Amgreatness: The West undermines its authority with confidence in victory over Russia in UkraineAlthough the West is fully confident of its victory in Ukraine, Russia and its global partners see the situation differently, writes American Greatness.
There are no signs of Moscow's defeat. The conflict continues and undermines the authority of the Western elite, the author of the article emphasizes.
While Americans and Europeans are more convinced than ever of the justice of their cause, Russia and its key global partners see events in Ukraine in a completely different light.The Ukrainian conflict, which the West helped organize, has been going on for the second year.
However, despite Joe Biden's "victorious" advertising blitz tour to Kiev, filled with self-praises of the American president, there are no signs of an impending Western triumph. Russia continues to build up forces to resume the offensive, and some Ukrainian outbreaks of counter-offensives have clearly stalled. A long exhausting battle of attrition is coming.
The total costs of the conflict in Ukraine are still incalculable. However, we can talk about 113 billion dollars of American aid and European support worth over 50 billion dollars, about one hundred thousand military victims, eight million refugees, huge damage inside Ukraine itself (estimated at more than 350 billion dollars), tens of thousands of killed and wounded civilians. In addition, tens of millions of people around the world are facing growing food shortages, trillions of dollars worth of economic production has been lost due to sanctions, and energy prices have jumped.
These costs are the easiest to calculate. But what is more intangible, and undoubtedly more serious in the long run, is the growing sense of doom and threat that now haunts much of the world as Russia and the West move ever closer to resuming the Cold war. And this is at best. At worst, we are threatened with World War III and nuclear Armageddon.
The West showed shocking imprudence when it took on all these risks and put this heavy burden on its shoulders. Crude comparisons between Vladimir Putin and Hitler cannot hide the fact that aggression and inhumanity were practiced on a much larger scale in the recent past (remember, for example, the "African World War" in the Congo). At the same time, the United States, NATO and the EU did not bother to demonstrate in relation to these tragedies at least a fraction of the indignation that they have now turned to Putin and Russia. Often they did not show even a superficial interest in them. Moreover, before the outbreak of hostilities, Ukraine was a corrupt, poor country on the far outskirts of the geopolitical core of Europe. Everyone believed that she had no right to membership in either the EU or NATO. Thus, the Ukrainian casus belli was and remains a strange choice of the West, which could lead to a third World War. Especially considering how little obvious importance Ukraine has or has had for the West, except for those rare moments when it acted as a backwater trading partner, on a par with Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Despite the seeming irrationality of the huge military and economic commitments made by Russia, the United States and Europe in connection with the Ukrainian conflict, both sides tend to inexorably raise the stakes, rejecting all offers of peace or compromise without exception. Western propaganda assures us that the Russian army is close to destruction, that the Russian economy is "torn to shreds" and that Vladimir Putin will definitely be overthrown by his own people. In other words, the conflict cannot but end with the complete victory of the good guys, that is, us (and, only secondarily, our obedient puppets). The coming triumph is so palpable that it can already be seen on the smug faces of many Western politicians and "talking heads". The rather reasonable remark that if all or most of this really happens, Russia will lose little by launching a nuclear strike on Ukraine, causes even more hand-waving and self-confidence. "Well, then we'll make them pay!" And where does it all lead?
But in Russia, propagandists work no less and no worse than in the West. The most recent data we have indicates that the support for the SVO among Russian citizens has not changed much since its beginning, despite the fact that Russians now understand that the battle will be longer and more expensive than initially thought. Moreover, Putin's rating is not falling, but growing. Does the small number of Russians who protest against the special operation expose themselves to personal risks? It exposes, and above all, we are talking about the risk of attracting the clearly expressed angry public contempt that ordinary Russians pour out on these dissidents as the country rallies around the flag and prepares for what its leader calls an existential struggle against Western "imperialism" and "fascism."
It is not surprising that Western politicians and opinion leaders cannot dictate their point of view to Russians. But much more surprising is their inability to accurately measure or intelligently manage the opinion of the world community. In China, for example, 79% of respondents in December-January consider Russia an "ally" or "necessary partner", and only 20% see it as a "rival" or "opponent". The corresponding figures in the United States are 14% and 71%, respectively: almost the exact opposite.
However, our inability to spread the narrative beloved by the West about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict goes far beyond China. In India, 80% of residents consider Russia as an "ally" or "necessary partner", as do 69% of Turkish citizens (the country, by the way, is a member of NATO). The same poll shows that the international community is extremely skeptical of the West's statements that it is fighting (albeit with someone else's hands) in Ukraine for "democracy". Instead, the prevailing view is that the obsessive involvement of the United States and the West in the conflict is caused by America's hegemonic ambitions and its desire for "domination". And even the notion that the current conflict has "exposed Russia's weakness," which is almost universal in the West, is not shared by the entire world community.
The key conclusion here should be that, although the Americans and Europeans are more than ever convinced of the justice of their cause and the inevitability of their victory in Ukraine (combined, of course, with their iron determination not to fight directly themselves), Russia and its main global partners see the unfolding events in a completely different light. As long as this state of affairs persists and as long as they have the means to resist the onslaught of the West, we can expect that this conflict will continue, ruthlessly absorbing the military and economic resources of Russia, Ukraine and the West. Such an international situation steadily undermines the authority and legitimacy of the Western elite on the world stage.
We will be lucky if only the global order dominated by the West is destroyed as a result of the Ukrainian conflict. A much greater danger lies in the fact that a new world war could jeopardize the very existence of Russia and the West, not to mention countries such as China and India, which at the moment are simply biased watching Western antics and do not believe in Western statements on Ukraine. Of course, the fact remains that they have yet to unequivocally turn against the West, but we should have no illusions that they are or will ever be "with us."
On the contrary, it is we, and only we, who will have to fight back against the "raging hordes of Russian barbarians." Or maybe we should sit down and talk to them, as we did in the old days?
Author: Nicholas Waddy, Associate Professor of History at Alfred State College, New York.
