Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 7 – Fearful that a
Russian victory in Ukraine would tempt Vladimir Putin to move against the
Baltic countries whose defense would require the kind of military actions that
NATO does not want to have to take, the Western powers have decided that they
must stop Putin in Ukraine by non-military means, according to Andrey
Piontkovsky.
They have become convinced, the
Russian analyst says, that “if they allow Putin to triumph in Moldova, Ukraine
or somewhere else, then on the very next day, his ‘little green men’ will
appear on the territory of the Baltic countries, that is, on the territory of
NATO member countries” (espreso.tv/blogs/2015/06/07/dylemma_putyna).
In that event,he says, they would
not be able to avoid the open military conflict that they have done so far in
Ukraine because if they did not live up to Article 5 of the NATO Charter, “this
would be a shameful end of NATO, the end of the West as a subject of world
politics, and the departure fro the world arena of the US as the guarantor of
the security of the West.”
“But if they come to the assistance
of Estonia, this would be a war with a nuclear power led by a man who lives in
another reality and who flaunts his nuclear weapons. That is an unthinkable
choice [for the West],” and that is why, Piontkovsky argues, the West has made
a firm decision to “stop Putin here and now in Ukraine … ‘without boots on the
ground.’”
The West doesn’t have any need to
use military force in Ukraine, he continues, because it “has sufficient
economic and political means to inflict a humiliating defeat on Putin.” And, it is important to understand, that what
the West is doing is about its own security and has nothing to do with its
sympathies or lack thereof to Ukraine.
This
new toughening of the West’s position has left Putin in “a very complicated
situation.” His efforts to promote a frozen conflict in place of the failed
Novorossiya project have not been accepted by the West, and consequently, he
must either accept a slow retreat or escalate dramatically, something that his
entourage may find “’too dangerous and extremely expensive.’”
Putin’s choice, Piontkovsky
continues, is thus between “political death as someone who will be held
responsible for corruption, responsible for the downing of an airliner and a
mass of other unattractive affairs or be the fighting leader of ‘the Russian
world’ who throws a challenge to the entire West.”
Emotionally, of course, Putin would
be drawn to “the second variant.” But not everyone around him will be happy
with that, and the Kremlin leader may be less of a free agent on this question than
he or others suppose – indeed, Piontkovsky suggests, some commentators close to
the Kremlin have indicated that Putin faces exactly this kind of choice.
The coming days and weeks are likely
to be critical, and what will happen depends not only on what takes place on
the ground in Ukraine and in Western diplomacy but on “how much Putin controls
the situation personally.” He might benefit for a time from a bigger war; but
many of those around him would not.
Moreover, Piontkovsky says, if Putin
moves dramatically in Transdniestria or Odessa or somewhere else, there is
little doubt that “the reaction of the West will be very harsh,” judging from
the statements of Western diplomats and leaders over the last two or three weeks
with regard to Putin.
Consequently,
the Russian analyst says, one can say that Putin “has already suffered a
political defeat … he has two variants for the future: that of a slow retreat
and that of an insane escalation. And both will leqad to his political defeat.”
The latter “will lead to the end of the Putin regime much more rapidly, but it
will entail enormous losses of human life.”
And thus one must put one’s hope in
Putin’s entourage, Piontkovsky concludes, a group of people who despite their
own shortcomings “might be able to restrain him from this insane step.”
No comments:
Post a Comment