July
28, 2023
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky emerges as a tragic figure in the unfolding drama
that is the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
He
was asked to sacrifice the lives of his countrymen in order to be seen by the
U.S. and NATO as worthy of joining their club. But when the sacrifice did not
produce the desired result (i.e., the strategic defeat of Russia), the door to
NATO, which had been left open a crack to tease Ukraine into performing its
suicidal task, was slammed shut.
Despite
NATO’s disingenuous machinations to maintain the optics of potential Ukrainian
membership (the Ukraine-NATO Council, created during the Vilnius Summit earlier
this month, stands as a prime example), everyone knows that Ukrainian
membership in the trans-Atlantic alliance is a fantasy.
Ukraine
is now left to pick a poison of its own choosing — accept a peace which makes
permanent Russian territorial claims while forever foregoing the possibility,
however distant, of NATO membership; or to continue to fight, with the likely
outcome of the additional loss of territory and destruction of the Ukrainian
nation and people.
Robert
Graves’ autobiography, Goodbye to All That, does double duty by providing a
template for Ukraine as it charts the passing of Europe’s old order — the
U.S.-dominated NATO alliance, the European Union, the rules-based international
order and all the post-World War II structures, which held the Western world
together for nearly eight decades. They are all now crumbling around us.
Graves’
struggle to adapt to post-war England in the aftermath of the horrors of the
First World War, and his observations of a nation collectively struggling to
define itself, is a cautionary tale for what is in store for Ukraine.
As
Ukraine bids farewell to its former self, it must also part with its dreams of
becoming one with a European community whose own longevity is very much in
doubt. That is largely because of its disastrous involvement in the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Ukraine
will never be the same after this war ends. Neither will the NATO alliance.
Having defined the proxy war it is waging in Ukraine against Russia in
existential terms, NATO will struggle to find both relevance and purpose in a
post-conflict world.
The
Vilnius summit on July 11-12 in many ways represented the high-water mark of
Europe’s old order. The summit was the requiem for a nightmare of Europe’s own
creation — the death of a nation, the nullification of a continent and the end
of an order which had long ago lost its legitimacy.
Strange
Isolation
Watching
the reporting from the Vilnius summit, I was struck by the strange isolation of
Zelensky as he sought to mingle with the leaders of NATO nations that called
him friend and ally but treated him and the nation he leads as anything
but. Zelensky had pulled out all the
stops to jockey Ukraine into position for NATO membership, only to be scratched
at the gate.
Briefed
in advance of a proposed NATO communique declaring that Ukraine would be
invited to join the alliance “when allies agree and conditions are met,” the
Ukrainian president was left to vent his frustration to an accommodating press
only too willing to jump on the chance to flame the fires of scandal. “It’s
unprecedented and absurd,” Zelensky bemoaned, “when time frame is not set
neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time
vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine.”
Mollified
after being chastised by his NATO masters, Zelensky later changed his tune,
speaking of his desire to join NATO, but in a new, non-confrontational manner.
“The results of the summit have been good,” Zelensky told NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg during a joint press conference, “but if we had got an
invitation [to NATO], they’d have been perfect.”
Later,
during a press conference with U.S. President Joe Biden, Zelensky stood mute
while Biden continued to pour cold water on the prospects for Ukrainian NATO
membership. “We’ve just concluded the first meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council
and — where all our allies agreed Ukraine’s future lies with NATO,” Biden said.
“Allies all agreed to lift the requirements for the Membership Action Plan for
Ukraine and to create a path to NATO membership while Ukraine continues to make
progress on necessary reforms.”
One
could sense the anger and frustration in Zelensky’s eyes as he listened to
Biden add insult to injury by calling him “Vladimir.”
The
Fantasy of Unity
While
Zelensky was playing the role of someone desperately looking for a date to the
prom — on prom night — Turkish President Recep Erdogan was playing hard to get.
After agreeing to allow Finland and Sweden to join NATO during last year’s
Madrid summit, Erdogan laid down stringent conditions which kept Finland from
being ratified as NATO’s newest member until April 2023. He left Sweden in the
lurch on the eve of the Vilnius summit.
Just
before departing for Vilnius, Erdogan surprised many by linking Turkish
ratification of Sweden’s bid to join the trans-Atlantic alliance with Turkey’s
desire to join the EU. “First, come and open the way for Turkey at the European
Union and then we will open the way for Sweden, just as we did for Finland,”
Erdogan declared. Shortly after arriving in Lithuania, Erdogan met with NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson,
after which Erdogan reversed course, saying Turkey supported Sweden’s accession
to NATO.
While
Erdogan did not get his invitation to join the EU, Sweden promised to actively
support the modernization of the EU-Turkey Customs Union and visa
liberalization regarding applications by Turkish citizens for visa-free travel
to Europe.
But
the Stoltenberg-Erdogan-Kristersson meeting was merely window dressing for more
substantive behind-the-scenes horse trading between Erdogan and Biden, which
saw Turkey green-lighted to buy new F-16 fighters and have its existing fleet
of F-16 fighters modernized.
Getting
F-16 fighters had been a major goal of Turkey’s ever since the U.S., in 2019,
removed Turkey from a U.S.-led international program to develop and produce the
F-35 fighter following Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 air defense system from
Russia. The F-16 sale, however, had been stalled following the imposition of
sanctions on Turkey in December 2020 as part of the Countering America’s
Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) — the first time such sanctions
targeted a NATO member.
The
U.S. desire to see Sweden enter NATO as
soon as possible appeared to be sufficient justification for the Biden
administration to waive the CAATSA sanctions and send the F-16 deal to the U.S.
Congress with its blessing. But Sweden’s accession is not guaranteed.
While
the U.S. and NATO are pushing for Erdogan to call a special session of
Parliament to ratify Swedish membership, Erdogan is holding off until October,
when the Turkish Parliament convenes. Erdogan is looking for assurances that
the F-16 deal will be approved by U.S. Congress. This is not sure thing,
however, given concerns among lawmakers over Turkey’s strained relationship
with NATO ally Greece, and the view that deconfliction there is as important as
Sweden’s NATO membership.
To
sum up: Biden and Stoltenberg highlighted the decision by Erdogan to move the
application for Swedish membership to NATO onto the Turkish Parliament for
ratification as a symbol of NATO’s “rock solid” unity.
Left
unsaid is that Erdogan had to threaten NATO to get the U.S. to articulate a
bribe that had the U.S. waiving its prior sanctioning of a NATO ally while at
the same time compelling the U.S. to consider the security implications of the
deal, given the open hostility that exists between Turkey and fellow NATO
member Greece.
Webster’s
defines “unity” as “a condition of harmony” and “the quality or state of being
made one.” When it comes to the proper usage of that term, I don’t think the
contentious relationship between Turkey and NATO qualifies.
Add
to this France’s rejection of a proposal to open a NATO liaison office in
Japan, and Hungary’s ongoing open disagreement with NATO and the EU over how to
respond to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, and one finds the NATO edifice
riddled with fissures of discontent and disagreement which can only deepen as
NATO stares the growing probability of a Russian military victory in the face.
Goodbye
to All That
If
the weeks leading up to the Vilnius summit were defined by the desire on the
part of NATO to see the long-awaited and much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive
reach its maximum potential, the days which preceded the NATO gathering have
confronted both Ukraine and its Western allies with the reality that the war is
not going well for either.
The
Ukrainian counteroffensive was formed around a core force of some 60,000
Ukrainian soldiers who received special training by NATO and European
militaries on weapons and tactics designed to defeat Russian defenses. Since the
counteroffensive began on June 8, Ukraine has lost nearly half of these troops,
and a third of the equipment provided — including scores of the Leopard main
battle tanks and Bradly infantry fighting vehicles that had been viewed by many
as game-changing technology.
Back
in 1993, George Soros postulated an architecture for a new world order premised
on the United States as the sole remaining superpower overseeing a network of
alliances, the most important being NATO, which would gird the northern hemisphere
against a Russian threat.
“The
United States,” Soros wrote, “would not be called upon to act as the policeman
of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others.
Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical
capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential” of any
U.S.-led alliance structure “because it would reduce the risk of body bags for
NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act.”
Forty
years later, this very scenario is playing out on the bloody battlefields of
Russia and Ukraine. The billions of dollars of military assistance provided by
the U.S., NATO and other European nations is the living manifestation of the
“technical capabilities” Soros spoke about, which are being married to
“manpower from Eastern Europe” (i.e., Ukraine) to enhance the military
potential of NATO in a way that reduces “the risk of body bags for NATO
countries.”
Left
unspoken are the hundreds of thousands of body bags that have already been
lowered into the dark soil of Ukraine, highlighting the callous disregard for
that human tragedy by the Vilnius attendees.
No comments:
Post a Comment