When the entire U.S. national security and diplomatic cadres were wailing that Russia was going to invade Ukraine, was this just a prediction based on international intelligence or was it a move designed to egg on Russian President Vladimir Putin? How did the U.S. side know that a leader like Putin, who runs the world's largest country, would succumb to his fear that the West was up in arms to get Russia? How could the heirs of the largest spy network, known as the All-Russian Communist Party, not know that somebody they described as a neo-Nazi had been equipped to the teeth with man-portable air defense systems? Conversely, how could they know that NATO's European members wouldn't sincerely help resuscitate the alliance from its "brain death"?

It is not just that U.S. natural gas is too expensive to replace Russian energy (there's that, too). Overall, the U.S. plans to deliver the "final solution" to the Russian problem, which former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton garrulously divulged in a New York Times obituary she penned about the individual who implemented the NATO expansion plan after the demise of the Soviet Union. In her farewell article for Madeline Albright, who served as the 64th U.S. secretary of state under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001, Clinton wrote that Albright’s plan would erase "Russia’s centurieslong efforts to dominate its neighbors" and ease former Soviet bloc countries' worries about "Russian revanchism."

Albright was with President Clinton during his presidential campaign and helped in assembling his National Security Council. Clinton appointed her to the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1993 and she held that position until 1997 when she became secretary of state. Albright served in that capacity until Clinton left office in 2001. During that time, as Hillary brags, Albright not only devised NATO’s expansion plan but also prompted a change that would shape Putin's psyche: NATO crossed the line between being a defensive alliance and becoming an offensive war machine for the first time. (NATO flexed its offensive muscles in Libya in March 2011 when a multistate NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in response to events during the first Libyan civil war.) Clinton and Albright are, in a sense, the reasons for Putin’s "siege syndrome."

Yet, Putin should have known that NATO is not his fiefdom and if he aggravates it the way he is right now in Ukraine, it does not intend to bare its proverbial teeth in a grimace of pain. Still, it has just bared its teeth; and Ukraine seems to be having second thoughts about NATO membership. The people of Donbass can live happily after rebuilding their lands if there is no NATO air base or military presence; Crimea can have a special status as it rightfully deserves and Putin can be remembered as the person who restored peace.

And why not?

If ordinary denizens on social media can see that the Ukraine campaign is only chapter one of "the new world order" that U.S. President Joe Biden has proudly declared and claimed leadership of, why can't Putin recognize the move and understand that he is a pawn?

Last week, at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, Biden said: "And now is a time when things are shifting. We’re going to – there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it."

Biden caused an uproar by using the phrase because it clearly reveals what is in the offing. Biden has not gathered all old and new neocons from the left and right at the White House insensibly; these figures make up the coherent action group needed to get rid of two rival superpower candidates, the Russian Federation and China. Hillary was not quoting Ms. Neocon herself (journalist Anne Applebaum) in her Albright article without reason. Ms. Applebaum heaps praise on Albright as the architect of NATO expansion: "The expansion of NATO was the most successful, if not the only truly successful, piece of American foreign policy of the last 30 years. We would be having this fight in East Germany right now if we hadn’t done it."

Jacob Heilbrunn, in his New Republic article titled "The Neocons Strike Back," mentions that "at pivotal moments in modern American foreign policy, the neocons gave intellectual legitimacy to policies that might have once seemed outré." He writes that a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol, have liberated themselves from the confines of the movement and been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates. Now, we can see why U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken was warning everyone that the U.S. government was not seeking a regime change in Russia when no one was accusing it of that.

Colorful revolutions?

If Mr. Putin fails again on the Ukraine issue and instead of restoring peace, continues with this occupation that is not only ruining Ukraine but also Russia’s military and reputation, we could witness very colorful revolutions in and around Russia. The "policies that once seemed outré" will shape the contours of chapter two of "the new world order," starting with the NATO summit in Brussels last week where leaders issued a dire warning to Beijing about its discreet support to Russia. China should know that its lamb's defense will have no effect on the wolf down the line.

Hilary wrote that U.S. alliances, especially with other democracies, "are a military, diplomatic and economic asset that neither Russia nor China can match."

One only hopes Putin and China's Xi Jinping will take note. Peace, gentlemen; there is no such thing as bad peace in the world.