Russia is indeed winning on the battlefield. Yes, progress has been glacial relative to Hollywood standards of military success and to the pre-drone era. But a mile run in a year measures the same as a mile run in a minute in terms of territory traversed. Further, the glacial progress, it has been plausibly argued is, or is also, a strategy of deliberate attrition, in which – to this point of the conflict – Russia has been quite successful, attriting not just Ukraine, but also NATO and the US, whose nuclear capability lags significantly behind Russian in many respects (although note that Russia lags considerably behind the US in satellite and satellite launch technology which is relevant to its surveillance capability), including in overall volume and sophistication, and whose declining stocks of weapons account for US enthusiasm for getting out of Ukraine in order to prepare for the upcoming US war against China – although we can also argue that this is a war that the US has already started. In the meantime, looking at Russian advances in Huliaipolia and other points of the contact line in Ukraine it seems quite possible, if not likely, that with or without the survival of robust Ukrainian fortifications in some areas of the Donbass or Novorussiya, Russia will quite soon make a sudden leap forward to the Dnieper, from Kherson on up.
Yet there is no possibility of a ceasefire and even less possibility of a peace settlement. I say this despite or even because of the obvious silliness of Ukraineโs latest 20-point plan being hammered out with the US and impossibility of Russia allowing a 60 day ceasefire for presidential elections (conventional and online) whose corruption should be presumed.
This is primarily because (1) Zelenskiy and his US-Euro instigated Neo-Nazi gang are committed to clinging to power regardless of any or all consequences; (2) Trump, even if his own apparent diplomatic manouvers deserve to be taken at face value (but of course, they should not – they are far more likely to be intended to deceive the perennially gullible Putin Kremlin), lacks anything remotely like sufficient political leverage to push through any kind of settlement with Russia; (3) Russia will stand very firm to its June 2024 demands (โIstanbul+โ) and, in the event of continuing refusal by Ukraine and its European sponsors to give any ground in negotiations – which is certain – will likely add to their basic demands (Ukrainian neutrality, Crimea, and ALL of Luhansk, Dontesk, Zapporizhzhia and Kherson), the โbufferโ territories they are seizing in Sumy and Kharkiv (and, I suspect, in future, Chernihiv, which Russia invaded in 2022 but from which it was forced to retreat), Dnipro-Petrovsk, and Odessa.
But we should be wary of assuming that everything that we need to know is in the public domain. Hovering in the background of the seemingly senseless circularity of negotiations between the US, Ukraine, Europe and Russia are some jokers in the pack. They are hinted at in efforts by both the US and the UK to secure rights to mineral deposits and other natural wealth of Ukraine. There is also an increasing likelihood of issues arising from continuing US appetite for the seizure of Greenland from Denmark, at a time when the economic security of Denmark and of Europe generally has been compromised by their shrill support, against their own interests, for Ukraine. Enormous wealth in natural resources is at issue at a time when global warming is shrinking the Arctic, and there may be deep-level negotiations concerning access to these rights whose purpose is to reduce the otherwise strong possibility of violent resistance to US imperialism from competitors involving, among others, Russia, Denmark, and Canada.
Despite the continuous stream of self-defeating and embarrassing failures in their efforts to prop up Ukraine in a context in which the US is abandoning Ukraine – the latest of these being its doomed attempt to seize frozen Russian assets – European leaders have shown every intention of continuing their shrill anti-Russia rhetoric, declarations of intent to go to war with Russia by 2030, and military mobilization to the extent that they have left Russia with no choice other than to prepare for war with Europe. The latest European Council vote on a loan of over $90 billion to Ukraine (perhaps 40% of this to be paid back to Europe for an earlier European loan) is argued by some to operate as a motivating force for European leaders to keep the war going. The longer they keep the war going, the longer they can delay having to pay back principal on the loan to whoever will be the hapless financiers to take on this risk and the longer, they think, they can fool their own publics into thinking their leaders are doing something noble.
Therefore, it seems quite possible that Russia will indeed at some point defeat Ukraine militarily and will impose its own conditions for a settlement. If Ukraine still resists, Russia will continue to advance. It will meet a constant succession of European-backed โdirty warโ reprisals many of them orchestrated by Londonโs MI6 in collaboration with other European agencies that will keep the temperature of the conflict considerably warm – even as both Russia and Europe continue to prepare for a broader conflict, mainly to Russiaโs advantage (given its strengths in the capability for affordable weapons production). Both sides will encounter significant resistance from their own populations but, through clever propaganda, fake news, false flag operations, and traditional policing and special forces suppression this they will overcome – although, again, this will work more to Russiaโs advantage given that Europe is in reality the aggressor, and a not very unified one at that, while Russia and Russian existential identity is on the line and the Russian people will be more easily motivated to put down their lives for the security of their fatherland.
In the meantime, from a not wholly promising starting position (of a hegemon in economic, political and cultural decline), the USA will move from strength to strength. The fundamental reason for this does relate to that starting position, which is one of exemplary military power, one that exercises more influence over the political and social structure of the USA than any other force, combined with a network of army bases sufficient to threaten virtually every other country throughout the world, leadership in space and satellite technology, and an even more consequential leadership of the global for-profit corporate and financial system.
A part of this, of course, has to do with its status as a nuclear weapons power that is equalled (or perhaps somewhat surpassed by Russia, with China racing to rank third or even higher).
What we must now conclude following our observation of the handling of major geopolitical contests over the past few years is that though the US in 2002, under President George Bush, initiated a disassembling of global security safeguards against nuclear war, the logic of mutually assured destruction still prevails, but it prevails more strongly over US competitors than it does over the US itself. Even though Russia may now possess nuclear or nuclear-equivalent weapons (Kinzhal, Zircon, Orestnik, Berevestnik, Poseidon etc.) that are superior to the nuclear force of the US, and although it has an immensely strong nuclear ally in China and also in North Korea, there are no indications to date that Russia (or, for that matter, China or North Korea) is prepared to actually use such weapons beyond the immediate theater of war in Ukraine against Russiaโs real enemies in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, either to protect its own immediate interests or the interests of such allies as (former) Syria, Iran or Venezuela.
It is not even necessarily about the nuclear status of weapons since it would seem that Russia is not even prepared to use conventional weapons to win its war against Kiev in a manner similar, for example, to the US-backed Israeli decapitation strike on Iran earlier this year.
It is difficult to know exactly what we are dealing with here. It is of course a question of calculation. At no time, so far, has Russia felt able to calculate that its use of its own advantages in nuclear weaponry would protect it against a more devastating reprisal of some kind by its nuclear opponents or even that a devastating win with the use of conventional weapons could prevent it from being devastated by a nuclear attack from these opponents. There is some reason to think that the Kremlinโs logic at this point debars serious consideration of a confrontation, nuclear or otherwise, that could provoke such a reaction. In brief, the Kremlin expects of its opponents devastating behavior that the Kremlin so far denies to itself. And it denies to itself because it places greater value on global security than does its enemies, and greater faith in the long-term efficacy of a commitment to rationality, a commitment which paradoxically, in the case of Vladimir Putin, may be grounded in religious belief.
Appraising this reluctance of Russia (and China) to go to the brink, and confident in its own ability to project ultimate willingness to do so itself, has given an unbridled US Presidency enormous scope in pushing forward with its hegemonic ambitions. By instigating war with Russia, and involving Europe as a co-belligerent in this process, the US has de-industrialized Europeโs leading industrial power, Germany, crippled much of Europe and is creating an ever greater dependency of Europe on US financial, energy and US defense industries.
By apparently withdrawing its own military support (but not intelligence) from Ukraine, the US has passed prime responsibility for NATO security to Europe, requiring Europe to pay for the war and to have Europe purchase most of the weapons from US defence corporations, to have Europe be the major belligerent against Russia and, in this way, also to attrite Russia, pretending to be indifferent while in reality always nudging the conflict in Europeโs favor (or so the Americans may calculate).
In the meantime, the US has considered itself free to wrest control over the global trading system, often with a view to twisting this to US advantage, sometimes with the purpose – through sanctions, tariffs, piracy and the like – of blocking the participation of some parties to accessing this system. Assessing the threat of retaliation from the BRICS as relatively weak (given slow or faltering progress in giving institutional and military concreteness to links between BRICS members, beyond the likes of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Belt and Road Initiative, and the Eurasian Economic Union, and the strong tendency of so many BRICS members to want to try to balance their relations between the West and East), the US is discovering new reservoirs of imperial power that trap otherwise potentially powerful adversaries like Japan or Brazil into compliance with US hegemonic agendas.
The environment of diffidence in the Global South strengthens US impudence, as in its current behavior in Venezuela which, if pushed through to the extent that seems likely, will extend US power to manipulate global energy prices to its advantage (and Russian disadvantage) well into the forseeable future. It also provides political flesh to the global network of US military bases such as to give the US the resources that it needs for regime change shenanigans everywhere and to contain both Russia and China and, in the long term, to effect some form of blockade on China. Yes, China has a significant tool in its control over trade in rare earths, but the US will figure out workarounds to this impediment. In the longer term perhaps the sheer population size of China, and its technological brainpower (five million STEM graduates a year against the USโs half million), and its greater financial self-reliance (but not in the field of energy) will pose more significant challenges.
In the meantime the balance of power in Latin America, with the rightwing drift in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru is growing stronger, while the US threatens the very survival of leftist regimes in Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba. At the northern end of the Americas we have seen how Canada is dominated by the USA, and mention has been made of US lust for Greenland. In the Middle East, the imperial boot lies firmly over the Palestinian throat, Syria is ravaged, Lebanon and Iraq are scarcely any longer serious candidates for sovereignty, Iran (plagued by severe water shortage and pollution) is again threatened by Israel, the US seems to have captured both Armenia and Azerbaijani loyalty and the independence of Georgia is moot. In Asia, the US essentially commands Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. It has confounded and disoriented India with its complaints of Indian imports of Russian oil, high tariffs and demonstrations of disrespect. India has yet to make a decision as to whether it will give up trying to navigate between the US and the BRICS. In Europe, the US will create the correct conditions for the re-entry to power of European rightwing movements such as Germanyโs AfD and the French National Rally (whose prospects are currently stymied by the electoral tricks of Macronโs and Merzโs liberal authoritarianism) with a view, one day, finally, for a return of the US to its struggle with Russia (China, by that time, having been domesticated).
In Africa US interventions are pervasive. Trumpโs recent attacks on alleged ISIS sites in Nigeria should be interpreted as a new Western menace to West Africa since ISIS is already being used by the French as a weapon to contest the wave of new nationalism in the nearby Sahel and now US anti-ISIS maneuvers are a weapon for replacing the French with US influence. It follows that as the US weakens continental Europe, European imperial influence on the African continent is also declining in favor of the US, also, as in Latin America, posing a threat to Chinese B&R initiatives in Africa.
Please understand, in the case of misinterpretation, that this is a scenario that I believe plausible; it is definitely NOT one for which I advocate. What I advocate is a multi-polar world of sovereign, independent nations whose international governance is negotiated through the corridors of a very much reformed and restructured United Nations located a very long way away from the USA.
(Featured Image: “President Trump & the First Lady’s Trip to Europe” byย The White Houseย is marked withย Public Domain Mark 1.0.)
