When will ‘allies’ work to end war in Ukraine instead of prolonging it?
Acoin toss will be final pregame ritual before Super Bowl LVII kicks off a little after 6:30 p.m. EST Sunday. But what would happen if the NFL’s special coin somehow landed in a divot and stood upright on its edge?
No doubt they’d toss it again — immediately!
Unfortunately, when nations stage elections to choose their leaders, and the outcome isn’t a clearcut win for any of the contending factions, an immediate solution rarely is available. Result: In a polarized society, each side may seek additional allies to bolster its ranks — or at least keep the ones it has.
To cite a relatively mild, but embarrassing, example from our nation’s capital, the GOP’s House majority is now so tenuous that Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs every vote.
Therefore, he’s had to refrain from removing a New York Republican whose outlandish embellishments will surely earn him an epitaph someday that begins “Here lies George Santos . . .”
Then there’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dilemma. In Israel, one election after another has failed to give a decisive Knesset majority to his center-right coalition or to his center-left opponents.
Therefore, Netanyahu’s current ruling coalition has added far-right parties whose extreme views are creating a Palestinian backlash at a time when it looked like the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords” were beginning to pay modest dividends in matters of trade and diplomacy.
Granted, the Palestinians also have extremists within their ranks, including some who resort to bombs and bullets rather than ballots. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban remarked years ago during a visit with the Miami Herald Editorial Board, “It seems that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Yet prolonged political crises in nations where the electorate is extremely polarized can lead to consequences far worse than parliamentary gridlock or sporadic violence. In Spain, for instance, it eventually led to bloody clashes followed by a civil war (1936-39) that morphed into a proxy war as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union kept pouring in support for their respective allies, no matter how many Spaniards died.
Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s renowned painting “Guernica” was an expression of the artist’s rage over the deaths and destruction that occurred when — in response to a request by Spain’s rightwing Nationalists — Nazi warplanes bombed the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937.
Prior to the Spanish Civil War, there was a lengthy period when neither of Spain’s center-left or center-right factions could gain a decisive win and hold onto power. Instead, control toggled back and forth between the two increasingly extreme sides.
The Republican side included Communists and anarchists who opposed the monarchy and wanted to end the Catholic Church’s historic role in Spanish life. Meanwhile, Fascists became dominant in the right’s Nationalist coalition.
Soon the rival factions began to form well-armed militias as both sides increasingly resorted to the violence that preceded the full-scale civil war. Eventually the Fascists, led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, prevailed and, in 1939, he established a brutal dictatorship that lasted, to some degree, until 1975.
That unfortunate outcome was a stark reminder that proxy wars often leave behind a legacy of death, destruction and dictatorship as a wounded populace yearns for safety and security through the imposition of law and order, no matter how repressive the steps taken in the name of preserving the peace.
Unfortunately, as Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion nears its first anniversary — Feb. 24 — it plainly fits the definition of a proxy war. The contending outsiders — Russia’s president and his allies, including Belarus and Iran, vs. NATO and other allies — show no sense of urgency for ending the war.
Prior to Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s political scene was notoriously corrupt, whether in the conduct of business (as with Hunter Biden’s lucrative tenure on the board of Burisma) or in the chronic rigging of elections, where results often alternate from one extreme to another, as in Spain during the run-up to its proxy war.
Some of Ukraine’s election victors were aptly characterized as Russian puppets, whose goal was to maintain close ties with Moscow and remain subservient to Russia’s strategic goals. Others, including the current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have sought closer ties with the rest of Europe, up to and including membership in NATO and the European Union.
If the outside forces on both sides really cared about the amount of death and destruction raining down on
Ukraine’s civilians and infrastructure, they’d be trying to end the war instead of taking steps that will only prolong it.
For Putin, however, the Russian military’s inability to win a quick and easy victory in this proxy war has been a huge embarrassment, so there’s no reason to believe that he’ll relent until he achieves his goal, regardless of the costs.
This raises a troubling question: How many “Guernicas” will it take before both sides finally agree to bring this proxy war to a satisfactory conclusion — one that won’t leave Ukraine largely destroyed and stuck for decades under a dictatorial ruler?
Unfortunately, it seems, there can be no answer as simple as redoing a coin toss.