More than six months after its outbreak, the Ukrainian war is no longer in the news.
The interest of international television stations in direct transmission of the speeches of the Ukrainian president decreased, as well as their desire to devote prominent paragraphs to the events of the Russian bombing of Ukrainian targets, whether civilian or military, or the flight of thousands of Ukrainian refugees from their towns and cities.
Although the Ukrainians have become more capable of inflicting painful strikes on the positions of the occupying Russian forces in eastern or southern Ukraine, the major media rarely try to read the variables of the balance of power in the war arena and the possibilities of its development.
In some form, world public opinion (regardless of what world opinion means in detail) seems to be trying to break free from the burden of the Ukrainian war, which has weighed on it during the winter and spring months.
And because the war broke out in the late two years of an epidemic that nearly paralyzed most of the countries of the world, it seemed to represent a new chapter in the conspiracy of disease and politics on the life of the entire human community.
With the arrival of summer, and the relative dissipation of the dangers of the epidemic, the media and the circles of observers of politics and international relations rushed to try to dispose of representations of both the epidemic and the war.
The truth is, that the Ukrainian war is still going on unabated, and no one expected, last February 2022, neither on the Russian side, or Ukrainian, or in other countries of the world, that the war would continue for all these months, without showing signs of an end to her.
Over the past few weeks, the exchange of artillery and missiles between the two sides of the war has reached an unprecedented level.
In addition to the huge number of displaced Ukrainians, whether they left their homeland for other countries, or moved to safer areas inside the country, the wheel of war still caused great destruction to Ukrainian cities in the east, in addition to the dangers of nuclear radiation if the Zaporozhye plant in the south was damaged. Ukrainian, which is one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world.
But the most dangerous of all is that the Ukrainian crisis has already developed, without explicit approval from the major countries, into a global crisis, affecting most countries of the world, those who chose to be a party to the war in the first place, and those who did not.
How could a crisis that began with regional and national border disputes, related to a very complex and clashing history, turn into a global crisis?
To what extent can the Ukrainian war redraw the map of power in the world?
war transformations
It is no longer useful now to return to the reasons that prompted Russia to start the war, and whether the Russian decision was launched from urgent defensive geostrategic imperatives, or from imperial, aggressive, expansionist tendencies.
The important thing is that the war based in its first weeks on the Soviet military principle, aiming to achieve strategic control over Ukraine.
In other words, Moscow's primary goal was to inflict a severe military defeat on the Ukrainian army, including a complete blockade of Kyiv, and then return the Ukrainian state to the sphere of Russian influence, and completely separate Ukraine from the West, just as the situation of Belarus has become.
The Russian war leaders worked to weaken the defense positions and destroy the Ukrainian military capabilities, using a variety of bombardments, in preparation for the advance of armored columns on several axes towards Kyiv and several other strategic Ukrainian cities.
However, whether due to the solidity of the Ukrainian resistance, or the strength of Western military supplies, the Russians could not achieve the goals of the first comprehensive attack with the expected speed.
The Ukrainians succeeded in inflicting heavy losses on the Russian forces advancing on Kyiv and Kharkiv, in particular, and turned the Battle of Mariupol into a costly siege.
This prompted the Russian leadership to change the approach to war.
The forces attacking Kiev withdrew and could no longer attack Kharkiv, and the Russian leadership abandoned the principle of rapid and overwhelming offensive warfare, adopting a strategy of war of attrition and slow progress.
Moscow also announced, at the same time, that its war aims to control the Donbass region, to protect the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine and ensure its security and stability, in addition to controlling the southern sector of Ukraine bordering the Crimea, which is necessary for the security of the peninsula, and where Moscow calculated that the predominance of language Russian influence on the people of the south will make the Russian military presence a smooth affair.
On the other hand, Kyiv abandoned the negotiation approach with Russia, whether due to Western pressure, or the Ukrainian leadership's realization that it could not accept the minimum Russian demands, and decided to continue resisting the Russian attack.
Once the Western powers realized that the Ukrainians were intent on continuing the war, the United States and its European allies in NATO began organizing supplies of strategic military support for Ukraine.
The United States, Britain, Germany, Bulgaria and Poland provided the Ukrainians with all kinds of ammunition, artillery units, medium-range precision missile launchers, as well as armored vehicles and anti-aircraft guns.
There is even evidence that Turkey has supported Ukraine with numbers of armored vehicles, and that it continues to provide Bayraktar drones, which Kyiv had contracted to purchase before the outbreak of the war.
In addition, in June 2022, Britain announced a plan to train tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.
It is believed that Western military experts are in Ukraine, under diplomatic cover, to help the Ukrainian army train in modern military equipment, or even the tactical use of such equipment.
In addition to all this, the United States, since before the outbreak of the war, provides periodic intelligence information, when needed, to the Ukrainians.
Western military aid to Ukraine has so far amounted to more than ten billion dollars;
There is no indication that Western capitals have put a cap on this aid.
In other words, the West is looking at the Ukrainian war as an arena of exhaustion and weakening of Russia and the Putin government.
In exchange for the war of attrition that Russia is waging to bring the Ukrainian government and army to its knees, the main Western powers entered the war, indirectly, to drain the Russian army and the Russian leadership.
Because wars of attrition are inherently untimely defined, no one can predict the end of this war.
There are reports that Russia's losses in the war exceeded 15,000 dead in the first six months of the war, including dozens of high-ranking officers.
There are also indications that the Russian war machine has begun to show some shortcomings, such as the inability to produce the war requirements of artillery and missile munitions, or the start of negotiations with Iran to obtain additional numbers of drones.
Rather, there are those who point out that the war requires increasing numbers of soldiers, and that the Russian state has launched an active recruitment campaign throughout Russia, with the aim of avoiding declaring a general mobilization, and has withdrawn significant numbers of Russian soldiers who have been present for years in Syria and Libya.
However, in addition to the difficulty of confirming these indicators, or reading their actual significance, the war in the Donbass region is witnessing a steady advance of the Russian forces, albeit much slower than what was expected from the army of one of the largest military powers in the world.
Economic war too
The Russian-Western confrontation in Ukraine was not limited to the military arena of war, but extended, since the beginning of the crisis, to the financial-economic field.
Western countries, without a UN resolution, imposed a series of sanctions on Russia, the state, the business sector and officials, and prompted the exit of major Western companies from the Russian market, whether those operating in the services sector, energy, or traditional and electronic industries;
And suspended air traffic between Russia and most Western countries.
European countries decided to stop importing Russian coal, and gradually reduce imports of oil and oil products.
Western countries also froze Russian funds deposited in their banks in dollars, pounds sterling and euros, and a discussion began in major Western capitals about whether it was possible to use frozen Russian funds to rebuild the devastation caused by Russia in Ukraine.
Russia responded to the financial-economic war in several ways: The first was manifested in the imposition of counter-sanctions on Western countries and officials, and on Western companies that responded to the Western sanctions regime.
But Moscow realizes that the sanctions it imposes on Western powers will have little effect on the Western economy.
Therefore, Russia has resorted to trying to empty the Western sanctions of their content, by finding other markets for Russian oil, such as India and China, and selling it at below-market prices.
As for the third Russian measure, it was to reduce Russian gas supplies to European countries, a number of which, including Germany, depend largely on Russian gas.
Russia also imposed other restrictions on its exports of rare earths, fertilizers, and grain.
Anticipating the inability to meet the needs of the European market for gas during the next few months, the European Union imposed on its countries a reduction in gas consumption starting from August 2022. A number of EU countries, especially Germany and France, also started to return to using coal to operate power plants, In a flagrant retreat from environmental protection policies.
But no one can predict the situation in the EU countries in the coming winter, when the rates of gas consumption for electricity generation and heating will increase significantly.
At the same time, the consequences of the long closure during the two years of the Corona epidemic, the problem of disruption in energy supplies and an increasing number of agricultural and manufactured goods, and indicators of the traditional capitalist cycle, combined to create a worsening economic crisis worldwide.
The four major powers involved in the Ukraine crisis: China, Russia, the European Union, and the United States account for 60 percent of global economic output.
With the turbulence of financial and economic relations between these powers, it is not surprising that most of the world's economic and financial conditions are in turmoil.
The significant and prolonged rise in the prices of energy sources;
the high prices of a number of necessary agricultural commodities, such as wheat and agricultural fertilizers;
a significant decrease in the supply of manufactured goods that use electronic chips;
the massive rise in inflation;
These are some of the most prominent manifestations of the global economic crisis.
There are tens of millions of families who can no longer manage their daily lives, not only in Third World countries, but also in West-European welfare states.
Despite the presence of other reasons related to domestic politics, the global economic crisis exacerbated the crises of a number of countries, and started pushing them towards bankruptcy, most notably: Sri Lanka, Egypt, Tunisia and Sierra Leone.
Intense competition to form a new international order
Russia is the one who started this war, but it cannot stop it, first: because Western military supplies to Ukraine encourage the latter to continue the war, and enhance the Ukrainian leadership’s ambition to achieve some victory, or at least improve the terms of negotiation in the future.
Secondly, because stopping the war before achieving the declared Russian goals would mean the fall of Putin’s regime.
To continue the war, Russia is betting on inflicting heavy and steady losses on the Ukrainians that it becomes difficult for them to make any partial gains, and to continue the resistance.
But Russia is also betting that economic pressures will lead to the collapse of NATO's unity, the division of Europeans against themselves, and the retraction of their leaders, especially Germany and France, from what Moscow describes as submission to US policy.
Russia is also working to strengthen the alliance with China, especially after the severe tension in US-Chinese relations due to the dispute over the Taiwan issue, and to rebuild a system of better relations with second-tier countries, such as: Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and third world countries, especially in the East. middle.
On the other hand, the West is betting that the increasing losses on the battlefield, and financial and economic sanctions, will weaken the Putin regime, and undermine Russia's ability to continue the war in the medium term.
Western powers impose constant pressure to prevent China from providing tangible support to Russia, economically, technically and militarily, and seek to close the doors of second-tier and third-world countries to Russia.
The United States is also making a continuous effort to preserve the unity of NATO, persuade OPEC countries to pump more oil into the market, help Europe replace Russian energy sources, and convince European governments that Russia has become a strategic threat to the future and stability of the continent.
At the same time, the United States is trying to build lines of communication and growing relations with the countries of the Caucasus and the former Soviet Central Asia, none of which has recognized the independence of the two states of the Donbas region that broke away from Ukraine.
(from left to right) Finland's Ambassador to NATO Klaus Korhonen, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Sweden's Ambassador to NATO Axel Wernhof attend a ceremony marking Sweden and Finland's membership applications in Brussels (European)
Behind all this, Russia and China are now seeking to change the entire current world order, the system led by the Atlantic bloc, either by weakening American hegemony over international affairs, or securing a safe place for them in the international decision.
In Ukraine in particular, and in Taiwan after that, Russia and China have found that neither of them can secure vital strategic interests, or achieve a strategic national goal, if this move encounters American opposition.
But bringing about a tangible change in the structure of the global system does not yet appear to be easy.
The four major world powers can be classified according to the capabilities of power in their three dimensions: military, economic, and soft (i.e. cultural, educational and moral influence), as follows:
1- Russia has superior military capabilities, but it is considered a second-class economic power, and it lacks any tangible soft power.
2- China is a major military and economic power, but its cultural and moral influence is still weak and marginal.
3- On the other hand, the European Union is a weak military power, but a gigantic economic and cultural power.
4- As for the United States, it is considered a major power and a great influence in the three circles together.
What this map of power capabilities means is that Russia and China must go into a close alliance to be able to challenge the Atlantic's hegemony over the international system, and not necessarily to become a dominant and leading power in the foreseeable future.
So far, at least, it is clear that China does not want to build a close alliance with Russia, either because Beijing sees Russia as a burden on it and its economic influence in the world, which is based on normal relations with the West, or because Beijing does not want to get involved in historical European conflicts. Old and complex between Russia and the West, it has no solution.
In the end, however, it is no longer possible for Russia and China to submit to the rules of the Euro-American international system, which calls for further search for other friends and allies outside the Atlantic bloc.
Therefore, it is more likely, during this transitional phase in the fate of the international system, that the competition to win friends and allies will escalate between the four major powers, which will allow a relatively greater margin for the rise of second-tier powers, such as Turkey, South Africa, India and Brazil, if they manage their foreign relations well and avoid unfair bias. The justification and unnecessary for any of the contending major powers.
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This article is taken from Al Jazeera Center for Studies.