Possible solutions to the Ukraine War must go beyond a settlement of land as the invasion was illegal, and the problems that it aimed to solve were largely created by Russia exerting influence due to its own paranoia or fear of being overrun by an encroaching NATO. Russia’s fear that NATO was creeping up upon its borders suppose threat but NATO was always a defensive alliance that has not declared war until the intervention in Bosnia and then the tragic intervention in Iraq by America with some NATO forces alongside it. But Iraq, although understood by Russia to be a war conducted by NATO, was a terrible miscalculation by the American President GW Bush and UK PM Tony Blair due to a belief that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to World Peace with WMD.
Saddam was a terrible leader in many respects but his brutality was directed at ISIS who evolved from al Queda and his brutal crackdowns. Tyrants were imposing a form of order as Putin correctly observed, supporting the Bashir al Assad regime in Syria as it was the Government. Trump then recognised that America had reacted to all this intervention costing the US dearly, forming a new reactionary underclass of thuggish idiots (now called MAGA) who do not seem to realise they are doing Putin’s bidding. Some people do not seem to understand the subtly required for diplomacy. The Republican base and its current loud mouth idiocracy (Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bobert, Margorie Tayor Greene) are the direct result of a President who has attempted to break America with terrible foreign policy and a religious zeal to issue guns and reduce human rights.
The ‘war on “woke”‘ is an effort to remove laws that a) make little sense, and b) should not be confused with progress. The division of Left vs Right leaves people conflating issues that really do matter with ones that are merely to rile up the base. Woke is a term that has been stretched from its original or intended meaning to something else. This is a common political tactic – to redefine the planks that the opposition takes: in this case – ‘woke’ has morphed from BLM into discussions about transgenderism and a way of attacking ‘liberals’ and ‘the left’ as if they were the same group of people or opinions. They are not. Liberals are not left wing – liberalism is ‘a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.’ Free enterprise is the foundation of capitalism.
The culture wars are an attack on the very structure of civilisation. This broad insanity that has seeped into American Republican thinking and attempts to cast ‘woke-ism’ into a category that must be rejected by all. This is a distraction from actual political change. It is driven by the undermining of western democracies that has been Putin’s most successful project of the last fifteen years or so. The Ukraine War is his most expensive miscalculation. What the Russian people seem to accept is that their great saviour would squander all the gains of the last twenty years because of his belief that history was more important than the future.
Biden has funded Ukraine into a defensible force wearing down the Russian military machine. The outcome of this war may not be good for Ukraine but it will also weaken and expose a belligerent Russia on its other borders and protects NATO countries. It is a holding action but it is driving China to align itself with Russia as America has not proven itself to be very friendly and Russia fulfils its energy needs more cheaply than the Middle East.
It is all about energy. Russia has plenty of it but it is the polluting variety. Global climate change and poisoning of the atmosphere will cost far more than the commitment to this war. And weakening Russia in this way does not prevent climate change. All those explosions is not the only problem it is creating but it is significant. A feared nuclear exchange will accelerate climate disaster and instability. The world took a very terrifying turn when Russia thought it should walk over Ukraine and the West disagreed.
Energy is the key to this conflict. Untying the West from Russian supply ultimately will make energy cheaper for China as they install gas and oil pipelines and take advantage of a crippled Russia. It’s weakened military will fail to protect it from North Korea and China taking control of Manchuria and then Siberia. This will ensure China dominates Russia increasingly and ‘The West” will become more isolationist. Orwell’s prediction of Eurasia vs Eastasia will become the new and terrible reality. Russia will suffer dreadfully due to Putin’s miscalculation.