The first of two current world wars

There are two world wars currently under way: one between democracy and totalitarianism; and one between people and money. This is about the first. The one that everyone knows about started in earnest, for the second time, about a year ago when Russia invaded the remaining parts of Ukraine, that it hadn’t already taken over in 2014. While I suspect most people think this is a war mostly between Ukraine and Russia, this is only the tip of a rather large iceberg. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is almost fully invested in supporting Ukraine, as are other countries. Nations near Ukraine have been sending former Soviet-era arms and equipment to Ukraine to replace similar equipment lost in the defence against the invasion which began on February 24^th, 2022. Since the invasion, Ukraine has received over 200 Soviet-era T72 main battle tanks from Poland, Czechia and a small number from other countries¹.

However, by far the biggest donor of tanks has been Russia itself, with perhaps as many as 540 Russian tanks being hauled away from the front lines by Ukraine and either repaired or modified before going back into battle. What seems to have surprised many of the people who work on these tanks is the age of some of them; up towards 50 years old. These tend not to be repaired for battle, but modified for other tasks, such as hauling captured or damaged tanks back from the front². NATO countries also provided anti-tank missiles, with the UK providing over 5,000 Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) shoulder-launched missiles³. The US has provided thousands of Javelin shoulder-launched missiles, as well as 1500 units of tube-launched, optically tracked wire guided (TOW) missiles. The latter are shoulder launched, but mounted on vehicles or tripods. Ukraine also has its own Stugna-P anti-tank missiles⁴. It has also been supplied with numerous types of anti-aircraft missiles including Stingers from the US⁵, Chirons from Korea⁶, among several others. Numerous artillery pieces have been sent, along with tens of thousands of shells for them. One of the other systems sent to Ukraine which has had a significant impact is the High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) is a missile launcher mounted on a five-tonne truck which can fire six guided missiles in quick succession. These missiles are GPS guided and can be accurately targeted⁷.

Now, NATO is getting even more serious with pledges of western main battle tanks. The US is sending 31 of its Abrams tanks, having already sent 60 Bradley Fighting Vehicles; the UK is sending 14 Challenger 2 tanks, and Germany and Spain are sending 20 Leopard 2 tanks. While these numbers are small, the tanks are likely much more effective than those the Russians have. This was indicated by the battle of 73 Easting fought in the First Gulf War. On the 26^th of February, 1991, elements of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment (ACR) – including approximately 36 M1A1 Abrams tanks – defeated two Iraqi armoured brigades in close combat. In the battle, the 2nd ACR lost no Abrams tanks and only one Bradley Fighting Vehicle to enemy fire. The Iraqi Army lost 160 mostly T72 tanks, 180 personnel carriers, 12 artillery pieces, and 80 wheeled vehicles. It is tanks such as the T72 model which still form the backbone of the Russian invasion forces⁸.

Some muppets have blamed NATO for this war; their supposed reason being that NATO said it would not expand eastwards after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. But did it? The answer is; no it didn’t. Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who would probably know, said that before the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO’s enlargement was “not discussed at all”. However, he did state that he thought its enlargement was a “big mistake” and “a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made” in 1990. Indeed, the only formal agreement signed between NATO and the USSR, before its breakup in December 1991, was the Treaty of Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The promises therein referred to territory of the former German Democratic Republic, which prevented deployment of non-German NATO forces and the deployment of nuclear weapons. Both of these promises have been kept⁹.

In July 1992, NATO offered to undertake peacekeeping duties on behalf of the United Nations and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) had been established in 1991 with the USSR and former Warsaw Pact countries as members, to enable dialogue and enhance transparency between western and eastern Europe. However, many former Warsaw Pact countries, especially Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, wanted a greater level of assurance of their security after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These countries duly signed the Visegrad Declaration in February 1991, with the objective of “full involvement in the European … system of security”. The attempted coup in Moscow in 1993, the first Chechen war in 1994 and the Russian assistance provided to Abkhazia, exacerbated the security fears of the former Warsaw Pact countries. Alongside this, there was significant debate in the early 1990s about the merits of enlarging NATO. Rather than jump straight into enlarging it, the Partnership for Peace (PfP) was established in 1994 and included NACC members as well as former Soviet countries, such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan⁹.

Russia was a participant in these new security arrangements, and was keen to clarify that NATO enlargement was not a security threat to Russia. The then president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, wrote in a September 1993 letter to then US president Bill Clinton: “Any possible integration of east European countries into NATO will not automatically lead to the alliance somehow turning against Russia.” So it was being clearly signalled that Russia did not object to the direction Europe’s new security architecture was going⁹. Those former communist countries who have joined NATO did so of their own volition. The three Visegrad countries Poland, Hungary and Czechia joined NATO in 1999 with Slovakia joining in 2004. This was widely supported by the people of the countries which joined. For example; 85.3% of Hungarians voted in a referendum to join⁹.

To blame NATO for this invasion is just a repetition of Russian propaganda. After all, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine; first in 2014 and then a year ago. It is imperative that Russia and Putin lose this war. Why?

• To end Putin’s megalomaniacal desire for the recreation of the Soviet empire^{10, 11}.
• To defend the peace project of the European Union. Russia’s war is not only an attack on Ukraine, but against the greater idea that European states can peacefully cooperate¹¹.
• To weaken the prestige of tyrants. In this century, the trend has been towards authoritarianism, with Putin providing a model. His defeat by a democracy interferes with that trend¹¹.
• To protect democracy; Ukraine’s and ours. If Putin wins, it will weaken democracy around the world because it will demonstrate that democracy cannot defend itself against a determined tyrant¹¹.
• To decrease the risk that Ukraine will simply be the first in a line of countries attacked. This includes countries like Moldova¹², Lithuania¹³, Latvia¹⁴, and Estonia¹⁵. Who are all concerned, perhaps rightly, that they may be next, after all they were once all part of the USSR.
• To decrease the risk of a major war in Europe. A defeat for Russia would likely decrease the risk of another attack by Russia on another neighbouring country¹¹. As some of these are already members of NATO, the alliance is bound to retaliate against an attack on any such member state.
• To decrease the risk of China invading Taiwan. The near unanimity of the west in supporting and arming Ukraine has surprised China, such that its response in support of Putin has been relatively muted; partly for fear of western sanctions¹⁶.

Part of Putin’s logic in attacking Ukraine was to effectively weaken NATO, but he seems only to have strengthened it, with the Ukrainian population very much in favour of joining NATO, such that in September of 2022, it formally applied to join¹⁷. Finland and Sweden, after decades of non-alignment, have also applied to join NATO¹⁸. Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina have announced their intention to join, mostly because of their proximity to Russia-friendly Serbia¹⁹. In addition, Putin has seemingly strengthened the European Union (EU), with Ukraine asking to join it as well. Similarly, Moldova and Georgia have also asked to join the EU since Russia invaded Ukraine²⁰.

It is imperative that Russia loses this war, just as it was imperative that Germany and Japan lost the Second World War. It could be argued that if the west (mostly France and the UK) had stood up to Hitler’s Germany when, in 1936, it remilitarised the Rhineland; or when it annexed Austria in 1938, or when it was allowed by France and the UK via the Munich Agreement to annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, again in 1938, or when it occupied and annexed Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia in violation of the Munich Agreement. We can never know, but many millions of people died in the subsequent war. In Ukraine in the last year, it is likely that as many as a third of a million combatants on both sided and Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded.

Sources

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218
2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/03/the-ukraine-repair-shop-where-russian-tanks-go-to-change-sides
3. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61482305
4. https://eurasiantimes.com/ukraines-most-lethal-us-supplied-atgm-reportedly-turns-russian/
5. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/15/infographic-what-weapons-has-ukraine-received-from-the-us-and-al
6. https://eurasiantimes.com/south-korea-to-supply-ukraine-with-chiron-manpads-us-is/
7. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218
8. https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2022/05/02/so-much-for-the-myth-of-russian-main-battle-tank-superiority/
9. https://theconversation.com/ukraine-the-history-behind-russias-claim-that-nato-promised-not-to-expand-to-the-east-177085
10. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/22/putin-speech-russia-empire-threat-ukraine-moscow
11. https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-the-world-needs-ukrainian-victory?r=50j1k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
12. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-it-is-concerned-by-situation-breakaway-moldovan-region-2023-02-27/
13. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/20/russia-condemns-lithuania-transit-ban-some-goods-kaliningrad
14. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/10/1116802683/latvia-is-growing-its-military-as-russia-becomes-increasingly-aggressive
15. https://www.rferl.org/a/estonia-security-report-russia-baltics/32261905.html
16. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-escalates-ukraine-war-china-stands-awkwardly-by-him-2022-09-22/
17. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/30/ukraine-applies-for-nato-membership-after-russia-annexes-territory
18. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/01/finland-starts-building-fence-on-russian-border-as-mps-prepare-to-vote-on-nato-bid
19. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/5/nato-membership-indispensable-for-kosovo-bosnia-leaders
20. https://www.icmpd.org/blog/2022/ukraine-moldova-and-georgia-have-their-european-prospects-confirmed.-what-does-it-mean-for-migration-policies