Big powers choose convenient principles, small countries pay the price: Shanmugam

Singapore has taken a firm and consistent stand that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is

a clear, gross violation of international law.

This was made clear in our support for resolutions at the United Nations condemning the invasion, and the sanctions that we imposed against Russia.

Nine years ago, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, I was the foreign minister. I stated the same position: It was an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. Russian troops should not be in Ukraine in breach of international law, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be respected. 

This is clear – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on any pretext, is inexcusable. 

At the same time, one year on, it is useful to take a step back, to look at the broader history – to see what responsibility others, beyond Russia, might have – where the situation is less clear. 

The Western view

The dominant view, put out in Western media, is that this war arose largely because of President Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions. 

In this view, Mr Putin is nostalgic about the USSR. He called the break-up of the USSR in 1991 the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century”, and that it was the demise of “historical Russia”. He wants to restore Russia to its former glory, and bring back former Soviet states under Russian authority. 

Ukraine, in particular, was an especially painful loss, because Russia and Ukraine share a long and common history. 

Although both had evolved into different countries, Mr Putin believes that Ukraine has to be in Russia’s sphere of influence. Just before Russia invaded Ukraine, he said: “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by… Communist Russia”, and that “Ukraine never actually had stable traditions of real statehood”. As such, its separation from Russia was a “historic, strategic mistake”. 

In other words, Ukraine’s sovereignty is an artificial construct – so that sovereignty does not have to be respected. 

Summarising this view, The New York Times, in an article published on Feb 27, said: Mr Putin is “intent on securing a place in the pantheon of historic, expansionist Russian leaders”, by styling himself as a “modern-day Peter the Great, gathering up lost Russian lands”. 

In this view, it is Russia who is the sole, irresponsible, actor. Mr Putin’s own ambitions have led to all this suffering. 

Much of this is accurate. But it does not convey the whole picture. It too conveniently absolves the West of any responsibility, for the way the events have unfolded. 

Another view

There is another view. Some analysts, like Professor Anatol Lieven, have pointed out that Mr Putin was not always opposed to cooperation with the West.

Russia had once made overtures for cooperation and peaceful co-existence. 

For instance, Mr Putin wrote on Feb 27, 2012, that Russia is an “inalienable and organic part of Greater Europe and European civilisation”. He expressed his hope for a “harmonious community of economies from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. 

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, with Mr Putin’s approval as prime minister at the time, also tried to propose a European security treaty in 2010. This would have institutionalised consultation between Russia and Western countries on equal terms. 

Was Russia just bluffing, when it said it was keen on integrating with Europe and the West? 

There are credible scholars who believe that Russia was serious. 

However, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, Russia was treated as a “has-been”. It was not seriously consulted on major issues, and it was not treated with a great deal of respect. 

The neoconservatives in the United States saw America as the hyperpower, in a unipolar world. As such, Russia’s security concerns do not appear to have been taken seriously.

Russia had repeatedly said that there should be no eastward Nato expansion, as it was a threat to Russia’s security. But Nato expansion happened anyway. 

As a result, in this view, Russia felt increasingly encircled.

Looking at the facts: Nato expansion

In assessing these two views, we have to go back to the facts. 

One starting point is to consider whether the West had promised that Nato would not expand, after the Cold War. 

In 1990, as the Berlin Wall was falling, the US and USSR discussed how to reunify Germany. One question raised was whether Nato would then expand – primarily, into the territory of East Germany. But, as the Cold War was ending, there were also implications beyond Germany, to the then Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe. 

Records show that Western leaders anticipated Soviet opposition to Nato’s expansion. 

For example, in a speech on Jan 31, 1990, West Germany’s Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said that in the process of reunification, “Nato should rule out an expansion of its territory to the east”. 

Shortly after, on Feb 9, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker also told Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that, given the need for assurances to the countries in the Warsaw Pact, there would be “no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction for forces of Nato one inch to the east”. 

In separate discussions between Mr Gorbachev and the leaders of (West) Germany and France, similar concerns were acknowledged. 

However, notwithstanding these discussions, non-expansion was not mentioned in the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. 

Nothing was in writing, but historical records suggest that Russia was given some basis to believe that there would be no eastward expansion of Nato. In his memoirs, Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns, who was then a political officer in the US Embassy in Moscow, said then President Boris Yeltsin and the Russians “assumed, with considerable justification, that Jim Baker’s assurances (of non-expansion) would continue to apply after the break-up of the Soviet Union”.

In other words, even after the Warsaw Pact ended, Russia’s security concerns would continue to be respected – Nato would not expand eastward. 

However, Mr Burns said that the Clinton administration saw the applicability of these assurances as “fairly ambiguous”, because they had not been precisely defined or codified. 

In 1991, the USSR collapsed. 

The year after, in 1992, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary jointly declared their “long-term objective (to attain) full-fledged membership in Nato”. 

In 1999, they became Nato members and, in 2004, seven other Eastern European countries followed suit – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Russia protested these expansions. Mr Yeltsin told US President Bill Clinton in 1995 that this would be “a new form of encirclement”, which Russians feared. Russia’s legislature also voiced concern in 2004 that Nato expansion “does not promote the consolidation of stability and security in Europe”. 

In February 2008, Mr Burns – by then the US Ambassador in Moscow – wrote to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He said that Ukraine joining Nato was the “brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)… (he had) yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests”.

We do not know how seriously these views were taken. But two months later, at the 2008 Bucharest Summit, Nato welcomed Ukraine’s and Georgia’s aspirations for Nato membership. Nato members declared their agreement that “these countries will become members of Nato”. 

Mr Putin responded the next day. He said that the appearance of Nato at Russia’s borders was viewed as a “direct threat to the security” of Russia. 

And six years later, on April 17, 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mr Putin said it was a response to “the infrastructure of a military bloc… moving towards (Russia’s) borders”. 

One may agree or disagree with whether Nato expansion was indeed a threat, but Russia’s position was clear. 

Assessing Russia’s concerns

One might reflect: Could Russian concerns have been better handled? 

This is not an argument that Nato should not have expanded. To the Baltic states and countries like Poland, it is entirely understandable that they might want to join Nato. They have a bitter history of invasion and occupation, and Nato membership would provide security against this. 

But there was arguably a responsibility to deal with Russia’s security concerns, even as Nato decided on enlargement. 

We have seen such security concerns being voiced in different ways elsewhere. 

In April 2022, when

China signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands,

there was considerable alarm in Australia about a possible Chinese military presence in the Pacific islands. 

And 60 years ago, during the Cuban missile crisis, the US ordered a “naval quarantine” around Cuba on Oct 22, 1962, to intercept “all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba”. 

America was not keen on Russia’s military on its doorstep. And America and Australia both felt similarly about Chinese military presence in the Pacific Islands. 

Likewise, as regards Nato, Russian concerns needed to have been dealt with. Otherwise, it would look like double standards are being applied. 

To be clear: nothing justifies the Russian invasion of Ukraine – Nato enlargement, and how Nato enlargement was done, can in no way justify an invasion. The point is only that the picture is more nuanced than some portray it to be. 

Looking at the facts, the West were not uninvolved bystanders, who had no role to play in the current situation. 

Lessons: Big powers choose principles to suit their current interests

Entangled in these historical events, are two important principles of international law.

First, indivisible security: One state should not enhance its security at the expense of another’s. One state’s security is inseparably linked to another’s. 

Second, self-determination: in this context, the right of a state to choose its own military and political alliances. 

We have seen that these two principles can contradict each other. When they do, each power will pick the principle best suited for its interests, in that particular geopolitical context. Let me illustrate. 

In today’s conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has referred to the indivisibility of security. He says that Ukraine has an “obligation not to strengthen (its) security (by joining Nato) at the expense of the security of other states” – i.e. Russia. 

On the other hand, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has affirmed that the right of Ukraine to choose its own security arrangements and alliances is a “core principle” that the US is “committed to uphold and defend”. 

During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when it was Cuba that was potentially posing a threat to the US, it was the reverse. 

Back then, US President John F. Kennedy spoke about halting Cuba’s offensive build-up of weapons in “defence of our own security”, as they were “a threat to world peace”.

In response, Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev dismissed America’s actions as “undisguised interference” in the internal affairs of Cuba. 

In a reversal from today, it was America back then who emphasised the principle of indivisible security, while Russia emphasised the principle of sovereignty. 

Such dynamics are not new – and they will continue. Great powers will cite the principle that best suits their interest and the position they wish to take, at that particular point in time. 

But it is often the small countries who pay a disproportionate price. 

Depending on how you look at it, smaller countries can be said to have been either wilfully used as pawns, or just inadvertently caught between the powers, as collateral damage. But – as in this case – looking at the past few decades of conflict and tension between Russia and the West, it is the Ukrainians who

are bearing the brunt of the suffering.

One thing about Ukraine is clear, though. Its defence has been nothing short of heroic, against a vastly superior power. 

A war that many thought would be over in days, has stretched to more than a year. Ukraine’s sense of national identity, purpose, and independence have now been forged in steel and blood. 

Whoever might have queried the artificiality of Ukraine as a state before the war, will have no doubts today that Ukraine’s sense of nationalism and statehood is completely formed. Ukraine’s spirit has become immeasurably stronger, and it is unlikely to be rolled over. 

There is a lot to admire about the way Ukraine has defended itself. 

For small countries like Singapore, it is in our interest to have regional structures that promote cooperation, rather than rivalry, in our region. We must also work to uphold international law consistently. 

But we must also understand that ultimately, we have to have the military means ourselves, and the social resilience, to defend ourselves. And we must continue, as we always have, to act only and always in Singapore’s own interests.