The Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth month with no sign of a near end to this global crisis, which is likely to develop into a third world war, if not with weapons, then over food and the specter of economic stagnation that began with Covid 19. Has the world lost its mind, or have the rules of world peace been shaken?
Over many years, the major countries, without exception, relentlessly played the role of a bully, each in their sphere of influence. Every powerful country has given itself the unethical right to invade other countries, as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Either due to the formula of equal powers or fears of potential repercussions, the world was able to live according to the theory of the fine line that governs the relationship between major countries which control the fate of mankind. Meantime, most other countries are marginalized except for some protocol measures to suggest that there is a global peace system; it is nothing more than an international speech machine called the United Nations, which is incapable of doing anything without permission from the Big Five.
It is good for humanity that there is occasional agreement to deal with a few international crises, but the greatest tragedy occurs when one of the five countries is an original party or an agent for other parties to the conflict. Hence, the United Nations does nothing but offer criticism, denunciation, and sometimes verbal condemnation.
A specialist in human history can find that most major wars since the twentieth century have been caused by these countries, while the rest of the world is the dry grass that breaks under the legs of the fighting elephants. The Ukrainian crisis is no different and will end according to the same fine line theory where these scuffles blur and sometimes erase the line between reason and greed.
The question remains: how many lives will be lost, how many safe people will be forced to flee, and how many families will lose their feeling of safety and security? All of this appears to be irrelevant as the big countries rush like bulls to the edge of the abyss, and every country will mobilize its nuclear weapons of destruction, a tenth of which is enough to destroy the world several times. The Ukrainian President Zelensky has stated that the solution must be diplomatic, so why is there a deliberate delay? That’s the point. The US and Europe fantasize about depleting Russia's military capabilities while crushing its economy via a boycott that did not work with Iran, which is less financially powerful than Russia. In terms of military capabilities, what is the use of weapons of mass destruction, which is sufficient to destroy the world all at once, even by accident?
The fact that major countries are not sincere in their pursuit of true peace, as a resolution for most crises, is known. If we think well of them, the great powers only look for their interests from a narrow perspective, and if we think badly of them, they are greedily seeking to guarantee their permanent, unethical interests, which is more likely.
It has all happened before - despite the stringent Treaty of Versailles in 1918, under which Germany was stripped of its forces Armed forces, with the exception of 100,000 soldiers who were only allowed to carry light weapons during military parades, the victorious countries felt that this was insufficient, so the treaty was followed by a January 1920 supplement in which Germany admitted responsibility for the war and paid reparations of 269 billion marks, the final instalment of which was paid in 2010 by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In addition, parts of its lands were carved out for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France, which led to the deterioration of the German economy.
Hitler came to power in 1933 to raise Germany from rock bottom to prosperity, but he pushed the world into a second world war because the Versailles Treaty was itself a justification for a new global war. Therefore, the world did not impose fines on Germany after World War II so that the tragedy would not be repeated. On the contrary, it contributed to the building of a destroyed Germany after World War II, and only Israel benefited from the funds, as a representative of the plight of the Jews, so it took sufficient compensation using means of enticement, blackmail and inheritance without legal basis.
Now we confront the same facts, with the world ignoring Russia's interests, attempting to marginalize the remnants of the Soviet Union, biting off some of the countries affiliated with the Warsaw Pact, and joining NATO, which should have been dissolved after the fall of the Iron Curtain until the forces were balanced and the need for it was no longer required.
Instead, the American thinker Francis Fukuyama came out with the theory of the end of history to establish America’s leadership in the world, which resulted in many regional wars, most of them by proxy, and ideological terrorism spread, as happened in resisting the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, so the American intelligence assigned Al-Qaeda to fight Russia, which then turned against America and the whole world using the ideologies of Islamic extremism.
When this was not enough, Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State during the George Bush Jr. administration, came out to preach to humanity a policy of creative chaos, which caused many countries to split and activists to reject the democracy that she preached. Condoleezza left, but terrorism and dictatorship persisted, and unfortunately, most of the victims were from countries in the Middle East.
How will the Ukrainian war end?
I believe that the suffering of the peoples from unprecedented high prices and the expected energy crises will force European governments to encourage negotiations to get out of the crisis. The European peoples can bear if convinced, but the dilemma is that the great countries lack great leaders such as Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, and even Margaret Thatcher, who could have influenced the morale of their people to bear the sacrifices of high prices and economic stagnation. Thus, protests will sweep the world when European people reach the limit of survival.
Then, as usual, people will revolt in search of food whose supply chains have been disrupted by the war, from which the arms companies benefit. As usual, America will emerge as a creditor to Europe. Erdogan, on the other hand, will pay the price of agreeing to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, as they will lose their neutrality and their well-being as well. In addition, China’s influence will grow, as the country gets ready to bite Taiwan, while the old man in the White House abandons the dreams of strategically defeating Russia.
Then, the world will start trying to draw the fine line once again.
