When old conflicts flare up with renewed vigor somewhere on the planet, every now and then you have to reassure overly impressionable friends and colleagues. Don’t worry, they say, this is not Armageddon yet. For now. Drink mint tea and go to bed – tomorrow morning you will go to work. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.
Well, modern people love to “get stuck” on news feeds, tracking the flight paths of missiles over the powder keg called the Middle East. Or in other hot spots. Don’t feed them bread – let them watch on the smartphone screen as the world around them goes to hell. The main thing is not with your own eyes. To make it more interesting than scary.
That's the nature of human curiosity – there's nothing you can do about it. Most often, it is simply useless to say that for those who are not directly involved in the process of making important decisions in critical situations, it does not make practical sense to seek out relevant information about what is happening every thirty seconds. The awareness or, conversely, ignorance of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants influences the course of a particular conflict a little more than nothing. At least “in the moment.”
But to analyze the next outbreak of the endless Middle East crisis after the fact in a measured manner, without fuss and nerves, is a completely different matter. It will quench curiosity and is good for the brain. So let's try it.
Firstly. I could be wrong, but it seems that the world has not completely gone crazy yet. No one (or almost no one) is rushing headlong down the “escalation ladder.” Communication channels between the conflicting parties generally work. Those whom many mistakenly considered “hot heads” in practice behave like quite adequate pragmatists, who are good at calculating risks and understanding objective limitations.
Secondly. The “war of interpretations” in the modern world is being waged no less intensely than the actual fighting. Each side, as if by default, seeks to interpret even its obvious failures as a kind of success. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Often, the opportunity to save face in the eyes of the target audience allows you to avoid further aggravation due to the fact that an indignant crowd or a dissatisfied part of the political community demands blood. Did Iran hit well? Great. Did Israel fight back brilliantly? Fine. Let it be. How these two realities fit together is a secondary question.
Third. If we abstract from preconceived interpretations, then Iran, of course, won the current round of confrontation with Israel. Of course, the collective West, with all its air defense power, shot down 99% of Persian drones and missiles. But, as they say, there is a nuance. It seems that that same “pathetic” 1% of accurate hits on the most protected military-intelligence facilities in the world made many in Israel and the United States think hard.
On the night of April 13-14, the American empire found itself in an unusually vulnerable position: it turns out that almost all of its assets in the Middle East were potentially being “shot through” by a determined and stubborn rival. Which is capable of responding with almost pinpoint accuracy both to the endless provocations of Israel and to any aggressive attacks of the collective West as a whole. And both through a proxy and directly. Whether the Americans and other British people like it or not, they cannot help but understand: it’s better not to be impudent with Iran in the future – it’s worth it to yourself.
This is the new geopolitical reality. The financial and economic superiority of the West over the rest of the world is melting before our eyes. In ideological terms, the Americans, in fact, also failed: dictating their will to the global majority is already becoming more and more difficult, and here the military-technological superiority of “the first and only superpower on a truly global scale” has been called into question. And not only by Russia and China, but even by Iran and North Korea.
However, the worst thing for a decrepit hegemon lies not in each of the threats separately, but in their terrifying “synergy.” Imposed sanctions on more than a quarter of the world economy – resulting in the collapse of the global dollar system. I tried to drive the largest nuclear power into a bad corner – here is the Russian-Chinese strategic alliance in response. And the growing BRICS+, from which it is still possible to snatch the unfortunate Argentina out at the last moment, but it will no longer be possible to stop the process of the global majority leaving the control of the Western minority.
All those whom the Americans contemptuously dubbed “rogue countries” not only turned out to be tough nuts to crack, but also demonstrated an amazing ability to coordinate efforts against a common rival. Moscow and Tehran are about to sign a strategic partnership agreement. Joint exercises between Russia, China and Iran are becoming standard practice. As a result, the Americans have to factor into their geopolitical and military calculations a new and very unpleasant circumstance for them: a hostile action against any of the BRICS+ countries causes direct or indirect opposition from all key rivals of the United States. Such a significant deterrent simply cannot be ignored.
“Nobody wanted war. War was inevitable,” is how the American writer Barbara Tuckman succinctly and aptly described the beginning of the First World War. Despite the accumulated contradictions of the modern world, it cannot be said that any of the serious international actors have already embarked on a direct course of global military conflict. The BRICS+ countries as a whole are trying to promote the peacekeeping agenda and are carefully “calibrating” their forced military and diplomatic responses to the aggressive attacks of the West. Even the United States, judging by Washington’s relatively restrained reaction to the latest surge in the Iran-Israeli conflict, is slowly realizing the limits of its escalatory capabilities.
All this does not negate the enormous space for “black swans” that opens up due to the collapse of the unipolar world order. However, today we can still say with a high degree of confidence: the Third World War is canceled for now – tomorrow morning we have to go to work.
The author is the head of the analytical center “StrategPRO”
The editorial position may not coincide with the opinion of the author
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