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The other day, the US and Zelensky had a public spat!
Without saying a word, they just cut off military aid to Ukraine.
There’s a war going on at the front, and suddenly you realize you’re out of bullets, out of food, out of everything.
Let’s see how hard this cutoff is.
The U.S. has given Ukraine over 100 billion dollars in aid since 2022.
Roughly $2.5 billion in arms and ammunition are constantly being shipped to Ukraine every month.
Now, this lifeline has been cut off in one fell swoop.
Including previously promised HIMARS rocket systems, Patriot air defense systems, and other critical weapons.
The importance of intelligence in modern warfare cannot be overstated.
U.S. satellite and electronic reconnaissance capabilities provide Ukraine with valuable information on Russian military movements.
Military experts estimate that
that this information made the Ukrainian army’s defense much more efficient, an advantage that has now been completely stripped away.
To make matters worse, the White House has put unprecedented diplomatic pressure on Britain to stop providing Ukraine with frontline intelligence.
01
Great Power Support, Often Depends on Interests of the Moment
From a historical perspective, this shift in attitude is not without precedent.
In the twentieth century, the United States suddenly changed its position on several occasions in different wars.
In 1975, when the United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam, it also quickly cut off its support for South Vietnam, leading to the rapid collapse of the South Vietnamese regime.
Earlier still, when Stalin fell out with Tito after the Second World War, the Soviet Union immediately withdrew all assistance to Yugoslavia.
All these historical cases remind us
The support of great powers often depends on immediate interests rather than long-term commitments.
For Ukraine, this is a bolt from the blue.
In the face of this flip-flopping faster-than-a-book behavior by the United States, Ukraine came to its senses
In a great power game, a small country is the pawn that can be sacrificed at any time.
Ukraine’s current situation can be described as internal and external problems, bad to the extreme.
GDP in 2023 plummeted by 30 .
What kind of concept is that?
It’s equivalent to a decade of economic development gains being wiped out overnight.
Kharkiv, Odessa and other industrial zones have been repeatedly bombed, and, according to the Ministry of the Economy of Ukraine, a number of power generation facilities throughout the country have been damaged, and factories have been forced to close or relocate.
The Ukrainian economy is like a hollowed-out beehive, still on the surface, but already empty inside.
Historically, this is not an uncommon situation.
Poland during World War II and Austria-Hungary after World War I experienced similar economic collapses.
The Polish economy at the time shrank during the war and only gradually recovered in the 1950s.
The so-called international support actually came with an explicit price tag.
While the United States and European countries talk about supporting Ukraine, they all have their own little agendas in their bones.
Through military assistance, the United States has depleted Russia’s strength on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has been able to make a lot of money for its own military industry.
According to statistics, the U.S. military industry five giants Raytheon Lockheed Martin and other companies since the outbreak of the conflict, the average share price rose by more than 25.
Germany ostensibly supports Ukraine, but until last year was buying gas from Russia.
France, while condemning Russia, has maintained diplomatic channels with Moscow.
Poland, while actively supporting Ukraine, has also taken the opportunity to take in a large number of Ukrainian refugees, easing its own labor shortages.
This is a situation that has been repeated throughout history.
Looking back at the Munich Agreement of 1938, Britain and France at that time did not hesitate to push Czechoslovakia into the tiger’s mouth of Hitler for the sake of the so-called peace.
Afterwards, Churchill sarcastically said
They chose between war and shame, and ended up with both shame and war.
The tragedy of Ukraine is that it has always been forced to choose sides between different powers without ever really taking control of its own destiny.
This dilemma is strikingly similar to that of 19th century Poland Finland.
In those days, these small countries swung between powers like Russia, Prussia and Austria, and paid a terrible price in the end.
Poland, even, was completely partitioned in 1795 and disappeared from the map for 123 years.
02
Ukraine’s Jedi Strike Back
The U.S. move was meant to be a sword to the throat to keep Ukraine in line.
It’s a very clear plan.
Without the aid, Ukraine will be like a hungry kitten and will have to do what the United States wants.
In the 1950s and 1970s, the US made many Latin American countries dance like puppets on strings by turning on the aid tap.
For example, in 1954, Guatemala’s President Arbenz wanted to carry out land reform and touched the interests of the United Fruit Company of America.
As a result, once the U.S. stopped providing aid, coupled with the CIA’s covert support, Arbenz went down in the blink of an eye.
But Zelensky was not willing.
Like Castro who risked nuclear war rather than bow to the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Zelensky chose to play hardball.
This situation is historically known as a small country being tough.
In 1940, when Hitler’s Germany was strong enough to sweep across the European continent, tiny Greece resisted.
Churchill’s line.
From now on, we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks .
It still makes the blood boil.
In 1956, Egyptian President Nasser shocked the entire Western world by decisively nationalizing the Suez Canal instead of giving in after the U.S. withdrew aid for the Aswan Dam.
Zelensky’s reaction caught Washington off guard.
Faced with a U.S. volte-face, Ukraine made a bold decision to turn its hopes to China.
This move is not unusual in history.
Smaller countries, more often than not, look to third parties.
Looking back at history, Egypt’s maneuvering between the United States and the Soviet Union, and Tito of Yugoslavia’s search for his own path between the East and West camps, are similar examples.
After falling out with Stalin, Tito succeeded in opening up a third way of the Non-Aligned Movement between the United States and the Soviet Union, thus maintaining the independence of his country.
Why did Ukraine choose China?
First of all, China doesn’t like to dictate as much as the United States does.
Historically, US aid has almost always come with strings attached.
The 1947 Marshall Plan helped Europe, but required European countries to accept the American economic model
Aid to South Korea in the 1960s, but South Korea had to send troops to fight in Vietnam.
In contrast, China’s principle of non-intervention was much more valuable.
China’s economic power is not to be underestimated.
In 2024, China ranked second in terms of total foreign trade.
If Ukraine can ride on China’s economic express, it will be much more reliable than counting on billions of dollars of military aid from the US.
China’s way of dealing with international conflicts is really different from the West.
The West tends to favor dichotomies
It’s either friend or foe, black or white.
Traditional Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, emphasizes the middle way, harmony and difference.
On March 6, China’s ambassador to Ukraine, Ma Shengkun, signed an agreement with the heads of Ukraine’s agricultural sector in Kiev, agreeing to allow Ukrainian peas and aquatic products to enter the Chinese market.
On the surface, this is just an ordinary agricultural trade agreement.
But in the current international situation, this is not a simple buy and sell peas so simple!
Ukraine’s signing of an agricultural agreement with China is like a shout-out to the United States.
If you don’t help me, I have other friends!
03
Why produce?
Some may ask why trade in agricultural products?
This may seem trivial, but there is actually a great deal more to it than that.
Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, has about 40% of the world’s black soil.
During World War II, one of Hitler’s key goals in invading the Soviet Union was to acquire the grain-producing regions of Ukraine.
Even Hitler said
Whoever controls the grain in Ukraine controls Europe.
The food trade has always been the basis for building relations between nations.
For the White House, Ukraine’s proximity to China is certainly bad news.
The U.S. was trying to force Ukraine’s hand by cutting off supplies, but it didn’t expect to push Ukraine into China’s arms.
Historically, the U.S. has made similar mistakes many times.
In the 1950s, the U.S. hostile policy toward Cuba directly pushed Castro toward the Soviet Union
In the late 1970s, U.S. support for the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran sparked the Iranian Islamic Revolution, which led to Iran becoming a longtime adversary of the United States.
A good hand was dealt.
The intention was to control Ukraine, but it ended up giving it to China.
I am afraid this is another miscalculation of American diplomacy.
Trying to stop Ukraine from moving closer to China, but apparently it’s too late.
The agreement has been signed and the peas and fish products are about to leave for China.
This cooperation between Ukraine and China could be just the beginning.
Historically, once a small country gets a taste of multilateral diplomacy, it tends to expand the strategy further.
EN
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