Responses on the Weekly Commentaries

• 02-May-22
• admin

There have been responses to the weekly commentaries in the past few days.   I am happy to address them.

 

The key query regards what is the most important reason why Ukraine and Russia are at war.

 

On the first question, I have cited Prof John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago who has placed fault with the West for pushing an agenda of NATO eastward expansion, crossing red lines for the Russians.   He has been consistent in his argument, since 2015 shortly after Russia took the Crimea.   This view is established in various lectures he has been giving over the years, BEFORE the war, and his latest expression of it was published in the Economist a week or so ago.

 

One of our readers told me that the Straits Times has carried a rebuttal in an article by Sir Adam Roberts, emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford.   Sir Adam argues that it is wrong to say the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis.

 

Here is Sir Adam’s article in the Straits Times, republished from the Economist, if case you missed it, on April 12:

 

“Why is it that Professor John Mearsheimer, a distinguished American exponent of international relations, has reached such an apparently perverse conclusion about Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine?

It is a "special military operation" indeed - one whose initiation and conduct have been condemned as violating the most fundamental rules and norms. Yet he argued in an article for The Economist's By Invitation section on March 19 that "the West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014".

Prof Mearsheimer does not let President Vladimir Putin off the hook entirely: "There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the crisis and is responsible for how it is being waged," he writes.

But Prof Mearsheimer's central argument is that the crisis began at Nato's Bucharest summit in April 2008, when then President George W. Bush, along with the other Nato member states, ostensibly committed the alliance to the future membership of Ukraine and Georgia. The Russian leadership was deeply opposed to the prospect of Nato extending its reach so close to the heartland of Russia.

It's questionable whether Mr Putin was right to say Nato posed a threat to Russia's sphere of influence. From the start in 2008 there were different interpretations of what was meant by "will become members". For some these words, with no timeframe specified, were there to enable President Bush to return home from Bucharest with something to show for his trip. Other member states, all of whose votes would have been essential for any formal offer of membership, remained doubtful. But Mr Putin took the phrasing seriously.

Prof Mearsheimer's argument has some strength in suggesting that the 2008 Bucharest summit declaration was a disaster. He has shown consistency in this matter. He practically invented a school of international relations called "offensive realism", based round the idea that systems in which there are several great powers are prone to manage their mutual relations with deep rivalry and a high risk of war.

One conclusion that follows from his world-view is that states are bound to take seriously the concept of "spheres of influence", an old-fashioned term for a phenomenon that is still very much alive. However much spheres of influence may challenge the idea of the sovereign equality of states, they have by no means disappeared in international relations.

Take the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In demanding the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles from Cuba, America was, in effect, defending the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The doctrine sought to exclude European colonial rule and military presence from the western hemisphere. As for the Soviet Union, throughout the Cold War it regarded virtually all of Eastern Europe, where it imposed client regimes, as its sphere of influence under the euphemistic label of "commonwealth of socialist nations".

There is no dispute now that Mr Putin wants to defend Russia's sphere of influence. Right at the start of his speech on Feb 24, as his forces invaded Ukraine, he criticised the "expansion of the Nato bloc to the east, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders". He embarked on a tirade against the actions of the Western powers and of the Ukrainian government. He infamously claimed, without a shred of evidence, that there was an ongoing "genocide against the millions of people" in the Donbass region.

However, for Prof Mearsheimer to reduce the causes of Russia's invasion to the Bucharest declaration is simplistic and wrong. Other, more important factors were at play.

For a start, there were some obvious frustrations, fears and mistakes. The continuing American strategic partnership with Ukraine, which Prof Mearsheimer mentions, may indeed have played a part, rubbing salt in the wound of Nato's projected expansion. Ukrainian defiance in response to Russia's huge military exercise on its border last year would have been hard for Mr Putin to tolerate.

A successful and democratic Ukraine undermines the Russian leader's own authoritarianism at home.

And there was a faulty understanding of the situation on the ground: both America in Iraq and Russia in Ukraine have launched wars on terrible "intelligence".

Break-up of empires

Alongside these proximate causes there are three other factors that help to explain the current crisis in Ukraine. The most important, and the most neglected, is that the break-up of empires is often messy and traumatic.

Often foreign military intervention of some kind follows.

The end of European colonial empires, and the collapse of the Soviet and Yugoslav empires in the 1990s, forced new or reconstituted states to make fateful decisions. Is citizenship based on ethnicity or simply residence? Should kin living outside the state have a right to citizenship? What frontiers does the state have? What friends and allies? What

Constitution? What language? Such questions have been at the heart of most of the political crises and armed conflicts of the past 100 years or more.

The dozens of UN peacekeeping missions established since 1945 have all had the task of addressing post-colonial and post-imperial crises.

Both Georgia and Ukraine faced many if not all of these quandaries in the 1990s - and faced them long before the question of Nato membership arose.

From the very beginning of their new existence the status of Russian minorities in Georgia and Ukraine was particularly difficult. In Georgia two breakaway republics provided a basis, or at least a pretext, for Russian intervention on occasion. In Ukraine, too, defending the rights of its two Russian-supported breakaway republics was the ostensible reason for Russian military interventions there. And in these pro-Russian republics there were forced expulsions, of Georgians and Ukrainians respectively, leading to calls that they should be enabled to return to their homes.

Second, the existence of nuclear weapons outside of Russia necessitated a degree of Western involvement in security matters. An array of nuclear weapons remained in Ukraine (and also in Belarus and Kazakhstan) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem of what to do with this arsenal was addressed in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of Dec 5, 1994.

The three post-Soviet states agreed to hand these nuclear weapons over to Russia. In return, they received security assurances from Russia, Britain and America, which all undertook to respect the sovereignty, independence and existing borders of Ukraine and the other two states.

This provision was violated by Russia's takeover of Crimea in March 2014. The breakdown of the Budapest

Memorandum left Ukraine in an awkward situation. It was unable to trust Russia's word, but also had reason to doubt Western security guarantees. The idea of full-blooded membership of Nato appeared increasingly attractive but not necessarily more attainable.

Colour revolutions

The third factor is colour revolutions - the popular revolutions that occurred in many countries in the former Soviet Union in recent decades.

They must have reminded Mr Putin of the movements in Eastern Europe in 1989 that precipitated the collapse of one communist regime after another. Mr Putin was deeply suspicious of the revolutions, such as the Rose revolution in Georgia in November 2003. It was the first successful assault in the former Soviet Union against the corrupt strongmen who had come to power in the immediate aftermath of communist party rule. It was followed within a year by the Orange revolution in Ukraine that threw out another such strongman, Viktor Yanukovych.

It suits Mr Putin to treat civil resistance movements as parts of a grand international conspiracy.

I have been studying such movements for more than 50 years. In that time all kinds of accusations have been made that such movements are the pawns of outside forces. There is little evidence to support such theories.

Prof Mearsheimer, in a lecture on "The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis" at Chicago University in 2015, actually lent some credence to the idea that such movements verge on being an American instrument. "Our basic strategy is to topple regimes all over the world." Evidence for this generalisation was not presented. Throughout his analysis Prof Mearsheimer pays remarkably little attention to the ideals and political desires of people in countries that have experienced "people power" revolutions.

These factors suggest that the 2008 proposal to expand Nato to include Georgia and Ukraine is just one among many developments that have made the current crisis so acute.

It is arguable, indeed likely, that the Nato expansion proposal made matters worse, as may some other Western actions, but to assert that "the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis" goes too far.

© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

 

Well, now that the intellectual knives are out, and eminent scholars are dissecting the reasons for the war, we can all evaluate for ourselves what the key arguments are.   Basically, I don’t consider Sir Adam to be refuting what Prof Mearsheimer says – he is merely saying that there are other reasons for the war, and that the west’s role is not as significant as Mearsheimer says it is.   

 

In my case, I completely accept that Mearsheimer is correct.   Why?  This is simple.   If on 23 Feb 2022, the collective West, especially America, stated in writing that they would not accept Ukraine into NATO, and there will be no expansion of NATO eastwards into Ukraine, there would not have been an outbreak of hostilities.   It would have been the single most important concession by the West to avert war.   All they had to do was to agree not to step over the bright red line, lined with loud speakers for emphasis, laid out in the sand by Russia to tell everyone that an existential challenge is being shoved right in its face.   It was not secret diplomacy that nobody knows about.   It was not a confidential huddle.    Putin hollered his concern loudly and clearly to everyone.   For years on end.   Sir Adam must have heard it too.   And he of all people, high in his ivory tower, cannot plausibly claim he did not hear it – sound travels remarkably well in elevated places.      

 

And this was well-known to ordinary people like me.   It was a clear red line, and the West deliberately crossed it, and even stomped its foot on the sand all around it.   Can anyone who did that not be at fault for instigating war?

 

In other words, among the many terms and conditions in the decline of the affairs of state prior to the war, one was more critical than all the others.  Yes, Sir Adam can point to a lot of the background factors, IN ADDITION to the NATO eastward expansion reason, that triggered the outbreak of war, but that was by far, the most critical one, in the sense that if this condition had been met (where all the protagonists unambiguously shake hands on that single condition), Russia would have no provocation to invade. 

 

Therefore, in my book, Mearsheimer wins the debate with Sir Adam hands down.  The West, and in particular, the US, is mostly to blame for the destruction of Ukraine, given that we accept that Russia was also complicit on the other side.

 

Now that we are at it, let us expand beyond Sir Adam’s reasons for why there is a deterioration of the relationship between Russia and America that caused the war.  In other words, I would suggest that there were even more reasons than Sir Adam suggested for the general slide into hostilities, without these overshadowing the Mearsheimer reason. 

 

First of all, besides the three reasons which Sir Adam brought up, I can identify two more.   I am no emeritus professor, but hey, we simply cannot excuse that idiot Zellensky for being the president of a corrupt and weak country, “poke the bear in the eye” (Mearsheimer’s words) and expect that to have zero consequences.   It is well known by now that he is a powerless puppet, who cannot make any decisions on his own.  He is placed there by the powers that be to regurgitate scripted lines on and on in meaningless speeches after the said poked bear has reacted.   I mean, he dared the bear to maul him, because there were all kinds of people whispering to him, go poke the bear and when the bear is mauling him to pieces, he claims the bear is bad.   That to me, is also a critical reason for the war.   Just because he is stupid does not mean Zellensky is not accountable.

 

And for the folks out there who argue that Zellensky and the Ukrainians deserve to live out a life not under the shadow of an overbearing neighbour, there is no disagreement about that.  

But in diplomacy there are many ways to manage a crisis so that it does not lead to war.  Zellensky screwed it all up, and if he was instigated, it would also be on him.   Zellensky is not the person, in the grand scheme of things, to lead Ukraine at this time in its history, because he does not have the intellect or the experience to steer the very dicey path that provides for national survival between treacherous neighbours to both the east and the west.  

 

Hell, Zellensky could not even manage the internal politics of the country, let alone its foreign policy, given its serious divisions in language, culture and religion.  

 

How do we know that he is not his own boss?  Easy.  There are too many times when he has flipflopped on policies, indicating he has no convictions of his own.  Then he keeps saying during the negotiations with the Russians that he has to seek “approval from the people”, another way of saying there is a higher authority from whom he takes orders since it is obviously not even sensible to imagine referendums when the country is being torn apart.   

 

Far more importantly, we can analyse exactly what he actually says in his speeches.  Most of it are platitudes.     

 

It is the same as listening to another puppet, Joshua Wong, the uneducated activist in HK, favourite of the western media, and if you really listen beyond the regurgitation of the line that democracy is better than sliced bread, you hear emptiness.   It is the same with Zellensky.   Most intelligent people have already seen through the ploy and know that he is nothing more than a conman.   

 

Since he is only a puppet, or actor, it is really not important what he has to say, before the war or now.   Has he contributed anything positive to prevent the terrible destruction of his country for which I would hold him to be the individual most responsible?   No.  As a national leader, a basic understanding of the risks facing your own country is paramount to the success of diplomacy and a proper foreign policy that he is responsible for.   His blundering is another important reason why Ukraine is being torn apart.       

 

The question then is who are the puppet masters who have in fact created the conditions for war?   If it was clear to an American academic, John Mearsheimer, for nearly a decade if not longer, of the Russian attitudes on what their red line is, then the puppet-masters behind Zellensky, close to the execution of policy, must obviously know what these are.     There is no possibility of their not knowing.

 

If it is not ignorance, then it must be deliberate policy to confront Russia and Putin.  This is very important to understand.

 

The red line is clear to all who have observed Putin and the Russian concerns since 2008.   Who in positions of power relating to Ukraine would not know?  

 

We must conclude that this is not the west or America “sleep-walking” into a war.   No, hardly.   It is a deliberate policy to trigger a conflict that will diminish both Putin and Russia, using a proxy war that utilizes the dispensable resources available down to the last Ukrainian.    

 

It is not for me to rehash what is widely publicised in non-mainstream western media.   Such information is available via many sources, and it is better for our readers to find out for yourselves, who are the oligarchs behind Zellensky, and who are the American political elites who are waging a global battle in the name of democracy against authoritarianism and using the situation in Ukraine to counter Putin and Russia.   Both the Chicago and Oxford academicians offer us “safe (uncontroversial) analyses”, neither of which can be faulted, especially since their arguments actually complement each other.   But there seems to be a deeper story, one of intrigue and involving a political game of Go.   The players are the political elite in America and the Russians, and the real reasons for war are not what meets the eye.

 

With that said, I really think that among the Western elite, the Americans are far more involved in triggering the conflict.   Looking at things up to now, the Germans and the French, if they were not pushed by the Americans, would not have erred on the NATO eastward push.   Russia and the European West could have evolved into a united continent, as trade and commerce would have dictated that way forward.   Merkel was an architect of that policy and it would have worked.   NordStream 2, a showpiece of an economic marriage between Russia and Germany, was not a mistake.  It would have been a sign of a wider European economic integration that would have built a more prosperous Europe.  

Unfortunately, Western Europe is entirely dependent on American military protection, and have little choice but to toe the American line, and fall in completely with US foreign policy.  That’s where we are today.

 

And for the Americans, the reason for trying to contain Russia, fighting a proxy war using brave Ukrainians and frightened Europeans is because they want to diminish the world of authoritarianism, to advance the ideology of liberal democracy as the way forward, to the end of history, for all mankind.  That would actually have been good, IF the last twenty years had proven liberal democracy to work, not everywhere but just in America, as a system that would solve the problems of a post-industrial society.  Since it has been seen to be full of flaws within the borders of America, then pushing liberal democracy to the rest of the world is simply hypocritical. 

 

The Americans’ overarching policy objective is to make the entire world look like them, regardless of history, culture or economic circumstances.  They want a one-size fits all governance system with them at the apex and with unfettered capitalism run by a kleptocratic centre based on American finance.   The uneducated would call it “missionary”, almost like a religion; the cynical would call it exploitative, allowing American capitalists to plunder the world for profits without leaving anything behind.   

 

Whatever it is, it’s fine if it works to better the lives of the peoples governed by such a system.  The sad and obvious fact is that it doesn’t, not by a long shot, as demonstrated by the financial crisis in 2008 and the failure of the Covid response, as well as the lopsided income and race inequality that has come to mark American society and its debt-laden economy.   If it doesn’t work for the Americans, where would it work?   Who else would want it? 

 

Well, for the American political elite, it doesn’t matter if countries they push it to don’t want it.  Liberal democracy is what they think the world needs and they want everyone to adopt it.  

 

In that mission, Russia and China stand out as being non-compliant.   They must therefore be contained.   

 

This is another reason why there is a shooting war in Ukraine, being fought to the last Ukrainian and an economic war being fought to the last European country.   The war is an offshoot of the competition of liberal democracy plus kleptocratic capitalism versus authoritarianism plus socialist capitalism.   The US plus Europe vs China plus Russia.     

 

The Americans really want to vanquish Russia militarily and economically.   The argument that it was the west who pushed for NATO eastward expansion is not entirely accurate.   It was not the “west”; it was the Americans.   The western European countries knew, just as passive academicians (Mearsheimer, Roberts) also know, the Russians would not tolerate NATO expansion and would go to war over such an existential issue.  By beating on that drum long enough and portraying Putin as evil incarnate, and ignoring the objections of the Russians over encroachment of their “sphere of influence” which they themselves would never allow under the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere, the Americans enticed all the small countries of Eastern Europe into NATO where their historical fear of the hordes from the eastern steppes could be minimised.  Ukraine would have been the last to fall out of the grip of Russia, the traditional hegemon in the region. 

 

The French and the Germans were willing to compromise on not crossing the red line, said so in many statements, even told Zellensky in his face that Ukraine cannot join NATO or even the EU, but this position was ignored by the Americans.  I don’t know if we need to look for another reason why there is a war in the Ukraine.  

 

There is also a trap being set by the US to bring China into the fray.   After all, China is the ultimate target, the peer competitor of the US, which Russia is not.   The plan that is rolling out seems to be that since Russia and China are “friends without any limitation”, there would come a time when the war drags on, and China would become embroiled.   

 

That seems to be why the US is always talking about a long war in Ukraine.  They are trying to suck China into the fray.

 

Here are some extracts of a thoughtful commentary by Jessica Wildfire, a well-regarded American writer in Medium (a non-mainstream online publication):

“Most recently, U.S. senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham headlined a “surprise” visit to Taiwan with four other members of congress. Apparently they’re showing support for a close ally.

I don’t buy it for a second.

Politicians are flailing for attention.

Houses speaker Nancy Pelosi was supposed to visit Taiwan this week, but then she got Covid and had to stay home. Other high profile politicians decided to seize the spotlight from her.

They rushed over there.

It doesn’t feel like our politicians are thinking about what’s best for Taiwan or anyone else right now. They’re simply performing stunts so they can stay in the headlines. It’s how they campaign.

There’s no reason to spend your own money to race halfway across the world and virtue signal about democracy. You can pledge your support over a zoom call. You don’t have to hop on a carbon spewing jet, unless you’re doing it for attention. You only do that if you’re preparing for midterm elections, and if you can use tax dollars to pay for it.

 

The mainstream news is at it again. They’re saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has awakened our dormant interest in protecting Taiwan from aggression, and defending freedom around the world more broadly. It’s an interesting take, because we can’t even defend freedom at home. It’s hard to see how we’re qualified to help anyone else.”

 

Well, that is one ordinary American’s view of the world and of her country’s political system.  

Ms Wildfire is not a famous historian or geopolitical strategist like Mearsheimer or Sir Adam.  She does not teach at some top university like U of Chicago or Oxford.   But it does reflect what thinking people who are bewildered by what their own government is doing in the world and their impression is, if you ask me, pretty obvious.  

 

In other words, if the actual protagonists want to end the war immediately, even after much death and destruction, it can probably still be done.   All the conditions that started the war and that can end it, have already been uttered by everyone who is NOT important.  But no, all we hear from those who are important and who pushed Ukraine and Russia into a war, are calling for a prolonged war now.  This gives us a complete explanation of how the war started and how it won’t end soon.

 

 

Wai Cheong

Investment Committee

The writer has been in financial services for more than forty years. He graduated with First Class Honours in Economics and Statistics, winning a prize in 1976 for being top student for the whole university in his year. He also holds an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst.