The Ukrainian War Prolongs the U.S. vs. Non-U.S. Divide

IN FOCUS, 26 Aug 2024

Sakai Tanaka – TRANSCEND Media Service

The following is my translation of Sakai Tanaka’s article published on 14 Aug 2024. The views and/or opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of mine. I take no responsibility for any views, opinion, information or whatever else expressed in the article.
— Satoshi Ashikaga, translator (Google Translate)

Original source: ウクライナ戦争で米・非米分裂を長引かせる (tanakanews.com)

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14 Aug 2024 – On August 6, Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Russia’s Kursk Oblast. As of August 13, the Ukrainian army had violated the border by 40 kilometers and occupied an area 12 kilometers from the border with 6,000-10,000 troops. This invasion has caused 180,000 Russians to become refugees. Kursk Oblast is about 100 kilometers north of the Donbas region, which is the main battlefield of the Ukrainian war. The border was guarded by security forces, but they were few in number and had no choice but to surrender to the invading Ukrainian forces. The Russian side was invaded by surprise.

However, if you think about it, this is strange. Russia is constantly closely monitoring the Ukrainian side from the air, and should have been able to capture the Ukrainian forces approaching the border before they crossed the border and destroy them with missiles or other means. Even if the Russian army’s initial action was delayed, they could have defeated them immediately after crossing the border. The Russian army has begun a counterattack. However, it is already the seventh day since the invasion. Since we do not know the details of the site, we cannot be certain, but we suspect that the Russian side did not destroy the Ukrainian army for several days after the invasion, and intentionally left it to a certain extent.

You may argue that “the Russian side would never do such a self-destructive thing,” but as a major strategy, this is not self-destruction, but rather a strategy that will lead to Russia’s long-term development. As I have written many times before, as long as the Ukrainian war continues, the West, Japan (the US side) will strongly sanction Russia economically, and the BRICS and developing countries (the non-US side) that do not participate in the sanctions against Russia will strengthen their global solidarity by cutting themselves off from the US side. The non-US side is building its own world system that is not dependent on the dollar, the US financial system, or US, European and Japanese consumption, and the longer the Ukrainian war continues, the more solid the world system the non-US side will create.

Recently, there has been little information about the construction of the non-US world system, but this is because the non-US side has strengthened its tendency to keep its construction activities secret. Without people knowing, the world will shift to a multipolar type.

The US continues to abandon its irrational oil and gas interests based on the unfounded theory that global warming is anthropogenic, so the world’s energy interests are shifting to non-US sides. The non-US sides are being led by China and Russia to take over the resource interests that the US and Europe have had in general for their own purposes.

The US, Europe, and Japan have already passed the peak of their economic development and are in decline. They appear to be developing because of the US-centered financial bubble, but a huge bubble will eventually burst. The US side will become a very shabby existence.

If the US bubble bursts while the US-non-US division due to the Ukraine War (or other conflicting factors) continues, the center of the world will decisively shift to the non-US side. The 100-year-long US-UK hegemony will end, and the world will become multipolar. Contrary to the US propaganda and delusion that “multipolarity is unstable,” a multipolar world will realize unexpected stability.

Russia, which has been viewed as an enemy and mocked by the US side for more than 70 years since the start of the Cold War, will gain greatly from the end of US hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar world. Since the start of the Ukraine war, the Russian economy has been booming despite being subjected to strict sanctions by the US. The West has long been buying resources from developing countries (currently non-US) at low prices and skimming off the proceeds. The fall of the West will lead to the development of not only Russia but the entire non-US world.

Because of this structure, Putin’s Russia has been secretly working on strategies to prolong the Ukraine war as long as possible with minimal damage since the start of the war. Even though the Ukrainian authorities and the US media spread lies (war propaganda) such as “Russian army’s major defeat, strategic mistakes, and massacres,” the Russian government hardly refuted them and left the US people’s hostility towards Russia unchecked. In reality, Russia is gradually winning while avoiding a comfortable victory. While Russia has suffered fewer casualties, Ukraine has suffered many, and even when they committed human rights violations by capturing draft evaders and forcibly sending them to the front lines, the number of meaningless deaths in battle only increased, worsening the shortage of troops.

The weapons sent to Ukraine by the West were also destroyed by airstrikes after information about their storage locations was leaked to the Russian military before they could be sent to the front line (it is suspected that the hidden multipolar faction in the US intelligence community created a structure for leaking information). Western Europe sent too many weapons to Ukraine, leaving it short of weapons for its own defense. Ukraine has been completely defeated by Russia, but Russia has limited the front line to Donbass and other areas and has postponed the division of Ukraine into three parts, maintaining the national identity, and encouraging the West to treat Russia as an enemy and continue the US vs. non-US global conflict that will lead to the decline of the US side.

Ukrainian President Zelensky previously said that he would fight until he defeated Russia. However, since last year, he has been defeated and cannot defeat Russia, so he has been thinking since this spring that he would negotiate with Russia to reach a ceasefire settlement in order to protect the national identity of Ukraine and to maintain his own political life. His presidential term expired in May. In early July, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, who appears to have been asked by Zelensky, traveled around Russia, China and the US to propose peace in Ukraine. Zelensky’s shift to negotiations is an inconvenience to U.S. officials and Putin.

Xi Jinping is taking a stance of wanting to make peace with Ukraine. Putin also publicly takes a stance of wanting peace (but cannot do so because Ukraine will attack). It is unclear what the relationship between the Chinese and Russian leaders is, as they are really thinking behind the scenes.

The governments and establishments of the US and Europe still say they will make Ukraine fight until they defeat Russia. The mastermind behind this strategy is the intelligence community of the US upper echelons, which is controlled by the hidden multipolar faction, which is an agent of capitalists who want to develop the economy of the non-US side. The US upper echelons and Putin’s Russia are hidden “comrades” in terms of plotting the Ukrainian war structure and the prolongation of the US-non-US division.

At the time of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, it was the US upper echelons that forced Zelensky to intensify the oppression of Russian residents in Ukraine, forcing Russia to invade Ukraine to protect Japanese citizens. The US upper echelons provoked the Ukraine war, predicting that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the West would impose strict sanctions against Russia, causing a global US-non-US split, and giving an advantage to the non-US side, including Russia. Putin also knew this, so he went along with the provocation and started the war, allowing himself to be falsely accused of being evil. Not knowing that such a hidden structure existed, the establishment and citizens of Europe and Japan have been naively trusting the propaganda, viewing Russia as an enemy and supporting Ukraine, forging ahead on the path to self-destruction.

The current invasion of Kursk by the Ukrainian army is also happening within this structure. Zelensky, who wants to start peace talks with Russia, did not plan the invasion of Kursk. The invasion was planned by the US upper echelons, who are in charge of the Ukrainian army’s operational planning, and Zelensky was not informed of it or could not refuse it. The Zelensky administration later explained that “we will occupy Russian territory and use it as a negotiating tactic to get Russia to make concessions in return for returning it,” but this explanation is unreasonable. The invasion gave Putin an excuse to deny negotiations and continue the war structure. Putin stated that “we cannot negotiate peace with Ukraine, which kills civilians.” Zelensky’s peace plan is at a dead end.

Putin seems to have taken a strategy of leaving the Ukrainian army invading while preventing the Ukrainian army from advancing so as to kill as few civilians as possible, allowing the occupation, and then strengthening the counterattack after a few days. During this time, the Russian army made the Ukrainian soldiers they captured confess that “their superiors told them to target civilians,” so that they could prove their crimes against humanity. It has been pointed out that the Ukrainian army also used chemical weapons. On August 11, the Ukrainian army also used a drone to attack the cooling tower of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is occupied by Russian troops near the Russian border, and the United Nations has launched an investigation.

The tanks of the invading Ukrainian army were made in the United States and Europe, and the U.S. Congress and the upper echelons of the EU fully support Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk. When the U.S. and European NATO forces allowed the Ukrainian military to invade mainland Russia, they gave the Russian military the justification to launch ballistic missiles at the capitals of Western countries in retaliation. However, Russia’s goal is to prolong the conflict with the West, so it is unlikely that they will actually launch an attack.

It has also been pointed out that the U.S. upper echelons want to oust Zelensky, who wants peace, and replace him with another leader who is more compliant, and the name of former interior minister Arsen Avakov has been mentioned. In the West, the replacement theory is explained as a fraudulent one, with “Zelensky wants to continue the war, so we will replace him with a leader who can make peace.” If they were going to oust him, it would not be surprising if they had made the move sooner, so Zelensky may have surprisingly strong tenacity.

It is also possible that Zelensky changed from a war hawk to a peace hawk because he would abandon Ukraine if Trump were to return to the U.S. presidency. It is true that the Trump camp is showing signs of disliking the Ukraine war, such as when Vice Presidential candidate Vance refused a call from Zelensky. However, if we look closely, Trump is leaving a system of continuing the Ukraine war within the Republican Party.

Lindsey Graham, the most powerful Republican senator in the U.S. Congress, visited Ukraine on August 12th, accompanied by Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, who is an enemy of Russia, and met with Zelensky, where he praised the Kursk invasion as a great operation and promised to provide as much military support as possible. Graham pressured Zelensky to “not negotiate peace. Fight forever.”

In the U.S. Republican Party, the warmongering congressional group will continue to plot to make the Ukraine war permanent, ignoring the Ukraine-hating Trump camp. Trump will continue the Ukraine war, while creating a sense of reluctance, and will be dragged along by the congressional group. Until recently, I thought Trump would push for peace in Ukraine, but that prediction is now wavering.

Trump is trying to force the US (its allies) to cut off economic ties with China and is a hidden multipolarist who is trying to de-Americanize the world.

So, while he has expressed his desire to talk to Putin, if he actually returns to the presidency, he is likely to be dragged by Congress to continue sanctions against Russia, prolonging the US vs. non-US divide, and inheriting the decline of US hegemony and the trend toward multipolarization. Putin has also pointed out that Trump is difficult to predict.

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After graduating from university, Sakai Tanaka started working at the Kyodo News Agency in 1986. From 1997 he joined Microsoft Network (MSN) and in 1999, due to change of policy at Microsoft, he became an independent journalist. Tanaka has published more than twenty books on international affairs, some translated and published in China, South Korea and Taiwan. He studied at Harvard University from 2000 to 2001 and in 2005 was invited to serve as a senior researcher at the Royal Faisal Institute in Saudi Arabia. Website: tanakanews.com

Satoshi Ashikaga is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Having worked as researcher, development program/project officer, legal protection/humanitarian assistance officer, human rights monitor-negotiator, managing-editor, and more, he prefers a peaceful and prudent life.  His previous work experiences, including those in war zones and war-torn zones, constantly remind him of the invaluableness of peace.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Aug 2024.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: The Ukrainian War Prolongs the U.S. vs. Non-U.S. Divide, is included. Thank you.

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