By Peter Longley
Is Europe on the brink of war? Have we taken a gigantic step backwards? I wonder. We could be dragged into a long struggle with Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation in which nobody will be the winner, least of all Ukraine. This is not 1938 all over again as Europe sat on the brink of World War II. We are on the brink of this crisis because we chose to look back rather than look forward and in doing so we have possibly destroyed peace in our time.
I have visited Ukraine several times both in Soviet days and in modern times and from my experience and the observation of history, I acknowledge the long association of much of Ukraine with Russia. Ukraine and the tartars of Crimea were by conquest brought into the Russian Empire by Potemkin’s successful campaign under Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century to give the growing Russian Empire an outlet on the Black Sea. One could say that this was theft as is any campaign of aggrandisement, but it is fact. As a result, the area became intrinsically Russian in speech, character, culture and architecture. It remained so until it was created as the Soviet of Ukraine after the Russian Revolution. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Federation of Russia, Ukraine including the Crimea became an independent country, but with deep divisions in loyalties. About a quarter of Eastern Ukraine including the Crimea remained intrinsically Russian. A further quarter had closer links to Kiev but still remained largely Russian in character, and most of the western half of this large country became fiercely independent, with eyes looking to western democracy and Europe. In my opinion, the mistake was made in not dividing the Ukraine in two after the break-up of the Soviet Union. If it had been, it is probable that this crisis would not have arisen. Russia and the Russian sphere of influence would have continued to have that window on the Black Sea. In Putin’s mind I have no doubt that he sees a recapture of the eastern corridor of Ukraine as assuring his hold on the Crimea and Sebastopol, emotionally and strategically more significant than Sochi to the south east and assuring Russian supremacy over the Sea of Asov, the gateway to the Black Sea.
In many ways, this is all tactically rather old-fashioned and probably would not be rearing its head in global politics today were it not for the current weakness of Europe heightened by Great Britain’s populist decision to leave the EU. Prior to Brexit, Europe was steadily becoming a major economic force in the world, holding together no less than four of the top seven economies of the world, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy. I do not doubt that at that time Putin saw a united Europe to his east as a potential ally for his weakening economy when pitted against the meteoritic rise of the Chinese, Oriental and Indian economies. The sale of Russian oil and gas especially to Germany, the industrial powerhouse of the EU, was a step in this direction.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the original need for NATO as an allied European/American alliance against the threat of Soviet communism in rebuilding Europe after World War II, became basically obsolete. It was not disbanded partly because the EEC was never to be a military force, but purely a social and trading partnership of equal western democracies. Through NATO, however, the European nations got dragged into the long inconclusive struggle in the Middle East in support of their strongest NATO member, the USA, costing lives and treasure and creating an enormous refugee immigration problem that affected the EU, for geographic reasons, far more seriously than the USA.
At the same time, partly through the western nations obsession with globalism and their bottom line economies, China was catapulted into a meteoric rise, making her the second largest economy in the world, second only to the USA.
This was predicted in a cartoon in the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong in the late 1980s. It depicted a huge planet—China and its sphere of influence that believe it or not even swallowed up Japan and India. Around this planet there were shown two very large moons—the sphere of the Americas that included, Canada, Mexico, all of South America and surprisingly Australasia. The other fictitious moon in the cartoon was seen to be the EEC as a counterbalance between the two that surprisingly was seen to have taken in Russia, thus holding five of the largest economies of the world. Of course, Great Britain was a part of that.
For emotive and quasi-patriotic reasons, based in an imperialistic mentality looking back to a near-past when Great Britain was a premier power in the world, mixed with a genuine populist upsurge against excessive immigration, Great Britain voted in a referendum to leave the EU in 2016. At that time, Boris Johnson was opposed to Brexit like most British politicians. I doubt in reality he has changed that much, but he seized on the opportunity to finally “Get Brexit Done” making it his election slogan. If it had not been for the Brexit puppet-master, Nigel Farage, who stood his Brexit party candidates down so Johnson could win his “stonking majority” of red wall seats in the traditionally Labour constituencies of northern England, we would probably still have a hung parliament. Boris Johnson was now faced with the need to “Get Brexit Done” in a hurry. As such, he rushed through a poor deal with the EU that has led to an almost impossible impasse in Northern Ireland, and a possible impasse over Scotland, although this is receding as time goes by.
For Northern Ireland there were two choices. We either had Great Britain stay in the customs union thus eliminating all need for customs checks, or we took Great Britain out of the EU customs union altogether and returned to a full border between Northern Ireland and the EU Republic of Ireland. This would have worked for Brexit, but it would have possibly seriously damaged the fragile peace in Northern Ireland between Republicans and Unionists. Johnson, in his rush to “Get Brexit Done” and make sure that the rest of Great Britain did not stay in the customs union with the EU, agreed to an ‘Eton Mess’ trading border in the Irish Sea that I have no doubt he thought he could bluff his way out of in due course, but it is not proving so. He simply did not understand the complexities of Ireland.
We have left the EU, that is fact; but in my opinion we would have done much better to have stayed in the customs union. This would have kept Europe as one financially trading unit rather than allowing Europe to become weakened as it has been by both Brexit and Covid, but this would have put Boris Johnson out of synch with most populist Brexiteers—the fall-out of an unwise populist vote. A weakened Europe has now played right into Vladimir Putin’s hands and led him to take us to the brink of war. Ukraine may well be the collateral damage. The future could look even bleaker when we could see Russia not as a partner with the European moon, but as a part of the Chinese planet as we see already happening in the opening up of better relations between Moscow and Beijing.
A solution in Ukraine, given our current state of crisis, must not just be a united show of strength, but must also include some compromise over Ukraine with Putin. We need the Russian Federation in the European camp rather than the Chinese camp for the balance of our future planet. Yes, we are dealing with a dictatorial thug, but we are not dealing with a communist. The old cold war mentality needs to end. It might have been tongue in cheek, but I noted a letter in the Daily Telegraph in the past week, ‘Offer membership of NATO to the Russian Federation and the problem might be solved.’ It may not be quite as simple as that, but I do believe it is a vision for the future.