Why did we go to war?

One hundred years later, we are still discussing what caused the First World War, and who is to blame. What we should have learned is that while isolated incidents and the reaction to these in itself may have seemed rational and understandable, the sum of these incidents became a catastrophic leap into death and destruction. With this hindsight we could have avoided a similar chain of events one century later.

In the escalation of tensions in Ukraine, we have seen the following critical incidents:

1. Interference in domestic affairs
If Ukraine was a sovereign state, an intervention in its internal affairs could only have been justified in the case of severe violations of human rights. But what was under discussion were the country's international relations. The EU support for protests against an elected president was a casus belli - not for Russia but for Ukraine.

2. A president accused of corruption and election fraud
Yet, we never went to Times Square under George Bush. So this too was an internal affair for the Ukrainians to resolve.

3.  Loss of sovereignty
What became clear in the past months was that the Ukrainian government was under heavy pressure from all sides: the Russians protecting its sphere of influence and the USA and the EU undermining it either out of idealism or for selfish reasons. The good thing is that in this free and transparent part of the world we will be able to fully disclose our responsibility in this loss of sovereignty: who did what, who paid whom and for what purpose.

4. Military intervention in the Crimea
The intervention in the Crimea was a breach of international law, and Western politicians cried that "Putin had become unpredictable". That was a flawed analysis, since we could have predicted that Russia had a strong strategic interest in not having its navy isolated. This interest, while it did not justify the intervention, should have been anticipated. Militarily, if the West wanted war, and with an eye for Russian interests if it would have wanted to avoid war. This foresight is what distinguishes statesmen from activists.

5. Annexation of the Crimea
While the military intervention was a breach of international law, the annexation was much more questionably so. The Kosovo precedent has sanctioned the option of unilateral secession. For other interests, in those days.

It is appealing to translate the conflict in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys", and this is fuelled by both sides stepping up their propaganda. But this is not Liverpool against Manchester United. It is bad guys on both sides and civil populations trapped in the middle.