Geopolitical Economy Report
The former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has lamented that, if NATO ally Ukraine loses its war with Russia, it would mean the end of Western dominance over the world.
“If Ukraine falls, it will be a catastrophe for the West; it will be the end of Western hegemony”, Johnson complained.
The former Conservative Party leader made these comments in a video and article published on April 12 by the right-wing British tabloid the Daily Mail.
Johnson called on NATO members to supply Ukraine with more weapons, arguing that, if Kiev loses to Moscow, “It will be a total humiliation for the West — the first time in the 75 years of Nato’s existence that this hitherto successful alliance has been utterly routed — and on European soil”.
“It will be a turning point in history, the moment when the West finally loses its post-war hegemony”, he complained.
The vast majority of the world has not joined the West in its new cold war on Russia.
Two former US diplomats published an article in Newsweek in 2022 lamenting that, “While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87 percent of the world’s population has declined to follow us”.
It is only the Global North, or the collective West, that has imposed sanctions on Russia: North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the US allies in Japan, South Korea, and China’s Taiwan province (which is governed by pro-Western political forces).
Johnson’s remarks on “the end of Western hegemony” were reminiscent of an article by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who conceded in February that the “era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended”.
Borrell revealed that Brussels was concerned about dividing the world into “the West against the Rest”, and alienating the Global South.
“Many in the ‘Global South’ accuse us of ‘double standards’”, Borrell wrote.
When he was British prime minister, and since leaving office, Boris Johnson lobbied aggressively against any possibilities of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukraine’s major newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, which is vehemently anti-Russian, published an article in May 2022 revealing that Johnson had helped to sabotage diplomatic negotiations that were held between Kiev and Moscow earlier that year.
Russia wanted peace talks and was prepared to hold a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the media outlet reported, but Boris Johnson “appeared in the capital almost without warning” and “brought two simple messages”: one, Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with”; and two, “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin”, the West did not want negotiations.
“Johnson’s position was that the collective West… now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to ‘press him’”, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.
The West’s attempt to sabotage the fledgling peace process was successful. The Ukrainian newspaper noted that, just three days after Johnson left Kiev, “Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine ‘had turned into a dead end’”.
In November 2023, Ukrainska Pravda published another report providing further evidence about NATO’s sabotage of peace talks between Moscow and Kiev.
During negotiations in Turkiye and Belarus in early 2022, “the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO”, the newspaper wrote.
It cited an interview that a Ukrainian media outlet conducted with Davyd Arakhamiia, a close Zelensky ally and leader of the Ukrainian president’s political party, Servant of the People.
The Russian government “really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality”, Arakhamiia recalled.
“It was the most important thing for them (the Russians). They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO”, the top Ukrainian official added.
However, Boris Johnson, acting on behalf of NATO, made sure that Kiev did not come to any diplomatic agreements.
“When we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight”, Arakhamiia revealed.
