A few days ago, the Ukrainian war enters its ninth month. What was expected to be a picnic by Vladimir Putin has turned into a global nightmare more than anything else. The Russian president was able to sabotage the world, which is suffering from two crises of energy and food, but he was not able to turn Russia into a superpower similar to what the Soviet Union was until the end of 1991.
It is still too early to assess what the world will be like after the end of the Ukrainian war, but it is certain, at least until now, that a decisive decision was taken at the American and European levels. The content of the decision is that Putin is not allowed to win in Ukraine, just because the fall of Ukraine means the fall of Europe. It is clear that the Russian president did not look carefully at the map of Europe and the position of Ukraine in this map before making his decision to invade the neighboring country.
The Ukraine war revealed, before anything else, the weakness of Russia and its army and the weakness of the weapons it produces, and it revealed precisely how much Vladimir Putin does not know the world and does not know anything about the economy and its importance and about American and European technological development. He refuses to admit that the Soviet Union collapsed primarily for economic reasons. The Soviet system could not establish a viable economy. It was a huge iron ball full of missiles and nuclear bombs, but that ball stood on the weak legs of the unproductive Soviet economy capable of creating the kind of competition that could induce the citizen to work.
Yes, it can be said that the whole world is suffering from the invasion of Ukraine, but this invasion did not lead to the establishment of a multipolar world. In the end, it cannot be ignored that Russia needs the Iranian embrace. Vladimir Putin has become dependent on the Iranian marches to continue his Ukrainian war… and on artillery shells from North Korea. The Ukrainians headed by Volodymyr Zelensky surprised Vladimir Putin, whose personality seemed closer to that of Saddam Hussein, who made all the mistakes that a politician could make by invading Kuwait in the summer of 1990. That was on August 2 of that year.
It was never true that the Americans got Saddam into a trap. It is just that the man does not know the region and the world. So he went to his own trap. What applies to the late Iraqi president also applies to Vladimir Putin, who becomes more clear every day that he does not know the world. He does not know Europe, does not know America, and does not even know China, which took a cold stance on his Ukrainian war.
Putin does not know, in particular, that a country whose economy is smaller than the size of the Italian economy is not allowed to play the role of a superpower, despite possessing nuclear bombs and missiles and great wealth represented in oil and gas, and despite the fact that Europe will cool down this winter due to the shortage of Russian gas supplies.
Vladimir Putin changed the world, but the decision taken in Europe and America is a decision to dispense with Russian gas on the one hand and not engage with the current Russian president on the other.
The world is currently still in a phase of transition. It is difficult to talk about a balance with America established by China, which faces huge internal problems, despite the presence of a strong man in it, Xi Jinping, who seeks to be another dictator. Sooner or later, Xi will discover that he must focus on the domestic situation of China, which is still suffering from COVID-19 and a deepening economic crisis. The depth of this crisis does not reflect more than the real estate market, which is deteriorating daily, which made the Chinese authorities destroy huge construction projects in several cities for fear of the real estate market collapse.
It is certain that many countries in the third world, including Egypt, suffer from severe economic crises caused, among other things, by the repercussions of the Ukrainian war, but it is also certain that a country like Iran will not be able to exploit the Russian weakness to prove that the “Islamic Republic” has become a center of international polarization and that it can dominate the Gulf and the Middle East.
Similar to what happened to Russia, Iran will soon discover that its problem is with the Iranian internal situation and with the Iranian peoples who yearn to belong to the culture of life and not to the culture of death that the “Islamic Republic” is trying to spread in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen… It is also trying to export it to regions in North Africa through marches it is supplied to the “Polisario”, which is nothing but a tool of the Algerian regime.
One cannot be overly optimistic in any direction, but what is certain is that the world, thanks to Vladimir Putin, has radically changed for the worse. Like Hitler, he will not be allowed to win… No matter what price Europe will pay and no matter what negative effects the Ukraine war will have on third world countries.
It remains a bright spot, somewhat luminous, in the midst of all this global darkness. This point is the demise of Arab illusions regarding dependence on the United States. Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are looking for their interests within a general framework that goes beyond America, which withdrew from Afghanistan in the way it withdrew more than a year ago, and does not want at the present time to take the Iranian threat to regional security, especially from Yemen seriously.
The world will suffer for a long time from Vladimir Putin, who will have to get out of power sooner or later…but after causing a disaster on all levels, who will deal with this disaster and how will it be treated? There is no answer to this question in a world where America continues, until further notice, to play a role that no other party can play…
