By Nirmal P. Acharya
Recently, Carlson, the former famous Fox TV host, interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In this interview, President Putin clarified the following views to the Western audience: the Russia-Ukraine battlefield is a war forced out by NATO’s five successive eastward expansion; the Sino-Russian alliance is strategic cooperation forced out by the US; the US has a lot of pressing domestic issues to deal with, such as illegal immigration, the huge national debt, the drug problem, the gun problem, and so on, there is no reason to go thousands of miles away from Ukraine to provoke a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
In fact, the US needs a Russia-Ukraine war to consolidate its hegemonic position. The hegemon needs to harvest the world and call upon the resources and wealth of the world at any time to nourish himself. This is the underlying logic behind the establishment and consolidation of US hegemony. The so-called “rules-based order” that the US often talks about is the institutional arrangement that the US has made so that it can harvest the world.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US broke its promise and launched five rounds of NATO eastward expansion. To put it bluntly, it is to continuously weaken and even collapse Russia’s resistance capacity in order to plunder the resources of Russia, the world’s largest resource country.
But this time the US miscalculated. After two years of fighting with dozens of countries, the US failed to bring down Russia and was stuck in a strategic dilemma.
Former US President Donald Trump claims he can easily resolve this dilemma. He said he could end the war within a day of being re-elected president this year. His wishful thinking is nothing more than to abandon Ukraine in order to please Russia, and then unite Russia to besiege China, that is, to change the strategy of “harvesting Russia first” to “harvesting China first”. China has amassed the world’s greatest wealth, creating an even greater temptation for Mr. Trump.
Actually, harvesting China is more difficult than harvesting Russia. China is the world’s largest industrial country, much stronger than Russia; as soon as the US starts moving closer to Russia, Europe will immediately start moving closer to China, because Europe understands that its relationship with Russia is a trade-off. Mr. Trump’s strategy will not be enough to drive Russia against China; it will only make Europe feel betrayed and compelled to turn to China. This will instead help China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy.
Let me be blunt: the days of America reaping the world are over. The US can neither harvest Russia nor harvest China. Under the joint pattern of China, Russia and Iran, the only country that is likely to be harvested by the United States is probably Argentina, far from the Eurasian continent.
America has always harvested other countries. Can we imagine the US being harvested by another country for once? Nepal seems to have a chance to harvest America. The US has come all the way to Nepal to send a big gift–MCC. If we can find a way to get the MCC aid that the US has promised to Nepal to actually go to Nepal, and to get that money to the MCC quickly and effectively, I think it can be counted as Nepal harvesting the US.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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