In those ten days that shook the world, here stealing the title of John Reed’s classic about the Bolshevik revolutionary coup of 1917, many truths of instant consumption emerged under the caterpillars of Vladimir Putin’s tanks in Ukraine.
One of the most repeated is the supposed resurrection of NATO, the western military alliance created in 1949 to stop Stalin’s steamroller over European ruins. Presumed because, as a military alliance, NATO does not fulfill its founding objective. Appears weak and insecure.
The definition is of who has the bombs over his head, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He complained that the club had not agreed to create a no-fly zone over his country, which would put Westerners and Russians in each other’s crosshairs.
For the world, of course, it had better be this way: a NATO that was inclined to act militarily would guarantee us a Third World War, which gives Putin a rather frightening edge. And even that risk remains on the radar, depending on the interpretation the Russian makes of moves such as sending offensive weapons to Kiev or even tougher sanctions, as he has already fancied.
For now, the US, backed by the Allies, is betting on the First World War of Sanctions, with Russia’s unprecedented isolation from the international system. It’s a tug of war. So far, for all the predicted destruction of his economy and perhaps domestic support base, Putin has not blinked.
Even when he associated sanctions with acts of war, on Friday (4th) and Saturday (5th), he did so disdaining the effect until now. But if the vertical famine in society, from billionaire oligarchs to residents of Russian corners, tightens, as everything indicates it will, the idea of ​​a president cornered with nuclear weapons does not sound comfortable.
In any case, at this point, his campaign, problematic as it is for him for not breaking Kiev quickly, continues to escalate into violence.
The prospect of a longer conflict terrifies everyone. Ukrainians, for the evident suffering of their population. The Kremlin, for opening the door to military exhaustion that forces escalations of violence that may or may not match its objective — which is always assumed. Nobody knows how far Putin will go.
The West, because without Putin’s quick defeat the effects of sanctions chemotherapy will begin to affect the patient as a whole. There are signs of this here and there, and when the game actually comes to the hydrocarbons sectors, it will be easier to measure the damage outside Russia.
The hidden subject of this game, China aims at distancing. When it’s all over, if not with the apocalypse, you’ll be the main actor to watch. Putin’s ally, whom he embraced as a brother in a crusade against Western pressures, Xi Jinping has kept a low profile.
He did not condemn the war and criticize the sanctions, as would be obvious, but he has adopted a line of seeking balance. He looked sideways when he was accused of knowing about the conflict and asking for its adjournment due to the Beijing Winter Games, which ended four days before the first explosion.
Xi is taking note of the lessons he sees, and Washington decided to draw by bringing the Quad together this week. The alliance with Japan, India and Australia reminded the Chinese that the reaction to the invasion is a model to be followed in the case of Taiwan, the island that Beijing will try to reabsorb.
Added to the lack of subtlety is the fact that China would have much more to lose than Russia in such a clash. Whether any accommodation between the dictatorship and the US will emerge from this clash, which at the other end will see a world divided into blocs and the Russians in the lap of the Chinese for lack of choice, is something to be seen.
But the navigability conditions for Xi are reasonable while he waits for the booty, not least because the West will not come out of this crisis well, no matter how much it sells itself as united on TV and cell phone screens.
