by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies
Every day brings new noise and fury in the crisis over Ukraine, mostly from Washington. But what is really likely to happen?
There are three possible scenarios:
The first is that Russia will suddenly launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The second is that the Ukrainian government in Kyiv will launch an escalation of its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries.
The third is that neither of these will happen, and the crisis will pass without a major escalation of the war in the short term.
So who will do what, and how will other countries respond in each case?
Unprovoked Russian invasion
This seems to be the least likely outcome.
An actual Russian invasion would unleash unpredictable and cascading consequences that could escalate quickly, leading to mass civilian casualties, a new refugee crisis in Europe, war between Russia and NATO, or even nuclear war.
If Russia wanted to annex the DPR and LPR, it could have done so amid the crisis that followed the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. Russia already faced a furious Western response over its annexation of Crimea, so the international cost of annexing the DPR and LPR, which were also asking to rejoin Russia, would have been less then than it would be now.
Russia instead adopted a carefully calculated position in which it gave the Republics only covert military and political support. If Russia was really ready to risk so much more now than in 2014, that would be a dreadful reflection of just how far U.S.-Russian relations have sunk.
If Russia does launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine or annex the DPR and LPR, Biden has already said that the United States and NATO would not directly fight a war with Russia over Ukraine, although that promise could be severely tested by the hawks in Congress and a media hellbent on stirring up anti-Russia hysteria.
However, the United States and its allies would definitely impose heavy new sanctions on Russia, cementing the Cold War economic and political division of the world between the United States and its allies on one hand, and Russia, China and their allies on the other. Biden would achieve the full-blown Cold War that successive U.S. administrations have been cooking up for a decade, and which seems to be the unstated purpose of this manufactured crisis.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
