Ukraine became the new Vietnam

Published on 05/15/2022 04:00

Ukraine’s war for Vladimir Putin’s Russia is what Vietnam represented to the United States. It is a proxy war, in which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States and Britain, uses its latest hybrid warfare against invading Russian forces. If there is any doubt about this, information has been leaked:

Initially, the Times revealed that “the United States provided intelligence on Russian units that enabled the Ukrainians to identify and kill several Russian generals who died in the Ukraine war, according to senior US officials.” In the second, following an NBC News report, the New York Times reported that the United States “provided intelligence that helped Ukrainian forces locate and attack” the Moskva, the main battleship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, which was later wrecked.

At the time of the Cold War, the strategic military balance between the United States and the former Soviet Union allowed the right and left to compete for power in their countries, especially in Europe, in a democratic way, with the exception of spheres of influence. of the two forces. In the watercress region, as football commentator João Saldanha put it, the two powers entered alone: ​​it was the same in Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia, which were invaded by Warsaw Pact forces; and in Latin America, where direct interventions and US-backed military coups hampered the rise of the left during most of the Cold War. The “missile crisis” in Cuba, the exception, in 1962, almost led the world to a nuclear war.

The American defeat in Vietnam was the first in a chain of events in which the United States failed, such as the Iranian revolution and Afghanistan. The Soviet defeat in that country can be seen as a sign that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was closer than imagined, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of so-called “real socialism” gave the US hegemony in this new unipolar world, where globalization advanced with neoliberal policies and NATO demonstrated its power in intervening in Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. However, the emergence of China as an economic power in the past two decades has put this hegemony under control at the economic level.

Declare defeat

Russia has already been defeated, both morally and financially. By standing up to NATO, Putin paved the way for its expansion, including traditionally neutral countries like neighboring Finland and Sweden. The two countries participated in the NATO meeting held yesterday, in which Turkey withdrew its objections to the expansion of the organization. As a result, Russia has become very isolated in the Baltic Sea. The problem is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of non-humiliating options. The war may cost him power, and the great adventure of Biden and European leaders.

Biden adheres to a firm position, but he also does not know how to get out of the confrontation with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is working to make Ukraine a member of NATO or obtain a bilateral military agreement with the United States. Both believed that Ukraine could put the Russians on the run. Putin has failed to achieve his original goal: to seize control of Kyiv and change the Ukrainian regime. Now it is in danger of failing to take Ukraine’s former industrial center, the largely Russian-populated Donbass region, in a longer and more exhausting war.

The distance between Washington and Hanoi is 13,336 km. The distance between Kyiv and Moscow is only 775 km. Russian military doctrine is based on land depth and air warfare. The defeat in Ukraine cannot be compared to the defeat of the United States in Vietnam. Putin has two possibilities: throw in the towel and retreat in the face of increased resistance by the Ukrainian army, armed and advised by US intelligence services, or escalate conventional war and destroy Ukraine, with unpredictable consequences, as it may result. Direct intervention by NATO, as happened with Serbia. The difference is that Russia has a nuclear arsenal.

Globally, there are other aspects to consider: (1) The economic sanctions adopted against Russia are successfully using the entire institutional framework of the global economy. (2) The United Kingdom after Brexit, outside the European Union, in alliance with the United States, asserted its political and military hegemony in Europe; (3) Germany and France lost the leading role; (4) the war in Ukraine serves as a warning to China regarding Taiwan; (5) The US-UK-Australia military agreement and Australia’s bilateral agreements with Japan and India represent the expansion of NATO into the Indo-Pacific region, the main hub of China-dominated global trade.