The beginning of something larger?

The invasion creates dangerous precedents for India to use against Pakistan

AT PENPOINT

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia was inevitable precisely because it was unreasonable. President Vladimir Putin wishes to upend the world order, and restore one in which Russia’s wishes are taken account of. His real enemy is thus the USA, not Ukraine, but Ukrainians are dying, not Americans. That means that he may end up defeating the Ukrainians, but still not achieve his war aim.

What Putin has managed to do, probably, inadvertently, is strike a blow at the modern concept of sovereignty, of the nation-state, that has prevailed since the Treaty of Westphalia.

He may also be drawing the wrong lessons from recent events. The lesson he is supposed to have drawn from the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is that the USA is now weak, or more precisely not strong enough militarily to impose its will on anyone willing enough to resist. Another lesson is the futility of trying to attempt regime change. One might be successful, but the ousted regime comes back.

That was not the Soviet experience when the USSR invaded. Sardar Daud had been ousted, but his regime apparently sank without a trace. The Soviet proxy, the Babrak Karmal regime, was replaced first by chaos, then the Taliban.

Thus if Russia achieves its goal of installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv, there is no guarantee that the Zelensky government in some form or the other, will not return.

The world order that Putin envisages is also dubious. It is almost as if he has forgotten why the USSR collapsed, and left the field open to the USA: it could not afford the military expenditure needed to compete. It should be noted that one of the reasons for the USSR flying apart is that it had been forced to spend too much on the invasion of Afghanistan.

This is perhaps the biggest worry for the world. The pullbacks from the abyss by India and Pakistan had made Kashmir the most likely nuclear flashpoint. The likeliest points of conflict between China and the USA were the South China Sea and Taiwan. Russia’s invasion has overtaken them all.

The inability to maintain its military not only prevented it from following an expansionist policy abroad, but also caused it to fly apart, because it had maintained its presence in the other republics because of the Red Army. The inability of the centre to pay for it meant that the USSR collapsed. Russia will have to be ready to make the necessary expenditure; it may find that the precedent war might overtax its resources.

The USA certainly found, after Afghanistan and Iraq, that its way of waging war was hideously expensive. The expense of conflict was one reason why European countries gave their colonies independence after World War II: they could no longer afford to garrison them. One important reason was that they could no longer find enough recruits for their militaries. Russia may not have the funds, but the reaction of the Russian people to having to fight will prove a test.

Another test is the one Ukraine faces. Can it engage in the kind of prolonged guerrilla struggle that the Taliban waged? Or have they become too Europeanized? The image of Stepan Bandera must be there for Ukraine, for he operated with the Nazi invaders, as well as went to a concentration camp, during World War II. Putin’s rather cryptic reference to de-Notifying Ukraine may be a reference to Bandera’s struggle against the Red Army when it went through Eastern Europe on its way to Berlin.

Bandera may be a controversial figure because of his role in the Holocaust, but he was a Ukrainian patriot, who waged a a guerrilla war against the USSR as it returned. The USSR imprisoned Ukrainian nationalists as members of the ‘Banderist gang.’

That brings up perhaps Putin’s most egregious defence of his invasion, that Ukraine has cultural, linguistic and spiritual affinities to Russia. That might be true, but it smacks of a kind of old-fashioned nationalism.

It does not take into account the greater inclination of the Ukrainian people for Western Europe. It runs counter to the brutal suppression of the Chechen drive to independence, and must be music to the ears of the BJP in India, for the same argument applies to any reversal of the Partition. It does emphasize similarities, but it does not acknowledge differences. It might be used as a justification for Russia conquering all the Slavic countries. Why stop at Slavic. All the Indo-European countries then become fair game, which means all of Europe.

This same view can be seen in the opinion, which has been expressed but which is not seriously held by any scholar, that all the Romance languages (like French, Spanish and Italian) are not really descendants of Latin, but dialects of it. There is the famous joke that a language is a dialect with an army.

Within Pakistan, there is the Seraiki question. Is it a separate language or just a dialect of Punjabi? Should there be a separate province or two? And if Pakistan is the homeland of three Punjabis, what about the Punjabi dialects spoken in India? Does Pakistan have a claim on East Punjab and Himachal Pradesh?

Extending this a little further, that logic would allow India to claim Pakistani Punjab and Sindh, because they spoke members of the Indo-Aryan languages that had a common origin. Pushto and Balochi are Indo-Iranian languages, and could be taken in the next phase. But then, Persian is an Indo-Iranian language too…

The linguistic argument would make Russia ready to conquer the whole of all who speak Indo-European languages. And as the Indo-Aryan languages can have their origins traced to Indo-European, we could have Putin’s Russia aiming to take over the Subcontinent.

Pakistan is left high and dry in all of this. Pakistan’s PM was in Moscow when the invasion started, which is not being seen favourably in the West despite his protests that Pakistan did not want to get involved in any blocs. However, blocs are forming. India is dithering about choosing between the old friend (Russia) or the new (the USA). Its relations with Ukraine have not been ideal, and its failure to choose reflects the pull of the USA. Its abstention in the UN General Assembly is being seen as support for Russia. If so, what price Pakistan’s abstention?

Pakistan has got to see how it avoids annoying China (Russia’s ally) or the USA (Ukraine’s). Indeed, the visit to Russia was made because China had helped arrange the visit. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin does not seem to have been impressed enough with the Chinese introduction to make any move away from India.

Perhaps the futility of this war is most sharply shown by the fact that it will probably not change the dynamic in the Sino-Russian relationship. When the dust settles, China will still be the rising power, and Russia will still be its junior partner.

The latest European War harks back to outbreaks around the second decade of the century. By that standard, the invasion was a little late, In 1618, the Thirty Years’ War started, ending only with the Treaty of Westphalia, which gave substance to the idea of the modern state, which evolved into the idea of a nation-state. Then in the 18th century was the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in the 19th the Napoleonic War, which ended at Waterloo in1815, and in the 20th, World War I began in 1914. In that respect, it is possible to talk of slippage.

The Thirty Years War was terrible, but every succeeding war was worse. Is the latest outbreak a harbinger of an even more terrible war, of one that was presaged in World War II, of a nuclear conflict.

Putin’s increase in Soviet nuclear readiness indicates that a nuclear war could happen. The USA has held back, and there are some who begin to doubt Putin’s mental stability because of this.

This is perhaps the biggest worry for the world. The pullbacks from the abyss by India and Pakistan had made Kashmir the most likely nuclear flashpoint. The likeliest points of conflict between China and the USA were the South China Sea and Taiwan. Russia’s invasion has overtaken them all.

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