Russian crisis explained in light of History Hegemony-Revolts-Capitalism-Millennials

Background:
Some peoples ideologically and others while being resentful of, yet helplessly remain willing to accept as is, the prevailing Hegemon given the instability and upheaval that surely shall, and must come along if its to be stripped off of it’s imperial purple toga.

Color it either with inter-civilizational frictions or nationalistic defense of identity & borders by a proud race & culture, or a realization of, and then fatigue from, the seemingly endless exploitation and oppression by the ruling class. This canvas or spectrum of revolutionary thoughts is painted with these broad but apparently related strokes often with overlapping hues.

Having identified these traditional themes as what generally is believed to be the basis of a revolt, it is recently that we have started to see another powerful etiologic actor emerging and starting to dominate the current socio-political debate. The visible depletion and projected finitude of the natural resources coupled with robust scientific evidence to its support, is that powerful etiologic factor that will continue to influence all major future policy decisions.

This irreparable damage to Environment & Climate is increasingly being considered as an existential threat not only to earths biodiversity in general but alarmingly to mankind in itself. Growing alongside are concerns of its potential to permanently change in a matter of few generations the ways to which humans have gotten used to survive & conduct socially. We have not seen this phenomenology play such an important role in traditional politics ever before.

Eco-degradation is now not only increasingly associated with, rather it is being attributed to unchecked capitalism much to the worry of western policy makers, economists and environmentalists alike. A millennial revolt against this race to the bottom oddly enough is emerging from within the very societies & class that this economic system has purportedly served the most.

Next, for an interested reader and pondering observer of revolts, history generously lays out to bare the fact that revolts are orchestrated in some form or denomination of human organization which even if dwarf in numbers to its oppressor, still are able to rise above if a true conviction is at its core. Someone is always identified in history who had mustered that courage and stood up to say “no” to the perceived unfairness, oppression, humiliation or exploitation.

This “no” seldom bears instantaneous results. Rather it is a process which accrues momentum trans-generationally before it is fully able to manifest itself worthy for the records of history. And while this “no” undoubtedly is instinctual & natural manifestation of a cyclical rejection by the have-nots, for the system by the few, favoring the few, ironically enough, it only occasionally is able to yield the desired results of status quo rejection. And more often than not it’s a self annihilation exercise that in the cruel hindsight of history is then judged to have had been best avoided. But so is the free nature and spirit of sapiens; willing to pay any asking price for the myth of freedom and Immortality.

Foreground:
Kremlin over past two decades and perhaps even before has registered repeated warnings of (“no”). These had fallen on deaf ears and remained unheeded by the Hagemon (US). I am not entirely clear as to why now, but as we saw, it was towards the end of last year and through the first two months of this year that Kremlin first couldn’t stress and later take more of this perceived existential threat of NATO’s expansion. Russian fait accompli had started when it first amassed its troops at the eastern Ukrainian border in hopes of pressuring both Ukraine and NATO to make concessions and when the counter narrative was equally opposite and resolute Russia adventured with its troops in sovereign Ukraine. This is undoubtedly and unreservedly unfortunate. Yet I see the ostensible Kremlin’s premise of NATO’s mission creep as tenable and not unfounded insofar Russia feels threatened by it.

Without going into Cold War and it’s fallouts, it is an established fact that US Foreign Policy has now switched its focus from Terrorism to Great Power Competition i.e. a competition with revisionist Russia and the challenger China. One then begs to ask this question: Would the US’s Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which states that any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas is a potentially hostile act against the US, make room for any adversary in Western Hemisphere? let alone an alliance of adversaries at its borders. If that answer presumably is “under no circumstances”, why is it not then naive and unfair to expect a declared adversary and competitor to play by the rule book of democracy and allow NATO -the most powerful military alliance in the history of mankind- at its southern doorway.

Putin belongs to the generation where Balance of Power and Sphere of Influence politics means everything. This is his and Russia’s core interest not to allow NATO with its superior weaponry at its borders. Not only that, Ukrainian membership into NATO will cut Russia’s access to it’s Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol which traces its history to 1783 and with that gone, goes its access to the Mediterranean, practically reducing Russia to the status of a client state of Western Europe and NATO.

Another question in similar vein then is (or was) whether is it an interest of similar degree and importance for the NATO? i.e. Is it US or EU or NATO’s core interest to defend Ukraine too? And the West’s answer to that so far is no. NATO and US alike are not going to send their troops into Ukraine and nor are they thinking to enforce a no fly zone over Ukrainian skies.

Putin for the time being stands alone as the lone bad actor, an aggressor and a pariah in the eyes of the free world democracies. He may get even further isolated or, the Europe which seems currently united may not remain so united after all. It’s difficult to predict and it’s possible that a sane and reasonable face saving may end the current face off.

Academic John Mearsheimer and celebrated young historian Yual Noah Harari, to name a few are visibly divided on this issue and so are the mainstream news outlets. Given the West currently has a very large media footprint we see it tad bit lopsidedly in favor of Western point of view. Similarly a clear diplomatic consensus -as evidenced by the two recent votes in the UN which I shall discuss in detail momentarily- also suggest it is far from clear. Stating very broadly, the representatives of the sides who’s geo-economic interests and political mileage benefits or rather depends on continued US hegemony or to mildly put it, its support for IRBLO (International Rule Based Liberal Order) consider this as an act stemming from Russian time old imperial designs and expansionist ambitions.

Personally, in this current Russo-Ukrainian crisis I agree and camp with the political scientist John Mearsheimer, who has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. He believes “all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of nato. The Russians had made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand.”

Taking his analysis back to my earlier point regarding the Monroe Doctrine-why does it then not occur to the US and European leaders alike that no sovereign country with capacity in general and case in point great power like Russian Federation can be expected to behave otherwise. Or is it that the current Western coalition knowingly is poking Putin in the eye and pushing Ukraine decades behind by making it the next proxy Cold War theatre like Afghanistan.

Atlanticism and Eurasianism
Unfortunately West’s Atlanticism and Russia (or Dugin’s) Eurasianism are two very different and opposite ideologies with neither one of them convincingly surfacing as a clear winner of hearts & minds and environment, making this conflict even more dangerous and a resolution even more important.

According to Alexander Gelvevich Dugin a Russian thinker and philosopher sometimes dubbed as Putin’s Rasputin, Atlantism is the shared belief in political and economic values among the countries with Atlantic shores. He believes Atlanticism is the sole benefactor only for the capitalist liberal democracies of Western and Northern Europe, including America, at the expense of the rest of the world. These are sea faring capitalist states with a dark colonial past and an imperialism as highlights of their resume.

In contrast to Atlanticism, Dugin’s Eurasianism is the ideology which is centered on the idea of revolutionising the Russian society and building a Russia-dominated Eurasian Empire that would challenge and eventually defeat its eternal adversary represented by the USA and its Atlantist or NATO allies. Dugin considers Russia as a Eurasian land based power without the alleged imperial or colonial desires. However critics label this as a form of fascist totalitarianism ideology in disguise.

Now that we have touched upon these two ideas I feel it is important to trace the roots of Atlanticism and why the west is seen to behave in a manner construed as hubristic and imperial. As a student of history I solemnly observe a couple of noteworthy ongoing parallels between the Roman Empire and the Atlantists which I feel are important and would like to share with my readers for them to really understand the background behind this divide.

Roman Empire
First, the Roman Empire in its prime (circa 30-300 AD) encircled all of the coastal land mass of the Mediterranean Sea. Mediterranean Sea was their pool encircled by the continents of Europe , Asia Minor and Northern Africa. Outward spreading to deep inside the continental reaches was large swathes of that empire. This well guarded circumference around all of the Mediterranean with access to the Nile in Egypt provided the empire a safe passage for merchant and naval ships. In drawing parallels one risks oversimplification but that aside for the moment, it appears the Atlantic Ocean and arguably every other sea and ocean for all practical purposes has been the pond/s for the Atlantists for close to over four centuries. Their ability to project their naval power across continents and ability to control choke points and trade routes has been unprecedented.

“Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves.”

Britannia used to be the name for the Roman colony which is modern day England and also an eponym for a famous English cutter boat in the seventeenth century once formidable, later it could no longer participate in yachting competitions against America given a change in yachting rules made by the Americans. It was considered unfair back then and led to its version:

The famous Britannia rules the waves and America waives the rules.”

The point here is that the rest of the world sans the brethren Roman styled modern democracies begrudgingly feel that Atlantists waive the mutually agreed norms & rules for when it suits their vision for the world while holding other accountable if they desist.

Second, Roman Empire in for the longest was was at war with the Huns, the Germanic tribes or the Goths. Interestingly enough these bands of barbarians invading from the empire’s north-east came from north of river Danube which runs across Europe from Germany to the Black Sea. This land mass was called Satmatia in those days. Most of those areas are presently located inside current Russian borders.

Historians commonly refers to these tribes as barbarians (in contrast to the civilized Rome). They were hardy unorganized bands who for the love of their freedom fought Roman legions to avoid the expanding imperial yoke. And as the eighteenth century historian Edward Gibbon an English historian, writer, and member of parliament in his most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire notes, these barbaric invasions were one of the major reasons of the Roman Empire’s fall in 476 AD, when the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed the Emperor Romulus Augustulus. From then on, no Roman emperor would ever again rule from a post in Italy.

Briefly, what I am deducing here is that the supremacy of seas, disdain of barbarism and holding onto the Roman roots are a few themes that to this day influence how descendants of that empire see others and perceive themselves. The argument I construct here is that USA (and NATO with that extension) are structured and behave like a modern day version of the Roman Empire of the first half of the first millennium. And to its heirs barbarians are not acceptable as equals. This is in my opinion the fundamental divide behind the facade of current rhetoric.

I must also stress that we are not identifying these common patterns to demerit the Romans. These are the commonalities that it’s heirs hold dear to and exercise. As all empires have a shelf life and an expiry date, Pax Romana came to an end and so shall will Pax Americana.

I hope by now the reader would be able to construct with me the motif and see the trajectory of what had happened in the past and the likelihood of it to happen again given similar circumstances over long period of time.

Great Wars (WW-1 & 2)
Ongoing conflict in Ukraine must make European capitals reflect on the suffering, wounds and devastations of the two World Wars in which both the trigger incident and bloodiest theatre was on European soil. With that and the sameness of the involved participants in this current conflict I see dry tinder which can again lead to the conflagration of Europe. The ladder of escalation is fraught with the unknown-unknown risks. The most serious of all being a tactical nuclear exchange.

For all practical reasons this is now no longer a war between two neighbors. It’s simply naive to construct it that way. Economic sanctions as one commentator put it are modern day siege tactics, which traditionally used to be around enemy stronghold and is therefore construed as a open declaration of war by all definitions, and will be taken as such by Putin and its Russia. Sanctions will hurt Russia deeply both in short-medium & long term. We have already started to see capital controls and interest rate hikes to up to twenty percent as a result of these sanctions. The sovereignty of Russian state bank has been breached with these unprecedented measures and run on banks might be next. Public chaos and instability would ensue as rubble starts to go into a downward devaluation spiral leading to hyperinflation and further political instability.

Equally unhelpful amounting to adding fuel to this fire is the provocative rhetoric from UK premier Borris Johnson pressuring to accuse Putin as a war criminal and ICC (International Criminal Court) prosecutor Karim Khan on March 3rd said that he has actively begun an investigation into the war in Ukraine after a referral from the UK and allies. ICC may take this up. This should scare and send shivers up the spine and remind the world leaders especially the European leadership of Treaty of Versailles and its Article 231, commonly known as the “War Guilt Clause,” which forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for initiating World War I. Germany was required to make enormous war reparation payments which it thought as unfair and its ripple effects were felt by the Germans in the interwar period. Not only that, it led to popular fascist regimes in Europe. By placing the burden of war guilt entirely on Germany, imposing harsh war reparation payments Treaty of Versailles created an increasingly unstable collection of smaller nations in Europe and not only failed to resolve the underlying issues that had caused WW-1 to break out in 1914; it according to some academic assuredly paved the way for another massive global conflict which we see twenty years later as WW-2.

Presently, from the Western point of view had this not been for the sanctions and economic siege, Russia as they know of Putin (a tyrant) would have had access to its over USD 600 billion war chest, making it extremely likely for him to blackmail Europe even more by keeping Ukraine hostage for as long as he pleased, making any meaningful negotiations impossible. I sense Putin would have weighed this variable heavily in his invasion decision matrix. But some foreign policy experts argue otherwise and feel he did not see such choke hold coming. It’s difficult for me to predict and how these sanctions eventually pan out is anyones guess.

I feel unless there is stomach to take immense mutually assured destruction risk unanimously across the EU spectrum (which will be foolish, irresponsible and extremely unlikely), some sort of face saving way out will be engineered for Putin. But it’s very difficult to say as to when and under what terms. What will be on and what shall remain off the table will come to our knowledge in the coming weeks.

Asian Response
Now shifting my readers attention towards what I feel is going to be an extremely important fallout of this conflict in the decades to come especially for rest of the Asia which we saw surface in the past two weeks at the United Nations.

A seemingly subtle yet important diplomatic development was first seen in the UNSC (United Nations Security Council) meeting on February 25th where the draft, submitted by Albania and the United States, garnered support from 11 members but was vetoed by the Russian Federation. Importantly China, India and the United Arab Emirates all abstained.

A week later again, we saw votings along similar lines on March 2nd where in an emergency session of UNGA’s (United Nations General Assembly) a resolution A/ES-11/L.1 “Aggression against Ukraine” was passed with 141 votes yes, 5 no, and 35 abstentions. This numerically was an overwhelming global condemnation, however as we observe and parse it out, an interesting pattern and a divide emerges based on geography if not for an assumed difference in Eurasian and Atlantist frame of mind.

Countries east of Euphrates (~ Eastern outpost of the Roman Empire) Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India and China all abstained in this landmark show of intent vote. These abstaining countries comprise almost two thirds of the Asiatic mass and about thirty percent of Global GDP and includes both past and present US allies as well as both the competing great powers according to the US foreign policy & includes India which too is projected to become an international heavyweight within our lifetime. By hedging their bets, these countries seem very unsure where to put their weight and this to me is very interesting and intuitively should be concerning for Washington.

For the nonparticipating nations of Asia who consistently abstained in the two, UNSC and later UNGA votes on this conflict, their geo-economic and international political life will never be the same. Multiple media outlets are starting to highlight Western hubris and hypocrisy when describing the war refugees. They also bring to fore the uncalled for invasion of Iraq and are drawing parallel between the 1962 the Russian Cuban missile crisis and US double standard along with many democratic regimes changes in which US has been covertly or overtly involved. Making a legitimate case convincing the aforementioned countries which oddly all lie to east of Euphrates to keep their cards close to their chest until they figure their respective econogeopolitically favorite alpha male in this contest.

This time it’s not a choice between religious brethren hood or any political or economic ideology as it commonly is or was in the Cold War. During these past seventy six years (since WW-2) this Asiatic mass has seen the rise of China and India and heavy handed devastations of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran obviously is a veteran persona non grata. I predict these countries and their foreign policy elites would sense that they are going to be on their own, fend intelligently for themselves by making new regional alliances and invigorating existing ones. Ones which will promote Asiatic land trade and minimize their vulnerability and dependence on USD as the reserve currency.

In their view whether this remains a contained conflict in Eastern Europe or expands into a war of Europe-with or without NATO/US involvement-this conflict will likely make US spread out thin militarily and divide and sap its present China and Asia centric focus. President Jo Biden’s in his March 1st State of the Union address presented an expensive and expansive domestic restructuring plan. He vowed the Republican line of going back to developing US manufacturing and job creation with Made in USA as his focus. Along with that he plans $ 1.75 trillion in domestic social and infrastructure spending and achieve energy independence while tackling a 7.5% inflation as his agenda for the rest of his term. This is a lot for someone to have on his plate and yet be able to maintain its global footprint.

Conclusion:
Towards the end I would take a jab on how I see the regional dynamics might take shape keeping current conflict in view. A careful study of history including the past behavior of participants within the general understanding of framework of international relations is all one has and needs. Obviously those on ground and privy to close meetings & regional experts will have a better shot at it. I would with this premise try to describe the outlook for South Asia broadly and Pakistan with extension to comments on other major actors as they fit into the construct.

Note: Following take apriory the assumption that EU will make Russia come to the negotiating table and resist US/UK pressure of hardline bargaining. If so then:

• Russia will come out of this somewhat stronger yet mildly hurt.
• Asia (other regions possibly too) will continue to move away from unipolarity towards regionalism.
• China and Russia will strengthen their ties and foster coexistence and promote regionalism.
• Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran will want to see China and Russia relations develop to their land based trade advantage.
• India will feel intense pressure from US but it will still not throw all its weight behind it. It will try to maintain its Cold War non aligned position but will remain available to USA if needed against Pakistan.
• The world in general will increasingly realize dollar dependence is risky. Cryptocurrency will come into limelight
• Nuclear deterrence will make more and more sense to all those countries who can make a case akin to Ukraine. Examples will be UAE and KSA.
• Unless able to counter similar sanctions, China will put Taiwan on the back burner.
• Iran will continue to gauge US threat and will engage within the region with the highest bidder.
• In USA Increased domestic spending and economic restructuring will make US and USD less available for the world. US Millennials and environmentalists will start to color both social environmental and economic policies.
• US Financial experts will work with global financial institutions to make crypto currencies subject to state control-this will be challenging.
• Inter-European mistrust and right wing nationalism will color its current liberal democracy. We could see another arms race reminiscent of interwar period.
• As the core issues will stay unresolved between the Atlantists and the rest, mutual mistrust will further increase.
• Gulf Muslim countries will continue to gravitate towards US and Allies.