Some moderate journalists ask then, considering the threat Russia is facing (read above), why did not Putin just stop at protecting the Donbass region? And retain some titbit of moral high ground?

Until the invasion, I was of the belief that Putin's intention was to stop at protecting the Donbass area. I think this was Putin's intention as well. According to some report, he made the decision to go the full hog, the night before... I am not a military person, but I understand some basic tactics... Putin would have been given advice from his military analysts: The Russian in Donbass, already facing 60,000 Ukrainian troops, would have been seen this number swell to near the full force of the Ukrainian army (around 400,000) within a week or so. Fighting such a "war" on a front-on combat would have been like going to hell. The "correct" decision was thus made to destroy the Ukrainian military before it was assembled facing the Donbass. 

Considering the Russians power, they went in with precision. Sure, there has been some civilian casualties, but in real terms, these poor people are quite in a small number compared to say Iraqi casualties when Bush invaded under false pretences. Some innocent Ukrainians may have been killed by friendly fire. THIS NOT UNCOMMON in such situation, including trying to create a false flag event. As well some of Azov troops "hide" amongst civilians and use them as "shield". But overall, so far despite a disastrous public relations exercise to which Putin would give raspberries — the mission has eliminated 90 per cent of the Ukrainian military equipment and untold number of Ukrainian soldiers death. So far the Russians would have lost about 700 soldiers.

Soldiering is a risky business. War is an ugly business, but we have to understand how NATO lied to Gorbachov — who is considered a honest man by the western media...

Another journalists' question is in a form of a statement that "Surely, Zelensky is not a Nazi..."

Of course not, but his bases are with a few caveats. If Zelensky CARED about "his" people and the future of the planet, he would sign a peace treaty with Russia forthwith. HE CANNOT WIN THIS WAR, EVEN WITH TWITTER WINDS IN HIS SAILS. Not only he should sign a treaty, he should stop making demands of a no-fly zone above Ukraine — a no-fly zone which would be enforced by US and NATO military. Either he is deluding and think this is a comedy show, either he wants to start WW3, in a stupid dare... At this level, Zelensky is dangerous. Even if the US congress approves a "no-fly zone", the US military, known for their brazenness, would not go there...

The next problem will be to manage "a defeated Ukraine"... It won't be easy, even for the best of negotiators... Lives have been lost, displaced and injured. Compensation and a new political reality will have to take place. It will take 20/30 years to heal, but there will be longer terms scars. This was Putin's sophie's Choice... 

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BEIRUT (Sputnik) - Discrimination that the West is now perpetuating against Russia is unprecedented in world history and infringes on the principles of international law, turning the world into "a jungle," Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Thursday.

"Western discrimination of Russia is unprecedented in world history... The West lies in every word in pursuit of world power and thievery... The West has proved that international law is worthless and has crossed out all the principles of the world agreements turning the world into a jungle," Assad told a meeting with teachers from all Syrian provinces, as quoted by Syrian news agency SANA.

The president noted that there are means of confronting the West, and called for a "dynamic thinking" and a strong will to find economic solutions amid unilateral sanctions.

The president said that the world turned into "a wild forest run by Western thieves in the absence of international law" after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"The West is experiencing a historic reversal of its global role after the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine... The conflict in Ukraine has exposed the true face of Western powers to their people," Assad said.

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours Friday, with much of the discussion focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden reportedly warned Xi that China will face “consequences” if it provides material support to Russia. It was the first call between the two leaders of the world’s two largest economies in four months.

In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing for talks with Xi ahead of the invasion. Earlier this month, China joined India, Iran, Pakistan and 32 other nations from the Global South in abstaining from a United Nations vote condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine. On Saturday, China’s vice foreign minister criticized NATO as a, quote, “Cold War vestige” and criticized Western sanctions on Russia, saying globalization is being used as a weapon.

To look more at China’s evolving relations with both Russia and the United States, we’re joined by Alfred McCoy, professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of numerous books, most recently, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change. His recent article for The Nation is headlined “Russia and China, Together at Last.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor McCoy.

ALFRED McCOY: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you start off by responding to the talk that President Biden and Xi Jinping had on Friday, what we learned of what they said?

ALFRED McCOY: Apparently, what President Biden was hoping to accomplish in his phone conversation with Xi Jinping was to draw on their successful video meeting last November and kind of encourage or even pressure President Xi to back away from China’s strong support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And that did not happen. President Xi’s quote, the most memorable, the most important quote, was he wanted the United States to “untie the knot” of Ukrainian and Russian security. And that was a kind oblique reference to the idea that the United States and NATOare responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding NATO right up to the borders of Russia and threatening Russian security. And that’s also a reference to the historic meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping on February 4th of this year, when the two met during the Winter Olympics and they issued an historic 5,300-word declaration that laid claim to establishing a kind of new global order to attacking U.S. global hegemony and to build upon their strong bilateral alliance, their very close economic integration in the field of energy, and to simultaneously block NATOfrom threatening Russia and block the United States from supporting Taiwan against China’s legitimate claims to Taiwan. And so, in effect, what that meeting failed to accomplish was it simply failed to break this emerging alliance between China and Russia, which is literally shaking the current world order.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday. He was questioned by Margaret Brennan.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Has Xi Jinping, your president, told Vladimir Putin to stop the invasion? Do you condemn it?

QIN GANG: Actually, on the second day of Russia’s military operation, President Xi Jinping did talk to President Putin —

MARGARET BRENNAN: Was that their last phone call?

QIN GANG: — asking President Putin to think about resuming peace talks with Ukraine. And President Putin listened to it, and we have seen four rounds of peace talks have happened. Let me continue. China’s trusted relations with Russia is not a liability. Actually, it’s an asset in the international efforts to solve the crisis in a peaceful way. And China is part of the solution. It’s not part of the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor McCoy, can you respond to the significance of what the Chinese ambassador to the United States said?

ALFRED McCOY: Of course. He is again kind of affirming what President Xi said in that meeting last Friday with President Biden — in essence, that China is not going to rupture its relations with Russia, it’s not going to apply pressure on Russia, it’s not going to blame Russia, it’s not going to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine an invasion, and it is going to affirm that Russia has legitimate security concerns in Ukraine that must be met, and that if China is going to do anything, it is going to apply its considerable international power and prestige to support Russia in establishing its security in Eastern Europe.

I think what’s going on more broadly is that we’re saying a sense of extraordinary confidence from Moscow and Beijing that, literally, history — and, more importantly, geopolitics — is on their side. They believe that their alliance gives them such dominance, such power on the massive Eurasian landmass, that they can prevail, that they can not only dominate the landmass, they can dominate international politics. In essence, they are pursuing a geopolitical strategy to break U.S. control over the Eurasian landmass, and thereby break U.S. global power. They think that they are witnessing the birth, the historic birth, of a new world order in which the great global hegemon, the United States, which has dominated the world for the past 70 years — in which its global power is broken, and its dominance over Eurasia, something the United States has maintained since the start of the Cold War in the early 1950s, but that is coming also to an end.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki talking about Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping on video phone call.

PRESS SECRETARY JEN PSAKI: The movement of China to align with Russia or to — yeah, the movement of them to align with Russia or their proximity of moving closer together is certainly of great concern to us, as we have expressed, and we are not the only country that has expressed that concern, including many other members of the G7 have expressed exactly that concern. So this is part of the discussion, has been an ongoing part of the discussion, expect it certainly would be when the president goes to Europe next week. But we’re not in a place at this point to outline the specifics. We’re still discussing.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk more about, Professor McCoy, what Biden threatened, if it has an effect? You know, he is going to Europe this week. He’s speaking with a lot of European nations today, then meeting in Brussels with other NATO members, then going to Poland to hold bilateral talks Friday and Saturday. What this means for Russia, and then for Russia and China?

ALFRED McCOY: The United States is concerned, I think, in two areas — one, that China will provide weaponry and financial support, and, in fact, China can break the financial embargo that the United States is trying to impose upon Russia in order to restrain them in their invasion of Ukraine. And so, what Washington is monitoring is flows of weapon and flows of financial support from China to Russia. That’s what the United States is trying to restrain. And that, the weapons may have a short-term impact; the financial flows, a medium-term impact. That’s the U.S. concern.

But I think we need to sort of analyze the situation in dual tracks — one, focus on the diplomacy, the military activity in Ukraine, the course of the war on the battlefield. OK? And that may or may not go Putin’s way. But underlying that, there is this extraordinary confidence in Moscow and Beijing that the geopolitics of Eurasia are on their side, that because of their alliance and their dominant position in this great landmass that comprises 70% of the world’s population and productivity, that it almost inevitably — that they are going to emerge as the new centers of global power on the planet. And that, I think, is underlying their boldness and their resistance to Washington’s pressure.

So, we can — from their perspective, we can provide weapons, we can mount financial pressure, we can even impact the situation on the battlefield by providing anti-tank missiles and handheld weapons that can bring — Stinger missiles that can bring down Russian helicopters and aircraft. We can do all, that but that is not material. That’s not what’s going to matter. They believe, because of the theory of geopolitics, that being the dominant powers in this great Eurasian landmass, that they can slowly break the controls that the United States has imposed over Eurasia since the start of the Cold War, and they can break U.S. global power, and they, together, can construct a new global order.

Every global hegemon — and that’s the word that Beijing and Moscow use — every global hegemon for the last 500 years, from the Portuguese to the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, the United States, and now the Chinese, have done one thing in common: They have all dominated Eurasia. Their rise to global power, including the U.S. rise to global power after World War II, was accompanied by dominance over Eurasia. And decline of all of these global powers, including the United States, has been marked by their declining control over Eurasia.

And together, Beijing and Moscow are pursuing a strategy that I call, you know, push, push, punch. So, they are pushing at these great chains of geopolitical control that the United States has ringed around Eurasia since the Cold War — naval fleets, air bases, mutual defense pacts — they’re pushing slowly at the east and west ends of Eurasia, hoping to strain and break those chains of control that the United States has imposed over Eurasia, until, in the succession of these punches, those chains of control snap, U.S. dominance over Eurasia comes to an end, and, correspondingly, in the theory of geopolitics, U.S. global power also declines.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor McCoy, one of the key reasons binding Russia to China, in addition to what you’ve been talking about, is that Russia is a major energy exporter. China is one of the world’s leading energy importers. Put that together with, The Wall Street Journal reporting last week, Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market. China buys more than a quarter of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. Can you talk about the significance of both the currency and energy politics?

ALFRED McCOY: Sure. One of the foundations of U.S. global powers, right since the end of World War II, has been that the dollar has been the functional global reserve currency. That was set at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. And in 1971, when President Nixon ended the automatic convertibility of dollars to gold, Saudi Arabia announced that they would keep conducting their petroleum transactions in dollars. And since oil is the most negotiated of all international commodities, if the world is doing its oil business in dollars, that means the dollar has that continuing support as global reserve currency.

Since 2015, the Chinese currency has become a part of the international basket of currencies recognized by the International Monetary Fund. And as China’s dominance over the global economy grows and it becomes the world’s largest economy, the Chinese currency’s role in that international economy is going to increase. And once the dollar declines — that is the most negotiable, the most visible part of U.S. global dominance — that global dominance will follow the decline of the dollar downward.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you see all of this playing out, Professor McCoy?

ALFRED McCOY: Short term, I think that what we’re looking at is a kind of a parallel of what happened with the last time China and Russia were aligned. In the early 1950s, Mao Zedong went to Moscow. He was a supplicant. He formed an alliance with Joseph Stalin. And Joseph Stalin cashed in that alliance very quickly by using China to enter the Korean War. China fought in Korea for three years. It cost them about 40% of China’s budget, 200,000 dead Chinese soldiers. What we’re looking at is kind of a reprise of that. You know, Putin comes to Beijing in February in the Winter Olympics. He’s now the supplicant. He needs China’s diplomatic and economic support for his Ukraine invasion. And so, at the moment of this very strong alliance again, this time Putin attacks. He’s sacrificing his budget, his soldiers, in this strategy of pushing and pushing and breaking the U.S. dominance over Eurasia.

I see, long term, the growing power of China over the Eurasian continent. Their Belt and Road Initiative, this trillion-dollar development program that now incorporates around 70 nations in Eurasia and Africa, laying down infrastructure — pipelines, railroads and roads — across the whole Eurasian landmass, if this development project succeeds — and it’s 10 times the size of the Marshall Plan that the United States used to rebuild Europe after World War II; it’s the biggest development scheme in human history — if this scheme works in laying down infrastructure of rails, pipelines and roads across the Eurasian landmass, and that draws the commerce of Eurasia, home to 70% of the world’s population, towards Beijing, then, almost as if by natural law, power and prestige and global leadership will flow towards Beijing.

And so, what we’re witnessing is the violent eruptions of a great tectonic shift in global power. As U.S. global power declines, China ascends. Power shifts from the West — Europe and the United States — towards Asia. And what we’re witnessing then, an historic change that is for the — I’d say, by 2030, by the end of this decade, it will become clear that U.S. global power has eclipsed, that power has shifted to Beijing on the Eurasian landmass, and they are the new global hegemon, constructing a new kind of world order, far less concerned with human rights, far less concerned with law, a kind of transactional world order of mutual convenience.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but it’s certainly a discussion that we will continue. Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of numerous books, most recently, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation, “Russia and China, Together at Last.”

Coming up, we go to Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony, for an exclusive interview with a leading Sahrawi human rights defender, Sultana Khaya, who’s been under de facto house arrest for almost 500 days. A group of U.S. activists have just broken the siege on her home. Stay with us.

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Could we have predicted this war in Ukraine? And could we have prevented it? The simple answer to both these questions is yes. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal and has to be condemned by the international community. And it has been condemned. As a former Ambassador to the United Nations, I fully understand and support the need to protect the principles of the UN Charter. Yet, in geopolitics we must always do two things simultaneously. We must moralise. And we must analyse. Since geopolitics is a cruel game and follows the cold and ruthless logic of power, we must be cold, dispassionate and hard-headed in our analysis. The only iron law of geopolitics is that it punishes those who are naïve and ignore its cold logic.

So could we have predicted this war in Ukraine? And could we have prevented it? The simple answer to both these questions is yes. Indeed, many leading statesmen in the West correctly predicted this disaster in Ukraine.

Probably the greatest strategic thinker that the US produced in the 20th century was George Kennan. He fashioned the famous containment strategy which ultimately succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union. He passed away on 17 March 2005.

On 21 February 2022, the famous New York Times correspondent, Tom Friedman, requoted at great length what George Kennan told him in 1998. When asked about the impact of the expansion of NATO into former areas of the Soviet Union, he said, very presciently, “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”

So why did NATO continue expanding despite the clear warnings of George Kennan? In some ways, the correct answer was also endorsed by George Kennan. On 1 December 1997, the famous and legendary editor of the magazine The National Interest Owen Harries wrote an article explaining why NATO expansion was unwise and then gave the reasons why it was happening. He cited several reasons, but let me just quote the first two: “the strength of the Polish-American vote, as well as that of other Americans of Central and East European origin” and “the enormous vested interests–careers, contracts, consultancies, accumulated expertise–represented by the NATO establishment, which now needed a new reason and purpose to justify the organization’s continued existence”.

In short, short-term domestic political interests of gaining voters and narrow economic interests trumped geopolitical wisdom. Immediately, after Owen Harries published this article, George Kennan immediately wrote a letter endorsing all the points made by Owen Harries. He said “It was in some respects a surprise because certain of your major arguments were ones I myself had made, or had wanted to make, but had not expected to see them so well expressed by the pen of anyone else.”

What is striking about the project to expand NATO is that many leading American thinkers, both liberal and conservative, opposed it, including Paul Nitze, James Schlesinger, Fred Ikle, John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, William Perry, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Vladimir Pozner, Bob Gates, Robert McNamara, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart, Pat Buchanan, Jeffrey Sachs, and Fiona Hill among others.

The greatest living strategic thinker in the US today is Henry Kissinger. He didn’t oppose the expansion of NATO to the former Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe. But he strongly counselled against admitting Ukraine into NATO. As a good student of history, Kissinger pointed out why Ukraine was viewed differently by Russians. In a 2014 article published in the Washington Post, this is what Kissinger said, “The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Keivan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709, were fought on Ukrainian soil.”

As a wise statesman, Kissinger proposed a sensible compromise solution. On the one hand, he said, “Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.” On the other hand, he said (in 2014), “Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it came up.”

The real tragedy about Ukraine is that if the then American President, Barack Obama (a Nobel Peace Prize winner) had heeded the advice of Henry Kissinger, the war in Ukraine could have been avoided. Kissinger’s formula emphasised that the Ukrainians would be free to choose their own political system and regional associations. Indeed, the strong Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion was not anticipated. This strong resistance confirms their strong desire to join the European Union. And they should be allowed to do so. And, as advised by Kissinger, Ukraine can stay out of NATO and remain “neutral”. In the past ‘neutral’ states were allowed to join the European Union. Ukraine could follow that precedent. Such a win-win solution could have prevented a war. Indeed, two days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Zelensky (who has emerged as a real hero after the invasion) said, “We are not afraid of Russia, we are not afraid of engaging in talks with Russia, we are not afraid of discussing anything, such as security guarantees for our state, we are not afraid of talking about neutral status.” If neutral status had been agreed to, the war could have been avoided.

When future historians write about this Ukraine episode, one big question they will surely ask is why the clear and explicit warnings of leading Western statesmen, like Kennan and Kissinger, were ignored? They will also ask why our world doesn’t have distinguished peacemakers today who could have prevented the conflict.

This may well be the most important lesson that the world should learn from the Ukraine episode. Wars are tragic, as they always have been. Peace must be preserved. And the world needs to develop a class of globally respected statesmen who could emerge as global peace-makers.

Curiously, we used to have such globally respected statesmen, including people like Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu. Many of them were members of a council of “The Elders” which has tried to provide calm and sensible advice from time to time. Clearly, we seem to lack such distinguished statesmen today.

And the risks continue to grow. Recently, the former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo said in Taiwan that the US should “immediately take necessary, and long-overdue, steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is to offer the Republic of China (Taiwan) America’s diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country.” One doesn’t have to be a geopolitical genius to figure out that his prescription would lead to a war over Taiwan.

Since his provocative suggestion could lead to a war, a war that could be even more destructive than the war in Ukraine, one would expect a global chorus of voices to emerge and condemn the reckless statement of Mike Pompeo which could lead to a war.

So far I have not heard any leading voice on our planet condemn his statement. And that’s the nub of our global problem. Where are the global peacemakers when we need them more than ever?

By Kishore Mahbubani — a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the author of ‘Has the West Lost It?’

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

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President Joe Biden on Tuesday described the conflict in Ukraine as a historic “inflection point [that] comes along every six or eight generations,” and described the US’ role in the conflict as fighting the first “real battle” in a civilizational struggle versus Russia and China. Biden also promised to send billions more dollars worth of aid to Kiev.

“We’re at an inflection point in history. It comes along about every six or eight generations,” Biden said, during a visit to a Lockheed Martin factory in Alabama, adding that “things are changing so rapidly that we have to be in control.”

It is unclear what the last “inflection point” referenced by Biden was, with six to eight generations describing anywhere between 100 and 200 years ago. However, Biden went on to describe the US’ mission in Ukraine in grander terms than simply shipping arms to an ally.

“There’s an ongoing battle between autocracy and democracy,” he said, referring to China and Russia as enemies of supposed Western “democracies.” The conflict in Ukraine, he added, is “the first real battle” in this clash of civilizations. 

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NOTE: THIS IS A FIGHT THAT HAS BEEN CHOSEN BY THE USA. THE UKRAINE INCURSION IN UKRAINE IS A LOCAL DISPUTE THAT THE USA HAS CHOSEN TO MAKE GLOBAL AND ENCOMPASS CHINA IN THE MIX. THE DELIBERATE PROPAGANDA BY THE US AND THE OUTRAGEOUS SHUTTING DOWN OF OPPOSING VIEW POINTS TELL THE STORY WELL: THE USA WANT TO OWN AND CONTROL THE WORLD SINGULARLY. THIS IS A FASCIST POSITION. 

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