The war begins and, of course, tensions and uncertainties increase.
A good number of commentators focus on the scenarios and foundations of the war, with parts of the Western press also questioning the moral and legal legitimacy of Putin’s Russia’s warlike actions.
All these conversations are necessary and valid. But it is essential to remember that, as we enter the terrain of war, we must adopt the analytical key of realpolitik, the field of action and reflection of politics and geopolitics that deals with the raw reality of power.
In this key, I go back to the 1990s to draw attention to three basic mistakes made by the West.
The first of these was the triumphalism that took hold of the victors of the Cold War. The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the end of the communist threat could have given rise to a pacifying approach with the declaration of the end of NATO, an alliance created in 1949 to contain an eventual expansion of Soviet Russia.
However, the Western attitude, it is worth remembering, was one of continued and increasing aggressiveness. From 12 original members, the organization grew to be home to 30 states, understandably creating a shadow of an existential and physical threat to the integrity of Russia, then weakened.
As a result of this moral error (and also strategic, as we will see shortly), the West refrained from building a policy of neutralizing fundamental territories for the creation of an environment of collective security in Europe.
If, in the immediate post-Cold War period, the West had started with a policy of “Finlandization” of Ukraine (that is, the transformation of Ukraine into a sovereign state, but with a commitment to absolute neutrality in relation to military alliances), the world would not would be living this degree of insecurity that we are going through now.
The environment at the time was absolutely propitious for such a diplomatic initiative; it was not invested in this out of mere short-term opportunism, driven by the powerful lobby of the US arms industry.
The third misconception stemmed from an obtuse lack of perspective in the 1990s US of what the future of China would be. The American establishment at the time did not anticipate that, in three decades, China would become its biggest contender in the arena of geopolitical and geoeconomic power on the planet. With increasing tensions between East and West, version 2.0, the most important derivative of the Russo-Ukrainian war is the surrender of Russia, in the expression of the bars and taverns, in the laps and arms of China, body and soul.
From the perspective of realpolitik, the alliance between Russia and China to face the confrontation with the West opens the doors of Europe to China. For the first time since the 13th century, by “Asiatizing” Russia instead of “Europeanizing” it, the Eurasian continent risks being integrated, as in the Mongol century of Genghis Khan.
A US moral deviation in the 1990s turned out to be a tremendous strategic mistake, with immeasurable consequences for future generations which, in addition to all the unnecessary violence, could accelerate the present decline of the West relative to the East.
