And the orange one called Putin a genius this week. It made me want to understand more and dig deeper into the background as I listen to numerous Clubhouse chats and read about the arguments from all sides.
There are really 2 sides to every story and depending on how it is framed, the good and bad guys’ roles can be interchanged quite easily. For example, if a country is trying to overtake another, it is called an invasion. If the US does the same, it is called a liberation exercise. Same action, different meanings.
Let’s look at the Western countries’ points of view first. Ukraine has just been attacked by a hostile opponent whom Biden had been warning for days that the invasion was imminent. Russian troops have been surrounding the country and building up to more than 150k troops while denying that they were planning to attack.
Putin cleared all doubts by declaring on Thursday that he will defend the 2 breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukraine’s suppression of the separatist states as they were seeking Russia’s help. Its soldiers were then mobilized to cross the shared borders and move into the country from all sides.
This seems to be the biggest invasion since WWII which many see as being unprovoked and the arguments of freeing the states from a Nazified regime sounded hollow as the Ukraine president is Jewish!
Putin is basically opportunistic and had been patiently bidding his time and getting ready for this week’s invasion of Ukraine. His argument for the attack is relatively consistent over the last few weeks.
When the Russian federation collapsed in the early 1990s, many new countries next to the EU were granted independence. According to Putin, there was an agreement to ensure that these countries stay neutral and act as a buffer between NATO and Russia. This seemed to have been broken as a number had successfully applied and joined NATO.
With its joined defence pact, NATO countries are now bordering Russia and threatening them right in front of their doorsteps. Putin liken it to the Cuba missile crisis where the threat was just in front of the US. Russia did also tried to join NATO in the 1990s but was refused as a legacy of the cold war then. Now it is faced with an encroaching and expanding NATO bloc next to it.
Its basic demand was that Ukraine stays neutral and stop its application to join NATO. Biden had flatly said that this cannot be done as it is up to each country to decide. That was perhaps the last straw for Putin and made him even more determined to right this wrong to the motherland.
Russia has been slowly biding its time since the 2014 Crimea annexation where they believed that the democratically elected pro-Russian president was wrongly ousted by the demonstrations that the Western world had supported in 2013.
Since then the Russian central bank has slowly built up its reserves to at least $600+ billion and made the world more dependent on Russian oil exports. Oil has now reached highs of $100 even as Russia becomes the 3rd biggest exporter of oil in the world. Europe is ever more dependent on these imports into winter and a number of gas pipelines from Russia to Europe are also located in Ukraine.
Putin has been boldened with past victories in Georgia and Crimea with hardly any serious repercussions. There may have been sanctions before but Russia had survived them all. He had probably calculated his risk/reward ratio and decided that this is as good a window as any for action to reclaim the motherland. He has figured out that NATO and the US are likely not to have the nerve to want to send troops over to escalate the situation and bring on WWIII.
It’s a game of chicken and he thinks that NATO has blinked already, even as Putin warned of retaliation and hints about going nuclear if any country tries to come into Ukraine. They have already waged a Cyber Warfare attack on the country to try to cripple its infrastructure.
The Western world seems to be adopting a wait and see attitude to determine if the first round of sanctions are working in the next 30 days! Oil-related sanctions have also been dropped as that might cause prices to go even higher. With the recent rise of cryptocurrencies, the threat of restricting the US SWIFT system for payments for Russia is no more as big an impact as before.
As of now, we are not sure of Putin’s ultimate end game yet. Is it to topple the existing Ukrainian government and take over the whole country? Or just to do a quick and sharp attack to capture and secure the 2 breakaway regions like what they did in Crimea?
The financial markets had fluctuated wildly over the last few days, dropping like a brick initially and then staging a big rally last night. It seems to think that this may be a short invasion exercise for Russia to aggressively stamp its disapproval of the situation to let the world know its side of the story.
America has no appetite for another new war after the recent Afghanistan withdrawal. It can only supply more weapons and aid to Ukraine. NATO is powerless to intervene as it is not part of the pact yet.
Russia meanwhile had already sought support from China a few weeks ago and China is watching carefully as this may be a template for its Taiwan problem too. Common enemies of the free world have ganged up. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
A new world order is developing and the old norm of policy strategizing may not be applicable anymore.
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