‘Washington doesn’t really manage to suppress Europe by not unleashing a thermonuclear war’
The reality of a nuclear war is being actively discussed both in the global and Russian media. Nevertheless, despite the seriously increased probability of such a scenario due to the sides’ different unprecedented statements and actions, it is necessary to try to understand the sides’ objectives to evaluate the real risks of such an unpleasant scenario, thinks sinologist, author of books on China Nikolay Vavilov.
“In a couple of months of the energy blockade, and the authorities in Europe will get new sovereign forces”
Using the Chinese term, the USA’s task is to strip Europe of “strategic autonomy.” In other words, not to allow, first of all, Europe (Germany, Italy, Western Europe) to change its course to a Russian-Chinese vector (energy and the appearance of a system of yuan, euro, ruble, Swiss franc as alternative to the dollar) and not to permit the EU to cement its role of the global financial centre (and Beijing at the same time) during crises in the USA.
This task isn’t done amid a total thermonuclear war in which missiles reach Washington too. Neither does Washington manage to suppress Europe by not unleashing such a war — in a couple of months of the energy blockade, and the authorities in Europe will get new sovereign forces on the back of popular protests. These new forces will come to an agreement with the PRC and Russia quickly, and Olaf Scholz’s SPD in Germany will start opposing the USA’s opinion with greater determination amid the general European discontent.
In the standoff, Washington influences the situation only in the information space — to threaten but not start a nuclear war.
“At a certain point, the confrontation will reach the peak, and more significant actions will have to be taken”
Like with COVID-19, the information component of the “nuclear COVID-19” is much greater in its scale than its real component — a threat of a nuclear war results in a capital outflow from the EU, the opponent’s general destabilisation, there exercised leverage on the EU’s attempts to make a breakthrough in the relations with the PRC (an investment agreement).
However, only newspaper headlines, statements and the launch of missiles without warheads aren’t enough to make such a scenario a reality — at a certain point, the confrontation will reach the peak, and more significant actions will have to be taken.
For instance, the use of tactical nuclear war in Western Ukraine, which is extremely destructive from a perspective of a local and temporary impact on supply chains, agriculture, moods in society, is almost comparable to COVID-19 restrictions in early 2020, but it doesn’t envisage retaliation against the US and a use of strategic nuclear weapon, that’s to say, a transformation of the conflict into a total nuclear war.
Reference
Nikolay Vavilov is a ыinologist, graduate of Saint Petersburg State University’s Faculty of Asian and African Studies. He studied and worked in different regions of China for 10 years. During his studies in Saint Petersburg State University’s Faculty of Asian and African Studies, he was referred for a state internship to the PRC according to N. Speshnyov’s recommendation (1931-2011), later, Speshnyov’s was Vavilov’s research adviser for his thesis.
From 2008 to 2013, he worked in Russian production and commercial companies in the provinces Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiyang. In 2013-2015, he worked in China’s state news agency Sinhua.
He is the designer and main author of South China online newspaper (2014).
During Innoprom in 2015 (Yekaterinburg), he participated in meetings of local committee secretaries of the Communist Youth League of China with related regional partners. He is the author of the books The Uncrowned Kings of Red China: Clans and Political Groups in the PRC (2016), Chinese Power (the second edition was printed in 2021).