Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev published an intriguing piece at his think tank in late September about “Europe and the Conflict in Ukraine: A Changing Historical Context”. His main point is that “Europe’s elites are no longer fighting for the rights and sovereignty of their own states, but only for their own position within a collective West integrated under US authority.” He accordingly arrives at a very startling conclusion as regards the recently escalating Ukrainian Conflict.
In Bordachev’s words, “Judging by the rhetoric we hear from European capitals, as well as by the scale of the assistance they are supplying to the Kiev regime, the conflict with Russia is currently perceived by those in power in Berlin, Paris, and London as having almost existential significance. And should their prospects of retaining power—particularly under pressure from the United States—become increasingly uncertain, these elites may indeed resort to unleashing military confrontation with Russia.”
Several days prior to his piece, RT republished an equally intriguing one by Fyodor Lukyanov, Bordachev’s colleague who serves as their club’s Research Director. The part of greatest relevance to Bordachev’s was his conclusion that “Rationality doesn’t always prevail in international politics, but this doesn’t mean Russia should write off Eastern Europe as a lost cause – because the countries closest to a conflict may ultimately have the strongest reasons to keep it under control.”
Circling back to Bordachev’s piece before returning to its relevance to Lukyanov’s, it can be concluded that Europe’s elites are fighting for their country’s role in the US-supervised post-war European security architecture west of the new “Iron Curtain” along that front of the “cordon sanitaire” around Russia. The future order will likely be characterized by a German-dominated militarized EU or a militarized EU in which the Polish-led Intermarium counterbalances Germany but complements its containment of Russia.
The rise of the AfD in Germany and the credible scenario of the National Rally following suit in France, both due to the EU’s three systemic errors that Putin recently discussed, could lead to Bordachev’s warning about the EU waging war on Russia out of domestic political desperation coming true. In connection with that, it’s worth mentioning the newfound worries among many about a false flag (in Poland?) to that end, which readers can learn more about from this analysis here.
Pairing Bordachev’s warning with Lukyanov’s assessment that “the countries closest to a conflict may ultimately have the strongest reasons to keep it under control”, the resumption of official Russian-Polish dialogue is naturally essential, even if it’s mediated at first by the US. Just recently, “Russia Officially Recognized the Grand Strategic Challenge Posed by Poland”, namely in connecting the western and southern flanks of the “cordon sanitaire”. Without Poland’s participation, an EU war on Russia is unlikely.
It’s therefore in American, Russian, and Polish interests to develop a crisis-control channel amidst the false flag fears that are circulating, but Poland’s ruling liberals are rabidly fearmongering about Russia, so its conservative president is the only one that it could talk to. He’s an ethnic Russophobe as proven by him slurring Russians last month, but he’s also pragmatic, so it’s possible that Trump could help him and Putin reach a grand deal for maintaining peace along the western flank of the “cordon sanitaire”.
