Some expert analysts of international and geopolitical/Geo-strategic affairs have been waxing eloquent in journals like The Foreign Affairs, the Economist, WSJ, The Atlantic etc. about how the Ukraine war has serendipitously succeeded in uniting the NATO alliance which was until recently beginning to fray and dissipate in Europe .
No Western expert however cared to dwell on an equally significant success that is now unmistakable and ominously unifying Russia and China together in Asia as long term adversaries of the NATO.
Only yesterday , Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister in an interview to India Today spoke about the possibility of a strategic joint-venture (if not full-fledged partnership given India-China tensions) between Russia-China-India in Asia that could be aimed solely at resisting Western hegemonic ambitions in Asia . …
If that ever happens any time in the near future … it will herald the advent of a new and uncertain World Order that would pit the two hemispheres of the world against each other in a titanic struggle for world dominance —— I.e. Cold War 3 between the “Axis of Asia” Vs the “Axis of Atlantis” !
Like it or not, there’s going to be another “Brave New World” emerging from all this in the 21st century.
For the moment, in the Ukraine war, how do things stand? Will Putin halt his attacks once Donbas take-over is completed and use that to save his face?
That will really depend upon USA and NATO. Do they want to give Putin space to retreat and save face? I don’t think so . The West is only pouring more and more deadly arms and ammunition into Ukraine to support the Zelensky forces there to fight a trench battle to the very bitter end. Ongoing cease-fire negotiations between the warring parties are just a smoke-screen used by the Ukrainians to conceal protracted, “long-term” battle-plans being drawn up in concert with NATO . This fight, Biden, Stoltenberg and Boris Johnson have all said, is for the long haul. If the opportunity to fight the long-haul war is now missed by America, then NATO, goodbye, it will be finished. And the entire western world today knows that only too well and hence giving up beating the war drums that they are all now prepared to keep sounding will be heard well into the future.
I am not in the same league of CNN’s anchorman, Fareed Zakaria, whose weekly “My Take” on world affairs is lapped up by the cable-TV watching millions in the world to be virtually the last word on predicting the outcome of the Ukraine War. But a good friend of mine this morning did invite me to give my own take on what I think is going to happen in the Brave New World that I have said will soon be upon us . And so, in imitation of Fareed Zakaria, (and imitation is a form of complimenting, they say) this is how I gave to my friend my very own take on the matter :
IN the course of my own own 35+year career as a corporate finance professional in international companies abroad, I’ve travelled and been in both Ukraine and Sudan many times and have thought them both to be remarkable similar in terms of their geopolitical plight and condition. In understanding one I have found it easy to understand the other.
Let me confess that although I’m not an expert on the affairs of either country (as a Fareed Zakaria I presume might well be), I can modestly say that having had some close-quarter acquaintance with both countries and their peoples, I do have gained some personal, common insights into their circumstances. Based on those insights, here is my take :
1. Ukraine is going to become the Sudan of Europe just as Sudan might one day, most likely, will become the Afghanistan of Africa.
2. Both Sudan and Ukraine are only pawns in the game of superpower rivalry between US Vs China and U.S. Vs Russia .
3. Both Sudan and Ukraine are sitting on immense mineral wealth and other rare earth natural resources, not to mention agricultural wealth, which make them extremely eligible candidates attracting the covetous eyes and attention of superpower dogs of war .
4. Sudan’s coastline is a long one right in the middle of the Red Sea at the mouth of which is the one of the world’s most critical maritime “choke point”, the Suez Canal. Similarly, Ukraine’s coastline alongside the Black Sea is of strategic importance to whichever superpower controls the Eurasian maritime “choke-point” on the Bosporus, the gateway to both the Mediterranean Sea and the Azov Sea. No superpower of the world can ever give up its claim to these “choke-points” if it wants to be counted and respected geopolitically.
5. Both Sudan and Ukraine peoples are very productive and industrious albeit not so fully educated in the advanced sense.
6. Both Sudan and Ukraine are highly corrupt countries . Their politicians and governments are venal and ruthless . Their respective military forces are more or less thuggish in the sense that they are a law unto themselves.
7. Both Sudan and Ukraine are super-high Debt countries. Sudan has huge loan liabilities to settle with China . Ukraine has huge loan liability to settle towards the western EU multilateral financial institutions.
8. Both Sudan and Ukraine have inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflicts within their country that often threaten to tear their country apart .
9. Sudan is the prime battleground for South Sudanese Christian evangelism and Sudanese Jihadi Islamism.
10. Ukraine is prime battleground for neo-Nazi Roman Catholics fighting Russian Orthodox Church as well as the centre of conflict between Europhile Ukrainians of Germanic-Polish ethnicity and Russian speaking Slavic stock in western and eastern Ukraine respectively.
11. Sudan will sooner or later in this century descend into conventional war with its southern neighbour Ethiopia over Nile River water-sharing . (The West and Russia-China will keep goading this conflict in the years to come). And as for Ukraine, it will sooner or later in this century descend into civil war between the Ukrainians and Russian-speaking Donbassians . The civil war will continue over several decades — just like Shias and Sunnis all across the Middle East continue their sporadic but chronic civil war.
In view of the above 11 scenarios I have painted, I say this as have said it before a 100 times, that this is exactly the kind of precarious and fraught situation which the 3 superpowers of the world today also actually want to be prevailing in both Ukraine and Sudan. It is only such cold warlike situation and rivalry that can and will keep the gigantic wheels of the “military-industrial complex” in the respective countries whirring away profitably in non-stop 3 working shifts in the weapons manufactories ! Also, it is the only way which will keep the global Energy marketplace humming too with hyper-activity and sloshing about on top of huge waves of Petro-currency .
The long and short of the story is this: War has got to be made globally permanent .. for only then can Peace also be made to prevail locally, and episodically at least, all across the world .
Sudarshan Madabushi