Spheres of Influence vs Fight for Freedom — Ukrainian choice
Many people who support Russia in Russian invasion to Ukraine are blaming NATO for that. Allegedly NATO wanted to take Ukraine from Russia, which made Russia to attack. Even if that has no logic in it, because:
- Ukraine was very far from getting NATO membership
- Finland is also joining NATO, and Russia does not attack it
but there is another term coming up in these discussion — Sphere of Influence and I would like to talk about it.
Ukraine is under a Russian sphere of influence — and NATO wanted to put Ukraine into its sphere of influence. It’s logical that Russia attacked — Ukraine is just a pawn in the game, NATO shouldn’t have provoked Russia” they say.
What’s wrong with this statement?
Explain — not justify
First of all — this really can explain Russian actions. Actually that’s exactly what Russia wants — they are playing the geopolitics and they want Ukraine to be in the Russian sphere of influence in one way or another — be it a USSR 2.0 or a new Russian Empire. Destroying Ukrainian culture, language, history and heritage should be a byproduct of this “dependance”, since, according to Russians, Ukrainians do not exist as a separate nation, and thus all the “Ukrainianism” should be eliminated.
Yes — this is Russian motive. But is this motive justifiable? Does explanation always lead to justification? If you can logically explain the burglars intentions (he just wanted to be rich), does this mean that you may justify his actions? Why the wish of Russia taking over Ukraine (which they do want) then justifies their actions?
Not a board game
Secondly — world is not a board game. Ukraine is not a patch on a map, where you put your flags on. It’s one of the biggest countries in Europe to have its own politics. Actually all countries can have their own politics, regardless of size — that’s what UN is about. Real people live in Ukraine, real people die. We know the unfortunate past events, that were all about “sphere of influence” games which lead to death and destruction (America colonisation, Race for Africa, Second World War), now we have a Russian aggression towards Ukraine. And this is exactly why UN was created — to stop playing the “sphere of influence” games. Does UN succeed? That’s another question. But it should — that’s the idea.
Spheres of influence do not exist
Thirdly — what exactly is “sphere of influence”? Does it objectively exist? Sphere of influence is a category we use to describe the world. People may think of a world in terms of “spheres of influence” and categorise countries by various spheres to make it simpler for them to understand the world. Again — world is much more complex than that — for instance which sphere of influence Iran belongs to? Turkey, Hungary, Iceland, Philippines, South Africa? There are lots of “but”s to each of these (and many other) countries. Even though “spheres of influence” may be used to explain some facts about the world, the spheres of influence do not actually exist (unless a country is physically occupied) — these are our mind maps, paradigm tools, name it how you want.
Thinking in terms of spheres of influence may be helpful, but the label cannot justify the war. If I label my neighbour “a city dweller” I should not kill him if he moves to the village to justify my label. I should simply change the label.
Freedom
Spheres of influence are very imperialistic and colonial terms — if citizens of non-empire countries are still using them, this means they have a slave mentality.
If Ukrainians don’t really like the “sphere of influence” term, what do we like then? Freedom. This is our word of choice. We are free people. Our anthem says that, it also says that we are going to die for it (and our people are proving it). “Freedom or Death” is not a mere slogan for Ukrainians. We like to say that our coat of arms has a word Freedom engraved into it — this is not historically true, but we still like the idea.
And what about our wish to join NATO? Aren’t we jumping into NATO’s sphere of influence? Well, no, we would become an important part of it (if we ever join NATO — that’s still an open question). And we are free to choose our allies. Russia is apparently not a good ally, so we will choose somebody better.
Spheres of Influence is simply a label to explain the world, it does not exist, Ukrainians don’t think in these terms — actually there is a long history of independent Ukraine being neutral, it just didn’t work out well with Russia. We have a long history of fighting for Freedom. Freedom is what we believe into. And Ukrainians prove it on the battle fields.