Today in Ukraine is the tomorrow for America's allies

On the evening of February 21, Putin signed a decree recognizing as independent states the republics established by two ethnic Russians in the Eastern Region. Some analysts believe that this move was forced by the Americans and also opened the curtain on the reshuffle of the cards in Europe. Tensions over the border standoff between Russia and Ukraine have lasted for nearly a year from 2021 to the present. During this period, the United States performed eye-catching in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, fanning the flames everywhere, lest the world not be chaotic. What the United States has done just exposes its deep diplomatic strategy and reflects the current pattern of the three-country evolution of China, the United States and Russia in the current Eurasian geopolitical chess game.

[The United States] manipulates allies to maintain hegemony

The United States is a two-oceanic country located in the Western Hemisphere, and its world hegemony is based on the defeat of the German-Italian-Japanese Axis group after World War II, the elimination of the collective hegemony of the colonial powers in Western Europe, and the prevention of the emergence of a unified power in East Asia. The fundamental strategy of the United States after World War II has been continuously implemented for nearly 80 years, but its basic ideas and frameworks have not changed.

At the end of World War II, the key design of the "Yalta Agreement" and the "Cairo Conference" was that in the European direction, the use of the Soviet Union to directly attack nazi Germany's occupation of Eastern Europe prevented the European countries from uniting as a whole, and the global anti-colonial movement was used to indirectly weaken the colonial powers of Western Europe, led by Britain and France. In the direction of East Asia, china was supported to become one of the four powers of World War II, and became a permanent member of the United Nations Organization to replace Japan, so as to prevent the resurgence of Japanese militarism, the United States military occupation of all of Japan and the occupation of the Korean Peninsula with the Soviet Union. The U.S. East Asia strategy has been tested by the founding of New China, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, and has continued until the strong rise of China today. The United States believes that the East Asia strategy has reached a time for major revisions.

Now europe continues to weaken due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia, and both the European Union and NATO are expanding eastward. Russia also faces a choice of two directions, one is to actively join the Eu and integrate into the European family, and the other is to build the Commonwealth of Independent States formed by most of the former Soviet republics into an international organization similar to the EU. But both of Russia's efforts have been deliberately undermined by the United States. On the one hand, the United States manipulates NATO's eastward expansion, creates an atmosphere of tension and confrontation between NATO and Russia, and prevents Russia's integration into Europe from eventually endangering the hegemony of the United States. As a result, we will see that whenever the economic cooperation between the EU and Russia is getting better, the United States will create all kinds of reasons to obstruct it. Projects like Nord Stream 2 have not been finally built by the United States for their interference. In the context of this crisis in Ukraine, it is possible to completely fail.

On the other hand, the United States continues to sow discord in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, squeezing Russia's strategic space. After the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the United States began military involvement in Central Asia, which led directly to the 2008 War in Georgia. In Central Asia, Russia is certainly overjoyed by the hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

(Russia) sells for the sake of attacking and defending

The root cause of the Ukrainian crisis began in 2013. As Ukraine's traditional pro-Russian forces were overthrown by pro-American forces cultivated and manipulated by the United States in the form of street politics, Russia's long-term interest layout in Ukraine was put to the forefront by the new government. The new government has embarked on a sweeping shift to the West, the first sign of which is the demand for membership in the European Union. Russia's resistance to Ukraine's accession to the European Union is actually limited, as Russia's long-term goals also have options for joining the European Union. The EASTward expansion of NATO led by the United States is the biggest problem for Russia, and the provocative voyages of nato allies in the Black Sea that the United States often gathers nato allies have made Russia intolerable. This led to Russia's Jedi counterattack, which in 2014 took back the Crimean Peninsula, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet was stationed, by referendum. This move was subjected to continued economic sanctions by the Western Alliance, and Russia's decline accelerated. Moreover, after the loss of Crimea, Ukraine can no longer relive the old dream of the three-state alliance of East Slavic countries, and it has completely withdrawn from the CIS organization and has since parted ways with Russia strategically.

Ukraine's choice is a geopolitical nightmare for Russia. Since then, although Russia has stepped up the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union composed of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, the other four countries in the alliance have great dependence on the Russian economy but have little help.

Compared with the global initiative in the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russia's various bluffing strategic performances today are actually a bit of an illusion of attack and defense. The scramble for South Ossetia and the repossession of Crimea, military intervention in Syria, demonstration flights by strategic bombers to Venezuela, and the reopening of surveillance stations in Cuba are all propaganda and advertising. In fact, every move by Putin is to receive it when the point is good. Like the Turkish military deliberately shooting down a Russian military plane in Syria, Russia unexpectedly calmed down and instead improved relations with Turkey. That's because Putin knows that Russia's current strength has little chance of winning in an all-out confrontation with the U.S.-led system of allies.

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis is no exception. Russia's real strategic demand is not a full-scale invasion of Ukraine or the annexation of the two pro-Russian regions, Donesk and Luhansk, but a posture of imminent war, creating psychological panic, causing inconsistent voices within NATO to obtain a commitment from NATO to stop its eastward expansion.

To this end, Russia is trying to divide NATO countries, and the United States is naturally highly defensive. Whenever the countries of the European continent have a diplomatic trend to unite, the United States will use the old European stick Britain and the new European stick Poland to stir up the topic of tension. The assassination of the Russian agent London has profoundly poisoned Russia's relations with European countries in public opinion, while Poland has been occupied by Russia for a long time because it has ruled the Ukrainian region in history, and it has been put in the forefront by the United States at a critical moment to aggravate the contradiction between Russia and Ukraine. These historical knots and geopolitical contradictions cannot be solved for the time being, and Russia can only stick to the chassis of the five countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, betting on both sides to sell, on the one hand, to win the goodwill of Germany and France to the west, and on the other hand, to win China's support to the east.

(China) To wait for work in the long run

In the joint communiqué after the China-Russia summit on February 4, 2022, China for the first time explicitly made a statement of respect for Russia's security needs and opposition to NATO's eastward expansion, and also named the threat to world peace posed by the United States to the trilateral alliance formed by the United States, Britain, and Australia and the implementation of the "Indo-Pacific Strategy".

The meaning of the Eurasian strategic double balance of the United States is to undermine cooperation between the EU and Russia in the direction of Europe and China and Japan and South Korea in the direction of East Asia; in Europe, it uses the Russian-Ukrainian dispute as a starting point, and in East Asia it uses the Taiwan issue as a starting point. Therefore, the ulterior motives mentioned the Taiwan issue at the recent meeting between the foreign ministers of the United States, Japan, and the ROK are strategic statements that have never been made before.

The United States bets in both the Eurasian directions at the same time, it looks like a global chess game, in fact, it is a taboo for soldiers not to concentrate on key breakthroughs. The United States has successively withdrawn strategically from the Greater Middle East region and the greater Central Asia region, while China can effectively operate it by means of the Sino-Russian-Iranian triangular relations; the United States wants to use the "United States, Japan, India, and Australia" to carry out the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" of containing China, and China can also promote Sino-Russian-Indian relations within the framework of the "Shanghai Cooperation Organization" to offset it; the United States wants to sabotage Sino-Japanese-ROK economic cooperation but does not expect that the RECP agreement has already entered into force; the United States deliberately presses Russia step by step in the direction of Europe, and the counter effect is that the Sino-Russian strategic cooperative relationship is more solid. The first strategic effect of the Withdrawal of the United States from the Greater Central Asia Region is that the layout of China's "Belt and Road" initiative will certainly be steadily brought into play; the United States is bent on using the Taiwan issue to stir up trouble, but in the face of China's strength and determination, it has never dared to cross the red line. Wait a minute.

At present, the defeat of the United States has been revealed, but it has dispersed its forces to provoke trouble everywhere, harming others and harming itself. For China, the times and the situation are on our side, nothing is a big profit, undefeated is victory, and the United States is anxious to jump. (The author is affiliated with the Research Center for International Studies, Hunan Academy of Social Sciences)

Source: Li Hanqiu (Contributing Writer)

Editor: Fu Xinyi

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel:[phone]

Producer: All-Media Center of National Defense Education Weekly