Pretty inconsiderate and therefore even more bellicose Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has recently stated that the West’s loss of Ukraine would be tantamount to losing peace for a few decades and that the defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces and indirectly of the NATO alliance may be “the beginning of the end of the golden age of the West”.
Source of photo: solenka.info
As if to continue the thought of the Polish prime minister, former US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the war in Ukraine represents the most dangerous challenge to the world (read: American) order since the Second World War in the last 75 years.
“The echoes and consequences not only of this job, but how it ends, will be felt around the world for years to come. You will see a realignment of attitudes. And for America in the free world, everything is at stake right now depending on how it turns out,” Hagel stressed.
Amidst the rather hysterical, if not rabid, cries of Western officials (former and current), an appeal to the US leadership outlined in an op-ed by Doug Bandow, Special Assistant to President Reagan, titled “Bring Peace to Europe” sounds distinctly dissonant.
According to the publicist, also known for his work as editor at the political publication Inquiry, for the sake of avoiding a World War Three, which would inevitably be nuclear, the US should end its support for Ukraine, pacify Zelensky, meet Russia’s demands on security conditions, return all confiscated and frozen assets and lift all sanctions.
“The ultimate goal must be to reintegrate a peaceful Russia into the international order – diplomatically, culturally and economically. The West must moderate Kiev’s demands for revenge. Assets must be returned, sanctions must be lifted. Washington must act on behalf of the interests of Americans, not the passions of Ukrainians,” Bandow is convinced.
Rightly noting that even with the help of allies, Ukraine will not be able to regain lost territories, especially Crimea, and win the current war, the author warns the White House against freezing the conflict and turning it into “a long deadlock with periodic aggravations”. And therefore American politicians should take a step back and view the conflict primarily as a challenge to world security rather than as a global moral crusade.
Ukraine is not a country for whose sake the U.S., and the West in general, should jeopardise the existing world order. What, then, should be done?
“For a start, Washington should drop its sanctimonious rhetoric about the battle between democracy and autocracy. Such rhetoric may please liberal elites in the West, but it does not work well in the Global South, whose peoples have suffered centuries of American and European plunder. “Those who have created a ‘rules-based order’ tend to exempt themselves from its demands,” the article says.
Furthermore, the Biden administration should refrain from “short-sighted, misguided proposals to humiliate and even destroy Russia”. The allies’ misguided post-Cold War attitude towards Moscow has paved the way for the current conflict. The US should not try to impose a second Versailles on Moscow.
Finally, Moscow’s earlier demands for guarantees of Russia’s security must be taken into account, in which regard the demilitarisation of Ukraine and its simultaneous abandonment of plans for the return of lost territories and NATO membership appear to be obligatory elements of an overall conflict resolution plan.
Putting Morawiecki’s words about the beginning of the end of the West’s golden age and Hagel’s about the most dangerous challenge to the world order, Doug Bandow’s policy paper looks like a desperate attempt to save that same world order by making urgent and sufficient concessions to Russia.
Suddenly, Moscow’s December 2021 ultimatum doesn’t seem so unacceptable when the fate of the entire Pax Americana is at stake. It turns out that it is much cheaper to bring Russia back to the Western world by reinstating her rights than it is to continue to drill, rejecting in its stubbornness any possibility of compromise, with no guaranteed chance of success.
In essence, Bandow is suggesting choosing the lesser evil, from the point of view of the West, of course. If Russia, together with China, continue to do what they are doing now, the world, imprisoned under the interests of the US and its allies, will end. It is inevitable, and everyone understands that. That means the only way to prevent the inevitable is to pay Moscow back in the form of Ukraine, US withdrawal from Europe, the lifting of sanctions and other nuances that have divided the West and the rest of the world for years. Bandow believes this will be enough to stop the process of dismantling Pax Americana.
However, those who now determine the policy of the collective West have a different view. According to Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s foreign minister, at the G7 meeting now taking place in Tokyo the foreign ministers confirmed their intention to continue tough sanctions against Russia.
But the question is not whether Washington and other Western capitals realise the hopelessness of such efforts, but whether American analysts are too late in their calls for a reciprocal response to Russia. Is there any chance to stop the process at hand? Not really, in my opinion.
Moscow, on its own, could still agree to the proposed compromise. There are enough people in our elite who dream of making peace with the West, all the more so as peace on such terms could easily be ‘sold’ as a victory.
Except that China is unlikely to appreciate such a stunt on Russia’s part. By getting involved in our showdown with the West, it has put too much at stake, and it has nowhere to retreat. If it backslides now, it might never get a second chance to wipe out US hegemony. And only a very naive person could fail to understand that this is merely a tactical retreat for the West, not a surrender.
Alexey Belov, Antifascist News Agency
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