Everything is making Vladimir Putin the “public enemy number one”. He has become such because, in addition to having attacked Ukraine, destroying it and martyring its population by depriving them of electricity, water and heating, this man is also guilty of two other crimes, both of which threaten world peace.
The first is leading Russia into a break-up. Many will think, and not only in Ukraine, that a break-up of Russia would deprive the bear of its claws, and that there would be no reason to regret it, but when the war, Western sanctions and the decline in gas and oil exports will have further damaged the economy of the world’s largest country, the scale of the disaster will become apparent.
At that point, the social anger and despair of families without fathers, sons or husbands will turn against the Kremlin and plunge the entire Federation into a violent political crisis. While the Russian army will continue to be stuck in Ukraine, while Central Asia will be freeing itself from Moscow definitely, while Russia will lose on all fronts, the contenders to succeed Vladimir Putin will tear each other apart, the regional leaders will hear the call of a personal destiny, and more than one of the peoples of the Caucasus, the Far North or the Far East will think that the time for independence has come. In the unknown of a new hazard, civil war will tear a nuclear power apart. Jihadist movements will find new grounds for action and China and Turkey will inevitably be tempted to intervene in the immense chaos that the European Union will see emerging on its borders.
The second of Vladimir Putin’s other crimes is to have already considerably damaged the world economy by reducing the volume of trade. All continents are affected by this. As long as this war does not end, they will suffer more and more, and social and political tensions will multiply in every corner of the globe.
For the sake of Ukraine, Russia and the world, the Russian president and his regime must lose this war as soon as possible, but even though this is not a debatable fact, the conclusions are still not drawn.
It is incomprehensible that the United States and the European Union are not doing more than they are to help Ukraine win. We are helping it not to lose. We are helping it to cope, to survive and to regain lost territory. This is putting a strain on European and American budgets and is even beginning to deplete the arsenals of the Atlantic Alliance. This is not nothing, but it is not enough.
Ukraine needs air protection, air force and anti-missile shields. It needs tanks. It needs the means to win and to win quickly, but our help remains limited because we fear that the Ukrainians will want to retake Crimea or demonstrate their ability to strike back by attacking Russia’s infrastructure. In fact, on both sides of the Atlantic, we fear that the prospect of too much and too quick a defeat could drive the Russian president to new extremes, whereas the the truth lies in the contrary: he will only raise the stakes if he is still hopeful of regaining control.
Inconsistency is no longer an option. In addition to extending and accelerating their arms deliveries to Ukraine, the democracies must do everything possible to isolate Vladimir Putin on the international scene. Faced with Public Enemy No. 1, they need to form as broad a front as possible by resigning to make common cause with regimes they have every reason to condemn.
The leaders of Central Asia are by no means democrats, but the democracies must support their desire to emancipate themselves from the Kremlin. Venezuela, Qatar or Saudi Arabia have no respect for human rights but if their oil or gas can replace Mr Putin’s, well…
All is fair in war, because the priority today cannot be given to battles for the rule of law. It is only too true, for example, that the Polish right-wing in power is flouting its European commitments by sitting on the independence of the judiciary. In contrast to the Hungarian Prime Minister, this right-wing has nonetheless stood by Ukraine by arming it and welcoming its refugees. In the context of this war, this makes all the difference and rather than continuing to lump the Polish and Hungarian leaders together on the grounds that they are all oblivious to the law, the Commission, the capitals and the Parliament of the European Union would be better advised to come to an agreement with Poland in order to impose a balance of power on Viktor Orbán, the Kremlin supporter. This would be, it is true, a little distortion of morality. The Polish opposition would have every reason to be indignant, but when faced with Vladimir Putin, the imperative is not to keep one’s hands clean but to put out of action an arsonist against whom it is time to relearn realpolitik.
If the democracies were obviously right to ally themselves with Stalin during the Second World War, they can and should approach more actively Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, who sadly has no clue what “respect for minorities” means. Whether commercial or diplomatic, India must be able to find a major interest in turning its back on the Kremlin and even with China, even with the country of which Mr Xi has turned into the world’s largest dictatorship again, a deal should be sought that is perhaps no longer impossible.
Stunted by the war in Ukraine and the anti-Covid confinements, China’s growth is falling back and feeding a social anxiety that is fuelled by the property crisis. The contract between the Communist Party and society is thus no longer far from breaking down, as the Chinese no longer have any reason to leave the party with a monopoly on power while the prospects for improving their standard of living are fading. In other words, the discontent is becoming so political and probably so widespread that Sunday’s demonstrations may have heralded others, and Mr Xi may soon have only two options: an invasion of Taiwan or appeasement with the US.
The latter would be much less risky for him than the former, and this is the time to make him see the benefits he could gain from ceasing to support the lost cause that is the tenant in the Kremlin.