The West must shoulder blame for Ukraine

IF the current crisis in Ukraine demonstrates anything it is that the Cold War far from thawing has entered a new phase.

Rather like some prehistoric monster from a bad B movie it appears that the Cold War has been in a state of deep freeze just waiting for the right climate to appear for it to make its grand resurgence.

Ukraine has provided just such a catalyst. The old rivalries between two dominant forces are reawakened. There is a misconception however that the growls from the aged Soviet bear are the cause of all today's ills. In international politics it still takes two to tango and the West must foot its fair share of the blame.

As the doyen of international relations John Mearsheimer stated: "The   United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West." (Mearsheimer, 2014)

The United States logically wants to maintain its position as the only hegemon in the global debate, China may be approaching this state but has not yet achieved the same level of cultural or political dominance. 

For Vladimir Putin this poses a direct threat to the sovereign interests of Russia. A Ukraine without Russian ties would pose a problem for him, by, as Mearsheimer points out, giving the West a strong staging point right on his border. 

Imagine for a second that Scotland had voted for independence and England refused to allow it. Would the West defend China if they interceded on Scotland's behalf? It may sound particularly far fetched yet in rational terms the situation is not that much different than the one currently facing Ukraine and its surrounding areas.

Of course with Ukraine however there are far deeper veins to plum for information on the cause and effect of the situation. In historical terms it would be more akin to France throwing its support behind an independent Scotland against the English.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Russia is arming rebels, a useful but not entirely fair term. So long as it doesn't become explicit however it must be seen as part of the great game. Suggestions that the West could overtly arm Ukrainian forces is a dangerous idea. While support is restrained to words and sanctions, with armed support kept to the shadows, there is a possibility for both sides to walk this back. 

If either side admits openly to supplying military assistance though it will force the situation into a whole new phase. The crisis in Ukraine may be devastating but an escalation would be catastrophic and the West would well and truly have the blood on its hands.

The fall of a superpower

Has America’s role as the global moderator of all that is right been compromised beyond repair? That is the question which must surely be asked in the wake of recent events involving the world’s foremost superpower.

Rather than demonstrating its power America’s announcement on Tuesday that it would send a team to help find more than 200 missing Nigerian schoolgirls proved that it no longer has the teeth to act when needed.

The world has known since April 14th that the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped the girls from their school. The group, whose name translates loosely as “Western education is a sin”, was known to have been trading the girls into marriage and shipping them across the border. Yet the world, and in particular America, sat back and did nothing.

Nigeria’s own government, ostensibly fearful of reprisal from this increasingly powerful group, did little to take action, preferring to hope that the loss of so many young women would go unnoticed. They are fighting a rear guard action against extremism though. They are under constant fear of what the next atrocity will be. If allowing more than 200 young girls to be taken could be seen as a price to keep things from escalating then apparently it was a price they were willing to pay.

The West, however, is under no such constraints. America has time and again pledged its strength to root out extremism and fight for a moral cause. Why is it therefore that it did nothing until its hand was forced by a statement released by the group?

The same story has been repeated time and again. With Syria President Obama clearly stated that chemical weapons were a red line which could not be crossed. To do so would bring the wrath of the world down upon the Syrian government like so much biblical thunder. Chemical weapons have been used though and America and the West have done nothing. Refugees flood across the borders and many more are trapped inside besieged cities, waiting for the next dose of chemicals to fall upon them, and the West does nothing.

In Ukraine America made it clear that they would support the newly formed government and would take strong action if Russia was seen to be instigating aggression. Pro-separatist groups roam the streets, many equipped with Russian weaponry. Reports come in on a near daily basis of supposed Russian interference in the region. Crimea fell with Russian support and its people left Ukraine. Yet the West does nothing more than threaten sanctions which have already been demonstrated beyond a doubt not to work.

America, Britain, France, Germany et al cannot wage war on every country which they deem to have gone against their moral principles. The West cannot be the world’s police force. Imposing a different culture and identity on a people through force has already been proven to fail in Afghanistan and Iraq. To keep pretending, however, that the world has not changed, that the threat of force without the will to back it up and that the ability to do so even exists undermines any hope that a more rational approach to tackling increasing global unrest can ever be found.