On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked an effort in the Senate to hold a quick vote on the nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine that passed in the House on Tuesday.
“My oath of office is to the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said on the Senate floor before blocking the vote. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.”
Paul blocked the vote because he wanted to include text in the bill that would create a special inspector general for oversight of the billions being sent to Ukraine. He initially offered to include the oversight as an amendment, which would have been voted on separately, but he ultimately wanted to change the legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) were hoping to get the legislation passed on Thursday night, demonstrating the bipartisan support for spending massive amounts of money to fund Ukraine’s war. Paul’s objection will set the vote back at least one week.
“The vast majority of senators on both sides of the aisle want it. There’s now only one thing holding us back the junior senator from Kentucky is preventing swift passage of Ukraine aid because he wants to add at the last minute his own changes directly into the bill,” Schumer said.
In the House, the $39.8 billion aid package passed in a vote of 368-57, with only Republicans voting against the legislation. The vote came as Americans are facing soaring gas prices, and over 8% inflation rates, a 40-year high. “Americans are feeling the pain [from inflation] and Congress seems intent only on adding to that pain by shoveling more money out the door as fast as they can,” Paul said.
By claiming credit for Ukraine’s most visible military successes, we diminish the achievements of that country’s own forces.
By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III.
The US goal of imposing a crushing defeat of Russian aggression is secondary to our far more vital interest in avoiding a U.S.-Russia war.
Last week, sources leaked to The New York Times that, in Ukraine’s targeting and killing of Russian generals and the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, U.S. intelligence played an indispensable role.
Apparently, our intel people identified and located for the Ukrainian forces what became the targets of their deadly attacks.
Why US intelligence would do this seems inexplicable.
By claiming credit for Ukraine’s most visible military successes, we diminish the achievements of that country’s own forces.
By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III.
Moreover, US boasting like this plays right into Putin’s narrative that Russia is facing and fighting in Ukraine a U.S.-led alliance that is out to crush Russia.
Indeed, why are we going beyond assistance to the Ukrainians in defending themselves, into making this American’s war?
When Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Poland following her visit to Kyiv, she virtually embraced the idea of the Ukraine-Russia war as now being America’s war, declaring, “America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”
Accompanying Pelosi to Kyiv was a delegation of House Democrats, one of whom, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, echoed Pelosi in Poland:
“The United States of America is in this to win.”
Their visit followed that of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who came out of Kyiv and declared the US strategic goals in Ukraine’s war:
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things it has done in invading Ukraine.”
No wonder the price of US corn reached a 10-year high in mid-April, as exports from Russia and Ukraine, major sources, are now blocked by sanction and war. Aside from the energy-inefficient use of US corn for biodiesel supply, the latest Biden ethanol initiative will add to the growing food crisis while doing nothing to lower US gasoline prices.
It’s beginning to look like some bad actors are deliberately taking steps to guarantee a coming global food crisis. Every measure that the Biden Administration strategists have been making to “control energy inflation” is damaging the supply or inflating the price of natural gas, oil and coal to the global economy. This is having a huge impact on fertilizer prices and food production. That began well before Ukraine. Now reports are circulating that Biden’s people have intervened to block the freight rail shipping of fertilizer at the most critical time for spring planting. By this autumn the effects will be explosive.
With the crucial time for USA spring planting at its critical phase, CF Industries of Deerfield, Illinois, the largest US supplier of nitrogen fertilizers as well as a vital diesel engine additive, issued a press release stating that, “On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective immediately.” Union Pacific is one of only four major rail companies that together carry some 80% of all US agriculture rail freight. The CF company CEO, Tony Will stated, “The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers. Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.” CF has made urgent appeals to the Biden Administration for remedy, so far with no positive action.
Direct sabotage
CF Industries noted that they were one of only thirty companies subject to the severe measure, which is indefinite. They ship via Union Pacific rail lines primarily from its Donaldsonville Complex in Louisiana and its Port Neal Complex in Iowa, to serve key farm states including Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California. The ban will affect nitrogen fertilizers such as urea and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), as well as diesel exhaust fluid, DEF (called AdBlue in Europe). DEF is an emissions control product required for diesel trucks today. Without it engines cannot run. It is made from urea. CF Industries is the largest producer of urea, UAN and DEF in North America, and its Donaldsonville Complex is the largest single production facility for the products in North America.
At the same time, the Biden gang has announced a fake remedy for record high gasoline pump prices. Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-ethanol biofuels. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed the measure would “reduce energy prices and tackle rising consumer prices caused by Putin’s Price Hike (sic) by tapping into a strong and bright future for the biofuel industry, in cars and trucks and the rail, marine, and aviation sectors and supporting use of €15 fuel this summer.”
Only the capitalized “Putin Price Hike” is not a result of Russian actions, but of Washington Green Energy decisions to phase out oil and gas.
After hounding the US and other NATO members for weeks about his need for heavy weapons to defend against Russia’s ongoing “special military operation”, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to have been granted his wish. The US Congress, on April 28, passed legislation that breathed life into a World War II-era law that would allow the US to quickly supply weapons to Ukraine on loan.
By a vote of 417 to 10, the House of Representatives sent the revised 80-year-old law to the desk of President Joe Biden, where he is expected to sign it (the US Senate had earlier passed the legislation unanimously.)
“Passage of that act enabled Great Britain and Winston Churchill to keep fighting and to survive the fascist Nazi bombardment until the United States could enter the war,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland who has been at the forefront of anti-Russian legislation over the years. “President Zelensky has said that Ukraine needs weapons to sustain themselves, and President Biden has answered that call.”
The Congressional action comes on the heels of President Biden approving an additional $33 billion in military aid on top of the nearly $3 billion already provided to Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia. While much of the earlier weapons shipments focused on light weaponry such as anti-tank missiles and man-portable air defense systems, the new support package places an emphasis on heavy weaponry, such as howitzers and armored fighting vehicles, which Ukraine needs to replace equipment destroyed or damaged in battle.
Beware of what you wish for.
General Omar Bradley, a famous American military commander during World War II who knew more than a thing or two about killing Nazis, is attributed with saying“amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” For every piece of heavy equipment that the Ukrainian military is about to receive as part of this massive infusion of military aid provided by the US there is attached the unspoken yet critical reality of the issue of maintenance and sustainability. Simply put, if its broke, you can’t use it. And military equipment breaks – frequently – especially when subjected to the strains and stress of unending modern combat.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
In his interview with Dave Smith, Colonel MacGregor yearns for “the kind of country that we were a hundred years ago, which in most cases, was interested in intervening to end conflicts, not with military power, but to offer its services as an objective partner, as someone who could bring two sides together and avoid a larger more destructive conflict“ Does this sound like isolationism and lack of compassion for our fellow man?
Libertarians, liberty-wing Republicans, and other opponents of nondefensive wars are popularly misconceived as having an “every man for himself” approach to both economics and foreign policy. Of course, this is patently false in both cases, but this piece will focus on clarifying the latter.
Local Libertarian activist Roy Minet, who has also written about the former, touched on the popular myth of isolationism in his 2014 LNParticle: “Apparently, they call anyone who doesn’t support their various military interventions around the globe an isolationist.” I made this same point in my 2017 piece about how the isolationist label helped kill Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. This conflation of noninterventionism with “isolationism” continues to squelch and distort the message of antiwar voices … which is particularly relevant given the current events in Ukraine.
The Libertarian National Committee recently sent out a mailer titled “No War with Russia.” It warns of the danger of entangling alliances and lays out a brief history of Russia and the US’s precarious relationship and the role the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has played in it. The prescription is noninterventionism because “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
A recent article on mises.org further explains how the state, along with its media allies, exhibits a pattern of concocting crises to perpetuate the power of this hammer: “What defines our present condition is how the moral panics are used to rally a civilian army that revels in the demise of the nonconforming opposition…. The Russia-Ukraine War is an easy lightning rod that the government and established centers of power in society can use to demonize Americans who hold the wrong view.”
This “wrong view” is often merely a more nuanced and contextualized view of the situation than what is found in mainstream legacy media. “The answer for why Americans pine for more war is probably complicated, but it’s clear that they generally hold simplistic views of the situation over there.”
Perhaps it is people’s resignation to the idea that the history and context of the conflict are too complicated to grasp that leads them to accept the simplistic narrative they are fed. Consequently, popular virtue signaling seems to be centered around criticism of Vladimir Putin and conceding nothing to him (even if this comes at the expense of Ukrainians themselves). But noninterventionism takes the sensible position that Putin is not our leader and that thus Americans can’t hold him accountable for bad behavior. Conversely, if we at least acknowledge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s role in provoking this conflict, we can work toward holding our own leaders accountable and press them to create a more diplomacy-friendly atmosphere.
This exemplary takedown of the “Ukraine” propaganda comes from Russell Bentley of Texas, now living in the Donbas (and some of whose interviews I’ve posted here):
There’s a wise old maxim that says, “The first step on the road to wisdom is to call things by their right names.” So, let’s do that.
“Fake News” has been around a long while, The New York Sun’s “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 is a good (and amusing) example. An absolute falsehood and fantasy was published as fact to a credulous public who ate it up. This fake news story about the moon established The Sun as a major and highly profitable newspaper throughout the United States. Fifty years later, Hearst and Pulitzer were competing with each other for readership by publishing preposterous and sensationalist phony stories that became known as “yellow journalism”, or as I simply call it, “urinalism”. Because the media that publish such swill, and the hacks that write for them, are fit only for cleaning toilets. But those carefree days are long in the past, and fake news is no longer funny.
The practice of publishing false stories for financial or political motives has probably been around much longer than that, but today it has been elevated to a science and an art form, a black art form, that is truly one of the greatest threats to the future of Humanity in the world today. It is mass brainwashing on a global scale, abetted by science and technology, a war on human consciousness, a concentrated and deliberate attack on people’s ability to see reality, to discern fact from lies, it is a war against the truth.
It has been correctly said that a respect for the truth is the basis for all morality, so a war against the truth is a war against morality, against all that is good and decent. Without an ability to see reality and detect lies, without a moral compass, people are literally no more than dumb beasts, mules to be worked and exploited by their owners, or sheep to be led to the slaughter. “Fake news” is a term a bit too cute and cozy for the black art of intentionally erasing the very intellect and morality that makes us human. It seeks to dumb down and degrade Humanity to the point to where people are no longer human. And that point is fast approaching, and for many, is already here.
I want to give three concrete and irrefutable examples of genuine nazi propaganda, produced by the West, (US and EU) about the war in Ukraine in just the last month, which not only attempt to cover up the crime of intentional mass murder attacks on civilians, but go further still and attempt to blame the actual victims for the crimes of US, EU and Ukrainian nazis. You will see by these three indisputable examples how disinformation is used as a truly evil weapon, how to defend against it, and how to destroy it with the truth.
Example #1 La Stampa (Italy) FRONT PAGE PHOTO – “THE CARNAGE”
The Italian propaganda rag La Stampa published the photo above on 15 March, 2022, showing a horrific scene of mass murder of civilians by illegal cluster munitions delivered to a city center by a ballistic missile. 24 civilians (including an entire family with 2 kids) were murdered, and dozens more gravely injured. The headlines in red across the top – “Russia kills 400 in Mariupol, Kiev prepares for Russian attack”. Emblazoned across the photo, “The Carnage”. The photo is real, and while the headlines are intentionally misleading, they are not outright lies. They don’t have to be. The liars at La Stampa don’t have to actually lie, most Europeans, like most US citizens are far too stupid to actually look beyond the headlines, and are easily deceived by nothing more than insinuations. And pro-nazi propagandists like those at La Stampa know it.
I could tell you that the photo actually shows the results of a Ukrainian Army war crime by a Tochka-U missile that was intentionally launched at Donetsk city center around 12:00 noon on Monday March 14th, that in fact it was intended to kill many times more than the 24 civilians who were murdered. I could tell you that the weekend before, fake ukrop troll accounts on Russian and other social media spread false stories that the DPR administration would be giving news about the status of DPR soldiers at 12:30 on March 14th at the Administration Building in central Donetsk, and wives, mothers, daughters of soldiers should come there then.
But even if they were allowed a vote, the Ukrainians understood what antisecessionist Americans refuse to admit: cultural minority groups that are out of favor with the central government’s elites have a better chance at true self-determination through secession rather than unity and democracy. Although Ukraine was the most important non-Russian component of the USSR, it was nonetheless in the minority. At the time, Ukrainian separatists believed Russian ethnics would dominate politics within a post-Soviet democracy. They were probably right.
By now, it should be abundantly clear to all that the official US regime narrative on Ukraine is that one is supposed to be in favor of Ukrainian political independence. That is, we’re supposed to support the idea that Ukraine is a separate state that is politically independent from the Russian state. By extension, of course, the idea that Ukraine is a sovereign state also implies it is separate from all other states as well.
But how did Ukraine get that way? States, of course, don’t appear out of nowhere. They generally come into being through one of two ways, or a combination of both. States can be formed out of two or more smaller states through a process of conquest or voluntary union. And states can result when a part of a state secedes to form its own state.
In the case of Ukraine, it is a state that was created out of a piece of the Soviet Union thirty years ago. This occurred via secession. Indeed, Ukraine was part of a remarkable trend toward decentralization and secession that occurred in the early 1990s. These secession movements, of course, were opposed by the “legitimate” central government in place at the time.
Put another way, to “stand with Ukraine” today is to “stand with secession.” But don’t expect to hear it phrased this way on MSNBC or at the New York Times. No, the “s word” is still a no-no in political discourse in America. Also a no-no is to advocate for the process that brought about Ukrainian secession: to hold an election—against the central government’s wishes—as to whether a region will secede.
The Ukrainians did that, and today we’re supposed to cheer that and accept that election’s outcome. Many American pundits even believe it’s worth fighting a war over. But to suggest something similar for a region of the United States? Well, we’re told that’s just plain wrong.
Ukraine Formed Out of Secession
The modern Ukrainian state was necessarily born out of secession because the Ukrainian state was not always separate nor sovereign. The history of Ukraine is a long history of various territories and polities that were, over time, incorporated into the Russian Empire beginning in the seventeenth century. What we now know as Ukraine more or less only came into being in the late nineteenth century. But then it was subject to the Russian czar and (later) to the Soviet Communists. Consolidated, sovereign Ukraine came into being only in December 1991, when a referendum was held and a majority of the voters voted for independence.
Ukraine soon after enjoyed both de facto and de jure independence because the Soviet State was too weak to do anything about it. Ukraine was not alone. By late 1991, the Baltic states had already declared independence, in moves that were opposed by the Soviet state and deemed illegal. A total of fifteen new states were carved out of the Soviet Union during this time. Secessionism extended beyond even the USSR, with Slovenia declaring independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. In 1993, Czechs and Slovakians both seceded from their state, dissolving Czechoslovakia altogether.
It is instructive to note that the United States regime and American pundits generally opposed these secession movements. Washington was late to recognize and accept the independence of the Baltic states. This was in spite of the fact the US had never even officially recognized the Soviet Union’s annexation of the states after the Second World War.
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.
Russia Turns to the East – China Provides an Alternative Economic Powerhouse.
The second pivotal event of 2014 was less noticed and in fact rarely mentioned in the Western mainstream media. In November of that year according to the IMF, China’s GDP surpassed that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity terms (PPP GDP). (This measure of GDP is calculated and published by the IMF, World Bank and even the CIA. Students of international relations like economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, Graham Allison and many others consider this metric the best measure of a nation’s comparative economic power.) One person who took note and who often mentions China’s standing in the PPP-GDP ranking is none other than Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
From one point of view, the Russian action in Ukraine represents a decisive turn away from the hostile West to the more dynamic East and the Global South. This follows decades of importuning the West for a peaceful relationship since the Cold War’s end. As Russia makes its Pivot to the East, it is doing its best to ensure that its Western border with Ukraine is secured.
Following the Russian action in Ukraine, the inevitable U.S. sanctions poured onto Russia. China refused to join them and refused to condemn Russia. This was no surprise; after all Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China had been drawing ever closer for years, most notably with trade denominated in ruble-renminbi exchange, thus moving toward independence from the West’s dollar dominated trade regime.
The World Majority Refuses to Back U.S. Sanctions
But then a big surprise. India joined China in refusing to honor the US sanctions regime. And India kept to its resolve despite enormous pressure including calls from Biden to Modi and a train of high level US, UK and EU officials trekking off to India to bully, threaten and otherwise attempting to intimidate India. India would face “consequences,” the tired US threat went up. India did not budge.
India’s close military and diplomatic ties with Russia were forged during the anti-colonial struggles of the Soviet era. India’s economic interests in Russian exports could not be countermanded by U.S. threats. Now India and Russia are now working on trade via ruble-rupee exchange. In fact, Russia has turned out to be a factor that put India and China on the same side, pursuing their own interests and independence in the face of U.S. diktat. Moreover with trade in ruble-renminbi exchange already a reality and with ruble-rupee exchange in the offing, are we about to witness a Renminbi-Ruble-Rupee world of trade – a “3R” alternative to the Dollar-Euro monopoly? Is the world’s second most important political relationship, that between India and China, about to take a more peaceful direction? What’s the world’s first most important relationship?
India is but one example of the shift in power. Out of 195 countries, only 30 have honored the US sanctions on Russia. That means about 165 countries in the world have refused to join the sanctions. Those countries represent by far the majority of the world’s population. Most of Africa, Latin America (including Mexico and Brazil), East Asia (excepting Japan, South Korea, both occupied by U.S. troops and hence not sovereign, Singapore and the renegade Chinese Province of Taiwan) have refused. (India and China alone represent 35% of humanity.)
Add to that fact that 40 different countries are now the targets of US sanctions and there is a powerful constituency to oppose the thuggish economic tactics of the U.S.
Finally, at the recent G-20 Summit a walkout led by the US when the Russia delegate spoke was joined by the representatives of only 3 other G-20 countries, with 80% of these leading financial nations refusing to join! Similarly, a US attempt to bar a Russian delegate from a G-20 meeting later in the year in Bali was rebuffed by Indonesia which currently holds the G-20 Presidency.
Nations Taking Russia’s side are no longer poor as in Cold War 1.0.
These dissenting countries of the Global South are no longer as poor as they were during the Cold War. Of the top 10 countries in PPP-GDP, 5 do not support the sanctions. And these include China (number one) and India (number 3). So the first and third most powerful economies stand against the US on this matter. (Russia is number 6 on that list about equal to Germany, number 5, the two being close to equal, belying the idea that Russia’s economy is negligible.)
These stands are vastly more significant than any UN vote. Such votes can be coerced by a great power and little attention is paid to them in the world. But the economic interests of a nation and its view of the main danger in the world are important determinants of how it reacts economically – for example to sanctions. A “no” to US sanctions is putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.
We in the West hear that Russia is “isolated in the world” as a result of the crisis in Ukraine. If one is speaking about the Eurovassal states and the Anglosphere, that is true. But considering humanity as a whole and among the rising economies of the world, it is the US that stands isolated. And even in Europe, cracks are emerging. Hungary and Serbia have not joined the sanctions regime and of course most European countries will not and indeed cannot turn away from Russian energy imports crucial to their economies. It appears that the grand scheme of U.S. global hegemony to be brought about by the US move to WWII Redux, both Cold and Hot, has hit a mighty snag.
For those who look forward to a multipolar world, this is a welcome turn of events emerging out of the cruel tragedy of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. The possibility of a saner, more prosperous multipolar world lies ahead – if we can get there.
Indeed, in the case of Ukraine, President George H.W. Bush even traveled to Kyiv in 1990 to lecture the Ukrainians about the dangers of seeking independence from Moscow, while decrying the supposed nationalist threat.
The US government today likes to pretend that it is the perennial champion of political independence for countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the days following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington opposed independence for Soviet republics like Ukraine and the Baltic states.
In fact, the Bush administration openly supported Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together rather than allow the USSR to decentralize into smaller states. The US regime and its supporters in the press took the position that nationalism—not Soviet despotism—was the real problem for the people of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
Indeed, in the case of Ukraine, President George H.W. Bush even traveled to Kyiv in 1990 to lecture the Ukrainians about the dangers of seeking independence from Moscow, while decrying the supposed nationalist threat.
Today, nationalism is still a favorite bogeyman among Washington establishment mouthpieces. These outlets routinely opine on the dangers of French nationalism, Hungarian nationalism, and Russian nationalism. One often sees the term nationalism applied in ways designed to make the term distasteful, as in “white nationalism.”
When nationalism is convenient for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its European freeloaders, on the other hand, we are told that nationalism is a force for good. Thus, the US regime and mainstream media generally pretend that Ukrainian nationalism—and even Ukrainian white nationalism—either don’t exist or are to be praised.
In 1991, however, the US had not yet decided that it paid to actively promote nationalism—so long as it is anti-Russian nationalism. Thus, in those days, we find the US regime siding with Moscow in efforts to stifle or discourage local nationalist efforts to break with the old Soviet state. The way it played out is an interesting case study in both Bush administration bumbling and in the US’s foreign policy before the advent of unipolar American liberal hegemony.
The Antinationalist Context
In the late 1980s, it was already apparent that the Soviet Union was beginning to lose its grip on many parts of the enormous polity that was the USSR. Restive nationalists within the Soviet Union were beginning to assert local control. For example, by 1989, ethnic Armenians and Azeris were already embroiled in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh that continues to this day. Deadly ethnic violence flared, but Moscow, in its weakened state, put off taking action. Yet, in January 1990, Moscow did act in what is known in Azerbaijan today as “Black January.” Soviet tanks rolled into the Caspian Sea port city of Baku and killed as many as 150 Azeris—many of them civilians: “The ostensible aim of the intervention was to stop Azeri massacres of Armenians, but the real goal was to prevent the Azerbaijani Popular Front from taking power.”1 The Popular Front was the chief political arm of anti-Moscow nationalism in Azerbaijan, and its leader stated, ”The goal is to drive out the army, liquidate the [Moscow-controlled] Azerbaijani Communist Party, establish a democratic parliament.”
Yet instead of Washington pundits instructing Americans to announce “I stand with Azerbaijan,” we were told the real threat was nationalism. As Doyle McManus wrote at the Los Angeles Times in 1990: “An ancient specter is haunting Europe: untamed nationalism…. From Baku to Berlin, as the Soviet Bloc has disintegrated, ethnic conflicts that once seemed part of the past have suddenly returned to life.” These old nationalistic impulses, one official from the State Department averred, are “dangerous ghosts” from Europe’s past. Arch establishment foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinki was on hand to claim that ethnic tensions could lead to “geopolitical anarchy.” Bush administration officials were “worried” that smaller national groups might replace the Soviet Union. At the time, it was not uncommon to hear that nationalism in Europe would bring about a situation similar to that which supposedly caused World War I. As one “senior Bush advisor” said, “It’s 1914 all over again.”
So, when the Soviet tanks showed up to crush a potential coup that might free some Soviet subjects from Moscow’s yoke, the feeling in Washington was one of relief rather than dismay at Moscow’s aggression. Washington was clinging to the idea that the answer to nationalism was to ensure the continued existence of—as Murray Rothbard put it—”a single, overriding government agency with a monopoly force to settle disputes by coercion.” That agency was the USSR.
The US Against Independence for Ukraine and the Baltics
After going a full administration without a new war to fill their coffers, the D.C. defense industry has finally found their next big prize. After dismissing the prospect of diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia, the Biden Administration continues to flood Ukraine with an endless supply of military hardware, while using extraconstitutional means to perpetually lengthen the size and scope of America’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson had their time to shine, but now it’s the defense contractors’ time to hoover up all it can from the taxpayer-funded Beltway regime. Welcome back to your place in the spotlight, and hop on back aboard the U.S. taxpayer gravy train, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed, and friends. There’s an ongoing inter slavic conflict 5,000 miles away from our shores, and the war machine is ready to eat.
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On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (who served on the board of Raytheon prior to his appointment) kicked off what he deemed a “historic meeting” of more than 40 allied countries, with the purported goal to “help Ukraine win the fight against Russia’s unjust invasion.”
And how exactly will Lloyd Austin accomplish such a task?
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MCViewPoint 