Finian Cunningham
The war in Ukraine is one of several violent attempts by the United States and its NATO allies to shore up crumbling Western hegemony.
The war in Ukraine is not an isolated conflict. It is one of several violent attempts by the United States and its NATO allies to shore up crumbling Western hegemony.
Former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen says the war in Ukraine is one front in a broader international conflict that is aimed at preserving a world order once dominated by a global minority of Western powers, primarily the United States.
Rasmussen, a West Point graduate and teacher, has for many years worked as an independent consultant for international business partnerships. Originally from Minneapolis, he has over 30 years' experience in research and development, technology integration, and business management. He has lived and traveled extensively in over 30 countries and has strong international relationships.
His special interests include Eurasian economic development and the prospects for the BRICS group of nations led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which now includes Iran as a member along with several others. The BRICS+ comprises about half of the globe's population and economy.
Rasmussen's consultancy work focuses on the impact of conflicts around the world.
He contends that the U.S. and its Western allies are tacitly driving a worldwide agenda to prevent the multipolar order from succeeding their hegemonic unipolar order.
Rasmussen says it is not a coincidence that the U.S. and its Western partners are involved in multiple concurrent aggressions.
Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Cuba and Venezuela, together with tensions in Latin America, for example from the Trump administration's interference in Brazil's presidential elections, and in East Asia with China, are all stemming from a desperate attempt to prop up the Western order. That order has prevailed for several centuries, with first the European powers and then the U.S. taking over as the lead hegemon since the Second World War.
But that old order is failing and falling as a new multipolar order emerges, as illustrated by the growing importance of the BRICS, Eurasia, Africa, and, in general, the Global South. A world majority is more assuredly asserting itself, demanding equitable development based on win-win partnerships and mutual co-development in contrast to the exploitative Western order.
Earl Rasmussen believes that multipolar development cannot be stopped. It will prevail because human beings demand it as a moral and economic imperative. But he warns that the world is undergoing violent resistance by the U.S.-led Western powers.
He also contends that the Western nations, as presently seen in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and other European states, are themselves undergoing popular revolts against their elitist ruling classes who are invested in the old order. The political crises in Western nations are due to the loss of moral authority of establishment parties. People can see their corruption and duplicity and how these parties are servants of corporate power, the Zionist lobby, the military-industrial complex, and so on.
The end of the Ukraine war will mark the end of Western hegemony. The U.S.-led NATO proxy war is facing a historic defeat by Russia. Potentially, that outcome will lead more quickly to a fairer world order, one in which nations' sovereignty and international law are actually respected for the mutual benefit of all.
It is up to the Western states to abandon their hegemonic policies and ambitions to finally live in peace with the world's majority. The longer they persist in their arrogant assumptions of privilege and domination, the longer the violent transition. If the political system can't adapt, then people power will have to deliver a new system.