Ukraine: The solution is Machiavellian

29 May, 2022 - 00:05 0 Views
Ukraine: The solution is Machiavellian

The Sunday News

The book: Has the West Lost It?

A Provocation, by Kishore Mahbubani is a hard-hitting critique of the Euro-American Empire.

Published in 2018, the book came when the world was about to be re-configured by the coronavirus pandemic and the global economic crisis that it occasioned.

The book came at a time when it was about to become obvious that western leaders cannot provide strong answers for the strong political and economic questions that confront the world inter-state system.

The situation in Ukraine is as a result of an attitude of international political arrogance, political paradigm of war and tragic nihilism driven by western economic and political leadership of the world, in the perceptive observation of Mahbubani.

Euro-American political and economic interests were pursued with total disinterest in the interests of other parts of the world, and that was a recipe for economic wars and military confrontations.

NATO

Mahbubani’s terse observations came when the so-called “dean of America’s Russia experts,” one George F Kennan, had warned that the enlargement of NATO into Central Europe that the West was pushing was “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Kennan, the man credited with generating the American strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, noted correctly that NATO imperialism into Central Europe will derail American efforts at transforming Russia from an enemy to an ally.

Thus, America and her European allies were not bereft of wise political counsel well before the situation degenerated into a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Enter Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Speaking from the exalted platform of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Henry Kissinger, last Monday counselled that Ukraine should urgently concede to Russia’s demands and stop the war.

Kissinger warned that Euro-American drives to see Russia militarily defeated in Ukraine were ill-fated, tragic and dangerous.

Ukraine, otherwise, is being used as a military guinea pig by a Euro-American alliance that knows that it may not go into an armed conflict with Russia without igniting the spectre of nuclear war.

Kissinger is the prophet of Realpolitik and an acknowledged Americanist.

Richard Nixon

A former National Security Advisor and later United States Secretary of State for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger is an experienced Americanist with a wealth of political wisdom that can only be ignored at the peril of American and western interests.

Indeed, when Kissinger, a well-known fanatic of war has to be the one that preaches peace, it becomes clear that things political have gone awfully wrong in the world.

The alternative world order

The Nigerians have a powerful proverb that says, the fly that does not listen to advice follows the corpse to the grave.

Brave political and economic analysts, some of them American and Europeans have warned and advised against enduring Euro-American political, economic and military expansionism.

The advice and warnings have fallen into the deaf ears of a Euro-American Empire that tragically believes in its invincibility and entitlement to world economic and political dominance.

The believed Euro-American monopoly of military might has equipped the Empire with a titanic political ego and tragic bravado that are a threat to world peace.

The desires and fears of other countries are trampled upon by a western alliance that has built a reputation for invasions of countries, regime changes in other states and profiting from wars.

This alliance has trouble imagining an alternative world order where the world will be a shared place where there is no one power with economic, political and military monopoly.

That alternative world is a world that is diametrically opposite to the New World Order that the West is driving the world towards.

The future is Machiavellian

In his terse provocation to the West Mahbubani envisioned a decolonial alternative world that was to be minimalist, multilateral and above all else Machiavellian.

It was to be Machiavellian in the sense that a change to the order of things was a necessity.

A change of direction was needed in the world so that states exist minimally without the need for expansionism, economically and politically.

World affairs would be multilateral affairs that are run through consultations and consensus of governments in respect of their fears and desires, their interests.

This would be a diplomatic world where countries compete politically and economically as legitimate adversaries and not enemies that would go to war against each other than negotiate and achieve consensus.

As Machiavelli said, to attempt to finish with arms of war what could actually be finished with words will eventually lead to the “peril of the commanders,” this alternative decolonial world would be a world against war.

A world against war would not necessarily enjoy the Kantian “peace of the graveyard” but will be alive and competitive politically and economically.

It will be a world where opponents and enemies can trust each other not to endanger human life, destroy infrastructure, pollute nature and kill for power.

Ukraine

The people of Ukraine and Russia, today, exist as vulnerable and endangered people that live in precarity.

What are called “disposable” and “dispensable” beings are such people whose lives have become expendable.

It is the coloniality of knowledge that, through the western media, has turned it into “common-sense that Russia is a senseless and unjustifiable aggressor in Ukraine”.

Russia

The whole history of NATO expansionism that threatens Russia is conveniently silenced through western informational and narrative supremacy.

It would take frank conversations about the fears and desires of Russia and Ukraine, a retreat from old tactics of containment of opponents and adversaries, and respect for the history and future of all countries to achieve diplomatic sincerity.

Diplomatic sincerity is the first ingredient of international trust and respect that are the foundation of peace and liberation.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].

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