Ukraine Crisis Shows Fault Lines of Multipolar World

The Russian incursion into Ukraine follows eight years of civil war within Ukraine, ignited by the regime change operation engineered by the United States of America during the Maidan events in 2014. For eight years, a brittle peace agreement, the Minsk agreement, directly negotiated by Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, papered over the civil war. Ukraine bristled, wriggled and tore at the loose restraints of the paper shackles of Minsk. Ceasefire agreements came and went. Shells rained on the people of the Donbass. Nearly 15 000 people died. Silence reigned in the Western media. “Liberal Democracies” do not attack their own.

Diplomacy and negotiation did not resolve the conflict, and so Russia demanded a more fundamental solution: it drafted treaties that offered peace and security for Europe that replaced the NATO model of treating Russia as the Cold War enemy, with a legally binding arrangement of indivisible security that respects Russia as a part of Europe. It is America that is not part of Europe. It is America that has invaded and militarised Europe, with 119 military bases and 34 000 troops in Germany alone, and a porcupine of missiles in Poland, the Baltic States and other Russian neighbours. It is America that is conducting economic war against Europe’s natural economic partner and demanding vassalage from Europe in relying on non-Russian sources of energy and other resources. Whatever happened to free markets and comparative advantage? It is America that needs to “back off” to secure peace and prosperity for all of Europe, and indeed all of Eurasia.

We are not entering World War III, I think, I hope, I insist on believing. But we are entering the final phase of the Hundred Years Cold War of the Anglo-American Powers against Russia. My forecast is that the system of power that has led this war will collapse, perhaps surprisngly quickly, but likely over five to ten years. I have begun a series of podcasts within my Burning Archive podcasts, under the subtitle Geopolitics Upside Down – a small pun on both my viewpoint from Down Under and the fundamental upheavals in the world order. In these podcasts, I am exploring the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, European security, NATO-Russia War, and emergence of multipolar world. Do check them out.

But some thoughts need to find their way in writing, and can be developed and lengthened over time. There appear to me to be seven great fault lines cracking open during the Ukraine crisis that will shape the social, political, cultural and international orders we share, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that we navigate through. I am going to note these fault lines today, and develop them over time in both the blog and in the podcast, and in more extended writing. Some of the concepts have been articulated

So here is the list of the fault lines of the Crisis of the Birth of the Multipolar World or the .

1. The break-up of liberal democracy – are we moving to a post-democratic society, the collapse of democracies into authoritarian regimes, or the realisation of multiple mixed regimes (including liberal, woke, state-capitalist and conservative democracies)
2. Collapse of the Media-Theatre State – Mainstream media has revealed itself to be a propaganda machine, and more than that intertwined with the political operatives of the security state. Politics has degenerated into media stagecraft. But Ukraine is showing that social media stunts do not win wars, nor secure peace, nor stop pandemics. The stage performance will continue; but the audience is leaving.
3. Wars of the Anglo-American Succession – The Globalist American Empire is divided, corrupt, incompetent and collapsing. Its economic sanctions are undermining its financial hegemony. The other Great Powers of the World are reorganising internally and externally to manage the succession. America’s Century of Humiliation is commencing.
4. The Eurasian Treaty that will end the Hundred Years Cold War – The Anglo-American Wars against Russia ultimately must end. China and Russia together, with support from India, ASEAN, Latin America and most of Africa will force an end to their endless ideological Cold War, and teach Western Europe and Northern America how to negotiate a lasting peace, rather than loot in a drunken dance of triumph.
5. New Security Arrangements in Europe and the West Pacific – The crisis will lead to new security arrangements in Europe, and a downgrading of America’s role. But it is only the first
6. Cultural Fragmentation – Global Netflix culture is breaking up. If it is a choice between American culture and Russian culture – I will choose Russia. A multiploar world is a truly multicultural world.
7. The Economic Remaking of the World – The American dollar is losing its ascendancy. The sanctions against Russia are harming the West. The theatre of the economic war is exposing the difference between a real economy (that supplies energy and real things) and a financial and information bubble economy (that supplies twitter, finance, porn and fast food).

More on all of this soon.