Posted on 07/18/2024 12:08:02 AM PDT by Mount Athos
The depiction of Russia as an inescapable enemy is a dangerous narrative that will only undermine the long-term interests of the United States and the West by fostering permanent strategic ties between Russia and China. Notwithstanding the challenges posed by the Ukraine War, Washington must sooner or later develop a formula to exercise the kind of three-cornered diplomacy between Moscow, Beijing, and Washington developed by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that helped win the Cold War and bring stability between these three powers. At the same time, Washington diplomats will have to help find a solution to the Ukraine war that somehow will be acceptable to all protagonists.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russians welcomed Americans, anticipating the friendship promised by Reagan to Gorbachev. This opportunity to forge a new relationship dissipated over the ensuing years with NATO’s absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries. Russia’s disillusionment culminated when NATO rejected Yeltsin’s appeal for Russia also to join the alliance. After that, relations steadily deteriorated and have now reached the breaking point with Moscow’s Ukraine invasion.
Despite their centuries of contribution to Western science, music, and literature, Russians have always harbored deep-seated insecurities about their relationship with the West, bordering, some would say, on paranoia. Notwithstanding those issues, Russia’s first historical impulse was to face west toward Europe, not east. With the debacle created by the Ukraine War, Russia finds itself isolated from the West and with no real option but to forge a closer strategic relationship with its historical rival and protagonist, China.
As Washington and its allies search for a formula to resolve Ukraine on terms acceptable to all parties, they should take advantage of that peace-making process as an opportunity to reopen a dialogue with Russia. Addressing Moscow’s historical grievances over NATO expansion as an integral part of ending the Ukraine war can lead not only to the cessation of hostilities but to a more stable, long-term balance of power in Europe. While Ukraine’s sovereignty cannot be sacrificed, Moscow itself should not be confronted with terms that can only lead to more Russian grievances, thereby making conflict and instability a continuing inevitability.
The current “peace through threat” approach against Russia will not be ultimately productive. Reimagining Russia relations will require a more positive, multi-faceted approach. Diplomatic, not military dynamics, should be prioritized, and diplomats should be led by those who understand the history and cultural ties between Russia and the West. Returning to regular high-level dialogues and working groups focused on specific areas of possible economic and security cooperation will be essential. Despite the Ukraine war, for example, the United States and Russia have managed to continue the International Space Station program.
As painful as it might be for many to accept at this point, Ukraine’s status as a neutral buffer state—like Finland during the Cold War—might be seriously reconsidered as part of any potential peace package. President Zelensky himself made that offer to Moscow after Russia first invaded in March 2022.
While there has been bitter devastation and loss for Ukraine since then, making neutrality understandably tougher for Ukraine to accept at this point, that option remains a practical avenue for exploration. In fact, neutrality should now become an even more immediate consideration since NATO recently announced that it will not accept Ukraine for alliance membership until Kyiv better addresses corruption in the defense industry.
Along with neutrality, a new regional security framework that would include NATO and Russia as partners could also be considered to address regional security issues. Finally, the potential for internal Ukrainian constitutional reforms, creating a new governance approach for Russian ethnic minorities in Ukraine, could be raised along with neutrality and security framework considerations.
The reigning culture of institutionalized Russophobia within Western governments and media is not conducive to developing momentum for peace negotiations. The Ukraine War should be resolved under a blueprint that not only preserves respect for sovereignty and borders but sets the stage for rapprochement between Russia and the West. The present path, which appears bent on punishing Moscow, will not lead to better long-term stability in the region. Instead, it is most likely to produce, at best, a frozen conflict with the same kind of negative consequences for stability as seen in Korea over six decades.
Prince Klemens von Metternich ended the Napoleonic Wars, which cost millions of lives over twelve years, by allowing a defeated France to join the victorious allies, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain, in 1815 as a member of the Concert of Europe. That arrangement helped to create a stable peace in Europe for a good part of the nineteenth century. Equally creative diplomacy will be needed today to help solve yet another bitter and destabilizing conflict in the heart of Europe.
Persia (various factions) and the Roman Empire, even pre the east-west split, had numerous wars. And Armenia figured in most of them.
I’m reimagining it as a stable democracy with properly elected representatives that don’t look at their neighbors with avarice and evil intent. Until that happens I’m treating them as the enemies they are.
CC
The Roman empire lasted until the mid fifth century. So if you got that part wrong I have to question your whole premise.
CC
Do this, and you might well find that, among others, Eastern Europe creates its own alliance system, and goes nuclear to boot.
Similarly in East Asia South Korea and Japan are likely to do the same, should the US show itself as unreliable wrt China.
This is how one gets a truly multipolar world. Not a good result.
And this idea is the result of single axis thinking. It is not a question of Russia (or China) and “the west”. NATO expansion was driven mainly by the ex-subservient states of the Soviet Union, to which “old” NATO, and the US, acquiesced. There are many concerned parties and these problems are multi-axis. And this can’t be waved away.
Trajan took Ctesiphon in 114 or 115. After defeating the Persian (Parthian) armies in Armenia, the Romans marched through Mesopotamia and took the Parthian capital.
Look it up. There are more BTW.
Some other minor wars
- the Romans again took (and sacked) Ctesiphon in 165 or 166
- And Septimus Severus did so again in @ 198.
Among other wars, I’m just counting those where the Romans got all the way to the Parthian capital.
Armenia seems to have worked more as a generator of pretexts for wars than a peacekeeping buffer.
The first thing Russians would need to learn is to stop screwing over each other.
That’s a point of contention with historians. And Persians and Rome fought multiple wars between 54 BC and the early 600’s.
CC
Excerpt from George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error,” New York Times, 05 Feb 1997
“Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?”
“[B]luntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … ”
Um…. The globalists require Russian natural resources to be in their control. Syria and Ukraine are simply European pipeline wars.
Zelensky was placed as a puppet during the Obama administration. They must replace Putin as well. They are using the Ukraine war to do it.
They do not care how many sons, husbands, wives, daughters, moms, dads and children die to achieve their goal of replacing Putin.
Putin is a bad guy, no doubt. But is he affecting your daily lives and struggle to survive like the globalists?
Democrats always have war and hostages.
I guess that means we are all out of Afghan lithium.
You mean, what we already had for 50 years before neocons overthrow the notion and conducted a coup on America?
One of the ironic things was that young Russians were drifting towards the West. They saw ‘freedom’ in Europe, the Cafe Lifestyle, the Anything-Goes sexual liberation, not having to deal with Church on a regular basis, and of course the peace and prosperity of the Europe, as there was no more censorship or travel restrictions after the fall of Communism. At the same time the older generations kept telling them that things will end badly if they follow that path, and they need to be Russians first, because the West was out to get them...and the young there thought: “What a bunch of silly old people”. The young were a genuine threat to the Russian ruling class, but they were a bit to young to make a move on to grab power...but time was working against the old, Soviet types, still running the government.
Well, the Ukraine War and its fallout taught those young Russians a HUGE LESSON - the West was really out to get them, or at least the Western ruling class and the Neocons*. They would only accept Russia if they had effective control of Russia, which they have made clear on numerous occasions since the start of the Ukraine, and prior, with the most obvious one being the semi-official policy paper that called for the breakup of Russia into smaller countries that could be ‘managed’ from the West (the Neocon term for that is ‘decolonialization’), but comments about “weakening Russia” and refusal to discuss alternatives to having a war in Ukraine and then refusing to end that war are other examples. And with that, and now Europe devolving into pure crap (think immigration and now poverty), while it’s now Russia prospering (thanks to the ‘sanctions’, LOL), this ENTIRE GENERATION of Russians is lost to the West, and they’ll have to start all over again with their ‘projects’, assuming they even manage to make it past Ukraine without starting World War 3.
*as to why the West was hellbent on taking down Russia, there are several theories, including the fact that Russia a competitor for world domination, Russia wouldn’t play ball regarding Climate Change, and Russia also wasn’t into Globohomo (probably the most likely reason). As for Russia’s now very close relationship with China, that only started AFTER the Ukraine War started, and so wasn’t a factor in the Western approach to Russia.
*“[B]luntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era*
What if all those countries wanted in like Finland? They all dealt with the Russian bear firsthand.
Too many armchair historians here. I’m still learning.
BS.
It seems that the “west” permanently ticked off Japanese youth by opposing their invasion of China, with military aid to China. Yeah, I’ll buy that.
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