The two hotbeds of war in the world at the moment are Palestine and Ukraine. The supporters of peace, more numerous than the government spokespeople and the mainstream media which relay them want to admit, have an interest in understanding the issues in order to guide their own action. It is in their interest to grasp the links that unite these two conflicts and which go back to a single cause: the United States. World opinion is already alerted by the tragic events occurring in the Gaza Strip. The images that reach us are unbearable and staggering in their cruelty, but this conflict has, by its long duration, also allowed public opinion to form acquire an informed idea which has made easier the task of separating truth from falsehood and distinguishing the victim from the executioner. This is much less true for Ukraine because the actions of the United States are more recent, were carried out on the sly or were only understood by those who followed geopolitical events. US involvement in the genocide of the Gazans is lastingly ruining its reputation abroad, but not yet to the point of judging it as the main culprit for what is happening in Ukraine.
Palestine and Ukraine
In Palestine, the US system of control over the Middle East/West Asia is being tested by the Palestinian revolt against Zionist-Israeli settler colonialism, entirely dependent on the US. More than 7 months after its launching, the massive Israeli attack against the population of the tiny territory of Gaza and its small guerrilla group has achieved none of its objectives (destroying Hamas, recovering Israeli hostages, driving the Palestinians out of Gaza through an “ethnic cleansing”). The strategic situation based on the myth of invincibility is in tatters.
The resolution of this “conflict” is distant because there are decades of dispossession, massacres, apartheid, injustice and denial of rights to be resolved. The genocide of the Jews by the German Nazis has, especially since October 7, 2023, been exploited and made to serve as a useful alibi to place Israel in a victim posture of victimization, paving the way for the main objective of Zionist ideology, namely the project of Greater Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine. The trauma that European Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis increasingly resembles what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people.
The conflict between an Israeli state dominated by the Zionist ideology aimed at making Palestine a settler colony (an ideology sponsored by British, then American, imperialism) and Palestinian national rights dates back to 1917 and has now reached a paroxysm of violence. It is part of the broader conflict dynamic between the control of the region by US imperialism and its challenge by national forces in Arab and non-Arab countries (Iran). This conflict is itself a component of the global struggle initiated by the United States to perpetuate its hegemony (unipolar system) rejected by Russia, China and the South. This is the Third World War, begun before our eyes taking shape in forms different from those of 1914 and 1939. A long war, with military and non-military characteristics, with multiple twists and turns.
It is this global conflict which is also unfolding in Ukraine, where the US and the Western military alliance that it leads planned to bring Russia to its knees by using the Ukrainians as cannon fodder and Ukraine as proxy, pawn and agent provocateur in a proxy war. Sponsored, financed, armed and trained by NATO, Ukraine is being sacrificed in the hope of bleeding Russia, weakening it and bringing about a regime change in Moscow that would put that country in the hands of the US. With Russia defeated, the US would move on to its ultimate objective, a conflict with China in order to interrupt its economic successes, make it regress on all levels, recolonize it and prolong American hegemony by default.
History has a habit of thwarting the most cleverly concocted plans. We know that the Ukrainian adventure is not going at all as wanted and planned. Despite the debauchery of disinformation, mendacious “story-telling” and fantasized “narratives” about an easy victory against a supposedly inept Russia, the reality (obvious from the start to anyone familiar with the situation) ends up imposing itself on everyone (including NATO governments and the pro-American media fauna: propagandists, on-set “experts” and parrot journalists). Russia clearly has the upper hand; it is methodically disarming Ukraine, easily destroying the best Western weapons and emptying NATO’s arsenals. Western triumphalism turned into panic, despondency, ranting, and gesticulations. The bet on an easy proxy war against Russia is lost.
If world public opinion is increasingly coming to the same conclusion of failure in this regard, Western public opinion is still not fully aware of the causes allowing us to understand the origin of the Ukrainian conflict. The preposterous idea that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was an unprovoked aggression is less heard, but the importance of the role played by the US is not yet fully appreciated. Unfortunately, it may be necessary for another conflict to erupt, this time between China and the United States, for all eyes to be turned towards the single guilty arsonist, and to understand to what extent he is also at the origin of the Ukrainian tragedy. This is why the real causes of the war in Ukraine must constantly be revisited.
Phases of the conflict in Ukraine
It is important to once again take a provisional assessment of the evolution of this conflict in order to look ahead. On January 20, 1991, well before the Ukrainian independence referendum which occurred on December 1 of the same year, Crimea, administratively transferred to Ukraine just 37 years earlier, voted by referendum in favor of attachment to the USSR.
The war in Ukraine then went through several phases:
The march towards war began in 2008 with the plan to integrate Ukraine into NATO. NATO’s successive expansions since the end of the Cold War led the Organization to put its troops, tanks and missiles on Russia’s border, in direct military contact with it.
Start and preparation. The 2014 coup in Kiev, sponsored by the US, was linked to the Middle East. Furious that Putin helped Obama refrain from bombing Syria in 2013, the neoconservatives decided to open a new front in Ukraine, a territory contiguous to Russia, overlooking the Black Sea, home to its Sebastopol naval base and ultra-sensitive for its security. Installing the putschists who were supporters of Stepan Bandera, pro-American and Russophobic in Kiev was the prerequisite for putting Ukraine in a state of war against the Russian-speaking people of Donbass and against Russia itself. It was only in reaction to the putsch and following a second referendum held in Crimea that Russia annexed this oblast, but not Donbass, despite calls from the Russian-speaking population. Supposed to ensure its autonomy, the 2015 Minsk agreements were ignored by Kiev, under the cover of France and Germany who were the guarantors of these accords. Starting in 2014, the Ukrainian army was reconfigured, rearmed and augmented by NATO. In 2022, it had military forces the size of the Turkish army, the largest in NATO after the US. Ukraine was ready to face Russia.
In 2021, Biden’s coming to power gave free rein to anti-Russian neoconservative warmongers. Threats, provocations, bomber flights and even naval skirmishes on the coast of Crimea increased. Russian sovereignty was no longer respected. At the end of 2021, Russia, after years of patience, diplomacy, pleading, warnings against NATO’s advance towards its borders and prayers that the West would hear its security needs, changed its tune, called for the signing of comprehensive European security agreements and moved troops south. Its call to negotiate was rejected by the West, Zelensky expressed the desire to acquire nuclear weapons and Donbass was on the verge of being invaded by the Ukrainian army. Russia’s security was at stake.
On February 21, 2022, Russia recognized the independence of the Russian-speaking republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. On February 24, 2022, its troops entered Ukraine with the objectives of demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. The situation went as follows: the West expected a total occupation of Ukraine (Russia could have achieved it in a week if that was its goal) and planed its transformation into a second Afghanistan for Russia; it intended to support a guerrilla war that would exhaust Russia, facilitating regime change in Moscow by pro-American elements; but Russia did not intend to place itself in this quagmire by occupying Ukraine; its intervention was limited, to the surprise of the West; it launched a “special military operation” (OMS) with an expeditionary force of some 150,000 men, far from the number sufficient for a war and an occupation; the SMO took Donbass against a Ukrainian army three times its size and made a show of force with minimal fighting in order to get Kiev to sign a neutralization agreement; that almost succeeded in April 2022, but the US prevented Kiev from signing and began shipments of “lethal” weapons for a classic war against Russian forces. The quantity, quality and power of these weapons kept increasing. Already present in the situation since 2008, NATO was now clearly engaged, through Ukraine, in a proxy war against Russia.
Russian restraint created in the West the illusion of a Ukrainian-NATO victory, maintained the myth of Russia’s weakness (“a gas station”, said contemptuously the warmongering American senator John McCain), the belief in its infinite incompetence (the intervention in Syria from 2015, with combat planes, S-400s and cruise missiles, demonstrated the exact opposite), the ignorant speculations on its supposed lack of ammunition. It led to belief in the scenario of a military defeat for Russia. The stir and shock of February turned into jubilation and arrogance. No attention was paid to the fact that Russia had been modernizing its army for at least 10 years, that it was not as deindustrialized as some wished to believe (how could a country that produced advanced weapons systems, including hypersonics, be without industry?), that it had immense material and human capacities, several times greater than those of Ukraine, and that it had a long history of resilience, called upon many times, especially when the security of Russia was threatened. In the face of NATO escalation, it had the resources for even greater counter-escalation.
The SMO was a middle path between inaction and the occupation of Ukraine. The SMO gamble failed because it was based on the hope of avoiding the inevitable: full-blown war. Until the end, Russia followed its policy since the end of the Cold War: to put off the use of force as much as possible, to try to convince the West to take its concerns into account, to seek agreements. All this, on the contrary, only reinforced the West’s conviction that Russia was weak, that it could be pressured and pushed around, and that ultimately it would not react to NATO expansion. But launching a SMO to sign an agreement was optimistic, even unrealistic, to the extent that there was no guarantee that the agreement would be respected after the departure of Russian troops, that Ukraine would actually disarm, that US missiles pointed at Russia would not be installed surreptitiously. The cancellation of the April 2022 agreements and NATO’s commitment put an end to this entire policy.
The war that the SMO was designed to avoid occurred. It was a conventional war, essentially land-based and high-intensity, an almost unthinkable scenario at the start of 2022. From September 2022, Russia mobilized its reserves, increased the pace of its military production, established itself on powerful defensive positions and set about systematically destroying Ukraine’s military capabilities and potential, as well as NATO’s arsenals, through a war of attrition (“meat grinder”), which is a more reliable method than a treaty. Ukrainian human and material losses were staggering. The “counter-offensive” of June 2023, which was expected to break the Russian front, was a disaster on all levels. Complacency and contempt for Russians led to blindness. It was the last card in the all-offensive strategy to deliver Russia a decisive defeat blow on the battlefield. NATO/Kievian decision-makers were in a state of disarray; depression reigned; the policy of exploiting Ukraine against Russia was a monumental and bloody failure. Its inspiration since 2014, Victoria Nuland, was fired. Ukrainian commander-in-chief Zaluzhny was replaced, even though the fiasco of the “counter-offensive” was the fault of NATO, which planned it. Today Ukraine lacks weapons and soldiers. But there is no sign that this conflict will end anytime soon. The war to the last Ukrainian continues, fueled by military and financial contributions from Western countries.
Today and tomorrow: a long-lasting conflict
If Russia’s security does not allow it to ignore Ukraine, the US cannot withstand a defeat at the hands of Russia in Ukraine because it would shake its global hegemony. This means that the chances of a settlement are low; it’s a fight to the finish. The most lucid had already understood this by 2022.
After the hysteria and then the euphoria of 2022, what was known to minds not infected by Western political and media hype became obvious to everyone in 2023: Kiev cannot win. Russian forces enjoy a clear superiority in number, equipment, firepower, training and organization. Ukrainian lines are almost no longer holding out in the face of incessant nibbling operations along the entire length of the front. They can be broken at any time, opening the way towards the Dnieper, Kharkov, Odessa and perhaps Kiev itself because there are no support points worthy of the name behind them.
The failure of the Ukrainian proxy forced its Western sponsors to step forward. Statements warning of collapse multiplied. The predicted military health walk in the park towards Moscow switched overnight to a scare of a Russian sweep, including T90 tanks parading on the Champs-Élysées. European allies of the US got agitated, denounced Russia, swore to remain alongside Kiev, signed 10-year treaties with it, promised long-range missiles for direct attacks deep inside Russia, and talked about sending their own troops to fill the gaps in the Ukrainian ranks. Macron only stands out because of his theatrics and dabbling. It is not impossible that Kiev will bomb Russia with European missiles, in which case Russia will consider London, Paris or Berlin as belligerents, with the consequences that this entails.
More accustomed to abandoning compromised causes, the US, by far the leading supplier of arms and dollars, was initially reluctant to continue pointless spending, but ended up adopting a new appropriation law. Of the $61 billion, Ukraine will immediately receive only $14 billion, half of which will go to ordinary expenses that keep the Ukrainian state afloat and the other half for the acquisition of weapons, especially shells which are increasingly lacking. The rest is intended for the US military-industrial complex to put it in a position to produce weapons that will only see the light of day in a few years. This tells us that the conflict will be long-lasting and that NATO will be pushing it as long as there are Ukrainians to put on the frontlines.
From Moscow comes validation of this observation. Defense Minister Shoigu was replaced by Andrei Belousov, a senior state official whose mission will be to strengthen the links between military production and the country’s general economy. Russia had already defeated the Western plan to bring about its downfall it through “sanctions”. Detached from Western currencies and markets, it has developed an economic self-sufficiency, as well as its relationships with China and the non-Western world. It is increasingly taking the posture of a country which anticipates continued Western pressure and which strengthens itself in anticipation. One cannot help but note the irony: Putin, who constantly criticizes the Bolsheviks, is obliged forced to follow in their footsteps because he leads the same country and faces practically the same foreign adversaries. For NATO and for Russia, Ukraine has never been the main issue. NATO and Russia are looking beyond Ukraine. Russia is putting itself in a position to confront NATO in the long term. This is a confirmation that the conflict with NATO could take a more direct form, perhaps manifesting itself on fronts other than Ukraine.
It is possible that the war in Ukraine will remain for many years to come the focus of the US-Russia confrontation, without excluding the opening of other fronts. European hotheads, in search of military adventures, could launch their countries into suicidal interventions against Russia. Either way, the Russia-Ukraine proxy war will become even more clearly a NATO-Russia confrontation. In all cases, it is a long-term conflict, decisive for the future of the world. What will become of the US-China conflict also remains to be seen. Russia was supposed to be dispatched quickly by Ukraine, allowing the US to turn against China, which it considers its main adversary. Does the surprise of Russian resistance and the fact that Russia counts even more today on the international scene than it did in 2022 delay a US-China war? One dares to hope so without really believing it. For supporters of peace and public opinion, the coming years will be a period where their vigilance and activism will have to make themselves felt.
