Thread by @Chxta

I just published What is our interest in #Ukraine? link.medium.com/wJJXJfBD2nb

I’d like to begin this by saying something important: the attack on Ukraine is immoral and wicked, and deserves all the uproar that has accompanied it from wherever.

Sadly, that is about where it will get.

The world of geopolitics is not a moral place, and to quote the Athenians when they sent an ultimatum to the Melians during the Siege of Melios, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

Herein lies the meat of the matter from my POV: in the end, the world of international geopolitics is about might being right, not about anything else.

This is why @CondoleezzaRice could pontificate about what @KremlinRussia_E has done without irony despite her role in #Iraq.

In the end, this whole conflict is about self-interest, and powerful countries will do what they can to either protect or advance their interests.

Notable Western geopolitical scholars and strategists had warned about the Western push to co-opt #Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence, warning that it would backfire, but unfortunately, the people in charge of Western diplomacy remained adamant.

Just this morning, I heard a #UK MP say something along the lines of ensuring that @KremlinRussia_E would end up in the dock at the @IntlCrimCourt.

This kind of hubris is the kind of hubris that ensures that the conflict will only get worse.

#Russia is not some weak African country, and at the risk of sounding like an apologist, I’ll say that they will win the shooting war in #Ukraine.

Whether they will win the war after the shooting has stopped is another matter.

Here is how I think this will end: #Ukraine will be a wreck, #Russia will be pushed deeper into #China’s economic orbit, and the Chinese will create an alternative system to the one that the West is using to punish Russia.

Get ready for a parallel internet, an alternative to SWIFT, and the use of the Yuan for more and more international trade.

#Germany will rearm & eventually be a bully in #Europe because, after this excitement, the Americans will still withdraw from Europe as their local politics becomes more and more bitter. The #UK, searching for a place in the post-Brexit world will become more of America’s bitch,

#France will be faced with the choice of either accepting to be #Germany’s subaltern or doing more malpractice in #Africa to compete with Germany.

I suspect they will try to compete, so sorry for West Africa.

Meanwhile, in #Asia, as #America focuses more inwards, #Japan will rearm to avoid becoming #China’s bitch.

Yes, we are now in a far more dangerous geopolitical world, and again it’s kinda OK (not really) as that is the natural order of things.

We are getting to the end of Pax Americana, and serious countries are going to jostle to fill the gap that will be created by #America’s increasing disinterest in the international system.

Now speaking of weak African countries, I was disappointed to read of #Nigeria condemning #Russia’s actions in #Ukraine.

There are a lot of questions to be asked of our foreign policy elite in that action, starting with, what are Nigeria’s interests?

Are #Nigeria's interests served by joining a bandwagon to pile in, or are they served by being circumspect like #India has been?

India, a country with a keen sense of self and history, has taken its interests into account first and has sat solidly on the fence in this matter.

@narendramodi simply appealed for a ceasefire but did not take a stand on the issue.

He is right.

#India has a huge agricultural economy, and a significant portion of its input, especially fertiliser, comes from #Russia.

The Indians are working on a mechanism to trade with #Russia using their currency to avoid the impact of Western sanctions.

This is what serious countries do.

#Germany, the leading country in the EU, dithered on sanctioning #Russia for years in the face of pressure from the Americans. Eventually, they suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but crucially, the first Nord Stream pipeline is still pumping Russian gas to German homes.

#Britain has put sanctions on the Russians and made a lot of noise about it, but to quote the British commentator, @NickFerrariLBC, "we have done the opposite of using soft words and a big stick."

The Italians openly lobbied to remove luxury goods from the list of sanctions the EU was preparing because that would have hurt their economy.

Ultimately, everyone is out for his interest, regardless of what cloak they attempt to dress it up in.

The Eastern European countries that are screaming about human rights and sovereignty are only doing so because it is in their interest to get the Americans in and protect them from #Russia, their historical oppressor.

I would point out that the very attitude of #Poland and #Ukraine towards Nigerian (and other African) students, shows very clearly that when it comes to others, their talk about human rights et al will dissipate, and this is where we come right back to our interests.

In the three decades since the collapse of the #USSR, in a unipolar world, the West has not shown much interest in a better #Africa.

Following #LekkiMassacre, asides from token noises made, what have the Western powers done to advance their so-called commitment to democracy and the rights of Nigerians?

They have continued to advise our murderous military and sell them weapons.

It is almost unarguable that a lot of the new economic packages that the West is sending to our neck of the woods is in response to the rise of #China.

Heck, they never say anything when #France misbehaves in our part of the world.

But the bitter truth is that it is alright. We do not rank high on their ladder of interests, and this is the game we need to learn to play.

We need to learn to ask some uncomfortable sounding questions.

What are #Nigeria’s national interests? How do we pursue those interests?

Who do we have to play against to advance those interests?

I suspect that sheepishly following Western interests would be acting against our interests.