A WAR AND TWO OLYMPICS

 

 Following the 5-day war which started on August 7, 2008 in Georgia, Swiss diplomat Tagliavini prepared a report on the incident for the EU and the OSCE. The report holds Saakashvili, Georgia's then president, responsible for triggering the armed conflict.

There are many analysts who have made analogies between the situation in Georgia at the time and what is happening in Ukraine today. Few, however,  make the connection between these two conflicts and two events that took place or are about to take place thousands of kilometers away : the summer Olympics in  August 8, 2008 and the winter Olympics, which must begin on February 4, 2022 , both hosted in China.

It is very likely that now, as in 2008, the neoconservatives of the US administration have hoped to trigger a similar incident, which would kill 2 birds with one stone. On the one hand, such a conflict would create the conditions for drastic sanctions on Russia. On the other hand, the attention of the international public would have been diverted from the Winter Olympics, depriving the Chinese authorities of the global audience expected for such an event.

So far, however, it appears that no Ukrainian Saakashvili has been found to provoke the Russian army by attacking the Donbas insurgents, thus re-editing a scenario first used on August 7, 2008.

US: from Nation-Building to all-out War

"Billions spent on the Kennedy School, grand strategies seminars, and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service has bought us an elite that's about to blunder us into a Ukraine war."(J.D. Vance)

In a few days from now, President Biden will host German Chancellor Scholz in Washington. The expectation of Washington neocons is that he will succeed in pressuring Germany to join a pan-European alliance against Russia. 

To be sure, the German refusal to send weapons to Ukraine - and thus help ignite a fratricide war between Ukraine and Russia - makes sense. Germany was right in refusing to join the neocon-inspired war against Iraq in 2003 and is even more justified in refusing to join NATO in sponsoring a war against Russia now.

Unfortunately, France is no longer led by a president as experienced or astute as Jacques Chirac: Macron seems willing to send troops to Romania, regardless of how pointless this is from a military point of view.

Since 2001 the US have embarked in quite a few military interventions or coups around the world, which were followed by a disastrous drive to promote nation-building: in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Ukraine (2014). All these ill-conceived nation-building efforts have backfired miserably. Undaunted, the Washington neocons who have monopolised American foreign policy for the last two decades are now promoting a war by proxy, encouraging the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.

Since 2007 onwards, Vladimir Putin has cautioned the West against pushing the boundaries of NATO eastwards. His pleas went ignored and - at the NATO summit in Bucharest one year later -  the George W Bush administration officially announced the intention of the US to include countries like Georgia and Ukraine in the alliance (these efforts were thwarted by the refusal of France and Germany to endorse the expansion). In 2014, the US engineered a coup d'etat in Kiev, replacing Yanukovich with an American puppet regime that ultimately bled Ukraine dry and is at the origin of today's crisis.

Unfortunately, after 14 years of unsuccessfully calling for a stop to NATO's eastward expansion, the Russians were deliberately left with no other option by US negotiators than to put a stop to this expansion through military action against Ukraine. 

The fact is that the treaty they are seeking to guarantee Russia's security can only be concluded after fighting a war, not before.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, Western intellectuals have elaborated projects aimed at achieving "perpetual peace". Some of the fruits of this labour have been the multilateral institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Sadly, however, humanity has been confronted with some of its biggest and most devastating military conflicts regardless of such well-intentioned efforts. To this day, no lasting peace treaty has been able to be concluded without fighting it out on the battlefield first.

The recent, ill-conceived US nation-building efforts abroad have coincided with a period in American history when consensus has evaporated, the nation is deeply divided and American society itself is in danger of internal collapse. Sure, the Pentagon and the US Defence Department are against a war breaking out in Ukraine, but the neocons in Washington and their supporters in the military-industrial complex want it and will most probably get it. 

As long as the American polity remains unable to expunge from their ranks the neocons putting America's future in jeopardy, however, the string of military and nation-building failures experienced by the US is set to continue.

Vladimir Putin's Take on Russian History

 

British historian Dominic Sandbrook tries to explain to Western audiences bored with the study of history that for the nations of Eastern Europe history matters enormously.

He claims that Vladimir Putin is by no means the successor of Stalin - who was Georgian - but that he considers himself as a successor at the helm of the Russian state built by Peter the Great . Thus, in a historical essay published on the website of the Russian presidency, Vladimir Putin states unequivocally that the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians all have the same origin and hail from the Ancient Rus, even if throughout history there have been divisions between them.

Romanians can very well relate to this approach to Russian history. For at least two centuries, all Romanian intellectuals have stated with one voice that Moldovans, Wallachians and Transylvanians "all hail from Rome", that they belong to the same people, sharing a common origin and language. Putin says exactly the same thing about Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, and I - as an historian - don't think he is wrong .

In other words, Putin is not a kind of post-Soviet leader like Nazarbayev, for example, eager to rebuild the USSR, as the recent neocon campaign in the US would have us believe. No, he is a nationalist leader and is mainly interested in restoring unity to the Russian world. That's why I don't think Putin is a danger to the former Soviet satellites, like  Romania . Bringing the USSR back to life in a  new form is not on the Kremlin's geopolitical agenda.

What is happening now with regard to Ukraine is therefore the consequence of Putin's nationalist approach to the history of Russia, which in his view involves a multidimensional effort aimed at restoring in time the economic and political unity of the Russian world, in the sense that it was first achieved  by Peter the Great in the 18th century.

A NEOCON FOREIGN MINISTER IN TITULESCU'S COUNTRY

 

 I have lived to see this one too! In Titulescu's country, they have installed as  foreign minister a certain Bogdan Aurescu, who acts abroad as if he were an employee of the US State Department and his boss were Blinken, not the president of Romania.

On January 24, Aurescu proposed - without his EU counterparts paying any attention - that the next regular meeting of EU foreign ministers be held in Kiev, in an apparent show of "solidarity" with Ukraine. Without mentioning a single word about the Ukrainian government's policies of denationalization through the language suffered by the 500,000 Romanians who actually live in the middle of the Ukrainian nightmare, Aurescu is worried about the fate of Ukraine! (I won't mention here the fact that in 2015 the same Romanians living in Ukraine complained that the Kiev authorities were forcibly recruiting them and sending them to fight the Russophones in the Donbas.)

As a matter of interest, in 1998 - anticipating trouble in the region - I sent a letter to Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, advising him to try to relocate the Romanians from Ukrainian Bukovina to the villages in Transylvania left empty after the massive migration of Transylvanian Saxons to Germany after 1989. Naturally, the former president turned a typical deaf ear , as if those Romanians did not exist for Bucharest. President Iohannis can find the letter in the archives of the Presidency and could try, as a fellow Transylvanian Saxon, to save willing Romanians of Ukraine from  Kiev's nationalist excesses in the way I proposed back then. He could consider that, of course, once the ski season comes to an end...

As for Aurescu, a resignation of honour would be the most appropriate exit from the scene, even more necessary than that of Prime Minister Ciuca. I am sure that just as the Ukrainians have found a job for the former Georgian president Shakashvili, Aurescu too would be able to find a job over there with the help of American neocons, maybe even as Kiev's foreign minister.

An Analogy Between Scotland and Ukraine

  The United Kingdom and Russia have more things in common than they think: a glorious imperial past, loss of international clout and a troublesome rogue province each

Analogies between the history, geography or culture of nations are used to illustrate both the similarities and differences between them, in order to better understand historical realities.

Since 1991, following a referendum, a new state - Ukraine - has appeared on the map of Europe. Detached from Russia, of which it was an integral part since 1654 - at the request of Bogdan Khmelnitsky's Cossacks - the new state is in fact only a rebellious province of Russia which decided to abandon the Russian Federation in order to join the EU. For Russia, the most contentious decision made by Kiev was that of applying to join NATO.

Ukraine's population is 40 million, or about a quarter of the total population of the Russian Federation before the separation. Ukraine's economy is based on coal mining and heavy industry, especially steel or aluminum production. Agriculture is also an important branch of the economy. Ukraine is the poorest state in Eastern Europe.

In 1996, Scotland became an autonomous province within the United Kingdom, of which it has been an integral part since 1707. Since 1999, Scotland has its own parliament. Scotland covers a third of the UK land area, but only has about a tenth of its population (5.5 million). The Scottish economy was based on coal mining and heavy industry for decades, especially shipbuilding.

Until 1560, Scotland was a staunch ally of France for 250 years and fought the English armies on numerous occasions, including during the Hundred Years' War. Scotland was also the northern gate through which French armies came to the rescue of their Scottish allies fighting the English for independence. For the English kings, subduing Scotland and incorporating it into Great Britain represented their main national security concern for centuries.

At the beginning of this millennium and about a decade before Brexit, Scotland tried to secede from Britain by referendum, and it has failed so far. However, being one of the poorest areas of Western Europe, the exit from the British common market in favour of its EU membership would cause a significant drop in the living standards of its citizens, just as the Ukrainians experienced after they left the Russian Federation.

The analogy between the two provinces - one Russian and the other British - reveals that leaving the economic, political and military structures of which they have both been an integral part for centuries is not only very risky, but can result in a failed state, like today's Ukraine.

As for the current British political leaders' interference in the problems between Russia and Ukraine, I refrain from commenting. I am sure however of one thing, namely that the British authorities would react quite violently if Russia intervened on the side of Scotland in its campaign to break the current arrangements linking it to Great Britain ....

UKRAINE AND THE END OF PEACE IN EUROPE

In an unfortunate turn of events, it seems Ukrainians are intent on finalising their nation-building at the expense of European peace.

Today Romania celebrates 163 years since the double election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler of the United Principalities of Moldova and Wallachia. The double election capped a 3-year diplomatic offensive by Romanian intellectuals in leading European capitals, aimed at securing  international recognition for the new state - formed through the unification of Moldova and Wallachia - by the great powers of the day. 

Cuza's double election was the gimmick used by the founders of the modern Romanian state in order to circumvent the restrictions imposed on the unification of the two principalities by the European great powers during  the 1856 Paris peace congress . The unity of the new Romanian state was thus obtained peacefully, albeit by defying the will of Western and Central European rulers, most notably those of Great Britain and the Austrian empire. Less than a decade later, the Romanian state became a kingdom and in 1877 it obtained its independence from the Ottoman empire.

This outstanding example of diplomatic skill and statecraft allowed the new state to survive and prosper. At the end of WWI, the Romanian kingdom more than doubled its territory and population, reuniting within its borders all the Romanians hitherto living in Austro-Hungarian or Russian empires. To this day, for all its shortcomings, Romania is a functioning democracy, a stable and peaceful nation of Europe.

Europe is unfortunately witnessing today the different saga of yet another new state, Ukraine, at its doorstep. The evolution of Ukraine since 1991 has not matched Romania's peaceful model in any way shape or manner. The initial Western enthusiasm from the 1990's having evaporated, Ukraine is barely functioning and looks set to put an end to peace in Europe - a peace that has lasted largely uninterrupted since 1945. 

In my professional view, this is happening because Ukraine lacks a patriotic elite. Sure, there are pro-western politicians and parties, as there are pro-Russian parties and politicians. What Ukraine badly needed, however, is a breed of politicians and intellectuals who are pro-Ukrainian, that is, exclusively dedicated to advancing a purely Ukrainian agenda on the international stage. 

The lack of such an elite was and is currently being used by interested parties, like Russia and the United States. Their geopolitical designs, however, have very little to do with the core interests of the new nation. Sadly, however, the Ukrainians have failed to prove to them both that they have what it takes to build a strong and peaceful nation.

The very latest developments are a case in point. In an open-for-all-to-see international conspiracy, some politicians from the UK and the United States are using the Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border to sell rumours and unconfirmed stories to the Western public about Moscow's intention to install a puppet regime in Kiev. Echoing the London or Washington storyline, current Ukrainian authorities have vowed to round up all the local politicians who might be part of the plot. In so doing, they seem to overlook the fact that they behave as a puppet regime of the West themselves. Moreover, Ukrainian leaders are showing a bizarre willingness to send their own citizens to the slaughter , by beating the drums of war with Russia on behalf of the West.

In truth, taking part in a conspiracy against peace in Europe is not the way to advance Ukrainian nation-building. As an historian, I am more convinced today than ten years ago that what we are dealing with in Ukraine's case is the failed launch of the new state. In other words, over the past 30 years Ukrainians have proved to the rest of the world that they are not mature enough to have their own state and to govern themselves peacefully , with only minimal foreign interference.

Unfortunately, as Ukrainians rejected neutrality out of hand - which is the only realistic solution to their problems -  they are running the serious risk of disappearing again from the map of Europe as an independent state. In case that happens, they will not be able to blame Russia or the West, but only themselves.

The Failed Presidents of Eastern Europe

  With each passing day, I am more and more convinced that the Ukrainians have fallen into the same political trap as Romanian voters did when they elected Iohannis as president in 2014.

To be sure, Iohannis did not have the necessary national political experience : until his election, he was the mayor of a Transylvanian city atypical for Romania, nor was he a member of the Liberal Party (he had been active in the German Forum). No, he was elected because Romanian voters thought that by endorsing a Saxon they would get a better treatment in Brussels and that they would be accepted faster in the Schengen area by the EU:

"The election of Iohannis is undoubtedly linked to high expectations and hopes. But these alone do not fundamentally change the political situation in Romania,"  a leading German CDU MP said. "Doubts about Romania's accession to the Schengen Area persist (...) (Romania) will not achieve this goal in 2015," he added. The reaction of the chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs comes in the context in which, recently, the president Klaus Iohannis declared in the German press that he will make efforts for Romania's accession to Schengen to take place in 2015. "( Adevarul newspaper from 2015)

In turn, Zelensky was elected president without any previous political experience. In my opinion, the Ukrainians voted for him because of the supposed connections that someone of his ethnicity might have in Washington. Ukrainians seem to have believed - wrongly, as it comes out - that the mere choice of Zelensky as president would secure their admission into NATO. ( Unfortunately, neoconservatives of Jewish origin's perceived domination of US State Department structures had created a vulnerability for the United States, which is currently being exploited by the likes of Zelensky. )

Both Iohannis and Zelensky were also elected with a mandate to end corruption, which has not happened. Instead, Iohannis became - ironically for a descendant of Hitler's allies in Transylvania - a vocal champion of campaigns to combat anti-Semitism in Romania ...

The two presidents both belong to microscopic ethnic minorities from Romania or Ukraine, which unfortunately do not have a history of harmonious coexistence with the majorities of the two states. This fact makes their selection for their state's top job  even more inexcusable.

The consequences of choosing the two presidents are worrying, to say the least. Romania's domestic political instability has become chronic over the past year, while Zelensky has managed to endanger peace across Eastern Europe through his uninspired neighborhood policy.

It is obvious today that at the instigation of domestic and / or foreign services, both peoples made a colossal electoral error. I am curious to see, however, how all this will play out in the end.