The Arithmetic of Alleged Aggression

Phoney outrage over Russia rumbles on. So I thought I would set out some facts on the issue:

 

Bear in mind that before it lost huge portions of its contiguous land empire, Moscow was not defeated in war, and in fact (with some small exceptions probably inspired from within the KGB) barely lifted a finger to retain its control.

 

Compare this with the Chinese People’s Republic, which engaged in a severe massacre in its own capital, followed by widespread repression,  rather than relax its rule, in the same period, and which despite this still enjoys warm diplomatic relations with the NATO powers. China could also be accused of severe aggression in Tibet.

 

Such an enormous transfer of territory from one power to another as took place between Russia and the EU after 1989 is, as far as I know, unknown in history, except as the result of humiliating defeat in actual war.  I simply cannot think of another example of such an event having taken place without such a defeat. 

 

I might add that both Manfred Woerner, then in charge of NATO, and James Baker, then US Secretary of State and spokesman for the entire Western alliance, gave undoubted assurances to Mikhail Gorbachev, at the time that NATO would *not* extend its jurisdiction eastwards. I think it fair to say that it was on that understanding that Mr Gorbachev peacefully dismantled the Soviet empire. Without those guarantees, it would not have been so peaceful. yet they have been utterly broken.

 

There can be no doubt that this understanding has been broken. There can be no doubt that Russia has complained clearly about this for years, while refraining from any action. President Putin said in Munich , at a major security conference, in February 2007, seven whole years before the February 2014 revolution in Kiev : ‘It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.

 

‘I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Manfred Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?’

  

NATO forces now exercise close to the Russian border in the Baltic states

 

http://www.stripes.com/news/nato-wraps-up-major-exercise-in-poland-baltics-1.252512

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10802516/British-troops-fly-to-Estonia-as-tensions-with-Russia-rise.html

 

 

Aggression generally means advancing your force and power into the territory of others, or (and this is important in this case) into non-aligned and neutral territory bordering rival countries.  Ukraine, since 1991, had been non-aligned, retaining economic and political links both with both Russia and the EU bloc.

 

 

Aggression is not always achieved by direct military intervention. It can be done by economic pressure, by sheer menace, by stirring up ethnic or other discontents in the territory of the targeted country (examples, Germany’s overthrow of the Russian provisional Government by employing the Bolsheviks in 1917, the Anglo-American overthrow of Iran’s leader, Mohammad Mossadeq, by a stage-managed putsch in 1953).

 

I fail to see how it was anything but an act of aggression to encourage Ukraine ( a bankrupt, corrupt, ill-gverned and poorly-defended state which in normal circumstances would not be considered for membership of these bodies for an instant) to dream of EU and NATO membership.

 

THis was done, as can be dmonstrate easily by recourse to published figures and reliably reported facts, by scattering EU largesse in hundreds of millions of Euros across Ukraine

 

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/04/EU-millions-paid-for-Ukrainian-groups-behind-Yanukovych-overthrow

 

, plus the active intervention on foreign soil of prominent NATO and EU politicians.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-victoria-nuland-wades-into-ukraine-turmoil-over-yanukovich/

 

 

http://eastbook.eu/en/2013/12/uncategorized-en/two-days-in-the-hottest-scene-catherine-ashton-visits-ukraine/

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10518859/John-McCain-in-Kiev-Ukraine-will-make-Europe-better.html

 

 

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/04/uk-ukraine-idUKBRE9B20BV20131204

 

Ukraine was thuis encouraged to  seek EU association, and then accepting the resulting unconstitutional regime change as valid, and accepting the resulting government as a legitimate negotiating partner, could possibly be described as ‘defensive’, or ‘passive’.  

 

IN any allegation of assault, self-defence is generally regarded either as a mitigation or as an actual full defence against the charge.  In this case, the expanding power, aggressively pushing its desires, ignores protests made over a long period, and overrides a peaceful attempt by Russia to resolve the quarrel.

 

It may then be reasonably assumed to have taken more serious, perhaps covert steps to reinforce its earlier encouragement

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/john-brennan-kiev_n_5147799.html

 

 

Arithmetic again: Just before the Kiev putsch Ukraine had asked for €20 billion (US$27 billion) in loans and aid. The EU was willing to offer €610 million in loans, one 16th of what Kiev wanted.  Russia offered $15 billion in loans plus cheaper gas prices, far closer to what Kiev was asking for.  In addition to the money, the EU required major changes to the regulations and laws in Ukraine. Russia did not. Thus the EU sought power over Ukraine which it had previously possessed, in return for wholly inadequate financial promises.  Russia offered a large bribe to maintain the status quo, under which Ukraine remained non-aligned.  It was hardly unreasonable or irresponsible of President Yanukovych to decide that the Russian offer was preferable.

 

 

The Arithmetic of Alleged Aggression:

 

 

Territories and populations in Europe which have ceased to be ruled from Moscow since 1989 (NB, these figures are approximate, and do not include Central Asia or the Caucasus, in which case they would be much larger):

 

Former Warsaw Pact

 

GDR 16 Million people 41,800  sq m

Poland 38 million 128,000 sq m

Czechoslovakia 15.6 million 49,300 sq mi

Hungary 9.9 million 36,000 sq mi

Romania 20 million 92,000 sq mi

Bulgaria 7 million 43,000 sq mi

 

Former USSR now in EU and NATO

 

Lithuania 3 million, 25,000 sq mi

Latvia 2 million, 25,000 sq mi

Estonia 1.3 million, 17,000 sq mi

 

Former USSR now non-aligned

 

Belarus 9.5 million 80,000 sq mi

Ukraine 48 million 238,000 sq mi

 

Thus, Moscow has lost direct control over roughly 180 million people, and roughly 700,000 square miles.

 

The EU (and its military wing, NATO) have in the same period *gained * control over more than 120 million of those people, and almost 400,000 of those square miles.

 

How many times is a sovereign power, clearly the defensive and losing force in this change, expected to watch its protests being ignored, and former agreements being broken, before it is entitled to respond?

 

I thought we were all supposed to believe that appeasement in the face of threats and force was a bad policy, to be despised and mocked? Yet, not merely do we condemn President Putin when he refuses to appease the ‘West’ any further and says, after many clear and patient warnings ‘thus far and no further’.  We actually accuse him of aggression.

 

I am accused, in this debate, of being an apologist for Mr Putin, or of ‘siding’ with Russia. I have even been slandered by people claiming I take money from Russia in some form. This is not so.  I regard Mr Putin as a sinister tyrant, and am happy to repeat this ad infinitum, because it is true. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the Ukraine dispute. The blindness of so many commentators to the extremely nasty side of the Ukrainian elite and its allies is a symptom of their infantile view that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ countries and that we should pick our side on this basis. Such babyish views always lead to exaggerating the ills of the one, and concealing from yourself the wrongs of the other.

 

I think the same (sinister tyranny) is true ( as I shall explain in a later post) of our NATO ally Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and of the Chinese Politburo. My response to tyranny abroad is to defend liberty and law at home where and when I can, not to imagine that I am some sort of caped crusader who can go round the world biffing despots.

 

My engagement in this conflict is simply an attempt to set the record straight. This seems to me to be justified when I read unhinged calls for *us* to threaten Russia with sanctions or military action, to halt Moscow’s wicked aggression.

 

As we have learned several times in recent years the recruitment of the ignorant populace into such crusading fantasies is the first step towards actual war. Much later, the duped and deluded shouters of ‘tough’ slogans  realise that they have been humbugged by politicians, and pretend they never supported the wild adventures for which they once cheered.

 

But by that time, the bereaved, here and there,  have been forgotten, the mounds of rotting human corpses have been bulldozed into the mass graves by men in  gasmasks, the ruined towns clumsily rebuilt,  and the limbless, blinded  children have graduated to adult begging.

 

It is the truth I support in this conflict, and it tells me that this country and its people have no reason to support a historically-tainted and dangerous interference by outsiders in a part of the world where it is very likely to do serious harm. At the very least, Britain has no reason to support this adventure. And if we stand aside, we make it less likely that it will turn into a full-scale war. Otherwise….