11 Apr 2022

The Power of Democracy and Freedom

 

Reflecting on what is happening in Ukraine, Leo Tolstoy's opera, "War and Peace", comes to mind, in which through some historical figures, Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon Bonaparte, forced to leave the throne of power ingloriously, he wishes to disavow the romantic ideology of war and bring out the fragility and importance of human values. The author, among other things, in his memorable pages reveals an important aspect: "History is not made by the great leaders (Napoleon is described as a vein leader, a good strategist, who is guilty of believing to be the architect of his own destiny, like a child who on a carriage is believed to be the driver), but by groups of people of various backgrounds, warriors, nobles, humble, generous, rich, dreamers who together constitute a people".

In particular, in the novel Tolstoy, witness of the disastrous campaign of Sevastopol for the Russian Empire, strives to express the desire for historical and patriotic redemption of the mother country, bringing out the popular character of the struggle against Napoleon, after the humiliating defeat in the Crimea (conflict fought from October 4, 1853 to February 1, 1856 by the Empire tsarist, against an alliance composed of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Sardinia).

The emblematic pages of the novel are linked in some respects to current events in Ukraine. The citizens of a sovereign state are undergoing a military invasion, ordered, outside any norm of international law, by a reckless, rancorous and humane leader, almost for a messianic duty to rewrite history for the benefit of his own country. With weapons he wants to cancel the decisions taken in Yalta (Crimea, 1945)) by the victors of the Second World War and in the treaties following the dissolution of the USSR, in December 1991. To justify the aggression in the heart of Europe, it is claimed that the West has encircled and threatens Russia's security by enlarging NATO and the EU to its borders. Some, even in Europe, support this thesis, following a media narrative that attributes the origin of every conflict, especially after the fall of the Berlin muro, to the USA, the EU, NATO (which is a political and military alliance for defensive purposes) and its allies. Although the intervention in Iraq by an international coalition, first to depose the dictator Saddam Hussein and now to fight ISIS, is questionable, the military operation in Ukraine is execrable as it aims to oust a leader, democratically elected (73% of the votes), in order to expand its empire to the detriment of a people who defend their land and freedom. The conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, the occupation of Donbas and the annexation of Crimea certainly cannot be blamed on the aggressive attitude of the West, which has probably made some mistakes in relations with Russia. For the sake of clarity, I believe it is necessary to retrace some fundamental steps in EU/NATO/International Organizations/Russia relations.

In 1991, 15 independent republics emerged from the dissolution of the USSR, including Ukraine, before NATO and the EU began their enlargement to the east. In 1997 the G7 was transformed into the G8 to include Russia in the assembly of the most industrialized countries in the world. Only in 1999 Poland joined NATO, while the Baltics and Romania followed in 2004. In 1994 NATO began the "Partnership for Peace (PfP)" program to bring many former Soviet republics closer to the Alliance; in particular, among these entered the PfP Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The improvement of relations between the various Partners allowed, in 2002, in the Italian military base of Pratica di Mare to conclude a historic agreement between Russia and NATO, in order to strengthen the mutual collaboration in the field of security and the fight against terrorism. At the Rome summit of the same year, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was established, which was to meet once/twice a year, at the level of Foreign Ministers, to strengthen mutual cooperation in the field of security, arms control, including those nuclear. In short, it was believed that in the 21st century the period of the "cold war" was really over. However in the Munich conference, in 2007, the Russian leader changed his attitude: he accused Washington of wanting to impose its military standards on other nations, to threaten Russia by installing missile shields. In 2008, after accusing the US of wanting to fuel global conflicts through the unilateral use of force, the Kremlin authorized the invasion of Georgia and, in 2014, the annexation of Crimea and military support for the Independence from Ukraine of the Donbas Republics. In fact, this annexation occurred as a result of the "orange revolution" of Maidan Square in Kiev (January 2014) which led to the fall, out of the people, of the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Faced with these unilateral decisions, taken outside international law and the balances established in previous agreements , the Western world reacted with economic sanctions and changing the framework of cooperation with Russia. But how is it changed so radically Moscow’s relations with the Western world and with Ukraine to determine its invasion? It was certainly not the aggression shown by NATO and Europe against Russia, as the regime's propaganda would suggest. Russia's leader felt the threat of external conspiracies when he learned that he was losing support within his power system and that he was not able to achieve the goals he had set. In fact, he has failed to modernize his country, despite a major military build-up that has allowed him to achieve foreign policy successes, through the use of his soldiers in major conflicts, from the Middle East to Africa. He has consolidated the Russian economy in an autarkic way, in the face of widespread globalization, preparing for years to resist any sanctions deriving from the international community for his military adventures. The latter, however, were possible because of the weakness of the Western world, divided between the United States and Europe, also favored by some political parties sympathetic to the Kremlin and by the alternation of leadership not very incisive in the main countries. For example, it should be pointed out that European energy policies have not taken into account the possibility of blackmail and the dependence that could result from relying mainly on Russia's energy sources. There also remains the doubt that, ignoring history, the West has believed for years that Russia, born from the dissolution of the USSR, could become a democratic country, erasing its tsarist aspiration, aimed at dominating the old continent and to enlarge its empire and its sphere of influence. Ukraine, on the other hand, having become independent, tried to shake off its communist past, imposed by the Soviet regime of the thirties (three million dead) and to free itself from Moscow's attempts to impose its protectorate. Therefore, this country has recently tried to get closer to the Western world by establishing within it a government as democratic as possible, helped by the flows of money from its emigrants who in the other countries of Europe have found hospitality and work, savoring the value of the freedom. This attempt to free oneself from the past, highly contagious to the peoples of "greater Russia" is considered intolerable by the dominant Russian oligarchy, as it can shake its entire system of power. The master of the Kremlin, obsessed with maintaining his functions (a recent amendment to the Constitution allows him to hold the office of President until 2036), did not even take into account the lessons deriving from the “great patriotic war” and of the new elements that Gorbachev had introduced with glasnost (transparency of communication) and perestroika (establishment of the rule of law). Currently, unfortunately, the Russian people are subjected to disinformation, to the strict and autarkic laws of the regime in order not to be contaminated by the Western system of life. But as Tolstoy teaches, the wind of modernity, freedom and democracy cannot be stopped by a tsar, who sooner or later is destined to cede power in the apotheosis of his ego, overwhelmed by the demands of his people who wish to live peacefully as in the rest of the free world.