According to recent news, Ukraine has recently entered the defensive stage, and the Russian-Ukrainian war has ushered in a new turning point, which will be a test for Ukraine, Russia and NATO led by the United States.
The United States has risen in the geopolitical game between the United States and Russia
The Ukraine crisis has completely deteriorated relations between Ukraine and Russia, which is a serious geostrategic disaster for Russia, which seeks to build a Eurasian alliance and try to reorganize the power of the former Soviet Union. The United States has succeeded in becoming the biggest strategic beneficiary by virtue of its own advantages, and has achieved the goal of squeezing Russia's strategic space and dividing the CIS. Once Ukraine successfully joins NATO and becomes a "quasi-alliance" of the United States, Russia will lose its core interests in this geopolitical game, and Putin's dream of great power rejuvenation will also suffer a heavy blow. While turning Ukraine completely towards the West, the United States has also succeeded in dividing relations between the European Union and Russia, eliminating Europe's independent centrifugal tendencies.
After the Cold War, the nature of the transatlantic alliance changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a common enemy. The United States and the European Union have shown a posture of being incompatible on the international stage, and Europe's voice has been continuously strengthened, especially in regional affairs. Although NATO's appeal is still strong, the EU has long shown a keen interest in taking the lead in European security affairs as the trend of European integration intensifies. As Kenneth Waltz put it, "Alliances forged to win wars collapse immediately after victory, and the more decisive victories there are." "Since the 90s of the 20th century, the European Union has expanded its membership to 28 through six eastward expansion plans, weakening Russia's traditional influence in the region while impacting the strategic interests of the United States.
In 2002, Europe and the United States signed the Berlin Supplementary Agreement, and the EU began to lease NATO equipment to exercise its own regional crisis management rights. In order to strengthen its autonomy, the EU has also actively sought to strengthen relations between Europe and Russia, in an attempt to get rid of NATO's monopoly on European security affairs and deepen its competitiveness with the United States. However, the Ukraine crisis has brought a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the United States, and the "Crimea" incident has made Europe feel unprecedented security pressure.
Faced with its own limited defense capability, the EU has no choice but to return to the arms of the United States. At the same time, NATO has also been able to regain the leading position in European security affairs, and has started cooperation with the EU to strengthen the deployment of defense facilities and increase defense spending. It can be seen that the United States has taken advantage of the Ukraine crisis to provoke mutual suspicion between the EU and Russia, and intensified the confrontation and sanctions between the two sides through the conflict between their interests in Eastern Europe, so that Russia is on the defensive in this game. For the United States, it can be described as a successful strategy of "killing two birds with one stone".
NATO's "close pinch" to Russia
NATO's "close pincer" against Russia stems from the collective defense concept that it has adhered to for a long time since its inception, and is an important Western strategic thinking, emphasizing both strategic deterrence capability and strategic capability. The core of the concept of "approaching pincer" refers to deploying one's own strategic forces as close as possible to the enemy's border areas, compressing the enemy's geostrategic air interrogation from the two main attack directions, and presenting on the military map an M-shaped crab claw that pincers the prey.
This strategy aims to force the enemy to fight on multiple fronts through the alliance system and collective cooperation, thereby reducing the concentration of military materials and strategic forces, not only weakening the enemy's logistical support ability to launch an offensive, but also dragging the enemy into the quagmire of long-term strategic confrontation, and finally promoting the enemy's socio-economic collapse through a war of attrition and geopolitical blockade, so as to achieve victory without a fight.
Therefore, it is a steady strategy of both offense and defense, step by step, which neither rushes forward rashly nor passively defensively, but gradually tightens the geopolitical encirclement of Russia in accordance with changes in the geopolitical security situation. The conditions for its implementation include two aspects: the enemy is generally on the strategic defensive, and its own offensive capability and willingness are relatively strong.
Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, NATO has adopted an offensive of "close pincer" against Russia, focusing on supporting Russia's two northern, southern, and eastern neighbors to geographically encircle Russia, and finally forcing it to implement local defense. From this point of view, the fundamental reason why NATO was able to rely on its successive eastward expansions after the Cold War and its ability to carry out an offensive against Russia after the Ukraine crisis is not only that Russia's weak national strength has led to a decline in its strategic influence on neighboring countries, but also that NATO realizes that only by integrating the various resources and advantages of existing allies can NATO's strategic deterrence in the military field be stabilized. Based on the conceptual logic of integrated warfare, NATO's strategic goal of "approaching and pinning down" Russia cannot be described as ambitious: from the perspective of the highest goal, it is to build a global military system with NATO countries as the core; From the perspective of the medium-level goal, it is to further disintegrate Russia's alliance system in the European region;
From the perspective of the basic goal, it is to create Russia's "enemy image" to enhance NATO's internal cohesion and prevent the loosening of NATO's command and control system. ...In short, NATO's offensive against Russia has long gone beyond the thinking framework of traditional geopolitics, but has risen to a new level of geostrategy, which is also an important perspective for us to understand NATO's future operating policy, strategic deployment and resource allocation. The confrontation between NATO and Russia in Eastern Europe has not changed its strategic intention of encircling Russia, but has further aggravated the security anxiety of its eastern allies, and the continuous decline in mutual trust between the "new NATO countries" and the "old NATO countries" has proved that NATO's collective security purpose is almost gone, and NATO has become a tool for the United States to provoke contradictions among its European allies and manipulate European security affairs.
Whenever Russia chooses the strategy of attacking the east and attacking the west and "countering the tough with super-toughness," NATO's "close pinch" against Russia will come to an abrupt end. Therefore, even if Russia is now in the dilemma of "one bear fighting a pack of wolves", its ability to reopen the world with the help of Arctic development cannot be underestimated. After all, this vast country has enough patience and time to accumulate strength, and NATO's deterrence and containment of Russia is just another cliché and a picture of Eastern European countries.