WWIII

What if Russia and Ukraine do not want a stalemate but only a quick decisive win?

If the Ukraine War becomes a long-drawn war of attrition that neither the NATO nor Russia are willing to lose, there could become a de facto ceasefire line between the four eastern oblast and Crimea and western Ukraine. This would be a stalemate, extending indecisively perhaps like the Cyprus issue between Greece and Turkey.

But what if any of the two sides does not want a stalemate but only a quick decisive win? This lust for winning can drive either one to extreme options. Russia for one does not seem ready to retreat. With China behind its back and Iran willing to go to any length in its support, and ranking only 2nd in global fire power, Russia seems stronger than ever on the fronts. As for Russia’s strategic depth, it has bases all around its near-abroad, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan in Central Asia; in Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia in Caucasus; and in Kaliningrad, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine in Europe.

Russia’s strategy has always been to strengthen within its region, especially around its borders. So, whereas post-colonial Europe and the US have only ‘interests’ in countries all around the world, Russia has around its mainland, influence, which has elements of shared culture, languages and history. This makes Russia’s post-Soviet space a bulwark within which it feels its security – and an invasion in its near-abroad is seen as an invasion on its security and existence.

The US and allies have always kept Russia alienated from themselves and never ceased to declare it an axis of evil – choosing to keep it an ‘enemy’. Even when at the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev made all sorts of policies like glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring) and democratisation, just to make the US believe that they want to be friends now, Reagan publicly called Russia the ‘evil empire’. Later Gorbachev declared that rather than cooperating with Russia, the US had conspired to build a ‘new empire headed by themselves’, and that the US had expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders despite their initial assurances that they wouldn’t do so.

Now that post-Cold war, NATO has engulfed 12 Eastern European states which were former Warsaw Pact members, the US was still unhappy and wanted more – it wanted both Belarus and Ukraine! In Belarus, the Jeans Revolution was staged against Lukashenko in 2006, which failed. In Ukraine, the 2014 Euromaidan succeeded in ousting pro-Russian Yanukovych, bringing in Poroshenko and later Zelensky. Russia felt NATO reaching for its jugular.

So, what has this to do with WWIII? With Ukraine, NATO has initiated the appetite for war throughout European states. Poland and the Scandinavians have started beating the war-drum by increasing military spending, ramping up exercises and urging tougher sanctions. Finland and Sweden, considered neutral states, have opted for joining NATO and the whole Baltic region surrounding Kaliningrad is at daggers drawn with Russia right now.

On the other side, western media is full with news on Chinese intentions of occupying Taiwan. With this assumption in mind, Japan has announced $320 billion military budget, specifically mentioning buying ‘missile to target China’ and ‘to ready for sustained conflict’. The QUAD – including India whom China constantly threatens along its vast northern border – is jubilant over Japan’s reentry to Kamikaze-mode, and the QUAD has reinvigorated its pledges against China.

Threatening and encircling two major powers will tempt them to reciprocate in their military strategy too, potentially leading to a global confrontation. But this will not be a usual war. When the theater is global, faced with existential threats, opposing powers will have to turn to the nuclear option and the global chessboard will swiftly turn into a checkerboard where several men go down with one wrong move.

So, Ukraine and Taiwan can be two touch-offs for WWIII. As yet, China has demonstrated calm showing it will not invade Taiwan until it’s ready for the big game. But in Ukraine, it’s not like Zelensky has any real power or an option to negotiate a deal with Russia. NATO has been in Ukraine much before Zelensky, and has trained over 100,000 Ukrainian fighters since 2014, making them into far-right neo-Nazi elite fighting groups like the Azov Battalion that has allegedly threatened Zelensky with death if he tries to concede.

It has been estimated that a large number of weapons being flooded into Ukraine have specifically fell into the hands of the Azov Battalion and its likes. This is just what was made to happen in Afghanistan and Iraq: large piles of weapons were allowed to reach the hands of groups that later became ISIS and Daesh. This means that coming out of Ukraine would, for Putin, mean that Ukraine be given in the hands of extremist elements that would constantly destabilise the country and play in the hands of their benefactors against Russia.

But these types of long-drawn plans are not the first option for the US and its European allies because they are running short of time. The unipolar moment of the US hegemony that tended to globalise the whole world in its syphon of unilateral capitalist profiteering is coming to an end. After the 2008 economic crisis, Europe was hit by the Eurozone crisis and Covid shutdowns. Now they are facing a freezing winter and soaring inflation. Western economists on alternate media are constantly warning of an impending economic crisis that will destroy the West in little time. And they are blaming Western powers’ artificially keeping their economies going by overborrowing trillions of dollars, allowing central banks to buy huge amounts of useless debts and allowing their governments to continue with their spending-sprees. Perhaps these bad habits are the real factors pushing humanity towards war!

The unchecked capitalist free-market monster feeds on unabated profits. No matter how much profits have been made, it always needs more. The free-market monster has evolved into a beast with no nation, no belief, no moral and only profits and interests. About 9% of the population owns 37% of global wealth, and 1% richest own 38% – but this monster needs to squeeze the poor further! If the profit-monster is not fed, it will go frantic and do anything, even if it means gulping up the whole humanity in torments of war, even if it means a WWIII.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2022.

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