Checkmated over Ukraine

Cornered: Ukrainian armoured vehicles blocking a street in Kyiv as Russian troops stormed toward Ukraine’s capital on Saturday. – AP

WHEN the wilfully unstoppable force of Nato expansion hits the steadfastly immovable object of Russian national security, war erupts.

By February 24 when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Moscow’s challenges became exposed and grew more acute.

Russia cannot hold Ukraine in any sense as resentment to its incursion swells. There can be no assurance Russia can succeed in whatever it seeks to do to Kiev.

As in all military interventions, moving in is always easier than pulling out – which must eventually happen. And then what?

All disputes must conclude in negotiations, especially between neighbours, and it is now harder to negotiate. Meanwhile Russia is cast as the sole villain, so an invasion could not have been its preferred option.

As a power play it is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions and superpower dimensions. Ukraine and Nato may have top billing but the US and Russia are the key actors.

The 1947 Dunkirk Treaty between Britain and France was a contingency agreement against German or Soviet aggression. This grew to include the Benelux countries and then the US and six others to become today’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

By 1955 Nato expanded to include WWII foe Germany, leaving the Soviet Union out in the cold. Moscow then established its Warsaw Pact alliance in trying to achieve some balance.

Since then, Moscow stayed in Nato’s sights on the other side of the fence. Nato’s first Secretary-General Hastings Ismay described its role as “keeping the US in, Germany down, and Russia out.”

Nato is a Cold War device that was not dismantled after the Cold War but has instead grown. But the official rhetoric in the early 1990s was of consolidation with a few contemplating dissolution.

As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, Nato officials from the US, Britain, France and Germany repeatedly assured Moscow that Nato would not expand. Nato had become the most serious organised challenge to Russian national security.

US Assistant Secretary of State Raymond Seitz said expansion of membership would not happen “either officially or unofficially.” His British counterpart added that expansion was “unacceptable”.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher agreed and said so. Then Nato’s expansion happened.

When Russia complained, Nato stalwarts said any agreement was only verbal and not written down, implying that what they said could not be trusted. Later Nato claimed there had not even been a verbal agreement.

Earlier this month Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper reported that Prof Joshua Shifrinson of Boston University had found a declassified document confirming that a pledge on Nato’s non-expansion had been made. Elsewhere it is reported that President Bill Clinton broke that pledge.

In 1999, Nato expanded by including former Soviet bloc countries Poland, Hungary and Czechia. Russia seethed but could do little.

In 2004, Nato expanded further by admitting former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia complained again but once more its security concerns were ignored.

As Nato missiles aimed at Russia moved closer to its borders, Moscow protested but Nato said they were only there because of Iran. Russia was unconvinced.

After Ukraine’s independence its government continued friendly relations with Russia. But the US engineered the 2004-05 Orange Revolution that toppled the government and replaced it with one closer to the West.

France and Germany invaded Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries with each attack ending in disaster. Napoleon’s and Hitler’s forces nonetheless made damaging incursions into the Russian heartland and national psyche.

Today France and Germany are among European nations careful in managing relations with Russia. However, a US-led Nato with less experience and less sensitivity to Russian security concerns has acted with less care.

Russia remains the world’s largest country by area rich in natural resources like oil and gas. It is not a threat to Europe or even Ukraine if agreements made can be honoured, but provoking it can produce a different result.

Using Nato to challenge and undermine Russian interests will not end well for anyone. US interests are protected with the Atlantic Ocean as buffer, but European members of Nato share a continent with Russia and would have different priorities.

The UN wants Russian forces to withdraw from Ukraine and return to base almost as much as Russia wants Nato to withdraw from its eastward momentum and return to the 1997 Nato-Russia Founding Act. Although neither may happen soon, Moscow has no interest or expressed desire to occupy Ukraine so the former is more likely than the latter.

Ukraine for now is trapped in a vicious cycle of violence and disintegration beyond its control. It is a familiar plight of pawns caught between incompatible great powers.

Ukraine wants urgent negotiations with Russia while Russia wants Belarus to host talks on the Minsk accords for a ceasefire and phased measures towards a compromise. Even if talks are possible it will be an uphill task since Moscow and Kiev have different interpretations of the 2014-15 terms.

Among Biden’s errors is targeting Putin personally as if another Russian leader would have acted differently. Even Boris Yeltsin would have done the same over Ukraine, while a nationalist like Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have acted tougher and earlier.

For the West to dump the Nord Stream 2 deal supplying Europe with Russian gas punishes only Europe which now has to pay many times more for US supplies. On Feb 4 Russia signed a new US$117.5bil oil and gas deal to supply China instead.

Western observers worry that China may learn unsavoury lessons from Russia’s actions in Ukraine to further its disputed claims in Asia. Any lessons would be more akin to Nato’s gradual encroachment on Russian territory.

The apparent beneficiary from Ukraine’s crisis is China, being a distraction for the West which also increases Moscow’s dependence on Beijing. But China is also awkwardly positioned as it wants to maintain good ties with all parties.

The only unqualified beneficiary of the crisis is China-Russia relations, which must count as another major strategic blunder for Nato and the West.

Bunn Nagara is a political analyst and Honorary Research Fellow of the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.