Sari Arho Havrén
I'd like to push back a bit about the proxy war framing, for a number of reasons. The proxy label works analytically only for Moscow and Beijing: it erases Ukrainian agency, recasts an interstate invasion as bloc competition, and legitimizes the “root causes” narrative. However, on the other side, a genuine proxy sponsor (the US) doesn’t spend years restraining its instrument. I find the China component even weaker when looking at it from Washington. If Ukraine were a US proxy against China, one would expect Washington to treat the war as attrition of Beijing’s partner and resource it accordingly, instead, the dominant US debate (especially in the prioritizer camp) has been that Ukraine diverts resources from the Indo-Pacific. The war constrains US posture against China more than it advances it.
Velina Tchakarova
We are now four and a half years into the one week blitzkrieg war of Russia against Ukraine and half of year into the three days war of US and Israel against Iran. The underdog is able to sustain the first and second strongest armies in the world thanks to drones and cheap tech. We have entered the new Cold War between the US and the DragonBear with meanwhile two proxy wars in Ukraine and Iran, and the grayzone hybrid warfare in the global system, whereas the AI-led fourth industrial revolution is entering the exponential curve now. Everything is on the move; perpetual uncertainty is the new normal. Nobody can tell which geopolitical/geoeconomic/geotechnological bloc is going to win. In the West, they must relearn what victory means and rewire their Mindset to develop the will to win again.