Banks against tanks strategy
AFTER the end of two devastating world wars, America along with its allies, established global legal order with the sole purpose to maintain peace and security.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has undermined the foundations of that post-world war-II legal framework that prohibits the use of force against territorial integrity and political independence of states.
Putin’s war of choice triggered a wave of anger across Europe and the world at large. Global leaders denounced Russian aggression and vowed to respond to this act of war with determination, composure and unity.
European leaders vowed to retaliate with an unprecedented level of sanctions and embedded strategy based on diplomatic and security elements.
Russia, under President Putin, considers the expansion of NATO as a direct threat to its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
The Russians have accused NATO of threatening their future and launching active military build-up on territories adjacent to Russia.
To cope with this, they coined their military adventure as “special military operation” aimed at ensuring Ukraine’s neutral status by ending its desire to formally join western defence alliance NATO.
Russia is now actively pursuing its goal of seizing eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and is creating a land corridor along the south coast from Crimea to the Russian border.
In recent weeks, conflict has favoured Russia because of its huge edge in terms of conventional firepower, especially in artillery, but still they are far away from achieving their objective due to tactical maneuvers by the Ukrainian military and undeniably brave resistance from the people of Ukraine.
The Russian military operation against Ukraine prompted a strong unified response from the European leadership in the form of targeted sanctions to weaken Russia’s economic base and by blocking their access to key markets and technologies.
The Ukrainian leadership demanded that sanctions need to go further to stop Russia’s aggression through an oil embargo, freezing Russian assets in the EU and blocking the access of Russian banks to the European financial market.
In short, it is a banks against tanks strategy. The leadership in Ukraine stressed upon the need that the Russian assets that are scattered in different jurisdictions must be found, have to be seized or frozen and then they should be allocated to a special fund that would be used to help all those affected by the war.
The Russian actions triggered different stages of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and the situation is worse and volatile the closer you go to Russia.
The Russian offensive forced around 20 million people to change their location, 5 million people had left the country, 7 million people are internally displaced and the war has claimed scores of lives on both sides.
These innocent people are the real victims; they bear the brunt of ugly geo-political ambitions of the great powers.
The war in Ukraine revealed that it is a subset of broader regional geo-political agenda based on deep-rooted ideological bias.
Putin’s war and western response to safeguard democratic values has entirely changed the geopolitical outlook of European affairs.
The Ukraine war is both a failure of diplomacy and collapse of the European security architecture.
Europe believes that if Putin manages to redraw borders then it is an invitation for others to do it as well and that is a threat to rules based order, EU, transatlantic allies and democracy.
They reiterated their resolve that they won’t allow Russia a return to a world order in which strength dictates.
They vowed to turn Putin’s aggression into a strategic failure by scaling up their efforts through different means.
They took many unprecedented decisions to quell the Russian ability to take higher risks and to limit the scope of war.
Europe has proven to be extremely united over their stance that Ukraine is fighting for all and they must win this war.
To support Ukraine, Europe took a principled decision along with the US to provide heavy weapons.
The US has passed a $40 billion dollar bill for military aid and support for humanitarian causes.
Other than that, Germany for the first time ever is supplying arms to a war zone including heavy weapons to strengthen Ukraine’s defences.
The EU also proposed a 10 billion Euros macro-financial assistance and it is important to mention here that it is the largest package of macro-financial assistance ever conceived by the EU for a third country.
The EU also focused on the reconstruction of the Ukraine through massive investment combined with ambitious reforms to modernize administrative capacity to establish rule of law, independence of judiciary, fight corruption and last but not the least to build a fair sustainable and strong competitive economy.
The Russian aggression has rekindled the transatlantic relationship and it has given NATO a new purpose.
Europeans reposed their confidence that NATO is the most successful alliance in the world and the bedrock of transatlantic stability.
NATO at present is trying to achieve two fundamental tasks in response to Russia’s aggression: providing maximum support to Ukraine and preventing the war from escalation.
For the first time they deployed combat early battle groups in the eastern part to increase the readiness of forces and establish new defence domains including cyber and space.
Among these important developments, the most unique one was Finland and Sweden’s decision to apply for NATO membership.
This was the direct result of Putin’s actions and has further strengthened the close bond between NATO and the EU.
The war in Ukraine has exacerbated current political fault-lines and created further divisions due to reliance on the import of key commodities like energy.
The developing countries suffered a massive blow due to increased prices of energy, food and production.
It has triggered an economic recession and affected the vulnerable and poor sections of society globally.
The prolonged conflict in Ukraine means uncomfortable consequences for the whole world. Both Russian and Ukrainian should look towards avenues of peace to end the war and the sufferings of the people.
—The writer is an Independent analyst who has previously worked with the Islamabad Security Dialogue.
