Cheta Nwanze

I’d like to begin this by saying something important: the attack on Ukraine is immoral and wicked and deserves all the uproar that has accompanied it from wherever. Sadly, that is about where it will get.

The world of geopolitics is not a moral place and, to quote the Athenians when they sent an ultimatum to the Melians during the Siege of Melios, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Herein lies the meat of the matter from my point of view: in the end, the world of international geopolitics is about might being right, not about anything else. It is the reason why, without any irony, a former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, could sit at a Fox News desk two nights ago and pontificate about Russia’s illegal action, secure in the knowledge that she was a US National Security Advisor when her country lied to the world and then illegally invaded the sovereign country of Iraq, less than two decades ago.

In the end, this whole conflict is about self-interest and powerful countries will do what they can to either protect or advance their interests.

As far back as a decade ago, notable Western geopolitical scholars and strategists had warned about the Western push to co-opt Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence, warning that it would backfire. George Kennan, a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union and a major architect of the Truman Doctrine for containing Russia, was critical of US efforts to expand NATO until he died in 2005 aged 101.