“There is no substitute for victory”! This is a famous line from General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. A veteran of World Wars I and II, and the Korean War, MacArthur certainly knew about what he spoke. But in no uncertain terms, the wars of today no longer resemble those of yesterday. When he said those words, MacArthur was generally describing the conventional battlefield he saw. While this conventional battlefield is still very much around today, it is also a hybrid battlespace that is fast becoming a dangerously nuclear one.
With the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine, I’d say “there is absolutely no substitute for peace!”
When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, world peace became unhinged in a way it wasn’t since the Second World War. It wasn’t so much because it was a war between two neighboring countries. But it became such because the world quickly saw how it can easily escalate into a much larger conflict, even a nuclear one, involving many other nations. World leaders therefore did not lack in warning the Russian leader Vladimir Putin towards withdrawing from Ukraine.
However, it was too late. For reasons political, economic, and cultural, Putin has been hell-bent on subjugating Ukraine, a resource-rich and critically significant buffer between Russia and Western Europe. But the Russian leader underestimated Ukraine which has successfully fought back waging its own counter-campaign turning effective defense into offense hurting Russia. So, the war has dragged on and is now at a point where Russia could lose – conventionally. In short, the world once again finds itself at a dangerous crossroad in history where another global war can be ignited if its leaders cannot find a mutually inclusive peaceful solution.
The latest developments in the war are very disturbing as Russian jets and drones have been suddenly flying into Polish, Romanian, and Estonian airspaces. Naturally, the leaders of these NATO countries have invoked Article 4 of the Charter calling in other members to weigh in on the matter. (Also read: The Philippines: a new laboratory for US cutting-edge missiles and drones)
To this effect, leaders of other members like the United Kingdom, Poland, and Sweden issued a warning to Russia that their air defenses will shoot down any further incursions into NATO airspaces. “Several other Allies – including Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway – have also recently experienced airspace violations by Russia.”
The member countries of NATO’s North Atlantic Council issued a formal statement in response to Russian airspace incursions that their commitment to Article 5 is ironclad. Article 5 of the Charter authorizes any offended Council member, in alliance with other members, to “employ, in accordance with international law, all necessary military and non-military tools to defend (itself) and deter all threats from all directions, … to respond in the manner, timing, and domain of (its) choosing.” The allies are undeterred by Russian aggression and feel they have the moral right “in the exercise of (their) inherent right to self-defense against Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression”.
Russia’s recent airspace incursions can be viewed in the light of Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia in the recent weeks. “Ukrainian forces struck two Russian oil distribution facilities in the Bryansk and Samara regions… In Samara, the military hit a line production station that mixes Russian oil for its flagship Urals oil grade for export… In Bryansk, it hit a line production station of a pipeline critical for Russian army supplies.”
In essence, Ukraine has strategically attacked Russia’s supply lines crippling its ability to support its war efforts. It has done so by renewing its “campaign of long-range drone attacks on Russian oil production sites”.
Possibly, the airspace incursions are Putin’s retaliation against Ukraine’s recent attacks and warning to NATO which he has long accused of enabling Ukraine against Russia. However, they also betray desperation on the part of Russia forcing it to simultaneously risk conflict with the United States. Russia cannot fight a protracted war against Ukraine without its oil export revenues. And between the U.S. and China, Russia has already invested on the latter. Dangling its nuclear arsenal as a threat, Russia is basically warning the U.S. and NATO to lay off.
In response, the U.S. and NATO have these to say. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Russia’s repeated incursions were either intentional or an example of “blatant incompetence.”
For his part, newly-installed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz said: “The United States stands by our NATO allies in the face of these airspace violations; And […] I want to emphasize that the U.S. and our allies will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
In light of the incursions, there also seems to be a pattern of lying openly presented as an alternative foreign policy tool. For instance, while NATO condemned the airspace violations characterizing them as a “wider pattern of increasingly irresponsible Russian behavior […] which are escalatory, risk miscalculation, and endanger lives”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “Moscow had not received any credible information about the claims by Estonia that Russian MiG-31 aircraft had crossed into the territory of the NATO member […] Such rhetoric only serves to heighten hostility.”
In response, the Estonian Foreign Ministry replied that, “Russia violating a NATO member’s airspace was one thing but ‘publicly lying about it to the whole world is another’.”
Seemingly unconcerned about the potential for international conflict that it might bring about, this pattern of “alternative foreign policy statements” (aka lying) is also blatantly practiced by another state power on the other side of the globe which happens to be an ally of Russia. After a naval vessel and coast guard ship both owned by the People’s Republic of China collided while harassing a small Philippine boat in Philippine EEZ, defense ministry spokesperson Colonel Zhang Xiaogang had this to say: “We solemnly warn the Philippine side not to persist in its misguided actions and repeat its mistakes. It must immediately cease its infringing ‘provocation’ and inflammatory ‘propaganda’. Otherwise, it will bear all consequences.”
Hinting at U.S. support of the Philippines, the Chinese spokesman accused the Philippines of “courting external forces and playing the fox borrowing the tiger’s might to destabilize the region”.
In essence, this growing pattern of alternative statesmanship (open lying) is now a tool used by states like Russia and China, incidentally both authoritarian states, in furtherance of their foreign policy interests. However, it must also be stated for the record that this type of behavior is against the international rule of law which values the pursuit of truth to resolve international conflicts.