Russia vs. Nato (I)
A recurring opinion about the crisis in Ukraine is the treatment given to Russia as an heir of the Communist Revolution, Sovietism, etc. Not that, but sovietism, communism, etc. is that they are manifestations of a historical stance of the Russian Empire through expansion and territorial domination.
Well, this is not exclusive to the Russian Federation, right? But it is in that country that the imperialist impetus manifests itself in its purest, best finished form, at least when it comes to the 21st century. When Putin defines the dissolution of the former Soviet Union as a “geopolitical tragedy”, from the point of view of the classical concept of geopolitics, he is not wrong. After all, if empires once crystallized keep their territories under stable rule, their disintegration leads to periods of instability, which means wars, genocide, terrorism, etc.
If we think about it, throughout history, history is in the long term and not just a few decades, we had a longer time of existence under imperial rule than through the constitution of nation-states, most of which come from the end of World War II to the current days. Before that, the centuries showed a succession of absolute monarchies, emperors, caesars, tsars through which Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Germans, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. And how could I forget Romans and Brits? Persians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians? You see, this is not about assuming that the world is just a representation of the “Law of the Strongest”, but recognizing that physical force guided by strategy is what ultimately decides when agreements prove innocuous.
Because when analysts guided by the mentality of an institutional-liberal world, with clear rules and established consensus, no longer have answers to the continuous financial instabilities and contexts of acute crisis in the economy asserted by environmental changes, sudden or slow but profound, war and barbarism stand out. . So what do we have? The strength of weapons. Many must be wondering what reason Moscow must have in threatening a free and independent country, as Moscow is not ashamed of its communist past as Berlin is ashamed of its Nazi past? But the point is that Moscow does not glorify its Bolshevik past at all, it wants to rescue the territorial dominance and security brought by the union constituted by force, it doesn’t matter, but that prevented conventional armies and strategic weapons of mass destruction from reaching a few hundreds of kilometers from its capital.
It’s easy to understand that Washington would never allow the installation of weapons of great destructive power along the Mexican or Canadian borders, so why on earth should Moscow do the same with Ukraine? See that since the end of the USSR there have been successive movements of NATO advance towards the east, with Germany, Poland, Romania and others and now with Ukraine? No, it is not speculation, there are agreements made for the transfer of resources for Ukrainian defense as well as training and collaboration for joint action by the Ukrainian armed forces with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Yes, the problem is not Ukraine’s integration into the European Union (EU), it was never that, but the physical threat of extermination of a country by an organization created to defend Western Europe from the former Soviet Union. It just doesn’t exist anymore, so why keep NATO?
Maintaining NATO is no longer a necessity of defense, but an intention to threaten and, at the limit, attack. And before you think I’m demonizing this organization, know that without it others would take its place, basically because there is no power vacuum.
