Husam Dughman

Still reeling from the harrowing onslaught and impact of COVID-19, the world woke up to the news of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This led to an international outcry and worldwide condemnation, followed by the imposition of all sorts of sanctions on Russia by mostly Western countries. Some of Russia’s friends were ambivalent about the Ukraine war and counselled restraint and respect for other nations’ sovereignty. Notable among those are China and India. Russia’s relations with Western countries are now at their lowest ebb since the first half of the 1980s. But how on earth did it all come to this? To try and understand the situation more clearly, we have to begin by looking at some historical background.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man in which he celebrated the end of the conflict between the world’s two major competing ideologies, and the final and decisive triumph of the liberal-democratic, capitalist-based model. He considered that the West had prevailed and that it would be a matter of time before the rest of the world adopted that model. Many at that time agreed with Fukuyama, but not everybody. Jacques Derrida pointed to the ever-present, worldwide violence, tyranny, injustice, and inequality as real manifestations that the end of history was at best misleading. Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in which he saw the continuation of world conflict by other means. Huntington thought that the major civilizations of the world would be in a state of confrontation for the foreseeable future, with some experiencing more frequent and intensive clashes than others. The horrific events of 9/11 and the rise of anti-Western jihadism added more criticisms of Fukuyama’s thesis, and those were followed by two very long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which started off successfully- for the Americans in particular- but both of which have now ended in abysmal failure: Iran has since run the show in Iraq, while the Taliban has now retaken Afghanistan. The emergence of China and Russia as global powers is another reason why some people have been sceptical of the idea of the end of history, especially given that China is seen as a one-party state and Russia as an autocracy.

Russia has never been seen by Western countries as part of the Western world; it has always been regarded as an outsider. Somewhat like Turkey, Russia has also not been considered wholly European either, given that much of its vast land is in Asia. Nevertheless, in the old era of the Balance of Power, Russia was not consistently perceived as an enemy by Western countries; on the contrary, it had been an ally of Great Britain’s and Prussia’s in their fight against Napoleon’s France. And while Russia did in fact go to war with the British, the French, and the Ottomans in the Crimean War, that did not stop the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from joining France and Russia to form the Triple Entente, an alliance that was designed to be a counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Italy. In the First World War, Russia entered the war on the side of the major powers of Great Britain and France, against Germany. Three years later, and only a few months after the entry of the United States of America into the war, Russia withdrew from the war because of the Bolshevik Revolution, thereby leading to the signing of the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in 1918.

In the aftermath of the end of World War I, the Bolsheviks in Russia  successfully engaged Tsarist Russia’s First World War allies who had intervened to support anti-Communist forces. Russia, which in 1922 became the Soviet Union, then went through a long period of political upheaval which- following the death of Lenin- brought about an intense power struggle, especially between Stalin and Trotsky, leading to the victory of the former and the exile and later assassination of the latter, something which subsequently formed the basis of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The Soviet Union later joined forces with the UK, the USA, and their allies in the fight against Hitler’s Germany. Following the end of the Second World War, the Cold War began between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. The Cold War ended 45 years later with the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. In the three decades since then, Russia had overall reasonably good relations with Western countries. In spite of some sporadic tensions here and there, such as when Russia fought in Chechnya, in Georgia, and then in part of the Ukraine where it annexed Crimea, relations between Western countries and Russia continued to be civil. Putin’s legitimacy was consolidated by Russia’s hosting of the World Cup in 2018.

Taking the above-mentioned historical background into account, there seems to be nothing inevitable about a Russian-Western conflict. The only serious, major Western confrontation with Russia happened during the Cold War when it was part of the Soviet Union. Yet, the Cold War appeared to be based on a misunderstanding by both the USA and the USSR of one another: The Americans saw the Soviets as an “Evil Empire” that was hellbent on spreading the gospel of atheistic Communism throughout the whole world and doing everything in their power to bring about the conversion or destruction of the God-fearing, freedom-loving people of the US and their allies. For their part, the Soviets saw the United States as a contemporary continuation of Napoleon’s France, the Kaiser’s Germany, and Hitler’s Germany, namely a Western nation wanting nothing else but the conquest of their land and the persecution and enslavement of its people. As a matter of fact, both parties were wide of the mark: The Soviets were mistaken in that unlike previous Western invaders of Russia or of the Soviet Union, the United States was not keen on conquering Soviet lands per se; it was rather ideologically driven in its hostility to Communism which it saw as a major source of Godless tyranny. The Americans, too, misunderstood their adversary: Far from single-mindedly wanting to spread the ideology of Communism, the Soviet state had since Stalin been conducting its foreign policy much like Tsarist Russia had always done i.e., aiming at the furtherance of the traditional interests of the state, with ideology playing second fiddle to that overriding objective.

America’s lack of understanding of the way Russians view and interpret their history lies at the very heart of the Ukraine crisis. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO started to demonstrate willingness to accept new members, most of whom were from the old Soviet bloc: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999; Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic joined in 2004; Croatia and Albania joined in 2009; Montenegro joined in 2017; and North Macedonia joined in 2020. Such an expansion of NATO membership was largely initiated and blessed by former US president Bill Clinton. In spite of Russia’s strong opposition to that expansion which it saw as a potentially dire security threat, Clinton insisted it was better for world peace. That was undoubtedly a major blunder by Clinton, an otherwise highly intelligent and perceptive politician. The aforementioned move by Clinton and those who supported him showed crass ignorance of Russia’s historical security concerns, particularly with regard to Western countries. It also manifested a dismal failure to comprehend the strong feeling of humiliation and the underlying seething resentment of a global power that had been considerably downsized in world status, weight, and prestige. Post-World War I Germany comes immediately to mind. You do not push the Russian Bear or the German Imperial Eagle to the wall and not expect grave consequences. The reasons for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have to be understood within that context.

In the words of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin invaded his country because he wanted security guarantees, neutrality, and the non-nuclear status of Ukraine. Putin had been very unhappy with Ukraine’s West-leaning policies and its bid to join not only the EU, but also- and most alarmingly for Russia- NATO, as enshrined in Ukraine’s 2019 constitution. Coupled with NATO’s alleged statement back in 2008 that it intended to enroll Ukraine someday, those recent developments must have looked very menacing indeed to Putin. In fact, the major security concerns felt by Russia led to Putin’s stating before the Ukraine war that the expansion of NATO as initiated in 1997 had to be reversed, that NATO’s military presence and infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe- as well as in the Baltic states- should be dismantled, and that the same should apply to all strike weapons near Russia’s border. Russia simply could not allow itself to be strangled by NATO, and Moscow regarded the continual expansion of NATO membership in the East as far too close for comfort.

It seems patently clear that not only is the United States at fault for failing abysmally to understand Russia’s political history and blameworthy for peremptorily dismissing Russia’s legitimate security concerns and sensitivities, but it is also guilty of hypocrisy. Russia’s vehement opposition to the expansion of NATO in countries dangerously close to its borders is reminiscent of the United States’ Monroe Doctrine. That doctrine stated that any political intervention in the Americas by foreign powers would be regarded as an act of hostility against the US. In other words, the Americas were viewed as the US’s backyard. It was this same Monroe Doctrine that former president John F Kennedy invoked in his opposition to the installation of Soviet ballistic missiles on Cuban soil in 1962, something which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and almost led to World War Three. If the US was willing to go to war with Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and risk the annihilation of the whole world because the Soviets had installed ballistic missiles on Cuban soil, why do Western countries- particularly the US- consider Russia’s vigorous opposition to NATO members being on its doorstep as the manifestation of an unfounded apprehension? To make matters worse, the US and the UK in particular are accused of further hypocrisy in respect of their illegal and unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003. Both countries tried unconvincingly to link Iraq to Al-Qaeda and its 9/11 attacks, and both countries falsely charged Iraq with developing weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, both accusations were completely unfounded. Why then did the self-righteous EU that currently feels enthusiastic about imposing sanctions on Russia fail to impose sanctions on both the US and the UK for their illegal invasion of Iraq which was a blatant violation of international law?

When some people around the world accuse Western countries of insularity, selfishness, insensitivity, and hypocrisy, who can blame them?

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Husam Dughman is a Libyan Canadian political scientist, religious thinker, linguist, and an expert on immigrants and refugees. He received his formal education in Libya and the UK. Mr. Dughman later worked as a university professor of political science in Libya. Due to confrontations with the Qaddafi regime, he resigned from his university position and subsequently worked in legal translation. Mr. Dughman has been working with new immigrant and refugee services in both Canada and the US since 2006.

Husam Dughman has published a book entitled Tête-à-tête with Muhammad. He has also written numerous articles on politics and religion. He has just completed the full manuscript of a book which he hopes to have published in the near future. The new book is an in-depth examination of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and the non-religious school of thought.