{"id":16837,"date":"2022-04-03T04:26:24","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T02:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=16837"},"modified":"2022-04-03T13:05:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T11:05:48","slug":"16837","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=16837","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Sergey Karaganov<\/a>:<\/strong> For 25 years, people like myself have been saying that if Nato and Western alliances expand beyond certain red lines, especially into Ukraine, there will be a war. I envisioned that scenario as far back as 1997. In 2008 President Putin said that if Ukraine\u2019s membership of the alliance became a possibility then there will be no Ukraine. He was not listened to. So the first objective is to end Nato\u2019s expansion. Two other objectives have been added: one is the demilitarisation of Ukraine; the other is denazification, because there are people in the Russian government concerned with the rise of ultra-nationalism<\/span> in Ukraine to the extent that they think it is beginning to resemble Germany in the 1930s. There is also an aim to free the Donbas republics of eight years of constant bombardment.<\/p>\n

There was also a strong belief that war with Ukraine was inevitable \u2013<\/span> maybe three or four years from now \u2013<\/span> which could well have taken place on Russian territory itself. So probably the Kremlin decided that if you have to fight, let\u2019s fight on somebody else\u2019s territory, the territory of a neighbour and a brother country, once a part of the Russian Empire. But the real war is against the Western expansion.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what the outcome of this war will be, but I think it will involve the partition of Ukraine, one way or another. Hopefully there would still be something called Ukraine left at the end. But Russia cannot afford to \u201close\u201d, so we need a kind of a victory. And if there is a sense that we are losing the war, then I think there is a definite possibility of escalation. This war is a kind of proxy war between the West and the rest \u2013<\/span> Russia being, as it has been in history, the pinnacle of \u201cthe rest\u201d \u2013<\/span>\u00a0for a future world order. The stakes of the Russian elite are very high \u2013<\/span>\u00a0for them it is an existential war.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know whether Ukraine will survive, because it has a very limited, if any, history of statehood, and it doesn\u2019t have a state-building elite. Maybe something will grow from below, but it\u2019s an open question\u2026 We shall see\u2026 This war \u2013<\/span> or military operation; however you call it \u2013<\/span> will decide. Maybe the Ukrainian nation will be born: I will be happy if Ukrainians have an effective, viable government \u2013<\/span> unlike the situation during the last 30 years<\/span>. They were the absolute losers after the Soviet Union, because of their lack of a state-building<\/span> elite.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Bruno Ma\u00e7\u00e3es:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you think the US is benefiting from this war?<\/p>\n

Sergey Karaganov:<\/strong>\u00a0At this juncture, yes, because the big losers are, in addition to Ukraine, Europe, especially if it continues with this mysterious zest for independence from Russian energy. But China is clearly the victor of this whole affair\u2026 I think the biggest loser will be Ukraine; a loser will be Russia; a great loser will be Europe; the United States will lose somewhat, but still it could very well survive as a huge island over the ocean; and the big victor is China.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Bruno Ma\u00e7\u00e3es: <\/strong>Do you think this is a moment of supreme danger for Russia?<\/p>\n

Sergey Karaganov: <\/strong>I would say yes, this is an existential war. If we do not win, somehow, then I think we will have all kinds of unforeseen political repercussions which are much worse than at the beginning of the 1990s. But I believe that we will avoid that, first, because Russia will win, whatever that victory means, and second, because we have a strong and tough regime, so in any event, or if the worst happens, it will not be the dissolution of the country or collapse. I think it will be closer to a harsh authoritarian regime than to the dissolution of the country. But still, defeat is unthinkable.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Bruno Ma\u00e7\u00e3es: <\/strong>How do you feel personally? Do you feel tormented by what is happening?<\/p>\n

Sergey Karaganov:<\/strong> We all feel like we are part of a huge event in history, and it\u2019s not just about war in Ukraine; it\u2019s about the final crash of the international system that was created after the Second World War and then, in a different way, was recreated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, we are witnessing the collapse of an economic system \u2013<\/span> of the world economic system \u2013<\/span> globalisation in this form is finished. Whatever we have had in the past is gone. And out of this we have a build-up of many crises that, because of Covid-19, we pretended did not exist. For two years, the pandemic replaced decision-making<\/span>. Covid was bad enough, but now everybody has forgotten about Covid and we can see that everything is collapsing. Personally, I\u2019m tremendously saddened. I worked for the creation of a viable and fair system. But I am part of Russia, so I only wish that we win, whatever that means.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

So the West will never recuperate, but it doesn\u2019t matter if it dies: Western civilisation has brought all of us great benefits, but now people like myself and others are questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation. I think geopolitically the West will experience ups and downs. Maybe the shocks we are experiencing could bring back the better qualities of Western civilisation, and we will again see people like Roosevelt, Churchill, Adenauer, de Gaulle and Brandt back in office. But continuous shocks will of course also mean that democracy in its present form in most European countries will not survive, because under circumstances of great tension, democracies always wither away or become autocratic. These changes are inevitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sergey Karaganov: For 25 years, people like myself have been saying that if Nato and Western alliances expand beyond certain red lines, especially into Ukraine, there will be a war. I envisioned that scenario as far back as 1997. In … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}