At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to the global dynamic of moving toward a multipolar order and away from one dominated by Europe and the United States.
The Russian leader noted that Western sanctions, intended to strangle Russia’s economy, have instead accelerated the process of decentering the West and spurred new relationships between Russia and partners in Africa and Asia. He also pointed to increased trade in rubles and yuan, although he cautioned that Russia has never intended to “de-dollarize” its economy.
Professor Joe Siracusa, a political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University in Western Australia, told Sputnik on Friday that Putin was “simply registering what is already a reality.”
“The world has already broken up, with the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, and we got the Western groups. The world is broken up into multi-polar agencies. I thought it was a very good statement,” Siracusa said. “It's not like it's about to happen - it has happened - and Russia has joined the show.”
Siracusa noted the “really well-dressed people from around the world, men and women there” at SPIEF, saying it “suggested to me that the American-led sanctions on Russia are a complete failure.”
“Putin literally left the sanctions for dead tonight and makes it look ridiculous, what the West is trying to do. At the same time, he didn't have a lot of malice in his voice, he invited Western companies, transnationals to come back to Russia without penalty. That's sort of very magnanimous,” he said.
“Multipolarity is the natural condition of the world,” said Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels, Belgium. “Unilaterality can be imposed by dominion and force but cannot be endured for a long time.”
“From 1945 to 1991, the world was locked in a bipolarity because of the post-WWII balance of power and the persistence of European colonial practices. After the end of European colonial practices and the voluntary dissolution of the USSR, the world’s natural multipolar trend regained pace,” but that changed with US and UK “interference” with the process, he explained.
“Since 2001, the USA and UK have weaponized globalization, imposing the primacy of security interests on economic development. After the financial crash of 2008, the Western powers entered a distress era while others, namely China, Russia, and some large southern countries, expanded their free actions and activities based on national interest and cooperation,” he said.
“The situation today is that the multipolarity is consolidated and it is progressively structuring its own institutional framework. Realistically, multipolarity is a fact and those who benefit from it have no intention of abandoning it. Therefore, Putin’s sentence that ‘the neocolonial international system is irreversibly finished’ is just an empirical statement. It is a realist not an ideological statement," Raffone said.
'They Don't Know Any History'
During his remarks in St. Petersburg, Putin also spoke of the special military operation in Ukraine, which is in its 16th month and where Ukraine has recently launched a new counteroffensive heavily based on Western-supplied weapons. Putin noted that Ukraine is on the verge of running out of weapons while Russian military production is continuing to ramp up, leading him to predict that Kiev has no chance of winning.
Siracusa said Putin’s confidence stems from “the fact is that Russia is bigger and has outlasted Ukraine.”
“I think the Russian armed forces have acquitted themselves very well. I mean, the Ukrainians tried to resist them, but it was of no use. And I think President Putin is just stating a fact,” he noted. Siracusa said that Western leaders have chosen to ignore the neo-Nazi elements of Ukraine’s military, and the ethnic supremacism of today’s Ukraine, and funnel weapons to them anyway because “they don't know any history.”
“They don't understand historical events. Many of them are in their 40s and 50s and have no recollection of this. And in American universities, only 5% of people study history, in terms of the Bachelor of Arts degree in history. So, there's a much lesser understanding of what these things are. And it's not helped by the ignorance in Washington," Siracusa said.
“And of course, Washington had its own drama. I like to say that ‘Washington is 70 square miles surrounded by reality.’ They sort of make up things as they go along and attribute significance to them. But look, it's a matter of ignorance. That's what drives me crazy, is when people don't know what they're talking about and then sometimes they just make it up.”
“Western European leaders are aware of the situation, and they have done everything to prevent the situation from derailing to a point of no return. They failed.
The question should be posed to the UK and the US leaders who, for different reasons, and with different aims, turned a blind eye,” Raffone said, noting that London “has been meddling with Eastern European extremists, nationalists, and neo-Nazis, for many decades since WWI. Their strategy is continental, anti-German and competitive with France.”
“The disparity of human forces and military capacity, including weapon production, is evident,” Raffone said, pointing out that “even high-ranking US military [brass] have been rather loud in signaling that Ukrainian objectives have to be ‘sustainable’, ‘realistic’, and ‘achievable.’ In other words, the weapons and training suppliers of Ukraine are saying that reason should prevail over legitimate aspirations.”
“The many lines of Russian fortifications along the contact line make it very difficult, or impossible, for the Ukrainian forces to penetrate in the Russian controlled territories. Incursions are possible, as we see on the ground, but with high losses in terms of human resources and weaponry. While Russia can replace … both human and hardware losses, Ukraine is short of people and depends on weapons supplies from abroad. The willingness and the economic conditions of the Ukraine supporters have reached the tipping point. In the coming months, the Ukraine support chain will progressively deflate,” Raffone predicted.
De-Nazification 'Lost its Significance' in the West
Indeed, Putin spoke of the neo-Nazi atrocities in Ukraine, including a video circulating that depicts those atrocities, noting that the goal of the special military operation is the de-Nazification of Ukraine.
“This idea of de-Nazification, which, of course, is one of the basis of the allied occupation of Germany and Austria after the second World War, has lost its significance in the West," Siracusa told Sputnik.
Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis. - Sputnik International, 1920, 23.05.2022 Russia
"That is, Western audiences aren't familiar with what the president is talking about. I mean, the idea of de-Nazification is a project that goes on for a 100 years, you just don't knock the DNA out of these people overnight. I understand it in its long historical terms. I think it could have been explained a little better. And I think the Western press made no effort to explain it at all.”
Paraphrasing Shakespeare, Raffone quipped that “something is rotten in Ukraine.”
“Now it is difficult to say how the Ukrainian internal balance of power will shape. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s leadership is under pressure from within Ukraine – extreme nationalists, oligarchs, desperate population – and from outside, as it is shown by the intensification of peace or mediation missions. The existence of strongholds of Ukrainian extremists is well known since 1991. They may become a serious security challenge for Ukraine and for Europe too. The video shown by Putin is a remarkable reminder of history, but it is also a warning on possible outcomes,” he said.
