What’s at Stake in the War in Ukraine

After a U.S.- and European Union (EU)-orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014 and eight years of civil war that followed, Russia decided to go on the military offensive in Ukraine. The mainstream media is focusing on the war, but very important events are also taking place behind the scenes.

While NATO member countries reacted almost as one behind Joe Biden to denounce Russia and implement sanctions against the Kremlin, this was not the case for most of the “rest of the world.” While the EU and the United States are pouring money into arming and supporting V. Zelensky in Kiev, Russia is weaving its web with precisely that “rest of the world” that is not hostile to it. Among other things, it is strengthening its relations with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – 41% of the world’s population), which are substantially increasing their consumption of Russian products (oil, fertilizers, grain, etc.) and signing new contracts in national currencies, thereby weakening the all-powerful US dollar, the pillar of the American empire. Moscow has also shown that it is resilient in the face of sanctions that are hurting Europe more than Russia, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban notes: “I thought we were shooting ourselves in the foot, but now it seems that the European economy has shot itself in the lungs and is suffocating.”

The American Decline

The United States is no longer the power it once was. It is torn by a major political and societal crisis that the last presidential elections exposed and that the mid-term elections of next November will amplify. Their empire, built on violence, is running out of steam. While Europe sees a recession, Russia announces trade surpluses. While the euro falls below the dollar for the first time in 20 years and Germany runs its first trade deficit in 30 years, the Russian ruble strengthens. The EU thought it could do without Russian hydrocarbons by replacing them with imports from other countries and American liquefied natural gas (LNG). The problem is that the United States and Europe do not have sufficient infrastructure to import this LNG, and that the “rest of the world” is not fighting to deliver its hydrocarbons to us. La Tribune headlined in early July: “Electricity: prices may triple this winter.” We, the French, are going to pay dearly for our abandonment of political sovereignty in favor of Washington and Brussels.

Vladimir Putin’s real objective is not the Ukraine but American globalism. He says: “This is the beginning of the transition from American liberal globalist egocentrism to a multipolar world. A world that is not based on selfish rules invented for the sole purpose of pursuing a hegemonic policy, nor on hypocritical double standards, but on the basis of international law and the sovereignty of peoples and civilizations; on their desire to live out their historical destinies with their values and traditions and cooperate on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.”

The US and the EU did not see this move coming. They do not want to see that the “rest of the world” is fed up with the hegemony, hypocrisy and interference of the Atlanticists who practice a systematic double standard to their sole advantage. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya… the West has helped itself to hydrocarbons and other natural resources at the expense of international law and respect for the sovereignty of nations. The West has largely tarnished its image in these wars and foreign interference. Also, the “rest of the world” does not adhere at all to the American imperialist program and its woke anthropology, stemming from the cancel culture that Washington and the European and Anglo-Saxon capitals try to impose on them.

Faced with this admission of weakness, Washington is confronted with a historical dilemma: to admit its limitations and adapt peacefully to the emergence of a new world model, or try to go all out in a military confrontation that can only be global and possibly nuclear. Let us not forget that the Americans have already revived their economy twice, thanks to the two world wars. Let us hope that they love their children more than they love their Empire.


Nikola Mirkovic is a French-Serbian graduate of the European Business School and passionate about geopolitics. He has been bombed by NATO. This article appears courtesy of La Nef.