Ukraine: This New Cold War Must End Before the World Collides with Armageddon

After a year of war, Russia is still engaged in a second invasion of the internationally recognized territory of a neighboring country, which turned out to be much more bloody and destructive than the first, due to the incomparably stronger resistance of Ukraine.

The international aspect of the war was sharply emphasized by the recent visit of US President Joe Biden to a country where there is no concentration of American troops. NATO countries are stepping up support for Ukraine, despite all the rumors about how tired they are.

And Beijing has just presented a peace plan after properly consulting with Moscow, as they are allegedly bound by “friendship without borders.”

In a recent speech, Vladimir Putin offered no prospect of peace, instead blaming the West for the conflict: “They [Occidente] they started a war. And we have used and continue to use force to stop it.”

In order to help understand how the world came to this dangerous moment, and to judge it as fairly as possible, we must first consider a historical perspective. There are two conflicting descriptions of the chain of events that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

View from the Kremlin

One version — let’s call it pro-Russian — presents the invasion as Moscow’s reaction to three decades of US-led Western intrusion into its former sphere of dominance, as part of the US quest for global hegemony.

Two major rounds of NATO expansion to the east were seen by Russia as hostile and provocative gestures. Moreover, Russia itself was never invited into the alliance, the raison d’être of which was precisely to oppose it after the Second World War. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted to NATO in 1999 amid the first US-led war since the end of the Cold War, which saw them bypass the UN Security Council in violation of international law: the Kosovo War.

In 2004, six more formerly Russian-dominated states joined NATO (together with a seventh from the former Yugoslavia). Among them were three former Soviet republics: three Baltic states: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The backdrop this time was the US invasion of Iraq, which began last year, once again bypassing the UN Security Council and representing yet another violation of international law by Washington.

A year earlier, George W. Bush had unilaterally abandoned the missile defense treaty, to the chagrin of Moscow. So when, at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, he insisted on promising Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO, Vladimir Putin felt compelled to act before Russia was stranded on the long North Atlantic border with a hostile alliance.

This resulted in the events in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014. Putin ended up ordering an invasion of Ukraine in an (unsuccessful) attempt to bring about “regime change” in that country, as the US tried to do but failed in Iraq.

NATO version

The opposite description — let’s call it the NATO version — presents the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a product of Putin’s megalomania and his desire to restore imperial rule to Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.

After becoming president of Russia at the turn of the century, Putin gradually increased the concentration of power in his hands and became increasingly authoritarian. This process accelerated after his return to the presidency in 2012, after a transition period during which he was formally replaced in the post by his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, although he continued to pull the strings from the premiership.

Faced with massive opposition upon his return, Putin felt threatened by a Western-sponsored “color revolution” against his government. He invaded and annexed Crimea to bolster his legitimacy, knowing how popular such an annexation is in Russia.

His success in this endeavor and the relative restraint of the Western response — along with the effect of his prolonged self-isolation for fear of contracting COVID — led him to think about the next step to pander to Russian nationalism by subjugating Ukraine. He tried to do this by invading it, and so far failed miserably, as the stability of the country exceeded all expectations.

Keep a cool head, because if not…

Which of these two narratives is correct? The objective answer to this question is both. Both are true and there is no contradiction between them; in fact, they completely complement each other. This is because Washington’s behavior since the end of the Cold War created ideal conditions for the growth of Russian revenge, which Putin managed to realize.

What does the recognition of the two facts mentioned above give us in relation to the present war? There is no doubt that the main responsibility for the current tragedy lies with Russia. His invasion of Ukraine was not provoked by anything and was clearly planned.

Assuming that Putin was convinced that his “special operation” would be welcomed by the majority of Ukrainians, he should have canceled it and withdraw his troops as soon as it became clear that he was wrong. Instead, he is mired in his country’s military in a long, bloody, and destructive war in eastern Ukraine.

Russia must withdraw its troops to where they were before February 24, 2022. As for Crimea and parts of Donbass controlled by pro-Russian anti-Kyiv forces since 2014, their status must be resolved peacefully and democratically in accordance with the UN Charter. , along with the deployment of UN troops in the disputed territories.

The world cannot afford another world war to restore international legitimacy. The new Cold War, launched by Washington less than a decade after the end of the first, and now embodied in Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine and dangerous saber-rattling around Taiwan, must end before it leads to Armageddon.

Gilbert Achkar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations, SOAS, University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.