By Prof. Swaran Singh
The central threat of both Putin’s and Biden’s speeches underlines their determination to expand instead of end this conflict
This Friday in New York, Malta, the current chair of the UN Security Council (UNSC), is to convene a special ministerial session to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine as it completes one full year and its end is not yet in sight.
This has been preceded by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debating on Thursday, ahead of a vote on Friday, on one more resolution reiterating “the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
In fact, much of this week saw politicians and diplomats of all hues traveling around the world trying to persuade national leaders to vote one way or the other, but only to witness further hardening of global fault lines.
Last October as well, after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s signing of “accession treaties” on September 30 formalizing Russian annexation of four regions of eastern Ukraine, the UNGA debated a similar resolution condemning the annexations. In the end, 143 of the 182 UNGA members supported the resolution and 35 chose to abstain, while five, including Russia, voted against.
Before that as well, the Bucha massacre of early April 2022 saw a UNGA resolution to remove Russia from the Human Rights Council, resulting in even more – 58 nations out of 175 voting – abstaining while 24 nations including Russia voting against it.
So one lesson of this one-year-old Ukraine war is absolutely clear: Given the veto systems of UNSC, this most powerful apex body as well as all other UN organs become dysfunctional when it comes to conflicts involving any one of the permanent UNSC members, the P5.
Not just that, even local conflicts involving any of the P5 becomes global, where the entire tenor and trajectories of that conflict become vulnerable to divisive major-power geopolitics hijacking the narratives away from where the conflict first ignited.
Thus we see observers calling the Ukraine war “a moment of reckoning” where a “tectonic chasm appears to have split the Global North from the Global South” transforming global geopolitics.
Skewed focus
It is said that when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. That surely sounds like a condescending and patronizing comparison, yet it makes sense in understanding how Ukraine’s national pride has received no more than lip service as it has been turned into nothing more than a battleground of world’s big sheriffs.
The military-industrial complex of developed industrialized nations has been the war’s only beneficiary so far, though some players have also displayed strong aspirations about this being an opportunity. It is interesting how year after year nations continue to fight wars in the name of pious visions of establishing democracy and freedom, which has remained an illusionary dream for much of the human race.
Understandably, the first-anniversary debates on the Ukraine war have focused on issues of global existential concerns; on the continued nuclear threats from Russia, on the perilous nature of US-Russia deterrence stability, and the West now choosing to up the ante by agreeing to supply Ukraine with offensive main battle tanks that could take the war to Russia’s terra firma.
Few and far between are commentaries that have bothered about the continued misery of those uprooted and separated from their dear ones and hundreds of thousands wounded and unknown number of dead. The guessing game of these numbers has also become part of rhetorical polemics from both the sides of theemerging global divide.
So even as the UNGA and UNSC sessions have spent much of this week intensely debating on this war, media have remained glued to the grandstanding speeches of the Russian and American presidents, who have managed to grab an inordinately large part of the public attention the world over.
Some of their ostentatious mega-events make humanity numb to the pain and suffering of millions of Ukrainians, even Russians, who see little hope for their future. One report calls Bakhmut “the meat grinder,” with average life expectancy of a soldier in eastern Ukraine now being a mere four hours.
Even the issue of the Ukraine war rattling global markets with shortages of food, fertilizer, fuel and finance capital have been sidelined.
On Wednesday, after declaring Thursday a Russian national holiday to honor people serving in its armed forces, President Putin took to the stage to address a cheering crowd of 200,000 people gathered at the “Glory to Defenders of the Fatherland” concert at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.
At this stadium, with a normal seating capacity of 81,000, his short five-minute pep talk – which was followed by state-sponsored performances by pro-war artists, military veterans and a group of Ukrainian children from the city of Mariupol – echoed the two-hour state-of-the-nation address he had delivered to the Russian parliament on Tuesday.
This saw a strong-willed Putin hailing Russia’s “brave fighters” defending “our historical lands … our interests, our people, our culture, language and territory, our entire nation.”
Biden-Putin duel
The two back-to-back speeches on Tuesday by Presidents Putin and Biden focused searchlights on the Ukraine conflict becoming part of their ping-pong diplomacy. Their speeches were addressed as much to their domestic constituencies as to their friendly global audiences.
Putin’s speech on Tuesday was telecast on every screen available as he blamed Western power elites who “intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation.” He explained how “those imposing sanctions are punishing themselves. They have caused price hikes, job losses, an energy crisis. And we hear them telling their own people that the Russians are to blame.”
Taking his strategy of dangerous brinkmanship a step forward, he announced that Russia was “suspending its participation in the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty,” which was rubber-stamped by his parliament the next morning.
Putin’s speech also talked of how “the US is developing new types of nuclear weapons … [and] the Russian Ministry of Defense and Rosatom must ensure readiness for testing Russian nuclear weapons.”
Indeed, during Biden’s surprise visit to Kiev on Monday, Russia unsuccessfully tested its nuclear-capable “invincible” intercontinental ballistic missile, which, if it had been successful, would have found a mention in Putin’s state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday.
Instead Putin chose to reassure his countrymen, saying, “I want to emphasize that elections of local and regional authorities this year, and the presidential elections in 2024, will be held in strict accordance with the law, taking into account all democratic and constitutional procedures.”
It is uncertain how many will take that bait, especially when he had little to say about his plans for those losing their lives and limbs for his grand strategy of ensuring Russia’s “strategic parity.”
But Biden was not to be left behind. Media were abuzz over his secretive 36-hour journey from Washington ending in his brief stroll with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of Kiev’s famous St Michael’s Cathedral.
This was followed by his quick visit to St Sophia Cathedral and concluded with delegation-level talk at Mariinskyi Palace before Biden returned to Poland, where next evening he was to deliver his rebuttal to Putin just a few hours after the latter’s nationwide address.
Alluding to Putin as an “autocrat” who has “met the iron will of America,” Biden’s speech outlined the future of the Ukraine conflict, saying “President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail. And the Ukrainian people’s love for their country will prevail.”
Expanding, not ending
The central threat of both presidential speeches and other commentaries underlines their determination to expand instead of end this conflict. Both seem to have developed deep stakes in being seen as the winning side. Their inability to back down is bound to be read at least partly in terms of their national elections next year and both aspiring to try for one more term in office.
While Putin’s speech reiterated his nuclear threat, which is becoming too repetitive to sustain credibility, the most revealing part of Biden’s address was his saying: “The United States has assembled a worldwide coalition of more than 50 nations to get critical weapons and supplies to the brave Ukrainian fighters on the frontiers, air defense systems, artillery, ammunitions, tanks and armored vehicles.”
The Biden administration has also betrayed a certain fatigue at providing for Ukraine’s grandstanding. This saw the president underline the distinction between his and his allies’ strategies, by saying, “The European Union and its member states have stepped up with unprecedented commitment to Ukraine, not just in security assistance, but economic, and humanitarian, refugee assistance and so much more.”
Does this place the onus increasingly on middle powers like China, India, Iran and Turkey that have stood up to their autonomy and have displayed interest in mediating in this conflict?
Originally published: First Post, February 24, 2023.
Posted in SIS Blog with the authorization of the author.
Swaran Singh is visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Calgary, Alberta, and professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Del