While it may have been present domestically prior to 2014, it was during the conflict with Russia and the annexing of Crimea that we saw the far-right gain international notoriety in Ukraine. The Azov regiment was a paramilitary militia primarily made up of volunteers that were members of nationalist far-right groups (Aljazeera.com, 2022). They drew controversy due to the sporting of Nazi insignia on their uniforms and their tendency to attack Roma, immigrants, and the LGBT community. In the proceeding years, various news outlets have shown stories of government officials in league with these groups as they patrol the streets and attempt to “purify” Ukraine (BBC Newsnight, 2018). It must be stated that while these groups were sporadically around very specific parts of the Donbas region and Kyiv, they performed miserably in formal elections, showing that regular citizens had little appetite for the hardline rhetoric of these groups. Specifically in 2018, the far-right marched on the Maidan and were on sanctioned patrols in some of Kyiv’s districts (BBC Newsnight, 2018). During these patrols, they harassed women (misogyny is a big part of far-right ideology (Orav, Shreeves, & Radjenovic, 2018)), shut down betting shops with links to Russia, and co-opted council meetings in order to further their agenda. It is alleged that during this time, the far-right groups had the support of the then Interior Minister Arsen Avakov who had known links to the Azov militia and employed many of their members as security and their commander as his deputy. It is under this guise that Russia went about performing a successful securitizing act and launched its invasion on a mission to “de-nazify” Ukraine. They did this through the waging of war, which as will be illustrated is the worst possible strategy to combat any form of extremism. It has been stated that this piece is a commentary on the strategy of counter-terrorism rather than any kind of justification for war. However, as security scholars, we must acknowledge the Russian right as a sovereign nation with a legitimate use of force in this anarchic system from a perceived threat to their borders. Whether the construction of the threat was accurate, and the level of threat posed was inflated, Russia, within this realist paradigm that we find ourselves, was justified in its action.
Footnotes from history
We have seen historically that Russian counter-extremism measures are punitive and heavy-handed which tend to alienate sections of Russian society such as its Muslim population and other minority groups such as Jehovah’s witnesses. This strategy has been a destabilizing element in Russia, most notably in its combating of so-called Chechen extremists (Omelicheva, 2019). However, Russia is not alone in concocting a poor grand strategy by deploying the military to solve problems that could be resolved politically (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017). Notwithstanding Clausewitz and the idea that war is politics by other means, a clear distinction can be drawn between war as a counter-extremism strategy and social policy with the same aim. Britain in India and Northern Ireland, the United States of America in Iraq and Afghanistan, and France in Algeria, are all examples of the ineffective deployment of the military to combat extremist behavior.
Britain has had a very long history of countering extremism and terrorism in one form or another. As a colonial power, along with France, among other European countries, British military personnel were drafted in to keep the peace and squash any uprisings that were bubbling up. In 1916 during the Easter Risings in Dublin, there was an armed “insurrection” that should be classified as a fight for freedom, which was quickly put down by the British forces. While the killing of the vanguard of the short-lived rebellion moved to stop that particular event, what it did in the population was engender a spirit of togetherness, resentment of the British, and a call to arms for many Irish people. The resulting conflict, punctuated by the events of “Bloody Sunday”, would go on to take over 3,500 lives and could hardly be deemed an effective strategy as a counter-extremist measure. The same tactics were used in the Assam region of India, with Bengali revolutionaries that were labeled as Communist extremists suppressed by the British Army, in conjunction with local police (Barton, 2020). Rather than quash the extremist movement and suppress the ideology of the revolutionary fighters, the presence of the British Army only served to galvanize the local community, which in turn protected and fed the extremist groups (Barton, 2020).
France, another colonial power, faced a similar problem in Algeria in that the Algerian people were fighting to free themselves from the bondage of colonial rule and were met with a military response in the form of French forces and the co-opted Pied-Noir and Harkis (Paul et al., 2013). This formented an extremist base during the battle for freedom in which sections of the Algerian population joined the FLN and went on to commit various acts of terrorism in the name of revolution. The barbarity of the French response drew international condemnation particularly from the USA, who, ironically, would then go on to use the French tactics in Vietnam with the same result. The impending French withdrawal would also lead to the galvanization of a pro-French Algerian right-wing extremist organization that would go on to conduct a series of bombings and assassination attempts in France (Paul et al., 2013). The actions of the French military were ineffective in achieving its stated aims and did more to propagate and entrench extremist views than to counter them.
The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have been the most ineffective military interventions in the fight against extremism and terrorism in recent times. Not only did the US grand strategy of regime change, the spread of democracy, and the stabilization of the region not come to pass, but the invasion and subsequent occupation created the breeding ground for some of the most dangerous extremist ideologies we have seen since the end of the Second World War. With 288,000 people dead in Iraq (Iraqbodycount.org, 2022) and 243,000 in Afghanistan (Costs of War, 2022), the obliteration of infrastructure and society, the military response in the name of countering violent extremism and terrorism has cost the equivalent of 151, 11 September attacks (Crenshaw & LaFree, 2017). Since the US has withdrawn from the region, the Taliban have resumed control in Afghanistan and Iraq is in a perpetual political crisis. All the while Islamic state extremists continue to carry out insurgent activities in the country. Again, we can see clearly that waging war to counter extremism, political violence, or terrorism is a terrible strategy that ultimately costs lives, culture, and exorbitant amounts of money.
Double standard
Looking at the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we saw the very same countries denouncing the aggression on the part of Russia and calling for an end to the conflict. However, if you look at security from a realist ontological perspective, surely the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a justifiable exercise of a legitimate state use of force to counter extremist ideology and ensure the security of their borders. The very states calling on Russia to seek diplomatic resolutions are the very states that have waged war to suppress autonomy, sovereignty, and independence. The reality is that most are pseudo-realists otherwise known as liberalists, that are happy to wage war for whatever reason, as long as there is an international institution such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the United Nations (UN) behind the action. In some cases, even the lack of institutional approval does not stop the powers that be as we have seen in the case of Iraq and both organizations mentioned act, to a large extent, at the behest of the global hegemon, the US. The double standards of the “West” versus the rest are clear to see here, and while not condoning the conflict itself, from a security perspective, there is precedent for this type of action, regardless of how ineffective it has been.
Conclusion
As shown, war as a means of combating extremism, terrorism, and political violence is a poor strategy and more than likely there are ulterior motives for an invasion. In the French and British contexts, it was the suppression of revolution and the maintenance of colonial power. For the Americans, it was the projection of power, access to vast amounts of oil and regime change to bolster its waning influence in the region. In the case of the Russian invasion, we could apply all of the above. In all cases, a desire to occupy or maintain ownership of lands outside of their own state borders is clear to see and the suppression of an ideological threat was just a pretext for achieving those political aims. As Clausewitz states, “war is politics by other means”, a claim that still rings true to this day.