Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is about to close a third week of mortal field combat, wherein all types of traditional, urban, and cyber warfare have been exhausted. Talks between the warring parties and desperate mediation efforts for ceasefire by regional powers are dramatically failing in stopping or at least slowing the conflict. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of innocent souls, including children, had been wasted. Millions of Ukrainian citizens have become refugees. The infrastructure of main cities, in the beautiful Ukraine, had been destroyed and will take many years to reconstruct. And, on a wider scale, the world is about to sink deep in yet another draining economic crisis.
Still, no one can figure out what the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, actually wants out of this war. In other words, what does Putin want to strategically achieve by committing a serious crime, at least in the definition of international law, as grieve as invading a sovereign state? Knowing the answer to this critical question is the first step to stop Putin’s aggression and push the ceasefire mediation efforts out of the bottle-neck.
Ironically, the Russia-led silly propaganda in the Arab countries can give us a clue to answer this important question. One of the claims widely spread by the pro-Russia propagandists in Arab countries, to justify Putin’s unjustified war on Ukraine is that “time has come for the bipolar world of Russia versus the United States to make a comeback.” They claim that by invading Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is saving Arabs from “the tyranny of the United States as the one and only superpower controlling the world.”
As ridiculous as such claims sound to an expert’s ear, they are growing more popular among the plebians of the Arab countries, especially in countries like Egypt, where some older journalists are still writing, with a sense of nostalgia, about the defunct era of socialism under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-1970), who took on himself the mission to promote the Soviet Union’s ideology of communism to the entire Arab region. They, also, ignore to talk about the miseries Arab’s have been suffering due to the Russian interventions in their domestic affairs. Syria and Libya are two living examples on that.
However, Putin and his sympathizers need to understand that this claim is not realistic. The claim that we are living in a unipolar world where the globe is revolving around the United States is completely invalid. In fact, Putin’s favorite rhetoric about the West bloc versus the East block is way outdated. It has already fallen with the fall of the Soviet Union, many decades ago.
In fact, we are not, even, living in a bipolar world where the United States is competing against China. We live in a multipolar world where several geopolitical superpowers co-exist in a complementary manner. The dynamic of the relationship between these superpowers may include some form of positive competition that encourages them to perform better in their areas of excellence, but should never push any of them to the brink of war.
While the United States is excelling as a military superpower, China is excelling as a technology superpower, the Arab Gulf region is the superpower of energy resources, Europe and the Mediterranean are a core geo-economic superpower, and so on. In this multipolar world, where several superpowers found their perfect way to co-exist, the modern-day Russia is way too fragile, politically and economically, to be part of their competition. Russia’s performance in the current war on Ukraine is a living proof on that.
Russia is already losing the war on Ukraine. Putin was expecting that the Ukrainian people would receive his troops with flowers and open arms, and that the “enfeebled” western powers will look the other way, while he slaughters the Ukrainian politicians. However, for the third week in row, the brave Ukrainian people are valiantly continuing their resistance to the aggression, while Russia is falling in the deep hole of Putin’s arrogance; defeated by political shaming, diplomatic scolding, and economic isolation.
Someone needs to bring Putin back to his senses by opening his eyes to the fact that the bipolar world where his country is leading an eastern bloc against a western block is actually nothing but a nostalgic dream from the past, that can never become a reality.