Now there is a lot of talk about the fact that the West has changed its attitude towards Russia. It is said that these changes have been accumulating for a long time, starting from unsuccessful attempts to “reset” in 2009 (and this despite the war unleashed by Russia in Georgia in 2008!) and further, after 2014 and, especially, after February 24, 2022, these the changes have grown into an irreversible process of turning Russia into the main enemy of the collective West: “the Russian Federation poses the most serious and immediate threat to the security of the allies,” this is now officially written in the new NATO strategic concept, adopted at the summit of the leaders of the alliance member countries in Madrid on June 29, 2022 of the year.
Indeed, it would be foolish to deny that after everything the Putin regime has done, there has been no change in the perception of Russia in the West. A lot has happened, too. But there is one very important nuance in all these changes: approaches are changing, the system of relations is changing, and even the mechanisms of influence and pressure ... a lot of things are changing in the plane of “what to do and how to do it” with Russia and even specifically how to act against the Putin regime. But, I'm afraid, these changes are in no way connected with the achievement of that hierarchical goal, i.e. goals of the same level, if compared with the West, which Ukraine sees (or should see!) in front of it.
It would be more correct to say this: the strategic goals of Ukraine and the West lie in the same vector, but the goals themselves are NOT IDENTICAL, that is, they coincide, but not one hundred percent! What for Ukraine is in the intermediate target fragment, for the West - in the final one. In other words, as much as we would not like it, but at the moment there is a border beyond which the West will not go. It is precisely this, and not just the fear of a nuclear threat, that, together with the risks of a global war, is one big complex reason that explains the behavior of the West and, in particular, how dosed, with pharmaceutically adjusted slowness, the Allies supply the necessary and much-anticipated weapons to Ukraine.
The strategy of the West implies the pacification and isolation of Russia, and NOT DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE - and, first of all, pacification through isolation and weakening in anticipation of Russia being transformed or transformed by itself through some of its internal processes and a change in the ruling regime. The weakening provides a number of opportunities that allow the countries of the conditional West: a) to get rid of unnecessary competition at the "great chessboard"; b) benefit from access to resources, including routes and infrastructure under the direct or indirect control of the Kremlin; and c) to use Russia's geographic opportunities, human resource or other potential as a temporary ally when it is necessary to solve critical tasks in the military or economic sphere - if the capabilities and resources of the West itself prove to be insufficient.
It is this approach that is basic from the standpoint of the strategy of many forces that are now acting as our allies: that is, to significantly weaken the Russian Federation with the hands of Ukraine, observing its slow collapse from the outside and solving the related problems “as they become available”… In other words, they do not strategize on destruction level right now - because in their opinion, this is very risky and has significant uncertainties, namely: 1) how to prevent the spread of Russian weapons of mass destruction? .. 2) how will this affect the development of frozen conflicts in the regions of Central Asia, the Middle East and the Caucasus? .. 3) how to prevent a significant strengthening of China due to access to Russian natural resources, in particular, to energy sources, etc.
That is, in its strategic assessments - in the event of a complete and rapid collapse of modern Russia - the West inevitably faces a critical rise in China, both in connection with the growth of its economic potential, and in connection with the diversion of significant Western resources to overcome new and renewed crises that will inevitably shake up all the regions that were previously in the sphere of influence of Russia. Moreover, in case of unwillingness or impossibility to divert their own resources and focusing solely on solving the internal problems of their countries, the Western world will receive no less devastating consequences in the form of the final loss of leadership and, first of all, the United States, which, as a result, leads to even more and, apparently, China's irreversible dominance of the world, period.
Thus, the West puts a completely different content into its “anti-Russian” strategy, namely: a process of defragmentation extended over time, which has its roots in history - which can be clearly seen in the example of similar strategies that in the past stimulated centrifugal forces acting on the collapse of the Russian empire , and then the Soviet Union ... But, as can be judged from the same story, such a strategy looked more like an attempt to weaken the Hydra by chopping off its heads, instead of aiming to destroy the Hydra as such.
And now I don’t see why they should invest in this “here and now” or once and for all ... but I see a completely different roadmap, which at the level of working concepts now dominates among politicians and the expert community in the West (in particular, this approach is offered by the well-known expert Luttwak).
In fact, the partial weakening of the Russian imperial Hydra is a fake, implemented through half measures. Moreover, very dangerous half-measures from the point of view of Ukraine's strategic interests, the focus of which is reduced to SECURITY issues. Without the destruction of the imperial essence of Russia, Ukraine will always balance on the verge of two options - from bad to worse, namely: either it will have to bear exorbitant costs to maintain the necessary level of security, or it will slide into a state of permanent chaos and slow (and possibly an avalanche) disposal of its statehood.
Investors, if we are talking about serious, comprehensive and systemic programs for the development of the Ukrainian economy, do not invest in places where a rocket can fly or a bomb can fall every day. Moreover, it doesn’t matter where and who will launch such a launch: a crazy dictator sitting in a bunker or a monkey with a grenade, thus representing some kind of “new Russian project” connected with us by a common border. Foreign tourists do not go to such a country and international transit and transport and logistics routes are not laid through its territory. This country is bypassed. At best, there are "investors" who, under a paramilitary escort, take grain, timber or iron ore out of it ... But is this the kind of economic model we are striving for?
If there is no investment and free, safe movement of citizens and capital both within the country and across its borders, a full recovery of the economy will be impossible, and the lagging behind the West will be insurmountable. If, thanks to the super efforts of the Ukrainian state, business and our allies, it is still possible to attract investments, then the costs of maintaining the level of security necessary for this will turn out to be too high, and as a result, the obstacles to economic recovery and further development will also be insurmountable or extremely burdensome, which, again, increasing the burden on the budget and business, will inevitably lead to the flight of financial and human capital and, as a result, will create the effect of lagging behind in the quality of life not only from developed, but also from developing countries, where there are no such costs.
Thus, security is now a key issue for Ukraine! And strategic security is impossible in the conditions of preserving the imperial essence of Russia. Because, as we have seen from history more than once: after the seemingly complete collapse of 1917 and the no less complete collapse of 1991, Russia is reborn as a new, even more aggressive project.
Moreover, the most interesting thing is that such a revival would not have been possible without the participation of the West, which, partly due to the failure of the elites, partly out of necessity, relied on cooperation with the Russians as a lesser evil - because. SUCH was the adjustment of the strategy in those historical conditions. Which only confirms another historical example: the West's revision of its attitude towards the USSR in 1941. The same USSR that less than two years earlier was expelled from the League of Nations due to aggression against Finland, and besides, it stained itself with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.
But in less than two fucking years, the USSR turned from an enemy into a friend! I emphasize: it was still the same Stalinist “criminal regime”, which only 8 years before had staged a famine that claimed millions of lives, which the West also heartily and quite sincerely condemned.
And all why? Because after the attack of Germany on the USSR, and Japan on the USA in 1941, it became possible, and in fact - an emergency - to use Stalin to fight Hitler.
Such an “adjustment” of the strategy, caused by certain historical conditions - in fact, internal systemic problems and mistakes of the West itself - allows for some time with a slight movement of the hand to transfer conditional Russia (whatever it is called) from the status of a strategic enemy to the position of " temporary strategic ally. And just such a state is the most dangerous time for Ukraine, which can come at any moment!
Now, of course, the conditions are different, but the strategy of the West has not changed dramatically yet: even expert circles are not talking about the dismantling of the empire - that is, understand correctly, no one would be against it if it happened by itself, but not a single sign does not mean that this is already at the heart of the strategy (even at least at the same level as it was before 1917 and 1991). In any case, until it lies!
But there is also good news. It should not be assumed that the prevailing approach in the West, no matter where it comes from - from the expert community or from individual politicians - is, in its way, one and only. No, everything changes - this is not a dogma! .. and this is not the only concept (in fact, like the collective West, it is not a single whole, there are many different, even opposing interests), that is, no one has a monopoly on defining the concept of a strategy regarding war and peace and the future fate of the "last empire", and Ukraine now more than ever has the opportunity to influence changes in the strategy of the West, while achieving its own strategic goals.