This is a repost of the comment I left for the Anti-Empire's recent article titled "How the US Could Have Prevented the Russo-Ukrainian War AND Kept the NATO Door Open for Ukraine". Article goes into how US leadership, Joe Biden in particular, could have prevented this war if they wanted to. Wishful thinking from my point of view. Why would they be preventing this conflict if what US administration did since 2012 (with the exception of Trump period) was to create conditions leading to the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine? I also look briefly at the cultural roots of this war that is often overlooked as the fundamental reason for hostilities.
For the subject at hand, the fundamental reason for the Russo-Ukrainian war, everything is relatively simple. Modern Ukrainian identity is based on being anti-Russian. They have nothing else to go by to distinguish themselves from Russians unlike the other people of the former USSR that are ethnically and culturally distinct, like Georgians, Moldovans, Azerbaijani and so on. If you take anti-Russianness away from (most) Ukrainians, what do you have left? You find Russians again. This concerns primarily city dwellers in Ukraine who for centuries, basically since the coming of varangian rulers Oleg and Igor in the IX century, have associated themselves with Rus', e.g. with Russians. Based on the stance of declaring itself an anti-Russia and yelling from every corner that they are at war with Russia since 2014, Ukraine has set itself for eventual armed conflict with Russia. I didn't believe this war would start in February of this year and I wasn't correct in my assessment of the situation, I admit. But the whole logic of positioning of Ukraine opposing itself to Russia in every possible way could lead only to one thing - to an eventual hot conflict on the ground. This has little to do with NATO membership for Ukraine, though it became a trigger and a formal reason for conflict, this is a conflict of a civilizational level when one significant part tries to break off the larger part of civilization and for this declares itself an antidote to a larger part.
At this point we have just one winner in this conflict, it is US of A. Considering turbulent period for the world we are entering into right now US in a stroke of genius move had elevated themselves above the rest in the Western world. Here are the main achievements of the plan that was playing out for a decade:
- Eastern Slavs are busy at killing each other in large quantities and at destroying the legacy of "complexity", e.g. the great industrial base that Donbass was famous for. This legacy would be very difficult of not impossible to rebuild. Main question is who would do that and why?
- Europe is now detached from Russian resources to a great extent, and that was one of key advantages, by their own admission, that allowed the continent to prosper since the early seventies. In addition EU members through NATO are burdened with much higher military spending than they ever had to endure since the time of WWII
- UK while trying to surf on top of this situation and to reassert its global leadership through their involvement in Ukraine, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan is in a precarious situation ecomically and is heading for yet another political crisis
- US, on the other hand, with all its shortcomings looks like an island of stability in the Western world attractive for migration of capital and even advanced manufacturing from Europe. Not sure if Joe Biden was behind this grand plan, but we have to give it to the old man, he was the highest ranking and most dedicated member of the project of “Ukraine as anti-Russia” that got into an active phase approximately in 2012 after re-election of Putin as president, despite the direct objection to it by Obama and Biden.
When I call my relatives in Kiev they sometimes end the conversation with assertion "We shall overcome!". Sure, I agree with them - yes, we are going to win! However I think to myself, but we (in this case America) already won in this conflict. Now, is this going to be a victory benefiting US long term remains to be a question. But this is a subject for a separate conversation.