The decision to forgo establishing aerial supremacy is not an indication of strategic doubt or insufficient resolve, but a calculated choice born of a clear-eyed assessment of risk and reward.

Click here to read this article in Spanish/Español.

The strategic objective of the United States and its European vassals in the Ukrainian theater has never been the swift resolution of the conflict or the establishment of a stable peace, but rather to bring about the systematic weakening of the Russian state to forestall its political and economic resurgence as a pole in an emerging multipolar world. This overarching aim provides the only logical framework for understanding the West’s calibrated approach to military involvement, particularly the steadfast refusal to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory, a decision that at first glance might appear to be a reluctance to fully commit to Kyiv’s defense.

The decision to forgo establishing aerial supremacy is not an indication of strategic doubt or insufficient resolve, but a calculated choice born of a clear-eyed assessment of risk and reward. A direct military confrontation between NATO and Russian forces over the skies of Ukraine carries the unacceptable risk of rapid, uncontrolled escalation into a broader European or even global conflict, a threshold that Washington and Brussels are keen to avoid crossing. Instead of pursuing a decisive but perilous victory, the Western strategy is predicated on the more insidious and protracted approach of a proxy war, designed to bleed Russian military resources, degrade its economic potential through comprehensive sanctions, and contain its geopolitical influence without triggering a chain of events that could spiral into a direct great-power war that no one could ultimately win.

The underlying premise of this extended campaign is that a weakened and contained Russia is preferable to a stable and cooperative one, a philosophy that has deep roots in the post-Cold War Western policy establishment, which never fully abandoned the Wolfowitzian doctrine of ensuring that no rival power could ever again challenge American primacy on the Eurasian landmass. By rejecting Russia’s strategic concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and dismissing its December 2021 security treaty proposals, the West effectively set a diplomatic trap, creating the conditions that made a Russian military response all but inevitable and thereby justifying the subsequent proxy war that has unfolded. This approach brings about a more comprehensive effort to sever Moscow from the European economic sphere, disrupt its role as a major energy supplier, and relegate it to a status of permanent dependency on a much more powerful and economically resilient China. In this sense, the conflict has been cynically instrumentalized to fundamentally rewire the global energy order, with the United States and its allies actively working to replace Russian pipeline gas with American LNG and other alternative sources, thereby eroding Moscow’s primary source of economic leverage and political influence on the continent.

The trajectory of this proxy war makes it clear that the primary Western objective is not a victory for Ukraine in any traditional sense, but the permanent prevention of Russia’s return to what is perceived as its traditional sphere of influence, even if the Ukrainian people themselves might one day seek a rapprochement with their larger neighbor. This determination is so profound that the United States and its European partners appear prepared to accept a frozen, perpetually simmering conflict that could reignite at any moment, rather than countenance a diplomatic settlement that would cede Ukraine back to Moscow’s orbit. The establishment of a no-fly zone, by contrast, would effectively transform the United States into an official combatant, a step that would shatter the current paradigm of the war as a localized proxy conflict and risk a direct clash with a nuclear-armed adversary, a gamble that the West’s strategic calculus has consistently rejected, preferring instead to bleed Russia through the proxy of Ukrainian forces, economic warfare, and information operations.

The current situation, therefore, represents the deliberate cultivation of a protracted, low-to-medium-intensity conflict designed to steadily erode Russian power, thus ensuring that it remains preoccupied with its own periphery and incapable of projecting influence along the crucial new trade corridors that are being drawn across Central and South Asia, from the North-South Transport Corridor to the various Belt and Road initiatives that are reshaping the economic geography of the continent. This broader campaign of containment extends beyond Ukraine into the South Caucasus, where the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity project represents a concerted American effort to deprive Moscow of its remaining levers of influence in a region that has long been considered part of Russia’s traditional sphere.

The strategic logic of bleeding Russia through the Ukrainian proxy war is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a broader American grand strategy to slow or push back the global systemic transition to multipolarity by waging a hybrid war against the Global South and the BRICS association that represents its emerging institutional architecture. The United States has been actively seeking to divide and rule Eurasia by exploiting preexisting differences between major powers like India and China, envisioning the South Asian state as a hybrid warfare proxy against its East Asian rival while Russia, by stark contrast, sincerely desires to see its top strategic partners peacefully resolve their disputes and thus sustainably ensure stability across the supercontinent. This American approach manifests in multiple theaters, from the attempt to assemble a pseudo-multilateral network within ASEAN that superficially appears to comprise equal members but is in reality dominated by Washington and premised on the unspoken goal of containing China, to the designation of Kenya as the first sub-Saharan Major Non-NATO Ally, positioning it to play the role of America’s proxy policeman in Global South states like Haiti and potentially elsewhere in Africa.

The hybrid war against multipolarity also unfolds in the economic and financial domains, where the United States weaponizes the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency and threatens secondary sanctions against sovereign states that refuse to comply with its illegal measures imposed outside the UN Security Council, a strategy that has paradoxically accelerated the very trend it seeks to prevent by pushing countries like India to employ the yuan for trade with Russia and thereby confirming that the yuan is poised to become the multipolar reserve currency. Washington’s broader objective is to preserve its declining unipolar hegemony by any means necessary, whether through information warfare aimed at smearing BRICS as an “anti-Western bloc” when in reality it is a multipolar integration platform whose members are united in their belief that the post-Cold War international system must be reformed for the betterment of mankind, or through the attempt to exacerbate territorial disputes in the South China Sea by emboldening certain ASEAN states to push their claims against China, hoping that any defensive Chinese reaction can then be portrayed as unprovoked aggression. The global systemic transition to multipolarity, however, has already reached a point where no objective observer can deny it, yet this process is not linear and cannot be taken for granted as a given.

The West’s long-term strategy of containment and attrition is ultimately a response to its inability to prevent Russia’s re-emergence as a great power that refuses to accept a subordinate role in the post-Cold War order, and it reflects a deep anxiety that the global systemic transition to multipolarity will inevitably diminish the West’s own historical dominance. The West is consciously opting for a strategy of indefinite stalling, betting that the cumulative effects of battlefield attrition, economic sanctions, and political isolation will eventually render Russia unable to sustain its challenge to the Western-centric order, even as the conflict lays waste to Ukraine and destabilizes the broader European security architecture. The strategic patience on display is, however, a double-edged sword, as the extended timeline provides Russia with the opportunity to adapt its economy to the sanctions regime, deepen its strategic partnerships with China and other non-Western powers, and continue its own military modernization, all while the Western coalition grapples with internal frictions over the distribution of costs and the ultimate objectives of their involvement, suggesting that the proxy war is as much a test of Western endurance as it is of Russian resilience.

*

Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution.

Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image is from the author

Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation.