The "Ukraine Crisis" and Relativity of Security

 

Security as a concern and concept occupies pivotal position in much larger discourse of International relations, rightly understood, security is not just an isolated element but itself a function of an array of conditions defining any given international order, these include: threat, anarchy, wealth and larger entropy and distribution of power. While the concept of Security remains state oriented and concerned with preservation of a given status quo, the identification of such “status quo” remains primarily contested. This contestation, fundamentally, steams from an incohesive understanding and identification of the actors, means and definitive ends involved in a security struggle and confrontation. All of them germinate from the observation pertaining to the amorphous nature of the state itself. Being a much larger and complicated entity, it defies any straight attributes of insecurities.

 All the while adding on to, and more often challenging, the state-oriented conception, humanitarian and environmental concerns goes on to constitute and create the relative nature of security as a social and material concept. Security thus understood is given to protean complexity echoing out of the immensely relative nature of the issue. Emphasis on any one element or dimension might facilitate another or could well possibly stand in contradiction to it, therefore one’s judgment of such divergences and priority informs the conception of: who is to be secured? what constitutes security? From whom or what it must be secured? By what means should it be secured? When confronted with such questions one is given to realize that Security is about recognizing a specific kind of material and matter, and this assessment is done with the logic of relativity and power entropy.  Therefore, something is deemed to be a threat when a particular elite declare it to be, in recent history the declaration of “War on Terror” by Bush administration in aftermath of 9/11 without a universally accepted definition of “terror” illustrates the monopoly of ideology and hierarchy in threat perception and securitization.

Recent developments in the eastern Europe illustrate the relative nature of security and how it is but a function of power. Russia has more than 92,000 troops amassed around Ukraine’s borders and is preparing for an attack by the end of January or beginning of February, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, Brigadier General Kyrylo Budanov, told Military Times on November 2021. This suspended sense of alarm and threat is persistent now for three months and is largely dubbed as “Ukraine crisis” in western media. The sense of crisis drew support from larger western communities of nations, much of which remains token and reluctant. Recently inviting £88 million of new funding, including from the UK’s Good Governance Fund, announced aid efforts to reduce Ukraine’s reliance on Russian energy supplies. [ GOV.UK ] While President Joe Biden has formally approved the deployment of 3,000 US troops to Poland, Germany and Romania, the Pentagon announced recently, in a move to bolster NATO countries in Eastern Europe with tens of thousands of Russian troops amassed along Ukraine's border. [CNN] The deployment of such massive amounts of troops and combat forces is clearly deemed as most obvious and largest in the long line of “Russian aggression” on Ukraine border since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Clearly in such a context the security setup, put into place in Europe since the commencing of Cold war is brought into effect bringing together NATO in ensuring security for the members and a potential NATO member, Ukraine from Russian aggression. The means for achieving such security remains primarily military, diplomatic and economic. The promised economic sanctions on Russia by America, in aftermath of an invasion illustrates the issue of economic security being brought to front in securing of a military one. Paradoxically the recalcitrance from Germany to actively engage in the issue as expected by her counterparts in Europe emerges out of her energy dependency on the Russian supplies which were hoped to create a pacifying effect on Russia in name of economically integrating Russia with Europe.  Thus, illustrating the double-edged nature of economic coarsen and security. Another impulse for this collective action on the part of NATO members come from the sense of maintaining a status quo, the protection of Ukraine’s sovereignty is closely linked with securing of western ideas of state and citizen seemed to be jeopardized by an aggressive and authoritarian Russia.

While for Russia the current developments are not “Ukraine crisis” but of a much larger security set up. Here the problem, as deemed by Russia, pertains to the failure of European security arrangement to ensure a “stable” Europe; facilitating a peaceful coexistence with Russia. The gradual eastern expansion of NATO in post-cold war years concentrates in the guise of security a threat for Russia. Any attempt to induce a former soviet republic into NATO is perceived as a threat by Russia. Obviously, both Russia and European states have been holding military exercises since before tensions spiked last year. And that's exactly the point: Military volatility is baked into Eastern Europe, such that when tensions do spike it has the capability to make the continent suddenly much more precarious. Russian security calculus would prefer existence of a “neutral zone” between itself and NATO.

 The recent actions by Russia also tie up to the domestic conception of Russian state, which had received considerable rendering in the eyes of Russian people in aftermath of a prolonged economic slowdown and potentially susceptible to influence from mass movements (Islamist or secular) happening around the nation’s periphery within former republic. Here the object of security thus becomes not only the realm of the nation but larger social and political ideas that stand hegemonic within it. The phenomenon also demonstrates the hierarchy of priority each actor produces to navigate through and within the relative labyrinth of international security. All the while the questions of humanitarian security are but side-lined and absent from mainstream debate, for this prolonged conflict, stretching over 280 miles of front line, have claimed more than 13,000 lives and displaced almost 1.5 million people internally. Paradoxically the question of violence therefore remains unasked in the larger theorizing of international security.

Bibliography

Military Times. www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2021/11/20/russia-preparing-to-attack-ukraine-by-late-january-ukraine-defense-intelligence-agency-chief. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022.

GOV.UK. Crown copyright, www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-travelling-to-kyiv-in-demonstration-of-support-to-ukraine#:~:text=The%20UK%20has%20long%20been,strategic%20UK%20support%20to%20Ukraine. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022.

“Global Conflict Tracker.” COUNCIL on FOREIGN RELATIONS, Council on Foreign Relations., 3 Feb. 2022, www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine.

Bertrand, Natasha, et al. “US Troops to Deploy to Eastern Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis.” CNN Politics, © 2022 Cable News Network. A Warner Media Company., 3 Feb. 2022, edition.cnn.com/2022/02/02/politics/us-troops-europe-russia/index.html.