The Ukraine Battle and What’s After it

Reading the ongoing battle within Ukraine, and its global extensions that reach the farthest corners of the world, requires a parallel vision of the various actual dimensions thereof. This also requires not stopping at what the various media outlets present in their coverage, which primarily has a propaganda character, not an explanatory one.

Within the efforts to explain what is going on, the following main points can be established:

First: The Russian military operation does not target Ukraine as much as it targets NATO and its dangerous expansion that going on relentlessly for 30 years to encircle Russia, as well as to try to tighten the US’s global control.

Second: The process of American military expansion during the past decades, which implicitly included the adding to the NATO, starting in 1997, 14 countries that were previously within the space of the former Soviet Union and its vicinity. That is, it has almost completely encircled Russia from the west. This expansion process was, and still is, an objective result of the potential difference between economic power and military power. Meaning that the actual continuous decline of American economic power, and implicitly of the dollar’s ​​dominance globally, was forcing the US to cover up this decline with more military presence, to impose by force what it was no longer able to impose economically. However, this same process, i.e., compensating the economy with the military, entered the stage of a “sharp response” in which the economic and military waves have overlapped in a manner that subsides each, since approximately 2008, i.e., with the financial crisis, where the US entered a new historical phase of decline in which the military power is no longer able to support the economy (namely, the inability to prevent the rise of the ascendants, especially China). Additionally, the economic and financial power is no longer able to sustain military activity with the same momentum, and with the same technical development. What we see now in Ukraine is closer to a state of paralysis, where there are no actual measures that NATO can take, other than statements and sanctions (the latter have opposite effects that we will touch on later).

Third: If the changes in the international balance have accumulated during the past two decades (economically, politically, and militarily), then the qualitative turning point in it is what we are experiencing today. The military climax we are witnessing now – which may not be the highest peak – appears to be the inescapable path to push the transition process to the end.

Fourth: This transition process is not a new cold war, nor is it a transition towards bipolarity or multipolarity, rather it is further and deeper than that. (See the article: Four Levels of Reading the Current International Transformation, Kassioun, Issue 1057, dated February 14, 2022).

Fifth: The rise of the conflict to its current level, in parallel with the sanctions that are increasing daily, in parallel also with the rise in energy and grain prices and the rise in inflation rates around the entire world, as well as disconnecting most of Russia’s banks from the global SWIFT system, all of these carry very important implications about the nature and dimensions of the ongoing battle, within at least three levels:

A) As for the “Western Alliance”, the side that will foot the main bill is Europe in particular, and this is too clear to say much about it. However, what we think is important in it is that it implicitly means that the US itself, within the framework of its management of the battle on its part, and its management of its retreat, is working to make its allies primarily foot the bill of this retreat. Kassioun had previously said this since the beginning of this century, when it said that the dollar will not retreat completely before it drags the euro, the yen, and all the economies of its “allies” to the abyss. What we see of a “formal unity” in the ranks of NATO and the West today, hides directly beneath it, very close to the surface, a great rift that will soon appear with the exacerbation of the financial and economic crises. What still prevents it from appearing fully are many factors, perhaps the most important of which is the nature of the political leaderships controlling the European scene, which since the 1990s have been characterized by the decline of their level and independence, and in many cases their direct subservience to globalized financial centers

B) For Russia, China, and their allies in Asia and elsewhere, the economic and financial measures taken by the West mean pushing them towards accelerating the process of getting rid of the dollar-dependent global financial system. In this context, in the medium term, disconnecting a major portion of Russia’s banks from SWIFT (despite the pain it will cause in the foreseeable future, not only in Russia, but even more in Europe and in various countries of the world, including the US, but also in all developing countries that will be affected significantly and quickly through the economic portal) will be of great service to accelerating the ongoing historical transition process, because it will strengthen the interconnections among emerging economies that are isolated from the dollar, and will eventually lead to the dollar itself to a historical inflation that will bring it closer to its end

C) For Russia itself, the most important guarantee for success in the transition to a new world is not only the control of Kyiv and putting an end to the expansion of NATO, which extended to 14 countries in Russia’s vicinity over the past twenty years, as important as this matter is, but rather freeing Moscow itself and Russia, as a whole, from being bound by the global financial and economic system, in which the Russian economy plays the role of plundered through the unequal exchange within the international division of labor. As the abovementioned Kassioun article indicated, the US Federal Reserve and the global financial elites are still very influential in managing the internal economic situation in Russia, and it is impossible to move towards the new world in which the American West does not prevail without decisive blows to the partnership between the financial elites in Russia itself and the Western financial elites.

There is reason for optimism in the matter as a whole, in that proceeding with the confrontation to the extent that we see now, which is expressed by the Ukraine battle, implies that the internal confrontation in Russia against the financial elites has entered a new phase. For example, but not limited to, the direct victim thus far from US sanctions are the largest banks and financial corporation within Russia, as well as some of its financial elites, who hardly hide their connection and direct relations with the West and its dollar system.

Certainly, the most affected in the foreseeable future from the major ongoing inflation processes around the world, primarily with the American push, will be the peoples of this world, including the Russian people. However, this is also what gives a double push, externally and internally, to deepen and escalate the sorting in Moscow itself. That is, the needed sorting for the battle of ending the unequal exchange relations with the West and the economic dependence, in parallel with striking the existing pattern of wealth distribution. This sorting, and particularly this battle, is the biggest and most important battle, which perhaps the most important outcomes triggering it was NATO itself with its transgressions and persistence. This sorting and this battle, that is, against the financial and economic elites linked to the West and plundering internally, is the obligatory path for Russia to actual transition to the new world, and pushing the whole world into alliance with China and with everyone who is in this international trend towards new horizons.

An Additional Point:

The intensification of the international conflict also means that the various places on fire and in crises in the world, the fate of which is hanging (to some degree) on reaching consensus with the West, which everyone knows the West does not want it and does not seek it, but only works to deepen and delay crises and turn them into stagnant quagmires. This intensification of the conflict opens the door towards actually solving these crises, i.e., towards solving them away from and in spite of the West. Syria may be the most important headline globally for this upcoming model of solving crises without and in spite of the West. Perhaps one of the important indicators in this direction is the news published by Kremlin’s official website, on February 25, about the phone conversation between the Russian and Syrian presidents, which stated: “The Syrian settlement was discussed, and in particular, bolstering of the political process within the Astana formula.”

(Arabic version)