By Air Cmde TK Chatterjee (retd)
Before the onset of winter in Europe, when I was about to set course to India to escape its severity, my French friends said….’hopefully the war in Ukraine will be over by the time you get back’. They desperately needed that hope because Europe was on the brink of energy crisis through the winter, thanks to the war. I told them that when Putin was massing his army in Belarus more than a year back, I thought it was mere posturing to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. I was wrong. I had mistakenly given Mr. Putin more credits than he deserved. He had not considered the fact that a war with Ukraine can be started by Russia, but to end it, may not be Mr. Putin’s call. But will the war end before the winter is over? This time I was sure, it will not.
So here we are after more than a year, after more than 100,000 dead on both sides, the war lingers on. It does not even make the headlines in international press anymore. But death and destruction continue in eastern Ukraine, with new revelations of barbarism each day. And the military industrial complex of the world laughs all the way to the bank.
The western hemisphere, that is almost synonymous with NATO, has promised support to Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’. But is this ‘support’ for a defensive war, or an offensive one? An offensive war will require many times more the support than it is getting or has been promised. Some old and used MiG29s from Poland will not turn the course of the war drastically.
The war that started between Russia and Ukraine has enlarged into a contest between Russia and the West. It is clear what Russia wants. They want Ukraine to be part of Russia, the way it was with USSR, and if that is not achievable, then keep Ukraine as a buffer between NATO and Russia. They already have a land corridor from Russia to Crimea and access to the Black Sea minus the Odessa port. They only must hold it. We also know what Ukraine wants. They wanted to remain as Ukrainians and get under the NATO umbrella as a safeguard against the Russian bear. Their aim, which six months back was to get a negotiated ceasefire, has now changed to reclaim Donbass region and Crimea. A tall order for which they do not have the resources. Is the West capable of building up the Ukrainian forces to a level that is required for such offensive war? They also need to sustain it through the operation with their own wartime industrial effort. It will be interesting to see if that happens.
But while we can understand the aims of the two belligerents, the foxing part is – what is the aim of the West? Rhetoric about threat to free world and rule based world order apart, if the aim is to weaken Russia to the extent that there remains no opposition to NATO hereafter, then the rest of the world must pause to think…..will that be right! In any case despite all the economic sanctions, IMF has predicted a growth of 0.7% in Russian GDP this year. Sanctions so far has not really worked. Or perhaps the West is playing a waiting game till the Russian public demand accountability of their own leadership for this messy situation.
The containment and isolation of Russia policy of the West has already resulted in an undesired spinoff. An axis between China and Russia has been formed. As I write, the French president and the EU president have just returned from China and the German FM has now reached Beijing. Having failed to deter Russia from continuing the war by arming Ukraine militarily, they are now at China’s door seeking the dragon’s help to stop Russia from continuing this meaningless war. Another facet of these visits is also to ensure that their individual trade relations with China are not compromised due to USA-China rivalry. While the French president is quite vocal about France not being an American ‘vassal’ and that Europe should not get involved in crises that are not their own, the rest of Europe is rather quiet. For this the French president is being castigated from across the Atlantic for ‘kissing Xi’s ass’. Since this ridiculous expression came from Mr. Trump, it did not carry much weight, but it must be an unexpressed thought in the minds of many. Another fallout of this conflict is Russia’s offer of cheaper energy deals to Asia and Africa which has led to a multinational effort to de-dollarize the world. This fact alone is likely to have a much more global effect than the war itself.
That NATO has not got directly involved in this war is only to avoid a direct confrontation between two nuclear armed powers. But that fact also makes all nuclear armed countries bolder, especially China in its plans for Taiwan, as is evident from their recent activities around the island. And so does too North Korea.
So, the question in common man’s mind remains….who will win this war? Let alone victory or defeat, even the criteria of win or lose is not clear at this time. A bigger question is when it will end, because the cost of this war is being borne by the whole world. The western media is going gaga over the forthcoming Ukrainian spring offensive now that Ukraine is armed with tanks and other weaponry. A ceasefire at this juncture will make Putin seem the winner, with Donbass and Crimea under his control. Such a truce will be difficult for the western nations to explain to their citizens, after having spent their taxpayer’s billions. The alternative is to arm Ukraine to the extent that they can drive the Russians back to Russia. That will be a herculean task, even if the west supplies its most advanced long range weapon systems to Ukraine, which is most unlikely. But assigning a time frame for completion of such an offensive is likely to be as disastrous as the Russian estimates of time plot of 24 Feb 2022 for a forced regime change in Ukraine.
The West has self-deterred itself from arming Ukraine to capacity to launch a full-scale offensive, with an aim to ‘escalate to de-escalate’. Neither have the Russians made any great headway beyond Donbass, despite all their nuclear and conventional saber rattling. Both sides seem to be settling down to a war of attrition. Hence it is about time that prudence prevails, and a mediated settlement reached. The EU leadership, France, China, or India is well equipped to play the third-party mediator and bring the belligerents to the table. Hundreds of thousands of lives and assets worth trillions are already lost, it is now time that this destructive game ends.
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