by Claudiu Secara

The biggest conundrum in describing the current conflict in Ukraine is how to reconcile the many arguments for the Ukraine war as a fake war (see The Fake War) with the arguments that the world is sliding into WWIII (World War III is Coming).

1. Neither of the principals, that is the US or Russia, is deploying its serious weapons, although some prototypes are being tested. As Putin said, “We haven’t even started yet.” But the same can be said about the US. None of the most advanced weapons has been used yet. Both sides are using obsolete, almost World War II vintage hardware, disposable overstocked weapons, although they may be surreptitiously testing partial subsystems of the new weapons.

2. The focus is on Ukraine as a very isolated battleground; there’s no palpable threat of escalation to make everyone fear an imminent worldwide conflagration, which is carefully and declaratively circumscribed. “Don’t worry, this is only about Ukraine,” and frankly, how many people are losing sleep over the Ukrainians and their backwater country? The Western European population has very little sense of Ukrainians as being in any way part of their common history, common heritage, historical shared belonging. Yes, the mass media campaign is relentless in whipping up pro-Ukrainian emotions, but the man on the street couldn’t care less. Ironically, even the East Europeans have little appetite for the boorish Ukrainians. The Poles mostly covet Lvov, the Hungarians salivate for Transcarpathia, the Romanians have claims on Bukovina, and even the Slovaks dream of Zakarpatska. They all would like to see a weaker, much diminished, and even humiliated Ukraine.

3. The sanctions that never bite are another sign of a fake war. How amateurish are the Western epigones in using sanctions against their Enemy Number One, sanctions that backfire on their own economies 100 percent while, as a matter of fact, strengthening Russia’s economy? Ms. Annalena is a jurist by trade, Joe Borrell is an aeronautical engineer, Macron is a banker’s accountant; none of them has any background or experience in international economics, history, diplomacy, military affairs, anything relevant to strategic planning and policy making.
None of them was educated as a statesman, laboring as an apprentice in the shadow of his/her elder mentor with years of experience. While the Klaus-Schwab-school of WEF agents helped their careers and skipped years spent as students of world affairs (or at least of the last 100 years of history), obviously they are still simple sycophants with no standing or understanding of their own roles.

4. Such nincompoops are given the command of the Western Crusaders. In a real war, there would be charismatic leaders to electrify their nations and inspire a surge of warmongering, as in the lead-up to World War I, or even like the Franco-German war of 1870, when the young were exalted and drawn into the frenzy of the romantic killing fields, in the muddy trenches of Europe. Not even Zelensky’s theatrical talents can convince the Ukrainian population that this is a war of survival for the Ukrainian nation. Instead, millions upon millions of young people (5, 8 million ?) have abandoned their own country under “existential threat” rather than feeling motivated to volunteer for the front.

5. This also ties in with a similar sanitized version of the war on Russia’s side. No massive war preparations, not much hardship inflicted upon the population. Life goes on in Russia just as before, in fact a bit better. Imports are defying the sanctions and the economy is growing. How does that compare with the utter suffering the nation went through in any of the previous wars? No mass mobilization with a great campaign and festive parades. Rather, the new combatants are contract workers, this time army workers with good pay and all the perks. Mr. Putin himself seems more concerned with visiting schools and sharing past stories with school children rather than making fiery speeches to the mobilized at the front. Let’s have a good education and even a better culture and good manners.

6. There are other signs that are incompatible with preparation for an existential war by the West. The obsessive focus on climate “change.” “Climate change?” Is is warming or cooling?! Hmm, both. — So, the West is de-industrializing and is destroying the very basis for the West’s war economy, is diminishing the access to the sources of all the inputs for Western industrial powerhouses, and is focusing on polar bears while a slow-growing army of unemployed is getting more and more desperate and restless. Desperate and restless? Like the working classes in the 1930s? Is there any parallel between the 1930s and the 2020s?

7. We come now to the topic of the Covid pandemic that wasn’t. That was the wake up call.

8. We learned that there is a concern about overpopulation, about the limits of our natural resources, about the need to reduce the global population. Come China and India on the development train, joined by a number of other Asians — the Indonesians alone are a lot; then the explosive population in Africa, Latin America and the Arab countries — how is that going to work? Is there enough oil in the ground to last forever and provide a high living standard for 8 billion, 9 billion, 10 billion+ humans? — That’s the question that the leaders at the Davos conclaves are discussing.

9. They don’t lose sleep over Ukraine, but they do lose sleep over the West’s diminishing leverage over the direction of the world and the inescapable rush to hit the wall of resource depletion and resource allocation. This is nothing new in the history of mankind. Every technological or scientific advance has caused a population explosion. Especially in resource-poor but innovative Western Europe.

10. There is an irony in that the more a nation is struggling to survive, the more innovative it is in finding ways to overcome the penury of resources. From inventing and developing intensive agriculture to inventing and developing a whole new art of industry and technology, pioneering sectors of human activity never seen before, the West has led the way for the rest of the world.

11. Unfortunately, every new leap ahead brings short-term relief, as it is followed by a new population explosion which soon nullifies the success. Sometimes a new solution is found, but sometimes a population adjustment is needed on an emergency basis. In the best cases this adjustment was made through the old-fashioned colonization of new settlements. From the time of the Greek colonies to the waves of emigration to the newly discovered continents of Americas and Australia, that was a time-honored relief valve for overpopulation.

12. And then, there is war.

13. On some level, the causes of war are described as the fight over resources, whether land or raw materials. From the Roman Empire’s population explosion and the ensuing need for more grain (and silver and gold), to the Mongol or Gothic migration, they all were preceded by a population explosion. World War I involved the emerging powers, Germany and Russia, challenging England and at the same time clashing with each other over Eastern Europe and especially over control of the Bosporus Strait — But on a different level, it was the increased population that required more resources and more living space for all of them. In World War II, this was even more explicitly formulated by Germany as the need for lebensraum. Without more people to occupy the new lands, what use would that space have been?

14. The West’s population is stable right now – actually, it is declining quite dramatically. It is the developing world that has a population problem and it is invading the West, by peaceful means for now. That is a fact. And here we have the seeds of the next war. If the West cannot control this secular, long-term population explosion in the developing countries, and that includes China, India and all the rest, potentially Russia too, the West, the laboratory of modern societies, will become a wasteland, like Rome spoiled by the invaders from outside.

15. What’s significant is that the world, but mostly the West, has transitioned from exuberant development to a mood of pessimism about the future and a feeling of foreboding and expectations of some major events and upheavals and decisions to take place.

16. The West is faced with extinction; unless, on Western terms, it takes extreme action to stop and reverse this multilevel trend. And it is clearly actively preparing to do just that. On the same multiple level basis. Using bio warfare, or direct slaughter. It takes time to line up all the chips. — That’s why the West called it Agenda 2030, that’s the deadline.

Note for Those Who Need Help: The West is cornered and is desperate. Desperate and cornered animals act aggressively and attack the more powerful. The West is in a dire predicament and it will go to the brink. There is no evidence of self restrain or retraction. It will escalate and trigger World War III. All the signs converge to the same conclusion: The Long War is underway and it will change everything we know. — The West cannot win, but neither can the developing world continue its expansion.

That’s the conundrum.

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Claudiu Secara is the author of The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism (1998) and Time & Ego. Judeo-Christian Egotheism and the English Industrial Revolution (1997)