Recently, the situation in the border between Russia and Ukraine has deteriorated, and the Ukrainian government and civilian armed forces in eastern Ukraine accused each other of launching artillery bombardment. On the evening of the 21st local time, Russian President Putin signe

China Net Commentator Tang Hua

Recently, the situation in the border between Russia and Ukraine has deteriorated, and the Ukrainian government and civilian armed forces in eastern Ukraine accused each other of launching artillery attacks. On the evening of the 21st local time, Russian President Putin signed an order to recognize the "Donetsk People's Republic" and "Luhansk People's Republic" in eastern Ukraine. The United States and the European Union have successively issued statements that they will take sanctions measures. The regional situation is evolving in a more complex and unknown direction.

The development of the situation in Ukraine has been the result of a series of complex factors. Among them, , led by the United States, has continued to exclude Russia for many years, and eroding its strategic space is an important factor that cannot be ignored. Although NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg denied that "NATO has never promised not to expand", Boston University scholar Siflinson recently revealed to Germany's "Spirit Spiegel" that government documents from 1990 to 1991 found in the National Archives of the United Kingdom showed that Western diplomats did make a promise to "NATO not expand eastwardly", but they broke their promise just eight years later. On March 12, 1999, Polish , Hungarian , and Czech officially joined NATO. Since then, NATO has expanded its sequels many times. If Ukraine is taken over, wouldn’t Russia have to block its opponent’s missile launchers? Which Western country can accept such a situation? In addition, Russia and Ukraine have the same clan and origin and are connected by blood. It is emotionally difficult to accept it being thrown into NATO's arms, and since then, the wars are facing each other. The United States and NATO have not only never faced Russia's concerns, but have also repeatedly tried to build a European security order that suits its wishes at the expense of Russia's security interests. At the beginning of 2022, the long-accumulated contradictions finally triggered this Russian-Ukrainian border crisis.

In addition, in the complex situation, the United States, which is thousands of miles apart, is constantly exaggerating the threat of war, fearing that the world will not be in chaos: first, it mobilized the US troops stationed in Europe and the United States and provided weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, and other means, to pressurize the already tense regional situation; then, President Biden and his senior government officials made sensational remarks that "Russia is about to invade Ukraine", and took the lead in ordering the employees of the country's embassy in Ukraine and American citizens to evacuate as soon as possible, and at the same time, it forced European allies to threaten Russia with sanctions and undermine the atmosphere of peace talks.

The United States deliberately creates tensions, with the following three considerations:

cuts the world's leeks and deals with high domestic inflation. Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on February 10 showed that the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6% month-on-month in January and 7.5% year-on-year, the largest year-on-year increase since February 1982. In fact, before the data was released, the Federal Reserve had realized the seriousness of the inflation problem. Chairman Powell announced at the end of last month that the United States would raise interest rates at the March meeting, and at the same time narrowed the balance sheet and recovered the US dollar on the market. Also at the end of January, the situation in Russia and Ukraine suddenly heated up, which is probably not as simple as a coincidence. The US government attempted to use this incident to create panic in the capital market, guide the global dollar to return to the United States, cooperate with the interest rate hike policy to curb domestic inflation, and at the same time make up for the insufficient domestic liquidity in the United States caused by interest rate hikes, avoid a sharp decline in U.S. stocks and housing prices, and avoid an increase in domestic financing costs. What's more, after the return of the US dollar causes the assets of other countries to depreciate, the United States will releasing liquidity by cutting interest rates to acquire high-quality assets of these countries and complete the plunder of their wealth. In the past few decades, the US interest rate hike has triggered many global economic turmoil, including the Asian financial crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis, and other global economic turmoil, but in order for the US economy to "soft land", I believe the Biden administration does not mind doing it again.

leads European security affairs and suppresses European strategic autonomy. In recent years, under the advocacy of France, calls for "strategic autonomy" in Europe have gradually emerged. French President Macron even made a high-profile statement that NATO has " brain-dead " and should form a "European Army" to achieve defense autonomy. The poor performance of the United States in the Afghanistan's withdrawal last year has won the idea of ​​defense autonomy to support more European countries.In a rotating country speech to the European Parliament last month, Macron said security and stability plans should be "firstly established between Europeans and then shared with NATO allies", urging the EU to have a separate dialogue with Putin on easing tensions in Russia and Ukraine. This is obviously contrary to the United States' idea of ​​controlling Europe, differentiating and even suppressing Europe's rise if necessary. Therefore, after the "Normandy Model" quadron talks were held on January 26, Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, the United States spared no effort to promote the escalation of tensions. On the one hand, it exaggerates that "Russia is about to invade", and on the other hand, it forces France, Germany and other countries to publicly express what specific sanctions measures to take against Russia's "possible invasion" to undermine all parties' efforts to ease the situation. The United States hopes to consolidate such a fixed mindset - "European security can only be protected by the United States, and Europe's security affairs are the final say", so as to continue to firmly control Europe's defense dominance.

The midterm election is approaching, and Biden and the Democrats are eager to reverse the adverse situation. In the past year of his inauguration, the Biden administration's work has been unremarkable: the efforts to fight against the new coronavirus through vaccination have failed. The United States has repeatedly set a new high in a single-day case number since the outbreak of the epidemic. The severe inflation completely erased the weak increase in the income of ordinary Americans. The supply chain crisis also led to a shortage of goods, and the public complaints were full of people. A previous poll showed that 58% of Americans disapprove of Biden's work during his presidency, with supporters accounting for only 41%. According to the plan, the US midterm elections will be held in November this year. The prospects of Biden and the Democratic Party are not optimistic. If we want to avoid becoming a "lame duck", Biden and the Democratic Party need an opportunity to turn the tables. The current situation in Russia and Ukraine is in time. If the United States successfully achieves the above two goals, it will not only boost the domestic economy, but also re-establish a leader in international affairs. It can be said that it will kill two birds with one stone, and Biden and the Democratic Party’s prospects in the midterm elections will also be greatly improved.

However, manipulating regional tensions to relieve itself will inevitably take great risks. If the United States wants to profit from it, it must control the scale of the conflict to a very small range and maintain the so-called "storm in the tea cup". Once a full-scale conflict breaks out of Russia and Ukraine, the United States will inevitably fall into the dilemma of "not intervening and watching injustice". Moreover, to what extent the situation in Russia and Ukraine can help achieve the return of the US dollar, but the effect of pushing up the price of commodities, including energy, has already appeared. On the 11th, affected by the situation in Ukraine, the price of crude oil, which has never exceeded US$100 per barrel since 2014, has soared to the highest point in eight years. The rise in energy prices will have a chain reaction on the prices of most consumer goods, and will instead push up US inflation.

As President Xi Jinping once said, "It is not only undesirable to only care about the security of one country and ignore the security of other countries to seek their own so-called absolute security, but will also end up harming yourself." Europe's affairs should still be left to Europe to solve. If the United States cannot contribute to regional security, it is best not to be a disruptor. It is a good deed for others and yourself. (Editor in charge: Li Xiaohua, Cai Xiaojuan)