As I watched into the wee hours of the morning, I saw live on Al Jazeera, the amazing delivery of a masterful speech by the Kenyan Ambassador to UN.
I have always seen parallels between former Soviet (USSR) rule in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia with the exploits of the European Powers in the Colonial Age, but until this speech by Martin Kimani, I had not come across much opinion echoing this sentiment.
‘ Every African country was birthed by the ending of empire…Our borders were not of our own drawing… They were drawn in the distant metropolis of London, Paris, and Lisbon… With no regard for the ancient nations they cleaved apart… Today, across the borders of every single African country, live our countrymen, with which we share deep historical, cultural and linguistic bonds. ‘We decided to follow … the United Nations Charter… not because our borders satisfied us… but because we wanted something greater.. forged in PEACE’ – Kenya’s Ambassador to UN Martin Kimani
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As an aside, there are lessons in Martin Kimani’s words for Nigeria too. Regionally focused decisions are sometimes made for ‘unclear’ reasons with the interests of Nigeria not explicit or proven.
Some feel ‘ethnic leanings’ drive these decisions, such as the Chad – Trans-Saharan Highway Project. These ‘ethnic leanings’ have also led to unhelpful and unsolicited criticism of the Morocco-West Sahara dynamics.
Nigeria’s new Leonardos are good at supporting ground troops against ‘medium equipped’ ground actors but would struggle to engage against units generously equipped with American Stinger, Russian Verba, Chinese QW-4, or Japanese Type 91 shoulder mount ordnances.
They are not air superiority tools, and would have problems dealing with Morocco’s squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-16C/D, Mirage 2000’s and Northrop F-5E’s with Tiger III avionics. Morocco is planning to buy 25 new Lockheed Martin F-16V .Tensions in Africa can flare easily, and international conflict has started for smaller reasons. The F5E has the longest range without refueling in the Moroccan toolkit, which would still leave it around 500km short of a strike and return to the most southerly airbase. They could easily just build another base further south.
Ultimately, mass exchange between groups of people regionally and globally is transactional. People collectively gravitate towards what will profit them. So it is that when nations come together on some common goals, they want to consider.. ‘How will this benefit us?’
The European Union and NATO are completely different structures. Nevertheless, if we look at the members of NATO and things like ‘Quality of Life’ indices for citizens, we can see that the conditions NATO citizens enjoy are generally superior to that of citizens of former ‘Warsaw Pact’ countries, many who have since joined the EU..
I am most certainly not anti-Russian and I believe Russia has a lot of good to offer both to its own people and to the world.
Mr. Putin, please, I implore on you to look at what you can do to improve the position of Russia, and its products in the global marketplace.
‘Iron Grip’ leadership is so ‘Last Millennium’. If Russia is to maintain and improve its influence in the world, then it needs to focus on innovative and creative approaches to International Trade, and improving the attractiveness of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
The reality is that military security, regional cohesion and economic prosperity are all linked. You have made arguments on the advance of NATO and your feelings about how you think this threatens your own national security.
However, an invasion of East Ukraine driven by the type of ‘ethnic brotherhood’ arguments Martin Kimani counsels against ; in the hope that over time they will follow the ‘Belarus Model’ is counterproductive.
For you to sell your ‘alliance products’ then you need to improve them in the marketplace so that they appear to offer more security benefits than membership of NATO, and more economic benefits than membership of the EU.
The only way to achieve this, is to translate quality of life for ordinary citizens in Russia to something that surpasses that of ‘go to’ global comparisons, so that it changes the perception of regional nations to Russia as somewhere to aspire to, and foster a desire for ‘ties’ of different types.
Capturing them through a politico-military ruse which continues to imagine foreign phantoms is not the way forward.
‘For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.’ Job 3:25
‘And we will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and life and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient’ – [truncated] from Al Baqarah, 2:155/156 (Further Observation – On collective levels, foreign policies are almost entirely based on fear) From Fatima Altaf, Clinical Psychologist and Iqbal Studies Researcher.
Or simply put – thinking about what you fear the most increases its chances of coming to pass.
www.un.int /kenya/staff/amb-martin-kimani
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_system
www.reference.com/geography/countries-make-up-russian-federation-3245b795d437821f
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Moroccan_Air_Force