Korybko To Timofeev: The US Is Waging A Hybrid World War Against Russia, China, & Iran

Awareness of this fact could improve Russian policy formulation going forward.

Ivan Timofeev, one of the Valdai Club’s programme directors and the Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, published a thought-provoking piece in late June titled “Contemporary International Politics: Anarchy or World War?” He argues that the growing trend of conflicts across the globe, including significant ones like the Ukrainian Conflict and the Third Gulf War, is more a sign of worsening anarchy in the international system per the Realist school of thought than a World War.

As Timofeev sees it, “Armed conflicts in various parts of the world hardly share a unified logic of struggle among specific centres of power that underpinned the world wars of the past. The crisis in the Persian Gulf is only loosely connected to the Conflict in Ukraine. Both could be presented as part of the United States’ effort to preserve its hegemony. The difficulty, however, is that Washington lacks a consolidated adversary…Accordingly, there are presently no clear global coalitions of opposing sides.”

In actuality, the US’ abovementioned campaign to preserve its hegemony simultaneously targets Russia, China, and Iran in accordance with the late Zbigniew Brzezinski’s precept of preventing them – especially the Sino-Russo Entente – from consolidating the supercontinent and then expelling the US from it. None of those three are allied with one another, but that’s irrelevant to the unified logic of the Ukrainian Conflict, the NATO-like AUKUS+ encircling China, and the Third Gulf War.

Moving along, Timofeev elaborated, “Is the current conflict between the West and Russia part of a world war? No—because there is no world war. Rather, it represents a prolonged consequence of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR. In this extended confrontation, the West has sought to consolidate the outcome in its favour by advancing its military infrastructure eastwards and drawing post-Soviet states into its orbit. Ukraine has been a central objective in this process”.

Be that as it may, last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) serves the dual purpose of a NATO military logistics corridor into Central Asia, thus simultaneously threatening Russia, China, and Iran while unprecedentedly optimizing the US’ plans to divide-and-rule them. Moreover, it’s only part of the “cordon sanitaire” that’s taken shape around Russia in the Arctic-Baltic via UK-led efforts, Central Europe via Polish-led efforts, and Northeast Asia via Japanese-led efforts.

As this containment noose tightens, Russia, China, and Iran will find themselves in more difficult geostrategic positions, which raises the odds of them cutting lopsided deals with the US for some mild pressure relief at the cost of preserving – and possibly even strengthening – US hegemony. Russia and China are nuclear powers, however, so the US’ coercion of them will remain within the realm of Hybrid Warfare as opposed to a direct conventional war against them like the Third Gulf War against Iran was.

Therefore, contemporary international politics are already arguably characterized by an undeclared World War, albeit a hybrid one. Timofeev is correct in describing other conflicts like spring 2025’s Indo-Pak clashes and the Continuation War in Karabakh as sparked in part by the international system’s worsening anarchy, but that doesn’t detract from the US’ Eurasian-wide campaign against Russia, China, and Iran being a de facto World War. Russian policymakers should therefore plan accordingly.