Ukraine and Russia
Whether the ceasefire in Ukraine lasts or not (probably it won't) and whatever the conditions of a peace agreement between the government of Ukraine and the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic which, in the best scenario, both sides will eventually sign and adhere to, Russia has already achieved what it wanted.
The "guarantors" no longer guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity
It has made the government of Ukraine realize that it will exist only as long as Russia allows it to. For, as Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has told Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU Commission, he, Putin, could take Kiev in two weeks, if he so wished. He certainly could and still can, as there is nothing to stop him.
The NATO summit in Wales has left nobody in any doubt about this, as, despite their anti-Russian rhetoric, and their much talked-about project for the creation of the Rapid Reaction Force in support of NATO's East European members, the leaders of the bloc have offered Ukraine nothing that could help its weak army to defend its territory. NATO will protect only those who are already its members. And there is no plan to allow Ukraine to join.
The European Union and the United States have threatened more sanctions, unless Russia "immediately withdraws all its military assets from Ukraine's territory". But Russia denies that there are any - so there's nothing to withdraw. Moreover, EU leaders have simultaneously said that the sanctions could be withdrawn, if the ceasefire holds.
The sanctions, first introduced after Russia's incorporation of the Crimea, could never be effective, because in Russia they only serve to consolidate the popular support for Putin and his policy, and in Europe, dependent on Russia's gas and markets, no economy can carry the burden of these sanctions and Russia's counter-sanctions without significant damage to itself. But toothless as they were, these sanctions were the only vestige of the West's willingness to protect Ukraine's territorial integrity.
In December 1994, NATO's two key members, Britain and the United States - as well as Russia - signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity and political independence in exchange for its giving up its nuclear stockpile - the world's third largest. It may well be that it is this political agreement that makes Russia insist that the crisis in Ukraine is an entirely internal Ukrainian affair. This, despite the fact that separatists themselves boast about thousands of Russian military "on leave" fighting together with them and rebels getting military training in Russia, and even despite the undeniable fact of the incorporation of the Crimea into Russia's territory,
However, not only Russia, but the other two guarantors of Ukraine's political independence and territorial integrity refrain from mentioning the uncomfortable Memorandum. They have realised by now that the only way to fulfil their pledge is to go to war with Russia - something they are unwilling, unprepared and unable to do. Perhaps under any circumstances, but certainly not over Ukraine.
And certainly not in the situation when they need Russia's assistance in their fight against the Islamic State and radical Islamists elsewhere in the world, and not when Russia warns them "not to come against" it, as it is "one of the most powerful nuclear nations." So for now the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine are off the negotiations agenda. All talk is about much needed peace (the war has already cost more than two and half thousand lives, and displaced more than a million people), not the form and shape of the future Ukraine.
The shape of peace to come
Peace would, indeed, be a blessing. Not just for the suffering civilians, but even for the government of Ukraine - if only the rebels with their Russian backers stayed where they are now, controlling huge areas of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions. But rebel leaders do not conceal their intention to go all the way to the Romanian border in order to create "Novorossia", "New Russia", either as an independent state, or as autonomous region within Ukraine - but certainly not under its control.
The latest rebel activities - the occupation of Novoazovsk and the fight for the strategic port of Mariupol en route from Russia to the Crimea - confirm the seriousness of their intentions. Were these plans to materialize, there will be very little left of Ukraine. And whether they do or not, depends entirely on Russia's wishes.
Russian public opinion readily backs such plans. Sergei Dorenko, a popular Russian journalist, spoke on his radio channel of an opinion poll in which, he said, forty thousand Russians took part. They were offered three options to interpret the goals of the latest operations in the Mariupol area: "to cleanse" the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukrainian troops ("punishers"); "to cleanse", in addition to these two regions, the territory of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, which would open a land corridor to the Crimea and allow Russia to control the Dnieper mouth and a powerful hydro-electric station; "to cleanse", in addition to these four regions, the territory of Odessa and Nikolayev regions, which would lead the rebels straight to the Transdnistria and the mouth of the Dniester river, and thus give Russia control of the whole Ukrainian Black Sea coast. The absolute majority of the polled, Dorenko said, opted for the last option. "Not that I particularly need the mouth of the Dniester river right now, but it could come in handy", he declared.
The document of Mutual Misunderstanding or Mutual Hypocrisy
Why would Russia want all that, risking a further squeeze on its economy? More territory? Even Russia's fiercest critics do not suggest that. Russia is the largest country in the world, struggling to develop what it has already got.
The international Left, who now see a new light in Russia because of its anti-Westernism which they take for anti-imperialism, blame NATO enlargement for Russia's present expansionist mood. Some Western political analysts do exactly the same. In his recent Foreign Affairs article John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist and theorist of international relations from the University of Chicago, wrote: "No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow's mortal enemy until recently, moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West".
Usually, as in this case, the list of NATO's "transgressions" against Russia is cited with dates of all its enlargements into Eastern Europe. In NATO's view, there have been no transgressions. The Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris in May 1997, pledged that NATO and Russia would adhere to the basic principles of the United Nations charter (self-determination and territorial integrity naturally among them) and ensure "equal security for all states irrespective of their membership of a politico-military alliance". But there was not one word, let alone a clause, which precluded NATO from admitting new members willing to join NATO.
What the Founding Act did include was a declaration of the equality of both partners and the promise that both sides would consult and act together by consensus. Both seemed to think at that time that such consensus existed or could be achieved. In 1997 Russia was not what it is now, when it almost defines its identity in opposition to its own extremely unfavourable image of the West.
In the early 1990s the West was an ideal to be aspired to, and even in 2000, having just come to power, the then acting president Putin said that Russia might eventually join NATO, "if and when Russia's views are taken into account as an equal partner". But after the collapse of the Soviet Union the West did not see a weakened Russia as an equal partner. NATO certainly failed to take in most of Russia's objections, either to its enlargement into Eastern Europe or to its other actions in Europe and elsewhere, particularly in Serbia and Kosovo. Each time justifications for this lack of consultation and consideration could be found in international law or political expediency, but in Russia's view it hollowed out the agreement and led to the infringement of its national interests.
On the other hand, Russia's objections themselves and its conviction that the enlargement of NATO was detrimental to its national interests clearly showed that from the start Russia saw the West as an opponent, not as a partner at all. For it "partnership" meant something like an agreement on the demarcation of the assumed territorial spheres of influence and possible consultation on actions in other regions: a milder replica of the relations between the USSR and the West in the late Soviet era. A breach of the assumed lines of such demarcation amounted to a breach of national security and certainly ran counter national interests of the side that suffered such a breach.
So the 1997 Founding Act was a document either of mutual misunderstanding or mutual hypocrisy. NATO never took seriously the idea of equality with Russia, and Russia never took seriously the idea of partnership with NATO. Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment has rightly noted that the lack of willingness on the part of the West to incorporate Russia meaningfully into its fold after the collapse of the USSR was not unlike the treatment of Germany by the victorious Alliance after the first world war - with well known and tragic consequences.
But to accept Russia's concept of its national security as a territorial sphere of influence (as, for example, Mearsheimer does) means to accept the logic which denies equality of status and freedom of choice to any country that was a part of the USSR or of the Warsaw Pact - or actually to any smaller and militarily weaker country. This was the mentality of the 19th century when the world was partitioned according to the wishes and interests of the largest and strongest imperialist powers, including Russia.
The Russian Eurasian world
What would have happened if the West agreed with this logic and refused to admit East European countries to NATO and to the European Union? Putin's critics often accuse him of attempting to restore the former Soviet Union. But in 2010 Putin famously said: "Those who are not sorry about the collapse of the USSR, have no heart.
Those who want to restore it, as it was, have no head." "As it was" is, perhaps, the crucial phrase here. Putin is not trying to re-create the USSR "as it was", but he is in the process of creating the Eurasian Economic Union, a counterweight to the European Union, with just Belarus and Kazakhstan at present - but including other ex-Soviet states later.
Even though the Eurasian Union will only come into existence in 2015, Kazakhstan, its founding member, has already surmised the shape of things to come. Even before Russia's present confrontation with the West, the Kazakh government stressed that the country saw the Eurasian Union as a purely economic organisation, a common market with no political goals.
"We do not meddle into what Russia is doing politically, and they cannot tell us what foreign policy to pursue", Kazakhstan's deputy prime minister said. But with European sanctions against Russia even the common market becomes a problem for its Eurasian partners. In a recent interview Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's president, ventured into a bold statement: "Kazakhstan has the right to leave the Eurasian Economic Union. Kazakhstan will not enter an organisation which threatens our independence".
Putin responded with a threat. He was convinced, he said, that Kazakhstan would remain in the Eurasian Union, because its people recognised that it was "good for them to remain in the sphere of the greater Russian world". He did not need to remind Nazarbayev that 23 percent of his country's population was Russian, he just mentioned the possibility of the "Ukrainian scenario" in Kazakhstan, as well as the fact that "the Kazakhs never had statehood" before 1991.
Had they not been admitted to NATO, the East European countries would have been in exactly the same situation in which Kazakhstan is now. They would not have been allowed a choice of whether to join or not to join the Eurasian Union: Russia would have reminded them that they too have significant Russian minorities or that they are dependent on Russian gas. Russia has been forgiving of many of Ukraine's sins, some of which are the same as Russia's own, such as its pervasive corruption and its tolerance of radical nationalist movements. But Ukraine simply doesn't stand a chance of survival if it continues to insist on its association with Europe and to seek assistance from NATO.
At the moment Russian nationalists are in a state of euphoria. Internationally Russia has already proven to the West that it can do exactly what, in its view, the West is doing elsewhere. At home its leadership is adored by a huge majority. Just two years ago Putin faced mass demonstrations against him. According to Russia's authoritative polling agency, the Levada Centre, last month his approval ratings reached 87 percent.
As Alexander Dugin, a professor at Moscow State University, a popular philosopher of Russians' exclusive superiority and an advocate of Russia's Eurasian superpower, has said, "there are no more opponents of the Putin course, and if there are any, they are ill and in need of psychiatric treatment. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable". Dugin doubles as a member of the Expert Board of Consultants to the Chairman of the State Duma (Parliament) of the Russian Federation.
Russia's leadership behaves as if Russia is invincible. But some Russian intellectuals now quote another Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviov, who wrote in the 19th century. Soloviov worked out a formula of the progression of destructive nationalism: "national self-consciousness - national self-satisfaction - national self-adoration - national self-destruction". Perhaps it is time for the Russians to take a minute to think at which stage of this formula Russia is now.
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