Here is my analysis of what’s going on in Ukraine after one month. It may not prove acceptable to many. Certainly not liberals, the ruling elite in Washington, or even some left liberal and socialist left. But I’ve always spoken my mind on this blog and will continue to do so, with no allegiances to any political forces or organizations. So here goes:
First, this is a proxy war engineered by US neocons and political elites, that has its origins going back as far as 1999, when the neocons began to gain greater control over US foreign policy. The dress rehearsal for the current conflict originates with the Clinton administration. Once Clinton could not keep his zipper shut and the radical right used the opportunity to exact whatever concessions they wanted from him in his final two years in office, the shift in US foreign policy began and has gained momentum ever since.
In Bill’s last two years, in domestic policy a shift began to a more hyper neoliberalism in tax, spending, war, monetary, industrial and trade policy. In foreign policy, the main elements were a rejection of the prior US position not to move NATO east that was given to the remnants of the Russian elite in 1991-2 after the collapse of the USSR. The ‘old guard’ of US foreign policy, led by advisers like George F. Kennan and other US ambassadors was abandoned in the late 1990s. NATO led by the USA became an offensive organization. Its first victim was Yugoslavia-Serbia and the bombing of Servbia-Kosov0. That same year the march of NATO east also began.
In 2005 the US supported the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine that ended in a stalemate between pro-US and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. The US next moved on Georgia encouraging it to invade south Russia, which it did but lost. NATO moved further into east europe in the wake of that conflict. In the Ukraine in 2010 the pro and anti-US elements came to an uneasy truce. The US then built up its influence by courting the ground forces of fascists as a popular uprising force, led by US under secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, who bragged the US had spent $5 billion financing the coup that occurred in 2014. The election of that year was narrowly won by the pro-Russian president. The street forces were then unleashed in mass protests in Kyiv that winter, 2014-15 and the pro-Russian president fled the country. Buttressed by publicly declared fascist elements in the street, many of whom then took seats in the new Parliament, the US deepened its economic and political involvement in Ukraine further. Victoria Nuland was appointed by the new Kyiv government as ‘economic czar’ over the Ukraine economy. (Made possible by Ukraine suspending its constitution that foreigners could not assume such a position. She was made an honorary citizen). Following her appointment the floodgates of US capital and business opened wide and US companies absorbed, purchased, and joint ventured with former Ukrainian companies. The US military advisers descended on Ukraine.
Russia responded by supporting the pro-Russia Donbass region. A local war in that area began. 14,000 pro-Russian Ukrainians died, as the fascist forces were organized in special military units and unleashed on the Ukrainian east (aka the Azov battalion). A peace armistice was arranged at Minsk in 2016 and the fighting and attacks slowed but never ceased. NATO moved east once again, a third time since 1999, absorbing the three Baltic countries after having already brought the rest of eastern Europe into the NATO fold.
Trump was elected president in 2017 and for the next four years a hiatus of sorts in the conflict followed. The Democrats believed Russian intervention in the US election of 2016 stole the presidency from Hillary Clinton and they never forgot. They waited their turn.
In 2020 Biden won and the preparation to step up the political pressure on Russia began anew: In late summer-fall 2021 the Biden administration deepened its military and political cooperation with Ukraine, as it pulled out quickly from Afghanistan. Joint US-Ukraine military exercises occurred. More US advisers poured into Ukraine to train the Ukrainian army. In November 2021 a preliminary agreement was signed by the US with Ukraine to bring it into the European Union, a necessary precursor to NATO membership. (Over the previous two decades the US withdrew from several missile treaties with Russia and set up advanced early warning radar in Poland and Romania.) All of eastern europe and baltics was now under NATO by 2021. Only Ukraine, which had repeatedly requested membership remained. The US refused to acknowledge that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine, and repeatedly in 2021 refused when asked to clarify. Encouraged by these US statements and actions, Ukrainian president, Zelensky, became more strident in his request for US military protection, membership into NATO, and even began publicly saying Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons. Zelensky was being played like a violin by the US. A plausible explanation is the US was taunting and provoking Russia to invade. It had much to gain by a Russian invasion on a proxy country soil. (See my prior article ’10 Reasons Why the US May Want Russia to Invade Ukraine’ posted on this blog in February)
Russia began its military build up last winter in response. The US and neocon elements running US foreign policy used the threat of a Russian invasion to re-establish its hegemony over NATO among European nations which were showing signs of distancing from NATO, especially under Trump. US business interests, especially the oil and gas companies, had much to gain from a US policy of driving Russian out of Europe–not only in energy but in all areas of business. There was much profit to be gained by US corporations entering the European economic vacuum that would be left by a Russian exit.
Russia took the US bait and invaded on February 24, 2022. The US media-propaganda corporation machine immediately went to work to freeze out any and all global alternative commentary on the origins and state of the military conflict. The American public was force fed carefully selected stories about the plight of refugees, estimates of civilians killed, heroic Ukrainian fighters, and how the US was again the leader of protecting Democracy and Freedom. Little or nothing slipped through the US media to provide an actual picture of what was going on in Ukraine on the ground. The story was Russian military forces were bogged down, poorly equipped and led, being killed by the thousands and about to be defeated. Much of the reporting taken directly from Ukrainian government press releases.
Then the US media drumbeat began to assume an ominous character: the Russians were preparing chemical or biological weapons under a ‘false flag’ (but whose?); the Russians were prepared to continue on to invade NATO countries; and, most concerning, talking heads began to appear increasingly proposing how a tactical nuclear war could be won with Russia. Biden in recent days assumed the even more disconcerting public position declaring Putin was a ‘war criminal’ and that ‘Putin had to go’. The former declaration made it difficult to negotiate a truce at some point; the latter a virtual declaration of ‘regime change’ for Russia that would make Russia assume no hope in negotiating a truce whatsoever. It almost amounts to evidence the US does not want a truce or end to the conflict. It wants to debilitate Russia economically with its sanctions for some time to come, foment popular unrest in Russia, and humiliate it into a virtual surrender instead of a negotiated compromise at some point. The US still has much to gain geopolitically and economically from an extension (and perhaps even intensification) of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. How else can one interpret the US president’s declaration of Putin as ‘war criminal’ and need for ‘regime change’?
But Putin and Russia are not Milosevic and Yugoslavia. Nor Quaddaffi or Saddam Hussein. Nor Noriega of Panama. Nor the Taliban. Russia is one tenth of the global economy and source of much of its economic resources. And it’s a country with 6500 nuclear weapons.
One may ask, how can US neocons pushing the conflict in Ukraine be so short sighted? To that one can only recall their disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that they drove the US into. Biden appears increasingly unable to halt the US neocon insistence on further extending NATO and provoking Russia into a deeper conflict. Thoroughly neutralizing Russia is a necessary strategic precursor to taking on China in Taiwan or South China sea.
We are in an era of US imperialism running amuck. The same year, 2021, that the US ended its 20 year long disastrous war in the middle east, it is slouching toward another in Ukraine. Biden says US won’t get involved in Ukraine directly. But it already is. Ukrainian forces have many US advisors fighting side by side, directly tactics on the ground and use of US made weapons. US weapons like drones are likely US directed, being used with some effect to ambush Russian advanced forces. There’s also the very likely use of US satellites and AWACs helping Ukrainian forces identify where Russian forces are advancing on the ground so they can be ambushed. The US is sending thousands of javelin and stinger missiles, and training thousands of Ukrainian troops is the far west of Ukraine. As the conflict continues, it is almost inevitable NATO & even US forces will be drawn into the fight–under the cover as mercenary or volunteers.
Ukraine is a proxy war between US and Russia that has its origins in the US, going back to 1999 and continuing and growing ever since. It is US imperialism that is at play here. It’s not a Russian imperialism. Russia is desperately trying to prevent further penetration of US imperialism, not advance to the west. Russia lost whatever empire it had with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The US media-Neocon narrative that Russia in planning to restore the former Soviet empire into the baltics and eastern europe is nonsense. Russia clearly lacks the military resources to do so if it wanted. Even its 150,000 troops in Ukraine are dangerously spread thin along four fronts. Russia has plans to attack the baltics or Poland is a neocon narrative used to restore US leadership over NATO and serves as an excuse to increase US military combat forces in eastern europe.
The foregoing is not to approve of the current Russian invasion. It is just to acknowledge the Russian security reasons, fears and concerns driving it. One can only imagine if Mexico joined the former USSR ‘Warsaw Military Pact’ and began joint military exercises with the former Soviet Union, what the US response would have been. It would have been a US Mexico invasion in a New York minute, as they say. That’s how Russia views the situation in Ukraine. It knows if Ukraine joins NATO, then Finland and Sweden would quickly follow. The next US/NATO destabilization ‘targets’ would be Belarus and Kazakhstan (where popular uprisings have already occurred with no doubt some degree of US encouragement). A Ukraine in NATO would mean a Russia completely surrounded by NATO and it would either have to capitulate to US/NATO demands (including demobilizing its nuclear forces) or else in desperation fight a war next time using those nuclear weapons–an even worse scenario than the present. Russia no doubt believes it is either a fight in Ukraine now, before Ukraine joins NATO, or a much worse conflict later. Today’s Ukraine proxy war may be the last non-nuclear war in the 21st century.
To continue to see the conflict as a moral issue of unjustified invasion will not bring a resolution to the conflict any closer; in fact, it will perpetuate and risk a deeper conflict as public opinion is corralled in support of war hawks, neocons, and elites’ plans to continue it.
This is not to deny that Russia is a capitalist country and economy and its government deeply integrated with greedy capitalist Oligarchs. But the US is not any different: it’s a capitalist country with its own gaggle of even greedier oligarchs (bankers, shadow bankers, oil corps, and the more visible tech versions-Musk, Zuckerman, Bezos, et. al.)
Leftists and socialists are wrong to assume the position of “a plague on both their houses. They’re both capitalists and oligarchic and therefore we should support neither and call for a workers revolution to overthrow them all (as per Lenin’s call in 1914).” Their demand is Europe out of NATO! And Russia out of Ukraine!
But a workers revolution is not even remotely on the agenda anywhere. That therefore will not stop the conflict from escalating into an even wider, or more dangerous nuclear, confrontation.Nor is Europe about to exit NATO. Quite the opposite. So this left position sounds good but is completely naive. The demand should be to oppose US imperialism, even if it means another capitalist country (in this case Russia) is being attacked by that imperialism. The socialist left position sees Russia and US imperialism as equivalents. And in taking that view it in effect abstains. But to take an abstentionist position with regard to US imperialism, which is now running amuck in the 21st century, is tantamount to supporting it. It ignores which is the greater threat to world peace? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or US imperialism intent on driving NATO east into Ukraine (and likely points to follow)? It should be asked which policies originated the conflict and now show indication of a desire to perpetuate and even deepen the crisis?
The demand should be an immediate truce and halt to the fighting. Ukraine and US/NATO should immediately sign a formal agreement of no extension of membership in NATO and no US military presence in Ukraine as part of the truce agreement. Ukraine should assume a model of Finland neutrality in its relation to Russia. Finally, Russian speaking areas of eastern and southern Ukraine should be allowed an independent international observed vote as to what country they want to join as independent republics. All sanctions should be rescinded within 30 days of a settlement. And no Ukrainian military units should tolerate soldiers or officers with extremist political associations or views.
There is no denying that fascist elements have been present in Ukraine since 2014 at least, and have a deep role within the Ukrainian military and influence within the Ukrainian Parliament and government itself. The US and west does not understand how deep the memory and fear of anything fascist runs in Russia. Russia may be over-estimating the fascist threat. But what the unleashing of the Azov battalion and other such forces did in 2015-16 and after is a stark reminder. And is it also a fact that the Azov and other forces were once again shelling and attacking the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lughansk in 2021.
The greatest danger to world peace is US imperialist interests now reacting irrationally to growing indications that the American empire is now under threat like never before; that the US global unipolar world order since 1991 can no longer be sustained. With neocons largely in control of US foreign policy since the late 1990s it is likely the US is about to engage in another, even more dangerous adventure in Europe than it did in the middle east in the previous two decades. That conflict ended with a tremendous loss of life, trillions of dollars of wasted US resources, a region left in shambles from Libya to Syria to Iraq to Afghanistan. A repeat of that policy on the Eurasian continent will prove many times more destructive and very likely lead to a tactical nuclear conflict that cannot be contained.
This proxy war in Ukraine is not at all about freedom or democracy. That’s just bullshit propaganda. It’s about money and power. It’s about restoring US imperial hegemony over Europe, breaking Russia as a global challenger to the US, and a dress rehearsal for then going after China.
In recent weeks both US and NATO have been stumbling toward confrontation with Russia over whether the Ukraine will be allowed membership in NATO. While there are various secondary issues on the negotiating table—deployment of US troops into Poland, Baltics and Romania and Russian natural gas delivery to Germany, among other issues—make no mistake: NATO membership is what the developing conflict is fundamentally about. As one of the main media vehicles of US imperialism, the New York Times, recently blared in its front page headline: “U.S. Won’t Bow to Russia Over Who Can Join NATO”. (February 3, 2022).
Background to Today’s Conflict
The pending conflict over Ukraine NATO membership has intensified recently, events have been leading to this at least since the January 2005 so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine when emergent right wing forces rode a wave of popular protest over the previous November 2004 national elections. The origins of the current crisis go back even further, to the breakup of the former USSR in the early 1990s during which the US promised Russia that NATO would not be expanded to Eastern Europe, the Baltics, or the Caucasus.
In the November 2004 Ukraine election the pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovich won 39% of the vote; but the anti-Russia candidate, supported by growing fascist forces, also won 39%. Yanukovich’s support was heavily concentrated in east and south Ukraine, while Yushchenko’s in western Ukraine. As the vote was underway that November, and not yet concluded, Yushchenko called for mass street demonstrations. He then immediately declared himself president as mass protestors threatened to assault the Ukraine Parliament. In front of his massed supporters in Kyiv, the day after the election, Yushchenko unilaterally took the ‘oath of president’ in the Parliament in which only his supporters were present and which therefore lacked a quorum to legitimize the November vote results. After he had himself sworn in, he then immediately called for continued mass strikes, protests and sit-ins to force the acceptance of his declared victory and questionable ‘oath’.
Yushckenko’s declaration was supported by the Central Electoral Commission which, it was later determined, withheld significant regional votes from being counted and ran a separate computer tally of the votes. In order to avoid growing political conflict in the streets, the Ukraine Supreme Court intervened in early December and voided the November election in which Yanukovich had won a narrow popular vote victory by less than 1%. The Court declared a run-off election for late December 2004. The same Central Election Commission tallied 52% vote for Yushchenko vs. 44% for Yanukovich in that run off, as several minor parties either abstained or threw their support to Yushchenko.
The next election in 2010 saw Yanukovich win back again in an election international observers declared was fair. Rising right wing forces did not accept the 2010 results, however. In 2014 another uprising was staged, focused in the capital city of Kyiv. This time far more violent than in January 2005. This time, February 2014, fascist forces murdered more than 100 in the streets.
The insurrection of 2014 was clearly organized and funded by US imperialist interests. Manipulating forces behind the uprising was US undersecretary of State for Eastern Europe, Victoria Nuland. In a pubic speech in the Ukraine following the uprising of 2014, Nuland was quoted by the press bragging the US has spent $5 billion funding various grass roots movements behind the insurrection that toppled ‘fairly elected’ pro-Russia leader, Yanukovich.
At the core of those movements were largely self-declared fascist organizations that had grown and mobilized since 2005. Using classic fascist violence, including assassinations and widespread shootings of police and government officials in Kyiv (as well as subsequent multiple assassinations in Ukraine’s second important city, Odessa), the US-backed fascist forces—along with their political representatives—took control of the Ukraine government that February 2014.
In the wake of the insurrection and take over, Nuland was appointed by the new right wing Ukraine government as ‘economic Czar’ for Ukraine. Nuland had formerly been an owner of a well known US Chicago financial firm before being appointed as under-secretary of State for the region, a position she held at the time of the February 2014 coup. After she became ‘economic Czar’, however, US investors began to pour into Ukraine—including relatives of well-known US politicians like Vice President Joe Biden. The quickly took up positions on various Ukrainian company boards of directors. US economic imperialism now penetrated deeply into the economic infrastructure of Ukraine.
Russia’s response to the insurrection of 2014 and the deposing of ‘fairly elected’ Yanukovich, was to provide support to the heavily pro-Russian eastern provinces. As it became clear in 2014 that outright declared fascist organization members took over key positions in the Parliament and government, Russia sent military forces to take back the strategic Crimea peninsula that housed Russia’s black sea naval forces. Crimea had always been part of Russia, but was ‘given’ to the Ukraine in the 1950s by the USSR in a government provincial reorganization. In 2016 further conflict erupted in the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk as Ukrainian fascist-led military forces attempted to take back the provinces but failed in the wake of Russian military support to the region. The US and NATO then imposed sanctions on Russia in response which exist to this day, which Biden is threatening to intensify still further.
It’s important to note that while these events from 2004 to 2016 were occurring in the Ukraine, US war hawks pushed for, and achieved, expansion of NATO into East Europe—contrary to assurances made to Russia by the Clinton administration in the 1990s. The same year, 2004, as the first right wing uprising occurred in Ukraine, the US expanded NATO into seven East European countries and the three Baltic nations, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. NATO forces were now located less than 400 miles from Moscow.
In 2008 US political factions in government, led by US Senator John McCain, Dick Cheney and others signaled and encouraged then Georgia President, Mikhail Saakashvili, to invade Russia’s South Ossetia province on Georgia’s northern border. Georgia had been courting US and demanding NATO membership since at least 2003, when it sent significant troops to join the US invasion of Iraq. Georgian military forces invaded South Ossetia on August 7, 2008. Russia drove them back and entered Georgia itself a week later. It later withdrew and military conflict ended October 2008.
In 2009 and 2010 the US announced plans to deploy advanced missile systems of NATO into Poland and Romania, which were completed by 2016. The US also deployed ship-based advanced Tomahawk offensive missile systems on warships it sent into the Black Sea around the same time. Both the Romania land-based and US ship-based missiles were of the advanced ‘Aegis’ type, capable of rearming with nuclear warheads on very short notice. If Russia intervened in the US election of 2016, it certainly had some justification given the US/NATO threat of forward basing of nuclear capable new missiles to Romania and Poland.
Russia responded angrily in 2017 and 2018 to the advanced US missile deployments of 2016, declaring they violated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) missile treaty signed with the US in 1987, in which both sides had agreed not to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in eastern Europe or on Russia’s western border. In an unprecedented direct public response, Russia further declared it would destroy the missile systems in Romania if necessary. In reply, the US followed up with deployment of a Patriot anti-missile system in Romania.
In July 2019 the US formally withdrew from the 1987 intermediate missile treaty that Reagan and Gorbachev had negotiated. During the 2020 US election year and Covid health & economic crisis further escalations more or less froze in place.
It is in this context of events in Ukraine from 2004 to 2016—i.e. the coup staged in 2014, the deployment of US missile systems in Eastern Europe and in the black sea thereafter in 2016, and US withdrawal from the INF treaty in 2019—that the recent events of US-NATO expansion into Ukraine should be understood. History and context mean everything. Explanations based just on immediate events are easily manipulated by mainstream media and political forces behind it.
US/NATO vs. Russia: Ukraine 2021-22
Once Biden was elected and Democrats were in power once again in 2021 political forces—in both Eastern Europe’s NATO allies and within the newly elected Zelensky government in the Ukraine—began pushing for more US advanced armaments and for Ukraine’s admission into NATO. By late summer 2021, aware of the new pressure to allow Ukraine into NATO and the greater sympathy of the Democrats to sanction Russia compared to Trump (whom they, the Russians, had largely neutralized for reasons still unknown), Russia responded to the new NATO inclusion initiative.
Putin wrote an extended position paper in late summer 2021 that more or less drew a line in the sand so far as Ukraine inclusion in NATO was concerned. He noted in particular that the US and other NATO governments declared in 2008 that Ukraine “will become members of NATO” in the future, albeit without specifying exactly when, but that US/NATO has never withdrawn or repudiated that 2008 statement.
That fact, plus the advanced and potentially nuclear armed missile deployments in Poland, Romania, and on the Black Sea constituted a clear threat to Russia. The US pulling out of Afghanistan and the middle east, while bolstering its sea-based nuclear submarine forces in Australia, was another signal that the US empire was clearly shifting its military resources and preparing for new conflicts. A NATO Ukraine could mean moving Romanian and Black Sea US missiles still further north into Ukraine right up to Russia’s border. With similar NATO forces in the Baltics on its border, Russia would be surrounded with NATO missiles just a few minutes from Moscow.
About the same time in 2021 uprisings erupted in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia might easily conclude these two events likely portend future 2014-Kyiv like insurrections in these border states. Another Ukraine 2014-like coup in Belarus or Kazakhstan would mean Russia would be even further encircled. Russia intervened to assist their governments and put down the protests. Future such insurrections in these states, however, are not out of the question. And it is probable that Russia and Putin have interpreted these uprisings as US assisted—not unlike that of 2014 in Ukraine.
It is easy to see why Putin and Russia felt themselves increasingly encircled by NATO in East Europe and Baltics, given the likely US instigated and backed support for anti-Russian forces in Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan destabilizing its frontiers. A NATO Ukraine could destabilize Russia’s borders on a number of fronts. It would in effect strategically outflank Russia and close the ring on them.
NATO in Ukraine in 2022 would accomplish what Nazi Germany in 1942 could not. Social memories of the German Nazi invasion of Ukraine in 1941-42 run deep in Russia. It is often under-estimated by western political advisers—and especially by the so-called non-military ‘experts’ advisers to US presidents who have a long history of advocating US run headlong into military adventures abroad—most notably Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Syria. One might ask: “would Russia allow NATO and the US to enter and ‘take’ Ukraine—after it had lost 10 million of its citizens there to deny the same to the Nazis?” While this is not a mode of thought among US advisers, it is no doubt a central consideration within Russian circles—military and civilian.
It is true that Putin and Russia began a build up of military resources on its Ukrainian border. It’s also true the US is purposely hyping and exaggerating it. Thus far the Russian military build up has been a ‘measured’ one. It is mostly military hardware that has been moved to forward bases with limited troops to support it. Most of the alleged 175,000 troops at the border, trumpeted almost daily by Biden and US mainstream media, are not in forward border positions. They are in some cases hundreds of kilometers within Russia at their regular bases. A truer signal of intent to invade Ukraine will occur once support battalions move forward to the border—i.e. medical, ammunition, food and similar logistical troops and supplies. That doesn’t appear to have occurred as yet, however. Russia’s military movements so far have been designed apparently to get the attention of Biden and the US to bring them to the negotiating table. And in early January 2022 it worked.
Biden released what the US media is calling a ‘Transparency Mechanism’ offer. In it the US offered to allow the Russians to verify if its missile systems in Poland and Romania were defensive or not. But in exchange, the US wanted Russia to reciprocate by allowing it access to Russian border missile sites—one of which would be the Russian facilities in the Kaliningrad, Russia region, a small area sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic sea coast. The US also offered in the ‘Mechanism’ that it would not permanently deploy offensive missiles in Ukraine—indicating it would only do so ‘temporarily’ (however that might be defined). The real kicker of the Mechanism offer, however, was Russian had to withdraw from eastern Ukraine and Crimea as part of any deal. It was obviously a non-starter but it gave the US cover that it was putting a proposal on the table and negotiating.
But as Biden was making the above offer he simultaneously announced the US was sending another 5,000 US troops to eastern Europe, no doubt to placate Poland and the NATO Baltic states now demanding even more advanced NATO arms. Biden also reiterated his oft-repeated threat since December that if Russia invaded there would be new massive economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies worldwide. He didn’t, and hasn’t yet, defined what exactly that might be the new massive sanctions, but clearly it suggests sanctions of a new nature not just more severe. (That could include, in this writer’s opinion, denying Russia to the US controlled SWIFT international payments system that would prevent Russia from selling its oil on global markets.) At the same time the US Congress has rushed to pass new emergency aid and military supplies to Ukraine and US ‘war hawks’ have been demanding US sanctions be placed on Russia even before it invades. Somehow they think that is a deterrent, instead of a provocation.
Throughout January 2022 Biden and the US media kept pounding away the message that invasion is ‘imminent’. This premature declaration, often repeated, has disrupted social stability within Ukraine itself, resulting in its president, Zelensky, to go so far as to publicly contradict Biden’s message. The US toned down its ‘imminent invasion’ theme for a couple days, to allow the British to release a document claiming to show Russian invasion plans (One wonders why it is that the Brits typically release such politically salacious but unverified ‘reports’—i.e. dossiers, false flags, etc. on behalf of their US big brother?). In the interim the pressure continued to grow on Ukrainian politicians as near panic by Ukrainians themselves took root among the populace.
On February 1, Putin predictably rejected the ‘Transparency Mechanism’ proposal and publicly stated he believed the US and NATO were attempting to provoke Russia into a war in Ukraine.
In a clear appeal to western Europe NATO countries, Putin added he expected “dialogue to continue”. That set off a flurry of announcements and visits by heads of state in the UK, France, Germany and Italy this past week. About to get sacked by his own party in the UK, Boris Johnson ran off to Kyiv for some photo ops. France’s Macron announced had had telephone conversations with Putin and planned to meet him directly. So did Germany’s newly elected chancellor, Olaf Shultz, who scurried off to Washington to meet with Biden.
Putin meanwhile flew off to China to meet with President Xi during the opening of the winter Olympics. Both released a direct joint statement accusing the US of aggressive military moves in both the Pacific and Ukraine that would severely destabilize global peace and status quo.
At latest report, the media war in the west continues to intensify, with the Biden administration leaking a report that suggested Russia had plans to fake a ‘false flag’ operation as a prelude to invasion. In a like response, the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, in turn leaked some US/NATO plans in the works. Lately US media is hyping the number of likely dead from an invasion at around 60,000.
The preceding events and moves by both sides around the Ukraine today are reminiscent of how, in August 1914, both sides kept raising the stakes, in what appeared at first as small inconsequential moves but which then accelerated, grew increasingly threatening, until eventually resulting in military conflict and the 1st World War. Today in the Ukraine both sides circle each other, like boxers coming into the ring in the first round, testing and feinting, looking for weaknesses, sizing each other up, trying to determine what the other’s opening move might be. Should one slip or fall by accident or the other unknowingly signal a blow is coming, it might very well precipitate a general exchange between both.
10 Reasons Why US Elites May Want Russia to Invade Ukraine
Much of mainstream media continues to focus on why Russia is about to invade Ukraine. It refuses to consider the fact there are significant advantages for the US in provoking Russia to invade Ukraine. The US media, the Biden administration, and US war hawks in Congress say they are trying to discourage Putin and Russia from invading. But what they say and what they do are not the same thing. Ample evidence suggests the US and a good part of NATO want a confrontation, so long as it’s a proxy war fought between Russia and Ukraine on Ukrainian ground so that they can stand by, feed the conflagration with arms, and in the process achieve other US-NATO objectives. Just what might these other objectives of US/NATO be?
Here are at least 10 reasons why US political elites in both US parties, war hawks and military-industrial complex capitalists favor a Russian invasion of Ukraine:
- Reunite NATO and strengthen US hegemony over it once again
In recent years—and especially since Trump—certain members in NATO have questioned whether the US is as reliable a partner to the alliance as it once was in decades past. Nations like France, and now Germany, have had growing doubts. Voices have risen within the EU that it should go its own way with its own defense and strategy. China has made major economic inroads to the EU NATO states. Europe and China are now either first or second biggest export/import traders with each other. Key Europe state leaders are very nervous about the US leading them into a conflict in Ukraine that could have very serious effects on their economy, at the very least, and at a time Europe’s economy continues to struggle to jump start a recovery from the past two years Covid precipitated recession. The US’s track record in the middle east is giving them pause as well: it achieved little, left the area in shambles, and the US then just pulled out to shift its focus on China. The European NATO allies, moreover, are also quite split among themselves. The East Europeans, the recent additions to NATO, follow the US lead in hope of more arms and troops. But big players like France and Germany are not so inclined to follow blindly. If a US provocation of conflict in Ukraine goes poorly, the risks—political and economic—for western Europe NATO states are high.
- Get Germany to cancel the Nordstream2 Russian Gas Pipeline; get Europe to buy US gas instead; increase US natural gas exports to Europe and thereby create supply shortage in US to justify US domestic gas price hikes & US profits
Germany is particularly uncertain about following the US leading Europe into another middle east-like quagmire in Ukraine. Its new chancellor, Olaf Shultz, is especially nervous about the prospect. There is significant public opposition in Germany to becoming embroiled in Ukraine, even indirectly. And German capitalists themselves are split as well over the fate of the Nordstream2 natural gas pipeline from Russia. Germany desperately needs the supply. Russia’s gas is significantly less costly than would be purchasing natural gas from the US. For years now the US has been pressuring Germany to halt Norstream2 and buy liquefied natural gas from the US—at higher prices. Substituting US gas for Russian would also require Germany to build highly expensive new port facilities to import the US gas. US oil corporations want to sell the gas, to offload a US glut of natural gas supply. That would bring not only profits from more sales to Germany, but create shortages of supply in the US that would enable US corporations to raise prices in the US domestic market as well. The US gas corps—mostly owned by the big oil corporations—will enjoy a win-win profit. Then there’s the German and Europe uncertainty whether the US would even be able to supply the roughly 40% of natural gas Europe gets from Russia. Behind the scenes in the conflict in Ukraine is the looming gray presence of US oil companies who own and control most of US natural gas—who have had their hand in just about every American military adventure since the 1960s.
- Create excuse to send still more troops & advanced weaponry to Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) & East Europe (Poland, Romania)
There are political forces in the US that want to arm Poland, Romania, and the Baltic countries to the hilt, including stationing nuclear weapons in their countries. Governments in the region are more than happy to bloc with these US war hawks. It means new massive funding from the US, more US arms and troops, and a boost to their economies (and to those politicians’ pockets as well no doubt).
- Obtain more economic concessions from Ukraine for US business in exchange for more and better US/NATO arms
The US empire does not provide aide without demanding a cost. US investors and corporations have already, post-2014, penetrated deeply into the Ukraine economy. They have funded, acquired, and otherwise controlled a significant number of former all Ukrainian companies in key sectors of the economy. Biden’s son is not the only next generation representative of the US political elite (from both parties) to sit on Ukraine company boards of directors. As the US provides even more funds and weapons to Ukraine, it will exact a price in return. It will demand a still deeper further influence over the Ukraine economy and banking system. Ukrainian elites will more than welcome them, however, since the US form of economic empire integrates the colonial elites by sharing a big piece of the economic pie with them. It’s the Ukrainian workers and consumer that will have to pay the higher price in the end.
- Grow US political support to go after Moldova to drive out Russian supporters & install US puppet regime over entire country
It is a certainty that should military conflict erupt in Ukraine, the US and its field intelligence services (CIA, State, etc.) will move on Moldova as well in some manner. Moldova is the small state located between southwest Ukraine and Romania. For years it has had an uneasy truce between Russian backed forces running half of the country and pro-western the other half. The US will attempt to change this and turn the country to full pro-western hegemony if NATO absorbs Ukraine, or perhaps even if military conflict erupts there.
- Justify more US effort & funding to try to destabilize Belarus & Kazakhstan
It is naïve to think that US intelligence and related forces are not deeply involved in the recent public demonstrations and protests in both Belarus and Kazakhstan, the latter just weeks ago as tensions have risen in the Ukraine. At a minimum, the US is testing the extent of anti-Russian opposition in these countries, which are closely aligned economically and politically with Russia. Russia has helped these governments put down the demonstrations, some of which, as in Kazakhstan, were especially violent uprisings. Should the US ‘turn’ Ukraine fully toward NATO it is certain the US will intensify its efforts to further destabilize Belarus and Kazakhstan on Russia’s borders. They will be the next ‘Ukraine-like’ targets, following the template for Ukraine that began with 2014 and now culminating in 2022.
- Provide major foreign policy distraction for the Democrat party before November 2022 midterms
One cannot discount the potential advantages for the sitting president and party (Democrats) of a foreign policy issue such as Ukraine. It allows Biden and the party to ‘look tough’ in an election year, which always seems especially to add support for the party that ‘gets tough with Russia’—so long as it doesn’t lead to direct conflict with the US. Ukraine is a classic US proxy war possibility—the kind the US prefers to fight at a distance and on the ground of another country (Ukraine) using its own troops.
- Get Congress to approve a further increase in US defense budget in addition to $778B
The US wars in the middle east are over. It will take time to build up new technological weaponry and forces to confront China in Asia. The US is behind in several key technological areas. The US deal to provide Australia with latest US nuclear subs is just one such example of how the US build up in the Pacific will not occur overnight. It will take time to build those subs in Australia. A proxy war in the Ukraine serves as a convenient interim excuse not to reduce defense spending as the US withdraws from the middle east but actually to raise it still more.
US defense spending is clearly out of control. Pentagon spending alone is now $778 billion, and continues to rise even after the US withdrawal from the middle east. However, total US defense spending is well over $1 trillion a year when other departments of government are included as well: Energy, State, AEC, Homeland Security, CIA, NSA, DARPA, etc.) The MIC never wastes time encouraging the US to get into another conflict once it ends one in order to prevent defense spending cuts post-war: Once the USSR imploded in the late-eighties/early nineties the military bete noir became Saddam Hussein. That fueled the 1991 first Gulf War and continued war spending thereafter and turned US attention to the middle east. The US intervention in Somalia in the 1990s and Balkans kept it going. The next convenient enemy was the ‘Terrorist Threat’ in wake of 9-11 attack in the US. That fueled defense and war spending still further over the next two decades, including wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the current US proxy war in Yemen. Now that the US has withdrawn from the middle east direct wars, it needs a new enemy to keep the war spending going. It will take time to build up China as the target. In the interim, however, Ukraine and Russia will do nicely to keep Congress flowing dollars to the US military-industrial complex war machine.
- Excuse to go after pro-Russian supporters: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba again
A protracted conflict in Ukraine could eventually lead to a spread of the conflict to other ‘proxy’ nations. For Russia that means Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Given a war in Ukraine, war hawks in the US will no doubt find justification to go after these countries with renewed destabilization efforts run by US intelligence units and even perhaps US special ops forces.
10. Test effectiveness of latest US weaponry against Russian forces & Russian weaponry effectiveness against US without having to directly confront Russia; get Russia to reveal state of its cyber capability
Proxy wars provide a good excuse to test new weaponry of the US in a third country battlefield. That means not only testing how well offensive US weapons perform against Russian defenses, but how well Russian weapons perform against US defenses. Weaknesses inevitably appear, permitting the correction and upgrading of the weaponry for potential future use elsewhere. But they are only discernible on a real battlefield. The US especially is interested in testing its cybersecurity weaponry while getting Russia to reveal the extent of much of its capability. Another area of interest to the US military is to test how well US anti-armor missiles perform and how well US/NATO missiles perform against Russian anti-missile systems (like its S-500).
Some Conclusions
All the above constitute advantages for the US should a direct conflict occur in the Ukraine against Russian forces. Ukrainians will pay the human and economic price. The US and its corporations will benefit economically and strategically. Europe will be caught in between, uncertain as to the economic effects of a conflict on it or the great political risks should the conflict not go well.
The behavior of US interests the last two months increasingly suggests it is the US that favors an open conflict in the Ukraine. For the US, it’s win-win situation. There is much to be gained strategically, politically at home, and economically: re-establishing its unchallenged hegemony over NATO; driving Russia out of Europe’s economy and making Europe even more dependent economically on US resource exports instead of Russia; deepening US influence and control over Ukraine’s economy and government; feeding US war hawks demands to destabilize other countries which, like Ukraine, also border Russia; resurrect spending and operations targeting Latin America friends of Russia; create justifications in Congress to spend even more on US defense and war in the interim until the bigger, longer term buildup and military spending targeting China can come on line; and test in a real theater of operations the effectiveness of both US defensive and offensive weaponry against a sophisticated opponent like Russia—without having to provoke a direct conflict with Russian forces.
Time will reveal whether Russia and Putin also favor an open conflict in Ukraine—or whether the western media is exaggerating the Russian threat and beating the drums of ‘imminent invasion’ to serve the interests and various objectives of US and NATO.
Longer term, Russia may have no alternative but to invade should the US play its ‘final card’ and move to bring Ukraine into NATO. The US says it has no such intention. But if so, why does it refuse to withdraw its declaration of a decade ago that Ukraine in NATO is the goal ‘at some point in the future’? Is the future now? Once the Ukraine joins NATO it is ‘game over’ for Russia strategically for decades to come. Similar developments like Ukraine eventually would occur in Belarus, Kazakhstan and likely Moldova. Calls and efforts to bring them too into NATO would similarly follow. Russia will have been outflanked. It will be thereafter now more easily intimidated. Surrounded by NATO states everywhere, what likely would follow would be a US-NATO demand of a full scale nuclear disarmament by Russia.
This writer believes therefore that preventing NATO from entering Ukraine is a ‘red line’ for Putin and Russia. If pushed into a corner with no retreat or way out, it is quite possible Russia may see no alternative to invading. That’s not on the immediate agenda. But that’s not to say it will never be.
Jack Rasmus
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