OPINION: Volodymyr Zelensky ’no longer’ a master of his own destiny. Zelensky today is guarded 24/7 by a team of US minders, strongmen and military medics. He may not be free to turn against the advisers that are blocking and forbidding the acceptance of a compromise.
By DR. ANDRÉ THOMASHAUSEN
ONE of the greatest diplomats after World War II, Henry Kissinger, remarked in his reflection in 2014, on the secession of the Crimea from Ukraine, that the test of policy was how it ended, not how it began.
Kissinger was the architect of the doctrine of peaceful co-existence in the ’70s. It kept the world out of war and allowed for the era of détente (the easing of hostilities) and subsequent disarmament of many thousands of nuclear warheads. Multiparty democracy in Africa was achieved on the success of Kissinger’s vision of non-interference with the choices of political and economic systems that people may make.
In stark contrast, the 1947 “Truman Doctrine”, spelt out by US Democrat president Harry Truman in Congress in a joint session on March 12, 1947, stated: ”It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”
The Biden administration has taken the Democrats’ interventionist tradition to the extreme by launching an unprecedented economic war against Russia. Within days, the West, representing barely 10% of the world population, cut 60% of Russia’s trading links and froze (or effectively confiscated) about 80% of Russia’s sovereign reserves, totalling just over $600 billion (about R9 trillion).
The full forces of Western media and social networks are mobilised against Russia. Russian music and music artists removal from programmes and the cultural banishment of Russia is in full swing, including even the prohibition of the importation of Russian-made Vodka or the banning of Russian cats from International Cat Federation competitions.
Oil and energy prices have doubled as a result, much to the delight of associated industries and tax collectors who can expect enormous windfall profits. The plight, suffering and, eventually, hundreds of thousands of premature deaths as a result of absolute poverty in economies in Africa that do not have hydrocarbon resources, do not concern the great leaders who want “to make the world safe for democracy”.
To reduce gas and energy imports from Russia, Europe is willing to forget the all-important climate change, and switch on again or extend the lifespan of old coal-fired power stations. Likewise, all bitterly fought immigration policies are forgotten. Unlimited refugees from Ukraine are welcomed and are given full resident status and working permits in the EU. In the UK, British families who “offer sanctuary” to refugees from Ukraine can earn a £350 (about R7 000) grant.
Classic international law categorises a full and existential blockade as an Act of War. While the UN is unable to safeguard the sacred principle of proportionality in the sanctions wave against Russia, its leadership may lawfully employ counter-measures and use force in self-defence, under art 51 of the UN Charter.
The isolation of Russia from the rest of the world is what Biden is pursuing at any cost. His national security adviser Jake Sullivan, in a seven-hour meeting on Monday with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, threatened that China would lose its EU and US markets if it supported Russia. When questioned about the consequences for the world economy, he simply said: “So be it.”
The tabu of international law of the prohibition of the use of force outside the UN system has been eroded by an acquiesced 30 years of contrary state practice, especially in Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The civilian casualties sum up hundreds of thousands and the bombing loads exceed many times those released in WWII. At least the Russian military have shown in Ukraine a humanitarian restraint that was absent in the military expeditions of Nato since the ’90s.
Under the new catch-all categories of “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect”, the West has, for decades, attacked and invaded whomever it chose to. It paved the way for the return to the older concept of “just war” which is why the Russian intervention is “wrong” and the earlier Nato interventions were “right”.
Further escalation in the name of international law righteousness would be the least desirable outcome of the war in Ukraine. It would trigger the adoption of global counter-measures by Russia that could initiate WW III. If Russia is pushed into a checkmate, its military leadership will impose the escalation that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been avoiding. It is an infantile or rather geriatric illusion to think that a toppled Putin would be succeeded by a “nice Russian”, one moulded like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky according to the Western idols of the post-modern “end of history”. Only a far more nationalistic and resentful leader could succeed Putin.
A second settlement scenario is preferable. It would, within the next few days, increase the stalemate to the level that is required in any conflict for the parties to consider a negotiated arrangement to be less risky and painful than the continuation of confrontations. At the negotiating tables, this is the scenario that is emerging. Certainly, Zelensky does not want to survive as the conqueror of a land reduced to rubble and ashes.
However, Zelensky today is guarded 24/7 by a team of US minders, strongmen and military medics. He is no longer a master of his own destiny. He may not be free to turn against the advisers that are blocking and forbidding the acceptance of a compromise.
Hence a third “default” scenario is the Syrian model of a war of attrition. In the scenario, the US will continue to spend billions in arms supplies to a Ukrainian military that will die in a proxy war for the type of “democracy” that the US Democrat Party claims as its “calling”. In reality it will serve to embellish the Biden presidency, channel new riches to the US-dominated oil and gas and arms industries, and get the EU to accept more rigorously that it can exist under only American command.
But a tragic outcome for the international rule of law as well as for the victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is unavoidable in all three scenarios. The only moral winner in this conflict will be the one who has the courage to end it.
* DR. ANDRÉ THOMASHAUSEN is a German Attorney and UNIASA Professor Emeritus for International Law.