Somehow, Macron’s attempt to negotiate a
balanced way out of the current war scare between the West and Russia over
Ukraine is supposed to resemble Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of
Nazi Germany. That accusation implies both moral and political failure because
the consensus on the historical appeasement of Nazi Germany by, mostly, Great
Britain is that it was a crime as well as a mistake. Selling out interwar
Czechoslovakia to the Nazis was not only evil but also worse than useless.
Instead of ending Germany’s drive to war, the sacrifice only emboldened and
helped the Nazis.
No wonder such a fiasco looks like an
attractive cudgel to deploy against leaders whose policies you don’t like, at
all. Yet there is a problem: the current crisis between Russia and the West
does not resemble the last years before World War II and Macron is not remotely
an appeaser.
Whatever strident commentators like Tim
Snyder, Francis Fukuyama, and Anne Applebaum may have been telling us, Russia
is not, actually, in pursuit of either a new or re-constituted empire
(neo-Soviet or otherwise), it is not hell-bent on “revenge” for
losing the Cold War, and it has no grand plan to destroy or cripple the European
Union or the West in general.
Make no mistake, there is no doubt that
Russia is challenging the West. Yet it is crucial to finally let go of
misleading analogies that play well to audiences steeped in movies about Nazis and understand the actual nature of that challenge.
What
Russia wants is to stop endless NATO expansion and, in particular, neutralize
Ukraine. The upshot of Moscow’s strategy is, in one word, a sphere of security
interest. As spheres go, its projected size is, actually, quite modest: Moscow
does not aim at getting the Warsaw Pact, its former military alliance in
Eastern Europe back. It also does not try to regain domination over all former
Soviet republics west of Russia. What it does insist on is that, as a minimum,
neither Belarus nor Ukraine join the West, either formally or informally.
You may
disagree with these aims for any number of reasons. But you may not
misrepresent them, explicitly or implicitly, as the analogy of Hitler’s aims:
building a racist empire on massive conquest, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Nothing here matches remotely. And by using that false analogy for rhetorical
effect, you disrespect the victims of Nazism, intentionally or not.
But back
to Macron. Here is a Western politician who has been clear about his demands on
Moscow and France’s solidarity with the West in general and NATO in general. He
has not given the slightest evidence of wanting to sell out the security of the
West or, in fact, Ukraine.
What he
has done is two things: First, he has insisted on the simple fact that the
interests of the European NATO members do not always align with those of the
USA and that therefore Europe needs its own dialogue with Moscow. Banal really,
yet somehow heresy for all too many. Second, he has had the temerity to also make
demands, mostly tacitly, of the Ukrainian leadership. And that, his second sin,
is what has triggered the most bizarre attacks on him.
To
understand why, just look at the latest meeting of Russian and Ukrainian
representatives in the Normandy Format sponsored by France and Germany, this
time in Berlin. It was a failure. After nine hours of talks, there have been no
results promising any change to the deadlocked status quo.
That’s no wonder really: once you
carefully follow not only Ukrainian policies but also open statements from
politicians on talk shows and by the general commentariat, you know that there
is no real intention to ever implement the Minsk agreements. Instead, by now
Ukrainians say clearly and repeatedly that they consider the agreements
disadvantageous and a result of Russian pressure so that they have a de facto
right to block them by any means. Kiev’s strategy is not only obvious in its
actions now but quite explicit – to take as much Western support as Ukraine can
mobilize while stalling on Minsk.
From Kiev’s point of view, you could
understand this policy of openly declared bad faith as motivated by both
populist politics and national interest, even if misconceived and
short-sighted. But even if you cut the Ukrainian elites some slack here, there
can be no doubt that this approach should be a massive problem for their
Western partners and supporters. In essence, Ukraine refuses to implement the
only existing plan to end the crisis that began in 2013/2014, while the West
pays for this strategy of obstruction by ongoing and growing massive economic
and military aid, and, last but not least, by taking irresponsible risks with
its own security. And if you are German, you also get Ukrainian insults and
Nazi comparisons into the bargain, just to sweeten the deal, it seems.
Yet at this point, there is only one
significant player in the West who shows any capacity and will to challenge
this perverse situation: France under Macron. This challenge is at the core of
his recent initiatives, from a key speech before the EU parliament to his
recent flurry of high-level meetings. Though by no means “soft” on
Moscow, Macron is also no fool with regard to Ukraine. He is open about his
expectation that to strike a compromise, Kiev as well must make real concessions
and cannot get everything it wants. And that is the true reason for his
vilification as an appeaser. What we are really seeing here is not a rerun of
1938, but an abuse of the memory of Nazism to slander a reasonable and fair
initiative.
If you call Macron “Chamberlain,” if
you can’t let go of shouting “Munich” every time anyone dares
speak with Russia’s leadership, you demonstrate one of two things: ignorance or
demagoguery.
Written by: Tarik Cyril Amar,
a historian from Germany at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia,
Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold
War, and the politics of memory.
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