Proxy wars make unsettling comeback
It’s the day of the North-East proxy war all over again. Concrete proof that this is so comes in the form of the latest military aid package approved for Ukraine by the Biden administration running into $60 billion. So substantial is this injection of assistance that it has prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to see it as pointing to a “chance of victory”.
To the extent to which the West sees some of its best interests, such as the right to self- determination, being eroded in the Ukraine, to the same degree could the latter’s efforts to protect its independence against the Russian invasion be seen as a proxy war where the West pits itself indirectly against the East, in the form of Russia.
Only time will tell whether Zelenskyy is right in seeing the emergence of a “chance of Victory”, now that the much hoped for aid has arrived from the West, but increasingly sizeable and sophisticated arms for Ukraine foreshadow a further prolongation of the wasting war in the Ukraine. While the Russian armed forces would need to brace for an escalating and more destructive confrontation in the Ukraine, the civilians on both sides of the divide should see themselves as being placed ‘on the firing line’ as never before. Overall, the human costs of war would prove staggering.
To make matters far worse for the Russian side, the UK government too has weighed in with an aid package for Ukraine to the tune of Sterling Pounds 500 million, making the prospect of bringing early relief to the relevant suffering publics by the international community a very distant one, since the war in the Ukraine would be stepped-up several fold as a result of the influx of more arms.
It would not be irrelevant, at this juncture, to take the minds of Russia’s rulers to their Cold War failure in Afghanistan. There was nothing to gain from the long-running Afghan quagmire for both sides to the conflict. The USSR’s failed military intervention left behind an Afghanistan which has wilted in the grip of big power rivalries over the decades.
However, Afghanistan was the last of a number of Cold War era proxy wars which rendered the world an increasingly dangerous place for the majority of its peoples. We are not seeing a Cold War type ideological confrontation in the Ukraine, but it is an open question whether the Russian people, for instance, are gaining anything substantial from the war right now.
The Ukraine situation, though, points to the primacy of sovereignty and issues flowing from it in these post-Cold War times. What Ukraine impresses on ambitious global powers is the impossibility of waging colonial era type military interventions in particularly the global South at present. Ukraine, under President Zalenskyy, has decided to fight back the Russian invasion tooth-and-nail and the likelihood is that there would be no clear winners from this war of attrition.
An independent country which is committed to protecting its sovereign rights has no choice but to fight back forces that are intent on destroying it and this is the task that Ukraine has set for itself right now.
On the other hand, the Russian political and military establishments are in an effort to revive the colonial project in Ukraine, which is a preposterous proposition in the present global political order which is gravitating towards political and economic liberalization. Given this backdrop it is small wonder that the West and its military arm, NATO, are firmly behind Ukraine.
Not surprisingly, the West is seeing in the Russian invasion of Ukraine a flagrant violation of all the political values that it claims to uphold and protect. There is no turning back on the moves towards political and economic liberalization that characterize the current neo-liberal age.
Moreover, by invading Ukraine it could be said that Russia is in an attempt to take the world back to some of the earliest stages in the development of modern day capitalism. Besides, if Russia’s reasons for invading Ukraine are to be accepted, any bullying big power could consider itself justified in invading its smaller neighbours, which it sees as coming under its suzerainty.
Accordingly, the world is in for a long-running East-West proxy war in the Ukraine. However, the world’s security worries would in no way end with the Ukraine because it also has other major concerns in the form of the Middle East blood-letting and the Taiwan Straits, in addition to those parts of Africa that are continuing to be weighed down by inter and intra-state turmoil.
In the Middle Eastern theatre and in the Taiwan Straits, intervention by the West is bound to continue and intensify because the latter sees some its crucial interests as being threatened in the relevant regions. Despite its keenness to extend humanitarian assistance to the war-affected populations in the Gaza, the US remains committed to protecting Israel’s best interests.
Such concern has heightened in the wake of the current hostilities between Iran and Israel. It would be in the US’ interests to keep Iran in check because the latter is a threat to Israel as well as to the West’s oil and energy supplies. Accordingly, the US would be going the extra mile to ensure Israel’s security while preventing Iran from being too great a military and political power in the Middle East.
The US could work towards the latter aims by constantly arming Israel and ensuring that the military balance in the region is constantly in favour of Israel rather than its foes’. Here too, then, is an ongoing proxy war between the West and the East; the latter taking the form of Iran which is backed by China and Russia.
Another potentially destructive proxy war between West and East is, meanwhile, working itself out in the Taiwan Straits. The US has over the years been seeing itself as a natural ally of Taiwan because the latter is a capitalist outpost in South East Asia as well as being viewed as an adversarial, break-way state by China. In its efforts to contain the power of China in Asia, the US has been seeing it to be in its interests to ensure the security of Taiwan as against China’s growing regional predominance. All this works out to more Western military aid to Taiwan, going forward.
Accordingly, proxy wars between West and East are once again surfacing unsettlingly in international politics. Military budgets of Western powers are set to grow at the expense of welfare budgets. Needless to say, the latter trend will eventually result in growing public unrest and anger towards governments.
