I was wrong.
Every January, the Financial Times invites its readers to predict the year to come by answering yes or no to a set of questions. One question this year was, “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” to which I answered in the negative.
It’s not that I was unaware of the massive troop build-up on the border, or President Putin’s track record. But I figured, with the show of force, he would achieve his objectives -- concessions from the Ukrainian government on its Westernizing ambitions, and possibly more territorial acquisitions.
A full-blown invasion of a large country with over 40 million people -- this was a risk that didn’t seem worth taking. Not when Mr Putin could have bolstered his image as a “brilliant strategist” (or an evil genius, depending on your point of view) by getting what he wanted without firing a shot.
Clearly, I was wrong!
And having got it wrong, I have spent the last few weeks trying to better understand what’s going on. It’s important to do so, because this conflict is likely to shape the next decade, in more ways than one.
I started by trying to see the world from the Kremlin’s perspective.
Through the eyes of Russia
The view that is most sympathetic to the Russian regime’s perspective is that having suffered two bloody invasions through what is now Ukraine, any Russian government would be wary of the presence of hostile forces in that country. And the Ukrainian government’s overt desire to court NATO and EU membership, if not today then someday, is not something Russia can reasonably accept.
A variation of this argument is that, like it or not, certain countries are great powers and have legitimate spheres of influence or hegemony over their near neighbourhood. The Americans have the Monroe Doctrine. The Australians don’t like the Chinese to invest too much in the Pacific (or the French to use the region to test nuclear weapons). India does not want Bangladesh to become friendly with China -- okay, let’s come back to this point. And the Russians won’t like a Westernized Ukraine.
The peace is best served when these fundamentals are respected by everyone.
From these perspectives, it’s the West’s fault for enticing Ukraine to ignore the reality of geography and upsetting the order of things.
No moral high ground
Besides, it’s not like the West has any moral high ground when it comes to not respecting others’ sovereignty. The invasion of Iraq, after all, happened under false pretexts, and without a United Nations mandate.
Earlier, the West bombed Serbia without UN mandate to protect the Kosovars from genocide -- a worthy objective perhaps, but not exactly respectful of the sanctity of borders. And the UN gave permission to topple the legitimate regime of Col Gaddafi to prevent atrocities.
So, another line of argument went, why couldn’t the Russians intervene in Ukraine to protect people who were allegedly being killed by “neo-Nazis and coke addicts?”
Yet, these arguments are less than convincing upon closer inspection.
If protecting the people of the breakaway regions of Ukraine is the objective, then why invade the whole country?
The argument that the “West did it too,” in conjunction with the cold logic of the realpolitik of spheres of influence, should be taken more seriously. The thing is, when one does so, the picture that emerges is rather less flattering for the Russian leader.
The neo-con misadventure in Iraq was guided by a disastrous belief that Texas could be recreated in Mesopotamia. The hubris there was about assuming that others would want to become like the invading power.
The Kremlin’s views about Ukraine, and other former Soviet, and Romanov, territories couldn’t be any more different. The Russian leader and his inner circle are far more likely to worry that these countries are becoming too un-Russian, embracing democracy, markets, sexual freedom, and all sorts of “Western decadence.”
There might also be another aspect to the supposed Western decadence. What might the history of Western intervention in the past few decades look like to a former KGB colonel?
Western planes, bombs, missiles, and drones kill people in faraway places. But a suicide bomber in Beirut, and drowned Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu can be enough to make it cut and run. When that’s not an option, it still cannot achieve its stated, and unstated, objectives after years of occupation, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So, perhaps, from Putin’s perspective, the world looked something like this: The Russian empire needed to be restored, maybe not in name, but in form; to do that, the formerly Russian territories needed to be brought into the fold; this could be done by, first fomenting ethnic conflicts, then sending “little green men” as peacemakers; and if necessary, or when possible, full-blown invasion.
Not a swift victory
From experience, in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and Syria and Libya in more recent years, Putin might have concluded that the West would pay nothing more than lip service to Ukraine’s sovereignty. Europe needed the Russian gas, and a weak and vacillating American president would not countenance any strong response and risk the economic fallouts.
In any case, the Russian generals seem to have expected a swift victory, asking the soldiers to carry drill uniforms for the intended victory parade in Kiev.
Well, it looks like the Kremlin, too, was wrong.
Wars go off the invaders’ scripts for many a reason, inspired leadership of the defenders being a major one. Someone once written off as an alcoholic political-has-been might become the prime minister, and rally the nation to fight on the beaches, fields, and streets, and never surrender.
Someone considered a political novice claiming to be a donut might in the process inspire peoples’ belief in the indivisibility of freedom. An unknown major’s radio broadcast might echo around the country, affirming resistance against occupation.
And a former comedian might use his social media skills to inspire his nation.
We have seen quite a few leaders who play so on the screen. The current Indian prime minister, for example. Or the last occupant of the White House. Arguably, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also playing a role on the screen -- the role of a president standing his ground in the capital city of a country under invasion, a city that is being shelled and bombed, a president who tells his people that he is not going anywhere, and therefore all who can must stay and fight, a president who declines the offer of an exile with “I need ammos, not a ride.”
Of course, Zelenskyy is playing a role that is the reality.
And the reality has been, in the famous words from March 1971, ghore ghore durgo and jar ja achhe tai niye shotru’r mokabila. Literally.
It’s hard to know whether the Western response had been as swift and decisive had the Russian army been in Kiev with the Ukrainian president fleeing on an unmarked chopper. The reality, of course, is that the West is doing everything possible short of a shooting war involving NATO troops. The sanctions are already more far reaching than anyone might have conceived.
More importantly, Europeans are committing resources to defend peace in their continent. And as for the supposedly weak and vacillating American president -- well, he is risking a stagflationary recession, and an electoral shellacking of unimaginable magnitude, to stand up against aggression.
Wrong, and wrong again
I wasn’t just wrong about whether Putin would order an invasion. I was also wrong about the response to the invasion when it did happen. Zelenskyy is a hero of our time, and the liberal West has finally found its spine -- I did not see either.
Of course, I have no idea how things will play out. Maybe a negotiated settlement where Putin is given a face-saving off ramp is still possible, perhaps in the form of a “neutral Ukraine” (one that is not a member of NATO, but is very much within Western security umbrella) and some form of UN-administered plebiscite.
Maybe a protracted war. Maybe something worse -- the phrase “scorched earth” originated in that part of the world, after all. Whatever happens, we may well see a new government in Moscow.
Perhaps at this point it’s important to think about the political fallouts of the invasion of Iraq. The war was protested by millions in all Western capitals. Before the invasion, President Bush seemed to have put together a formidable political platform under the rubric of compassionate conservatism, based on tax cuts, bipartisan immigration, education reforms, and social conservatism.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair’s New Labour seemed electorally unassailable. The war had ended the political career of not just the leaders, but their entire political coalitions. And all this happened through the ballot box. Peacefully.
Meanwhile, sadly, the responses in our part of the world have been along the lines I had expected. It seems that Putin is the great unifier, not just of the people of Ukraine against invasion and the Western democracies against aggression, but also of the leaders of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh in the 75th anniversary of partition, and of the vociferous Bangladeshi chattering classes of Awami-nationalist-leftist-Islamist types!
The three South Asian countries declined to condemn the Russian aggression in the UN. The Pakistani PM fumed about the lack of Western action in Kashmir, never mind that it’s Russian guns and bullets that are used on the people of Kashmir. India’s dependence on Russian weaponry might explain its diplomatic stance.
What about Bangladesh?
How is it that the Russian aggression is cheered among Dhaka’s chatterati? How is it not clear as daylight that if we accept the notions of spheres of influence and hegemony, the implications would be to accept that Bangladesh can never aspire to sovereignty?
If we live in a world where Russia can veto Ukraine’s Westward drift (even if an overwhelming number of Ukrainians support it), do we also not live in a world where India can veto Bangladesh’s foreign investment and infrastructure policies, let alone security matters?
Let me end with the previous Bangladesh governments’ stance on sovereignty. The Iraqi president Saddam Hussein apparently had a good personal rapport with the general who ruled Bangladesh in the 1980s. Iraq had materially contributed to relief operations in floods and storms that buffeted the country in that decade.
Despite this, Bangladesh joined the Operation Desert Shield. By the time the operation turned into the Desert Storm, the general had been toppled by people power and was in jail. The caretaker government, with full support of both major political parties, continued with Bangladesh’s participation in the global coalition against aggression.
Over a decade and much acrimony between the two parties later, there was also bipartisan consensus that Bangladesh should stay out of America's war in Iraq. Confident in the knowledge that her nemesis shared her conviction, the then Bangladeshi prime minister flatly refused Donald Rumsfeld’s request for Bangladeshi participation in the invasion.
The common thread in the actions of Bangladeshi leaders, in office and in opposition, was in the belief that if aggression by large countries against smaller neighbours goes unchallenged elsewhere, Bangladesh’s very existence might one day be threatened.
If anyone refuses to see this, their claims about Bangladesh’s independence, sovereignty, and democracy surely would ring hollow.
Jyoti Rahman is an unabashed liberal democrat whose views are available at https://jrahman.substack.com/.
