Can NATO rely on the lessons of the Cold War to shape its strategy against Russia? The duty wanted to weigh the new geostrategic imperatives introduced by the war in Ukraine with Professor Jane Boulden, holder of the research chair in international relations and security studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will address the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on Tuesday. He will certainly ask for more help from Canada. What should the Trudeau government respond to?
I would recommend restraint on airspace protection (no fly zone) from Ukraine. The risk is so high. Obviously, this is a heartbreaking situation. Ukraine is suffering. There is no doubt. Nor is there any doubt that Western restraint is adding to Ukrainian suffering. However, it is in the very nature of the nuclear world to impose this restraint. We cannot risk this further step, this direct engagement with Russia, because the risk of an escalation to atomic war is real. One of my colleagues says it well: if we are wrong, we will all die. The statement is powerful, but it remains within the realm of the possible.
How do you yourself qualify the attacks launched by Russia in Ukraine?
The question of defining what happens is important. It seems obvious, but it’s not. Until the Second World War, the reality of war was clear, despite some gray areas. Until then, one state formally declared war on another, and hostilities followed. This is no longer the case. After 1945, it became increasingly difficult to define what war was exactly. By contrast, the situation in Ukraine fits the traditional way of thinking about it: one state has crossed another’s border militarily using violence to achieve its goals vis-à-vis the invaded state. And even there, there are still shadows. From Putin’s perspective, Russia is not invading a separate state, but that view is completely opposite to that of the rest of the world. From the perspective of the international community, the laws of state behavior, not only in the event of conflict, but in general, rest entirely on the notion of state sovereignty. Two elements relate to it. First, the idea that a government has authority over everything that happens within its state, then the idea that this sovereignty is recognized by all other states. In short, in Ukraine, it is indeed a classic interstate conflict.
How does this “old-fashioned” conflict will it change the defense sector of Canadian society?
We are already measuring the effects. I think military spending will increase and our involvement in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) will increase with the deployment of troops in Europe. We already have them in place in Latvia and we are committed to increasing them. We will also see other forms of engagement within the alliance. This increased involvement in NATO cannot happen overnight. It will take time to get there.
The cover of the magazine The Economist speaks of the “Stalinization of Russia”. So we go back several decades?
Yes I think so. Moreover, no matter how this tragedy will end for Ukraine, this event indicates that we have entered a new world of relations with Russia. The effects will last for years. We are back to a situation similar to that which prevailed during the Cold War. One must also ask whether the situation stems from the vision of one man, Vladimir Putin, or whether it depends on a perspective shared by Russian elites in general.
So has NATO failed in its post-Soviet reconversion? Has the West been too conciliatory towards Russia?
I wouldn’t put it that way. Perhaps we did not read the signs correctly. In 2008, when Ukraine applied to join NATO, Putin immediately declared that it would be a step too far for Russia. So I would say that we did not understand enough how strongly this problem mattered to him. In addition to misreading the signals, we have not prepared for the possibility of what is happening now. Russia therefore took advantage of our attitude. Several analysts believed that Putin would be satisfied to claim the secessionist republics of Donbass by creating a corridor to Crimea. So why has he now chosen to go to war to take all of Ukraine? It is very difficult to understand what is in the head of a dictator. There is a difference to be made between not wanting NATO on its border and wanting to recreate the Soviet Union. These two objectives are related, but different.
French President Emmanuel Macron judged in November 2019 that NATO was “brain dead”. President Trump thought none the less. Strategists have announced that the axis of the world is shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific. How will the conflict in Ukraine affect global geostrategy?
China can no longer be taken out of global geostrategy. But the role of this new power and the relations with it still remain unpredictable. China is now a very different country from that of the Cold War era in terms of its place in the world and its interconnection in the global network. China wants to be seen as a good global citizen, and by that I don’t mean that this country is going to behave according to our standards, not at all. But China does not want to become what Putin now represents, which is an international pariah.
Do the fears of the use of unconventional chemical or biological weapons by this pariah seem justified to you?
If Putin feels frustrated with the course of the war—and there are signs of that frustration—he may well go that route. It’s risky. These weapons are difficult to control, his own troops could be hit, and the effects could cross borders and stimulate aftershocks. That said, this war already violates some principles of traditional warfare. The laws of war require that civilian buildings, hospitals, and humanitarian equipment not be intentionally targeted. On the other hand, the methods of cyber warfare are not used when one would have expected the contrary, for example to flatten the electrical network of the country or target objectives in European or North American countries.