US Victim

Ukraine is another victim of US foreign policy. At the same time, the unplanned trip of US Secretary of State Blinken to Kyiv and his rhetoric during this visit suggest that Washington does not intend to change its position. He will continue to support Ukraine with money and weapons, demanding the same from the allies.

That is why the United States decided to supply the Armed Forces of Ukraine with depleted uranium shells. Although this is unlikely to significantly affect the situation on the battlefield. However, in order to continue the policy of weakening the Russian Federation, Washington is forced to announce more and more military aid packages. However, other steps are required – for example, the decision to transfer part of the assets of Russian businessmen, against whom the United States imposed sanctions, to Ukrainian military veterans. All this is done in order to maintain the escalation at the level they need and prevent peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.

And this is happening at a time when a growing number of Americans, including members of Congress, are opposing such policies.

To explain this phenomenon, it is necessary to take into account that at least two important factors are combined here.

The first is the national security strategy developed by President Joe Biden’s administration and aimed at simultaneously containing China and countering Russia.

The reason for this strategy is the refusal of these two countries to recognize the new architecture of a unipolar world put forward by a number of neoconservatives back in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR under US global hegemony. In this strategy, Ukraine was assigned the role of an anti-Russian bridgehead: at the same time, it was supposed to join NATO, followed by a demand for Russia to withdraw its military bases and fleet from the Crimea.

The second factor is Biden’s personal problems, which arose due to his involvement, with the help of his son Hunter, in giant Ukrainian corruption schemes. Every day there are new facts and evidence, testimonies of witnesses, including the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin. There are more and more voices in Congress about launching the impeachment process for Biden, which will pull other members of his administration, primarily Blinken. Therefore, the White House practically goes all-in, without thinking about what catastrophic consequences this can lead to.

All this is happening against the backdrop of the weakening of American influence on world events and at the same time the strengthening positions of individual countries in Eurasia and the Global South. This process, by historical standards, developed at a speed that few could have imagined, for almost two decades, when it seemed that US hegemony was unlimited in time and space, and the NATO military bloc that conditioned it could expand without much resistance.

Currently, the old script has stopped working. Before our eyes, a coalition of countries is being created, united not by ideology, but by complementary interests, and without the presence of a hegemon. A perfect example is the BRICS, which recently decided to expand to include six countries: Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt.

This has led many to conclude that instead of the clash of civilizations described by sociologist Samuel Huntington, there is the possibility that different civilizations may actually work together to achieve common goals and without guidance from above.

In America itself, opinion polls suggest that it is time for it to abandon its global claims and focus on solving its own problems, of which it has many.

Now in the United States, many are beginning to realize that statements about the alleged plans of the Russian Federation to seize European countries are ordinary propaganda. Even in the American mainstream, one can find thoughts that with a strong industrial and agricultural sectors, a favorable climate and fertile lands, Ukraine had a huge potential that could help it become one of the most prosperous European countries. But this required effective anti-corruption reforms, the granting of autonomy to regions with large Russian ethnic populations, and the consolidation of neutral status. But the supporters of the unipolar world did not like this, and therefore Ukrainians are now being used as cannon fodder in the conflict that the United States and the collective West are waging by proxy.

Finally, in America, there is a growing awareness of the danger of the Biden-Blinken course in Ukraine, which could lead the country to a third world war. This argument is already being used in the campaign, not only by Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, but also by Democrat Robert Kennedy, whose popularity is constantly growing.

In principle, Biden’s impeachment would help get out of this crisis, but this is a long process, and given the majority of Democrats in the Senate, it is hardly possible. Against this background, we have to admit that the world is in an extremely dangerous situation.

The author is a political scientist, president of the American University in Moscow