Cold War Reloaded - Der neue Ost-West Konflikt

Ukraine could join ranks of ‘frozen’ conflicts, U.S. officials say

How Ukraine could become the next South Korea.

Zitat von Politico - 18.05.23

[...] The options discussed within the Biden administration for a long-term “freeze” include where to set potential lines that Ukraine and Russia would agree not to cross, but which would not have to be official borders. The discussions — while provisional — have taken place across various U.S. agencies and in the White House.

It’s a scenario that may prove the most realistic long-term outcome given that neither Kyiv nor Moscow appear inclined to ever admit defeat. It’s also becoming increasingly likely amid the growing sense within the administration that an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive won’t deal a mortal blow to Russia.

A frozen conflict — in which fighting pauses but neither side is declared the victor nor do they agree that the war is officially over — also could be a politically palatable long-term result for the United States and other countries backing Ukraine.

It would mean the number of military clashes would fall, the costs of supporting Kyiv also likely would drop, and public attention to the war would wane.

“We are planning for the long term, whether it looks frozen or thawed,” said a U.S. official familiar with the Biden administration’s discussions on Ukraine. The official said such planning is a growing focus of the administration, whereas in past months “it was all about the urgent and short-term.” [...]

If active armed conflict ceases, the costs to the United States and other Ukrainian partners likely will fall over time. “It’s cheaper to arm a country that isn’t expending the weapons every day,” the former Biden administration official said. [...]

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Der running Gag der medialen Befragung deutscher KriegsexpertInnen ist, dass eine Figur wie Professor Carlo einfach zehn Minuten am Stück banalste Gemeinplätze absondern kann, die außerhalb der "liberalen" deutschen Wertebubble schon längst bekannt sind, und dann trotzdem für einen ganz bedeutenden Wissenschaftler gehalten wird, weil er gerade erst heraus gefunden hat, dass auch Staaten außerhalb der westlichen Wertegemeinschaft eigene Interessen haben, die ihnen nicht von Putin und Xi aufgezwungen werden, bloß weil sie "unseren" #Werten nicht gerecht werden.

Nicht schlecht für einen "Realisten".

Ja wo sind wir denn? Wenn jetzt jeder dahergelaufene Bananenrepublikführer meint, er könne ökonomischen Zwang anwenden um seine Interessen durchzusetzen, gerade so als wäre er ein Mitglied der G7, dann bricht doch die regelbasierte Ordnung zusammen!

Interessantes Paper - aus der Zeit vor der gewendeten Zeit - das die NATO-Osterweiterung vor allem als identitätspolitisches Projekt betrachtet, welches die Eliten in den beitrittswilligen Staaten weniger als Sicherheit vor der russischen Barbarei ansahen, denn als einen Weg der national(istisch)en Identitätsstiftung mittels Anerkennung der neuen Mitglieder als vollwertige und willige Subjekte des dominanten Wertekanons durch die in der NATO konzentrierte imperiale Macht des Westens.

“Love, Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject-Making in Central Europe

[...] Central Europe here includes the 10 formerly socialist states that acceded into NATO in either 1999 or 2004. In these states, NATO accession is normally discussed as “more” than “just” a security matter. In governmental rhetoric, academic research, and mainstream media coverage alike, accession is cast first and foremost as the ultimate codification of the region’s identity and values.

Conceptually, the discursive assemblage of NATO, values, and identity illuminates the production of subjects. NATO accession was not simply imposed on Central European states or their electorates; far from it. Across the region, accession was widely perceived as empowerment: as becoming an agent, gaining recognition and acceptance, and attaining a confirmation of westerness.

Accession campaigns did not simply rehearse negative arguments about foreign threats. They equally emphasized positive notions of cultural belonging and moral values. They worked not against but through the civil society. They sought not to separate NATO from social life, but to integrate it into entertainment, education, and civic life more broadly. NATO membership was and is constituted as an essential precondition for becoming a subject in international affairs. Accession thus represents a process by which power regulates social life from the interior, through the creation of particular kinds of subjects, particular realms of consensus, and a particular normative space of imperial right. This process is an integral part of the militarization of social life—a multilayered sociopolitical dynamic by which militarism gains popular and elite acceptance (Enloe 2004:219).

[…]

The second aspect of the legitimation of NATO—the constitution of military power as good—is a key part of what Hardt and Negri (2000:9) call the new inscription of authority. Today’s global power relations, they argue, are based not on force itself, but on the capacity to present force as being in the service of right and peace.

These relations rely on an “ethico-political dynamic”, which envelops the entire space of what it considers civilization—a boundless, universal space (ibid.:11). This ethico-political dynamic lays the foundation for a renewed notion of just war: no longer an activity of defense or resistance, but one that is justified in itself, by the appeal to essential values and justice.

This just war combines two elements: first, the legitimacy of the military apparatus insofar as it is ethically grounded, and second, the effectiveness of military action to achieve the desired order and peace. The Empire’s powers of intervention do not begin directly with its weapons of lethal force but rather with its moral instruments (Hardt and Negri 2000:35). They are based on the production of the normative space of imperial right.
Intervention becomes juridically legitimate only when it is inserted into existing international consensuses. The first task of the Empire is “to enlarge the realm of the consensuses that support its own power” (ibid.:15). 2 The military complex becomes a key part of the production of moral good (see also Flint and Falah 2004 for an in-depth discussion of the concept of just war). [...]

NATO enlargement exemplifies this mechanism. Whereas national security discourses still invoke the negative notion of threat, however “soft” and however indirect, NATO enlargement discourse invokes only positive categories—values, democracy, openness.

NATO, like Empire, is a “machine for universal integration. It does not fortify its boundaries to push others away, but rather pulls them within its pacific order” (Hardt and Negri 2000:198).

[…]

This narrative of NATO enlightened and good is especially pervasive in Central Europe, where it enframes virtually all utterances of security, defense, and foreign policy more broadly (Oas 2005). Across the region and throughout the integration process, NATO membership was cast in dramatic and existential terms as integral parts of the region’s return to its European home.

The pro-NATO lobby did not imply a threat to NATO’s member or candidate states. It conceived of membership not as an answer to strategic issues but as a reward for and a marker of “sameness” with the west on the basis of “values” (Popescu 2005:461). [...]

The narrative is a productive one. Linking NATO membership to acceptance by, and agency in, the international system, it constitutes that membership as an essential attribute of political subjectivity. The making of NATO into a household term and pairing it with freedom and democracy is not just a matter of official speeches. It percolates through political debate and sets the tone of public utterances. It is operationalized through a wide range of practices in a variety of settings—parliamentary debates, news media, entertainment, and education. Governmental actions are certainly important, but they are a part of practices involving a host of actors from the civil society. In all accession states, pro-NATO campaigns included an array of activities executed by NGOs.

[…]

To record these details and to foreground the pervasiveness of the pro-NATO campaigns is not to claim that Central European electorates necessarily supported NATO accession. Opinion polls yield varied results, depending on the timing and the target group of the poll, and on the questions asked and results reported.

In broad terms, NATO accession was popular across Central Europe and many people clearly believed that accession expresses their country’s western identity. At the same time, the extensive and intensive governmental campaigns indeed indicate that political elites “were taking no chances” because they were unsure about popular opinion (Gaube 2002). Throughout Central Europe, governments pursued all venues of public information; from ministers writing in newspapers to NATO information offices (funded in part by NATO).

Through such activities, NATO was made so ever-present and everyday as to be boring. One study of Bulgarian public opinion states just that: that the public is so accustomed to hearing of it as to pay no attention (Domozetov 2001). The characterization of Slovenian discussion on NATO as a “debate among the convinced” ( ˇSabiˇc and Jeluˇsiˇc 2002) applies to other accession states as well. In the Czech case, “there was never any wide-scale Czech public debate on what NATO entry would mean, no realistic discussion of how much it would cost and no explaining the issue to the people” (Stroehlein 1999).

When public opinion was not sufficiently supportive of NATO accession, the chattering classes simply ignored it in the name of democracy (which was to be achieved and/or protected only by NATO membership). When intellectuals or opposition politicians occasionally questioned NATO they found no debate on which to rely.

[…]

A schoolgirl’s picture about a light circle of family and a dark circle of weapons around it is smoothly interpreted as an image of a secure world, an image that supports a military alliance. One can question accession into a military alliance, but how can one question “returning to our European roots” or “making Europe whole and free”? How can one question one’s country gaining international recognition and passing “from an object to a subject” in international affairs?

To highlight this process of subject-making is to point out that the heavily pro-NATO rhetoric that we hear from Central Europe is not simply a natural reaction to the decades of Soviet domination. It is not a reactive process of responding to a threat, but a productive process of subject-making. This is not to say that it is false but that it is a social product.

Beyond Central Europe, the paper illuminates the twin processes of militarization and the production of imperial right. Both processes are at their core concerned with subject-making. NATO enlargement, I argue, was based not merely on ignoring the public. It was also based on making NATO into an unremarkable and integral part of social life.

Accession was effected not through negative categories of threat but through positive narratives of fully fledged politically active western subjects. It locates geopolitics at the scale of individual action and individual identity.

The accession discourse produces NATO membership as a state’s precondition for being—as a requirement for being recognized as a modern, mature western subject. It constitutes NATO not just in terms of state action, but also in terms of individual responsibility and individual emotions. It constitutes the military–industrial–media–entertainment complex not simply as necessary or inevitable but also as morally good. Within it, accession is not something that happens to people, that is imposed on the electorate for “reasons of the state”. It is a constructive process that emphasizes the participation of individuals and social groups. […]

The process is not concerned merely with putting individuals into the service of power. It rather seeks to integrate individuals into its very functioning. It works by enlarging the unremarkable realms of consensus that underpin the normative space of imperial right.

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Merje Kuus: “Love, Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject-Making in Central Europe, Vancouver, 2007 (-> PDF)