On a visit to Oxford a few weeks ago, Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative, (Walter Münchau writes), made an interesting remark: “Diplomacy is the art of managing double standards”. Münchau illustrated its inherent hypocrisy by contrasting the enthusiasm with which EU leaders supported the ICC’s decision to seek an arrest warrant against Putin last year, and “yet not to accept it – when it hits a member of your team” (i.e. Netanyahu).
The most egregious example of such double ‘thinking’ concerns its correlate – the western ‘management’ of created realities. A double standard – a ‘narrative’ of us ‘winning’ – is crafted, and then set against a narrative of ‘them failing’.
A resort to the manufacture of narratives of winning (instead of actually doing the winning) may seem rather clever, but the uncertainty it causes can have unforeseen potentially disastrous consequences. For instance, President Macron’s deliberately obfuscated threats to send NATO forces to serve in Ukraine – which only contributed to Russia preparing for a wider war against all NATO, accelerating its offensive operations.
Instead of deterring – as likely intended by Macron – it brought about a more determined adversary, with Putin warning that Russia would kill any NATO ‘invaders’. It was not so clever, after all…
Take as a more substantive example President Putin’s response to a press query during his visit to Uzbekistan: ‘These representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, … firstly provoked us in the Donbas; led us by the nose for eight years, deliberately deceived us into supposing they [the West] wanted going to resolve things peacefully – notwithstanding their seemingly contrarian attempt to force the situation ‘towards peace’ – through armed means.
‘Then they deceived us during the negotiation process’, Putin continued, ‘having, a priori decided in secret to defeat Russia on the battlefield – and thereby to inflict a strategic defeat on it. This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences (Putin probably refers to a ratchetting missile exchange ending – even – with nuclear weapons). If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave in view of our strategic arms parity? Do they want a global conflict? It’s hard to say… Let’s see what happens next’, he concluded. (This is a paraphrase of what was a long and extensive question and answer session by President Putin).
Naturally, some in the West will say that this is just a Russian ‘story’ – and that the West has acted reasonably throughout, in response to Moscow’s actions.
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