IKENNA EMEWU
Retired professor of Political Science and expert in strategic studies, Prof. Obasi Igwe is a name that rings a bell in military science.
A few years ago, Igwe retired from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)
During his service years, he was such a darling of the students. No student that passed through UNN in his days didn’t know him. He was the type that would be brought in to placate the students when nerves get frayed. And they did always listen to him to embrace peace and sheath their swords of solidarity marches.
In the brewing Russia-Ukraine crisis, we reasoned that Igwe is the right person with the pedigree to speak on it.
As always, the expert in political theory never disappointed.
He did not only look extensively at the reasons the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the US and Russia are spoiling for a showdown, but also warned loudly that Nigeria and Africa should steer clear of this tinder waiting for a spark to ignite into a flame he fears would exacerbate into another global war.
You may think that you are far away from the Balkans region or shielded from the fire of the US by the vast ocean, but Igwe reasons differently and argues that the whole world is involved and should exercise both concern and caution about this impending danger.
Does this issue have anything to do with Nigeria when we don’t belong to the world powers and live far away from the region?
I should say yes to that line of thought. It involves Nigeria and indeed every country in Africa mainly. It involves Africa because the continent is made of very weak states and quite vulnerable when anger flares among the superpowers.
Precisely about Nigeria, don’t forget that one of the issues said to power this anger between Russia and Ukraine and remotely between the US/NATO and Russia partly has to do with the Nord Stream II gas pipeline to link Germany and Russia.
Nigeria is one of the countries endowed with many natural gas deposits. It is possible that if the Russian option fails, Germany and the EU may look towards Nigeria that had been discussing the trans-Sahara gas pipeline project with Niger and Algeria in a recent pact signed last week to fill that void and send gas to Germany.
My advice is that Nigeria should not accept to be an adversary to Russia and other progressive mankind by obliging, especially at this crisis moment, to build a pipeline to supply gas to Europe via the Mediterranean. To indirectly support the cancellation of the Nord Stream II pipeline by NATO would be a foolish act Nigeria can ill afford. It would unnecessarily entangle her in the centre of the conflict, expose Nigerians to a nuclear or other war, and will bring more suffering and ethnic cleansing on the Niger Delta and other gas-producing areas of the country. Such regions would be overstretched to extract gas that would feed Europe with the lure of the economic gains that would actually come with pains.
Already, the reporting of this incident in the Nigerian media is slanted to the benefit of the US and NATO. No progressive and peace-minded person should be frustrated by the almost totally meaningless and biased reportage of the events in Nigeria and other neo-colonial states and propping of pro-NATO/Western analysts, given their ownership, and the type of people in power. We must continue with the balanced analyses essential for peace and progress in the world.
I am pained to see that many African leaders sing the praises of US/NATO/Western imperialism, and equally sing the praises of the local variants in Nigeria, and that is why we have remained where we are: the happiest enslaved peoples on earth.
So, what is the way out of the looming danger?
The sure ways to avert crises in the Balkans that tend towards igniting the tinder are straight and simple, but simple only when the forces that fan the embers slow down.
NATO (mainly the US, UK and France) should withdraw their troops, weapons, missiles, etc from the Russian borders. What would they claim they are doing near Moscow and St. Petersburg, etc?
NATO should also respect the agreed basis of Russian troops’ withdrawal from Germany in the early 1990s, which include the non-extension of NATO eastwards.
NATO should respect the Constitution and territorial integrity of Ukraine, first by restoring the Yanukovyk presidency they unlawfully overthrew, stopping the arming of the Ukrainian putschists now in power in Kyiv, and accepting that Ukraine in NATO is both an unnecessary provocation to Russia, and ultimately a conspiracy against global peace.
The US and her NATO allies should end their self-propelled ‘exceptionalism’, and go back to the treaties they had already signed to ensure peace in Europe and the world, which include the INF, Open Skies, START, SALT, Iran Nuclear Deal, Climate Change and others and stop stoking the fires of war everywhere. Yes, NATO and the US may be ‘exceptional’ to the characters leading Africa due to their little level of understanding of international political games, strength and low self-dignity, but neither to the Russians nor to the Chinese and other civilized human societies. There must be an equal and fair world for everybody.
NATO should come to an end; it’s an abiding threat to everyone in the world, whereas no one is threatening any of their countries.
But we don’t understand how these are really about us – Africa. It happens far from us. How are we involved?
There are multiple perspectives on the events around Ukraine.
In Nigeria and other African countries, some people demand that we should neither bother nor worry because they concern the great powers, and we have enough problems of our own to begin to mind about the business of others.
To those great minds, we assure that those matters are even more about us/Africans than about them, whether NATO, Germans, Ukrainians, or Russians. In fact, the issues in contention are directly linked to our own problems, because it is substantially the attempt by the West/NATO to solve the problems of Europe the way they have tidied up those of humiliated Africa that is at the root of the crisis. What we see and hear is NATO and Russia in contention, but what is deep inside is whether Africa, including Nigeria and other oppressed and self-oppressed peoples of the world, have a right to live and develop in peace as modern democratic secular states of equal laws and equal applications without Western diktats.
Of course, the decision, the choice, lies more with us than them, and this depends on whether we in Africa desire to be equal human beings with dignity, or whether we insist on continuing the slave trade and its mentality in the new form of taking dictations from the West up to this 21st century.
Many don’t really know the background of these issues. Can you explain how the world got here with the Russia-Ukraine threat on our hands?
The Warsaw Treaty Organization/Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, and Russia is the biggest component of the latter immediately became the inheritor of her nuclear weapons and successor state at the UN Security Council.
However, one condition for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the so-called German Democratic Republic or East Germany was that NATO will not and should not expand eastwards towards Russia, meaning that the central European states, previous allies of the Soviet Union, now reduced to Russia, should be allowed to develop in peace, consistent with the Helsinki Final Act, and not be absorbed or inveigled into NATO, which if allowed, would result in American, British, etc. troops and weapons ‘peacefully’ being at the Russian borders and just a few minutes or seconds missiles flight to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
NATO absorbing those East European states also means that the buffer that had shielded Russia from Western imperialist designs since the Roman empire, Napoleon and Nazi Hitler, etc, would be broken. This agreement or undertaking was not written down; it was a gentleman’s agreement to promote and sustain peace in Europe and by implication the whole world.
So, do you imply that US and NATO are breaching the existing agreements?
The two powerful groups tend to capitalise on the flimsy excuse that these treaties were not written down. They could not be written down because events unfolded very fast, Russia had been weakened, East European nations had to be free, Russian troops withdrawn, and none of this could wait for the laborious job of formal treaty-making that usually takes years.
Indeed, although treaties are the major instruments for the conduct of relations between states, in actual fact, because of their daily volume and intensity, most of these relationships actually occur in informal settings, including phone calls.
Nevertheless, there were before then, many treaties already in existence that could interpretatively attain the same objectives: Mutual and Balanced Force reductions, Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF), the Open Skies and several other confidence-building measures, SALT, START, just too many to name here.
In time, the US, NATO, and the West would find one pretext or the other to withdraw from each and every one of these agreements in view of Russian inability to stop them, including even the most recent ones relating to Climate Change, Iran’s Nuclear Deal, and so on.
But there are scarcely instances in history to justify your fear for Nigeria and Africa in this matter.
They are quite a number of such instances in history to prove me right. For instance, what they practically demand, at least imply, is a unipolar world order in which everyone is dictated to by America, or America will use NATO and conquer the country and destroy the people. The reasons they give is what you must believe. The dictatorial system killed and/or destroyed the best in Africa and elsewhere: Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Kwame Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Thomas Sankara, etc., and this was all in the name of ‘Western interests’.
If all those were ‘justified’ as part of the cold war, now this: Saddam Hussein was hanged and Iraq destroyed for being in possession of weapons of mass destruction – did he have such weapons; Gaddafi eliminated and Libya destroyed for not being a true democrat obeying the ‘international community’; and now, how possible is it for Boko Haram, ISWAP, and so on to massively penetrate the Sambisa forest surrounded by Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and other strong enough states without a locally supportive international conspiracy of sorts, with Nigeria as the major target?
We are friends with America and the West, we love their peoples exceedingly, but they are not interested in anybody’s friendship; what they want and demand is our indefinite enslavement as a condition for ‘friendship’ with them, and that is the basic problem between them and Russia.
Or have you forgotten the alleged role of France in Mali that led the country to order an immediate withdrawal of French troops just last week?
Russia has refused to be dictated to, and any other country, even including those in the NATO such as Turkey and de Gaulle’s France that object to American imperial methodologies risk vengeance and ultimately war. Even individual critics and civil rights actors get hurt for not supporting American/Western imperialism. That’s the democracy they promote, and there is no dearth of African scholars glorifying such a system that diminishes and dehumanizes their peoples.
Since NATO was important because of the bipolar Cold War, why is it still necessary some 30 years after the Cold War?
Russia withdrew its forces from Germany after the Cold War ended; why is the US still occupying Germany with more than 30,000 troops, missiles, and so on? I also ask that same question.
Why is America still occupying Japan, South Korea and other countries, and till today refuses to sign a Korean peace treaty? Why are NATO forces at the Russian borders/Baltic states, etc overlooking Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities?
If Nigeria and Mauritania are adversaries, and ‘peaceful’ Mauritania steadily moves and deploys her weapons into the Gambia, then Senegal, then Côte d’Ivoire, then Ghana, then Togo, and finally at the Nigerian borders and the Benin Republic, a few kilometres to Lagos and Abuja – what would Nigerians think, what would a responsible Nigerian leadership do? That is the big question we need to answer to help us understand what Russia is talking about.
America and her NATO instrument of dominating the world tell everybody that they are a ‘defensive organization’, defending freedom and democracy. Is Germany free with the American occupation and tele-guidance on a daily basis? Japan, South Korea, the various European countries, etc?
Is a handcuffed unfree man free because he is told by his captor that he is free and democratic? The day the American occupation of Europe is ended, from that day will those countries prefer a French-German led European Union with a fair relationship with Russia then alliance or tutelage under America. They all love warmongering America because of American guns pointed at their heads; the day America goes is the day the ‘love’ will disappear – and America knows this and so, doing everything to delay or obviate such a time.
The condescending way that Anglo-Saxon America treats her black and indigenous populations is the way they believe that such far more advanced civilizations as Russia, China, Germany, Japan and others in the world should be treated, and not everyone agrees.
What exactly do you think is the major grouse of the West and US about Russia?
They are apprehensive of an emerging multipolar world order that would benefit mankind greatly and seem to be determined to wage war against it. It is as simple as that. We must not accept the distorted narrative promoting imperialist aggression against anybody.
NATO having surrounded Russia from the Baltic states through Poland, Romania, Turkey, Israel, Iraq, to Afghanistan, it remains only Ukraine to complete the encirclement. When Russia is destroyed and dismembered, NATO forces would have their sights and weapons set on China, India, Mongolia, Pakistan, etc, while the Indo-Pacific carriers, bombers, submarines, and Australia and Guam-based etc missiles would hem in from the South. Hence, Russia is demanding written guarantees that this is not the intention of ‘peaceful’ NATO; they request that the originally unwritten protocol be now cast in ink. Why?
A certain pro-Russian Yanukovyk was elected the President of Ukraine, and the West didn’t like it and manipulated another ‘election’ or parliamentary intrigue that removed him in favour of a pro-American/NATO side that pursued everything anti-Russian, except the goal of European integration that is neither bad nor necessarily hostile to Russia that was pursuing the same goal in her own way. As if to test the popularity of the pro-Western government and legitimacy of its anti-Russian policies, another more honest election was held and the same Yanukovyk won again resoundingly – again to the annoyance of the West. This man started to pursue a balanced policy favourable both to Russia and the West, but with Ukraine’s interests in mind.
Still, the West wouldn’t have it; for them, it must be all or nothing. In a violent terrorist coup d’etat, the West in 2014 orchestrated the unlawful overthrow of this popularly elected president, with him and his family barely escaping with their lives from a presidential palace under armed siege. Instead of condemning it and insisting on the restoration of Yanukovyk, the West immediately mounted propaganda that this unconstitutional and treasonable act was a ‘revolution’. Probably in fear of an imminent onslaught through Ukraine or to save the Russian-speaking regions from it, Russia occupied the Crimea, conducted a referendum, and annexed it, in addition, to support extended to the Dombass and other Russian speaking regions of Ukraine to fight for freedom from an emerging anti-Russian Ukrainian system. These putschists or their allies are the people in power today in Kyiv.
For America or the West to subscribe to a written guarantee not to accept or drag Ukraine into NATO, or even not to attack Russia, is almost impossible, because it would destroy the whole essence of the continuation of NATO, which is to wage war on Russia at an appropriate time, dismember it across the Urals, and threaten or blackmail the Asian powers from the north. Ukraine has already been absorbed into the NATO military infrastructure and only waiting for a final announcement of membership. When that is done, the war on Russia would be triggered by Article 5 of defending every NATO member’s territorial integrity. Immediately the war starts nuclear weapons would come into play because neither the US/NATO nor Russia would want to be defeated: in fact, whoever fires first shall “win” the day, for the first side would either have inflicted enough unacceptable damage to blackmail the other side into surrender or at least gain the initiative.
NATO, America, Britain, France, will destroy Russia a million times with their combined arsenals, and Russia on the other hand would distribute their arsenals and destroy the Western countries only once. It would now be Russia eradicated many times versus America, Britain, France and so on eradicated only one time, while the ‘survivors’ would get hold of their guns, sticks, stones, curses, for the finishing touches.
From some African standpoint that is the core of the NATO programme for Europe, and by extension the entire world. All they are trying to see is how to conquer Russia while suffering ‘tolerable damage.’ You might imagine that these are wonderful people reasoning in the spirit land.
So, are there consequences of a nuclear war on Africa?
The only word enough to describe such consequences is indescribable. And, no one might even live to ‘describe’ anything. Nuclear dust and prolonged darkness destroying photosynthesis, nuclear winter, extreme heat and radiation, violent climatic and environmental alterations, total death of flora and fauna and the entire food, sociocultural and economic chains, against none of which we have any defences – not even the bombs themselves – would kill all or most Africans.
Then, not all the missiles may have been fired; there would still be rogue or approved elements concealed in the high seas and skies, and they would point their guns at Abuja and other African capitals, blackmailing that African resources be used to reconstruct their societies or that they return right here to form renewed colonial governments. On the other hand, African tyrants already waging wars against their peaceful populations may now see that there’s no one anyone can any longer cry to, and so exploit the general confusion to implement further ethnic cleansing.
A nuclear War would be a war triggered by selfish satanic agents against God, man and nature.
Could this war be averted, and how?
The 1975 Helsinki Final Act demanded the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of all nations of Europe. Strategically speaking, and experts in international law can help us here, the steady extension of NATO boundaries eastwards mindless of Russian security concerns practically and logically amounts to an alteration or shift of boundaries of NATO through the countries concerned and, therefore in clear breach of the Helsinki agreements.
This cannot be defended on the principle that an independent country should decide its destiny, because breaching treaties and foreign military occupations are inconsistent with sovereignty and capacity for national autonomous decision making. There should be a written agreement guaranteeing the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including the freedom to be part of the European Union, but not part of NATO, and never a stationing of lethal weapons or engagement in NATO military exercises.
There should be a return to the Minsk framework, with European powers arriving at peaceful solutions to their problems.
American troops should withdraw from the countries of Europe and allow them to develop in conditions of actual sovereignty. There should be no need for any forward defence now or for the US continuing to breathe down on Europe after 77 years of unnecessary occupation. America cannot be pursuing an aggressive forward defence in Europe, protect herself with a Monroe Doctrine at home, and deny the same to Russia and other countries.
This means an end to NATO and all the aggressive wars and destruction they engage in all over the world.
If Russia’s security is guaranteed, the possibility of a restoration of the Yanukovyk presidency and another referendum in Crimea should not be totally discounted. America is a great power, there are millions of our kith and kin there, and we love and respect America, France and Great Britain, without in any way loving less the Germans, Turks, Chinese, Indians, Japanese or Russians.
We can have a balanced and multipolar world of American, British, French and other Western democratic leadership by example, not the reigning military-strategic command and control stoking fires of conflict and war everywhere.
If a written guarantee for Russian security is not made and NATO continues the March to the Russian borders, a war would break out one day and it would be catastrophic.
What actions should Nigeria and Africa take now to prevent further wars in Europe or an outright nuclear war?
First, we must stop subjecting ourselves to Western propaganda, and try to understand the issues holistically.
The West and Russia must be persuaded to exchange another written mutually binding guarantee against aggression.
There must be a social and other mass media campaign against the war in Europe.
We must persuade the federal government not to promise to be an ally or friend to any side that is in any way preparing for or waging a war in Europe or elsewhere.
We should strive to have the ECOWAS, AU and the moribund Non-Aligned Movement subscribe to the anti-war process, while government should continually conscientize the citizens of the clear and present danger facing mankind.
