Towards a (Better) Global Security Architecture
It seems very likely that the next major event in Ukraine will, after all, take the form of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, one that will manifest the same, tired media-optic diversions that are the dreamstuff of a mediocre comedian (such as the Belgorod “invasion”) and a somewhat more authrentic main (attempted) thrust from Zaporizhzhia down to Melitopol and the Black Sea. Involving some 60,000 Ukrainian forces, its destiny long foretold is of another staggering loss of Ukrainian life on top of the obscene losses in Bakhmut (as many as 1,700 on May 12 alone, according to Russian sources, for what they are worth), and another wave of decimation of western-gifted armory and taxpayer wealth, in artillery, missiles and jets.
If there is no counteroffensive, the collective west’s collective taxpayers will get very antsy about the well over $100 billion gifted to their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, wondering what is left to show for such generosity, as their own food and fuel bills keep rising relentlessly. They may even start to suspect that Biden and Zelenskiy both are mere pimps for the US armaments industry and for neoliberal Ukrainian oligarchs.
The counteroffensive will chalk up some successes; this or that oil depot will be set aflame, and grim plumes of dark smoke will glower over the headlines of the world’s “serious” media; this or that Russian politician, writer, or philosopher will be assassinated; this or that train will be derailed. None of it will make any substantial difference to anything. Russia will remain an extraordinary and indomitable power; Ukraine on the other hand will have played its last hand; bankrupt; it will be dismissed and ignored by despondent western plutocrats and ideologues and the politicians they groom.
Under Putin, Russia’s instinct will be to play low-ball, move its forces to the Dnieper, take Odessa, consolidate control over the four oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It will ponder how best to bring about its remaining objectives: the neutralization, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. The west will at first play its game through pawns, Poland, the Baltics, Moldava, then threaten and may actually set boots on the ground alongside a skeptical Polish army, to stabilize western Ukraine west of the Dnieper. There will be talk of implementing a “frozen conflict” as if that was, like, an adult “thing.”
Russia will not buy into this. It knows that frozen conflict is just that: frozen; it is of greater benefit to the adversary who in this way evades decimation or nuclear annihilation; it solves nothing and it costs a lot to maintain; and, particularly irritating, it doesn’t even necessarily remain frozen.
Russia will consider that it has a pretty strong hand, especially if: elections go its way in Turkey and Slovakia; Putin is returned - more popular than ever - in 2024; Biden is booted out later that year by Trump who, whatever his glaring faults, actually turns relatively mellow when faced with war; and the collective west tips into recession while Russia’s economy remains strong.
Waiting for their Viking Warlord (All Hail, Biden the Boneless!) the Neocon Tribe that controls Washington, having focused their attention on China for as long as a year, (so tiring!) will move to war. Foolishly, needless to say, for they will lose that conflict (they lack the weapons, intelligence and foresight that it requires) and, as they sink, so too will the myth of western civilization. (It may stage a short comeback in the footnotes of Shanghai history textbooks some decades hence). Their mini-Neocon appendages, meanwhile, especially in Eastern Europe, feeling abandoned, betrayed, will pull themselves up by their own boot straps, independent of the USA and in alignment with the rest of Europe.
Well, I don’t know if that is a realistic scenario - it is surely one possible, scenario among many. It sounds painful and it will be painful.
And it could be avoided. Not through “frozen conflicts” or Polish troops but through Big Ideas. Big War deserve Big Consequences, and Big Consequences can be a lot more productive if carefully anticipated and directed. Russia, with the support of China, with the support of a (much expanded) BRICS and the Global South in tow, will exercise powerful influence on the shape of this future, perhaps even on the next major aeons of the human experiment.
To do big things you have to think Big (not as in Nixon to Kissinger, mind). Wartime, and the urge to end war, has a way of promoting either small, humble thinking (sighs of tired and tattered relief, a hand outstretched to the bottle or a warm bath) or hubristic chest-thumping that predictably reduces men to wapes.
Russia may think it lacks the energy for any of this.
What could be the rewards of Big Thinking? What future could this portend? That future, I propose, is first and foremost a new Global Security Architecture (let’s call it the GSA) which will enshrine a multipolar world. It will require a considerably restructured United Nations which, most definitely, will no longer be headquarted in New York. Durban could be a nice change or Timbuktu (not the one in California, stupid). No more Security Council dominated by the ex-imperial or neo-imperial victors of World War Two. In fact, no more empire, nor neo-empire, no neoliberal nor neocon. And no more NATO or comparable “defensive alliances” for whom peace and profit and purpose requires perpetual war.
The new order will nurture and protect sovereignty in many ways, including by severely punishing the external miscreats of regime-change shenanigans. It will set criteria for robust nation state governance structures, which, in addition to all manner of welfare, humanitarian and diversity requirements, will inflict severe pain on those who manipulate political structures on behalf of private enterprise and private capital (corporations, if you prefer) and visit even worse punishment on those whose pollution accelerates global warming. Death alone will greet those who meddle with the instruments of mass death, be they nuclear or chemical or AI.
Marx saw capitalism as the highest stage of development that would usher in a workers’ paradise, communism. In place of communism we should strive for multipolarity, not just any old multipolarity that stinks of all the fetid platitudes that we have come to associate with the never-delivering of “democracy,” but a multipolarity that is the product of the most complex, collaborative and inclusive planning, organizing and resourcing that human beings have ever before achieved, to secure a planet of nations each of which is the product of relatively flat socioeconomic structures, guided by a vision of individual and collective self-realization, prosperity (enough), health, security and joy.