The clash of civilizations

The fault lines of the Western and Russian civilizations do not coincide with political borders. Samuel Huntington's explored the fact and made use of disunited Ukraine as an example in his "Clash of Civilizations" [Huntington, 1996] thesis was indeed shrewd and illustrative for several reasons:

1. Ukraine, with its diverse linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups (Ukrainians, Russians, Crimean Tatars, etc.), embodies the clash of civilizations within its borders. This diversity reflects broader civilizational fault lines, such as Orthodox Christianity (associated with Russia) versus Catholicism and Islam (associated with Europe and Central Asia).

2. The geopolitical struggle over Ukraine between Russia and Western powers (EU, NATO, and the US) underscores Huntington's thesis of civilizational conflict. This conflict is not just about territorial disputes but also about competing civilizational identities and allegiances.

3. Ukraine's internal divisions and external conflicts highlight the role of identity politics in shaping civilizational clashes. The quest for national identity and sovereignty in Ukraine has been influenced by both Western and Russian civilizational spheres, leading to internal divisions and external interference.

4. By using Ukraine as an example, Huntington illustrates how civilizational fault lines in one region (Eastern Europe) can have global implications. The tensions in Ukraine have reverberated beyond its borders, impacting international relations and global security dynamics.

In his predictions Samuel Huntington turned out to be more in unison with reality than Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History”. 

Though there are scholars who believe that two civilizations can’t peacefully coexist inside the same state, a more positive interpretation can be found in Kipling’s poem about West and East, the initial lines of which are familiar to every educated man:

OH, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

As Kipling unfolds his story, it turns out that the accidents of birth, nationality, race, or family, do not matter at all – much more important for mutual respect are such qualities as integrity, honesty and courage, since they reduce to a secondary place ethnic diversities.

That’s just the opposite of what happened in Ukraine and made it a failed state, when Western Ukraine tried to impose its values on the Russian South East that naturally rebelled against it

NATO’s “Drang nach Osten”

RUW is a culminating point of the “Drang nach Osten”, an expansion of the West into the East spearheaded by NATO. At the beginning of its enlargement NATO’s plans didn’t raise Russian concerns. Everything changed after the Bucharest summit.

In 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, NATO Allies welcomed Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership and agreed that these countries will become members of NATO. They also agreed that both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations and welcomed democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia.

It was understood that choosing an alliance was their sovereign choice. However, the aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia violate a very important principle, accepted by OSCE members and enshrined in the Istanbul Document (1999) and Astana Declaration (2010): “The safety of each participating state is inextricably linked to that of all the others”. It is the principle of the indivisibility of security and it means that the security of one country cannot be achieved at the expense of the other. This principle is not respected when NATO reduces warning and early warning times to Russia by removing the “buffer zone” between NATO and Russia. The buffer zone disappears if the country stops being neutral.

 Double standards of Western narrative

When I come across a collection of 200 photos illustrating atrocities committed by Russian troops during the “invasion”, I sympathize with innocent victims, but I find the overall interpretation of events highly biased. [Guzy, 2022]

I don’t remember angry denunciations addressed to the Kiev impostors who unleashed ruthless war against their own compatriots trying to bomb them into submission. The photojournalists might have found blood-chilling pictures of death, ruin, suffering and devastation in the cities of Donbass. They preferred to turn a blind eye to it for eight years. 

Those who promote Western narrative are silencing uncomfortable facts. For them everything amounts to the battle between the universal good and the universal evil:

“By repelling the Russian assault and mobilizing itself and half the world in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, Ukraine has ensured its continuing existence as an independent state and nation.

The Ukrainian state proved itself capable of surviving and functioning under continuing warfare to a degree matched by few states…

There are clear indications that the Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in modern history.

“It was the first “good war” since the global conflict of 1939 – 45, in which it was clear from the start who was the aggressor and who the victim, who the villain and who the hero, and whose side one wanted to be on.” [Plokhiy, 2023: 294]

Nearly every quoted statement from Serhii Plokhy’s book is false:

“Ukraine has ensured its continuing existence as an independent state and nation”.

Is the author serious? Ukraine showed that it was INCAPABLE of defending itself without its Western masters. Everyone who speaks about “independence” in this context is either a cynic or a fool.

Fortunately, there are many people in Ukraine for whom it is NOT “clear from the start who was the aggressor and who the victim, who the villain and who the hero, and whose side one wanted to be on.”

In his brilliantly written book “The Invasion” Luke Harding uses his talent to disseminate beliefs, instead of facts, which make up a much more complicated picture, than the one which deals only with stereotypes of Western propaganda:

“Russia was now closed to a large swath of Western observers and politicians. The only story the home media were allowed to share was a virtuous fable, shouted by Russian state TV anchors. It said the Kremlin was not to blame for hostilities in Ukraine. Rather, Moscow was forced to defend its security interests and to take action against the U. S.-controlled neo-Nazis swarming Kyiv. Russia was a victim of Western aggression. Its spets op was clinical and proportionate, No civilians had been hurt. To say otherwise was to lie.

Orwell had imagined this shrill reversal of things in his portrait of high Stalinism. War was peace, freedom was slavery, ignorance was strength.”
[Harding, 2022: 242]

Luke Harding does not wish to see Russia as a victim to aggression, and facts testifying to this claim are just wishful thinking to him. Nevertheless, NATO’s march eastwards is a fact. And it is the reversal of the Caribbean Crisis of 1962. If John Kennedy’s security concerns are treated seriously, then Vladimir Putin is entitled to look for security guarantees too.

George Kennan was right when he warned against the enlargement of NATO that would be perceived as a threat by Russia. There were other famous politicians who were critical of the course pursued by Ukraine. President George H. Bush asked the Ukrainian Rada to dump “suicidal nationalism”. The Ukrainian politicians seemed deaf.

In 2008 Putin asked NATO to stop its march eastward and patiently waited for at least 16 years before he leapt.

Conclusions

1. Everyone who analyses the war between Russia and Ukraine and speaks about an overarching battle between good and evil, civilization and barbarism – simplifies and distorts the phenomenon.

2. The currant hostilities in Ukraine seem to be resisting a simple definition and contain unusual and controversial dimensions that make it possible for Moscow and Kiev to maintain peaceful processes between Russia and Ukraine, such as cross-border travel, trade and negotiations, co-existing with military developments between the two armies.

3. There is a strong geopolitical aspect to the conflict, making it worthwhile to look at the history of the confrontation between the West and Russia, embracing ideological face-off during the epoch of the Crusades and purely political and economic rivalry during the march of the West into the hostile East represented in Europe mainly by Russia.

4. The factor of personality stands up as crucial to understanding global changes, which make us treat history against the backdrop of great battles and the monumental figures of Peter the Great, Frederic II, Napoleon, Churchill, Stalin and others.

5. Demonization of Vladimir Putin reached unprecedented proportions with the issuing of the arrest warrant for the Russian President by the International Criminal Court (ICC); it goes hand in hand with dehumanization and victimization of the Russians which for their ostracism in Western countries can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the Nazi Germany.

6. By inviting Ukraine to join NATO the West pushed Ukraine into unusual and unnatural confrontation with Russia that started to treat its “brotherly folk” with suspicion.

7. Making the Russian language a state language of Ukraine should be treated as a necessary precondition to any meaningful negotiation about the restoration of normal relations between Moscow and Kiev.