Home ›› 02 Jan 2023 ›› Editorial
Most people over 35 years old remember where they were when they first saw the images of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11. Two decades on, we are still living through the effects of the attack and America’s response. Few of us will have a similar visceral memory of the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the effects are likely to reverberate around the world for as long.
We know some of them. The Russian war machine has shown itself to be largely inept, leaving the Kremlin reeling as Ukraine failed to collapse in short order as expected.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was then stunned by the response of other countries. He is on record as believing the western nations are weak and effete and lack willingness to take tough action. However, three years after French President Emmanuel Macron said Nato was "brain dead", it has rediscovered its purpose. Germany, embarrassed at its relationship with Russia, and the state of its armed forces, has condemned Moscow and pledged $100 billion to modernise its military. The Baltic States are being re-enforced while Finland and Sweden have applied for Nato membership. The EU is more united on a single issue than it has been for several years although this resolve will be tested as we move into a second year of war. Relations between Russia and the West looked broken for a generation.
We have seen the first "Broadband War" – a reminder of how semi-conductor chips and space are an integral part of warfare. Russia’s missiles took out parts of Ukraine’s internet in the first few days of conflict. Two thousand of Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals were flown in to get it back online. They were then used (in part) to locate and fire on Russian positions which poses the question – are civilian satellites a legitimate target when used in warfare? The missiles and drones used in the fighting rely on computer chips to work, a Javelin missile for example requires 225. And yet we still saw "old-fashioned" trench warfare. The human cost of the war has been huge. Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, thousands of Ukrainian civilians murdered, and 14 million driven from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of young Russian men have fled Mr Putin’s conscription, causing a brain drain in an economy from which large parts of the world are decoupling. Russia can survive European countries gradually weaning themselves off its energy supplies but that will require huge investment in orienting pipelines elsewhere and western technical and financial help will be hard to find.
The conflict has pushed inflation in many countries to the highest levels this century. For five months Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, was unable to move grain through its ports. This exacerbated food shortages in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, and raised bread prices in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. The latter normally receives 80 per cent of its wheat from Ukraine. Costs are now at their highest in 14 years adding to the tremendous strain the Tunisian economy is under.
Those are some of the already "known knowns" of the conflict. We can also see several issues coming down the line.
With Russia turning to Iran and North Korea for military assistance, the Americans and Europeans cannot count on Moscow helping them pressure Tehran into returning to the JCPOA nuclear deal, or Pyongyang to curtail its missile launches. Where that leads is impossible to tell.
The Central Asian republics have made their feelings clear about what they see as colonialism by Moscow. None of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation members recognised Russia’s annexations of parts of Ukraine and at a recent summit, Mr Putin was challenged about his lack of respect for the region.
The National
