The emotionalism and biases surrounding the conflict in Ukraine were very detrimental to his understanding. In Western countries, an atmosphere of co-belligerence has established a single thought that does not tolerate contradiction. It is the outcome of the fighting that will dissipate the smoke of partisan discourse and will make it possible to clarify many things. Let’s try to take stock, provisionally.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Biden and Russia
The coming to power of Joe Biden in January 2021 marks an intensification of the confrontation with Russia. Under Donald Trump, the obsession was China. It still obsesses the Biden administration, but it gives free rein to the anti-Russian tropisms of the Clinton and Obama days. The neoconservatives are well in the saddle there; Victoria Nuland, author of the immortal “Fuck the European Union”, takes up a position at the top. They no longer have Trump in their way and Russia has always been their pet peeve.
From the start of the Biden administration, arms shipments to Ukraine increased. Large-scale NATO land and naval military exercises are held on Russia’s borders in March-April 2021. A naval exercise follows in the Black Sea during the summer of 2021. B-1 nuclear bombers make flights of reconnaissance on the Black Sea and on the edge of Russia in October 2021. A destroyer and a command ship enter the Black Sea in November 2021. At the end of 2021, an end of inadmissibility is opposed to Russian proposals for treaties of security in Europe.
The escalation against Russia is partly explained by the political weakening of Biden: stampede in Afghanistan, projects blocked in the Senate, rout announced for the mid-term elections. As an icing on the cake, mounting tensions with Russia could even harm the candidacy of the other contender for the White House, the “pro-Russian” Trump.
geopolitics first
Political calculations of this kind no doubt have their place, but they are not enough. The geopolitical stakes are far more important. The entire US establishment and its media and academic extensions fuel neoconservatism, and therefore Russophobia and Sinophobia. This is so because Russia and China are the two most powerful challengers to US hegemony.
The dominant international fact of our time is the questioning of the primacy of the United States as the sole superpower.
The era of American domination, celebrated as “the end of history” in 1989-1990, is drawing to a close. China’s economy will overtake that of the United States soon; Russia has risen and refuses subordination.
Both reject unipolarity, exceptionalism and the privileged status of the dollar which allows the United States to live at the expense of others by printing paper money. Both echo the positions of many countries. The transition from unipolarity to multipolarity is the great transition of the current era. The world is being reconfigured.
The normal behavior of empires
Like the hegemons of the past, the United States will not willingly cede first place. Like their predecessors, they do everything to hinder, and if possible to kill, those who challenge them. This is neither original nor surprising. This is the normal behavior of empires. However, for the United States, the military path is complicated by the fact that Russia and China are nuclear powers, capable of fighting back. It is no longer about Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Libya. For now, at least, nuclear war is not the first option.
This is what compels us to favor destabilizations, regime changes and conflicts on the periphery of Russia and China in the hope of creating fixation abscesses damaging to both.
As the United States cannot make war directly, it makes it by proxy, in border regions serving as platforms.
Ukraine and Taiwan play this role. Permanent military, economic and political pressure is exerted against Russia and China in order to create tension, multiply provocations, ignite sparks, set their neighbors against them.
The way to perpetuate hegemony is to spread division. British imperialism was a past master in the matter for three centuries and it acts today as guardian of its offspring. US leaders have been bluntly proclaiming since 2021 their desire to embroil Russia in a long-running conflict in Ukraine in the oft-repeated hope of undermining it. They think the 1980s intervention in Afghanistan caused the breakup of the USSR and say they want a remake in Ukraine.
Poor Ukraine
At present, Ukraine is kept on a drip of Western weapons. It is called upon to sacrifice itself for as long as possible so that the American strategy of bleeding Russia, of its economic suffocation, of the overthrow of its regime can be carried out.
Hence the official narrative, rehashed over and over again, that Russia is losing the war, that Ukrainian victory is near, that all of Donbass and even Crimea will be recaptured.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is losing 100 to 200 men a day, with three to four times that number in casualties. Will she be held at arm’s length in battle until the cannon fodder runs out? She loses Russian-speaking territories that she will never see again.
The wake-up call at the end of this conflict risks being as brutal as the war itself. The alignment of a country with the distant enemies of its immediate neighbour, a fortiori a great power, is a tragic recipe for becoming a sacrificial victim of a confrontation which is beyond it. The worst part is that we don’t see how to prevent this drama from coming to an end.