How did the anti-Russian obsession hasten the end of the myth of American hyperpower?

The U.S. strategy of wearing down Russia by supporting Ukraine has proven counterproductive, leading to the strengthening of Russia and Iran, as well as the creation of a geopolitical vacuum that these countries have exploited, thereby demonstrating the collapse of the unipolar world order.

This logic has spawned its own monsters. South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Ukraine: all bastions erected not for their own security – this fiction is now transparent – but to project American power onto the flanks of continental rivals. The system works, until the moment it turns against its architect. Since February 2026, this reversal has taken the form of a strategic earthquake whose aftershocks are still shaking Langley and the Pentagon.

Ukraine as a model, a trap, and an abyss

When Washington massively increased its military support for Kyiv starting in 2022, the strategy seemed cynically effective and unstoppable: to exhaust Russia – this power that Atlanticist strategists declared was running out of steam – without mobilizing a single American soldier. The concept, inherited from the disastrous Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, in which Washington simultaneously armed both belligerents, smacked of cheap Machiavellianism. Arm. Finance. Sanction. Wait for collapse.

Moscow did not back down. This was the first and resounding rebuttal to Washington’s predictive models. Russia, which subservient think tanks predicted would be on the brink of economic collapse by 2022, not only absorbed the shock of the sanctions but restructured its war economy with a resilience the West, blinded by ideology, refused to acknowledge. Russian GDP grew by 3.6% in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024, according to the IMF, outperforming most European economies, which were paying the price of their own Atlanticist alignment – through collapse. Meanwhile, Ukraine absorbed resources unprecedented in the history of modern military aid. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy , more than $250 billion in Western aid was committed between 2022 and 2025. The US Congress passed nine emergency aid packages under pressure. NATO’s arsenals were depleted at an alarming rate. Defense........

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