Bringing realistic assessment to the Russo-Ukrainian War while applying trade principles to help end it
 No one is pleased with the Russo-Ukraine war, but one is relieved that the initial rah-rah! cheering that Ukrainians beat the Russians back from Kiev has given way to a more realistic assessment of what's happening, and what is likely to happen.
Highly partisan reports in the western media spoke of beating back the Russian advance, but the phrase "Russian advance" survived in succesive reports day after day despite much stress on the words "beating back".
From this one hopes to save the Black Sea Port of Odessa from Russian control so trade can resume. The world needs Ukrainian grain and Russian oil - needs that will become more acute as time goes on.
But it is not feasible that the eastern Donbas, Donetsk, Luhansk regions and the southern Crimean Peninsula will be anything but Russian henceforth as there are so many ethnic Russians who live there.
What's more, much of the initial American anti-Russian fervour was derived from a hope of reviving the failed anti-Trump Russian collusion charge. Few Westerners knew much or cared much, about the Ukraine. After all, it had been part of Russia since the 18th century - almost as long as a British monarchs reigned over Canada, which they forcibly took from the French in 1759.
In the 1850s, Britain, France and Turkey fought the Crimean War against Russia on what all presumed to be Russian soil. Over the years, ethnic Russians populated the eastern regions of Ukraine providing local majorities. And those people who were not Russian, particularly in the Crimea where Cossacks reign, they were not Ukrainian either.
Former US President Donald Trump had been accused of skullduggery, making shady deals in the Ukraine and colluding with the Russians in his election. Despite a two-year FBI probe to substantiate these allegations, the Democratic Party came up with nothing. Yet, the former US president remains a serious threat to the prospects of the progressives who dominate the Democratic Party and who fear electoral disaster in the November mid-terms.
So when the Russian Army didn't, as they fully expected to, roll in as glorious liberators covered with flowers, the world was pleasantly surprised. Instead, they were met by competent tank-busters, and they ignominiously scuttled away within a short distance of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In the West, many thought the movie should end with the good guys in he saddle and the bad guys fleeing for their lives. The cheers were deafening.
But as one retired British general remarked on YouTube that there is a big difference between being "parade ready" and "battle ready". Armies with no expectation of war soon tend grow soft and ill-prepared for the bloody business that war is. Morever, armies enjoying long periods of tranquility tend to promote commanders skilled in the arts of peace rather than cut-throat combat readiness. Peacetime commanders tend to shine in interpersonal relationships, social sensitivity and bookkeeping.
This is a universal problem. Generals who command and the beginning of a war as seldom end up in charge at the end of the war, just as initial failures in the field indicate little more than that - initial failures. Such was the Russian experience against Finland and Germany in the 1940s - terrible and repeated blunders at first, but victory in the end.
We have paid little attention to root causes. The ethnic Russian separatist movement mustered substantial militaries to fend off Ukrainian forces in 2014, so it is not as though there is not local Russian support in the east. Their supporting population can likened to the English-speaking majority of western Quebec province in Canada. Most government jobs (police, post office, public clinics etc) provided by the provincial French-speaking majority, are given to francophones. If the largely English-speaking Canadian Army occupied western Quebec vowing to end the state-sponsored linguistic cleansing that has prevailed for 50 years, this would have the support of the western Quebec's anglophone local majorities if ever put to a vote. Similar issues have been ignored by the media in the Ukraine.
Henry Kissinger, aged 99, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant, former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, has advised that Ukraine be prepared to give up land, that is the eastern and southern regions the Russia already controls. That would include it historic naval station at Sebastapol in the Crimea.
Perhpas it is too soon to say that Moscow and Kiev might settle for a half a loaf to avoid a wider conflict. It seems that the Russians have the best cards, in that they are in a position to degrade Ukrainian real estate assets without escalating the conflict beyond the Ukrainian borders while the Kiev's forces have no reciprocal option. If Kiev had a missile with a 300-mile range, Ukrainians could hit Volgagrad from Luhansk if they could get that close. Volgograd is the new name for Stalingrad where one of the most epic battles of World War II was fought. But that is the only Russian target of substance in that range.
It appears the Russians do not intend to take over the whole country unless there is general acquiesence beyond the eastern regions. The Ukrainians have shown that they will be a difficult people to rule given the spunk they have shown in defending their country and the genuine sympathy they have generated beyond millions of their well-connected disaspora.
It is wise to remember that Russia, for all its authoritarian faults, is not the totalitarian Soviet Union. It is closer to the rightist Tsarist regimes of the pre-communist rule, depicted in its armorial bearings with its twin eagle of the Romanovs. It follows the usual rules of rightest dictatorships - if you do not bother the ruler, chances are the ruler will not bother you. This is unlike communist rule which seeks to supervise the citizen's life in detail in a quest to create a new social being to populate a socially-engineered utopia. Russia has no such ambitions.
One hopes one's goal to be to settle the dispute in a way that can restore trade as a practical instrument of peace. It may be too much to hope for that the question might be settled democratically in the way the canton of Jura was separated from the canton of Bern in Switzerland in 1978. But by treating this as a border re-adjustment to avoid and ethnic minority being abused by a national majority, we may well see our way out of this and avoid World War III.
It is interesting to note as this war continues how the world is beginning to coalesce into the Orwellian vision of warring states of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. One can only hope that it does not turn into the Orwellian nightmare he conjured up in his books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. |
