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      Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe (Language and the News)

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      To our readers: Our regularly updated feature Language and the News will continue in the form of separate articles rather than as a single monthly collection (click here to read previous entries).

      We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 23: Effective Veto

      On Monday evening in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a long, emotional presentation of all the historical reasons for which Russia’s sense of betrayal by interests in the West justified declaring two regions of eastern Ukraine autonomous political entities, implicitly compromising the territorial integrity of an independent nation.

      Putin’s argument reflected more than a simple statement of preferences. His action, decreeing the autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk and subsequently sending Russian troops to protect them, literally violated international law as it is understood and practiced today. It provoked immediate condemnation from all sides and a round of previously promised sanctions from the United States and Europe. It stood, nevertheless, as a sincere statement of historical fears not just of the Russian government, but also the Russian people, who have had three decades to define their appreciation of the nature of Western political and economic domination.

      When Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect in Eastern Europe (Language and the News)

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      In the aftermath of Monday’s events, Al Jazeera helpfully listed “5 things we need to know about Putin’s decision.” After briefly mentioning Russia’s demands concerning NATO, the article notes that “Western leaders have rejected those demands. They say the Kremlin cannot be allowed an effective veto on Kyiv’s foreign policy decisions and have defended NATO’s ‘open-door policy,’ which grants any European nation the right to ask to join.”

      The Western position relies on accepting a basic principle of international law as it is understood in the age of the nation-state: the notion of sovereignty. The Cambridge dictionary defines it as “ the power of a country to control its own government” and alternatively as “the power or authority to rule.” The Oxford Public International Law website, in its first paragraph, notes, with considerably more precision, that “sovereignty, ie of supreme authority within a territory, is a pivotal principle of modern international law. What counts as sovereignty depends on the nature and structure of the international legal order and vice-versa.” In other words, the concept contains a lot of ambiguity.

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      In paragraph 156 of the same article, thousands of words later, we discover that the preceding 155 paragraphs have not clarified the issue. “Difficult questions,” it concludes, “pertain to the localization of the co-originality between international standards of human rights and democracy and hence to the relationship between them when either of them or both have their sources in international law.” In other words, as any well-informed farmer in Iowa might say, it just ain’t that easy to draw any cut-and-dried conclusions.

      East Coast American jurists have, nevertheless, decided that on the question of NATO, Ukraine’s sovereignty — even after the Minsk accords, which, as Putin complains, have never been truly applied — includes the right to select the partners with which it wishes to ally. The lawyers are technically correct to note that if Russia succeeded in preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, that would be a breach of Ukrainian sovereignty. Al Jazeera describes it as giving Russia “an effective veto.” 

      The Russians see it differently. And the Americans would probably secretly agree. As a member of NATO, nations compromise their sovereignty by giving the alliance — clearly led by the US — an “effective veto” in many facets of their own security policy, even, to some extent, in their internal politics. But none of that is official. It is merely “effective.” The European nations, especially France and Germany, have discovered and begun reacting to the nature of that effective veto. There have been signs that they are beginning to champ at the bit. But in the current crisis, they have agreed to remain in line. 

      Depending on how the crisis plays out, the stirrings of a movement toward the independence of Europe’s security with regard to the US are likely to grow into a serious project. Those stirrings were first prompted by Donald Trump’s ambiguous attitude toward NATO and hostile attitude toward Europe. More recently, French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed the idea forward, specifically in response to the growing Ukraine crisis. 

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      There is no telling at this point in which direction the crisis will evolve. It could degenerate into a local struggle for power or it could implicate the political future of Ukraine and beyond. If it does spread beyond its current borders and if, as a further consequence, that aggravates an already existing energy crisis due to Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas, the current sense of solidarity with the US accepted by many European nations will be further weakened, if not shattered.

      For the moment, US President Joe Biden may be focused more on the kind of strongman posturing deemed necessary for improving the chances of the Democratic Party in November’s midterm elections At the same time, he is certainly hoping to keep Europe in tow inside NATO. But if things get out of control, and Biden’s posturing has already aggravated that risk, the United States may in the end lose the “effective veto” it has exercised for decades over everything that happens in Europe.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      How the G7 and UN Can Make Multilateralism Sustainable

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      “Progress towards an equitable world” is Germany’s goal for its G7 presidency program, which frames the G7 states as “leading industrialised countries and value-based partners” with a particular responsibility to “shape a positive future… in the spirit of sustainable economic recovery.”

      Clubs such as the G7 itself and the “climate club” envisaged by the German presidency are often able to make quicker decisions and act faster than more inclusive multilateral organizations such as the United Nations. Despite this, a speedboat, for all its pace and maneuverability, cannot cross the ocean on its own. So, too, the G7 cannot tackle any global challenges alone.

      Time for a Sober Look at the Ukraine Crisis

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      The German G7 presidency has thus announced in its program that it intends to forge close links with the UN and the G20 in particular, with the goal of achieving a “fair and rules-based multilateralism.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also underscored the importance of pioneering initiatives and partnerships within the framework of an “inclusive and networked multilateralism.”

      In his report, “Our Common Agenda,” building on the commitments in the declaration adopted by the member states on the occasion of the UN’s 75th  anniversary, Guterres develops numerous ideas for how to strengthen international cooperation. He calls for progress to be made wherever there are common interests.

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      So, is what belongs together growing together? Unfortunately not (yet), as the G7 program is rather abstract and dutiful in its references to the UN. However, the German G7 presidency has an opportunity to change this and implement shared priorities on a collective basis.

      Tether “Strong Alliances for a Sustainable Planet” to the UN

      Both the G7 and the UN are opting for pioneer projects and partnerships with non-governmental stakeholders, such as the COVAX vaccination drive and the G7 initiative for infrastructure projects in poor countries. It is positive to see the UN secretary-general not shying away from dealing with these formats and advocating for their greater use in order to implement global goals, most notably those of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris climate agreement. While many UN member states may support such partnerships, there is no agreement on this kind of multilateralism beyond mere inter-governmental relations.

      In order to achieve the greatest possible impact, it is important for the G7 that as many states as possible consider its initiatives to be beneficial and legitimate. To this end, it would be worthwhile to tether these initiatives institutionally to the UN system, which would ensure that partnerships meet human rights standards, are transparent in their design, monitored on an ongoing basis and further developed in line with the needs of the target groups.

      The UN secretary-general has proposed strengthening the existing UN Office for Partnerships, which is not currently in a position to carry out the aforementioned tasks. After the failure of earlier reform attempts, due not least to financing issues, digital solutions are now to be employed. The G7 should support the development of an effective UN hub and link its own initiatives through this hub. This could help the G7 generate acceptance and, at the same time, galvanize other partners. By subjecting partnerships to this kind of quality control, the UN could strengthen its central role in global governance.

      “Investing in a Better Future” — With the UN

      Like the German G7 presidency, the UN secretary-general places a particular focus in his report on future issues in conjunction with matters of justice. The world organization needs to become far better at avoiding shipwreck — that is the UN must respond more inclusively and justly to acute and future transnational crises. Developing greater strategic foresight, taking increased account of the interests of young people and future generations, and bringing key players together quickly in the event of the outbreak of new crises — these are the ambitious proposals for placing the UN further into the center of global problem-solving.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Here, too, the member states are divided when it comes to the increase in authority and knowledge for the UN that would go hand in hand with these measures. The issue of upgrading the UN is also contested within the G7 due to concerns about effectiveness and sovereignty and given the influence of states such as China and Russia.

      In view of overlapping interests with regard to major concerns for the future, the G7 should, nonetheless, insist upon pooling the existing capabilities of the UN system more effectively, while at the same time supporting the targeted development of the UN’s strategic capacities politically and financially. This can be done via voluntary contributions or, beneficially in some cases, the expansion of the regular budget. In 2021, the G7 committed in the Cornwall Consensus to make crisis management more effective and fair in the future. This year, the G7 should discuss the role of the United Nations in this.

      Currently, member states are discussing in the UN General Assembly which of the secretary-general’s proposals they intend to support, while preparation processes for the G7 summit are also underway. It is time to consider processes as one whole and bring them together for a future-proof multilateralism.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Time for a Sober Look at the Ukraine Crisis

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      Recent wars and crises show us how dangerous it can be when dishonest political elites unite with a powerful media to direct an uninformed public. It might be difficult to comprehend the combination. But unfortunately, even tragically, that’s exactly the combination that enabled wars to be launched in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and is now being used in the case of Ukraine.

      The West’s Middle Eastern Playbook

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      Remember the Gulf of Tonkin lie? It cost more than 3 million Vietnamese their lives, murdered in cold blood, using the most lethal weapons American war industry could produce and sell. An identical modus operandi was used as recently as 2003 to start the Iraq War. The lies about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs cost the lives of a million Iraqis, and counting. Last year, the US finally drew the curtain on its 20-year war in Afghanistan, at a cost of over $2.3 trillion and nearly 50,000 civilian lives. How is that possible? Because the public is ignorant and, therefore, easily fooled by decision-makers and powerful media.

      Same Playbook

      It’s the same playbook, again and again. The media refocus public attention from a country to a specific individual, presenting them as a bogeyman from whom the people are to be liberated. Now the war is not against a nation in which millions will die but against an individual. It’s easy to turn your ignorant people against one person. In Vietnam, it was Ho Chi Minh, in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar and his Taliban, and Hussein in Iraq.

      Take a look at the Ukrainian crisis: The conflict is not with Russia — it’s with Vladimir Putin. The narrative is, will Putin invade? Why is Putin amassing his — not Russia’s — army? The Russian president is the new bogeyman. And what do the nice people at NATO want? Just freedom for Ukraine to join NATO, which incidentally includes Kyiv’s right to allow NATO armies to amass on its territory, on Russia’s doorstep. How could there possibly be something wrong with that? Right? Wrong!

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      Here are some real thoughts for our domesticated friends on the other side of sobriety. It might even help free them from the confinements of their media and actually take a global, rather than a parochial, view of their problems.

      Suppose Ukraine, after joining NATO, becomes emboldened and decides to challenge Russia (or is it Putin?) in Donbas or Crimea? Both have a sizeable Russian population and, like all of Ukraine and Russia, were part of the former Soviet Union. What will NATO do? Trigger Article 5 and embark on a direct military confrontation against Russia on Ukraine’s side? Or will it unprecedentedly abandon a NATO member in war and risk breaking up the alliance, giving French President Emmanuel Macron’s description of NATO more credence?

      If war breaks out over Ukraine, as some never-seen-action, gung-ho rocking-chair warriors want, what will happen in Asia? What if China decides that the moment is right to take over Taiwan and the whole of the South China Sea? Will our Western warriors start a war with China while fighting Russia?

      In the Middle East, where Washington’s client states are on the run, will they be able to rely on American protection, which they desperately seem to need despite hundreds of billions spent on military hardware? What will happen if their regional adversaries decide to go full scale on them, creating a wider conflict across the Arab world because all hell has broken loose in Europe and the South China Sea?

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      And who is doing the actual saber-rattling? The leadership of major European countries — the front-line states — is scared, not by Russia invading Ukraine but of their own Anglo-Saxon war-mongering allies in London and Washington. The Europeans realize that these are the same people who pushed the world to disastrous wars repeatedly, killing countless millions but losing each one of these conflicts — unless, of course, the purpose of war is exclusively to kill and destroy.

      Trusting these same people with decisions of war and peace is like using the same failed mindset and same failed plan but hoping for different results. This has never worked. It will never work.

      Sitting on a Powder Keg

      These are realistic scenarios in a world sitting on a powder keg with everyone wanting to redraw geopolitical maps. Are these global ramifications even considered in the West? Does the public in the West even know or understand these global realities? The media there are busy entertaining the public with war scenarios and military hardware. No one is telling them that if the war starts; we will know where and when it started, but we won’t know where or when it will stop. Of course, we will be able to estimate how destructive it will be, assuming that it still matters.

      The path to war is littered with bravado, brinkmanship and ego. We then lose control of events, and all that is required is a spark, or a single bullet, like the one that murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand and created an uncontrollable chain reaction leading to a war that killed 40 million people.

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      Following the fall of the Soviet Union, we drifted from a bipolar world that maintained decades of no major wars to a destructive unipolar system of unstoppable wars and invasions. With the reemergence of Russia and the rise of China, we now see a tripolar world in the making, with a number of regional superpowers such as India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey coming into their own. There is no going back on this.

      Attempts to prevent others from rising will only result in destructive wars. The sooner our friends across the big pond recognize and learn to coexist with that new world order, the better it is for everyone. This is not to say their time is up, rather that time has come to share power, and they must accept that new reality. The alternative is disastrous. Germany tried to control the world and become its dictator. We know how that ended. Lessons learned — time for sobriety.

      And here is a thought: Taking one’s nation to the edge of the cliff requires brinkmanship. Taking a step back requires leadership. 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      What Would Helsinki 2.0 Look Like Today?

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      The European security order has broken down. You might think that’s an overstatement. NATO is alive and well. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe is still functioning at a high level.

      Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world — in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992 — have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

      In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake

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      So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise and the status quo will be restored.

      Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.

      The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a budget of $3 billion and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.

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      Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.

      And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds East and West together in the tenuous OSCE. Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.

      Presently, there are no arms control negotiations between East and West. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a decade ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further behind since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.

      So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps sometime soon.

      So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe. What we need is Helsinki 2.0.

      The Origins of Helsinki 1.0

      In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.

      “Betrayal!” said one of them. “Appeasement!” said another. Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

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      I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time, I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.

      As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

      At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region — the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia — and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.

      Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proved otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And, ultimately, it would be human rights — rather than war or economic sanctions — that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.

      After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly, that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first Eastern European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security — my first contribution to Foreign Policy in Focus back in 1996 was a critique of expansion — but logic took a backseat to appetite.

      The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.

      This brings us to the current impasse. The OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a special monitoring mission to assess the ceasefire there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.

      The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?

      Toward Helsinki 2.0

      The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise. That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.

      As I argue in a new article in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”

      The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis — or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in the melting Arctic — the Putin administration change its tune last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

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      There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy — as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.

      What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.

      Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in American-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.

      As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage — through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile attitude toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.

      The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado

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      In the prelude to World War I, Western nation-states, from North America to the Urals, found themselves involved in a strange game nobody really understood. It turned around their perception of each nation’s individual image on the world stage. Each nation imagined itself as wielding a form of geopolitical power whose hierarchy was impossible to define.

      Even the borders of nations, the ultimate criterion for defining a nation-state, had become hard to understand. The idea of each nation was built on a mix of geographical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and ideological considerations. These became infinitely complicated by shifting relationships of dependency spawned by the dominant colonial model they all accepted as normal. And not just normal. Colonialism appeared to both Europeans and Americans as an ideal to aspire to.

      Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

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      Two world wars in the first half of the 20th century had the effect of seriously calming the obsession of Western nations with their individual images. For most of the nation-states emerging from the Second World War, an air of humility became the dominant mood. Two hegemons emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union. But even those powerhouses accepted to work within the framework of an idealized system, the United Nations. That forced them to respect, at least superficially, a veneer of outward humility. The Cold War’s focus on ideologies — capitalism vs. communism — served to hide the fact that the new hegemons were the last two political entities authorized to assert the geopolitical power associated with the previous century’s colonial nation-states.

      The current showdown between the US and Russia over events at the Ukrainian border shows signs of a return to the ambience that preceded the First World War. The Soviet Union disappeared 30 years ago, leaving a weak Russian state in its stead. The US has been on a steep decline for two decades since the confusion created on 9/11.

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      That should signify the existence of an opportunity for non-hegemonic nation-states to reemerge and potentially vie for influence on the world stage, as they did before World War I. After a century of adaptation to the consumer society on a global scale, however, the similarities may only be an illusion. 

      Still, some people appear to believe in an idea definitively discarded by history. The New York Times’ take on the latest posturing of Great Britain proves that the illusion is still alive in some people’s heads. In recent days, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been diligently seeking to drag his isolated, Brexited nation into the fray of Eastern European border disputes, conjuring up reminiscences of pre-1914 Europe.  

      Over the weekend, British intelligence spread the “intelligence” that President Vladimir Putin is seeking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. Times reporter Mark Lander cites unnamed “British officials” who “cast it as part of a concerted strategy to be a muscular player in Europe’s showdown with Russia — a role it has played since Winston Churchill warned of an ‘Iron Curtain’ after World War II.”

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Muscular player:

      An actor or performer whose wardrobe and makeup teams have the ability to turn the player into an image of Atlas or Hercules during a performance on a stage

      Contextual Note

      In the games that precede a major military conflagration, nations feel compelled to adopt attitudes that go well beyond their ability to perform. Lander quotes Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of a think tank in London, who explains that Johnson’s Britain “is differentiating itself from Germany and France, and to some extent, even the U.S.” He adds this pertinent observation: “That comes out of Brexit, and the sense that we have to define ourselves as an independent middle power.”

      There’s much that is pathetic in this observation. In a totally globalized economy, it is reasonable to doubt the idea of a “middle power” has any meaning, at least not the meaning it once had. Outside of the US and China, Russia may be the only remaining middle power, because of two things. First, its geography, its sheer landmass and its future capacity to dominate the Arctic. Second, its military capacity carried over from the Soviet era. The rest of the world’s nations, whether middle or small, should not even be called powers, but “powerlessnesses,” nations with no hope of exercising power beyond their borders. Alongside the middle and small, there may also be two or three “major” powerless nations: India, Brazil and Australia.

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      But, of course, the most pathetic aspect of the description of Britain’s ambition is the fact that Johnson’s days as prime minister appear to be numbered. He is already being hauled over the coals by his own party for his impertinent habit of partying during a pandemic. 

      In a press conference in Kyiv on February 1, Johnson deployed his most muscular rhetoric. For once finding himself not just on the world stage but in the eye of the hurricane, he felt empowered to rise to the occasion. “This is a clear and present danger,” he solemnly affirmed. “We see large numbers of troops massing, we see preparations for all kinds of operations that are consistent with an imminent military campaign,”

      The hollowness of Johnson’s discourse becomes apparent with his use of the expression, “clear and present danger,” a locution that derives from a US Supreme Court case concerning the limits on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase in his draft of the majority decision in 1919. It became a cliché in American culture, even reaching the distinction of providing the title of a Hollywood action movie based on a Tom Clancy novel.

      As for his analysis of the clear and present danger, Johnson, who studied the classics at Oxford but maybe missed Aristotle, seems to ignore the logical inconsistency of assuming that if A (military buildup) is consistent with B (a military campaign), it does not make B predictable and even less “imminent.” That, however, is the line the Biden administration has been pushing for weeks. Johnson’s abject adherence to it may be a sign of the fact that Johnson is incapable of doing what Chalmers claimed he was trying to do: differentiate Britain — even “to some extent” — from the US.

      Historical Note

      The Times’ Mark Lander is well aware of the hyperreal bravado that explains Johnson’s move. “The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure,” Lander writes, “which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”

      Lander goes on to cite Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, eager to remind people of the historical logic of Johnson’s move. She refers to a British tradition rife with cloaks and daggers. “Where the Russians are concerned, you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum.” She wants us to think back to Britain’s active participation in the Cold War, punctuated by an occasionally embarrassing episode such as the 1961 Profumo affair, starring model and escort Christine Keeler. But she knows that what best illustrates that glorious period for Britain in its holy struggle against the Soviet Union is James Bond, who has long been “at the forward end” of the Hollywood spectrum. In our hyperreal world, Pierce knows that fiction will always dominate and replace our understanding of reality. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      We need to ask another question in a world conditioned by the image of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Does the world really need muscular players today? The ancient Greeks imagined Heracles as a naturally muscular hero, who built up his bulk through his deeds, not through his workouts in the gym or to prepare for body-building competitions. Heracles was about killing lions with his bare hands, slaying Hydras, capturing bulls, and even cleaning stables — that is, getting things done. For the Greeks, Heracles was a muscular being, not a muscular player. 

      When Greek playwrights actually put Heracles on the stage, he could be tragic (Euripides, “The Tragedy of Herakles”) or comic (Aristophanes, “The Frogs”). In that sense, Arnold Schwarzenegger, from “Conan the Barbarian” to “Twins,” fits the role. The difference is that Heracles was a deity (the son of Zeus with the mortal Alcmene) and, thanks to the completion of his seven labors, became a god on Mount Olympus. When Schwarzenegger completed his labors as a muscular player in more than seven films, he became a Republican politician in California.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Britain’s Still Got It

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      Since Brexit in 2016, the United Kingdom’s growth rate has been poor. Inflation is at its highest rate in 30 years. In December 2021, it had risen to 5.4%. Wages have failed to keep up and, when we factor in housing or childcare costs, the cost of living has been rising relentlessly.

      COVID-19 has not been kind to the economy. Rising energy prices are putting further pressure on stretched household budgets. To stave off inflation, the Bank of England is finally raising interest rates, bringing an end to the era of cheap money. Payroll taxes are supposed to go up in April to repair public finances.

      Has Britain Achieved a Post-Racial Politics?

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      The Resolution Foundation is predicting that “spiralling energy prices will turn the UK’s cost-of-living crisis into a catastrophe” by spring. The UK’s 2022 budget deficit will be larger than all its G-7 peers except the US. The beleaguered Boris Johnson government finds itself in a bind. At a time of global inflation, it has to limit both public borrowing and taxes. Unsurprisingly, there is much doom and gloom in the air.

      We Have Seen This Movie Before

      Since the end of World War II, the UK has experienced many crises of confidence. One of the authors move to the country in 1977. Back then, the Labour Party was in power. James Callaghan was prime minister, having succeeded Harold Wilson a year earlier. The British economy was the fifth-largest in the world but was buffeted by crises. In 1976, the government had approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when, in the words of Richard Roberts, “Britain went bust.”

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      From 1964 to 1967, the United Kingdom experienced “a continuous sterling crisis.” In fact, the UK was “the heaviest user of IMF resources” from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. The 1973 oil crisis spiked energy costs worldwide and pushed the UK into a balance of payments crisis. Ironically, it was not the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher but Labour led by Callaghan that declared an end to the postwar interpretation of Keynesian economics.

      In his first speech as prime minister and party leader at the Labour Party conference at Blackpool, Callaghan declared: “We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour, that option no longer exists.” After this speech, the Callaghan government started imposing austerity measures.

      Workers and unions protested, demanding pay rises. From November 1978 to February 1979, strikes broke out across the UK even as the country experienced its coldest winter in 16 years. This period has come to be known as the Winter of Discontent, a time “when the dead lay unburied” as per popular myth because even gravediggers went on strike.

      In 1979, Thatcher won a historic election and soon instituted economic policies inspired by Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian rival of the legendary John Maynard Keynes. Thatcher’s victory did not immediately bring a dramatic economic turnaround. One major industry after another continued to collapse. Coal mines closed despite a historic strike in 1984-85. Coal, which gave work to nearly 1.2 million miners in 1920 employed just 1,000 a century later.

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      Throughout the 1970s, the UK was dubbed “the sick man of Europe.” People forget now that a key reason the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 was to make the economy more competitive. Between 1939 and the early 1990s, London lost a quarter of its population. Yet London and indeed the UK recovered from a period of crisis to emerge as a dynamic economy. Some credit Thatcher but there were larger forces at play.

      There Is Life in the Old Dog Yet

      Last week, one of the authors met an upcoming politician of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A strong nationalist, he spoke about the importance of Hindi, improving India’s defense and boosting industrial production. When the conversation turned to his daughter, he said that he was sending her to London to do her A-levels at a top British school.

      This BJP leader is not atypical. Thousands of students from around the world flock to the UK’s schools and universities. British universities are world-class and train their students for a wide variety of roles. Note that the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca were able to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with impressive speed. This vaccine has since been released to more than 170 countries. This is hardly surprising: Britain has four of the top 20 universities in the world — only the US has a better record.

      Not only students but also capital flocks to the UK. As a stable democracy with strong rule of law, the United Kingdom is a safe haven for those seeking stability. It is not just the likes of Indian billionaires, Middle Eastern sheikhs and Russian oligarchs who put their wealth into the country. Numerous middle-class professionals choose the UK as a place to live, work and do business in. Entrepreneurs with a good idea don’t have to look far to get funding. Despite residual racism and discrimination, Britain’s cities have become accustomed to and comfortable with their ethnic minorities.

      Alumni from top universities and skilled immigrants have skills that allow the UK to lead in many sectors. Despite Brexit, the City of London still rivals Wall Street as a financial center. Companies in aerospace, chemical and high-end cars still make the UK their home. British theater, comedy, television, news media and, above all, football continue to attract global attention.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Napoleon Bonaparte once purportedly called the UK “a nation of shopkeepers.” There is an element of truth to this stereotype. The British are a commercially savvy, entrepreneurial and business-friendly bunch. One author knows a dealer who trades exclusively in antique fans and a friend who specializes in drinks that you can have after a heavy night. The other has a friend who sells rare Scotch whiskey around the world and an acquaintance who is running a multibillion insurance company in India. Many such businesses in numerous niches give the British economy a dynamism and resilience that is often underrated. Everything from video gaming (a £7-billion-a-year industry) to something as esoteric as antique fan dealing continues to thrive.

      The UK also has the lingering advantage of both the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. Infrastructure and assets from over 200 years ago limit the need for massive capital investment that countries like Vietnam or Poland need. Furthermore, the UK has built up managerial experience over multiple generations. Thanks to the empire, English is the global lingua franca and enables the University of Cambridge to make money through its International English Language Testing System. Barristers and solicitors continue to do well thanks to the empire’s export of common law. Even more significantly, British judges have a reputation for impartiality and independence: they cannot be bribed or coerced. As a result, the UK is the premier location for settling international commercial disputes.

      In 1977, the UK was the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2022, 45 years later, it is still fifth, although India is projected to overtake it soon. The doom and gloom of the 1970s proved premature. The same may prove true in the 2020s. The economy faces a crisis, but it has the strength and track record to bounce back. The UK still remains a jolly good place to study, work, invest and live in.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Dissecting the Ukraine Crisis (Language and the News – Updated Daily)

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      As we announced in January, by highlighting the everyday abuses of the language of public personalities and the media, Fair Observer’s new running feature prolongs the four-year-old tradition of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary (now reduced to a weekly format). We will frequently add new items to the month’s entries. Each item will cite an occurrence in the news and add a short reflection focusing on its intended and unintended meaning.

      We invite readers to join us and submit their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 1: Multiple Audiences

      CNN reports that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is feeling some discomfort in the face of US President Joe Biden’s eagerness to create panic around the idea of a Russian threat. Zelensky himself describes Russia’s actions as “dangerous but ambiguous.”

      “Earlier in the day, another source from the US side said there is a recognition in the White House that Zelensky has ‘multiple audiences’ and is trying to balance them. ‘On the one hand, he wants assistance, but he has to assure his people he has the situation under control. That’s a tricky balance.’”

      Though the source cited only two of the audiences, there are certainly a few others that were not mentioned. It could be said that nearly every relatively powerless country has at least two audiences: its people and whatever hegemonic power has decided to support it. The United States is by far the most prolific hegemonic “audience” of countries across the globe, though some fear China may surreptitiously catch up. The idea of being an audience, of course, implies an attitude of listening attentively, usually through the hegemon’s diplomats but just as significantly, through its spies.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Fair Observer’s Language and the News feature seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Understanding Russia’s Logic Vis-à-Vis Ukraine

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      When it comes to Russia’s troop deployment near the Ukrainian border, many Western governments are left wondering whether the escalation is merely intended to underpin Moscow’s demands for an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and the withdrawal of NATO and US troops and military infrastructure from eastern member states.

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      However, it cannot be excluded that the failure of the talks with the US and NATO on security guarantees has been calculated by Moscow from the outset in order to justify an intervention in Ukraine that was being planned regardless. The Russian leadership is deliberately playing on strategic ambivalence to complicate Western decision-making. It criticizes reports about a possible Russian invasion as a Western conspiracy theory, but at the same time, it brings a military response into play should the talks with the US and NATO fail.

      In this way, Moscow is trying to further polarize the Russia debate in Europe and make a unified European and transatlantic response more difficult.

      Russia’s Military Logic

      Against this backdrop, it is worth taking a look at the Kremlin’s previous pattern of using the Russian military as a foreign policy tool. From this, conclusions can be drawn regarding the Kremlin’s cost-benefit calculations. First, the military show of force represents a firmly established instrument of Russian coercive diplomacy. For example, President Vladimir Putin achieved the first summit meeting with US President Joe Biden in May 2021 after moving Russian troops to the border with Ukraine.

      Second, Putin had kept Russia’s previous military interventions limited, either with regard to the duration or in terms of the number of forces deployed. In this way, he avoided causing resentment among the Russian population due to high casualty figures or massive economic costs.

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      Third, there has been only one case of military intervention leading to the annexation of territory — the conquest of Crimea in 2014, a mixture of military surprise, acceptable political and economic sanctions, and domestic mobilization potential that allowed Putin to raise his previously plummeting approval ratings to new heights.

      It cannot automatically be assumed that the previous logic for the military use of power will continue to apply unaltered. However, there are not yet sufficient indications that it has fundamentally changed. Based on this logic, three scenarios can be identified as more likely among the options being discussed in the media.

      How Will the Situation Develop?

      First, it is in line with previous logic to view the deployment on the border with Ukraine as part of a coercive diplomacy strategy to influence the US and NATO to make substantial concessions. The military exercise with Belarus scheduled for February is intended to increase pressure in the short term, given the stalled negotiations. If the talks fail, there is a risk of escalation. With its demands for a complete revision of the existing Euro-Atlantic security architecture, Russia’s leadership risks running into a trap of its own making and losing the possibility of a face-saving solution.

      Moscow regards the negotiations being offered by the US and NATO on arms control and confidence and security-building measures as merely complementary to its demands, not as a substitute for them.

      Second, Moscow could further underpin its coercive diplomacy by permanently deploying Russian troops in Belarus. As a result, Russia would be in a better position to close the so-called Suwalki gap — a strategically important land corridor between Poland and Lithuania — and thus cut the Baltic states’ connection to the rest of NATO. Moreover, with a permanent military presence in Belarus, Russia could make its threat of a major invasion of Ukraine more credible.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Since the stationing of Russian troops requested by Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko would not constitute a hostile incursion, Moscow would not be subject to political and economic sanctions, but it would have to expect increased military reassurance measures from NATO for the eastern member states.

      A third scenario is an open incursion by Russian troops into the separatist-controlled part of the Donbas region. The number of Russian soldiers massed on the border gives credibility to this version of events. The military costs for Moscow would be low, since pro-Russian forces and covertly deployed Russian soldiers already control the area. Russia would face sanctions from Western countries, but these would be limited compared to a full-scale invasion. To be sure, no surge of approval for Putin comparable to the one that followed the Crimean annexation is to be expected.

      Chain of Legitimacy

      However, a chain of legitimacy for the invasion could easily be constructed. In recent months, some 600,000 residents of Donbas have obtained Russian passports. The deployment of armed forces abroad is permitted under Russian legislation in order to protect Russian citizens against an armed attack. Some pretexts that could be used by Moscow for these actions include statements made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about wanting to retake the separatist areas and false flag terrorist attacks by supposedly Ukrainian or Western forces.

      According to the logic so far, Russia is not expected to annex Donbas but to recognize it as an independent entity. An initiative to this effect is already being prepared by the Communist Party of Russia, which is loyal to the Kremlin. By taking this step, Moscow would lose the opportunity to gain a political veto position in Ukraine by granting Donbas autonomous status. However, it is no longer putting much hope in it.

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      With an open military intervention in Donbas, Russia would also put Zelenskiy in a precarious domestic and foreign policy position, in which he would lose room for maneuver and credibility between the demands for a military response and the warnings not to let the situation escalate. This would also further polarize the Western states.

      All other military scenarios — from the establishment of a land bridge to Crimea to the occupation of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast or other parts of the country — cannot be ruled out. However, they would then be associated with significantly higher military and economic costs as well as domestic political risks. This would be a clear sign that the Kremlin’s calculations have fundamentally changed.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More