On Geopolitical Abstractions of the 2022 Crisis in Ukraine

On the 24th of February, 2022, Vladimir Putin, widely construed as a long-time authoritarian fixated on re-envisioning the USSR, enacted the unthinkable - a military invasion into its European neighbour.

For Ukrainians, the past week and a half have felt surreal - an excerpt from a nightmare. While some mothers flee with their children, to escape bombardments and shellings, others grieve inconsolably for their fallen sons in the army. Young fathers part ways with their families - many for the last time ever, to answer the forceful calls of conscription their state imposes on them. Thousands of families have lost their homes, and many more their way of life; millions on either side of the aisle spectate in horror, as their life-savings are vanquished by unforgiving foreign exchange markets.

And yet, as reprehensible as all of this is, there is a sobering revelation encased in it.

What's being unleashed on Ukraine today, is a Wednesday in Palestine. It's a Thursday in Syria, and it's a Friday in Afghanistan. Not with the same barbaric intensity or media coverage, perhaps, but nevertheless with the same consequences. Emaciated children. Displaced middle classes. Discriminated refugees. Unstable governments, riddled with terrorism and disorganized militia that emerge from avoidable power vacuums.

For decades, the world's western democracies (of which the United States is not least complicit) have through air-strikes, unsolicited militaristic interventions, weapons sales and political demagoguery, exacerbated the civil conflicts of tens of developing nations. Once hopeful, they now lay in ruin - as sacrificial lambs, at the expense of what is purported to be the free world. And within their confines, these same governments have normalized the abject suffering they've inflicted on the populations of these cursed nations. It is exactly for that reason, that their sanctimony in relation to Ukraine is as quintessential of human hypocrisy as one can be; the Russian state is answering, unjustifiably even, with an operation made inevitable by the incompetency of its NATO counterparts.

Chris Hedges, in his article 'Chronicle of a War Foretold', examined the West's shared complicity in this crisis. Over the past two decades, a systematic expansion of NATO's borders (with missile bases becoming increasingly proximate to Russia) is greatly responsible for having encouraged Putin's militaristic options. Ukraine's involvement, of course, resulted from its prospective membership in the NATO, and of pre-existing tensions over Crimea. Nevertheless, the West's diplomatic failures in convening on and honouring a NATO-centric agreement, spurred in Putin what he was always willing to do.

Needless to say, however, the truth of this reality has done nothing to deter the West's fierce responses to the invasion - which have been predominantly economic in nature. I'd even go so far as to call them misguided, because they do nothing to halt the Russian state - but make the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Russian citizens and civilians, those far removed from the war, a living hell.

Sanctions across the board have decimated, and continue to decimate the Ruble; multinationals distance themselves from the country at a staggering pace, and banks integral to the state's trade and energy practices find themselves alienated from SWIFT. Ask yourself; who bears the brunt of these measures? With the prospective assistance of emerging markets in Asia, and an apathy to his own people, Putin stands unfazed. What else might one expect of a lifelong tyrant, at the endgame of his regime? He has almost nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Civilians on the ground, however, are not as fortunate; the EU and NATO will likely harden immigration mechanisms for them, going forward. Young men, innocent as daylight, find themselves in the horrific conundrum of having to be drafted into the Russian military. People flock to ATM machines, to garner whatever cash they can in an economy that is no longer capable of being cashless. Progressive dissidents to the war, few as they may be, are arrested and incarcerated by law enforcement.

There is a slightly more overarching theme, however, that can be abstracted out of this unrelenting chaos; the theme of human governance. Or, for the sake of accuracy, the inability of human beings to govern one another. Whether it be the West, or Russia, or any other nation-state on Earth; time and again, the failure of constitutional democracies to maintain themselves without degenerating into autocratic warzones demonstrates an inextricable relationship between institutions of governance and institutions of power. When left untouched, they will invariably bleed into one another - forming an Orwellian state. How this state forms, can be underscored by a range of mechanisms - militarism, ethnonationalism or colonialism (as is the case with Russia) - but it can't be stopped. It might not have happened with every government on Earth (the United Kingdom being a reasonable example); but given enough time, it will.

Stare into the eyes of a child who hails from Syria, and you will know that what is transpiring in Ukraine today is not an anomaly. Everything about civilised society, is uncivilised in a human sense.