Ukraine: The Real Power Games

As Russia consolidates its hold on Crimea, there are some very odd features to the response to the crisis by the West. On the one hand they are trying to use the established forums to push Russia into an uncomfortable position, while probing for the response to Russia that does not look like climb down and which doesn't cause financial and economic disruption. On the other hand they are proceeding with a takeover of Ukraine, taking advantage of the countries weak position to tie it to the West. However the real objective of the West's moves is probably part of another chess game.

The West is ultimately concerned about the unknown implications of a powerful, rich and well organised China. The US is the sponsor for a number of Pacific rim countries with residual disputes with China. An emergent and confident China will want to resolve these disputes in its favour, but if it does, it will show the West to be weak, opening the way for China to push the West to obtain better access to trade and natural resources. It is this chess board that is dictating the choice of games the West is choosing to play at a more local level. The results for many countries and their people are often awful.

This is no-where more true than for Syria. Syria is sponsored by Russia and the West wants to remove Russian sponsorship for states that oppose it. It has failed to use isolation and sanctions to bring down the governments in Iran and Syria, so now it is seeking to isolate their Russian sponsor. This is not a strong strategy as the Russian government already has a nationalist and despite appearances, isolationist remit. While Russian businessmen have invested around the world, they have done so in ways that have left the West more vulnerable to financial sanctions than Russia. Europe's dependence on Russian energy means that Russia has the freedom to run many isolationist strategies and policies (including on internal issues), without losing its major sources of revenue. Keeping Syria in a state of chaos is protection for the continued dependence of Europe for gas, as it prohibits the building of new gas pipelines through Syria to bring alternative supplies from the Gulf.

Similarly, the Russian support for Iran is enabling Iran to supply China with oil outside of the dollar trading system. This is exactly the kind of practice the US is keen to stop, as it undermines its economic stranglehold on the world's economies. 

So there is a convergence of interest between Europe's concerns regarding energy vulnerability and the US's concerns about growing Chinese power and its ability to clip the wings of US power, both in the far east and its hold on trade and finance. This has led to the US's other strategy: to bind its 'friends' into closer trading agreements that will in effect define the borders of the US Empire. Exploiting regional insecurity, the US is effectively subjugating both Europe and its Pacific allies. Creating insecurity in Eastern Europe will no doubt help doubting European governments consider this all to be necessary.

What is far from clear is if this strategy will actually work. While increasing the depth of US power might mean that China will not risk pushing its case on land disputes, equally it may make no difference. The likelihood that Russia and China will further explore common ground in how to thwart the West is very high. 

The longer term danger in all this is that the world becomes dominated by a number of big power blocks that are held in balance to each other, but are unable to reform themselves internally without becoming vulnerable to the others. It was this sort of structured instability that underlay the other causes of the First World War.

Ordinary people struggle to affect decisions on keeping a local hospital open. Helping our leaders not to plot the way to unavoidable conflict is something that would require a global movement with a clear vision for managing the world's affairs in the interests of us all. Now That's a tall order.