Victims of Western ego …. Shazia Anwer Cheema
NATO’s 75th anniversary which was held in Washington on July 10 seized the fate of Joe Biden as candidate for the Presidential race after his organic cognitive decay was exposed to the Western world when he called Volodymyr Zelenskyy as ‘Putin’. The mood, attire and décor of the event somehow gave the ambiance of a funeral; the tense, stiff postures, gloomy looks, and a fumbling incoherent host. If we recall the last G7 summit, similar exhaustion, substances and detachedness from reality were the visibly prevalent characteristics and several critics pointed out the redundancy of the bloc in literal and metaphorical terms. The important question is: what did the world’s mightiest discuss? Well, just the Project Ukraine — something that is evident from the ferocious communique issued after the meeting.
The defiantly aggressive tone towards Russia and China, the demand that China must not be allowed to become an accessory in Russian ventures, and the visceral loathsome toward Russia were not the only talking points, the most important one being the heretic plunge toward stopping and containing China. However, Robert Fico, Viktor Orban and Tayyip Erdogan were the adults in the room, rest by default did not possess the ability to see that their absurd rhetoric and Project Ukraine had dragged down the collective West in a ditch of chaos and uncertainty. And even in the Western world there is the majority that is not ready to buy Western farce of “true democracy, self-serving rule-based order, and China-Russia nexus of evil”.
The Western proxy war via Ukraine against Russia has punched the collective West so hard that their economy is bogging down; the population is polarised at a scale history has never seen before; the EU and its leaders are becoming irreverent every passing day; and strange ideas and ideologies are filling the vacuum, but the level of spurn for Russia has proven greater than EU domestic complications.
Everything has been engulfed by the Project Ukraine, which has become a lizard in the mouth of the snake; if the snake swallows the lizard, it will defiantly die with the lizard plague and if it vomits the lizard to save his life then his might, his power will be questioned. Thus the West has decided to linger on the Ukrainian crisis as long as logically possible. The collective West cannot let Project Ukraine go; the efforts of Viktor Orban to travel to Kyiv and Moscow to find a mediating ground has been demonised to the level that no sane mind has any doubt that the end of Project Ukraine will be the ultimate victory of Russia and thousands of lives lost for sheer odium of collective West would be under question in history books.
The realities that President Zelenskyy is facing are bitterer. He needed immediate help but the collective West, despite good intentions to help him, could offer him mere promises. Zelenskyy asked for 128 F-16 fighter jets and was promised six immediately. He was told by Stoltenberg that Ukraine would get $100 billion but the communique mentioned only $40 billion. He did not either get any timeline for joining NATO or the EU. This is where the collective West is standing right now and the results of the US Presidential vote in favour of Trump would surely be difficult for Ukraine. President Zelenskyy has admitted it would be ‘hard work to deal with Donald Trump’ if he wins the US presidential race. Zelenskyy looks worried about what happens if the Trump team comes because Senator JD Vance who will be Vice President has already said he “doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine”.
Those who have been following Trump’s election campaign understand he will follow his previous policy of a “positive attitude toward Russia” and his negative approach towards the Ukraine conflict is known by political analysts. While talking to CNN last year, he said he could end the Ukraine-Russian war in 24 hours, sending a clear message he does not want the war to continue. Several European think tanks fear if Trump were elected in November 2024, the US backing for the war effort could end entirely. If it happens then Ukraine will be left with nothing but an existential threat. History will remember that a beautiful, hardworking and intelligent nation became the victim of Western ego.
Courtesy Express Tribune