By Basil Okoh
(As a kid, my grandmother taught me unforgettable lessons in fighting bullies, one of which was that every implement within reach is a valid weapon of warfare. Fighting does not have rules and is different from playing. After you win the fight, blames and the settlements can begin.)
It is not often that the fate of a country is determined by the sagacity of its leader. Bravery in the face of adversity is usually rewarded by Providence to men of valour. So it was for Menelik II against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1896 to defend against Italian colonialism.
Volodymyr Zelensky is a brave man and his astute leadership in the face of a brutal invasion by the second most powerful military power in the world has elicited admiration and praise. His army’s resistance of the massive assault has helped reinforce the present perception of Ukraine as a notable military power in the world and demonstrated the prime of place of technology in the warfare of the 21st century.
Zelensky’s persuasive communications skills in corralling world opinion for the Ukrainian cause has resonated both in the battlefields of Donetsk and Donbas and in the conference halls across the world as Zelensky pricks consciences as his speeches travel the world, pleading the cause of Ukraine and seeking support and donations from its leaders.
Ukraine has held the Russia forces in three years of brutal warfare, inflicting more than 800, 0000 casualties on Russia and slaying more than a thousand soldiers daily until Donald Trump stepped in on the side of Russia. The rude shock of America’s volte face has demoralized the Ukrainian leadership, as Trump brings a transactional diplomacy in the matter, wringing Ukraine of its mineral wealth.
Ukraine and the entire Europe is now adrift as Donald Trump takes sides with the aggressor Russia and it’s authoritarian president Vladimir Putin. The survival of Ukraine as an independent nation now rests on the leadership astuteness and negotiating skills of Zelensky and the Ukrainian leadership, leveraging on the tenacity of their forces in the battle fields. It also rests on the strong commitment of European nations to contain the imperial ambitions of Putin and Russia. The future of Ukraine and then of Europe hangs in the balance, reminding all of us of the feverish but fruitless diplomacy of Europe of 1939. Europe must dig deep to find the will to stop another overreaching dictator this time. Europe must find answers to Russia’s existential challenge to it’s peaceful existence.
It is alright to negotiate ceasefires and try to find diplomatic settlements to the territorial ambitions of Russia, now backed by president Trump, but Russian aggression will not end with a ceasefire, no matter how much territory Ukraine concedes or how favourable the terms of truce are to Russia. So, Ukraine must dig deep to dredge up solutions to sustain its independence from Russia aggression. That solution must come from within its people and territory. The tenacity of Ukrainian fighting forces and the enduring responses from Ukraine’s leadership to contain Russia’s unceasing aggression will provide the only security guarantees that Russia will respect. Russia won’t go away from Ukrainian borders and Russia won’t cease its aggression in Ukraine except if there’s a guarantee of deep retaliatory hurt from Ukraine for any Russian recalcitrance.
Conventional weapons may no longer be enough to deter Russia and overcome the treacheries of Donald Trump. Ukraine must go beyond the pale to find new survival tools to stand up to Russias annexation plans, particularly now that Trump has sided with Putin in a not so subtle collaboration.
The balance of military power today suggest that Russia no longer has the conventional military capacity to overrun Ukraine. The speedy advancement by Ukraine in the mastery and acquisition of military technology, particularly in unmanned systems; in the Black Sea, UAV’s and unmanned ground attack weapons means that Russia will pay dearly, far more than it can possibly afford in men and equipment, for any rascal move to Western Ukraine.
Ukraine needs to have ambition and acquire the ultimate weapon to guarantee its own survival. Nuclear technology will be the only guarantee that can offer Ukraine the security cover it needs so badly to check Russian aggression. America cannot be trusted to provide security guarantees to Ukraine and neither can fractured Europe be able to do that. The security of Ukraine will have to come from within Ukraine itself, not from anyone outside Ukraine.
In 1994, America gave security guarantees which made Ukraine give up the nuclear arsenal in it’s territory after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The US was pursuing its interests and working to avoid a proliferation of nuclear weapons across the emergent republics of the crumbled Soviet Union.
But when Russia got frustrated with the advancements of NATO into the break away Soviet Republics, threatening to encircle Russia and fearing it could no longer keep Ukraine under its sphere of influence, it invaded Eastern Ukraine in 2014, taking the Donetsk and Donbass regions, without as much as a whimper from the Obama administration. The incapacity of the US to enforce or uphold its security guarantees to Ukraine emboldened Russia to again take Crimea in 2014 and to embark on a misadventure to take all of Ukraine in 2022.
As it stands now, neither the full complement of NATO nor the US government can offer Ukraine any satisfactory security guarantees without a consideration of other geopolitical issues surrounding the European contestations with Russia. Ukraine must grow the stubborn will and secrecy to burgeon a nuclear industry that will stand as a bulwark against Russia invasion, just as Pakistan did against India.
If Ukraine must continue to exist as an independent country, it must find its own way of removing the overhanging nuclear threat from Russia by providing similar weapons to deter Putin’s aggression. There has to be a counterforce offering protection from Ukraine’s own nuclear arsenal. Ukraine cannot guarantee the loyalty of its friends forever as America has just shown.
@basilokoh.
