Putin’ the Geo back in Geopolitics

A recurring theme of my recent writings has been geography, and how it should form the basis of any material analysis of international relations – put plainly, you can’t spell geopolitics without the ‘geo’.

When British and French Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier met in Munich in September 1938 with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Italian Prime Minster Benito Mussolini, it was geography which was first and foremost on the table for discussion - specifically the geography of Czechoslovakia.

Note carefully that there was no talk then of Czechoslovakia’s democratic sovereignty. Such language has always been applied selectively, as in the case of Ukraine at the present time.

Chamberlain had written to King George at the time saying that he saw Britain and Germany as “the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against communism.” As such Britain would stay out of the German-Soviet conflict and restrain its allies from involvement in a fight against the Nazis.

“Germany is the bulwark of the West against Bolshevism, and, in combating it, will meet terror with terror and violence with violence.” wrote Hitler in 1935, echoing Churchill’s words from nearly two decades earlier: “By combating Bolshevism, by being the bulwark against it, Germany may take the first step toward ultimate reunion with the civilised world.” (The Times 12.4.1919)

But Chamberlain and Churchill’s professed paranoia around Bolshevism so obviously displayed here deflects from the reality laid bare by assurances made by Hitler to Chamberlain at their Godesberg meeting in May of 1939: “We will not stand in the way of your pursuit of your non-European interests and you may without harm let us have a free hand on the European continent in central and South-East Europe.”

Historians of both left and right persuasion have often attributed the causes of WWII and the Holocaust to a clash of ideologies. Yet while there may be a superficial element truth to this, the real reasons are far less romantic. Rather than trying to prevent a war, Chamberlain was trying to direct one. While Soviet-style communism might have posed an ideological challenge to the West’s preferred way of ordering its economic relations (socialism for a few private owners, sodomy for everyone else), Lenin and Stalin’s theory of socialism-in-one country really posed no territorial threat at all. It was never about ideology. It was about an expansionist policy which is historically always coupled with brutal racism. This is why Stalin’s repeated appeals for a collective security agreement against the Nazis fell on deaf ears.

While publicly the Soviet Union was our ally, privately the war had been orchestrated against it from the outset. The real plan was to cajole Germany into a war of attrition against the Soviets, and to go in at the last minute and sweep up. Fortunately for history it didn’t turn out that way. Not so fortunately for the 27 million Russians who lost their lives in what became known to Russians as the Great Patriotic War.

Today's lib-fascist appeasement of Nazis in Ukraine is not a new thing. These are the same lib-fascists who encouraged Hitler to seek an empire in the east, allowed him to annex the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and waited until June 1944 to lift a finger to against him.

The difference today is that the Cold War is over, and there is no specter of communism for the Churchills and Chamberlains of our time to obsess over. Yet they still continue to sell their wars based on the phony excuse of ideology.

Fast forward 60 years and the same ghouls would use the same tactics to sell us the War on Terror.

“The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously.” — George W. Bush.

Still playing the same card, today’s enemies are framed in terms of their apparent opposition to Western liberal values, and labeled as dictators, autocrats, murderers and thugs. Hence Putin is a cold blooded killer who hates gays, while the US president openly calls for regime change, and US officials lobby for an insurgency and a protracted Afghanistan-style war in Ukraine.

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record here, the West didn’t spend 44 years fighting the Cold War because of communism. If that had been the case, NATO would have been dismantled at the same time as the Berlin Wall. The fact is nobody ever went to war over religion or ideology, just as the West hasn’t spent the last 70 odd years installing and toppling strong men across the Global South in order to spread democracy. Wars are fought for territory and resources, and the West still still seems to be living under the 19th century illusion that it can have it all.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the leaders of Brazil, India, China, and South Africa are currently in negotiations with Russia, seeking to replace the US dollar as the standard of international trade in response to what they perceive as US aggression.

Putin is famously quoted as saying “The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.” (April 2005) Another quote which is often forgotten is this one: "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain". (February 2000) Contrary to popular opinion, Putin is not seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union or Imperial Russia. The tragedy he speaks of is the tragedy of the 100 million ethnic Russians and Russian speaking people who suddenly found themselves outside of Russia after the Soviet Union was dissolved. He also sees himself as having a sacred duty to protect these people, wherever they may be.

As one of the most consistent politicians on the world stage, Putin has made his positions abundantly clear, including Russia’s red line over NATO expansion in Ukraine. The stated aims of Russia’s Special Military Operation are twofold: Denazification and demilitarisation. To the first point, Putin did not start a war. He intervened to stop a war which had been raging for 8 years – a war led by ethno-nationalists which has so far claimed the lives of some 15,000 Russian speaking citizens in the country’s east. To the second point, NATO’s very presence in a Russian border state, with its missiles within striking distance of the Russian capital, constitutes an existential threat which will not be torerated.

Putin’s strategy in Ukraine aligns with his overall mission: to restore Russia’s world status, to build self sufficiency and social cohesion, and to promote independent but Russia-friendly neighbouring regions. The prospects for Ukraine at this point do not include occupation or annexation. Russia rather seeks a policy of neutrality and the recognition of those states which have declared their independence. Unless the West tries to create some sort of never ending guerilla war scenario by funnelling in mercenaries for Russian target practice, these outcomes seem likely to be achieved in short order.

As the world steers closer toward multi-polarity and a new realpolitik based on regional interests and civilisational values, the West’s uni-polar, end-of-history attitude is increasingly being seen as outdated and irrelevant. Indeed the US and its NATO allies may have walked into a trap of their own making in Ukraine, if history has anything to say about it. The French at least seem have some sense of historical memory, with 16 of 20 candidates in the upcoming presidential elections in favour of withdrawing from the NATO alliance, an anachronism which should have gone the way of the Warsaw Pact.