Would you want to live in a so-called buffer state, a nation sandwiched between the competing interests of rival superpowers? Cynical enthusiasts of international relations realpolitik take the view that such buffer states — Ukraine included — are a necessary evil, the peacetime equivalent of no man’s land designed to keep otherwise warring factions apart. For these international “realists”, buffer states should be discouraged from choosing sides. By doing so, they’ll only end up antagonising the “rejected” side, increasing the chances of a major conflict.
Lord Skidelsky, the economic historian and biographer of John Maynard Keynes, offered his own variation on this thinking on Twitter just the other day, warning Finland that “application…to join Nato would be a catastrophic mistake. It would break its 1948 neutrality pact with Russia, the mutually accepted and observed basis of its independence”. Funnily enough, this didn’t go down too well with Finns who think security promises dating back to the late Forties aren’t worth the Soviet paper they’re written on.
