On 17 October, the Yonhap news agency confirmed through North Korean media that the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s legislature, had amended the constitution 10 days earlier to explicitly define South Korea as an ‘enemy country’. Over the past week, North Korea has taken a series of high-profile actions to demonstrate its strength to South Korea. At noon on the 15th, North Korea blew up the military demarcation line between the two countries north of the Gyeonggi Line, the Donghae section of the inter-regional highway, cutting off both sides of the road. In response, South Korea conducted a symbolic ‘counter-fire’ on its side of the demarcation line, firing German-made Taurus cruise missiles capable of penetrating the ground for the first time in seven years.

North Korea accused the South Korean military of using drones to enter its airspace and even infiltrated the capital Pyongyang on the 3rd, 9th and 10th of the month to distribute anti-North Korean leaflets. Although the South Korean military has denied any involvement, observers believe this is the ‘drone version’ of the two sides’ past psychological warfare, which has evolved from the traditional methods of loudspeakers and air-dropped balloons. Given the widespread use of drones in modern warfare and the reality of multiple battlefields, it is clear that North Korea’s harsh response is not an act of grandstanding, but rather a ‘might makes right in the face of strength’ approach to express itself more forcefully.

On 9 October, North Korea appointed a new defence minister and agreed to test-fire 240 mm guided rocket artillery shells with a maximum range of 67 km to hit the target that would completely cover the South Korean capital Seoul, about 50 km from the 38th parallel, in the event of a war between North and South. On 11 October, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) issued an operational readiness directive, ordering the joint artillery units in the border area and the units carrying out important fire attack missions to go into a state of full fire readiness. On the 11th, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) issued a combat readiness directive, ordering the joint artillery units in the border areas and the units conducting significant firepower strikes to go into a state of full fire readiness and threatening that further detection of South Korean drone strikes would be considered a ‘declaration of war’. The DPRK also announced that eight artillery brigades on the DPRK side of the 38th parallel had been placed on ‘stand-by’.

However, observers find it unusual that Russia has seized the opportunity to strengthen diplomatic interaction with the DPRK and even to consolidate joint defence commitments, promising to send troops to help the DPRK in the event of an ‘invasion’. At a delicate time when the battlefield struggle between Russia and Ukraine has entered a critical phase and Israel and Iran are preparing to ignite a war in the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, known as one of the world’s powder kegs, has once again deteriorated due to North-South relations, adding colour to the great power chess game.

The three hotspots are closely linked by a strong internal correlation and logical chain. The United States has no time to pay attention to the normalisation of US-North Korean relations, which has created an opportunity for North Korea to take advantage of the situation and try to break its isolation by trying to resume North-South Korean relations and US-North Korean relations. Russia, on the other hand, needs to further strengthen its diplomatic focus on the East. It is ready to take advantage of the situation to exert pressure on Northeast Asia and to work closely with North Korea to achieve its goal of encircling and defeating the enemy in order to diffuse and balance US and European pressure.

On 14 October, Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted to the Duma a bill on the ratification of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Article 4 of the treaty states that if one of the signatory parties is attacked by force by one or more states and is in a state of war, the other party shall immediately provide military and other assistance by all available means. The alliance agreement between Russia and North Korea is a bilateral matter within the sovereign, constitutional and international law competences of the parties and in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. However, the timing of Putin’s request is intriguing. The agreement was signed with Kim Jong-un during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June this year.

Putin’s submission of the Russian-North Korean alliance treaty to the National Assembly for consideration and approval, in order to make it a document with legal force and strategic deterrence, is a concrete demonstration of the close interaction and mutual cooperation between the two sides. It is difficult to say who is more active between Russia and the DPRK, or who needs whom more. In truth, this is a result of the emotional cohesion of the two ‘lone shepherds’ and their joint efforts to counter external threats. However, the bilateral strategic need to strengthen Russian-North Korean relations, especially the military alliance, is not due to a sudden change in the situation on the peninsula or the deterioration of inter-Korean relations, which prompted Vladimir Putin to legalise the agreement and send a signal to the outside world.

In June this year, the two Koreas accused each other of dumping large quantities of waste paper and soil from weather balloons. In the same month, Putin visited North Korea for the second time in 24 years and the two sides signed a military alliance agreement. However, it is difficult to say whether Putin’s failure to submit the Russian-North Korean treaty to the legislature for ratification in time for his return was due to the fact that the relevant procedures needed more time, or whether the Kremlin deliberately waited to see what would happen. In any case, it is clearly unusual for Putin to take such a critical step at a time when inter-Korean relations have suddenly thawed.

In fact, the key turning point in this period of deteriorating inter-Korean relations came on 30 December 2023. On that day, Kim Jong-un pointed out at a Workers’ Party meeting that the inter-Korean relationship was not an inter-Korean relationship, but a hostile wartime relationship, and proposed to completely cut off bilateral land transport links. Based on the latest and highest definition of bilateral relations, the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly decided in January this year to dissolve the long-standing ‘Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland’, the ‘National Economic Cooperation Bureau’ and the ‘Geumgangsan International Tourism Bureau’. The DPRK National Assembly also accused South Korea of making ‘reunification through assimilation’ and ‘systemic reunification’ a national policy for nearly 80 years, which contradicts North Korea’s national policy of reunifying the country ‘on the basis of one nation, one state and two systems’. Therefore, North Korea has said that ‘national reunification can never be achieved’ in relations with the South.

The main reason for the rapid deterioration of South Korea-North Korea relations is North Korea’s deep disappointment and dissatisfaction with the inter-Korean and inter-American relations, which did not meet North Korea’s expectations and did not progress after many warm interactions in 2018, especially after the Singapore, Hanoi and Panmunjom summits. In particular, the failure of the United States to find a solution for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for Pyongyang’s denuclearisation by the end of 2019, in line with its expectations, has caused great disappointment in North Korea. The strategic trust between North Korea and the United States has long been in serious deficit, and US-North Korea relations have once again reached an impasse as party changes and domestic political struggles in the United States have come to the fore. At the same time, North Korea continues to take decisive steps towards ‘de facto nuclear armament’ and a ‘unified nuclear missile strategy’, making it impossible to lift US-led sanctions and creating a worsening, even deadly, vicious circle between the two countries.

With the Russian-Ukrainian war at a stalemate and relations between China and the United States severely strained, American attention to Northeast Asia is not possible. This situation is providing North Korea with space and diplomatic and security leverage to regain strategic favour with China and Russia. At a time when unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are at the forefront of the world’s debate on how they have ended the era of tanks and changed the course of warfare, South Korea’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have repeatedly entered North Korean airspace, objectively deepening North Korea’s hostile assessments and countermeasures. This situation is the unavoidable responsibility of South Korea.

Russia’s strong support for North Korea shows that, on the one hand, Russia is indeed strengthening its ‘pivot to the East’ strategy in its foreign policy and, on the other hand, it is showing a rather pronounced pragmatism and leverage thinking by treating relations with North Korea as ‘reheating the old dish’. Putin’s first visit to North Korea in 24 years clearly shows that since he came to power in 2000, his focus on relations with America, Europe and China has led him to neglect and treat Pyongyang, his former East Asian neighbour, former war buddy and old friend, coldly. Now, however, in the face of Western military, diplomatic, economic and financial pressure, he has been forced to greatly enhance North Korea’s diplomatic status and strategic role by reopening the long-closed gates of Pyongyang and signing an alliance agreement in order to gain a solid and reliable strategic backyard and establish a common eastern line in the Asia-Pacific region against the strategic dimensions of America and NATO. Similarly, Russia has fully consolidated its ‘New Era Partnership of Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation’ with China and increased its focus on Vietnam, one of its strategic partners in Southeast Asia.

The sudden warming of Russian-North Korean relations and the reaffirmation of the alliance in recent months has much to do with the fact that Japan and South Korea follow the United States and are close military allies, especially since they chose sides in the Russia-Ukraine war and are small followers of the United States, even actively seeking to join NATO and promote the ‘Asia-Pacificisation’ of the alliance. This creates a strategic constraint and threat to Russia from the Asia-Pacific region, particularly from the Far East. Moreover, since August 2023, the DPRK has provided Russia with a ‘certificate of loyalty’ by supplying more than 1 million artillery shells and missiles.

Drastic changes in the international environment, especially the prolongation of the Russia-Ukraine war and the crisis in Northeast Asia, which have not been fundamentally resolved and even the common rivals and enemies are still the same, will inevitably push the DPRK to show its goodwill to Russia in various ways, at the same time attracting Moscow’s ‘two-headed eagle’ to the Far East, especially to the US’s mortal enemy, North Korea. Of course, Russia and North Korea have renewed their honeymoon not only because of the unforgettable memories of the Cold War, but also because of the realistic need to deal with the risk of a hot war and to jointly reconstruct the world and regional order in accordance with their respective goals. In a way, this situation is particularly dangerous because it resembles the international strategic environment before the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the dynamics of the great power game and the internal conflicts on the Korean Peninsula.

At a time of renewed tensions on the Korean peninsula, with Russia and North Korea forming a close alliance, China launching large-scale military exercises to encircle Taiwan, and maritime police patrolling around the island for the first time, the premiere of the major television drama *’Shangganling’ on CCTV-1 on 16 October inevitably raised many associations for some observers. But this is purely coincidental. None of the world’s three major hotspots were triggered by China, nor did China play a leading role; on the contrary, China has always hoped for and advocated an immediate end to these conflicts.

History is always similar and often repeats itself, but as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus warned, ‘you cannot bathe in the same river twice’. The relations between China and Russia have reached their best level in history, China and North Korea have renewed their friendship and mutual assistance agreements. On the other hand, China and the US have once again entered a period of serious friction and confrontation. However, unless the US invades North Korea again and threatens China’s core interests, it is impossible for China, Russia and North Korea to return to the same trenches as during the Cold War. Therefore, no matter how close relations between Russia and North Korea become, this will not lead to a return to the old path of military antagonism between China and the US and the Western camp.

The continuous broadcasting of Chinese television dramas about the Korean War and the strong conflicts and frictions that Russia and North Korea have with the United States are two different things. The fact that China has crossed a forbidden zone with its television dramas and presented a series of productions on the Korean War basically expresses the determination of the Chinese government and people to stand up against tyranny and oppression. This sends a message to American policymakers that they should not repeat the mistakes of the Korean War and return Sino-US relations to the bloody and dark past.

*Battle on Shangganling Mountain is a protracted military engagement during the Korean War, during which China fought to resist US aggression and aid Korea (1950-53).

Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.

On the first anniversary of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the possibility of a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel is now on the world’s agenda. Israel’s attack on Lebanon, the escalation of Netanyahu’s inhumane activities and Israel’s destructive actions in Lebanon have become a new page of events in the Middle East over the past year, and we still see Israel’s war machine advancing on this battlefield. However, the Iranian issue could lead to a new type of conflict, and the regional and global implications of this war will be profound.

One year after Israel’s attack on Gaza and the historic genocide, and with the war spilling over into Lebanon – aimed at destroying the Lebanese Hezbollah, one of Iran’s main allies in the Middle East – what is the analytical situation in Iran, and how do ordinary citizens and public opinion assess the situation?

Ordinary citizens are worried, but united against the external enemy

Iran has gone through a difficult social, economic and political period in recent years. The events surrounding the rise in petrol prices, which led to violent demonstrations in some cities, and the events that followed with the death of Mahsa Amini are considered to be one of the most important turning points in Iran’s social history in recent years. The sudden and suspicious death of President Ebrahim Raisi and the sudden change in the ruling wing were also among the issues that preoccupied Iranian society last year. In addition to these events, chronic inflation and economic stagnation, the continuous devaluation of the national currency, rising prices and falling incomes are among the deep crises in Iran’s social environment. Growing income inequality, rising unemployment and dwindling hopes for a better quality of life in the future have placed a heavy psychological burden on Iranian society. In such an environment, the prospect of war looming over the country seems alarming at first glance. When the threat of war is added to the existing economic and social crises, it can be expected that these crises will deepen or that social conflicts will erupt in the country. Based on this analysis, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people in a video message in recent weeks, trying to put psychological pressure on society and the government by drawing attention to the current problems in Iran.

Contrary to this initial perception, however, it is clear from the wider Iranian society and people’s reactions on social media that the sense of national consensus and unity has increased across the country as the war approaches. The attendance of millions of Tehranis at Friday prayers, where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei delivered a sermon after a four-year hiatus, is a clear indication of this sense of national unity. The missile attacks on Israel by the Iranian armed forces and their reverberations around the world have both increased the Iranian people’s sense of national pride and honor and reduced their worries about how their state would respond to a possible attack by Israel.

Israel’s inhumane behavior in Gaza and Lebanon has also drastically changed the Iranian public’s view of the war. Compared to a year ago, Israel now has no credibility among the Iranian people, and they have developed a sense of disgust at the atrocities committed by Israeli forces in Gaza and Lebanon. This disgust manifests itself in the form of support for the Iranian state in any action against Israel. The last time the Iranian people experienced this disgust and support for the government was in 2014 and 2015. In those years, ISIS committed the most brutal crimes against humanity in Syria and Iraq, which led the Iranian people to support the armed forces in their cross-border operations in Iraq and Syria, making Qassem Soleimani a historic national hero for Iran. For the Iranian people today, Israel is not much different from ISIS in 2014.

One of the most important effects of the tensions between Israel and Iran has been to discredit and even destroy the opposition abroad in the eyes of the Iranian public. Over the past year, the Iranian opposition group abroad has become a supporter of Israeli crimes in Gaza and, with the escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel, a supporter of Israeli military aggression against Iran. This small but vocal group claims that the Israeli attack on Iran is actually directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that this attack poses no danger to the Iranian people. With this rhetoric, this group belittles and ridicules the humanitarian feelings of the Iranian people as well as their nationalistic feelings. Therefore, one of the consequences of the year-long war in Gaza for Iran can be seen as the erosion of domestic support for the Iranian opposition abroad.

The elite community is divided: Defence or offence

The Iranian political elite, and especially the strategic analysts, have been going through turbulent times, especially in the last year and after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The current discourse among Iranian analysts can be divided into two groups: those who approach the war situation in the region from a tactical perspective and those who see the current situation as the result of some strategic actions. Both groups draw different roadmaps for the future, depending on their approach to events.

According to the pro-minimal intervention group, Iran should not fall into Israel’s trap of escalation and its responses should be calibrated so as not to lead to a direct war and serious conflict with Israel, while providing deterrence. This is because a direct conflict between Iran and Israel would trigger a war between Iran and the United States, which could create an uncertain future for the region and the country. According to this group, Iran should allow Hamas and Hezbollah to fight Israel on their own and manage the situation in such a way that the conflict eventually ends in a ceasefire. While it is possible that Iran could provide support to prevent Hezbollah’s defeat, too much support would create unnecessary costs for Iran. Moreover, this group sees the possibility of Israeli damage to Iran’s oil infrastructure and Iran’s inability to repair it in the short term due to sanctions as one of the main reasons for a minimalist approach to intervention.

On the other hand, some Iranian analysts believe that ignoring a major war in the region that could have strategic consequences and adopting a minimalist approach to the current situation is strategic blindness. According to this group, Iran is engaged in a major war, and whether or not Iran strengthens its position on the battlefield will not change the intensity of the war; it will only affect Iran’s interests.

This group argues that Iran should immediately move from a position of reacting to Israel’s military actions to a more active and entrepreneurial stance. As long as there is a constant reaction to Israel, the power to control tensions will remain in the hands of Tel Aviv and the Israelis will continue to be able to manage the field through various shocks. According to this group, Hezbollah is a strategic asset of Iran and Iran cannot and should not give up this asset. Giving up its strategic assets means cutting off its own hand and arm, and the counter-front will only stop by destroying all existential aspects of Iran.

According to these analysts, Israel has convinced America that the best way to reduce the strategic power of Russia and China is to create chaos in the Middle East, weaken Iran’s strategic power and intimidate Middle Eastern countries. America is therefore prepared to support Israel for a long time to continue this war. They argue that Iran should not wait for Israel’s actions and should prevent Israel’s next moves in advance by attacking Israel’s security and economic infrastructure. Therefore, some analysts believe that Iran is considering an attack on Jordan as an option to damage American forces in the region and Israel’s military security system.

This group of analysts believes that the transfer of the war to Iran could become an opportunity and an advantage for Iran. This is because Israel has been waging a security war against Iran for the past two decades and has carried out numerous assassinations and sabotage against Iran’s strategic installations. Iran has always been weak in this security war because of its lack of resources and technology and because it does not have the intelligence support of the Mossad. But now that the conflict has shifted from a security war to a military war, Iran has gained considerable power and initiative and should use this opportunity to pacify Israel in the future. Otherwise, Israel will compensate for its military weakness with security sabotage in the post-war period.

Speaking on 9 October at the Ukraine-South-East Europe Summit in Croatia, Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Ukraine has an opportunity to “promote peace and lasting stability” in the next three months and that the situation on the battlefield creates an opportunity to take decisive steps to end the conflict with Russia by 2025 at the latest. He then launched efforts to lobby for help and support from the four main members of NATO and the EU, namely Britain, France, Italy and Germany.

This was Zelenski’s most optimistic message of peace since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and with the clearest timeframe. It clearly shows that he is not only pinning his hopes on the planned second “peace summit” on the Ukrainian conflict, but also trying to prepare public opinion for the Kiev leadership to make major concessions. Many recent indications suggest that the two-year and eight-month-long direct Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the war with the indirect involvement of 32 members of NATO, in relation to the fundamental interests of the great powers and the ambiguity of US policy, are beginning to give way to the prospect of a peaceful settlement. This situation seems to be tending towards a rapid transformation from “Afghanization” to “Palestinianization” in order to prevent the war from getting completely out of control and turning into a real “Third World War”.

At the military level, the balance of victory in the war seems to have tipped even more clearly in favor of Russia. On October 3, the Russian army took control of Ugledar, Ukraine’s major military base in the Donbas, which it had operated and defended for nearly 10 years. This area was Ukraine’s major logistical support and supply center, the junction point of the Ukrainian army on the southern and eastern fronts, and had become the site of a two-year ‘meat grinder’ struggle between the two armies. The loss of Ugledar was strategically equivalent to the loss of key battle points such as Mariupol and Bakhmut.

After taking Ugledar, Russia was able not only to facilitate its advance in the Donbas region, but also to strengthen its southern land connections and railroad security to the Kerch Strait. Ukraine, on the other hand, lost important maneuvering space and strong bridgeheads in the east and south, while the Kiev leadership and its people had to feel a series of psychological, public and diplomatic defeats.

At the diplomatic level, the US elections are starting to send negative signals for Ukraine. The Biden administration is gradually reducing military aid to Ukraine, shifting from an initial approach of “do what Ukraine needs” to “do what the US can do”. Republicans, who have a 50-50 chance of winning the election, are openly saying that they are tired of supporting Ukraine and that if Trump is elected, he may reverse Biden’s policies and abandon Ukraine. Under Harris, the Democrats may even be forced to accelerate the Russia-Ukraine war by the internal divisions in America and the need to rally public opinion. In the NATO-Europe camp, discomfort with prolonging the war is growing; stocks of military equipment and ammunition are running out, the economic situation is difficult, and it is becoming a binary choice: To switch to wartime or to continue with a normal time economy?

Under the influence of this situation, the authorities in Kiev are moving towards an increasingly pessimistic picture. On the one hand, while trying to hold on to the battlefield, they have mobilized strategic reserves in a futile attempt to strike against the Russian mainland in a last ditch effort, and are even being accused by Russia of “covert use of chemical weapons disguised as smoke bombs”. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government has started to give peace signals, willing to negotiate with Russia.

On October 7, the Financial Times reported that Kiev was holding secret talks about ceding part of its territory to Russia in exchange for Ukraine joining NATO or obtaining other security guarantees. The report read as follows: “The talks are taking place behind closed doors. Under the deal, Moscow would retain de facto control over about a fifth of the Ukrainian territory it occupies, while the rest would be allowed to join NATO or receive similar security guarantees.”

At the end of March this year, Zelensky, always a hardliner, clearly weakened his position, backtracking and saying that he would accept negotiations for peace even if they could not restore the 1991 borders. In fact, the latest Financial Times report is not new information; it is perhaps the outline of an agreement generally agreed by the two sides at the beginning of the war, or perhaps the essence of the US withdrawal plan.

In August 2023, Danish media revealed that US CIA Director Burns made a secret visit to Kiev to test the possibility of getting Ukraine to give up 16 percent of its territory in exchange for an end to the war, and on August 15, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff publicly suggested that Ukraine cede some of its territory to Russia in exchange for a license to join NATO.

These and other developments show that the games of the great powers are getting more complicated and that the new strategies for ending the Russian-Ukrainian war are accelerating the transition from “Afghanization” to “Palestinianization”. The terms “Afghanization” and “Palestinianization” are academic conceptual approaches that I adopted after the outbreak of the war, and they have been confirmed by developments on the battlefield.

First of all, the US is forcing Ukraine to become the “European version of Afghanistan”, trying to make Russia relive the historic tragedy of the Soviet Union, which for a decade was buried in Afghanistan and accelerated its collapse; while Russia is using its overwhelming comprehensive power and geographical advantage over Ukraine to make Ukraine the “European version of Afghanistan”, thus trying to make its rivals relive the strategic nightmare. In Afghanistan, they failed to conquer the Taliban for 20 years and eventually had to withdraw their troops in distress. While both sides are building a “European version of Afghanistan”, if the Russian-Ukrainian war takes the path of “Afghanization”, it will be a brutal war of consumption and stagnation. It could last three to five years in the short term and eight to ten years in the long term. This scenario is similar to what the Soviet Union and the United States and NATO experienced in two successive Afghan wars.

On the other hand, it is clear that the United States and NATO do not intend to fight a World War I and World War II-style conventional world war with Russia, because nuclear weapons and long-range delivery vehicles are sufficient to allow both sides to annihilate each other and destroy the world. The Russians, from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, have a long history of warfare and have only accepted to cede territory in defeat. Small countries in Europe have always been allies or victims at the table of the great powers. Based on this general judgment, an outcome in which Russia will win with a huge costs but Ukraine would lose totally. Most of Ukraine seems to have been foreseeable from the beginning of the war: Russia would permanently annex Crimea and parts of southeastern Ukraine, while losing the West, and the remaining western Ukraine would perhaps join NATO. Russia would then do everything to “Russify” the annexed territories, while Ukrainian nationalist insurgents would harass Russia for a long time and try to regain the lost territories. This picture could eventually turn Ukraine into a “European version of Palestine”: First it will be divided by great power interests, then it may be dragged into a perpetual conflict of division, counter-division, occupation and counter-occupation, annexation and counter-annexation. Just like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has been going on for more than 70 years.

Initially defending the alliance strategy and trying to rebuild the transatlantic relationship severely damaged by the Trump administration, by the end of 2021 the Biden administration rejected Russia’s demand to halt NATO’s eastward expansion and withdraw the defense line to the 1999 position, and openly declared that it would not deal with Russia’s troops by military means, encouraging desperate Moscow officials to penetrate the US undercurrents and categorically launch a “special military operation”. Subsequently, the Biden administration, through Britain, pressured Ukraine to break the ceasefire that was about to be reached between Russia and Ukraine and promised to provide support to Ukraine through NATO members. This support was reinforced by the promise to “continue to support for as long as it takes”.

Based on thousands of years of “Russophobia” and the “chilling effect” of reality, Western European countries, driven by the need to help each other, resolutely supported Ukraine in order to block Russia’s attempt to annex Ukraine. By supporting Ukraine to thwart Russia’s annexation attempts, it has made this war of comparable overall strength increasingly permanent and turned it into a proxy war. The dual strategic goals of the Biden administration are to exhaust Russia, a long-time strategic competitor, and to contain the European Union, which is trying to break free from long-term US control and realize strategic autonomy, diplomatic independence and even military self-improvement in order to maintain “Pax Americana”, i.e. US-style world hegemony.

However, politicians are often quick and forgetful, the war has started and has reached a stalemate, whether the US or the European partners are deeply aware that there is no possibility of defeating Russia on the battlefield, with its vast territory, population, strong and comprehensive national character. Moreover, it is undesirable for Europe and the United States that both the United States and Europe suffer heavily from this war and that it ultimately paves the way for a new great power game with China’s “beautiful landscape”. If the new model of the great power game avoids the ‘Afghanization’ of the Russia-Ukraine war, then this conflict will end up in ‘Palestinianization’.

Russia in particular, having learned the lessons of the war after the first half a year of failure and hardship, is rapidly seizing strategic control for victory. By 2025, it plans to increase its defense spending by 25%, launch a military mobilization plan for 133 thousands people, increase the number of active military personnel to 1.5 million and significantly increase its military production capacity. It has also reached the capacity to fire around 10,000 artillery shells per day, increased drone production six-fold and greatly expanded its inventory of hypersonic missiles.

In short, three and a half years after the Russia-Ukraine war, NATO continues to violate Russia’s “red line” to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons and even condones Ukrainian counter-attacks on Russia’s mainland; Russia is increasingly using military and even nuclear weapons to deter its rivals; and the war situation is spiraling upwards. If the war continues, even if it does not spiral out of control and trigger a ‘Third World War’, it will reopen similar wounds for the US and NATO, such as the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and ultimately the blood money.

War is the mortal enemy of peace, but he who has not been through war cannot appreciate peace, and the closer the death and destruction, the easier it is to achieve peace, echoing the Chinese saying that “refuse to admit defeat until faced with overwhelming evidence; only when death is staring one in the face.”

‘Afghanization’ is certainly a tragedy for all parties to the conflict, but can ‘Palestinianization’ bring peace to Europe and the world? Shouldn’t those who caused these crises and conflicts bear their historical responsibility and public criticism?

Prof. Ma is Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University (Hangzhou). He specialises in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle East politics. He worked for many years as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine and Iraq.