SEven our staring at the poker face of the perpetual foreign minister, who actually has nothing to say, and our tense wait for the decision of the great leader, who reserves the last word here, as in general, during the completely unfounded, demonstrative public march of his now war-tested troops still goes on, contributes to dumbing down and at the same time has something paralyzing. And that is of course part of the calculation.
With us staring like rabbits at the snake and ending up seeing the mere “averting an invasion” that is supposedly unplanned as a diplomatic success, Putin has already achieved some fairly broad goals: Not just the de facto acceptance of the formal annexation of Crimea and the incorporation and rearmament of pseudo-republics in Donbass. On the contrary, it has become an established fact that Belarus has sunk back into the status of a semi-sovereign vassal and is available as a military deployment area at any time – be it against Ukraine or for any actions against the Baltic republics and against Poland, as recently with the cynical game with the refugees who have flown in.
And all of this seems just the prelude to a larger geopolitical power game aimed at Europe, the West and the world at large. I’m afraid Michael Thumann summed up the situation in the current issue of “Zeit”: Vladimir Putin by no means wants to go back to the days of the Cold War, of solid camp formations, secure zones of influence and a mutually guaranteed balance of terror (which, however, itself is a far too idyllic image of that “Cold War” fought in Asia and Africa in great, murderous proxy wars). Instead, according to Thumann, Putin wants “to move forward into the irregularity of the 21st century, in which military strength and national unity are what count most.” His ultimatum demands, which were declared more or less non-negotiable, and the “red lines” drawn far in front of and around Russia, which delineate a zone of reduced sovereignty stretching from Scandinavia via the Balkans to the Black Sea, are ultimately leading to a revision of the treaties and agreements signed by the previous Moscow governments in the 1990s between the successor states of the Soviet Union and the disintegrating Warsaw Pact and the countries of the Western Alliance – and contrary to the image of “NATO advances”, a phase of unprecedented, mutual withdrawals, disarmament and cooperation.
Like a driven man, he rushes from one Pyrrhic victory to the next
Such a renegotiation, dictated by Russia’s alleged “security needs”, would be – at least in its intention – the instrument for detaching Western and Central Europe, which is allegedly dominated by America, from its Atlantic anchors and its countries individually or jointly in a new, “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. In it, the overwhelming military and geopolitical weight of Russia would come into its own much more than today. And only from this position could it again face the United States as a world power sinking into chaos and at the same time challenged by China “on an equal footing” – and hopefully China itself too.
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