Adapted from the New York Times¹ and La Repubblica² By: Ahmed ELNAHAS –
Castelfiorentino, March 4th 2014.
The
chessboard image is the classic metaphor portraying the Cold War era. An era of international tensions and attractions that
started right after WWII in 1948. However, that image draws a luring deception.
Many choices remembered today as reference for far-sightedness and tactical
geniality; were then qualified mere weaknesses. The Cold War’s costliest
manoeuvres in Korea and Vietnam, proved to be uselessly unproductive.
Often
rhetoric causes problems. In 1952, Eisenhower promised an aggressive policy for
the “Liberalisation from Communism”.
Yet, he always opted to prudence instead of conflict. Even the “Missiles Crisis”, in Cuba back in the
sixties; found its solution in the secret barter deal by which Uncle Sam
removes his missiles from Turkey as long as the Soviet Bear dismantles his’
from Cuba.
Regan did
more or less the same when facing the Polish emergency, and the repression of ‘Solidarnosc’.
He demonstrated caution. Poland, as other satellites, were liberated thanks to careful
negotiations with Gorbachev.. The Cold War then was not a calculated game
structured and played among masters; it was a horrifying era of high tensions,
where leaders knew that the slightest false move would’ve dragged them, and the
entire world, into the darkness of a bottomless abyss.
But today’s
open game, between Putin and Obama, is much more than the classic game of chess
that both Moscow and Washington used to play, and cleverly I may add, until
1991 using situations, countries, and governments as pawns to move at will over
their global chessboard. Though, always observing the utmost caution, as not to
reach a destructive frontal crash line.
In fact, the
alarming element which really preoccupies the world, about the present military
operations in the Crimean peninsula, is the 18th century tactics and
visions that Putin’s Russia brings into the 21st century;
demonstrating the profound cultural backwardness of a leadership modelling the
pre-Soviet Tzarist patterns. Thus, Putin is not any longer the successor of
Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev nor even Eltsin; he has become the last living
ROMANOV heir of Tzar Nicolas II.
Before
such unexpected and much troubling shift in the Russian perception on modern
politics, we discover that the United States, United Nations and the European
Union stand surprised and helplessly confused with no real efficient, nor
effective, instruments to use as the appropriate ‘Counter Measure (s)’;
not even any true means of intimidation. Whether Russia is present or absent in
a G8 or a G20, will not change a single bit the fact of a European dependence
on the oil and gas supplies (passing all through the five major pipelines through the Ukrainian
territory and Crimean ports), and always more on the capitals pumped by Russian
Oligarchies.
Out from
the Syrian disaster, when Obama unwisely launched a precise ultimatum knowing
he can’t respect, the administration must have learned never to fall beyond the
“Red Line on the sand”. Already the
White House came dangerously exposed warning Putin “..not to violate Ukrainian Sovereignty”; at which the Russians
have formally, and mockingly, avoided doing by sending thousands of soldiers
with no shoulder patches nor flags.
Should
this unidentifiable, and nameless, official army transform into an invasion and
occupation force, with official signs; and if the situation would degenerate in
a civil war; perhaps even reaching the still boiling crater of Chernobyl (at only 160 km from Kiev); we
would then witness first hand an eruption of diplomatic initiatives, of
frenetic meetings between Europeans and Americans, of meaningless appeals with toothless
warnings.
But no
one, certainly not the USA who are still painfully and slowly ungluing their
feet out from Afghanistan, is ready to die for Crimea. In the Ukraine, the “Putin
Doctrine” have no rivals, if not half the Ukrainians themselves.
Make the
parallel with the Arab Spring(s), focussing on Egypt’s situation; only by then you
would discover how hollow are the words of Arab leading political figures.
Pass On The Word.
¹ ©Sam Tanenhaus the NYT.
²
©Vittorio Zucconi La Repubblica.
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