@prashanthamine
Mumbai: During his heyday as the US Secretary of State, back in 1968, Henry Alfred Kissinger, better known simply as Henry Kissinger once observed that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin may know the implied meaning of Kissinger’s quote. But Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky might well be realising the true meaning of it as he beseeches the US and its allies for help in staving off the Russian military invasion of his country.
Whatever the outcome may be of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one thing is clear that Ukraine was let down in a big way not just by the West, but by world bodies as well. The Russian invasion has left a huge question mark on world bodies like the United Nations Organisation (UN), European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and their ability to maintain global order, peace and security all over the world.
Certainly, the Russian military invasion and its war crimes cannot be condoned in any way, but the inability of the world bodies, be it the UN or the EU, to nip the potential flash-point in the bud raises serious questions on the world order that is unable to prevent aggression against relatively weaker, smaller nations. The West on its part is hesitant and is not willing to touch Ukraine even with a bargepole, lest run the risk of direct confrontation with Russia.
Today, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is all about NATO’s expansionism beyond the Baltic states consisting of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The Russian response to it has been by its bid to expand its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan -, but also the founding states Turkmenistan and Ukraine, as well as Georgia, who left the organization in 2008.
Looking deeper into the current prevailing circumstances, those do bear striking resemblance to what triggered the Second World War in 1939, except here the aggressor has changed from Germany to Russia.
Back then the threat of nuclear war was born in 1945, today Russia’s nuke threat is for real.
According to a recent report of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “Russia’s nuclear arsenal, which includes a stockpile of approximately 4,477 warheads. Of these, about 1,588 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and at heavy bomber bases, while an approximate additional 977 strategic warheads, along with 1,912 nonstrategic warheads, are held in reserve.”
As per report of the US Congressional Research Service (US-CRS) of September 2020, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads consisted of 3,750 warheads, which is a far cry from its maximum of 31,255 warheads at the end of fiscal year 1967 at the height of the Cold War, post the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
By definition the nuclear stockpile includes both active and inactive warheads. Active warheads include strategic and non-strategic weapons maintained in an operational, ready-for-use configuration, warheads that must be ready for possible deployment within a short timeframe, and logistics spares. They have tritium bottles and other Limited Life Components installed. Inactive warheads are maintained at a depot in a non-operational status, and have their tritium bottles removed. A retired warhead is removed from its delivery platform, is not functional, and is not considered part of the nuclear stockpile. A dismantled warhead is a warhead reduced to its component parts.
During the Cold War, the United States possessed large numbers and a wide range of non-strategic nuclear weapons, also known as theatre or tactical nuclear weapons.
The biggest let down of Ukraine has come in the form of the violation of The Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The Memorandum on Security Assurances, known as the Budapest Memorandum, is in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that was signed on December 5, 1994 in Budapest.
By this treaty Ukraine had given up all the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union on its territory in lieu of written assurances and guarantees of respecting its independence, sovereignty. Signatories to the memorandum included the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The signatories had then had assured Ukraine that “its independence, sovereignty will be respected, its existing borders would be respected, refrain from using threat of force, no use economic coercion, to seek immediate United Nations Security Council (UNSC) action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.”
As somebody has rightly said, you do not cheat on a small nation first by asking it to disband its nuclear weapons and then failing to keep your solemn assurance to guarantee its safety and security. The net effect will be that no small nation will ever be henceforth willing to forego its nuclear arsenal. Matters were made worse on March 2, by US President Joe Biden in his first State of the Union address in which he quite bluntly stated that the US will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.
If the West has left Ukraine in the lurch, leaving it feeling short-changed over guarantees to relinquish nuclear weapons, it surely was dealt a body-blow when the US, the EU and the NATO simply turned down its request to join the EU and NATO as late as in January 2022. Even at the height of the Russian invasion of his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky applied for the Western bloc membership. Instead, what he got was an assurance of safe passage out of Ukraine which he promptly turned down.
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Biden and the NATO countries are well aware of the NATO charter that guarantees collective defense and the right to any European nation to join the alliance. If Ukraine were to be a NATO member the US and its other allies would have been drawn directly into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
It is for the same reason that Biden has refused to impose a ‘No Fly Zone’ over Ukraine, despite Zelensky demanding the same. Till now the US has imposed No Fly Zones only over Iraq, Libya and Bosnia in the past.
NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, argues that the No-Fly Zone could spark a “full-fledged war in Europe involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering.” In short, neither NATO or the US want to be dragged into a direct armed confrontation with Russia given the fact that most of their economies are recovering from the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ever since its independence on August 24, 1991, its tryst with EU and NATO membership has always remained unfulfilled. By NATO’s own February 2022 Factsheet, Ukraine joined North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) (1991) and Partnership for Peace Programme (1994).
Since then, the tumultuous regime changes in Ukraine did mar its chances of formally joining the EU and NATO has meant it never got into the Western block. All that Ukraine got instead was the establishment of NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) to take the cooperation forward. The NATO opened offices of NATO Information and Documentation Centre (NIDC) and NATO Liaison Office (NLO) in Kyiv in 1992 and 1999.
In June 2017, Ukranian parliament adopted legislation reinstating its membership in NATO as a strategic foreign and security policy objective. In 2019, a corresponding amendment to Ukraine’s constitution entered into force. In September 2020, President Volodymyr Zelensky approved Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO. Ukraine has supported NATO in its peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
While US President Joe Biden has made all the right noises in so far as deploying US and marshalling NATO troops along Russia’s borders in NATO countries, and slapping sanctions on Russia, he has not been forthcoming on when Ukraine would be formally inducted in the US led Western Block. He is well aware of the fact that China might use the same pretext as Russia to take unilateral action against Taiwan.
China has already brushed aside any parallels drawn between Taiwan and Ukraine arguing that the ‘renegade’ island nation across its shores as being an inalienable part of mainland China. President Biden is in a bind as any softening or hardening of his diplomatic postures could send conflicting, wrong signals worldwide and open Pandora’s box with nations staking claims over each other’s disputed territories.
Russian President Vladimir Putin too seems to be equally aware of the predicaments that Biden and the EU face. His stand has been quite clear that Ukraine will not be part of NATO and that there are no strategic weapons placed near his own backyard in Kyiv. The assurances not forthcoming from the West and the West dangling the NATO carrot before Ukraine, seems to have irked and provoked Putin into launching a ‘special military operation’ into Ukraine.
Putin and Russia are also getting a blow-back from the past, be it the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 15, 1962 or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. Ever since its failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17, 1961 of Cuba, US has used mercenaries to wage indirect wars with the Soviet Union/Russia. Taliban was used to eventually drive away the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989. Now according to western media reports, western mercenaries have landed on the borders of Ukraine to fight the war against Russia.
It is not without any rhyme or reason that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is feeling let down. Before the Russian invasion began, Zelensky had accused the West of creating a panic thereby affecting his country’s economy. Now he is raising questions about NATO’s fragility and ability to stand by Ukraine in what he calls for its fight for democracy.
What Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needs to contemplate is that Ukraine has been made to wait along with Georgia since 2008 to be fully integrated into the US and Europe led NATO alliance. While lesser-known republics like Albania and Croatia (2009) and Republic of North Macedonia (2020) have joined the NATO alliance.
The genesis of the current dispute lies in the Minsk Agreement that was signed on February 12, 2015. Clearly, from what is happening now in Ukraine it does appear that the Agreement remained just a piece of paper.
One of the Agreement clauses was to withdraw Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) and Tactical missile systems, which in the current conflict zone seems to have been completely ignored.
The Ukrainian Parliament was supposed to have passed a resolution specifying the certain areas of the disputed Donetsk and Lugansk regions enjoying local self-government. It was decided to withdraw all foreign armed formations, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under monitoring of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.
Furthermore, there was further decentralisation in Donetsk and Lugansk regions and granting them special status. Some of the measures agreed to was Right to linguistic self-determination, protection from prosecution, discrimination for persons involved in the events in the said regions.
The rapidly changing geopolitical situations around the world and advent of multilateralism has raised question marks over the rigid structures of world bodies like UN, World Trade Organisation (WTO), UNSC, World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) – World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has in its 2021 review of the Ukrainian economy noted Ukraine is also one of the world’s largest grain and sunflower oil exporters, and holds mercury, titanium, and iron ore deposits, along with coal reserves. However, its dependence on the primary sector of the economy has rendered it vulnerable to global prices and external shocks.
Despite the rapid growth trajectory of China and India they have very meager voting powers in these UN led world bodies. The emergence of other developing and financially strong countries like Brazil, India is calling for an urgent restructuring of the Western block dominated world order. The Brookings Institution in its 2022 report on Global Economy and Development, while acknowledging the role played by the G-7 and G-20 group of nations, calls them as a “self-selected clubs” of major nations.
According to the ICS report, Ukraine needs a lot to do in winning the war on corruption, solidifying responsive, accountable, and transparent governance. Moreover, Ukraine needs to diversify from its primary agrarian economy to exploration of its rich mineral deposits. Endemic corruption, over-dependence on others, and lethargic attitude seem to be the prime reasons for which even the Western bloc countries are hesitant in whole-heartedly welcoming Ukraine into their fold.
By US-CRS own background research paper, “Closer integration with the EU and NATO does not appear to have enabled Ukraine to improve its near-term prospects for membership in these organisations… The EU is unlikely to consider Ukraine a candidate for membership soon… In 2008, NATO members formally agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO, but neither state has been granted a clear path to or timeline for membership.”
