The First and Second World Wars are well known. No need to go back over them. The Third was cold, but it left millions dead in Asia, hundreds of thousands in Latin America and tens of thousands in Europe. We are now witnessing the beginning of the Fourth. The fall of Bashar al-Assad on December 8th is a wake-up call. If we look to the East, this war began on February 22, 2022, when Russian Special Military Forces entered Ukraine, or more precisely on February 18, 2014 in Kiev, following the Maidan revolution instigated by the United States, by the admission of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, who admits to having spent five billion dollars to this end.
But if we turn to the Middle East, thr Fourth World War began on March 20, 2003, with the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies, followed by Libya (2011) and Afghanistan (2021). In Asia, it began in 2007 with the creation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad, bringing together Australia, Japan and India, at the initiative of the United States, to counter the rise of China. It continued with the refocusing of US foreign policy on Asia under Barack Obama, which is now reflected in the delivery of arms to Taiwan, in violation of the agreement signed by Nixon during his visit to Beijing in 1972. World War Three was cold and limited. The Fourth one is lukewarm, and operates across the globe outside any international convention. Where is it taking us?
In Ukraine, where the USA and its allies are now cobelligerent, victory is within Russia’s grasp. Can the United States accept its defeat, after having explained to the world that it was a conflict between democracy and freedom, on the one hand, and authoritarianism and servitude, on the other? What weapons does the USA have at its disposal to continue the war? Economic sanctions, the dollar, propaganda, regime change, regional conflicts and nuclear weapons. Since nuclear power is out of the question for the moment, the United States favors regime change, as in Georgia, Romania and Moldavia, and regional conflicts, as in the Middle East, to disguise its defeat and achieve its goal of global hegemony. They add assassination and terrorism for good measure. Regime change is ultimately ineffective, and regional conflicts destroy everything but solve nothing. The same goes for sanctions, the dollar, assassinations and terrorism. Then there is nuclear power. Will the United States resort to it? Its nuclear policy allows it to do so.
What about peace negotiations? The timing seems right: Donald Trump wants peace, and Vladimir Putin has said he is ready to negotiate since the first day of the Special Military Force. But that is a red herring—unless the neocons accept the conditions stipulated in Vladimir Putin’s draft European architecture submitted on December 17, 2021, which they are not ready to accept, as their equivocal response has shown. For the record, from the Russian point of view, the war in Ukraine is an existential war, and from the neoconservative point of view an essential step in the completion of their hegemonic project. This is why Professor John Mearsheimer does not believe that the neoconservatives will allow Donald Trump to reach an agreement with Vladimir Putin.
Presented as a victory for Israel and the United States over a bloodthirsty tyrant, the destruction of Syria is part of a plan whose ultimate goal is the subjugation of Iran. The United States and Israel are the perpetrators of this scheme, whose fighters are supplied by Turkey. Israel wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the United States wants to bring about a color revolution based on young people’s discontent with the mullahs and their outdated rules. If both partners succeed, Iran—a staunch supporter of the Palestinians, China’s biggest oil supplier and Russia’s de facto “ally”—will come under Western control. This will be a victory for the West and a monumental failure for the BRICS—a failure which may well lead to Saudi Arabia’s defection.
What are the Islamists of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham doing, which Turkey has used in cooperation with Israel and the USA to achieve its objectives in Syria? There is nothing to suggest that they will be grateful servants to their new masters. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that they will be pursuing their own—as yet unknown—objectives. For the record, the CIA has put a $10 million price on the head of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of the Islamists!
Questions: How can Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights be justified when Russia is blamed for its annexation of Crimea, an integral part of Russia since the end of the 18th century? How can we justify Israel’s illegal bombing of Syria? How can we justify the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians? By ignoring international conventions and the most elementary humanitarian rules, Israel and its American and European allies are placing themselves on the sidelines of world society. How long will this continue? How will it be resolved? Violence begets violence.
In Asia, the United States continues its steady march towards a Sino-American conflict. It has just delivered to Taiwan the first 36 Abrams tanks from an order for 108. China, meanwhile, is continuing its naval intimidation maneuvers around the island and increasing its defense budget.
Before concluding, let us recall three lessons from history: a) there is no example of a nation at war that has not used all the weapons at its disposal; b) political leaders are often victims of their own intrigues; and c) empires are born, grow and die. So, what does the future hold? World War Four has created an extremely unstable and dangerous world. The slightest spark, the slightest mistake could turn it into nuclear war. No rational person wants a nuclear war, whose survivors, if any, would probably be the Indians of the Amazon rainforest. Question: Are our leaders rational? In view of the nature of the conflicts and confrontations of all kinds that the world knows and has known in the past, the question arises, and the answer is not the most reassuring.
Perhaps the disastrous state of the world economy, judging by the stratospheric debt levels of the major nations [the same applies to France, China and many other nations (World Bank and Bank for International Settlements statistics). This indebtedness is due in part to increasing defense budgets, incipient mercantilism and economic sanctions], and the irrational exuberance of the financial markets [The price/earnings ratio, calculated over ten years by Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Schiller, exceeds its 1929 level], and the amount of derivatives [The notional amount of derivatives is equal to 6.5 times the world’s gross domestic product], will save us from the nuclear scourge by substituting a 1929-style financial crisis, to the power of 2? Busy picking up the pieces, leaders will have no choice but to cooperate, as they did in Washington in December 2008, to avert the consequences of the subprime crisis. In this scenario, some of us will starve to death, but humanity will survive.
Featured: The War. by Otto Dix; etching, 1924.
