Thursday, February 24, 2022

Foolish Things

Oddly out-dated in certain ways as it took place before the Trump presidency, John Mearsheimer's lecture nevertheless serves as a superior backgrounder on some of the deeper causes of the current crisis in Ukraine...


A handful of observations for those that take the time to watch this. 

Putin is not one of those autocrats who has arisen from within a robust democratic tradition and trampled on it. Catherine the Great aside, Russia has always been run by one man and has forever regarded our western liberal values with at least a degree of suspicion. 

Since the end of the Cold War the USA has, as Mearsheimer points out, persisted in the belief that elected politicians will always be pro-American, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. 

Of course the history of countries like Guatemala (and possibly also Chile) shows that in the fairly recent past the USA had few qualms about over-throwing legitimate democratic regimes. As the USSR started to founder, this policy evolved into support for 'voting', which meant either genuine democracy or an appearance of it, until the self-serving fantasy of the benign hegemon was fully formed. 

There can be no doubt that the US is "pivoting" towards eastern Asia and after Brexit the UK appears to want to come along for the ride. This is one reason that Macron, in the aftermath of AUKUS, has been so obviously desperate to appear useful during this current crisis, and there can be no doubt that Russia is also feeling the early symptoms of declining relevance. And acting on them. 

And yet I think Mearsheimer exaggerates the extent of continental Europe's potential decline in strategic importance to the US, for there are meaningful intellectual and cultural resources at stake there in 'the West' and during the Q&A he seems remarkably optimistic about America's own ability to shake off the rise of right wing extremism. 

Some of the institutions such as NATO (and perhaps also the EU) may soon appear even less fit for purpose, but integration is here to stay. The ultimate end product of this crisis will surely be a realisation amongst continental Europeans that they can no longer quite so easily lean on the Americans for their defence needs. 

Mearsheimer holds that Putin has been acting rationally and to some extent predictably. We drove our un-Russian values and our integrated institutions right up to his border and then acted surprised when he responded in a way that suggested the Ukraine sat within Russia's zone of vital strategic interests. 

As I have stated before, the correct and somewhat obvious alternative approach would have been to designate Ukraine as a neutral buffer zone as Austria was during the Cold War. 

Mearsheimer thinks that a lack of a proper peer competitor since the collapse of the USSR has led the US to "do foolish things" on the foreign policy front — the "reverse Midas touch" he repeatedly refers to in the video, which he says afflicts both Democrats and Republicans. 

One could question whether confrontation with China is really necessary or whether the US has subconsciously understood that it needs a proper peer competitor to force itself to think more strategically again and has followed this instinct towards the rising sun. 

The conventional foreign policy view is that we are now all 21st century agents and the old ways of balance of power politics are no longer relevant, so whatever happens next in Ukraine could serve as a very striking wake up call as the West has been dabbling in an area that it now cares about a lot less than the Russians and has ended up with a losing hand at the moment of confrontation — because the economic stick is demonstrably inadequate and Putin likely to act with the greater resolve. 

I believe the Russian President will continue to encroach gradually and in reliably ambiguous ways unless a response from the other side provokes him into something altogether more brutal. 

This was in part the meaning of the hairdryer session his spy chief was on the end of yesterday, the unfortunate squirming official having suggested all too un-ambiguously that the objective was to swallow the Donbas whole into the Russian Federation. 



Esos deditos...


Over six years ago Mearsheimer could see that Putin would attempt to wreck Ukraine rather than let it be swallowed by an advancing West. In doing this he is skirting the outer limits of a strategy which could wreck Russia too. 

Perhaps there are those on 'our' side who have considered ways of prodding him that direction — "Full Tonto" — hoping that the rational, well-considered strategy will unravel in the heat of the moment leaving the Kremlin to do some foolish things too, as Vlad discovers his inner Mr Hyde. 




3 comments:

Gary Denness said...

Interesting.

I buy into the argument that Russia is compelled to act because Ukraine is joining NATO about as much as I bought into the argument that the UK should leave the EU because Turkey is joining it. That’s to say, not at all.

Is it not a much simpler case of Putin wanting a Ukraine that operates in the same sort of way as Belarus?That’s to say, a subservient relationship?

Inner Diablog said...

Compelled to act? Absolutely not. There is no justification for this invasion, yet the West has dabbled in semi amateur fashion and had all the signs that Putin was in earnest for years. The years that have elapsed since the lecture show that the situation was there, hiding in plain sight. Perhaps we all imagined that Putin would remain the ever ambiguous adversary until he was somehow gone. He's crossed a line now and taken the world with him.

It is interesting that Mersheimer essentially blames the EU for 2014, not NATO or the CIA like our friend Mr Fry.

Inner Diablog said...

And I was mystified by why the West gave no ground at all even though it was bleeding obvious that they had no real stick to beat him with. They didn't even pretend to address his 'security concerns'. Up until a few weeks ago they must have believed he was just sabre rattling, declining power, worried about his bank accounts etc.

Ukraine joining NATO struck me as a good idea on a par with removing the concrete dome on top of Chernobyl. Yet nobody seemed willing to concede it. The very way the alliance is structured means that admitting a country that has an open conflict with Russia and a civil war internally would basically be insane. And what would be gained by encroaching deep into Russia's strategic and cultural space. There were better ways to foster democracy in Kiev, which might eventually have pressed on east without a line of missiles at its edge.