Yuba Nath Lamsal

After the collapse of Soviet Union, Samuel P Huntington came with the thesis that the future wars will not be between countries but between cultures or civilisations. In his book ‘The Clash of Civilization and The Remaking of World Order,’ Huntington basically points out some key civilisations -- Western civilisation, Orthodox civilisation, Chinese civilisation, Japanese civilisation, Hindu civilisation, Islamic civilisation, African civilisation and Latin American civilisation -- around which the conflict will revolve. Huntington’s thesis comes after Francs Fukuyama prophesised in his book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ that ideological conflict came to an end with Western liberal ideas reigning supreme over all other ideologies.

Neither Fukuyama’s prophesy nor Huntington’s claim has come to be a reality. With Russia and Ukraine locked in bloody war, contrary to Fukuyama’s thesis, history has repeated. Unlike Huntington’s treatise, the war is not between cultures but between the two sibling countries.

Resolution
As the Russia-Ukraine conflict flared up, the United States and Albania moved a resolution in the UN Security Council to condemn Russia for initiating war against a small neighbour Ukraine. In the Security Council, 11 members voted in favour of the resolution while China, India and United Arab Emirates abstained. The resolution could not be adopted as Russia vetoed it. Similarly, a resolution was moved in the United Nations General Assembly in which 141 countries including Nepal voted in favour, while 35 countries including India and China abstained. Nepal made its position further clear stating ‘it opposes the use of force against a sovereign country in any circumstance and believes in peaceful resolution of disputes through diplomacy and dialogue’.

With Russia initiating the war, the world is again moving towards a new form of conflict. It has brought back the memory of the Cold War era when the United States and Soviet Union vied to flex muscles for projecting their influence and power. Russia may have its own logic and argument, but attack on a sovereign country cannot be justified. As Bertrand Russel once said ‘war does not determine who is right - only who is left’, none wins in the war and humanity gets defeated. In other words, war is a crime against humanity, whoever starts.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is not a new but a long-running one. Right after Ukraine declared independence from Soviet Union in 1993, friction between these two countries has continued. But situation worsened after the present Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky came to power."

Apparently the war is between Russia and Ukraine. But the crux of the problem is not between Russia and Ukraine alone but between Russia and the United States. Ukraine is Europe’s geopolitical pivot of Europe. The United States wants to take Ukraine away from the Russia’s security orbit and integrate it into the Western camp. The United States is expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastward. Beginning in 1999, the eastward expansion of NATO has already incorporated Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Check Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The US and the West want to further expand NATO and their next target is Ukraine and Georgia, which made Moscow more susceptible and nervous. Moscow views Ukraine as its sphere of influence and Ukraine joining the NATO as a direct security threat to Russia.

Until 2004, Ukraine had maintained balanced relations with both Russia and the West. However, Ukraine’s foreign policy equilibrium changed after the President Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko came to power who adopted pro-west policy and planned to join the European Union and ultimately NATO. However, his plans could not materialise as the then Prime Minister Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych pulled out of the deal to join EU. Yanukovych, too, failed to maintain a balance between Russia and the West and earned the reputation of being a pro- Russia man.

Yanukovych had close personal relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he comes from the Russian speaking Donetsk region. In the 2010 presidential election, Yanukovych narrowly won but his rival candidate questioned the validity of the election results. US often coaxed Yanukovych to join Western alliance against Russia and abrogate the lease of strategic Sevastopol port in the Black Sea. However, Yanukovych not only refused to join the Western alliance but seemingly demonstrated pro-Russia leaning and signed an agreement with Russia extending the Sevastopol port lease.

His too pro-Russia policies annoyed the West on the one hand while public resentment grew within the country against the Yanukovych government, on the other, which he failed to handle properly. The public resentment developed into mass demonstrations. In the wake of the public protest, Ukrainian parliament impeached him. Unable to face massive protest, he fled to Russia in 2014 paving the way for Volodymy Oleksandrovych Zelensky to rise to power as President of Ukraine.

Since coming to power Zelensky as president avowedly took pro-West policy and was eager to join EU and NATO which dismayed Russia. Already alarmed by incorporating Baltic countries and several other east European countries into NATO, Zelensky’s hobnobbing with the West and the US made Vladimir Putin further susceptible. The United States wanted Ukraine to abrogate the deal with Russia concerning the lease of strategically located Sevastopol port of Crimea and intended to have its own naval base in Sevastopol port. In retaliation, Russia annexed entire Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014.

The more Kyiv leans towards West, the more Russia advances westward in Ukraine. The next step Russia did was to recognise two Ukraine’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics. Kremlin did not stop there and went further ahead by militarily attacking Ukraine. Russia calls President Zelenskyy as ‘Western proxy and puppet’ and has been trying to defend the attack as an attempt to ‘free Ukraine from Nazification’. Whatever the claim and counter claim, the core goal of Russian attack is to control and protect its Western border and keep the NATO forces at bay by creating Ukraine as a buffer zone.

Domestic politics
As Vladimir Lenin said ‘what Ireland was for England, Ukraine has become for Russia’, Putin too considers Ukraine as Russia’s backyard and the present conflict is the outcome of this Russian mind-set. However, the domestic politics was also partly responsible as politicians often politicised the strategic and foreign affairs for the partisan interest being polarised into pro-West and pro-Russian camps and failing to understand the sensitivity of its powerful neighbour. As John F Kennedy said, ‘domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.’ Ukrainian crisis is the mix of both domestic as well as foreign policy disaster.

(The author is former ambassador and former chief editor of this daily. lamsalyubanath@gmail.com)