MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘NATO’

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

European antiwar protests gain strength as NATO’s Ukraine proxy war escalates – The Grayzone

Posted by M. C. on March 3, 2023

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/27/europeans-protest-natos-proxy-war/

STAVROULA PABST AND MAX BLUMENTHAL

Europeans are storming the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and their own declining living standards. The Grayzone has covered demonstrations and interviewed protest leaders in several countries since the war erupted.

Athens, Greece –– This February 21, several thousand Greeks filled Athens’ streets to denounce NATO and the United States in the wake of Antony Blinken’s Greece visit, where the US Secretary of State applauded the Mediterranean country for being amongst the first European countries to support Ukraine, thus leading to way for “the support of democracy.”

It was just one action among many protest actions across the continent as the NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine approached  its first anniversary. European citizens are growing agitated as their leaders appear set on extending the war at least another year: they’ve approved several rounds of sanctions on Russia, provided billions of euros in assistance to Ukraine, and have agreed to train thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. 

Such actions have blighted living standards for average Europeans. Although the continent has avoided a widely feared energy collapse thanks to successful efforts to secure energy alternatives and unseasonably warm weather, European governments had already prepared for possible power outages and mobile blackouts earlier this winter due to the severing of Russian energy.

As the war escalates, so too are protest actions in core NATO states, from Greece to Britain to the Czech Republic to France and Spain. The recent wave of demonstrations builds on sizable displays of opposition to the war throughout the winter in cities from Chișinău to Paris to Brussels to Tirana to Vienna.

In Germany, where Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has declared that “we are at war with Russia” amid reports that the US military destroyed the country’s Nord Stream pipeline connecting it to Russia’s gas supply, demonstrations against the NATO proxy war are surging as well.

The rising tide of protests across the continent appear to have have rattled European leaders, triggering police repression, demagogic denunciations, and even prosecution of protest leaders for publicly criticizing their governments’ military support to Ukraine.

Unlike Western mainstream media, which has treated the protests with contempt when it has not ignored them altogether, The Grayzone attended several protests and interviewed the labor and antiwar activists who have mobilized their fellow citizens against NATO’s proxy war.

Popular resistance builds in Europe as leaders grovel to Washington

By the arrival of the February 24, 2023 anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a growing number of German citizens had begun to bristle at their government’s submissive attitude to Washington. Not only had Chancellor Olaf Scholz acceded to US demands to send Leopard tanks to the Ukrainian military, setting up what could be the first confrontation between German and Russian armor since World War Two, he seemed studiously disinterested in determining who was responsible for destroying the Nord Stream pipelines.

An antiwar manifesto authored by Sahra Wagenknecht of the Die Linke (Left) party and feminist writer Alice Schwarzer has provided a vehicle for German outrage at their government’s military support for Ukraine. Calling on Scholz to “stop the escalation in arms deliveries” and “lead a strong alliance for negotiations,” the open letter had garnered over 700,000 signatures at the time of publication.

On February 25, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer summoned supporters of the manifesto to rally in central Berlin. Over 15,000 protesters, and possibly many more, heeded their call, flooding Brandenburg Gate to hear speeches by the two authors and speakers including Jeffrey Sachs and former German Brigadier General Eric Vad.

Wagenknecht framed the delivery of German tanks to Ukraine against the ghosts of country’s past, proclaiming, “We don’t want German tanks firing on the great grandchildren of Russian women and men. This is complete historical amnesia! Have you forgotten German history?”

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

RATO and NATO – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on March 2, 2023

https://www.fff.org/2023/02/27/rato-and-nato/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Let’s engage in some imagining. 

Let’s imagine that Russia and China form a new organization, called the Russia Asia Treaty Organization, or RATO. One day they invite Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico to become members. All of them agree. 

The U.S. government objects. “What is the purpose of extending RATO to our part of the world?” U.S. officials angrily ask. 

RATO responds: “You have nothing to worry about. RATO is an entirely peaceful organization, just like NATO.”

Russia and China ask Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile, and Guatemala if it would be okay for RATO to install military bases, nuclear missiles, tanks, and troops in their countries. They enthusiastically say yes. 

“Wait right there, busters!” U.S. officials exclaim. “We don’t want RATO bases, nuclear missiles, tanks, and troops over here in our part of the world.”

RATO officials respond, “You have absolutely nothing to worry about. These are all defensive in nature. RATO, like NATO, is a peace-loving organization.”

U.S. officials reply, “Well, we don’t like it one bit. But to avoid war, we won’t stop you from installing those bases, nuclear missiles, tanks, weaponry, and troops in those countries. 

However, our Red Line is Cuba. We will not permit you to install bases, nuclear missiles, tanks, weaponry, and troops in Cuba. Do not cross our Red Line, or we will be forced to invade Cuba and effect regime change there in order to prevent this from happening. Remember: This is our Red Line. Do not cross it.”

One day, RATO announces that it is going to install bases, nuclear missiles, tanks, weaponry, and troops in Cuba, with the full consent of Cuba. RATO ships containing such items begin moving toward Cuba, with the full intent of crossing the U.S. Red Line. 

Immediately, the president of the United States orders a full-scale military invasion of Cuba in an attempt to effect regime change there and install a pro-U.S. regime into power. 

In accordance with the RATO treaty, RATO begins furnishing money and weaponry to Cuba.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Putin’s “Civilizational” Speech Frames Conflict Between East and West

Posted by M. C. on February 25, 2023

Bets can be made that Patrushev explained in detail to Wang Yi how that is just wishful thinking. The “logic “of the current collective western “leadership” has been expressed, among others, by irredeemable mediocrity Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general: even nuclear war is preferable to a Russian victory in Ukraine.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/putins-civilizational-speech-frames-conflict-between-east-and-west/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=pescobar

PEPE ESCOBAR

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty.

The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what happened a year ago also marked the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world.

Then two days later, Moscow launched the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine to defend said republics.

Cool, calm, collected, without a hint of aggression, Putin’s speech painted Russia as an ancient, independent, and quite distinct civilization – sometimes following a path in concert with other civilizations, sometimes in divergence.

Ukraine, part of Russian civilization, now happens to be occupied by western civilization, which Putin said “became hostile to us,” like in a few instances in the past. So the acute phase of what is essentially a war by proxy of the west against Russia takes place over the body of Russian civilization.

That explains Putin’s clarification that “Russia is an open country, but an independent civilization – we do not consider ourselves superior but we inherited our civilization from our ancestors and we must pass it on.”

A war dilacerating the body of Russian civilization is a serious existential business. Putin also made clear that “Ukraine is being used as a tool and testing ground by the west against Russia.” Thus the inevitable follow-up: “The more long-range weapons are sent to Ukraine, the longer we have to push the threat away from our borders.”

Translation: this war will be long – and painful. There will be no swift victory with minimal loss of blood. The next moves around the Dnieper may take years to solidify. Depending on whether US policy continues to cleave to neo-con and neoliberal objectives, the frontline may be displaced to Lviv. Then German politics may change. Normal trade with France and Germany may be recovered only by the end of the next decade.

Kremlin exasperation: START is finished

All that brings us to the games played by the Empire of Lies. Says Putin: “The promises…of western rulers turned into forgery and cruel lies. The west supplied weapons, trained nationalist battalions. Even before the start of the SMO, there were negotiations…on the supply of air defense systems… We remember Kyiv’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Putin made it clear, once again, that the element of trust between Russia and the west, especially the US, is gone. So it’s a natural decision for Russia to “withdraw from the treaty on strategic offensive weapons, but we don’t do it officially. For now we are only halting our participation to the START treaty. No US inspections in our nuclear sites can be allowed.”

As an aside, of the three main US-Russian weapons treaties, Washington abandoned two of these: The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was dumped by the administration of former president George W. Bush in 2002, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was nixed by former president Donald Trump in 2019.

This shows the Kremlin’s degree of exasperation. Putin is even prepared to order the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom to get ready to test Russian nuclear weapons if the US goes first along the same road.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Tanks for Nuttin’ – TomDispatch.com

Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023

Why do Ukrainians killed by Russia generate headlines, while deaths attributable to Mexican drug cartels — 100,000 Americans from drug overdoses annually – are treated as mere statistics?

https://tomdispatch.com/tanks-for-nuttin/

Andrew Bacevich

The name of the game in Ukraine seems to be escalation, not just in the fighting (with a major Russian offensive expected soon), but in weaponry, too. Only recently, after initially refusing, President Biden agreed to send advanced American M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine (partly to push Germany to dispatch its own advanced Leopard 2 tanks and other European countries to do the same). And that, sadly enough, represents just another step up the ladder to… well, who knows quite what.

The Ukrainians are now demanding that the U.S. (and so, as with those tanks, other NATO allies) supply its air force with F-16 jet fighters. In an unsettling analog to the German tank accord, the Polish government seemed to agree to deliver some of its F-16s to the Ukrainians, with one proviso: that NATO (that is, the U.S.) agree to do the same. In Washington, those planes had been considered a “red line” not to be crossed and not so long ago President Biden offered a flat “no” to the very idea — as he had, once upon a time, with those tanks, too. In other words, in a phrase now in use at the Pentagon, he “M1-ed” the idea. As it happens, sentiment at the Pentagon already seems to be shifting, suggesting that the president’s F-16 position may soon prove to be so yesterday. Only recently, in fact, the U.S. agreed to send Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs that would double the range of that country’s rocket batteries, though like the tanks and possible planes actual delivery remains in an undefined future.

Here’s a question to consider: Once promises are indeed made to deliver those F-16s, what can Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demand next? It’s worth recalling that, in 1994 in a remarkable move, the Ukrainians returned to Russia the massive nuclear arsenal left there when the Soviet Union collapsed. It had briefly made the new nation into the third-largest nuclear power on Earth. The Ukrainians did so, however, only after the Russians agreed “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” No small irony there, right?

Is it too farfetched, then, to imagine that, once those F-16s are assured, Zelensky could begin demanding tactical nuclear weapons? After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his confederates have already muttered more than once about using such weaponry against Ukraine.

I know, I know, that’s certainly one wild jump too far, except that so much has proven unnervingly too far in the first major European war since World War II ended. As TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of the remarkable new book On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, suggests today, perhaps nothing is inconceivable when what’s at stake is “civilization” itself (as defined in both Moscow and Washington). Tom

Tanks for Nuttin’

Is Civilization at Stake in Ukraine?

BY ANDREW BACEVICH

“To defend civilization, defeat Russia.” Writing in the unfailingly bellicose Atlantic, an American academic of my acquaintance recently issued that dramatic call to arms. And lest there be any confusion about the stakes involved, the image accompanying his essay depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin with a Hitler mustache and haircut.

Cast Putin as the latest manifestation of the Führer and the resurrection of Winston Churchill can’t be far behind. And, lo, more than a few observers have already begun depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the latest reincarnation of America’s favorite British prime minister.

These days, it may be Western-supplied missiles downing “kamikaze drones” rather than Spitfires tangling with Messerschmitts over southern England, but the basic scenario remains intact. In the skies above Ukraine and on the battlefields below, the “finest hour” of 1940 is being reenacted. Best of all, we know how this story ends — or at least how it’s supposed to end: with evil vanquished and freedom triumphant. Americans have long found comfort in such simplified narratives. Reducing history to a morality play washes away annoying complexities. Why bother to think when the answers are self-evident? 

A Case of Whataboutism?

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

NATO’s ‘war against Russia’ inches ‘closer to direct conflict’

Posted by M. C. on February 1, 2023

After all, it is mainly Ukrainians paying the price of the “war against Russia” fueled from afar.

https://mate.substack.com/p/natos-war-against-russia-inches-closer

Aaron Maté

(US M1 Abrams tanks at a training site in Germany, 2018. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Sharon Matthias / 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

Since the first week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron has repeated a mantra on behalf of his NATO partners: “We are not at war with Russia.”

Nearly one year in, that notion has officially been dispelled.  

“We are fighting a war against Russia,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said this week.

Baerbock was trying to assuage NATO allies’ frustration over German reluctance to send Leopard 2 tanks into Ukraine. She can now claim vindication. In a reversal of its initial position, the German government has announced it that will deliver Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainian army.

To overcome German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s jitters, the White House engaged in an about-face of its own, approving the shipment of 31 US-made M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Scholz had insisted on conditioning any German tanks to a similar US commitment. Up until this week, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin was “dead set against providing” the M1s, and declared there to be “no linkage between providing M1s and providing Leopards.” Austin had argued that the M1s are too cumbersome for Ukraine, requiring costly jet fuel, heavy maintenance, and lengthy training.

Just last month, a senior US defense official declared that “even one M1 was out of the question,” according to the Washington Post. When used by US troops in Iraq, the M1s were “hard for us to sustain and maintain,” the official noted. For Ukraine, “it would be impossible.” Even last week, senior Pentagon official Colin Kahl dismissed the prospect of sending the “very complicated” M1, because “we should not be providing the Ukrainians systems they can’t repair, they can’t sustain, and that they, over the long term, can’t afford.”

As Gen. Mark Milley learned when he came out in favor of diplomacy with Russia to end the fighting, the Pentagon’s outlook is no match for Washington’s proxy war fever. The White House reversed course, Politico notes, after “a parade of Democrats and Republicans” in Congress “pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first.” What the Pentagon “was not taking into enough account,” the New York Times reports, citing a US official, “was the intense fear among European governments of doing anything to provoke Russia without having the cover of the United States doing the same thing first.” When it comes to provoking Russia, the US is undoubtedly first.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

George Soros Urged Use Of Eastern European Soldiers To “Reduce The Risk Of Body-Bags For NATO Countries” In ‘New World Order’ Article | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on January 24, 2023

“Japan should be asked to join NATO. Then we would have the beginnings of an architecture for a new world order. It is based on the United States as the remaining superpower and on open society as the organizing principle. It consists of a series of alliances, the most important of which is NATO and, through NATO, the Partnership for Peace which girds the Northern Hemisphere,” he writes.

Soros acknowledges that the NATO countries have no appetite for “body bags,” but his statement implicitly indicates that Eastern Europeans can fill this role.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/george-soros-urged-use-eastern-european-soldiers-reduce-risk-body-bags-nato-countries

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

As the war in Ukraine rages on, there is little doubt that the human cost has been enormous for Ukraine, including what is likely more than 100,000 soldiers who have died in combat operations.

However, there was one man who predicted much of what has come to pass in the battle in the east of Europe: George Soros.

The billionaire oligarch financier, often portrayed as a humanist, promoted a hard-nosed geopolitical strategy in his 1993 piece entitled “Toward a New World Order: The Future of NATO.”

In the piece, he outlines how Eastern Europeans could be used as the “manpower” in coming conflicts in an effort to reduce the number of deaths in Western countries, which Soros argues the West would not politically tolerate, unlike the east of Europe.

“The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the Partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder,” wrote Soros in the article.

Soros acknowledges that the NATO countries have no appetite for “body bags,” but his statement implicitly indicates that Eastern Europeans can fill this role.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Just Say No to the New Forever War | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 18, 2023

The only way this was ever going to end, outside of escalation to a war between Russia and NATO and the likely end of human civilization, was through a negotiated settlement. It seems preferable that any division be done with a pen rather than a gun.

A recent comment on RonPaul’s Liberty Report-US has spent well in excess of Russia’s annual military budget on Ukraine.

https://mises.org/wire/just-say-no-new-forever-war

Joseph Solis-Mullen

Whenever asked about whether the US will change its policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine, to start pushing for Kyiv to enter negotiations rather than apparently providing as much money and as many weapons as they ask for, the Biden administration’s refrain has been a consistent variation of “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing as long as it takes.”

As long as it takes for what?

For Ukraine to “win” its war against Russia, taking back all land occupied or annexed by Russia since 2014.

While it isn’t clear this is possible, and even less clear that pursuing such a maximalist outcome is in the American national interest, Joe Biden and his administration officials continually play dumb at the notion they could end the war, or they feign offense at the suggestion that the decision isn’t one entirely up to the Ukrainians, a decision the Biden administration cannot and should not in any way influence—it was the Ukrainians, after all, who elected Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a war platform.

Except, of course, that he was voted in on a peace platform.

As is now openly acknowledged, instead of then backing Zelenskyy when he tried to get the ultranationalists in the eastern part of Ukraine to submit to central authority and agree to elections per the Steinmeier Formula to implement Minsk II, as negotiated by the governments of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, the Trump administration shrugged and told Zelenskyy to take a hike. The frontline ultranationalists who told Zelenskyy to go to hell—those are the guys the US government has been working with since 2014 and arming with heavy weapons since 2017.

Not that all the weapons are getting to them, as no one was surprised to find out—nor much of the money for that matter. The situation has gotten so unacceptable that the Washington Post, while it still cheers the hurried passage of every new appropriation earmarked for Ukraine, has dared to openly question where all the guns and money that aren’t going to Ukraine are going. CBS released an entire documentary, which was then almost immediately partially retracted under pressure, casting a critical eye on the policy, which is corporate media speak for “This is a huge problem!”

Rather than halting or slowing the process in response to these justified objections, the Pentagon went ahead in October and put US troops in Ukraine to supervise.

Um. What?

But while the deaths pile up and the stalemate continues, Americans should keep in mind that this is all part of the plan: to get other people killed so the US government can weaken Russia and intimidate China. At least, that is what they think the plan is doing. It is hard to say for sure. Russia will be economically and technologically less robust over the long term, and no one likes running afoul of the US Treasury, but it obviously seems to push Russia and China closer together. Was that part of the plan? If so, was it a good plan?

Other than finally admitting what we already knew, which was that flushing weapons down a black hole half a world away in one of the most corrupt countries in the industrialized world was a bad idea, the so-called Fourth Estate really has been failing abysmally. Though predictable, the corporate press has never met a war it doesn’t love; the copy the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have been publishing is naked war porn: daydreams about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) blowing up the Russian ships blockading Odessa or about seizing the advantage from China and militarizing, or rather further militarizing, the Taiwan Strait in order to show Beijing that Uncle Sam isn’t going to be intimidated.

Because, you know, that’s how the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved without blowing up the world.

Yikes.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Why the CIA Attempted a ‘Maidan Uprising’ in Brazil

Posted by M. C. on January 14, 2023

The US is being slowly but surely expelled from wider Eurasia by concerted actions of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Ukraine is a black hole – where NATO faces a humiliation that will make Afghanistan look like Alice in Wonderland. A feeble EU being forced by Washington to de-industrialize and buy US Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) at absurdly high cost has no essential resources for the Empire to plunder.

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/why-the-cia-attempted-a-maidan-uprising-in-brazil/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=pescobar

PEPE ESCOBAR 

A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at color revolution in Iran.

On Sunday, alleged supporters of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, bypassing flimsy security barricades, climbing on roofs, smashing windows, destroying public property including precious paintings, while calling for a military coup as part of a regime change scheme targeting elected President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva.

According to the US source, the reason for staging the operation – which bears visible signs of hasty planning – now, is that Brazil is set to reassert itself in global geopolitics alongside fellow BRICS states Russia, India, and China.

That suggests CIA planners are avid readers of Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the New York Fed. In his ground-breaking 27 December report titled War and Commodity Encumbrance, Pozsar states that “the multipolar world order is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really but because of ‘BRICSpansion’, I took the liberty to round up.”

He refers here to reports that Algeria, Argentina, Iran have already applied to join the BRICS – or rather its expanded version “BRICS+” – with further interest expressed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.

The US source drew a parallel between the CIA’s Maidan in Brazil and a series of recent street demonstrations in Iran instrumentalized by the agency as part of a new color revolution drive: “These CIA operations in Brazil and Iran parallel the operation in Venezuela in 2002 that was highly successful at the start as rioters managed to seize Hugo Chavez.”

Enter the “G7 of the East”

Straussian neo-cons placed at the top of the CIA, irrespective of their political affiliation, are livid that the “G7 of the East” – as in the BRICS+ configuration of the near future – are fast moving out of the US dollar orbit.

Straussian John Bolton – who has just publicized his interest in running for the US presidency – is now demanding the ouster of Turkey from NATO as the Global South realigns rapidly within new multipolar institutions.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Using Ukraine as a Bloodied Pawn – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on January 12, 2023

The goal in Afghanistan then, as it is in Ukraine now, was simply to harass and bleed Washington’s adversary. Then, as now, there was little concern about the impact on the beleaguered inhabitants in the country serving as an arena for a proxy war – and surprisingly little concern about the wider geo-political ramifications. 

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Galen_Carpenter/2023/01/10/using-ukraine-as-a-bloodied-pawn/

by Ted Galen Carpenter

U.S. and NATO officials routinely contend that assisting Ukraine in its war against Russia is a moral as well as a strategic imperative. Ukraine is supposedly on the frontlines of a global struggle between democracy and freedom on one side and brutal authoritarianism on the other. That justification lacks credibility for two reasons. First, Ukraine itself is a corrupt, repressive autocracy, not a freedom-loving democracy, even if one uses the most flexible, expansive definition of “democracy.” Second, the Russia-Ukraine war is a nasty turf fight over mundane stakes, not part of an existential global confrontation between good and evil.

It is hard to determine how much Western political leaders and their media mouthpieces actually believe their own moralistic propaganda. Some likely have drunk the Kool Aid, but others clearly have more practical (and less savory) reasons for wanting Washington to wage a proxy war against Russia. First and foremost, the financial benefits to the military-industrial complex are enormous. The United States has already provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv, and a major portion of those funds are going to pay for Ukraine’s purchases (now or in the near future) of weapons systems from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, or other manufacturers. Those firms also will benefit from the destruction of weapons already provided to Kyiv, since US stockpiles supposedly must be replenished. The usual collection of hawks already are sounding alarms that the arsenals of the United States and its NATO allies have become significantly depleted.

However, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin may have inadvertently disclosed a broader, ignoble motive for the proxy war. An April 2022 statement that he issued in Poland at the end of his stealth visit to Kyiv emphasized that Washington’s goal was not merely to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, but to “weaken Russia” to the point that it could no longer pose a threat to any other country. Achieving such an objective would indisputably require a prolonged war in Ukraine – regardless of the consequences to the Ukrainian people.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The War in Ukraine has Underscored the Necessity of America Exiting NATO – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on January 5, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/the_war_in_ukraine_has_underscored_the_necessity_of_america_exiting_nato_.html

By Steve McCann

With the passage of the ludicrous omnibus bill the total amount spent and committed to be spent by the United States in Ukraine since the Russian invasion is in excess of $110 Billion.  That amount exceeds the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 130 nations. Further, only America and its chief adversaries China ($239 Billion) and Russia ($154 Billion) spend more per year on their defense budgets.

During this same period of time the 27 nations of the European Union plus Great Britain have spent or committed to spend $36 Billion in Ukraine or half of what the taxpayers in the United States have been obligated to contribute.   

Meanwhile the U.S. national debt is now $31.5 Trillion and will, due to unconstrained spending, increase at least another $15+ Trillion in less than ten years, thereby abetting uncontrolled inflation and potential insolvency.   (It took this nation 224 years to accumulate the first $15 Trillion, 13 years for the second $15 Trillion and less than 10 years for the third $15 Trillion.) The United States with less than 5% of the world’s population is responsible for 45% of global national debt.   

By comparison, the national debt of the 27 countries in the European Union plus Great Britain is currently $18 Trillion, and their debt is equivalent to 90% of their annual GDP ($20.4 Trillion). The national debt of the United States is equivalent to 137% of its annual GDP ($23.3 Trillion) as America’s national debt far exceeds its annual economic output. 

Why is the United States, experiencing runaway inflation and unfathomable debt growth, footing the vast majority of the cost and not the nations of Europe who can afford it and are most directly impacted and threatened by the Ukrainian invasion?   Why, despite America’s unparalleled level of spending, is Volodymyr Zelensky unabashedly browbeating the United States to commit to unlimited as well as unaudited billions more?  Why, in response to this browbeating, is the feckless Joe Biden and members of both parties in Congress committed to spending American taxpayer money in Ukraine for an undefined “as long as it takes”. 

The answer lies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, an alliance in which America took upon itself the role of the military protector of Western Europe.  The ruling class in the United States, regardless of changing circumstances in Europe and incapable of restraining their lust for spending, fervently believes that it is their calling to protect the ancestral home of socialism and modern day globalism.    

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »