Viswanathan K's Thoughts

If the US had such a powerful non-military weapon (secondary sanctions and mafia diplomacy), why didn’t they use it when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – the “first” Ukraine “war”?   Multiple reasons, explains says Jordan Schneider’s interview with Eddie Fishman. (1) It happened suddenly and without warning. The Americans were caught unawares, and thus had no strategy in place on how to react. They found themselves continuously reacting to events on the ground. (2) Russia was (is) a huge economy and the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, so the cascading effects of crippling the Russian economy were too risky. (3) The world was still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, and Obama wasn’t sure if it was safe to rock the world’s economic boat. (4) Europe was entirely dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. “(The West) don’t know what kind of sanctions are tolerable to their own economies.” (5) Neither the US nor the EU was willing to risk all-out economic ...

Donald Trump is fickle on so many things (Ukraine started the war; no, no, Russia started it). But he does seem to be consistent on doing what he thinks is best for America. His policies may or may not achieve his intent, I am only referring to the underlying theme.   Why should America pay for others is a consistent theme of Trump’s, even from his last stint. Each time he harps on that, it is Europe that is maximally impacted. After all, the EU had happily outsourced its military security to the US. Now if the US either doesn’t want to be the protector and/or demands the EU pay more for security, it is Europe that is impacted either way.   Unsurprisingly, the old guard in NATO, both American and European, hates this. You can make out they are all old because they will refer to World War II, the Normandy landing, and the Cold War. It still doesn’t strike them that all those wars, cold or hot, ended decades back… They are living in the past.   Trump’s stance o...

Why does America have such a long period (2 months) before the winner of an election takes over as the President? No other democracy has such a ridiculously long transition period. This could be dismissed as an American quirk, except when you see what has happened in the Ukraine war since Trump won.   Biden gave Ukraine the “green light for Ukraine to strike Russia with US-made long-range missiles”. This is very dangerous for obvious reasons. How would Russia respond if an American missile launched by Ukraine hit deep inside Russia? Will UK and France follow (or be forced to follow) the American policy and authorize Ukraine to use their missiles to hit inside Russia? Would Russia decide to strike a European manufacturer of missiles in such a scenario? Would NATO then be forced to declare war on Russia? Would nukes come into play?   You’d think Biden’s team would cite a good reason why they have set things off on such a dangerous and unpredictable trajectory when he is...

As the Ukraine war completes its first year, Andrew Sullivan’s article asks the pragmatic question: “It (the war) is indeed right and just. But is it prudent?” Ironically though, both sides (West and Russia) believe the war is “right and just”. Russia views a Ukraine that joins NATO as an unacceptable, existential risk. The West considers the invasion of a European country as unacceptable.   Sullivan wonders about the wisdom or folly of Biden’s declaration that Ukraine “must triumph”. Won’t any attempt to retake all of Ukraine, he asks, inevitably mean the war will spill over into “Russia proper at some point”? “My worry is that the West is committing itself to an end-goal — the full liberation of all of Ukraine — that no Russian government could accept, without regime change in Moscow itself. Which means, as Biden’s gaffes sometimes reveal, that this is ineluctably a war for regime change in a nuclear-armed country — which is an extremely hazardous enterprise. It’s righ...

This blog is a view on a group of assorted events related to or triggered to by the ongoing Ukraine war. There is no unifying thread to these observations.   ~~   The New York Times wrote that as Russia is dragged deeper than planned in Ukraine, their ability to keep the peace in some of the older parts of the Soviet Union has decreased – this includes both Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan etc), as well as the Caucasian side (Armenia, Azerbaijan   etc). With Moscow tied down in Ukraine, skirmishes and even war has broken out among various pairs of these countries. Yes, I know, those wars don’t make the news, while Ukraine hogs all the space –only wars that affect the West make the news…   In this setup, China has started to step into Central Asia as the peacemaker/ peacekeeper. After all, the Belt and Road projects extend into many of those countries. Whether China is doing a stop gap job until Russia is back, only time can tell.   In the Ca...

Was Putin serious when he threatened the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in the Ukraine war? (In case you wondered, a “strategic” nuclear weapon is long range – intercontinental – and usually with far more destructive power, whereas a “tactical” one is short range and with lesser power. But even a tactical one is more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima).   It's impossible to know for sure, obviously. As an Indian who has heard periodic threats of various Pakistanis at various rungs of their government and military on exactly this topic, I don’t remember anyone losing any sleep over such threats. But in this case, it is the US which has to decide whether to take the threat seriously, not India.   Is Putin getting desperate enough to actually thinking of using one? Or is he just bluffing, as a way to force NATO to consider if Ukraine is worth the risk of setting off a nuclear war? On the other side, remember how Trump had trashed the Europeans over NATO – he acc...

It’s hard to know what the status of the Ukraine war is. Western publications will always say Russia is failing, that the Ukrainians have done remarkably well. More problematically, some things are true, but the extent of their impact is harder to gauge. Yes, the Russian army is suffering losses, but what is their morale? How would you or I know the answer to that, if all we read are Western outlets? Yes, there is Western sanctions induced chip shortage in Russia, but how badly does it affect the Russian army and the Russian public? Is it swaying Russian opinion against the war? Or is it uniting them against the West?   That is why I liked Andrew Sullivan’s article, which analyzes the impact on both Russia and Europe. Just because Russia isn’t winning doesn’t mean that Europe is winning. There are other options – stalemate, and ruinous costs on both sides.   Large parts of Europe, including Germany, were heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas. With Russia having tur...

The Ukraine war is one of the very few things on which the Left and the Right in India seem to agree – it is the West’s fault, both sides feel. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, not only did NATO continue to exist, it even set about expanding and absorbing the ex-communist states. How long could Russia tolerate NATO’s expansion, goes the thinking, even as it was inching closer and closer to Russia’s doorstep?   Has this become a pivotal moment? The moment when Indian public opinion starts to get increasingly critical of more and more aspects of American foreign policy? The thought occurred as I was reading R Prasannan’s scathing commentary on the passing away of US Foreign Minister-equivalent from Clinton’s era, Madeleine Albright. The article starts off guns blazing: “Madeline Albright passed away, unmourned in India. No surprise. No American has hurt us more than she did, save Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who sent nuclear war...

Why is Ukraine so important to Putin and Russia? There are several reasons.   One, Crimea (in Ukraine) is the only port that the Russians have that remains unfrozen all year around. Imagine having a navy that can’t go to war because, hey, winter is here! That makes Crimea indispensable to Russia. I wrote about it the last time Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014: “The EU had been wooing an in-dire-economic-straits Ukraine for some time to come into their orbit. Just when it looked Ukraine would say Yes (and Russia would lose access to the Crimean naval bases), Putin got the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, to back off. A revolution followed, Yanukovych was overthrown and Ukraine seemed to be slipping away. And that is when Putin moved in with his military might.”   Two, Russia has fretted and fumed in impotence even has NATO expanded eastwards after the Cold War, taking more and more eastern European countries under its wing. NATO in Ukraine is simply unacceptable...

Sometimes, evil geniuses can be impressive. Very impressive. Like Lord Voldemort. A great (albeit evil) wizard, the man wasn’t just brute force. He could manipulate others into doing his work, he could improvise, he could use guile and cunning…And now I found a real life guy for that role: Vladimir Putin. For starters, just see why the man is even Russia’s President today. The Russian constitution (yes, they have one) says nobody can be President for more than 2 successive terms. Putin realized the keyword there was “successive”: so he served 2 successive terms, then made Medvedev his proxy for the next term, and now is back in power! How’s that for exploiting a loophole? And just see how Putin has handled the Ukraine/Crimean crisis. The EU had been wooing an in-dire-economic-straits Ukraine for some time to come into their orbit. Just when it looked Ukraine would say Yes (and Russia would lose access to the Crimean naval bases), Putin got the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanu...

As the start of Euro 2012 draws near, the BBC showed a documentary with details of the extent of racism and support of neo-fascism and non-Nazism among the football fans in the two host countries, Poland and Ukraine. But wouldn’t stadium security and the cops prevent such incidents? Not necessarily. As in most non-Western countries, when the violence happens, in these two countries, the police sit back and let things happen. Things have reached a point where many non-white players from the participating countries feel it safer to not call their relatives to cheer them on from the stadiums. Why then were these two eastern European countries picked as the hosts for the Euro Cup? Turns out the European football governing body did know of these risks, but decided to go ahead anyway. Why? Partly, it was the usual “let’s bring eastern Europe to the fold” reason. Another was political correctness. Bad choice: sometimes, one just has to call a spade a spade. Being blunt was something Obama ...