The new world order, following the fall of the Soviet Union, is still taking shape. That is why many aftershocks are continuing to shake up international relations.
Amongst those aftershocks are the breakup of former Yugoslavia, the Arab Spring, wars in the Caucasus and now the threat of war in Ukraine.
The implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 landed Russia in a state of turmoil, allowing the West to take advantage of the situation and put its marks on the global map.
At that time, the West drew a line in the sand by intimidating Serbia in the wake of its actions against other ethnic groups and signaling to Moscow that its influence on the European continent was significantly shrunken.
With Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, Russia responded in kind by drawing its own line in the sand in the Syrian front, while the West was jubilantly destroying one Middle Eastern country after another. Thus Russia’s stand in Syria halted the drive of the Arab Spring, whose terminus would have been Iran. That is why Iran joined Russian in support of the Assad regime, though it certainly had its own political ambitions in the Middle East.
All eyes are now on Ukraine at this time, on whose borders hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are amassed and Western capitals are announcing an imminent Russian invasion, without giving up hope on diplomatic efforts.