. Today, inflation rates are rising across the world and in the largest economies have reached levels not seen since the early 1980s. As these countries tighten money supply, fears of recession loom large. The war in Ukraine has aggravated the situation for the poorer countries by creating food and fertiliser shortages. The sharp surge in energy prices threatens the prospects of economic recovery. Prospects of collective global action to deal with these challenges appear remote, given growing tensions among major powers.  

And so, the war grinds on, with no end in sight.

The inevitable conflict

It is a fact that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in gross violation of the United Nations Charter and international law; it is equally true that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is not an innocent bystander. In 2022, Russia is the guilty one but NATO’s folly was to forget that the cost of its expansion goes up as it gets closer to the Russian border. Its strategic error was in concluding that Russia was in terminal decline and adopting an ‘open door’ policy.

By 2005, 11 former East European and Baltic states had joined NATO. Addressing the Munich Security Conference in 2007, President Vladimir Putin described NATO’s decision of moving eastwards and deploying forces closer to Russian borders, “a serious provocation”. The warning was ignored. At the NATO summit in early 2008, the U.S. pushed for opening membership for Ukraine and Georgia. France and Germany, sensitive to Russian concerns, successfully blocked a time-frame for implementation. As a compromise, it was the worst of both worlds. It convinced Russia of NATO’s hostility and dangled prospects for Georgia and Ukraine that NATO couldn’t fulfil.  

Later that year, Russia intervened in Georgia on the grounds of protecting the Russian minorities, taking over the neighbouring provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2014, following the Euromaidan protests in Kiev against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russia separatists, assisted by Russian mercenaries, created autonomous regions in eastern Ukraine. The fuse, lit in 2008, was now smouldering.  

Post-2014, NATO continued to strengthen its relationship with Ukraine by providing it training and equipment, formalising it in 2020 by making Ukraine a NATO Enhanced Opportunity Partner. British and U.S. warships’ presence in the Black Sea began to increase. In 2019, U.K. entered into a cooperation agreement with Ukraine to develop two new naval ports, Ochakiv on the Black Sea and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov, a move that Russia saw as potentially threatening. The die was cast.

Liberalism trumps realism

Neither side wanted war. NATO members insist that Ukraine would not be joining NATO but remains unable to walk back from its 2008 statement. This would be seen as ‘appeasement’. In diplomacy, appeasement had long been accepted as an honourable route to ensuring peace, practiced by the British since the mid-nineteenth century in its dealings with European powers and especially the U.S. as it sought to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Neville Chamberlain too used appeasement to negotiate “peace in our times” in 1938 but Winston Churchill employed it to pillory him and the term never regained respectability thereafter.

An equivalent term surfaced – sensitivity for each other’s core interests -practised during the Cold War to prevent the U.S. and USSR from getting into conflict. With the end of the Cold War, this became history. The liberal school, having vanquished the Marxist school of thought, was now convinced of the righteousness of its cause. If only the rest of the world could be made to see reason, democracy would flourish, free markets ensure prosperity and a Western led rule-based order prevail. The triumph of liberalism led the neo-con believers towards interventionism (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Colour Revolutions, Syria); others, attracted by the prospects of Chinese and Russian markets, deluded themselves that economic growth would lead to political openings.

The realist school of thought cautioned against military interventions backed by a one-size-fits-all democratic prescription and the risks of excessive economic dependence on China but these voices were dismissed. Many U.S. scholars and strategic thinkers cautioned against NATO enlargement, warning that Russia may be weak but it would be reckless to ignore its security interests; they were charged with ‘appeasement’. Liberalism was upholding ‘moral values’; amoral realism was easy to reject as immoral.

French President Emmanuel Macron talked in February of the Finlandisation model as an option for Ukraine. Austrian neutrality imposed by US, USSR, UK and France in 1955, enshrined in its constitution was mentioned. But these solutions had found acceptance in a war weary Europe when politics was frozen by the Cold War. Finland had accepted limited sovereignty and just two presidents guided it – Urho Kekkonen (1956-82) and Mauno Koivisto (1982-94) and both also served as prime-ministers before assuming the presidency. In 2022, such stability is impossible with power politics in flux, rivalries sharpening and populism on the upswing.

In early March, in an interview to Russian media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that Ukraine was not pressing for NATO membership but wanted neutrality to be guaranteed; he even talked of autonomy for Donbas as a compromise and a period of ten years for talks on Crimea. But that interview was soon forgotten.

How wars end

Wars often develop their own momentum and the Ukraine war is no exception. Russia possibly anticipated a short, sharp conflict, a collapse of the Kiev regime (perhaps similar to what happened in Kabul last August), and lack of NATO cohesion. It has had to readjust its aims as it has settled down to a long and brutal war. The G-7, European Union (EU) and NATO have displayed unusual cohesion and Ukrainians have shown exemplary grit and motivation. Russia is in a bind. Even its limited war aims of controlling Donbas and the Black Sea coast have been a slog. Finland and Sweden joining NATO will squeeze it further in the Baltic Sea. Ukraine’s ability to fight depends on how long western funds and military hardware keep flowing.

In a moral world, there is a right and wrong and Russia should be held to account. But in the real world, other factors come into play. A blame game or establishing the root cause will not help end the crisis. Eventually, talks will need to take place, between Ukraine and Russia and with NATO and U.S. playing an outsize role behind the scenes. This means acknowledging Russia’s security interests in its neighbourhood.

The problem is that the war is now being cast in binaries – a battle between freedom and tyranny, between democracy and autocracy, a choice between rule-based order and brute force. This makes compromise difficult. And Russia cannot be defeated unless NATO wants to engage in a full-scale war.

The longer the war continues, the greater the suffering for the Ukrainians. The more territory Ukraine loses, the weaker will be its bargaining position at the table. And the longer the war continues, the greater the risk of an inadvertent escalation. History tells us that when faced with choices, major powers have a propensity to double down. The nuclear taboo has held since 1945; sane voices need to ensure that it is not breached. The sooner the war ceases, the better for Ukrainians, Russians and the world. It is an imperfect world but we don’t have another.

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