In my previous exchange, if you call it that, with The Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, emphasising his support for - I will not call it otherwise - the Assad regime's imminent victory in Syria, describing beyond all reasonable doubt that it was a good thing, and that all former colonial powers - as well as non-French or -Turkish ones - should merely stand idly by as this passing of inexorable phases of human conduct occurred, I held the view that he was, and likely would continue in a state of being, wrong as well as cynical. Being a keen, educated, sophisticated - to a degree - liberal columnist, and emphasising his support so civilly for a pan-Arab, national socialist dictator (I'd say fascist, but in solidarity with undue victims of the phrase, I stand by the longeuresque designation) was worthy of some scorn. But like to hate as you may, his previous, just as defaitist - and far more relevant - critique of western inability to align interests in Syria with not-as-bad dictator Putin, rang a sordid and very evident truth. I have spoken, too little, of the need to ground reasonably sceptical views of foreign, authoritarian superpowers - I am talking, again, of the great red dragon - in coexistence with a post-Communist Russian state, whether a fascist or democratic-robber baronesque or their synthesis, the Putinist one - and in the Syrian case, the decision or non-decision to walk alongside Assad's daring bluff to turn the conflict into one against audacious bath-robed, Kalashnikov-wriggling blackbeards has certainly left an open hole void of reason and tactfulness in failing to synchronise efforts with Russia's colder, but just as emphatic and, I suppose, correct derision against said blackbeards in order to contain its own very real presence of such forces within her (recognised) borders. Well, in a world where foreign policy is not governed by Palme-esque idealist loudmouthery (and for all said or shouted on the subject, it very seldom is) one would tend to cooperate with actors with similar interests, and similar foes. Whatever could be spoken of Nixon, could not be said of Clinton, and often in the negative sense. And the failure to conscript, as well as lift, a post-revolutionary, post-authoritarian Russia into just that, and a beacon of liberty and light or something vaguely resembling it, and even a member of the western alliance, is returning like proverbial roosters, now sordidly recognised as the most undesirable aliens.
On this topic, now brought into the very present and a presence by the edge of "Europe", however defined in Western (European) terms, has now elongated into a very real proxy war between "West" and "East", as the factual "East" is still rising. And whatever could be spoken on the subject of arming an enemy of Russia, as well as a former subject-republic, in open war against its former master country, the inability to provide direct or adequate aid, the repercussions and consequences of the frozen wasteland the elongated frontier is coagulating into, we must countenance that the prime act of Western effort, or aggression, of toppling the Russian economy and isolating it in a fashion akin to, say, the former Afrikaner regime, has utterly and at the same time gradually failed. Whereas "stronger than ever" is a cliché, and while the many outrageous rumours of Putin's crumbling health cannot conceal the inevitably descendant circle of his natural age and the political repercussions it will produce - now being the longest Russian leader since Stalin, he has soon outlived him too - there is absolutely nothing we did not know a year, or eight years in the past, which suggests that either he or the Russian state is crumbling. And for his very questioned longevity, the two are not the same. A successor, let alone a Navalny, may be a tougher nut, and more fatal. The benefits of Putinism, for those who would recognise it, may not be (truly) recognised in Grozny, but a hand has been continuously offered, prodded, waved off and slapped, and only sympathy for the former subjects of the Russian yoke has kept it in the cold. Now, my question is, how much longer will the West endure, in the faint hope that our grand strategy would result in what Western leaders have wanted for decades, nay, centuries; a complete Russian collapse and a new order in the East, by whatever name and nature it is desired?
I think, with all the unrecognisable variables in the air, that the situation is like to remind of the "solutions" of 2014 and 2015, with the war grinding down, greater Russian bounties to a higher and higher price, and a final - if unspoken - settlement. This may be for the sake of bringing peace, or restoring Europe to something before the energy crisis, or for the actual purpose of bettering the conditions of the subjects of Putinism - who must then just as well be more likely to rise up and alter the system which, we hear, is not theirs - but under no circumstances will the current war of roubles and dollars last, unless it is upped in direction of total and complete annihilation. This should never be ruled out, but I hold it as unlikely as Europeans, emphasis on Germans, will look in direction of different solutions. In this, Ukrainians will only serve as cheaper and cheaper pawns, and while Putin's aim of distancing Ukraine from the west has forever failed - at least for any such future he may be part of - it is a knowledge he must hold closer to heart than Ukrainians, or Russians, ever were.
