The Russia-Ukraine war created an earthquake in the international arena. There are many questions that need to be answered, and these questions provide clues as to what kind of world order will emerge in the coming period.
In my previous article, I wrote that the losers of this war will be Ukraine and Russia, and even if Russia wins the war on the ground, it will lose at the end of the day.
This view of mine has not changed. I would like to remind those who say "But Russia is such and such", the poetic words of Sezen Aksu:
“I'm the prey, you're the hunter
You can shoot me!”
Yes, Ukraine is the prey and Russia is the hunter… But there is more to the words:
“Who is the passenger, who is the innkeeper?
Wait and see!
You can't kill me .
I have a voice, an instrument, a word.
Who am I? I am the common sense"
The entire world public opinion, including probably the majority of Russia's own people, is against this aggressive action of Russia. Then you have to say "Lets wait and see". Because in the emerging situation, a proportional equality has been established between the gain of Russia and the loss of all the rest of humanity. Will Russia, with the invasion of Ukraine, be able to kill the common sense of all humanity? We'll see.
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Now let's come to the important questions that give clues to the new world order that we will witness the emergence of in the coming period. The most important of these is undoubtedly “Has the West sold Ukraine?” is the question.
The USA and NATO, on the one hand, pat Ukraine on the back, pursuing the love of "come on, my boy, fight with Russia as much as you can"…
On the other hand, they reject Ukraine's demand for a "no-fly zone". “We will not go to war with Russia,” Biden said openly. Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general, says similar things. Their reasons are the same: “Nuclear war will break out and it will be the end of the world. We can't afford it!”
Let's underline the "we can't afford it" part. Because Putin is already making this move because he is sure that he will hear the words we have underlined.
There is a saying in Turkish; It is said that "the madman hides his stick when he sees the madman". Putin took out his stick: he instructed to be ready for nuclear missiles – which must be ready at any moment, because after one side presses the button, the other side has to press the button while those missiles are still in the air. You can't do this if you're not ready.
If we read the word backwards, Putin does not hide his stick because he is sure that there is no "crazy" in front of him that he would be afraid to take his stick out.
A similar threat by Putin remained at the level of a claim he made against a NATO country in 2016. But obviously Putin hid his stick at the time. Why not hide it now?
This situation can be qualified as an indication that NATO is not deterring enough, if not the end of its deterrence. The main function of nuclear weapons is not their use, but their non-use. If you use it, you're already done. The function of not using it is deterrence. Putin said "shah" by giving the command "be ready" in front of the world public to nuclear weapons that should already be ready. This is a clear threat to the whole world. The actual invasion attempt of Ukraine is also an “intimidation”.
North Korea has made similar threats in the recent past. However, North Korea has not been taken seriously in these threats. In addition, North Korea has not attempted to invade the territory of any state. Moreover, North Korea does not have intercontinental nuclear warhead missiles on the scale of Russia.
Now, there is a nuclear threat that needs to be taken seriously by the whole world. The owner of the threat demands that his actions against international law be accepted by ignoring them with the threat of arms.
This situation is similar to the bank robber who, after using a gun, stuffed all the money in the safe into the bag and demanded his release with the security forces, threatening "let me out or I'll blow up this place". You can't let the robber go by waving his arms. Even if you do, the robber will definitely be caught and punished at the end of the movie. Otherwise, order cannot be achieved.
The question then is: "How will Russia be punished"? Or "will it be given"?
Most of us are sure of the answer to the second question. What remains is the question of "how to give". That question should also be considered and handled together with the question “Did the West sell Ukraine?”.
Make sure that the author of these lines does not dream that the West has ethical concerns that will not sell Ukraine. But sometimes you can't find a way out because the problem has become your problem and now you have to solve it. This is now the case for the West.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, “Man is the wolf of man”. According to him, strife and conflict begin where there is more than one person in the natural environment. Because if they want the same thing, contention and conflict will begin. It is the state that will ensure this order. The French thinker JJ Rousseau, who lived about a hundred years after him, puts forward a different thought. Rousseau; By saying "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains", people can live in peace in the natural environment; he says it is property and the unequal distribution of property that compels him to be bad. In a free and equal society, there will be no conflict if no one is poor enough to sell himself and no one is rich enough to buy someone else. The state, on the other hand, exists for the protection of property, there would be no need for it if there were no people who bought more than they needed. Later, Karl Marx was influenced by this idea and carried it forward. Although my humanitarian side says “Rousseau is right”, my realistic side knows that Hobbes is right, and this saddens me.
Why did I tell you all this? It is Seneca's famous phrase: "ordo ab chaos" meaning "order arises out of chaos". Order, on the other hand, cannot be contrary to human conscience, even on paper. After the Second World War, humanity sincerely wanted peace in an environment where millions of people lost their lives in the war. The answer to this widespread and massive peace demand was with the establishment of the UN. The UN was a peace organization; "War" was now forbidden. Exceptions to the prohibition of war were limited to self-defense and interventions made by the UN Security Council Resolution. The states that guaranteed this ban were, in essence, only 5 states: Russia, the USA, China, France and England, although the UN members are very close to 200 today. States with veto power in the UN Security Council.
In those days, no one, of course, wanted a war - sincerely - again. But "memory is disabled with nisyan", that is, people forget. Although the UN Security Council tried to stay within the framework of fairness during the cold war, the disintegration of the Soviet Union after the cold war destabilized the world, and the West, especially the USA, could not make good use of the chance that this situation presented. Especially the Iraq war; can be described as a turning point. The attacks of September 11 and the military intervention of the USA in Iraq afterward were tried to be made in accordance with Article 2 of the UN Charter by dressing up as "preventive self-defense" by Bush. This ridiculous cover-up was later included in the literature under the name "Bush doctrine". However, the conscience of humanity was bleeding. No one believed this preemptive self-defense myth. And the road to today's hell was paved in those days. The West did not stop in Iraq; After 1.5 million people were massacred there, 10 states, especially Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, were scrambled under the name of the Arab spring, Gaddafi was killed and their money in Western banks was taken. The West had become a true "Wild West". If you say “It was always like that” you would not be right; because, as I said, everyone was sincere when the UN was established after the Second World War.
Now Russia emerges and says to the West, "You cannot teach us a lesson in humanity, turn around and look at yourself", in fact, it says "I am not doing anything other than what you are doing". So, is Russia right?
No, from the point of view of the common conscience of humanity, Russia cannot be right. Because the practices of the West, which supported its own argument, were not justified either. A bad example cannot set an example. Russia was not very clean anyway; now their hands are as dirty as the West.
In "Macbeth", Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth say the following famous phrase: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" And now Russia has also got blood on its hands. The situation reached in terms of humanity today dictates a new world order. Neither the UN can survive as the old UN, nor can the West "sell" Ukraine. For the West, the sale of Ukraine is now equated with the loss of its own struggle for survival.
Therefore, the question should be asked not as "Did the West sell Ukraine" but as "Can the West sell Ukraine". And in my opinion, the answer to this question is “no”.
There is a beautiful term used in English; It is called “At the end of the day”; They translated it as "at the end of the day" in Turkish, but it doesn't quite fit. Daily gains or losses should not deceive us. As Sezen Aksu said, we have to say "stop it" and wait. What about “at the end of the day”?
