World has entered a post-Ukraine phase which, like 9/11, will shape global security for years

War has shaken conviction in the stability of Europe and its borders, while Putin’s threat of nuclear force casts doubt on the strength of modern treaties
The reverberations of this conflict will be felt in the coming decades as global security systems are debated and restructured

C. Uday Bhaskar

Published: 3:30am, 2 Mar 2022

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The crisis in Ukraine has been rendered even more ominous after Russian President Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear deterrence forces on “special alert” in response to what he described as Nato’s aggression. Belarus has also decided to renounce its non-nuclear status, enabling Russia to locate nuclear weapons in that nation – if required.

Predictably, the global community is bewildered by this threat of weapons of mass destruction. The US has condemned the move as “unacceptable” and accused the Russian president of “fabricating threats” to justify “further aggression”. The US and its allies have exercised another kind of “nuclear” option – the fiscal one – by severely restricting Russia’s access to the global financial system.

The Russian invasion has belied many early assumptions that Putin would seek only to intimidate Kyiv, despite the steady Russian military build-up along the border with Ukraine in early February, and the fact that Putin deems Ukraine’s national autonomy to be historically invalid – Ukraine was a republic of the former Soviet Union and acquired its current political identity after the end of the Cold War.

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Within a larger historical context, the certitude that Europe had reached a postmodern state wherein national borders would not be altered by the use of force, as sanctified in the Helsinki agreement of 1975, is now in tatters. Wars and conflict in the post-Cold War era were expected to take place in the developing world, with the more powerful nations acting through proxy.

The sanctity of borders has a special resonance for Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

At the time, the United States, the United Kingdom and a truncated Russia provided security guarantees to a denuclearised Ukraine. Twenty-eight years later, this question will ricochet in strategic security deliberations for a long time: would Putin have invaded Ukraine with impunity on February 24 if Kyiv had nuclear weapons?

The strength of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the assurance embedded therein that nuclear weapon states will not threaten non-nuclear weapon states with the use of nuclear weapons will now be reviewed and debated intensely. Global strategic entropy will be aggravated and the reverberations in relation to weapons of mass destruction will be felt in the years ahead.

In terms of diplomatic response, the United Nations emergency deliberations over Ukraine have been predictable. The UN Security Council was divided among its five permanent members, with the US, UK and France supporting the resolution condemning Russia on February 25. Russia vetoed it and China abstained. Among the non-permanent members, India also chose to abstain.

China’s Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun attends a United Nations Security Council assembly to vote for an emergency session on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in New York on February 27. Photo: Reuters

The pattern was repeated in the Security Council meeting on February 27. The resolution to call for an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly was adopted despite Russian opposition.

It is instructive to note that both China and India took similar positions on Ukraine. Both showed a prudent reluctance to criticise or condemn Putin in public, while encouraging a cessation of hostilities and a return to the negotiating table.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have reportedly spoken to the Russian leader urging restraint; the events of the next few days will testify to the efficacy of such counsel. Neither of them have officially recognised the breakaway regions of Ukraine after Russia did so.

A timeline of Russia’s stand-off with Ukraine

Both Asian powers face a conflict of interest in relation to Russia, the European Union and the US. Globalisation and geoeconomic compulsions draw them towards the US and EU, the two biggest trade-economic interlocutors. Strategic and security considerations, and a legacy relationship with Moscow, shape their policies towards Russia. Binary choices are not an option, and for New Delhi this is further compounded by the scope of the China-Russia ideological entente with its anti-US orientation.

The desire to bring a recalcitrant Ukraine with Nato membership aspirations back into the Russian fold, where it historically belonged, is being advanced as the trigger for Putin’s decision to invade and occupy Kyiv. However, the resistance Russia is being met with on the ground points to a surge in Ukrainian nationalism, and a return to a modified Minsk protocol is becoming a receding option.

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The current situation over Ukraine is kinetic, with many layers of complexity and contestation. Nato’s steady expansion eastward ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union is now being perceived as the original policy blunder.

Historical revisionism, accompanied by emotive nationalism and military assertiveness, is a double-edged sword, and Europe’s deeply troubled past is being violently resurrected. Should Crimea have been “gifted” to Ukraine by then Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev? Was it wrong to expel the original Tartar inhabitants from the peninsula? There are many intractable strands of recent regional history.

Germany’s decision to increase its defence spending and bolster greater EU resolve and cohesion could see the emergence of a more active strategic entity. A galvanised Nato which sees Russia as the immediate security threat is on the cards, which will exacerbate the very exigency that is fuelling Moscow’s insecurity.

A Belarusian protester holds a sign in favour of Nato closing the airspace over Ukraine at an anti-war rally in Seattle on February 26. Photo: AFP

The world has lurched into a post Ukraine phase – transitioning from the post-9/11, post-Kabul 2021 period. It may be premature to arrive at definitive conclusions about how the current flux will crystallise over the next few years.

The world is yet to fully overcome the challenge and impact of Covid-19; both economic recovery and addressing the needs of the impoverished citizen will drive national policies. Isolating Russia and heaping opprobrium on Putin is the dominant mood, but patient political negotiations to assuage the insecurities of all the principal state interlocutors and realising the aspirations of their citizens is the Holy Grail that beckons.

Russia’s Ukraine attack and the limits of China’s foreign policy

Whether the protests within Russia against Putin’s invasion or the fierce resistance in Ukraine backed by Nato will alter the current crisis is moot. For now, the European teacup has been stirred violently with a sprinkling of the dreaded nuclear weapon. Resolve and restraint have to be judiciously harmonised.

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi