Link here.

By Rajan Menon, Boston Review, 9/21/22

Rajan Menon is the director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, Spitzer Professor Emeritus at the Powell School of City College of New York, and a senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies. He is the author (with Eugene Rumer) of Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (MIT Press, 2015).

In wartime what happens at the front matters immensely. But what happens in the rear—in society at large—matters too, even if it lacks the battlefield’s drama and urgency. I was reminded of this during a recent trip to Ukraine. What also became clear as I traveled through Ukraine was that as the war continues with no end in sight, the country’s ability to prevail at the front will depend on how badly the war damages a critical part of the rear: the economy.

Thanks to a street-smart friend who has spent considerable time in the country and come to know it well, I was able to venture far afield from Kyiv: to Kryvyi Rih (President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown), Nikopol, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, Cherkasy, and the outskirts of Donetsk.

Since the war began, Ukraine’s airspace has been closed to nonmilitary planes, so flying into Kyiv isn’t an option; it’s train, bus, or car—I chose car. Still, once I’d crossed the border from Poland into Ukraine, it was hard to comprehend that I’d entered a country that has been at war for nearly seven months against the world’s second most powerful military machine.

The ancient city of Lviv, just over forty miles from the Polish border, bustles with energy. At rush hour traffic chokes its streets. In the early months of the war, Lviv’s population swelled and rents soared. “Internally displaced people” (IDPs) from the areas hit hardest by the war started seeking safety there (as they did in numerous other Ukrainian cities), though for some it was a waystation to other border cities, such as Chernivtsi and Uzhhorod. Lviv still has many IDPs, but you wouldn’t know it.

Head east from Lviv to Kyiv—about seven hours by car—and the rolling, lush countryside radiates a deceptive calm. I was about fifty miles outside Kyiv before imposing military checkpoints with a clutch of soldiers materialized—a recent development, I was told. Until May, because of the gauntlet of checkpoints and the nighttime nationwide curfew, which remains in effect, the drive from western Ukraine to Kyiv could take twelve hours, sometimes even more than a day.

In Kyiv itself, despite the frequent missile strike alerts, the swanky restaurants and chic cafes remain jammed. Trendily dressed young people chat each other up as if they hadn’t a care in the world; people saunter through the streets, riveted by their smartphones; fancy cars line the busy streets. It certainly does not feel like prewar Kyiv, but in another sign of normalcy’s gradual return, Kyivans have started complaining about traffic again.

The normalcy is a façade, though. The war weighs heavily on everyone’s mind. Venture into the capital’s outskirts—to places such as Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin—or travel to places near the frontlines—on barely passable pothole-filled roads—and the destruction the fighting has wrought is omnipresent. (The endless expanse of sunflower fields and rustic village homes provide welcome relief.)

Indeed, once you leave Kyiv far behind, there is no forgetting that you are in a country under attack. During my stay in Ukraine, only one day passed when warning sirens did not pierce the night, and sometimes the day, at least once. Ukrainians mostly shrug off these alerts. It is impossible to live in terror and apprehension daily for months on end and continue to function, even semi-normally. Still, the alerts are a reminder that the normalcy provided by daily routines can be shattered instantly by a missile strike. There is no shortage of stories describing this.

Moreover, the consequences of war—over 5,000 civilians killed, another 7,000-plus injured as of late July, cities destroyed, over 11 million refugees and IDPs, and a battered economy—are inescapable. Though millions of Ukrainian refugees have returned home from neighboring European countries, their jobs have largely vanished. Annualized inflation, which hit 22.2 percent in July, more than double what it was before the war, makes getting by even harder, especially for those from poorer regions in Ukraine’s south and east. The places where people shopped, the clinics they relied on, and the schools their kids attended may no longer be standing.

The war has also produced a deep hostility toward Russia in much of the country that will not dissipate soon, if ever. Russian has come to be seen by many in Ukraine as the occupier’s language. Even those who regard it as their first language, including ethnic Russians (especially young people), have switched to Ukrainian, smuggling in Russian words when their vocabulary comes up short. The anti-Russian sentiments typically associated with western Ukraine may be slowly spreading to the country’s Russian-speaking regions—for example, Odesa and Mykolaiv.

Indeed, the war has kindled a greater hostility toward the Russian people as a whole. Several people I met remarked that the war’s savagery proves that Russians are not a normal people. “All Russians?” I asked, suggesting that this was a crude generalization and stereotype. “Yes,” they replied. They wondered how I could not understand this after seeing places such as Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin, on Kyiv’s northern outskirts, where Russian troops committed atrocities, where bombed-out building are still visible. Surely I knew that Russian soldiers had defecated in the living quarters of Ukrainian homes they had occupied, scrawled venomous messages on buildings, and tortured and executed civilians?

In this climate the reflexive tendency to differentiate between eastern and western Ukraine, always simplistic, has become even more so. The fate of places such as Donbas and Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, make clear that Ukraine’s Russian-majority regions have witnessed vastly more death and destruction than its other parts. This contradicts Vladimir Putin’s claims that he invaded Ukraine partly to protect its ethnic Russians from persecution from latter-day Nazis and Banderites, contemporary acolytes of Stepan Bandera, who was prepared to work with the German occupiers during World War II to realize his dream of an independent Ukrainian state.

Though I’ve traveled to the Donbas before, I did not on this occasion because that would have meant wading into a battlefield. Many people there, and others throughout the country, are of the view that Ukraine should not cut itself adrift from Russia. Still, one has to wonder how closely people in areas traditionally, although not entirely accurately, labeled for convenience as Russophone feel connected to Russia now. The war has changed how Ukrainians, regardless of ethnicity and language preference, think about their identity.

Ukraine is hardly the only country where the place of ethnicity and language in shaping identity is complex. Identity, as scholars have shown, may turn on the ethnicity of one or both parents, the language of the ethnic group that people embrace, or the language people use to think and speak. Nailing down people’s identity in Ukraine is even harder because there has not been a national census in over two decades.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the push to make Ukrainian mandatory (which does not mean Russian is or will be banned; you hear it everywhere, save in the country’s western parts) evokes varying sentiments, particularly in wartime. Some are convinced that it must be done, especially following the Russian invasion. Others believe Ukrainian will naturally become the country’s defining language as the post-Soviet generations become the majority, and that mandating its use will prove divisive. Still others, above all older native Russian speakers (who can be ethnic Ukrainians or Russians), bristle at anything that they consider compulsion.

I asked some of my interlocutors whether language policy that favors Ukrainian was wise in a country containing millions of Russian speakers who tend to be concentrated in the east and south, especially when Russia stokes their anxieties about becoming “the other.”

My question was irrelevant in one sense. Ukraine’s linguistic separation from Russia, underway even before the war, has been accelerated by the fighting. The government deems it essential to forge a distinctive national identity. A recent law (passed before the war, it will take effect in January) requires that Ukrainian be used in government, businesses, and schools.  When Russian-language public schools reopen in the fall, they must switch to instruction in Ukrainian. Waitstaff and hotel clerks, indeed all businesses in the service sector, must use Ukrainian first and can use another language only if necessary, otherwise they risk a $200 penalty.

Putin insists, as he did in a July article, that Ukrainians and Russians are really one people united by a shared history and culture. Ironically, he may be remembered as arguably the greatest contributor to the solidification of a distinctive Ukrainian national identity—one marked by animus toward Russia and the determination to turn away from it and toward Europe.

Russia thought it would quickly and decisively achieve a battlefield victory; that it hasn’t has induced Putin to target Ukraine’s infrastructure even more in hopes that the Ukrainian government will be unable to sustain its armed resistance.

The war has already exacted a heavy toll on the Ukrainian economy. Prime Minister Denis Smyhal expects that GDP could shrink by more than one-third this year alone and the National Bank projects that inflation, too, will reach over 30 percent. Next year’s budget deficit is projected to be $38 billion—that’s more than one-fifth of Ukraine’s current GDP. The European Union and the World Bank reckon that the bill for rebuilding the economy will be $349 billion, but the destruction increases daily and the war could still drag on for years.

Despite the carnage, destruction, and fear produced by the war, though, people have not only managed to create space to live their lives but also to make sacrifices to help their country even when it involves great personal risk. These endeavors inspire faith in Ukraine’s future.

Nikopol, a city located across the Dnipro River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, is visible if you stand at the river’s shore (not advisable: you are in range of Russian artillery across the river). The city is unprepossessing at the best of times; the refugee influx, collapse of businesses, and constant shelling from Russian troops (including the day before I arrived) has made it worse. A local businessman, a “mini oligarch,” as my friend labeled him impishly, called it “a dead city.” That’s not hyperbole. Though we were there on a beautiful, sunny day, the streets, parks, and playgrounds seemed empty. Nikopol has become a dried-out husk.

Yet virtually none of the doctors and staff at the local children’s hospital—which is cheerily decorated, spotless, and well equipped—have left, unlike so many townspeople who concluded that Nikopol was too dangerous due to frequent Russian shelling or the risk that Russians could take the city. The exodus has included many refugees, save apparently the hardened souls from Mariupol who have experienced far worse, and local people with skills the city’s economy needs desperately. The doctor who showed us around could certainly have found a job in a safer, quieter, and lovelier place in Ukraine, of which there are many. Yet he chose to stay in a city from which, my friend said, people flee to their dachas to escape the nighttime shelling, or drive to villages and sleep in their cars if they can’t afford a rural abode.

In Dnipro, which has also been rocketed continually, an NGO runs a shelter for IDPs. The employees of the NGO have likewise remained at their posts out of a sense of civic duty. The overwhelming majority of the residents are women and children who have fled other parts of Ukraine. The youngest is a month old. They are permitted to stay for a week but then must move on—but to where exactly?—to make room for the next batch of arrivals. Community restaurants donate meals to the shelter and local and foreign NGOs provide other supplies. The accommodations are barebones: makeshift bunkbeds draped with threadbare sheets to create a modicum of privacy. Yet for people fleeing death, the spartan refuge, even if transitory, is a lifeline.

The man who appeared to be in charge observed wearily that obtaining basic supplies is a constant struggle that requires day-to-day adaptation and improvisation—and all while suppressing the fear of bombardment, I thought. The harried young staff who tend to the many needs of the IDPs could have moved to safer venues. Yet, like the employees of the Nikopol hospital, they have stayed at their jobs.

Nikopol and Dnipro are not like Kyiv, Lviv, or Cherkasy; the risks created by war are visceral and unrelenting. The urge to leave must be overwhelming at times, especially for young, well-educated people, who can more easily move elsewhere, find jobs, and begin a new life. That makes the determination of those who have stayed to serve others remarkable. The examples of civic-mindedness in Nikopol and Dnipro can be found in various forms elsewhere in Ukraine.

The focus on Ukraine’s front is understandable, but how the war has reshaped life in the rear, and especially the good that people have done in dangerous circumstances, is also worth recording and remembering. Some changes unfolding in the rear may prove problematic, but others augur well for the country’s future, especially once it begins the long, hard recovery of rebuilding and reintegration that could takes decades to accomplish.

By Michael Snyder, End of the American Dream Blog, Reprinted by ZeroHedge, 9/27/22

Something really strange just happened.  On Monday, large underwater “explosions” were detected in the precise areas of the sea where the Nord Stream pipeline system is now leaking.  In fact, the explosions were so large that they actually registered on the Richter scale.  If someone wanted to purposely damage the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, very large explosions would be needed because those pipelines are extremely thick.  So it appears that this was a deliberate act of sabotage, and that is what many European officials are now alleging.  But if that is the case, who was behind it?

At this point we just don’t know.

But there are certain facts that we do have.  The following are 15 things we know about the “mysterious explosions” that severely damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines…

#1 We are being told that the sections where the pipelines were damaged are “70-90 meters below sea level”.  So someone would need to go down pretty deep to get to them.

#2 It is extremely unlikely that these pipelines could have been ruptured by accident because they are extremely thick…

The steel pipe itself has a wall of 4.1 cm (1.6 inches) and is coated with steel-reinforced concrete up to 11cm thick. Each section of the pipe weighs 11 tonnes, which goes to 24-25 tonnes after the concrete is applied.

#3 It is being reported that explosions “were heard” in the areas where gas is now leaking out of the pipelines…

Explosions were heard near the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipes where gas is now leaking into the Baltic from three holes, scientists have confirmed, while chronic safety concerns have led to a five-mile exclusion zone being imposed around the affected area.

#4 The Swedish National Seismic Network detected one explosion that registered 1.9 on the Richter scale and another one that registered 2.3 on the Richter scale…

Two powerful underwater explosions were detected on Monday in the same area of sea as the Nord Stream gas leaks, according to the Swedish National Seismic Network.

The monitoring network said the first explosion occurred on Monday at 2:03 a.m. Swedish time with a magnitude of 1.9 on the Richter scale, followed by a second at 7:04 p.m. on the same day with a magnitude of 2.3.

#5 The largest leak is reportedly “spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter”…

It comes after shocking footage released earlier today by the Danish military from a flyover of the affected region showed huge swathes of the sea near the Danish island of Bornholm churning as the gas bubbled to the surface.

A military statement claimed that the largest leak ‘is spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter. The smallest is creating a circle about 200 metres (656 feet) in diameter’, while the head of Denmark’s Energy Agency said it could take up to a week for gas to stop draining into the sea.

#6 German officials are claiming that this was a deliberate act of sabotage…

Germany is reportedly far less hesitant, however, with officials believing sabotage is virtually the only plausible cause for the leaks.

“We can’t imagine a scenario that isn’t a targeted attack. Everything speaks against a coincidence,” a government official reportedly told German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

#6a NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attributed the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines to acts of sabotage and said he had discussed the protection of critical infrastructure in NATO countries with the Danish defense minister.

#7 Interestingly, this incident took place just one day after thousands of German protesters took to the streets and demanded the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline…

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the northeastern German seaside town of Lubmin on Sunday, urging officials to put into service the halted Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that was designed to transport fuel from Russia to Germany.

Germany had stalled the launch of the ambitious energy project for months before putting it on the back burner in the wake of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which is now in its eighth month.

#8 The prime minister of Denmark also believes that this was a deliberate act of sabotage…

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said her government believes the leaks were caused by ‘deliberate actions’, adding that the gas supply pipeline will be out of action for around a week.

She said this evening: ‘It is now the clear assessment by authorities that these are deliberate actions. It was not an accident. There is no information yet to indicate who may be behind this action.’

#9 The Ukrainians are blaming the Russians for the explosions…

It comes after Kyiv’s presidential advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter: ‘The large-scale gas leak is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU.’

Podolyak accused Russia of seeking to ‘destabilise the economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic’.

#10 It is being reported that the CIA recently warned Germany about a potential attack on the pipelines…

German magazine Spiegel said the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently warned Berlin about the increasing signs of a possible planned attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system.

Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources, that the CIA tipped off Berlin in the summer about possible attacks on NS1 and NS2.

#11 A Polish member of the European Parliament seems absolutely convinced that the United States was behind the attack…

A former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

#12 Joe Biden previously threatened to “end” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

#13 Victoria Nuland has also previously threatened the Nord Stream 2 pipeline: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

#14 Meanwhile, European officials just gathered for a ceremony “to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe”…

Leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark have attended a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe, a key stage in the drive to wean Poland and Europe off Russian gas.

The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to Poland. It is the centrepiece of a Polish strategy to diversify away from Russia that began years before Moscow’s February invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis.

The flows from Norway along with supplies via liquefied gas terminals are central to Poland’s plan. The country was cut off from Russian gas supplies in April, allegedly for refusing to pay in roubles.

#15 Germany’s Tagesspiegel reports that German security authorities assume that the three tubes of the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1 and 2 will be forever unusable after alleged acts of sabotage.

If they are not repaired quickly, a lot of salt water will run in and corrode the pipelines, the Tagesspiegel learned from government circles.

So what does all of this mean?

I don’t know.

But this certainly is not going to be good for the rapidly growing energy crisis in Europe.

It is going to be a bitterly cold winter all over the continent, and there will be a lot of anger.

As I keep warning, the comfortable lifestyles that we are all currently enjoying will soon be rudely interrupted.

Everything is changing, and a lot of pain is on the horizon.

So I would encourage you to monitor global events very, very closely in the months ahead, because they are going to have very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

By Gordon Hahn, reprinted from Russian and Eurasian Politics Blog, 9/19/22

The August sun leads a political analyst’s fancy to projections about the future informed by the past. August, through Barbara Tuchman’s famous The Guns of August, remains a kind of ‘meme’ symbolizing the road to World War I, a war born in circumstances with some commonalities with those we live in today: rising powers, declining powers, ill-advised alliances, contested Slavic territories, and naked human ambitions for expansion and empire. August also has a special meaning for rusologists as a month of momentous political events. For them, August has brought watershed moments like the 1991 August coup, the Kursk submarine sinking, and the 2008 Georgian-Ossetiyan-Russian ‘August War’. Given the slow-escalating global confrontation surrounding the Russo-Ukrainian war or war for NATO expansion, it seems a good time to think about how this multi-layered set of crises might escalate so that we might better understand the need to end the crisis through statesmanship, diplomacy, and compromise rather than by military means (kinetic or otherwise). There are just too many ways for the present war crisis to escalate and for things to ‘go south’ even further.

Russia’s invasion in February almost immediately escalated from a Russo-Ukrainian war sparked by NATO expansion and the Western-backed February 2014 Maidan revolt to the level of a NATO-Russian war. We might date 26 April 2022 the beginning of the end of the first almost entirely Ukrainian phase of Russo-Ukrainian War. Since that date when NATO convened a summit to discuss weapons supplies and other forms of assistance to Ukraine and approximately timed with the West’s urging Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy to reject the Istanbul agreement that both sides had been inclined to accept, the Russ0_Ukrainian War has been transitioning through a proxy war stage to a NATO-Russian War; one largely driven by the question of whether or not NATO can expand and otherwise do what it likes in what Russian sees as its sphere of influence. With the transitional proxy war stage, Ukraine functioned as a de facto NATO member bearing the brunt of the war burden to the detriment of its people and economy and potentially the destruction of its statehood, which serves as a useful buffer between Russia and the West/NATO. This next escalatory stage is not be to a NATO proxy-Russian war but a full-on NATO-Russian war in which Ukrainian forces will play less of a combat role and equipped, guided, and effectively commanded and led by NATO. This larger NATO war effort is intended to roll back Russia’s gains in Ukraine’s east and south and bring the war to Russia perhaps not with ground troops per se, but with aerial attacks and the deployment into Russian of sabotage and terrorist forces, organized by NATO special forces in order to fuel a Russian insurgency against the Putin regime. In the interim, this perhaps will lead to a second Crimean War that will be more global than the first version of 1850-1854.

The recent Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive (and the wise Russian withdrawal to concentrate focus on the east and south as originally intended) was not nearly so much a Ukrainian counteroffensive as it was a NATO counteroffensive. Russia’s withdrawal was a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin never having considered occupation as a goal of the ‘special military operation — no less all of Ukraine as Western propagandists and agitated analysts contend. The Kharkiv advance was organized on the basis of: NATO training of tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces; massive Western weapons supplies to Kiev (e.g., see https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/usp.cfm); the NATO Central Command’s and Western intelligence’s deep embeddedness into the Ukrainian forces; NATO-designed counteroffensive tactics, strategy, and plan; large numbers of former Western soldiers and officers participating in the operation; possible participation of Polish officers and troops brought in under the new Ukrainian law allowing Polish citizens nearly equal status as that of Ukrainian citizens; and possible participation of Western special forces advisors if not units.

The new character of the war — a Russo-NATO war with only Ukrainian bodies being used to carry out the war — is a major escalation. It is essentially now a stealth world war, with NATO and especially the United States functioning de facto and perhaps even de jure as combatants. This is likely to be met with a series of Russian escalations. There can be a crossing of a threshold between NATO’s stealth combatant role and an official NATO intervention that could be triggered by a NATO member’s unilateral action prompting a Russian attack on that NATO member, a Russian attack or Western- or Ukrainian-claimed Russian attack in response to which NATO can do no other than enter the war officially, or any number of unforeseeable ‘blacks swans.’

Once NATO enters the war officially, supplying troops, there is likely to be a next stage beyond the NATO-Russian war proper. It is likely to involve limited involvement of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), China, and the Sino-Russian-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) even if there is no breakout of war around Taiwan – a de facto World War III. With a war for Taiwan or a NATO invasion of Russian territory, World War III will become full-blown and likely go nuclear.

The Russo-Ukrainian War or the Stealth War for NATO Expansion

Russia’s invasion in February almost immediately escalated from a Russo-Ukrainian war sparked by NATO expansion and the Western-backed February 2014 Maidan revolt to the level of a NATO-Russian war. Since NATO member-states, including the U.S., are already deeply involved in the war, there is little to prevent the war from escalating into a full-fledged NATO-Russian war, with all the grave risks such a development would entail. Ukraine is functioning as a de facto NATO member, as it was becoming before the war, bearing the brunt of the war burden to the detriment of its people and potentially the destruction of its statehood, which serves as a useful buffer between Russia and the West/NATO. NATO weapons are put in the hands of Ukraine’s military and paramilitary neofascist-dominated groups. We also know that NATO leader, the U.S., and NATO are performing key military functions in the war. Intelligence from NATO members satellites and other sources are choosing or at least approving targets for Ukrainian forces to attack, including civilian targets and Russian territory (https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fworld-news%2F2022%2F08%2F01%2Fbritain-helps-ukraine-hunt-russian-spies-eyeing-western-military%2F). Retired former U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor has asserted that NATO officers form a military staff that is directing much of the Ukrainian war strategy and tactics. NATO member-countries’ citizens, usually retired servicemen, and likely active servicemen are fighting alongside the Ukrainians as volunteers as well as training and advising Ukrainian forces. Britain and other NATO members have been training 10,000s of new Ukrainian soldiers per month. The Ukrainian military is now three times the size of Russia’s, whose forces could never have occupied all of Ukraine and were never intended to do so. NATO soldiers are likely to become more prevalent in the war and more Polish.

Poles are even more anxious to see Russia defeated militarily than perhaps even Washington or their Lithuanian coinhabitants of the ancient commonwealth that carried out the first hybrid invasion on Slavic territory four centuries ago. It is important to note that Polish messianism and Russophobia drives its forward stance against Moscow, and Warsaw has growing ambitions to not just lead Eastern Europe but all of Europe. The Ukrainian war next door offers a good opportunity for Poland to seize the leadership from Russia-dependent and Russia-receptive Germany. A Ukrainian law recently signed by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy gives Polish citizens the rights similar to those of Ukrainian citizens. This could serve as legal cover for thousands of Polish soldiers to enter Ukraine, don Ukrainian uniforms, and using NATO-supplied Western equipment begin fighting against Russia’s forces. When proof of any such gambit emerges – as it inevitably will – Russia could decide to hit Polish targets in response, bringing NATO into the war more directly in one form or another.

There are other places where tensions could lead to a Russian and/or NATO escalation and expansion of the war. For example, perhaps at the request of the West or perhaps without, Azerbaijan could open up a second front for Russia in Armenia. Russia is a guarantor of the shaky ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh War, and it would be forced to intervene to protect Armenia if a major escalation by Azerbaijan appeared on the verge of inflicting a major defeat on Moscow’s historical ally. Similarly, instability in Moldova/Transdniestria or one of the Baltic states prompting an attack on Russian forces in Transdniestr, a renewal of the Kaliningrad blockade, or a Russian incursion in one of the Baltic states. But Crimea is likely to be the fulcrum around which World War III will evolve. The West (e.g., through Turkey) could ‘encourage’ Baku or machinate in Moldova in order to provoke a crisis. One in the former could spark a CSTO response. In both cases, Russia could be faced with a second front, complicating its Ukraine op but further internationalizing the Russo-Western war.

Clandestine NATO functions will become transparent once the NATO-led nature becomes manifest and public. Ukrainian forces gradually will take a back seat and be integrated into a larger NATO forces and war effort, declared under an Article 5-worthy Russian attack, will be designed to roll back Russia’s gains in Ukraine’s east and south. Any success on the mainland will open a path to Crimea backed by naval operations in the Black Sea, leading to a second Crimean war. The first Crimean War in the 1850s was in fact the first world war. The region is the southern cleft in the Black-to-Baltic Sea ‘intermarium’ that forms the divide between the Western and the Russian-Eurasian civilizations.

A Second Crimean War would certainly become more global than the first, which included some Western operations in the Baltic (White) Sea and even in Russia’s Far North and Far East. On the Russian side, Belarus will almost certainly be forced to enter the war willingly or not, and Russia will likely seek and at least partially succeed in bringing some other members of its own military alliance, the CSTO, into the war effort. China may assist in mobilizing at least some token participation of the CSTO’s other members (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) especially the Central Asian members. China and some other SCO members (India, Pakistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; candidate members – Belarus, Iran, Mongolia, and Afghanistan) will likely assist in providing equipment and perhaps limited numbers of troops, and this will escalate into World War III.

Turkey, as well Hungary and India, could be pivotal swing states, whose alignment with either the rest (‘East’) or the West could tip the balance in the regional wars or overall global conflict. Turkey’s role will be pivotal in this war and may decide whether the nascent global war stops at this phase or escalates to full-scale world war. Turkey could defect from NATO and side with Russia and China in the emerging alternative global system and alliance to those of the West and NATO. Turkey’s control over the Bosporous Straits can help to deny or limit NATO naval forces’ access to the Black Sea, which will be crucial for seizing Crimea away from Russia. Failure to take Crimea and increasing assistance to Russia from ‘the rest’ can help Russia defeat the West in this Crimean War.

In connection with or autonomously from events in Ukraine, a larger war could also be sparked by a decision by Moldova to integrate into Romania or put down unrest by Russian, Ukrainian, and or Turkish (Gagauz) minorities. This could be sparked by fears in Tiraspol resulting from a Russian move against Odessa, indicating a drive to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria. Any such Romanian-Moldovan scenario would force the breakaway republic of Transdniestria and the Gagauz Autonomous Republic to assert independence and perhaps integration with Russia, sparking a Russo-Romanian war. Turkey, another important swing state in any res-West WW III, also would likely respond to events in the Black Sea or Moldova, separate from or connected with the second Crimean war or expanding world war.

Another risk is that a coalition of post-Soviet elements will create a de facto or de jure coalition of partisan, volunteer forces and/or states opposed to Russia or, organized by Russia under the CSTO, against Ukraine and other pro-Western former Soviet republics. For example, some Ukrainians are encouraging Georgia to open a ‘second front’ against Russia. This will encourage Georgian volunteers to head to Ukraine or could eventually be taken up by a nationalist Georgian government under certain circumstances.

Becoming wholly manifest over time, World War III would then see Sino-Russian alliance members expand the war to parts of Asia by attempting to settle their own regional scores or achieve their own regional ambitions in ways that counter NATO or NATO members’ moves in Ukraine or elsewhere. For the alliance’s leaders – China and Russia – that means Taiwan and former Soviet republics-become or -would-be NATO members (that is Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Transdniestr, the Baltic states), respectively. Under circumstances — such as a threat to Kaliningrad as developed two months ago when Lithuania attempted to halt Russian transportation to the exclave — Russia could try to move into additional former republics beyond Ukraine once NATO forces entered Ukraine or Russian territory– first of all the Baltic states. China might seek to establish its full sovereignty over Taiwan and perhaps seek territorial gains in contested territories with India, which would likely attempt and could indeed remain neutral.

India is the premier swing state that could sway the outcome of a East-West or rest-West world war. It is a kind of cleft state, with one foot in the republican West as a viable federative republic regime and another foot among the ‘rest’ as a member of SCO, a co-member of BRICS with China and Russia, a historical victim of Western colonialism, and arguably the Eurasian landmass’s second foremost power. However, SCO is still not yet a primarily military bloc. Indian neutrality could serve as a pretext to justify within SCO’s internal politics a Chinese move against SCO-member India’s Ladakh region. Japanese neutrality is unlikely, meaning likely Sino-Japanese conflict.

Russia and the U.S. will still be on opposite sides through proxies in the Syrian civil war, with Moscow’s forces supporting the Assad regime and U.S. forces and supplies backing a broad if weak anti-Assad coalition of mostly Mulsim Brotherhood, Al Qa`ida, and ISIS types. The West is supporting some Kurdish forces against Damascus; Russia is doing the same to a lesser degree against Turkey. If Iran is already a SCO member and perhaps even if it is not, it could invade Iraq and link up with Syria in our world war scenario and perhaps challenge Israel in war. It might also step up actions against the Saudis, for example, in Yemen.

Any Western-backed Azerbaijan move to re-start or continue its war for Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia could play into either Iranian or Turkish hands, with Istanbul and Teheran becoming key protagonists in the war. Should Turkey defect from NATO, Sino-Russian diplomacy could produce a modus vivendi in which Iran and Turkey sign a Mideastern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing areas in the Levant and South Caucasus for conquest and or de-sovereignization and heightened influence.

In addition to the local political-military tensions and conflicts mentioned above, obviously there is an underlying global economic confrontation between the West and the rest, which is aggravating tensions further.

In sum, there a host of ways in which the current Ukrainian (and Syrian) conflict can ignite or escalate into regional wars or more global by dint of other conflicts, many of them with a Russo-Western subplot. From there escalation might have no limits.

Nuclear War

World War III becomes an existential threat to one or more combatant parties and so goes nuclear.

A decade ago Ukraine was a tinderbox, and it has blown up. Now the region and the world are tinderboxes. How long before they blow up?

Link here.

Interview starts at about 13 and a half minutes in. Ben Abelow is the author of the book How the West Brought War to Ukraine, which I am currently reading and will be posting a review of soon. – Natylie