After pro-Russian separatists shot down a passenger plane in Ukraine, the West has demanded that the Russians disown their out-of-control compatriots in Ukraine. Our narrative is that the Russians are happy to keep Ukraine unstable and that what happened to the Malaysian airliner was the risk Russia was running by arming the separatists with sophisticated weapons.
As I write from the Balkans, however, I am aware of different interpretations of the Ukrainian crisis and other crises around the world.
When seen from the Russian perspective, Ukraine is just another example of the gradual but definitive encroachment of the West into all things Russian, and it isn't Russians who are doing the destabilizing but the Americans.
Many Russians see Russia and Ukraine as part of the same Russian/Slavic culture. To them, America arming and financially supporting an opposition in Ukraine would be like the Scottish Nationalists being financed by Russia. How do you think London and Washington would react to that? How do you think they’d react to the idea of a Russian puppet running an independent Scottish state from Edinburgh.
This is how close Ukraine is to Russia, according to many Russians — and that's why Putin is unlikely to back down and do what the West wants.
Many Russian strategists consider Ukraine simply a pawn to keep Germany away from Russia. They believe that the only meaningful alliance in Europe would be one between an energy-rich Russia and an energy-impoverished Germany, between a technology and manufacturing-rich Germany and a manufacturing-poor Russia.
They regard an alliance with Germany as the logical geopolitical relationship for Europe in the first half of the 21st century, and they regard the EU as a relic of the 20th century, necessary to protect western Europe under the umbrella of Nato both from itself and ultimately from the Red Army.
It's easy to see how such a coalition would upset America by undercutting its importance to Europe. Russians may therefore accuse America of destabilizing Ukraine to heighten the regional angst of the Poles and also line the Germans up against the Russians in defence of a very limited Ukrainian state, which they see as little more than an IMF supplicant propped up by IMF/EU loans to cover the day-to-day pilfering of its home grown kleptocracy. Meanwhile, allies like Poland get all the best American military equipment, US investment, and regular US pats on the back.
Again when seen from Moscow, further south on the other side of the Black Sea, America is happy to let its ally, prime minister Erdogan, in Turkey tear up the Turkish constitution, jail opposition politicians and questioning journalists, and do the very things they scolded Putin for doing, staying in power by jumping from prime minister to president and back.
While Erdogan makes a mockery of Ataturk’s Turkish republican values, America sells Turkey the finest military hardware because Turkey promises to put manners on Russia’s ally in the region, Assad in Syria. Furthermore, the Turks and the Persians have hated each other for millenniums, so a strong Turkey keeps Russia’s other ally, Iran, in check.
America’s other ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, allegedly lends its support to al-Qaeda and its various Sunni offshoots such as Isis in Iraq, revealing that America is either very capable of playing both sides or is terribly out of its depth in the region. All the while, America’s biggest ally in the region, Israel, pulverises Gaza, but Gaza itself is held by Iran’s ally Hamas and thus is a pawn in Iran’s regional game.
Hamas were out of favour with Iran for not backing Assad in Syria at the beginning, but now with Assad securely in power after an unbelievable 150,000 people have been killed in Syria, Hamas has to cozy up to Iran again. The Hamas embrace of Iran was made more urgent by the eclipse of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Qatari-financed movement in Cairo, which is now on the run.
This grotesque geopolitical chessboard, where each conflict can be seen as a proxy war for something else is the kaleidoscope through which the world is seen from Moscow and Washington and indeed the other capitals of major world players from Beijing to London.
All sides have their narratives, allies and interests. All desperately want to remain in control and are happy to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by their allies. In all cases, innocents are killed. So the Americans look the other way in Gaza, while the Russians discount the killings in Aleppo. The French get all hot and bothered about Ukraine while ignoring the fact that its own troops are up to their eyes in the civil war in Chad and southern Libya. Britain lectures Russia on intervention in Ukraine while ignoring the fact that their troops are in Afghanistan.
Maybe it’s because I am in the Balkans 100 years after Gavrilo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand and kicked off a global conflict, but the unstable alliances of 2014 look equally as fragile as they did in 1914.
Sometimes when you are living through historic times you don’t realise it, but last week’s events from Ukraine to Gaza and Iraq do have a momentous feel to them.