The United States is already at war with Russia

Wolfgang Hansson

That's why Lavrov is right - the United States is already at war with Russia

PUBLISHED: LESS THAN 3 HOURS AGO

UPDATED: LESS THAN 1 HOUR AGE

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

COLUMNISTS

Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov was not so wrong when he warned of a third world war the other day.

The United States would never defend Ukraine with such devotion unless it was about something far greater than the survival of the Ukrainian nation as a democracy.

In practice, the United States and NATO are already at war with Russia.

Russia invaded Ukraine and started the war. Russia is the aggressor who violates all the laws of war.

But since the United States and NATO countries have seen how well Ukraine has managed to defend itself and how arbitrarily and incompetently the Russian army has behaved, the United States in particular has advanced its strategic goals in the conflict.

During his visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said bluntly that the goal was "to weaken Russia".

The modus operandi of war is increasingly being carved out.

The United States and the European Union provide Ukraine with heavier and more advanced weapons in order to prevent Russia from winning the war. But the goal is more comprehensive than that. By adding large losses of manpower and military equipment to NATO with the help of Russia, the West is helping to erode and in the long run weaken the Russian army.

The sanctions, which are specifically aimed at Russia's imports of high technology, are intended to make it more difficult for Russia to renew its weapons stockpiles. Or as Lloyd Austin put it.

- Russia will not be able to invade a neighboring country in the future.

The goal is to defeat Putin and teach Russia a lesson.

Tactics from Afghanistan

The parallel is a bit lame, but I think it can be compared to the US tactics in Afghanistan when the country was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1979. The US armed and financed militant Islamist groups that wanted to fight the Russians. The United States provided them with money and weapons. In the end, the Soviet Union could not bear any more losses or bear the economic cost, but withdrew from the country. (But even the United States, much later, had to pay a high price in the form of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States.)

The collapse of the Soviet Union was caused in part by the failure of Afghanistan.

Now we see a bit of the same scenario unfolding in Ukraine.

No wonder the Russian leadership is upset and worried.

It is in this light that one should see Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's threat that the risk of a third world war has increased.

In Russia's eyes, they are already at war with the United States and NATO because they provide so much aid in the form of weapons, money and vital intelligence to Ukraine. Without outside help, Russia would probably have already won the war by now.

So when Lavrov claims that the United States is waging a proxy war, a war through agents, in Ukraine, he is not lying for once.

Russia started the war, but as it developed, the West has gradually moved its positions to stop Russian aggression.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned of the dangers of a third world war.

Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP / TT

The bar is raised all the time

Look at Germany. Initially, Ukraine was offered 5,000 helmets as support. Now they are sending their most advanced tank and training the Ukrainian military in Germany.

Even the United States and Britain, which already at the beginning of the war provided Ukraine with certain weapons, have abandoned their restraint. Now the British Foreign Secretary is proposing to send fighter jets to Ukraine. The bar for where the border goes so as not to provoke Russia is raised all the time.

What was impossible for NATO to do at the beginning of the war is today everyday food. The only red line that exists is direct military intervention. But before the war is over, it may also have passed.

The United States did not want the war in Ukraine, but once it broke out, they tried to take as much strategic advantage of it as possible.

In the new security order that is gradually emerging, the United States does not want to have to tie up too many resources in Europe when the big fight in the future is with China. The war in Ukraine serves as a way for the United States to weaken Russia in the long run, but to let the Ukrainians take the brunt. A war that has been outsourced in practice.

If the United States and NATO were to openly join the war, it is likely that the Russian people would be much more motivated to fight. Then they themselves would feel threatened.

And Potemkinkuliss

The war has clearly shown that the Russian military machine is not nearly as impressive and powerful as most of us assumed before February 24th. On the contrary, it has shown an almost shocking weakness. Putin has built a Potemkin backdrop.

But as Russia's adversity piles up, so does the risk of Putin becoming more desperate. If he can not show any victory at all to the grand military parades on May 9 in Moscow in memory of Russia's victory in World War II, then he can be tempted to increase efforts further by using chemical weapons or smaller nuclear weapons to further increase the threat to the West.

Russia is more likely to attack NATO arms shipments into Ukraine. Depending on how the West responds, it can also mean an escalation.

For each week that the war in Ukraine continues, the risk of spreading to other countries increases, by mistake or as a calculated risk.

So far, the warnings from Joe Biden and Sergei Lavrov about a third world war are just warnings. But the threat is creeping ever closer.