By Dennis Onakinor
Dennis Onakinor wades into the discourse on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and condemns President Putin’s embrace of international brinkmanship and gangsterism, previously associated with American leaders like Ronald Reagan, George Bush (Sr.), and George Bush (Jr.). While observing that the war machine of a global military power like Russia can effortlessly overrun a weak neighbouring country such as Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks, he calls on Putin to retrace his steps from the path of destructive militarism, and learn from the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan as well as the American misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
“There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,” wrote William Shakespeare in his 1606 play, “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” And, the mind-reading art is even more illusory when the subject is an international spymaster trained in the art of simulation and dissimulation. Indeed, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet “Committee for State Security” (KGB) agent, has just shown the world that mind-reading is an illusion, following his country’s military invasion of neighbouring Ukraine after several months of strident denial of such intention.
Since October 2021, when Russia commenced massing about 150,000 – 200,000 heavily-armed troops on its borders with Ukraine, President Putin and his spokespersons have vehemently denied allegations of an imminent Russian military invasion of its neighbour. Even in the face of credible intelligence reports from Ukraine’s US-led NATO allies, Russian functionaries, especially Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, branded all related information as US-orchestrated anti-Russian hysteria.
As US’ President Joe Biden and other Western statesmen, such as NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, continued to sound the imminent invasion alarm, Russian officials derided it all as “hollow and unfounded attempt to incite tensions,” adding that “Russia doesn’t threaten anyone.” On January 28, 2022, Lavrov sought to quash all related rumours as he told an interviewer that “There won’t be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation, we don’t want a war …”
Such was the vehemence of the Russian denials that an embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky pitiably admonished Western leaders against further warnings concerning the imminent invasion of his country. Thus, when President Biden, on February 15 2022, warned that the invasion was only a matter of days away, only a few people took the information seriously, with Putin laughing it off in what would turn out to be an exercise in grand deception.
Reality soon dawned on the world, when in the early hours of February 24, 2022, the Russian war machine rumbled into Ukraine. Not many people expected it to happen. On February 15, 2022, Yours Sincerely had published a related article in THE NEWS GURU titled “War Is Not Inevitable If Preventive Diplomacy Is On the Cards.” There, I stated that “Questionable as its massive military presence on Ukraine’s borders may be, it is doubtful that Russia really intends invading its neighbour – with all the consequences. Perhaps, Putin simply wants NATO to pay attention to Russia’s concerns that have been ignored for too long.” Alas, I miscalculated spectacularly, like most people, who fell for the anti-invasion lies of Putin and his cohorts.
It is now obvious that preventive diplomacy was never really part of Putin’s options in respect of the Ukraine crisis. Steeped in Russian irredentism, he had decided from the onset to resolve the crisis militarily. His vehement denials and blatant lies about the imminent invasion were nothing but tactical delays calculated to ensure adequate preparations for the assault on Ukrainian military infrastructures, towns, and cities.
In his televised national address preceding the invasion, Putin articulated a casus belli, rooted in his much-trumpeted demand for security guarantees from NATO and its Ukraine partner: “As NATO expands to the east, with every passing year, the situation for our country is getting worse and more dangerous … We can no longer just watch what is happening … Further expansion of the NATO infrastructure and the beginning of military development in Ukraine’s territories are unacceptable for us … This is a real threat not just to our interests, but to the very existence of our state, its sovereignty. This is the very red line that has been talked about many times. They crossed it.”
Sounding angry and belligerent, Putin highlighted the objectives Russia hoped to achieve from its unprovoked aggression against its neighbour: “We have been left no other option to protect Russia and our people, but for the one that we will be forced to use today. The situation requires us to take decisive and immediate action … I decided to launch a special military operation … And for this we will pursue the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”
In a manner reminiscent of the bellicosity of President George Bush (Jr.) in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Putin issued a stark warning to any adversary who might want to intervene on the side of Ukraine: “Whoever tries to hinder us, or threaten our country or our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to consequences that you have never faced in your history. We are ready for any turn of events. All necessary decisions in this regard have been made. I hope that I will be heard.”
International political analysts have likened Putin’s disdain for preventive diplomacy to the hawkish militarism of US’ President Ronald Reagan, whose administration was characterized by what an analyst referred to as “global geopolitical gangsterism.” Some people opine that Putin’s brazen invasion of Ukraine was directly scripted from the devil-may-care attitude of Reagan in his actions against Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, etc. Others maintain that he is emulating the predatory attack of George Bush (Sr.) against Panama. Still, others say that he is borrowing a leaf from the playbook of George Bush (Jr.) on Iraq.
It would be recalled that on October 25, 1983, President Reagan ordered the military invasion of the Caribbean island state of Granada, ostensibly to intervene in that country’s political crisis – said to have been engineered by the CIA. He also authorized the CIA to mine Nicaragua’s territorial waters against the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in June 1986. He severely diminished Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s aura of invincibility when he launched a preemptive aerial assault on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi on April 15, 1986. Elsewhere, he confronted Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, humbling its naval force in a series of battles fought in the Persian Gulf between 1987 and 1988.
Upon succeeding Reagan in January 1989, a hawkish President George Bush ((Sr.) decided to tackle Panama’s military dictator, General Manuel Noriega, who was resisting extradition to the US for alleged drug trafficking offense. Brushing aside all international opposition, he ordered an invasion of the Central American country on December 20, 1989. Noriega was captured and flown to the US, and was subsequently sentenced to a 40-year jail term in April 1992, although he was paroled after 17 years due to “good behaviour.”
President George Bush (Jr.), having ousted the ruling Taliban and its al-Qaeda terrorist associates from power in December 2001, decided to humble Iraq’s strongman Saddam Hussein. Against the United Nations’ opposition, he ordered the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, ostensibly to rid the country of its weapons of mass-destruction (WMD). Subsequent events would reveal that the invasion was based on falsified intelligence information.
In a statement insinuative of the popular axiom, “What goes around comes around,” Putin alluded to some of the above-highlighted acts of international brinkmanship in his bid to draw parallels with the Ukrainian invasion: “First, without any approval from the UN Security Council, they carried out a bloody military operation against Belgrade, using aircraft and missiles right in the very centre of Europe … Then came the turn of Iraq, Libya, Syria … However, there is a special place for the invasion of Iraq, which was carried out also without any legal grounds. As a pretext, they put forward supposedly reliable information from the United States about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
While Putin’s examples of America’s violation of international law may be germane, he has failed to realize the simple truth that two wrongs do not make a right. In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he stands inextricably guilty of the same international lawlessness for which he holds the US severally culpable. Like Presidents Reagan, Bush (Sr.) and Bush (Jr.), he is presently exhibiting the global geopolitical gangsterism that was associated with American great-power chauvinism and hubris.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the war machine of a great military power like Russia can humble a militarily-weak country such as Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks. But, the bitter experience of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and that of the US in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, have shown that the real trouble of great-power interventionism lies in post-invasion pacification. Putin has failed miserably in learning this vital lesson.
While analysts agree that Russia’s strategic security concerns in relation to NATO and Ukraine are genuine, they however find it hard to understand how the invasion of Ukraine will effectively resolve the security concerns in its favour. For, after all the death and destruction occasioned by the invasion, it would still have to engage its adversaries in a negotiated solution to the conflict. And, if that be the case, of what purpose was the war?
Thus, in light of the Soviet’s Afghan debacle, and the US’ Vietnamese, Iraqi, and Afghan military misadventures, President Putin would do well to reverse course from the path of destructive militarism to that of diplomacy. It is never too late to embrace the option of peace.
Meanwhile, a revanchist President Xi Jinping is closely watching developments in Ukraine, while tactfully refraining from condemning or supporting Russia’s act of aggression. Undoubtedly, the outcome of events in Ukraine will determine China’s ultimate move against Taiwan. Perhaps, the world is witnessing a resurgence of global geopolitical gangsterism.
Dennis Onakinor, a global affairs analyst, writes from Lagos – Nigeria. He can be reached via e-mail at dennisonakinor@yahoo.com
