Opinion from S Gurumurthy, Editor, Thuglak, and commentator on economic and political affairs for the New Indian Express.
Having pushed Ukraine into war, the US does not know how to save it. Having started it, Russia does not know where to end it. Having been pushed into the war, Ukraine does not know how to come out of it. It accuses its adversary Russia saying it is an invader and charges that its friends are betrayers. The UN Security Council keeps on meeting without any result. The global TV network for which the war is a reality show, a boon, keeps demonising Russia and valourising Ukraine. What the desperate Ukraine needs is a ceasefire. It is running from pillar to post — from India to Turkey to France, to Israel, to Japan — pleading with them to talk to Putin for a ceasefire. Everyone is talking to everyone else.
But Biden is not talking to Putin and Putin is not talking to Zelenskyy. This is the sad state of the efforts to stop the war. Poor Zelenskyy. What he is now saying to end the war — that we will not apply to join NATO, we will remain neutral — had he said that before, the war would not have started. Russia has staked everything – its goodwill, its economy and its last atom bomb – like a jihadi, making the West shudder to think of taking it head on. But the war is bound to end. When is the only question. When it does end, Russia would have got all that it wanted and Ukraine would have given all that it had denied. And the West would have realised and the world would have known how needless the war was. But, what kind of world will the pointless war leave behind?
The worst outcome of the Ukraine war is that it has shown that anything and everything can be politicised and weaponised — from financial transaction systems like SWIFT, to banks, private companies like Google to civilian airspace. SWIFT is a high security neutral financial network created by an NGO and used by 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries. By jamming this critical network, the Ukraine war has destroyed the most basic of mutual trust among nations. Take India. The share of Google in Indian email accounts is 62 per cent. Were India to fall foul of the West, the entire country can be brought to a halt by Google. Each nation or group of nations will now look for alternatives.
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