Introduction
I realize that some of the articles I’ve been writing over the course of the last year and a half have been challenging for some folks to take in. I get it. I understand. Writing these articles has been a major challenge for myself as well and I have no desire to put anybody off. Yet, I have also felt a strong need to share what I’ve learned, however unpleasant, about what the leadership of the country that I live in and love has (really) been up to behind the veil of what the Western corporate media is allowed and/or instructed to report. It is my sincere hope that this series of writings, which has mainly focused on the multiple facets of the disaster that is still going on in Ukraine, has been in some way helpful to you.
The US’ Sacrifice of Ukraine
On March 4, 2022, almost seventeen months ago, I wrote an article for Pressenza that was entitled “The US and NATO’s Sacrifice of Ukraine”. In that article the following was said, “By flooding Ukraine with weapons (which is what the US did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia) over the past few years and refusing Russia’s constant requests that NATO drop its plan to annex Ukraine, an extremely volatile and deeply dangerous situation has been created. It’s a situation that has basically amounted to the sacrifice of the people of Ukraine.” Suffice to say, the writing was on the wall right from the outset of the current phase of this war, a war that technically began in 2014.(1)
After an initial failed attempt to trigger negotiations via a smaller scale invasion in late February of 2022, Russia shifted to a larger scale invasion with the aim of taking the Donbas region of Ukraine and neutralizing the Ukrainian military. This was actually a move that Russia wanted to avoid, despite what the Western media was reporting at the time. In fact, about a month after the current phase of the war began there was a peace settlement signed by both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul.(2) This agreement would have put an end to the war in March of 2022.
Instead, the US and NATO ordered Zelensky not to go through with the agreement, promising Ukraine full Western support on the grounds that it continue fighting and that it reject all attempts to negotiate any kind of settlement with Russia until “total victory” was achieved.(3) Unfortunately, the US and its NATO allies misread Russia’s failed first strike as a sign of weakness, thinking it an opportunity to crush Russia’s economy via multiple rounds of sanctions while the NATO trained Ukrainian military acted as its proxy army.
What Has Ended Up Occurring in Ukraine
The recognition of the facts mentioned above doesn’t absolve Vladimir Putin and Russia from the damage they’ve done in Ukraine since their invasion began in February of 2022. What the recognition of these facts makes clear are the Biden administration’s real reasons for provoking this war and for relentlessly pushing to escalate it once it got going. The US’ aim was never a humanitarian one. The US’ game plan in this war has been, from its outset, to use Ukraine’s manpower to damage Russia and to reap as much financial gain as possible for the US military industrial complex.
What has ended up occurring is that Ukraine has spent the better part of the last year and a half incurring massive casualties (in the hundreds of thousands) in a battle where they’ve been completely outgunned and outnumbered.(4) So much so that within the first three weeks of Ukraine’s current counter-offensive it became clear to just about everyone except those ensconced in the Western mainstream media bubble, that Ukraine has absolutely no chance of victory against Russia. In fact, after a month and a half the Ukrainian army has not made a significant advance anywhere along the line of contact in their counter-offensive. Ukrainian forces have yet to reach even to the first of three heavily protected Russian blockades of defense. All of the fighting in this counter-offensive so far has taken place in the “gray zone”, which stretches in between the Ukrainian army and the first line of Russian fortification.
Meanwhile, US weapons manufacturing profits have reached record breaking levels for the better part of a year and a half. (5) As for the Biden administration’s promise to support Zelensky and Ukraine until “total victory”, it’s becoming more and more clear that the US and NATO are incapable of fulfilling any such promise despite the massive profits that weapons manufacturing companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have achieved over the past year and a half. President Biden recently admitted publicly that the US is now “out of ammunition”. Meanwhile Russia’s weapons and ammunition production remains at levels that NATO will not be able to approach until 2025.(6) Which begs the question: What will be left of Ukraine’s fighting-capable population by then?
The US’ Sacrifice of Europe
By the summer of 2022 it had become evident that Russia’s military capabilities were formidable. Reports of large numbers of Ukrainian casualties had begun to trickle through the margins of the Western media’s corporately curated reporting. The initial overflow of European assuredness in the certainty of a Ukrainian victory began to ebb, as reports of uncertainty were starting to arise.
On September 22 of 2022 the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was blown up. This pipeline enabled Europe to obtain reasonably priced gas from Russia. “Coincidentally”, on February 7, 2022, President Joe Biden said “If Russia invades there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We will bring it to an end.”(7) There was also an extensive report written by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh detailing exactly how the US blew up the pipeline with Norway’s help.(8)
Destroying the pipeline made Europe dependent on the US for energy, ending the possibility of their turning again to Russia for their supply of gas. The result has been a huge increase in energy prices across Europe, which has caused massive inflation as well as throwing a large portion of Europe into recession.(9)
Under no condition would the Biden administration allow Europe, most of which has become a vassal to the US over the last twenty to thirty years, to opt out of this war. Even if it required wrecking their economy and putting many of their citizens in danger of freezing to death in the coming winter.
The US’ Sacrifice of Itself
None of the wars or occupations that the United States has instigated and/or taken part in in the 21st century have been undertaken for humanitarian purposes. These wars and/or occupations include those with Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Libya. All of the conflicts the US has participated in in the 21st century have been empire expanding, profit driven ventures including the current proxy war in Ukraine.
Every war and every occupation that the US has instigated or taken part in the 21st century has been a massive failure. They have all generated tremendous destruction and death for millions of people in the countries the US has invaded as well as in the ones they claimed to be helping. Nor have any of these occupations and/or wars served any positive purpose for the vast majority of the US citizenry.
The neocon ideology, the ideology currently held by the Biden administration and the former Bush Jr. administration, has been the dominant foreign policy ideology in the US in the 21st century. It is an ideology that is characterized by a belief that the entire world must be tamed and/or converted to the neoliberal way of life. It is an ideology that unabashedly spurns diplomacy in favor of bullying and military superiority. This ideology, this method of foreign policy whose progenitors were people like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton, is being carried on in full force by Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. The neocon ideology is bipartisan, it is the ideology that the majority of both major US political parties’ politicians hold. Both the Democrat and Republican parties are now fully subordinate to their mega-wealthy neocon donors who have profited immensely off of all of the aforementioned 21st century US conflicts.
The neocons’ general method of operation is to first covertly infiltrate foreign nations. They then generate conflicts within these nations resulting in the US backed installation of government officials that are economically subsidized by and therefore beholden to the US military industrial complex. This is the true purpose of the 750 plus US military bases that currently span the spectrum of the globe.(10)
The US is no longer well thought of or trusted by most of the nations of the world. Over the course of the last few decades, for the reasons mentioned above, a desire has been created in dozens of countries that used to admire the US to want to break away from its economic and military stronghold. This growing desire amongst what is now a considerable majority of the world’s population to separate from US domination has been hugely accelerated by the global reprecussions of the current US proxy war in Ukraine.(11) These countries now see that the 21st century US leadership’s central objective has been the enrichment of its wealthiest citizens at the expense of its own middle class and its poor, as well as at the expense of the rest of the world’s nations.
The majority of the world’s population has realized that in the process of sacrificing its enemies and its allies alike, the US has inadvertently ended up sacrificing itself.
We Can Do Better Than This
We can do better than this. There’s still time left to steer this ship in a direction that circumvents an unnecessarily massive shipwreck. In future articles I will be addressing the very real possibility of both individual and collective change in these confusing and turbulant times.
CITATIONS:
1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022)
2- https://www.livemint.com/news/world/putin-publicly-shows-draft-of-peace-treaty-signed-by-russia-ukraine-in-2022-watch-11687136116863.html
3- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/09/west-victory-in-ukraine-escalation-war
4- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/were-almost-out-of-ammunition-and-relying-on-western-arms-says-ukraine
5- https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-arms-exports-up-11-fiscal-2022-official-says-2023-01-25/
6- https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/us-weapons-factories-ukraine-ammunition/index.html
7- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/biden-meet-german-chancellor-russia-ukraine-tesnions-rcna15190
8- https://www.brusselstimes.com/446104/deconstructing-the-obvious-seymour-hersh-on-why-the-us-blew-up-nord-stream
9- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/08/eurozone-sinks-into-recession-as-cost-of-living-crisis-takes-toll
10- https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/how-many-us-military-bases-are-there-in-the-world/
11- https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/05/24/more-than-30-countries-want-to-join-the-brics/