Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 7 – The meeting
of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss
Ukraine without the presence of Ukrainian leaders has led many commentators to
draw parallels with the 1938 Munich Conference at which Britain and France sold
out Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of “peace in our time.”
Perhaps the most thoughtful of these
is offered by Andrey Piontkovsky who argues that “events in Ukraine are
developing approximately according to the very same scenario” that events in
Czechoslovakia did 77 years ago and strongly implies that they will continue in
the same direction as well (ru.tsn.ua/analitika/frau-merkel-kapitulirovala-409494.html).
Just how far Merkel and Hollande are
prepared to go for peace in their time is unclear, he argues. It could be
anything from “a second Transdniestria” to the legitimation of Russian “peacekeepers”
inside the borders of Ukraine and the “guarantees” Putin seeks for a “non-aligned”
government in Kyiv.
But as the Russian analyst points
out, the very fact of the meeting represents “an enormous political success”
for the Kremlin leader. Not only does it boost Putin’s prestige and end all the
talk about his international isolation, but it divides Europe and the United
States as well as undermining the unity of Europe itself, two long-standing
Moscow goals.
Many if not all “had hoped that
Putin had been driven into a corner, but now he is again on the march. All
this,” Piontkovsky says, “has become possible” thanks to the shift of position
of German Chancellor Merkel who has succumbed to Putin’s latest campaign to
achieve exactly those two ends.
(Piontkovsky dismisses Hollande’s
presence in Moscow and his actions as not unexpected because the French
president has been “zombified by Putin” for a long time and thus could be
expected to follow Merkel if she made such a shift away from support for
Ukraine against Russian aggression to cooperation with Moscow in the name of
ending the conflict.)
Among the
leaders of Putin’s latest ideological effort has been Dmitry Trenin, head of
the Moscow Carnegie Center and someone “very respected in America as a
pro-Western specialist,” even though in fact he is “a GRU colonel” and may now
even be a general in the Russian intelligence services, Piontkovsky says.
In an interview
to London’s “Financial Times,” Trenin suggested that if the United States provided
weapons to Ukraine, “’the Russians’ in this case would use tactical nuclear
weapons,” a statement that so frightened the Europeans that Merkel and with her
Holland changed their approach and have pushed Ukraine toward acceptance of Putin’s
plans.
Not only does
this open a gulf between the EU leaders and the United States and between
Germany and France and many other countries in the EU, but it allows Putin to
achieve two other goals as well. On the one hand, it sets the stage for exactly
the kind of negotiations Putin wants: by world leaders face to face over the fate
of lesser powers.
And on the
other hand, it shows that aggression and even the threat of aggression works
for Moscow, thus guaranteeing there will be more of it. In that way too, Moscow
2015 resembles Munich 1938, even if the leaders of Germany and France are not
prepared to learn those lessons or even think longer term.
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