When I was preparing to write my weekly article that I had decided to dedicate to the analysis of the situation in Ukraine, I received an email from my dear friend, Juan Pablo Cárdenas, a Chilean journalist with a long professional career, whose opinions are always highly considered by me, to in order to improve the work.
Juan Pablo reminded me of an article I wrote on September 2, 2014 called “Europe, playing with fire in Ukraine”, which was published by the Radio Editions of the University of Chile that at that time he directed in a book entitled “ Crazy world where I was born. An international system in permanent transformation”. In the message, Juan Pablo rescued the “prophetic and accurate” character of said analysis. I asked him if he thought I should publish it again and his response was forceful: "I would be very happy."
With the greatest respect for the reader, seven and a half years later, I deliver these lines again. Incredibly –and as Juan Pablo perceived it- the analysis is fully valid, it would only be necessary to change some names and facts that were recent at that time. But he left it unchanged so that the reader can assess current events and perceive that they respond to a calculated and continued policy of the United States, which has had Democratic and Republican governments in the period.
Europe, playing with fire in Ukraine
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but in my opinion, the conflict in Ukraine is the most dangerous that has taken place on the planet since the end of the cold war. It is true that in the period there have been several invasions of African countries, coups in Latin America, a deep economic and financial crisis, the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, genocide within the framework of a permanent siege by Israel against the Palestinian people , the constant threat of a NATO attack on Iran, and the post-imperial intervention wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, but in none of these has direct confrontation between two or more nuclear powers been or is so close. This has an explanation in the local, regional and global context. Let's go from the particular to the general.
It is no secret to anyone that there was a coup in Ukraine. It has its origin precisely in NATO's need to create a conflict situation like the one that exists today. The government of the ousted President Yanukovych was an obstacle to this. In that sense, the current Ukrainian government has been nothing more than a creation of the United States and Europe.
As in Syria and Iraq, where until two months ago the Islamic State was made up of freedom fighters from Syria and today they are classified as terrorists, in Ukraine it should not be forgotten that the revolts leading to the coup d'état, supported by the West , were carried out by Nazi-inspired organizations whose first actions were the attack on synagogues. Even Ukraine's Chief Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman recommended his community, in February this year, to leave Kiev and the country, stating that he did not want to push his luck, because "there are constant threats of attack on Jewish institutions." Of course, the government of Israel and the United States remained embarrassingly silent.
Thus, conditions were created to impose, in the midst of a brutal psychological campaign, the elections that brought the current government to power. In the current situation, his speech, supported by that of the NATO spokesmen, is so aggressive that it reminds one of the cold war with longing. The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko assured that Ukraine was “very close to the point of no return”. According to him, “the point of no return it is a large-scale war.” Adding fuel to the fire, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is famous for his abrupt statements according to German journalist Michael Stürmer, stated that the organization he heads is willing to strengthen cooperation with Ukraine.
In the same context, Ukraine's Defense Minister Valery Geletey indicated that his country "is on the threshold of a 'great war' with Russia, whose losses will be measured in thousands and tens of thousands" of victims. The use of the denomination of "great war" that was, the one given by the peoples of the Soviet Union to which they undertook to expel the Nazi army from their territory at the cost of 20 million fallen citizens, is striking.
It is worth saying that the arguments that are given by both the Western governments and the Ukrainian government to make these inflammatory assertions are based on an alleged direct participation of the Russian armed forces in the conflict. The truth is that so far no one has been able to present valid evidence in this regard. Faced with the Russian government's summons in this regard, the responses have been vague and superficial.
In memory, there are the atomic weapons never found in Iraq, the mass murders of Gaddafi in Libya, which were later found to have been a Hollywood stage staged in Qatar, and dozens of false stories that mark the history of the aggressive foreign policy of the United States and the customary tendency to misrepresent reality on the part of its presidents.
In the background there are two elements to highlight, the first is the inability of the Ukrainian regular army to defeat the rebel forces in the east. In a meeting held behind closed doors last Sunday, August 31, the NATO high command even reached the conclusion that "militarily the conflict is lost for Kiev" as reported by the German magazine "Der Spiegel". One of the participants in the meeting assured that the only path left to the Ukrainian president is that of negotiations "to be able to get his men alive from the pincers of the self-defense groups" from the east.
The response to both situations has been to deepen the conflict and involve Europe in the attempt to find a lifeline that will allow it to stay in power and save itself from defeat. However, for Europe, in which the vast majority of its countries are governed by the right, having embarked on this trance, as the caboose of United States policy, places it in a situation that is already beginning to show negative manifestations. . The sanctions against Russia originated in its support for Crimea's decision to join this country, however, today the argument has changed and the support of President Putin's government is used for the self-defense groups in southeastern Ukraine.
Russian countermeasures to these sanctions are beginning to be felt in Europe. They are also located in a somber context. In the second quarter of this year, the German economy shrank for the first time since 2012, the so-called "European locomotive" slowed by 0,2% of GDP, and France's economy is stagnant. The two represent almost half of the production of the euro zone and Italy, the third largest economy in the region, is in recession.
In this context, specialists warn that if the sanctions against Russia are maintained, or worse, if they are increased as the Ukrainian president has requested, a profound affectation of business and investment is fatal, as well as a loss of confidence in that the situation improves, with all the repercussions that this has.
Europe must carefully measure the consequences of its actions, the US economy is much more impervious to Russian countermeasures, especially in the energy field. Likewise, under these conditions, the strengthening of the dollar against the euro is inevitable. Thus, the United States will have used an extra-continental conflict to strengthen its currency at the expense of who is considered its ally.
On the global stage, it must be considered that Russia has once again assumed its status as a world power, after having been subjected to humiliation and ridicule in the times of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, revered by the West and despised by its people according to the surveys. In such a circumstance, it is not possible to apply forceful measures against him. The violation of the agreements made with Yeltsin himself not to extend the "NATO border" to the east in exchange for introducing market reforms at the end of the last century have been violated by the military alliance itself. Recently, NATO has announced that it will install 5 new military bases in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania, all close to Russia. Even Finland and Sweden, Baltic countries that are not members of the Atlantic alliance, have announced that they would bow to the coalition's anti-Russian military measures.
In this vein, the German newspaper Die Welt states that: "Military aid to Kiev could lead to a global war" and warns that: "such actions are inadmissible in the era of nuclear weapons." Despite the fact that the Russian government has stated time and again that it does not and will not carry out any military action in Ukraine, the West in a pointless effort tries to prove otherwise. President Putin himself has pointed out that the Ukrainian conflict should serve "to end this tragedy as soon as possible, peacefully and through negotiations."
Russia is not Afghanistan, it is not Iraq, Libya or Syria. Europe should consider this, do its math and remember that the two world wars of the XNUMXth century were fought in its space, that it took years to recover and that in both cases the only victorious country was the United States that did not risk its territory, nor its population, nor its economy and I do not believe that - in the midst of the current crisis - there are resources for a new Marshall Plan.
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