by Graham E. Fuller (grahamefuller. com)
18 June 2022
The war in Ukraine has dragged on long enough now to reveal certain clear trajectories. First, two fundamental realities:
- Putin is to be condemned for launching this war– as is virtually
any leader who launches any war. Putin can be termed a war criminal–in
good company with George W. Bush who has killed vastly greater numbers
than Putin.
2) secondary condemnation belongs to the US (NATO) in deliberately
provoking a war with Russia by implacably pushing its hostile military
organization, despite Moscow’s repeated notifications about crossing red
lines, right up to the gates of Russia. This war did not have to be if
Ukranian neutrality, รก la Finland and Austria, had been accepted.
Instead Washington has called for clear Russian defeat.
As the war grinds to a close, where will things go?
Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist pronouncements, Russia is
winning the war, Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term damage to
Russia is open to debate.
American sanctions against Russia have turned out to be far more
devastating to Europe than to Russia. The global economy has slowed and
many developing nations face serious food shortages and risk of broad
starvation.
There are already deep cracks in the European faรงade of so-called
“NATO unity.” Western Europe will increasingly rue the day that it
blindly followed the American Pied Piper to war against Russia. Indeed,
this is not a Ukrainian-Russian war but an American-Russian war fought
by proxy to the last Ukrainian.
Contrary to optimistic declarations, NATO may in fact ultimately
emerge weakened. Western Europeans will think long and hard about the
wisdom and deep costs of provoking deeper long term confrontations with
Russia or other “competitors”of the US.
Europe will sooner or later return to the purchase of inexpensive
Russian energy. Russia lies on the doorstep and a natural economic
relationship with Russia will possess overwhelming logic in the end.
Europe already perceives the US as a declining power with an erratic
and hypocritical foreign policy “vision” premised upon the desperate
need to preserve “American leadership” in the world. America’s
willingness to go to war to this end is increasingly dangerous to
others.
Washington has also made it clear that Europe must sign on to an
“ideological” struggle against China as well in some kind of protean
struggle of “democracy against authoritarianism”. Yet, if anything this
is a classic struggle for power across the globe. And Europe can even
less afford to blunder into confrontation with China–a “threat”
perceived primarily by Washington yet unconvincing to many European
states and much of the world..
China’s Belt and Road initiative is perhaps the most ambitious
economic and geopolitical project in world history. It is already
linking China with Europe by rail and sea. European exclusion from the
Belt and Road project will cost it dearly. Note that the Belt and Road
runs right through Russia. It is impossible for Europe to close its
doors to Russia while maintaining access to this Eurasian mega project.
Thus a Europe that perceives the US already in decline has a little
incentive to join the bandwagon against China. The end of the Ukraine
war will bring serious reconsideration in Europe about the benefits of
propping up Washington’s desperate bid to maintain its global hegemony.
Europe will undergo increasing identity crisis in determining its
future global role. Western Europeans will tire of subservience to the
75 year American domination of European foreign policy. Right now NATO is
European foreign policy and Europe remains inexplicably timid in
asserting any independent voice.How long will that prevail?
We now see how massive US sanctions against Russia, including
confiscation of Russian funds in western banks, is causing most of the
world to reconsider the wisdom of banking entirely on the US dollar into
the future. Diversification of international economic instruments is
already in the cards and willl only act to weaken Washington’s once
dominant economic position and its unilateral weaponisation of the
dollar.
One of the most disturbing features of this US-Russian struggle in
Ukraine has been the utter corruption of independent media. Indeed
Washington has won the information and propaganda war hands down,
orchestrating all Western media to sing from the same hymnbook in
characterizing the Ukraine war. The West has never before witnessed
such a blanket imposition by one country’s ideologically-driven
geopolitical perspective at home. Nor, of course, is the Russian press
to be trusted either. In the midst of a virulent anti-Russian
propaganda barrage whose likes I have never seen during my Cold Warrior
days, serious analysts must dig deep these days to gain some objective
understanding of what is actually taking place in Ukraine.
Would that this American media dominance that denies nearly all
alternative voices were merely a blip occasioned by Ukraine events. But
European elites are perhaps slowly coming to the realization that they
have been stampeded into this position of total “unanimity”; cracks are
already beginning to appear in the faรงade of “EU and NATO unity.” But
the more dangerous implication is that as we head into future global
crises, a genuine independent free press is largely disappearing,
falling into the hands of corporate-dominated media close to policy
circles , and now bolstered by electronic social media, all manipulating
the narrative to its own ends. As we move into a predictably greater
and more dangerous crises of instability through global warming, refugee
flows, natural disasters, and likely new pandemics, rigorous state and
corporate domination of the western media becomes very dangerous
indeed to the future of democracy. We no longer hear alternative voices
on Ukraine today.
Finally, Russia’s geopolitical character has very likely now
decisively tilted towards Eurasia. Russians have sought for centuries to
be accepted within Europe but have been consistently held at arms
length. The West will not discuss a new strategic and security
architecture. Ukraine has simply intensified this trend. Russian elites
now no longer possess an alternative to accepting that its economic
future lies in the Pacific where Vladivostok lies only one or two hours
away by air from the vast economies of Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul. China
and Russia have now been decisively pushed ever more closely together
specifically out of common concern to block unfettered US freedom of
unilateral military and economic intervention around the world. That the
US can split US-induced Russian and Chinese cooperation is a fantasy.
Russia has scientific brilliance, abundant energy, rich rare minerals
and metals, while global warming will increase the agricultural
potential of Siberia. China has the capital, the markets, and the
manpower to contribute to what becomes a natural partnership across
Eurasia.
Sadly for Washington, nearly every single one of its expectations
about this war are turning out to be incorrect. Indeed the West may come
to look back at this moment as the final argument against following
Washington’s quest for global dominance into ever newer and more
dangerous and damaging confrontations with Eurasia. And most of the rest
of the world–Latin America, India, the Middle East and Africa– find few
national interests in this fundamentally American war against Russia.
==================
Graham E. Fuller is a former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence
Council at CIA with responsibility for global intelligence estimates.
https://grahamefuller.com/some-hard-thoughts-about-post-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR0g262plai_6gd5VhMIReKAEx4tiEHeJZ_TvKACoX6fJBRzVBI3rs52tUc
