WIDE ANGLE | Wars In Ukraine, Gaza Strip May End With A Bang, Not A Whimper | Saeed Naqvi

Ukraine and Gaza are TV serials streaming interminably on our screens because the authors don’t know how to script the final scene. The general drift of the story is known, but not the end.

An end to the Gaza war is in perpetual delay because both the United States and Israel are embarrassed admitting that global exceptionalism for one and regional exceptionalism for the Jewish state ring hollow with global power shifting rapidly from the North to South since the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse.

After the Vietnam debacle and the fall of Saigon in 1975, US public opinion became resistant to foreign involvement. The post-9/11 wars caused an adrenalin rush as the “neo-cons” embarked on expediting the American century. With the US embroiled in numerous wars, big and small, maintaining 760 bases worldwide, Donald Trump asked President Jimmy Carter: “China is going ahead of the US; what should we do?” Carter’s response: “Except for a skirmish with Vietnam in 1978, China has not been at war; we have never stopped being at war.”

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 was, in many ways, even more destructive of American, in fact Western, self-esteem than the Vietnam debacle 50 years ago. Indefatigable Vietnamese nationalism was a factor, but it was US public opinion, stoked by outstanding journalism by anchors like Walter Cronkite, which helped precipitate the dramatic end.

In Afghanistan, the mainstream media played a negative role. It covered up. One of the West’s current tragedies is the collapse of the Western media’s credibility. There is a complex bunch of reasons for this reliability deficit, but let me touch on two.

The Rupert Murdoch syndrome mistook the “sole superpower” moment as more durable. Editorials in the Washington Post, say, became indistinguishable from Le Monde. While the unipolar world passed, the media remained frozen, deluding itself that it served a unipolar system.

Also, when wars break out, the war correspondent becomes a propagandist and mythmaker. As the US has been continuously at war since the 1990s, journalists tended to be propagandists, without credibility.

The narrative in both the wars is in conflict with the ground realities. The narrative, amplified by the media, dreamt up a scenario in which Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine without any provocation to fulfil his “imperialist dreams”.

Totally forgotten were the promises to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 by US secretary of state James Baker that “Nato would not move by an inch any closer to Russia”. At the Bucharest Nato summit in 2008, President George W. Bush virtually poked Mr Putin in the eye by announcing that Georgia and Ukraine would join Nato. This was a “red line” Mr Putin wouldn’t allow to be breached, as for Russia this was an existential threat.

There were worse provocations, including the coup in 2014 in which elected President Yanukovych, who sought neutrality, and was replaced by a West-friendly candidate. This was almost ignored by the Western media.

Likewise, on the Gaza front Israel’s genocide and mass murder by starvation, spread over two years, are justified as punishment for Hamas’s temerity for having murdered 1,200 Jews and taken 251 hostages with stunning audacity on October 7, 2023.

In Ukraine the might of Nato, EU, Europe and the US are all pitted against Russia. What has thrown a monkey wrench in Western plans against Russia is the friendship “with no limits” which Russia and China announced earlier in the same month that Russian troops moved into Ukraine.

What is actually fuelling the two wars was blurted out by Boris Johnson when he, trapped in “Partygate”, scuttled a deal that was arrived at in April 2022 in Istanbul. According to a Foreign Policy article, Johnson turned up in Kyiv to stay Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hand. “The West was not ready to end the war yet.” To him, the war was not about Ukraine but Western hegemony.

The casualty figure of Ukrainians is 1.7 million. By all reliable accounts, the Russian advance on the battlefield is relentless. The seven leaders of what Donald Rumsfeld disparagingly described as “old Europe”, chaperoned Mr Zelenskyy to the Trump durbar at the Oval Office, but with what purpose? Please don’t talk to Vladimir Putin? Don’t end the Ukraine war on his terms. Cite European security, though it is Western hegemony which is on the line.

In Gaza, nearly two years after the October 7 attack, what is the scorecard? Hamas’ audacious, bold attack was not designed to inflict defeat on Israel, but to invite Israeli retaliation. The Jewish state walked straight into the trap with such barbarity as to make the world gasp and close its eyes.

Supposing Adolf Hitler had survived in some Satanic scenario, would he have been welcomed in any post-war assembly. The answer, obviously, is a resounding “no”. Why would any other logic apply to the apartheid state which has perpetrated genocide, murdered by starvation on live TV and whose only expertise in war is to assassinate popular leaders.

The day after this war is over, I cannot visualise Benjamin Netanyahu being showered with petals. Neither he nor the “river to the sea” project that he strives for has survivability.

How will the West cope with two more defeats: one in the heart of Europe and the other in its most powerful outpost in West Asia? This will not be allowed to happen easily. There has been talk of Taurus missiles and medium-range missiles to bolster Ukraine. In desperation, these could be brought into play with cameras prepositioned around Moscow and St. Petersburg for fireworks, which will temporarily drown out the reversals on the ground. Israel, with its back to the wall, may target Iran with something more lethal. The world will keep a steady gaze on Moscow and Tehran in mortifying suspense.

The writer is a senior journalist and commentator based in New Delhi