The Russian invasion of Ukraine recalled the tragedies that unfolded on the old continent during the First and Second World Wars, and the unintended and natural comparison to the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent Nazi campaigns hostile to all the European countries which plunged the continent, rather the world, into a cycle of murder, terror, famine, displacement and genocide of millions of civilians…

The comparison between the two events is completely legitimate and understandable, the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The overlap of geostrategic interests with a multiplicity of conflicts and crises all over the world may ignite a global crisis that goes beyond the borders of the European continent, but rather a global war that has begun economically and may turn into military confrontations between major powers that possess nuclear weapons…

The same scenario repeats itself, and like the trigger for World War II, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was preceded by precursor events and signals that were misunderstood as a weakness of the United States, who “will accept” the imposition by Russia of reality outside international law…

A sequence of events that at the time seemed fleeting and sometimes unrelated, but which turns out to be a prelude to geopolitical and economic misreading by the Russian side that led to the outcome of the sum of all fears: agitate the nuclear spectrum and allude to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

– 11.2020 US Elections.

– 07.2021 The American-Russian summit in Geneva.

– 08.2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

– 11.2021 Strategic Alliance and Australian Submarine Contract.

– 2021-2022 German legislative elections, French Presidency of the European Union.

– 2.2022 Sino-Russian summit.

The state of division that resulted from the US presidential elections during a global pandemic has been misread as an internal weakness of the White House new administration and therefore de facto of the US decision at the international level, followed by the American desire to ease tensions with Russia during the American-Russian summit in Geneva, Switzerland, a victory for Russia and a return to bipolar hegemony over the world, this triumph and this euphoria led the Russians to serious misjudgments, hard believers, that the United States of America will focus totally on China, and will have as medium and long term objective its economic competitor on the world markets, most of the countries of the world has become organically linked to the Chinese economy.

What has wrongly confirmed these Russian forecasts are Chinese concerns and lack of understanding of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, followed by the Deal of the Century and the Tripartite Agreement between the United States of America – Great Britain – Australia on assistance and supply of the latest American technology for nuclear-powered submarines.

China sees in this decision a clear indication of the implementation of a plan to counter its expansion and possibly besiege it and reduce it to its regional space, the Chinese reaction did not linger with a firm response translated into the strengthening of the Beijing-Moscow axis, which reached its economic peak in 2014 with the signing of a 30-year oil and natural gas supply contract worth 400 billion US dollars, the coincidence or the choice of the right timetable after the invasion of Crimea and its annexation to the Russian Federation.

The same scenario is repeated in February 2021 before the invasion of Ukraine and this time if with a contract worth 118 billion US dollars during the Sino-Russian summit on the sidelines of the opening of the Olympic Games in winter of Beijing and its final joint declaration, from which we retain the phrase: “there is no forbidden ground for our cooperation…”.

All these events are not isolated, the acceleration of socio-economic transformations and political transitions in several European countries, in particular the Berlin-Paris axis, which has undergone major changes likely to bring the EU into a new era, With regard to European economic power, the 2021 legislative elections have definitively turned the page on governance CDU-SPD coalition and its emblematic figure Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Germans have created a surprise with a tripartite alliance, the first of its kind in the history of modern Germany which brought together the parties of the center-left – the Greens – the liberals in a complex combination which took long weeks to lead to a compromise of governance hanging by a thread and which risks imploding at the first major crisis affecting the path of energy transition after the definitive abandonment of nuclear power, which made Germany totally dependent on Russian gas, the state of political turmoil in Germany coincides with the next French presidential elections to be held in early April 2022, the EU’s rotating president for a six-month term in early January from the same year.

France and its common European defense project, a dream it has always defended and which did not materialize in the absence of reluctance from certain European countries, with Brexit coming the time of the European common defense pact project, reinforcement from NATO.

A possible increase in the number of member countries of the EU, in particular material means and its common defense, would allow the United States to take more effective action to besiege China and dispel the fears of the countries of Southeast Asia on the growing influence of the latter and its plans for supremacy, in particular a possible annexation of Taiwan…
Russia has committed a cascade of errors of judgment and an erroneous appreciation of the political, economic, media and especially the intelligence services of the United States of America, its influence and the insight of its political leadership in the White House have made the difference…

The acceleration of the events the world is witnessing today is the prelude to radical transformations which presage a change in the mechanisms of common international action, which the United Nations built on the ruins of the League of Nations, will we perhaps witness the birth of one or more mechanisms for international action…

Sarhane Saadi
Founder and CEO
SATAS International for Strategic Studies