Whenever there’s a horrible international situation, I always want to hear what Paddy Ashdown has to say. He’s very wise on all the intricate web of international relations, agendas and history. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s worth listening to because he’ll tell it exactly like he sees it. He makes it all so much more real.
He’s just been on Murnaghan talking about the situation in Ukraine. Unfortunately, he confirmed my feeling that the world is a very much more scary place this weekend.
He was very clear that one foolish mistake could tip a volatile situation into war. That, he said, could be one “trigger-happy” Russian soldier opening fire, a Ukrainian misjudgement of a situation. Something that could very easily happen in the heat of a tense moment.
He said that it wasn’t clear what the Russians were up to. He said it was possible, but unlikely, that their ambitions were limited to securing their international treaty defined rights of access to the port of Sevastopol rather than wider territorial gain. He likened Putin’s stance to Hitler’s over Sudetenland as opposed to the modern Western view that the fate of nations is subject to the view of its people.
But what to do? Two points from Paddy:
- It would not be sensible for the west to retaliate with force, so diplomacy must be as powerful as possible;
- Not sure that it’s wise for Hague to be going to Kiev unless he brings a single, united message from international community. Most important diplomatic move would be Chancellor Merkel going to Moscow which might restrain Russia.
He said:
Well, President Putin has taken the view that if he uses the military card we will not out-trump him and he’s right, we will not respond in a military fashion, these are not the circumstances in which it is possible to do that I imagine. I mean I’m not privy to all the information here but one has to presume that, in which case the only option left is the diplomatic option and we have to make that as powerful as possible and the quintessential element of that is to look for the West to be utterly united, utterly decided and to show the will to take action together, not individually. If we want to go travelling across the world let’s do so but when we do that we speak as a united voice. Only if we do that I think can we create circumstances in which we may pull this thing back. Look, this is not alone, the Russians tried this in Kosovo when they tried to unilaterally take over the airport, I don’t think this is going to end so happily. They tried it in Georgia, by the way this has always played out to their long term disadvantage and this will too, but we’re not considering the long term here, we’re considering the short. We have to know what to do now and what Russia seems to be doing is lining up, setting up the Sudetenland excuse, the excuse of Hitler which was if anybody of a nationality which is the same as ours, in this case Russian, suffers then we reserve the right to intervene. Here is the bottom line misunderstanding, or if you like cultural clash, whereas the whole of the West has moved towards a new standard that the fate of nations is decided by the will of their people, Russia seems to be regenerating and bringing back the old standard, which is the standard of the 19th century which is great powers have the right to subjugate the wishes of their neighbours in order to preserve their spheres of influence. That way lies catastrophe I’m afraid but it is only diplomacy now, if we will not use force and I can’t see that that would be a sensible thing to do, which can pull us back from this and this diplomacy will only work if it is united and powerful.
You can read the full transcript here.
None of this gives much cause for optimism.
* Caron Lindsay is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings