Ukraine... and the story of the tail that "wagging the dog"

An American novel entitled “Wag the Dog” was published in 1993, which depicted “Desert Storm,” the first war that the United States fought with its Arab and international allies against Iraq in 1991, as if it was a war that was intended to create an atmosphere conducive to the re-election of President George Bush the father for a second presidential term, and in the novel, a Hollywood film director was hired to supervise the organization of the war for this end. The truth is that Bush Sr. lost the elections in 1992, despite his rejoicing in the victory he achieved in "Desert Storm", and Bill Clinton winning the presidency.

In 1997, the novel was followed by a hugely popular movie, which was based on the novel and bears the same title. As for the story of the film, it is different from the story of the novel, as it revolves around an American president who seeks re-election for a second term, while his luck in success falls due to a sex scandal, so he resorts to creating a war in Albania in order to divert attention from his problems and revive his popularity. The film seemed to foretell what had actually happened. A few weeks after the film was released, the famous Lewinsky sex scandal exploded in Clinton's face. His order to bomb the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory in Sudan at the height of that scandal seemed like a miserable attempt to divert attention from it. Two years later, Clinton oversaw a war not in Albania itself, but in the Albanian province of Kosovo in Serbia.

Since the release of the film, the phrase "shake the dog" has become a reference in the English language to the tendency of political officials to fabricate crises to distract people from issues that are embarrassing to them. We can only think of that phrase and what it symbolizes when we see that the two Western leaders most eager to escalate confrontation with Russia over Ukraine are Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, both of whom face the most political embarrassment. Biden is floundering over his failure to deliver on his election promises in the economic sphere, which has exacerbated the rapid deterioration of his image that resulted from his loss of face in organizing the exit of US forces from Afghanistan last summer. As for Johnson, for weeks, he has been facing an unprecedented wave of discontent that has reached the core of his party, the Conservative Party, related to repeated violations that took place in the Prime Minister’s headquarters, of the barriers that his government dictated to the public in the process of gatherings in order to contain the spread of the Covid epidemic.

The two men, Biden and Johnson, act as if they wish Russian forces would invade Ukraine in order to divert their people into a dangerous state of war that would allow them to play the role of historical leader. It seems that Biden dreams of playing the role of US President Roosevelt in managing the war against Nazism, while Johnson is known to have aspired to imitate Winston Churchill. The comedy reaches its climax with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who aspires to replace Johnson, and dreams of imitating Margaret Thatcher in her fight in the Falkland Islands war against Argentina, to the extent that she seizes the opportunity of her travels related to the current confrontation in order to organize a picture of her on board A tank similar to a famous image of Thatcher, and another wearing a fur hat in the Red Square in the Kremlin, similar to another famous image of Thatcher, although the weather did not justify wearing gears for such a hat!

Of course, we say all this while we are fully aware that Vladimir Putin's threat to Ukraine is not a figment of the imagination. However, the behavior of the American and British governments differs markedly from the behavior of the French and German governments. While the first two rulings exaggerate the upcoming war, rather they affirm every day that it is imminent, as if they are urging its occurrence, the other two seek to understand the message that Putin wanted to convey through his military measures and show an understanding of Russia’s security demands, which are not at all different from the demands of any superpower in its state. .

There is great hypocrisy in the Western claim that Russia in this case is encroaching on Ukraine’s sovereignty and its right to join NATO, while the Russian demand is not directed at Ukraine, but rather at the alliance itself. Moscow is asking it to stop expanding to the east, which is not a supernatural demand at all. For example, during the missile crisis in Cuba in 1962, Washington did not ask Cuba to stop receiving Russian missiles, but rather demanded Moscow to withdraw its missiles from the island, and the difference is clear between the conflict between two superpowers on the one hand, and the will of a superpower to impose its will on a state. Weak on the other hand. And if it is true that Russia has repeatedly committed pressures of the latter kind over time, the same applies to America and the other great powers.

Chess player Vladimir Putin sought to move his minister and his two castles at this particular time, realizing that Biden is in a position of weakness first, and that the state of the global fuel market increases his ability to put pressure on Western countries, secondly, in addition to the fact that relations between America and China have reached the bottom, ensuring solidarity Beijing with Moscow (especially that Russia's ambitions towards Ukraine remind China of its ambitions towards Taiwan). It is likely that the American reaction surprised Putin, as it went beyond what he aspired to do to reach a situation described by the foreign circles in Moscow as hysterical. As for the misfortune of all the countries on that chessboard, it is that their importance is no more than that of the soldiers, whom it is easy for the player to sacrifice in pursuit of his own ends.