Hard sanctions are the only answer

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/02/2022 (935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Save us from the bitter fantasies of old men.”

That was the prayer that came to mind as I watched the first news reports of Russian missiles landing on Ukraine. Apart from Vladimir Putin’s fantasies of a new Russian Empire, there was no reason for the invasion.

Yes, the situation tests the resolve of United States and the European Union to counter aggression against their allies. Perhaps soon, it will also be a test of the NATO alliance that was on the brink of dissolution because of its apparent irrelevance to life in the 21^st century.

So, as we wait for the fallout from this invasion — and that is literally the case, given the number of nuclear facilities (along with the exclusion zone around Chernobyl) at risk — there are some lessons to be learned already:

First, we can’t underestimate the self-destructive tendencies of the existing geopolitical/economic system and its current leadership. Always expecting sweet reason to prevail when it comes to making the major socio-economic changes that a sustainable future will require is dangerous, even delusional.

There is a small minority of people who will always prefer destruction over creation, death over life, their current greed over anyone else’s future need.

Further, when these people have control of the reins of political, economic or military power, disaster inevitably follows on the heels of their stupid decisions. It is only a question of how soon, and how extensive, the damage will be.

So, extremist elements of whatever political stripe must be sidelined and rendered irrelevant by the rest of us — and not given any political power whatsoever, at any level of government. In a democracy, no one is compelled to vote for a fool — though political debates across Canada during the #FreedomConvoy22 debacle make it clear that too many people have already done just that.

Second, no government — however tyrannical — survives for long without the consent of the people. Even in a totalitarian regime (say, North Korea), there are not enough soldiers to coerce the people into obedience. Compliance is a choice; obeying the rule of law (whatever it is) is a choice. Supreme leader wannabes (such as Vladimir Putin) ignore this at their peril.

Recall the recent helpless comments of the Ottawa chief of police, before he finally resigned: with tears in his eyes, he said he simply did not have enough police to end the occupation and subdue the blockaders. He was right. Yet, imagine how much worse things would have gotten, and how quickly, if the people of Ottawa had decided to handle the situation themselves.

Using counter-insurgency calculations, there are not enough active-duty personnel of all ranks in the whole of the Canadian Armed Forces to subdue an insurrection in a city the size of Ottawa — or Winnipeg.

In every society, people either consent to the rule of law — the same rule of law for everyone, whatever that law is — or there will certainly soon be chaos. If the people of Ukraine do not submit to Russian occupation, there are not enough Russian troops to force them — and the alternative of butchering or relocating 43 million Ukrainians would never be supported by the Russian people, who were not asked if they wanted a war in the first place.

Third, it is always much easier to start a war than to predict how it will turn out. The last time the Russian Empire went to war was in 1914. That war ended a few years later with its defeat, the death of the Tsar and the Bolshevik revolution (soon taken over by Joseph Stalin).

The Russian people thus already know how to make a revolution. They have also had a bitter lesson in what happens when elites hijack that revolution for their own purposes. A real, democratic Russian revolution has been brewing for a long time – Putin’s adventurism, the greed of the Russian oligarchs and the invasion of Ukraine may finally make it happen.

So, what can we do right now, in a world in which a global conflict would certainly doom the planet to climate disaster? Sanctions — real ones — are the only avenue. The problem, of course, is that sanctions by themselves are not enough to ensure regime change. After all, Saddam Hussein lived very well for a decade while the people of Iraq starved and died under the sanctions the rest of the world imposed, before the Americans and British invaded and (arguably) made things worse.

With nuclear war as a lethal part of the equation, of course there will never, ever, be any invasion of Russia, despite Putin’s paranoid rants. But neither should there be any conflict with the Russian people themselves – just with their self-destructive leaders.

Sanctions will serve as a stark, inescapable reminder that the Russian people need to clean up their own house — and soon, before events spiral further out of everyone’s control.

The future of the children, on all sides, right now hangs in the balance.

Peter Denton is adjunct associate professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada.