Things keep ratcheting up in Ukraine, with France continuing its saber-rattling escalatory spiral. Let’s quickly run down the new separate signals being sent from all across NATO: In a new Le Parisien piece, Macron reportedly reiterated the eventual need for ground troops to save Ukraine:
Reality seldom delivers to us that kind of catharis.
They will probably never learn even if they do get that beating.
Look, on the whole i agree with your sentiment, but i also know to temper my expectations because life is messy and imperfect and the outcomes of complex geopolitical processes are also most often imperfect. It is likely that not everything will turn out exactly as we want. But at the end of the day what matters is the trajectory, the direction of evolution for the balance of power in the world, and regardless of the details of the exact outcome of the Ukraine conflict that trajectory is already clear and set. The outcome of this conflict can at most accelerate or slow down that already ongoing process, but can never reverse or stop the trends that are already in motion, which are those of the global south rising alongside China. Russia has been playing a long game in Ukraine but China is playing an even longer game across the entire world.
The West’s hegemony is falling one way or another. The Ukraine conflict is not the cause of that fall, it is a symptom of it (while of course also being a powerful catalyst too).