It is starting to seem that the coming Russia-Ukraine war will be the first in recent history to be announced in advance. Already a week ago, senior US officials, including US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, announced that the war will start on February 16. For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared this date a day of national unity.
As you read these lines, the war in Ukraine may have already begun. But it may as well not start tomorrow, not in a week's time, and perhaps not ever. This is pure fortune-telling in tea leaves and, given the overall tragedy of the situation, I do not want to joke about all this, even though the situation looks tragicomic at times. In any case, the events of the last few months allow us to draw a number of conclusions about current developments in world politics.
Russia has been demonstratively massing troops on the Ukrainian border since last spring. It cannot be said that post hoc ergo propter hoc, but this blatant saber-rattling began soon after Biden's affirmative answer to ABC journalist George Stephanopoulos' question: do you consider Putin to be a killer?
Last spring's maneuvers seemed threatening enough for Biden to call Putin and arrange a meeting in Geneva on June 16. Although observers admitted that Putin had supposedly "won more points" in Geneva, he did not get any tangible bonuses from this meeting. The conference of the major powers on the distribution of spheres of influence in the world not only did not take place, but its outlines were not even theoretically sketched out.
Although Russian propaganda has been tirelessly trumpeting in 24/7 mode since Putin's Munich speech in 2007 that there is no more important issue in the world than the Russia-US standoff, few outside the Russian information space were even aware of this "global confrontation" until recently. Russia's place in the Western media was microscopic compared to the place of the West (US) in the Russian media. The disproportion was glaring. When Obama once referred to Russia as a regional (not global) power, he did not mean to offend Russia in any particular way. That is how Russia was perceived in the West. A backward, cold, unhappy country ruled by a petty dictator with a band of thieving buddies.
Russia returned to the headlines in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the downing of the Malaysian Boeing. But even in July 2014, when Igor Girkin-Strelkov's raiders were already rampaging through Ukraine's eastern provinces, led by a variety of people like Motorola, Bes and Givi; when BUK anti-aircraft missiles, which can shoot down aircraft up to 18,000 meters, were being moved across the Ukrainian steppes, there were no embassy evacuations from Kyiv and even passenger planes flew over Ukrainian territory without any restrictions. Now that no serious hostilities have yet begun, a huge panic has been created. What is going on?
There has been a fundamental change in the Western reaction to Russia's political behavior. In the past, Putin and his court were fond of the childish threat of "I'll count to three. One... Two... two and a half... two and three quarters...", waiting and waiting for the moment when the West starts to get nervous and show its readiness to make some concessions, but now the reaction is quite different. Now there are startling cries from the US: Three!!! Three!!! Just attack already! Let's go! What are you waiting for? You have until February 16 to show whether you're a real man or if you're all talk!
I repeat - I do not want to joke about a possible attack on Ukraine, because it really cannot be ruled out that there is a short-circuit somewhere and that war really breaks out. However, the hysteria that is being whipped up at the moment cannot help but give the impression of something surreal, which is reinforced by the desperate cries from both sides, from Moscow and from Kyiv: do not raise panic.
But the panic is being raised quite deliberately, and Russia is being fired continuously from all the main caliber guns of the information artillery. In fairness, however, these are retaliatory barrages. The world's leading publications keep posting a picture of a 79-year-old Ukrainian old woman, Valentina Konstantinovskaya, in an ordinary coat, laying on a rolling mat, learning how to use an AK-47 assault rifle.
Here, we need to recall the main point of the so-called sanctions. Although the aim of sanctions is usually stated as punishing the rule-breaker or seeking to change his behavior, in reality, the main point of sanctions is to satisfy the domestic political demand for the satisfaction of moral superiority. We have defended the victims against their evil-doers. The severity of sanctions is therefore closely dependent on the domestic political demand.
Russia got away with relatively light sanctions in 2014 because there was not really a demand for them in the West. Only the downing of the Boeing with almost 300 innocent victims changed the vector of public opinion a little, but only a little. The symbolic sanctions imposed at the time still allow Russian diplomats today to say "We don't give a sh*t about your sanctions", as the Russian Ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, did in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper some days ago.
The whole "science" of marketing revolves around how to create demand. Political marketing is no different. To avoid a repeat of 2014, when then US President Barack Obama, with an extremely serious - not to say sanctimonious - grimace, repeated the phrase about "the high price that Russia will have to pay", but the result of the heavy sanctions was nothing but a squeak, now, before even anything has started, such an image of Dr Evil has been created out of Putin that it will be very difficult to continue the usual kissing up to him (read: to the money behind him).
This is probably what both French President Emmanuel Macron and the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited the Kremlin yesterday, are trying to say when they meet Putin. Their implied message could be something like this: "Dear Vladimir! We respect you and your country, we cherish our old friendship, but now our arrogant elder brother on the banks of the Potomac is driving this wave against you and there is nothing we can do about it even if you yourself weren't helping him by moving your troops around. Lower the tone a little, and business will continue as usual. Don't do anything stupid, and we will have many more World Cups and Olympics together. We'll build many more gas pipelines together."
The problem is that nobody knows what is going on in Putin's head. Nor how much information he is provided with that adheres to reality, and therefore how adequate his decisions are. The absolute majority of analysts agree that a large-scale, comprehensive invasion of Ukraine could have catastrophic consequences for Russia. Moreover, there is no single reason for such an invasion that makes any sense. Even the head of the ultra-reactionary All-Russian Officers Assembly, retired Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, admits this and has published a sensational statement categorically rejecting an invasion of Ukraine and, even crazier, calling on Putin to resign.
Most political commentators, unlike US officials and intelligence services, believe that there will be no war, because it was just a game to begin with. We can only hope that it is so and let Putin, together with Biden, receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 for "preventing the threat of war and preserving peace." If giving such a medal to the two current "warmongers" would really help prevent a global catastrophe (the consequences of a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be avalanche-like), then I am absolutely in favor. Let them have the medal. The main thing is not to start a global mess with massive bloodshed.