In Lenin’s time, there *were* multiple imperialist powers competing for global supremacy (aka WW1).
WW2 was the conclusion to this process of consolidating multiple imperialisms into a single imperialist world system, with the US at the helm.
As westerners, we are by and large members of a global labor aristocracy, meaning we have been bribed with wages that are an order of magnitude higher than those received by the working class in the global south.
There, it runs into other finance capital doing the same. In order to avoid a race to the bottom, the competing owners of finance capital agree to a temporary truce and carve up the world into a patchwork of monopoly territories.
But eventually, this too runs its course and the more dominant owners of finance capital subsume the weaker territories until there is but one imperialist world system dominated by a single country.
This is why Lenin called imperialism “the highest stage of capitalism”
China’s eradication of ETIM terrorism within Xinjiang shifted the staging ground for western-backed destabilization of the BRI—the largest infrastructure project in history—to Central Asia.
Ignoring this context will have you cheering on the next color revolution.
These protests were then capitalized on by western-backed terrorist squads that went around beheading state security forces and demanding the current government be overthrown, a goal obedient western vassals like the UK were more than happy to help with.
It’s simple to reconcile once you stop seeing Ukraine as a smol bean fighting Big Bad Russia and start seeing it for what it is — a US-backed proxy used to:
1- destroy Russia and
2- sever Europe from Asia by forcing them into permanent reliance on the US for energy & defence.