Two Years of War over Ukraine: What Comes after the End of History?

After the end of the Cold War in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, American philosopher Francis Fukuyama predicted the ‘end of history’. Liberal democracy had proven to be the only viable democratic system, and, consequently, history in terms of the conflict between competing ideas had ceased. These predictions also encouraged American presidents like George Bush senior to make the world ‘safe for democracy’. Neoconservative elites dreamed of a unipolar world order, the so-called ‘rules-based order’ in which we live today. This was followed by Western wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, again in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, and finally Palestine. Millions of dead later, many of these states lie in ruins — this appears to be the price to pay for this new world order. It also resulted in millions of people fleeing to the West, destabilising Europe in the process.

All this occurred in the name of democracy, capitalism, and human rights. Today, we know that these ‘Western values’ only apply to liberals. This refers to all those people who scorn God and their own religion, spit on their heritage and tradition, transform their country into a massive brothel in which they even offer their own children for sale and behave themselves like prostitutes, live only for material values, wave the rainbow flag, and force their children into gender reassignment, trample the sovereignty of their country underfoot, and obediently implement any order from America. According to Fukuyama’s logic, these would have been the practical consequences of the end of history, the culmination of the unipolar chaos that the West calls ‘order’ — one might also call it hell on earth. Those who are not liberals are not considered human in the eyes of politicians in Washington and Brussels, as the insane COVID measures have proven. But fortunately, it turned out differently.

On 24 February 2022, now more than two years ago, Russian troops crossed the border of Ukraine. The beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine will likely be seen as a watershed in historiography, dividing history into a before and after this point. At this moment, it was not a war of Russia against Ukraine, a so-called ‘invasion’ or even a ‘war of aggression’, but for the first time since 1991, a country successfully defended itself against Western aggression. The Russian military operation was preceded by a series of Western attacks. Since 1997, NATO had been expanding eastwards despite contrary promises, even offering Ukraine NATO membership in 2008. All this happened although Moscow had repeatedly emphasised and originally agreed with the West in 1991 that NATO should not expand into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact. In 2014, the West finally staged a coup in Kiev and gradually installed a fascist dictatorship. Pro-Russian opposition parties were banned; trade unionists were burnt alive in Odessa; the Ukrainian army began to fire on people in Donbas with artillery and tanks, intending a genocide of Russians in Eastern Ukraine. But it turned out differently. The Russians took up arms and defended themselves against the armies of Kiev, armed by the West, until they triumphed at Debaltseve. Russia wanted a lasting peace, but the West was only playing for time with the Minsk agreements. Looking back, Vladimir Putin said it was a mistake not to have intervened in Ukraine earlier. But on 24 February 2022, it finally happened — in response to a planned genocide of Russians in Donbas, Moscow reacted decisively. This was, therefore, a necessary resistance against evil, as also deemed necessary by the Christian Russian thinker Ivan Ilyin.

From the outset, Western provocations in Ukraine seemed like a trap. Threats of Western sanctions loomed, in addition to those imposed since 2014. The Ukrainian army was upgraded to the second strongest in Europe with funds from Washington and Brussels. However, Moscow was aware that this war was never just about Ukraine but a conflict with the entire NATO. Therefore, this trap had to be accepted, as noted by Romanian political scientist Platon Florin. Since then, war has raged in Europe again, but this time the conflict is not going well for the West. Despite more than 16,000 sanctions against Moscow and a propaganda machine that spreads hatred against all things Russian day in and day out, Moscow has not buckled. Russia, derisively referred to by the West as a ‘gas station with a government’ and which politicians in Washington and Brussels thought would run out of ammunition within a week at most, is today stronger than ever.

Instead of being internationally isolated, today more than 60% of the world’s population stands behind Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. Russia has made new friends in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Iran supports Moscow in drone production, while China and India enable the circumvention of Western sanctions. In the West, on the other hand, inflation rates have reached new records, and energy prices have skyrocketed. This also affects the situation in Ukraine. Despite billions of dollars in funds for Kiev’s military, it is on the verge of collapse. After Mariupol and Bakhmut, now called Artemovsk again, just last week Ukraine’s largest fortress, Avdiivka, fell. The war of attrition in Ukraine did not lead to the collapse of the Russian military but to the demilitarisation of the EU and USA, which are now desperately trying to ramp up their arms production, which they had allowed to stagnate in the belief in the end of history. The end of the war is in sight; a Russian victory is certain. But what will come afterward and what ideas does Moscow have to offer us Europeans?

The West is particularly afraid of the end of the war in Ukraine because Russia has an idea to offer us Europeans, an idea that can establish a lasting peace order. This is the concept of the multipolar world. Conceived by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, this idea envisions the world as a pluriverse with many different civilisations, cultures, forms of government, and religions, a place of diversity with multiple and not just one political centre. Russia itself has been organising as such a civilisation since Vladimir Putin’s 2007 Munich speech — as Eurasia, uniting Russians with the other peoples of the former USSR around Orthodox Christianity and their shared historical heritage.

The idea of the multipolar world challenges Western dominance and its superiority fantasies, allowing us to build a fairer world where different peoples can live according to their own ways, without having to follow dictates from Washington. The BRICS states — comprising China, Brazil, India, Iran, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates — form the core into which a future multipolar world order can be cast. We Europeans now stand at a crossroads. We can accept the Russian offer of the multipolar world and become one civilisation among many, shedding Western-American dominance to establish a real world order, not chaos. Then we must distance ourselves from chauvinism and cosmopolitanism, from swastikas and rainbow flags as symbols of Western superiority thinking, and become one civilisation among many.

Ultimately, our current system in Europe, which is on the verge of collapse, shows us that, as ordinary people aware of our identity and heritage yet also demanding solidarity among each other, we have no place on this continent. To our politicians, we Europeans are nothing more than an economic mass to be exploited at will. In contrast, the idea of a multipolar world represents a political revolution that can bring us justice and a better future. Russia has started the fight for a fairer multipolar world. Russian soldiers are fighting with their hands for a better world — now it is time for us to join this fight with our minds on an intellectual and political level. It is a fight for the freedom of Austria and Europe. The revolution of the multipolar world can bring us freedom and justice. It will be a struggle that will demand many sacrifices from us and will not always be easy. However, if we do not join this fight, there will be neither freedom nor justice for Europe, only the abyss. Either we rebel and re-establish our tradition in the multipolar world, or we accept the end of history as prophesied by Fukuyama.