He who bears the guilt of a war cannot represent an innocent cause. That was the case for the USA in Iraq in 2003 and for Russia in Ukraine in 2022. And yet there is a serious difference in the local perception of this intervention, measurable in the degree of dismay, in fear, anger and insecurity. When a part of Europe becomes a theater of war, the impression is overwhelming: This war can be heard, seen, suspected and feared. It takes place on your own doorstep, not in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. There was Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and Libya, there is Yemen, Syria and Mali. In 2003, one saw the television pictures of the houses in Baghdad hit by rockets, from which no more residents could be drawn because no one could be found. All of this fades when people fight and die, suffer and flee in the middle of Europe like they have not done since the Yugoslav civil wars a quarter of a century ago.
Dismay and alarm are legitimate reactions. They remain so, as long as the question is tolerated as to how things could (or had to) come to this between Russia and Ukraine, between Russia and NATO, and the West in general. These antipodes are currently turning from declared opponents into bitter enemies. And possibly for an indefinitely long time. It doesn’t help much to celebrate, by means of a ritualistic condemnation of the aggressor, that you’re on the right side when that side becomes the front. No matter how much Vladimir Putin and his entourage are condemned, it doesn’t last, and certainly not enough. Precautions must be taken to avoid the great crash, the irreversible inferno. Politics as propaganda lost in moods and a turn to rearmament cannot be a substitute for keeping the peace.
Who follows Putin?
And certainly not a forced renunciation or even the self-imposed ban on telling the history of this escalation. What was pursued solely with the eastward expansion of NATO has not only reached an ultimate point, but has also reached a deadlock for Ukraine – in a double and tragic meaning of the word. Instead of constantly standing in front of a Ukrainian flag, Olaf Scholz should have dissuaded the leadership in Kyiv from their maximalist positions towards Moscow and persuaded them to engage in substantial negotiations. Apparently that was exactly what was not wanted.
In this situation, to castigate Vladimir Putin as an irrational “revisionist” who obsessively and vindictively wants as much back from the Soviet Union as he can—by force—is a disregard for historical reason. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will not be resurrected as a Union of vassal states dependent on Russia. If political action deserves the attribution “revisionist”, then it refers to a global political interlude – more an episode than a caesura – on the threshold of the last decade of the 20th century. Unexpectedly, a Europe without blocs, an association of states freed from the East-West conflict, seemed possible. The “Charter of Paris” adopted at the CSCE summit in November 1990 pointed the way. On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Pact dissolved as an Eastern military alliance, with which NATO lost opponents and its raison d’être, but did not believe in taking this into account. In a “revisionist” way, the outdated camp was preferred instead of new partners. Not only did NATO remain what and how it was, it was shifted eastward and became more offensively oriented than it had been since its founding in 1949 Military operations outside of Alliance territory and beyond Alliance defense legitimized. Use has already been made of this with the aerial warfare waged against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia since March 1999. No, that doesn’t excuse the attack on Ukraine, but it’s part of its lead-up.
As might be expected, Russia is now being isolated by the West and subject to harsh penalties. But Russia is not going away. Putting together one sanctions package after the other may help to get through the moment, but it is not a strategy. Doing maximum damage to the Russian economy in order to snuff out the life of the Putin regime when the people become impoverished and rebelliously refuse to follow – that amounts to a horror scenario. Who follows Putin? Alexei Navalny? The early 1990s should still be vividly remembered. At that time, civil war-like conditions like those in August 1991 and October 1993 spread to Moscow itself, apart from the armed and brutal clashes on the post-Soviet periphery, which did not interest Western Europe because they did not touch them. The disruption of state and society in Russia could become a bed of embers.
No one should, therefore, be under the illusion of capitalizing on the implosion of a country of these proportions. The world’s second largest nuclear weapons arsenal can only be controlled under predictable political conditions. The stability of the Russian Federation is in the existential interest of Western societies, which maintain modern, trained armies capable of attack, but are not capable of war themselves. Definitely less than the Russian. A highly complex organism of data and economic cycles, traffic and social life leads to highly vulnerable, interdependent systems of existence. Their resistance to crises has long been decreasing rather than increasing. Concern in Germany about a stable energy supply and the necessary transfer of resources from Russia speaks volumes. Galloping climate erosion and an unresolved pandemic are already overtaxing consistent conflict management that produces collective acceptance instead of cognitive rejection.
How helpful can it be to split Europe into two mutually exclusive defense and political orders for a long time to come? Maintaining well-armed, war-capable armed forces, cultivating separate rule and value systems, and watching over antagonistic sovereignty of interpretation means digging rifts that will be insurmountable. The old dramas with the usual lyrics. There is a risk that communication channels, such as those that were both self-evident and indispensable during the Cold War, will be closed for a long time. Under these circumstances, Russia and the West will lose the ability to be sustainable. At the moment, the war in Ukraine is paving the way for this, as is the urge in Brussels, Berlin and Washington to want to excommunicate a major power from the world community.
From the beginning
Until 1990, the axiom applied that despite all the competition between the systems, there must be no thermonuclear conflict. The nuclear arsenals of the superpowers served to project power, but they also served the purpose of keeping each other in check through mutual deterrence. The question will be whether this is still true in view of the absolutely irreconcilable West-East antagonism – for which it is not clear how alone Russia stands. Are the conditions being created so that nothing more can be guaranteed, let alone contractually fixed? The West’s declaration of economic war is more likely to be confirmed than withdrawn. It aims to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine with an externally-led coup d’état against the Putin government. More than just an indication of how important the western outpost Ukraine has been and will remain in weakening Russia. After all, the fight for this country was, from the start, primarily a fight for Russia, for the political existence or non-existence of the Putin system. Compromises are hardly conceivable, only victory or defeat.