As Russia's geopolitical standing rises above regionalism in the Ukraine conflict the United States hegemony looks battered

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Amid the rapid economic, military and political waning of an Islamic-governing superpower the Ottoman Empire, that dominated supremely vast areas of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for more than 600 years, emerged one of the most challenging and complex conflicts.

The mid-19th century Crimean War, which unequivocally produced a Pyrrhic victory toward the winners, played host to national ambition and feeling, psychological fear and fierce political rivalry.

Czarist Russia, and the brains behind the conflict while laden with dubious geopolitical designs, had to churn incessantly Ecclesiastical-type foreign policy, synonymous with that of 11th century Crusades.

Hence, the rejuvenation of the centuries-old paternalistic custody over Christians of the East, as well as the Church of Nativity at Bethlehem, and its sacred relics. Before the war in January 1853, the Czar Nicholas, whose country had fought against the Ottomans nearly once every twenty years for almost two centuries, had a famous conversation.

First with the British statesman John Russell, he described politically demoralized Ottoman Empire "a sick man-a very sick man," whose empire was disintegrating before them.

Thus Russia, an intractable power since the Middle Ages, single-handedly confronted Britain and France, as well as the army of Sardinia and Piedmont in the Crimean War.

Despite the Ottomans, who hardly had any military alliance with the West joining the internecine conflict, the Czardom nevertheless thought it was of utmost importance to decide obstinately on the "sick man's" territories before the inevitable and fateful event.

Today, the theater of this very dreary conflict the Crimean peninsula, with a population of 1,015,826 according to 2021 estimates and annexed by Russia in 2014, is once again witnessing on Ukrainian soil, a cataclysm so surreal in the 21 century unfolding.

Now a year after Vladimir Putin, the Russian president simultaeously acknowledged the independence of Donbas, a Russian-speaking separatist region of Ukraine and declared war on the entire country, the stalemate from the conflict in addition to devastating global economic, political and social effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, have placed the Kremlin's geopolitical standing above regionalism.

Speaking on nuclear security in The Hague in 2014, former U.S. president Barack Obama, described post-Soviet Russia as no more than a "regional power" whose actions in Ukraine appeared to be a weakness rather than strength. Obama was playing down his rival in the 2012 presidential election Mitt Romney, who had suggested that Russia was the United States main geopolitical foe. However, this talk down was augmented by another opponent in the 2008 contest Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who proclaimed on CNN's "State of the Union" that Russia was a gas station masquerading as a country.

Contrary to well-espoused punditry on Moscow's emasculated political power and military bluffs by both Obama and McCain even today, has seen Romney's geopolitical assumption on the East Slavic country becoming hegemonical reality.

Indeed, the sheer planning and timing of the Russian Federation's full-scale military attack on pro- West Ukraine, is symbolic of the decline of America's political influence and power, a phrase that for decades had become a scholarly cliche.

Among the seismic affairs in Washington, of which the Kremlin on a furtive two- pronged mission, is gambling upon, are a host of complicated liberal and utopian ideas, all adrift from the country's well-construed historical injustices.

Alongside these emotionally contested left-wing baggage such as the Critical Race Theory (CRT), the Pulitzer Prizewinning 1619 Project and wokeism in both the classroom and workplace, are an imbroglio of right-wing conspiratorial theories in the 2020 presidential election, that eventually led to the January 6, Capitol riots.

There is varying strategic assessment and optimism from the mainstream point of view, about a complete geopolitical debacle of Moscow in neighboring Ukraine, given an array of challenges chief among them unprecedented resilience from Ukrainians.

Despite all the analyses against Russia, and indeed, owing to the West's massive financial and military assistance to Kyiv, as well as the resolve of militarily- neutral Sweden and Finland, which shares a long border with Russia applying for NATO membership, there is more to Putin's grand scheme, than Washington's punitive geoeconomic and geostrategic response.

For decades, Moscow and neighboring ally Beijing, which is projected to overtake Washington as the world"s largest economy by 2035, according to Goldman Sachs, have decried America's unipolarity and universality.

Both bemoan the traits as a threat to their "cultural civilizations," as well as political ideology.

With the social movement that emerged victoriously following the killing in the U.S. of a black man George Floyd, by a white police officer in May 2020, the nativist neighbors who concurrently battled protests and rallies in their respective cities and domains in 2019-2020, were unnerved to exigent action.

The Antifa-led Black Lives Matter ( BLM). protests that dramatically swept across both sides of the Atlantic, and threatened to usurp millennia-old European history, on one hand, enthralling thousands of converts in strategic " Kremlin backyards" such as Kazakhstan and Lithuania together with Soviet satellite the Czech Republic, is seen as an inevitable alleyway to clinching and dominating, the fiercely contested and invaluable New World Order.

Soon after a face-to-face summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva in 2021, Vladimir Putin speaking to reporters, ironically said he felt sympathy for America following "disorder, destruction, violation of the law among other criminal activities during BLM protests."

The Russian strongman on one hand, compared the movement , which won its biggest political trophy when the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives; to foreign entities in his country, and vowed to contain such a movement on Russian territory.

Accordingly, Putin's Kremlin which has been accused of interfering in U.S. domestic politics, perceives Washington's institutions ineluctably weakened in several ways, the majority cause celebre.

While placing the U.S. in a " demographics quandary," one stark instance is an existential issue, a subject of scholarly interest even beyond the Western academia.

Racial transformation in the United States as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, also known as Hart- Celler and spreading faster in the European Union and NATO member countries, is vastly replacing adventurous, establishment and militarily-aligned Americans, as well as their cultural and ideological influence.

With a population of 46,9 million, according to the Bureau of the Census, descendants of the Atlantic slavery and immigrant counterparts from Sub-Saharan Africa, together with visible minorities of revolutionary Hart-Celler, while constituting an ascendant and important electorate; have become emotionally self-conscious and are of the belief that the imminent reinvention of the country, should be in accordance with their historical grievances and philosophy.

Just like the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the Crimean War, a transcending multiethnic and multinational United States astride an irreversible ideological polarization, and the pressures of internationalism, will see its hegemonical verdict and that of the West in general, from the shores of the historic and strategic Black Sea.

In 1854, an Ottoman breakaway Greece, which had promised neutrality in the Crimean War, was enjoying self-government.

Among those that had been assured considerable autonomy and practical independence by the Ottomans, were the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia ( now Romania), in addition to Serbians and Montenegrin's.

These rather conciliatory measures however, had ambiguously aroused ethnic and racial emotions among subject nationalities.

Authors Bio:

Memory Christina Motsi political writer/columnist