Hans Kundnani, director of the Europe program at Chatham House, a British think tank, warns us about going “too far” in our opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He says the West’s “earlier inaction has exacted a heavy price,” but sees its current reaction as “dangerous” “overcompensat[ion]”.
He first aims to establish his bona fides as “neither a pacifist nor someone who equivocates about authoritarian states”. He then complains of being “out-hawked,” and argues—while Russian shrapnel tears through Ukrainians—for “de-escalation and ways out rather than further commitments to Ukraine and regime change in Russia”.
What does “de-escalation” mean? Russia invaded; it’s for Russia to un-invade and restore the status quo ante. Kundnani offers no evidence that suggests Russia has any intention other than Ukraine’s surrender and subjugation by Russia. Who, then, is to “de-escalate”? Does he mean that the West do a U-turn on sanctions?
If the West did so, Moscow would immediately deem this an admission that its “special military operation” in Ukraine is a justified response to a legitimate Russian national security concern. Assuming Ukrainians continued to fight, Russia would expand the scope of the destruction it is inflicting on Ukraine.
He’s right enough on the need for Western leaders to think carefully about “further commitments to Ukraine, given that an ongoing war’s miseries would have to be endured by Ukrainians alone. Whether the West is right to induce in Ukrainians a belief in an unlikely positive outcome is indeed a moral question to be considered.
More curious is Kundnani’s fact-free assertion about “further commitments … to regime change in Russia”. Which Western government has committed to a policy of regime change in Russia? That the West and Ukraine want to see Putin gone is not the same as pursuing a policy to change Russia’s government.
“The [West’s] aim must be to do all [it] can to avoid a further escalation (while taking seriously the possibility that Putin may himself escalate …) and to end the war. How does Kundnani propose for this to happen, given it takes two to end a war? If he believes Ukraine should surrender, he should say so clearly.
His concern is that “experts … are urging all kinds of economic, political and military steps whose consequences … have the potential to drag NATO into a war with Russia”. Well, yes, there always is the potential that a war expands. But that still doesn’t tell us what the West should do unless, of course, the answer is to accede to Russian demands.
Kundnani cites Nicholas Multer, an expert on sanctions: “How in no time the west has gone from targeted sanctions to financial war against the post-Soviet economic space, without unified aims nor clear conditions for lifting restrictions, all while an impetuous nuclear-armed tyrant is waging a war of aggression, is quite terrifying”.
Mulder confirms the limits of the academy’s usefulness to real life. He imposes on the West the duty to give Russia a roadmap “for lifting restrictions,” as if it were a mystery what’s required of Russia: cessation of hostilities in and withdrawal from Ukraine. If he wants to call sanctions a “financial war” (vs. a “special economic operation”?) so be it.
Kundnani struggles to “avoid the feeling that what is happening is overcompensation. [The West is] feeling guilty about [its] mistakes … Germany’s persistent dependence on Russian gas, [and] the UK’s persistent failure to deal with Russian money laundering”. Unpersuasive psychoanalysis aside, without these mistakes, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine?
He also points a finger at Americans and Britons for “increasingly framing international politics as a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism”. If memory serves, it has been Putin and Xi who “framed” international politics in terms of democracy’s fading appeal and limited usefulness. Besides, it has always been thus.
Kundnani alleges that “many experts now sense the possibility of finally removing Putin from power. For some in the Biden administration, this is revenge for Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election”. As if straight out of a joint Republican/Russian disinformation exercise, he provides no fact to support the claim.
He mocks EU efforts to assert a common geopolitical position, accusing it of being “hyperactive” with sanctions against Russia and weapons for Ukraine. And he rejects von der Leyen’s characterization of the Russia’s invasion and the EU’s response as part of a “wider tendency … to frame his conflict in civilizational terms”.
He even argues that India has not condemned Russia’s invasion because it has been framed this way. This conveniently ignores the decades-long relationship through which Russia has supplier military hardware to India. It is fanciful to believe that India’s position on Ukraine is driven by how EU leaders characterize the conflict.
Kundnani—and others who think like him—have a choice: see Russia’s invasion as a betrayal of Western values or as an affirmation of the traditional model where national borders and sovereignty are subservient to the whims of a greater power. It’s absurd, though, to argue that standing up for the former is “recklessness”.
