by Munir Shafiq
How do we understand the United States' initiation of a military front in Ukraine against Russia? The apparent fact of opening a military front in Ukraine indeed indicates that it was Russia that mobilised military forces and began to launch a war, or firing but, in fact, the US is behind preparing the ground for the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
This is because of its relentless pursuit to expand NATO, to the extent that it was about to add Ukraine to it and to complete its encirclement and blockade of Russia to completely stifle it, or force it to acquiesce and surrender.
After the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US wanted to change the Ukrainian regime, which is friendly to Russia, by dangerously arming the new regime loyal to it, as the war showed. This directly represents a threat to the Russian national security at the highest level, which means that the US forced Russia to wage war, while it hopes that Russia is subjected to a strategic defeat. This was demonstrated by all the steps it took to escalate the war and not to find a solution to calm it down, or to reach an understanding between Russia and Ukraine to stop the war.
The US applied all means of pressure on Europe to involve it in the war, by arming the Ukrainian army and supporting President Zelensky.
You should read the American policies from the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, till today, since they represent a new strategy in dealing with Russia, backed by China.
The motive for this turn in the American policy, especially if the coming days and months prove that there is a new strategy adopted by the Pentagon, the deep state, and some centres of power in the US, is different from resolving the contradiction with Russia and China, through economic, scientific, political and financial competition, during an arms race similar to the situation in the Cold War era, with the Soviets and the socialist camp.
Therefore, several senior analysts expected a repeat of the Cold War against Russia and China, as the same situation in the years before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. But, depending on what we are witnessing now, in an escalation of the military confrontation in Ukraine, and moving to the phase of besieging Kaliningrad, which pushes the Russians to expand the war, it means that there is a new strategy that uses war without reaching the nuclear level, even if in contact with it. The American approach adopted to handle the contradiction between it along with its allies on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other, means that the war in Ukraine is the beginning and that the world has entered a phase of new global military conflicts, and will not return to the international situation before the war in Ukraine, and also will not return to a new type of appeasement.
If this conclusion is correct, this means that the world has entered into a phase of world wars that are below the level of nuclear among the major powers, and perhaps below the comprehensiveness of the first and second world wars.
At the same time, it is noticeable, through following-up of the European policies and the preparations for holding the Conference of the Group of Seven on 24-26 August, that these policies, in turn, tend to escalate the military situation in Ukraine, and the militarisation of Europe again, instead of trying – as many expected – to de-escalate the war in Ukraine. So far, the war has incurred a lot of damage, economic losses and social crises in Europe.
As for Europe, the other question is: Has it, in turn, entered into a new integrated strategy, or a parallel to the American one, is facing its contradictions with both Russia and China?
There were, indeed, some signs issued by Germany and France, which tended to find a solution to the military escalation and to search for a solution between Ukraine and Putin, but this went side by side with their military support for the Ukrainian army. Accordingly, we can say that both Germany and France (Europe, in general) are proceeding on the same track that the US began to draw. So, this means that all the calculations that were based on calculating European economic gains and losses, at the Group of Seven conference on 28 June, 2022, became subject to the war strategy that aims to defeat Putin. Of course, without reaching the nuclear level but almost at that level or these wars started to escalate, to almost being on the verge.
What remains now is to complete the explanation: Why is this shift in the American strategy toward wars that are below the nuclear level, as an alternative to the strategy of the Cold War, or similar to it, to what happened in the past, when the West defeated the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact?
The answer is that the Cold War had two main traits: first the arms race and, second, the economic, scientific, financial and political race. So, the second race became the most important and decisive, after excluding the option of world war due to the development of nuclear weapons on both sides.
Here, in the second race, the gap was wide in favour of the US and the West, which led the Soviets to be defeated (of course, for self-soviet reasons as well).
Today, China is an outstanding competitor in this second field (economy, scientific development and financial capabilities); it is a competitor, about to surpass the US. The US realised that it does not have a chance to compete with China, which intends to turn it into a cold war lasting for another twenty or thirty years.
Therefore, the US found that the current contradiction must be resolved through a military strategy, which is not limited to an arms race and peaceful competition, but rather takes the pattern of Ukraine, which may be generalised on a larger scale, later.
Accordingly, let us wait for a world of global wars among the major powers, even without reaching the nuclear level, if this world is "lucky"… what a horrible world awaits humanity.
This content was published in Middle East Monitor on July 04, 2022. To restrict the overall size; some images may have been excluded.
Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of UMMnews.
