Small events with BIG consequences

WORLD news are saturated with reports, commentaries, and analyses as to what will be the next development after a Russian Su-27 fighter jet allegedly downed a US Airforce MQ-9 surveillance bird, in international waters, above the Black Sea, on 14 March. Prevalent currents of commentary and speculation circulate a horrific picture of possible escalation of hostilities between the United States of America and Russia that have so far been fighting in proxy in Ukraine. The US and its NATO allies have allegedly so far contributed to the fighting in Ukraine by arming, training, and providing intelligence to the Ukrainian armed forces so that they can better resist being overpowered by the Russian army. The other strategy has been to heavily sanction Russia economically. A number of mercenaries and or some de-uniformed military details from US and some European countries have been captured by the Russians, or their bodies recovered in the battlefields of Ukraine. The confrontation between a Russian fighter jet and a US surveillance bird above the Black Sea represents a spectacular event where the two biggest nuclear powers of the world came into military contact without Ukrainian insulation. This event mirrors a recent, no less spectacular event, when the US airforce had to shoot down a Chinese balloon that was floating high up American airspace. 

For military historians and other students of war this event is a big incident that can lead to unforeseen escalation and unforeseen consequences between the two world powers. Proxy wars almost always lead to incidents where the proxy is removed from the scene and two or more gladiators have a confrontation, direct or indirect. What has been observed is that it is usually small but significant events that lead to big wars between and among nations of the world. World War II was blamed on the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, the global economic depression, failure to appease bullies and angry victims of history, the rise of military will to power in Germany and Japan and a spectacularly weak and ill-purposed League of Nations. What happened is that Germany invaded Poland, one day in 1939, prompting France and Britain to declare war on the invader. World War I that gave birth to the horrors of trench warfare, poison gas (chemical weaponry) and the monstrous tanks was chiefly ignited by the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Many events around the present war in Ukraine mirror the Sarajevo incident and Germany’s invasion of Poland. 

The Death-drive of the super-powers

The defeat and eventual collapse of big world powers in world history has never been as a result of some weaknesses of theirs but their power. Their will to power and their egopolitics that takes their might as right has always been their great undoing. A lazy observer of world affairs, especially matters military, can tell that the present war will leave some great powers of the world much compromised, minimised and defeated. That is not the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem here is that in fear of defeat, one great power might resort to weapons of the last resort, nuclear arsenal, to change the face of the war and try to salvage some victory albeit at the expense of the world and humanity. I arrive at this observation because two great powers have dug down into a war of no return. Clearly Russia will not accept any defeat. Equally, for the money that has been invested in Ukraine by the US and its allies, pulling back or accepting Russian victory will be a humiliating defeat that will reduce the political weight and military image of the US and its NATO allies. A Russian victory in Ukraine will reduce US spheres of influence in the world, forever.  World powers have been driven by their will to power and egopolitics into a war of no return. The conflict has become existential for both sides.  Their power has led them to a very risky military posture that can only provoke desperation which is the oxygen of military escalation. Political realists might foresee a compromise as the solution, but equally realist is the risk of escalation until a breaking point, and what Professor John Mearsheimer foresees as “horror.”

The small events with big consequences

There were once different relations. In June 2017, President Vladimir Putin told US film director, Oliver Stone, that he once asked US President, Bill Clinton, if Russia could join NATO. In 2008, Putin was invited and attended a NATO gathering in Bucharest, as a friend of NATO. And that is when things turned when the meeting declared and celebrated that some former Soviet Republics could join NATO.  In 1999 Hungary, among others had already joined NATO. In 2004, Romania and more others joined.  The 2014 coup in Ukraine and the uprising in Donbass, leading to Ukraine demanding and being encouraged by the US and some European countries to join NATO and the European Union was a declaration of war to Russia that saw the Warsaw Pact, the Minsk Agreements, and the promise given to Gorbachev that NATO “will not step an inch” into the former Soviet Republics being violated. In December 2021 the Russians wrote to NATO and to the US President, Joe Biden, issuing strong reservations that were rubbished. The war was as good as made.  It is for that reason that Americans such as Prof John Mearsheimer, Retired Colonel Greg McGregor have argued that NATO expansionism, and European Union imperialism into the former Soviet region and the Baltic States is the original cause of the war in Ukraine, and not Russian aggression. 

Recently, award winning American investigative journalist, Hersh Seymour, published a sensational article exposing how the United States of America was behind the bombing of the Russian Nord Stream Two gas pipeline that pumps gas into Europe, in order to sabotage Russia and achieve a monopoly into supplying Europe with gas. Authoritatively, Swedish Researcher and political analysts, Jan Oberg, has weighed in to declare that it is the USA that blew up the pipeline for selfish reasons that amount to “economic terrorism against Europe” and Russia. Well before the war, President Biden told a press conference that if Russia invaded Ukraine as America “we will bring an end” to Nord Stream Two” and “we will , I promise you we will be able to do it.”

This was after the US came out to confirm that it only supplied the intelligence that helped Ukraine to sink the Russian warship, the Moskva, a pride of Russia from the Soviet era. Clearly, the two powers, Russia and the US, have been brushing military shoulders in a way that promotes rather than prevents escalation. Some analysts and commentators have already observed that in form and in content, World War III has already started in the way some seemingly small events have been leading to one escalation after another. Others think that the economic world war, marked by sanctions and their busting are already a world war, what is left is a few more escalatory events that will blow the situation up to an all-out military conflict that pits a number of world powers and their allies against their opponents. The situation is here because of the fears and desires, and also the weaknesses of powerful countries whose egopolitics and will to power drive them to escalation. Like the Covid-19 global pandemic, a world war seems to be starting small but in instalments, is building up to engulf the world and bring down “horror” to reality. How world powers fail to generate enough political and military wisdom to hold back on escalation, in hope that their opponent, another superpower will simply be defeated can only boggle an African mind. 

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Contacts: decoloniality2019@gmail.com.