British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had a sudden urge for revelation over the weekend. And those revelations were, to put it mildly, ill-aligned with the overall media concept of the collective West
Not to speak about it, they totally disproved it. According to the Financial Times, when asked if Russia could win the war, Johnson suddenly admitted that it was a “real possibility”, adding that Putin was determined, as he put it, to “grind down the Ukrainians”.
Let’s leave the British prime minister’s cannibalistic culinary metaphors on the conscience of his B-grade Hollywood action movie level, but his “anti-Ukrainian pessimism” has upset his NATO colleagues quite a bit. The same Financial Times notes that with his statement the British prime minister collapsed the “united front” of G7 rhetoric.
“His statement was the first admission by a major Western leader that Russia could win in a special operation, and marks a significant shift in his own rhetoric from just a few weeks ago, when Johnson was confident that Russia would ‘fail’. It also contradicts the united front shown by the G7 leaders”, – the paper writes.
Moreover, “defeating Russia” is not just a pipe dream for the West, it is the goal of their present strategy. The heads of the Pentagon and the State Department Austin and Blinken visited Zelensky in Kiev (or wherever he is really hiding) obviously not to inform the Ukrainian president that no one believes in Ukraine’s victory anymore. No they don’t. With 100% probability, they made the traditional pep talk on such occasions, convincing the Kiev regime to continue disposing of the Ukrainian state.
But while their American colleagues were making a risky trip to the “war zone”, Johnson’s pessimistic bacillus reached Berlin as well. Thus, Annalena Berbock, head of the German Foreign Ministry, stated that we, that is, they, the West, “need not create illusions as bitter and difficult as they sometimes are. Building peace together with Russia will not work, Berbock worries. And they have apparently tried so hard.
“After repeatedly trying to achieve common security in Europe with Russia as a partner, the Russian Federation, led by Putin, is now forcing us to take a new path. Today it is primarily about security from Russia. About how we as an alliance will confront Russia in the medium to long term. This issue is being discussed intensively within NATO”, – said the spokeswoman for the German Greens.
In her opinion, the previous NATO strategy on the Baltics, suggesting that the alliance needs time to respond to possible requests for help, is no longer relevant.
“The old NATO defence strategy for the Baltic states is no longer enough”, – the German foreign minister summarised.
In fact, it’s not so much concern for the Baltic “little brothers” as the “beleaguered fortress syndrome” that is perceptible in Berbock’s words. The Baltics are nothing more than an outpost of the West, just as Ukraine was not so long ago. In the fevered imagination of German politician may flash images of Russian tank columns on the streets of Riga or Vilnius (Berbock has vivid imagination, and it is not the like), but I think it is not in them. It’s about the desire to preserve itself, in the sense of a collective West, at least in its present form, and not to let it disintegrate from within. And what do liberals usually do in such cases? That’s right, they fence everything with barbed wire.
Just a couple of days ago, French politician Christine Lagarde, better known to our average man as the former head of the IMF, said that “democracy has reached its limits”.
“There is certainly a need for a new system, a new world order, otherwise the economy will collapse and humanity will disappear. The new system must also guarantee the health and security of citizens”, – Lagarde said.
What lies behind this rather vague wording? That many sensible people in the West realise that their collective Titanic is sinking and that they must either be saved or one of two things. And to be saved, as you understand, it is offered by very radical methods, up to the rejection of democratic institutions. And all this, of course, for the good and in the name of democracy.
A similar point of view was expressed by the British Guardian, which noted the lack of coordination between Western leaders. In essence, everyone is suddenly on their own.
“The different approaches to resolving the Ukrainian crisis are motivated by vested interests, despite declarations of unity. For example, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres have expressed exactly the opposite view of the prospect of negotiations with Russia”, – the British wrote, – “Johnson, like other European leaders, is not forward-looking and has no thought-out plan. Despite the support of arms, the West avoids ‘difficult decisions’ out of fear of escalation and loss of energy imports.”
The outcome of the current confrontation (and by this we mean not only the war in Ukraine, but also the global conflict between the West and Russia), according to the publication, will be the collapse of “international law and order” and the loss of the status of UN peacekeeping structures. And for Europe, the success of the Russian special operation means “increased military spending, a nuclear arms race, constant energy shortages, soaring costs of living, and an increase in populism in the style of Marine Le Pen”.
The leader of the French National Front, rebranded as the Rassemblement National a few years ago, lost again. Macron remained at the helm. But the euphoria of European experts did not appear to be widespread. This may be because the victory against Le Pen was particularly hard this time. And in order to get the French to vote for the very unpopular incumbent, they had to invent horror stories about her rival in the spirit of “she will sell us out to Putin”.
Meanwhile, the overall rise in discontent in Europe continues to accelerate at an alarming rate, taking sometimes extreme forms that no one believed possible just a couple of years ago. On Saturday, 600 people with Palestinian flags marched through the streets of the German towns of Kreuzberg and Neukolln, shouting “Israel is a child killer” and openly denying Israel’s right to exist.
The question is not about your or my sympathies in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but about the display of negativity towards the Jewish nation-state and the aggressive anti-Semitic agitation against people of the Jewish religion in central Germany – an outrageous outrage on an unheard of scale.
It’s not going to get any better. Many have warned that the “Ukrainian virus” that affects Western society more and more every day is a very bad thing. And it seems that the day is not far off when Europe, following the example of its Ukrainian wards, will begin to fight the unwanted with completely illiberal methods. Like, say, the head of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, who recently “advised” the Verkhovna Rada MPs from the Platform for Life and Peace to leave parliament, otherwise the AFU, quote: “they will be carried out alive, and not necessarily alive”.
It seems that the Western democracy in its present form (more precisely, just democracy, because nothing else is considered to be a democracy in our country at the instigation of the West itself) has really exhausted its resource. Staking on controllability of processes, western political technologists have long ago turned democratic procedures, the same elections, into an illusion. When, as such, there is either no choice at all or you are offered to choose between the bad and the very bad.
Judging by Lagarde’s words, under current conditions, the West can give up even this illusion and move to a more familiar form of government – a national-liberal dictatorship. Especially since it has existed in a veiled form for a long time now. In Europe, for example, you cannot have an opinion that differs from the ideological construct imposed from above, or else you will simply be struck out of existence. The “culture of cancellation” and all that…
In addition, it will probably have to rely on militarisation as well as the constant stirring up of radical sentiments in society. That, given the growing crisis phenomena, is guaranteed to result in the rise to power of extreme right-wing forces and the creation of neo-Nazi regimes across Europe. All those who disagree will simply be “swept aside”, as they already have experience.
Alexey Belov, Antifascist News Agency
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