On January 17, 2022, the UK Ministry of Defence published an article by Ben Wallace, the Minister of Defence, with regard to the Ukrainian situation.

That article follows:

Minister of Defence, Ben Wallace

I have lost count of how many times recently I have to had to explain the meaning of the English term “straw man” to my European allies. That is because the best living, breathing “straw man” at the moment is the Kremlin’s claim to be under threat from NATO. In recent weeks the Russian Defence Minister’s comment that the US is “preparing a provocation with chemical components in eastern Ukraine” has made that “straw man” even bigger.

It is obviously the Kremlin’s desire that we all engage with this bogus allegation, instead of challenging the real agenda of the President of the Russian Federation. An examination of the facts rapidly puts a match to the allegations against NATO.

First, NATO is, to its core, defensive in nature. At the heart of the organisation is Article 5 that obliges all members to come to the aid of a fellow member if it is under attack. No ifs and no buts. Mutual self-defence is NATO’s cornerstone. This obligation protects us all. Allies from as far apart as Turkey and Norway; or as close as Latvia and Poland all benefit from the pact and are obliged to respond. It is a truly defensive alliance.

Second, former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but joined at their own request. The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality the growth in Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own malign activities and threats.

Third, the allegation that NATO is seeking to encircle the Russian Federation is without foundation. Only five of the thirty allies neighbour Russia, with just 1/16th of its borders abutted by NATO. If the definition of being surrounded is 6% of your perimeter being blocked then no doubt the brave men who fought at Arnhem or Leningrad in the Second World War would have something strong to say about it.

It is not the disposition of NATO forces but the appeal of its values that actually threatens the Kremlin. Just as we know that its actions are really about what President Putin’s interpretation of history is and his unfinished ambitions for Ukraine.

We know that because last summer he published, via the official Government website, his own article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. I urge you to read it, if you have time, because while it is comprehensive on his arguments it is short on accuracy and long on contradictions.

We should all worry because what flows from the pen of President Putin himself is a seven-thousand-word essay that puts ethnonationalism at the heart of his ambitions. Not the narrative now being peddled. Not the straw man of NATO encroachment. It provides the skewed and selective reasoning to justify, at best, the subjugation of Ukraine and at worse the forced unification of that sovereign country.

President Putin’s article completely ignores the wishes of the citizens of Ukraine, while evoking that same type of ethnonationalism which played out across Europe for centuries and still has the potential to awaken the same destructive forces of ancient hatred. Readers will not only be shocked at the tone of the article but they will also be surprised at how little NATO is mentioned. After all, is NATO ‘expansionism’ not the fountain of all the Kremlin’s concerns? In fact, just a single paragraph is devoted to NATO.

The essay makes in it three claims. One: that the West seeks to use division to “rule” Russia. Two: that anything other than a single nation of Great Russia, Little Russia and White Russia (Velikorussians, Malorussians, Belorussians) in the image advanced in the 17th Century is an artificial construct and defies the desires of a single people, with a single language and church. Third, that anyone who disagrees does so out of a hatred or phobia of Russia.

We can dispense with the first allegation. No one wants to rule Russia. It is stating the obvious that just like any other state it is for the citizens of a country to determine their own future. Russia’s own lessons from such conflicts as Chechnya must surely be that ethnic and sectarian conflicts cost thousands of innocent lives with the protagonists getting bogged down in decades of strife.

As for Ukraine, Russia itself recognised the sovereignty of it as an independent country and guaranteed its territorial integrity, not just by signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 but also its Friendship Treaty with Ukraine itself in 1997. Yet it is the Kremlin not the West that set about magnifying divisions in that country and several others in the Europe. It has been well documented the numerous efforts of the GRU and other Russian agencies to interfere in democratic elections and domestic disputes is well documented. The divide and rule cap sits prettiest on Moscow’s head not NATO’s.

Probably the most important and strongly believed claim that Ukraine is Russia and Russia is Ukraine is not quite as presented. Ukraine has been separate from Russia for far longer in its history than it was ever united. Secondly the charge that all peoples in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are descendants of the ‘Ancient Rus’ and are therefore somehow all Russians. But in reality, according to historian Professor Andrew Wilson in his excellent essay for RUSI entitled “Russia and Ukraine: ‘One People’ as Putin Claims?” they are at best “kin but not the same people”. In the same way Britain around 900AD consisted of Mercia, Wessex, York, Strathclyde and other pre-modern kingdoms, but it was a civic nation of many peoples, origins and ethnicities that eventually formed the United Kingdom.

If you start and stop your view of Russian history between 1654 and 1917 then you can fabricate a case for a more expansive Russia, perhaps along the lines of the motto of the Russian Tsar before the Russian Empire “Sovereign of all of Rus: the Great, the Little, and the White” – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus respectively. And crucially you must also forget the before and after in history. You must ignore the existence of the Soviet Union, breaking of the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty, and the occupation of Crimea. Far more than footnotes in history, I am sure you will agree.

Ironically, President Putin himself admits in his essay that “things change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is only one answer: with respect!” However, he then goes on to discard some of those “historical circumstances” to fit his own claims.

Dubious to say the least, and not in anyway a perspective that justifies both the occupation of Crimea (in the same way Russia occupied Crimea in 1783 in defiance of the Russo-Turkish Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774) or any further invasion of modern Ukraine, as an independent sovereign country.

The last charge against the West by many in the Russian Government is that those who disagree with the Kremlin are somehow Russophobes. Leaving aside that GRU officers deployed nerve agents on British streets or that cyber hacking and targeted assassinations emanate from the Russian state, nothing could be further than the truth.

Russia and the UK share a deep and often mutually beneficial history. Our allegiances helped to finally defeat Napoleon and later Hitler. Outside of conflict, across the centuries we shared technology, medicine and culture. During the 18th Century Russia and Britain were deeply tied. Between 1704 to 1854, from age of Peter the Great through Catherine the Great and well into the 19th Century the British were to be found as admirals, generals, surgeons, and architects at the highest level of the Russian Court. The father of the Russian Navy – one Samuel Greig – was born in Inverkeithing in Fife.

That shared admiration is still true today. The British Government is not in dispute with Russia and the Russian people – far from it – but it does take issue with the malign activity of the Kremlin.

So, if one cold January or February night Russian Military forces once more cross into sovereign Ukraine, ignore the ‘straw man’ narratives and ‘false flag’ stories of NATO aggression and remember the President of Russia’s own words in that essay from last summer. Remember it and ask yourself what it means, not just for Ukraine, but for all of us in Europe. What it means the next time…

Featured Graphic: Photo 151366060 / Map Ukraine © Chernetskaya | Dreamstime.com

https://sldinfo.com/2022/01/the-nordics-the-uk-and-the-ukrainian-crisis/By Robbin Laird

The current Ukraine situation is part of a chain of events.

And as such, the Russian threat to Ukrainian sovereignty is simply not about Ukraine.

It is about the stability of the current European order.

Of course, those with historical knowledge understand that any European order is an imprint on the dynamics of change which always have affected the European continent and made it such a generator of wars and forceful changes of borders, cultures and nations.

We are here again.

Not surprisingly so as the region cutting through the European continent from the Black Sea north has been an unsettled part of the post-Soviet European order.

To simply take this year, the Black Sea crisis of this summer where we saw significant information war and the “migrant” crisis generated by the Russians through Belarus against the Poles, the Balts, and the European order more generally are all part of the wider challenges which Russia is generating against the post-Soviet European order.

In my co-authored book with Murielle Delaporte, we highlighted Putin’s unwillingness to accept the current European order.

How Europeans and the United States shape their engagement with the Russians going forward will shape the next phase of the European order.

This is not simply a Ukrainian crisis; it is much broader than that.

This is not a static thing but a moving process, whereby Brexit and the Turkish de facto exit from NATO have been key parts of reshaping the European order and the Russian pressure on their former territories is now playing a forcing function to determine who is serious about maintaining the current European order and who is not.

It is also the case that Russia’s challenge to the European order is part of the wider challenge of 21^st century authoritarian powers to the global order as shaped by the United States, the European Union, and the democratic powers in Asia.

Whatever transpires in the Ukrainian crisis is not limited to Europe.

As we wrote in our book on the return of direct defense in Europe:

“The leading authoritarian leaders seem to like being ruler for life, as the head of China, in 2019, received parliamentary approval to be able to run beyond the term limits which had been in place. The Parliament approved the removal of the two-term limit on the presidency, effectively allowing Xi Jinping to remain in power for life. Putin has redefined Russia’s place in the post–Cold War period, and shaped a comprehensive narrative which one might call Making Russia Great Again.

“And in reshaping Russia in his authoritarian image, Putin has shaped a narrative which is rooted in Russia being the victim of the West, led by the United States, and in returning to its roots to become a key authoritarian Euro-Asian power. Putin both contributed to and has been abetted by the rise of 21st century authoritarianism.

“With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Chinese becoming members of the World Trade Organization, globalization and democratization seemed to be evolving hand in hand.

“But rather than globalization leading to democratization, it has been shaped significantly by the 21st century authoritarian powers who have used that process to enhance their ability to operate within and without against the key powers driving the liberal democratic order.”

In short, we have entered a new historical epoch which will be shaped by the concrete actions of key states and what the results of such actions will be both in fact and perceived reality.

History is on the move once again, and with it the shaping of new global anarchy or order.

Featured Graphic: Photo 151366060 / Map Ukraine © Chernetskaya | Dreamstime.com

Also, see the following:

Allied Resolve 2022 Exercise: Russia Brings Troops from Far East to Belarus

The Nordics, the UK and the Ukrainian Crisis

The Ukrainian Situation: The Perspective of the UK Minister of Defence

The Czech Republic Rallies Support for Ukraine

By Pierre Tran

Paris – There was perhaps a faint echo of sweeping U.S. sanctions against Vietnam after 1975, as the people of Afghanistan face a winter of starvation due to international restrictions on humanitarian aid and on the Afghan banking system.

News pictures of a chaotic evacuation of Afghan and foreign nationals from Kabul last August prompted media reports to rerun that iconic image of a Huey helicopter on the rooftop of a CIA safe house on April 29 1975 in what was then Saigon.

Beyond the two rushed airlift operations, are there parallels between the dire economic conditions and punitive sanctions after the victories of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the North Vietnamese forces south of the 17th parallel?

Such is the rising risk of widespread hunger in Afghanistan, former British prime minister Gordon Brown and The New York Times separately called for an easing of strict foreign control of humanitarian aid, and the Afghan central bank and commercial lenders.

“The Gulf states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – have the money and have made offers to provide assistance, but they fear an American backlash,” Brown said in a Jan. 12 op ed in The Guardian, a British daily.

“Realistically, it will require the U.S. to break the logjam and end the cycle of starvation and death.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times said in a Jan. 14 editorial, “The Taliban remain on the U.S. sanctions list, so the international community has refused to give them money.”

The New York Times went on to say, “Even though U.S. Treasury Department officials say that the central bank of Afghanistan is not under sanctions, financial institutions around the world are treating it as if (it) was. Foreign banks are refusing to wire money to Afghanistan, not only because they don’t want to deal with the reputational risk, but also because they fear that the long arm of the U.S.”

There is that perceived risk of upsetting the U.S. authorities over Afghanistan and the very real punitive sanctions Washington imposed on Vietnam after the 1975 evacuation.

The U.S. cut diplomatic ties with Vietnam, and then imposed an economic embargo in 1978 after Vietnamese forces toppled the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot in Cambodia. That U.S. embargo, which included trade sanctions, was seen back then as punishment of Hanoi, with the victory of North Vietnamese forces fresh in the memory of Washington policy makers.

The U.S. also made sure Vietnam could not receive support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, at a time when the southeast Asian nation was struggling with widespread poverty. The Vietnamese economy – and the people – suffered from weak growth for the 1980s and it was only in 1994 the then Clinton administration lifted the trade embargo and normalized relations with Hanoi.

That allowed the two nations to sign a bilateral trade agreement in 2001, which included a lifting of non-tariff barriers.

Vietnam showed interest in ordering second-hand, refurbished Lockheed Martin P-3 and S-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft, Reuters reported in 2016, after the then Obama administration lifted the arms embargo.

That lifting of the arms embargo came despite what broadcaster CNN reported in 2016 as Vietnam’s “dismal” record in human rights, which included  the jailing of dissidents.

Vietnam operates a fleet of Airbus C-212 maritime patrol aircraft.

The U.S. handed over of six Metal Shark coastal patrol boats to the Vietnamese coast guard, the American embassy reported in May 2017.

With normalization of trade relations, the U.S. became the leading destination for Vietnamese exports, with shipments of textiles, electronics, and seafood, the Council on Foreign Relations reported in 2019. The U.S. exports to Vietnam included cotton, computer chips, and soya beans. Bilateral trade rose to more than $60 billion in 2018 from $451 million in 1995.

On the human rights front, the Vietnamese authorities sentenced on Dec. 14 2021, Pham Doan Trang, a journalist and author, to nine years of prison, with the indictment citing her giving interviews to Radio Free Asia and the BBC.

In the wake of the 1975 victory, there were re-education camps, which saw South Vietnamese officials and personnel being lectured where they had gone wrong.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have re-opened schools for secondary education for boys but effectively banned girls from the class room.

Concern over such measures lay behind the U.S. limiting the release of humanitarian aid. But Washington has eased those restrictions and backed a U.N. security council resolution which exempted most aid from sanctions aimed at the Taliban.

The U.S. Treasury agreed to widen the definition of humanitarian aid by including education,  allowing a broader use of funds by aid organizations in Afghanistan. That U.S. agreement meant Afghan teachers could get paid.

The U.N. security council adopted the resolution Dec. 22 2021.

Aid organizations had been pushing the U.S. to ease restrictions, intended to deter the Taliban from weakening women’s rights. Those U.S. restrictions were seen by the aid agencies as increasing the prospect of starvation across the country.

The U.S. backing for the U.N. resolution required a review of the mechanism in a year and full reporting requirements.

Washington has frozen some $9 billion of reserves the Afghan central bank held in the U.S., on the grounds that it was unclear who should have access to the funds. That has led to a severe lack of liquidity for the Afghan banking system and scarce cash for the people of Afghanistan.

Featured Graphic: Photo 23407126 / Afghanistan © Juan Camilo Bernal | Dreamstime.com