By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein*
It is almost natural that countries (especially the powers that have more facilities to do so), want to solve their internal problems by unleashing conflicts abroad. For that, attacks on its national security are adduced, false nationalisms are exploited and Manichean calls are made for national unity in defense of the threatened sovereignty and integrity.
Who can doubt that the artificial conflict between Russia and Ukraine corresponds to this logic? Especially given the proverbial and accelerated failure of the administrations of Joe Biden in the United States and Boris Johnson in Great Britain. Biden’s popularity is one of the lowest of any US president at the end of his first year in office.
According to an article published by the Los Angeles Times on January 20, which cites an Associated Press – NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 43% approve of the president’s management. Likewise, just 28% want Biden to run for re-election in 2024, including 48% of Democrats. In economic matters, the situation is worse, as scarcely 37% evaluate the president’s management positively. It should be noted that the 2021 inflation was the highest in 40 years.
Nor is the perception of handling the pandemic better, rejected by 55% of Americans. In the same way, it is considered that the government has been totally inefficient in the diligence of the migration problem and has not even been able to carry out its spending plan in terms of infrastructure and improvement of the economy. In general, it is perceived that Biden has been unable to build consensus with the Republicans – which was a great flag of his campaign – and he has no succeeded to convince even some of the more conservative legislators of his own Democratic Party. In this context, citizens wonder what is the point of re-electing Biden, which is seen as an extension of the crisis.
The situation of Boris Johnson is not different. Johnson is being questioned and debated in the midst of a deep political crisis, originating from the leak of an email in which the prime minister’s principal secretary, Martin Reynolds, invited government personnel to a party during full lockdown.
Thus, the leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, has called Johnson to resign, while polls show that 90% of Britons think he should step aside.
In this context, whoever has doubts about the true objectives involved in the development of the “Ukrainian crisis” should listen to Johnson who, after a visit to that country, first apologized for having attended the aforementioned party and then appealed to the national sentiment, calling to “concentrate all efforts to confront Russia.” All this, after the Scottish deputy Ian Blackford called on him to agree to be “investigated by the police for violating their own laws.” For her part, the deputy Angela Rayner, the Labor Party’s number two, said Johnson “had to go” immediately.
When another deputy accused him of “ruining the country’s reputation, Johnson responded by saying that: “Our country’s reputation in the world is based […] on the fact that we are able to unite allies to oppose Vladimir Putin. This is what the world is focused on right now and what I’m focused on right now”, making it clear what the real goal of his Ukrainian affair is. Likewise, by clearly establishing who would die in a possible war between Russia and Ukraine, Johnson stated that: “The best we can do is inform the Russian citizens that the Ukrainians will fight to the last drop of blood”. Simply put, Johnson decided that Ukrainians must die to save him and Biden from debacle.
Some unsuspecting reader might think that I am speculating about the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, but it has been the authorities of this country who have been in charge of reporting what is actually happening there. Last Friday, January 28, the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, warned that the impression is being created in the West that war with Russia is an imminent fact. Ruling out that this will happen, he lamented at the same time because the terror created around the alleged war is hurting the national economy.
The Ukrainian president asked “Are there tanks in the streets?” He himself replied that this was not the case, but that such was the impression that had been created in countries such as the “United Kingdom, Germany, France and Lithuania”, where the media transmitted complete false news about the mobilization of the armed forces and the militarization of the cities. Nevertheless, a situation of horror is being generated that is causing serious economic damage to the country from what he called a manifestation of hysteria, forcing him to talk with leaders of other countries to clarify that Ukraine is in need of stabilizing its economy, while spreading news indicate the oppossite.
In a clear but veiled allusion to Biden and Johnson, Zelensky pointed out that: “signs are coming from respected leaders of states who openly, not even in diplomatic language, say that ‘there will be a war tomorrow.’” He pointed out that this produces panic in society, in the markets and the financial sector, also stating that a very large sum of money had fled the country in recent days, deploring that “the increase in tension conceived by the media has ‘a high cost’ for the country.”
After the specter of an urgent war was raised in November, which – according to the US network CNN – was even announced by Biden to Zelensky (although denied by Washington and Kiev) more recently, on January 26, the Undersecretary of State herself, the American Wendy Sherman put a date on the Russian invasion when she pointed out: “Everything indicates that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] “will use military force at some point, perhaps between now and mid-February”, unleashing the “hysteria within the hysteria”, withcountries like the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan began to withdraw their diplomats from Kiev.
Zelensky commented that such a decision was a mistake, but with the rhetoric typical of subordinate countries, he hastened to clarify that: “I have no right to say that it is a mistake of the governments of respected countries. I think it’s a mistake for us, for Ukraine.”
On the other hand, this situation has continued to deepen inter-European contradictions. The leaders of the Old Continent will have to find arguments to explain to their citizens why, following orders from Washington, they force them to pay for the gas they consume a price three or four times higher than what they would have to do if they obtained it of Russia. Such reasoning begins to make a dent in some European leaders whose rationality does not allow them to understand that they have to “buy” in Ukraine a conflict that they do not consider their own. In this regard, the German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, stated that NATO’s expansion to the east is not on the Alliance’s agenda. Similarly, she reiterated that Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO “is not currently on the agenda,” adding that Ukrainians want to live in peace, so it is essential to return to discussions on the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Interestingly, in that Germany coincides with Russia.
That same day, Friday, January 28, confirming the statements of President Zelensky, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov told the Parliament that there are no preparations for a Russian offensive against his country. He explained that: “At the moment, there is no event or action of a military nature [by Moscow] that is noticeably different from what happened last spring.”
But what was Biden’s decision in this situation, in which one might expect tensions to ease and conditions for negotiation and dialogue to improve? The same day, without mediating an opinion regarding what was declared by Zelensky and the Ukrainian defense minister, he announced that he was going to transfer more troops to Eastern Europe and the NATO countries in the short term.
In parallel, the United States convened a session of the UN Security Council which, according to the Russian representative before that instance, Vasili Nebenzia, does not contribute to the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine, but rather harms it. Nebenzia said that the open format offered by the United States is a classic example of “megaphone diplomacy”, which does not solve anything and creates more noise by transmitting the wrong message of what is happening.
By the way, has anyone bothered to ask the Ukrainians what they think about joining NATO? The Ukrainian researcher Volodymyr Ishchenko, associated with the Institute of Eastern European Studies of the Free University of Berlin in an article entitled “NATO and Ukraine: let the Ukrainians decide democratically”, published on the portal sinpermiso.info, points out that in December 2007, less than 20% of Ukrainian citizens supported joining their country to NATO. Although after the 2013 coup d’état and the referendum in Crimea that established its incorporation into Russia, that figure increased to around 40%, a majority of more than 60% of Ukrainian citizens still reject their entry into the aggressive war organization led by the United States.
However, in his latest article, Ishchenko clarifies that “the polls no longer included the most pro -Russian Ukrainian citizens [sic] from the territories that are not under the control of the Ukrainian government: Crimea and Donbass”, which makes it impossible to compare the numbers statistically.
Thus, it is clear that the “conflict” in Ukraine is an artificial invention of the United States and Great Britain with the complicity of European elites aimed in the short term at saving Biden and Johnson from the debacle, and at the strategic level consolidating a domination and an Anglo hegemony in the world, even if this leads to a new war in Europe with the usual millionaire losses of human beings and material goods that Washington and London will see from afar and then. Much later, a new “landing in Normandy” will be invented that consecrate them (through Hollywood) as “defenders of humanity” even though they do it on the corpse of millions of citizens who today are forced to obtain gas at low prices and later will be cannon fodder for arms dealers to take advantage of to increase your gain and profit.
* Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein is a Venezuelan international relations expert, who was previously Director of the International Relations of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his country’s ambassador to Nicaragua and an advisor for international politics for TELESUR. Gelfenstein has written numerous books, among them “China in the XXI Century – the awakening of a giant” which has been published in several Latin American countries. You can follow him on Twitter: @sergioro0701