What is, and is not, important about war in Ukraine. Middle Nation Podcast (E:15)

This is Shahid Bolson. This is the Middle Nation podcast episode number 15, I believe.

There have been, several Muslim commentators reacting to the war in Ukraine by denouncing the hypocrisy of The US and Europe and the glaring racism and cultural bias behind why Ukrainian lives matter and why their refugees are more worthy than, say, Syrians or Afghans or Muslims in general. I've seen a lot of Muslims expressing their outrage about the double standards at work in this whole situation, and they point to, for instance, the Iraq invasion or the invasion of Afghanistan, illegal wars and regime change projects that blatantly violated the territorial integrity of sovereign countries perpetrated by The United States and its allies. And frankly, that barely scratches the surface. But to be honest, I find all these sorts of criticisms, well, boring, unremarkable, and a little exasperating. I mean, is any of this news to anyone?

By calling all this out, you're kind of revealing that you somehow, on some level, didn't already know this about Western nations, that you have been indescribably naive up until this moment. Do we need to put out a primer or something about Kufr? How is it a blistering critique to point out that the Kufr are not just Kufr, but are also hypocrites? I mean, perhaps living in the West has caused some Muslims to succumb to actually believing the West's hype about itself? That seems to be the only explanation.

Look. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, among both Muslims and non Muslims, all of these outrageous contradictions of Western powers between what they say and what they do and all their double standards and all their bigotry, all these things that you are waxing furious about, it all goes without saying. Everybody knows. These are not insights. On some level, I wonder if Muslims on social media are just venting about this because Ukraine is a trending topic, and they wanna say something about it, but they are as yet undecided about what their position should be.

So the low hanging fruit is Western hypocrisy. But again, yeah, we know. This is not remotely the most interesting or important aspect of the war in Ukraine. What is interesting and important is that this is a conflict that could have very easily been averted if averting it was ever a goal. I've talked about this before and written about it on the community page on my channel.

There was no reason this had to happen except that having it happen was desired. That is important. The United States has accelerated its abandonment of the post World War two global order that had at its core the stability and prosperity of Europe through America's guarantee of protection for Europe's international trade as a strategy for confronting and containing the Soviet Union. Modern Europe was underwritten by The United States, and this system is no longer an American priority. The avoidable war in Ukraine that was, in my view, insistently provoked is the canary in the mineshaft.

Not only has Europe's benefactor left the building, he dropped the hand grenade on the way out. Sanctions against Russia do not hurt The United States. They hurt Europe. Banning Russian ships from Europe's ports does not hurt America. It hurts Europe.

If the sanctions regime extends to Russia's energy sector and the divestment of BP, British Petroleum, from their shares in that sector certainly indicates that they might extend to Russian energy, then Europe's lights go off, not America's. In fact, Europe becomes energy dependent on The United States, which holds sway over Saudi Arabia, The UAE, and Iraq, and is itself the largest producer in the world. Now I've said this before. The war in Ukraine can accurately be described as almost a proxy war by The US against Europe. In addition to energy, there's food.

Remove Russian and Ukrainian wheat from the global market and fertilizers, and there are going to be food shortages. Farming around the world will be crippled, and there could potentially be famines, but not in America. If the sanctions do hit the Russian energy sector, the EU will not survive as an entity. Germany will have to break ranks. There's no EU without Germany.

But here's the thing, and this is why all of this is happening. Why The US does not care what happens to Europe anymore? We're not actually that far away from there not being a Germany anyway. At least not a Germany that resembles what it is now. That's because Germany, like most of Europe, is dying, literally.

They are facing mass retirements in the next few years, and they do not have sufficient workers to replace them. And this holds true for the rest of the continent. Europe is shrinking as both a workforce and as a population of consumers. And frankly, The US does not have to confront or contain the Soviet Union anymore. It hasn't had to do that in thirty years.

It doesn't even have to confront or contain Russia actually because Russia is even worse off demographically than Europe. With or without war, Russia is unsustainable as a modern state. There's just not enough at stake over there anymore for The US. Business and policymakers are looking towards the emerging markets in Asia, Africa, The Middle East, and Latin America now. It appears that the consensus on this is so significant that the process is being accelerated via war in Ukraine.

So what is going on now and what we can expect is, in a word, demolition. Conflict creates ideal conditions for maximum control and profiteering, the optimal situation for corporate domination. It is a strategy first developed in South And Central America, refined in The Middle East, and it has already been slowly progressing inside The United States and inside Europe for at least the last two decades. The imposition of neoliberal reforms, austerity, debt slavery, and the hollowing out of government. Now until now, Europe and America have been subjected to a light version of that program, but the time has come for Europe to get the full treatment.

What that means essentially is that Europe will revert to its pre World War two self, and that is a continent in a continuous state of conflict, rivalry, desperation, and poverty. This is or should be enormously important to us. We are living through a paradigmatic shift in the global order, and we're going to have to shake off whatever awe or admiration or attachment we may feel towards Europe. We have to confront our own hypocrisy in this regard because we want to, on the one hand, denounce the West, while on the other hand, wanting to live there at the same time and to preserve its success. Well, look, America is not that sentimental about Europe.

Why should we be? The only reason the demographic collapse in Europe is not worse than it is is because of immigration, and a lot of that is Muslim immigration. The same is true in The US actually. The birth rate in The United States would be much lower except that foreign born mothers have more children than native born mothers. It is right and appropriate and strategic at this moment in history for the Muslims to focus on the development of our own countries and the development of cooperation and unity between our countries and to set aside our disproportionate fascination with the countries of the West.

This century can end with Muslims at the polar opposite of the economic and political spectrum from where we began it. The Ukraine war is like a bell that announces the shift change at a factory. Europe's shift is ending, and ours is beginning.