On Thursday 17 April the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the US is set to meet in Geneva for talks on the current situation in the Ukraine. While news headlines focus on the details of eastern and southern regions of the country voicing strong opposition to the interim government in Kiev, the situation in the country should be viewed and understood as part of a very disconcerting trend in contemporary world politics.

While following news from the Ukraine thoughts on micro-politics, a term sometimes reserved for discussions of the dynamics and processes that impact on institutions, and how these can in turn impact on political systems, kept on coming to mind. However, when one expands this concept slightly to encompass sub-national social and political dynamics, it becomes possible to contend that recent news from Libya, Ukraine, Greece and other countries suffering from internal weakness or conflict, may be pointing to a set of mirco-political dynamics in different environments with international consequences.

To contextualise, the micro-politics I speak of here refers to the extent to which localised conflicts, or conflicts that emerge as a result of protest against central state authorities, ultimately shape not only domestic politics with the states thus affected, but also on regional and international environments. For example, following on the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s government, ensuing conditions of insecurity had dire regional consequences – especially in Mali where thousands of Tuareg, who until then served in the Libyan armed forces retreated to their country of origin with weapons and experience. This indirectly contributed to half of the country declaring itself independent from the central government. It took a major regional and international offensive to push Tuareg and Islamist fighters back to reclaim Malian territory.

But, to make the further, and hopefully more interesting, I briefly refer to a few supposedly unconnected recent media reports. The first deals with the news that negotiations between representatives of the Tripoli based transitional authorities ended an eight month blockade of four oil export terminals in eastern Libya.

Background to this is that federalist rebels challenged authorities with a set of political demands while blockading the Zueitina, Hariga, Ras Lanuf and Es Sider ports. Together these export terminals account for a total export capacity of around 700,000 barrels per day of Libya’s total crude oil exports. For a weak an internally challenged transitional authority the flow of oil is a critical life-line thus re-opened.

The second example comes from across the Mediterranean. Around 6am on the morning of 10 April 70kgs of explosives packed in a car exploded outside a building of Greece’s Central Bank. This was to be a significant morning for the bank for unrelated reasons. This would have been the first time since the great green monster of the 2008 financial crunch had hit, that the bank would have started issuing bonds to the international markets. Well, at least the bonds went off with a bang after the financial crunch, one could say.

The third example is composed of several elements, most of which centred on the territories of the Ukraine currently gripped in a major stand-off that has exposed several historical fault-lines that pervade the territory. Crimea has already voted in favour of joining the Russian Federation, while other eastern regions such as Donetsk, and Kharkiv protestors occupied government buildings. A controversial ‘anti-terror’ operation currently under way will in all likelihood increase tensions and create conditions for civil war. It should be remembered that the Ukraine’s woes started with violent pro-EU protests stoked, among others, by seriously questionable organisations with links to World War II Nazi sympathisers and supporters.

But, what do these three examples from recent news headlines tell us? Club Med, this is now if we consider both the northern and southern shoreline of the Mediterranean, is occupied by countries still either clawing their way back to a semblance of economic and financial stability now (Italy, Greece, Cyprus) with north Africa’s Libya and Egypt continuing to exhibit symptoms of dire political distress and internal weakness after popular revolts in the by now forgotten ‘Arab Spring’. The bomb outside Greece’s central bank may not have rattled bond markets, but it illustrates the fact that since imposition of austerity, incidences of attacks on politicians, and in this case, attacks on institutions have been more regular occurrences. This means that on both sides of Club Med states are battling instability caused by economic crisis, as well as severe systems breakdown and low-level civil conflict as in Egypt.

In Libya the post Gaddafi interim governments have not by a long stretch of the imagination managed to bring the country under control. For eight months federalist rebels blockaded key ports and blocked oil exports. While the capture and blockade of ports are headline making incidents, throughout Libya there has been an increase in calls for more local autonomy as tribal groups and political alliances are losing hope that the humpty dumpty of the Libyan state will be put back together again.

In the case of Ukraine we see similar processes at work. Although the violence in the country was originally spurred by pro- versus anti- EU integration protests, the proverbial fault-lines that run through Ukraine are by now linked to much more powerful and potentially lethal international fault-lines. It pits Russia and the EU/NATO against each other in a situation that calls on all local and international actors (directly and indirectly involved) to exercise extreme restraint. The Ukraine’s new government, immediately after taking power, frightened all ethnic and linguistic minorities with an attempt at suppressing local and minority languages (including Russian which is, in most parts of the east and south of Ukraine a significant presence due to historical and religious reasons). This, of course, brings the issue of micro-politics to the fore.

Although the above threat was quickly removed from the table, the tension potentially tearing Ukraine apart at this stage is another example of how national, or even international stresses (eg. the battle for Ukraine’s economic allegiance to either EU or Russia) can cause local histories, languages and regional orientations to become fault lines with the potential of engulfing both the national and international actors as a consequence of the micro-political tensions.

As more regions in southern and eastern Ukraine call out their opposition to a coup imposed government (with some seriously dubious far right wing links that go as far back as Nazi sympathisers and supporters in the Second World War) the EU and NATO will react with more threats of isolation and punishment of Russia. This is unwise given the dire regional consequences armed conflict in Ukraine will have on the regional economic outlook as well as peace & security on a complex Black Sea basin.
Not only is this not good for global governance, and the search for a peaceful and humane world, but it is also ironic that this is taking place in a period of protracted, if not exponentially increasing, global uncertainty. This uncertainty is fed by two sources – ongoing uncertainty in global and regional economies especially the Eurozone. But, if we add to the conditions in abovementioned countries the years lond struggle in Syria, ongoing instability in Iraq (e.g. Fallujah and regions of southern Iraq are barely under the control of the central government),while in Egypt the strangeness of the removing the country’s first ever democratically elected president has caused globally under-reported political and social tensions in a key African anchor state.

The three examples of stories cited at the beginning may be unconnected at first sight. But on second reflection the conditions of internal fragmentation, tribal disunity, and militias refusing to subject themselves to a new central authority in Libya, may point to the direction political and social conditions will take in Ukraine. This is now if attempts fail at bridging the divisions threatening not only the state, but more importantly the society at large. The micro-politics of language, historical orientation will in this context become defining features of international responses to the crisis.

Something else that strikes me from these stories is that in each case the politics of a specific region, informed by local history, language, or political and social vision, has made world headlines. This is not only the result of integrated global communications and the flow of information. It is as if the 21st century has shown its true colours in the past few years. On the one hand there are processes of massive global integration, creating increasingly complex flows of finance, information, and culture. However, at the organic level of geographic realities, there seem to be more powers of disintegration, than integration at work.

If these situations are anything to go by, then it is clear that we have to prepare ourselves for more micro-political struggles to make world headlines. The micro-politics of language, of historical and cultural orientation, and regional allegiance has shown its true hand in the second decade of this century. Conditions of weakness created in central state authorities by rebellion (as in Libya, Syria and Ukraine), stand to cause long-term regional peace & security challenges. This means that analysis of international conditions have to be more aware of local realities, while also respecting the principle of constructive engagement. The isolation of Russia in response to conditions in Ukraine under current conditions of global uncertainty is unproductive because at this stage the world deserves more constructive engagement than thuggish isolation.

Written by Petrus de Kock, Geopolitical Solutions