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Join on Telegram Rabat – As someone who has spent the last few years living happily in Morocco, I finally briefly returned to Europe last week, where I was shocked to see the near-universal panic and push for war related to the Ukraine conflict.
In the media, politics, and popular opinion, one narrative appears to be universally accepted, that the Russian offensive in Ukraine constitutes an imminent and clear threat to the current world order; democracy itself is being attacked and needs urgent intervention.
This has resulted in strange political trends. In the US the right-wing of the political sphere is pushing the center-left administration into further escalation and military action, while in the UK, the center-left is pushing the right-wing administration to do the same. “The government is not doing enough against Putin’s aggression,” is the criticism shared by both US Republicans, and the UK Labour party alike, making for some very unlikely bedfellows.
An eerie consensus
Beautifully documented by American journalist Michael Tracy in a recent piece, democratic opposition parties across the West near-universally agree that the government is not doing enough, and call for further military action to cripple Russia once and for all.
Ironically, in western democracies, the anti-war narrative has become a narrative that calls for more direct military action, for vastly increased military spending and for flooding eastern Europe with advanced Western weaponry to support the Ukrainian resistance.
High-level officials in the UK have called for NATO to intervene directly by setting up a naval blockade to defend the Ukrainian port-city of Odessa. Meanwhile, many in the US press and political scene continue to call for the establishment of a “no fly zone” over Ukraine.
What these fairly abstract military terms really mean, few expand upon. Because a NATO naval blockade, or a no-fly zone, both imply that NATO forces would actively engage in combat with Russian military assets, by shooting down Russian planes, or attacking Russian navy vessels.
Throwing caution to the wind
What shocked me most during my brief time in Europe, is the growing consensus that it might be worth risking a possible third world war, in order to “teach Putin a lesson.” Russia’s incursion is being presented as a direct threat to democracies worldwide, which then turns into the conclusion that democracies must unite and urgently fight back.
The existential terms in which the renewed fighting in Ukraine are being presented stand in stark contrast to earlier Russian misdeeds against its neighbors. The fact that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, or annexed Crimea in 2014, somehow did not meet this standard.
Yet now the drums of war are emanating from every direction in the “free west.” The countries that promote freedom of speech and the open debate of ideas appear now to have produced a near universal consensus on the war, and any nuanced counter-arguments are quickly dismissed as “pro-Putin.”
From comedy shows to the evening news, the calls for a direct clash with nuclear-armed Russia are not just accepted, many seem to agree that democracies should have engaged in this clash much earlier.
A threat to democracy?
When I tell my Moroccan friends or colleagues about the European consensus on Russia as an existential threat to democracy, many either smile or scoff.
After all, Morocco’s geopolitical “neighborhood,” has seen democracies tumble and creak over the past years. Since August 2019, West-Africa has seen six coup attempts, four of which successful, and two occurring in the same country.
Democracies in the region have been regularly overthrown at gunpoint, yet few in the West have presented it as even a fraction as relevant as the conflict in Ukraine to the “rules based order” led by Western democracies.
Ironically, it was the Western intervention in Libya that made possible many of the current coup attempts.
The attempts to overthrow Muamar Ghaddafi and establish a new democracy in Libya led to the country being flooded with Western-funded weapons, while NATO airplanes assisted in crushing the Libyan air force. The aftermath of Ghaddafi’s swift overthrow however, constitutes what the CIA calls “blowback,” the unintended consequences of military intervention.
Small arms and well-trained fighters flooded into the Sahel and West-Africa, arms intended for Libyan fighters against Ghaddafi became the guns pointed at the heads of African democracies.
Blowback
The horrific consequences of a possible direct military confrontation between the “free West” and Russia cannot be underestimated, yet even the current military support for the Ukrainian resistance could constitute a greater threat to democracies than Russia ever could be.
What happens to the thousands of weapons being sent to Ukraine once this conflict inevitably dies down? And what happens to the thousands of experienced and trained fighters who will find themselves unemployed and potentially destitute after the silencing of the guns in Ukraine?
What is likely to occur, based on the patterns of recent history, is that those weapons will flow south, and create a new flint that could spark civil war and coup attempts far away from Europe’s borders. From politically unstable Lebanon to insurgents in Nigeria, a new influx of fighters and advanced weaponry could itself result in the crumbling of democracies.
When I have asked Europeans to look into what their countries have done, or could have done better, to prevent the current potentially apocalyptic stand-off with Russia, many appear flummoxed. The problem is the inherent evilness and war-hunger of Putin and the Russians, and democracies are simply responding to this threat, is the common response.
Deescalation
Yet few recognize that the only way to “influence” Russia’s part in the conflict is through potentially world-devastating war. Investigating what democracies can do to de-escalate the conflict and prevent another future stand-off is actually within the control of citizens of free democracies, and could result in a sustainable peace.
While the consequences of the current mindset in the democracies of the “rules based order” are uncertain, the current conflict is certainly a threat to democracy and stability.
The irony is that it is not democracy in London or Washington that is under threat. The blow to democratic ideals incurred by this conflict are more likely to be felt in Beirut, Addis Ababa or Abuja.
When the refugees of those potential conflicts arrive at Europe’s borders, will they be seen as victims of the struggle to protect democracy, and will they be received as Ukrainian refugees have been?
In order to prevent such a calamity, a key role can be played by the group of countries who have not picked a side in the Ukraine conflict, the countries that are being depicted as an alliance of authoritarians by Western media and politicians.
Those countries could call on the world to treat the Ukraine conflict as if it were a conflict between brown people, when the West seems to be able to be more neutral and devoid of emotion. In that case we could use the UN’s vast array of conflict-resolution mechanisms to stop the fighting, disarm irregular combatants, and establish a negotiated peace.
The question is whether we have already gone too far over the precipice, where deescalation is seen as defeat, and negotiations are seen as a missed chance to punish Russia once and for all. Only time will tell if calmer heads and nuanced solutions will prevail. For all our sakes, let’s hope that they will.
