Commemorating the Great Patriotic War [WWII],
President
Putin awards a Jubilee Medal to Sergei Kolesnik, a participant
in the WWII liberation of Ukraine, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
To Reshape Global Order, Russia Needs Help of Other Disgruntled Peoples (Gazeta, Russia)
"If they
were put in a global context, Russian demands for new rules of the game would
garner wider support. … There are many countries and peoples who consider the
planet's existing world order to be unjust. Most comprise what used to be
called the 'third world' - developing and post-colonial countries; and many
have long been extremely dissatisfied with the chorus of discrimination by
great powers unprepared to give up their dominant position. … Humanity's
accumulated fatigue with the lack of alternatives to the West opens up new
opportunities. Even if Moscow has no ideology to offer right now, it would resonate if Russia sensibly channeled this anti-hegemonic fervor."
Fyodor Lyukanov on how the war in Ukraine has changed our lives
but not the world.
Had the crucial Feb. 11 talks in Minsk happened
a week later, they could have been part of a time loop. Almost exactly 12 month
before, on February 21, came the culmination of the Maidan
protests and the toppling of the government in Kiev. The
result of the talks? With the interference of the great powers there was
an end to hostilities and a consolidation of the revolution on the global stage.
This was neither more nor less than what occurred during the French Revolution
from the storming
of the Bastille to the Congress of Vienna. Only
then the interval from start to finish was over a quarter century, whereas
this time everything occurred within the course of about a year. After all, time moves faster in the 21st century.
Nevertheless, the magnitude of events then and now are
comparable in much the same way as imperial Vienna 200 years ago compares with
Minsk today.
More importantly, the scene of the action today, Ukraine, is
a place in which the same things have happened again and again and bringing history full
circle: an endlessly repeating loop of something approaching tragicomedy.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Minsk II is doomed. There's
a chance that armed conflict in Donbass can be
stopped (or at least frozen), as the costs involved if war continues are far
too great. Yet the Ukrainian drama is not over and the shockwaves it set in
motion will continue to reverberate throughout European politics. This will
provoke new crises.
That's because Minsk in 2015 is not like Vienna in 1815 or Yalta in 1945 in the
sense that a new world order or new rules of the game will not be created - and
couldn’t be.
Almost a year ago, when in response to the political tsunami
in Kiev, Moscow rushed to aid the population of Crimea by permitting a vote for
self determination, many considered it a demand for a revision of the global
order. Yet the significance of refusing to accept the inviolability of borders that
emerged after the collapse of the USSR goes beyond the post-Soviet space.
A leitmotif of the year in Russia has a discussion about the
injustice of global events over the last quarter century. This is in part because
since the end of the Cold War, as a rule, consultation with Moscow has been an
afterthought conducted at best for the sake of form. This is also in part due
to the antagonism that comes with publicly raising questions about the
essential facts and events of recent history. Out of this emerges the idea of
questioning the legitimacy of German unification highlighted by Russia
lawmakers and echoed in Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's
speech at the Munich Security Conference [video below].
If they were put in a global context, Russian demands for new
rules of the game would garner wider support.
There are many countries and peoples who consider the
planet's existing world order to be unjust. Most comprise what used to be
called the “third world” - developing and post-colonial countries; and many
have long been extremely dissatisfied with the chorus of discrimination by
great powers unprepared to give up their dominant position. With its imperial
tendencies, Russia cannot of course simply align itself with these former
colonies. However, humanity's accumulated fatigue with the lack of alternatives
to the West opens up new opportunities. Even if Moscow has no ideology to offer
right now, it would resonate if Russia sensibly channeled this anti-hegemonic fervor.
Russia, however, when referring to new rules of the game,
does not in fact have in mind rules that are global and comprehensive, but only
those to regulate its relations with the West.
The spirit of the Cold War which everyone is talking about today
is seen precisely in the obsession with a relationship that defined the global order
30 years ago, but which now, though, if not peripheral, are certainly not as
central to the world as they were.
The battle for Ukraine, which has changed all of our lives over
the last year, is in a global context a local episode that most outsiders see as
something rather exotic.
If the first act in Crimea aroused the curiosity of many (what
if Russia really is trying to challenge the prevailing order?), interest
rapidly became bogged down because few people understand the drawn-out conflict
in Donbass.
The results of Minsk depend largely on Russia, although ultimate
success is of course hardly guaranteed. The parameters of a possible solution
were clear from the outset last April as the flames of Donbass
began to blaze. Whatever else makes this era unique, the fact that it took
thousands of lives and complete destruction for those involved to accept the obvious
shows that human nature hasn't changed at all.
Russia sought the transformation of Ukraine into a state limited
only by certain decisions primarily centered on NATO membership. The arrangements
in Minsk dealt with constitutional reform and vesting certain areas (at least the
Donestk People’s Republic and Lugansk
People’s Republic) with powers that would make them a kind of in-line fuse.
Everything else is, on the whole, deals with technicalities (albeit very
important technicalities) that must facilitate the smooth transition toward this
purpose.
Using the popular analogy of Yalta Conference for which we
recently commemorated the 70th anniversary, the Conference was planned down to precise
detail. It is an apt illustration of how the ambitions of Russia have
diminished since the days of the superpowers.
Instead of the division of Europe through which the USSR was
granted a much-needed buffer zone in the east of the continent, a measured
partition of Ukraine is more modest, yet is also sought with an eye on a buffer
zone in the east.
If the intended plan is implemented, then the goal could be
considered realized, although the price and profitability of the project is
best left for later. Independently formulated and decided by it, Russia will
resolve its own problems and prove to the West that there remains a magic red
line along its borders.
This has nothing to do with the global rules of the game.
Minsk is neither a model nor a precedent.
A better parallel, which has been repeatedly mentioned, would
be the Dayton Accords
on Bosnia. They halted the war but failed to create an effective state. The
case of Ukraine is of course on a much larger scale and the probability of an
unpredictable relapse into conflict and crisis is much greater than in Bosnia,
which quietly smolders under the supervision of the E.U.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The war in Ukraine hasn’t changed the world. Global
processes will take their course, increasingly taking on an Asian flavor with
Middle Eastern spices. There is no place for vareniki(Ukrainian dumplings). Minsk won’t be
a new Vienna or Yalta, primarily because such fundamental agreements don’t touch
on the central themes of global politics.
These are primarily issues related to China, and the Chinese
think rather differently and not in terms of spheres of influence traditionally
used by Europeans. This has made it much easier for China to negotiate with Russia,
which is why historically we have been much closer.
To the Old World - including those in the E.U. and those
like Russia which is not now and never will be, it remains to define relations among
themselves just as they did 200 years ago. The only difference today is that
while in the fields of Leipzig and Waterloo a new geopolitical architecture was
charted for Europe (which was essentially the world), what is now happening in Mariupol and Debaltseve is
impossible to understand.
*Fyodor Lukyanov is Chief Editor for Russia in Global Affairs.
