One marvels at the vituperations of Western governments even as President Vladimir Putin meticulously marshaled his devil-may-care plan for the invasion of Ukraine. If he had implemented his plans two years earlier, Donald Trump would have been sitting in the White House cheering him on.
It is surprising that Trump has not sent a ‘good job’ message to his Russian hero. Trump envied Putin’s maximum powers and wished he could manipulate the American constitution to such an end.
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Trump adored the little rocket man – Kim Jung Un. The happiest handshakes of the Trump rule were with Putin and Kim. The best economic deal of his term was the deal with the flagitious and empleomanic Saudi rulers just after they lured Jamal Khashogghi to his assassination in Turkey. Trump the throttlebottom went to Riyadh with glee and returned with the myrrh of a kindergartner after securing the favour of Santa Klaus.
Trump still commands a huge following today but the majority of Americans saw the imminent danger he posed to democracy and managed to kick him out just in time. It was obvious that having massed troops around Ukraine, Putin would not have bowed to the huffing and puffing threats of Western sanctions.
There is only nominal strategic difference between democracy, communism, the monarchy and other isms and schisms where strategic interests are concerned. Bush, Blair and Obama dispersed the kernels of democracy by brute force from Iraq through Syria to Libya. A seed watered by greed, blood and deception has never germinated sumptuous fruits of democracy anywhere; instead, they breed insecurity and distrust.
Western leaders manufactured lies to invade sovereign nations with disregard to their own citizens on the street shouting – Not in Our Name! The Iraqi invasion created pseudo-democracy and left a grim shadow of the glory of yore. Iraqis have no votes in the UN or anywhere to criminally prosecute those who lied to destroy their heritage.
Syria, a nation with years of global history and heritage has become a smoldering ruin since the West decided that Bashar Assad is worse than the Saudis they prop up. Most exiled Syrians have become mental cases comparing their past lives to the Spartan beggarliness they become as refugees in western nations. Ukrainians would soon taste that pie.
In Libya, Muammar Gadhafi was a penitent prodigal owning up to his past crimes, paying for them and imagining life as a democrat when the West wasted him with brutal force. The insecurity of the Libyan invasion has spread across Africa and bred insurrection.
Cuba and Venezuela are paying for refusing to align with capitalism. Africa is scared by targeted covert operations at every leadership poised to contend against the forces of neo-colonialism and imperialism.
The graveyards of our continent are filled with the dead bones of visionary leaders cut down for their vision and mission to liberate their people. They always die young.
On the other hand, kleptocrats get mild warnings as they collude with foreign enterprises to loot their treasury; perpetuate themselves in office with rigged elections while laundering the proceeds of their kleptomania in Western banks and businesses.
Western interests in Africa are at the core of the continent’s fault lines and its underdevelopment. The so-called World War II ended with the creation of organs such as the UN, NATO and the Non-Aligned Movement. They were meant to stop expansionism and the redrawing of boundaries. But capitalism has redrawn boundaries with brute force and swift cunning. America would never feel secure if Mexico aligned to Russia, but it even changed the spelling of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev to Kyiv. Its next plan was to get Ukraine to join NATO.
While nothing justifies the invasion of one country by another, the current kerfuffle explains a pattern in history in which big fishes constantly swallow little fishes only to whine that piranhas were endangering the aquatic ecosystem.
Russia’s demand was simple – give assurances that Ukraine would not join NATO. The war could have been averted with that assurance. Today’s opportunistic push by Putin is the display of you-can’t-stop-me stratagem by Russia to preserve its communist system and secure its own boundaries. Western powers have gone to war to preserve their own interests using global agencies in which they have veto power. Why is Russia’s attempt different? Volodymyr Zelenskyy is bound to wake up one morning discovering why using your head to break the coconut eliminates you from the snack table on which it is served.
There have been talks of Russia using elimination tactics to control the population of Ukrainians. The British used the same tactic everywhere from South Asia through Canada, Africa through Australia. In these climes, indigenous peoples were systemically reduced in numbers for settlers to conquer and dominate them. Those who come to equity must come with clean hands.
Ironically, the difference in this ‘war’ is Perestroika and Glasnost. The awesome power of global news and social media has opened humanity to subterfuge while the Internet and the World Wide Web have changed the boundaries of propaganda for all sides.
In past ‘wars’, victims have been suppressed by the power of imperial media. Information dissemination is no longer a one-way street.
In the unfolding Russia-Ukraine conundrum, African politicians have sometimes played deaf and dumb while some have jumped in with analogies and pedantic comparisons. The Russia-Ukraine story is more than expanding an empire. It is a war playing on the theme of strategic interests.
Just like Trump, African rulers envy the totalitarianism of Putin. Putin convoqued a meeting of his own Security Council; harassed his spy chief and members to endorse his plans. The West feels scandalised with a system often deployed in Africa by so-called democrats.
Nigerian leaders have maintained a curious non-aligned silence obviously because of the ambivalence of Western powers as our leaders pursued the war against insurgency. Russia has offered to help. Where the democrats have been pussyfooting, the communists have become emergent allies. Nigeria likes to be mapped on the side of democracy with questionable credentials.
One remembers how not to count the number of deputies that served Bola Ahmed Tinubu as governor in Lagos State. He always seemed to find a ‘democratic’ way of dropping them. Nasir Ahmed el-Rufai and Kogi’s Yahaya Bello are in the same league. Like Putin governors constantly exercise absolute power.
Putin plotted his graph first and called the Kremlin to rubberstamp it. He undermined and humiliated Sergei Naryshkin, his spy chief to tow the line; Trump did the same thing to James Comey as FBI director in America without fuss. When the West uses the same strategy, it calls it ‘intervention’.
Weeks ago, Zamfara Governor, Bello Matawalle tried, indicted and impeached his erstwhile deputy, Mahdi Aliyu Gusau by manipulating a ‘democratic’ parliament to endorse it. He handpicked a replacement that was screened, endorsed and sworn within a time that broke Guinness records on impeachments.
Not long ago, Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto took turns juggling power while they battled cases at the ICC. Today, Kenyatta is working hard to ensure that Ruto does not replace him. Unlike bogus Western democrats with blood on their hands, African rulers cannot call Putin a tyrant.
