updated: April 21, 2022
Before writing this post, I have waited for more than a week to see how the piece of news I am about to share with you is reported in the mainstream Western media. But, surprise: it wasn't.
Zelensky's plans for Ukraine after the war are extremely significant for Russia and the EU alike, and as such they more than deserved to be brought to the attention of the Western public. After all, the EU and American citizens are regularly being called upon to finance Ukraine's war effort and to put up with the almost 5 million refugees in need of their help. As it happened, however, this piece of news got published only in the main Arab media, followed by the Jewish press from Israel or the US.
Here goes. Commenting on Ukraine's future after the war, Zelensky intimated that the country is going to be remade - from a securitary point of view - in Israel's image. As he puts it, Ukraine is not going to be liberal as the rest of Europe, nor an authoritarian country like Russia. Instead, the "New Israel", as Zelensky calls it, is going to be a state in which armed military personnel patrol the streets, the restaurants, the supermarkets, cinemas and so on, in a constant state of alert. Zelensky does not want to sacrifice territory for peace and, given his future plans for Ukraine, one can now understand why: the "New Israel" would need its own version of the Gaza strip - the Donbas region - and its own Palestinians (the Russophones) to provoke, boss around and eventually kill when they rebel.
At this point in time, Zelensky is not mentioning the possibility that his new state would acquire nuclear weapons, but the fact is implied in the comparison made with the state of Israel. What we are given to read between the lines is the fact that his new Ukrainian state will be at odds with both its eastern neighbour Russia and, ultimately, with the European Union, whose liberal values he says he has to reject. We can also safely assume that such a state will exponentially increase instability in Eastern Europe and beyond, and that it will be in a permanent state of war with one or more of its neighbours (especially with Russia), like Israel has been for most of its existence as a state. Apparently, American experts working for the Atlantic Council are even willing to offer a "road map" to make such a project come to fruition.
What is really hard to gauge at this time is how the Ukrainian elites react to such a mad project. However, taking into consideration the big number of ultra-nationalists and outright neo-Nazi organisations in the country, I am inclined to believe that the New Israel project could find favour with them, as long as the US - like in Israel's case - undertakes to finance Ukraine's ongoing military expenditures.
In case Zelensky succeeds in getting his project off the ground, Ukraine is not likely to end up like a Big Israel, however it may very well become an European version of Pakistan. Such an outcome would follow the law of unintended consequences and this does not bode well for Russia or for Ukraine's neighbours. In fact, in such a case, Moldova could easily become a version of Kashmir. Its possible invasion by Ukraine cannot be altogether ruled out, the presence of the Russian 14th army in Transnistria being an excellent justification for overrunning this militarily weak country. Like Pakistan, Ukraine would also stand a very good chance of becoming a permanent haven for extremist organisations worldwide, further contributing to destabilising EU member states. It follows that European countries trying to assist Ukraine in its war efforts have to date made all the wrong choices in this conflict. The only beneficiary of such a development would of course be the US, bent as it still is on global hegemony.
The "New Israel" project proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that all those European powers assisting the Kiev regime with money and weapons are therefore ignorant of the consequences, and that they are helping build a type of state in Ukraine that nobody in their right mind would be able to tolerate, least of all the Russians.
It is high time, therefore, to seriously think whether Europe and, indeed, the world can really sustain the existence of Ukraine as a political entity. In my opinion as an historian, I think that the Ukrainians have proven over the last 30 years that regardless of what other gifts they might be endowed with individually, collectively they cannot be entrusted to have and run their own state without posing huge risks to European and world peace. Accordingly, Western politicians should take a hard and serious look at the "New Israel" project, because with it Ukraine's nation-building process has come full circle and it is not at all what anyone expected.
