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Posts Tagged ‘Nuclear war’

Dailywire Article-UN: Risk Of Nuclear War At Record High. Please Engage In Peace Talks, Russia And Ukraine.

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

https://www.dailywire.com/news/un-risk-of-nuclear-war-at-record-high-please-engage-in-peace-talks-russia-and-ukraine

By  Tim Meads

Ukraine-Russia Bomb
(OLGA Zhukovskaya via Getty Images)

Well, folks, don’t look now, but the “risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the cold war,” according to the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu.

The war in Ukraine — obviously — is what is driving that risk. Based on reports made during the UN’s security council on Friday, that war isn’t ending any time soon — as if there were any doubt of that. Americans should know it is not going to end any time soon, our commander-in-chief has said that our tax dollars and equipment will be supporting Ukraine in its battle against Russia for “as long as it takes” — whatever that means. The Swamp wants this war to continue — and so it will.

While Biden has been banging the war drums, Putin has been chatting with its neighbors and new BFF Belarus. Now, reports indicate that Russia will be stationing non-strategic nuclear weapons within Belarus territory. According to the UN, those will be in place for aerial use by July.

For its part, Russia denies such accusations.

“We are pursuing cooperation with Belarus without violating obligations,” Russian ambassador and Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday. “We are not transferring nuclear weapons. We are talking about the retrofitting of airplanes and training teams in the construction of a storage facility on the territory of Belarus.”

Yet he did make sure to note that Russia would respond to any “provocative measures” as it saw fit, while adding, “A nuclear war cannot be won.”

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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.

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.

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Blowing Up the World When So Little Is at Stake | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 16, 2022

By no means should Anton be taken as a supporter of the policies of Vladimir Putin, and those who in response urge the defects of the Russian dictator have not grasped the key point of Anton’s argument. We no longer face the bleak prospect of being “Red or Dead,” if indeed we ever did, and nothing less than this could justify pushing Russia to the nuclear brink.

https://mises.org/wire/blowing-world-when-so-little-stake

David Gordon

In last week’s column, I discussed Christophers Coyne’s excellent book In Search of Monsters to Destroy, a cogent account of America’s endeavor to build a “liberal” informal empire. Coyne shows the inherent contradiction of using brutal means to achieve humane values. This week, I’d like to discuss an even more deplorable part of American foreign policy, one which threatens the world with destruction. During the Cold War, the United States risked nuclear war with the Soviet Union; and though the Cold War ended long ago, American support for Ukraine in its war with Russia again risks atomic war. The dangers inherent in American policy have been discussed by Michael Anton, whom readers will recall from previous columns, in his thoughtful article “Nuclear Autumn,” which appeared in the fall 2022 Claremont Review of Books, and I’m going to focus my comments on his remarks.

Anton’s argument is in essence this: The United States came close several times during the Cold War to nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and this would have had appalling consequences. Nevertheless, the danger of losing the world struggle to communism made this risky policy at least arguably rational, at least until 1983, after which the Cold War lessened in intensity. In present circumstances, though, matters are entirely different. Russia, unlike Soviet communism, poses no threat to the United States, yet America’s nuclear policy is more reckless than ever before. Given the consequences of nuclear war, we ought to adopt a less interventionist Ukrainian policy.

As you would anticipate, I agree with the latter part of Anton’s analysis, but the former seems questionable. Anton says,

Conservative conventional wisdom soon hardened around this interpretation, where it has remained ever since: Reagan’s initial toughness was a necessary corrective to Carter’s fecklessness and Nixon’s détente, put the Soviets on their back foot, and forced them back to the table, resetting the stage for a Western victory. Nineteen eighty-three came to be seen as a kind of mirror-image of 1938, teaching the same lesson: appeasement begets war, toughness brings peace—or better yet, victory.

There is no doubt something to this, but even on its own terms, this rendering skips over important elements. The first is that the stakes matter. And the stakes in the Cold War were the very highest: the survival of the free world and maybe even the existence of the whole world. By 1980, it was plausible to fear that freedom and even humanity were losing. It was therefore not unreasonable to believe that calculated risks were warranted.

But you never know where toughness might lead, what it might provoke. When the consequences of toughness could be total destruction, it is rational—moral, even—to be tough only when the stakes are equally enormous. Toughness not in the service of a core interest—or the core of all core interests—is not merely foolish but reckless.

The apostles of nuclear brinkmanship said that the survival of the free world was at stake during the Cold War, but though they were no doubt right that the horrors of living under the gulag were worth fighting to prevent, it is not evident that the nations of the “West,” to use the Cold War argot, faced this threat. The Soviet Union had a relatively poor economy and had enough trouble keeping the Warsaw Pact nations in line without pursuing Western expansion in serious fashion. The Cold Warriors would have done better to heed the lessons of Ludwig von Mises’s calculation argument: so long as the Soviets continued their efforts at central planning, their economy was bound to collapse.

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Walking Wide Awake into World War III | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2022

Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton agrees; “You call it sleepwalking but everybody’s wide awake. It’s just, they’re stupid.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/walking-wide-awake-into-world-war-iii/

by John Weeks

pexels victor freitas 865711

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with rising tensions between NATO and Russia, have drawn comparisons to the outbreak of World War I.

In 2014, back when the open hostilities in Ukraine really began, the journalist Eric Margolis said “We can stumble into a war with Russia. This reminds me of 1914 all over again.”

This “stumbling” of course refers to the “sleepwalking thesis of war” that is part of both popular and scholarly narratives of World War I.

The International Relations realist Stephen Walt warned “the West is sleepwalking into war in Ukraine” the day before Russia invaded. The World Health Organization (yes, that one) has warned the world could be sleepwalking into a nuclear war. And the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network is concerned the world might be “sleepwalking into nuclear Armageddon.”

Unfortunately, it’s much worse than that. The United States is marching wide awake toward general nuclear war.

Princeton University historian Stephen Kotkin has criticized the sleepwalking thesis of war as a comforting myth that remains “close to people’s hearts” to this day.

“Nobody ever sleepwalks into war,” he says.

Kotkin points out that the government and military archives of the Great Powers contain thousands of orders to move horses, hay, and weapons systems into place to prosecute the war years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. The Great Powers also imposed military conscription to ensure they would have a wealth of young men to feed into the slaughter.

Kotkin says:

You go into the archives, and you see nothing but decisions being made towards war. And somehow this is known as sleepwalking towards war. There was no sleepwalking to World War I. There was only preparation for war. There was nothing but incessant preparation to war.

Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton agrees; “You call it sleepwalking but everybody’s wide awake. It’s just, they’re stupid.”

The stupidity continues.

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It’s Time To Tell Biden We Say ‘NO!’ To Nuclear War!

Posted by M. C. on October 12, 2022

Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside Russia. The murder of Dugina was a textbook definition of terrorism, which is, “the use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.”

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/nonukewar?e=4e0de347c8

Ron Paul

Oct. 10 – Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.

Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside Russia. The murder of Dugina was a textbook definition of terrorism, which is, “the use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.”

Just over a month later, the Nordstream pipelines were blown up, seemingly ending at least in the near term the possibility that Germany may find a way to save its economy by mending fences with its main energy supplier. A leading Polish politician thanked the US for doing the job.

Then over the weekend, the bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea was bombed, killing at least six civilians and leaving part of the bridge under water. Traffic was restored hours after the attack, but Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the blame on Ukraine’s intelligence service. We all know that Ukraine relies on its US masters, so we can assume the US provided the intelligence allowing the targeting of the bridge.

There is a pattern here. More and more brazen attacks are being launched against Russia and Washington is doing little to hide US fingerprints. Why?

The Biden Administration seems to be moving us closer to nuclear war over Ukraine and Biden himself seems to know it. Last week he said, Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons…” For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of nuclear weapons] if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

So the question is if he knows that his proxy war against Russia is moving us closer to the unthinkable – nuclear annihilation – why does his Administration persist in crossing red line after red line? Apparently, Biden’s “experts” believe that Putin is bluffing and will do nothing about the Dugina assassination, the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, and the Kerch Bridge attack.

But what if they’re wrong?

Normally foreign policy action should be weighed on a cost/benefit basis. Will adopting one particular policy benefit the United States more than the risks involved? In this case there is absolutely nothing on the positive side of the ledger. Will the security and prosperity of the United States benefit more from regime change in Russia than it would suffer should nuclear war break out?

It doesn’t seem all that hard. No.

So what’s going on here? Why does the US Administration – with the support of most Republicans in Congress – continue to send tens of billions of dollars in military aid and move us toward nuclear war over a conflict that has nothing at all to do with the United States?

The time to end US participation in this war is yesterday. And if it takes millions of Americans in the streets peacefully protesting while demanding that their representatives stop this madness, then bring it on. Tomorrow may be too late.



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Only Adult Children Still Believe U.S. Propaganda

Posted by M. C. on October 1, 2022

When President Kennedy, deeply chastened by the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, spoke about real peace and democracy at American University on June 10, 1963, he was the last American leader to recognize that international relations had to undergo a radical change, especially in the nuclear age.  Demonizing other countries had to give way to dialogue and mutual respect.  He said:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

Five months later the CIA made sure his voice was stilled.  Such sentiments have been verboten ever since.

http://edwardcurtin.com/only-adult-children-still-believe-u-s-propaganda/

Edward Curtin

It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so.  It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match.  The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in “Brainwashed for War with Russia,” the Biden administration and their media lackeys

… will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China …. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse – or a modicum of embarrassment.

Many good writers – all of whom are banned from mainstream media – have  made clear why the corporate media propaganda about the US/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is false and egregiously dangerous.  The government of the U.S.A. is led by morons in the demonic grip of the “The U.S. Should Rule the World” ideology.  It is nothing new.

I don’t wish to debate the facts, for that is a fool’s game created to suggest there is something to debate.  For the evidence is clear, except to the public in the grip of propaganda-induced ignorance or those elites who never learned from the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis that dark Furies will destroy those who in their hubris push the limits.  The Biden administration has already done that, while President Biden mutters inanities as if he were a mafia boss wandering the streets in his pajamas and slippers.  The recent sabotaging of Nord Stream 2 is another example of the treacherous road we are traveling, as Diana Johnstone makes clear in her recent article, “Omerta in the Gangster War.”

For years, the U.S.- run NATO has moved military forces and bases into countries encircling Russia. This includes weapons that can very quickly be converted to nuclear use. This, as I’ve pointed out before, is tantamount to Russia doing the same in Mexico and Canada, and let’s add Cuba as well.  We know what the U.S. response would be, but when President Putin and his government objected and said this is a betrayal of previous agreements, he was dismissed as if he were a child making things up.

In 2014, when the U.S. engineered a coup in Ukraine, bringing into power neo-Nazi elements, and Russia protested this coup on its western border, Washington mocked such concerns. Every time Russia has complained about such provocative moves, the U.S. has dismissed them as inconsequential.

For years the U.S. has supported the Ukrainian killing of the Russian speaking peoples of eastern Ukraine, and finally, when Ukraine had amassed forces to invade the Donbas region, the Russian government had had enough and sent troops into the region to defend this area.  Thus the hypocritical West played at outrage that what they had created was finally backfiring.  Russia was cast as the guilty party for invading Ukraine.  And now a full-fledged U.S. war against Russia is out in the open and it will become more dangerous as it continues.  Nuclear annihilation becomes a very real possibility as the Biden administration continues to push the envelope.

There will be no end to the war in Ukraine because the U.S. is intent on doing everything in its power to try to bring Russia to its knees.  It is madness on its face, but then insane people are in charge. In this process, everyone is expendable, friends, foes, and anyone who stands in its way, including the U.S.’s supposed European allies whose leaders seem intent on destroying their own countries.

Perhaps ironically – but I think not, as a knowledge of history confirms – the volte-face of the American liberal class with its promotion of the new Cold War, censorship, the CIA, and FBI and the so-called progressive Democratic politicians in the U.S congress, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, embracing and voting for war with Russia via Ukraine, should be no great surprise. These people, and their Republican counterparts, with rare exceptions here and there, live on desolation row and flip when so ordered.  But “nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row,” in Dylan’s words, because it’s the social disease we inhabit, and like fish in water, many know nothing else.

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We Might Be Spared Nuclear War For Now But The Threat Of Home-Grown Tyranny Remains

Posted by M. C. on September 26, 2022

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

If you want to comprehend the collapse of the West, compare, for example, Liz Truss and her UK government with the British government around the middle of the 19th century. James Grant in his biography of Walter Bagehot reports, for example, that Prime Minister Gladstone translated Horace and Homer, published substantial works on religion and Neapolitan politics, and addressed the Ionian assembly in classical Greek. Parliamentarian Robert Lowe was fluent in Sanskrit. Sir George Lewis was the author of Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. The House of Lords had its own learned members. Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Britain’s National Academy of Sciences. Today we have presidents and prime ministers who can’t speak English.

In the US merit has been redefined as racist, and educational standards have been so lowered that the large grocery store chains do not trust their checkout clerks to give change.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-might-be-spared-nuclear-war-now-threat-home-grown-tyranny-remains

As readers know, I am convinced that Putin’s toleration of insults and provocations has had the effect of encouraging more and worse provocations and not, as he intended, to downplay conflict.  As you also know, I am convinced that his “limited military operation” in Donbass designed to protect the Donbass Russians, formerly a part of Russia, from horrible abuse by Ukrainian forces and the neo-Nazi militias, was a mistake.  It is a mistake because the West characterized a limited operation as an “invasion of Ukraine,” and used its slow progress as evidence of Russian failure.  It is a mistake because the go-slow nature of the Russian offensive in order to minimize the impact on civilian lives and infrastructure gave the West plenty of time to convince itself to get more and more involved with diplomatic support, money, armaments and ammunition, training, and now with satellite  information for targeting the Russian forces.

As I see it, Putin has been behaving as British Prime Minister Chamberlain is alleged to have behaved, thus encouraging more aggressive actions.  Wanting peace at all costs brings war.

As it is no longer possible for the Kremlin to speak of  “our Western partners” or to deny that the West is at war with Russia, the Kremlin, trying to avoid a war that it knows would be nuclear, has reached my conclusion of eight years ago that if the areas in today’s artificial borders of Ukraine that require Russian protection were reincorporated into Russia, the conflict would have to cease or become direct Western military aggression against Russia.  As Biden says he has no stomach for a war with Russia and will not permit one, and as NATO is incapable of such war, the referendums that begin today in the liberated areas of Ukraine, which without question will succeed, promise to reduce the threat of Armageddon.  Although in my opinion the leadership everywhere in the Western world is Satanic and insane, I do not think the Western governing elites are ready to commit suicide by attacking Russian territory. The West can say it doesn’t recognize the rights of people to self-determination, but if Russia says it is Russian territory, it is.

So that you understand, the referendums are Putin’s way of ending the conflict before it widens into nuclear war.  Putin’s rescue of the world from nuclear war will not be acknowledged by the Western presstitutes, Washington’s puppet EU and UK governments, or by the puppet who serves as NATO secretary general.  

But what they think does not matter. Putin, belatedly, is doing his best to save us all from nuclear war.  Pray that he succeeds.

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British PM Hopeful Says She’s ‘Ready’ to Launch Nuclear War

Posted by M. C. on August 27, 2022

Sleep Tight!

I keep forgetting, is the UK our puppet or is the US theirs?

by Will Porter 

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/british-pm-hopeful-says-shes-ready-to-launch-nuclear-war/

FILE PHOTOS: The ‘Baker’ nuclear weapon test is seen at Bikini Atoll, July 25, 1946; UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. (Credit: Pentagon; UK Prime Minister’s Office)

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has declared that she is ready and willing to kick off thermonuclear warfare should she take over as prime minister, stressing her hawkish bonafides as she seeks to replace Boris Johnson.

Appearing at a town hall event in Birmingham on Tuesday, Truss was asked how she would feel about ordering “global annihilation” in the event of a nuclear standoff with a foreign adversary. 

“I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick,” said host John Pienaar, who went on to ask: “How does that thought make you feel?”

“I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do that,” Truss replied, drawing applause from the audience. When Pienaar asked again how that decision would make her “feel,” she simply stated “I’m ready to do it.”

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The insane neoconservatives who control US foreign policy are leading us to nuclear war

Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2022

The insane neoconservatives who control US foreign policy are leading us to nuclear war

Russia will never trust the West again – Kremlin. 

Clarification: In this article I write that under the neoconservative Wolfowitz Doctrine of US hegemony, “the Kremlin has two choices. Russia can surrender its sovereignty or Russia can destroy the West. Russia has no other alternative. The entire world needs to understand this.” I am not advocating that Russia destroy the West. I am simply pointing out that for three decades the West has confronted Russia with this limited choice. Putin himself has complained about it over and over. I find it astonishing that the Western “foreign policy community,” whatever that is, has permitted a policy that corners a powerful nuclear power such as Russia in this way. And it continues. Now we have Lithuania blocking Russia’s access to part of Russia. This is insanity. This is confirming Russian conclusions that only force can constrain the West.

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NATO Engaged in Direct Aggression Against Russia

A wider war is Washington’s goal

Paul Craig Roberts

As I have many times written, the Kremlin’s Ukraine operation cannot be limited. Washington will not permit it to be limited. Washington has already widened the conflict, and is now widening the conflict further. The insane Jewish neoconservatives who have control over US foreign policy have prevailed on tiny, helpless Lithuania to violate the agreement with Russia for the provision of Kaliningrad and has received a Russian ultimatum. The moronic State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed the ultimatum as “bluster.” The White House idiot says Washington backs Lithuania. In other words, Washington is egging on a wider war.

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The Cheese in the Trap: When Will the Populist Right Join the War Party?

Posted by M. C. on March 25, 2022

Meanwhile, the populist Right’s narrative on China has infiltrated independent media. Figures like Tim PoolJoe RoganSteven CrowderBen ShapiroLex FridmanSaagar EnjetiJack PosobiecThe Young Turks, and many others, push the same narratives about China that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did in her statement. Why are these figures trying so hard to convince Americans that their enemy is not the politicians controlling their lives, but instead is a regional power on the other side of the globe?

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-cheese-in-the-trap-when-will-the-populist-right-join-the-war-party/

by Patrick Macfarlane

mtg for patrick

On Wednesday, March 13, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene released a statement on the war in Ukraine.

As the White House is purposely prolonging the conflict, risking a wider war, Greene’s statement is praiseworthy and needed.

She condemned weapons shipments to Ukraine, decried the establishment of a no-fly zone, and warned of the real risk of nuclear war with Russia. She criticized America’s long, pointless wars in the Middle East. She spoke against sanctions that would prevent Russia from exporting fertilizer, grains, and energy and warned these measures will push Russia closer to China. She called for a declaration that Ukraine will never join NATO. She said that the U.S. must broker peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. She even mentioned the American role in the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

There is much to like about what she said. But at the same time, her statement contained many hawkish narratives that have become synonymous with the populist Right, mainly, that:

  • Joe Biden is weak (if only he were more aggressive, we wouldn’t be in this mess)
  • U.S. involvement in Ukraine plays into China’s hands (the 21st Century is defined by great power competition with China)
  • Joe Biden caused the war in Ukraine by lifting sanctions on the Nordstream II pipeline (despite previously saying sanctions are a precursor to war)
  • U.S. dependence on foreign goods makes us weaker (economic decoupling from China)
  • “Deadly Chinese fentanyl” is flowing through our southern border each day (China has infiltrated domestic policy and is attacking us from within)

Her statement largely echoes the prevailing narrative on the populist Right, that, instead of picking a fight with Russia, or wasting blood and treasure in the Middle East, the United States should instead focus on countering China.

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