By Graham E. Fuller
June 22, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- The war in Ukraine
has dragged on long enough now to reveal certain
clear trajectories. First, two fundamental
realities:
- Putin is to be condemned for launching
this war– as is virtually any leader who
launches any war. Putin can be termed a war
criminal–in good company with George W. Bush
who has killed vastly greater numbers than
Putin.
2) secondary condemnation belongs to the US
(NATO) in deliberately provoking a war with
Russia by implacably pushing its hostile
military organization, despite Moscow’s repeated
notifications about crossing red lines, right up
to the gates of Russia. This war did not have
to be if Ukranian neutrality, á la Finland and
Austria, had been accepted. Instead Washington
has called for clear Russian defeat.
As the war grinds to a close, where will
things go?
Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist
pronouncements, Russia is winning the war,
Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term
damage to Russia is open to debate.
American sanctions against Russia have
turned out to be far more devastating to Europe
than to Russia. The global economy has slowed
and many developing nations face serious food
shortages and risk of broad starvation.
There are already deep cracks in the European
façade of so-called “NATO unity.” Western Europe
will increasingly rue the day that it blindly
followed the American Pied Piper to war against
Russia. Indeed, this is not a Ukrainian-Russian
war but an American-Russian war fought by proxy
to the last Ukrainian.
Contrary to optimistic declarations, NATO
may in fact ultimately emerge weakened. Western
Europeans will think long and hard about the
wisdom and deep costs of provoking deeper long
term confrontations with Russia or other
“competitors”of the US.
Europe will sooner or later return to the
purchase of inexpensive Russian energy. Russia
lies on the doorstep and a natural economic
relationship with Russia will possess
overwhelming logic in the end.
Europe already perceives the US as a
declining power with an erratic and hypocritical
foreign policy “vision” premised upon the
desperate need to preserve “American leadership”
in the world. America’s willingness to go to war
to this end is increasingly dangerous to others.
Washington has also made it clear that Europe
must sign on to an “ideological” struggle
against China as well in some kind of protean
struggle of “democracy against
authoritarianism”. Yet, if anything this is a
classic struggle for power across the globe. And
Europe can even less afford to blunder into
confrontation with China–a “threat” perceived
primarily by Washington yet unconvincing to many
European states and much of the world..
China’s Belt and Road initiative is perhaps
the most ambitious economic and geopolitical
project in world history. It is already linking
China with Europe by rail and sea. European
exclusion from the Belt and Road project will
cost it dearly. Note that the Belt and Road runs
right through Russia. It is impossible for
Europe to close its doors to Russia while
maintaining access to this Eurasian mega
project. Thus a Europe that perceives the US
already in decline has a little incentive to
join the bandwagon against China. The end of the
Ukraine war will bring serious reconsideration
in Europe about the benefits of propping up
Washington’s desperate bid to maintain its
global hegemony.
Europe will undergo increasing identity
crisis in determining its future global role.
Western Europeans will tire of subservience to
the 75 year American domination of European
foreign policy. Right now NATO is
European foreign policy and Europe remains
inexplicably timid in asserting any independent
voice.How long will that prevail?
We now see how massive US sanctions against
Russia, including confiscation of Russian funds
in western banks, is causing most of the world
to reconsider the wisdom of banking entirely on
the US dollar into the future. Diversification
of international economic instruments is already
in the cards and willl only act to weaken
Washington’s once dominant economic position and
its unilateral weaponisation of the dollar.
One of the most disturbing features of this
US-Russian struggle in Ukraine has been the
utter corruption of independent media. Indeed
Washington has won the information and
propaganda war hands down, orchestrating all
Western media to sing from the same hymnbook in
characterizing the Ukraine war. The West has
never before witnessed such a blanket imposition
by one country’s ideologically-driven
geopolitical perspective at home. Nor, of
course, is the Russian press to be trusted
either. In the midst of a virulent anti-Russian
propaganda barrage whose likes I have never seen
during my Cold Warrior days, serious analysts
must dig deep these days to gain some objective
understanding of what is actually taking place
in Ukraine.
Would that this American media dominance
that denies nearly all alternative voices were
merely a blip occasioned by Ukraine events. But
European elites are perhaps slowly coming to the
realization that they have been stampeded into
this position of total “unanimity”; cracks are
already beginning to appear in the façade of “EU
and NATO unity.” But the more dangerous
implication is that as we head into future
global crises, a genuine independent free press
is largely disappearing, falling into the hands
of corporate-dominated media close to policy
circles , and now bolstered by electronic social
media, all manipulating the narrative to its own
ends. As we move into a predictably greater and
more dangerous crises of instability through
global warming, refugee flows, natural
disasters, and likely new pandemics, rigorous
state and corporate domination of the western
media becomes very dangerous indeed to the
future of democracy. We no longer hear
alternative voices on Ukraine today.
Finally, Russia’s geopolitical character has
very likely now decisively tilted towards
Eurasia. Russians have sought for centuries to
be accepted within Europe but have been
consistently held at arms length. The West will
not discuss a new strategic and security
architecture. Ukraine has simply intensified
this trend. Russian elites now no longer possess
an alternative to accepting that its economic
future lies in the Pacific where Vladivostok
lies only one or two hours away by air from the
vast economies of Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul.
China and Russia have now been decisively pushed
ever more closely together specifically out of
common concern to block unfettered US freedom of
unilateral military and economic intervention
around the world. That the US can split
US-induced Russian and Chinese cooperation is a
fantasy. Russia has scientific brilliance,
abundant energy, rich rare minerals and metals,
while global warming will increase the
agricultural potential of Siberia. China has the
capital, the markets, and the manpower to
contribute to what becomes a natural partnership
across Eurasia.
Sadly for Washington, nearly every single one
of its expectations about this war are turning
out to be incorrect. Indeed the West may come to
look back at this moment as the final argument
against following Washington’s quest for global
dominance into ever newer and more dangerous and
damaging confrontations with Eurasia. And most
of the rest of the world–Latin America, India,
the Middle East and Africa– find few national
interests in this fundamentally American war
against Russia.
Graham E. Fuller is a former Vice Chair of
the National Intelligence Council at CIA with
responsibility for global intelligence
estimates. www.grahamefuller. com
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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