Guns of August II
Israel Shamir
Cease-fire and its reasons
The piping-hot stage of the
Ukraine crisis was over with signing of Minsk cease-fire agreement. It
is far from clear how long the cease-fire will last, and whether it will
morph into stable peace; still this pause provides a chance to review
policies and strategies of the sides. The first part of this essay dealt
with the Ukrainian crisis up to the Boeing incident. I wrote there of
lacklustre achievements of the rebels and concluded that “without direct
Russian involvement, a separatist movement in Novorussia was doomed to
fail.”
After the Boeing disaster, the
Russians have made peace in Ukraine their priority. Paradoxically, this
called for more Russian involvement. From the beginning, State
Department claims notwithstanding, Putin did not want the war in the
Ukraine, and still less he wanted a war with Ukraine. He would prefer
the Ukraine remain neutral and friendly. This dish was not on the menu
as the US intended to fight Russia by Ukrainian hands, or at least, to
strengthen its hold over Europe by using Russian scarecrow. Still Putin
procrastinated hoping things will sort out.
He miscalculated: he did not
count on Poroshenko’s military ardour, on the new Kiev ruler’s readiness
to inflict huge civilian casualties and to sacrifice his own army. This
was unexpected development – after peaceful transition of Crimea, Putin
could expect Kiev will honour Donbass desires. Putin could not leave
Donbass in flames and forget about it. One million refugees from Ukraine
already crossed into Russia; continuation of Kiev’s war in Donbass could
dislodge up to five million refugees, too much for Russia to swallow.
Putin was ready to negotiate
with Poroshenko and achieve a peaceful settlement; Poroshenko refused.
The low-level support for Donbass rebels was not sufficient to change
the rules of the game and force Poroshenko to negotiate. This called for
a limited victory, at the price of some Russian involvement.
It appears that the
“involvement” rapidly changed the situation. Facing defeat at seaport
city of Mariupol, Kiev accepted Putin’s proposals. Did the involvement
amount to invasion? I have no access to the secrets of state, but I’ll
share with you what I have heard and seen and understood.
First, compare Russia to Vietnam
of fifty years ago.
- Vietnam was divided into
North and South by the West, like the USSR was divided into Ukraine
and Russia by the West.
- North Vietnam became
independent; Russia became independent;
- South Vietnam remained
under occupation, Ukraine remained under Western occupation.
- People of South Vietnam
rose against their US-installed government and North Vietnam
certainly supported their struggle.
- The US presented the war as
“North Vietnamese aggression”, but North and South Vietnam weren’t
two independent states; this was one state artificially separated
by the West.
- Likewise, the US presents
now the war in Ukraine as “Russian intervention”, but Russia and
Ukraine aren’t two fully independent countries; they are rather two
halves of one country, in the eyes of Russians and Ukrainians. In
their view, people of the Ukraine rose against the US-installed
government, and independent Russia had to support their struggle.
People of my generation remember
as the US killed millions of Vietnamese people, bombed their cities and
ruined their nature – under the banner of “resisting North Vietnamese
aggression” but it ended by unification of Vietnam. Poroshenko is a Ngo
Dinh Diem of the Ukraine, Putin is an unlikely Ho Chi Minh of Russia.
Actual Russian involvement took
form of (1) providing equipment and training for the Novorussia forces,
like the US trained the Syrian rebels in Jordan, and (2) allowing some
Russian officers to take leave from their duties and join the rebel
forces on the voluntary basis. The Russia-trained and equipped rebel
units fortified by some Russian officers, weren’t quite up to scratch as
regular army goes; their enthusiasm made up for the lack of skill. Kiev
regime estimated the whole Russian military presence in the Ukraine at
one thousand men; a negligible amount in comparison with 50,000 troops
of Kiev regime and 30,000 of the main rebel forces, but it made the
difference. Even more important was (3) strategic command and advice
provided by retired planners of the Russian General Staff.
I’ve been told by people on the
ground that the Novorussian military leader Colonel Strelkov (I
described him in Part One) had no previous experience of commanding
big-scale operations, and despite his personal courage he could not
successfully lead a force of 30 thousand men. Apparently he was asked to
leave the command to more experienced professionals. These first-class
military planners rapidly improved the situation by stabilizing the link
between Russia and the rebel-held enclave. The Kiev army has been pushed
away from the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk.
An additional rebel force
crossed the old Russian-Ukrainian border far to the south of Donetsk and
closed on Mariupol, an important city and port on the Sea of Azov. The
lightening speed of the Mariupol attack changed the equilibrium on the
ground. Now the rebels could proceed for Melitopol, eventually heading
for Kakhovka, a place of ferocious battles of the Civil war in 1919. If
they were to take Kakhovka, they would be able to secure the whole of
Novorussia or even retake Kiev. This development proved to Poroshenko
that he needs a cease fire. He agreed to the Minsk formula and the
armistice took place. The rebels were upset by the armistice as they
felt their victory was stolen from them, but they were convinced by the
Russians that it would be better to safeguard Donbass.
The sanctions
For the main antagonist of
Russia, the US, the cease-fire was a minor setback. Washington would
prefer the Russians of Russia and Ukraine to fight each other to death,
but it had to consider the weakness of Kiev forces. In 1991, at the
break-up of the USSR, the Ukraine has got a much better equipped and
much stronger army than Russia had, but twenty years of embezzlement
turned it into a feeble pushover. When the Kiev army will be beefed up
by Western mercenaries and by NATO soldiers, the war is likely to renew,
unless there will be a political settlement.
Meanwhile, the US applied
various means of economic warfare against Russia. These means are called
“sanctions”, though this word is misleading. “Sanctions” are acts of a
legitimate authority towards its subjects; such are Security Council
sanctions. The US and EU’s measures against Russia aren’t “sanctions”
but acts of war on Russia by economic means.
Some “sanctions” were aimed
against most powerful Russians in Putin’s inner circle. The idea was to
cause these strongmen to plot and get rid of the popular president. This
circle of sanctioned persons grew to include many parliamentarians and
businessmen, while the ordinary Russians took the sanctions in their
stride, or even enjoyed the discomfort they caused to the wealthy of the
land. Putin joked that EU travel bans on top legislators would leave
them more time to spend with their constituents. “The less time
officials and business leaders spend overseas and the more time they
spend dealing with current issues the better”, he said.
Other sanctions were aimed at
Russian economy: banks, credits were hit; the US allies were forbidden
to transfer advanced technology to Russia. Russians were used to this
treatment: in the Soviet days, it was called CoCom (Coordinating
Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), an embargo on advanced
technology supplies to the socialist countries. It was a powerful
obstacle to their development; if other countries could buy advanced
technology from, say, Japan, the Russians and Chinese had to steal it or
reinvent it. CoCom is one of the reasons for Soviets after WWII being
rather behind-the-times, in comparison with 1930s, when the Soviets
could and did buy the most advanced technology of its time. Apparently,
Obama resurrected CoCom; and this is the most serious threat to Russia
until now.
This will have a strong effect
in many ways, not only on Russia’s profits but on Russia’s thinking as
well. After 1991, Russia gave up many of its own industries, notably
aircraft and switched to buy Boeing or Airbus. Now they have to build
their own planes. Russia is fully integrated in Western banking and it
has billions of US securities at its account. Russia used its oil
profits to buy Dutch cheese, Polish apples, Italian wine, while
neglecting its own food production. Under Western sanctions, the
Russians are likely to back out of international cooperation and begin
to develop or resurrect their own industries and agriculture. This will
cost money; the social projects will suffer. The prosperity of the last
ten years is likely to vanish.
Russia sparingly applied
counter-sanctions. It discontinued importing foods from sanctioning
countries, thus applying pressure on European farmers. This measure is
likely to influence Europe. In France, for the first time ever, it can
bring Mme Le Pen of the Front National into the Palais de l'Élysée, as
both mainstream parties are equally beholden to the US. Finland,
Slovakia, Greece will ponder leaving the EU altogether. In Russia, its
pro-Western glittering and chattering class was quite upset with the
disappearance of oysters and parmesan cheese; the food prices rose all
over but slightly.
Sanctions after cease-fire
The Russians were bewildered by
the Western response of applying more sanctions despite the cease fire
in the Ukraine. Apparently, they thought and hoped to restore the
ante-bellum friendly co-existence with the US by giving up on the bulk
of Novorussia. The Russian ruling elites were ready to accept their
heavy strategic losses in the Ukraine and to live with it. But they
counted without the US, as Washington pushed for more sanctions.
Slowly, it transpires that for
the US administration, the Ukraine crisis just supplied a plausible
explanation and a trigger to attack Russia. To be on the safe side,
Obama has opened the Second Front against Russia in the Middle East;
ostensibly against the chimera of Caliphate, but it has another target.
ISIS (or ISIL, or IS, or Daish,
or Caliphate) is a neo-colonisation project for Syria and Iraq. The
technique is familiar: Anglo-Americans create a demon, nurture it to its
fullness and then destroy and take over the land. They created Hitler,
supported him, then demonised and destroyed him by Russian hands.
Germany remains an occupied country to this very day. Al-Qaeda was
created in 1980s to fight Russians in Afghanistan and later on it was
used to create the casus belli in 2001. Afghanistan is still occupied.
ISIS was created to fight Russians in Syria, and now it is being used to
bomb Iraq and Syria. At the end, the US will occupy and control the
whole Fertile Crescent, with Israel as its centrepiece. Some religiously
inclined persons may see it as fulfilment of the prophesy of
Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.
The Russians, like the Middle
Easterners, do not believe in the official story of saving the world
from the threat of ISIS. They remember that quite recently ISIS was
supposed to be a moderate force fighting for democracy against the
bloody tyrant. They think that the US uses its own toy monster to break
up Iraq, to create “independent” Kurdistan, to bomb Syria, to remove
Bashar al-Assad from power and lay a new gas pipeline from Qatar via
Kurdistan and Syria to Turkey and Europe, thus pushing Russia out of
European gas market altogether, to ensure Russia’s income dwindles and
the dangerous liaisons of Europeans with Russia are terminated.
Russians do not care for Islamic
takfiri extremists like everybody else, so they were surprised
that in the US pundits’ minds, there is a connection between ISIS and
Russia. Robert Whitcomb, the Wall Street Journal editor,
says in an essay called Wishful thinking about Putin and the
Islamic State that these two are somehow equal in their sheer
wickedness. “We might make fun of those Renaissance paintings in which
little devils skitter around. We don’t like to accept that there’s
something like evil in the world. But you look at something like the
Islamic State and the Putin regime and you realize that those people in
1500 were on to something.” (You won’t be surprised that Whitcomb hates
Islam and loves Israel, would you?)
Anne-Marie Slaughter, an
ex-State Department and a Professor at Princeton,
called for intervention in Syria to teach Russians a lesson. “The
solution to the crisis in Ukraine lies in part in Syria. Obama’s
climb-down from his threatened missile strikes against Syria last August
emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to annex Crimea. It is time
to change Putin’s calculations, and Syria is the place to do it. A US
strike against the Syrian government now would change the entire
dynamic. After the strike, the US, France, and Britain should ask for
the Security Council’s approval of the action taken, as they did after
NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Equally important, shots fired by
the US in Syria will echo loudly in Russia.”
In Russia, there are some voices
calling to support the US strikes in Syria. Important politicians and
parliamentarians propose to repeat 2001, when Russians supported the US
war on terror, despite its grim consequences. (Since 2001, Afghanistan
has been occupied by the US, and the traffic of drugs to Russia and
Europe increased twenty-fold). Actually, there are many pro-western
politicians in power in Russia, and especially in Russian media. Once,
the West had freedom of expression, while Soviet Russia spoke in one
voice. Now the positions has been reversed: Russia enjoys pluralism of
views and freedom of expression, while in the West, alternative views
exist on the margins of the public discourse.
Why the US is so keen on
subjugating Russia, provided that Russia is not punching above its
weight and is generally accommodating to the US demands? The US is
special, as this heir to the British Empire guided by Jewish spirit is
the only country ever possessing the unique, expensive and uncomfortable
desire to rule the whole of planet Earth. They view every independent
force in the universe as a challenge they can’t tolerate. They think
that Russia with its nuclear weapons and educated people can become too
strong and disobedient. Russia is a bad example for Europe, Japan,
China, India as these powers could strive for independence, as well.
Russia with its oil and gas can attempt to undermine the dollar status
as the world currency. Russian weapons could protect Iran and Syria from
American anger.
For these reasons, a war between
the US and its proxies and Russia seems very probable. Syria and Ukraine
are two perspective battlefields where the battle of will precedes the
battle of steel. The war may be conventional or nuclear, regional or
world-embracing. The alternative is the US’s full spectrum global
domination. Many Russians would prefer a war to this grim prospect.
Israel Shamir can be reached at
adam@israelshamir.net