Russia-Ukraine War: An eye-opener

Europe is calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine one big conflict since World War II, while Russia is calling it just an operation. Russia’s anger with the Ukrainian government was based on Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, the Western defence alliance. NATO was formed during the Cold War, which was being fought on various fronts against Communism. It was a symbolic, non-symbolic, psychological, religious, educational, practical and non-practical war with the main targets being the Soviet Union and other communist countries.

The creation of NATO was a relic of the Cold War era as were the SEATO and CENTO as the defence alliances. CENTO included Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey along with the United States, the UK, France, Australia and New Zealand, while SEATO included Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, France, New Zealand, the UK and the US. Both CENTO and SEATO were made in the east and west to encircle the former Soviet Union and China.

Under the Warsaw Pact, the defence alliance of the Soviet Union and the communist countries of Eastern and Eastern Europe was implemented against NATO, SEATO and NATO alliances of the West. Apart from Russia, this defence alliance included Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania and East Germany.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact effectively expired on July 1, 1991 and was disbanded. But NATO not only still exists, but it has also been conducting practical military operations in different countries of the world. After the victory of the Communist regime and the retreat of Communism as an ideology, NATO forces have invented a new ideological enemy called Islamic extremism.

In the new millennium of the 21st Century, NATO’s new goals were the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this context, Russia’s attack on Ukraine would be understandable. Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union when the NATO alliance was established against communism, even during the revolution of the Soviet Union, Russia’s food needs were being met from Ukraine.

Now that the Soviet Union, the axis of the communist state, has been destroyed, for what purposes NATO forces want to establish their bases in Ukraine. So after the end of the Cold War, the second phase of this war started against “Islamic extremism”. In this phase, the two of the Islamic countries Afghanistan and Iraq were targeted by NATO, as mentioned earlier, the Cold War was being fought on psychological, symbolic, non-symbolic, religious and educational fronts, we also saw another demonstration of this war during the Arab Spring, about which US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was jokingly saying, “We came, we saw, and we destroyed.”

In the Arab Spring, the wind of change came from Tunisia and the dictatorial regimes of many North African countries began to collapse. After Tunisia, the governments collapsed in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, which was considered a popular victory, even though the reality of this victory was revealed by Hillary Clinton after the brutal killing of Libyan President Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

When Spring Arab got stuck in Syria and the dream of regime change there could not be fulfilled, America had to bring a new strategy.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad was completely enslaved. There, the terrorists were given huge sums of money and training in terrorism. American allies Arab countries were providing full facilities to the terrorists, while Turkey was also showing its eyes to Syria. In such a situation, Russian support prevented the Arab Spring from advancing in Syria.

Now it will help understand the Ukraine conflict in this context. Ukraine was a province of the former Soviet Union where nuclear weapons were stored. Ukraine was considered the most powerful soviet (province) after Russia. It is said that over a third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was in Ukraine. There were thousands of atomic bombs in Ukraine. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Even before that, American think tanks and coined intellectuals started saying that Russia would attack Ukraine. Thus, the West wanted to create fear of a Russian attack in Ukraine by taking nuclear weapons from there.

Around 30 years ago, such an environment was being created for Ukraine not only to become a part of the European bloc and the European Union, but also to accept the defensive blockade of the West. In this background, the withdrawal of American and allied forces from Afghanistan last year was not without reason.

The US and its Western allies were not ready to accept Ukraine as a nuclear state; doing so would make it necessary to include Ukraine in major European decision-making processes, making it one more European country after Britain and France to become a nuclear power.

The United States, Britain and France were not exactly willing for this partnership. That is why Ukraine was deliberately and practically avoided to become a member of the world nuclear club. At the same time, the United States and the European countries were using all their resources to make India, an economically depressed and socially, religiously and ethnically divided country, a large industrial and economically powerful country with nuclear power.

As an alternative force in Asia, the competitors of China and Russia were following the strategy of bringing India forward. To achieve the same goal, the Arab countries with large economies in the Middle East were also started the process of making India’s enclave and Pakistan, which supported the Western world during the hot days of the Cold War, was left alone in the midst of poverty, bankruptcy and terrorism. Abandoned.

The Western world is forced to keep Ukraine on its side. There are several reasons for this. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe was forced to rely on Ukraine for its food and energy needs.

Russia and Ukraine are among the major exporters of wheat worldwide. These two countries account for one-third of the commercial sales of wheat in the world. These two countries export 55 per cent of sunflower in the world. Similarly, these two countries are also exporters of pulses and other commodities.

Besides, energy resources such as oil and gas are also present in Russia and Ukraine in large quantities. Europe is dependent on Ukraine for energy. In these circumstances, the West believes that if Ukraine becomes a part of the European Union and comes under the umbrella of NATO, the global economic and economic balance will always be in the West’s favour. Besides, India will also remain an ally of the West as a challenger to China, Russia and other new non-Western emerging economies. Just like grain, Ukraine has vast energy reserves. Ukraine has vast natural gas, coal, petroleum and other liquid energy resources, nuclear and renewable energy resources.

A few years ago, it was estimated that Ukraine had 10 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves. Ukraine is among the top 25 natural gas producing countries. The total gas reserves in the world are estimated at 54 trillion cubic metres. Thus, Ukraine has 3.095 billion barrels of oil reserves. The total oil reserves in the world are estimated at over 16 trillion barrels.

Ukraine is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of having commodity and energy resources and this feature has tempted the Western world to have Ukraine join NATO without becoming a member of the nuclear club or permanent membership of the Security Council. So that in the balance of power, it cannot compete with Britain and France and, on the other hand, it remains a country with an inferior status to India.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has also created new opportunities for India. This is the reason why Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sent a message to US President Joe Biden that India is ready to send food items to the world to combat the food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

Modi also claimed that India has enough commodities to meet the food needs of its 1.4 billion population and even after that, India can afford to send food stocks from tomorrow to meet the needs of the world. As it has been said that Russia and Ukraine are the major wheat selling countries in the world and both countries are able to meet the needs of one-third of the world’s population. India is making a big claim in terms of food grains.

But in terms of energy resources, it neither has such a big claim nor does it have the required energy reserves. In these circumstances, the question arises as to what are the responsibilities of Pakistan in case of such opportunities.

Pakistan has far more cultivable land than most of the countries in the world, but due to feudalism, we are not able to meet the required needs with our vast agricultural land. Moreover, we are not using water resources properly.

If we manage to store rainwater across the country instead of building dams on rivers, we can also build hundreds of artificial lakes or rain dams to save plenty of water for our water needs.

We are not focusing on the use of modern technology in agriculture. If today we end feudalism and agricultural land monopoly and focus on modern farming, we can also join the list of countries that meet the world’s food needs. Besides, if we discover oil and gas deposits near our vast coastline from Jeewani to Sir Creek, we can enter a new era of prosperity. Since we do not have the technology to explore oil and gas deposits, India is stealing our oil and gas resources from the border areas.

Engineer Arshad Abbasi, an expert on energy issues in the country, has revealed that the Pakistani authorities are unaware of the resources in their areas on the Indian border.

Resources are moving to India. He revealed four years ago in 2019 that we have neglected the issue of our resource transfer until now. India is extracting 200,000 barrels of oil/day from these border areas. In these circumstances, the question arises as to why our governments have remained silent for the last four years and why our oil and gas companies have remained silent.

We are always entangled or are purposely misled in our internal political and non-political issues due to which we remain largely indifferent to the changes taking place at the global level.

There are better opportunities for Pakistan across the world. Even in the days of this serious crisis, we could not talk about the purchase of cheap oil from Russia, so what is the sign of our ignorance in other matters.

However, we need mature visionary leadership and management to assess the natural resources we have been given and find opportunities for ourselves in the crises that arise in different regions of the world.