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Why US and Russian militaries won't clash in Ukraine (opinion)

2022-02-10T13:29:52.082Z


Russia and the United States, bitter rivals in the Cold War, but only once face to face on the battlefield. Perhaps Ukraine would be the opportunity that leads to a much more significant direct fight.


Editor's note:

Jorge Dávila Miguel has a degree in Journalism since 1973 and has maintained a continuous career in his profession to date.

He has postgraduate degrees in Social Information Sciences and Social Media, as well as postgraduate studies in International Relations, Political Economy and Latin American History.

Dávila Miguel is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald on the McClatchy network, and a political analyst and columnist for CNN en Español.

The comments expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author.

See more at cnne.com/opinion

(CNN Spanish) --

Russia and the United States, allies in the two European world wars, staunch rivals in the Cold War, but only once face to face on the battlefield, between 1918 and 1919, in the north of Russia in front of Bolshevik troops—and against the specific rules of engagement issued by President Harold Wilson, which prohibited it.

The Americans ended up defeated.

Perhaps Ukraine would be the opportunity that leads to a much more significant direct fight.

bloody

Let them show there who is more powerful, in weapons and brave in combat.

But it won't happen.


And the reason why NATO will never go to war with Russia, even if the latter invades Ukraine, is because Ukraine does not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty and there is no obligation to defend it.

Within Europe, despite public messages of unity, there is division.

Germany refuses to send weapons to Ukraine and convinced Estonia to do the same.

France seeks a European solution, separate from the United States and NATO.

On February 7, President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet with his counterpart Vladimir Putin, who received him at a very long table, perhaps symbolic, expressing distance and coldness.

Putin said the French leader had presented him with a number of ideas that deserved study.

Macron left enthusiastically for Kyiv, where he told President Volodymyr Zelensky that Putin had told him that concrete and specific measures would have to be agreed to de-escalate tensions.

However, the talks between Macron and Putin have aroused suspicion in Europe.

These divisions are not new.

In 2008, France,

It is difficult for any European country, however offended it may be with Putin, to send its young people to fight Ukraine.

That is why NATO and Europe will help Ukraine with weapons, but will place their forces outside its borders.

For what purpose?

Stop the Russian bear at the gates of Europe.

Although it is known that the bear, if it invades Ukraine, will surely stop at these gates.

Why continue?

They would only be gestures of Atlantic solidarity.

The financial weapons of the West

The SWIFT code is the main means of financial communication for payments that the United States owns, along with 23 other members of its board of directors.

It does not dominate it, but it is foreseeable that these countries will agree with Washington in eliminating Russia.

And if not, the United States has the ability to "twist arms", as it did in the case of Iran in 2012. For that, Washington has ownership of the dollar, the international currency par excellence, among other mechanisms.

But starting to twist arms between partners, this internal struggle, perhaps it would be beneficial for Moscow.

The West assures that this will be its path.

But in 2014, when its annexation of Crimea, it was also mentioned with removing it from SWIFT.

So Russia not only strengthened its Armed Forces, but also developed its own financial communications platform, the SPFS, to protect itself from this threat, although without the same scope.

Russia prepares 10 days of military exercises 1:28

The Russian response to its possible exit from the SWIFT code could be to suspend the delivery of fuel to Europe, still in winter, through the many pipelines it owns.

“If they can't pay me, I won't sell”, Moscow would say, and would invite interested countries to join its SPFS method.

In 2015, Beijing also launched its international interbank payment system with the aim of "helping internationalize the Chinese currency: the yuan."

China and Russia are not simply seeking to compete with the United States in the field of banking messages, but rather to limit Washington's enormous capacity to impose financial sanctions on the rest of the world.

According to Brian O'Toole, a former senior adviser to the US Treasury Department and now associated with the Atlantic Council in Washington, the United States can inflict further damage on Russia with other measures.

For example, going against two state institutions linked to Russian elites.

To the VEB (state institution for economic development) or to the Russian Fund for Direct Investment.

That would be worse than cutting off access to SWIFT.

The West, in its need to firmly oppose Moscow in this battle, would adopt those two measures plus whatever else they can think of.

This would bring about a new Cold War between Russia and the West.

This first European conflict of the 21st century may be the first to break the planetary hegemony of the United States, its perceived unilateralism, which Russia and China reject.

And it will settle depending on whether the danger of a NATO encirclement is truly unacceptable for Russia and whether it is unacceptable for NATO to consider its Open Doors policy in the framework of world geopolitics.

The central themes of the meeting between Putin and Macron 1:06

Both sides have firmly and publicly stated their position.

China supports Russia and carefully watches what the United States and Europe will do to Ukraine.

Because the case of Taiwan, whose sovereignty is disputed between Taipei and Beijing, comes later.

It has been said that China will not risk its economy to help Moscow.

But what is the alternative to Beijing?

If added to Western sanctions, it would help strengthen Washington's financial power and appear weak to the world.

This may lead China to see no other option than to oppose US extraterritorial powers.

In this way, the Russo-Chinese alliance would manifest itself and the West would find itself between two fronts.

I doubt that two old dogs like Xi Jinping and Putin have not analyzed such alternatives to the end.

And the important thing in the fight for a multipolar world is that the main adversary of both is not Kyiv, but Washington.

How far would Russia and China want to take the Ukrainian conflict?

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-02-10

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