On Thursday morning Russian president Vladimir Putin announced Russian forces will carry out a “special operation” in Ukraine. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted that: “Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”
The UN has failed, dialogue has failed, the whole of humanity has failed. This will be the largest-scale war on the European continent since the end of World War 2 in 1945. We can expect tens of thousands of civilian casualties, millions of refugees and huge disruption to energy and food supplies.
Until Thursday, the world had split into two camps. The West, led by the US, EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), condemns Russia’s aggression and is imposing sanctions, the most significant of which is Germany calling a halt to regulatory approval of the $11bn Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline that was intended to bring Russian gas directly to Germany.
The South, led by the other members of the Brics bloc, are urging diplomacy and dialogue. Brazil, India, China and SA are walking the tightrope of neither directly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor supporting its invasion of a sovereign country.
International relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor expressed sympathy, if not outright support, for Russia’s predicament in a speech to the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week. “We are calling for the same approach in the Ukraine-Russia tension that is being exploited by those hostile to Russia for purposes of once again unjustifiably extending sphere of influence. We urge calm and restraint; threats and posturing will not resolve the current tensions.”
Responding to questions by DA MP Willem Faber in parliament on Tuesday, Pandor said: “SA’s position has been (and is) continuing to encourage all the parties to strengthen all diplomatic efforts to avoid an escalation of tensions, and work towards an inclusive, sustainable and peaceful solution based on co-operation and dialogue.”
The SA government’s position is that the West has pushed Nato up to Russia’s front door, and Russia is understandably feeling threatened. The latter part of that is not really debatable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 Nato — a military alliance established to counter the Soviets during the Cold War — has expanded drastically.
Former Soviet satellite states have become Nato members, where “an attack on one member of Nato is an attack on all of its members”. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; and Montenegro and North Macedonia in 2017 and 2020 respectively. Georgia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina are aspiring members.
While no-one is in doubt that Russia feels threatened, the issue now is whether in the 21st century it is acceptable for a sovereign country to be attacked and annexed to provide the buffer zone Putin’s Russia wants. It is one thing for Pandor to state the obvious — that Putin’s uneasiness stems from the West extending its sphere of influence right up to Russia’s borders — quite another for either SA or any of the Brics partners to defend Russia starting a war.
Nor do I think the West is entirely on the moral high ground. It will make a lot of noise and impose yet more sanctions on Russia, but it doesn’t have the stomach to intervene militarily on the side of Ukraine. Ukraine will be left to its own devices, with the West standing on the sidelines; Russia will win the initial battles but will not be able to occupy Ukraine for any extended period.
The fighting will end, hopefully in a matter of months, the two sides will sue for peace, and the rest of us will carry on and pretend everything is fine.
• Dr Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
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