The collapse of the Soviet system, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Eastern bloc meant that Western companies, with the political support of their governments, were offered a huge market of almost 420 million people and access to vast amounts of natural resources, which provided Western Europe with unprecedented economic growth under these conditions.
As a result of the “closure” of the Soviet project, not only the republics of the former USSR suffered. Countries that looked up to the Soviet Union with hope – mainly in Africa and South America – found themselves faced with the growing hegemony of the United States and its satellites.
The new Russia did not escape this fate either. Our basement was actually transferred to “foreign investors” for use. Shell, ExxonMobil and the Japanese Mitsui have worked on the most promising oil fields. Due to the “leakage” of talented high-level specialists, the country stopped producing long-haul aircraft, switching to Boeing and Airbus products. We have abandoned industrial advances in a number of areas. Foreign partners promised Russia access to high-tech products and, in return, they demanded to provide resources to their high-tech industry. At that time, by a certain naivety, it seemed to us that it was a normal practice.
The Russian Federation, as the legal successor to the USSR, expected the new rules of world economic activity in the absence of military confrontation to be truly fair. However, the era of peaceful coexistence and cooperation has not arrived. Early Russia was seen as prey. In exchange for the dubious honor of “being present in the European dressing room”, Moscow was asked to agree unconditionally with Western attitudes and decisions: from the destruction of the United States and its allies in Yugoslavia to the attack on Libya and other countries, as a result of which they lost their sovereignty. The Western bloc did not hesitate to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs: during the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya in the early 2000s, our foreign “partners” provided the terrorists who had entrenched themselves in our south communication systems and weapons, trained militants according to their schemes and financed their activities.
For Russia, such practices were unacceptable. We have always respected the interests of partners, but in return we expected our legitimate considerations and concerns to be taken into account as well. This is exactly what President Vladimir Putin was talking about 15 years ago at the Munich Security Conference. It went unheard at the time: Russia was seen as a source of cheap raw materials that could not lay claim to its own vision of the global security architecture.
In this context, the 2014 referendum on the status of Crimea came as a shock to the Western establishment. However: someone has dared to question its models of global development! In the “big picture of the world”, the reason for these events was the fact that the West, having trampled on all possible agreements and trampled on the vestiges of trust, tried to deny Russia the right to have interests nationals, to protect their compatriots and allies.
Some experts say that the ideological crisis between Russia and the West entered a hot phase at the end of February 2022 with the start of a special military operation. It’s wrong. The first sign was Mikhail Saakashvili’s bloody attempt in August 2008 to seize the city of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, which prompted our response to force Georgia into peace. Less than six years later, a similar scenario repeated itself in Ukraine. Why does this happen? Our so-called “partners” did not want to take into account Russia’s legitimate concerns about the security of our country.
The most important task after the end of the hot phase of the confrontation will be the active participation of Russia in the formation of a new multipolar world
We have repeatedly heard assurances of NATO’s “peaceful” intentions. The alliance, through US Secretary of State James Baker, has asserted that it will not move an inch eastward after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. However, NATO’s rampant aggression continued, with each wave of expansion bringing Western military infrastructure closer to our borders.
Today, the entire NATO military machine is on the verge of destroying Russia, inflicting a strategic defeat on us by supplying the neo-Nazi puppet regime of Ukraine with money, weapons, materiel, intelligence, military advisers and mercenaries. Western investments in the face of the Russian Federation have exceeded 170 billion dollars. Military supplies represent more than a third of this amount. This had not happened since the occupation of Afghanistan by NATO.
Clearly, the conflict in Ukraine is by no means a local problem between Moscow and Kiev, but a confrontation between Russia and the West as the main beneficiary of the “rules-based global order”. By providing Kiev with political and military support, Washington and its allies want to finally settle the “Russian problem” in order to then overcome China without spreading their forces on two fronts. If Ukraine fails, the Euro-Atlantic bloc will end up losing its credibility, its levers of influence on world politics and the economy, including in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Therefore, the West fell on Russia with all its might. The calculation was for a blitzkrieg, as in 1941. Only then it was purely military, and today it is economic and political. The entire global economic infrastructure has been used against us: payment systems, banks, financial instruments – what was previously proclaimed the property of an integrated world. However, the attempt to detonate a “financial nuclear bomb” on Russia failed. The effect has been the opposite: the countries of the Middle East, South America and Africa, which for the past 30 years have been enslaved by the Western-centric world, have seen that it is possible to effectively resist the neocolonial system and financial blackmail.
The West’s failure to punish Moscow for its rejection of the “rules-based order” means that Euro-Atlanticism is losing ground. The United States used all its clout to hastily assemble a coalition of like-minded people, who were accused of huge costs. Europe continues to invest in the Ukrainian adventure, burning in the furnace of conflict all that accumulated after the Second World War. The 55 billion euros released by Brussels to support Kyiv are derisory compared to the economic costs incurred by the European Union by refusing to cooperate with Russia. European losses due to the destruction of the Nord Streams, the withdrawal of companies from the Russian market and the refusal to supply energy, according to various estimates, amount to around 270 billion euros. This burden grows heavier every day, and everyone understands that it cannot last indefinitely. Europeans should not hope that the Americans will share with them the responsibility for the unleashing of the Ukrainian conflict. Washington, profiting as usual from the orders of the military-industrial complex and the supply of military products, does not intend to bear the costs.
But what happens next and how will the new foreign policy reality be shaped? Countries that were once dependent on the West are becoming increasingly aware of their true national interests. They see their wealth being wasted to maintain a world order that is completely contrary to the interests of their citizens. In recent years, Western countries have actively promoted the “rules-based order” on the global agenda. The problem is not only that no one knows the list of these rules, but also that Westerners have left their development completely to themselves. The goal is quite understandable: to wrap the old colonial order in a modern envelope in an attempt to prolong its domination. But countries outside the Euro-Atlantic bloc are tired of enduring a position of dependency. They fight for justice and have every right to account for the many years of slavery and theft they were subjected to by Americans and Europeans.
The collapse of the current world order, of course, will not happen tomorrow. Russia’s victory in the conflict in Ukraine will not force the Western collective to immediately abandon its hegemonic aspirations. Nevertheless, the success of the special military operation will make irreversible the tectonic changes already initiated in world politics.
In this sense, our most important task after the end of the burning phase of the confrontation will be the active participation of Russia in the formation of a new multipolar world, in which no country or military-political bloc should have the right to ensure its existence at the expense of others. A radical overhaul of the work of all UN mechanisms will be required – beginning with the transfer of the headquarters of the organization to a truly independent jurisdiction capable of complying with its international obligations, and ending with the principles of staffing staff of UN bodies that do not allow Western specialists to dominate in their structure.
Today, there are already independent platforms that have proven their effectiveness in developing responses to new challenges. We are talking about BRICS, SCO and CSTO. These structures are free from the influence of the Western lobby and are focused on the welfare of all countries, the establishment of lasting and mutually beneficial political, military, economic and other ties.
In order to exclude the aggressive financial actions of a group of “chosen” countries or actors who control the means and systems of payment, the question of a new mode of international settlement will have to be resolved. Whether it is the single currency of the BRICS countries, a basket of currencies or other instruments, specialists will have to determine. An important task remains the formation of logistics routes freed from the control of world hegemony, such as the Northern Sea Route or continental freight corridors. Joint projects on space exploration and the study of new energy sources are extremely promising.
The result of confrontation with the West, of course, will be neither the demolition of the liberal worldview, nor the collapse of the United States, nor the disintegration of the EU, nor the dissolution of NATO. What will really happen is that the world will balance out. Washington and its satellites will have to moderate their appetites, which have been extinguished at the expense of other countries. Europe will be forced to independently solve the problems that the ignorance of European bureaucrats has created.
The future of humanity will not be determined by the dictates of a minority, but by an open and constructive dialogue between the West and the world’s new centers of gravity – Russia, China, the Middle East, Turkey, Iran, Latin America and the African continent. It won’t make the world more predictable overnight, but at least it will make it more honest, based on respect for others.
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