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Too awful to contemplate

AS THESE words are written, officials are scurrying around to put the finishing touches to the Nato summit which will be held on Thursday and Friday in the Welsh town of Newport just outside Cardiff.

It will be the most important summit since the Second World War, with considerable political and economic implications.

The mood in the West is grim. At a special summit of the European Union in Brussels at the weekend, José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission (the EU “cabinet”), used ominous words: “We are in a very serious, I would say, dramatic situation.

"We may see a situation where we reach a point of no return. If the escalation of the conflict continues, this point of no return may come.”

Is war between Russia and the West inevitable? Nothing, I suppose, ever qualifies in international politics for the term “inevitable”, but it is certainly true that the possibility of war, which seemed totally out of the question even a few weeks ago, has now become somewhat more realistic.

Soldiers are dying in Ukraine at this very moment. Bolstered by Russian heavy weapons and even regular troops, the Ukrainian separatists have started a counteroffensive against the government forces and are advancing.

In Luhansk, not far from the Russian border, they have recaptured the airfield, while a new front has been opened in the south along the coast, where an armoured column is clearly trying to force a land corridor between Russia and the Crimea, which was annexed by the Russians earlier in the year.

Merkel's frantic efforts for peace

The West has tried to cajole President Vladimir Putin to change his behaviour. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made no fewer than 35 telephone calls to the Kremlin. Other leaders, like US President Barack Obama, French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron, have also weighed in.
Without any result.

The problem is that Western leaders and Putin operate from widely different points of departure.

In the West widespread attention was paid to the fact that the First World War broke out a century ago, and the Second World War exactly 75 years ago. The memory of these terrible wars is very much alive among Western politicians, and the possibility of a third is something they find too terrible to contemplate.

Especially Merkel, leader of the country who was the chief culprit in unleashing the war in 1939, realises the weight of history on her shoulders. And she is therefore taking the lead time and again to “de-escalate” (the buzzword in Berlin) the situation.

Western leaders are also very afraid of the economic catastrophe a war would elicit. It would put the world back several decades, they fear. The global economy will be plunged deeper into recession than it was in the dark days of 2008 and 2009.

Ice-cold Putin

However, these things are of secondary importance to Putin. Putin, it is true, is not a complete madman like Adolf Hitler in 1939. Rather, he is an ice-cold chess player with an eye for a gap. And when a gap presents itself, he pounces with lightning speed.

At heart he is a 19th-century Russian nationalist, inspired by various 19th-century nationalist writers, expounding the virtues of Russian culture and its mission in the world, contrasting it with the shallow and debased culture in the West. Russia has to regain its place in the world as a superpower.

Therefore, the crumbling of the old USSR was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, he once proclaimed. Just last week, he said the Ukrainians and Russians were actually “one people”, thereby proving that he does not see the Ukraine as an independent country in the long run.

Putin, in other words, is looking at the world through ideological lenses. Mere economics do not really interest him.

Read: Putin's chess game

This means that economic sanctions make very little, if any, impression on Putin. Even the prospect of limited war does not make him blink, especially if he can fight that war while denying that he is doing so in order to confuse his counterparts in the West.

Besides, he knows that Western capitals have very little stomach for war. And even less military capability, because of the drastic defence cuts of the last 20 years or so. Nato is at this moment simply unable to fight any war with Russia.

That is why the Nato summit in Newport is so important. Even Merkel is getting exasperated with Putin, and the calls for rearmament are getting stronger all the time.

It seems likely that Nato will decide to bolster its defences in Poland and the Baltic states, which will probably enrage Putin. And from there, one possible scenario might be ever further escalation until... dare one say it?

In 1914, while Europe went to war, Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, stood by the window of his office and remarked: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We will not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

Let us pray that these words will not apply to the present.

 - Fin24

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.

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