IN his second State of the Union address, the US president Joe Biden struck a more aggressive tone on China saying if China threatened US sovereignty, they will act to protect their country. The statement came in the wake of the growing tensions with Beijing over a suspected surveillance balloon. However, Biden added he was committed to working with China where it can advance American interests and benefit the world. The US president also slammed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for his military aggression. He termed the invasion of Ukraine by Russia as a test for the ages, and a test for the world.
China and Russia have emerged as the biggest security challenges for the US as also reflected in Biden’s address. It has also been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine and war has since been dragging on with no side closer to declaring victory.
Meanwhile, the human tragedy is unfolding in Ukraine on a vast scale in terms of the deaths of civilians. The war has rallied western nations and many other countries from around the world behind the US. And all we are hearing is a predominantly western narrative on the war. Social media companies have censored Russian state-sponsored media so there is little in the public domain that can be called an alternative discourse. And this is creating a situation we are all so familiar with. The West has again put on a moralistic lens on the war: a conflict between flawless virtue and pure evil.
It is a familiar script that has earlier played out in US-led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and in the case of the US-backed Saudi war in Yemen. In the case of war in Iraq, it was the cooked up intelligence about the then Iraqi president Saddam Hussain possessing the Weapons of Mass Destruction that became the basis for war. And western media acted as cheerleaders for the destruction of Iraq.
The point is that it is not the reality on the ground but the west’s core interests that determine what is good and what is evil. Otherwise, the reality of Russian invasion of Ukraine is very complex. It is rooted in Russia’s legitimate fears of being encircled by the west and the NATO military bases reaching its doorstep. Many of the Eastern European countries that were once a part of the USSR-led Warsaw Pact have become members of the NATO, heightening Russia’s insecurity. Now the growing likelihood of Ukraine also joining NATO became the last straw for Putin. While it is nobody’s case to countenance the invasion of a sovereign smaller country by its powerful neighbour, the solution to the evolving fraught situation can be resolved if the US-led West and Russia sit down and work towards addressing each other’s grievances and fears.
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