Right at the start, he evoked the two Chinese characters that depict “crisis” (as in “danger”) and “opportunity,” melding them with a Russian saying: “Fight difficulties with your mind. Fight dangers with your experience.”
This elegant, oblique reference to the Russia-China strategic partnership led to a concise appraisal of the current chessboard:
The re-alignment of the balance of power presupposes a redistribution of shares in favor of rising and developing countries that until now felt left out.
To put it bluntly, the Western domination of international affairs, which began several centuries ago and, for a short period, was almost absolute in the late 20th century, is giving way to a much more diverse system.
That opened the way to another oblique characterization of hybrid warfare as the new modus operandi:
Previously, a war lost by one side meant victory for the other side, which took responsibility for what was happening.
The defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, for example, did not make Vietnam a “black hole.”
On the contrary, a successfully developing state arose there, which, admittedly, relied on the support of a strong ally.
Things are different now: No matter who takes the upper hand, the war does not stop, but just changes form.
As a rule, the hypothetical winner is reluctant or unable to ensure peaceful post-war recovery, and only worsens the chaos and the vacuum posing a danger to the world.
We are surprised by the processes taking place in countries that used to see themselves as pioneers of progress.
The social and cultural upheavals taking place in the United States and Western Europe are, of course, none of our business; we don’t interfere with them.
Someone in the Western countries is convinced that the aggressive erasure of whole pages of their own history – the “reverse discrimination” of the majority in favor of minorities, or the demand to abandon the usual understanding of such basic things as mother, father, family or even the difference between the sexes – that these are, in their opinion, milestones of the movement toward social renewal.
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