{"id":11570,"date":"2022-02-25T10:31:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T10:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/2022\/02\/notes-ukraine-crisis\/"},"modified":"2024-11-21T00:14:28","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T21:14:28","slug":"notes-and-questions-on-the-ukraine-crisis-an-utterly-frustrated-critical-opinion-inan-ruma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/2022\/02\/notes-and-questions-on-the-ukraine-crisis-an-utterly-frustrated-critical-opinion-inan-ruma\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes and Questions on the Ukraine Crisis: An Utterly Frustrated Critical Opinion – \u0130nan R\u00fcma"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One fact seems clear though it does not speak for\nitself: Russian Federation is directly attacking Ukraine. The rest appears as\npolitical or social scientific discussion, mainly as a debate centred on Russia\nand\/or the USA. I am among those who feel amazed and even angry that the issue\nis not the fate of the world but the aggression of a major country that has been\nunprevented\/mismanaged\/neglected\/rivalled\/caused\/fuelled\/provoked by another\nmajor country, one among many other such aggressions by major countries in the\n21st<\/sup> century. The words of Martin Kimani, Kenya\u2019s ambassador to the UN<\/a>, are noteworthy in this respect. One feels like\nscreaming a clear and bold \u201cNO!\u201d to all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the actual world where billions suffer under the\ndeadly consequences of global economic and ecological<\/a> crises, such a crisis like Ukraine that has been\nseriously mismanaged if not merely escalated and such aggression like Russia\u2019s are\nirrational and irresponsible. The ages-old discussions on rationalism, academic\nor not, is plausible, but who could seriously argue now that war is rational in\nthis exhausting ecological crisis we suffer? Rationalism is to sustain survival,\nnot extinction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The approaches of many International Relations (IR)\nscholars\/students seem rather part of the problem than a solution: If medical\ndoctors, biologists, etc. approached the Covid-19 pandemic and other public\nhealth problems in the way some IR scholars\/students have done to the Ukraine\nCrisis, please think how we humble humans would be doing in these days?\nViolence\/War is a public health problem like an epidemic\/pandemic: Observation,\nAcceptance, Treatment, and Prevention are essential!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observation has taken a long enough time. \u201cRussia,\u201d\nno matter what the mindset of its leadership, foreign policy elite or nation, cannot\naccept Ukraine as a separate and indeed independent nation and state, even if it\nseems it can for the other post-Soviet states. According to them, Ukraine is\nnot just \u201cpost-Soviet\u201d; it is part of Russia, perhaps not even unlike other\nRepublics\/Regions in the Russian Federation. We are told that its independence\ncan be acceptable only if it is under Russian control, and even that is an\nintermediate solution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the Russian elite, perhaps the society,\nhas been socialized with that notorious perception of threat from \u201cthe West.\u201d\nHistory seems to justify this perception ranging from medieval Swedish Empire\nto Napoleon\u2019s controversial French Empire, to Nazis, to Cold War. That Soviet\nUnion was not \u201cRussia\u201d at all only accentuated this perception or, in fact, the\nthreat because it has been a communist attempt in a capitalist world.\nCapitalists and communists are clear about each other: a destructive disgust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussia,\u201d no matter what the mindset of its leadership, foreign policy elite or nation, cannot accept Ukraine as a separate and indeed independent nation and state, even if it seems it can for the other post-Soviet states. <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Putin\nand fellows have regularly mentioned \u201cthe West.\u201d There is no unified \u201cthe West\u201d\n(Please consider Stuart Hall<\/a>).\nOrientalism hardly survives, imperialism has been reformed (Please consider\nDavid Harvey<\/a>),\nyet curiously enough, the discourse on \u201cthe West\u201d is reproduced instead by\nthose who have been considered \u201cnon-Western,\u201d indeed as a -desperately\nostensible- reaction. This flawed totalitarization<\/em>\n(uniformization) of \u201cthe West\u201d seems to misinform much foreign policy\nformulation and implementation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, one may have difficulties\nunderstanding why Russia has insistently pushed Europe to the USA. The American\nrole and presence in Europe have been challenged for years and not only by\nFrance, which has often been the black sheep on this topic. In a matter of (recent)\ndays, a hesitant Europe has been compelled to bandwagon with the USA, undoubtedly\ndue to Russian aggressive actions. Would not such a security-obsessed mindset\nwith a historical experience like the Russian elite require to benefit from the\nrifts between its rival\/enemy and its potential and controversial\ncollaborators? Doesn\u2019t that historically famous\/notorious Realpolitik signify\nthis? Were Soviet communists unhappy to cooperate with the leading capitalist\nUSA in the Second World War? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An observer of Putin\u2019s latest speeches may well\nthink that he seems to need psychiatric help. He seems disconnected from\nreality, absolutely convinced by his re-writing of history, and condemned by\nassumptions\/obsessions. His words about and to Ukraine appear as a pathetic\ndenial of concrete existence, unwanted and deliberately disassociated with.\nUnder current conditions, Ukraine does not want to be part of the Russian\nFederation. Ukraine does not want to be controlled by the Russian elite. Does the\nRussian elite not see that they are unwanted and why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That clich\u00e9 of Russian-Chinese cooperation against the\nUSA begs a similar questioning. It is fair to think that the effects of\nsanctions on Russia will crucially depend on possible Chinese economic support<\/a>. Isn\u2019t this a form of dependence<\/a>? China is Russia’s biggest supplier of imports, including\nthose with high technology such as electronics, computers, and mobile phones. It\nis also the biggest export market of Russian oil<\/a>, and a growing market for its natural gas<\/a>. Does not Russia look like a peripheral country\nsupplying raw materials to a developed industrial economy and importing\nfinished industrial goods? Does not this quite transparent political economic\ndependence on China disturb the Russian elite who are so obsessed with\nsovereignty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political-economic domination of China in what\nRussia considers \u201cnear abroad,\u201d such as Central Asia, seems unrivalled. Can Russia\nremain immune to Chinese political economic expansionism? Let\u2019s even ask: Can\nChina benefit from this Ukraine-Russia Crisis as a proxy war in its conflict\nwith the USA? While the Russian elite thinks they profit from the American-Chinese\ncompetition to assert their sovereignty, don\u2019t they seem peripheralized in this\nconflict? One may even argue: that there is no Russian-Chinese cooperation but\na peripheralization of Russia by China while The Russian elite thinks they emphasize\ntheir beloved sovereignty. Therefore, while Russia is argued to follow a\nrational plan against Ukraine and elsewhere, has it been rational recently, or\nis it merely failing in delusion? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One may equally question American attitude within\nthis respect. It does not seem genuinely understandable why the USA insistently\npushed Russia towards China by declaring both enemies. Same famous\/notorious\nRealpolitik <\/em>question again: Why unite\ntwo rivals against oneself while there could and would be rifts between them?\nRemembering that the Trump administration has been hostile even to Europe previously\nnamed the \u201cTransatlantic Cooperation,\u201d the rationalism discussion can be\nrevisited even in this limited sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

American\nelite escalated the crisis while the Russian elite has been obsessed with a\nthreat perception under a narrow-minded and obsolete understanding of security.\nThe USA has also behaved in the same context and accentuated these perceptions\nwith -again- narrow-minded understanding of deterrence. Russian elite was instead\nprovoked than deterred. Simply put, the American elite could not manage the\ncrisis. They escalated it to a level of conflict. Was it a (mis)calculation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winners and losers? There seems no winner. Losers seem to the ordinary humans earning and enjoying their life with their honest labour most dramatically in Ukraine, but Russians are not spared either. <\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\nhas been just a new stage in the context of continued mismanagements of relations\nwith post-Soviet Russia. It must also stem from the early deficient observation\nand misoriented behaviour of treating the Russian Federation as a defeated\npower like Germany after both wars. Hence, a disoriented Versailles moment for Russia.\nThere was an opinion published in Le\nMonde <\/em>in autumn 1993, warning about the possibility of Weimar Germany-looking\nRussian Federation could produce Nazi-like leader\/elite aggression. Nobody heard\nVladimir Putin at the time, and the Russian nationalist leader Zhirinovsky\nlooked like a potential Nazi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flawed nature and imposition of the so-called liberal reforms in Russia throughout the 1990s were even criticized by many liberal economists like Joseph Stiglitz<\/a>. Then Putin came, and the rest is known. But a question remains: Has Putin always been so, or has he gradually become so within the global economic and political crisis framework, to which the American elite has substantially contributed. Illegal and illegitimate military occupations in recent years started with the American occupation of Iraq; can we thus say Putin\u2019s Russia has become like or nothing more than G.W. Bush\u2019s America? One salient and vital difference: Bush left power with elections; the administration has changed. Nobody expects that from Putin and his cronies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all, this infamous multipolarity in world politics could not be managed in the case of the latest Ukraine-Russia crisis. The USA looks like missing its \u201cunipolar moment,<\/a>\u201d though, in a self-declared \u201ctrade war\u201d with China, Russia aims to restore bipolarity.<\/a> Yet, it is not comparable to the Soviet Union, especially in political-economic sense. As a result, Ukraine could not become an independent and neutral Austria of the Cold War. It could be questionable whether better management of multipolarity would be better for world peace. It can be said that USA, Russia and China are in a typical imperialist rivalry. What is more, it is an utterly destructive one due to the total extinction risk under the devastating ecological crisis. Above all, the main aim is world peace for all beings, and self-centric conflictual behaviour is the main problem. But a Ukraine, like an independent and neutral Austria, seems much better than what it is now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winners and losers? There seems no winner. Losers\nseem to the ordinary humans earning and enjoying their life with their honest labour\nmost dramatically in Ukraine, but Russians are not spared either. One could be concerned\nabout the fate of peaceful and democratic Maidan protesters in 2014, and at the\nsame time because of the increasing nationalist oppression in Ukraine in recent\nyears as a result of Russian aggression. The so-called post-communist transition\nhas been marked with the tragic disappointments of the masses aspiring more\nfreedom without necessarily losing social security. Neo-liberal economic exploitation,\nthough with some levels of political freedom, has continued with increasing\nauthoritarianism and eventually destructive old war. Meanwhile, the world is on\nthe extinction route in an ecological breakdown\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. \u0130nan R\u00fcma<\/strong>, \u0130stanbul Bilgi \u00dcniversitesi Uluslararas\u0131 \u0130li\u015fkiler B\u00f6l\u00fcm\u00fc\u2019nde \u00e7al\u0131\u015fmaktad\u0131r.Akademik derecelerini ODT\u00dc ve Paris-1 Panth\u00e9on-Sorbonne \u00dcniversitesi\u2019nde edinmi\u015ftir.Bosna-Hersek ve Kosova\u2019daki AG\u0130T misyonlar\u0131nda \u00e7e\u015fitli s\u00fcrelerle \u00e7al\u0131\u015fm\u0131\u015ft\u0131r.Siyasal \u0130ktisat, Balkanlar, Rusya, Avrasya ve ka\u00e7\u0131n\u0131lmaz h\u00e2le gelen T\u00fcrk D\u0131\u015f Politikas\u0131 \u00fczerine \u00e7al\u0131\u015fmaktad\u0131r.Do\u011fayla uyumlu ya\u015fam, emek ve \u00f6zg\u00fcrl\u00fc\u011f\u00fcn asal oldu\u011funu d\u00fc\u015f\u00fcnmektedir.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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To cite this work<\/strong> :<\/strong> Inan Ruma, \u201cNotes on the \u201cNotes and Questions on the Ukraine Crisis: An Utterly Frustrated Critical Opinion\u201d, Panorama<\/em>, Online, 25 February 2022, https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/blog\/2022\/02\/25\/notes-questions-ukraine-crisis\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copyright@UIKPanorama. All on-line and print rights reserved. Opinions expressed in works published by the Panorama<\/em> belongs to the authors alone unless otherwise stated, and do not imply endorsement by the IRCT, Global Academy, or the Editors\/Editorial Board of Panorama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One fact seems clear though it does not speak for itself: Russian Federation is directly attacking Ukraine. The rest appears as political or social scientific discussion, mainly as a debate centred on Russia and\/or the USA. I am among those who feel amazed and even angry that the issue is not the fate of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":8979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,486,507],"tags":[656,621,612,644],"class_list":["post-11570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crisis-in-ukraine","category-opinion","category-russia","tag-english","tag-russia","tag-security-strategy-geopolitics","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}