The Ukraine crisis has certainly got the world on a fear frenzy, as though it summoned the phantom of the ‘thirteen days’ of October 1962 (i.e. the Cuban Missile Crisis). But the Ukrainian standoff differs fundamentally from that of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is not a mere swap of positions between the United States and Russia. After all, 228 miles separate Havana from Miami. Whereas, Ukraine shares immediate border line with Russia. Furthermore, Cuba was a communist country at the time anyways; and had never constituted an integral component of the American or Western national character—much less, historical identity.
Thursday morning, February 18, 2022, witnessed several shelling incidents, carried out by separatist forces in the Donbas region; whereby a kindergarten was hit (Harding, et al.). The emotional appeal of the story is vividly apparent. Nevertheless, the inference that those attacks are ‘presage for an imminent Russian invasion’ is utter nonsense, as it stands. But the ongoing groundless Western monotonous narrative that an imminent Russian invasion is certain, would hold onto a straw in the middle of the ocean in hopes of floating. Separatists in the Donbas have been carrying out similar attacks for years now; and, this incident is no outlier from their protracted feud with Ukrainian authorities. To establish a sequential correlation thence, solely based on their coinciding with the current Russian-Ukrainian standoff, is an easily refutable and feeble reasoning at best.
The pressing question at present is: How to filter through all the noise and understand what is really going on?
The official narratives coming from both sides are the following: The West accuses Russia of concealing the true nature of its military build-up on Ukraine’s border, which convolutely entails an ignoble stratagem to invade neighboring Ukraine; meanwhile, Russia accuses the West of a chronic and ill-founded Russophobia, a persistent disregard to Russia’s strategic security interests, and consistent anti-Russia behavior.
Notably, the dominant sentiment underlying the two contending accusations is fear—and, the great peril lies in every inch of the path it projects. Yet we know that fear is neither for nought, nor does it emanate out of nothingness. In other words, it is not exempt from that universal law and oldest maxim of philosophy: ex nihilo nihil [nothing which once was not, could ever of itself come into being. Even more precisely, nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause—sin causa].
And the efficient cause for fear is, all too often, no other than the world’s greatest evil i.e. ignorance. Alas! The sequence does not end with fear alone. For, as per Averroes’ equation (Ibn Rushd): “Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence [my formatting].” Cunning is an innate quality pertaining to this evil; which takes guise under a myriad of simulacra and hyperrealities; and, in the realm of international relations, they manifest in the form of misinformation and disinformation.
Notwithstanding, in the realm of international relations, misinformation and disinformation are not pure evil contrivances. They are common tools of clandestine intelligence operations devised to gain an advantage over, or confound, the rival or enemy in wartime—whilst, mainly to avert that graver eventuality, i.e. war, during tensions in peacetime; in the sense that some evil may be permitted for the sake of the greater good, or to prevent a much greater and abysmal one. Or, as master Leibniz (1716) put it in “Theodicy,” “An imperfection in the part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole,” (Leibniz 699). For consider the matter in medical terms: Isn’t this compromise the chief principle of vaccination and the science of homeopathy?
Before elucidating the matter further, I would like to state that I, for one, am a diehard proponent of Intelligence work; even solemnly believe that both intelligence and counterintelligence operations have constituted an indispensable lifeline to the post World War II peace till this very day. [read, “Wrongfully Vilified Peacemakers: A Case for Intelligence Indispensability for the Preservation of Peace,” and, “U.S.-Russian Exceptionalism: Intelligence, MAD, and Détente”]
With respect to the crisis in Ukraine, the antagonism transpires most fiercely in the political sphere. If one solely engages their rational mind and suspend their emotive faculties for a moment, they can’t fail to detect the overgeneralized rhetoric which the two sides have been voicing for years. Accordingly, the Ukrainian case has been manipulated to fit into the parameters of that regressive reasoning.
The attentive spectator, however, would immediately spot the footprint of intelligence all over the Ukrainian scene.
I am inclined to assign the highest level of probability to these two simultaneous assumptions:
The first assumption (the Russian intelligence operation) is: Russian intelligence apparatus is conducting a counterintelligence operation, wherein misinformation (false intelligence) is deliberately [emphasis added] passed on to the West; eo ipso leading the latter to believe that Russia is mobilizing to mount an invasion against Ukraine. Thereon, the United States and NATO would habitually launch a propaganda campaign to expose ‘Russian malice’ and ill-will (as they have been doing!); except that the invasion would not take place, because Russia in reality has no intention to undertake one; and, the military build-up is meant, in its entirety, to dissuade NATO from further enlargement eastward. Now that the United States, alongside NATO, is promulgating the imminent invasion—which would not happen [emphasis added]—Russia would have proof of the US indulging in a disinformation campaign (an accusation Russia has already made!), and hence sabotage the latter’s international credibility.
Is this plausible? Remember the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961? How did that operation go south? Wasn’t it due to the fact that, “every agent the CIA had in Cuba during the Cold War was a double agent,” (Fitzgerald and Packwood 108). One unforgettable lesson the United States should have learned from such a failure, that is: Never underestimate Russia’s penetrative intelligence capabilities! It was Gordon S. Barrass, who served as Chief of the Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office in London and a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Cabinet during the last years of the Cold War, that once remarked, “The Russians were masters of intelligence and counter-intelligence; they operated on a scale that was just beyond our comprehension [my formatting],” (Fitzgerald and Packwood 100).
If this assumption is proved correct, the United States and NATO would just have to live with the fact that they were sold a pup.
From an alternative viewpoint, the second assumption (the American/NATO intelligence operation) would be: The CIA passed to the Russians, also by means of an counter-intelligence operation via Russian spies inside NATO, or possibly Ukraine, bogus intelligence [emphasis added] that Ukraine’s accession to NATO is a fait accompli—a done deal—; and it is only a matter of time before the decision to allow Ukraine into the alliance is made public. The United States and its NATO allies are, nevertheless, well-aware that a full-scale war is as horrid to the Russians as it is to them; and, above all else, the same Russians, who “By general accounts, the Red Army suffered fifty-five times more casualties than did American forces, and inflicted ninety-three percent of German combat losses between the German invasion of Russia and the Allied invasion of France on D-Day. Counting operations in all the war theaters, the Soviet share of the total Allied effort according to Soviet estimates was about seventy-five percent,” (Fitzgerald and Packwood 21)—that is to say, Russia that rendered unparalleled sacrifices to save the world in World War II, could never take it upon itself to be responsible for the Third World War.
Hence, the United States and NATO hope that a brinksmanship of the highest level of intensification would force Russia to concede, while making no concessions on their part; in which case the current U.S. administration would boast of its manhandling President Putin (consequently gaining domestic political capital; especially during this time of economic uncertainty vis-á-vis an ever-growing inflation [emphasis added]), reassuring its allies of its ability to contain and dwindle any threat coming from Russia—its arch-rival.
In short, if either or both assumptions are the true substrata of how events are unfolding and developing in the Ukrainian scene; in such a delicate and heightened brinksmanship, that is; the great hazard is one and the same as that which pertained to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962: That a simple miscalculation, for ‘pride or face,’ might plunge the world into another ungodly world war.
Related Publications: “A Lesson to Learn from JFK;” “Wrongfully Vilified Peacemakers: A Case for Intelligence Indispensability for the Preservation of Peace;” and, “Understanding Vladimir Putin: President Putin WON’T ‘Invade and Occupy’ Ukraine.”
Reference
Fitzgerald, Michael R., and Allen Packwood, Out of the Cold: the Cold War and its Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2013.
Harding, Luke, et al. “Shelling by Russian-backed Separatists Raises Tensions in East Ukraine.” The Guardian, 18 Feb. 2022, www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/17/shelling-by-russian-backed-separatists-hits-school-in-east-ukraine. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
Leibniz, Gottfried W. Theodicy. Apple Books; La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt’s Edition of the Collected Philosophical Works, 1875-1890, originally published in 1716.
