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IS PEACE NEAR THE TABLE?

22/08/2024 16:22:00 Chris Morgan

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IT’S remarkable that we aren’t all sitting on the edge of our seats, biting our nails because there’s plenty to be concerned about. The reality is that the human being is surprisingly well equipped to cope with and even adjust to unwelcome and even extreme circumstances. If it isn’t the Second World War 1939-45, the Korean War of the 1950s, the 30-year Cold War with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the Vietnam war of two decades, then its religious extremism from 1980 onwards, an ongoing HIV and AIDs pandemic, joined by the recent COVID-19, and hopefully not Mpox. When there’s a sustained lull, and there hasn’t been too many of those, it’s rarely enough to us to fully relax in our beautiful but imperfect world.

Unstable

These past two years we have seen the reemergence of serious warfare in highly unstable parts of the world. Now in August 2024, we are looking in particular at the Middle East, an area of numerous spells of warfare since the late 1960s; where Israelis are currently in combat with a terrorist group Hamas, but also – and not deliberately, we trust – killing thousands of innocent Palestinians. And slightly further afield, a vicious battle in and around Ukraine. Although the seriousness of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not to be underestimated it’s the Ukraine/Russia war that is the biggest threat to the rest of the world at the present time. And for one good reason – the risk of a nuclear war is being waved in front of Ukraine and, separately, the countries of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)

One of the most chilling dimensions of that Ukraine/Russia conflict is the extent to which a few individuals can draw two perfectly decent nations, with no inbred sense of hatred for each other, into ferocious mortal combat. The motive for attack appears to come from an all-consuming need for the former USSR (the Soviet Union) to rebuild from its dissolution in 1991. The determination to achieve that and the resentment seeing those countries – especially Ukraine – reasserting their right to be classed as sovereign states, did not remotely justify Russia’s attack against Ukraine, that took place in February 2022.

Change

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is simply spitting (or otherwise) into a headwind of change; one similar to the ‘Wind of Change’ that precipitated the independence programme within the British Empire. And let’s not forget that on 8 December 1991, an agreement was signed between the three Slav republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus for the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); with other states to follow suit later. It was clear from a statement by the leaders of that Commonwealth in 1991, that ‘the USSR has ceased to exist as a geopolitical reality.’

The USSR failed because of the failure of communism, its fundamental ideology. There was too much control by central government in those Soviet states, with little to no incentivise for the population to grow the respective economies. It’s ironic that the USSR name contains the word ‘socialist’ but did not capture its ideology. In fact, communism, which is alive today in only a few countries, mainly China, is simply an extreme form of socialism. Socialism aims to eliminate inequalities in society by creating a more equal distribution of resources. Communism takes it a big step further, requiring that all property and wealth are communally, rather than individually owned. But it’s a political ideology that doesn’t work. Remember: “All people are equal but some more than others?”, and the communism of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, while China drastically revised its economy to include some capitalism.

Support

To create the oligarchy to support his autocratic dictatorship now controlling Russia, Vladimir Putin has used the wealth he has amassed over his 24 years effectively in power. It could easily be that he has no interest in the revival of communism but simply detests the thought of former state members of the USSR, now being independent and turning their backs on the main player that was always Russia. Before the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Putin served as a KGB foreign intelligence officer protecting the USSR, his country. It was the largest sovereign state in the world, one that usually took the biggest number of gold medals at the Olympic Games; although a 1989 Australian study claimed that all USSR gold medal winners were on one drug or another.

The big multi-state family that Putin grew up in, no longer exists. His state, Russia, signed a peaceful agreement in 1991, making Ukraine a sovereign state. That fact should be respected and not violated. Will we see peace between Russia and Ukraine in the foreseeable future? It is quite possible. President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has seen his army crossing into Russia and taking territory. But he surely cannot be envisaging an attempt at a full invasion of a country that is vastly superior in every military category.

It is likely that Ukraine sees its advance as a destabilising measure and a useful bargaining chip in any peace talks. Both countries have suffered a huge loss of life, and with Ukraine now crossing the Russian border, Putin must surely be getting more than a little nervous. Now suddenly on the back foot, he may be feeling personally insecure; a mental state that can be dangerous. It is a danger that introduces the serious risk of nuclear warfare; because desperate people frequently pursue desperate measures.