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Will the coming year 2023 be better than the outgoing one?

Vladimir Danilov, December 29

In the run-up to New Year’s Eve, it is common to take stock of the past and make predictions for the coming year.

Like any other year, the outgoing year 2022 will be remembered for its events of national, regional and universal scope. However, among the particularly important ones in 2022 are perhaps the progressive climate change, galloping inflation in almost every country in the world with slowing economic growth and increasing widespread poverty, and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

An important factor affecting the international situation has been the unrelenting attempts by the US and Western countries to confront Russia, including by reviving and supporting neo-Nazism in Ukraine. This conditioned the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to secede from Ukraine on February 21 and join Russia through a voluntary general referendum, in accordance with the UN Charter. As a result of the West’s escalation of neo-Nazi hysteria in Ukraine and NATO’s intensified expansion eastwards, in violation of Moscow’s earlier conditional agreements with the West on this issue, Russia was forced to launch a special operation in February to denazify and demilitarize the Western-backed criminal neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. For eight years (!), with complete inaction by the West and international organizations, the regime had been killing thousands of Russian-speaking civilians in eastern Ukraine, bombing and destroying their cities.

Clearly fearing to lose the initiative in anti-Russian actions through Ukraine, Washington has tried to impose inappropriate actions on the world to replace the world order, established on the basis of international law, with a system of “rules” beneficial to Washington, imposing Russophobic sanctions contrary to market relations and pushing Russia out of the European energy market. The fear of most of the current rulers of Europe to defy the White House directives and their unconditional adherence to them has reinforced US policy not only within NATO, but also in pan-European affairs, subjecting the EU to US energy and economic pressure, almost already leading to the collapse of the European economy and a deep European crisis.

Because of the anti-Russian sanctions on Russian energy supplies imposed by Washington on Europe, and its apparent complicity in the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, the EU has been deprived of cheap and previously guaranteed Russian gas as well as oil. This, following Washington’s imposed purchase of several times more expensive US LNG, has caused a serious energy and, subsequently, economic crisis in Europe. Across the EU, businesses are going bankrupt and closing down, utility costs are rising and the population is falling into catastrophic poverty. For example, not only in Germany, which was relatively prosperous in the recent past, but even in Norway, according to the media there, an acute crisis of poverty has broken out, the queues for food are getting longer and longer, there are parents who do not know how to feed their children.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that, under pressure from the White House, not only the US but also European countries have found themselves in bondage to financial support for the corrupt Kiev regime, directing tens of billions of dollars to so-called “aid to Ukraine” at the expense of Western taxpayers and instead of financial and social assistance to the impoverished Western countries’ own population in the face of a general crisis caused by the US.

The situation has also been complicated by Washington’s demands not only for financial support for the criminal Kiev regime, but also for the West to transfer large quantities of military equipment and hardware to Ukraine. As a result, Europe is already talking about the loss of its own defense capabilities and the need to allocate more funding in 2023 not to support its own population but to buy new weapons. As a result, only the US military and industrial complex is rejoicing, which, thanks to this White House policy, can expect significant new arms contracts and even greater profits at the expense of Europe.

All this has led to a rise in social outrage in Western countries, which could erupt into a wave of anti-government demonstrations both in Europe and in the US itself, not today but tomorrow. “The globalists and the White House have dragged us into a proxy war with Moscow on Ukrainian territory in order to capture Russian resources”, the US media report. Numerous Western politicians and analysts have stressed that without US and Western weapons, the criminal Ukrainian regime would have long ceased to exist. Not only the hostilities there, but also the deaths of civilians in eastern Ukraine and the incessant bombing and terrorist attacks of Ukrainian fighters, whose actions are strengthened by the West by sending and funding thousands of foreign mercenaries, would have ceased.

But it is not only in Europe that Washington tried to escalate the situation in 2022 to achieve its self-serving military and economic objectives. One of the active areas of this hostile policy of the White House has been the aggravation of the trade and economic situation with China, provoking the Taiwan crisis and creating and strengthening an anti-Chinese bloc in addition to the anti-Russian one. That said, including in the military sphere in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the struggle for international expansion, the White House continued in 2022 to impose its policies in the Middle East, exacerbating the situation in the region by continuing to restrain the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran. All this is leading to a rise in anti-American sentiment there as well, which has largely manifested itself in the refusal of OPEC+ countries to support anti-Russian policies, in the bid by Saudi Arabia and several other Muslim states to join the BRICS and SCO associations that adhere to Moscow and Beijing’s positions.

In 2022, numerous actions by the USA and Western countries on the African track aimed at dragging the states of Africa and Central Asia into a Russophobic and Sinophobic confrontation have also proved to be futile and unsuccessful.

Of course, all of these factors will have an impact on global developments in the coming year 2023. It is already clear to everyone that the quest for world hegemony by Washington and its universally criticized, even by Americans,    President Biden’s limited capacity is over. The unipolar world being imposed by the White House is being replaced by an era of political multipolarity. In the trade sphere, in response to provocative US actions, a growing number of states have started to oppose such protectionist policies, and China even outright foresees the expulsion of the US from the global community.

In short, it is unlikely that anyone other than “Washington strategists” and the US military and industrial complex will miss the outgoing year 2022.

 But lessons must be learnt from all events and the experience must be applied in a new way. Today, on New Year’s Eve 2023, there is perhaps widespread hope for a calmer, more peaceful and more benign period for ordinary people. And this hope can be ensured not only by the greater prudence of all politicians, but also by the population choosing their new politicians.

 Some hopes for the calmer year 2023 are given by the fact that its symbol, according to the Chinese horoscope, is the Black Water Rabbit, which comes into the world only once in 60 years, promising calmness and stability. So let these hopes come true!

Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.