50 - Wars without End, Too Few Mitigated
To my subscribers:
This is the 50th edition of my Conflict Mitigation Newsletter. Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing it with others. But at 50 it is time to take stock. Please let me know what you would like more of, or less of, as we continue past 50 (rirrotberg@gmail.com). Comments and critiques will help me make this a better Newsletter in order to serve you and my other readers more completely.
I have been writing the newsletter every weekday since Putin invaded Ukraine. As I commented yesterday, the war in Ukraine now appears to be a slog, rather than the lightening assault that Putin over-confidently assumed. It could well be a very prolonged conflict. Not for that reason alone, but also because of other pressing commitments, henceforth I will write not every weekday, but two or three times a week. Please keep reading and commenting as we move forward. Eventually, the Ukrainian war will end, but we do not yet know how and when. Until it does, however, I will write about it as well as about oppressions and odious mayhem the world over.
The rest of today’s newsletter catches all of us up with what has happened to conflicts featured earlier in this newsletter. I thought that it was time for a review and updates.
Sri Lanka
Thousands of protestors still surround the residences of their political leaders, and mob government offices. They seek the ouster of President Goyabaya Rajapaksa for Sri Lanka’s massive economic troubles. (See the #40, “Rapacious Rajapaksas,” April 29) With its official coffer denuded, and only about $50 million (not billion) available in foreign exchange reserves, fuel and food supplies have run short. Sri Lankans are going hungry, as well as being unable to transport themselves within Colombo, the capital, or across the island.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s elder brother, resigned earlier this week. But the angry crowds were not satisfied. Eight protestors were killed on Monday; the police were ordered to fire live ammunition into roving groups of protestors after arsonists set properties alight and the people in Colombo’s streets turned violent. (Pro-government thugs attacked protestors, provoking them and stimulating more reprisals than before.) Nearly 104 buildings and 60 vehicles were torched, and more than 200 persons were injured in successive melees earlier this week.
A local court banned Mahinda Rajapaksa, his family, and fifteen close allies from leaving Sri Lanka until their responsibilities for attacks on anti-government protestors were investigated.
President Rajapaksa still attempts to govern. So far, only because India has extended credit lines has Rajapaksa been able to import basic foodstuffs, and petrol for the police. Otherwise, Sri Lanka remains in the midst of its worst ever economic crisis, with blame appropriately cast on the Rakapaksas (his younger brother had been finance minister) for poorly conceived tax cuts, infrastructural expansions that were probably corruptly conceived and expensive, and bad deals arranged with China.
Rajapaksa is an autocrat, so resignation will not come easy. Yesterday, however, he promised to give some of his executive powers to parliament and appoint a prime minister who was not a family member. Those temporizing moves probably will not appease protestors, who want him gone. Whatever happens next, any successor administration will only with difficulty extricate itself from the economic mess that the Rajapaksas have created.
Myanmar
The abusive military junta that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and her electorally dominant National League for Democracy early last year still battles daily with Burmese and minority ethnic group militants who have been in the streets and fighting from the rural hills to restore democracy, (See #23, “Myanmar,” April 5) Yesterday, President Biden met with heads of the other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but the junta was not invited. Nor have the leaders of ASEAN been able to mediate effectively in Myanmar’s conflict; when Cambodian President Hun Sen, this year’s chair of ASEAN, traveled to Myanmar recently to confer, the junta would not let him see Suu Kyi.
Peace talks between the ethnic armies and their Burmese allies and the junta have stalled. For the most part, the military leadership has steadfastly resorted to draconian tactics to maintain control, including imprisoning thousands of people. It has torched hundreds of villages in the center of the troubled country. Strikes in the cities are frequent. Economic activity is at best intermittent. But personnel in the Tatmadaw, as the junta’s army is called, show no sign of joining the dissidents.
Without staunch support from China, the Myanmar junta and General Min Aung Hlaing, its autocratic head, would be compelled to bargain, if not restore Suu Kyi’s ousted government. But Hlaing and other generals fear a constitutional government would reduce their lucrative and rampantly corrupt control of key sectors of the nation’s economy. The likelihood of a negotiated end to the internal war in Myanmar is slim.
Hungary
President Viktor Orban’s self-called “illiberal” government is preventing Europe from banning the import of Russian petroleum into Europe. (See #24, “Putin-like Compatriots, II: Hungary and Serbia,” April 6) It claims doing so would destroy its economy, but the real reason is that Orban is an admirer of Putin and refuses to jeopardize their friendship.
Europe (absurdly) started with unanimity as a rule for policy decisions. Therefore Europe cannot impose import restrictions on itself without Hungary’s approval. The other twenty-six members of the European Unon are ready to declare, and then to phase in, a blocking of Russian fuel imports. Doing so would cut income flows to Russia that support its war effort. Germany, most affected of all of the nations of Europe, has agreed to back Ukraine in that manner. But not tightly-ruled Hungary.
NATO Expansion
Finland and Sweden seem even more ready than hitherto to join the military alliance that is Europe and North America’s now powerful mutual assistance organization. (See #46, “Putin’s Big Day,” May 9) Putin fumed when Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, his Baltic neighbors, entered NATO. He dared NATO to embrace Ukraine. Now he threatens “untold consequences” when Finland and Sweden, bigger nations next to Russia, formally join the organization.
Finland shares an 832-mile long border with Russia, just as it did with the Soviet Union. And it fought two brutal wars against the Soviets. Now both nations seek to obtain the protection from Russia that membership in NATO promises. Finland said yesterday that it wanted in now. Sweden will make that decision Sunday, with its minister of defense saying earlier today that “we become stronger together” and it “sends a very strong security policy signal.” (Foreign Policy, today)
Neither Finland nor Sweden would have embarked on joining NATO if Putin had not invaded Ukraine, and threatened the peace and security of their general neighborhood, and of the entire free world.
Light v Darkness
Let me end this edition of the Newsletter with the words of Rusin, a Ukrainian soldier of the Carpathian Sich Battalion, a volunteer unit based somewhere in the eastern fighting zone amid constant Russian shelling. “This is not a war between Ukraine and Russia,” he said. “This is a war of the pure and the light that exists on this earth, and darkness. Either we stop this horde and the world gets better, or the world is filled with…anarchy.” (New York Times, Thursday)
More on Monday, and do send me your thoughts