Who will win the Ukraine war?

Both US and Russia. I’ll explain later how. The biggest loser will be Ukraine, it will be destroyed and sinked in debt. Europe will suffer but some countries will rise up again but not as a union. Other indirect beneficiaries of this war will be Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, India, North and South Korea, Japan. For rest of the countries it will be a question of who will be more effected than the other. Humanity and our planet will be in the losing side as real issues like climate change are not in focus anymore rather everyone is racing to secure and burn more fossil fuels. Unfortunately this may lead to point of no return by the time a viable solution can be brought in and adopted by all.

When I am writing this article, we are almost at the end of 2022. I believe 2022 is the turning point in history because of this war, that’s why it fascinated me. Like many I also tried to understand the war and both sides of the story without any  judgement or prejudice. War itself is a crime and cause of loss and destruction, and both sides have their own stories, so I am not going to go into moral side of it. This article is my understanding and predictions of this war.

Why is this war?

In 2015 Professor John Mearsheimer predicted that Russia will wreck Ukraine and that’s what happened today. His presentation at the University of Chicago explains in detail why USA, Russia and Europe did what they did today. Highly recommend to watch this https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 to have full understanding of the conflict.

After the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, the world moved from a bipolar world to a unipolar world. Today we see US dominance is everywhere from technology, military to economy. So their strategies and foreign policies are designed to sustain their dominance, weaken their opponent and having pro western “democratic” governments around the world. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with that, history tells us every super power tried to do that and every super power will try to do that in future. Anyway as part of their strategy they wanted to expand western influence and wanted to include Ukraine and Georgia.

On the other hand Russia, once a super power, wanted its old glory and respect back. But it was too weak to do so after the Cold War. Despite possessing the largest nuclear arsenal and mineral resources, they felt like West was not paying attention and lacking respect they believe they deserved. They wanted to break the unipolar world/US dominance into a multi polar world. So they started preparing for this from long back and it was obvious given the preparedness for sanctions they have shown. In 2022 they thought it was time. We all hear about they had real security concerns because of expanding NATO and they would feel existential threat if Ukraine becomes part of NATO and that is the reason why they started the Ukraine war. To some extent it is true but that’s not the real reason for this war. Remember when Putin first came he actually wanted to be part of NATO but west didn’t agree. Moreover even if Ukraine became part of NATO, I doubt NATO would have ever attacked Russia. So the real reason is not security concerns.

The point I am trying to make is that Ukraine war is about power and economy. One of the key reason for US global dominance today is the dominance of US dollars in global trade and foreign reserves and Russia intends to break that cycle with bilateral local currency trade followed by China. Not that dollar dominance will be over anytime soon but it may be the beginning of a process. The US see this as a threat and that’s why they are so heavily invested in this war, trying desperately to weaken Russia with sanctions and isolations. Another problem with US dominance is if Russia is portrayed as a winner in this war, US leadership will be questionable specially after the Afghanistan exit.

How US is the winner?

Everybody knows Ukraine war is a proxy war between US and Russia. Ukraine is just a staging ground. And that’s very convenient for US since their people don’t have to die fighting Russia unlike in other wars. Instead they get prove the superiority of their weapons in use. The hundreds of billions of dollars that we hear about for Ukraine, most of it are actually spent on ordering over priced weapons to their own weapon manufacturers. They get to use up old stocks and replenish with new stocks of their own. Not only US orders, massive orders are pouring in from European and Asian allies as US successfully portrayed Russia as security threat and demonstrated efficiency of their weapons in action. That’s good business for that industry and its shareholders. As history tells us with every war, economy gets employment and consumption - good for US economy.

Now let’s come to energy. US was never dependent on Russian energy, Europe was, so another opportunity was to move Europe’s dependency on Russian gas to US, which they did successfully. Lucky for them Nord stream pipeline was blown up, now Europe is buying expensive US gas. European companies losing competitivenes because of high energy price compare to US, so many investment will move to US. Oil companies made huge profit because of the rise of oil price. Dollar is stronger than ever. So it’s all win for US. You may say they have got inflation, but that was because of trillions of dollars give out to US population during covid time, not for the war. The longer the war goes on, the more profitable for US. That’s why this war has US bipartisan support.

How Russia is the winner?

US said their objective was to weaken Russia, destroy its economy but that didn’t work out. Despite sweeping sanctions, Russia came out stronger,  more independent, their currency was one of the best performing currency in 2022, their economy didn’t nose dive, their energy export revenue didn’t decrease. They were able to shift their market from Europe to Asia proving that West is no longer is the only market. They could make other countries realise their money is not safe with US and countries need more eggs in the basket. They have initiated the process of de-dollarization. Russia was able to win China, India and Saudi/Iran favours and didn’t get isolated as West presumed.

Russia has learned from their mistakes, gathered practical combat experience,  and modernising their weaponries. Their weapon industry is in full swing. They did get majority support of the Russian people and was able to fuel nationalism.

My Predictions for Ukraine war

1. Somebody wrote in twitter today “Ukranians are running out of Ukrainians.” I think that’s going to happen eventually. Russia will deliberately destroy Ukraine Army day by day to achieve the demilitarise goal. Unlike Ukrainians who are fighting for their territory, Russia’s main goal is to deplete and destroy Ukraine’s military potential. Ukraine will keep sending reserves to Donbas to Russia’s trap and at some point they will run out of it. Western mercenaries will no longer be willing to go there to die.
2. Russia will gradually take over the territories it annexed and will never give up even if fall of Putin. Ukraine will not be able to recover the annexed regions, it’s like Palestine wants 1968 borders, never going to happen.
3. The boundaries or the annexed region might be different, may be separated by rivers or other defendable positions. Russia might invade in part of some other regions in North and South but may leave those territories to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine.
4. West will keep sending weapons to Ukraine because that’s profitable and will probably fuel a civil war when the war is over.
5. If Ukraine military fails Zelenskyy will be the scapegoat. But when his back hit the wall, he might try a nuclear accident in any of the nuclear plant.
6. Ukraine will be a debt ridden economy with no chance of joining EU in foreseeable future. No chance in NATO as well.
7. Support for Ukraine will decrease over time. When Ukraine will start losing western medias will start diverting attention to Asia.
8. The world will divide into two power houses US and Europe on one side and China and Russia on the other side. Countries will side with either one of them depending on their interest.
9. Germany, Japan and South Korea will find this war an opportunity to strengthen their military power. China will be technologically independent and will take strategies to empower its military and to live with sanctions, learning from this war.
10. Europe will eventually find its way for energy independence and will probably lead the renewable energy future.

Tashfin Delwar
31 December, 2022