Nato expansion March 23, 2023
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
And so Turkey lifts the veto on Finland’s application to join Nato and presumably sooner or later will come to terms with Sweden and consequently that organisation will have two new members in the near future. Just in geo-strategic terms this outcome points up the utter futility of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian government. Did no-one counsel the political leadership in Moscow that this was a possible, perhaps likely, almost inevitable, outcome of starting a war of aggression on its borders? Or perhaps more accurately continuing and expanding a war of aggression. Along with the self-immolation of Moscow’s energy export market for the foreseeable future this is a massive set-back.
But it goes further. Short of a successful decapitation of Kyiv, wasn’t it always likely that Ukraine would ultimately become a sort of de facto semi-detached protectorate of various states in Eastern Europe and the EU and, in a way, a Nato it cannot and likely will not join? I’m no fan of Nato, but work through the dynamics and processes and what one sees something that is almost a certainty – that states on the periphery of Russia/Europe would look to their own security.
So who was it that didn’t tell the Kremlin this? Or was it that they simply wouldn’t listen?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
To play armchair general, I suspect the Russian government firmly believed that the Russian military, and the Russian military probably did not do enough to dissuade them, that Ukraine would be brought to heel and regime change/annexation normalised so quickly that countries like Finland and Sweden wouldn’t have the wave of anti-Russian alarm to ride all the way to NATO’s doors. After all, they didn’t after the Crimea.
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Yeah, that makes sense. And perhaps the Russian military did not feel they could say it too bluntly. Or did not want to. Or believed that Ukraine could be toppled rapidly. I guess too that the Crimea annexation to a degree misled them, or rather the lack of response. I mean squint and one could say, Crimea was a recent enough addition to Ukraine – that analysis is problematic but it clearly went some way with European powers and others. But a whole state. That’s a different matter. That was bound to get a response.
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When Russia invaded Ukraine all hell broke loose. Ironically, NATO was afraid to get involved initially as this might lead to ‘mutually assured destruction’ in a nuclear war. Not surprisingly, NATO changed tack when the Russian military forces proved unable to defeat Ukraine and NATO, Finland and Sweden went courting. My guess is that Putin surrounded himself with a very small circle of oligarchs, and some military leaders who probably didn’t dare to tell the truth. But Putin is nobody’s fool. His goal of making Russian nationalism a world force again is long planned and affected. This setback means he is going for a lengthy war of attrition instead.
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And he’ll throw everything into this – he has to to survive doesn’t he?
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I’ve seen this argued by the Russian dissident, Boris Kagaralitsky:
‘ The war will not end until there is a regime change in Russia. This is not an ideological statement, but a fundamental political principle of the Putin regime itself, which cannot survive other than by dragging out the war indefinitely. Unfortunately for the Kremlin rulers, eternal war is impossible, especially as it turns into an endless series of failures and defeats, something which tends not to stabilize a regime.
Apparently the best way out, which both people around the incumbent president and many politicians in the West are inclined towards, is to offer us Putinism without Putin in the very near future …’
Possibly true, terribly likely. But then, pending new developments, we don’t know.
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