WHY I DON'T TAKE SIDES IN THE WAR IN GAZA

 It may come as a surprise to readers of my geopolitics blog  that I have avoided - and will continue to avoid - taking sides in the conflict pitching Israelis against Palestinians in Gaza. 

The reasons are however quite simple. As a Romanian-Australian historian having specialised in Toulouse in international relations and geopolitics, my professional interests are exclusively focused on developments happening around Romania and, by extension, in Eurasia. This is why I have devoted most of my professional attention to the war in Ukraine in the past twenty months, as well as before that, since 2014. Sadly, Romania still has more than half a million ethnic Romanians living, or dying on the battlefields in Ukraine, and unfortunately it has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since February 2022. 

As Romania was for more than two decades a satellite of China during the Ceausescu regime, I have also paid special attention to China's spreading influence in Eastern Europe, before and after 1989.

By the same token, Russia was an important actor in the evolution of the Romanian principalities during the Middle Ages, as well as a leading power involved in the major developments affecting the history of the modern Romanian state since the unification in 1859. 

My professional interest in the major events happening within the EU has  deepened since 2007, when Romania was admitted as a member. 

My acquired knowledge of events from parts of the Arab world dates back to 2010-2011, when I was studying for my masters degree at Sciences Po in Toulouse. My research thesis then was concerned with the evolution of the EU's relations with the Maghreb countries. My thesis did not include research or references to events in the Mashreq ,nor did I acquire the necessary in-depth historical information about these areas.

After World War II, the US replaced European powers - the British and the French- in the Middle East, becoming its sole peace and security provider. Consequently, I have usually paid only scant attention to developments there. I have always considered it a huge mistake,for example,  and an illustration of his megalomania the fact that Ceausescu had cultivated political leaders from the Middle East, like Yasset Arafat , or that he tried - albeit unsuccessfully - to play the role of peacemaker between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A comparative analysis of the way major powers have governed the Arabs from the Middle East over the past few hundred years reveals the fact that the Ottomans were by far much more adept at keeping the peace among Arabs than the West has over the last  hundred years. Naturally, having the same religion as the Arabs in the Middle East or North Africa has helped the Ottoman Turks keep the peace in those regions until 1918 when the Sultanate imploded. Unfortunately, the skills of various Western administrators, including the Americans, were not up the task of keeping the Middle East stable and the Arabs pacified .

This above comment, however, should not be understood as an endorsement of President Erdogan's latest speech in Istanbul on behalf of the Palestinians from Gaza. Although his first decade in power was very successful, Erdogan has slowly but surely torpedoed his main achievements during his second decade at the helm. Trying to bask in the glory of his Ottoman predecessors, or of that of Kemal Ataturk, will not help the efforts to stabilise the Middle East or put an end to the conflict in Gaza. 

Who Are Ukraine's 'Palestinians' ?

 Last year in April I stumbled upon a project by Zelensky called the "Big Israel" which went largely overlooked by Western media until last week. A few days before the one-year anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, National Interest published an article by Leon Hadar about this outlandish project for post-war Ukraine.

Zelensky's " Big Israel" project advocates emulating Israel and building Ukraine up as a militarised nation, continuously at war with its internal and external enemies, i.e. mainly its Russophone citizens and Russia. Hadar considers that Zelensky's project has merit and he explains why:

'But the notion that Ukraine will try to be “like Israel” may not sound so farfetched. For instance, like the Jewish State, Ukraine enjoys wide public support among Americans and their representatives on Capitol Hill, who believe that the Ukrainians, like the Israelis, are “like them,” while the Russians, like the Arabs, are the detested “other.”

And, indeed, like in the case of Israel, Ukraine’s efforts to position itself as a natural ally of Washington, in both interests and values, has been accepted as a diplomatic axiom by powerful American foreign policy forces. Both Republican neoconservatives as well as many “conservative nationalists” on the political Right, and by liberal internationalists who dominate the thinking among Democrats, including the one currently occupying the White House, have come on board.'

One does not have to be an expert in international relations to realise how absurd and illogical such a project is. It is, however, revealing for the thinking that dominates  Kiev"s current political elite. For them, Western Ukrainians have much  in common with the Jews of Israel, whereas the Russophones from the Donbas region are viewed as Ukraine's equivalent of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and Ramallah.

The division of Ukraine along ethnic lines was envisaged first during the 1990s by Samuel Huntington, a valued National Interest contributor and leading national security expert. In truth, since Kiev refused the Minsk agreements, there just aren't any other solutions than the separation of the Donbas region inhabited by Russophones from the rest of Ukraine. 

This separation should not necessarily have caused a war, if the civilised parting of Czechia from Slovakia was any guide. Unfortunately, the Kiev regime knowingly preferred to emulate Yugoslavia's example in dealing with its internal ethnic strife. Worse still, it chose to involve the United States, which obviously saw an opportunity to advance their hegemonic agenda against Russia.

The project shows Zelensky and the other ministers or advisors of Jewish descent from his cabinet are trying to position Ukraine as America's 52nd state, immediately behind Israel. By putting an equal sign between Russia and the Arab countries in the Middle East and by forcing the Russophones of Ukraine to accept Kiev's rule, Zelensky hopes to position Ukraine geopolitically as the US's main outpost against its foe Russia in Europe.

The Jewish minority in today's Ukraine is minuscule. This large country cannot become a Jewish ethnic state in Europe, like Israel is in the Middle East. Indeed, Europe as a whole is unlikely to be fertile ground for the creation of such a huge US military outpost - potentially nuclearly armed - in its midst. Nor is Russia, with its old military tradition and its nuclear arms, willing to play the role of the Arabs for the US and Ukrainian military establishments. 

Although so far Zelensky's lobbying in Washington has proved lucrative, with the $130 billion already received, Ukraine is simply too big and situated in the wrong geopolitical region to be endlessly supported financially by the United States, as is the case with Israel. Last but not least, the Russophones from Donbas have demonstrated since 2014 that they resolutely reject the part of "European Palestinians" in this tragedy, directed by Zelensky on behalf of the Kiev regime.

Welcome to Europe's "Big Israel" !

updated: April 21, 2022

Before writing this post, I have waited for more than a week to see how the piece of news I am about to share with you is reported in the mainstream Western media. But, surprise: it wasn't. 

Zelensky's plans for Ukraine after the war are extremely significant for Russia and the EU alike, and as such they more than deserved to be brought to the attention of the Western public. After all, the EU and American citizens are regularly being called upon to finance Ukraine's war effort and to put up with the almost 5 million refugees in need of their help. As it happened, however, this piece of news got published only in the main Arab media, followed by the Jewish press from Israel or the US. 

Here goes. Commenting on Ukraine's future after the war, Zelensky intimated that the country is going to be remade - from a securitary point of view - in Israel's image. As he puts it, Ukraine is not going to be liberal as the rest of Europe, nor an authoritarian country like Russia. Instead, the "New Israel", as Zelensky calls it, is going to be a state in which armed military personnel patrol the streets, the restaurants, the supermarkets, cinemas and so on, in a constant state of alert. Zelensky does not want to sacrifice territory for peace and, given his future plans for Ukraine, one can now understand why: the "New Israel" would need its own version of the Gaza strip - the Donbas region - and its own Palestinians (the Russophones) to provoke, boss around and eventually kill when they rebel. 

At this point in time, Zelensky is not mentioning the possibility that his new state would acquire nuclear weapons, but the fact is implied in the comparison made with the state of Israel. What we are given to read between the lines is the fact that his new Ukrainian state will be at odds with both its eastern neighbour Russia and, ultimately, with the European Union, whose liberal values he says he has to reject. We can also safely assume that such a state will exponentially increase instability in Eastern Europe and beyond, and that it will be in a permanent state of war with one or more of its neighbours (especially with Russia), like Israel has been for most of its existence as a state. Apparently, American experts working for the Atlantic Council are even willing to offer a "road map" to make such a project come to fruition.

What is really hard to gauge at this time is how the Ukrainian elites react to such a mad project. However, taking into consideration the big number of ultra-nationalists and outright neo-Nazi organisations in the country, I am inclined to believe that the New Israel project could find favour with them, as long as the US - like in Israel's case - undertakes to finance Ukraine's ongoing military expenditures. 

In case Zelensky succeeds in getting his project off the ground, Ukraine is not likely to end up like a Big Israel, however it may very well become an European version of Pakistan. Such an outcome would follow the law of unintended consequences and this does not bode well for Russia or for Ukraine's neighbours. In fact, in such a case, Moldova could easily become a version of Kashmir. Its possible invasion by Ukraine cannot be altogether ruled out, the presence of the Russian 14th army in Transnistria being an excellent justification for overrunning this militarily weak country. Like Pakistan,  Ukraine would also stand a very good chance of becoming a permanent haven for extremist organisations worldwide, further contributing to destabilising EU member states. It follows that European countries trying to assist Ukraine in its war efforts have to date made all the wrong choices in this conflict. The only beneficiary of such a development would of course be the US, bent as it still is on global hegemony.

The "New Israel" project proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that all those European powers assisting the Kiev regime with money and weapons are therefore ignorant of the consequences, and that they are helping build a type of state in Ukraine that nobody in their right mind would be able to tolerate, least of all the Russians.

It is high time, therefore, to seriously think whether Europe and, indeed, the world can really sustain the existence of Ukraine as a political entity. In my opinion as an historian, I think that the Ukrainians have proven over the last 30 years that regardless of what other gifts they might be endowed with individually, collectively they cannot be entrusted to have and run their own state without posing huge risks to European and world peace. Accordingly, Western politicians should take a hard and serious look at the "New Israel" project, because with it Ukraine's nation-building process has come full circle and it is not at all what anyone expected.

 

Turkey, the Indispensable Negotiation Partner

 September 30, 2011

Over the last two weeks, Turkish diplomacy went all out to capitalise on the country’s increasing international clout. President Abdullah Gul has made a 4-day visit to Germany, Turkey’s main European partner, whereas premier Erdogan has made a highly publicised visit to Egypt and has recently met with President Obama in New York to discuss the situation in Syria.

Turkey’s sustained economic growth and the pro-Islamic geopolitical agenda it adopted a few years ago have transformed the country into an indispensable partner for the West. Turkish diplomacy and influence could become instrumental in helping the EU, for instance, deal with the upheavals in the Maghreb and help stabilise the region. The US, too, needs Turkish assistance in dealing with the crisis in Syria and in resolving the Palestinian question. Finally, Russia might find it opportune in future to use Turkey’s help in dealing with the political upheavals in countries like Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan or others in Central Asia.

Even if Turkey’s increased international standing, as well as its status as a major regional power in Asia and within the Islamic world, are by now indisputable, a cooler approach to the Palestinian issue might make its efforts more effective than it has been the case so far. Pushing Israel too hard on the Palestinian question is – as the latest events prove – counterproductive. The Turkish diplomacy has to find a way to help Palestinians by working closely with EU diplomats and the US administration in order to persuade the Israelis to soften their resistance to international efforts of helping Palestinians achieve statehood. As cooperation on the issue brings more rewards than confrontation, threats to accompany Gaza-bound humanitarian convoys with Turkish warships could only aggravate matters and increase tensions in the Middle East. Such a display of hard power could only play in the hands of Israel’s military and undo the successes achieved by the Turkish diplomacy’s soft means over the last decade.

Most analysts, especially from Europe, believe that Turkey is in fact a responsible stakeholder in the Middle East and contributes to increasing the political stability of the region. By spreading the message of democracy and human rights around the Islamic world now in turmoil, Turkey is also viewed by many inside and outside the Arab world as a positive force for democratic change. These are but a few reasons why the Turkish diplomacy will have to tread much more carefully in future on the Palestinian question and avoid antagonising unnecessarily Israel and its main backer, the US. (sources: Today’s Zaman, Project Syndicate, Reuters, Al Arabiya)