Post-Second World War, politicians in Moscow have often kept the rest of the world on edge. The crisis in Ukraine -- which, again, is being aggravated by the western, essentially the American, response to it -- is but the latest manifestation of what Russia has done and could do in our times.
Of course, there is yet little sign that President Vladimir Putin will have his army march into Kyiv. He has been trying to convince his detractors in the capitals of the West that Russia is in little mood for war, that its only concern is about Nato not expanding eastward.
That worry about Nato is understandable, for Moscow, once the citadel of communism with the Warsaw Pact in place, is unwilling to be humiliated into seeing its former Soviet republics -- of which Ukraine is one -- be home to a military alliance which once was, and still is, an enemy for Russia.
The flurry of diplomatic activities in the past few days around Ukraine demonstrates images of a world which is increasingly becoming panicky about Russian intentions in Ukraine. Western armaments and soldiers have been making a dash for Europe, to counter any invasion by the Russian army.
Obviously, men like US President Joe Biden are not ready to believe that Putin will be as good as his word, for the Russian leader yet has tens of thousands of soldiers massed along the frontier with Ukraine. In Washington, Biden certainly has been doing his best to convince Olaf Scholz, the new German Chancellor, to adopt a proactive position with regard to handling Russia.
For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron, up for re-election in a few months, has been on a diplomatic foray to Moscow. One is not yet sure if the five hours he spent talking to President Putin offered any breather to the world.
And let us not forget that only a few days ago, in Beijing for the Winter Olympics inaugural ceremony, Putin found a powerful ally in President Xi Jinping. The united front the two men put up has clearly rattled the West. Both Putin and Xi agree that Nato should stay where it is and not infiltrate Eastern Europe any further.
For good measure, Moscow and Beijing have also taken a swipe at AUKUS, the new alliance forged between Australia, the UK, and the US. The polarization between East and West is thus complete. A new Cold War is the dominant theme in today’s geopolitics.
O those Russians! All that Putin is doing these days is but a legacy he carries over from the days when the Soviet Union happened to be one of the two global superpowers. Joseph Stalin, having an alliance with the US and Britain, vanquished Adolf Hitler, then saw little reason not to enforce a blockade around Berlin in 1948. It was the beginning of the Cold War, a phase in history one would have thought had drawn to an end with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Now Vladimir Putin has reminded the world that, despite the end of the Soviet Union, Russia matters. Moscow’s action in the Crimea is an instance of its refusal to accept things as they are.
One only has to go back to history again. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 was one more sign of Moscow’s readiness to enforce its will, in defiance of Western protests. Nikita Khrushchev was least bothered by all those protests in Washington, London, Paris, and elsewhere.
No one should take the Ukraine crisis lightly. The Russians have always meant business, even if their actions have sometimes exploded in their faces. The Soviet leadership saw little reason not to pounce on Imre Nagy in Hungary in 1956 when it saw, correctly, an attempt by Budapest at desertion from the communist camp.
Nagy was executed and Hungary, with Soviet allies like Janos Kadar in charge, fell back into line. The post-Stalin leadership in Moscow had made its point. And it did a similar thing twelve years later in Czechoslovakia by decreeing a Warsaw Pact invasion of the country, and so putting an end to Alexander Dubcek’s efforts to give socialism a human face.
It did not matter that the world’s opprobrium for Moscow was the consequence of the act. Leonid Brezhnev remained unperturbed. Gustav Husak and his team went ahead to dismantle Dubcek’s reforms and rule in deference to the Soviet Union until Vaclav Havel came along.
By 1979, despite the economy beginning to hurt in Moscow and political fatigue starting to undermine an ageing leadership, the Soviet Union committed the blunder of sending its troops into Afghanistan. That was a costly mistake, bleeding the Soviet Union for years before the Gorbachev dispensation decided to call it a day.
It ought never to have been for Moscow to move against the communist regime already in place in Kabul, only to have its henchman Babrak Karmal installed in power. The move spawned the rise of the Mujahideen, with loud support from Reaganite Washington and Ziaul Haque’s Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan a battered country.
When the Taliban seized the country in 1996, they heralded a backward journey to unfettered medievalism. That single decision in Moscow, of sending its tanks, armoured cars and soldiers into Kabul in December 1979 led to trauma for the whole world. The pain is yet being felt.
Kabul, despite the Taliban being back in charge, has no functioning administration. Its women are prisoners again; its children are malnourished; it faces stark famine. It is a broken country.
But none of this obscures present reality. Putin is properly worried about Russia’s security. When he warns the West that Nato must not go beyond the point where it is today, he is in broad measure speaking for quite a few other governments, China’s for instance, as well.
Add to that the fact that the current preoccupation of the West, notably in Washington, with Ukraine looks increasingly like a determination to goad Russia into invading Ukraine. Despite Putin denying any intention to do that, despite Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for a de-escalation in the crisis and an urge that no panic be created, the White House and the Pentagon have upped their hostility toward Moscow.
Curiously, it is an eerie reminder of the obsession with which George W Bush and Tony Blair approached Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the early 2000s. No WMDs were there in Iraq, not an iota of evidence was there that the Iraqi leader was up to mischief. But, determined as they were to punish Saddam Hussein, they invaded his country and left it a vast ruin.
Putin, being a harder nut to crack, should be taken seriously. The two issues of Ukraine and the Nato expansion are intertwined. Biden, Jens Stoltenberg, and their friends should not be missing the point. That Russia is on its way to reclaiming its global role, and that China will soon be a superpower, are truths to be acknowledged.
Realpolitik rather than sabre-rattling ought to be the principle in the Western concept of geopolitics today.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.