The Russia-Ukraine crisis has exposed the fraying of the Western alliance.
Representatives of the ‘West’, from the US and NATO to the European powers, all dialled in to Monday’s confab to discuss the Ukraine crisis. US president Joe Biden emerged afterwards determined to put on a united front. ‘I had a very, very, very good meeting’, he said, adding, ‘total unanimity with all the European leaders’.
This is at best wishful thinking. If anything, the Russia-Ukraine confrontation has exposed precisely the absence of unanimity among members of the Western alliance. Each nation and each institution has signally pursued its own divergent objectives, often negotiating and talking to Moscow independently, and, in the process, crossing wires, muddying waters and taking us further away from any realistic solution.
