It is incredible that, in the middle of the war in Ukraine, justified by the insistence of the president of that country, Volodymyr Zelensky, to join NATO, the secretary general of the latter, Jens Stoltenberg, landed in Kiev with the promise that the country would be received “in brief” in the western military bloc. It is the height of provocation to the Russians. It was precisely to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO that Vladimir Putin unleashed the war, in the name of his country’s national security.
In the geopolitical context of Europe, the entry of Ukraine into NATO corresponds to a new step in the process of military strangulation of Russia, due to the siege imposed on it, since the end of the Soviet Union, by the adhesion to the bloc of its former republics that became independent. I discussed this in a previous article, justifying President Lula’s statements, according to which the two parties bear some responsibility for the outbreak of the conflict. It’s the truth.
The US reaction to Lula’s pronouncements for peace was expected. By all the evidence, and the main one is the US effort to dump weapons in Ukraine to carry out its “proxy” war, Washington wants the continuation of the conflict, not peace. In this sense, Lula’s speech generates a moral nuisance, even though it does not have major practical consequences. These would only come if Russians and Ukrainians were also interested in ending the war.
The message given in Kiev by the NATO secretary general goes the opposite way. It is a case of thinking about the strategy of the United States in this process, since nothing can be expected from the Europeans. These are simply doormats of US policy. They agree to impose tremendous political and social sacrifices on their peoples – as the President of Ukraine himself does, with regard to the domestic consequences of the war itself – in order to comply with Washington’s superior orders.
The fact is that the US strategy is nothing more than a bluff. Any newcomer to geopolitics knows that Ukraine cannot win the war. It is an illusion to assume that a country, even armed to the teeth by its handlers, can bring a nuclear power like Russia to surrender. Suppose that happens! What would happen, in that case, with the Russian nuclear arsenals? Would Moscow humiliately hand them over to Washington, which runs the war behind the scenes?
Suppose, on the other hand, that Western strategy is “only” to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But how to reconcile this with Russia’s national defense imperative? Putin had placed as a condition for avoiding conflict a formal and “written” commitment by the United States that NATO would not absorb Ukraine into its bloc. The answer was that the country’s sovereignty had to be respected. They did not realize that, in the face of Russian guns, this sovereignty was an illusion.
At that point, either a miracle of the type proposed by Lula happens, or we go to an infinite war with the risk of a direct confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers. And even if atomic arsenals are not used in the beginning, they can be used to a catastrophic end. At the beginning, for example, we could see North Korea take advantage of the American embarrassment with the Russians to attack South Korea and end the war that was interrupted in 1952 by the United States in the name of anti-communism.
Washington would be challenged in its formal commitment to provide South Korea with military protection. Japan would also be tempted to join the war, fearing that a reunited Korea under North rule would pose a threat of revenge against its former colonizers. At that point, the United States would be fighting on two fronts. But that would not be all. A war in Korea would launch massive migration flows from North Korea to China, destabilizing a country of 1.4 billion people.
Furthermore, in the face of overwhelming US conventional military power, North Korea could quickly lose the war. So we have to ask ourselves what its maximum leader, Kim Jong-un, painted by the CIA as a paranoid, could do with its nuclear arsenal, already capable of hitting the United States with intercontinental rockets.
In this chaotic situation, the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain, France, Israel, less expressive, but equally destructive, would have to be taken into account. And the effects of a general war in the Northern Hemisphere would have the potential to destroy civilization. The regions that were not directly affected by nuclear explosions, in the Southern Hemisphere, would be progressively consumed by atomic radiation.
To think that this is not a realistic scenario is irresponsible for political leaders around the world. An irresponsibility that also belongs to those who, in some way, have a moral influence on the course of humanity. Hence, I consider Lula’s attitude to be absolutely pertinent. Thinking that he, as the leader of a still developing country, does not have the political status to speak on an equal basis with the other leaders of the first world, is a kind of “mongrel complex” that only looks good on editorialists from “ The globe”. When Lula defends peace in Ukraine, he defends Brazilians against an atomic catastrophe.
I don’t think, moreover, that the statements that Lula has just made in Portugal characterize a retreat in relation to what he said in China and in the United Arab Emirates. He never equalized Russia’s and Ukraine’s responsibilities for the war. What he said was the obvious: that there would be no war if Ukraine had not insisted on joining NATO, and if NATO, since the end of the USSR in 1999, had not posed a real risk of aggression against Russia.
At the beginning of this process of virtual annexation of the former Soviet republics, Moscow was militarily too weak to react. The situation has changed both from a military point of view, with Russia’s recovery in this sector, and from a political point of view, with Putin’s rise to power. He gave clear indications that he would not accept NATO pushing the borders of Western Europe closer to its backyard, through the annexation of countries like Ukraine and Georgia. China even warned Westerners to take Putin’s remarks seriously before the war broke out. Neither Russia nor its main ally were taken seriously.
It is obvious that President Lula was referring to this when he noted that both parties are responsible for starting the war. Of course, if the Russian “special operation” had had a quick outcome, it would have ended in a peace agreement based on a formal commitment imposed on Ukraine to force it to desist from joining NATO. Putin’s main mistake, however, was strategic. His generals did not guarantee him a quick victory. With that, the war is prolonged indefinitely, and most people, limiting themselves to seeing the immediate facts, have forgotten its causes. Lula has shown that he has not forgotten.
Now, if there is a solution, it will necessarily go through the type of initiative that the Brazilian president suggests: exhaustive and direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, intermediated by countries that have friendly relations with both parties, and are accepted by the United States. This could be accelerated if leading European countries, such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, also stopped supporting the war. It would be a belated sign of the political rupture with Washington, which was to have occurred since the Cold War, when the Americans established their political hegemony in the West.
On the economy, where there is no imminent risk of war, French President Emmanuel Macron is taking an important step to stay equidistant between the two superpowers, the United States and China. It would be important for this to be generalized, putting an end to the block policy, as the Chinese want. In this case, however, it is easier for Washington to be defeated in the medium term. Jimmy Carter, a former occupant of the White House, realized this and gave a recent lecture on geopolitics to Donald Trump, according to a Newsweek report, rebroadcast by the Free Press Tribune, and which I reproduce here:
“…You are afraid that China will surpass us, and I agree with you. But do you know why China will surpass us? I normalized diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, and since that date… do you know how many times China has gone to war with someone? Not once, while we are constantly at war. The United States is the most warlike nation in the history of the world, as it wants to impose states that respond to our government and American values throughout the West, and to control companies that have energy resources in other countries.
China, for its part, is investing its resources in infrastructure projects, intercontinental and transoceanic high-speed railways, 6G technology, robotic intelligence, universities, hospitals, ports and buildings instead of using them on military expenditures. How many kilometers of high-speed rail do we have in our country? We wasted $300 billion in military spending to subjugate countries seeking to break out of our hegemony. China has not wasted a penny on war, which is why it surpasses us in almost every area.
And if it had taken $300 billion to install infrastructure, robots and public health in the US we would have high-speed transoceanic bullet trains. We would have bridges that don’t collapse, free health care for Americans not to infect thousands more Americans than any country in the world with COVID-19. We would have paths that maintain themselves properly. Our education system would be as good as South Korea or Shanghai.”
In short, what would become of Ukraine if, instead of the North Americans filling the country with weapons to assert their political hegemony in an attempt to defeat the Russians, promoting their membership in NATO as their virtual enemy, they promoted their economic development and Social? We would certainly have not only Ukraine, but most countries in the world with greater access to material wealth and greater possibilities for peace, but without hegemony from side to side.
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Source: https://www.diariodocentrodomundo.com.br/provocacoes-da-otan-rumo-a-guerra-nuclear-por-carlos-de-assis/
