We are so used to conflict in Africa that the news of the war in Ukraine doesn’t appear to have had much impact on us, perhaps also because it is far away in Europe. In the same way that Europeans and Americans must look at conflicts in Africa and feel dissociated from them, we are now looking at a war in Europe and feeling it is not our problem. Perhaps this is why there are some African leaders and intellectuals who have taken an anti-American position and expressed support for Russia. The wars, which we have witnessed in recent years in Libya, Syria, and other parts of the world, were brought on by internal uprisings, with the western powers (Russia and America) aligning themselves with different sides. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were launched by America with the justification of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attack, and the supposed presence of WMD in Iraq. There has been no happy ending to any of these wars, with the last state usually being worse than the first.
But for the European powers these were wars fought in other parts of the world with the most significant outcome being an influx of refugees. Most European countries have not invested much in defense, preferring to let America maintain the global balance of power. But one effect of the streams of refugees trying to access Britain, Europe and America was the election of a right wing government promising to deal with these mass movements of human-kind by building a wall, or ensuring there was no easy access across the English Channel.
President Putin has always watched from the sidelines of Europe, poking western nations in the eye when he got the chance – in Syria with his support for Bashar al-Assad and in the US elections with his support for candidate Trump. He was known to be unhappy with the loss of the Soviet sphere of influence, but few (including the Ukrainians themselves) thought that he would seek to take it back by force, launching an all-out assault on his neighbouring country. So the scenes of bombed out cities has come as a shock to the Europeans who have not seen war in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War. One result of the threat from Russia is that Germany has vastly increased its defense budget, something that has not been seen since the end of the war. Since Ukraine borders the EU, there are many Ukrainians who work in European countries and are not exactly seen as foreigners. I was speaking to my daughter in Ireland who told me that every Irish person knows someone from Ukraine; therefore this war seems very shocking and close to home for them.
Many of the conflicts we have in Africa are not considered to amount to much in terms of the global balance of power, so African wars and genocides have largely been ignored by western powers. Conflicts in the Middle East have been much more significant globally because of the presence of oil, but even oil has become less important today, with the threat of a nuclear attack launched deliberately or accidentally being a real possibility. As I watch television pictures of ordinary people being the targets of an unprovoked war, I wonder what it takes for the President of any country to make such a calculated decision. Many say that Putin is unbalanced and isolated, but we also had the case of George W Bush, supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who launched a war in Iraq in 2003. While there were many who felt that Saddam Hussein was a monster, that war was hard to justify and did not end well for the Iraqi people.
Henry Kissinger was the great diplomat of my lifetime, who developed a strategy of keeping closer to your enemies than they are to each other. The tilt towards China when he engineered a meeting between Nixon and Mao Zedong, was a stroke of genius, since it kept the Soviets off balance and maintained a tripartite balance of power. It is only in the last months that Russia and China have moved closer towards each other again, which could be extremely significant if China supports Russia in the present conflict. With the western world turning against Russia’s actions in the invasion of Ukraine, it is China that has the power to bail Russia out.
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