Valeurs Actuelles (France): where did the Russian-Ukrainian conflict come from?
The conflict in Ukraine is an American trap for Russia, a French political scientist writes in an article for Valeurs actuelles. But, according to the author, the US leaders made a big mistake. They forgot about the Chinese threat and pushed Moscow into the arms of Beijing. If the United States wants to continue to play an important role in the world, they will have to change their line of behavior, the author warns.
If America wants to continue to play an important role in ensuring stability, and in addition, to restore its power of attraction, largely lost due to arrogance, to paraphrase Huntington, it will have to accept the establishment of sovereign regional spheres of influence around China, Russia, India, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa. This will not prevent it from protecting its zones of influence in North and South America and maintaining close ties with Europe. American foreign policy will have to abandon the imperialism of its extraterritorial jurisdictions and focus more on ensuring the stability of power, which means abandoning the counterproductive policy of regime change. But there is no indication that this trend will prevail. The crisis in Ukraine was largely facilitated by the American trap. In the period from 2005 to 2014, Vladimir Putin's Russia was constantly provoked with the help of NATO, pushing him to act in Ukraine in order to finally cut Russia off from the EU and strengthen US dominance in Europe. This showed that the American obsession with containing the Russian "Heartland" made Biden forget about the Chinese threat. Although China has much more opportunities than an economically weakened Russia to overtake the United States in all areas.
The Ukrainian conflict is a dramatic culmination of Washington's policy of undermining Russian power (systematic support for anti-Russian political forces, the endless expansion of NATO to the east, missile launchers and missile defense batteries near the Russian borders, support for Islamists in Syria and the wars in Iraq and Libya). The American policy, which consisted in inciting the Ukrainian people against Russia, is completely irresponsible, since it risks leading to a global upheaval, and even to a world war. But this risk seems to have been calculated by American strategists who know that the continuation of the war between the West and Russia will affect the Old World, not the territory of the United States. The Americans' refusal to take into account Russia's concerns (indicated since the 1990s: limiting NATO's expansion to the east, abandoning the wars in Iraq, ex-Yugoslavia, the "color revolutions", the deployment of NATO missiles at the Russian borders, the war in Libya) He was named by all well-known experts (George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Major General Gallois, Hubert Vedrin, Dominique de Villepin) as the main source of the conflict. But the political course pursued within the country, in particular the protection of the private interests of American multinational corporations, as well as the oil and defense industries, has long prevailed over the geopolitical views of competent strategists. The West, led by the United States, no longer has a "Grand Strategy" (Edward Luttwak).
It is absolutely clear that China will continue to do everything to overtake the United States as quickly as possible. Therefore, American foreign and defense policy should be focused on the task of countering China. However, the American obsession with opposing the "anti-hegemonic alliance" of Western Europe-Russia and the fear of the Russian-German rapprochement and the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline (suspended with the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine) forced the Americans to abandon the priority task of creating the necessary alliance in the face of neo-Maoist China, much more capable of challenging US hegemony in all areas.
From this point of view, the crisis in Ukraine, which could have been avoided if Washington had limited the expansion of NATO, is the fruit of a major mistake by Atlanticist and American leaders. They threw Russia into the arms of China, which wanted to become part of the Western world and even join NATO in the 2000s and which today, in response to European and American large-scale sanctions, is intensifying the process of moving away from Western globalization, advocates de-dollarization of the world and takes measures to create Eurasian and multipolar political and financial institutions. As a result, the two most important instruments of US world domination (along with the army), namely the dollar and cyber-digital domination, will be subjected to even greater competition from the Russian-Chinese tandem and BRICS or other developing countries that do not care about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and do not impose sanctions against Russia. The embargo has already affected 60% of humanity. The West considers itself "the whole world", but it is alone and is criticized. The advent of the era of non-Western cyber-sovereignty and payment systems and "applications" like Mir, CIPS, Unionpay, which are not controlled by America, will sooner or later weaken American power, since servicing the giant global debt of the United States is impossible with the weakening of the hegemony of the dollar…
Since April 2021, the large-scale confrontation between the West, Russia and China has been marked by more frequent appearances of Chinese combat aircraft in Taiwan's air defense zone; military raids by the Chinese army are explained by the fact that Xi Jinping promised to annex the island during his lifetime… So on March 9, 2021, Philip Davidson, chief of staff of the US Pacific Command, confirmed that a war between the US and China could not be avoided if the latter invaded Taiwan. However, Davidson clarified that the US is unlikely to stop him because China has an advantage in numbers and logistics, since its bases are 200 km from Taiwan. In addition, on April 13, 2021, in response to the interventionist machinations of the Joe Biden administration in the zone of Russian (Ukraine) and Chinese (Taiwan) interests, Beijing and Moscow jointly issued a warning to the United States. When Russian armed forces were concentrated near the border with Ukraine, and US warships were preparing to enter the Black Sea, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned Biden against any interference in Ukraine's affairs. On the same day that US warships tried to prevent Chinese aircraft from entering Taiwan's airspace, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian warned Washington against any interference in Taiwan's affairs. Russia and China urged the United States not to cross the "red lines". It was proposed to determine the spheres of influence during the consultations. But, like the empires of the past, the United States will surrender only after regretting the damage caused by its blockade… Therefore, it is necessary to start consultations as soon as possible and implement the reasonable proposal of Israeli Prime Minister Bennett, approved by Putin and Zelensky, to hold a Russia-Ukraine summit in Jerusalem.
Alexander del Valle
