by Andrey Sushentsov, program director at the Valdai Club.

The desire of the US to dominate and its refusal to see other countries as equals, willing and able to assume equal responsibility for peace and stability, is the short answer to the question of why Moscow-Washington relations cannot get out of the current state of crisis. This attitude also leads the US to the same difficulties in its relations with China, India and even some of its own allies, such as Turkey.

The Russian and Chinese position is buttressed by the principle that peace is the result of compromise between the major centers of power, and that without their mutual agreement – without equality, mutual respect, a willingness to recognize each other’s interests, and adherence to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs – a stable order is impossible. The US believes, however, that peace is a deterministic given, and that no special effort is needed to maintain it. This leads to paradoxical solutions: the more weapons, the more peace. The West is not yet ready to become just one of the Atlanteans holding up the sky. It still believes it should be in charge.

Are changes in relations between Moscow and Washington possible with a change of administration in the United States? I expect that this will not have a significant impact on the American line towards Russia. It is useful to look at American politics as an independent factor in our planning – we need to assume we cannot rely on the US elites. Washington will in most cases act with hostility towards Russia, in some cases opportunistically, engaging Moscow at time when it suits its own interests.

There is still a paradigm gap between Russians and Americans in their understanding of the world in the 21st century. US experts believe that Russia is part of the West and will inevitably end up in the Western camp at the end of this crisis, with China as its opponent. This set of paradoxical ideas has been present in the American narrative since the early 1990s.

The Americans believe that ultimately Russia has no alternative, and will therefore accept any offer from Washington. With the dollar sure to remain as the dominant currency for the medium term, the US will be an important country. And much depends on its turbulent domestic political life.

When it comes to Ukraine, the Americans think in investment banking terms and say straight out that Ukraine is a fairly cheap instrument that serves two purposes: to weaken Russia and to stifle any voices in Europe calling for strategic autonomy from the US.

Over the past two years, Washington has found this method of mobilisation quite cheap. Indeed, Russia-EU relations have been disrupted, the main gas pipeline linking the Russian and Western European energy systems has been destroyed, Eastern Europe has been militarised, the US military-industrial complex has been strengthened, and economic activity has flowed from Europe to the US. The American economy has gained from this crisis, while the Western European economy has suffered badly.

What are the US objectives in the Ukraine crisis? It wants a weakened Russia, which has lost control of key advantages in the Eurasian space, such as in transport, economics, production and energy. The US wants to knock Russia out of the top five world powers and make it strategically secondary.

However, the US is beginning to realize that Ukraine as an instrument of deterrence against Moscow is no longer a cheap resource. Kiev’s own military, material and human resources are close to exhaustion, and maintaining the viability of the Ukrainian state is becoming increasingly expensive for the US and the EU.

The US has been looking at Russia as a declining strategic player for some time. They were waiting for the moment when the country would leave the top-five leading countries in order to deal with China. Why did the US abandon negotiations with Moscow at the end of 2021, push Ukraine towards a military solution to the crisis, and then forbid it to negotiate with Russia? They believed that a quick victory over Russia was achievable, that the 52 countries the US had gathered in a coalition around Ukraine – their economies, resources, military arsenals, intelligence, satellite constellations, arms supplies, political intelligence and other support – would be enough to defeat our country. The West had not properly assessed Russia’s potential and that of their own coalition, and the short-term goals they set themselves have proved unattainable. They believe that a country whose economy apparently accounts for 3% of the world’s nominal GDP cannot fight the entire grand coalition on its own. But when Western countries have 65-80% of their GDP in the service sector, rather than in heavy industry and weapons-related areas, a situation arises in which Russia alone produces more artillery shells than all the Western states. This is a paradox that the US has not taken into account.

The US-Russian standoff should be seen as a long-term confrontation. It will continue even after Washington realizes that Ukraine has lost its importance as a tool. As a result, the US will shift the center of anti-Russian activity to another country that, like Ukraine, is willing to sacrifice itself and be at the forefront of the fight against Moscow. The US will not cease to be a strategic rival, and therefore we cannot afford to ignore it in our planning. We must regard the Americans as a constant threat, and prepare for a long confrontation.

This article was first published by Valdai Discussion Club, translated and edited by the RT team.

By Sergey Markov

More trouble ahead. Dagestan. Radical Islamism is again raising its head in Russia.

I just returned from the Caucasus. And they told me there that radical Islamists are now holding demonstrations that should show their power.

In the evening, at about 7 p.m., a group of about 5 women in thick hijabs and a couple of people in niqabs come out onto the main street. They walk along the entire street, and on the sidelines they are accompanied by 5 – 10 young bearded men. And this is going on in many cities. This is how the Islamists show that they have an informal “night power” and that everyone should be afraid of them. And they are afraid.

By Yelena Panina and Oleg Pavlov

This article was first published in Russian on Tsargrad.tv

For more than two years, the special military operation has continued in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, this war against Russia was provoked by the “collective West” and globalist circles standing behind it, and is being waged by them through their proxy forces.

The leaders of Western countries and their top ‘think-tanks’ (FA, CSIS) have recently stepped up the rhetoric regarding our country and are obviously set on the military defeat of Russia. NATO participation in combat operations is not only coming into the open but the military escalation is being ramped up by leaps and bounds, i.e. supplies of ever more lethal types of weapons to Ukraine are gaining scale, the US and other countries of the West have decided to shift military activities deeper into the territory of Russia, and active preparations are underway for sending a contingent from NATO and its member states to Ukraine.

Russia has no other alternatives under the circumstances but to either win or die. This is our Patria o Muerte.

The comprehension of what victory is to us should underlie the recognition of this fundamental truth. Making no claims to present a complete clear image of the future victory, we shall try to formulate those major goals without attainment of which the victory is impossible.

First of all, let us ask ourselves how inevitable a special military operation (SMO) was and whether it was possible to somehow come to an agreement with the West.

The scale of the military force deployed against Russia, coordination of actions of almost all countries of the Western bloc, and their political declarations and demarches according to pre-written patterns leave no doubt that an anti-Russia operation had been prepared for many years. By all appearances, it has been financed and administered by Western countries, and primarily the United States, since 2012. In fact, everything that is going on in Ukraine today is the hot phase of the war unleashed by the West against us as far back as 1946 (after Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech). In its first stage, the task was set to destroy the USSR and at the second – to assimilate the Russian Federation and definitively solve the ‘Russian question’.

In practice, immediately after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR, the West, taking it as its absolute victory, got down to the implementation of the second stage and embarked on the exploration of the geopolitical space left by the Soviet Union, seeing it as a resource to expand and enhance its own hegemony that it had already gained at that time. The goal was to bring about such a model of unipolar globalization that would secure the latter as a form of the domination of the West for many decades, if not centuries ahead.

Despite verbal promises not to expand the NATO bloc to the territories of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact given to Mikhail Gorbachev, the United States used NATO as an instrument of expansion to bring the situation to admitting the Baltic States, and later Sweden and traditionally neutral Finland into the bloc. And before that, NATO began to woo Ukraine and Georgia. At the same time, NATO is far from being a harmless organization, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky recently called it. Only think about the large-scale bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 using depleted uranium ammunition, the 20-year war in Afghanistan under the auspices of NATO, the Iraq war of 2003–2011, which was fought even without a UN mandate on the basis of falsification – the “Powell test tube” – the war in Libya in 2011 or the reprisal against its leadership and the actual destruction of the country. In just 30 years, NATO conducted 23 military operations against other countries with over one million civilians becoming victims, while the toll of ethnic cleansing or environmental and humanitarian disasters after invasions by NATO troops is impossible to calculate. White phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster bombs against civilians, tortures, photo sessions with the bodies of the dead – all these crimes are on NATO’s conscience.

After signing the treaty that gives the full souvereignty back to Germany the politicians pose for a family picture in Moscow, 12 September 1990. © Global Look Press / Roland Holschneider / dpa

In 2004, when Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined the alliance, this monster moved nearer to the borders of the Russian Federation. Could Russia indifferently watch NATO missiles in close proximity, aiming at St. Petersburg, Moscow and our other cities? Most certainly not!

Nevertheless, we still hoped to bring some sense into the presumptuous Western elites. Then followed Putin’s Munich speech. But the United States ignored these signals and, through its own military support, provoked a full-scale invasion of Georgian troops into South Ossetia. One of the goals was to create conditions for Georgia to join NATO. Even Russia’s tough response did not stop the West. Washington organized a coup in Kiev in 2014 and started preparing for Ukraine’s accession to NATO. They perfectly realized the consequences and deliberately went for this aggravation.

All these events also cannot be considered outside the context of the US activities on the complete abolition of the international security system and arms control treaties. Over the past three decades, through the efforts of Washington and other Western countries, the entire supporting frame of this structure was destroyed almost to the ground. International legal nuclear deterrence mechanisms in essence ceased to exist.

A united, nationally strong, sovereign Russia with its special civilizational code did not fit at all into the globalist plans of the United States and it openly moved to implement the Brzezinski formula: “A new world order under the US hegemony is being created against Russia, at the expense of Russia and on the ruins of Russia.” Since the West failed to swallow Russia and finally turn it into its spiritual and resource colony – although it would seem that this was at arm’s length, and Putin set a course for its revival – the Anglo-Saxons decided to implement the old plan. It has existed since the Russian Empire emerged on the world stage as a global power at the beginning of the 18th century. The idea is to dismember and destroy the country, as far as it obviously interferes with hegemonic plans.

That is why this war was inevitable, and it was not us who started it. Another question is whether it was possible to start the SMO, since it was inevitable, in some other way, or to wait as in 1941 for a direct attack from Ukraine against us in order to have an indisputable right to self-defence? The counter question would be: “Are you really sure that if we continued to wait for the end of the development of Ukraine by NATO and its attack on us from territories that are thousands of kilometres closer to Moscow than the USSR border before the start of Hitler’s aggression, then we would be able to withstand this blow with modern missile technologies when the flight time from Kharkov to Moscow would be four to five minutes for hypersonic missiles?”

More than two years of the special military operation have convinced us that Russia’s battle for its security and sovereignty will be long and dramatic. All this time, the stated goals of the SMO have remained the same, i.e. to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, protect the citizens of Donbass and ensure the security of the Russian Federation.

However, life and the course of combat operations made their own adjustments to the implementation of these goals. By April 2024, Russia took control over parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye Oblasts, which, along with the Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts, were included in Russia in accordance with its Constitution, and the creation of a safe zone near Belgorod began. As for the achievement of other goals, the parameters of the final settlement that would ultimately ensure the security of the Russian state for the coming decades have not yet been formulated and made public, as well as the way by which this and other goals of the SMO can be accomplished.

Ukrainian soldiers, military in uniform, combat gear, rifles, weapons, on the occasion of celebrations on March 24th, 2023 in Kiev. © Global Look Press / Presidential Office of Ukraine

Some time ago, despite the official belligerent rhetoric, voices started to be heard in the West of those who called for a truce to be declared in Ukraine as soon as possible.

On June 15–16 this year, a ‘peace conference’ took place in Switzerland, where it was proposed to take the ‘Zelensky formula’ as the basis for a peaceful settlement, providing for the return of Ukraine to the 1991 borders. Since Russia had refused to take part in it under any circumstances, and the leading countries of the Global South did not participate in this farce, they tried to reduce the formula to three items. But it does not change the essence. The main idea is to present Russia as a country that does not wish to accept peace talks and then to put forward an ultimatum allegedly on behalf of the ‘international community’.

We also hear soft options: to recognize de facto Russian control over the territories liberated during the SMO and accept the rest of Ukraine into NATO.

It is also clear that the West is actively managing the conflict on the territory of Ukraine. It does not give Kiev the necessary weapons and ammunition and at the same time puts increasing pressure on Russia through strengthening primary and secondary sanctions. Then, by contrast, it ‘throws wood’ onto the fire, as the US Congress did by allocating more than $61 billion to Ukraine.

What is behind all these manipulations, including ‘peace initiatives’? The goal of the West was and is unchanged – the strategic defeat of Russia, final resolution of the ‘Russian question’, and termination of the statehood of the Russian Federation in a much harsher way than it was with the USSR.

Since the ‘Zelensky formula’ is absolutely unacceptable to Russia, they decided to boil the frog slowly: first, to force the parties to agree to an unsatisfactory truce or some kind of a peace, and thereby consolidate preconditions for a new conflict. Here comes all the stuffing about the truce, where the preservation by Russia of the already acquired territories is used as a carrot.

It is easy to predict the way the events will develop in this case. The truce, even without access to the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts, means that Russia will be cut off from the rest of Europe for a long time, for many decades, by the ‘Pilsudski barrier’; the zone of control of the buffer lands by the Western bloc will stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Russia will lose Kaliningrad, and the Baltic will finally take shape as a ‘NATO lake’. Russia will completely lose control over the Western Black Sea region that has existed historically for centuries (since 1711), Moldova will be absorbed by NATO member Romania, and the Transnistrian region by Ukrainian authorities.

At the same time, the Anglo-Saxons, who have conceptual power in the Western world, build on the views of such geo-politicians of the early twentieth century as Sir Halford Mackinder. According to him, the “pivot area, or heartland of Eurasia – much of Russia and Central Asia – is the key to the global balance of power. The state that gains control over this territory will rule the world.”

To master the ‘heartland’ it is necessary to destroy Russia. That is why after the ‘peace treaty’ imposed on it, ‘plan B’ will come into effect, according to which the West will continue to isolate Russia as if “at the will of the international community” and strangle it with increasingly harsh economic sanctions according to the Iranian model. The ‘Anaconda ring’ around our country will begin to shrink even more intensely due to the dragging of limitrophes into its camp. Primarily, Armenia and Kazakhstan, and then other, still Russia-friendly countries. Sabotage will intensify and shatter internal unity, taking advantage of the undermining of interethnic relations. The aim of these medium-term measures is clear, i.e. in 3-5 years (as luck would have it), using ‘salami-slicing tactics’ – numerous small but painful blows – to prepare a lightning disarming military strike against a country weakened by sanctions. It will possibly include the use of nuclear weapons, using both Ukraine’s membership in NATO by that time and the proximity to our borders of new alliance bases, which will be located in the south (Romania) and in the north (Sweden, Norway and Finland). The signs of this have already emerged from the calls of a number of politicians in Eastern European countries. Primarily, from the statements of Poland’s authorities on the placement of nuclear weapons on the territory of their country. Another “intelligence indicator” is a strike on the Russian early warning system, which will provoke Moscow to use tactical nuclear weapons, thus enabling the West to implement the option of a disarming strike.

If you look from a historical depth at the methods that are now being used by the ‘collective West’ and the Anglo-Saxons leading them, then it is quite obvious that London and Washington, with outwardly different tactics, use familiar and historically proven techniques based on the classic thalassocracy principle of ‘divide and rule’. The first one is a method that has been tested more than once, i.e. blockade and massive sanctions. This is exactly the way the United States acted against Iraq in two or three steps. First, in 1991, Baghdad was weakened by military means through Operation Desert Storm, and later by crushing 13-year sanctions, only to be finally finished off afterwards by a lightning military strike.

The second method is the use of a proxy to inflict unacceptable damage and to radically weaken the enemy. This was the way the Ottoman Empire was destroyed. At that time, in 1916, the role of Ukraine was played by the Arabs, who were armed by the Anglo-Saxons, exactly as today, and their military commanders (in that epoch it was, in particular, Thomas Edward Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia) achieved military successes.

Now Russia, since it is a powerful country with nuclear weapons, is being subjected to an unprecedented and multi-aspect hybrid technology of struggle in all areas, where the methods used against the Ottoman Empire and Iraq in different historical periods are being complemented by the ‘Anaconda Strategy’ – surrounding us with unfriendly regimes in parallel preparation for the ‘big war’. This will inevitably be followed by a new, much more destructive and bloody war, but directly with the entire NATO bloc, forcing Russia to surrender and be destroyed.

Vladimir Zelensky (M), President of Ukraine, is greeted by Ursula von der Leyen (R), President of the European Commission, and other attendees at the start of a meeting on January 16 2024, Davos, Switzerland. © Global Look Press / Hannes P Albert / dpa

These will be the consequences of failing to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation. It goes without saying that any country that finds itself in the situation Russia is in now should do everything to avoid dead isolation and set up coalitions that would allow the legal, psychological, informational and other walls erected by the enemy to be destroyed. This problem is being solved so far with greater or lesser success. They failed to drive Moscow into international isolation and they recognize it in Washington. The Global South did not fall for Western hysterics about ‘Russian aggression in Ukraine’ and the massive Israeli bombing of residential areas in the Gaza Strip, which led to colossal casualties, finally buried the West’s ability to manipulate with theses about ‘Moscow’s cruelty’. These arguments lost their validity for the Arab-Islamic world and Africa.

It has also been a surprise for the organizers of Russia’s isolation that Moscow manages, although not immediately and not without effort, to start building ad-hoc coalitions, albeit of different sizes and weights. Beside Great China, which is becoming a strategic rear area for Moscow, it manages to get on well with restive Türkiye, millennia-old Iran, and principled North Korea, i.e. with those who were called the other day (except for Ankara) rogue states as well as with SCO and BRICS countries.

However, this struggle as a whole makes sense only if the main military tasks are fulfilled during the SMO. That is why it is absolutely important to identify them. We can already feel a breeze of slight disappointment today among our well-wishers in the Islamic world and in Africa because the front line has remained practically the same for over two years. It influences many processes, including the efficiency and scale of BRICS expansion, as well as the readiness of our friends to resist secondary sanctions.

First, it is necessary to determine the boundaries of our territorial advance in the south and north, which will protect our country for a long time from any threats from the West. It is obvious that in the south there are no other alternatives but access to Odessa and further to connect with the Transnistrian region, where 220,000 of our compatriots live, right up to the mouth of the Danube and full control of it. But in this case, the Pilsudski-drawn arc ‘from sea to sea’ will be broken and the prospect of restoring relations with Western Europe, primarily with Germany, within the next 10 to 15 years will remain (in fact, the Anglo-Saxons’ fear of an alliance between resource-rich Russia and high-tech Europe under the leadership of Germany was precisely the cause of many events).

The fate of the western lands of the former Ukrainian SSR, and the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian territories before World War II is not so clear. The fact is that the redistribution of territories between Ukraine and Russia is actually the review of the badly drawn administrative boundaries inside the USSR, which did not take into account (and it was not needed) language or ethnic factors. That is why their revision does not actually affect the fundamentals of the valid Helsinki Act of 1975 on the inviolability of European borders, while changing the borders of Western Ukraine in favor of third countries requires a global revision of the foundations of the European security system.

Second, regarding the demilitarization of Ukraine within the new borders (without the Donbass, Lugansk, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Nikolaev and Odessa Oblasts and without access to the Black Sea), it is doomed to become a state with a neutral status enshrined in the Constitution. The military industry should be completely abolished; the armed forces should perform only the functions of the police and dealing with emergency situations (natural and man-made disasters).

Third, as for denazification, after the trial of neo-Nazi criminals, Bandera ideology should be completely prohibited and all its followers should be strongly prosecuted. Bilingualism should be introduced in the country with equal use of Russian and Ukrainian languages.

Of course, the outcome of any conflict is a reflection of the balance of power at the time it ends or freezes. At this stage the analysis shows that any truce or ‘freeze’ in Ukraine would be extremely unstable and only benefit the ‘collective West’ without realizing the above components of the picture of victory. They will provide Europe and the United States with the possibility to carry out the rearmament of their armies, preserve the Ukrainian proto-Nazi regime and prepare for a new, large-scale NATO advance on Russia. No change of power in the White House or the hypothetical arrival of Donald Trump to power will alter this scenario.

© Global Look Press / Petrov Sergey / news.ru via globallookpress.com

Summarizing all of the above, we can draw only one conclusion: Russia has no other options but to achieve victory along the described contours. It may seem impossible now, but we don’t want to die, do we?! Therefore, the half-war must be ended. The slogan “Everything for the front! Everything for Victory!” should become the raison d’être of our entire policy, both foreign and domestic. The victory banner should rise in Kiev – the mother of Russian cities and the sacred center of the Russian world.

Without detailing every tectonic shift that Russia is destined to make, we would like to re-emphasize: there is no other historical choice.

via RT

By Igor Istomin, acting head of the Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO University.

The possibility of a trans-European war is closer today than at any time since the mid-20th century. Western analysts discuss various scenarios of a possible conflict, while officials openly speculate about its likelihood and even discuss specific time horizons.

In a recent speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the actions of Western governments had brought the world “to the point of no return.” At the same time, domestic debate in Russia is dominated by the belief that the US and its allies recognize the catastrophic risks of a direct military confrontation with Moscow and will seek to avoid it for reasons of self-preservation.

Such judgments are based on the assumption that the West, despite its aggressiveness and arrogance, is guided in its policies by a rational balance of benefits and costs based on the existing balance of power. Past experience, however, does not convince us that the US-led bloc is capable of pursuing a balanced, calculated course.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the West repeatedly became involved in military adventures from which it then painfully sought a way out. One need only recall the examples of the interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Of course, in all these cases, the risks were significantly lower than in the case of a hypothetical war with Russia. But the stakes were also significantly lower.

A recent admission by US President Joe Biden is telling: “If we ever let Ukraine fail, mark my words, you will see Poland go, and you will see all these countries along Russia’s actual border negotiate on their own.” Thus, the good old ‘domino theory’ is back in the minds of Western strategists.

The divided consciousness of the West

The growing bitterness of Western countries towards Russia is consistent with the way in which they look at armed conflicts in terms of the logic of preventive war. Rather than linking interstate clashes to aggressive opportunism, this model sees escalation as a product of fears about the future. The belief that their situation will deteriorate over time leads states to take increasingly adventurous steps, up to and including the use of force.

Throughout history, major wars have usually been the product of this preemptive logic – the desire to strike before an expected weakening. For example, the collapse of the continental blockade system led Napoleon to attack Russia. German fears about the prospects for modernization of the Russian army were the trigger for the First World War.

A similar dynamic can be seen today in the policy of the West, which has invested considerable resources in confronting Russia.

The fact that Moscow doesn’t countenance losing in any way, but, on the contrary, is gradually moving towards achieving its goals, can only lead to frustration on the part of the US and its allies. This does not lead to reconciliation, but to the search for more effective means to hinder Russia.

Having failed in its plans to destroy the Russian economy with restrictive measures and to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow at the hands of Kiev, the West is moving ever closer to the brink of direct military confrontation. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly insensitive to the possible consequences of such a scenario. Like casino players, the US and its allies are raising the stakes with each successive bet.

The growing adventurism is clearly visible in the debate over the deployment of Western troops in Ukraine. Moreover, not only hysterical Western European leaders, but also seemingly more responsible American generals have begun to speak out on the issue. For example, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Brown, has concluded that the deployment of NATO troops to the country is inevitable.

The West’s willingness to take risks is reinforced by its contradictory, if not schizophrenic, view of Russia. Public figures never tire of claiming that Moscow’s potential was greatly overestimated in the past and has been further weakened by the Ukraine operation. At the same time, without being aware of the dissonance, they justify the build-up of their own armed forces on the grounds of an increased Russian threat. An Irish writer once labelled this sort of thinking as “Russophrenia.”

The inconsistency is also evident in the portrayal of Russia as an insatiable expansionist intent on invading its neighbours, combined with a belief in its reverence for Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which guarantees that NATO members will provide mutual assistance in the event of an attack on one of them.

The portrayal of Russia as a ‘paper tiger’ – an aggressive but weak actor – lays the groundwork for pre-emptive escalations to reverse the trends of confrontation unfavorable to the West. And they can be carried out not only in Ukraine.

The idea of restricting Moscow’s access to the Baltic Sea, which ignores the inevitable response to threats to Kaliningrad, is evidence of this, and is regularly introduced into Western discussions.

Quo Vadis?

So far, the idea of an armed attack on Russia has not been explicitly voiced by Western politicians. At present, they are talking about raising the stakes in the expectation that Moscow will not dare to respond. Moreover, the thesis that NATO and its member states do not want a direct military confrontation continues to be voiced. These assurances do not remove two kinds of danger.

First, the West can play with the reliability of nuclear deterrence and create such a provocation that Moscow will be forced to defend its vital interests with all available means. The aforementioned threats to close the Baltic Sea promise just such a flirtation.

Second, the established trend of increasing adventurism holds out the prospect of further policy shifts from the US and its allies. The logic of confrontation tends to raise the stakes, not least because of the accumulation of costs already incurred. As a result, the means available are beginning to dictate the objectives pursued.

Another factor increasing the risk of confrontation is the collective nature of the West. Domestic debates tend to emphasise the unequal nature of relations in NATO due to Washington’s clear dominance. Meanwhile, it is the vassal status of European states that increases their interest in escalation.

The prospect that Washington, preoccupied with competing with China, will lose interest in them and refocus on Asian affairs is a constant fear of its transatlantic allies. The embodiment of this dread is the figure of Donald Trump, but in European capitals there is a fear that this scenario will come to pass regardless of the personality of any particular leader.

US allies believe that time is working against them. Accordingly, the confrontation with Russia acquires an instrumental function, helping to justify keeping Washington’s attention on the European agenda. The debate in the US Congress over funding for Kiev in early 2024 has already become a wake-up call, demonstrating that the US is immersed in its own affairs.

Guided by the logic of anticipation, European NATO members may conclude that provoking a clash now, while the United States remains engaged in the conflict in Ukraine and containing Russia, is preferable to the prospect of bearing the burden of confronting Moscow alone in the future – a scenario they do not rule out.

Not surprisingly, the most irresponsible and radical proposals – such as sending troops to Ukraine or extending NATO guarantees to territory controlled by Kiev – come from Western European politicians. The internal dynamics within the West encourage competition for the status of the most intransigent fighter against Russia.

From plans to practice

In practice, NATO members are actively preparing for a military confrontation with Moscow. The bloc’s new force model, endorsed at the Madrid Summit in 2022, and the regional plans drawn up on its basis, envisage the deployment of a significant force of 300,000 troops within 30 days, in addition to those already stationed on Russia’s borders.

This is based on the active development and modernization of contingents from Central and Eastern European countries. Poland, which claims the same status as NATO’s main bastion that the Bundeswehr enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, is particularly noteworthy in this respect. The increase to 300,000 troops is intended to make its armed forces the bloc’s largest land army among European member states.

NATO members are openly practising combat scenarios in potential theatres in Eastern and Northern Europe. Much emphasis is being placed on learning lessons from the armed struggle in Ukraine. To this end, a special center is being set up in Bydgoszcz, Poland, to ensure a regular exchange of experience between Western and Ukrainian military personnel.

The weak link in the Western effort has long been the limited capabilities of its military industry. Nevertheless, NATO members are paying increasing attention to overcoming this problem. It would be foolhardy to expect that they will not be able to increase production over time, including by increasing Western European firms’ links with the US military-industrial complex.

Describing the interim results of Western efforts, experts at the influential Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies concluded in a recent report that NATO is ready for future wars. Such a resounding conclusion was accompanied by the clarification that the bloc still needs to work to prepare for a protracted confrontation that could lead to a clash with Russia.

Such contradictory expert conclusions are clearly dictated by political expediency – the desire to confirm the correctness of the chosen course of deterring Moscow, but at the same time the need to mobilize NATO member states to further increase efforts in the military sphere. They once again raise the stakes.

Finding the ‘golden mean’

In the case of the question posed in the title, analysis shows that the answer is likely to be positive. Russia faces the difficult task of containing escalation in a context of low receptivity to Western signals. Attempts to convey the seriousness of the situation are either dismissed out of hand or interpreted as manifestations of Russian aggressiveness.and NATO are drifting towards a major war

In the face of such indoctrination, there is a danger that we ourselves will slip into a similar exaggeration, trying to force the enemy to abandon its adventurous line with even riskier demonstrations of resolve. So far, the Russian leadership has managed to resist these temptations.

Undoubtedly, Western attempts to raise the stakes must be responded to. At the same time, it makes sense to focus the damage on the NATO member states themselves, not just their proxies (the focus should be on the notorious “decision centers”). Statements about the possible transfer of long-range weapons to US adversaries and the visit of Russian ships to Cuba are logical steps in this direction.

Perhaps the range of responses could also include the shooting down of drones carrying out reconnaissance for Ukraine over the Black Sea. This would also allow for a total ban on their flights in the adjacent waters. Russian deterrence could also be complemented by maneuvers in the Baltic, Mediterranean or North Atlantic with other states that are considered to be Western adversaries.

The expectations from use of deterrence should be weighed against historical experience, which shows that the response to such actions is more often to harden the adversary than to encourage them to make concessions. In particular, this calls into question the validity of sometimes heard suggestions of nuclear strikes for demonstration purposes. Such actions are more likely to have the opposite effect to that envisaged by their authors, i.e. to bring direct military confrontation with NATO closer rather than further away.

This article was first published by the Valdai Discussion Club, translated and edited by the RT team.