Tag Archives: military spending

The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy

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Bombs, Bullets, and Bellicosity Instead of Brains

Signe’s second toon du jour SIGN17e Military

By W.J. Astore

Source: Bracing Views

In my latest article for TomDispatch.com, I parse the meaning of America’s latest National Defense Strategy. Hint: It’s not about defense.

More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the U.S. Army War College and many other military institutions across the world. A passage from it describing an ultimatum Athens gave a weaker power has stayed with me all these years. And here it is, loosely translated from the Greek: “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.”

Recently, I read the latest National Defense Strategy, or NDS, issued in October 2022 by the Pentagon, and Thucydides’s ancient message, a warning as clear as it was undeniable, came to mind again. It summarized for me the true essence of that NDS: being strong, the United States does what it wants and weaker powers, of course, suffer as they must. Such a description runs contrary to the mythology of this country in which we invariably wage war not for our own imperial ends but to defend ourselves while advancing freedom and democracy. Recall that Athens, too, thought of itself as an enlightened democracy even as it waged its imperial war of dominance on the Peloponnesus. Athens lost that war, calamitously, but at least it did produce Thucydides, a military leader who became a historian and wrote all too bluntly about his country’s hubristic, ultimately fatal pursuit of hegemony.

Imperial military ambitions contributed disastrously to Athens’s exhaustion and ultimate collapse, a lesson completely foreign to U.S. strategists. Not surprisingly, then, you’ll find no such Thucydidean clarity in the latest NDS approved by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In place of that Greek historian’s probity and timeless lessons, the NDS represents an assault not just on the English language but on our very future. In it, a policy of failing imperial dominance is eternally disguised as democratic deterrence, while the greatest “strategic” effort of all goes (remarkably successfully) into justifying massive Pentagon budget increases. Given the sustained record of failures in this century for what still passes as the greatest military power on the planet — Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, of course, but don’t forget Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and indeed the entire $8 trillion Global War on Terror in all its brutality — consider the NDS a rare recent “mission accomplished” moment. The 2023 baseline “defense” budget now sits at $858 billion, $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.

With that yearly budget climbing toward a trillion dollars (or more) annually, it’s easy to conclude that, at least when it comes to our military, nothing succeeds like failure. And, by the way, that not only applies to wars lost at a staggering cost but also financial audits blown without penalty. After all, the Pentagon only recently failed its fifth audit in a row. With money always overflowing, no matter how it may be spent, one thing seems guaranteed: some future American Thucydides will have the material to produce a volume or volumes beyond compare. Of course, whether this country goes the way of Athens — defeat driven by military exhaustion exacerbated by the betrayal of its supposedly deepest ideals leading to an ultimate collapse — remains to be seen. Still, given that America’s war colleges continue to assign Thucydides, no one can say that our military and future NDS writers didn’t get fair warning when it comes to what likely awaits them.

Bludgeoning America with Bureaucratese

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

That’s a saying I learned early in my career as an Air Force officer, so I wasn’t exactly surprised to discover that it’s the NDS’s guiding philosophy. The document has an almost Alice in Wonderland-like quality to it as words and phrases take on new meanings. China, you won’t be surprised to learn, is a “pacing challenge” to U.S. security concerns; Russia, an “acute threat” to America due to its “unprovoked, unjust, and reckless invasion of Ukraine” and other forms of “irresponsible behavior”; and building “combat-credible forces” within a “defense ecosystem” is a major Pentagon goal, along with continuing “investments in mature, high-value assets” (like defective aircraft carriers, ultra-expensive bombers and fighter jets, and doomsday-promising new ICBMs).

Much talk is included about “leveraging” those “assets,” “risk mitigation,” and even “cost imposition,” a strange euphemism for bombing, killing, or otherwise inflicting pain on our enemies. Worse yet, there’s so much financial- and business-speak in the document that it’s hard not to wonder whether its authors don’t already have at least one foot in the revolving door that could, on their retirement from the military, swing them onto the corporate boards of major defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon.

Perhaps my favorite redefined concept in that NDS lurks in the word “campaigning.” In the old days, armies fought campaigns in the field and generals like Frederick the Great or Napoleon truly came to know the price of them in blood and treasure. Unlike U.S. generals since 1945, they also knew the meaning of victory, as well as defeat. Perish the thought of that kind of campaigning now. The NDS redefines it, almost satirically, not to say incomprehensibly, as “the conduct and sequencing of logically-linked military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned priorities over time.” Huh?

Campaigning, explains the cover letter signed by Secretary of Defense Austin (who won’t be mistaken for Frederick II in his bluntness or Napoleon in his military acuity), “is not business as usual — it is the deliberate effort to synchronize the [Defense] Department’s activities and investments to aggregate focus and resources to shift conditions in our favor.”

Got it? Good!

Of course, who knows what such impenetrable jargon really means to our military in 2023? This former military officer certainly prefers the plain and honest language of Thucydides. In his terms, America, the strong, intends to do what it will in the world to preserve and extend “conditions in our favor,” as the NDS puts it — a measure by which this country has failed dismally in this century. Weaker countries, especially those that are “irresponsible,” must simply suffer. If they resist, they must be prepared for some “cost imposition” events exercised by our “combat-credible forces.” Included in those are America’s “ultimate backstop” of cost imposition… gulp, its nuclear forces.

Again, the NDS is worthy of close reading (however pain-inducing that may be) precisely because the secretary of defense does claim that it’s his “preeminent guidance document.” I assume he’s not kidding about that, though I wish he were. To me, that document is to guidance as nuclear missiles are to “backstops.” If that last comparison is jarring, I challenge you to read it and then try to think or write clearly.

Bringing Clarity to America’s Military Strategy

To save you the trauma of even paging through the NDS, let me try to summarize it quickly in my version — if not the Pentagon’s — of English:

  1. China is the major threat to America on this planet.
  2. Russia, however, is a serious threat in Europe.
  3. The War on Terror continues to hum along successfully, even if at a significantly lower level.
  4. North Korea and Iran remain threats, mainly due to the first’s growing nuclear arsenal and the second’s supposed nuclear aspirations.
  5. Climate change, pandemics, and cyberwar must also be factored in as “transboundary challenges.”

“Deterrence” is frequently used as a cloak for the planetary dominance the Pentagon continues to dream of. Our military must remain beyond super-strong (and wildly overfunded) to deter nations and entities from striking “the homeland.” There’s also lots of talk about global challenges to be met, risks to be managed, “gray zone” methods to be employed, and references aplenty to “kinetic action” (combat, in case your translator isn’t working) and what’s known as “exploitable asymmetries.”

Count on one thing: whatever our disasters in the real world, nobody is going to beat America in the jargon war.

Missing in the NDS — and no surprise here — is any sense that war is humanity’s worst pastime. Even the mass murder implicit in nuclear weapons is glossed over. The harshest realities of conflict, nuclear war included, and the need to do anything in our power to prevent them, naturally go unmentioned. The very banality of the document serves to mask a key reality of our world: that Americans fund nothing as religiously as war, that most withering of evils.

Perhaps it’s not quite the banality of evil, to cite the telling phrase political philosopher Hannah Arendt used to describe the thoughts of the deskbound mass-murderers of the Holocaust, but it does have all of war’s brutality expunged from it. As we stare into the abyss, the NDS replies with mind-numbing phrases and terms that wouldn’t be out of place in a corporate report on rising profits and market dominance.

Yet as the military-industrial complex maneuvers and plots to become ever bigger, ever better funded, and ever more powerful, abetted by a Congress seemingly lustful for ever more military spending and weapons exports, hope for international cooperation, productive diplomacy, and democracy withers. Here, for instance, are a few of the things you’ll never see mentioned in this NDS:

  1. Any suggestion that the Pentagon budget might be reduced. Ever.
  2. Any suggestion that the U.S. military’s mission or “footprint” should be downsized in any way at all.
  3. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. and its allies spend far more on their militaries than “pacing challengers” like China or “acute threats” like Russia.
  4. Any acknowledgment that the Pentagon’s budget is based not on deterrence but on dominance.
  5. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. military has been far less than dominant despite endless decades of massive military spending that produced lost or stalemated wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.
  6. Any suggestion that skilled diplomacy and common security could lead to greater cooperation or decreased tensions.
  7. Any serious talk of peace.

In brief, in that document and thanks to the staggering congressional funding that goes with it, America is being eternally spun back into an age of great-power rivalry, with Xi Jinping’s China taking the place of the old Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s Russia that of Mao Zedong’s China. Consistent with that retro-vision is the true end goal of the NDS: to eternally maximize the Pentagon budget and so the power and authority of the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Basically, any power that seeks to push back against the Pentagon’s vision of security through dominance is defined as a threat to be “deterred,” often in the most “kinetic” way. And the greatest threat of all, requiring the most “deterrence,” is, of course, China.

In a textbook case of strategic mirror-imaging, the Pentagon’s NDS sees that country and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as acting almost exactly like the U.S. military. And that simply cannot be allowed.

Here’s the relevant NDS passage:

“In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and information warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare. The PLA seeks to target the ability of the [U.S.] Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our Allies in a crisis or conflict. The PRC [China] is also expanding the PLA’s global footprint and working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure to allow it to project military power at greater distances. In parallel, the PRC is accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear capabilities.”

How dare China become more like the United States! Only this country is allowed to aspire to “full-spectrum dominance” and global power, as manifested by its 750 military bases scattered around the world and its second-to-none, blue-water navy. Get back to thy place, China! Only “a free people devoted to democracy and the rule of law” can “sustain and strengthen an international system under threat.” China, you’ve been warned. Better not dare to keep pace with the U.S. of A. (And heaven forfend that, in a world overheating in a devastating way, the planet’s two greatestgreenhouse gas emitters should work together to prevent true catastrophe!)

Revisiting the Oath of Office

Being a retired U.S. military officer, I always come back to the oath of office I once swore to uphold: “To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Naturally, if China, Russia, or any other country or entity attacks or otherwise directly menaces the U.S., I expect our military to defend this country with all due vigor.

That said, I don’t see China, Russia, or weaker countries like Iran or North Korea risking attacks against America proper, despite breathless talk of world “flashpoints.” Why would they, when any such attack would incur a devastating counterattack, possibly including America’s trusty “backstop,” its nuclear weapons?

In truth, the NDS is all about the further expansion of the U.S. global military mission. Contraction is a concept never to be heard. Yet reducing our military’s presence abroad isn’t synonymous with isolationism, nor, as has become ever more obvious in recent years, is an expansive military structure a fail-safe guarantor of freedom and democracy at home. Quite the opposite, constant warfare and preparations for more of it overseas have led not only to costly defeats, most recently in Afghanistan, but also to the increasing militarization of our society, a phenomenon reflected, for instance, in the more heavily armed and armored police forces across America.

The Pentagon’s NDS is a classic case of threat inflation cloaked in bureaucratese where the “facts” are fixed around a policy that encourages the incessant and inflationary growth of the military-industrial complex. In turn, that complex empowers and drives a “rules-based international order” in which America, as hegemon, makes the rules. Again, as Thucydides put it, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.

Yet, to paraphrase another old book, what does it profit a people to gain the whole world yet lose their very soul?  Like Athens before it, America was once a flawed democracy that nevertheless served as an inspiration to many because militarism, authoritarianism, and imperial pretense didn’t drive it. Today, this country is much like Thucydides’s Athens, projecting power ever-outwards in a misbegotten exercise to attain mastery through military supremacy.

It didn’t end well for Athens, nor will it for the United States.

The Democrats Are Now the War Party

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The Democratic Party has become the party of permanent war, fueling massive military spending which is hollowing out the country from the inside and flirting with nuclear war.

By Chris Hedges

Source: ScheerPost.com

The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language stretching back to Korea and Vietnam, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was as lionized as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. All the wars they support and fund are “good” wars. All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil. The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party’s abject subservience to the war machine.

The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested. 

The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimately commit suicide. 

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present. 

The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists. Only nine Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in supporting the $1.7 trillion spending bill needed to prevent the government from shutting down, which included approval of $847 billion for the military — the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction. In the Senate, 29 Republicans opposed the spending bill. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, lined up dutifully for endless war. 

This lust for war is dangerous, pushing us into a potential war with Russia and, perhaps later, with China — each a nuclear power. It is also economically ruinous. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. Congress is also on track to provide an extra $21.7 billion to the Pentagon — above the already expanded annual budget — to resupply Ukraine.

“But those contracts are just the leading edge of what is shaping up to be a big new defense buildup,” The New York Times reported. “Military spending next year is on track to reach its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011, and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II — a level that is more than the budgets for the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined.”

The Democratic Party, which, under the Clinton administration aggressively courted corporate donors, has surrendered its willingness to challenge, however tepidly, the war industry. 

“As soon as the Democratic Party made a determination, it could have been 35 or 40 years ago, that they were going to take corporate contributions, that wiped out any distinction between the two parties,” Dennis Kucinich said when I interviewed him on my show for The Real News Network. “Because in Washington, he or she who pays the piper plays the tune. That’s what’s happened. There isn’t that much of a difference in terms of the two parties when it comes to war.”

In his 1970 book “The Pentagon Propaganda Machine,” Fulbright describes how the Pentagon and the arms industry pour millions into shaping public opinion through public relations campaigns, Defense Department films, control over Hollywood and domination of the commercial media. Military analysts on cable news are universally former military and intelligence officials who sit on boards or work as consultants to defense industries, a fact they rarely disclose to the public. Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star army general and military analyst for NBC News, was also an employee of Defense Solutions, a military sales and project management firm. He, like most of these shills for war, personally profited from the sales of the weapons systems and expansion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the eve of every congressional vote on the Pentagon budget, lobbyists from businesses tied to the war industry meet with Congress members and their staff to push them to vote for the budget to protect jobs in their district or state. This pressure, coupled with the mantra amplified by the media that opposition to profligate war funding is unpatriotic, keeps elected officials in bondage. These politicians also depend on the lavish donations from the weapons manufacturers to fund their campaigns.

Seymour Melman, in his book “Pentagon Capitalism,” documented the way militarized societies destroy their domestic economies. Billions are spent on the research and development of weapons systems while renewable energy technologies languish. Universities are flooded with military-related grants while they struggle to find money for environmental studies and the humanities. Bridges, roads, levees, rail, ports, electric grids, sewage treatment plants and drinking water infrastructures are structurally deficient and antiquated. Schools are in disrepair and lack sufficient teachers and staff. Unable to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, the for-profit health care industry forces families, including those with insurance, into bankruptcy. Domestic manufacturing, especially with the offshoring of jobs to China, Vietnam, Mexico and other nations, collapses. Families are drowning in personal debt, with 63 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. The poor, the mentally ill, the sick and the unemployed are abandoned. 

Melman, who coined the term “permanent war economy,” noted that since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its discretionary budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. The military-industrial establishment is nothing more than gilded corporate welfare. Military systems are sold before they are produced. Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Massive profits are guaranteed. For example, this November, the Army awarded Raytheon Technologies alone more than $2 billion in contracts, on top of over $190 million awarded in August, to deliver missile systems to expand or replenish weapons sent to Ukraine. Despite a depressed market for most other businesses, stock prices of Lockheed and Northrop Grumman have risen by more than 36 and 50 percent this year. 

Tech giants, including Amazon, which supplies surveillance and facial recognition software to the police and FBI, have been absorbed into the permanent war economy. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle were awarded multibillion-dollar cloud computing contracts for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability and are eligible to receive $9 billion in Pentagon contracts to provide the military with “globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic level to the tactical edge,” through mid-2028.

Foreign aid is given to countries such as Israel, with more than $150 billion in bilateral assistance since its founding in 1948, or Egypt, which has received over $80 billion since 1978 — aid that requires foreign governments to buy weapons systems from the U.S. The U.S. public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and purchases them for foreign governments. Such a  circular system mocks the idea of a free-market economy. These weapons soon become obsolete and are replaced by updated and usually more costly weapons systems. It is, in economic terms, a dead end. It sustains nothing but the permanent war economy.

“The truth of the matter is that we’re in a heavily militarized society driven by greed, lust for profit, and wars are being created just to keep fueling that,” Kucinich told me.

In 2014, the U.S. backed a coup in Ukraine that installed a government that included neo-Nazis and was antagonistic to Russia. The coup triggered a civil war when the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass, sought to secede from the country, resulting in over 14,000 people dead and nearly 150,000 displaced, before Russia invaded in February. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Jacques Baud, a former NATO security advisor who also worked for Swiss intelligence, was instigated by the escalation of Ukraine’s war on the Donbass. It also followed the Biden administration’s rejection of proposals sent by the Kremlin in late 2021, which might have averted Russia’s invasion the following year. 

This invasion has led to widespread U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Russia, which have boomeranged onto Europe. Inflation ravages Europe with the sharp curtailment of shipments of Russian oil and gas. Industry, especially in Germany, is crippled.  In most of Europe, it is a winter of shortages, spiraling prices and misery. 

“This whole thing is blowing up in the face of the West,” Kucinich warned. “We forced Russia to pivot to Asia, as well as Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. There’s a whole new world being formed. The catalyst of it is the misjudgment that occurred about Ukraine and the effort to try to control Ukraine in 2014 that most people aren’t aware of.”

By not opposing a Democratic Party whose primary business is war, liberals become the sterile, defeated dreamers in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground.” 

A former convict, Dostoevsky did not fear evil. He feared a society that no longer had the moral fortitude to confront evil. And war, to steal a line from my latest book, is the greatest evil.

Feverishly Racing Toward Our Own Destruction…

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By Michael Snyder

Source: End of the American Dream

We are careening directly into an abyss of war, pain and misery, and our leaders are thunderously applauding as it happens.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington this week because he wanted more money, and our politicians in Washington definitely did not disappoint him.  Even though we had already given Ukraine far more money than the rest of the world combined, our politicians agreed to give him another colossal mountain of cash.  On some level, we all have to respect Zelenskyy’s skills as a con man.  Even though he has banned the main opposition party in Ukraine, and even though he has banned all television stations that were critical of him, and even though he just banned an entire ancient Christian denomination, our politicians continue to worship him like some sort of a pop music star.  Zelenskyy has become an extremely oppressive dictator that has set himself up to rule Ukraine for as long as he wants, but members of Congress from both parties continue to hail him as a “champion of democracy” that deserves our unquestioning support.

What makes this so dangerous is that Zelenskyy has been trying very hard to pull the United States into his war with Russia.

Throughout 2022 the U.S. has been getting increasingly involved in the conflict, and at this point we are “providing most of the funding, most of the equipment, most of the ammunition, most of the high level intelligence and much of the training” for the international army that is fighting the Russians in Ukraine.

In other words, we are essentially a direct participant in the war.

For years I have been warning my readers that there would be a war with Russia, and now it is here.

If we had rational leaders in Washington, they would be trying to end this conflict before the nukes start flying.

But instead, they are pledging to give Zelenskyy whatever he needs for as long as it takes to defeat the Russians.

When Zelenskyy visited Washington this week, the White House literally rolled out the red carpet for him.

To see such an honor bestowed upon a cruel foreign dictator that is ruthlessly oppressing anyone that opposes him should nauseate all of us.

And when Zelenskyy arrived to deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress, he was greeted with a standing ovation.

It isn’t just the Democrats that have fallen for Zelenskyy’s act.

At this point, Mitch McConnell says that showering Ukraine with money should be our “number one priority”…

“Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans. That’s how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.”

Thankfully, there are still at least a few voices of reason that can see exactly what Zelenskyy is trying to do.

One of them is Tucker Carlson.

According to Carlson, it is absurd to give a foreign tyrant so much money when we have so many pressing needs here at home.

But no matter how hard Zelenskyy oppresses his own people, our politicians are going to continue to shower him with more money, and that is because Zelenskyy has done an amazing job of positioning his war as the most important “current thing”.  I really like how John Nolte made this point in one of his most recent articles…

Zelensky has brilliantly — brilliantly! — positioned himself to be The Thing Through Which The Establishment Proves Its Purity.

That means the only questions anyone dares ask about Zelensky and Ukraine are…

Who can give Ukraine the most money?

Who can give Ukraine the most weapons?

Who can give Ukraine the most praise?

Who can lick Zelensky’s boots the cleanest?

Zelensky is getting everything he wants and more, including America flirting with nuclear war. Why? Because he was savvy enough to crack the code of the shallow, insecure, conformist idiots we elect and reelect as our leaders.

Nolte is quite right.

And once a con man has identified a “golden goose”, he is just going to keep coming back again and again.

So even though we have already given Ukraine more money than everyone else combined, it will never be enough to satisfy Zelenskyy.

In addition to cold, hard cash, the U.S. also continues to give the Ukrainians some of our best military equipment.

The Biden administration just agreed to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, and that represents another huge escalation.

The Biden administration will send to Ukraine the most advanced air defense weapon in its arsenal, the Patriot missile system, officials said Wednesday, marking the most significant addition to American military support for the government in Kyiv in months.

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to escalate the conflict as well.

In fact, it appears that the Russians have been very busy moving tanks into position for another major offensive campaign from the north.

If both sides just keep escalating matters, we will eventually reach a point where somebody crosses a line that will never be able to be uncrossed.

We have been pushed to the brink of nuclear war, and the Russians are getting ready to officially deploy their new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles in January…

Putin said on Wednesday during a meeting with military chiefs that he aimed to deploy his terrifying RS-28 Sarmat missile – nicknamed Satan-2 – in January.

The world-ending missile can blast targets at almost 16,000mph – meaning it has the potential to obliterate the UK 1,600 miles away in just six minutes.

Sadly, the quote that you just read is not an exaggeration.

Each Sarmat can reportedly carry up to 15 independently-targetable nuclear warheads.

That means that one missile goes up, and 15 warheads come down.

And each one of those warheads can instantly wipe out an entire major city.

The Sarmat is the most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile in the entire world by a wide margin, and we have no way to defend against them.

So maybe we should think twice before getting into a nuclear war with Russia.

Unfortunately, our leaders seem to have gone completely mad at this point, and of course our leaders in Washington are simply a reflection of what has happened to the rest of our society.

https://twitter.com/ClownWorld_/status/1605770134269804545

When Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” in the 1980s, he was quite correct.

But since that time just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine has absolutely exploded in our own nation.

So are we “the baddies” now?

Sadly, most Americans will not even entertain that question.

And our leaders are just going to continue to push us toward a nuclear conflict that could ultimately mean the end of our society once and for all.

Beware of Long Wars: Ukrainian Attacks on Russia Are Dangerously EscalatoryBeware of Long Wars:

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By W.J. Astore

Source: Bracing Views

Reports that Ukraine is launching modified drones to strike airbases deep in Russia highlight the unpredictability and escalatory nature of wars. Ukraine is no longer content at defending itself against Russian aggression; Russia itself must be made a target, which will likely provoke harsher Russian counterattacks. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress continues to authorize billions in military aid to Ukraine, which is pitched as defending democracy and freedom.

War is many things but it is rarely democratic. Indeed, as James Madison warned, war is inherently anti-democratic. It strengthens authoritarian forces and contributes to abuses of power and corruption. As the Russia-Ukraine War goes on, with no clear resolution in sight, Ukraine suffers more even as the chances of escalation rise.

James Madison warned that no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare

What’s needed now is resolute diplomacy — a committed effort to end the war by all parties involved, obviously Russia and Ukraine but also the U.S. and NATO. The longer this disastrous war lasts, the more unpredictable it will become, the more atrocious it will prove, and the more likely ordinary Ukrainians and Russians will suffer and die, whether at various battlefronts or on the homefront.

Negotiation is not weakness nor is it appeasement. Negotiation is sensible, rational, and life-affirming. But there’s little reason for Ukraine to negotiate when it’s enjoying a blank check of support from the U.S. and NATO.

Meanwhile, as Ukraine continues striking deep into Russia, one wonders to what extent the U.S. military and intelligence agencies are involved. Did the U.S. provide technology?  Targeting information?  Intelligence? Or is Ukraine doing this entirely on its own, a scenario that is less than comforting?

I sure hope the U.S. and Russia are talking.  In the confusion and chaos of war, how is Russia to know for sure that an attack on one of their strategic air bases is coming from Ukraine and not from NATO territory?  Even if it’s clearly coming from Ukraine, if these attacks are enabled or approved by the U.S./NATO, will the Russians see them as an act of war? Will they respond militarily, creating even more escalatory pressure?

Bizarrely, Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia has been sold as America’s “good” war, a chance to weaken Russia and Putin in the cause of defending Ukrainian “democracy.” But as Ukraine’s tactics turn more offensive, and as the Ukrainian government likely becomes more authoritarian due to the pressures of war, how wise is it for the United States to continue to send massive amounts of military aid there while discouraging diplomacy?

Policies that end in prolonging the Russia-Ukraine War in the name of teaching Putin a lesson and eroding his power may teach us all a lesson in how war is not just anti-democratic. War runs to extremes, and only fools believe they can control it in a way that is conducive to liberty and freedom and justice.

America’s 2022 Allocations to Ukraine Total $112 Billion

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

During this year, the U.S. Government has allocated $112 billion to Ukraine, in order to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine. Russia allocates normally $60 billion per year for its entire military, but this year has increased that 40% to $84 billion, because of its invasion of Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine because, on 17 December 2021, Russia had demanded that the U.S. Government and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance stop trying to place its missiles on and near Russia’s borders (especially in Ukraine, which is the nearest of all bordering nations to Moscow); and, on 7 January 2022 America and NATO said no. Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from becoming a launch-pad for U.S. missiles. That’s what the war in Ukraine is — and always has been — about, from the Russian viewpoint: not being faced with U.S. missiles that are only a five-minute missile-flight-time away from Russia’s central command in Moscow.

The war in Ukraine started in February 2014, by America’s coup there that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-American one on Russia’s border, in order ultimately to become able to place just 317 miles away from the Kremlin U.S. missiles which would be only a five-minute flight-time away from nuking Russia’s central command — far too little time in order for Russia’s central command to be able to verify that launch and then to launch its own retaliatory missiles. It would be nuclear checkmate of Russia, by the U.S. (with the assistance of its NATO allies, which then would include Ukraine).

Whereas Russia’s objective is to not become nuclearly checkmated by America placing its missiles that close to Moscow, America’s objective is to nuclearly checkmate Russia in order to capture the world’s largest and most resource-rich country — to force Russia to capitulate and become another U.S. ‘ally’ (that is, vassal-nation).

President Biden had requested Congress to add $38 billion more this year for Ukraine than the $67 billion that was funded earlier in the year, but Congress decided to increase his requested amount by $7 billion (almost a 20% increase in his suggested increase), so that there will be a total of $45 billion added to the $67 billion previously allocated, for a total U.S. allocation to Ukraine this year of $112 billion. That amount is $28 billion more than Russia will have spent this year for all of its military — the vast majority of which Russian military expenditure isn’t being allocated to the war in Ukraine, but instead to other aspects of Russia’s defense against the threat to its national security from America and its allies. America alone has been spending annually  on its military around 20 times what Russia has been spending on its; and, in order to make America’s expenditure appear not to be so gargantuan as it actually is, large portions of it are being paid out from other federal Departments than the Defense (or Aggression) Department, but the total annual U.S. military expenditures have, for over a decade, been over a trillion dollars per year.

On November 16th, I headlined “U.S. Will Have Spent $100B on Ukraine This Year”, and now it’s clear that my prediction was on the conservative side, by $12 billion.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

The Conflict In Ukraine Has Evolved Into A War Between The United States And Russia

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By Michael Snyder

Source: End of the American Dream

Let’s be honest about what is really going on in Ukraine.  The United States is providing most of the funding, most of the equipment, most of the ammunition, most of the high level intelligence and much of the training.  That makes the United States a direct participant in the conflict.  Yes, many other NATO countries are also contributing in various ways, and that makes them direct participants as well.  But the mainstream media here in the western world continues to insist that this is Ukraine’s war and that we are just helping them out.  Without a doubt, Ukraine has lost an enormous number of soldiers over the course of 2022, but at this point the Ukrainians are really a junior partner in the war.  If the U.S. and NATO had not intervened on an epic scale, the war would already be over and Russia would have won.  Unfortunately, now that we are so deeply invested in the conflict there is no easy way out, and that has very serious implications for all of us.

So much of the death and destruction that we have already witnessed could have been avoided so easily, and we should be constantly pushing our politicians to find a peaceful way out of this mess before nuclear weapons are used.  Back in 2020, I published a book in which I specifically warned that war with Russia would be coming, and a lot of people thought that I was nuts to say such a thing.  But sure enough we now have a war with Russia.

And the Russians are very clear about who they are really fighting.  Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov boldly declared that the U.S. and NATO are “directly participating” in the conflict in Ukraine…

“You shouldn’t say that the US and NATO aren’t taking part in this war, you are directly participating in it,” Lavrov said in a video call with reporters. “And not just by providing weapons but also by training personnel. You are training their military on your territory, on the territories of Britain, Germany, Italy, and other countries.”

I wish that this wasn’t true.

Sadly, in this particular case Lavrov is quite correct.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but Ukrainian soldiers are being flown into the United States all the time.  The following comes from a BBC article about one location in Kansas where Ukrainian officers have been receiving “strategic training”…

Senior-level Ukrainian officers have been studying in the US state of Kansas, thousands of miles from Russia’s invasion and the battlefields of Donbas.

Outside the Fort Leavenworth army base, wheat fields are starting to turn. Wide, open prairie land, with softly rolling hills, stretches for miles, and the sky is huge.

This quintessentially Kansas landscape has become the backdrop for generations of international soldiers, who head to the US base to receive strategic training.

Of course Ukrainians are also being trained in the UK and in other NATO countries as well.

Unless we actually want to be considered direct participants in the war, we should not be doing this.

All of us should also be deeply alarmed by how much money we are giving to Ukraine.

According to the Kiel Institute, as of October 3rd the U.S. had already given 54.43 billion dollars worth of military and non-military aid to the Ukrainians…

Eventually I tracked down a database operated by the Kiel Institute, a German think tank. They have been tracking total military and non-military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. Their numbers include all aid from Jan. 24, 2022 to Oct. 3, 2022 (the data is scheduled for an update on Dec. 6).

According to Kiel, the U.S. has transferred military and non-military aid worth $54.43 billion to the government of Ukraine. The database Kiel has maintained is by far the most granular and detailed accounting of what the U.S. government has provided to Ukraine, including descriptions of the individual batches of military equipment. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

Needless to say, more aid has been authorized for the Ukrainians since October 3rd.

So the grand total is even higher now.

At this point we have actually spent far, far more money on the war than the Ukrainians have.

The Ukraine military is now outfitted with cutting edge equipment and ammunition, but all of that money is being spent in other ways as well.

Vast hordes of international mercenaries have been hired to fight, and your tax dollars are paying for them.

You see, the truth is that the Ukrainian army that existed at the beginning of the war has mostly been destroyed.  To replace them, Ukraine conscripted a whole bunch of new soldiers, and they also hired large numbers of mercenaries from other nations in Europe.

Yes, there are some western Europeans and Americans among the mercenaries, but the vast majority of them appear to be from the poorer countries of eastern Europe.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t seem to care that these poor mercenaries are being fed into an endless meatgrinder that is unlike anything that we have seen since the worst days of World War I…

As Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, including reinforcements previously in the Kherson region, the fighting in the Bakhmut sector has descended into trench warfare reminiscent of the first world war.

Over the weekend, images emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in flooded, muddy trenches and battlefields dotted with the stumps of trees cut down by withering artillery barrages.

For a moment, I would like for you to consider what it is like to be a soldier on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

Imagine standing in a muddy trench that is filled up with water up to your waist.  Your teeth are chattering like crazy because of the bitter cold, but you don’t dare crawl out of the trench because you are likely to be killed.  Your socks are soaked, your underwear is soaked and everything else you are wearing is soaked.  Both sides are endlessly shelling one another, and so it is almost impossible for you to sleep.  There are dead bodies all around you for as far as the eye can see, and you just hope that you will be able to make it through another day somehow.

At military hospitals all across eastern Ukraine, there is an endless parade of the dead and the wounded.  The following comes from the New York Times…

For almost an hour, the stream of Ukrainian casualties in the eastern city of Bakhmut seemed unending: Ambulances, an armored personnel carrier and private vehicles all screamed to a halt, one after another, and disgorged the wounded in front of the city’s only military hospital.

A soldier propped up by his comrades, his face a mass of mangled flesh, walked in the main gate. The dark green stretcher that awaited him was one of several still covered in blood.

Sadly, there is no end to the war in sight.

In fact, both sides just continue to escalate matters.  The Ukrainians are now regularly shelling targets inside Russian territory, and the Russians are now systematically going after power and water systems all over Ukraine.

This is going to be an extremely bitter winter for both the Ukrainians and the Russians.

And as this war intensifies, there is a growing risk that someone could eventually use weapons of mass destruction.

Once that happens, there will be no going back.

BYE, BYE KIEV, HELLO COTE D’AZUR: AS WESTERNERS SEND AID, HERE’S HOW UKRAINE’S CORRUPT ELITES ARE PROFITING FROM THE CONFLICT

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Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky (C) walks to his Presidential office after a ceremony of his oath in the Ukrainian Parliament, in Kiev, Ukraine. © STR / NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Olga Sukharevskaya

Source: New Cold War

For years, and particularly since the beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, the United States, the European Union – and their allies – have provided Kiev with $126 billion worth of aid, a number almost equal to the country’s entire GDP but Olga Sukharevskaya reports that officials and oligarchs have diverted much of the financial support sent to Kiev
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Since the beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, the United States, the European Union – and their allies – have provided Kiev with $126 billion worth of aid, a number almost equal to the country’s entire GDP. Moreover, millions of Ukrainians have found refuge in the EU where they were given housing, food, work permits, and emotional support. The scope is huge, even by western standards. Considering that the bloc has been funding Kiev while coping with an economic and energy crisis of its own, the assistance is perhaps especially notable.

Kiev bases its endless funding requests on the collapse of its economy, due to the war, and its need to “resist Russian aggression.” But is the aid reaching its intended destination?

The Monaco Battalion

While Ukraine has undergone a general mobilization affecting all men under the age of 60, many former and current high-ranking officials, politicians, businessmen, and oligarchs have moved to safety abroad – mainly to the EU.

The mass flight of Ukrainian elites started even prior to the armed conflict. On February 14, 2022, 37 deputies from the Ukrainian president’s parliamentary faction “Servant of the People” suddenly went “missing.” Had MPs not been banned from leaving the country the very next day, others would’ve definitely joined them. Meanwhile, former officials and oligarchs enjoyed more freedom to move around. According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 20 business jets took off from Kiev’s Boryspol airport on the 14th as well.

Tycoons were at the front of the line. Entrepreneur and MP Vadim Novinsky, businessmen Vasily Khmelnitsky and Vadim Stolar, Vadim Nesterenko, and Andrey Stavnitzer all left the country on charter flights. Millionaire politician Igor Abramovich booked a private flight to Austria for 50 people – taking relatives, business partners, and fellow party members aboard. Oligarchs flew from Kiev to Nice, Munich, Vienna,  Cyprus, and other EU destinations. Another group of businessmen took off from Odessa on private planes. The owner of Vostok Bank departed for Israel, while the head of the Transship group flew to Limassol. An ex-governor of the Odessa region, Stalkanat’s Vladimir Nemirovsky, also left the country.

In the summer and early fall of 2022, ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ prepared several investigative documentaries about fit-for-service Ukrainian billionaires and officials spotted vacationing on the Côte d’Azur during the war. A movie with the ironic title “The Monaco Battalion” shows Ukrainian oligarchs resting at their villas, mansions, and on yachts. In the first part, we see businessman Konstantin Zhevago, who is included on Interpol’s wanted list, relaxing on his private yacht worth $70 million. The yacht graces the shoreline of the Côte d’Azur as Zhevago’s family disembarks. Kharkov entrepreneur Alexander Yaroslavsky, who promised to sell his yacht and transfer the funds towards the restoration of Kharkov, can be seen sailing alongside.

‘Ukrainska Pravda’ journalists also got a glimpse of the Surkis brothers in France, who’re currently renting apartments worth €2 million per year. Meanwhile, a $300,000 Bentley belonging to Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev was spotted near the casino in Monaco, and Eduard Kohan, the co-founder of Euroenergotrade, was seen at one of Monte Carlo’s chic hotels.

A whole colony of Ukrainian oligarchs has apparently taken up residence in the elite French commune of Cap-Ferrat. Land developer Vadim Solar, oligarchs Dmitry Firtash, Vitaly Khomutynnik, and Sergey Lovochkin are among those enjoying high life in the middle of the war. The Cap-Ferrat villa once belonging to King Leopold II of Belgium was bought by the richest Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. His neighbors are Alexander Davtyan, President of the Investment Group DAD LLC, and Vladislav Gelzin, a former deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council.

As the creators of the film repeatedly emphasize, deputies and businessmen of “pro-Russian” parliamentary factions left the country during the war. Yet many active supporters of the current government also prefer to defend their homeland from abroad.

‘Ukrainska Pravda’ managed to interview Andrei Kholodov, an MP from Vladimir Zelensky’s faction “Servant of the People”, from his current residence in Vienna. The Austrian capital was also chosen by nationalist Nikita Poturaev and Sergei Melnichuk, a former head of the Aidar battalion known for war crimes reported by Amnesty International. The former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, 59-year-old Alexander Tupitsky, and the 45-year-old ex-prosecutor general of Ukraine Ruslan Ryaboshapka also preferred foreign “trenches.”

Members of the Ukrainian parliament are in no hurry to adopt vitally important laws for the country during wartime. According to the Telegram channel “Volyn News,” as of March 11, 2022, more than 20 MPs had moved abroad for unspecified reasons. The geography is extensive: Great Britain, Poland, Qatar, Spain, France, Austria, Romania, Hungary, UAE, Moldova, Israel, etc. In March, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine launched an investigation into the actions of six parliamentarians who have remained abroad.

Apparently, neither war nor punishment can put Ukrainian legislators to work. Only 99 deputies out of 450 attended the session of the Parliament on July 20. Presumably distracted by summer, the Côte d’Azur, the Maldives, and yachts… As for defending Ukraine itself – just leave it to the foreign volunteers, they say.

Where’s all the military and humanitarian aid going?

Some western benefactors have recently noticed that most of the military and humanitarian aid never reaches Ukraine’s army or ordinary citizens.

In an original documentary, CBS reported that about 70% of military aid failed to find its way to the intended beneficiaries and donor countries are often unable to control its intended use. According to the creators of the report, some of the weapons are sold on the black market. As US Marine Corps veteran Andy Milburn said, “I can tell you unarguably that on the frontline units these things are not getting there. Drones, Switchblades, IFAKs. They’re not, alright. Body armor, helmets, you name it.”

The Grayzone writes that weapons and humanitarian aid provided by the West to the Ukrainian military is being stolen along the way and never reaches the soldiers. At the same time, Ukrainian MPs recently gave themselves a 70% pay raise. The author of the piece argues that billions of dollars from the USA and the EU have been diverted.

A Ukrainian soldier named Ivan told journalists about western funds never reaching the front: “Imagine telling an American soldier that we are using our personal cars in the war, and we’re also responsible for paying for repairs and fuel. We’re buying our own body armor and helmets. We don’t have observation tools or cameras, so soldiers have to pop their heads out to see what’s coming, which means at any moment, a rocket or tank can tear their heads off.”

Samantha Morris, a medical doctor from the US, drew attention to the theft of medical supplies and the overall corruption: “The lead doctor at the military base in Sumy has ordered medical supplies from and for the military at different points in time, and he has had 15 trucks of supplies completely disappear,” she said. The doctors couldn’t even set up courses for medical assistants until a friend of the Sumy region governor interceded.

CNN talked to a retired US colonel who said that Ukrainian troops are short on supplies. Small arms, medical equipment, field hospitals and a lot more are under the control of private organizations – more concerned about stealing money than saving the lives of their compatriots.

As Stephen Myers, a former member of the US Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, insisted, “There is little to prevent a field commander from diverting some of the equipment to buyers, aka the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or whomever, while claiming the equipment and weapons were destroyed…”

Thousands of tons of humanitarian aid is being stolen. In September, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) proved that the head of the Office of the President, Andrei Yermak, his deputy Kirill Tymoshenko, the head of “The Servant of the People” faction David Arakhamiya and his friend Vemir Davityan were behind the large-scale theft of humanitarian aid in the Zaporozhye region. Zaporozhye officials Starukh, Nekrasova, Sherbina, and Kurtev only superficially carried out the task of distributing aid. In six months, they organized the theft of 22 sea containers, 389 railway cars, and 220 trucks. Humanitarian aid was sold in ATB and Selpo – supermarkets owned by Gennady Butkevich and Vladimir Kostelman, respectively. Of course, Tymoshenko, Nekrasova and Davityan all became “refugees” and found asylum in Vienna.

Admittedly, not everyone is on the run. Andrei Yarmolsky, the scandalous former deputy head of the Volyn regional administration – accused of stealing humanitarian aid, supplying defective bulletproof vests, and illegally moving men out of the country – was promoted. He now works for the National Security and Defense Council.

Medical supplies are also being stolen. The Telegraph reportsthat “some of the donated supplies later made their way onto the hospitals’ pharmacy shelves: priced, and listed for sale”. Health workers appropriate medicine, bandages, and medical equipment, and resell them to patients for whom they were intended to be free, the article says.

A similar story was told by the aforementioned doctor Dr Morris: “I got a call from a nurse at a military hospital in Dnipro. She said the president of the hospital had stolen all the pain medications to resell them, and that the wounded soldiers being treated there had no pain relief. She begged us to hand-deliver pain medications to her. She said she would hide them from the hospital president so that they’d reach the soldiers. But who can you trust? Was the hospital president really stealing the medications, or was she trying to con us into giving her pain medications for her to sell or use? Who knows. Everyone is lying.”

War for some, Gucci for others

Enormous cash flows from Western countries are continuously used by corrupt Ukrainian officials for personal enrichment and to acquire luxury goods.

In a recently busted corruption scheme, Odessa customs smuggled shirts, backpacks, sports shoes, belts, and other luxury items by Givenchy, Gucci, Polo, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Armani under the guise of army equipment. The documents, declaring the cargo as “for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” were signed by the acting head of the Odessa customs Vitaly Zakolodyazhny. According to MP Alexander Dubinsky, this is a common theft scheme. “The work of the customs is unsatisfactory because while some are fighting at the front, others are making money under the guise of their customs uniforms,” the parliamentarian said.

To take another example, in May 2022, Western countries abolished customs duties for Ukraine. Within a week, over 14,000 passenger cars were imported into the country. As the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Mustafa Nayem commented, “Considering we’re a country at war, our partners in Poland, Slovakia, and Romania were quite surprised by this fast-paced upgrade to our vehicle fleet.”

As they go about acquiring luxurious clothes and cars, the thieves are also taking care to withdraw capital from Ukraine.

According to the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, Ukraine’s budget is missing UAH 4.5 billion worth of taxes from agrotraders: “In August-September 2022, almost 12 million tons of grain crops and oil estimated at UAH 137 billion were exported through the customs territory of Ukraine. Of these, almost 4 million tons were exported by fake companies existing only on paper.” Moreover, “most of the non-resident companies to which grain is exported are high-risk and involved in criminal investigations.” Is this the “grain deal” that the global community is actively cheering? It looks like Ukrainian fraudsters are corrupting not just their own country, but foreign states as well. And this is just one example out of many.

When the Surkis brothers left Ukraine, they took $17 million with them. But that’s just a trifle compared to the “heroes of the Euromaidan.” According to former People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleg Tsarev, after the outbreak of hostilities leading Ukrainian politicians sent both their capital and their families abroad.

He mentions that the parents and relatives of President Vladimir Zelensky and his wife all left the country. Zelensky’s predecessor, former president Petr Poroshenko, moved not just his children but also about a billion US dollars in cash to the UK.

The same applies to other major Ukrainian officials: former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak, the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and many others all took their families and fortunes, estimated at around a billion dollars, out of the country. And that’s not to mention the numerous politically-affiliated oligarchs.

Scammers of smaller stature can “individually join the EU” as well. A system of bribery allows military-age males to leave the country. According to Izvestia, the fee is currently between $8,000 and $10,000. The Ukrainian media also actively reports on people paying to cross the border.

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The sympathy of Westerners towards a country at war is understandable. But while some countries are doing their upmost to aid Ukraine – even while facing an economic crisis themselves – corrupt Ukrainian officials are using the funding to amass personal fortunes and live the high life at fancy resorts. And all at the expense of taxpayers in the West.

In 2015, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, upon leaving the post of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, openly declared that he had become a billionaire. It is yet to be seen how many new Ukrainian super rich tycoons – nurtured by foreign military aid – will appear in the West by the end of the conflict.

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Olga Sukharevskaya is a former Ukrainian diplomat

Explain It to Me, Please

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If you want a war with Iran, Russia, China and Venezuela tell me why and how it would benefit Americans

By Philip Giraldi

Source: The Unz Review

So Honest Joe Biden is now going to give another $1.2 billion to the Ukrainians on top of the sixty or so billion that is already in the pipeline, but who’s counting, particularly as Congress refused to approve having an inspector general to monitor whose pockets will be lined. The money will be printed up without any collateral or “borrowed” and the American taxpayer will somehow have to bear the burden of this latest folly that is ipso facto driving much of the world into recession. And it will no doubt be blamed on Vladimir Putin, a process that is already well under way from president mumbles. But you have to wonder why no one has told Joe that the whole exercise in pushing much of the world towards a catastrophic war is a fool’s errand. But then again, the clowns that the president has surrounded himself with might not be very big on speaking the truth even if they know what that means.

Having followed the Ukraine problem since the United States and its poodles refused to negotiate seriously with Vladimir Putin in the real world, I have had to wonder what is wrong with Washington. We have had the ignorant and impulsive Donald Trump supported by a cast of characters that included the mentally unstable Mike Pompeo and John Bolton followed by Biden with the usual bunch of Democratic Party rejects. By that I mean deep thinkers about social issues who would not be able to run a hot dog stand if that were what they were forced to do to make a living. But they are real good at shouting “freedom” and “democracy” whenever questioned concerning their motives.

Indeed, opinion polls suggest that there is a great deal of unrest among middle and working class Americans who see a reversion to Jimmy Carter era financial instability, at that time caused by the oil embargo. Well, there is a new energy embargo in place brought about by the Biden Administration’s desire to wage proxy war to “weaken” Russia. Analysts predict that the costs for all forms of energy will double in the next several months and surging energy costs will impact the prices of other essentials, including food. Given all that, the fundamental issue plaguing both Democrats and Republicans is their inability to actually explain to the American people why the country’s foreign and national security policy always seems to be on the boil, searching for enemies and also creating them when they do not exist, even when the results are damaging to the interests of actual Americans.

That a serious discussion of why the United States needs to have a military that costs as much as the next nine nations in that ranking combined is long overdue and rarely addressed outside the alternative media. The 2023 military budget has been increased from this year’s, totaling $858 billion, and, if one includes the constantly growing largesse to Ukraine, approaching a hitherto unimaginable trillion dollars. The military budget has become a major driver of the country’s unsustainable deficits. The deaths of millions of people directly and indirectly in the wars started in 9/11 aside, the wars of choice have cost an estimated $8 trillion.

The Constitution of the United States makes it clear that a national army was only acceptable to the Founders when it was dedicated to defending the country from foreign threats. Do Americans really believe that bearing the burden of having something like 1,000 military bases scattered around the world really makes them safer? The recent rapid collapse of the security situation in Afghanistan suggests that having such bases turns soldiers and bureaucrats into potential hostages and is therefore a liability. One might also suggest that the insecurity currently prevailing in the country can in large part be attributed to the government’s depiction of numerous “threats” in order to justify both the commitment and the expense.

So where does all the money go? And what are the threats? Starting with a war that the United States is de facto though not de jure involved in, Ukraine, what was the Russian threat that demanded Washington’s intervention? Well, if one discards the nonsense of a “rules based international order” or a plucky little democracy Ukraine fighting valiantly against the Russian bear, Moscow did not threaten the United States in any way before the missiles starting flying. Putin sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on a number of perceived existential Russian national security interests, all of which were negotiable, but the US and its friends were uninterested in compromise while also plying the corrupt Zelensky regime with weapons, money and political support. The final result is a conflict that will likely only end when the last Ukrainian is dead and it includes the possibility that a misstep by the United States and Russia could lead to a nuclear holocaust. To put it succinctly, what is going on does not enhance US national security, nor does it benefit Americans economically.

And then there is China. Biden let the cat out of the bag on his recent trip to the Far East. He stated that the United States would defend Taiwan if China were to attempt to annex it. In saying that, Biden demonstrated that he does not understand the strategic ambiguity that the US and the Chinese have preferred over the past fifty years as an alternative to war. The White House for its part quickly issued a correction to the Biden statement, explaining that it was not true that Washington is obligated to defend Taiwan. Some uber hawkish congressmen have apparently found the Biden gaffe appealing and are promoting a firm US commitment to defend Taiwan, coupled with a $4.5 billion military assistance package, of course.

At the same time, some officials in the Pentagon and the usual gaggle of congressmen also keep warning about the over the horizon threat from China as an excuse to boost defense spending. Most recently, there was alarm over Chinese participation in a meeting in May in Fiji to consider a China-Pacific Islands free trade pact! In reality, the only serious current threat from China is as an economic competitor. A trade war with China would be a disaster for the US economy, which is heavily dependent on Chinese manufactured goods, but Beijing, with its relatively small military budget, does not pose a physical threat to the United States.

And let’s not ignore Iran which has been hammered by economic sanctions and also through the covert killing of its officials and scientists. The US/Israeli war on Iran has also spilled over into neighboring Syria, where Washington actually has troops on the ground occupying the country’s oil producing region and stealing the oil. Iran’s possible expansion of its nuclear program to produce a weapon was effectively impeded through monitoring connected to a multilateral 2015 agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) but Donald Trump, unwisely and acting against actual American interests, withdrew from it. Joe Biden has been warned by Israel not to re-enter the agreement, so he will no doubt comply with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s determination to have Washington continue to apply “extreme pressure” on the Islamic Republic. Does either Iran or its ally Syria threaten the United States in any way? No. Their crime is that they are in the same neighborhood as the Jewish state, which finds the US government easy to manipulate into acting against its own interests.

Finally, in America’s own hemisphere there is Venezuela, which has been elevated to the status of Washington’s most hated nation in the region. Venezuelans have been subjected to increasingly punitive US sanctions, including some new ones just last week, which hurt the poorer citizens disproportionately but have not brought about regime change. Why the animosity? Because the country’s leader Nicolas Maduro is still in power in spite of a US assertion that the country’s opposition leader Juan Guaido should rightfully and legitimately be in charge after a possibly fraudulent election in 2018. The latest therapy applied by the United States on Caracas consisted of blocking the country as well as Nicaragua and Cuba from participating in the recent meeting of the Ninth Summit of the Americas which was held in Los Angeles. A State Department spokesman explained that the move was due to the three countries “lacking democratic governances.” Mexican President Lopez Obrador protested against the move and removed himself from his country’s delegation, saying “There can’t be a Summit of the Americas if not all countries of the American continent are taking part.” The despicable US Senator Robert Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee then felt compelled to add his two cents, criticizing the Mexican president and warning that his “decision to stand with dictators and despots” would hurt US-Mexico relations. So where was the threat from Venezuela (and Cuba and Nicaragua) and why is the US involved at all? Beats me.

What all of this means is that there is absolutely no standard of genuine national security that motivates the US’s completely illegal aggression in many parts of the world. What occurs may be linked to a desire to dominate or a madness sometimes described as “exceptionalism” and/or “leadership of the free world,” neither of which has anything to do with actual security. And the American people are paying the price both in terms of decline in standards of living due to the upheaval created in Ukraine and elsewhere as well as a completely understandable loss of faith in the US system of government. By all means, let us shrink the US military until it is responsive to actual identifiable threats. Let’s elect a president who will follow the sage advice of President John Quincy Adams, who declared that “Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand in the name of spreading democracy.” At this point, one can only imagine an America that is at peace with itself and with what it represents while also being considered a friend to the rest of the world.