The most important question in the world right now is one: will a large-scale war in Europe (Russia's invasion of Ukraine) be avoided? This question leads to the next: will a global catastrophe be avoided? That is, a world war between the USA (NATO) and Russia?
Yesterday's meeting of the Russian Security Council, which decided on whether to recognize the self-proclaimed Donbas republics, not only did not give clear answers to any of these questions, but did not even indicate the direction of events, since this purely formal act, which changes the legal situation, could have completely different consequences. It can either freeze a conflict along the lines of Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Transnistria or serve as an instrument for further escalation. On the Moscow Stock Exchange, however, the indices fell by 14%-17% and dropped below 3000 points for the first time since November 10, 2020. The Russian ruble, for its part, slipped above 90 rubles per euro.
While the situation is unclear and hanging in the air, one can try to understand how the world got to the point where the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is look at your phone - has it started already?
At the Munich conference just held, all the speakers, from US Vice-President Kamala Harris to German Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, began by asserting that the West is as united as never before. It can probably be agreed that they really haven't been so united since 2001/09/11, but the question remains open as to how united the West is now that Russia is threatening to change the world's security architecture. Unfortunately, there is no real confidence in the mantra of the West's iron-fisted unity.
This was implicit in the Munich speech of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: "We will defend our land with or without the support of partners. Whether they give us hundreds of modern weapons or five thousand helmets. We appreciate any help, but everyone should understand that these are not charitable contributions that Ukraine should ask for or remind of. These are not noble gestures for which Ukraine should bow low. This is your contribution to the security of Europe and the world."
Do Western leaders realize that Ukraine is now carrying the entire weight of European security almost single-handedly on its shoulders? Although Zelensky's speech was greeted with a standing ovation in Munich, it is not to say that this standing ovation was not without its spoonful of hypocrisy. Today, it is customary to applaud Ukraine's heroism in public, but to imply quietly, in private, "Please, just reconcile with Putin". That is, become his obedient vassal, kiss the signet ring, and let us get on with life as before.
French President Emmanuel Macron's desperate attempts to appease Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's phone calls cannot be interpreted any other way, because nothing less than bringing Ukrainian statehood down to the level of today's Belarusian statehood would satisfy Putin. The actions and rhetoric of Macron so far, and of some other Western leaders, suggest that they might find this scenario quite acceptable.
If it were not for the damned Ukraine crisis, they could, as they hope, continue their never-ending battle against anti-vaxxers, global inequality, climate change, carbon footprint, racism, gender inequality, patriarchal cisgender domination and other wonderful things to play war with straight faces in their political backyard.
Unfortunately, the West has completely forgotten how to fight for real, with serious (not self-drawn) opponents. The military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were a safe bet, but even the negative consequences of these relatively light campaigns have had a demoralizing effect on the West. The doctrine of military dystrophy, raised as a foreign policy banner by Gerhard Schröder, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, was later finalized by Barack Obama when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009: avoid the use of force at all costs. Even after the crossing of the red lines they themselves drew in 2013 (after Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons). But nature abhors a vacuum. Putin immediately took advantage of this vacuum. So did China, which is still slowly growing muscles and waiting for the right moment to change the balance of power in the Pacific basin.
Now, when the West should be demonstrating that its muscles are far from atrophied and they are still strong, Aleksandrs Kiršteins, a Member of the Saeima, is tweeting a question that is on many tongues: "Is the West a single civilization with a high moral bar? The question is, of course, ridiculous in the context of Ukraine. Sanctions like those against Iran - blocking energy exports, cutting off SWIFT and freezing all foreign accounts - would be enough to burst Russia like an empty balloon!"
The key words in this Kiršteins tweet are "a civilization with a high moral bar". The value of anything is determined by the price you are prepared to pay for it. If you are not prepared to pay (suffer) for your principles (beliefs, convictions, faith), then they have no value. If we listen to the leading politicians in Europe (including the US), all we hear about are "values" and "high moral standards". The problem is that these words have become devalued from such frequent use. There is no visible evidence that anyone is prepared to pay and suffer for them.
For many years, Western leaders justified their actions, whatever was to their advantage at the time, on the basis of "values". Everything they do is right because it is in line with "values", because we are the "good" ones, as opposed to all sorts of "bad" people like Trump. In the Latvian political reality, it looked like this - everything Kariņš (Unity (Vienotība) & Co) does is good, because otherwise Gobzems (in whatever incarnation), the "oligarchs", the Russians will come. This belief in their own rightness, in their own goodness, was and still remains almost absolute. One might think - what is so bad about that?
The bad thing is that those who do not immediately believe in all this start comparing your speeches with your deeds and find that the speeches do not match the deeds. So all this talk about values is just empty words. As empty as Nobel Prize winner Obama's repeated threats about the high price Putin will have to pay for the events of 2014. Putin has learned well what "high price" means in the Western "value system". It is a symbolic price that allows them to look like the "good guys" fighting for "values" in their own eyes while paying hardly anything at all. It is like buying off the needy with a small amount of money that you found in your pocket.
The best-case scenario is if the "doubting Thomas" is someone like Gobzems. But what if it is Putin, who, in a press conference after his meeting with Macron on February 7, made a veiled threat of nuclear war: "Of course, NATO’s united potential and that of Russia are incomparable. We understand that, but we also understand that Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers and is superior to many of those countries in terms of the number of modern nuclear force components." So then what? Send Ukraine helmets or gauze bandages for the wounded?
Kiršteins is not the only one who tells us what should have been done long ago to stop the likes of Putin, but none of it has been done. What is more, there is no guarantee that the "heavy sanctions" with which Putin is now being scared will actually be "heavy", because there are always the excuses that Ukraine is, after all, not in NATO, not in the EU and, in any case, is guilty of its own fault - it did not comply with the Minsk agreement. According to Reuters, the sanctions currently planned actually exclude such a trifle (against the background of the overall sacrificial table) as disconnection from SWIFT. This shows that, overall, trade as usual is planned to continue. Well, a bit of a handicap, but only a bit.
If hostilities do break out, this is exactly the reaction Putin will have hoped for in the West. If he had no such expectations, if the West had demonstrated its determination to pay by deeds and not words, then Putin's behavior would be different. So to the first question posed in the introduction, I would say that it is possible that there will be a war, because the West will not force Ukraine to surrender without a fight, and the West cannot convince Putin that this move will end badly for him.
Will the war become global? That will depend on the reaction of the West. If it is sharp and unexpectedly firm, then Russia, in the best Russian tradition, will get its teeth kicked in, wipe off the blood and crawl back to be friends again. If it does not retaliate, its insolence will only grow, with no stopping it.
P.S. That is why wars are fought from time to time - to find out what's what. What are the "values" on the marketplace of ideas worth?
P.P.S. If we are to believe Professor Valery Solovey's stories about the Kremlin masters' keen fascination with various magical rituals and their deep superstition, then from a numerological point of view February 22, 2022 (2022/22/02) would be a very appropriate date for the outbreak of war. Given that the Great Patriotic War (not to be confused with the Second World War), which has acquired a religious status in Russia, also began on the 22nd (June 22, 1941) and ended successfully in the eyes of the Kremlin, this date would seem to a superstitious person a particularly auspicious date for an attack.