Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a new Iron Curtain between democracy and tyranny – Scotsman comment

In the decades following the fall of the Soviet Union, the world experienced a period of relative peace.

There were horrific wars and terrorist attacks, but the threat of nuclear annihilation, ever present during the Cold War, was almost forgotten and there was nothing close to the slaughter of the First and Second World Wars.

It was not quite an Age of Innocence but some were optimistic enough to declare history had effectively ended with the triumph of liberal democracy over Communism. Humanity, so the theory went, would increasingly develop in peace and harmony as global trade and the new connections forged by the internet brought the peoples of the world ever closer together.

Shortly after 5am Ukraine time yesterday, Vladimir Putin brutally shattered the last remnants of such naive thoughts as Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Many innocent lives have been ended on Putin’s orders, for no reason save his ambition to expand the number of people under his tyrannical rule. This is less of a war than mass murder organised by an evil mafia boss who has usurped the power of the Russian people.

And Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak was right when he told CNN: “Russia is attacking not just Ukraine, but all the rules of normal life in the modern world. What will be left of the security system on the continent? Zero.”

A new Iron Curtain is now descending – not just in Europe but worldwide – between countries that recognise Putin must now be declared an international outlaw and opposed until he is defeated on one side, and, on the other, states like Belarus, which formally ally themselves with his regime, and China, which responded to the invasion by denying it was underway and reiterating that Russia had what it called “legitimate concerns”.

Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of business leaders at the Kremlin yesterday, at which he said he wanted Russia to remain part of the world economy (Picture: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

As Boris Johnson said yesterday: “Our mission is clear: diplomatically, politically, economically and eventually militarily, this hideous and barbaric venture of Vladimir Putin must end in failure.”

The democratic world needs to wake from its slumbers and realise that this new reality is going to mean some difficult and unpleasant choices. It is likely to involve considerable economic pain, particularly with new priorities for public spending.

For, on top of paying off vast debts run up during the Covid pandemic, the UK now needs to significantly increase the fighting strength of its military so that it can play a greater part in the defence of fellow Nato states, because, if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, his next targets are likely to be our allies in the Baltic states.

One urgent step is to bring in economic sanctions that will not just “hobble” the Russian economy, as Johnson said, but cause it to crash in the hope that this will help persuade Russians to overthrow Putin.

The US, UK and EU, working with other democratic allies, also need to co-operate to find alternative sources of energy to the oil and gas currently bought from Russia. That could mean fossil fuels from other countries, nuclear power, and renewable energy.

The shunning of Putin’s Russia should be ramped up as quickly as possible. For example, Russia could be thrown out of Iter, the 35-nation collaboration to build the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor in France as a symbolic gesture, but also to try to prevent Putin’s regime from benefiting from such technological developments.

Over the last few years, the West, apparently belief that history will always tend towards justice, has largely turned a blind eye to Putin’s plotting, his attempts to corrupt democracies and buy up elected politicians as if it hardly mattered. This must now stop and we should also ask whether we are making similar mistakes about other dictatorial regimes.

On February 24, 2022, the world changed in a most serious and fundamental way, and a great new struggle is now underway between murderous tyrannies with contempt for human rights and liberal democracies committed to peace, freedom and justice.

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