A spectre once again haunts Europe. No,
I don't mean radical Islam, which once again reared its ugly head last week.
I'm referring to a new Cold War, one that represents a far more dangerous
threat to the continent.
Russia's illegal incursion in Crimea and
insurrection in eastern Ukraine has drawn the wrath of the West. In Russia,
meanwhile, anti-Americanism has reached new highs, Barack Obama is widely
despised and Russian supermarkets use US flags as doormats for customers to
wipe their feet on.
It's been a quarter of a century since
the collapse of Soviet Communism. Yet here we are at the dawn of second Cold
War between – let's not forget – two nuclear giants. Why?
The conventional
wisdom says Putin is a monster bent on reviving the Russian empire. Put the
past year's events in a broader historical context, however, and you'll reach a
more plausible conclusion.
According to
foreign-policy realists (including this writer), Putin's conduct has been
understandable. It has been a reaction to the West's attempts to pull Ukraine
and other former Warsaw Pact satellite states away from Russia's strategic
orbit.
In the late 1990s and 2000s,
Washington and Brussels expanded NATO up to the frontiers of the former Soviet
Union. In so doing, they repudiated an implicit agreement with Mikhail
Gorbachev in the early 1990s, that we would not exploit Russia's security
vulnerabilities, lest the demise of the Soviet Union unleash the kind of chaos
and bloodshed that characterised the collapse of other empires.
Add to this the US missile shield
on Russia's doorstep and last year's western-backed coup against a
democratically elected, pro-Moscow government in Kiev, and it is no wonder
Putin thinks we are intent on "tearing out the claws and teeth" of
the bear.
We had some warning of all this.
It wasn't just the Russians who warned that NATO expansion would cause trouble.
In 1997, the architect of the Cold War doctrine of containment, George Kennan,
and former prime minister Paul Keating were among many sceptics. Moving the
western alliance into Russia's face, predicted Kennan, would be a "fateful
error". It "may rank in the end", said Keating, "with the
strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in
the international system at the beginning of this century."
The critics have been vindicated.
Yet the likes of Hillary Clinton and Prince Charles continue to equate Russia's
incursion in Ukraine to Hitler's expansion in the 1930s. In fact, Putin's
calculations are based on an old truth of geopolitics: great powers play
hardball to defend their vital interests in their sphere of influence. Recall
Washington's response to the Soviets' attempts to put nukes in Cuba.
One can agree Putin is a thug and
still envisage a role for Russia in what it deemed its near abroad long before
Stalin appeared on the scene. After all, Ukraine is a conduit for exports to
Europe and covers a huge terrain that the French and Germans crossed to attack
Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. Most Crimeans, remember,
are glad to be part of the country they called home from the time of Catherine
the Great to Nikita Khrushchev.
It's also worth reflecting that
we need Russia's support more than we realise. A nuclear deal with Iran is
unlikely without Moscow's cooperation. Russia shares intelligence with the
US-led coalition about Islamic State terrorists. Picking a fight with Putin
also undermines the US pivot to Asia. After all, it merely drives the Russians
into the arms of the Chinese and makes it more difficult for Washington to make
Asia its number one strategic priority. That is not in Australia's
interest.
What to do? If made desperate and
humiliated further, this weakened power could be dangerous like a cornered,
wounded animal. A rapprochement, on the other hand, would not just end the
crippling sanctions as well as bring to account those separatists who shot down
the Malaysian passenger jet in July. It would more or less respect Putin's
limited conditions for peace: call on Kiev to respect the minority rights of
ethnic Russians, cease EU and NATO expansion and make Ukraine a buffer state
between East and West.
Call it "appeasement"
if you like. But when dealing with a traditional great power with modest
regional ambitions, a policy of compromise and accommodation is justified. As
Winston Churchill argued: "Appeasement in itself may be good or bad
according to the circumstances."
Bear also in mind another wise
Churchillian principle: "In victory, magnanimity." The British
conservative was no wimp, but he recognised the folly of grinding the face of
an old foe in the dirt.
George H. W. Bush was magnanimous
in 1989-91 when he refused to, as he put it, "dance on the [Berlin]
wall" and "gloat" over the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Alas,
his successors, intoxicated by the belief that America was the
"indispensable nation," expanded the US security umbrella without
taking into account Russian susceptibilities.
The West can avert a second Cold
War if our leaders adopt a more prudent approach towards Russia. Detente would
upset unreconstructed cold warriors, but it is more likely to resolve the
gravest crisis in the post-Cold War era than the madness of repeating the same
mistakes and expecting different results.
Tom Switzer, a research associate at the University
of Sydney's United States Studies Centre, is host of Between the Lines
on ABC's Radio National
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