India must work for direct dialogue between Biden and Putin to end the Ukraine war

The Ukraine war brings into light once again the irrelevance of the UN charter and all the noble principles and values that powerful states swear by in their conduct of international and state-to-state relations and how they are sacrificed at the altar of their self-perceived national interests and security. Right or wrong, powerful states can present their narratives in a manner that can justify their invasion of a weaker country and can get away. The US has done it in Iraq in the past, and now the Russians are doing it in Ukraine. The US called Sadaam Hussein an abominable dictator with his WMD posing a threat to the regional security and the Russians calling the regime in Kyiv neo-Nazis and drug addicts who must be overthrown even at the cost of pulverizing the country with rockets and missile carpet bombing.

The victims are always innocent people including women and children. When two elephants fight with each other, it is the grass that suffers, so the saying goes. Behind the intensification of the conflict and the cause of war lies Western obsession with Russia trying to expand its empire and restore the past glory of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and President Putin’s determined mission to retain its dignity as a major super power in the face of the Western design to reduce it to an insignificant country by incorporating one after another the old Warsaw Pact countries into the fold of NATO, on the other. Russians feel betrayed by the West in reneging on their assurance not to expand NATO to its borders and wants Ukraine to be a buffer state between it and NATO.

By the same logic, however, Russians can also be blamed for reneging its own assurances to Ukraine in 1994 to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity when the latter surrendered its nuclear weapons. Surely, if Ukraine had retained its nuclear weapons, Russians would not have dared to invade the country as it is doing today. Incidentally, the plight of Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion might impress upon some of the aspiring countries the importance of nuclear weapons for their security and hasten the process of further proliferation.

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