As has been unmistakably demonstrated over the past week or so, insofar as a handful of countries continue to constitute a unique ‘club’ of nuclear weapons’ possessors and insofar as members of that ‘club’ continue to believe that they can, as they please, threaten to press their nuclear arsenals into service as instruments with which to seek to re-shape the world order, the international community will continue to be an unstable place. Perhaps more to the point, this condition will leave the rest of us as no more than awestruck witnesses to a performance in which we qualify as no more than spectators.
There is something surreal about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s seeming attempt to re-absorb Ukraine into what some of us might have considered a long fossilized regime of Cold War ideologically-driven alliances. That is, without question, unacceptable.
The Russian President would surely be aware that as an interdependent international community we invite all kinds of unwanted demons into our midst, taking us down what is certain not to be a dangerous road, when we seek to exhume governance systems that had not previously served us well in the first place and simply superimpose these on our contemporary existence.
Truth be told we already have more challenges than we can effectively cope with given the dichotomy between the principles of the United Nations, on the one hand, and the divisions and dangers that inhere in a system where nuclear capabilities separate us in ways that are painfully apparent. It is this, more than anything else, that makes a mockery of the notion of what we are inclined to describe as the equality of nations.
President Putin’s ill-advised military invasion of Ukraine must, without question, be universally and unambiguously frowned upon by Guyana and the rest of the international community. In the instance of countries like Guyana unqualified condemnation of such actions is important if, in this day and age, we are not perceived to be seeking to create some diplomatic contrivance that resembles a posture of ‘neutrality’ in a matter as important to us as the inviolability of external geographic space.
What is of course particularly worrying about the Russia/Ukraine impasse is that it involves, on one side, a so-called superpower to make the world sit up and listen so that it would be foolhardy to think that the ‘differences’ between Russia and Ukraine can be settled bilaterally across a negotiating table. Already, the matter has metamorphosed into a clear cut ideological confrontation between Moscow and Washington which has escalated at breakneck speed and where the reality of nuclear weapons on both sides give rise to concerns about a likely excursion into brinkmanship.
One of effects that advancements in media technology have had is to allow consumers of news access to real-time or near real-time information, so that the media houses have significantly enhanced their competence as purveyors of information. What we have witnessed over the past few days is a relentless ‘blow by ‘blow’ western media bombardment of President Putin’s excursion into Ukraine, which has been presented with an eerie Cold War-type underpinning, as though it seeks to make the point that “Russia remains Russia” and that there remains reason for the rest of the world to be on guard.
Truth be told, President Putin’s posture in the matter of Russia’s relationship with Ukraine has about it a strong Cold War underpinning. It assumes that a Ukraine that moves closer to becoming part of an ‘alliance’ with what we loosely describe as Western Europe represents a threat not just to what Cold Warriors would describe as ‘the old order’ but what President Putin might well perceive as a threat to Russia itself. The Russian President’s problem, of course, is that he does not appear to accept that his ‘concerns’ cannot possibly warrant a wholesale annexation of independent Ukraine. Put differently, an unprovoked invasion of a neighbouring country on the basis of some perceived threat has no place in contemporary international relations. That would be a retrograde step not just for Russia but for the international community as a whole which is precisely why Guyana must make clear its displeasure over the Russian military intervention into Ukraine and issue an unambiguous call for the withdrawal of its military and its war inventory.
