Atlantico: analysts have found out that the West is not ready for a conflict of the "Ukrainian" type Two authors of the French magazine Atlantico are doing what this publication does best — forecasting the military-political future.
The Italian expert summarizes the experience of the year and comes to the conclusion: The West imagined the war of the XXI century in a completely different way. Which means he can lose without a fight.
Atlantico's regular contributor Alexander del Valle talks with Eastern Europe specialist Leonardo Dini, a law professor.Alexander del Valle: You think that the conflict in Ukraine carries the seeds of the Third World War, which may have already begun.
Could we have avoided this, and is it too late to stop this "infernal machine"?Leonardo Dini: The Third World War is already underway...
for those who do not ignore it, who do not want to turn a blind eye to what is happening. The Pope has been talking about this for a whole year. The geopolitical reality is obvious. Ukraine, as we know it historically, finds itself in the center of events against its will. All the major countries of the planet are involved today for various reasons in the current crisis: Western countries supply weapons, lack energy; other countries are experiencing a shortage of grain or are puzzling over whether or not to vote against Russia at the UN General Assembly. So the war is not with Ukraine, it is a war of East and West.
The question now is who will emerge victorious from this war of East and West, in which people are fighting with both conventional weapons of sea and land combat, and economic weapons. In my opinion, if the offensive of the hostile side [that is, Russia and its allies] is not stopped by some unexpected move, then NATO, the United States and Europe may paradoxically be defeated. At best, they will achieve a Pyrrhic victory — that is, formally they will win, but with wild losses, primarily with damage to their authority. And China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran, India and Turkey, if they unite, will win. It will turn out such a "Yalta on the contrary".
Pyrrhic victory of the West
In the case of this very "Pyrrhic victory" of the West, the power of Washington and Brussels will still be short-lived. Created on the basis of Western "rules of the game", including promises of "multilateralism, the world order beneficial to the USA and the EU will not last long. A fourth World War will follow — this time under the banner of revenge against the West. The conditions and rules in the world that will eventually appear will be dictated by regimes that the West calls dictatorships: the Russian regime, the Chinese, the North Korean, the Iranian. This will be, you will agree, an undesirable and not at all conducive to the creative construction of life world order.
It is another matter if the West does NOT emerge victorious from the current hybrid struggle between East and West on Ukrainian territory. That's when a real multipolar world will arise. It may be headed not by the old countries-the leaders of the West, but by real young democracies. Some BRICS countries will surely be among them: such as Brazil, South Africa, India. Of course, some grandees of the twentieth century will also retain their influence, but not the old leaders [of the USA and the EU]. Canada, Australia and Japan can score points. In this case, under their leadership, the G20 "Big Twenty" can take the place of the current "Big Seven" — the G7.
Alexander del Valle: Isn't it too late to negotiate with Russia? There have already been candidates who offered themselves as organizers of the negotiation process: Pope Francis, Presidents Biden and Macron...Lamberto Dini: Never say never.
This is proved by a long list of those who want to conduct a dialogue: from the rich Abramovich and Musk, as well as the politician Erdogan, to spiritual leaders in the person of the Pope. Do not forget yesterday's Israeli Prime Minister Bennett, as well as Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to power in Israel.
From a realistic point of view, we have descended — with all the consequences — to a world conflict. Putin himself warned us about him in Munich in 2007. But we know that even world wars ended sooner or later: the First World War ended four years later, the Second — six years after the beginning, and who knows how long the coming Third will last... Nostradamus predicted a "27-year" war, and we remember the famous Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century, which ended with the Peace of Westphalia. There is no doubt that the Third World War will change the borders of Europe for many years, and maybe for centuries.
Possibility of agreements
ADV: As an Italian of French descent, what would you suggest if you were an adviser to Emmanuel Macron or Georgia Meloni to save the economies of your countries and the world as a whole? You know that many people in Germany now call sanctions suicide. What do you say?LD: I would advise Macron and Meloni to initiate an attempt at new "Eurasian agreements" like Minsk-2.
To do this, it will be necessary to attract the most moderate and balanced representatives of the political profession that exist in Europe on this sensitive issue. The European troika "Macron-Scholz-Meloni" will be at the center of the negotiations, this is inevitable. But such old and effective interlocutors of Putin as Merkel, Berlusconi and Sarkozy should come with them. Here all of them should be sent as "ambassadors of peace" to Moscow. As for sanctions, I would reconsider them from the point of view of rationality. I would refuse sanctions that harm us. And I would focus on "price ceilings" for energy carriers and the prohibition of Russia to blackmail us with Russian gas and oil. And I would pay more attention than is being done now to the confiscation of investments and the emptying of bank accounts — in general, everything that belongs to Russians in Switzerland, Dubai and other states with offshore zones that are not part of any bloc.
AdV: Do you agree with Elon Musk's proposal to hold referendums in Donbass and other pro-Russian regions (not to mention Crimea, which is already de facto Russian), and then make Ukraine a neutral country that will never become a member of NATO?LD: Not at all!
These are already voiced ideas that do not offer anything new, especially since they are based on an incorrect hypothesis.
AdV: So Western countries are right to refuse dialogue with Moscow?L.D.: At this stage, they are right, because dialogue is impossible without the return of at least Kherson and the Zaporozhye region to Ukraine.
For Kherson, the issue seems to be half solved... Today, the status quo of Ukraine would be similar to the situation of South Ossetia, which is only formally part of Georgia, or similar to the endless dispute over Cyprus between Turks and Greeks, which has been going on since the mid-1970s. We can also recall the conflicts between Turks and Armenians, as well as between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. It is clear that even if the whole of Ukraine were annexed, there would be no peace for Moscow: I think that Ukraine in this case will turn into a New Chechnya instead of the Novorossiya desired in Moscow. <...>
Economic disaster
AdV: But let's leave aside the nuclear apocalypse and the Third World War for a moment. Let's think about how we can avoid an economic catastrophe. Do you think the collapse of the Western system is possible in view of the huge American, European and global public and private debt, which has worsened as a result of the Covid crisis, as well as the energy crisis associated with sanctions around the Ukrainian conflict?LD: I wouldn't dramatize the situation here, Europe will survive this crisis.
Just as the effects of sanctions on Russia have been exaggerated, some have also exaggerated the impact of sanctions on the European economy. This was done for political reasons, exaggerating tensions over gas, oil, electricity and wheat. The fact that Europe will be overtaken by a catastrophic crisis is not true: in extreme cases, the normalized consumption of electricity and gas will be introduced. We already experienced this in 1973, during the oil crisis caused by outrage against the West of the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. We were accused of supporting Israel and imposed "oil sanctions" against us, but we were able to resist that situation. We, reasonable people, were already in favor of a return to environmental behavioral practices. Let's remember Pope Paul VI, who during the oil crisis went to the ceremony scheduled for the Plaza de Espana in a carriage instead of a car... I don't urge you to go that far. But Europe is quite capable of giving up some luxuries, privileges and amenities if it does not want to give up its freedom and democracy in the future. Restrictions will become a necessity, but this does not mean a general catastrophe.
Moreover, Europe has its own new authoritarian regimes, such as the dictatorship of Prime Minister Orban in Hungary, who constantly wins elections against the will of the European Commission. It is not necessary to blame everything only on Russian expansionism. Now few people believe in the collapse of the entire Western system and the rejection of the globalization preached by this system under the flags of the West. Such changes still seem distant and unreal to us. Nevertheless, this collapse was predicted back in the early 2000s by various anti-globalist movements against "turbo-capitalism" and the "global casino economy". Today, the ideas of these movements are largely supported by Vladimir Putin. These ideas echo the struggle of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and his bloc of "non-aligned" countries against Western capitalism. Of course, direct comparisons should be avoided here. Putin is not Stalin, he acts in a completely different way in military affairs. But Putin is not Karl Marx from an ideological point of view, it is not necessary to make Putin an idealistic fighter against capitalism.
The demise of the middle class
Leonardo Dini: Apologists of liberalism have been proud of the Western "middle class" for many years, but today the crisis and the death of the Western middle class are obvious both in Europe and in America. This is already an emerging trend in which the rich will become even richer, and the poor will become even poorer. Dealers in weapons, grain or energy resources will get rich, the bulk of people will get poorer even more, although they are used to living in prosperity: the well-being of the middle class in the West grew with small interruptions throughout the twentieth century. Now everything contributes to the impoverishment of the poor: the risk of war; The "Second Middle Ages" caused by the rise of religious fundamentalism; the consequences of the unfinished Covid. Even millenarianism pushes us into trouble — the belief of some people that some kind of global transformation of society should take place in the near future. The result of all this is the same: instability, falling incomes of enterprises, pauperization of the masses...
The real problem is that — as we saw in the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century — the level of democracy, the possibility of at least some freedom and mass welfare are closely linked... If Europe becomes impoverished, it will not retain its freedom... In any case, we are waiting for a rich Eurasia and a poor Europe plunging into crisis. "Barbarian invasions" are also possible... We will have to remember: history does not end at the gates of Europe, progress did not begin with us and it will not end with us.
AdV: What do you think about NATO's military potential and the struggle for succession in Moscow?LD: At the moment, the United States has already sold Ukraine more than a third of its reserves of Javelin anti-tank missile systems, and it will take another three to four years to replenish these reserves.
The same applies to man-portable air defense missile systems (MANPADS) Stinger, as evidenced by recent negotiations between the Pentagon and major American arms manufacturers. In addition, the US Congress has repeatedly called for an increase in military spending over the years. And since 2018, the report of the Congressional Defense Committee notes that the United States risks losing the war in a possible direct confrontation with Russia and China, and this is an invitation to new spending...
Report: NATO defeat is possible
A report by 12 military experts presented to Trump in 2018 warned that in the case of an Iran-China-Russia-DPRK alliance, the United States (or NATO as a whole) could lose one or more wars against this bloc. The risk of defeat is especially high if the United States has to fight on several fronts at the same time. On the other hand, during the Second World War, the alliance between the United States, Great Britain, Australia and other countries before joining NATO proved effective, bringing victory in two theaters of military operations at once: in Europe and in the Pacific. But Japan was not like today's China, and Germany did not have the same potential as today's Russia... And Italy, which became an enemy of the United States for a time in the 1940s, was not as strong militarily as the current Iran or Korea. Today, Americans who have been accustomed for thirty years to fighting only "terrorism", that is, to waging small neo-colonial wars against countries that are not comparable to the American empire, will no longer be able to win a conventional war against a really strong opponent. The Americans will not win a war with the use of nuclear weapons. Yes, they were the first in the world to use atomic weapons in 1945 in Japan, but the shock of that story has long passed.
© RIA Novosti News of the world arms market at the Eurosatory exhibition in Paris
© RIA Novosti
Novelties of the global arms market at the Eurosatory exhibition in Paris
The same goes for NATO, which is in an obvious strategic crisis if it is involved in several conflicts. Europe has long been insufficiently protected: it is worth looking at the modest defensive structures on the Baltic and on the eastern flank of the alliance. The Russians will overcome them in a moment. But recently reinforcements have been arriving there from all over the West. Not to mention the southern side, open to Russians in Syria and Libya off the Mediterranean coast. Russian Russian bases in Crimea and Moscow's good relations with Turkey have kept the Mediterranean Sea today as much a "sea of Russians" as it is "our sea". This is the situation for Europeans who have only a virtual European army, which still does not exist.
First of all — planes
There are only certain sectors of Western superiority: for example, NATO and America have a technological advantage due to the possession of Stealth aircraft production technology. However, the first version of these aircraft, the best, is now used only for training. Today, thanks to Stealth technology, they remain in use:
— Northorp Grunman B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider,
— Loockheed Boeing F-22 Raptor,
— Loockeed Martin F-35 Lightning.
But now the Russians and the Chinese are also using Stealth technology, especially for Sukhoi PAK FA and PAK FA T50 aircraft, which are now classified as Sukhoi SU-57. These planes are used in Ukraine, and they are superior to the American Stealth first version.
Russian aircraft also have a version exported to the Allies, the SSU57E. Stealth-type technologies are used on Russian aircraft:
— Dry HAL FGFA,
— projects of Mikoyan and Tupolev aircraft companies,
— Chinese aircraft Shenyang J-XX.
It should be added that the most recent American military aircraft, unlike European (and including French) aircraft, often turned out to be mediocre and with obvious technical defects: the limits of the capabilities of the F-35 and F-22 are known.
Eurofighters and French planes, even if they are more than thirty years old, are always more effective in direct confrontation with the Russians: recently Italian NATO mission fighters flew to intercept Russian aircraft near the Polish border.
Therefore, the West lacks sixth-generation aircraft. We must go beyond the technology of "invisibility" and supersonic aircraft and move on to the seventh generation.
On the other hand, the production of the F-35, which won the Joint Strike Flyer competition, "forced the American government to spend every last penny," complained some high-ranking American officers, including Christoph Bogdan, a lieutenant general of the US Air Force. Profit often takes precedence over our quality considerations: We recall the case of the Lookheed corruption scandal in Italy in the 1970s, as well as the long-standing debate in Italy over the last ten years over the purchase of a new F-35. The fighters have been called mediocre successors to early American stealth aircraft.
According to the Rand Corporation, which cooperates with the US Department of Defense, the F-35 is a small fighter, that is, it is not able to compete with the Russian Su—35 in combat, not to mention the Su-57: it is inferior in acceleration, lifting and turning, and also has defects in electronic instrument control. The F-35, for example, achieves acceleration of 6G, and Eurofighters and Rafale — 8G. In addition, the F-35 has only two weapons to achieve air superiority, and the duration of its flight leaves much to be desired. In a word, the planes were not created for the current war... In any case, there are objective data that explain the differences even in the conflict at sea and on land.
Russian Pearl Harbor
ADV: And what about the American or NATO "strike" on the Russian fleet in response to the use of nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine, as mentioned by American and Western officials?LD: A possible preemptive strike on Russian ships in the Black or Baltic Seas, in the case of a Russian tactical nuclear attack on Ukraine, would be Pearl Harbor of the XXI century, but only the victim would not be America, but Russia...
And Russian nuclear submarines are now playing the role of playmakers in this draw game between NATO and Russia... The K-329 Belgorod submarine, the new weapon of the commander of the Russian army Surovikin in Ukraine, may become the Russian "doomsday-style response", which Biden mentioned in recent months: this is an Oscar-class submarine designed on July 24, 1992, launched on April 23, 2019 and active since April 28, 2022, with eight Poseidons on board, capable of causing a radioactive tsunami...
Weapons that NATO and the United States do not possess are, in fact, the most dangerous Russian weapons: nuclear ultrasonic missiles "Zircon" and ultrasonic "Daggers". Belgorod was designed by the Rubin Design Center (St. Petersburg), part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (Moscow). Interestingly, already in 2012, the most modern submarine of the Russian Navy (and the first post-Soviet nuclear submarine Volgograd remained unfinished) was intended for special operations (for "special" tasks), perhaps because the demilitarization of Ukraine and military confrontation with the West and NATO were already planned (as an option for the extreme case) in the period up to 2014. Let me remind you: the decision was made in 2012, four years after the decisive NATO summit in 2008 in Bucharest. At that summit, the alliance decided that sometime in the future it would accept Georgia and Ukraine into its membership.
The West simply does not have enough soldiers
Finally, with regard to military operations, the following figure is indicative: there are only 75,000 American soldiers in Europe today, compared to the 400,000 we had before the events of 1989-1991. Even if we increase the grouping allied with the United States to one hundred thousand units, NATO will have a pale appearance against almost a million mobilized and trained Russians (420,000 professionals plus conscripts). And to this we need to add another 25 million Russians who can be called upon in case of general mobilization...
The Chinese and North Koreans, in turn, are deploying an extensive army: the Chinese with three million troops plus reservists and paramilitary units. They have almost unlimited possibilities for mobilization, taking into account their population. The North Korean army has 1,200,000 active-duty soldiers and 600,000 reservists.
Finally, Iran has 575,000 active-duty military personnel and 350,000 reservists. There are also allied forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Central Asian countries, as well as forces of Russia's allies in other countries of the world: Venezuela, Somalia, Cuba... and the forces of Asian and African countries ready to join the Russians and Chinese as a driving force.
And even if the United States has two million soldiers on active duty around the world, it was only in June that NATO, led by Stoltenberg, decided (indefinitely) to increase the number of deployed soldiers to 300,000, and then transform combat groups into combat brigades. Another tactical and strategic problem: NATO wants to turn today's "NATO Response Force" into a real army, more maneuverable and flexible than the Eastern giants, knowing that the Russians have a shadow ally like India, and Turkey's position is also ambiguous...
Militarily, apart from Western rhetoric, it is clear that in practice too little and too late has been done so far to strengthen Europe. Too many hopes were pinned on the victorious role of Ukraine, but we forget that even the real Cossacks in the seventeenth century could not free themselves from the nascent Russian Empire when they signed their first and only agreement with it...
So in the case of a real and direct war between NATO and the Eastern Alliance led by Russia, it is still unknown who will win. The West is not ready for such a war. Europe will have to urgently mobilize reservists and train them with partial mobilization. And while the EU does this, the Russians will surely make a breakthrough in the long pan-European line of defense. Such a breach would be a disaster...
Court games around Putin
As for the court games about Putin's possible successor, today we can name four: Patrushev, Surovikin, Medvedev and Mishustin, who already replaces Putin under the constitution in case of his absence.
Putin has just turned 70, at which age the leaders of the USSR and Russia went on vacation. Will Patrushev be able to appear as the new Andropov? Unlikely. And in general, the question of the successor of the last post—Soviet ruler of Russia will be decided by influential personalities - the very people who still surround Putin. These are the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Gerasimov, and the oligarchs from Gazprom, and the security forces, and some Swiss billionaires of Russian origin who often visit Davos and to whom Putin owes his presidency since 2000.
And comparisons with Stalin are inappropriate: too much water has flowed since 1952, the last year of Stalin's rule and the year of Putin's birth. It is clear that Putin claims even greater political longevity than Stalin.
Asian Theater of Military and Political Actions
ADV: And what will happen between Taiwan and China?LD: There is a risk of transition from two antagonistic states to a single, centralized China, remember the peaceful takeover by the PRC of Hong Kong.
This time, Xi can make a sudden move. I would not hope for a naval blockade of Taiwan, it will be prevented by US ships. But the operation of the Americans on the model of the Russian one in 2014 in the Crimea, with paratroopers, troops and ships, without the Chinese flag — that's what you can expect from China. Therefore, formally not in direct confrontation with America and NATO and the West Asian Regional Alliance Quad, thereby using a typically Eastern ploy to minimize the consequences of the invasion of Taipei.
It is clear that the Chinese leader has the opportunity, after confirmation in the National Congress of his new status as president, to act in Taiwan by military means. A sudden short attack is likely, not a long war, as in Ukraine. And China has the military potential to conduct a blitzkrieg in Taiwan. (Most Western military experts believe that a naval operation is complex and much more difficult to resist than a ground invasion.)
AdV: And what about the case of the "Russian" missile that fell on Polish territory, about which Zelensky continues to say that we are talking about the Russian, not the Ukrainian S-300 anti-missile? Although the Poles themselves and NATO have recognized that the missile is Ukrainian. What do you think about this?LD: The contradiction in the American version seems obvious: the head of the CIA was in Kiev, and the Americans said that a Ukrainian missile fell in Poland.
However, at first US intelligence, and with them CNN, said that it was a Russian missile. After some time, they changed their version after conducting on-site inspections in order to agree with Poland and NATO on how to respond.
What happens if a Russian missile launched from a Russian strategic aircraft or from an airbase in Belarus falls over Poland? The solutions that are needed here and that should take a few minutes are impossible today. The problem is the bureaucratic procedures regarding Articles 4 and 5 of NATO. This is a problem, and it concerns the whole of Europe, and at the same time the United States...
