How Russia-Ukraine conflict has complicated the already complex geopolitics
The Russia-Ukraine military confrontation is taking the most visceral shape, disturbing the peace in the region. The side effects of this confrontation are going to be experienced by nations across the globe as the ongoing inflation induced by the COVID-19 pandemic is going to cross all bearable thresholds. On top of it, the US sanctions against Russia further complicate the global economic scenario. Therefore, this war is a calculated move undertaken by Russia with a certain specific aim in mind knowing the nature of the divided European Union (EU) and verbose and effete United States.
President Vladimir Putin understands the limitations of the EU and the US and Europe’s dependence on Russia for its energy needs. The military option chosen by the Kremlin at the Ukrainian theatre is just the first step to unseat the US from the position of global hegemon. The US-led world order based on the much-hyped concepts such as democracy, neoliberalism, human rights, etc, is going to experience a serious dent and subsequent dethronement. Russia and China are consolidating themselves to present a new world order antithetical to the democratic one peddled by the US post World War II. But, the most alarming aspect of the entire development and the ongoing global geopolitical and geo-economic churn is that of the rise of two authoritarian nations whose political philosophies do not remotely adhere to democratic norms.
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Moreover, the Ukrainian crisis explains vividly the failure of diplomacy and the absence of decisive leadership in placing a peace deal with Russia. It is quite apparent that the European nations cannot take a tougher stand against Russia as they rely largely on the latter for their needs. But the demonstration of incompetencies by the US in preventing war is a clear indication of the end of the US-led world order. The US' Afghan fiasco in 2021 was the symptom of its weakness, but its failure in Ukraine is the most demonstrative expression of its ineffectiveness to exercise its global leadership.
Francis Fukuyama's End of History myth — and the political philosophy around the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy with the closure of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 — meets the most brutal contradiction with the repetition of history and the erstwhile contender reclaiming its lost position. Fragmented Russia reunites itself to re-establish its undivided status reversing Fukuyama's conceptualisation of history that supports finality.
Ukraine’s tilting towards the West and imbibing Western attitudes and seeking NATO (North Atlantic Organisation) membership are acts of decoupling from Russia. For President Putin, it is an act of transgression and dispenses punishment in terms of annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 leading to the dismemberment of Ukraine. The current military terror inflicted by Russia on Ukraine embodies a demand to further slice the latter by recognising the rebel-held Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. These two regions are Russia- backed separatist areas which are demonstratively anti-Ukraine. Ukraine, a European democracy with 44 million people, finds itself now under a ceaseless onslaught unleashed by Russia for the former's disobedience to its old master. But, unfortunately, this conflict is not necessarily confined to Ukraine and the related areas. It is going to have serious global ramifications.
China is observing the theatrics of the war and gauging the nerves of the West and most particularly of the US. It may follow the trail and initiate military escalations against the territories which it self-proclaims as its own against the will of the people concerned. The bad precedent set by Russia may empower China to commit misadventure to punish its naysayers. Beijing's growing global footprints and technologically decked military and ultra-cutting-edge weaponry and disrespect for democracy and human rights mark the most lethal enemy which is currently taking stock of things to open its pandora's box at its will. To the global consternation, international organizations such as the UN and other parallel body designed to undertake peace-building activities as constituents of one particular world order have failed to broker a noncombat deal with Russia. This paralysis had its inception at the outbreak of the COVID-19 as they hid behind the veil of the unknowability of the genesis of the virus. This indicates the collapse of global institutions to upkeep peace and harmony among nations.
This collective ineffectiveness creates the ground for the emergence of a world order marked by egocentrism, power, and coercion. It seems the contours of neo-liberal de-territorialised order may be at stake in the vortex of threats emanating from both state and non-state actors. The question arises: Is political realism championed by Hans J Morgenthau back again in the 21st century?
Morgenthau in his famous work Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace argued that “no nation can foresee how large its miscalculations will turn out to be, all nations must ultimately seek the maximum of power obtainable under the circumstances. Only thus can they hope to attain the maximum margin of safety commensurate with the maximum of errors they might commit”. Will Russia do the same miscalculations irrespective of its outcomes?
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Coming back to the main issue, Russia's military juggernaut rolls its troops and tanks from all three directions — north, east and south — with Belarus' unwavering support. Kyiv's vulnerability is well evident as the Russian military entourage stations at the gate. The raison d'être given by President Putin for his attack on Ukraine for its 'demilitarisation and de-Nazification’ is a cooked-up story deficit of substance. The entire enterprise is a finely calibrated move to position itself as the global hegemon in the event of the emergence of a new global geopolitical order with the US' unceremonious exit from Afghanistan. However, sooner or later good sense will prevail and diplomacy will win as indications towards the same are very much visible.
Ukraine is no match to Russia militarily, and common sense says that the negotiation is very much around the corner. Russia will further slice Ukraine and come to a diplomatic table. The EU, UK, and the US will not send their troops as Ukraine is not part of NATO. The West won’t wish to prolong the war in Eastern Europe. Europe's energy dependencies on Russia force it not to do double-dealing with the latter.
The US sanction carefully sidelines the area of continued supply of energy from Russia and the nature of the sanction is more of lip service and a grand gimmick than anything substantially meaningful. The dread of the sanction threats is no more panicking for Moscow as it has met likes of this many times prior to the current one. The US armoury seems to have been reduced to sanction weaponry. Therefore, it loses its sphere of influence and impact. The demonstration of these symptoms is unhealthy for Washington.
Moscow will never appreciate the expansionism of NATO and the Orange Revolution and democracy drama at the threshold of its area of influence; and in a similar vein, the US won't appreciate the expansion of the Russian sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere. However, the US cannot afford to deal with two eastern biggies — Russia and China — at the same time. It is suicidal, not an act of exceptional bravery. This problem could have been dealt with diplomatically but the West complicated it and led the tension to an egregious end.
Support from the West is going to be purely verbal which literally means nothing; and if the West decides to support Kyiv in its defence against the Kremlin, it may expose the multiple fault lines of the so-called Western unity and isolate the US as the stand-alone entity in possession of artificial pomposity without real impact. However, antagonising at present with Russia when the EU shares substantial economic space with the former, especially in the area of energy sector, will prove a blunder of all times. Common sense prevents such engagement in real terms.
Jajati K Pattnaik is an Associate Professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Chandan K Panda is an Assistant Professor at Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. Views expressed are personal.
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Jajati K Pattnaik and Chandan K Panda
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