By Stephen Lwetutte
LONDON-UNITED KINGDOM/NEWSDAY:
Peaceful coexistence between and among military powers in Europe and elsewhere has ensured that there has been no more world war for 77 years, since 1945. This has been the case despite disagreements and the capacity of the parties to wage war. The widespread view that the current war has been sparked by North Atlantic Treaty Organisations (NATO) posing a threat to the Russian Federation (Russia) or the NATO expansion arose out of threats posed by Russia is not supported by hard facts on the ground. It would be misleading, futile and vain to look for a solution for ending this war on that basis. NATO would not stop being a neighbour to Russia even if the boundaries were rolled back and shifted westwards.
American-led NATO, a defensive military alliance comprising west European and north American countries by far predated (founded in 1949) the creation of the equivalent rival Soviet (USSR)-led Warsaw Pact, created in 1955 and was dissolved 1in 1991. Alliances are nothing new – they have always existed and coexisted throughout history. Today, Russia itself leads another little-known military alliance called the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), for example, with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, all since 1994 as members Therefore, for anyone to suggest that the war between Russia and Ukraine started because NATO wants to expand right to the Russian borders and compromise its is to miss the point and deliberately distort the facts, or they are unaware and ignorant of the fact that NATO countries already directly share a common border with Russia, and did so even with the Warsaw Pact countries.
While it is arguable that a legitimate concern could be raised if tactical weapons were deployed too close for comfort, as it was in case of the Cuban missile crisis in the October of 1962, when the world came to the brink of a third world war, that argument is now pretty much academic: the development of the state-of-the-art long-range and precision-guided weapons means you do not have to be anywhere near anyone’s borders to pose a threat. Back then, the Soviet Union had secretly sought to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, an island country only 90km from mainland United States of America. This meant that the United States was within striking distance of the United States soil in the event of an armed conflict or war. The US, in view of this, took resolute measures to stop the further deployment of more missiles en route to Cuba, including imposing a naval blockade around Cuba to engage the Soviets if need be.
In the instant case, Ukraine is not yet even a NATO member, notwithstanding her stated aspirations to join it. Secondly, despite its concerns and misgivings, Russia has up until now peacefully coexisted with NATO countries bordering it – NATO members former Soviet Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with Norway and Poland have a direct land border with Russia. In fact, formal relations between NATO and Russia established in 1991, and ever since NATO and Russia have cooperated in a number of areas, including on the war in Afghanistan, in the spirit of mutual tryst and friendship. That cooperation was disrupted on in 2014, when NATO suspended it following the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Russia even had a diplomatic mission at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, before 8 of its official were expelled in October 2021 following an incident. In response Russia suspended its mission and ordered the closure of NATO office in Moscow.
Mutual respect underpinned by each other’s military capability has been maintained on acknowledgement that any conflict between them could spell disaster not just for each other, but the entire world – there would Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in the even of war involving nuclear-armed powers. It is precisely on those considerations that NATO has turned down Ukraine’s request to establish a no-fly zone, similar to the one established by the UN in Libya, since it means that NATO would have to engage Russia directly by targeting its aircraft and air-defence systems in Ukraine, which would escalate the conflict if Russia was to respond, with potentially catastrophic global consequences.
All the above demonstrates that Russia has nothing to fear from NATO, not only because there is no premeditated threat, but also because it has the capacity to neutralise any such threat like no other country could. The fact that other NATO members, moreover former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Estonia have never triggered the kind that Ukraine has, is also indicative. Russia’s concerns with regard to Ukraine aligning itself with the West lie elsewhere – after all even Russia has since the demise of the Soviet Union sought to align itself with the West.
The sheer number of Western companies that have invested in Russia and Russian cooperation with the West have now come to the fore, and it is colossal. Unfortunately, even if the real issues between Russia and Ukraine could have laid elsewhere than in the expansion of NATO, sufficient mistrust has now already been created by this war among countries to make such alliances such as NATO and CSTO relevant and raise the spectre of an armed conflict a distinct possibility.
Diplomats should not be distracted by focusing on NATO expansion, even if it is officially given as the reason, because Russia has shown it can live with NATO and non NATO countries at its doorstep without feeling threatened. They should creatively look elsewhere as long as the universally accepted as sacred principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity are respected and upheld, and provide confidence to the majority of smaller countries who could not stand up to the might of countries like Russia, in the event that their sovereignty was at stake. In a civilised rules-based international order, in which Russia has a special status and extra responsibility as a UN Security Council Member, all countries should feel protected and secure.
The writer is a Multilingual Human Rights Practitioner, formerly at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London for over 20 years and now Legal and Human Rights Consultant.
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