“While acknowledging the important role of politics and ideology, it remains crucial to analyse how Russia’s model of capitalist accumulation created the structural conditions — the framework — within which subsequent political decisions were made. “Despite the regime’s pivot toward military-industrial expansion and sanctioned self-reliance, the basic logic of peripheral capitalist accumulation — rooted in natural resource exports, particularly hydrocarbons — remains intact. “Capitalists positioned in sectors aligned with state priorities — especially construction firms, arms manufacturers, and logistics companies — have seen profits rise even amid macroeconomic uncertainty. “For this cohort, the war has become not a disruption but a condition of accumulation. Any form of peace agreement that reopens Russia to global competition and winds down public investment in military and reconstruction sectors would likely erode these profits and restore the stagnation characteristic of the late ...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51