Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
In today’s era, some parties, including the movements of political Islam, Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, want to disrupt the current world order and initiate such fundamental changes that the world will become recoil.
In the meantime, China, which for centuries considered itself as a complete world that does not need what is beyond its borders, now sees itself in the mirror of the world and is trying to launch large economic projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Prioritize closeness with the global community.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda organization, summed up the ambition of political Islam in dividing the world into two camps of ‘good and evil’ between which there is no other relationship except tension and conflict, and the supporters of these two camps meet only on the front lines of war. Just as Rudyard Kipling, the famous English writer and poet, said: “West is West and East is East, and the twain shall never meet.”
Ayatollah Khamenei, at the end of the meeting with the participants of the 7th Ahl al-Bayt world Assembly, said: “We must put aside the unrealistic dividing lines between Islamic societies and focus on the dividing line between the world of Islam and the world of disbelief and arrogance.” This means that Shiite extremism is more insistent than Sunni extremism in the issue of the need to create a separation between the world of Islam and the world of disbelief. After all, according to the concept of “province of jurist”, Iran is the center of the Islamic world and the guardian of jurisprudence is the leader of all Muslims, and there is no doubt that in the shadow of such thinking, there is no legitimacy left for the borders of states.
Alike, Putin’s last speech, after the annexation of parts of Ukraine to Russia, also expresses Russia’s view of the world, which consists of two camps: the world-eating, corrupt, tempted, and devoid of honor and moral ‘West’ camp, and the ‘East’ camp. which adheres to such personal values, morals and family traditions that lead it to the right and justice, and this camp has always been a victim of the policies of the colonialist West. Interestingly, Putin is proud of the policy of the Eastern camp while the war against Ukraine continues fiercely and Russia is trying to create a new imperialism in the region.
In fact, Putin has launched the current war for purposes beyond Ukraine. He revealed his goals in an article he published in the summer of 2021 entitled “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. The focus of that article was on three points:
First: The people of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are of the same origin: the Russians are an ancient people who lived in the land between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; All of them are originally from the same land and follow the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Second: When in 1922, the Bolsheviks founded the Soviet Union, followed by the ‘Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’, the land of Russia was ‘usurped’.
Third: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West used Ukraine as a platform to threaten Russia and support ‘neo-Nazis’.
In this article, Putin criticizes Lenin and the Soviet Union in a way, but praises Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and implicitly introduces himself as their heir.
The game is bigger than the current developments in Ukraine, as Putin wants to create a world where that Russia presides over the ‘Slavic Federation’, which includes Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and even the northern part of Kazakhstan, which has a majority of Slavs. Putin wants Russia’s dominance in Eurasia to be recognized; Of course, not as a zone of Russian influence, but as a zone under its control.
There is no doubt that the current world is by no means integrated and unified, although the phenomenon of ‘Globalization’ has given it the name ‘global village’. The selfish treatment of rich countries with poor countries during the Corona epidemic was a development that revealed this reality. However, dividing the world into two opposing camps, always at war, is a great illusion and a greater danger than imagined.
To sum up, today, the world has practically changed, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is no longer possible to create a wall between states, and it must be acknowledged that there is no escaping the interdependence of states and nations in various fields of industry, agriculture, technology, medicine, thought and culture.
