SPECULUM VERUM
– For more than a decade, The West usually does not listen to the claims or warnings of Vladimir Putin. And in international political relations, disregarding the adversary has its own cost, always. This seems to have happened with the rupture on Monday of the agreement that guaranteed the export of grains by Russia and Ukraine..
The same thing had happened at the beginning of the war in February of 2022. Putin had been denouncing that the tacit agreements that the Western military alliance -NATO-– would not advance on the area of Russian influence. He said several times in public that the advance of foreign troops near his borders collided with the vital interest of his State and broke security protocols.. Even when it was already clear that Russia intended to violate the principle of territoriality by invading Ukraine, The West did nothing but push this war that probably would have been avoided, if they closed the doors of NATO to Volodimir Zelensky, instead of continuing to seduce him. a month after the invasion, the former prime minister of israel, Naphtali Bennett, achieved a pact between Russia and Ukraine that was knocked down: “There was a legitimate decision by the West to continue hitting Putin and not to negotiate… they blocked the deal”, said the israeli. in this war, one more time, The US and NATO seem to look at everything from their Western-centric perspective, without considering the desires or needs of the adversary. And so every agreement is broken.
The only agreement falls
It would be key if the only agreement reached so far –indirectly– between Russia and Ukraine, would stay. First, because millions of people and children can fall into even greater misery and even famine. and second, because once again, The West once again pierces the little or no confidence that its adversary may have in it, today already a mortal enemy. and without trust, A peace agreement could never be reached in this war stuck in a swamp of blood and condemned to last for years with consequences for both peoples – especially the Ukrainian one.– and low risk of nuclear attacks or accidents.
the endless war
The most realistic question is not "why the West once again pushes two brother peoples to continue the fight", but rather what benefits promoting the continuation of a war, without leaving much room for negotiation for either party. One possible answer is that so far, the only winner has been the USA, already become the world's largest gas exporter, displacing Russia from that podium, country that has plunged into a war that is very damaging to itself – which it had believed to be an easy victory– which also isolated it with commercial sanctions. In parallel, the world is rearming at an unprecedented speed –USA. is the world's largest arms exporter– and NATO that was in crisis, reunified and moved forward incorporating Sweden and Finland. This theater of operations, sometime, could be repeated against China.
None of this implies defending Putin in something, but to get out of the simplifying binary, which is the best guarantee that this is an endless war.