Trapped in another Cold War
This leaves Ukraine itself a war-torn battlefield; a chess-piece for world powers to use young, Eastern European men as pawns to be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics.
‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent’
- Winston Churchill’s iron curtain speech, 1946
It’s official. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its ensuing incursions into the Western-backed state since last February, Finland has joined NATO, doubling the length of the security alliance’s border with Russia.
It is a rational and highly understandable move on Finland’s part. Frequently the target of Russian aggression, and subjected to the Empire’s brutal Russification measures under the Tsar, the Scandinavian state has now secured international protection against any intimidation by Vladimir Putin.
Though this is good news for Finland, it firmly locks Western Europe into an ongoing Cold War against the Kremlin that shows no signs of abating, and furthers commit the NATO powers to fighting a proxy war in Ukraine in the hopes of weakening Russia’s military might and giving Putin a diplomatic bloody nose.
More cash, weapons, and volunteers will be funnelled to the East in support of the war effort; Finland, by association, gains a larger foothold in world affairs and, being so close to Russia, becomes showered with attention and armaments. Meanwhile, Putin has every incentive to keep the war going.
The invasion was sold to the Russian people as a ‘special operation’ to perform a ‘de-Nazification’ cleanse of Ukraine, with the ulterior and primary motive being to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO ally. A Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, the so-called Maiden Revolution, frightened Russia, and gave Putin the opportunity to retaliate by conquering Crimea, long assumed by Russia to be Russian land anyways (it was originally gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev). Furthermore, the Donbas, in Ukraine’s eastern provinces, saw Russian-backed militias fighting for control of Donetsk and Luhansk, areas which Putin has now annexed into Russia.
Ever since then, the temperature has been rising, and the media would have you believe that this war began in 2022. Regardless of when it began, both belligerents are in it for the long haul.
Russia will never back down unless it experiences another revolution, economic collapse, or a total defeat on the battlefield. On the other hand, NATO has squeezed itself into a Chinese finger trap. The only realistic way for Russia to seize all of Ukraine is through the West rescinding its supply chain, but if it does, then Russia will be the victor, and the momentum will be unleashed for Putin to place further pressure on Western Europe, and the United States will never let that happen.
This leaves Ukraine itself a war-torn battlefield; a chess-piece for world powers to use young, Eastern European men as pawns to be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics, and a crippled nation that will take generations to recover its population and infrastructure.