Sustainable conflicts born from geopolitical exhaustion

If we look at the crisis environment, which includes the Israel-Palestine conflict, on a global scale, we see a planned political cycle that constantly repeats itself in similar ways across different geographies.

From Ukraine to the Asia-Pacific, and from the Middle East to the Scandinavian Peninsula, the most striking characteristic of this formation is that it prepares the ground for a potential conflict environment and feeds on the destruction it creates itself.

In this conjuncture, where the answer is sought only in military alliances like NATO and AUKUS, it is natural that wars stripped of their diplomatic component cannot bring peace. This political approach, which has completely turned its back on diplomacy, does not aim for 'peace'; on the contrary, it turns disputes that could normally be resolved through negotiation into controlled and sustainable hot conflicts by also paving the way for armament.

The goal is to manage the emerging crisis to gain an advantage in both domestic and foreign policy. For the US and its allies, this means protecting the status quo against new global formations and a new world order led by China, Russia, and India. A different world order is not achieved through war, but wars can be fueled and used as a pretext to change or maintain the current political conjuncture. We are witnessing this today.

NOT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TARGETED PEACE

Biden's address to the nation on October 20, 2023, is remarkable in two respects. First, his strong emphasis on the concept of 'liberal hegemony,' which reflects the identity of the American establishment and defines its foreign policy, while also commemorating Madeleine Albright.

Biden states that the US, which fought for freedom and independence 250 years ago, represents a hope for people fighting the same struggle today, and that the US continues to serve as a beacon on the hill guiding humanity.

Second, the military and economic aid package totaling 106 billion dollars, which he will submit for Congressional approval primarily to support Ukraine and Israel, is an important detail.

This support, which is expected to be approved by Congress, includes 14 billion dollars for Israel and 60 billion dollars for Ukraine.

The armament on the ground and the nature of that armament send a message that sustainable conflicts are more desired than a real peace. Josh Paul, who served as the director of the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for 11 years and disagreed with the government on sending weapons to Israel, resigned from his post on October 19.

In an article he wrote for the Washington Post on October 23, Paul points out that all protocols are ignored when it comes to arms transfers to Israel. He states that arms aid, which could not be provided to any other country with Israel's human rights record under normal circumstances, receives Congressional approval without any debate or consultation.

In his article, Paul mentions that the weapons provided to Israel so far have not made any contribution to peace. He expresses his discomfort that the feasibility of some of the weapons sent should be questioned, but that inquiries are being bypassed and left unanswered.

He also points out that the weapons used to create infrastructure for and expand new settlements in areas that would be Palestinian state territory in a possible 'two-state solution' make a meaningful resolution process impossible.

In his protest, Paul mentions that there must be another way to defend without displacing millions of people. Netanyahu's aggressive stance, which defines Hamas's October 7 attack as their own 9/11, confirms Paul's criticisms. Netanyahu's adoption of a foreign policy that has caused destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine shows that politics has been completely shelved.

US FOREIGN POLICY FEEDING ON THE CONFLICT ENVIRONMENT: THE UKRAINE EXAMPLE

The process that began with Russia's annexation of Crimea on March 21, 2014, and continued with its intervention in Ukraine in February 2022 could have been easily prevented. Romania and Bulgaria were made members of NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007.

Following this, Putin, speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 8, 2008, had said that Georgia and Ukraine were Russia's red lines and that NATO's eastward expansion toward the Russian border could not be ignored.

Indeed, the announcement at the NATO summit held in Bucharest on April 2-4 that Georgia and Ukraine would one day definitely be included in NATO was an existential threat from the perspective of Russia, which views politics through a realist lens.

So much so that many diplomats and strategy experts evaluating NATO's expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union had emphasized that this scenario meant a serious provocation for Russia and that there would be a political and military response to it.

Frank Blackaby, the former director of SIPRI, who wrote about the idea of NATO expansion in 1996, had said that this scenario would drag Europe into a second cold war. That same year, then-Secretary of Defense William Perry wrote that this would ruin relations with Russia from the start.

Indeed, when the American Senate gave the first green light to NATO expansion on May 2, 1998, 94-year-old George Kennan, the architect of US Cold War strategy, evaluated this decision as a "tragic mistake." Kennan had stated that this decision could ignite a new cold war.

In 2008, US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns in his assessments, and in 2015, former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his memoirs, had pointed to the strategic mistake made regarding NATO expansion. Referring to the 2008 NATO summit's stance on Ukraine, Britain's former Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Roderic Lyne, summarized the situation in 2021 by saying, "if you want a war with Russia, this is the best way to achieve it."

Essentially, a war was needed for NATO, whose function began to be questioned during the Trump era, and the US, which had lost significant influence, to return to the world stage.

It was necessary to return to the ideological polarization environment of the Cold War to re-establish "American exceptionalism" in the world, as Madeleine Albright put it, created by the idea of 'American nationalism' and 'liberal hegemony.'

Indeed, on June 10, 2021, Biden updated the Atlantic Charter, signed between Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941, in front of cameras with Boris Johnson on the coast of Cornwall. This reference to the Atlantic Charter, which is a historical cornerstone in the formation of the Western alliance and NATO, 80 years later, carried symbolic importance.

Biden was trying to steer Indo-Pacific and European politics through Cold War parameters against the alleged Chinese and Russian 'threat perception.'

For Biden, who has not stopped using the slogan "America is back!" since June 2021, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was an expected and necessary conflict.

And in this process, every diplomatic step that could have prevented the war was deliberately avoided. Essentially, Ukraine was never a strategic element that needed to be protected by NATO. Zelensky's turning his back on Russia from the very beginning instead of diplomacy and his endless provocative tone, encouraged by the US, threw Ukraine into the fire.

The winner of the war was American foreign policy, which regained influence in both European and Indo-Pacific geopolitics.

Dr. A. Murat Şener