It is hoped that wisdom will prevail, and French President Emmanuel Macron’s last-ditch attempt at diplomacy will bring to an end the most dangerous confrontation between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War nearly 30 years ago.
Both the White House and the Kremlin have announced that, through French mediation, US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have agreed “in principle” to hold a summit to settle differences over Russia’s intentions towards neighbouring Ukraine. Such a summit would follow a scheduled meeting between US and Russian foreign ministers today, 24 February. According to US and French officials, both meetings on the ministerial and presidential levels have been predicated on Russia refraining from invading Ukraine, something Biden, speaking on Friday, had predicted might happen “in the coming week, in the coming days”.
Russia has firmly and repeatedly denied any intention to invade Ukraine, accusing the US and its European allies of spreading “fake news” in order to impose sanctions on Moscow and hinder its plans for economic development, restoring its deserved status in a “multi-polar world”, together with close allies such as China and a few other rising nations. Russian ridicule of repeated US and European warnings that the invasion of Ukraine was imminent gained more credibility after an earlier date of that alleged Russian attack leaked to American and European media, 16 February, passed unnoticed. The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry asked Western capitals to inform her in advance of the upcoming expected date for the Russian invasion of Ukraine so that she could plan her holidays.
The US “intelligence information” confirming that Russia was ready to invade the neighbouring nation, once part of the former Soviet Union, has puzzled experts and observers. Some said Washington rarely share detailed intelligence because that might endanger its sources, but in the case of Russian intentions towards Ukraine, together with satellite images of Russian military preparations, the leak is one way, US officials believe, to deter Putin and help cement a united European front against Moscow.
It is no secret that major US allies, namely Germany, Italy, and France, are not necessarily as vehement about a possible major war on European territories, thousands of miles away from the US East Coast. Russia is, and will remain, a neighbour, and Russian gas exports to key European countries are indispensable. Indeed, the US can pressure its allies to provide alternatives to Russian gas exports to Europe, but that would be a temporary measure and will not last.
Setting aside all kinds of fast developments on the ground in and around Ukraine, what is obvious is that the real reason behind the current, sudden escalation is a desire by Russia, and its close allies, to agree on a “new world order.” For Russia, in particular, this order cannot be based on the arrangements reached after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Putin, a senior intelligence officer at the Soviet Union’s KGB at that time, has openly stated that those arrangements were unfair to Russia, and dealt with Moscow as the defeated side in a Cold War that had lasted for nearly 50 years. He added that the United States and its NATO allies have even “violated” those arrangements when they expanded the military alliance to include not just former European members of the Eastern European bloc, such as Romania and Poland, but even former Soviet republics bordering Russia, the latest being Ukraine.
The Russian president, now in office for 22 years and seen as a key world player, had made it clear that he would not allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO, because that would mean that the US-led alliance would place weapons on its territory, increasing the chances of a doomsday scenario of a military confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Referring to Russian intentions towards Ukraine and its growing alliance with China at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borell, warned that “30 years after the end of the Cold War, we are facing a determined effort to redefine the multilateral order.”
The prospects of a war in Europe and a confrontation between the US and Russia, even if limited to harsh and unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow as Biden has made clear, would certainly negatively affect the whole world, the Middle East included. Both the United States and Russia have integral interests in the region, and a fallout between the two superpowers would bring to a standstill, if not further deterioration, all the hotspots that await diplomatic efforts such as Iran, the oil-rich Gulf region, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Palestine-Israel conflict.
In statements on Sunday, US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said, “We believe President Putin has made the decision (to invade Ukraine,) but until the tanks are actually rolling and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward.”
Let’s hope the French-mediated summit will achieve that goal.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 February, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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