Today can be a mark of end of a peaceful era, an era which lasted almost 80 years, an end to international world order according to Japan’s prime minister 1https://apa.az/en/asia/japans-prime-minister-says-russias-invasion-shakes-foundations-of-international-order-369139 . Many things have happened these 80 years in the world of warfare, especially the invention of atomic bomb, which made everyone fearful of consequences of another big war. If you want to look at it with apocalyptic eyes, today may be even the start of end of civilized world. But make no mistake, the signs were all over the world, US had already shown weakness in Afghanistan (against China) and Syria (against Russia).
The timing of Russia’s predictable invasion into Ukraine is not a coincidence. They (and I mean Russia, their quiet ally China, and the little mischievous Iran, Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela) have run several misinformation campaigns in west to divide nations and bipolarize the people, such as misinformation in US elections and antivaccine campaigns 2https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-anti-vaccine-disinformation-campaign-backfires/6318536.html, and have been actively working to destabilize the regions around by means such as proxy wars.
One of the winning cards in the hand of the new axis power (China and Russia, and other small ones) is the energy dependency of Europe. This is unfortunate and is due to decarbonization programs especially Germany is taking. You see! they wanted to shut down their coal powered power plants but had no replacement what so ever, and with nuclear out of picture due to unnecessary fears, they had to replace it with Russian gas, a goal set by European Union (read Germany !) to reduce CO2 emission and by doing that, they made themselves dependent to Russian gas import! You can read a bit about energy crisis the west will face here.
But even more significantly, the money flow from West to China is far more dangerous. We cannot almost buy anything of value that is not made in China. Even worse, the biggest companies, such as Volvo Carrs or IBM (now called Lenovo), and many more are bought by China, meaning that the profit of what a European does, will directly go to Xi Jinping’s expansionist pocket.
But it was the pandemic that made it all possible (1). While the western economy crippled due to pandemic, and with a less determined US president, now Russia and allies attack the democratic Ukraine and on paper Ukraine has no chance (but they can inflict heavy losses). This is a consequence of a destabilized world and greediness and ambitiousness of (semi-) dictators of superpower states. Something that will always be with human nature in possession of such power. The reaction to this invasion defines what happens next. Is this a start of series of battles which will lead to World War 3? Will China invade Taiwan in near future 3https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/15/as-russia-ukraine-crisis-unfolds-china-and-taiwan-are-watching.html ? Will eastern Europe be invaded in 2030? How will NATO react? Will we have more Rogue states?
The answer to these come with the reaction of other strong powers today. If the things do not go well now, we all will be affected. This is really scary, how people’s energy and attention are diverted to far less important or even fake stories and false news! Or even worse, they see the world so convoluted and are so confused with all sorts of conspiracy theories, and hence cannot understand the mechanics. Now we have all the evidence! Wake up! Read and write about this. As minimum. change your profile picture and support Ukraine so Putin sees that we are NOT sleeping! We should have empathy towards Ukrainian people and their suffering, lets just imagine how bad it felt if it was us. An imagination which is a step closer to a reality today.!!
Wake up people !!
(1) The turbulences after pandemics led to collapse of Athenian state, fall of Roman empire, change of dynasty in Iran from Parthians to Sasanian, and Han dynasty in China. Each pandemic led to economic crisis, and then insurgencies and external attacks. Of course those pandemics killed in range of hundreds of millions which in ancient world, is a lot, but the difference is that the world economy is much more sensitive to disasters these days.