On the Emerging Shape of the Allied Response to the Russian Invasion--'Trading Ukraine for the Rest of Europe': The View Now Being Shaped Through the Semi-Official Press?

 

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This morning, the United States finally began to more openly describe its real position on the absorption of Ukraine by Russia.  As is the common practice in the United States,the American position was described during the course of likely carefully curated "interviews" by high profile television and cable press organ personalities. The object of this semi-official communication is usually a former officials. During the course of those interviews, the former official, especially if they are or more likely tied to  the military or state security establishments, would spin out a scenario that might be taken as at least a tentative(though usually much more advanced version) of the official position or thinking already well developed behind closed doors among a small circle of "people who matter." 

Still. . . .. something is better than nothing; and it might contribute to the socialization and management of mass opinion or a response to its concerns. It cultivates the appearance of connection with power (and perhaps authority) by the citizenry to the ruling circles--at least indirectly; almost like listening in to late night conversations by ones parents.   If nothing else, it provides the discursive entertainment function of press organs with critical materials for developing appropriate thinking about important issues for which a political establishment seeks to discipline popular feeling ( or as they might put it; "knowledge"). 

The American position is now becoming clearer--semi-officially.  

On Friday morning 25 February 2022, Michael Morell, a career intelligence analyst and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2010-2013), now retired, was the focus of a carefully choreographed interview.  He spoke, naturally, only for himself. Yet if that was strictly the case one could have dragged any random person from the street for this sort of set up. He brings with him, formally, a lifetime of experience and connection, though  now not in any official capacity. Semiotically he is signified by his past and his connection.  It is not Mr. Morell, semiotically, who is speaking, but rather he is channeling attitude, approaches, and experience from the object of investigation--the current American Administration. That makes not him but his objectification, more important and perhaps worthy of weighing. 

In response to a series of questions about the war in Ukraine, the motivations of Mr. Putin, and the efficacy of sanctions Mr. Morell noted the following:

1. Sanctions could not prevent, and will not stop the invasion of Ukraine and its de facto absorption into a revivified post-Soviet Russian Empire (built on 19thcentury volkish principles).  In effect Mr. Morell has sort of said what Mr. Biden has been indirectly indicating--that the United States will sell Ukraine to the Russians. The sale price, however, will by the reckoning of the "accountants" in the United States be steep. That price is in two parts.  The first of course is the obvious--the sanctions.  The greater price is what might be called the "Chinese approach price"--the formalization (effectively) of a policy of decoupling the US-EU/NATO space from Russia. Not that interaction (especially economic) will not occur; hardly.  But that the old principles of convergence and open and robust interconnection at every level of social and economic activity is effectively over. We speak of top down rather than bottom up connection. The cost to Russia may be measured in the value of sanctions, as well as in the retention by the US-EU/NATO front of some measure of dominance in the discursive portion of the war.  Russia will be made a pariah (for a while); its leaders may pay the price for national actions (assuming they fall into the hands of the Allies or their goods anyway).  Yet Russia still occupies prominent spaces in the UN apparatus in NY and Geneva--even after it will have digested Ukraine.  

2. The function of sanctions was to remind Mr. Putin that his imperial ambitions may not reach further into Europe--at least into that part of Europe now constituted as the E.U/NATO space. That appears to be the American and European "asking price" for the transfer of Ukraine to Russia. The implications, of course, was that there might be space for the further realization of Russian 19th century Pan-Slavism in Southern Europe and no mention is made of the reconquest of the old Southern Soviet Republics (I wonder how the Armenians would read the remarks). However, the Americans would be more inclined--perhaps--to defend militarily the borders of EU/NATO and cede the autonomy of the rest (and its connection to the principles of the post 1945 world order).

3. The gamble here is based (one can only sigh because so much error has been produced over the centuries from this sort of thinking) on an assessment of what is occurring between the ears of Mr. Putin, and form there conveyed to his boyars and implemented through the state and social control apparatus in Russia. One pauses here to remember a former American President meeting Mr. Putin in Slovenia in 2001 who said

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country," Bush said, adding a few sentence later, "I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him." (Why Putin Plays Our Presidents for Fools)

 One pauses as well here to remember the fondness of Mr.Putin for staging these adventures around the time of Olympics (recall 2008 and Georgia) and of the pattern of the American ruling cliques (in the vernacular Presidential and Congressional advisors and thought drivers)  long pattern of concession/compromise--no doubt sensible at the time but in retrospect a cause for potential reassessment. In any case, pushing this bad habit forward, what is on offer is an assessment that what is occurring in Mr. Putin's mind can be divided roughly three quarters worth of domestic ambitions, one one quarter external security concerns. In a world in which the cost of war ought to be much dearer, it seems that war as an option to meet these psychological calculations is now on offer at bargain prices--art least in the way Mr. Putin prices value in the market for territorial acquisition. 

And that, in the end, is the tragedy.  The Americans and their European friends appear willing to concede Ukraine to Russia in war. They believe that the civil fines ought to be adequate compensation and in any case further their own internal objectives. They believe that this is enough to protect the peripheries of the European heartland from expanding Russian ambitions. They believe that this acknowledgement of the power and success of 19th century ethno-racial empire  will not undermine the carefully crafted post 1945 principles on which the international order was at least formally built.  They believe that eventually they may be able to bring individuals to justice in international tribunals. . . eventually. . . maybe. of ideologies of convergence.

Yet this is an extraordinary gamble based on what many may believe was naive assessments of the power of sanction, the integrity of the rump of the EUROPEAN/NATO space that is to be "protected", and an assessment of the integrity and power of the ideological premises that make the old world order appealing--not to the good burghers of Berlin or Park Avenue, but to the shopkeepers in Kampala or Asunción. And, in any case, the value of what was negotiated away--the authority and legitimacy of the post 1945 state system built around the UN (Götzen-Dämmerung (The Twilight of the Idols): Secretary-General's remarks to the General Assembly on Ukraine )--was significantly underestimated. Not that the leaders of the liberal democratic camp have any capacity for understanding this--like the members of the Roman Senate in the years after the ascendancy of Augustus, they rely on the preservation of the forms of the old system to reassure themselves that its substance remains unchanged. But again, as is the habit of leaders--the cost of that naivete is invariably borne by others.

In the end, the Americans (along with their EU/NATO camp), unofficially, suggest that Ukraine is an object that can be valued and traded. They believe they can actually realize the value (the price) they set for the sale of Ukraine to the ambitions of Mr. Putin and his 19th century project without unduly or permanently undermining the world order that it took tens of millions of lives to create, and more to maintain. One can hope they are right.  Though one might feel a bit queasy about the betrayal at the heart of this bargain. And one can wonder at the morality of selling an object that does not belong to one, reaping the value of that transaction, and then imposing its costs on others. If that is indeed what is being done, then one can only hope that Mr. Biden had courage enough to frankly explain this to Volodymyr Zelenskyy before he  and Ukraine are fully negotiated as the quid pro quo for a transaction in which the Ukrainians have had little to say. And not just Mr. Zelenskyy but also the people whose blood and goods will now lubricate the transaction and preserve  the luxury and safety of those who paid for with with the lives of others. 

This is a transaction in which not Mr. Morell or Mr. Biden, but Edvard Beneš may have more interesting things to say.