There Will Be Finlandisation
The collective West has acted autistically since the end of the Cold War, a problem russian and third world officials have complained about for decades. The perspective of the ‘leaders of the free world’ has been one of an end of History which leaves the North Sea individualism heirs as the frontrunners of the global moral race.
This translates into the followers of Fukuyama ignoring, dismissing or undervaluing the views and concerns of those they deem morally unworthy and overestimate the importance of their own initiatives and views.
This was evident in the run up to the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and Libya, for instance. NATO became an aggressive power, clearly without ever anticipating that one day the humanitarian justification and the ignoring of the UNSC, might be used against its interests. The R2P doctrine was well and good but only in the hands of the anglophone centred circle. Kosovo’s independence can be recognised but if Russia recognises other separatist regions, that is ‘revanchism’. The UK can conduct counter-insurgency campaigns in Ulster or Malaysia but Chechnya does not qualify.
The subversion of Ukraine by the atlanticist nomenklatura has contaminated Kiev and much of eastern Europe with this very same perspective. When the Euromaidanistas started cheering the occupation of police stations and army depots by the revolutionary crowd, they had no answer to what they thought the opposition to them might feel entitled to do once the precedent was set. Time and again, autistic policy and action are undertaken with complete disregard for the views of the other parties.
Russia being closer to the West, it had to endure the double standards sooner and is also turning the tables on the West earlier than the rest of the world. Nevertheless, judging by the hissy fit the West is throwing, it seems it has not yet learned its lesson and is on the process of damaging its relations with much of the rest of the world as well.
The USA unilaterally decided to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. It was also the West that refused to dismantle NATO, following the collapse of the Warsaw Treaty along with the USSR. Worse still, Brussels went ahead with five successive expansions against Russian objections and all the way to the borders of the Russian Federation. NATO has countered that it has not any significant forces closer to Russia’s borders but this is disingenuous. NATO has indeed mobilised often to the Baltic Air Police mission, it has installed surveillance facilities on the borders with Russia, it never stopped its surveillance flights and, of course, the armed forces of Russia’s neighbours are indeed NATO assets, as are their bases and territories.
NATO has outrightly deceived Moscow on several occasions: 1) certainly when it changed its mind about expansion 2) with Kosovo the NATO states had Resolution 1244 approved so as to post facto legitimise the intervention under the motto ‘illegal but legitimate’ and then proceeded to violate it, in turn, by recognising Kosovo’s independence and violating Serbia’s territorial integrity, 3) Brussels persuaded Moscow to pass Resolution 1973 approving a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011, only to violate that too by sending ‘little green men’ to aid the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi and then blatantly lying about it for months until the dictator was killed 4) in Ukraine specifically, the Weimar Triangle served as guarantors of the agreement signed by Yanukovych and the opposition, but then had no qualm reneging on it, less than 24 hours later when the opposition stormed the presidential palace and chased the Ukrainian President out of Kiev 5) Kiev never even attempted to implement the Minsk Agreements which provided for measures such as a cease-fire, demobilisation, direct negotiations between Kiev and the Donbass rebels and political referenda throughout the country on a future federal framework of administration 6) Mink II had to be negotiated following renewed fighting and added the obligation of constitutional reforms on the part of Kiev but as with Minsk I, the West never pressured Ukraine to implement it.
On the contrary, NATO refinanced, rearmed and refortified Kiev’s positions in the Donbass, also largely ignoring Russia’s warnings of support for the rebels, should Kiev attempt to retake the region by force a third time. Observing the military build-up in preparation for a new offensive, the russians went to the americans directly, to offer a frozen conflict in return for an official NATO disinvite for Ukrainian membership: this would have allowed the rebels a certain degree of autonomy and proximity to Russia without risking Ukrainian territorial integrity à la Crimea in 2014, as well as having guaranteed effective Ukrainian control over the segment of the Donbass it had already conquered, eschewing the possibility of having to abandon the fortifications it had already invested in.
Washington DC dismissed the offer outright. Moscow proceeded with the official recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, concluded a military pact with them and warned Kiev that any attack on the republics would be met with the utmost military resolve. Kiev ignored and continued its artillery duels with the rebels leading to Russia’s offensive of February 2022.
Even after the political disaster of a Russian campaign against the most important Brussels protectorate in the continent, the atlanticists persist in their self-delusions imagining anti-Putin coups in Moscow, believing themselves capable of blackmailing Russia economically through ineffective sanctions that harm them more than the Federation, and add insult to injury by failing spectacularly in persuading the rest of the world to join them in their boycott of the Russian economy, only to see their diplomatic standing decreased for naught.
This is where finlandisation comes in. Moscow has committed itself to two seemingly incompatible policies: sovereignty and denazification. Putin can injure Ukraine’s territorial integrity without affecting its sovereignty but he cannot denazify Ukraine without overthrowing its government. The solution might be finlandisation as this would assure the neutralisation of what will be left of Ukraine while allowing the residual regime to decide its own fate. It would be politically unsustainable for such a regime to continue to tolerate its ultra-nationalist elements while deserting the West, disarming, negotiating with Moscow the amputation of its own territory and future economic issues such as the provision of energy. While there is still no hint of a movement against the Zelensky dictatorial regime, be it on the streets or in the hallways, the Ukrainian Presidency has been busy conducting purges of the government’s inner circle.
As previously mentioned, such a coup would stand little chance of success without the complicity of the Ukrainian military and Russia…
The Westphalian Post 