The next crisis

 

Currently the world’s attention is turned to Ukraine, a huge country in Europe’s east, the second biggest after Russia.  Geographically, it has a long coast on the Black Sea, and borders with Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova.

 

Ukraine has a long and complex history.  Its land has been inhabited by humans for more than thirty thousand years and, over the centuries, has been dominated by several groups from all sides, which includes the Ottomans, the Austrian-Hungarian empire and the Russian Tsars.

 

Ukraine was constituted in 1917 as a Soviet republic, part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and in 1954 its territory was augmented by the Crimean peninsula by the then Soviet leader Krushchev, who transferred it from the Russian republic.  Ukraine achieved its independence in 1991 when the USSR dissolved.

 

The biggest member of what was the USSR is the Russian Federation, and its leader Vladimir Putin has long been with a chip on his shoulder with the dismantling of the USSR, which then forced him to drive taxis to make ends meet.  He has long wanted to return his country to the grandeur and glory of the past, and instead has seen Russia suffer economically when the communist system failed.

 

Russia nevertheless remained prominent on the global scene in many fields, with its huge amount of nuclear armaments, with its developments in space many times superseding those of the United States, and supplying huge amounts of fuel (oil and gas) to western countries.  

 

However, through the years after the fall of the Berlin wall, it has seen countries that used to form part of the USSR (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and others under its influence (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and others join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

 

Now one has to understand that each sovereign country has, or should have, the right to decide how it is to conduct its own affairs and what alliances it should have, however this is a relatively new concept.  History is replete with empires, countries, and before these structures, strong city-states that decieded to snatch surrounding and far lands in order to avail of their resources - minerals, agriculture, slaves etc.  Where would we start naming?  The Roman Empire, the Ottomans, Mongols, Maya, the British Empire, the Spanish, the Portuguese etc.  Perhaps it is better to say, where shall we stop?

 

President Putin took the first step to turn back the clock in 2014 when he ordered the annexation of Crimea (it is interesting to note that this was the second time this has happened, as this had happened in 1783 by the Russian Republic of the time.)  The reaction of the world was one of condemnation, declarations and economic sanctions, but everything remained the same.

 

I imagine President Putin thinking, is this all?

 

Now his gaze is resting on the rest of Ukraine.  In a statement made before ordering the entry of the Russian army into two of Ukraine’s orbosts (provinces) in the East, in parts already dominated by Russia, i.e. Donetsk and Lugansk, he commented that Ukrainians are partners, friends and family.1

 

It is true there are many links between the two peoples - for example in the First World War three and a half million Ukrainians fought on the side of the Russian imperial army, fourteen times as many as fought on the other side, the Australian-Hungarian one.  Also over two whole centuries until the end of the seventeenth century, both the Ukrainian and Russian people suffered incursions by the Tartars of Crimea who took away an estimated two million persons as slaves, until Crimea was defeated by Russia as I have already mentioned.2

 

Today however, the world generally no longer expects to see a country take over another, as understood by international law, and this does not seem to be understood, or accepted, by Russia, even if there might be some legitimate historical considerations to be made.  In truth, the population of 41 million (if Crimea is excluded) is divided, between the majority of ethnic Ukrainians of 78% who probably would prefer to strengthen relationships with the West and the rest of Europe, and the Russian minority of 17% who would look to Russia.  There are also some other much smaller groups that come from the surrounding countries.

 

Now that Russia has gone inside parts of these provinces, are they stopping there? We already know the answer to that.  What is going to happen to the rest of the country?  What effect will the sanctions being applied by western countries have?

 

There does not seem to be any effect on Russian calculations.  It seems that Putin understands nothing except a tank pointing its guns against one of this own, and of a missile pointing against another of his - in other words, a fully fledged war.  However he also knows that the world is tired of war after war, and the United States no longer has the aura of invincibility it had after the second world war.  Just think of the farcical conclusion to Vietnam and more recently to Afghanistan.

 

Observing these developments rather quietly is China.  There they are probably thinking, is it possible that Putin manage to just take this country so easily?  Would two enormous, adjoining allies, as are Russia and China, be able to overcome economic sanctions?

 

Which is the next crisis?  Taiwan?

 

1http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828, retrieved 24/2/2022

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine, retrieved 24/2/2022