Ukraine - the focal point between two world orders

Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, has become a proxy war waged by the US-led West against Russia; because the Russian Federation - the leading country in the struggle to build a multipolar world order, is the biggest obstacle to the US's ambition to continue to maintain world hegemony since the end of the Cold War. Thus, Ukraine is the epicenter of the struggle between two world orders in the 21st century.

US President Joe Biden declared that the war in Ukraine is a turning point in history leading to a new world order. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Ukraine is the epicenter of an epochal struggle that will give birth to a new world order. Although both Joe Biden and Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “new world order,” their implications were fundamentally different. While the White House owner pursued the ambition of preventing the collapse of the unipolar world order dominated by the US, the head of Russian diplomacy predicted that the war in Ukraine would end US world dominance and usher in an era of a multipolar world order.

Both the US and Russia see Ukraine as the epicenter of the struggle between two world orders in the 21st century. Photo: Fox News

There is a historical coincidence of the times. The world order in the 20th century was the result of the conflict between the US and Russia taking place in the form of three great wars: World War I, World War II and the Cold War. These three great wars all stemmed from the same underlying cause: the US's global strategy to gain world hegemony. The basis of this strategy was the geopolitical doctrine of Halford J. Mackinder published in 1905, which considered the territory of Russia as the "heart of the world" and any country that wanted to dominate the world must conquer Russia and turn it into a colony.

In order to gain world hegemony, the American tycoons were behind the spark of World War I, pushing European countries into a war of mutual destruction until they were exhausted and "using the wind to break the ice", the US jumped in to occupy Russia. After World War I, the US still could not occupy Russia due to a completely unexpected event: the Russian October Revolution broke out on November 7, 1917, giving birth to the first socialist state in the world. Therefore, after 1917, the US drew in the armies of 14 capitalist states to encircle and destroy socialist Russia, but this plot failed.

However, the American tycoons have not yet given up their ambition to conquer Russia and vigorously launch World War II. To realize this ambition, the American tycoons have invested comprehensively to bring Adolf Hitler to power and use the Nazi military apparatus to launch a new world war against the Soviet Union. This American plan also failed, forcing them to sign the Yalta Agreement (February 1945) with the Soviet Union and Britain to divide the post-war world and form a bipolar world order.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference. Source: US National Archives / US Army

However, when the flames of World War II had not yet died down, the US launched the Cold War with the intention of disintegrating the Soviet Union and they succeeded. Therefore, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the leaders in Washington declared the US as the "victorious nation" and Russia as the "defeated nation" in the Cold War, so Moscow had to accept the arrangement of a unipolar world order led by the US. However, at the time of the collapse of the bipolar world order, political analysts in the West had predicted that the unipolar world order led by the US was just a "moment in history". The 1997 Russia-China Joint Statement affirmed that the two countries would coordinate efforts to build a multipolar world order in the 21st century.

Claiming to be the world's hegemon after the Cold War, the US acted arbitrarily in international relations and brazenly launched a series of aggressive wars under different names drawn up by Washington such as "protecting human rights" in the Kosovo war (1999) and the Libyan war (2011), "fighting terrorism" in theAfghanistan war(2001-2021), “anti-chemical weapons” in the Iraq war (2003)… The US is also behind the instigation of a series of “color revolutions” in many countries. Washington’s military and political adventures not only drain the US’s huge resources but also cause destruction, death and instability in many regions, not bringing “human rights”, “freedom”, “democracy” or “reform” as they claim.

The Orange Revolution in 2004 changed the political landscape in Ukraine. Photo: DW

In addition, unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on many countries such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have eroded the foundation of the World Trade Organization, causing many countries to lose faith in the US-dominated “rules-based world order”. The overall decline of the US position signals the end of the era of the unipolar world order. This trend was acknowledged at the 2020 Munich Security Conference with the theme “Westlessness”, warning of the inevitable collapse of the US-dominated unipolar world order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the first world leader to officially declare that he does not accept the unipolar world order led by the US, and will fight to build a new multipolar world order. Washington considers Vladimir Putin's statement a "declaration of war" against the unipolar world order led by the US. Since then, the US, leading its allies, first of all NATO, has decided to launch a complex war against Russia, starting with a coup in 2014 to set up a government controlled by neo-fascist forces in Kiev. History repeats itself: If in World War II, the US used Nazi Germany to fight the Soviet Union, now they are using neo-fascist forces in Ukraine to conduct a proxy war against Russia. The neo-fascist nature of the current Kiev government is reflected in their vote against the UN General Assembly Resolution prohibiting the revival of fascism that caused World War II.

Similar to Nazi Germany, the neo-fascist government in Kiev considers a radical “anti-Russian” policy as a national policy. Since 2014, the US has considered Ukraine an ally and built the Ukrainian army according to NATO standards. At the same time, the US has built 10 military bases and 30 biological weapons laboratories on Ukrainian territory and conducted dozens of exercises on the territory of this country according to the scenario of war against Russia. Faced with this critical situation, in December 2021, Moscow proposed that Washington and Brussels negotiate to sign the US-Russia and NATO-Russia Security Treaty, which included a request not to admit Ukraine into NATO. Washington and Brussels flatly rejected this request from Moscow. Faced with this situation, President Vladimir Putin declared that the USadmit Ukraine into NATOis a “red line” and Russia will take measures to prevent the US from crossing it. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine is one of those measures.

Russia's special military operation in Ukraine to counter the US's admission of Ukraine into NATO (In photo: Russian tanks in Crimea). Photo: Document

The US's goal in pushing Russia into a "corner" and forcing President Vladimir Putin to launch a special military campaign in Ukraine is to use the excuse of "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" to entice the West to impose "hellish" sanctions on Russia with the intention of pushing Russia to disintegration. At the same time,NATO provides comprehensive aid to Ukrainein this war to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the US has led the West in imposing nearly 10,000 sanctions on Russia. However, when launching a special military campaign in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin foresaw and prepared measures to deal with the complex world war between the US and the West. In his speech at the Eastern Economic Forum on September 7, 2022, President Vladimir Putin affirmed: "Russia has successfully dealt with the US economic invasion. Meanwhile, the US economic war has pushed Western countries into a socio-economic crisis and caused unpredictable consequences for the whole world."

Meanwhile, the prestige and position of the United States are declining. First of all, key allies of the United States in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have realized the dangers of dependence on the United States and turned to support Russia to maintain a stable oil market. Some European countries have begun to realize the dangers of following the United States in its anti-Russia actions. French President Emmanuel Macron declared that it is necessary to build a European security structure with Russia, not against Russia. The war in Ukraine will continue, but at this point it can be predicted that the US-led Western conspiracy in the war against Russia has failed.

Part of a shipment of military aid, including lethal weapons from the West to Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the war in Ukraine proves that Western dominance is coming to an end as Russia establishes a partnership with China - a country that is rising to superpower status at the most important turning point in centuries. Barry Pavel - Vice President of the Atlantic Council's American Studies Institute - said that in fact, most governments in the world do not support the US-led embargo on Russia. Mark Leonard - Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations - said that the war in Ukraine proves that the era of the US-led unipolar world order has ended. Christopher Layne - Director of Intelligence and National Security at the George Bush School of Government - said: "Europe's world dominance is coming to an end"...

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Tass

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS Group of Emerging Economies (BRICS) suggest a multipolar world order model, which gathers countries with different political and social regimes, equal, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, based on the United Nations Charter and recognized international law, not on the rules imposed by a superpower. Currently, many Asian, African and Latin American countries are expressing their desire to join the SCO and BRICS. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that, as Chair of the G20 in 2023, New Delhi will promote the formation of a multipolar world order.