Thread by @UmlandAndreas

THREAD ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: Every additional Russian missile or drone hitting Ukrainian civilian buildings or critical infrastrucure has wider implications for Europe and the world. /1
(Picture: Summer 2019 @vostoksos mission: Recording gunfire at the Donbas contact line.)

The March 2022 decision by #NATO to reject #Ukraine's request for a #NoFlyZone was taken quickly & resolutely. However, deeper repercussions of this seemingly clear-cut case have remained under the radar screen. What Kyiv wanted was not NATO's active participation in the war. /2

Instead of inviting an out-of-area mission comparable to NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999, the Ukrainian request for a #NoFlyZone was about protection from rather than an attack on Russia. It would be a bilateral agreement between Brussels & Kyiv regarding Ukraine's territory. /3

A #NoFlyZone agreement between #NATO and #Ukraine would not have to mention #Russia at all. It would have simply regulated NATO's partial assistance to Kyiv in shooting down, exclusively over Ukraine's territory, all flying objects not authorized to enter #Ukrainian air space. /4

This idea was almost universally rejected in Brussels, Washington, Berlin, London, Paris etc. as crossing the Rubicon to #NATO's entry into the Russian-Ukrainian War & as the road to #WorldWarIII. Yet, Russia's air raids are not operations related to the battles on the ground. /5

Instead, most of Moscow's air attacks on #Ukraine are plain acts of state terror openly & explicitly targeting civilians. These unarmed women, children & men COULD BE but ARE NOT protected by a panoply of NATO anti-aircraft forces in #Europe - above all by NATO fighter planes. /6

Not only future historians may be stunned by how Europe's well-armed, highly protected & technologically superior nations watched Russian state terror against Ukrainian civilians next door. Politicians, diplomats & intellectuals around the world too may wonder what this means. /7

The delivery of some (but not many) anti-aircraft weapons & humanitarian aid to #Ukraine does not principally change the picture. Rather, such incomplete support looks like a mere alibi designed to enable European ministers and parliamentarians to say that they DID something. /8

So what? - "realist" European politicians, diplomats & analysts may ask. Well, it's about world security & European values stupid. While INSIDE Europe, many see rationality in refusing Ukraine a #NoFlyZone, some OUTSIDE Europe may note a manifest duplicity in this decision. /9

It turns out that the home continent of human rights & liberal democracy is willing to tolerate on its own turf weekly state terror, with unmanned objects, against millions of #European civilians. They COULD BE but ARE NOT protected by the world's strongest military alliance. /10

Being right next door, #NATO probably COULD take down almost all of the Russian missiles & drones hitting, every week now, Ukrainian residential buildings, power plants, transformer stations, etc. But it DOES NOT. This odd behavior is not happening in a geopolitical vacuum. /11

So far, there remains a strange neighborhood, within #Europe, of numerous advanced armies and daily large-scale war crimes. There is a bizarre Western unwillingness to do any direct harm to Russian unmanned flying objects on their weekly way to terrorize #Ukrainian civilians. /12

While popular in West European continental nations, NATO's non-action sends ambivalent signals to people around the world about:
(a) the idea of Europe,
(b) Western values,
(c) multilateral agreements,
(d) security-related organizations, and
(e) international law, in general. /13

NATO's manifest inaction regarding not only a military invasion but also a terror campaign in its vicinity may lead many to conclude that the European idea, Western values & international law should not be overestimated. Every state is for itself & should behave accordingly. /END

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