OPINION - Anne McElvoy: The risk of a Russian war with Ukraine is high — and we’ll all suffer

The stand-off between Russia and Ukraine feels eerily familiar to me. Posted to Moscow after years covering the collapse of East Germany and the carnage of Yugoslavia’s collapse, I was relieved to settle into Moscow — imagining a life charting the vast and fascinating territory.

Hubris, of course. Diplomatic high politics turned out to be a fraction of the job. My colleagues and I ended up covering the many conflicts that flared up as Soviet power shrivelled — in Tajikistan, Ossetia, Georgia and luckless civilians caught between ruthless local mafia and merciless Russian bombardments in the horrors of the Chechnya conflict. It revived the idea in Moscow that Russia, weakened by the collapse of the USSR, could salvage some of its Soviet glory if it exported force and established rights to set terms for its neighbours.

The same playbook was repeated in the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. One thing I can say after decades of watching former Communist intelligence services is that the backdrop and technologies change, but the strategies remain remarkably similar. All of these conflicts are really about upholding the claim of Vladimir Putin to dictate terms outside Russia’s borders and the significance of that in the central story he has created to sustain his rule.

Along the way, awkward facts are diluted into mythologies. One that has taken hold is that Nato aspirations of Ukraine are an imposition (or even an attempt at “encirclement” by the West). But really, that was the deal in 1990 —there never was an exclusion of neighbouring countries’ security arrangements. The only question is the strategic wisdom of doing so and what kind of security architecture will bring us all the greatest stability in the 21st century. But believing in simple solutions is also culpably naive. It is a trap into which the now-ousted German navy chief fell when he indulged in a bout of geopolitical myopia, recently claiming that the Russia tensions could simply be eased by granting its strongman “respect”.

This would be wonderful if true, but respect cannot be achieved by threat. None of us who stubbornly love Russia relish the revival of war drums. I too would like the “diplomatic solution” but that assumes that the request could be granted and have clear limits. One side massing troops on the border of another country is hardly the art of diplomacy at its most convincing.

I say all of this fully aware that Russia is a great country which deserves respect for its diversity and culture. My ongoing struggles with its mesmeric language are a labour of love and tussle with its grammatical convolutions. Russia offers so much to enrich the world — but the demanded “spheres of influence” its current overlord seeks cannot not be agreed or sustained without quelling the sovereignty of a large number of countries and accepting a random and shifting recipe for threatened invasions, mass cyber attacks, election meddling and assassinations of opponents. The never-ending nearly-wars of the 2000s replace the brittle certainties of the Cold War. There never would be enough concessions because the real line of attack here is on a weakened and self-doubting West.

And Putin has been undeniably shrewd in commanding the tactical fields of play — and the decision of the US and UK to pull out embassy staff looks precipitous. By chance, I bumped into a female Swiss diplomat who had “stuck it out”, as she put it modestly, in the diplomatic mission in Chechnya in the worst of the fighting — moving into a neighbouring cellar when her mission was too dangerous to remain in. A witness to history.

It’s true, whether embassy staff go or stay is symbolic. But the symbolism of leaving feels very wrong today. Whatever the next moves, the risk of war is high and beyond the undoubted casualties on both sides, its weapons will be economic (more sanctions), more energy and commodity price rises and an ongoing campaign to unsettle the West. The region is already shaken by the Trump presidency, Europe’s petty divisions and a narrowing national focus of the democratic world’s leaders. Some 30 years after the Soviet flag was lowered, this is not so much the return of the Cold War as the grim prospect of a nearly-war with ramifications from Lviv to London.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at The Economist

What do you think the consequences of a war between Russia and Ukraine would be? Let us know in the comments below.