Russia's Novorossiya War

In late July/early August of this year, I tried to get this opinion piece (set out below) on the Russian invasion of Ukraine published, somewhere.  While I failed each time to find a publisher, I think it stands up very well.  As I cannot find a publisher, but have my own blog, here it is below, unchanged ... albeit as the front-line armies of both the Russians and the Ukrainians seem to have been engaging in much reduced activities and, instead, focused on unit reconstitutions and reinforcements over the late summer, with the northern winter approaching, it seems likely, as of today, that this is all a relative calm before an enormous storm is unleashed by both Russia and Ukraine.  As I point out in my piece below, the Russians already have gained/consolidated their hold on significant formerly Ukrainian territories and their agricultural and mineral resources - and yet the fighting is still likely to continue on, and, one fears, may result in an escalated and wider war, with obvious risks. 

That the Russian Stavka is still fighting this war, when it has already made these substantial gains, has suggested to me for some time that the Kremlin does want to realise its historic Novorossiya and Tsarist ambitions.  One of my key contentions with Russia - as with other historically imperial nations - is that if, in Russia's case, you were to remove the Vladimir Putin apparatus from the Russian presidency and its power, then whoever supplants or succeeds Putin would pursue the same, or indeed, more aggressive Russian foreign and military policies.  If, for example, any of the Russian Tsars were restored to rule Russia, tomorrow, they would all pursue policies that are very similar to, if not more expansive than, those of Putin and his advisors.

It will almost always be the case that overriding imperial interests and geographic/political realities will dictate what must be done by a regime to secure its realm - and it is and will be the duty of the Tsar, or Kaiser, or Shah [or President or Prime Minister or Chancellor] to follow these course headings, however rough the weather may be that batters the ship of state.  It is also the case that, once a war is begun, the war, as both a moral and political enterprise, must have conquests and gains in order to justify casualties and expenses to subjects and citizens.  In Russia's case, having refused or been refused a negotiated settlement and launching the war in February, now is the time to realise the Novorossiya ambition. (NB: only in the post-everything West is it permissible, indeed almost praiseworthy, to fight stupid wars for the most esoteric ideological reasons, and for the making of no gains and the incurring of only tragic losses, for 20+ years.)

Viewed from the Kremlin, Russia fighting on to dominate the northern Black Sea makes enormous sense.  Russia has long sought to explore, extract, and exploit, the Black Sea's riches both in and under the sea, continental shelves and seabed.  A Russia that can dominate the north of the Black Sea will also be a Russia that raises obviously dire questions for the West, especially for NATO member, Turkey, with whom Russia already has a significant relationship.  That no one seems to be discussing these obvious consequences of further Russian advances shows the attenuation, if not shriveling, of the Western capacity to think geopolitically and with a view to how easily an already bad situation can become so much worse. Whether Turkey could resist Russian entreaties to divide the Black Sea, leaving, say, Georgia, to Russian mercies, is a scenario so obvious that one must believe that someone in North American and European defence and foreign ministries is thinking of what comes next.  The Russian bear, when repeatedly poked, will create its own more friendly den.  This was always obvious, especially from 2014 onwards, and has now only become more obvious with time.  One day, hopefully, what is and has always been actually obvious will impact on Western policymaking. That day, sadly, seems as yet far off.

Whether the West through NATO can keep the Ukrainian war effort going over a severe coming winter in which Western domestic societies will be under significant costs of living pressure and energy shortfalls, is itself an open question.  There have long been divisions within NATO and the European Union, as I point out below, over how to approach Russia and the threats posed by, and opportunities offered from, Moscow.  It may be that far from the Russian-Ukrainian war being merely one of gradual attrition that slowly exhausts the combatants, forcing them to negotiate over what remains, that, instead, the recent subdued fighting has been a mere prologue to a much more savage war.  It may also be that the worst peace negotiated now may be preferable to whatever fait accompli emerges from the battlefield in the months and years to come.  

It is a rare wish, for me, anyway, but I do hope to be wrong.  GC

RUSSIAN WAR IN UKRAINE – 30 July 2022 
 
The story goes, according to the great American historian Barbara Tuchman, that during the worst of the Great War, the Imperial German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg was asked by his predecessor, Prince von Bulow, 'How did this war happen?' Bethmann-Hollweg replied, 'Ah, if only one knew.’  War always confounds the grand designs of high commands – and always at great costs to innocents, as the July 1914 crisis that led to global carnage, showed. 
 
Yet, even so, the Russians, in month 5 of their invasion of Ukraine, have sustained a military effort of slow but steady advances, occupying territories that the West had, foolishly, denied could, instead, be the subject of negotiations.   
 
At worst, if Russia declared victory today and stopped its war, the Russians would occupy most of what was eastern and southern Ukraine, the whole of the Azov coast, as well as further expanded Russia’s military presence in Crimea.   
 
True, the Ukrainians have resisted with great ferocity and courage – they, too, share the Cossack lineage – but War is an entirely unsentimental affair.  No people, however brave, could repel the Russian garrison state next door. 
 
For we in the West, there is a stark contrast between Russia’s valuable acquisitions in mere months versus our years of stupid wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.  The West expended blood and treasure for 20+ years in the perverse belief that we could occupy and remediate Arab and Afghan societies brutalised by centuries of foreign and local tyrannies. The Russians have simply applied force, next door, to gain more ethnic Russians, as well as resource-rich lands and Black Sea coastal areas. 
 
So many Western delusions about the true state of this war result from commentary by our own failed Generals and ex-government officials, whose only successful conquests have been of TV cable news green rooms – and who, in Thucydides’ time, would have been exiled in disgrace.  Absurd tales of ‘ghosts of Kiev’ and ‘martyrs of Snake Island’ were consumed by journalism’s rubes, who clearly learned nothing from the lies told last year when Afghanistan’s regime was obviously collapsing.   
 
Western responses have been chronically chaotic.  A Russian invasion of Ukraine has been an obvious danger since at least 2008, when Russian forces first pushed south against resource rich Georgia.  If NATO’s plan was to support a Ukrainian military resistance to a Russian invasion, then Brussels should long ago have ensured it had its own manufacturers of Soviet bloc munitions of the kind Ukraine uses. Instead, the Ukrainians, bravely resisting Russian advances, have continually awaited shipments of whatever ex-Russian munitions can be bought from global arms bazaars.  It has all been something of a ‘cluster’. 
 
To be fair, the Anglo-American-Polish axis (with which Australia aligns) has supplied arms and munitions to Ukraine. Australia has even sent significant quantities of armoured fighting vehicles across the world to aid Ukraine.  Australia is a loyal ally and giving materiel support to Ukraine – and thus supporting our British, American, and Polish, allies – is certainly in our strategic interest.   
 
At the same time, as a matter of sheer realpolitik, the views of our closest military allies are not shared by most Europeans.  Whatever Germany’s public spin – and most of the EU is fully behind Berlin, if only as a diplomatic shield – it is the British, Americans, and the Poles, who are the real problem, not Russia. 
 
Viewed from Berlin, and by those allied to the EU’s Franco-Teutonic core, the EU had a workable relationship with Russia: the EU purchased cheap and reliably supplied gas from Russia, as well as metals, woods, and fertiliser, and Russia purchased vehicles and machinery from the EU.   
 
Europe’s enriching of Russia would, the Berlin consensus thought, make for peaceful times on either side of the Dnieper River, and no one, especially not Angela Merkel (who grew up in Soviet occupied East Germany!), thought becoming Russia’s energy hostage was unwise.  That so much of Germany’s political class has been the Kremlin’s human resources department is seen as economic integration - not foreign corruption. 
 
To many western Europeans, the compulsive Anglo-American desire over the last 25 years to expand NATO to Russia’s frontier was and is still seen as shackling reluctant Europeans to ex-Soviet security corpses.  It was, after all, Bismarck who said that a successful politics is founded on a good treaty with Russia.  Even Pope Francis, whose Jesuit order was patronised by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, has said, publicly, that the Russians are an imperial people who cannot have foreign powers on their borders.  
 
These public divisions within NATO and the EU endanger us all.  Europeans living next door to this slugfest cannot, unlike Anglo-American ‘laptop bombardiers’, relish an ongoing proxy war, fighting Russia until the last Ukrainian.  Moreover, for most Europeans, a very cold winter approaches, without any realistic substitutes for Russian gas.   
 
The wiser heads of the allied powers should be trying to negotiate a ceasefire that leads to talks and the arbitration of the grievances of all the belligerents and their sponsors.  As in war, so in peace: ‘If you will the ends, you will the means.’ 
 
The ghosts of July 1914 should be exorcised, not followed. 
 
Gray Connolly is a Sydney barrister and writer. He served previously as a naval intelligence officer in Asia, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. 
 

Grieving Beloved Parents

I am not entirely sure why, but I felt moved by the Coronavirus Pandemic and its death toll, particularly stories of young people facing the reality of unexpected deaths of loved ones, especially parents, to write this long piece on Medium about death, loss, and grief. 

I am, usually, quite a guarded person on life, generally, and family, in particular.  I realise that I periodically appear on radio and television, and in news media, in respect of matters of public controversy.  However, whatever we each may do with our lives, I still believe that all of us should have a private sphere of our own, known only unto God.  For my part, I would never have believed in November 2019 that I would be writing an essay on grief in November 2020 concerning my beloved and deeply missed mother and father. Spared the anxiety of worrying about vulnerable parents during the pandemic in 2020, I thought I would try to help anyone now finding themselves in the position that I was in a decade-plus earlier.

I found writing a reflection on losing my beloved parents to have been the hardest thing that I have ever written. In a sense, yes, of course, this is how it should be. Yet, even so, it was extraordinarily hard. There is nothing I would change about the piece. It is the writing that I would have liked to have read long ago. 

In writing the Medium piece, I learned a good deal about myself, as well as the process of writing.  I have always realised that few people will like all of the writing that you do.  I sent my piece to some close friends for their comment, who told me they found it very hard to read and finish, which was understandable to me, particularly as they all had their parents still in good health.  A very helpful suggestion, that I acted upon, was to digitally record my reading it, so people could treat it like a podcast and listen in stages.

As I tried to get across in my writing, there is nothing particularly special about my story. I am not any sort of victim - other people have lost both parents at even earlier ages, while many others have living parents that they do not get on with. The only reason my story matters to me is that it happened to me – and that it concerns my own parents, who I love and miss, every day.  I was the much youngest child in our family, I was very close to my parents, I looked after them until their passings, and, thus, I feel, whatever else I may know about, I know what it is like to see your beloved parents leave this life.  Our parents teach us everything except how to live without them.

As a Catholic, in common with many people of differing faiths, I do not believe that this life is our end but rather only the beginning of our journey. I suspect some, or, indeed, all, of this comes through in my writing.  Losing our parents is so very hard, but those who we lose, we will see, again.  I certainly believe that about my late mother and my late father.  I have also felt the presence of my mother and my father in my life, at various times since each passed, as a sign from a merciful and loving God that nothing, especially death, can separate us. 

A particular benefit to me in writing this piece, which I did not expect, was the surprisingly large number of people who read it, and who have since made contact with me. I was touched to find people who went through similar losses, and who said how closely they related to my own particular experience, even as we had never met. I also heard from people who never really had anyone to listen to them, or who was thought by their friends to be doing alright in all the circumstances, who was, instead, still in so precarious a state. I was thankful, also, to those who had been spared such pain as yet but who had passed my Medium piece onto a friend or relative who was navigating their own way through the gloomy wilderness of grief and loss. If, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote in his poem Ulysses, we are all a part of those we have met, then, so, too, do our writings form an arch through which we go to meet countless others and learn of their experiences, even when separated by places and times.

For my part, I was glad, so very glad, to have had the opportunity to write of loving parents, of how I learned to live with losing them from this life, and, for me anyway, to reminisce, even if at times with sadness. 

None of us knows what someone else is going through, or what heavy crosses they bear.  We, in particular, do not know who is coping and, more importantly, who is not coping.  All that we can do, especially those of us who have already been through the very worst, is to lend to the grieving a strong, if prematurely hardened, shoulder, and a most sympathetic and kind ear–and to show them that there is a way forward, however monstrously difficult it may seem to them, as, indeed, it seemed to us.  

We are all but pilgrims here, and we must do our best, we must persevere, and we must run our race until its end, knowing that those we love and miss, so much, are watching us, hopefully always proudly, and willing us on. We may only see through a glass, darkly - but then we will see, again, face to face.

The Russian Problem

Almost a month ago, I wrote a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and understanding the Russians, both as an adversarial power, and on their own terms as the historic Russia.  In some ways, it was a follow-on from my longer 2018 post here on the Russians.

As I have found out, partly to my amusement and partly to my disappointment, that one cannot have any perspective on the Russian problem that differs one iota from whatever is the conventional wisdom.  This is less about criticism, per se, than the sheer pride taken by so many in media and punditry in their complete ignorance of the Russians and, particularly, Russian strategic and military culture.  One could spend one's entire life attempting to counter, or even just contrast, so much of the current deluge of quite pathetic analysis of Russia with facts, and yet pass from this life with that task still a boulder that Sisyphus himself would mock you for trying to carry. 

The only ways forward in respect of Russia (as with China and Iran - also 'old countries' with historic claims of security domains) is, as regards the diplomacy:

1. understanding historic and current geography: boundaries past and present, component ethnic and religious groups, trade routes, enduring defence and security interests;  
2. recognising where common interests may lie, in which we can work together; and
3. recognising where our interests conflict - and trying to find ways to minimise those conflicts or, at least, mediate or arbitrate them, or disagree about them short of war.

In pursuing the above, the beginning of wisdom is recognising that Russia (like China and Iran) is an imperial and hegemonic power, with whom we will usually, if not always, have problems.  Russia - again, like China and Iran - will never be a 'normal country'.  Always maintaining a realistic perspective and only very modest expectations would help mitigate the swings and roundabouts of Western relations with the Russians, that seem to, always, be incapable of being anything other than the breathtakingly naïve or the irresponsibly bellicose, resulting in either unwise concessions or fevered hawkishness.

In saying this, yes, ideology does play a role here.  There will be revisionist powers that, ideologically, care only about extending their interests in respect of (1) and who do not care about (2) and (3). There will be, at times, adversaries with contempt for agreements and treaties, and no respect for concepts of legitimacy.  There may even be times for actions short of war.

However, if one's issue is that a revision is being sort by a nation-state, the first order question that is worth asking is, 'What actually is being revised?'  One should bear in mind with old countries, especially those that are great powers, or have been great powers and wish to be so again, is that they have long memories.  I am not usually given to quoting Edmund Burke but one must remember that not only do your adversaries get a vote in what the international order looks like, but their dead and as yet unborn, will, through the living, get a vote, too.  Not everyone lives in the now - and not everyone is historically illiterate - even if the West, too often is, sadly, both.  What if what you consider to be unable to be resolved without war, actually can be by diplomacy?  Where is the shame in discussions and negotiations?  And, if ideological powers during both war and peace could nonetheless still participate in the international order in the 20th century, and be negotiated with - on subjects from nuclear weapons to trade to space - then surely we should try this, also, now, rather than contribute to circumstances that may lead to future wars of unspeakable brutality and human tragedy?

By nature and intellectual inclination, I favour my own country, Australia, and our Western allies, having very large military establishments and enduring defence industrial bases, sufficient to deter aggressors and secure necessary interests - but which are used sparingly.  In other words, I may be a 'militarist' but I am most certainly no warmonger.  Resort to war should be the very last tool of statecraft - and war, once commenced, must be pursued, quickly and ruthlessly, with overwhelming force, to achieve a victory settlement that will ensure a long peace. Unless one is fully prepared to wage war, speedily and relentlessly - and, realistically, your reluctance to do so should almost always be the case - then our practice should be to engage in vigorous diplomacy, including diplomacy to avert wars by engaging in sensible and practical negotiation and compromise, by joining with allies in dialogue with adversaries. The effluxion of time by patient and calm reasoning may also see new generations come to power in adversaries, who may yet see matters differently.  In any event, it seems stupid not to first try such an approach, with a velvet glove overlaying any mailed fist.  

As Thucydides said in his magisterial history of the Peloponnesian War, "Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most."