EUROPE has largely been at peace since the end of World War II. The Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovkia in 1968 were exceptions, but they were localised attempts to keep the Soviet bloc intact politically, not intrude into the Western sphere. 

The Russo-Georgian war in 2008 has some echoes of the current Russia/Ukraine conflict. Truly dreadful were the Balkan wars that followed the destruction of the Soviet Union when the break-up of Yugoslavia resulted in war crimes ranging from genocide and crimes against humanity. Even so, the larger European peace prevailed. 

That peace came to an end in February of this year with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It had been preceded by the 2014 Russian campaign and subsequent annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. This time, Russia’s aims were about protecting the independence of the Donbass region. But they go beyond territory to include Ukraine’s neutrality between Russia and the West, Ukraine’s abstention from joining Nato, and its refusal to become a nuclear power and to allow foreign military bases on its territory. 

Should these demands be met, they would represent the most fundamental realignment in European affairs since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They occur against the backdrop of a punitive war. No matter who wins or claims to have won that war, European peace stands shattered. While Russia stands blamed for having launched the invasion, the West must stand accused of having lost the peace that existed before Russia’s “special military operation” began on February 24.

Why should the West be held culpable along with Russia? It’s because European peace would have prevailed were it not for NATO’s eastward expansion of its nuclear infrastructure threatening Russian security. 

It was an expansive West, bent on exporting its self-serving ideology of freedom and democracy through overt and covert support for popular uprisings against regimes that it considered to be unfriendly, that created the political encirclement of Russia, a country that has never sought to export its autocratic model of governance to the West. 

It was the West which would never allow even a great power such as Russia to stand in the way of the furtherance of its global ambitions whose scope envisaged nothing less than the total control of world affairs. It was America that would never let go of Europe as its strategic backyard, Europe as an American construction, even when America’s remit in world affairs receded with its spectacular retreat from Afghanistan. 

This is the West that has lost the European peace. 

During the Cold War, proxy wars between the Western and Eastern blocs were a favourite instrument of hegemonic conflict. Civil wars in the Third World ravaged Asia, Africa and Latin America. Now, the era of wars fought at arm’s length has come to Europe. Ukraine represents a half-proxy war waged between the West, which is arming Ukraine but not actually fighting alongside it, and Russia, which is engaged in direct combat. While no one can or should underestimate the determination with which ordinary Ukranians are resisting the Russians, the truth remains that they are participating in a half-proxy war. While the West is doing the dictating, Ukrainians are doing the dying. 

The only way of restoring peace in the long run is to accept Russia as a part of Europe. If America is an Atlantic power, there is no reason why Russia cannot be an accepted European power. After all, Nato’s oceanic agency lies astride the Atlantic. Russia shares the continent with its fellow-European nations. For Nato nations to pretend that Europe is complete as a region without Russia would constitute an act of geographical folly. 

Of course, the same recognition would entail a degree of Russian reconciliation. Much as Western overreach provides the primary cause of the Ukraine war, Moscow has to understand that the constellation of global forces is not arrayed in its favour. 

So far, China’s refusal to denounce the invasion of Ukraine does not translate into China’s support for it. So too India’s studied stance on neither condemning nor supporting the invasion. If Russia is to look for support among these two rising powers, it cannot hope to do so by imposing strategic dilemmas on them.

China has enough problems with the West without Russia adding to them with an invasion that does nothing to improve China’s position in global affairs. As for India, its dependence on Russia for arms does not outweigh its closeness to the West so as to shore up its position against China. 

In a nutshell, the bipolar world presided over by Nato and the Warsaw Pact is gone forever. What we have is a multipolar world in transition. The outcome of that power transition remains uncertain. 

If key global players focus instead on forging stronger bridges amongst themselves through the agency of the needs and demands of burgeoning international trade, lasting peace may be within reach. This would require the military industrial complex of the West to recalibrate. 

In the meantime, it is imperative that Russia ceases and reverses its military incursion, no doubt upon achieving a satisfactory compromise. 

The West has lost the European peace. Russia must not follow it in losing world peace. – May 1, 2022.

Francis Xavier, a Senior Counsel in Singapore, reads The Malaysian Insight

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.