Cyprus Mail
CM Regular Columnist

Russia’s point of no return

french president and centrist lrem party candidate for re election macron campaigns in charente maritime
President Emmanuel Macron

It seems ages ago that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin published a letter in the New York Times over the head of the US administration appealing directly to the American people for the US not to go war in Syria.

It was September 11, 2013, and Syria had allegedly used poison gas and America and Britain were poised to remove the Assad regime from power in Syria without UN Security Council authorisation.

The letter was probably written by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, but it went out in Putin’s name and had his imprimatur – his dogma if you like against wars of aggression.

In view of Putin’s personal decision to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022 what the American president should have done last week instead of calling for regime change in Russia was to hoist Putin with his own petard.

Here’s a summary of Putin’s letter. He recalled that at the end of World War II Russia and the US set up a new world order under the UN to avoid the devastation of wars of aggression contrary to the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force unless authorised by the UN Security Council.

President Putin thought the right to veto in the Security Council was a guarantee of consensus in the use of force and an essential part of the UN regime that had replaced the League of Nations.

He condemned war without Security Council authorisation, which he thought constituted an act of aggression. He argued that the potential strike on Syria was opposed by many countries and was likely to spread instability in the region and scupper the Iran nuclear deal that was in the pipeline at the time.

President Putin said that the war in Syria was not a struggle for democracy nor one between good and evil that it had been presented in the West. Crucially, Putin claimed that Russia was not protecting the Syrian government but upholding international law.

He conceded there was no doubt poison gas had been used in Syria but not by the Syrian government. It had been used, he said, as a provocation for intervention by the West. He complained that US intervention in internal disputes globally had become common place and that civilian casualties were inevitable however well targeted or sophisticated the weaponry the US deployed.

Upholding international law was crucial he said because if states cannot rely on international law that could lead to nuclear proliferation since if you have the bomb no one can touch you.

He pleaded with the American people for the US to stop using the language of force and follow the path of civilised diplomatic and political settlement and take up Syria’s offer to decommission her chemical arsenal.

Finally, he had a go at President Obama’s claim to American exceptionalism. He said it was dangerous for countries to believe they are exceptional. There are big countries and small countries. Rich and poor. There are those with long democratic traditions and those finding their way to democracy. Countries are different with different policies, but they are all equal in God’s eyes.

If you substitute Ukraine for Syria and Russia for America the condemnation of aggressive war applies with minor adjustments to Russia’s so called special military operation in Ukraine. The devastation of Mariupol in Ukraine is proof that the invasion of Ukraine was the result of the madness that gripped the Kremlin on February 24, 2022 that is alien to the Putin dogma exemplified in his letter to the American people.

There is, however, method to the madness President Putin unleashed on Ukraine. The madness is clear enough; no leader invades another country and destroys its cities and its infrastructure just because it aspires to join Nato and the EU many years from now. That’s just madness pure and simple.

The method in the madness of Putin, however, is more complex and requires an understanding of Russian history in the region that is unfortunately beyond the intellectual grasp of the US president and the current crop of leaders in Britain and the EU with the notable exception of President Emmanuel Macron of France who instantly distanced himself from President Biden’s rant last week calling for the removal of the Russian leader.

Megaphone insults hurled at President Putin is no way to conduct foreign policy at a time of crisis involving a nuclear superpower like Russia. As Theodore Roosevelt said famously many years ago the trick is to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Presidents Macron of France and Erdogan of Turkey have both kept lines of communications open and talk softly to Putin. Talking softly to Russia so as not to push her beyond the point of no return has much to commend it. Treating Russia as a leper state is not conducive to peace and is damaging the world economy and people across the world who can least afford it.

For anyone wishing to understand the place of Crimea in the Russian psyche and a deeper understanding of Russian policy in the Black Sea region than the fog of war wrought by the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine currently allows, Orlando Figes’ Crimea on the history of Russia’s involvement in Crimea and its neighbours is essential reading.

The fault lines around Ukraine and the disputed peninsula in Crimea south of Ukraine have existed since the Crimean war of 1854-56 when Russia fought against the Ottoman Empire supported by Britain and France.

Russia lost nearly half a million men in the Crimean war and the defence of Sevastopol in particular left its mark in the Russian psyche even though Russia lost the battle. Two of Russia’s greatest writers, Leon Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky fought in that war and wrote about what it meant to the Russian people, and as one nationalist poet wrote after the collapse of Soviet Russia:

On the ruins of our superpower

There is a major paradox of history

Sevastopol – the city of Russian glory –

Is outside Russian territory.

Vladimir Putin reversed that in 2014 and thereafter was driven by a logic that the history, geography, culture and language of the region are unique and that a Ukraine not joined at the hip with Russia as it was in Soviet times should not seek to join a military alliance that deems Russia its perennial enemy.

 

 

Alper Ali Riza is a queen’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge 

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