The ongoing explanations of problems in Mideast are mixed with what looks like attempts to revise the definition of a winning strategy, as well as with the sour taste from the results of American military presence in Iraq over almost 10 years.
Western strategy in Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia today is not better: wobbly at best and strongly allergic to winning.
The essence of the U.S. and European Union stance is their transparent insistence to compel Ukraine to fulfill the Minsk II script dictated by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The result would be restoration of Moscow’s hegemony as it was during ousted President Victor Yanukovych’s regime.
Fear of Russia in the West seems to be at the root of readiness for concessions, as demonstrated by U.S. Secretary John Kerry’s meeting with Putin in Sochi in mid-May. Kerry’s self-effacing body English at that meeting requires no quoting of what he was saying (which is available in published commentaries).
While Western retreat in Mideast is unavoidable (as proven by the Iraq fiasco and by “the longest war in Afghanistan” in US history), only a blind man cannot see that Ukraine presents a win-win opportunity for the West. Only Western fear of Russia stands in the way, not Russia’s power.
The new reality in Mideast is unavoidable because that entire region woke up after many decades of subservience to western (and previously Turkish) empires. No amount of hysterics from the Grand Old Republican Party can change this.
On the other hand, the retreat of the West (not to say The Downfall of the West) under pressure from Russia could only be characterized as a civilizational Parkinson’s disease. Russia, on the wrong side of history, openly committed to autocracy and domination over other nations, is winning the test of wills and self-love. The West meanwhile is scrambling over problems of uncontrolled immigration, social conflict growing out to a large extent from economic disparities, and the menace of terrorism from imbedded Islamist extremists. All of this galvanizes media attention.
The irony of West’s failure to give Ukraine a meaningful support is that in Ukraine the West has a winning hand — because of the desire of the Ukrainian people to have closer ties to the West and willingness to make sacrifices defending their country against the Russian aggression.
Remarkably, the U.S. Air Force keeps bombing the ISIS, despite the Iraqi army’s flight from a much smaller numbers of enemy fighters, and the absence of a broad-based people’s support for the Baghdad government. It did not cross the mind of Western strategists that “the Iraqi people” really do not exist, except on maps made in London and Paris during the post-World War I conferencing almost a hundred years ago. There are only the Shias, the Sunnis and Kurds, with their own pursuits and power struggle between the old royal and the new regimes of mostly passionately dogmatic and opportunistic mix.
If the West can barely conceal now its self-induced paralysis in recognizing and responding to Russia’s threat to its own existential stability as a democratic power center, it doesn’t take a “volshebnaya palochka” (a Russian magic wand) to visualize decomposition of Western will to defend itself if Russia gobble up Ukraine and becomes a real power.
All the ongoing talk of pivoting on China as an emerging menace becomes meaningless if Europe collapse as America’s ally. The USA most likely would maneuver itself into a corner while facing alone both Russia and China.
If that sounds simplistic, one should take a look at the coterie of dozen of Republican presidential candidates for the 2016 race in the USA. Most of them can barely wait to send the troops back into Iraq.
Not to over-complicate the existing mess as Russia continues to press deadly violations of the so-called ceasefire in Ukraine, what if the United States the European Union wake up and provide some real help for Ukraine, no matter how many Russian troops Putin may send?
He will not send many more and will not declare Armageddon.
Here is why not. Vladimir Putin knows, as well as we know, that NATO and Cato have no intention to invade Russia. His subterfuge about the West’s intent to destroy the Russian civilization is meant to raise dust in the eyes of his own people. He doesn’t work the same way as Obama. And he values the most his own off-shored billions.
