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ABSTRACT
At the heart of this conflict of Ukraine war is the American threat to break Russia into multiple states; alongside the Russian threat to create a new global trading currency with China as equal partners. These two contrary themes find themselves in mortal conflict in the land of Ukraine. The argument is that this bigger picture of this war explains why both sides are likely to fight to the end. Neither think that they can concede.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The concept of imperialism has been widely used over the last 100 years. I prefer the Indian scholar Jahati Ghosh’s use of the term. Ghosh’s view is that there is a world system which can be defined as imperialistic. It is dominated by a hegemonic power, today the USA. Imperialism in this definition is a world system where the resources of nature, water, coal, minerals, etc., and especially land are commodified, and owned by huge enterprises for purposes of profit talking instead of the well-being of the human population. The role of the hegemonic power with several satellites countries is to protect the huge enterprises.
2 Brzezinski was a Democrat, advisor to Jimmy Carter in 1988, he was the leader that entrapped the Soviets in Afghanistan by supporting the Mujahideen invasion with US weapons with the support of Pakistan Secret Service. Brzezinski’s influence on US foreign policy was immense; he advised Barack Obama and support Madeline Albright, Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken.
3 The notion of “states” as we use the term today has a relatively short history. Nation-states and the existence of capitalism go hand in hand. The ability to draw maps, and create borders which were defendable arrive with the technical and legal abilities of our contemporary age.
4 There is by now plenty of evidence which explains why Russia invaded, not least the public speeches made by Putin. Moscow was well aware of US intentions to break up Russia into many mini states.
5 It is worth a note that this article assumes that all the players have been operating in what their leaders assume are their best interests. Therefore, they are acting rationally within the terms of their overseas assumptions and policies. In this article this assumption especially applies to Russia.
6 There are now many articles which argue this case and many leading figures in the US Foreign Affairs establishment have made this very clear, for example, Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard; The Helsinki Commission discussed the decolonisation of Russia in June 2022, Michael Pompeo US Secretary State under Trump June 24, 2022. A major paper titled “Decolonizing Russia” was published by the Washington based Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. See https://www.csce.gov.
7 These speeches can easily be found on You Tube on the world wide web.
8 A small number of scholars from within the USA have been writing critically about the US dollar system of world trade, the world’s international currency. Michael Hudson is perhaps the earliest writer with his book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (Hudson Citation1972). Hudson has continually updated his theory ever since. I have used a recent article of his in preparing this article: “American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama” (Hudson Citation2022). There are now a number of authors following Hudson’s lead, including Nicolas Davies and Medea Benjamin’s “NATO and a War Foretold” (Davies and Benjamin Citation2022) and Eve Ottenberg’s “The West Can’t Stop Pillaging Other Countries’ Bank Accounts” (Ottenberg Citation2022). This section is based on the writings of these authors. The emphasis is my own. For background on the US dollar read Costigan, Cottle and Keys (Citation2017).
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Roger van Zwanenberg
Roger van Zwanenberg got his PhD in East African History from the Sussex University in 1969. He is the founder of the Zed Press in 1976 and the Pluto Journals in 2009, and Managing Director of the Pluto Press from 1986 to 2012. He is now Director of the Pluto Educational Trust. He is interested in global history. He wrote a book titled Wealth and Power: Transformation and Destruction, 1492 to 2020 which is posted on https://www.wealthandpower.org.