One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe is that this war simultaneously (A) was completely unprovoked and (B) just coincidentally happens to massively advance the strategic interests of the government accused of provoking it.
The Bill Kristol-led group “Republicans for Ukraine” has released a TV ad to help drum up GOP support for Washington’s proxy war against Russia, and it’s surprisingly honest about what this war is really about: advancing US strategic interests using Ukrainians as sacrificial pawns.
Here’s a transcript:
“When America arms Ukraine, we get a lot for a little. Putin is an enemy of America. We’ve used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine, and with it, they’ve destroyed 50% of Putin’s Army. We’ve done all this by sending weapons from storage, not our troops. The more Ukraine weakens Russia, the more it also weakens Russia’s closest ally, China. America needs to stand strong against our enemies, that’s why Republicans in Congress must continue to support Ukraine.”
One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe is that this war simultaneously (A) was completely unprovoked and (B) just coincidentally happens to massively advance the strategic interests of the government accused of provoking it. From the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 westerners were aggressively hammered over and over and over again by the mass media with the uniform propaganda message that this was an “unprovoked invasion”, but ever since then we’ve also been receiving these peculiar messages from US empire managers and spinmeisters that this war is helping the United States crush its geopolitical enemies and advance its interests abroad.
This bizarre two-step occurs because the US-centralized empire needs to convey two self-evidently contradictory messages to the public at all times: 1. that the US is an innocent little flower who just wants to help its good friends the Ukrainians protect their democracy from the murderous Russians who invaded solely because they are evil and hate freedom, and 2. that it’s in the interest of Americans to continue this war.
The second point is required because the message that the US is merely an innocent passive witness to the violence in Ukraine necessarily causes certain political factions to ask, “Okay, so what are we doing there then? Why are we pouring all this money into something that has nothing to do with us?” So another narrative is required to explain that backing this proxy war also just so happens to be a massive boon to US strategic interests abroad while creating American jobs manufacturing weapons at home.
McConnell defends the proxy war in Ukraine: "We haven’t lost a single American… Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons… So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead." pic.twitter.com/xjd3RcVoRb
And of course this war advances US strategic interests. Of course it does. Only an idiot would believe the US is pouring weapons into another country because it loves the people who live there and wants them to be free, and that it is only by pure coincidence that this happens to kill a lot of Russians, bolster NATO, and advance US energy interests in Europe. It doesn’t benefit normal Americans at home, but it absolutely does serve the interests of the globe-spanning empire that’s centralized around Washington. That’s why the empire deliberately provoked it.
Empire managers were openly discussing the ways a war in Ukraine would directly benefit the US empire long before the invasion. In 2019 a Pentagon-funded Rand Corporation paper titled “Extending Russia — Competing from Advantageous Ground” detailed how the empire can use proxy warfare, economic warfare and other Cold War tactics to push its longtime geopolitical foe to the brink without costing American lives or sparking a nuclear conflict. The US Army-commissioned paper mentioned Ukraine hundreds of times, and explicitly discussed how a war there could be used to promote sanctions against Moscow and attack Russia’s energy interests in Europe.
In December of 2021 John Deni of NATO propaganda firm The Atlantic Council authored a piece for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” subtitled “An invasion would be a diplomatic, economic and military mistake for Putin. Let him make it if he must.” Deni argued that “there are good strategic reasons for the West to stake out a hard-line approach” against Moscow and refuse to negotiate or back down over Ukraine, because if doing so provokes Russia to invade it would “forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe,” “result in another round of more debilitating economic sanctions that would further weaken Russia’s economy,” and “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”
"We get a lot for a little…we've sent weapons, not our troops…the more we weaken Russia, the more it weakens China."
The minds on the inside of the empire were talking about how this war would benefit the US before the invasion, and they’ve been talking about how much it benefits the US ever since. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius put it this past July: “these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”
The managers of the empire are getting everything they want out of this war. In public they rend their garments and cry crocodile tears and call it a terrible criminal atrocity, but every now and then they look at the camera and flash it a quick Fleabag-style grin.
They knew exactly what they were doing when they provoked this war, and they know exactly what they’re doing by keeping it going.
Long gone are Western headlines heralding Ukraine’s NATO-trained and armed forces and the prospects of them able to “sweep Putin’s conscripts aside,” as former British Army Colonel Hamish De Bretton-Gordon claimed in an article published as recently as June this year.
As Ukraine’s offensive forces broke across extensive Russian defenses all along the line of contact from Zaporozhye to Kharkov, the realization that Washington, London, and Brussels underestimated the Russian Federation economically, politically, diplomatically, and most importantly, militarily and industrially, began to set in.
Russian Military Production Grows, Western Stockpiles Dry Up
Today, different kinds of headlines now appear across the collective West’s media. The New York Times recently reported in an article titled, “Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say,” that Russia ammunition production was at least seven times greater than the collective West.
The same article acknowledged that Russia had increased its tank production two-fold and was producing 2 million artillery rounds per year, a number that is larger than the combined planned expansion of shell production of the US and European Union some time between 2025 and 2027. Not only is Russia out-producing the West, it is producing weapons and ammunition at a fraction of the cost of Western arms and munitions.
As Russian military industrial production expands, producing more tanks, artillery, cruise missiles, and ammunition for the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces find their sources of arms and ammunition drying up.
The BBC would report in a recent article, “Poland no longer supplying weapons to Ukraine amid grain row,” that:
One of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Poland, has said it is no longer supplying weapons to its neighbour, amid a diplomatic dispute over Kyiv’s grain exports.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland’s focus was instead on defending itself with more modern weapons.
While both Poland and the BBC attempt to frame the decision as motivated by growing tensions between Poland and Ukraine, the reality is Poland had a finite amount of expendable arms and ammunition it could send Ukraine, and it has expended those stocks. This leaves a much smaller number of more modern systems Poland has acquired for its own defense. Neither Poland nor its foreign arms suppliers produce weapons and ammunition in the quantities required to sustain Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, meaning that should Poland continue supplying Ukraine from this point forward, it will eventually find itself “demilitarized.”
Other nations are failing to deliver much anticipated weapon systems. This includes the ATACMS ballistic missile Ukraine has demanded from the United States for months now, and despite claims of its arrival being imminent, Reuters in a recent article has ruled them out once again ahead of the Pentagon’s next assistance package.
Germany’s air-launched cruise missile, the Taurus, has also failed to turn up in additional assistance packages. Bloomberg in its article, “Germany Plans Additional $428 Million in Military Aid to Ukraine,” noted that Berlin is still weighing “a multitude of political, legal, military and technical aspects,” before finally sending any.
It should be noted that neither missile, along with a wide array of other so-called “wonder weapons,” has any prospect of changing the outcome of the fighting in Ukraine. While the missiles, if delivered, will result in tactical victories for Kiev, they will have little to no impact on the fighting strategically.
What remains of Western military assistance to Ukraine is inadequate amounts of ammunition, older and/or increasingly inappropriate armored vehicles including relics of the Cold War like the Leopard 1 main battle tank, and “training” for Ukrainian soldiers conducted in compressed timelines producing entirely unprepared soldiers almost certain to perish within days of arriving at the battlefield.
The US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is unsustainable, and it appears many in the halls of power across the collective West are coming to grips with that.
Delusion Persists
However, elsewhere in the Western media, a deep sense of delusion is still reflected in articles that, despite admitting Ukraine’s failures, believe a “rethink” of Ukraine’s military strategy could help win what is obviously transforming into a “long war.”
For example, The Economist in its article, “Ukraine faces a long war. A change, of course, is needed,” admits the long-anticipated offensive “is not working,” but goes on to demands more offensive and defensive capabilities for Ukraine, including additional air defense systems and “reliable supplies of artillery,” both of which objectively do not and will not exist in the necessary quantities Ukraine requires for years to come.
At one point in the article, The Economist insists on Europe “beefing up its defense industry,” apparently oblivious to the lead times involved in doing so being measured in years – years Ukraine does not have.
The collective West apparently realizes their plans are failing to end the war in their favor sooner rather than later, but appear unaware that the “long war” they now realize awaits them is beyond their capability to fight by proxy or otherwise. The proxy war, designed to “extend Russia,” is now making Russia stronger militarily and industrially. At the same time, the conflict and the sanctions the West imposed on Russia are serving as a catalyst for other nations to pivot away from the US-led unipolar world and instead invest in a multipolar alternative, fearing that eventually the West may target them in a similar manner.
It is clear that the harder the collective West attempts to place Ukraine in a stronger position at the negotiation table, the weaker Ukraine and its Western sponsors become. The longer this conflict continues, the worse it will be for Ukraine and its sponsors. For the collective West, winning their proxy war is impossible militarily and industrially, but accepting this reality appears equally impossible for the collective West’s leadership psychologically.
Poor Justin Trudeau. The Canadian PM has egg on his face after it was revealed his government gave former Waffen-SS Nazi Yaroslav Hunka a standing ovation in Canada’s House of Commons.
It looks like Canada’s “House of Commons” (where there are few real commoners) is all gaa-gaa over Ukrainian Nazis. Of course, this is a major faux pas, as slavering over unrepentant Nazis is, to say the least, in bad taste, especially for “woke” leaders such as Trudeau.
How is it possible Canada’s “leaders” are unaware the SS Galicia Division where Hunka “served” was involved in the 1943 mass murder of Poles, Jews, Roma, and communists? How is possible for a man involved in genocide (directed primarily against women and children) to receive a standing ovation?
It’s rather amusing, in a sardonic sort of way, to watch as the Canadian government melts down over this embarrassing incident.
It looks like House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota will be thrown under the bus. He called Hunka a “hero” during the staged event that revealed the Canadian government’s apparent affinity for SS Waffen Nazis.
The pathetic face-saving blame game was dropped on Rota like 900 pounds of manure. There are demands he resign his post immediately. No doubt he will spend the rest of his now miserable life in shame.
Meanwhile, Trudeau declared his innocence. He insisted it was “extremely upsetting that this happened… This is something that is deeply embarrassing to the parliament of Canada and by extension to all Canadians.”
Justin’s father, Pierre Trudeau, the former Canadian PM (it’s a family affair), “was complicit in the granting of safe haven to thousands of known Nazis who had ‘killed Jews with their own hands,’” tweets Chay Bowes.
I know it’s popular now to consider just about everything posted on Elon Musk’s X-Twitter as a far-right conspiracy theory. However, Mr. Bowes includes a clip from a 1997 episode of Sixty Minutes. Needless to say, CBS ain’t what it used to be.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service revealed in 2019 that a secret file on the scandalous dealings of the elder Trudeau was dispatched to the memory hole. His “fascination with communism, fascism, socialism and religion drove Trudeau to the far reaches of the political world,” writes Robert Morley for The Trumpet.
According to a Free Republic book review of the biography Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, 1919-1944, authored by Max and Monique Nemni, Trudeau was “not in the usual iconographic way… the sacrosanct icon of the progressive new Canada but as an anti-Semitic admirer of Hitler and Mussolini.”
Like father, like son?
It should also be noted that Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, who arranged a Canadian training mission with Ukraine’s “integral nationalists” in 2017, has a rather ugly skeleton in her closet. Freeland’s Ukrainian grandfather Michael Chomiak (Mykhailo Khomiak) was a Nazi collaborator. He edited Krakivs’ki Visti, a “vehemently antisemitic” newspaper.
Before the insanity of Ukraine, the corporate media on occasion told the truth about Nazis. Now, according to the state and its corporate media megaphone, the real Nazis are in America—no, not the Operation Paperclip imports by the CIA, but a tiny marginalized homegrown fringe of skinheads and other deluded racist miscreants.
Canada’s “conservatives” are exploiting this incident to the hilt. In this regard, they are little different than their American counterparts, the supposed “conservatives” that want endless war with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and China. These are the “conservatives” that want to kill Julian Assange and run a former Gitmo JAG officer as president, they are colleagues of neocon “conservatives” like the psychopaths Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley.
Finally, to demonstrate the rank historical ignorance of Canada’s parliament, Hunka was described as fighting against the Soviets in World War 2.
I’m not sure what history books these ignoramuses are reading (if any at all). The Soviet Union, the UK, and the US were allies during the war.
I’ll bet Trudeau, Freeland, and at least a few MPs understand Ukraine’s Nazis were on the side of the real Nazis, not the Allies. However, it appears Canada, the US, and Germany required the ideology of authoritarian fascism in order to control their respective countries, and that’s why war criminal Nazis were shipped in under the wire.
When a title in the Washington Post is so revealing, you can understand that the handwriting is on the wall, and that really is SO revealing, and if it is not an “I hate to tell you so, but I told you so” moment, then how else can we interpret the headline “Ukraine’s inability to demonstrate decisive success on the battlefield is stoking fears that the conflict is becoming a stalemate and international support could erode?”
Not only appears to be!
Has not the veneer of legitimacy not already eroded enough to lay bare the bedrock of a military conflict that never had to be, but is instead is a conflict of choice, especially for the West—but the SHOW MUST GO ON—at least until after the US presidential elections. The Washington Post’s Susannah George is saying what even laymen know, Ukraine appears to be running out of options in a counteroffensive that officials originally framed as Kyiv’s “crucial operation” to retake significant territory from occupying Russian forces this year.
Yes, the military conflict is stalemated, and few want to be used as cannon fodder. It is only a matter of time until the West and the coalition of the willing will lose interest and start asking the hard questions: such as “where did all the money go, and how did the supposed NATO standard weapons disappeared so quickly and how did the West get engaged in this mess in the first place?”
All the promises of one weapons system after another, be it artillery, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), or anti-tank or anti-aircraft systems have all proved to be more talk than firepower, and only now will some F-16 get delivered. But who is qualified enough to fly them and use them for the purpose and manner they were designed for, and what is a ground offensive without air cover and close air support?
“Pouring sand down a rathole”
Is a figurative expression that refers to a futile or pointless action—a waste of time and money, and the lives of a generation. The phrase fits the effort made in Ukraine by the West as having been ineffective and wasteful. And most certainly, there are more than a few rats in the Ukrainian government, its Western sponsors, and partners in organized crime. They have shown themselves for what they REALLY are!
And now the West has the audacity to complain that Ukraine is casualty averse, not willing to die in droves for some greater cause, the American cause! As the headline, based on the work of Caitlin Johnstone sums it up well, The West Keeps Whining that Ukrainians Are Cowards, and how Western officials – under the cover of anonymity and from the safety of their desks – are expressing disapproval of Ukraine’s aversion to being killed!
It is an understatement to highlight that this proxy war has not brought about any meaningful results, and it has not gone well for regional security. Sand down a rathole sums it up well, as the expression often used to convey a sense of frustration or disappointment when someone is engaged in some action or causes that seems to have no real value or purpose—at least for normal people
The gathering clouds are not looking good for Kyiv, it has not been able to deliver on the battlefield, and as a result, its backers are backing off, as they know that political and physical (as in terms of the financial costs, and conceivably even worse) blowback is coming, reputations and careers are at stake. More aid to Ukraine is like pouring sand down a rathole, it just disappears, no result, other than negative consequences.
But just how much longer will it be before the West does an Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Vietnam, and just walks away and moves on to the next war to be orchestrated? But first it will look for a scapegoat, and that should not be difficult among the minions of the corrupt in Ukraine.
All the wonder weapons have thus far failed to live up to the hype, now the west is moving to supply early model F-16As, admittedly upgraded to an extent, from the forty-year-old examples still operated by Holland and Denmark.
But who is qualified enough to fly them and use them for the purpose and in the manner they were designed–and only too soon will they crash and burn, if they are able to get airborne- and are not simply destroyed on the ground by Russian cruise and hypersonic missile systems, as happened too much of the Ukrainian Air Force in the first days of the war.
As we have discussed before in NEO, about how American policymakers in their many attempts to isolate and antagonize Russia should have been asking, “How many more ‘redlines’ have to be crossed in order for Putin to fully act?”
Were any of them actually so naïve to have considered that Putin would not have acted when the Ukrainian government invaded its predominately ethnic Russian regions in the East of, not to face dire consequences as a result?
The answer to these questions should be a no-brainer in the BIGGER scheme of things, and that now includes the potential blow back over China and punitive action to anyone who refuses to toe-the-line and march to the same music as proffered by the collective West.
It becomes the question of staying power, and the financial lifeline that the West is willing to provide—but for how long? Already, the writing is on the wall, considering that Ukraine’s apparent inability to demonstrate decisive success on the battlefield is stoking fears that the conflict is becoming a stalemate.
There were high hopes that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would turn the tide in its favor. While the West was trying to convince itself of its own rhetoric, with wishful thinking that the Russian army would panic and flee at the first sign of NATO supplied Wunderwaffen such as the Bradley IFV and Leopard 2 tanks, and constantly trumpeting the upcoming offensive to cut the land bridge to Crimea by retaking Melitopol and reaching the Sea of Azov, the Russians took the time to dig in along the front line spanning east to south Ukraine, creating deep defensive lines that are in parts made up of networks of mines, bunkers, trenches and layers of anti-tank obstacles over 75 kilometers deep.
Without more advanced weapons to buttress the front line or troops enough in reserve, as reported by CNBC, quoting [unnamed] Defense experts who say “it’s unlikely that the Ukrainian counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year. But they note it’s crucial for Ukraine to be able to show at least some gains in order to maintain Western support for the war into 2024 — and perhaps beyond.”
This translates,
“We don’t care if you can achieve any strategic objective, only to gain ground, for PR purposes, so to placate Western taxpayers. You need not concern yourselves about the mistakes of the German army who also thought military gains could be measured by territory gained. It also does not matter the causalities taken, as you still have enough warm bodies to conscript, young and old, to be used as fresh cannon fodder.”
“The question here is which of the two sides is going to be worn out sooner,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Center for a New American Security, who visited Ukraine in July. “We shouldn’t expect the achievement of any major military objectives overnight.”
And the question for NATO and its new turn on life, what is its purpose of existence, and has it really evolved? You can do anything in the name of combating the other side; just ask the people of Haiti under Papa Doc. The only rational conclusion is that NATO has to fulfill some mission in a post-Cold War world. It is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to try and find one.
One prong is to try and start another Cold War by declaring everything Un-American to be wrong and hostile—including alternative media that takes exception to what is being done for the sake of the few well-connected elites who are becoming rich through arms sales.
Collective West and Claimed Supremacy
The other is to insert terrorist groups into various countries to give the “international democratic order” something evil to fight against. There is no reason a defensive alliance should have a cultural dimension. Westerners need to stop claiming credit for the West’s achievements, while disassociating themselves from its crimes. This only reinforces misplaced loyalty to a civilization and policy that is based on greed and misguided values.
The West, especially the United States, wants to take collective credit for good things but to individualize blame on others. The villains of the West are grouped together as being foreign, even when they are home-grown; Hitler was a product of Western Civilization, King Leopold, Harry Truman, and most of those who came after them – in their dirty wars that span the last 70 plus years of “peace”.
Very different political models can co-exist, side-by-side, and even within the same country, as the differences between local councils in pluralistic countries often demonstrates. But NATO insists on its partners having a one culture, one value system—it being the one the US likes and trusts, which is always something close to what the US itself claims it has developed, and mostly on its own.
You can’t talk to Communists, Muslims, or Russians, and if you do, you will pay the price, as Ukraine is discovering the hard way now. NATO is aware of this weakness, but has no real intention of addressing it. This leaves it only one way out – coming out of the stockade with all guns blazing, like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Probably with much the same result…
So which state is next on the list of countries to be knocked off?
Could it be that Biden and team is finally realizing the US is putting itself further up that list by the day? US policy is in flux and is already overextended, (in actions and recriminations), and its own worst enemy. It has to win. However, this begs the question, where are the troops coming from? As clear as day, we can see that Biden wants to be a war president and let someone else die for that war.
US policy lacks consistency, and media spin is the solution. Take for instance, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, who was always constantly warning that Moscow that Washington, as the collective West, will “respond” to any acts of aggression or recklessness carried out by the Russian government, as if this function is his sole claim to fame.
He knew very well that allowing the Ukrainian government installed by the west after the Maidan revolution (or coup?) to attack and murder local citizens in the East of Ukraine was crossing one of many redlines for Putin. However, he still does not cut back on the rhetoric, doubling-down as [if the US is REALLY willing] to back its statements with direct support for Kiev for the long-term, at least until after the presidential elections.
For the Biden administration, Ukraine is a way to demonstrate America’s claimed “unwavering support” for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and a collection of claimed Western values, all of which are neatly wrapped in propagandized sound bites. But we know better, and based on the political and military reality, nothing new can be added to the discussion of Ukraine from a policy position.
Screaming Foul
US Secretary of State Mr. Blinken is always screaming foul over something: China or Russia, and now West Africa, as if it is going to really make some difference in how the world spins.
He forgets what NATO does is invariably on the orders of the US Federal government, even if it goes against the needs and best interests of the majority of its members, and against claimed Western values. Ukraine, Poland and other NATO members, even fledging potential members, only have the future of being transformed into outposts of men and equipment—in order for the US to have the ability to take “protective reaction” measures if necessary—so that the Hawks can trumpet “America will respond!”
It comes as no surprise, since 2014 nothing has actually really changed, and even with the extra baggage, rhetoric and range of military hardware delivered by Biden and team. It is all but a continuation of a failed bullying policy, a familiar but UGLY FACE in the long-running Washington-Moscow standoff over Ukraine, and confirmation that the world is no longer unipolar.
Biden and his minions are still pushing hegemonic actions to interfere and topple actual and fledgling democracies—and spilling the blood of so many innocents in the process. Sooner rather than later all this will backfire, for the sake of civilization, and the survival of the species, and the sooner, the better!
On September 7th, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledged that the war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, like Western ‘news’-media say, but much earlier, in 2014, and that Russia’s invasion in 2022 resulted from NATO’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO and to bring NATO’s military forces closer to Russia’s borders: “He [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” In other words: Russia’s invasion actually was defensive, not aggressive, on Russia’s side. And Stoltenberg proudly proclaimed that Russia has been defeated in that defensive objective, because instead both Sweden and especially Finland (one of the nearest nations to The Kremlin, other than the nearest of all, which is Ukraine) rushed to join NATO as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stoltenberg was so proud of having turned to dust Putin’s goal of making Russia safer, that Stoltenberg repeated many times NATO having done the exact opposite of what Putin was urging. Stoltenberg was clearly proud to have overseen the frustration of Russia’s need for a defense against a possible blitz-nuclear attack by NATO.
Furthermore: Stoltenberg acknowledged that this war is and has been good for NATO because it’s forcing NATO member countries to increase their expenditures on military weapons, and is thereby forcing down these countries’ expenditures on other matters that voters usually care more about.
The war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014. The full-fledged invasion happened last year, but the war, the illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia went into eastern Donbas in 2014.
Since then, NATO has implemented the biggest adaptation on this Alliance in modern history, in decades. And part of that is to invest more in defence. I think I’ve told you before that I know it’s hard to allocate money for defence, because most politicians want to spend money on health, on education, on infrastructure instead of defence. …
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty, that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.
Stoltenberg’s speech on September 7th ignored America’s coup, and he even ignored that the coup was quickly followed by the breakaway of Crimea because a plebiscite was held there on 16 March 2014, which produced a 90%+ vote for Crimea to again be a part of Russia, of which Crimea had been a part from 1783 to 1954. And he ignored that the breakaway of Donbass resulted after the Obama-installed Ukrainian government started in April 2014 an ethic-cleansing invasion of Donbass because over 90% of the voters there had voted for the Ukrainian President whom Obama’s coup had replaced, and Obama didn’t want those voters ever again to vote in a Ukrainian election.
So, although what Stoltenberg said there was true, it was very incomplete, because it failed to mention the coup, and the coup-regime’s ethnic-cleansing campaign, though those American initiatives were actually the things that started the war in Ukraine.
I am not a big fan of Federal Government disaster relief. Too much of the time the money never gets to those who need it most, and too often Washington’s armies of disaster “experts” are more interested in pushing people around than helping them.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to look at recent footage of the devastation in Maui and then hear President Biden tell Congress that he needs another $24 billion for Ukraine. How can this Administration continue to justify tens of billions of dollars for this losing war that is not in our interest while the rest of the United States disintegrates?
Biden’s new $24 billion request comes on top of well over $120 billion already spent to fight the US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. Heritage Foundation budget expert Richard Stern has done the math and determined that Biden’s spending on the Ukraine war thus far will cost each and every American household $900. How many Americans would rather have those $900 dollars back in their pocket rather than in the pockets of Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and Ukraine’s oligarchs?
Recent surveys have shown that a majority of Americans could not afford to cover a sudden $1,000 emergency. Will Americans connect the dots and realize that the reason they can’t find that $1,000 for an emergency is because the neocons have already sent it to Ukraine?
Ukraine has long been known as among the most corrupt countries on earth and not long ago investigative journalist Seymore Hersh wrote that Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky has embezzled at least $400 million in aid from the American people. Corruption scandals continue to break in Ukraine. Just last week Zelensky fired the heads of all local draft boards for corruption. Some press reports suggest that sales of luxury cars in Ukraine have broken all previous records. I wonder why.
No wonder the tide of US public opinion is turning against further involvement in the war. Recently CNN found that among all Americans, more than 55 percent are opposed to continued aid to Ukraine. Among Republicans the number opposing more aid to Ukraine rises to three-out-of-four. That is why we are finally starting to see more Republican Members raising concerns. I’d like to think they have seen the light that an aggressive and interventionist foreign policy is not in America’s interest, but most likely they are worried about losing elections. Whatever their motivation, this turning tide should be welcomed.
Yet the Biden Administration persists in backing Ukraine even as the US mainstream media is increasingly pointing out the obvious: Ukraine is not winning and cannot win, and continuing to pour money into a losing cause will just result in bankruptcy at home and more dead Ukrainians overseas.
Last week Newsweek published an article asking, “Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?” In the article, Northeastern University Professor Max Abrahms wonders out loud whether Biden’s continued support for Ukraine might be related to compromising information held in Kiev about the many Biden family shady business ventures in Ukraine and the region. It is certainly worth considering.
Meanwhile, the residents of Maui that survived the recent horrific fire will take little comfort knowing that the Biden Administration is more interested in sending their money to Ukraine than in helping them recover.
The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual shift – and never more than in our current incandescent juncture.
A fascinating consensus in discussions among Chinese scholars – including those part of the Asian and American diasporas – is that not only Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to China’s own and with solid ties with the Global South/Global Majority that can benefit and aid Beijing.
Meanwhile, a smatter of Atlanticist foreign policy analysts are now busy trying to change the narrative on NATO vs. Russia, applying the rudiments of realpolitik.
The new spin is that it’s “strategic insanity” for Washington to expect to defeat Moscow, and that NATO is experiencing “donor fatigue” as the sweatshirt warmonger in Kiev “loses credibility”.
Translation: it’s NATO as a whole that is completely losing credibility, as its humiliation in the Ukraine battlefield is now painfully graphic for all the Global Majority to see.
Additionally, “donor fatigue” means losing a major war, badly. As military analyst Andrei Martyanov has relentlessly stressed, “NATO ‘planning’ is a joke. And they are envious, painfully envious and jealous.”
A credible path ahead is that Moscow will not negotiate with NATO – a mere Pentagon add-on – but offer individual European nations a security pact with Russia that would make their need to belong to NATO redundant. That would assure security for any participating nation and relieve pressure on it from Washington.
Bets could be made that the most relevant European powers might accept it, but certainly not Poland – the hyena of Europe – and the Baltic chihuahuas.
In parallel, China could offer peace treaties to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and subsequently a significant part of the US Empire of Bases might vanish.
The problem, once again, is that vassal states don’t have the authority or power to comply with any agreement ensuring peace. German businessmen, off the record, are sure that sooner or later Berlin may defy Washington and do business with the Russia-China strategic partnership because it benefits Germany.
Yet the golden rule still has not been met: if a vassal state wants to be treated as a sovereign state, the first thing to do is to shut down key branches of the Empire of Bases and expel US troops.
Iraq is trying to do it for years now, with no success. One third of Syria remains US-occupied – even as the US lost its proxy war against Damascus due to Russian intervention.
The Ukraine Project as an existential conflict
Russia has been forced to fight against a neighbor and kin that it simply can’t afford to lose; and as a nuclear and hypersonic power, it won’t.
Even if Moscow will be somewhat strategically weakened, whatever the outcome, it’s the US – in the view of Chinese scholars – that may have committed its greatest strategic blunder since the establishment of the Empire: turning the Ukraine Project into an existential conflict, and committing the entire Empire and all its vassals to a Total War against Russia.
That’s why we have no peace negotiations, and the refusal even of a cease fire; the only possible outcome devised by the Straussian neocon psychos who run US foreign policy is unconditional Russian surrender.
In the recent past, Washington could afford to lose its wars of choice against Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it simply can’t afford to lose the war on Russia. When that happens, and it’s already on the horizon, the Revolt of the Vassals will be far reaching.
It’s quite clear that from now on China and BRICS+ – with expansion starting at the summit in South Africa next month – will turbo-charge the undermining of the US dollar. With or without India.
There will be no imminent BRICS currency – as noted by some excellent points in this discussion. The scope is huge, sherpas are only in the initial debating stages, and the broad outlines have not been defined yet.
The BRICS+ approach will evolve from improved cross border settlement mechanisms – something everyone from Putin to Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina have stressed – to eventually a new currency way further down the road.
This would probably be a trade instrument rather than a sovereign currency like the euro. It will be designed to compete against the US dollar in trade, initially among BRICS+ nations, and capable of circumventing the hegemonic US dollar ecosystem.
On the electronic technology front, the Empire has gone no holds barred to impose global economic dependency, monopolizing intellectual property rights and as Michael Hudson notes, “extracting economic rent from charging high prices for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.”
In practice, not much is happening other than the prohibition for Taiwan to supply valuable chips to China, and asking TSMC to build, as soon as possible, a chip manufacturing complex in Arizona.
However, TSMC chairman Mark Liu has remarked that the plant faced a shortage of workers with the “specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.” So the much lauded TSMC chip plant in Arizona won’t start production before 2025.
The top Empire/vassal NATO demand is that Germany and the EU must impose a Trade Iron Curtain against the Russia-China strategic partnership and their allies, thus ensuring “de-risk” trade.
Predictably, US Think Tankland has gone bonkers, with American Enterprise Institute hacks rabidly stating that even economic de-risking is not enough: what the US needs is a hard break with China.
In fact that dovetails with Washington smashing international free trade rules and international law, and treating any form of trade and SWIFT and financial exchanges as “national security threats” to US economic and military control.
So the pattern ahead is not China imposing trade sanctions on the EU – which remains a top trade partner for Beijing; it’s Washington imposing a tsunami of sanctions on nations daring to break the US-led trade boycott.
Russia-DPRK meets Russia-Africa
Only this week, the chessboard went through two game-changing moves: the high-profile visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to the DPRK, and the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
Shoigu was received in Pyongyang as a rock star. He had a personal meeting with Kim Jong-Un. The mutual goodwill leads to the strong possibility of North Korea eventually joining one of the multilateral organizations carving the path towards multipolarity.
That would be, arguably, an extended Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It could start with an EAEU-DPRK free trade agreement, such as the ones struck with Vietnam and Cuba.
Russia is the top power in the EAEU and it can ignore sanctions on the DPRK, while BRICS+, SCO or ASEAN have too many second thoughts. A key priority for Moscow is the development of the Far East, more integration with both Koreas, and the Northern Sea Route, or Arctic Silk Road. The DPRK is then a natural partner.
Getting the DPRK into the EAEU will do wonders for BRI investment: a sort of cover which Beijing does not enjoy for the moment when it invests in the DPRK. That could become a classic case of deeper BRI-EAEU integration.
Russian diplomacy at the highest levels is going all out to relieve the pressure over the DPRK. Strategically, that’s a real game-changer; imagine the huge and quite sophisticated North Korean industrial-military complex added to the Russia-China strategic partnership and turning the whole Asia-Pacific paradigm upside down.
The Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, in itself, was another game-changer that left collective West mainstream media apoplectic. That was nothing less than Russia publicly announcing, in words and deeds, a comprehensive strategic partnership with the whole of Africa even as a hostile collective West wages Hybrid War – and otherwise – against Afro-Eurasia.
Putin showed how Russia holds a 20% share of the global wheat market. In the first 6 months of 2023, it had already exported 10 million tons of grain to Africa. Now Russia will be providing Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Eritrea with 25-50 thousand tons of grain each in the next 3-4 months, for free.
Putin detailed everything from approximately 30 energy projects across Africa to the expansion of oil and gas exports and “unique non-energy applications of nuclear technology, including in medicine”; the launching of a Russian industrial zone near the Suez Canal with products to be exported throughout Africa; and the development of Africa’s financial infrastructure, including connection to the Russian payment system.
Crucially, he also extolled closer ties between the EAEU and Africa. A forum panel, “EAEU-Africa: Horizons of Cooperation”, examined the possibilities, which include closer continental connection with both the BRICS and Asia. A torrent of free trade agreements may be in the pipeline.
The scope of the forum was quite impressive. There were “de-neocolonialization” panels, such as “Achieving Technological Sovereignty Through Industrial Cooperation” or “New World Order: from the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development.”
And of course the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) was also discussed, with major players Russia, Iran and India set to promote its crucial extension to Africa, escaping NATO littorals.
Separate from the frantic action in St. Petersburg, Niger went through a military coup. Although the end-result remains to be seen, Niger is likely to join neighboring Mali in reasserting its foreign policy independence from Paris. French influence is also being at least “reset” in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Burkina Faso. Translation: France and the West are being evicted all across the Sahel, one-step at a time, in an irreversible process of decolonization.
Beware the Pale Horses of Destruction
These movements across the chessboard, from the DPRK to Africa and the chip war against China, are as crucial as the coming, shattering humiliation of NATO in Ukraine. Yet not only the Russia-China strategic partnership but also key players across the Global South/Global Majority are fully aware that Washington views Russia as a tactical enemy in preparation for the overriding Total War against China.
As it stands, the still unresolved tragedy in Donbass as it keeps the Empire busy, and away from Asia-Pacific. Yet Washington under the Straussian neocon psychos is increasingly mired in Desperation Row, making it even more dangerous.
All that while the BRICS+ “jungle” turbo-charges the necessary mechanisms capable of sidelining the unipolar Western “garden”, as a helpless Europe is being driven to an abyss, forced to split itself from China, BRICS+ and the de facto Global Majority.
It doesn’t take a seasoned weatherman to see which way the steppe wind blows – as the Pale Horses of Destruction plot the trampling of the chessboard, and the wind begins to howl.
For approximately 20-25 years, the political West has been flirting with the idea of Ukraine joining NATO. And yet, Kiev is as far from joining the belligerent alliance as it was a few decades ago, as evidenced by Zelensky’s unconcealed, almost painful frustration at the latest NATO summit in Lithuania’s Vilnius. The very idea that Ukraine might join the aggressive alliance is hardly a new concept. The CIA had plans for such a scenario long before the Soviet Union’s dismantling during the late 1980s and early 1990s. And yet, the country never became part of NATO, not even after approximately two decades of close cooperation, including the Ukrainian military’s direct participation in illegal US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saakashvili’s fate can serve as a stark reminder to the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, which perfectly explains his perpetually depressed bearing. He understands that the political West wants the war to last for as long as possible and that’s certainly not an appealing prospect for someone who will eventually have to take all the blame for Ukraine’s unrelenting collapse. NATO’s mixed messages are designed for this exact purpose. The belligerent alliance has openly stated that it will not accept Kiev regime’s membership until hostilities cease, meaning that Moscow will simply have no incentive to stop its counteroffensive against NATO aggression until most or all of Ukraine is under its control.
The fact that the political West has prevented a peaceful settlement speaks volumes about how it sees Ukraine and its people. Zelensky and his clique are there just to execute commands, regardless of the cost for the Ukrainians or even the Neo-Nazi junta itself. In his op-ed for Politico, Wolfgang Ischinger, one of Germany’s most prominent diplomats, recently suggested that the Kiev regime might be given all aspects of membership, only without actual membership. According to Ischinger, “[NATO] could grant Ukraine all the practical and concrete options and opportunities that NATO membership includes, but without official treaty membership”. In other words, Kiev would effectively have all the commitments of a member, but no benefits. Hence – TTLU.
After the Crash 