WAR
Boiling Point
As temperatures rise, conflict becomes inevitable
For the past month and a half I’ve been starting and scrapping posts, leaving them unfinished, as the situation in Ukraine, Gaza, the Red Sea, and Iran is escalating and even the next possible flashpoint area in the China Sea is simmering and threatening to erupt at any moment.
All I can do, all anyone who isn’t directly involved in policy and decision making can do, is watch in growing alarm as the global situation is increasingly spiralling out of control.
All these crises seem to be inevitably escalating as any solution appears impossible: in Ukraine, Russia is hell-bent on keeping its territorial gains, while Ukraine is adamant about liberating the occupied territory (approximately a quarter of the country, depending on the definition). The West has been backing Ukraine, if only by supplying it with armaments and cheering on its resistance, while also keeping it away from the negotiating table. NATO is holding Ukraine in an embrace, that is part headlock and part propping it up, but to an independent observer it looks more like it is using it as a human shield against Russian bullets.
Bullets that wouldn’t be flying if NATO hadn’t insisted on grabbing Ukraine in the first place.
Speaking of human shields, Netanyahu’s government, seems to have found a solution to the problem of Hamas using the civilian population as cover: it bombs everyone indiscriminately, essentially dubbing anything a military target, including hospitals, refugee camps and even schools. By that definition an operation that left 274 dead (nearly half of whom were women and children) to save the lives of four hostages could be considered “surgical”.
Iran, the largest Shia Muslim country in the world, is using the situation as a way to pursue its long-standing feud with Israel, even though the Palestinians are majority Sunni Muslim, while most Sunni neighbours of the country had until recently been trying to normalize their relations with Israel.
All the while China has not just reaffirmed its friendship with Russia, but included Taiwan together with Ukraine in the list of issues that concern the two countries. The implication is clear: both countries fully support each other in what they consider matters of the utmost importance in their respective geopolitical agendas. The multipolar world order has been officially announced. Tellingly, there is no official translation of the lengthy document in English.
Meanwhile, the statements coming from various European countries, most prominently Britain and France, paint a picture of Europe preparing for war. However, the unity of the West is questionable, in light of the EU election results that crowned the right as the dominant force in European politics, most importantly the big win of the far right National Rally in France and the snap elections that Macron has ordered as a result, as well as the upcoming U.S. elections which seem to be the most divisive in recent history.
The U.S. continues to pull NATO towards conflict with Russia, while at the same time trying to not cross any Russian red lines. To that effect it has granted permission to use long-range weapons in strikes inside Russia, but not too deep. Unfortunately, some of the first targets were radars that form the core of the Russian early warning system, something that one hopes was a stupid mistake on the part of Ukraine, rather than a deliberate move ordered by the U.S. We have to believe that because if we don’t, it means that the U.S. is testing the water for an attempted first nuclear strike.
That would be insane.
The fact remains that U.S. made weapons are now striking targets inside Russia, even ones with immense strategic value, not for the war in Ukraine, but for the survival of Russia itself.
Russia responded by sending warships to visit Cuba, in what is labelled a friendly routine visit, but one understands its significance: you choose to play in our own back yard, we can do the same.
It seems that many still have trouble accepting the obvious: as the U.S. considers the entire Western hemisphere to be its exclusive sphere of interest, going back to the 19th century, so does Russia consider the former Soviet states to be its own and after its protests were ignored for years, it drew a line on the sand for Georgia and Ukraine.
There is no question of morality involved in this. Just like almost any great power before them, Russia and the U.S. take sovereignty of other countries and international law seriously only when it suits their interests to do so, despite what they are saying.
This volatile situation is made even more uncertain due to the upcoming presidential elections in the U.S. The Biden administration is frantically scrambling to achieve some sort of permanent ceasefire in Gaza before November, while struggling to convince both the powerful Israeli lobby, the wealthy Arab Americans and the progressive wing of its own party that it’s not abandoning them. The PR gymnastics of the White House would be almost comical, if not for the millions of lives that depend on the developments in Gaza and the West Bank and the thousands that have already been lost, on both sides.
At the same time, Biden seems to be in no hurry to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine. U.S. and Ukraine signed a 10-year defense agreement during the G-7 summit in Italy in an attempt to demonstrate American commitment to the continued support of Ukraine’s defense. Zelenskyy, however, isn’t so confident and few could blame him. Ukraine wants the lost territory back. The U.S. is happy as long as Russia remains mired in Ukraine.
It’s no secret that the U.S. considers the outcome of the USSR’s 10-year war in Afghanistan to be a great success. Yet the country never recovered. Is that the future that it envisions for Ukraine?
Meanwhile, the first batch of Dutch F-16s is supposed to become available to Ukraine soon. It remains to be seen how much this will affect the situation in the air and, by extension, on the ground, in the midst of the Russian summer offensive.
In any case, if the far right comes to gradually dominate Western governments, and, most importantly, if Trump returns to the White House, support for the war will almost certainly wither. No 10-year defense agreement will help Ukraine then.
While temperatures are rising and conflicts are escalating, a link that is anything but random, it should become increasingly clear that we ought to be aiming to de-escalate conflict, wherever possible. And yet, somewhere in the background of all this bloodshed, another silent civil war is raging.
10 years ago, when all eyes were on the extremely complicated and destructive war in Syria, while the seeds for the current war in Ukraine were being planted and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were ongoing, a silent, also very complicated civil war was tearing South Sudan apart.
Sudan’s civil wars are “silent” for us in the West, as the war-torn country is neither close enough to the oil wells, nor populated by white Christians or their allies. Some experts cite the climate crisis as a major factor in Sudan’s woes, deadly droughts not at all unlike the one that ignited the farmer uprising in Syria.
How many more “Sudans” should we be expecting as the climate crisis starts hitting more areas of our planet harder so that water and food shortages become impossible to ignore? What will happen when the grass actually becomes greener on the other side?
And how will the powerful on the planet be able to handle the wave of conflicts that is almost certain to come when the current ones show no sign of abating? Sometimes it feels like no WW3 will ever be declared, but an endless litany of conflicts will pile up, spiralling out of control. The great powers will find it increasingly difficult to juggle all these wars and will gradually focus on those most important to their immediate survival. Eventually, each country will start fending for itself in a vain attempt to secure ever-dwindling resources. It wouldn’t be a world war, but a world at war.
Sadly, it’s not hard to imagine such a future. And as long as we keep turning our backs on diplomacy and reason, the nightmare of a boiling, disintegrating world will be getting ever closer by the day.
