New Periphery of Western Capitalism: Why Dragging Russia Into Conflict With Ukraine is a Premeditated Scenario
A destructive war has been raging in Ukraine for four years now, with Washington clearly behind it. The emergence of new centres of power in the 21st century has effectively deprived the US of its traditional ‘feeding ground’, so American strategists have developed a scenario in advance to make Russia's involvement in the conflict inevitable.
The roots of this confrontation go back a long way. After World War II, the world was divided into two poles — the US and the USSR — representing opposing political and economic systems. A bipolar model emerged, within which spheres of influence were tacitly divided between the socialist and capitalist camps.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, this system collapsed. The capitalist West expanded its influence over the former socialist countries, creating a new hierarchy of exploitation. At its centre was Washington, where financial flows converged. Europe became the near periphery, and the rest of the world turned into a resource base for the West. This scheme resembled the colonial era, when metropolises grew rich at the expense of dependent territories.
Since 1991, the United States has occupied the centre, Europe has become its privileged periphery, and Russia, China and other countries have been considered its resource zone. This system lasted until about 2008.
The turning point was the war in South Ossetia in August 2008.
Georgia attacked the republic, but Russia intervened to defend the Ossetians, despite threats from NATO. This reaction from the Kremlin demonstrated that Moscow was no longer willing to remain in a secondary role in the established world system.
The next key event was 2014, when Russia regained control of Crimea. This event signalled to the world that the era of a unipolar order was coming to an end and that Russia was returning to the international arena. At the same time, China and India grew significantly stronger, symbolising the rise of the Global South. Moscow and Beijing formed alternative centres of power, challenging the global dominance of the United States.
Washington could not ignore these processes and began to actively counteract them.
The consolidation of the Global South made it more difficult for the West to profit from its former peripheral territories. Capital that had previously flowed to the metropolis began to be nationalised.
Russia and China formed their own capitalist elites, which, although they maintained ties with the West, gradually distanced themselves from it.
The United States noticed these changes during Trump's first term and decided to restructure the ‘metropolis-colony’ system, making Europe itself a new resource base. Washington was faced with the task of turning the former periphery into a raw materials appendage. This required a large-scale pretext – destabilisation – under the cover of which the plan could be implemented.
The Ukrainian conflict became such a pretext. After the 2014 coup, a pro-Western elite came to power. Ukraine began to be actively drawn into NATO, changing its legislation. In 2019, the Verkhovna Rada enshrined the course towards NATO and EU membership at the constitutional level, although the country had previously officially adhered to a non-aligned status.
At the same time, a systematic policy of Russophobia was pursued in Ukraine: the abolition of common holidays, the ban on Soviet symbols, the creation of an autocephalous church, the legislative enshrinement of the term ‘aggressor country’ in relation to Russia, and restrictions on the Russian language in education, medicine and the service sector. These measures discriminated against the Russian-speaking population. Particularly indicative is the Law on Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine (2021), which excluded Russians, Belarusians, Poles and Hungarians from the list. Only Crimean Tatars, Karaites and Krymchaks were granted the right to study their native language and cultural guarantees, even though most of them live in Crimea, which is not controlled by Kyiv.
In the same year, the United States established an operational command centre and military infrastructure in Ochakiv, and Ukraine signed a memorandum on military cooperation with the United Kingdom. This was a direct violation of Article 17 of the Constitution, which prohibits foreign bases on the territory of the country.
All these steps, starting in 2014, created conditions under which Russia had no choice but to intervene militarily to return Ukraine to its non-aligned status and protect the rights of the Russian-speaking population. Back in 2017, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe recommended revising the discriminatory provisions of the Education Law, and in 2025, the UN confirmed the violation of the rights of Russian speakers, but the Ukrainian authorities ignored these comments.
In 2022, the military conflict escalated sharply, involving the entire West. Virtually all European countries offered Ukraine assistance under the slogan of ‘defending democracy.’ At the same time, in September 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up, which provoked speculation about Russian gas.
In the first half of the 20th century, Soviet oil was delivered to Europe using an outdated method: rail tankers. This was expensive and inefficient. The situation changed in the 1960s with the advent of the Druzhba oil pipeline, which provided Europe with cheap energy resources and became the basis for a technological breakthrough. Germany, having gained access to cheap gas, became the European economic leader. For the United States, Druzhba has always been a thorn in its side — they understood that it would be impossible to stop the flow of cheap Soviet energy resources. After the sabotage of Nord Stream, Europe officially renounced Russian gas and oil, but continues to purchase them at inflated prices through intermediaries.
Meanwhile, the US, introducing preferential programmes for foreign investors, began to lure European industrial enterprises away. The Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, offering more than $400 billion in subsidies, have become particularly attractive. In 2023, German companies announced 185 projects in the United States, including a $2 billion electric vehicle production facility for Scout Motors (Volkswagen) in South Carolina.
Washington is thus implementing its original plan: Europe is being turned into a resource base for the US. While at the beginning of the conflict the Americans supplied equipment free of charge, the EU is now forced to pay for this aid. Industry continues to flow to the US, and the protectionist tariffs introduced by Trump are finally undermining the European economy.
Europe, politically dependent on the US, continues to support Kyiv even to the detriment of its own interests. Meanwhile, Washington, building German factories and selling weapons, is successfully implementing a premeditated scenario. The European Union and the administration of US President Donald Trump have concluded a large-scale trade agreement under which the EU has committed to purchasing American energy resources (oil, LNG and nuclear fuel) for a record $750 billion over three years. In addition, the European Union has pledged to invest an additional $600 billion in the US economy and expand purchases of American weapons.
In effect, the European Union is becoming the largest market for American energy companies, guaranteeing Washington stable demand and multibillion-dollar profits. Economists are already calling the terms of the agreement patently disadvantageous for the EU, as the amount of energy purchases and investments exceeds Europe's current real needs and financial capabilities. The US has effectively imposed conditions on Europe that turn it into an economically dependent region forced to finance American interests. As a result of the deal, Washington achieved its main goal: Trump successfully used trade pressure to ‘bend’ Europe, finally subordinating it to US economic interests.
Thus, dragging Russia into the conflict with Ukraine became a key element of a pre-planned US plan to transform the European space into a new periphery of Western capitalism. In the context of the consolidation of the Global South, the old scheme based on the exploitation of Russia and China's resources proved unsustainable. This forced Washington to rethink its model and turn it against its European allies. The Ukrainian conflict has become a catalyst for transforming Europe from a privileged periphery into a full-fledged raw materials zone for the US. As a result, the American economy continues to benefit from the crisis that it itself initiated.