Neoconservative Western Elite Self-Immolation
The Western reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds me of the failed “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Western elites are in danger of getting carried away by their own rhetoric and propaganda; and their seeming anger at Russia’s actions to reclaim Ukraine from the Western campaign to turn it into a vassal to be used as the frontline of their war to subjugate Russia. The failure of this maximum pressure campaign will be much greater, as it will be so much more visible to the world and the blowback on Western economies could be so much greater. Western elites have lit a match not understanding that they have doused themselves in gasoline (petroleum to some readers).
Firstly, the West and the Rest of the World (ROW) cannot do without the exports of food, metals, other raw materials and fossil fuels from Russia and Ukraine. Secondly, this maximum pressure campaign is very much a Europe plus White Settler Colonies affair as the ROW is not joining in. Not China, not the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, not the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), not Central Asia, not India, not Pakistan, not Africa, not South America. The ROW represents the massive majority of the World’s population and its fastest growing economies, and the West represents a much smaller and shrinking share of the global GDP than in the last century. The ROW is a vast market, and supplier base, for Russia to engage in trade with outside the US$ system; there will be no Cold War style cordon sanitaire. In addition, if the West cuts off the Russian banks through which Russian exports are paid for through SWIFT, the only outcome will be either an economic crash in Europe (electricity shortages etc.) and heavy impacts upon the US, or Western and ROW payments for Russian exports being denominated in rubles, yuan etc. The latter will feed into a move away from the US$ standard that has been a major base of US power since the US$ was unlinked from gold in 1971. The extreme financial actions taken against Russia will be a wakeup call for every ROW nation to protect themselves from the West’s repeated usage of the global financial system as a weapon. This can only lead to an acceleration of the trend toward non-US$ payments. The seizure of Russian central bank assets, as the West has also done with Afghanistan and Venezuela, will resonate across the ROW. Holding assets in the West will be seen as being akin to giving them to a proven thief for safekeeping.
The failure of this maximum pressure campaign, and the slow and painful Western climbdown will greatly damage the leverage of the West. The worst thing that the policeman/bully can experience is a recognition of its impotence among those it wishes to police/bully. After the failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria (caused by Russian intervention), the collapse of the attempted Belarussian and Kazakh coups, the failure of the tariff war with China, the chaotic mess of the Western COVID response, the continued resistance of Venezuela, Iran and Nicaragua, and the success of the Bolivians and Hondurans in overcoming the Western-backed coups, the Western policeman/bully brand has lost a lot of its lustre. Impotence in the face of Russia asserting itself as a rejuvenated great power will remove much of its remaining credibility in the ROW. Argentina engaging with China to overcome the neo-colonialism of the West is just another straw in the wind.
The West has seen itself as the dominant world power for five centuries now, through the empires of Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. With the fall of the Soviet bloc, the US and the West thought that they had fulfilled their dream of global dominance and an “End to History”. The dream is turning into a nightmare and the Western elites need to wake up and understand the reality of a multipolar world where the West is just another player. Europe is in danger of starting a cycle of decline as it rushes to separate itself from its natural geographical hinterland in the east; becoming a decaying archipelago on the edge of the Eurasian future joined at the hip to a declining US.
The Western elites need to ouster the neoconservative ideologues from the levers of policy before they drive Western economies and societies irrevocably into accelerating decline. Hopefully, as Russia proves itself resilient to the attempts to destroy its economy, the thoughts of turning Ukraine into another “Afghanistan” are shown to be the stuff of Chicken Hawk fever dreams, and Western economies and financial systems take increasing hits, the ideologues will be shown the door and the pragmatists will assert themselves. Given the scale of the ideological propaganda raised to fever pitch, this will not be an easy or quick process. Even if it is successful, the damage done by the neoconservatives to the national interests of the US and other Western nations will be huge and irreparable; the only option will be to limit any future damage. The neoconservatives have embedded themselves in the security services and the policy functions, but their support may be quickly cut off by the economic elites once the latter realize the scale of the damage upon themselves and the specter of an increasingly embittered and restless population. The removal of the cancer that is neoconservatism will take time though and will require a level of intestinal fortitude among the pragmatic elite factions, with the other possibility being the closing of the US discourse with the war drums kept beating loudly.
The Western elites are at a fork in the road, they may choose the path of gentle relative decline or a much faster one fraught with the possibility of existential mistakes. Russia and China would much prefer the first option, but if forced to will deal with the second one. The West needs to wake up from its unipolar dreams, smell the coffee, and deal with the actual geopolitical reality. This will be jarring, as they will have to treat non-Westerners with respect and as equals, or even worse betters in some cases. Their half-millennia of dominance has come to an end, and looking backwards isn’t a good way of dealing with what lies ahead. The sheer lacklustre nature of US and Western policy makers and thinkers is astounding, they seem unable to look more than one move ahead and show a complete lack of understanding for the planning, strength, and fortitude of their opponents; have they even thought about the impact of possible Russian counter-sanctions? Most of them should not even be allowed to run a small city let alone a nation. Their predecessors from the last century look like giants compared to these intellectual pygmies.
I will end this with a link to an excellent commentary by Alexander Mercouris of the Duran, together with a take on the current status of the Ukrainian campaign devoid of the ridiculousness of Western propaganda.