Russia
The Ukraine war began with the violent overthrow of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, a coup that was overtly and covertly backed by the United States government in the service of NATO expansion. During his presidency (2010-2014), Yanukovych sought military neutrality, precisely to avoid a civil or proxy war in Ukraine. But this stood in the way of NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia that the US had pushed for from 2008 onward.
The plan, all the way, which members of several administration including Blinken have explicitly admitted on numerous occasions, was to use Ukraine to achieve the larger geopolitical goal of weakening Russia. In other words, the Ukrainians were cannon fodder in a U.S. proxy war against Russia.
It didn’t take long for Vladimir Putin to respond to the coup d’état, because he knew NATO’s main goal was to seize Sevastopol, Russia’s Black Sea naval base on the Crimean Peninsula. Just five days later, on February 27 2014, he installed a pro-Russian government, with a declaration of independence on March 16. Russia reunified Crimea on March 18 2014, formally reclaiming the strategic Black Sea peninsula. A referendum was then held based on UN statutes of self-determination, with 90% of the population voting to rejoin Russia.
Thus, the coup d’état fomented by the United States led to the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation. The United States did nothing or was unable to do anything about it. The rest of the problems with Ukraine required more prolonged preparation by the Russians, both in the economic/military area and in the psychology of the Russian population.
The Minsk I & II agreements that followed were an “attempt to give Ukraine time” and that Kiev uses it “to become stronger”, in the words of Angela Merkel and François Hollande. What escapes the West is that these agreements also gave Russia (and the “Others”) enough time to develop the weaponry necessary to defeat NATO in an almost inescapable future conflict. Today, apart from an armament in general far above the efficiency of western weaponry, and military production ratios unthinkable for the West; manpower of the Russian army includes 1.5 million of active servicemen, while overall number –including all reserve forces– is over 2.3 million servicemen (fit to service over 46 million people). Russia is today the second largest army in the world (in number of active soldiers), after China (17.09.24).
On December 17 2021, Russia proposed the “Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on security guarantees” & “Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization”, but received no positive response from Washington or Brussels. At that time Russia was already prepared to start its proxy war against the West in Ukraine. These mutual security proposals were the last peaceful attempt by Russia and the “Others” to end Western hegemony. Naturally, the West rejected such proposals by the Russians –without smelling the immediate consequences, many of them created by themselves.
On February 21 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a speech laying out a long list of grievances as justification for the “Special Military Operation”, announced the following day. The rest is history…
The Ukraine war started as a proxy war provoked by the United States or the ‘collective West’ against Russia. But today, in the current geopolitical arena, the war is effectively the reverse —a proxy war that it has become a war of attrition in which Russia and the ‘Others’, rebelling against the US, are dramatically destroying both the economic power (especially in Europe) and military mithology of the West. The war in Ukraine is also the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone.
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The “Others”
A few days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a boastful speech at the United Nations, announcing the establishment of a new Middle East centered around Israel and its new Arab partners, the Palestinians, whom he totally omitted from his fantasy regional map, dealt him and Israel a fatal blow, politically and strategically.
About 03:30 GMT on October 7 2023, Hamas fired a huge barrage of rockets into southern Israel. About an hour later, fighters crossed into Israel in an unprecedented multipronged operation by land, air and sea. Most fighters entered through breaches in security barriers separating Gaza and Israel.
Desperate to reverse his personal failure and maintain his fragile coalition, Netanyahu was (and is) prone to overreact, and in the process alienate more of his new and potential regional partners. Already, Israel’s scandalous humiliation irreparably undermined its strategic and political standing in the region. Arab regimes that normalized relations with Israel and are still partnering with the Netanyahu’s government appear more foolish with every passing hour.
Amid Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s military response in Gaza has significant and challenging repercussions for U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense. It is an undeniable fact that the war in Gaza take global attention and resources away from Ukraine’s efforts. This change in focus lead to a diminution of economic and military assistance for that embattled country.
In fact, the “Others” cleverly coordinated a new proxy war against the United States being, in this case, the Palestinians and the Israelis the cannon fodder. This new front has achieved several objectives, such as the need to divert resources from Ukraine to Israel (with the irreversible crumbling of the Ukrainian front) as well as the internal confrontation of Western public opinion and, if we introduce the Yemeni Houthi militia into the equation, the clear vision for the whole world that the emperor has no clothes –in case the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan had not made it clear enough. In the realm of ideology, the soft power of the US and the West is also declining at an accelerated pace.
Iran and North Korea (as well as other countries/organizations in the reserve) may be in stand-by, and they will be fully activated as needed.
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Enter China.
Many western politicians think that, for various reasons, the voices advocating for unification in Taiwan are diminishing. More people are either supporting ”independence explicitly” or supporting ”independence implicitly”. If this trend continues, the Taiwan independence forces might keep winning in future general elections.
Westerners –as usual– fail to consider another possibility, that Taiwan may not have another so-called general election. The unification of China has entered the fast lane. In this year’s government work report, the Chinese Premier used different wording when discussing national unification. In the past, the concluding phrase was almost always “promoting the peaceful reunification of the motherland”. However, this time it was changed to “promoting the reunification”, without the word “peaceful”. In other words, the Chinese are fully prepared for all possibilities.
During the Chinese New Year, when two fishermen from Fujian died under circumstances attributed to Taiwan, in response, the Chinese Coast Guard immediately began regular law enforcement patrols in the waters near Kinmen. The so-called “restricted waters” and “prohibited waters” established by the Taiwan authorities ceased to exist. I believe these patrols will soon extend to areas like Penghu, as the Chinese have no intention of turning back.
The Chinese have possibly concluded that that Taiwan «independence” forces only understand the logic of strength. That’s why the Chinese Coast Guard’s recent action of boarding a Taiwanese yacht to check licenses and documents was highly effective. The whole Taiwan region now knows, the Mainland is getting serious. I have always believed that the longer unification awaits, the more limited Taiwan’s choices will be.
Moreover, many options remain between peaceful and non-peaceful reunification, all backed by the unwavering will of 1.4 billion Chinese people with an army of 2 million of active personnel, and 626 million fit for service. —practically twice the total population of the United States. Maybe it is time for Taiwan to return to the motherland, as the Chinese will not allow this issue to be indefinitely delayed. However, China is patiently waiting the proper degradation of Western military power in Ukraine and Palestine before acting.
Will the United States dare to intervene in a reunification in the Taiwan Strait by force? My basic judgment is that the United States has neither the ability nor the guts to do so as per today. Much less each passing year.
Take a look at NATO, consisting of more than thirty rich countries, now getting difficult to sustain the Russian-Ukrainian conflict alone. A primary cause –among many others– lies in the major Western powers indulging in the financialization of their economies for a long time, leading to de-industrialization.
In 2022, after Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the Chinese imposed a military blockade on the island. The United States warships were required by the PLA to stay outside the 1,000-nautical-mile limits, and they kept their warships there without a word. The United States, which is already in hot water, needs to show global presence, or else its own allies will look down on it. Meanwhile, it also begins to realize how unprecedentedly vulnerable it is right now.
The U.S. is in the weakest moment since World War II. Both its hard power and soft power have declined so much that the Houthis, being nicknamed the ”slippers army” for their crude equipment, have dared to fire missiles at U.S. destroyers and U.S. aircraft carriers non-stop.
Although China has the highest threshold among the world’s major powers for the use of force, the conclusion is clear. They will always strike when necessary, and once they do, they will be the decisive force that finally brings down the whole house of cards.
Something you don’t hear very often is that during the Cold War, no hot wars happened between the United States and the Soviet Union, but two hot wars happened between the United States and China: the Korean War and the Vietnam War, in which the United States lost both.
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Conclusion
The four pillars of Western hegemony -economic, technology, military, and ideology- are deeply shaken today, and various reliable alternatives have emerged. The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict proves that the world has entered a “post-American era”. Consequently, a series of US-led institutional arrangements, including alliances like NATO and the status of the US dollar hegemony, may gradually decline.
The pattern here is clear. The United States or the “collective West” have brought about themselves this situation by their excessive hubris and myopic planning, and they are being carefully deceived at least since 2014 by the Russians and the “Others”. The “sanctions from Hell” and the “Ruble reduced to rubble” have been a pipedream of the West. When it comes to damage inflicted, Russia benefits from the situation much more than the West. If this war turns into a world war, and the United States or the “collective West” have to fight Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, they have no chance to win.
The boiling frog apologue applies here to its full extent. Whether we like it or not, a truly multipolar international order will emerge through the dynamic interplay of revolution, reform … and turbulence.
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Dugutigui – The West, the boiling frog – (en)
– 24 julio 2019 al 6 septiembre 2022 – 3 años 1 mes 13 días. Fuera. La prueba de que un virus puede saltar de un humano a 
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