A Manifesto to the Ukrainian People

 The horrendous suffering in Ukraine prompts me to speak to you from my heart, as a concerned neighbour, but also as a Romanian-born historian, fully aware that your country is the scene of a tragic confrontation with your much larger neighbour Russia. 

When you started your nation-building process back in 1991, your leaders could have taken a close look at the way the Romanians built their state 163 years ago. Unlike Ukraine, Romanians had lived under Ottoman rule and started their unification process in 1859, in a much more agitated international environment than that of the 1990's. The leaders who built the nucleus of contemporary Romania were, however, learned, skillful and dedicated to the task of building a united and independent state. The state-building process was completed in 1918 at the end of the first world war, when Romanians living under Austro-Hungarian and under Russian rule were united in a single state for the first time in their history. 

Alas, 22 years later Romania was forced to give up Moldova and northern Bucovina to the Soviet Union and northwest Transylvania to Hungary, following the conclusion of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. 

After the 1946 Peace Congress in Paris, Romania recovered its lost territories in Transylvania, but not Moldova and northern Bucovina, which continued to be incorporated into the USSR. 

With very few exceptions, the Romanian nation-building process, which took some 60 years to achieve, was guided by outstanding and committed political leaders who tried to limit loss of life on the battlegrounds of Europe to a minimum. When Romania, like Ukraine today, faced a similar kind of predicament in 1940, it was enough for Stalin to send an ultimatum to the Romanian government and the politicians of the time gave in to his demands. I can assure you that they did not do that out of cowardice, but simply because the Romanian army was no match for the Soviet army. Romanians have always believed that dying for a cause is commendable, but also that sacrificing one's life stupidly is a mistake. You might be told by your leaders that you are braver or smarter in battle than the Romanians, but this is just not the case.

Nowadays, Romania is - as you know- a stable country in southeastern Europe and a member of both NATO and the EU. This was made possible by the fact that Romanians are part of the larger, Latin group of countries, like France, Spain and Italy, but also because Romania does not have a common border with Russia, having allowed Moldova to become an independent republic which acts as a buffer state between Russia and Romania. For Romania that has meant a loss of some 34,000 square km and a population of 3 million people, 20% of whom are Russian speakers.

Sadly, I think Ukraine's misfortune lies in the fact that it has not been blessed with competent and selfless political leaders. Your leaders should have been able to select the best possible administrative formula to run the country so that it behaves as a non-threatening neighbour to Russia. Although the key to Ukraine's independence would have been its strict adherence to a neutral status, like Moldova's, after 2014 and the Maidan upheaval Ukraine's leaders preferred to seek an alliance with the United States, a distant superpower from some 8,000 km away. To make matters worse, various Kiev governments refused to offer the inhabitants of the Donbas the autonomy they were asking for, choosing to fight and kill some 14,000 of them over the last 8 years. 

The situation worsened after the election of Zelensky in 2019. The changes that were made to the Ukrainian constitution enshrined as national objectives the country's adherence to NATO and the EU. Moreover, the new national security doctrine of Ukraine, adopted at the same time, stipulates that the country must try to recover Crimea from Russia and annihilate the armed resistance of the people in the Donbas. 

This explosive mix of mistakes prompted the Russian army to mobilise for almost a year on Ukraine's border starting with 2021. The Kremlin's hope was that the Zelensky government and its American backers will agree to scrap the NATO membership provision in the Ukrainian constitution and that they will apply the Minsk II agreement. 

Time and again, however, the diplomatic negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US have led nowhere. Both the US and the Ukrainian governments proved intractable during negotiations and refused to even acknowledge Russia's security concerns at its western border with Ukraine. Ultimately, Russia was left with no alternative but to invade Ukraine, which is - I am convinced - the last thing it wanted to do. 

Even now, with the Russian army in the country and 4 million Ukrainian refugees at the borders, the Zelensky government refuses all meaningful talk or compromise to end the conflict. The heroic resistance of Ukrainians is instead being used by Zelensky in order to become what Andriy Yermak said recently in London: "a leader of the free world". This objective, to be sure, shows that Zelensky's oversized ego is impairing his judgement and that he is not sound of mind.

I wish to remind you that Zelensky is but a TV actor and Andriy Yermak a film producer and that their lack of experience in government means that they do not realise how destructive it is for Ukraine to fight Russia. As you have probably noticed, however, the leaders of the 30 countries that compose NATO do realise it, and that is why they will not indulge Kiev's requests for a no-fly zone or additional tanks and heavy military hardware. These leaders are both experienced and protective of their populations, unlike Zelensky, Yermak & co. 

Unhappy with this, Zelensky is now actively trying to undermine their leadership by addressing the Western public directly by videolink in the street, "instructing" citizens to pressure their governments to give him what he wants. This, to be sure, is an unheard-of attempt to undermine the governments of nations which provide humanitarian help for Ukraine and shelter for its refugees.(The only other known example of this was when Stalin mobilised Western factory workers during the Great Depression against their bosses and political leaders, but in more subtle ways)

As a concerned neighbour, I find this behaviour to border on madness. It is now up to you, the Ukrainian people, to individually and collectively try to get Ukraine out of this mess. For a month now, you have proven your valour on the battlefield. It is now time to stop the destruction and the deaths by putting your weapons down. Unlike the Ukrainian army, I am sure that the Russian soldiers won't shoot you in the kneecaps or resort to castration if you do. 

For the time being, Ukraine is used by the US and the UK as a pawn against Russia. Both the American and the British leaders are trying to deflect the anger of their citizens from scandals at home, by focusing their attention on the tragedy in Ukraine. They also supply more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine in order to prolong the war. As one American politician put it, the US is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, if necessary. Now, you would agree with me that this geopolitical battle between nuclear powers has nothing to do with the Ukrainians, and no Ukrainian should have to die for it either.

The Zelensky government's advertised plans to "defeat Russia" and make Ukraine the arbiter of a new security architecture in Europe are both unrealistic and outlandish, and no Ukrainian soldier or civilian should lose their life over them, simply because that will not happen. 

My advice to you is to cut your losses short and refuse to play in Zelensky's latest film "How I Became Leader of the World". From my part I can assure you that a majority of Western politicians are quite fed up with Zelensky's antics, even if they humor him because they feel a lot of compassion for the ordinary Ukrainian people.

From where I stand, the way your leaders went about building the Ukrainian state was wrong and led to catastrophic consequences not only for you, but for our entire region and for Europe as a whole. Please stop and rethink it all, taking into account the interests of your neighbours as well.

Spare a Thought for Joe Biden

 " Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum"

The American president is in big trouble, both domestically and internationally. After only one year in office, Joe Biden is considered one of the most unsuccessful presidents since George W.Bush. On the home front, the Democrats' fortunes are going south in all major polls, the party risks losing a significant number of Congressional and Senate seats in the fall. Former allies are deserting the party in droves and no wonder: the current administration has mishandled both the pandemic and the American economy, with inflation having risen to a 40-year high long before the Ukraine conflict started. The president's approval rating is one of the lowest ever, proving that Obama's advice - who told Joe Biden he did not have to run in 2020 - was both prescient and timely. 

The bad news on the home front is more than matched by disastrous news from abroad. As soon as he moved into the White House, Biden brought the ill-famed team of neocons Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland into the State Department and the national security apparatus, together with whom he had masterminded the so-called Maidan "revolution" in Ukraine back in 2014. This team did not waste any time in botching diplomatic negotiations with Russia throughout 2021 and provoking it to intervene militarily in Ukraine. They are currently undermining any bilateral talks which might lead to a peace treaty being signed, if Blinken's declarations are any guide. As Victoria Nuland recently told Congress, they envisage a long drawn-out conflict in Ukraine. This would suit the neocons' strategy to torpedo Russia's economy and leadership.

European political leaders, like Emmanuel Macron, were shocked when Joe Biden launched his savage personal attack on Vladimir Putin in Poland, advocating for regime change in Moscow. This, however, was consistent with the neoconservative agenda regarding Russia, despite Blinken's official denials. By calling Putin a "butcher", Biden is desperately trying to determine American feminists to vote Democrat in the midterm congressional elections. Sure enough, the importance of geopolitics in international affairs is hard even for seasoned politicians like Olaf Scholz to grasp, let alone for feminists. This is the reason why they have reduced the entire Ukraine situation to an issue they have been nursing for some time, that of Vladimir Putin's "toxic masculinity". According to leading American feminists, a kind of hormonal reaction of the Russian president explains Russia's intervention in Ukraine. 

Neoconservatives deserve another special mention, however. Affected as they are by the virus of global hegemonism that destroyed Napoleon's France in the 19th century and Hitler's Germany in the 20th century, they continue to push a "USA uber Alles" unipolar agenda in international affairs. Their hate towards Russia is not racial in nature, rather it is based on the realisation that the two other major hegemonic drives in the West's modern history were stopped only with the help of Russia. By refusing to accept NATO's expansion up to its doorstep, Russia - together with China - became the biggest obstacle to their global hegemonic plans.

Any sane American administration would have relegated the neocons to the dustbin of history long ago, not recycled them as they did. Instead, Joe Biden gave them center stage in framing American foreign and defense policies once again, and the results are nothing short of disastrous. Small wonder, therefore, that leading neocon figures are calling this period in US political history "the neocon moment". Walking back American foreign policy from its current predicament seems to be a tall order, which, unfortunately, will have to wait until the next US presidential elections. Let us hope that after so many decades of overseeing US foreign policy, Joe Biden will at least be able to avoid igniting World War III.

The United States' Mad Drive for Unipolarity

 After the collapse of the USSR, unipolarity was supposed to last for no more than a decade. By extending it for two more decades, the US got embroiled in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine. This has to stop before it's too late.

Over the last few days I have watched in disgust the sorry spectacle of an American president visiting the Old Continent in order to prove to the world -and probably to himself, too- that Western countries stand united behind the US in its latest proxy war. On Friday he met up with young American soldiers deployed in Poland at the border with Ukraine, he ate a pizza with them and had the cheek to lie to them with a straight face as he tried to explain why the United States are putting them in harm's way, some 8,000 kilometres from their home country. He told them that they are there to  fight for democracies against autocracies, which - it goes without saying - the US is ready and willing to spend blood and treasure to defend.

Well, not quite. The real reason why US soldiers are being posted in Eastern Europe is to defend American unipolarity against multipolarity, which has been the natural state of affairs in international relations for centuries. As we know from the examples of Napoleon and Hitler, power is a heavy drug which makes political leaders act in dangerous, if not always catastrophic ways. Unchecked, unrestrained power - because this is what unipolarity is all about - is far worse, however, and that's what has brought the world to the brink of a fully-fledged nuclear war this time.

I have also watched in disbelief over the past few weeks how the US - which has interfered irresponsibly in Slav and in European affairs since 2014 - is propping up a Kiev regime bent on starting WWIII in order to weaken its larger neighbour, Russia. The US has not made the slightest effort to lean on the Ukrainian leadership to sue for peace, but is instead using Ukrainian people as cannon fodder, and the rest of Europe as a refugee camp only to provoke regime change in Moscow. Russia's cardinal sin, it appears, is that of being one of the main challengers to the unipolarity of the US in world affairs.

Unfortunately for all concerned, unipolarity cannot be saved. Regardless of how many allies the US enlists in this quest and how many inept sanctions they pile on Russia, (which are sure to be extended to China in the future, as well). As no sane political leader can disregard geopolitical imperatives in the conduct of foreign relations, like the US has for the past few decades, nor can unipolarity be enforced for long against multipolarity. Thus, although Zelensky wants Joe to be the "leader of the world", the truth of the matter is that this is not his choice or Joe's to make. 

After Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, an American geopolitician friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, described him as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer". After watching the American president for about one year go about "solving" international crises from Afghanistan to Ukraine, I can now confidently confirm that my American friend's assessment was an understatement. The US president is not only overwhelmed by the crisis in Ukraine, but his neocon team is a menace to world peace, and his monumental misunderstanding of the US's place in international affairs is there for all to see.

For most of us from Europe, the conflict in Ukraine is an internal problem of the Slav world. The other major ethnic groups that compose the EU - the Latins and the Germans - do not exhibit such fratricidal tendencies and get along fine with each other and with Russia. Similarly, an armed conflict between the countries of the Anglosphere has been inconceivable for more than 200 years. The attitude of the Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks in this conflict is -for the rest of the Europeans - puzzling, to say the least. Furthermore, neighbouring countries like Hungary and Romania see no valid reason why they should become involved in the Ukrainian mess, were it not for American pressure. In hindsight, the inclusion of Slav nations of Europe in NATO might have been another major error, on top of the admission of Baltic states.

I cannot call myself a Trump supporter, but I have to admit that his loss of the 2020 elections proved to be an unmitigated disaster, both for the United States and the world as a whole. As a businessman, Donald Trump at least understood the fact that the US cannot go about invading countries indefinitely or sponsoring pointless resistance movements, like in Syria or now Ukraine, and he was willing to adjust American foreign policy accordingly. With Donald Trump in charge of the White House, the Russian intervention in Ukraine would possibly have never happened.

The sooner American elites and foreign policy circles can acknowledge the huge risks involved in keeping up their claim to unipolarity, the better it would be for the world as a whole. I say this because by keeping up the fight to remain sole hegemon, the US runs the risk of not only losing its current (undeserved) status, but also of destroying large areas of the world in the process.

Rolling Back NATO

 Rolling back NATO is not proof of weakness, but of the existence of superior American statecraft skills, as well as a willingness to avoid nuclear catastrophe.

In the fall of 2008 I happened to be in Toulouse studying in the city's library. It is there that I saw a poster announcing a public conference organised at Sciences po on the 11th of November, featuring the Estonian ambassador to Paris. I decided to attend, only to realise that for the ambassador, the conference was an exercise in Russia-bashing, intended to elicit French sympathy for the poor Estonian people having to put up with life next door to their vastly bigger neighbour.

The Science po conference came only a few short months after the Georgian war from August 2008, during which another minuscule European country hoping for NATO accession dared to attack the Russian army stationed in Abkhazia and Ossetia. I also knew that the Estonians had previously stoked up inter-ethnic tensions in their country, including by provoking the Russian minority in Tallinn with the removal of the monument erected in honor of the Soviet soldiers from the centre of the city to its outskirts.

At the end of the conference I was allowed to speak to the audience, reminding them that the 11th of November was Armistice Day, marking the end of the First World War, which resulted in more than 50 million victims. I also reminded the Estonian ambassador that WWI was sparked by an incident provoked by Serbs, who had wanted to expand into Bosnia-Herzegovina but couldn't because it was administered at the time by the Austro-Hungarian empire. The cataclysmic event which followed, I said on that occasion, made large countries in Europe, like France, become extra cautious about being dragged into conflicts with other large nations by insignificant countries, like Serbia, Georgia or Estonia. Naturally, as an historian I knew that behind the bellicose stance of such stamp-size nations are some circles of freemasonry who use them as triggers for starting wars with enemies whose countries they intend to destroy or take over. In our nuclear age, however, this practice does not justify repeating the errors of the past, allowing major European nations to be tricked into yet another major conflict with Russia.

When it comes to Russia, what American policymakers fail to realise is that this country is currently engaged in an existential fight for survival as a state, with the US and its NATO allies. This fight is not about the preservation of its status as global hegemon, as is the case of the United States, or about any desire of Russia's to acquire such a status. No, this is a fight that Russians cannot afford to lose and will not lose. 

Furthermore, for American policymakers it would be an illusion to think that Russia, in order to defend itself, will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, or in any other European country for that matter. It follows that the most effective strategy to eliminate the threat posed by NATO on Russia's doorstep would be to deal a mortal blow to the country chiefly responsible for the problem, which is the United States. The 2 "generals" who always protected the US against invasion, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, make America more vulnerable to a nuclear attack than any other continent except Australia or South America, which do not possess nuclear capabilities and are not a target of Russia's ire. The experts who think this is a repeat of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis are, therefore, dead wrong. A comprehensive nuclear attack against the US is very much on the table if it continues to be on a collision course with Russia over NATO expansion. 

The current predicament in US-Russia relations, however, should not have to reach that point. American policymakers have the option of announcing a rollback of NATO from the Baltic states, preventing the Russians from starting another military conflict with the same objective. By extending an olive branch to Russia in this way, the US would prove that it does have the statecraft skills needed to correct its mega errors in the field of geopolitics, made by State Secretaries from the euphoric nineties, and that it finally understands the importance of Russia's security. (Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers, Spykman elaborated his Rimland theory before the end of the Second World War and the existence of nuclear bombs or guided missiles. )

From time immemorial, small nations like the Baltic states have had to learn to live in peace with their much larger neighbours, regardless of whether they succeeded in preserving their independence or not. In the case of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, including them into NATO was a catastrophic mistake which should be corrected as soon as possible. After all, a status of neutrality similar to that of Finland or Sweden and membership of the EU are sufficient to guarantee their safety and prosperity.

By now everyone agrees that: first, NATO is overextended, and second, that there is no place for the US and its NATO allies in Russia's backyard. By formally acknowledging this through the announcement of a NATO rollback, US policymakers would show the world that their country still has what it takes to act as a responsible and peace-loving nation. This shouldn't be regarded as a sign of weakness on America's part, but rather as proof that the US has the ability to manage international crises, like the one we are going through right now. This is so because not assisting Ukraine militarily in this conflict is just a small step in the right direction, but not nearly enough to prevent a future nuclear conflict with Russia.

The US is about to Cancel Itself

 After initiating bombing campaigns over the last 23 years in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and fomenting "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe, American politicians have lost the moral authority necessary to lecture the Kremlin about its military actions in Ukraine.

The average European or American TV viewer can naturally be excused for believing that Russia, and especially its president Vladimir Putin, bears the blame for what is happening in Ukraine. After all, citizens of Western countries are being bombarded on a daily basis with sickening images of buildings in ruins, crying women with babies, with the occasional cat or dog being thrown into the mix for good measure. To top it all off, Putin's latest actions in Ukraine are being presented as the acts of a madman, a bloodthirsty dictator, whose expected downfall justifies the adoption by Western countries of the harshest possible sanctions ever devised. The objective is clear: Russian people have to suffer for supporting their president, until they take to the streets to bring down those responsible.

The sorry spectacle of Russian bombs falling over Ukrainian cities and of millions of refugees heading towards the borders cannot obscure the fact that the heaviest responsibility for these horrors belongs to the neoconservative-dominated US foreign policy establishment. As known, they are now the main backers of the Zelensky regime, the ones writing his speeches and the ones opening doors for him in the West.

The harshness of the sanctions against Russia is the result of applying woke ideology to the field of international relations. Indeed, these sanctions are not meant to lead the Ukrainian conflict to a resolution, or the Russians to the negotiating table, far from it. The true goal of American neoconservatives is, astoundingly enough, to "cancel" Russia both as a country and as a menace to America's status as sole hegemon left after the demise of the bipolar world.

Taken together, the US' actions directed over the past few years against Russia and especially against China can only be explained by the desire of American foreign policy circles to keep America on top, at the expense of all other military and economic powers, established or emerging ones. To this end, crippling entire economies and vast geographical areas of the world and reigniting the spectre of war in Europe seem a small price to pay for the initiators of American unipolarity in world affairs.

There is currently talk in Washington about hegemonic transition and the Thucydides trap which, if not carefully managed, could finally erupt into an all-out war between the US with its NATO allies, on the one hand, and Russia & China on the other. This time around, however, the leadership of the would-be hegemon supposed to replace the US, namely China, is a hell of a lot smarter than American policymakers ever were. To be sure, China deserves a much more important role in world affairs than is currently the case. To their credit, however, the Chinese do not want to replace the US as the world's sole hegemon, but instead prefer to see the world run in multipolar fashion, by a kind of revamped G7 in which nobody is at the head of the table, but where all major participants share into decisionmaking concerning global affairs. 

In the first decade of this century, the US hoped that they could enlist Russia to organise a Washington-operated balance of power aimed at containing China's rise. American policymakers sensed, rather correctly, that no policy of containment towards China can be successful without having Russia on board. This was the main reason why , between 2009 and 2012, the Obama administration tried to mend fences with Moscow during the so-called reset. Fortunately, the Russians felt the danger of being used for the wrong ends and refused the US's overtures, siding over the last decade with China instead. As Russia refused to come on board, America's architects of unilateralism in international affairs, the neocons, have supported the 2014 upheavals in Ukraine and practically took over the political management of that country in order to turn it against Russia. What we are now witnessing is Russia's military reaction to the threat on its western borders. Regardless of how strident the Biden administration is now in framing the resulting competition as a fight between democracies and autocracies, from an IR point of view the strategy is shallow and is backfiring.

Coming back to the sanctions regime and NATO's posturing in the media, these have only proved to the Western public and to the new allies in Eastern Europe how ineffective the US has become in managing global affairs, especially in Europe. As much as American neocons would like to treat Putin like Saddam and Russia like Iraq and sanction them out of existence, the truth of the matter is that the use of the financial A-bomb (cutting out Russia from SWIFT) and of the financial H-bomb (freezing its central bank reserves in Western banks) is hugely counterproductive and can be fully met by the Russians -if pushed too far- with real atomic and hydrogen bombs. 

Now everyone would agree that this is not the type of global leadership with which the world could put up for long. America's extreme tactics call into question the current arrangements in global affairs: the fact that most commercial transactions are conducted in US dollars, and that all countries have to obey US diktats or else. In fact, all the US has succeeded in doing by interfering in Ukrainian internal affairs since 2014, and by supporting the war against Russia, has been to speed up its own demise as the sole world hegemon. By "cancelling" Russia, the US has initiated the process of cancelling itself. 

Zelensky's Manipulation of Western History

"Politicians and analysts in the United States and Europe not only celebrated the [2014 Maidan] uprising as a triumph of democracy, but denied reports of Maidan’s ultranationalism, smearing those who warned about the dark side of the uprising as Moscow puppets and useful idiots". Lev Golinkin, The Nation

In yet another shameless performance, Zelensky has appealed to the emotions of the US Congress members and portrayed his country as the innocent victim of Russian aggression. He has likened this to the surprise attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in 1941. How ridiculous can this man get ?

The Russian army had been waiting for almost a year at Ukraine's borders for Zelensky's government and its American backers to do the right thing by Russia's security concerns. When the advance notice was ignored, Russia saw no other option but to intervene militarily in Ukraine. 

But wait, there's more. In Europe, Zelensky has portrayed himself as a new Churchill, fighting for the freedom & democracy of the entire world. For reasons beyond my comprehension, major European newspapers like Le Figaro have picked up the Zelensky-Churchill comparison and ran with it. Never mind the fact that the real Churchill was a true blue representative of the British establishment and an Englishman to boot, whereas Zelensky is an Ukrainian of Jewish descent.

The democracy he claims he is defending is no democracy at all, but a successful de facto national-legionary state very similar to the one inaugurated in Romania by the Iron Guard in September 1940, even inspired directly by it, albeit with some democratic trappings about it, to fool foreign observers. The only major difference is that instead of killing Jews, the Ukrainian neo-nazi thugs go after the Russophones from the Donbas.

When I first heard Vladimir Putin claim that Ukraine had been taken over by neo-nazis, I thought he might be exaggerating and that he was probably looking for a pretext for an intervention. Alas, how wrong I was. After researching the issue, I have realised that he told the truth and that Ukraine is being run by gangs of thugs, like the Klitschko brothers in Kiev, by the Azov battalion - whose supporters infiltrated all the major state institutions like the police, army and public administration - and by a constellation of many other neo-nazi armed gangs gravitating around Azov as their benevolent sun. The Ukrainian parliament is there only to deceive foreigners about the true nature of the Ukrainian state. To make an analogy, this cosy relationship between Azov-type gangs and the Ukrainian police or the army would be akin to US southern states' police forces enlisting KKK members to help maintain law and order.

Sure, there are many neo-nazi organisations around Europe and the USA, but as a British reporter has discovered, Azov is the only neo-nazi group that has been gifted by a state (Ukraine) with plenty of weapons, armoured cars and tanks and been given a licence to kill as many Donbas Russians as possible. Its financial backer is - bizarrely enough for such a rabid anti-semitic organisation - Ihor Kolomoisky, a Jewish oligarh who also enabled Zelensky to become president of Ukraine. Now this is a true description of the Ukrainian "democracy" which Zelensky claims he is defending. This, to be sure, is an insult to the memory of Britons who gave their lives during the Second World War in order to protect true freedom and true democracy, that still existed in the world at that time. The fact that the spirit of freedom and democracy has vanished, with only a skewed version of it being currently promoted around the world by the United States is a different matter altogether. 

"Both Ukrainian human rights activists and leaders of rival extreme Right-wing groups have complained to me, in interviews, about the unfair advantage Avakov’s patronage gave the Azov movement in establishing its dominant role in Ukraine’s Rightwing sphere — including official functions as election observers and state-sanctioned auxiliary police. Ukraine is not a Nazi state, but the Ukrainian state’s support — for whatever reasons, valid or otherwise — of neo-Nazi or Nazi-aligned groups makes the country an outlier in Europe. The continent has many extreme Right-wing groups, but only in Ukraine do they possess their own tank and artillery units, with the state’s support." (Aris Roussinos)

Hang on, there's still more to the "democratic Ukraine" story. The emulation of Romanian history goes further than the national-legionary state model. Within their constitution, the Ukrainians have decided to adopt, like in Romania, the "national unitary" state model of French inspiration. This has prevented the implementation of the Minsk 2 accords, which would have solved the Donbas' problems for good. Zelensky, as the head of such a state is now asking the Congress of the United States - the prototype of federal states around the world - to prop up and help defend this inappropriate formula of state organisation in Ukraine.

Finally, Zelensky has played on the American obsession of retaining its status of global hegemon (he wants Joe Biden to be the"leader of the world", in his speech), which was simply a never-to-be-repeated accident which came about in the aftermath of the collapse of the bipolar world. Zelensky knows that the same forces that were behind Maidan are hard at work in Washington trying to prop up the US' flawed claim to global leadership, and he is trying to manipulate American politicians and public opinion to his advantage. 

Needless to say, American politicians should be wary of Zelensky's pleas and warped arguments and take America's national interest into consideration when dealing with the neoconservatives' push to maintain the status quo in world affairs. One thing is very clear, however. What neither Russia nor Europe need at their respective doorsteps is a nightmarish national-legionary state that would have made Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the Romanian Iron Guard captain, proud. (Incidentally, Zelea Codreanu was of Ukrainian-German ethnic origin, his father's real name was Zelinski)

This is the main reason why, instead of blaming and piling sanctions on Russia, Americans should assist it in cleaning up the mess they helped create in Ukraine.

All Hegemons Have an Expiry Date

 A day after Jake Sullivan's 7-hour meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, questions remain about the true objectives of the American "negotiators".

I, for one, am inclined to believe that Sullivan was instructed to use a carrot-and-stick approach with China. Over the past few years, China-bashing by various White House administrations has not yielded any practical results, so the overused threat of sanctions if China does not align itself with the US against Russia would not have worked by itself. 

It is entirely conceivable, therefore, that during the 7 hours of talks Sullivan might have alluded to "giving" China chunks of Russian territory in case wider conflict erupted and the Chinese came on board. Similar techniques were used by Henry Kissinger in the 70s to divide the former communist bloc and they worked. 

This time, however, China is a much more prosperous country and, as such, cannot embark on an anti-Russian course without risking serious consequences, nor does it want to. The United States cannot conceivably hope to stop China helping Russia, if needed, as both countries share the same continent and the same strategic interests, while being the targets of various sanctions and hostile propaganda from Washington.

The role of "masters of the universe" played by the United States over the last 20 years is fast becoming untenable , as the demise of the US as the sole hegemon is approaching. Sadly, instead of opting for a more rational organisation of decisionmaking in world affairs, officials of the current American administration prefer to evade reality and cling to the forlorn hope of keeping the world still, with them on top.

Now more than ever, the American foreign policy establishment needs to display clear thinking and set for the United States achievable objectives instead of ideological ones. This means that its top diplomats should stop pushing liberal democracy worldwide, as this lacks exportable qualities and is intensely disliked by at least two thirds of the world, from Russia and Asian countries, to the Islamic world and Africa. By the same token, the Americans should stop lecturing and moralising foreign leaders and countries and instead sit down with them at the negotiating table, fully taking into consideration their grievances and security concerns. 

Unfortunately, by walking the current path, the White House team - from the President down to Victoria Nuland at the State Department, who were the original architects of the events in Ukraine's Maidan - run the huge risk of getting their country into nuclear conflict with Russia.

Why Ukrainians Should Stop Listening to Zelensky

March 10, 2022. I have recently researched Dmytro Kuleba's entry on Wikipedia and the news is disastrous. Ukraine's foreign minister suffers of Asperger's syndrome, like Greta Thunberg. (The Wikipedia  entry about his syndrome was deleted on March 12th). Him holding such a high position in Kiev in these calamitous times for Europe calls into question the sanity of the entire Ukrainian leadership and that of their enablers in the Anglo-Saxon world.

March 9, 2022. If Ukrainians were in any doubt whether the armed resistance Zelensky and his team have organised against the Russian army was not about their own country or their people, now they have the proof. Their president's speech to the British lawmakers and Boris Johnson's televised reply show that Ukraine and its people have been used from the outset by the United States and Great Britain to provoke regime change in Moscow.

By asking for more weapons and tighter sanctions, Zelensky is fulfilling this particular agenda, which has nothing to do with the deaths and the suffering of ordinary Ukrainians. He has even had the cynicism to end his speech with a Shakespearean quote - "to be or not to be"- proving to the world that once an actor always an actor.

If Zelensky, Kuleba and the rest of the team had indeed been animated by strong patriotic feelings, the Russian intervention would never have taken place. Solutions to prevent it existed of course, but the two were not prepared to heed any sensible advice whatsoever. 

Thus, one month before the Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, I wrote the following letter to Dmytro Kuleba, which naturally remained without a reply:

"January 23, 2022

His Excellency Kuleba Dmytro

Ukrainian Minister for Foreign Affairs

Kiev

Ukraine

zsmfa@mfa.gov.ua

Your Excellency,

I would like to approach your office, during these tense times for your country as well as for the whole of Eastern Europe, with a proposal that might defuse the threat of military action in Ukraine.

When it comes to achieving lasting peace in Ukraine, the key is not in Washington, Moscow or Brussels, but in Kiev. This is because you and your colleagues are the only ones capable of deciding to adopt a full neutrality status for Ukraine, forgoing any military alliances with the East or with the West which may jeopardise the territorial integrity of your country.

As an Australian historian born in Romania, I am of course familiar with the issues affecting peace and security in Eastern Europe. On the 18th of December last year I wrote a post about Ukraine on my geopolitical blog, recommending a status of neutrality for your country. My professional opinion has recently been echoed by the renowned International Relations professor Stephen M. Walt, who is also of the opinion that your best hope for peace in Ukraine is to become a neutral country, although he seems to believe that Ukrainian politicians lack the will to select this option (please see links below). 

I would further like to suggest to you the adoption of a federal formula for Ukraine, which would be the most useful in putting to rest the current ethnic tensions you are experiencing. 

I take this opportunity to mention to you that the more than 500,000 citizens of Romanian heritage living in Ukraine are very unhappy with the nationalist policies adopted lately by Kiev and would welcome a larger degree of autonomy in education and public administration within their native lands.

If successful in these two endeavours, Ukraine would be able to join a group of prosperous and influential nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia or Germany and Belgium in Europe.

Needless to mention, the alternatives are dire and involve more or less permanent military conflict with Russia, which would only make Ukraine a permanent customer of the military-industrial complex of the United States.

[...]

Yours faithfully

"

A once prestigious Western institution like the Westminster Parliament yesterday has become the scene of a grotesque Zelensky & Johnson political show aimed not as much at British voters, but at the Ukrainian public, whose support for their president is understandably faltering. To be sure, more weapons and sanctions would not lead, as Boris Johnson told the British parliament, to regime change in Moscow, but to even more deaths and destruction in Ukraine. 

Naturally, it is up to Ukrainians themselves to decide if they want to continue to die for a country and a leadership that has practically been at war since the 2014 violent change in government. Before doing so, however, they should consider the opinions of colonel Douglas Macgregor from the United States, who knows best who bears the main responsibility for the carnage now taking place in Ukraine:

"  Meanwhile, the Washington elite remains committed to any course of action that promises to prolong the conflict and kill more Ukrainians. No one inside the Biden Administration or in the Senate seems remotely interested in crafting a ceasefire, let alone developing the basis for a potential solution that will save lives and halt the destruction.

Europeans must realize that Washington and London, along with their obedient media, will forgive any sin—deception, graft, murder—if it is committed against Moscow. Before it accepts any change in the regional status quo, Washington is prepared to sow chaos in Eastern Europe. This is hardly in Europe’s interest."

Multilateralism and the Remaking of G7

Following the oil shock of 1973, the G7 was created in 1975 to coordinate the West's macroeconomic and fiscal policies so as to avoid a global recession. Today the world economy faces an even bigger predicament, which could be addressed by restructuring the membership of the G7 and ending the war in Ukraine.

It is obvious by now that the biggest casualty of the conflict in Ukraine - second only to the human casualties -  is the world economy. Oil and gas prices have spiked in all major economies to unacceptable levels and could go even higher, jeopardising a timid economic recovery which followed the shock of the pandemic, and adding a few percentage points to existing inflationary pressures. The culprits here are both the US' unilateralism in foreign affairs and the current design of the global economic system's governance, which is also US-centric.

After the demise of the bipolar world, it should have been obvious to Western policymakers that the next stage in the governance of international affairs can only be multilateralism. Unfortunately, American neocons decided to launch their unipolar project which led to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and ultimately to Maidan and the current conflict in Ukraine. This situation, if left as is, won't lead to a second Cold War as some would hope, but to all-out nuclear war.

I believe that world leaders should start addressing the problems created by American unilateralism and unipolarity by first rebuilding existing collaborative institutions, such as the G7. In truth, the global economy can no longer be governed successfully by a G7 which has an almost exclusively Western membership, while leaving huge emerging economies like China to be part of a second-class economic grouping known as the BRICS.

In order to reflect today's economic realities, the G7 has to shed its purely Western image and drastically restructure its membership. This means including in this group systemically essential countries like China, Russia and Brazil as the next engines of economic growth, which would replace countries such as Great Britain, Italy or Canada. Granted, Russia cannot be called these days an economic power, but its huge oil, gas and mineral wealth makes it essential as a supplier of energy to all the other major economies in the group, as current events have amply demonstrated.  

To bring the world back from the brink of a prolonged economic recession and a potential nuclear war, American and EU leaders should also stop ignoring Russia's security concerns and the material support for the Maccabeean state Zelensky has been trying to build in Ukraine since 2019. In its 30 years of existence, Ukraine has proven to the world that it is unable to govern itself independently and build a state that can contribute to the peace and stability of Eastern Europe. Even more worrying is the fact that under Zelensky's leadership the Ukrainian constitution has redefined Ukraine as an anti-Russian state, a fact that Russia cannot overlook or tolerate on its Western border.

For me as a trained historian from the region, Russian tutelage of Ukraine looks more productive than any weird geopolitical designs recommended by a distant superpower like the US. I have always been convinced that "cancelling" Russia, instead of involving it in the macroeconomic management of the global economy, is not only self-defeating but also plain stupid. 

The fact that the Zelensky administration has to be replaced as soon as possible should be a given not only for Moscow, but also for the leaders of those Western powers still interested in peace and stability in Europe, a stop to war casualties and a steady supply of energy to the EU.

On the G8 and NATO

 In the spring of 1997 during my lobbying activity to foreign chancelleries, I was very preoccupied with the need to create an appropriate institutional framework for the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world. American neoconservatives and NATO had other plans, however. If they wanted Russia as an enemy, well ... now they got it.

In the spring of 1997, I came up with the idea of ​​recommending to the Clinton administration the inclusion of Russia in the G7, a proposal that was accepted by the Americans. Thus, in June 1997 the G7 became G8 with Russia as a member.

My geopolitical suggestion was based on solid economic reasons, but also on the fact that Russia felt immense frustration with its international status after the disappearance of the bipolar world. Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in a series of international conferences organized by EuroForum or IBC (two London companies) in Bucharest, Prague and London on the transition of Eastern European states to a market economy and the necessary reforms. On those occasions, I was able to see the dissatisfaction of the Russians with the way this process was evolving in their country, but also with the uncertain status of the new Russia internationally.

Unfortunately  at the time , the West had not yet framed a coherent post-1989 foreign policy, so as to give the Russians the feeling that they had not become a third-hand power, as many US or EU political actors would have liked. The fact that my proposal was accepted proves that at that time the Clinton administration had not yet come to be dominated by neoconservatives, the artisans behind American unipolarity, that was inaugurated by President GW Bush after the 2001 terrorist attack.

In the end, Russia was arbitrarily reduced - at the instigation of the neoconservatives - to the status of a big state with an oil pump ( Nina Khrushcheva ) and was removed from the G8 in 2014, after it annexed the Crimean peninsula.

In the summer of 1997, I also sent a lobby letter to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in support of Romania's NATO membership. My motivation was by no means anti-Russian. At that time, the country was in a dire economic situation, failing to attract - like the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland - foreign investors to take over large bankrupt companies in Romania. It was only years later that I realised that the military goal of the alliance had really become that of encircling Russia, and it never crossed my mind in 1997 that NATO would accept the Baltic states in 2004 as members of the alliance. ..

Certainly at that time, I did not grasp that I was trying to gain Romania's accession to a politico-military alliance, NATO, which would become responsible two decades later for the outbreak of hostilities heralding World War III, because this is the phase which we are all in after the events of 2014 in Ukraine. Mea maxima culpa !

A Post about Ukraine from the 2nd of March, 2014

I wrote the following post on the 2nd of March 2014 on my Facebook wall. This document correctly assesses the impact of Maidan on Russia from a geopolitical angle and accurately anticipates today's events.

 As none of the architects of the 2014 Ukraine policy have been held responsible by the US Congress, the world is now closer to nuclear war than it has ever been.

Today one thing is clear: sanctioning Russia for Western policy failures is morally wrong and it is only adding insult to injury. The events now unfolding in Ukraine are the harbingers of NATO's  future demise and probably that of the EU itself.

 2 March, 2014. HOW TO EXPLAIN THE RUSSIAN REACTION. Russia, the largest state on the planet, a state with huge resources, a strong army and sophisticated nuclear weapons, feels attacked today in its security zone, Ukraine.

The British lent a helping hand in the 19th century to craft and guarantee the security of the Belgian state: that meant when Belgium and the Netherlands   - that is, the British isles'  protection zone on the European mainland - were attacked , Britain automatically went to war against the aggressor. The island of Hawaii has the same geo-strategic situation for the United States: when it was attacked by the Japanese, the United States automatically went to war.

What the US and the EU have planned for Ukraine with the help of dissatisfied citizens in the west of that country is a huge error of the North Atlantic Alliance. All the Western officials in charge of managing the situation there for the last few years or months deserve to lose the positions they currently hold. The hard times we are going through now are ultimately the responsibility of these officials, who have obviously made the wrong career choice for themselves.

The phony outrage displayed now by some Euro-Atlantic political leaders, the threats, cannot hide the fact that Russia's security needs, its economic and geo-strategic interests, have been trampled on by all those who have made possible,  logistically and tactically, the mob insurrection that led to the overthrow of the Kyiv regime.

Russia could not tolerate the way the events in Maidan unfolded, nor the belligerence and threats of politicians - perceived in Moscow, not without reason, as representatives of a puppet regime - installed by Western countries to deal a deadly blow to the security interests of Russia in its own backyard.

 Through the policies they adopted, the new leaders which were appointed in the wake of Maidan  have shown that they do not understand the enormity of the mistakes they made, from the repeal of the law on nationalities, to the threat of suspension of the Russian naval base agreement in Crimea, or their anti-Russian rhetoric. Consequently, the possibility of a major military conflict in the area can no longer be ruled out, but it is even very likely.

(Author: Florian Pantazi 

Posted on Facebook on the 2nd of March, 2014

Translated from Romanian by the author)