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- Ελληνικά
In geopolitical confrontations and crises often the greatest difficulty is to enable the countries involved to disengage from the situations in which they have become involved on their own initiative and on the basis of their own commitments.
This to some extent is reflected in the current situation in Ukraine, with all the momentum it seems to be taking and the way it is determined by two intertwining tensions: those concerning the interior of Ukraine itself throughout its post-Soviet course and those concerning US-Russian relations throughout their post-Cold War evolution.
On the one hand, there is the background of Ukraine's own internal contradictions, where the national demand has coexisted for decades with integration into the wider Russian space, and where the climate in the eastern provinces defines divisions of identities and languages, and where the effort to invest in a combination of a turn to the West alongside more intense nationalism does not make it easier to deal with the problem with the eastern provinces.
On the other hand, there is the whole of what we have come to describe as the "New Cold War", namely the way the US sees Russia (and prospectively a "Eurasian" convergence with China) as a threat that needs to be "contained", mainly by creating a sanitary zone of pro-Western states and expanding and strengthening NATO and Russia's corresponding attempt to show that it can always respond militarily and therefore calls for a return to a regime of guarantees and a concept of collective security that harkens back to the years immediately after the dissolution of the USSR.
How both sides are locked into a frontal conflict
As far as the US is concerned, the problem is the way the front of the confrontation has been defined in recent years. The way that "authoritarian regimes" are now referred to as the adversary, and the way that this allows the US to lead the West, means that there needs to be areas of conflict where this is affirmed.
This is compounded by two other parameters: one is that part of the US military and diplomatic establishment sees now as an opportunity not just to contain Russia (indicative of the return of the narrative of Russian interference in the internal affairs of Western countries, e.g. in the 2016 US election) but also to 'send a message' to China and its own attempt at geopolitical upgrading. The other is that a number of governments are investing in being part of this "sanitary zone" against Russia.
All of this, in the case of the US, is also precipitated by the need to provide a counterweight to what appears to be the US withdrawal from both Central Asia and, in essence, the Middle East.
This situation traps the debate in a state of mind where a military engagement in Ukraine would finally allow for that big break with Russia and the kind of sanctions that would have real costs. In fact, some US allies like Great Britain, which has a number of operatives in Ukraine, even seem to be even more invested in the conflict.
As far as Russia is concerned, the problem lies in how it will handle the way it sees the situation in the world. In recent years Russia seems to believe that the era of understanding with the West is over and that now the West and the US are moving hostilely on the brink of military confrontation. At the same time, in Ukraine itself, the arrival of Zelensky has not helped to make progress on the issue of internal peace in Ukraine, namely institutional changes and the granting of some kind of local self-government to the eastern provinces. Instead, it appeared that Kiev was investing in nationalism, culminating in the way in which it again set itself the goal of recapturing the eastern regions and Crimea. All of this is also underpinned by a deep-rooted perception among the Russian leadership that Ukraine is part of a wider Russian space, as was evident in Putin's own article this summer on the "Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".
The result of all this is that Russia has chosen to increase pressure on both Ukraine and the US, both for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements and for security guarantees focused on the non-expansion of NATO at a juncture especially the latter was very difficult to answer explicitly in the affirmative.
Mutual escalation
The result of all this is an escalation from which there is no easy way out.
On the one hand, the US and its allies have made an impressive communicative investment in promoting the idea of imminent war, that unless there is a significant retreat on the other side, any de-escalation will be seen as a "concession" to Russia, as the more aggressive voices are already underlining.
On the other hand, Russia seems to be stuck on how to "raise the bar". It has upgraded its military presence near Ukraine - to a large extent already since April when it transferred significant units, current moves are more about large exercises - and at the same time has demanded from the West commitments such as not expanding NATO that are hard to meet, which in turn makes "de-escalation" seem like a retreat.
At the same time on both sides the temptation of tension is real.
On both sides the temptation of tension is real. For the most aggressive voices in the West, an eventual armed conflict in Ukraine is the ideal opportunity for the "next level" of sanctions and the formation of a world with clearer divisions between "friends" and "enemies", with the US in a leading role among the "liberal democracies".
For Russia, a real show of force towards Ukraine seems to be the way to force it to pick a side and acknowledge the need for a solution to the issue of the eastern provinces and of course to send a signal to the West that the "red lines" cannot be crossed.
The real fear of conflict
Of course, at the same time, the fear of conflict is real on both sides. On the Western side there is an awareness that the shock of an armed conflict will be too great, at a juncture when, in addition to everything else, the problems of the world economy have been joined by that of inflation, which is beginning to look less than cyclical. There is also the fear that the sanctions may not turn out to be such a deterrent after all, if what the Ukrainian Foreign Minister himself said about Russia's expulsion from the SWIFT trading system not being included in the sanctions being prepared by the EU at the moment because of the European reaction (just as it is not easy to cut off Europe's energy supply from Russian gas) is true. Moreover, it is not a given that at this stage the Biden administration wants to emphasize international or stick to the path of domestic reconstruction on the way to the mid-term elections in November 2022.
On Russia's side, despite the great preparation that has been done to deal with all sanctions variants and China's support in this direction, there is an awareness that a military conflict would have unpredictable and possibly very negative consequences, even if the Russian armed forces achieve major strikes and in a short time. It does not want a long-term invasion or occupation of Ukrainian territory and is aware that sanctions, to whatever extent they affect the domestic social situation, could also exacerbate domestic social discontent.
The search for a way out
Against this background, it is obvious that there is a parallel effort to seek some point of equilibrium that allows both sides a de-escalation that does not indicate that either side has retreated.
So, while the US, through the mouth of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, raised the tone by talking about an imminent Russian invasion at any moment, at the same time it was the US president who had a telephone conversation with Putin in which one could see the attempt to keep a channel of communication open, which was evident from the fact that the Kremlin stated, through the mouth of presidential adviser Yuri Ushakov, who informed about the Biden-Putin phone call, that "Russia will carefully study President Biden's proposals". Nor is it a coincidence that Sergei Lavrov said that "far from having exhausted the possibilities for a diplomatic solution" during his dialogue with Putin himself in front of TV crews. And the very fact that talks are continuing with the "Normandy format", i.e. within the framework of the Minsk Agreement, points to this atmosphere. So do statements such as those of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO is not on the agenda and that there should be a dialogue on security issues in Europe. All this shows that in addition to the communicative tone, there is also a parallel movement, with all the difficulty in finding a point of balance, both in relation to the issue of non-expansion of NATO and in relation to the Ukrainian issue.
The Ukrainian government itself, however, although, as might be expected, it has invested in projecting the threat it poses so that it can have both diplomatic and military support, nevertheless it also seems reluctant to become the theatre of a war that will have only disastrous consequences for itself, which explains why, at a time when the very setting of an imminent war also has a high cost, judging by the fact that during his conversation with Biden he invited him to Kiev to "help de-escalate" a situation in which he thanked the US and stressed that its help "will help prevent the spread of panic". Nor is it a coincidence that Zelensky has criticised foreign governments' decisions to remove their diplomats from Ukraine.
Source: in.gr
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