From Ukraine to the Persian Gulf,
the superpowers no longer call the shots!

By Yorgos Mitralias

Drawing by Sonia Mitralia

The first major lesson from the wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf is already glaringly obvious: the superpowers no longer call the shots! Despite their overwhelming military superiority, both Putin’s Russia and Trump’s United States are encountering countless “unforeseen” difficulties, are failing to break the resistance of far weaker countries, and are at high risk of being humiliated—a scenario that could well plunge them into a crisis of the gravest kind.

The raw facts speak for themselves: the war against Iran, which Trump often described as a mere… “short excursion,” and which was supposed to end after “two or three days,” has already been going on for three months, with no one able to predict when or how it will end. As for the war against Ukraine, which Putin called a mere… “special military operation”—and which was supposed to end after 4–5 days with the Russian army’s triumphant entry into Kyiv—has already been going on for over four years, and its victims (dead and wounded military personnel and civilians) now number nearly… two million! In short, Trump and Putin, with parallel lives and ideologies, share parallel bloodbaths and disasters!…

Indeed, Trump the real estate tycoon and Putin the KGB agent share not only the same megalomania but also the same ideology and the same anti-democratic, racist, repressive, virilist, and hyper-nationalist practices that make them die-hard fascists. And so it is no coincidence that both are the pillars of this Brown International of our nightmares, which brings together practically every right-wing extremist, neo-Nazi, and neo-fascist in the world!

So, given their aforementioned distinctive traits, their Ukrainian and Iranian misadventures take on a far greater dimension and significance. It is no longer just the traditional North American and Russian superpowers that are entering a crisis because they are unable to crush their adversaries once and for all. In reality, what is currently entering a deep and multidimensional crisis through these two superpowers—Russia and the United States—is something far more significant: the capitalist system itself. A capitalist system that, for the second time in 100 years, is resorting to its traditional lifeline and its “extreme solutions”: war and a frontal assault on human rights and democratic freedoms, as well as on what remains of its bourgeois democracy!

Hence this pervasive anxiety, this increasingly widespread sense of the end of the world, because the crisis of our barbaric and inhuman superpowers is undermining, eroding, and ultimately destroying the old (neoliberal) order without being able to impose a new one. However, such a situation is dangerous enough for the interests of those at the top to prompt them to react. And so all those who, just a year or even six months ago, displayed boundless servility toward Trump, are now distancing themselves and even going so far as to consider a divorce from the American superpower. And all this while even Russia’s traditional “friends” and “allies” are currently turning their backs on Putin, going so far as to refuse to stand beside him on the official podium in Red Square during major commemorations.

But, as might be expected, it is within their respective countries that the reaction from those in power against the warmongering “adventurism” of Trump and Putin is now beginning to emerge. And while in the United States a wind of revolt against Trump is now beginning to blow even within the ranks of the Republican Party, the situation is not very different in this Russia of endless conspiracies and palace coups—a legacy of the Tsarist and Stalinist eras, to which Putin, incidentally, lays claim: Putin’s popularity is, for the first time, in near free fall; leaks regarding the crisis of confidence taking hold at the highest levels of power are multiplying; and this atmosphere of the end of a reign—exacerbated by the poor performance of the Russian economy (official forecasts now reduce this year’s growth from 1.3% to 0.4%), and above all by the failures and deadlocks of the war against Ukraine, are causing Putin the autocrat to grow increasingly suspicious of everyone.

And no doubt, he is entirely right to be suspicious. For, lately, he has been racking up nothing but failures and problems. He has lost not only his dear Orban in Hungary, but also his footholds in sub-Saharan Africa, where the Wagner mercenaries (now called …Afrika Korps) have just packed up and left, while Black Africa, which was once so close to him, is now screaming at him following the revelation of the atrocious and macabre fate his army has reserved for the hundreds of Africans—mostly South Africans—who found themselves, against their will, on the very front lines in Ukraine to serve as cannon fodder.

But the worst thing for Putin is that his army is no longer advancing in Ukraine and is even retreating under pressure from the Ukrainians, who are regaining the territory they lost since 2024! And as if that weren’t enough, the Ukrainian army is now taking the war into Russia, with its drones and missiles targeting energy and oil infrastructure as far as 2,000 km inside the country! The result is devastating not only because these strikes on pipelines, terminals, refineries, and ports have caused Russian oil production to plummet to its lowest level in 17 years, thus nullifying, at least in part, the beneficial effects of the “gifts” Trump gave Putin by lifting the sanctions on Russian oil exports. But also, and above all, because they make this war—which until recently felt too distant and abstract to Russian citizens—tangible to them for the first time, which is already affecting their morale and radically changing their perception of this colonial and barbaric war against the Ukrainian people.

It goes without saying that the first and greatest source of Putin’s misfortunes are those Ukrainian men and women who have been fighting heroically for 51 months, with unexpected success, against a (nuclear) power many times larger, more powerful, and better armed, thus defying all initial predictions from both their “friends” and their enemies. The fact that these Ukrainian men and women are not only resisting but also launching a counterattack can only inspire other peoples around the world who are victims of the same aggressions and the same oppressions at the hands of the same or other imperialist powers…

Unfortunately, the situation of the Iranian people is quite different, as they are trapped and caught between the fierce repression they face from a barbaric and obscurantist regime, and the devastating bombings by the Trump-Netanyahu duo, who couldn’t care less about their fate. Moreover, we must admit the sad reality: the war against Iran waged by American imperialism and its Israeli ally has not weakened, but on the contrary has strengthened the theocratic regime, at least for a time.

The conclusion, though provisional, is self-evident: the imperialist wars in both Ukraine and the Persian Gulf are not only backfiring on their instigators but are also sowing unprecedented chaos by sweeping away the order that has reigned over the world since the end of World War II. The ensuing crisis could become cataclysmic if humanity allows various billionaire neo-libertarians (1) and others nostalgic for Nazi extermination camps—with their messianic, deeply supremacist, inhuman, and misanthropic agendas—to take advantage of the situation and fill the vacuum created. It is up to all of us to react before it is too late…

Note

1. See Libertarians vs. Neoconservatives – War is splitting the Trumpist leadership: https://blogs.