As Russian tanks move into Donetsk and Luhansk – which Ukrainian frontier is the finishing line no one knows – the West has to ask itself what on Earth it intends to do about it. Sanctions, once agreed, will no doubt have an impact on Russia’s economic development in the years to come. But they will also rebound on us. Oil and gas prices are already at their highest points in years. Putin, moreover, has already priced in the short-term consequences. He has been hoarding cash and spread-betting on future markets. He will also be turning to China’s Xi Jinping, his new best friend, to help him weather the storm, and all the indications are that Xi will not let him down.
So, while he cannot hope to trample over Ukraine with impunity – not least because of the expected resistance of the Ukrainian army – Putin can still hope to get away with his latest crazed venture. Thousands may die and the damage to his adversaries’ homes and businesses may be immense, but in the end – if that is what he intends – the Russian flag will fly once more over the parliament buildings in Kyiv.
But what of the West? Exactly how badly do we come out of this mess? How does Nato stack up in the wake of such a setback?
Fifty years ago, even 20 years ago, Nato meant the United States and its allies acting in concert. No one pushed America round and no one doubted that those who sought to ambush the West’s interests would be punished for their presumption. Afghanistan was invaded and occupied within weeks of the terrorist attacks of 9/11; Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was similarly overthrown, albeit on a false prospectus; and, in 2011, following deadly Nato air-raids, Muammar Gaddafi, was found dead in the Libyan desert with a bayonet up his backside.
But that was then and this is now. Today, Joseph R Biden, the 46th President of the United States, has only allowed Russia and Ukraine to rise to the top of his agenda because the dispute between the two has grown to the extent that it cannot be ignored. America’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan was a truer reflection of the Biden doctrine, which can be summed up in two words: China First. What happened in and around Kabul in a matter of weeks last August shocked the international community but was shrugged off by the Leader of the Free World as just one of those things – unfortunate but necessary if the US was to confront its only viable opponent, the hated People’s Republic, with its headquarters in Beijing.
The writing on the wall, in respect of the Atlantic Alliance, had first revealed itself in 2012 when Barack Obama announced America’s “pivot to East Asia”. Donald Trump made things worse when he cozied up to Vladimir Putin in the apparent belief that he had found a soul-mate while simultaneously rubbishing Europe (not unreasonably) for its failure to spend enough on defence and its lazy assumption that the US would always come riding to the rescue.
The situation wasn’t helped when Emmanuel Macron, the imperious new President of France, announced that in his view Nato was “brain-dead”. Nor was it encouraging when Germany, having for years let its defence forces wither on the vine, went ahead with Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline from Russia that Putin counted on not only to swell his coffers but to increase Europe’s dependence on his country for its future energy needs.
In Britain, there was, as ever, a lot of noise, much of it from Downing Street, which likes to boast of the fact that its armed forces are the best in Europe in spite of the fact that its army has been cut to just 73,000 (less than half the size of the US Marine Corps) and that both Russia and China (as well as the US) regard its much-vaunted new aircraft carriers – neither of which has an onboard missile defence system – as floating targets.
If one thing is certain in light of the unfolding catastrophe in Ukraine it is that Europe – not to be confused with the EU – needs to get its act together before Russia makes its next move. Nato is a splendid institution, but Nato is as Nato does, and for the moment all the Alliance has come up with is a minor shuffling of pieces of artillery around Europe’s eastern fringe. A few outdated jets here, a rocket launcher or two there and a couple of thousand extra troops deployed 500 miles from the action: that, in reality, has been Nato’s response to Russian aggression.
It should not be forgotten that at no point during the evolution of the current crisis did anyone anywhere suggest that the West should go to Ukraine’s defence by sending its armed forces into harm’s way. All of us understand why that was. Nobody wants to start World War III. But what does it mean for the 21st century equivalent of realpolitik. Can Russia and China, as the only ones ready to send in the tanks, now expect to get away with murder?
What happens if Putin, two years from now, follows up his invasion of Ukraine by swatting one or all of the Baltic states out of its path? Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are, unlike Ukraine, members of Nato, entitled to its Four Musketeers-like promise of All for One and One for All. Would Boris Johnson be willing to send warships into the Baltic, where the Queen Elizabeth would be threatened by Russia’s hypersonic ship-killer missiles? Would he risk a Market-Garden style drop by the Parachute Regiment (all 3000 of them, including reserves). Would he launch cruise missiles against the advancing Russian army?
And what would France do? Its armed forces are roughly equivalent to those of Britain, which means that they are much more effective than Germany’s rustbucket brigades but only a fraction as powerful or well-equipped as the forces under the command of Vladimir Putin. To take just one example, France has around 550 tanks (twice the British total) to Russia’s 12,400.
It simply isn’t a match. Without America – always assuming that no one reaches for the nuclear trigger – Europe presents only a modest military threat to Russia, and none at all to China.
Thus it is that we talk big on sanctions, which might bring Russia to its knees in 2030 but are about as likely to deter Putin in his pursuit of Ukraine as the Polish cavalry was in the face of the Wehrmacht in 1939.
What, then, of diplomacy? Surely that has to have some utility. Well, we have seen how negotiations between Russia and the West have worked out so far. If any reasonable outsider was to assess the performance of the major players on the global Risk board, Macron would score three out of ten (mainly for trying), Boris Johnson two (for bluster), Olaf Scholz zero and Biden one. Given that force was ruled out from the outset, they were all bound to be losers in round one. The question is, can the West, through sanctions, win round two? The answer is, maybe. But for Ukraine, if Putin really does send in the heavies, seeing Russia hit hard in the pocket in the years to come will be scant compensation for a massive death toll and the wholesale destruction of its domestic and economic infrastructure.
The long-term answer to Moscow’s attempt to recreate its former empire lies in re-establishing Europe’s technological superiority over the Kremlin’s best efforts combined with a military reawakening across the Continent spearheaded by Britain and France. In the meantime, all we can hope for, and all the people of Ukraine can hope for, is that sanctions do bite in the end and that Joe Biden’s America recovers its traditional Janus-like stance, looking west as well as east.
But what a world we live in! Warmongering, so long dismissed as “uncool” and “just sooo last century,” has become once more a legitimate pursuit, with even liberals and Socialists forced to acknowledge that it’s not words that stop tanks in their tracks, but the Anglo-Swedish NLAW fire-and-forget missile, 2,000 of which have been dispatched to the Ukraine and which are now, presumably deployed along the front lines.
If only there was more we could do.