When We Frame Geopolitical Issues in Mistaken Terms — We Guarantee that We Will Come Up with Unwise Solutions — Is the Ukraine Problem One of Russian Hegemony or Blatant Aggression?

© 2015 Peter Free

 

09 February 2015

 

 

Historical perspective makes a difference

 

Living temporarily in Germany as I am, I have been struck how differently many Europeans see the Ukrainian situation than influential Americans do.

 

Chancellor Angela Merkel said something revealing a few days ago. Alison Smale, at the New York Times, put her thought into context:

 

 

Ms. Merkel offered up a memory of her childhood in Communist East Germany . . . [when] questioned whether the diplomacy she has pursued in the Ukraine crisis was effective without a threat of force.

 

“Look,” said Ms. Merkel, who, like President François Hollande of France, had just returned from hours of negotiations with Mr. Putin, “I grew up in East Germany, and when I was 7 the Berlin Wall was built.”

 

Nobody expected the West to mount a military attack to bring it down, she said . . . .

 

She did not begrudge the West . . . . But she implied that it informed her idea that “I do not believe that the advances Ukraine needs will be achieved with weapons.”

 

Senator [John] McCain . . . rebuffed the chancellor, despite German complaints about his tone while in the country she heads.

 

[Leave it to America’s foremost, warmongering blowhard to piss off his hosts.]

 

“Asserting that there is no military solution, which is a truism, should not lead us to believe that there is no military dimension to the problem — or that hard power can play no role in a favorable solution,” Mr. McCain told the conference.

 

The German foreign minister [Frank-Walter Steinmeier] recalled that a Canadian colleague at a NATO meeting last summer had asked whether Russia should be seen as “a friend, partner, enemy or opponent to us.”

 

“Perhaps,” Mr. Steinmeier said, “this is easier to answer when you are further away from the conflict region. Our experience in Europe — in good times or bad — is that Russia remains our neighbor.”

 

© 2015 Alison Smale, Crisis in Ukraine Underscores Opposing Lessons of Cold War, New York Times (08 February 2015) (extracts, my comment in italics)

 

At first impression, both perspectives would seem reasonable.

 

 

Resolving the policy disagreement requires applying a contextually appropriate analytical framework

 

Chancellor Merkel’s hegemonic Great Power concept is more applicable than Senator McCain’s tit for tat military pressure thinking.

 

McCain presents a strategically superficial view of the Cold War and applies it to an obsolete map. Merkel implicitly selects the longer term Great Powers one that is more applicable to Russia’s currently contracted geographic position.

 

As Great Power hegemons wane in their projectable power, the more important preserving their sphere of influence becomes to them — exactly because the geography in question is closer to their heartland.

 

Pertinent here, Germany has extensive experience with what happens, when one or more European powers mistake the actual balance and attack one other.

 

 

Note

 

The Soviets discovered the same thing, when Premier Nikita Krushchev idiotically put ballistic missiles into Cuba in 1962.

 

Contrary to Senator McCain’s inferred thinking, the Federation is not yet so weak that it is going to allow the West to turn Ukraine into an arrow pointed at its heart — any more than the U.S. would allow Russia to turn Mexico or Canada against it.

 

The best that the West can reasonably hope for is to negotiate neutrality in Ukraine similar to that which the Finns managed after their defensive 1939-1940 Winter War with the aggressing Soviets.

 

In the real world, small dogs do not get to align with whomever they wish.

 

 

Choosing the appropriate analytical framework matters

 

Since the beginning of the Vietnam War — as evaluated according to our self-announced peace and democracy goals — the United States has consistently demonstrated that it is grossly incompetent, when it comes to foreign affairs. Assuming that American policy today is inherently any wiser is a mistake.

 

Coming off continuing disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq — among others — the United States is hardly in a position to chastise Europeans for their caution with regard to stirring the pot that they inhabit. Memory of two world wars is too fresh.

 

This is what German Foreign Minister Steinmeier meant with his “neighbor” observation. You do not arm the neighborhood’s kids with shotguns and tell them to take potshots at the Big Guy next door — without expecting a deadly retaliation.

 

 

The United States’ actual motives

 

In light of our penchant for waging perpetual war — and if we tentatively grant that American leaders are not the stupidest people on the planet — we should recognize that U.S. policy is predominantly about making money for the Military Industrial Complex, rather than about obtaining world peace and democracy.

 

Who, for example, is going to make lots of money by arming Ukrainians?

 

And who in our military and security bureaucracies are going to climb further in rank and prestige?

 

German and French leadership appear not to be convinced that stoking a conflagration in Ukraine is wise. An even hotter war there may come back to bite both in the way that German aggression (in the same direction) did in World War II. Better to keep the neighborhood kids on a leash, when the targeted Big Guy has nukes and a population roughly equal to France and Germany combined.

 

 

The moral? — Applying tit for tat logic is not enough in deciding appropriate foreign policy

 

Militaristic heavy handedness is not today’s European way with regard to managing foreseeable friction among Great Powers. Consistent with Realpolitik, Germany may become more aggressive, if the Russian Federation threatens Poland (which shares a border with Germany).

 

Perhaps after the United States loses 43 million lives in a war on our own soil, we might have better insight into Germany and France’ reluctance to violently stir geopolitical stew in Ukraine. This is not about appeasement. It is about Great Powers common sense.