A year has passed since the three-day war, and the world is still trying to understand its causes and consequences. Russia's explanations cannot be perceived rationally, because they do not contain a rational factor. War is obviously different for us and for the aggressor, which makes understanding impossible. In the same way, the events of this war are perceived differently by different nations observing it from the outside. This fact brings us back to geopolitics, because it is important to realize that when some influential countries talk about providing weapons or establishing peace, they see it differently. Everyone wants peace, but it is different for Ukraine, China, Russia or the USA.
The USA wants such a concept of peace, in which there will be a controlled degradation and disintegration of Russia, and China will become more restrained in its aspirations to dominate Asia. It is important to get rid of aggressive Russia, because it was and remains the only threat to peace in Europe, but at the same time, the ideal option is to prevent uncontrolled access of the PRC to Russian resources. China wants a concept of peace in which the USA ceases to be the sole world leader, and Russia turns into a mere moneylender to fuel China's grand project of national renewal. Russia wants such a concept of peace, in which it is recognized as a great power, it will have the right to "veto" anything that happens around it, having no reason to do so, except for nuclear weapons, the size of the territory and mineral reserves. Apart from that, Dugin had not been heard from for a long time, and now he came out of his cave again and declared that "there are only two ways out of this war — the victory of Russia or the death of humanity." We have heard about it before, but now it is important that everyone hears it.
Putin is just the personification of evil. Evil itself is the people who gave him power, who seek to dominate and hate everyone who does not belong to his "Animal Farm." Putin always wanted this war. For him, it began thirty years ago, and all this time he cultivated and cherished every moment of it. He assembled the war piece by piece, like a Lego model, and waited for the right opportunity. War became his only beloved child, and as soon as the conditions were right in 2014, he let it grow. Incapable of real strategic thinking, he directed all the forces of his petty, mentally traumatized nature to one goal — to prove to the "damned bastards" that he is stronger. He did not and does not have any business with his children, nor with other people's children, nor with his wives, nor with everyone else. The Neanderthal's dream of proving to everyone that he is a homo sapiens cannot be rational. For some, Orwell's novels became an antidote to the horrors of communism, for him — instructions for action.
Everyone wants peace, only Putin and his zombie population, who believe his every word, want war. For him, this is a war not against Ukraine, but against the USA and the West. The seizure of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, the aggression on February 24 — all these are components of the long-prepared plan of revenge of the West for East Germany, the collapse of the USSR, the "humiliation" of Russia during Yeltsin's time, technological backwardness and the inability to impose its false vision of the world order on the leading geopolitical players. It is worth noting that it is not by chance that the current phase of the war began with absurd ultimatums to the West. He was only interested in Ukraine as a battlefield. This was always done in the USSR. Only the leaders of the CPSU chose other territories — once Cuba, another time Afghanistan. If Putin had been the president of the USSR in the 1990s, such a battlefield would have been Poland, or the Baltic states, or Hungary, where the lessons of history were not learned. He grew up with the myth of an "unbreakable and legendary country", about the omnipotence of the KGB, about the right of the strong to take everything that came into his field of vision. He put in so much effort to become strong, but he was personally betrayed — firstly by Gorbachev, and then by Yeltsin. He did not take revenge on them, because for him they are small and secondary goals. His revenge is aimed at a powerful geopolitical player, namely the USA, and this is a real drive, even an orgasm, for his paranoid, mythology-warped view of the world. However, everything went wrong, because the world is different than he imagined. Ukraine did not give up, and the democracies of the world united to fight back against Russia.
Our victory is born on the battlefield, but it also lies in the clear understanding of what is happening around us. John F. Kennedy, who lived through the Caribbean crisis, once said: "In domestic politics we risk nothing but defeat, while foreign policy can bring us to the grave."
Geopolitics, which died a year ago, is slowly coming back. China has slightly reduced its aggressive rhetoric towards the West, but has joined the game of raising rates, demonstrating strategic relations with Putin, rapprochement with Iran and increasing supplies of almost free energy resources from the Russian Federation. China needs the USA to concentrate on the war in Europe, thereby weakening its position in Asia. Even for a superpower, "stretching" for nine thousand kilometers is a difficult task.
Russia has formed a basic alliance with the DPRK, Iran, Belarus, and Syria, and is persistently drawing the countries of Africa and Latin America, where people still remember the colonial past, into it. All this already happened in the Soviet times. This is bad, but not critical, because flirting with the "third world" requires money, and if the unity of the West does not give it slack, it will run out sooner or later.
The United States has done an incredible thing, namely, brought back the unity of the West, and now its position in negotiations with China is much stronger than in the immediate "post-Trump" period. Radical changes took place in the politics of France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, which even yesterday were talking about special relations with Putin. The European Union has taken on an unexpectedly powerful appearance, where only one country is stubbornly trying to destroy unity, and there are reasons to believe that the project of a united Europe will indeed become a reality. It is not ruled out that Great Britain will return to it as well, which in difficult conditions shows considerable leadership on the world stage.
It is worth noting that for the first time since the Second World War, Japan began to depart from orthodox pacifism. The constant provocations from restless neighbors were evident, and the review of strategic documents in the field of security and defense is a testimony to that. In the Indo-Pacific region, the formation and strengthening of new alliances has begun, which should become the foundation for maintaining the status quo and prevent the emergence of conflicts in the region where the industrial and technological heart of the world beats.
Finally, the unique "Ramstein" formula emerged, and may persist even after our victory, since, as it becomes increasingly clear, the threats of war can arise not only in Europe, and the civilized world must be ready to respond in conditions of incapacity of international institutions, designed to provide security. In addition, the USA has no intention of giving up its leadership position to anyone. However, the new configuration of the competitive environment in the top league will no longer be one-man. We are expecting the formation of two global blocs that will go far beyond regional characteristics. Thus, Russia's sweet dreams of the "third pole" will not become a reality.
On January 31, 1979, Deng Xiaoping made a historic visit to the USA. He was in high spirits on board the plane. A few weeks earlier, China and the United States had established diplomatic relations, and the Chinese leader viewed this fact as an extremely important step in his program to "open" China to the world. Deng Xiaoping was not a person who likes to talk a lot, but this time, according to eyewitnesses, he talked a lot about his plans for reforms and economic development of the PRC. In particular, he said: “If we look closely at history, we will see that all those countries that were with the USA became rich, while those that were against the USA remained poor. We will be together with the USA."
The fact that China still will not risk relations with the largest consumer of its products is confirmed by statistics: last year the trade between the USA and the PRC amounted to 690 billion dollars, and imports from China to the United States reached 536.8 billion dollars, while exports amounted to only 153.8 billion. Thus, although politics does intervene in the economy, the positive balance of $383 billion is an important enough argument not to forget Deng Xiaoping's words. Similar trends are observed in China's trade with the EU (its positive balance exceeds 210 billion dollars). Russia, on the contrary, has lost its strategic balance in its foreign relations: the European market for energy carriers and high-tech goods is effectively closed, and it is being pushed out of the arms market in Asia. In addition, industrial development is also in a state of stagnation. Russia is becoming easy prey for the PRC. For Russia, which has close economic and political relations with Eurasian countries, it is impossible to imagine standing on one leg even in the conditions of special relations with India and China. The question is when Putin's entourage will finally understand this and draw conclusions.
The world will be different after our victory. Pandora's box opened by Russia is doing its job, and instead of development, half the world is now in a hurry to order new types of advanced weapons. Even Hungary is dramatically increasing its military budget, not to mention our allies in Europe and Asia. The world after our victory will be different, but, in spite of everything, better. It is worth noting that Ukraine will also be its co-creator.