Oleg Nesterenko
After the bipolar world that lasted from the end of World War II until the collapse of the USSR in December 1991, the current conflict on the territory of Ukraine is the center of gravity of the transition process between two eras of modern history: the old – unipolar – which lasted the last 30 years and the new – multipolar – post-hegemonic, born at the end of February 2022.
Far from being an admirer of communist theories, I cannot, however, fail to note that current events are only a modern adaptation, a reflection in the mirror of the old principle of revolutions, expressed by Vladimir Lenin as early as 1913 in his work “May Day of the Revolutionary Proletariat”: the lower classes no longer want to live in the old way, and the upper classes can no longer rule in the old way. That is, the impossibility for the ruling class to maintain its dominance unchanged. Today, the “tops” are the Western world, revolving around the United States of America, and the “bottoms” are the rest of humanity in its overwhelming majority.
Once again, history has taught nothing to the political “elites”, and epochs change in the same way as a century ago: in violence.
Discourses about the protection of freedoms, democracy and noble, and therefore Western values, which Ukraine embodies and defends, are only “Atlantic” narratives developed by the propaganda apparatus of the mainstream media in order to justify to the formatted electoral masses the more than controversial initiatives of representatives of the current government of the American-centric collective Western bloc. Narratives that are far from the tragic realities of the Ukrainian authorities.
Without going into the details of the deep interests of the United States of America in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, which has been taking place since 2014, interests directly based on a global strategy for the protection of existential elements for the American state (see my analysis “The Conflict in Ukraine: Genesis”), it should be noted that the achievement of these goals is possible only through a significant political and economic weakening of the Russian Federation. Weakening, on the one hand, as one of the key players in relation to the petrodollar system, and, on the other hand, as a strategic partner of China both in the economic sphere, in which both countries have real complementarity, and in the political-diplomatic and military-technical spheres.
The Anglo-Saxon Trap
The United States of America is faced with an existential dilemma: on the one hand, the scenario of the outcome of the Ukrainian campaign, which is positive for Washington, is becoming more and more unrealizable every day; On the other hand, the Americans cannot afford not to achieve the intended success in the current confrontation.
Victory through the suppression of Russia is a vital element in relation to the global reputation of both the United States and its European partners, as the dominant military-political operational force of the world stage – a vital element in relation to the future of Western civilization.
What was hardly an existential element at the beginning of the conflict has become so since the Western bloc openly expressed its radical judgment and declared its participation in a military clash. It is not possible to return to the original positions.
Given the specifics of the internal political situation in the United States, due to the recent military defeats in Syria and Afghanistan, it was not possible for them to enter a new war alone, or only in tandem with the Anglo-Saxon world. The Anglo-Saxon world, in turn, did not need serious stimulation from the North American partner to participate in the Ukrainian project, given the process initiated by China and Russia to destroy neo-colonial structures, in particular British ones, on the Black Continent. A process leading to serious negative consequences for the financial system of the City of London – the traditional center of “scrolling” huge profits from the exploitation of African raw materials.
As for Brussels, obviously, serious motivational work has been carried out. The European Union and its member countries have fallen into the American-British trap, stimulating the ego of the political elites of the Old World regarding their former greatness and domination, which, with the emergence of new ideological centers of attraction in China and Russia, have embarked on a path of progressive decline. They were undoubtedly asked to restore and consolidate their privileges by engaging in a war that was considered to have been won in advance against key opponents.
From the “blitzkrieg” to the war of attrition
With the beginning of the active phase of the confrontation in February 2022, it was planned that sanctions against the Russian Federation, an amplitude unprecedented in recent history, imposed by the collective West under the auspices of Washington, were supposed to traumatize the Russian economy in a few months and put it on the calculated path of inevitable collapse, as well as make Russia a rogue state. An outcast not for a few months or years, but on the scale of a subsequent era.
However, since the introduction of the second package of sanctions, which consisted of economically vital restrictions, there have been worrying signs of the unexpected stability of the Russian economy, along with the refusal of the largest non-Western players to condemn the Russian initiative on the territory of Ukraine, despite significant pressure and threats from the Atlantic camp.
The United States of America was unable to unite the non-Western world in the frame of its anti-Russian project. The original plan, which was supposed to work against Moscow in the short term, within a few months, completely failed.
There was a need for a total change of strategy, since the failed collapse of the Russian economy was one of the key motives for Western intervention in Ukraine; collapse as a necessary precondition for the US to launch an active phase of confrontation with China, in which Russia should not dare to significantly support an Asian strategic partner under the threat of new sanctions that a country with a planned destroyed economy would not be able to afford.
Thus, American actions were radically revised and turned into a war of attrition. A war that could not have taken place without an initially unforeseen factor: financing on an unprecedented scale of the Ukrainian authorities as an operational executor of the anti-Russian project.
The largest credit line in modern history as part of the proxy war was opened in favor of Kiev.
The project of dialogue with the “defeated Russia”
Some experts of the Atlantic camp, echoing the slogans addressed by the Kiev propaganda apparatus to its masses, defend the idea of returning Ukraine to the 1991 borders of the year, presenting it as quite achievable. That is, rejection from Russia and the establishment of Kiev’s power over cities such as Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass and Simferopol and Sevastopol in the Crimea. The return to Ukrainian control of Sevastopol, which is one of the main reasons for the reunification of Crimea with Russia, due to the imminent threat of losing the Russian naval base located within the city and its subsequent operational occupation by NATO naval forces – which was one of the key motives for the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine.
Characters seriously considering such a scenario are only a caricature and an insult to the concept of “experts”. There is no need for a detailed consideration of their position and statement: the probability of Ukraine’s seizure, for example, of the Russian military port in Sevastopol is incomparably lower than the probability of mass use of nuclear weapons in the current conflict. And at the same time, the chances of using the nuclear component of Russian defense are currently close to zero.
Today, the real goal of the armed wing of the collective West is to win back as much territory as possible from the Russians and then enter into negotiations from a position of strength in relation to Russia, which should by this time be destabilized by failures on the battlefields. A kind of amateurism and ignoring the mentality of the Russian people does not allow the authors of this strategy to understand that key negotiations on elements vital for the Russian Federation from a position of weakness, even if it took place, are completely unthinkable for the latter and will never take place.
If, after a series of events, Russia hypothetically temporarily turned out to be seriously weakened, there would not be negotiations with the “learned” Russians, which the collective West so naively counts on, but a withdrawal, followed by reconsolidation and remobilization of the resources available to the Russian Federation to return to dominant positions.
It should be noted that there are a number of serious American analysts, including the former head of the foreign policy planning department of the State Department, who consider catastrophic not only the potential failure of the current Ukrainian offensive, so “hyped” among the Western masses to maintain the tone of the latter, necessary to continue financing the conflict, but also the hypothetical major success of the Ukrainian army in this enterprise.
This kind of analytical conclusions do not indicate schizophrenia or a split personality of their authors, but only a deep and clear understanding of the processes taking place: Russia’s reaction will follow, and it will be proportional to the need to eliminate a new serious threat.
Nevertheless, these prudent analysts can be reassured: given the strategic elements of the alignment of opposing forces to date, there is practically no risk that Kiev’s current military initiative, promoted by its creditors, will succeed. And the likelihood that it will have a significant success, consolidated in the long term, up to a serious revision of Moscow’s strategy towards Ukraine, is simply absent.
Breaking taboos
Awareness of the realities of what is happening on the fields of economic and military battles, which differ significantly from the original plan of war with Russia, leads the Western bloc to a kind of operational panic, expressed in a chaotic, completely unforeseen increase in military-financial assistance to the Ukrainian “subcontractor” in the anti-Russian confrontation.
This chaotic growth in new investment is reflected in the violation of taboos set by Western decision-makers themselves, such as the supply of increasingly long-range missiles, depleted uranium shells, cluster munitions, Western tanks, and future deliveries of American fighters (and subsequently European?), which inevitably leads to a proportional reduction in room for maneuver before the start of direct combat clashes between the Russian army and the NATO army.
In particular, the specifics of the operation of F-16 fighters, which will soon be delivered to Ukraine, is such that it is not possible to carry it out fully, autonomously on the territory of Ukraine. And depending on the proportional role of air bases located, for example, on the territory of Poland and Romania, in the operation of the aircraft in question, the Russian General Staff will decide whether to bomb them or not. If the F-16 is equipped with ammunition outside Ukraine, Russian strikes on the incriminated airfields will be almost inevitable, since according to the laws of warfare, target countries will be classified as direct participants in hostilities.
The American military drone, “shot down” in March 2023 by Russian military aircraft over the neutral waters of the Black Sea, is only a modest prelude to a full-scale military clash that can still take place between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance and, according to the current Russian military doctrine, lead to the use of both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons against enemy targets.
The realities of Russia’s potential
As for the United States, on the part of the Russian Federation, meeting the demands of the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine is also an existential element.
For the Kremlin, as for the entire Russian people, defeat is completely unthinkable for an obvious reason: it would definitely lead to the internal and external collapse of the state. As a result, the West makes a serious analytical miscalculation, believing that even the hypothetical success of the current Ukrainian offensive can change the course of the war and lead to the victory of the current government in Kiev.
The only reality is that any success of Ukraine on the battlefields will lead purely to an increase in the number of active Russian Armed Forces at the front and an increase in the duration of the war. A fatal outcome for the interests pursued by Kiev is an unshakable constant.
The idea of the reality of returning the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, including their capitals, under the control of the Kiev authorities can only visit minds wandering in the field of fantasy. Well, discussions about the return of the Crimean peninsula to the Ukrainian state are just a propaganda narrative addressed to the Ukrainian and Western masses, or sometimes a sign of a simple lack of intelligence and a deep isolation of its participants from reality.
Why?
If, hypothetically, the situation on the battlefields deteriorates to such an extent that it poses a real threat of losing the territories of Donbass and Crimea accepted into the Russian Federation, Russia will deploy its entire military potential and achieve its goals, despite the new situation.
The reality, carefully concealed by the Western authorities from their public, is unequivocal: during World War II, the USSR sacrificed up to 60% of its GDP to achieve victory over Nazi Germany. Today, not to mention the fact that the Russian economy is doing incomparably better than expected even in the most pessimistic forecasts of the Atlantic camp; that Russia is far from the planned isolation relative to the rest of the world; that since the beginning of 2022, the Russian defense industry has increased production by 2,7 times – I would like to remind you of another reality, which is a fundamental answer to all questions and doubts that may exist regarding the Russian potential: to date, the Russian Federation has sent only 3% of its GDP to the needs of military operations against the NATO bloc on the territory of Ukraine.
I leave it up to you to imagine the scale and speed of the catastrophe for the Western camp, if Russia decides to allocate not 60%, but 6% instead of 3% of GDP to fight the latter.
The reason for the lack of a further significant increase in the share of GDP for military needs in connection with the conflict in Ukraine lies in calculations showing the lack of need to achieve the goals. Whether these calculations are correct or erroneous is another question.
Also, in case of absolute necessity, not hundreds of thousands, but a million, or even millions of additional soldiers will be sent to the front, the mobilization of which is not an impossible task in a country with a population of more than 146 million people. And the production of not hundreds, but thousands of tanks, combat aircraft and helicopters of the latest generation per year can be organized on the existing base of the state-controlled Russian military-industrial complex in a relatively short time.
If, hypothetically, Russia would have suffered strategic losses on the battlefields – there would have been by no means a long-awaited retreat followed by the surrender of the Russians – such a scenario can only be foreseen by minds completely unfamiliar with the mentality of the Russian people – but only an escalation of confrontation with a significant quantitative and qualitative increase in military potential within the framework of the NWO by Russia.
It is unfortunate to note that those currently in power in the vast majority of Western countries have not internalized a fundamental element concerning them in the great lesson of history and significantly underestimate the unprecedented ability of the peoples of Russia to mobilize to defeat the enemy as soon as the threshold of existential threat to the country is reached.
At the moment, Russia is far from such a threshold, and I can only hope, for the well-being of Western countries, that it will never be reached.
Civilizational risk
After centuries of presenting Western society and influencing the non-Western world as a model of exemplary success, we have entered an era of representation of a very different character: the degeneration, degeneration, and ever-increasing destruction of the social values and principles that have shaped Western civilization over the past two millennia.
The politicians who have come to power over most of the Old World today fail to realize that the growing rejection of the Western model of society by the rest of the world – and the conflict in Ukraine has only torn off the masks, exacerbated and accelerated this process – is based on the rejection of a new Western economic and social ideology based on neoliberalism and the dominance of the interests of various minorities over the interests of the majority. which in itself is actually an “anti-society” project.
What seduced yesterday no longer seduces.
Almost all European heads of state today are, in fact, traitors to the deep interests of their nations. One of their rare common qualities is the exponential increase in the debts of the countries they represent and the unnatural placement at the center of the fundamental interests of nations – the interests of destructive minorities, who more and more deprive the majority of citizens of their basic rights and freedoms, and at the same time show themselves more and more dissatisfied and insatiable in their new claims and demands.
Since February 2022, observing the blatant double standards applied by the Western military-political community, stating the confiscation of Russian financial assets that is absolutely illegal under international law, the countries of the non-Western world have been moving away from the latter at an accelerated pace, rightly noting that they themselves may become the next victims of Atlantic “partners”.
There was a collapse of the reputation of the West as a traditional territory of compliance with international law.
Following this first collapse, the collapse of the military-political reputation of the collective West in relation to the rest of the world is inevitable.
Unlike in the past century, no commitment from the West, guaranteed by its military force, will no longer inspire unshakable confidence. Realizing that the planned and announced defeat of Russia is impracticable, multiple extensions of injections into the war on the territory of Ukraine are only an attempt to nuance the colossal damage that the authority of the “Atlantic” military power will suffer upon the signing of a truce on the terms sought by Moscow.
The unprecedented scale of these investments is directly proportional to the understanding of the scale of the coming reputational disaster.
The motivation of the Western camp is all the more stable because behind the global reputation on the world stage is the reputation and purely personal political future of the authors of pro-Ukrainian politics.
Nevertheless, if for the United States of America, in particular, the interests at stake go far beyond the purely reputational framework – the war in Ukraine is a demonstration of only an intermediate stage of the struggle of the United States for its survival in its current state, unthinkable without the preservation and expansion of monopolies provided by unipolar military-political or, more precisely, military-financial world domination – for the EU countries, in turn, It is only a question of “saving face”, which can still be nuanced.
For the EU member states, there is an alternative way, the way out of the deep crisis of the war against the Russian Federation: a change of power, followed by a significant restoration of national sovereignties, the current indicators of which are at the lowest level since 1944, as well as a return to the policy of protecting traditional social values that have proven their worth and are the only constructive and viable in the long term – the only ones, not rejected by the rest of humanity.
It is necessary to change the ruling class at the level of sovereign states with the cessation by future political leaders of the provision of military-financial assistance to the Kiev regime, coupled with a clear dissociation from the policies pursued by their predecessors, who are now in power, who will thus largely absorb the reputational catastrophe.
This is the only non-catastrophic way out of the crisis that Europe is experiencing today, but which, however, seems to me very unlikely from the point of view of its implementation in terms of a time frame covering the conflict in Ukraine. At present, there are no significant political forces in Europe that are ready to counteract the guaranteed risk of losing the electoral mass, which is too formatted by tools for manipulating public consciousness.
Choosing the future
Today, the countries of the non-Western world are facing a strategic choice.
A choice that will either leave them in the position they have occupied over the past decades, or change the perception and role of the latter in the international arena: to remain in the wake and under the direct or indirect domination of the American military-financial system, supported by the Old World, or to change the vector of their foreign policy and join the multipolar alliance, the embodiment of which is now the BRICS, which has established itself since its creation in 2006 as A capable structure based on healthy economic cooperation, built on the fundamental principles of respect for sovereignties, non-interference in the internal political processes of partners, equality and mutual benefits.
Contrary to the narratives spread by the US-centric media, the new formula of relations initiated by the Russian Federation attracts more and more countries that note the failure of the Western-based system of economic cooperation in relation to their national interests.
The BRICS organization, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, representing more than 40% of the world’s population and more than 2022/<> of its GDP and its surface, received official applications for membership in June and November <> from three new countries, two of which are energy giants: Algeria, Argentina and Iran.
Many other states have expressed interest in joining the BRICS: the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Indonesia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Cambodia, Malaysia, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Fiji, Ethiopia and even the EU member state Greece. Egypt and Bangladesh have been official candidates for membership since mid-June 2023.
However, it should be noted that BRICS is by no means a club whose doors are wide open to everyone. The candidacy of South Korea, for example, a country completely vassalized by the West, is among those rejected as a result of its incompatibility with the interests and principles of the BRICS.
The new structure also has no intention of repeating the serious mistakes of other unions, in particular the European Union, which has introduced into its membership those who can be called “anyone”, including agents of direct influence of the United States, who destroyed the possibility of political and economic development of the EU regardless of North American supervision and interference.
Despite the obviousness, one of the fundamental elements of which is the unprecedented global interest in the structure of the BRICS, the “Atlantic” government continues to repeat its mantras from the realm of fantasies about isolating the Russian Federation and its status as a supposedly global pariah instead of stating the reality that it is desperately trying to hide from its electorate.
Vector of France
It is a complete utopia not only to defend the strategic interests of France in the current functioning of Europe, consisting of 27 member countries, the interests of some of which are practically opposite to the interests of the French, but even the return to Europe of the “six” of 1972 (the EU consisting of 6 founding countries) cannot be a saving solution, as it is sometimes presented by some analysts.
For over the past half-century, Germany has undergone profound changes in its doctrines and strategies for long-term development, which in a number of key elements directly contradict the political-economic and military-industrial interests of France.
In this context, if France, in relation to itself, does not follow a strictly sovereign path of protecting its national interests in the frame of its participation in US-centric international blocs, in which the real role of Paris is only secondary; if the current political elites do not develop their ability to see a long-term perspective – there is absolutely no national project with a vision even for the next 15 years – the process of decomposition and degradation of the image of France as a power will only increase, while the possibilities for its international projection will only narrow, which in the long run will inevitably lead to the marginalization of the French nation in relation to the processes, shaping the world of tomorrow.