I’ve hesitated to blog about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I was embarrassed by the role of Londongrad – my home city – as a laundromat for dirty money from Russian oligarchs and plutocrats. The situation in Ukraine seemed too horrific and heartbreaking for comment. I wondered what I could write when so much has already been said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I last felt this way in August 1968 when, as a young man of 22, I followed the media coverage of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. I had to wait until 1989 for that wrong to be righted. By then, I was married to a half-Czech and had already visited Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time things must be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think that many observers expected the Russian invasion to be so quick and brutal that Kviv would be occupied and the Ukrainian government would be overthrown in a matter of a few days. That could still happen but, thanks to the bravery of the Ukrainian military and citizenry and the belated provision of armaments from NATO nations, it is beginning to look as if there may be other options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There might be a ceasefire and negotiations. There might be a Russian acceptance of limited territorial gains. There might be a sustained insurgency against any Russian-imposed governance and occupation. There might<\/em> even be a coup against Putin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But I can’t help feeling and hoping that, whatever the outcome, geo-politics have changed forever. It would be wonderful to think that the world community has accepted that invasion of one nation by another is so totally unacceptable in the 21st century that it will not be allowed to happen with impunity. There will always be insurgencies and revolutions – but war as we have understood it throughout history should become literally history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How could this possibly be the case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, we now have the satellite and electronic technologies to ensure that invasion by one nation of another – at least at scale – can never be a surprise. In 1941, Stalin could deny the human intelligence that he had of Hitler’s intention to launch Operation Barbarossa, but satellite photographs on an hourly basis and transcripts of political and military communications cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intelligence community – especially in the USA – correctly warned of each stage of the Russian military build-up and of the intention of the Russians to invade once the Winter Olympics in China were over. The same forewarning should be true of any future planning for international aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, the world community is slowly coming to a realisation that – if it really<\/em> wants to do so and it is prepared to pay the price – sanctions can have a real impact on an aggressor nation. Targeted and sustained economic sanctions against government entities, corporations and individuals, denial of access to financial and transactional systems, exclusion of all trading relationships, plus total boycotts of sporting, cultural, academic and scientific events and programmes, raise the bar of consequences that any potential aggressor will have to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, we have to be realistic and accept that war cannot be outlawed simply by good intentions, forewarnings and sanctions. In the end, any potential aggressor has to know that force can be met with force. We may have thought that the end of the Cold War meant that we had a massive peace dividend and that peace-loving nations could now cut back substantially on their military expenditures and preparedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Cold War remained (relatively) cold because of the power of deterrence. It is an ugly truth that we still need deterrence and that it has a cost that we must be prepared to pay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve hesitated to blog about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I was embarrassed by the role of Londongrad – my home city – as a laundromat for dirty money from Russian oligarchs and plutocrats. The situation in Ukraine seemed too horrific and heartbreaking for comment. I wondered what I could write when so much has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27694"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27703,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27694\/revisions\/27703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}