Throughout the history of human existence, the mighty has always been right while the weak suffers the brunt of the excesses of the mighty. Empires rose by annexing smaller tribes, at a time, Mogol was the race dominating the whole of south-east Asia which they achieved through sheer use of force to subjugate the less powerful territories.
In a world where being powerful is right and weakness is tough for the weak, the current crisis rocking Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine should not come as a surprise to students of history as it has been in practice even in the modern times through colonization of Africa and smaller continents by western power. What caused the two previous world wars was one or two powerful nations trying to create their hegemony over less powerful nations.
And what has always been the solution is to placate the powerful nations through territorial redistribution, as it was with partition of Africa by after the end of Second World War by the allied forces.
Fast forward to 2022, it should not come as a surprise that Russia is now playing the role of the mighty to oppress the weak (Ukraine) on the pretext of recognizing the right of self-determination of the people of Luhansk and Donetsk which are part of sovereign Ukraine.
Many precedences have been set before, but the recent one was set by United States when they invaded Iraq, no one stopped them. The Russian veto at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not stop them, Putin knows no one will or can stop him.
As much as I would like to disagree with Putin, however, I fail to see how this is different to invading a sovereign country under the pretext that it had weapons of mass destruction–only to find that said weapons did not exist.
The point I am establishing here is this; powerful nations have a history of acting unilaterally in ways that void the sovereignty of smaller countries. It can be argued that it has always been about national interest than any rules based quest for peace in international affairs.
That is why the so called rules based system needs to apply to everyone including the powerful countries of the west, and their friends like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and not only when it affects smaller nations. The west demeans the rules by turning a blind eye to some misdeeds by themselves.
In the words of Tacitus in which he says, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must”. So many atrocities have been committed by powerful nations which they usually got away with. The murdering of Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw in 2018 by the Saudi Arabia crown prince is an example of how the powerful nations pampered themselves and their allies.
Nobody is going to appear before the International Criminal Court for initiating an illegal war as it happened in 2003 and neither will Putin.
The circus continues.
