Text: Hu Houfa
It has been two years since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and various countries have set off a wave of hype to review the war and look forward to the future. The parties involved in the war have also defended their involvement in the war. Disappointingly, however, no one seems to care when and how the war will be ended. On the contrary, the hope of a truce is even more remote. Although Russia is willing to hold peace talks, it claims that it must be a prerequisite for achieving war goals. The Ukrainian side has repeatedly vowed that it will never stop until the aggressors are driven out. The United States and its allies have also reaffirmed their determination not to allow Russia to win. Once the flames of war are ignited, neither side will easily admit defeat, and it is unlikely that any side will withdraw its troops until it is difficult to continue. The war did not continue to expand, thankfully, but the voice of "NATO may send troops" has echoed in Europe, and we can only pray for God to bless whether the war will burn throughout Europe.
A war has been fought for two years, which is not a short time, but it is still not a winner, which shows that all parties have not achieved the goal of the war, and it also shows that this is a miscalculated war. Russia, the initiator of the war, has been shown to have made a mistake in its decision. In order to support Ukraine to win the war, Western allies have shown unprecedented solidarity with the United States and cooperated with the United States in an attempt to drag Russia down, but so far they have not achieved their ultimate goal. Thanks to the full involvement of the United States and its allies, the final outcome of the war no longer depends on Russia and Ukraine, and the control centers of the war are in Washington and Brussels.
Western allies have shown unprecedented solidarity with the United States in support of Ukraine in winning the war.
The biggest loser in the war is Ukraine. Zelensky will go down in history as a "national hero". He is undoubtedly qualified as a "wartime **", but his war decisions are not necessarily all beneficial to Ukraine, which will be answered by history. The enormous disaster caused by the war in Ukraine is irreversible. As an invaded person, Ukraine is undoubtedly in the moral high ground, the easiest to support, and can be understood no matter how much resistance is made, and Zelensky has also been praised by the West as a "big hit", which has inspired his will to resist Russia. It would be a shame for him to give up his resistance.
As far as Russia and Ukraine are concerned, the contradictions between the two countries are of course deep-rooted, and although there are many ways to resolve the contradictions, the two countries have chosen barbaric means of war. Once the vehicle is started, it is difficult to brake, and the parties have no heart to consider other options than fighting. The United States and its allies will also provide a steady stream of aid to Ukraine's resistance. However, the longer the war drags on, the greater the losses to Ukraine. Homelands have been turned into ruins, and more and more Ukrainian compatriots have become cannon fodder, leaving only the singing and crying spirit of anti-Russian spirit and the strategic interests of the United States.
As the main belligerent, Russia's launching of a special military operation against Ukraine is likely to be the biggest strategic mistake since the Cold War. It is conceivable that Russia, as a fighting nation, could not bear this kind of grievance. Russia's dispatch of troops to Ukraine is nothing more than two major purposes, one is to teach Ukraine a lesson, overthrow the pro-Western regime, turn Ukraine into a pro-** country, and make it a strategic buffer against NATO; The second is to occupy more Ukrainian territory and dismember and weaken Ukraine. However, later developments proved that Russia did not have a well-thought-out response to the consequences of the war, and the entire troop dispatch appeared hasty and rude.
As far as Russia and Ukraine are concerned, the contradictions between the two countries are of course deep-rooted, and there are many ways to resolve them.
Russia** Putin also recently said that he underestimated Ukraine's ability to resist and did not give enough estimation of the countermeasures of Western countries, which actually admitted the decision-making error of military action. He said that Russia has never refused peace talks, which seems to be laying the groundwork for Russia's first rank, but he stressed that even if it talks, it will not give up Russia's interests in Ukraine. The most fatal thing is that Russia lacks a sufficient legal and moral reason to send troops. It is true that there have been many hostile acts against Russia and ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and the United States has also tried its best to win Ukraine into NATO, and Ukraine is also actively seeking to join NATO, all of which have violated Russia's security interests, but these facts are not enough to launch a military operation against a country. Russia did not use the fact that the West and Ukraine violated Russia's interests as a bargaining chip, at least without exhausting all means, and then punched and drew its sword, which caused Russia to be extremely passive morally, legally, and morally.
Although the US-led NATO has an unshirkable responsibility for this war, no country dares to publicly stand up and defend Russia's invasion, because the inviolability of sovereignty is the red line and bottom line of international relations.
Now, two years after the military operation, Russia is getting farther and farther away from the war goals it set at the beginning, and the losses of the war are getting bigger and bigger. Militarily, Russia has failed to achieve its preset goal of a quick victory, has been extremely isolated diplomatically, and has been subjected to unprecedented economic sanctions. The war led to the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the border between Russia and NATO was greatly extended, and NATO member countries vigorously expanded their armaments, especially Poland, the Czech Republic, and other neighboring countries to take the opportunity to increase NATO troops. NATO countries are unprecedentedly united, their hostility toward Russia has risen unprecedentedly, and Russia's security environment has deteriorated unprecedentedly. On the whole, the actual results of the war are counterproductive to Russia's original intention of improving the country's western security, and the economic losses suffered by Russia are even more incalculable.
Now, two years after the military operation, Russia is moving further and further away from the war goals it had set at the beginning.
If we say that the winner of the Russian-Ukrainian war, it should be said that it is the United States. The United States is undoubtedly the country that has benefited the most from this war. Since the Russia-Ukraine war, the cohesion between the United States and its allies has reached the highest point since the Cold War, and the United States has once again made its allies feel that they cannot do without the protection of the United States, and only by standing closely with the United States can Europe be safe. After the Cold War, if there are still Europeans who do not recognize the hegemony of the United States, then this kind of doubt has been overwhelmed by the new atmosphere of great unity between the United States and Europe after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
It is an indisputable fact that the United States has made a lot of war money, and even US Deputy Secretary of State Nuland recently publicly admitted that most of the money for aid to Ukraine flowed back to the US economy, which was used to manufacture **, creating high-paying jobs in about 40 states in the United States. The implication is that the money of American taxpayers is transferred back to the pockets of arms dealers through ** aid to Ukraine. As far as the United States is concerned, it has once again proved that "war is a business opportunity" is an unbreakable truth.
In addition, from the perspective of geopolitics to maintain hegemony, the United States is also the biggest winner of the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia is the main obstacle to US hegemony in the world, and eliminating Russia's ability to confront the United States is a long-term strategy of the United States. The war has greatly damaged Russia's military, political, economic, and diplomatic aspects. For a long time to come, the United States will have peace of mind about the threat from Russia. Although the United States and its allies did not directly send troops, they actually used economic, political, scientific and technological, diplomatic, intelligence, information, and other all-round forces, and their role went beyond direct troop dispatch, but avoided the risk of direct troop dispatch.
The winner of the Russia-Ukraine war is none other than the United States.
As a spillover effect of the Russia-Ukraine war, the world economic landscape, including the international, industrial and financial systems, is being reshaped. The United States is trying to lead the Western allies in building an international economic system that excludes strategic rivals. The West's financial encirclement and suppression of Russia is unprecedented, and the West is planning to confiscate Russian assets in the West and provide them to Ukraine as aid, which sounds like a good idea, but it will break international financial rules and impact the international community's trust in international financial rules.
Mankind has entered an era of globalization and a high degree of civilization with artificial intelligence, but it has still not been able to change the fate of killing each other. The former brothers became enemies overnight, and hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian parents lost their children, becoming the largest and most advanced war since World War II.
The protection of life is the highest norm for all human behavior and the highest goal pursued in international relations. However, the "end of history" declared by Western experts with the collapse of the Soviet Union did not bring real peace to the world, and mankind is still accustomed to killing on the battlefield. On the one hand, there are universal values of the supremacy of life and human rights, and on the other hand, there are endless first-class upgrades and murderous battlefields. This strange phenomenon of the coexistence of barbarism and civilization will not be eliminated, and life and survival will be empty words as the most important value.