Ukraine is not weak

In solidarity with the resistance against aggression

I was wrong.

Every January, the Financial Times invites its readers to predict the year to come by answering yes or no to a set of questions. One question this year was, “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” to which I answered in the negative. 

It’s not that I was unaware of the massive troop build-up on the border, or President Putin’s track record. But I figured, with the show of force, he would achieve his objectives -- concessions from the Ukrainian government on its Westernizing agenda, and possibly more territorial acquisitions. 

A full-blown invasion of a large country with over 40 million people -- this was a risk that didn’t seem worth taking. Not when Mr Putin could have bolstered his image as a “brilliant strategist” (or an evil genius, depending on your point of view) by getting what he wanted without firing a shot.

Clearly, I was wrong!

And having got it wrong, I have spent the last few weeks trying to better understand what’s going on. It’s important to do so, because this conflict is likely to shape the next decade, in more ways than one. 

I started by trying to see the world from the Kremlin’s perspective.

The view that is most sympathetic to the Russian regime’s perspective is that having suffered two bloody invasions through what is now Ukraine, any Russian government would be wary of the presence of hostile forces in that country. And the Ukrainian government’s overt desire to court NATO and EU membership, if not today then someday, is not something Russia can reasonably accept. 

A variation of this argument is that, like it or not, certain countries are great powers and have legitimate spheres of influence or hegemony over their near neighbourhood. The Americans have the Monroe Doctrine. The Australians don’t like the Chinese to invest too much in the Pacific (or the French to use the region to test nuclear weapons). India does not want Bangladesh to become friendly with China -- okay, let’s come back to this point. And the Russians won’t like a Westernized Ukraine. 

Peace is best served when these fundamentals are respected by everyone. 

From these perspectives, it’s the West’s fault for enticing Ukraine to ignore the reality of geography and upsetting the order of things.

Besides, it’s not like the West has any moral high ground when it comes to not respecting others’ sovereignty. The invasion of Iraq, after all, happened under false pretexts, and without a United Nations mandate. 

Earlier, the West bombed Serbia without UN mandate to protect the Kosovars from genocide -- a worthy objective perhaps, but not exactly respectful of the sanctity of borders. And the UN gave permission to topple the legitimate regime of Col Gaddafi to prevent atrocities that were yet to have happened. 

So, another line of argument goes, why can’t the Russians intervene in Ukraine to protect people who were allegedly being killed by “neo-Nazis and coke addicts?”

Yet, these arguments are less than convincing upon closer inspection. 

If protecting the people of the breakaway regions of Ukraine is the objective, then why invade the whole country? Russia has been occupying — directly or through its proxies — Ukrainian territories since 2014. Putin could have limited his military action to the adjoining areas, and not march on the capital. Besides, the Russian occupation of the Crimea and other areas essentially made it impossible for Ukraine to join the NATO as membership would have resulted in a direct war between Russia and the West.

That is, anyone arguing that Russia felt threatened by Western posturing and Ukrainian provocation are likely to be either ignorant or not arguing in good faith.

The argument that the “West did it too,” in conjunction with the cold logic of the realpolitik of spheres of influence, should be taken more seriously. The thing is, when one does so, the picture that emerges is rather less flattering for the Russian leader.

The neo-con misadventure in Iraq was guided by a disastrous belief that Texas could be recreated in Mesopotamia. The hubris there was about assuming that others would want to become like the invading power. 

The Kremlin’s views about Ukraine, and other former Soviet, and Romanov, territories couldn’t be any more different. The Russian leader and his inner circle are far more likely to worry that these countries are becoming too un-Russian, embracing democracy, markets, sexual freedom, and all sorts of “Western decadence.”

There might also be another aspect to the supposed Western decadence. What might the history of Western intervention in the past few decades look like to a former KGB colonel? 

Western planes, bombs, missiles, and drones kill people in faraway places. But a suicide bomber in Beirut, and a drowned Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu can be enough to make it cut and run. When running away is not an option, the West still cannot achieve its stated, and unstated, objectives after years of occupation, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

So, perhaps, from Putin’s perspective, the world looked something like this: the Russian empire needed to be restored, maybe not in name, but in form; to do that, the formerly Russian territories needed to be brought into the fold; this could be done by, first fomenting ethnic conflicts, then sending “little green men” as peacemakers; and if necessary, or when possible, through a full-blown invasion.

From experience, in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and Syria and Libya in more recent years, Putin might have concluded that the West would pay nothing more than a lip service to Ukraine’s sovereignty. Europe needed the Russian gas, and a weak and vacillating American president would not countenance any strong response and risk the economic fallouts. 

In any case, the Russian generals seem to have expected a swift victory, asking the soldiers to carry drill uniforms for the intended victory parade in Kiev.

Well, it looks like the Kremlin, too, was wrong. 

Wars go off the invaders’ scripts for many a reason, inspired leadership of the defenders being a major one.

Someone once written off as an alcoholic political-has-been might become the prime minister, and rally the nation to fight on the beaches, fields, and streets, and never surrender. Someone considered a political novice claiming to be a donut might in the process inspire peoples’ belief in the indivisibility of freedom. An unknown major’s radio broadcast might echo around the country, affirming resistance against occupation. 

And a former comedian might use his social media skills to inspire his nation.

We have seen quite a few leaders who play so on the screen. The current Indian prime minister, for example. Or the last occupant of the White House. Indeed, Putin is no stranger to media image, witness his shirtless imitations of 1980s-era action heroes.

Arguably, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also playing a role on the screen -- the role of a president standing his ground in the capital city of a country under invasion, a city that is being shelled and bombed, a president who tells his people that he is not going anywhere, and therefore all who can must stay and fight, a president who declines the offer of an exile despite being marked for assassination by mercenaries’ bullets with the message that “…need ammos, not a ride.” 

Of course, Zelenskyy is playing a role, the role is the reality. 

And the reality has been, in the famous words from March 1971, ghore ghore durgo and jar ja achhe tai niye shotru’r mokabila.

Literally.   

It’s hard to know whether the Western response had been as swift and decisive had the Russian army been in Kiev with the Ukrainian president fleeing on an unmarked chopper. The reality, of course, is that the West is doing everything possible short of a shooting war involving NATO troops. The sanctions are already more far reaching than anyone might have conceived. 

More importantly, Europeans are committing resources to defend peace in their continent. And as for the supposedly weak and vacillating American president -- well, he is risking a stagflationary recession, and an electoral shellacking of unimaginable magnitude, to stand up against aggression. 

I wasn’t just wrong about whether Putin would order an invasion. I was also wrong about the response to the invasion when it did happen. Zelenskyy is a hero of our time, and the liberal West has finally found its spine -- I did not see either.

Of course, I have no idea how things will play out.

Maybe a negotiated settlement where Putin is given a face-saving off ramp is still possible, perhaps in the form of a “neutral Ukraine” (one that is not a member of NATO, but is very much within Western security umbrella) and some form of UN-administered plebiscite. 

Or maybe a protracted war is how this will play out. Or maybe it will be something even worse -- the phrase “scorched earth” originated in that part of the world, after all.

Whatever happens, we may well see a new government in Moscow. 

Perhaps at this point it’s important to think about the political fallouts of the invasion of Iraq. The war was protested by millions in all Western capitals. Before the invasion, President Bush seemed to have put together a formidable political platform under the rubric of compassionate conservatism, based on tax cuts, bipartisan immigration, education reforms, and social conservatism. Meanwhile, Tony Blair’s New Labour seemed electorally unassailable.

The Iraq War had ended the political careers of not just the leaders of America and Britain, but damaged their entire political coalitions for years to come. And all this happened through the ballot box. Peacefully. 

Putin might not be lucky enough to be voted out peacefully through a free and fair election.

I was wrong about the resistance in Ukraine, and the support across the liberal West. I am glad to have been wrong on both countst. Sadly, the responses in our part of the world have been along the lines I had expected. It seems that Putin is the great unifier, not just of the people of Ukraine against invasion and the Western democracies against aggression, but also of the leaders of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh in the 75th anniversary of partition, and of the vociferous Bangladeshi chattering classes of Awami-nationalist-leftist-Islamist types — it’s just that they have unified to support the Russian dictator! 

The three South Asian countries declined to condemn the Russian aggression in the UN. The Pakistani PM fumed about the lack of Western action in Kashmir, never mind that it’s Russian guns and bullets that are used on the people of Kashmir. India’s dependence on Russian weaponry might explain its diplomatic stance.

How is it that the Russian aggression is cheered among Dhaka’s chatterati? How is it not clear as daylight that if we accept the notions of spheres of influence and hegemony, the implications would be to accept that Bangladesh can never aspire to sovereignty? 

If we live in a world where Russia can veto Ukraine’s Westward drift (even if an overwhelming number of Ukrainians support it), do we also not live in a world where India can veto Bangladesh’s foreign investment and infrastructure policies, let alone security matters?  

How did previous Bangladesh governments responded to violations of smaller countries’ sovereignty by more powerful ones?

The Iraqi president Saddam Hussein apparently had a good personal rapport with the general who ruled Bangladesh in the 1980s. Iraq had materially contributed to relief operations in floods and storms that buffeted the country in that decade. Despite this, Bangladesh joined the Operation Desert Shield. By the time the operation turned into the Desert Storm, the general had been toppled by people power and was in jail. The caretaker government that replaced him, with full support of both major political parties, continued with Bangladesh’s participation in the global coalition against aggression.

Over a decade and much acrimony between the two parties later, there was also bipartisan consensus that Bangladesh should stay out of America's war in Iraq. Confident in the knowledge that her nemesis shared her conviction, the then prime minister flatly refused Donald Rumsfeld’s request for Bangladeshi participation in the invasion. 

The common thread in the actions of Bangladeshi leaders, in office and in opposition, was in the belief that if aggression by large countries against smaller neighbours goes unchallenged elsewhere, Bangladesh’s very existence might one day be threatened.

If anyone refuses to see this, their claims about Bangladesh’s independence, sovereignty, and democracy surely would ring hollow. 

A slightly smaller version of this piece was first published in the Dhaka Tribune. The title refers to a clip from the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld.

Below are list of articles that I have found useful.

• Modelling Putin

John Mearsheimer blames the West.

Adam Tooze explains why Mearsheimer’s views are at best limited.

Bret Devereaux explains why this is not about the West.

Alexander Titov shows how Putin is following a long-established playbook on conquest.

Alexander Gabuev explains why the Russian elites might have wanted the war.

Ross Douthat wonders if Putinism can be explained by the ‘clash of civilization’ framework.

Tim Harford tries some game theory. As does Tyler Cowen.

David Brooks explains why Putin is not for turning.

• Military matters

The Economist shows that the invasion isn’t going well.

Ellen Ioanes analyses Putin’s war planning and conduct.

Zack Beauchamp asks if Russia is losing.

Isaac Chotiner on the lessons from Syria.

The Economist explains how things could get far worse.

Adam Tooze provides historical and theoretical perspectives.

• Zelensky and the resistance

Franklin Foer knows a hero when he sees one. As does David Remnick. Kelsey Piper provides a very insightful background. Emily St James provides further details.

Andrey Kurkov shows that there are many heroes in Ukraine. And in Russia too, shows the Economist.

Foer also likes Biden, as does the Economist.

• Global reactions and the endgame

Noah Smith eviscerates the Putin apologists and useful idiots.

Jeffrey Sachs argues for an off ramp.

Douthat explores the impact on western populists.

Hu Wei provides a ‘Chinese liberal’ perspective. Noah Smith articulates China’s big choice. As does Gideon Rachman.

Tooze on the views from Africa.

Francis Fukuyama prognosticates the fall of Putin. Kazi Anis Ahmed ponders the same.

• Economic consequences of the war

The Economist’s first reaction: higher inflation, lower growth and some disruption to financial markets. Martin Wolf agrees.

Wolf explains why there are no good choices here.

Tooze asks if the sanctions cause Putin to escalate

IMF on the global economic fallouts.

Michael J Puma and Megan Konar warn that food prices will soar.

Jayati Ghosh explains how the developing world will be hit.

Kenneth Rogoff argues that defence is costly but worth it.