Ukraine

Amidst the heavy criticism of Germany’s lack of commitment in the Ukraine crisis, the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock argued in a speech to the German parliament on Thursday that alliance systems were a bit like a football team. ‘You don’t need 11 centre-forwards who all do the same thing; you need 11 players who get on with one another and who, most importantly, have the same game plan in mind.’ In other words, western alliance systems such as Nato should assign different roles and responsibilities to member states that are best suited to their individual strengths and weaknesses – horses for courses, to stay within the sporting imagery.

The growing alliance between Russia and China is something we shouldn’t lose sleep over, their long history of mutual suspicion runs too deep – or so we are told. Such a view is too complacent by half. China and Russia’s mutual hostility towards the West and their opportunism also run deep. And even if their burgeoning alliance is a marriage of convenience, it is still a very dangerous one. As Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, the nightmare for western strategists is that Vladimir Putin’s actions are being coordinated with those of Xi Jinping in and around the Taiwan Strait, where China’s military intimidation of Taiwan has reached new levels of intensity.

As Russian troops encircling eastern Ukraine are preparing to attack, western leaders are bracing for a Russian invasion while struggling to maintain a united front. Following the fallout of peace negotiations and numerous deterrence measures that appear to be inconsequential, French President Emmanuel Macron has called on the EU to conduct its own dialogue with Russia and forge its own plan for security and stability. It’s an indication that most European nations are tired of being sidelined during negotiations and reluctant to impose harsh sanctions against Russia, especially since it could risk a gas shortage that would impact recovering European economies.

Vladimir Putin has been the most effective practitioner of Realpolitik for the past two decades. With an economy about the size of Italy’s, and just as corrupt, he has accomplished his most ambitious goal: returning Russia to the status of a Great Power. Now he’s thrown his chips on the table once more, launching a massive troop build-up on the border with Ukraine and sending still more into Belarus (for “joint exercises”), positioning them just north of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv. Although the numbers don’t appear large enough to conquer all his neighbor’s territory, they are large enough to push through the eastern region (the one bordering Russia) and form a land bridge to Crimea, which Russia conquered in February 2014.