The Ukrainian Black Hole Gathers the Storm of World War III

Russia as a great power was, is, and always will be a very interested party in Ukrainian affairs, as the two countries are neighbors and deeply interconnected, having, at least until recently, deep historical, cultural, economic, military-industrial, and political ties. Russia’s post-Soviet involvement in all these ways in Ukraine was a matter of necessity, not one of choice. NATO’s decision and efforts to expand NATO to Ukraine over the last thirty years marked an ‚involvement of choice‘ pursuing the maximization of U.S. global power – the luxury of a powerful military alliance led by the world’s lone superpower at the time. This brought nearly all of Europe in addition to the U.S. – some 30 or so countries – to involvement in Ukraine.

Symptoms of this deep Western involvement include but are far from limited to European powers support of anti-Russian revolutionary forces in Ukraine, including neofascist elements, involvement in negotiating an agreement they eventually would abandon to regulate the revolutionary process they had nurtured to put the Maidan revolt on a less rowdy, more certain, regulated path, participation in the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 peace processes, the supply of NATOizing military assistance to Ukraine (2014-present) after its declaration of an ‚anti-terrorist operation‘ against a small group of Donbass separatists counteracting the Maidan revolt with their own, and the supply of almost all types of weapons, training, intelligence, economic, and financial assistance to Ukraine since the start of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War in February 2022. Again, this is a short, schematic list.

The war is now dragging the rest of the world, extending far beyond Europe and western Eurasia. Putting aside non-state, ‚volunteer‘ military involvement from nunmerous Western and non-Western countries and even more widescale economic and political assistance tot he war’s parties, there is now Western and non-Western states‘ expanding and often deepening military involvement in the war. Regarding the former, it suffices to note China’s and India’s purchase of Western-sanctioned Russian oil and gas for resale and transport to other countries, including Western ones. More importantly, countries ranging from Asia to Africa to Europe are supplying the two sides wityh weapons and other forms of support, and other wars across the globe are beginning to overlap with the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War.

The enormous if dwindling military supplies provided by the West and its closest allies are well known, and I will not discuss them here. These supplies are intrinsic to the Ukrainian War, as they involve the covert combatant, NATO. This involvement does not bring the war outside the European region. It is the support of far-flung countries supporting Moscow from the global South and the overlap with other wars not involving Western countries directly if at all, that is globalizing the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War and fueling a nascent World War III. In addition, Western responses to this activity are also helping to connect the Ukrainian War with other regions and their particular conflicts and wars. But the epicenter of this military and militarily-related activity is the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, and the longer it burns, the greater the likelihood that its overlap with and incitement of other conflicts will bring us closer to a global war—World War III. 

Mideast and Islamic Countries‘ Involvement 

Nearly from the outset of Russia’s ‚special military operation‘ Turkey has been supplying its Bayraktar TV2 drones to Ukraine. In so doing, it was one of the first NATO countries to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons. Trying to maintain equidistance between NATO and Russia, for example, by sponsoring the nearly successful Istanbul talks in March 2022 to end the war, Ankara has recently allowed one of its companies to prepare aviation bombs for Russian and Chinese fighter jets (https://armiya.az/ru/news/220693).

Iran then began to supply Russia with its ‚Geran‘ (‚Geranium‘) drones to Russia and since has stepped up military assistance, according to Western sources.  Iran has supplied Russia with munitions, artillery shells and drones, including the Shahed-131/136 series and more advanced advanced Mohajer-6), establishing an entire factory for producing Iranian-style drones on Russian soil (www.stimson.org/2024/iran-and-russia-enter-a-new-level-of-military-cooperation/; http://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-ships-ammunition-to-russia-by-caspian-sea-to-aid-invasion-of-ukraine-e74e8585; https://ecfr.eu/publication/alone-together-how-the-war-in-ukraine-shapes-the-russian-iranian-relationship/; and http://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/increased-iran-russia-military-cooperation-after-the-ukraine-invasion-impact-of-us-western-sanctions/).  In 2023, Moscow and Teheran Iran signed a contract for the supply of hundreds of Iranian missiles to Russia’s armed forces. In summer 2024, Russian personnel received training in Iran on the use of its Fath 360 close-range ballistic missiles. In September, the Pentagon reported that Iran had transferred shipments of Fateh 360 CBRMs to Russia (www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3901774/iran-gives-russia-short-range-missiles-while-us-partners-expect-to-keep-bolster/).

The globalization of the Ukrainian war is compounded by Russia’s growing military and intelligence assistance to Iranian defense in Teheran’s escalating conflict with Israel over the latter’s incursions into Gaza and southern Lebanon against Hamas and Hezbollah. Moscow assistance includes intelligence, fighter jets, and air defense. All this represents a markedly growing and broadening cooperation between these two countries, which are on the verge of signing a strategic partnership agreement. The impetus for all this, especially on the Muscovite side, is the war in Ukraine. While Iran is focused on Israel, it is well aware that a Russia defeated in Ukraine could fall into decline or chaos and thereby become unable or unwilling to continue its partnership with Teheran. 

More destabilizing in Iran’s support for Russia is the reciprocal Russian support for Iran as it confronts a forward-leaning Israel carrying out a brutal, seemingly genocidal war on Hamas in Gaza and moving into southern Lebanon to confront Iranian ally, Hezbollah. This has led to escalating tit-for-tat missile and drone exchanges between Israel and Iran, with Russia assisting Iran and the West assisting Israel with intelligence and air defense. Thus, Russia and Iran confront the U.S. in two wars, with the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern wars merging and both with great potential to draw in additional participants even as open country-combatants. 

Like Middle Eastern powers, Asian powers as well as Asia‘s global power, China, are being increasingly drawn into the Ukrainian conflict’s black hole, though Beijing appears to prefer peace and has undertaken diplomatic initiatives to bring the fighting to a halt. But the Sino-Russian strategic partnership – a near alliance – inclines if not obliges Beijing to support Russia’s war effort economically, politically and even militarily through assistance. Thus, Beijing increased imports from Russia by 50 percent in the year the war began (https://lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/09/16/china-comes-to-rescue-of-russian-economy-with-pragmatic-and-opportunistic-support_5997183_4.html). It condemend the November 17th decision of the Biden administration approving the use of ATACMs by Ukraine against targets inside Russia. Militarily speaking, According to Reuters, IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists, according to a report Kupol sent to the Russian defence ministry this year and obtained by Reuters. (www.reuters.com/world/russia-has-secret-war-drones-project-china-intel-sources-say-2024-09-25/). An unidentified EU official claimed in October that there is intelligence indicating that there is a commercial drone factory in China that is producing and shipping drones to Russia. The EU has initiated an investigation and threatened „consequences“ if the intelligence turns out tob e accurate (www.politico.eu/article/eu-china-drone-production-russia-war-in-ukraine/; and https://dronexl.co/fr_ca/2024/11/17/eu-chinese-military-drone-russias-ukraine-war/). There are reports China has sent $12 million in drones to Russia since the war began (https://nytimes.com/2023/03/21/business/russia-china-drones-ukraine-war.html). The U.S. sanctioned Chinese companies for involvement in the production of drones used by Russia in the war (https://english.alarabiya.net/News/united-states/2024/10/18/us-sanctions-chinese-firms-over-drone-production-for-russia-s-war-in-ukraine). 

Despite Beijing’s preference for peace so that it can proceed to build its One Road One Belt and other networks such as BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as the Ukrainian War escalates Beijing, like other states presently involved, will find it increasingly difficult to keep their distance from one or another party to the conflict play no less play a peacemaker role. China cannot allow ist chief ally, Russia, to lose the Ukrainian War. Facing a resurgent U.S. and NATO without its strongest ally and key partner will make it less likely that Beijing can rally the ‚collective Rest‘ to the construction of an alternative, non-Western new world order. Should NATO become an open combatant and directly enter the war or Russia were to get bogged down in a quagmire, then China’s involvement will grow not shrink. This is especially true if the Ukrainian conflict begins to overlap with other conflicts China or the other states that have offered forms of military assistance to Moscow – Iran, North Korea, even Belarus – are or become involved in. In other cases, NATO responses, such as assymetrical parallel responses or escalations, are increasing the range of conflicts and regions with which the Ukrainian War is interlocking.  

Intersecting Conflicts

As the NATO-Russia Ukrainian draws other countries into the vortex of military, intelligence and economic support, it is intersecting with other wars and conflicts around the globe. The overall trend is to push these wars and the Ukrainian war towards escalation as well as to interlock and consolidate existing and emerging global political and military blocs deeper in opposition to each other. This is further splitting of the world apart into two opposing camps that I have warned for years would result from NATO expansion and its inevitable strengthening of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership (see, for example, https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/10/putins-arab-gambit-just-got-more-bold-the-syrialevant-jihadi-crisis/; https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/29/explaining-putins-counter-jihadi-coalition-proposal-russian-interests-not-a-new-cold-war/; https://gordonhahn.com/2019/01/26/the-wests-alienation-of-russia-the-next-wave/; https://gordonhahn.com/2020/03/24/putins-constitutional-amendments-political-balancing-in-an-increasingly-traditionalist-russian-political-culture-divided-world-and-crisis-century/;https://gordonhahn.com/2022/03/08/considering-catatrophe-real-russian-fears-of-nato-expansion-real-western-fears-of-putin-unleashed-and-the-catastrophic-russo-ukrainian/;https://gordonhahn.com/2023/05/30/from-russophobia-to-dehumanization-from-tselostnost-to-demonization/; and https://gordonhahn.com/2022/12/30/the-world-split-apart-2-0-part-3-and-conclusion/).

Nearly a decade ago I warned of “more polarized East-West divide, a world split apart over the fate of Assad, the war against jihadism, and Ukraine” (https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/10/putins-arab-gambit-just-got-more-bold-the-syrialevant-jihadi-crisis/). The then relatively new Sino-Russian partnership or quasi-alliance now leads a far-flung global network and nascent alliance of states among the ‘Rest’ opposed to further American hegemony on behalf of the West. A network of conflicts stretching from the Mideast to southern Eurasia to Far East Asia is now forming that could drag the world into a global war.

The Ukrainian War and the Israeli Wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran

Russia and the U.S. are the links connecting the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War with the Middle East and its multifarious conflicts, particularly those between Israel, on the one hand, and Palestinians and other Muslims, on the other. Russia and Israel have had a good working relationship under Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Moscow’s support, cautious albeit, for the cause of a Palestinian state and its increasingly close relationship with Teheran. Thus, Moscow condemned Israel’s brutal ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, its expansion of the war to southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, and its attacks in Iran and then on Iran. The West and Ukraine stand on the other side of the barricade against Russia in the Middle East. Although Israel sponsored a UN resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and has provided humanitarian assistance to Kiev, it has  balked at supplying military assistance. Ukraine’s Zelenskiy has used his Jewish roots and close ties to the West to court Israel. As Israel’s Gaza War evolved into a missile war with Iran and an invasion of Lebanon targeting Hezbollah, Russia (and China, the Muslim world, and much of Africa and Asia), on the one hand, and the West, led by the U.S., on the other, have stood on opposite sides in these increasingly interconnected and dangerous conflicts. Russia condemned both Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack and Israel’s excessive response of ethnic cleansing of Gaza, while the U.S. has generally armed, financed, and provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s three wars over the past year plus. In the Israeli-Iranian air war of missiles and drones, Russia to assisted Iranian air defense and intelligence, while the U.S. supported Israeli’s air defense. 

In short, the Middle East knot’s wars together with the Ukrainian one is beginning to generate a global war. A good example, of this dynamic is the exacerbation of the war once merely adjacent and tangentially connected but now directly interconnected with the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Iran/Hezbollah conflicts: the now likely reconfigured Syrian civil war.

Ukraine and the Syrian Civil War

Syria like Ukraine and because of Ukraine has become the victim of aggressive geopolitics being waged against each other by the West and the East. The November attack on Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and Idlib region carried out by a Syrian opposition alliance of jihadists, most notably al-Nusrah successor Hayyit Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), other jihadi groups, Islamists such as Muslim Brotherhood, and the supposedly pro-democratic Syrian Free Army has led to the unexpected fall of the Bashir Assad regime. The operation appears to have been designed by Washington in part in order to force Russia to divert resources from Ukraine to bolster the Assad regime or risk the fall of the Assad regime and loss of Russia’s two military (one naval) bases in Syria. For now the attempt at the former has succeeded but that against the latter remains an open question. 

The U.S. has openly welcomed the revolutionary seizure of power, without explaining why the new regime should be expected to be any more humane than the Assad regime. Given the predominant position within the alliance of jihadi, formerly jihadi, and Islamist groups, one would expect more caution. This is the tipoff of a U.S. role in the revolt. We see this in the following White House comment: 

“This is a day for Syrians, about Syrians.  It’s not about the United States or anyone else.  It’s about the people of Syria who now have a chance to build a new country, free of the oppression and corruption of the Assad family and decades of misrule.  We owe them support as they do so, and we are prepared to provide it.  But the future of Syria, like the fall of Assad today, will be written by Syrians for Syrians.

Now, as the President stated, the fall of this regime is also a fundamental act of justice.  It’s a moment of justice for the victims of this regime and a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria, and also, of course, a moment of risk and uncertainty, as he discussed” (www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/12/09/background-press-call-on-the-situation-in-syria/).

Note that the statement all but takes credit for the overthrow, supporting the ‘new regime’. The Biden administration could not disclose its role, since supporting a U.S.-designated terrorist or terrorist group is illegal. The surrealism of the statement is compounded by the fact that there is as yet no regime or order to speak of, with different regions of Syria under the control of different members of the revolutionary united front, and which is likely to be overcome by internecine warfare. 

The West’s (including NATO Turkey’s) goal for its new Syria project at a minimum is an asymmetrical, parallel escalation on the order of the Kursk incursion but deployed internationally in order to force Moscow to divert some of its focus and resources from Ukraine elsewhere. Indeed, Ukrainian forces are said to be fighting on the rebels’ side and providing drone warfare assistance (www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/world/middleeast/syria-rebel-offensive-iran-russia.html). At a maximum, it was perhaps hoped that the renewed conflict would evolve into a ‘color revolution’, levelling a small ‘strategic defeat’ as compared to that which the West wishes to inflict on Moscow in Ukraine and thereby confirm the ‘right’ to eternal NATO expansion. This small strategic defeat – still limited by the fact that Russia as of now still holds onto its naval and air bases in Syria – is the price Washington has exacted from Moscow for its imminent victory in Ukraine. Thus, the CIA and Pentagon reportedly armed 21 out of 28 anti-government Syrian and foreign militias refashioned by Turkish training into a mercenary “national army,” according to the Turkish think tank SETA. Many of these groups took part in this week’s assault on Aleppo (https://t.co/aw6ueXG7hG).

The incursion’s main curator is NATO member Turkey, the president of which, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has dreams of a Greater Turkey and becoming the region’s superpower, while solving his Kurdish problem, centered in Iraq but bolstering opposition in Syria. Erdogan was pursuing his own ‘small imperial’ goals while doing a service for both NATO in its fight with Ukraine and Washington’s need to defend Israel. Turkey clearly played the lead role by organizing, training, and equipping the HTS-led revolutionary forces, likely with financing from Washington and Brussels. Thus, NATO is endorsing Turkish imperial or at least revanchist military action, even as it goes to war against Russia for what it regards as imperialist aggression in Ukraine. 

Ankara’s goals were in fact likely manifold: to secure Turkey proper’s security by placing one of the building blocks in Syria for what is hoped might become a Greater Turkey, to weaken competitor Iran, and to position Ankara in future perhaps to confront an increasingly ambitious Israel as the leader of the Sunni world and, with Iran weakened, of the Muslim world. These goals are to be served by the operation, at a minimum, diverting Iran and Hezbollah from their fight with Israel in order to defend their Syrian ally—Assad’s Alawite regime – or, at a maximum, to deprive them of said ally. The U.S. likely informed Israel of the plan, and this may explain Netanyahu’s sudden acceptance of a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, despite failing to achieve a single of its goals there or in Gaza.

In response to the Turkish/NATO-backed jihadist/SFA offensive into Aleppo, both Iraq and Iran reinforced Syrian forces with thousands of troops and militia fighters after jihadi-led, Western-backed counteroffensive took Aleppo in late November, but the jihadi-led coalition’s rapid advance led to calling off the assistance. Thus, Damascus fell and so too the Assad regime. This violent ‘color revolution – completion of the initial American effort at the same beginning in 2011 — has been condemned by almost all the region’s leaders and the Arab League in support of Assad. We now are faced with the specter of Turkey, Turkish-backed entities, Kurds, Israel, the various revolutionary factions, remnants of the Assad regime’s army, and perhaps others fighting in Syria. The unprecedented rhetorical support by Iran and Arab and Sunni states for Syria, many of which backed anti-Assad rebels back in 2012 and later, is a result of the U.S.’s failed Mideast policies, in particular Washington’s support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

The specter of a breakdown of the revolutionary coalition, civil war, and chaos hangs over Syria. In such situations – as the French, Russian, Chinese, and other revolutions demonstrate – the extremists, in this case the HTS, most often have the edge, given their zealotry, ruthlessness, and willingness to deploy violence to achieve their aims. The blowback potential is high here, with U.S. and its allies vulnerable. Israel now is under threat of having a full-fledged jihadi state, backed by NATO outlier, Turkey, on its northeast border. NATO’s Turkey is also at risk of similar blowback over time and more immediately continued instability next door and on its border, wherever that may end up being. In addition, a threat to Turkey comes from the opportunities the Syrian chaos affords the Kurds, who already have used it to seize Deir ez-Zur in eastern Syria on the Iraqi border. One way for Turkey to avoid blowback is to go on the offensive and realize the neo-Ottoman dreams of many in the country, including Erdogan, by taking large swathes of Syrian territory with or without partitioning in tandem with Israel. Regardless, America’s European allies now await more than a million refugees, fleeing from the jihadi revolutionaries. In terms of other regional players, not just Iran but predominantly Shiite Iraq may have problems with an emerging Sunni-dominated Syria next door.

For the U.S. itself, the risk of blowback appears to be limited for the most part to politics, unless the 1,000 troops illegally located there are drawn in, forcing incoming President Donald Trump to go against his inclination to avoid wars. The world is bound to see the enormous cynicism of American republican messianism, which condemns authoritarian governments but supports extremist oppositions in Syria, Ukraine (2014), and elsewhere. HTS amir Muhammad al-Jolani (Golani, Jawlani), was once a U.S. wanted terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head. Perhaps, some in Washington decided to use the same money to buy him off for this special operation, for Jolani is now being afforded CNN television interviews, where he portrays himself as a tolerant moderate, pursuing institution-building rather than the global caliphate (https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1865668192636657752; https://x.com/craigmurrayorg/status/1865663546773655991?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ; and https://x.com/maxblumenthal/status/1865077375601418656?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ). Time will tell. But recall how Russia’s intervention in Syria to support the Assad regime and regional stability was billed by the West as Putin sowing chaos by flooding Europe with refugees. Now when AQ- and ISIS-affiliated jihadists seize the country with support from Washington and Brussels and carry out a bloodbath and spark an even greater refugee crisis what will this be called? Among the Rest, such Western cynicism will only cement its support for Russia and China. More importantly, depending on resources and foci, a HTS regime could begin to target U.S. interests in another AQ-tied case of blowback for Americans.

Military-politically, Washington and Brussels may suffer from a rather ironic form of blowback of sorts should NATO member Turkey end up at war with U.S. ally Israel, the forces of which are moving into Syria from the south. This could put great strain on NATO unity and lead to the defection or ejection from the alliance of not just Turkey but other members.

Begun in part due to the overlap with the Ukrainian, the demise of Assad likely will create a new black hole in perhaps the world’s most explosive region. In addition to potential fighting even a war of some duration between Turkey and Israel, potential unintended consequences of the overthrow of the Assad regime also include: a strict Islamist regime in all or a rump of Syria, the partitioning of Syria, or a series of wars between factions that draws in neighboring and perhaps other states, and the partitioning of the Syrian state. The Syrian civil war is almost certain to continue in a new, more vigorous guise. Internecine warfare is already being regenerated between Kurds, on ther one hand, and the Turlkish-backed Syrian National Army in the northeast, between remants of the former regime and all those who overthrew it, including the jihadists such as HTS, between jihadists and the Free Syrain Army, and between other groups, including foreign forces such as the Israelis, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis, and soon perhaps others.

In terms of a partition, Israel has already seized the Golan Heights, and its troops have moved to within 20 miles of Damascus while decimating former Syria’s military infrastructure and weapons stores. Turkey and its proxies hold much of northern Syria and has increasingly less latent imperial dreams rooted in Ottoman nostalgia. Turkish TV has discussed a future map of Turkey’s expansion in 2025, which includes parts of Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and the northern parts of Iraq and Syria (https://x.com/sprinterfamily/status/1866451863165624497?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ).

Ultimately, a Syrian black hole, if it is not likely to, certainly has the potential to spinoff new wars involving Western allies, such as Israel and NATO’s Turkey, and foes, such as Iran, and fence-sitters, such as Iraq, which draw in the Ukrainian war’s participants and others once again. Despite the consolidating factor that is the recent Israeli military aggression, the tectonics of conflict between NATO Turkey and Russo-Sino-allied Iran could lead to a strategic earthquake no less powerful that a Turkish-Israeli conflict. Should Turkey and Iran somehow overcome their differences in the face of an Israeli advance on Damascus, the specter of a major regional war between Israel and the Muslims rises over the Middle East. In this event, Western powers, on the one hand, and Russia and perhaps even China, could be drawn into the Middle East vortex.  Any Turkish seizure ion northern Syria would pose the issue of whether Ankara would accommodate Russia’s military bases in Syria.

Another Mideast conflict – one that is mixing with the Ukrainian war (and the Israeli wars against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and perhaps Syria) – is the Houthi-Saudi Arabian war in Yemen. The Houthis have benefited from the receipt of hypersonic missiles from Russia that they have used to target Israel, since the latter ratcheted up its excessive response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack by ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. The Russian move was an asymmetrical parallel escalation to NATO’s involvement in the Ukrainian, mirror imaging the outside interference and sustenance of a group opposed to one’s opponent in another theater of conflict and war. The Russians like have forbade the Houthis from using the missiles against the Saudis, since Moscow has been nurturing better relations with Riyad, evidenced by Saudi interest in BRICS+. This sort of parallel escalation impinging on other conflicts is a key driver in knitting the Ukrainian war with others. This process could be developing in other regional hot spots in Asia and Africa.

The Ukrainian War and Sino-American Confrontation

The NATO-Russian Ukrainian War is having a wide-ranging impact on the intensifying Sino-American competition to, for America’s part, preserve U.S. global hegemony, and for China’s, to establish a bilateral or multilateral international order, in which China anchors an alternative pole to counterbalance the American-Western pole that once constituted the international system‘s unipolar structure after communism’s collpase. The Ukrainian War has strengthened the Sino-Russian near alliance or ‚strategic partnership‘ and its push to build an alternative world order the Chinese and Russians are networking together in a series of overlapping economic, financial, and political-military international organizations and institutions: BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). These institutions are not only organizing the global East and South, the Rest, against or at least alternatively to the West, but are encroaching on the West’s own power base. Thus, Turkey was preparing for associate membership in BRICS+, though this development will be on hold for a while as a result of Erdogan’s betrayal of Putin in Syria. Former close U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is also moving to join the organization.

Although Beijing has not openly sided with Russia in Ukraine and has supported rhetorically the principle of national sovereingty and territorial integrity, it has been clear in stating that NATO provoked Russia’s invasion and is responsible for the outbreak of the war. In terms of action, China has supported the Russian war effort with technology for weapons and ignored some Western threats of sanctions and fallen under the hammer of some. Indeed, China has seen Western sanctions against it expand. In response, China announced in early December a ban on exports to the U.S. of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications.(www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/dec/3/china-bans-exports-gallium-key-tech-materials-hitt/). This developing trade war is driven by the Ukrainian war and the resulting Chinese military-related assistance to Moscow mentioned earlier. It cannot be ruled out that as the Ukrainian War reaches its culmination next year, the losing side will choose to foment a conflict around Taiwan or in the South China Sea.  

t is no coincidence that it is during the Ukrainian war and its worsening of Sino-American relations that NATO has opened an office in Japan and is mirroring the network of network approach taken by the Russians and Chinese by initiating interaction between NATO and newly created Western security organizations in Asia: AUKUS and QUAD. 

The Ukrainian and Korean Wars

It may come as a surprise to many Westerners, but the North and South Koreans remain in a state of war – a ‚frozen conflict‘, if you will, since the 1950s in the absence of a peace agreement. With the strategic partnership agreement signed by Moscow with North Korea and the latter’s supply of artillery shells and other military equipment, Pyongyag is involved in the war even in lieu of any North Korean troops fighting in the Ukrainian war, for which there is no evidence even, according to the Pentagon and Ukrainian troops (https://ctrana.one/news/476136-itohi-1014-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html).

One wonders whether the recent political upheaval in Seoul was somehow incited by the West and Ukraine. Alexander Mercouris has put forward the interesting hypothesis that the failed coup by South Korean President Yoon was an attempt to circumvent parliamentary and popular opposition to greater and open weapons supplies to Ukraine, citing some circumstantial evidence (https://rumble.com/v5vzwr5-south-korea-coup-attempt-fails-putin-erdogan-talk-syria-kiev-demands-nato-t.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp). This is not so far-fetched, as even Mercouris himself seemed to feel. Upon the media reports that North Koreans were soon to be fighting in Ukraine or in the Kursk salient against Ukrainian troops, South Korea announced it might step up the present level of its weapons and other support to Ukraine. On November 6th, it was revealed that Seoul was considering various responses to the alleged participation by North Korean troops in the Ukrainian War (www.news1.kr/nk/military/5584234 and http://www.asiapacific.ca/publication/south-korea-considers-response-north-korean-troops-russia). On November 26th South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol met with a delegation from Ukraine led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and called for Seoul and Kiev to develop countermeasures in response to Russian-North Korean military cooperation (https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-north-ukraine-russia-3076ac05b327a038f5862d247263c3c9). This visit of a Ukrainian delegation to Seoul led by Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who met with self-proclaimed progenitor of the idea of coup by President Yoon, the South Korean Defense Minister, is missing from the analysis. Could Umerov haver slipped the Koreans ‘intelligence’ of Ukrainian, American and/or British origin citing the alleged North Korean infiltration of the South’s parliament?

As Kim Jong Un becomes emboldened by the new support emanating from Moscow, the nascent world war incited by NATO-Russia Ukrainian War could bring a restart of war on the Korean peninsula. As some have observed, Russian technology transfers to Seoul could shift the balance of power on the peninsula and destabilize ist cold peace (www.usip.org/publications/2024/11/how-should-seoul-respond-north-koreas-soldiers-russia). Any response by Seoul could further escalate tensions, leading to resuscitation of conflict. Any Korean conflict could intersect with the growing tensions between China and the West over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

The Ukrainian War and Post-Soviet Frozen Conflicts

The Ukrainian war has perhaps the most direct effect on post-Soviet states in Eurasia, where frozen conflicts remain or could be reignited. In Georgia, which has the the same status as Ukraine that, according to NATO policy, will one day be a member of NATO, should not be assumed to have left the era of frozen conflicts behind. Recent instability in Abkhaziya, the past history with Mikheil Saakashvili’s August 20028 South Ossetiyan War, and Western intelligence services‘ intenty and capacity to engage in mishchief wherever Russian interests can be damaged all tell us this. There seems no doubt that the recent Georgian election results have been used by the West to incite what have now become violent protests in that nation’s capital in an effort to escalate horizontally against Russian interests. The Georgian Dream government has been rejecting tensions with Moscow, condemning the Mikheil Saakashvili era and U.S. meddling at the time and is liklely set to begin a more full nornalization of Georgian-Russian relations. We have seen this movie before. In this sequel, the threat is real of a repeat of the Maidan experience, in which an illegal seizure of power in the nation’s capital spreads to other parts of the country, sparking a civil war. If this was to happen, then the Ukrainian War will have sparked another conflict.

A similar risk hangs over Moldova, which already has a ‚frozen conflict‘ in breakaway Transdnestria, which can be unfrozen easily by interested parties, most likely Washington and Kiev. The Russian base and troops in Transdneistria bordering Ukraine are somewhat isolated from the Russian motherland. Moldova has undergone election instability and shenannigans this past year, with some 50,000 Moldovan citizens living in Russia deprived of the franchise by way of Kishinev’s short supply of ballot forms to the Moldovan embassy in Moscow. The recent presidential elections in Romania, which strongly supports Ukraine and Moldova’s alienation from Moscow and has designs on Moldova’s integration with Bucharest, marked another theater in which the Ukrainian war could impinge on post-Soviet Russian conflicts. The victor in the election’s first round was a pro-Russian candidate. This did not suit the majoprity of the Romanian and European elite, with the EU condemning the outcome. In quick response, the Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the election results and required a re-vote. In 2004, a similar situation occurred nowhere else than in Ukraine. In lieu of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, the cancelled election’s outcome and the risk it poses for Romania’s political stability would never have happened. Any instability in Romania could influence the already shaky situation in Moldova-Transdneistria. Perhaps it is here that the overlap with Ukraine’s war poses the gravest threat of sparking a new military conflict. 

Finally, it must be noted that many of the conflicts being exacerbated by the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War impinge on China’s ambitious One Belt One Road project. One or a combination of several oft hem could put this Greater Eurasian grand project and in turn Chinese internal stabilty at risk, prompting Chinese military intervention.

Conclusion

The Ukrainian crisis begun in the 21st century by way of NATO expansion and the conflicts it is reawakening has grave lessons for us all. These events are another, rather conclusive piece of evidence that international relations is still governed by human power lust, great power geopolitics, wars, national fears, and imperial dreams, not the end of history and triumph of a democratic peace. Realist self-interest, refined perceptions of self-interest constructed by historical interpretations embedded in national cultures (cultural interpretations of history and national interests), and power maximization driven by human narcissism and ambitions drive the tragedy of human history. If NATO expansion, the Ukrainian black hole, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and now the apparent Turkish proxy-led invasion of Syria, its evolution into a neo-Ottoman imperial project, and the Israeli invasion of Golan and southern Syria have not gotten this message across, nothing will. The Ukrainian black hole, forged by the adepts of ‚democratic peace‘ and universal human values, is drawing the world into its calamitous vortex and spinning off new black holest that if conjoined can implode what remains of democracy, peace, and human values.