‘Bloodlands’ is the title of a book professor Timothy Snyder wrote in 2010 about the East European territory that took the brunt of the titanic 20th century struggle between Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. A struggle that, in Snyder’s estimation, took fourteen million lives in twelve years of killing policies unrelated to combat (with Russian and German combat casualties estimated at another eleven million).
The bloodlands in which this struggle took place are
comprised of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and Western parts of
Russia. Ukraine was at the heart of it and, together with Poland, took some of
the hardest blows. When the Second World War finally ended in Europe, there was
a strong worldwide sentiment of ‘never again’ that resulted in the formation of
the United Nations and economic cooperation between the former European opponents
which, in stages, resulted in the European Union of today. The Western allies chose
for a joint security arrangement by creating NATO and the Soviet Union
responded by combining force with their East European satellites in the Warsaw
Pact. These two huge military blocks, both equipped with nuclear power, kept each
other in balance by the threat of mutually assured destruction, and by all
these means an uneasy peace was kept in Europe for almost eighty years, with
only one exception of the Balkan wars of 1991-1992. As FDR, Churchill and
Stalin redrew in the final stages of the Second Word War the map on European borders and
spheres of influence, a norm against territorial conquest developed and was
enshrined in the UN Charter. With the fall of the Soviet Union, rapid
globalization of the world economy, and the unprecedented growth of technology
and prosperity in Europe, there was a reasonable expectation that the big
European wars were behind us, forever.
But now we know it was not to be. And it is again the bloodlands
that are getting brutally hit after seventy-seven years of uneasy peace. For
the time being, the bloodshed is limited to Ukraine and its adversary Russia,
but the conflict has every chance of expanding to the bloodlands beyond the
Ukrainian borders. In fact, Poland is already significantly affected by the
influx of 2.6 million refugees from Ukraine, and the people of Russia are
feeling the pain of the war in large numbers of military casualties and a
collapsing economy under the pressure of economic sanctions leveled by the West.
But the conflict is only seven weeks old and can, at any time, conflagrate into
a much wider war. All it takes is a spark that crosses over into NATO territory.
In the meantime, the world is helplessly watching Vladimir
Putin flaunting all the norms and rules of international law by invading
Ukraine and indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure in
his conquest to restore a part of the Soviet empire that broke apart in 1991. Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was right on target when he asked the UN Security
Council in a virtual address on April 5 what the purpose was of having a
security council that proves incapable of maintaining the security of the
members of the United Nations. His plight has surfaced the uncomfortable truth
that the current UN Charter is deficient in several respects, including the
fact that Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can block a
referral of its transgression to the International Criminal Court. If a permanent
member of the Security Council violates the rules of the UN Charter, it should
be barred from voting on UN action against such transgression. In the UN as the
guardian of the international order, no single member should be above the law. As
professor Tanisha Fazal states in a great article in the May/June issue of
Foreign Affairs magazine titled ‘The Return of Conquest?’: “If
the global community allows Russia to subsume Ukraine, states may more
frequently use force to challenge borders, wars may break out, former empires
may be reinstated, and more countries may be brought to the edge of extinction.”
Her article has the appropriate subtitle ‘Why the Future of Global Order Hinges
on Ukraine.’
As it is, blood is flowing in rivulets again in the
bloodlands and the global community has no tools to stem the flow. The conflict
resembles a heavyweight boxing match that bloodies both sides but will not end
until one of the combatants throws in the towel. Putin speculates that it will
be Ukraine, which is why he will not stop hitting Ukrainian cities and people
from the air with missiles, artillery, and bombers. The West rightly accuses
him of committing war crimes, if not genocide, but must admit that it used the
same tactics to bring Nazi Germany to its knees. Unfortunately, there is
nothing new under the sun. The only difference is that the Allies in the Second World War were
fighting to defeat the aggressor and this time it is the aggressor who flaunts
the rules of war.
Contemplating all this, I can’t help but wonder how this new
chapter of the bloodlands tragedy will end. And I dare to look back at the
American Revolutionary War for guidance. That too was a fight of David against
Goliath and I see more similarities: First, motivation and popular belief and support.
Just like the American Revolutionaries fought for their independence, the
Ukrainians know that they are fighting for the right of their nation to exist. The
belief to be fighting for a just cause is a powerful motivator for the
Ukrainians and one that the Russians, despite all Putin’s rhetoric, miss. Second,
the strong support of the Ukrainian military effort by the use of diplomacy. Just
like Benjamin Franklin tenaciously courted the French to support the American
cause with financial and military assistance, so does President Zelenskyy do a phenomenal
job on rallying the support of the free world for his cause. In both cases,
part of the diplomatic message is the unshakable conviction that the cause is just,
and the fight can be won. It is not hard therefore to predict that ultimately
Ukraine will win. The question is at what price? The Revolutionary War took six
years to be decided because the British had to concede in the end that they
could not continue to take the losses of life and treasury in a fight on
foreign territory. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that even if
the British had fought the war to a stalemate, in the end they would not have been
able to deny America its independence and sovereignty. Whatever happens next, I
do not believe that Putin can make good on his belief that Ukraine is not an
independent country and has no right to exist other than as a part of the
Russian empire. But, in the meantime the bloodlands are living up to their name
again.
