https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/25/greenwald-bidens-reckless-words-underscore-the-dangers-of-the-u-s-s-use-of-ukraine-as-a-war-proxy/
Biden’s Reckless Words Underscore the Dangers of the U.S.’s Use of Ukraine As a War Proxy
As grave of a threat as deliberate war is, unintended escalation from miscommunication and misperception can be as bad. Biden is the perfect vessel for such risks.
The central question for Americans from the start of the war in Ukraine was what role, if any, should the U.S. government play in that war? A necessarily related question: if the U.S. is going to involve itself in this war, what objectives should drive that involvement?
Prior to the U.S.’s jumping directly into this war, those questions were never meaningfully considered. Instead, the emotions deliberately stoked by the relentless media attention to the horrors of this war — horrors which, contrary to the West’s media propaganda, are common to all wars, including its own — left little to no space for public discussion of those questions. The only acceptable modes of expression in U.S. discourse were to pronounce that the Russian invasion was unjustified, and, using parlance which the 2011 version of Chris Hayes correctly dismissed as adolescent, that Putin is a “bad guy.” Those denunciation rituals, no matter how cathartic and applause-inducing, supplied no useful information about what actions the U.S. should or should not take when it came to this increasingly dangerous conflict.
That was the purpose of so severely restricting discourse to those simple moral claims: to allow policymakers in Washington free rein to do whatever they wanted in the name of stopping Putin without being questioned. Indeed, as so often happens when war breaks out, anyone questioning U.S. political leaders instantly had their patriotism and loyalty impugned (unless one was complaining that the U.S. should become more involved in the conflict than it already was, a form of pro-war “dissent” that is always permissible in American discourse).
With these discourse rules firmly implanted, those who attempted to invoke former President Obama’s own arguments about a conflict between Russia and Ukraine — namely, that “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one” and therefore the U.S. should not risk confrontation with Moscow over it — were widely maligned as Kremlin assets if not agents. Others who urged the U.S. to try to avert warthrough diplomacy — by, for instance, formally vowing that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine and that Kyiv would remain neutral in the new Cold War pursued by the West with Moscow — faced the same set of accusations about their loyalty and patriotism.
Most taboo of all was any discussion of the heavy involvement of the U.S. in Ukraine beginning in 2014 up to the invasion: from micro-managing Ukrainian politics, to arming its military, to placing military advisers and intelligence officers on the ground to train its soldiers how to fight (something Biden announced he was considering last November) — all of which amounted to a form of de facto NATO expansion without the formal membership. And that leaves to the side the still-unanswered yet supremely repressed question of what Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland referred to as the Ukrainians’ “biological research facilities” so dangerous and beyond current Russian bio-research capabilities that she gravely feared they would “fall into Russian hands.”
As a result of the media’s embracing of moral righteousness in lieu of debating these crucial geopolitical questions, the U.S. government has consistently and aggressively escalated its participation in this war with barely any questioning let alone opposition. U.S. officials are boastfully leading the effort to collapse the Russian economy. Along with its NATO allies, the U.S. has flooded Ukraine with billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, with at least some of those arms ending up in the hands of actual neo-Nazi battalions integrated into the Ukrainian government and military. It is providing surveillance technology in the form of drones and its own intelligence to enable Ukrainian targeting of Russian forces. President Biden threatened Russia with a response “in kind” if Russia were to use chemical weapons. Meanwhile, reports The New York Times, “C.I.A. officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units.”
The U.S. is, by definition, waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it. So obvious is this fact about U.S. objectives that even The New York Times last Sunday explicitly reported that the the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire” (albeit with care not to escalate into a nuclear exchange). Indeed, even “some American officials assert that as a matter of international law, the provision of weaponry and intelligence to the Ukrainian Army has made the United States a cobelligerent,” though this is “an argument that some legal experts dispute.” Surveying all this evidence as well as discussions with his own U.S. and British sources, Niall Ferguson, writing in Bloomberg, proclaimed: “I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going.” UK officials similarly told him that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.”
In sum, the Biden administration is doing exactly that which former President Obama warned in 2016 should never be done: risking war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers over Ukraine. Yet if any pathology defines the last five years of U.S. mainstream discourse, it is that any claim that undercuts the interests of U.S. liberal elites — no matter how true — is dismissed as “Russian disinformation.”
As we witnessed most vividly in the run-up to the 2020 election — when that label was unquestioningly yet falsely applied by the union of the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to the laptop archive revealing Joe Biden’s political and financial activities in Ukraine and China — any facts which establishment power centers want to demonize or suppress are reflexively labelled “Russian disinformation.” Hence, the DNC propaganda arm Media Matters now lists as “pro-Russian propaganda” the indisputable fact that the U.S. is not defending Ukraine but rather exploiting and sacrificing it to fight a proxy war with Moscow. The more true a claim is, the more likely it is to receive this designation in U.S. establishment discourse.
That there are few if any risks graver or more reckless than a direct U.S./Russia military confrontation should be too obvious to require explanation. Yet that seems to have been completely forgotten in the zeal, arousal, purpose and excitement which war always triggers. It takes little to no effort to recognize the current emergence of the dynamic about which Adam Smith so fervently warned 244 years ago in Wealth of Nations:
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war.
The grave dangers of the world’s two largest nuclear-armed powers acting on opposite sides of a hot war extend far beyond any intention by the U.S. to deliberately engage Russia directly. Such a war, even with the U.S. waging it “only” through its proxies, severely escalates tensions, distrust, hostilities, and a climate of paranoia. That is particularly true given that — ever since Democrats decided to blame Putin for Hillary’s 2016 loss — at least half of Americans have been feeding on a non-stop, toxic diet of anti-Russian hatred under the guise of “Russiagate.” As recently as 2018, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russia hacked into voting machines and altered the 2016 vote count to help Trump win. This cultivation of extreme anti-Russian animus in Washington has been made even more dangerous by the virtual prohibition on dialogue with Russian officials, which during Russiagate was deemed inherently suspect if not criminal.
And all of those preexisting dangers are, in turn, severely exacerbated by an American president who so often is too age-addled to speak clearly or predictably. That condition is inherently dangerous, made all the more so by the fact that it leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by the Democratic Party’s national security advisers who will never forget 2016 and seem more intent than ever on finally attaining vengeance against Putin, no matter the risks. Speaking to U.S. troops in Poland on Friday, a visibly exhausted and rambling President Biden — after extensive travel, time-zone hopping, protracted meetings and speeches — appeared to tell U.S. troops that they were on their way to see first-hand the resistance of Ukrainians, meaning they were headed into Ukraine:
It seems clear that this was not some planned decision to have the U.S. president casually announce his intention to send U.S. troops to fight Russians in Ukraine. This was, instead, an old man, more tired, unpredictable and incoherent than usual due to intense overseas travel, accidentally mumbling out various phrases that could be and almost certainly were highly alarming to Moscow and other countries.
But accidental or unintentional escalation — from misperception or miscommunication — is always at least as serious a danger for war as the deliberate intention to directly engage militarily. In January of this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that its so-called “doomsday clock” was set to 100 seconds before midnight, the metaphorical time they used to signify an extinction-level event for humanity. They warned that the prospect of a cataclysmic nuclear exchange among the U.S., Russia and/or China was dangerously possible, and specifically warned: “Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.”
In 2018, when the clock was “only” at two minutes before midnight, they emphasized tensions between Russia and the U.S. as one of the primary causes: “The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.” They urged recognition of this specific danger: “Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions.”
That Biden’s “gaffe” about U.S. troops headed into Ukraine could generate exactly this sort of “misperception” seems self-evident. So do the grave dangers from Biden’s sudden yet emphatic declaration on Saturday that Putin “cannot remain in power” — the classic language of declared U.S. policy of regime change:
That clear declaration of regime change as the U.S. goal for Putin was quickly walked back by Biden’s aides, who absurdly claimed he only meant that Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, not that he can no longer govern Russia. But this episode marked at least the third time in the past couple weeks that White House officials had to walk back Biden’s comments, following his clear decree that U.S. troops would soon be back in Ukraine and his prior warning that the U.S. would use chemical weapons against Russia if they used them first.
That Biden seems to be stumbling and bumbling rather than following scripted recklessness seems likely in some of these cases but not all. The White House’s vehement denial, in the wake of Biden’s speech, that regime change in Russia is its goal was contradicted by Ferguson’s reporting in Bloomberg last week:
Reading this carefully, I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going….I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime”…..I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.
Whether deliberate or unintentional, these escalatory statements — particularly when combined with the U.S.’s escalatory actions — are dangerous beyond what can be described. As an Australian news outlet reported on Sunday, “Russia has launched a missile strike near Poland in what appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.” The accompanying video (see lead photo above) shows at least three long-range cruise missiles, launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, precisely striking targets in western Ukraine, near to where Biden was in Poland. That missile launch, the outlet reasonably concluded, “appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.”
Whatever else is true, the U.S. and Russia are now in waters uncharted since the Cuban missile crisis. Even the savage US/USSR proxy wars of the 1980s in Latin America and Afghanistan did not entail these sorts of rapidly escalating threats. A Russian president who, validly or not, feels threatened by NATO expansion in the region and driven by questions of his legacy, on the other side of a U.S. president with a long record of hawkishness and war fever which is now hobbled by the carelessness and infirmities of old age, is a remarkably volatile combination. As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday: “A U.S. President who, during an atrocious war, does not mean what he says on matters of War and Peace, and must be corrected by his hyperventilating staff, is a clear and present danger to all.”
Hovering above all of these grave dangers is the question of why? What interests does the U.S. have in Ukraine that are sufficiently vital or substantial to justify trifling with risks of this magnitude? Why did the U.S. not do more to try to diplomatically avert this horrific war, instead seemingly opting for the opposite: namely, discouraging Ukrainian President Zelensky from pursuing such talks on the alleged grounds of futility and rewarding Russian aggression, and not even exploring whether a vow of non-NATO-membership for Ukraine would suffice? How does growing U.S. involvement in this war benefit the people of the United States, particularly as they were already — before this war — weighed down by the dual burdens of pandemic-based economic depravations and rapidly escalating inflation?
These are precisely the questions that a healthy nation discusses and examines beforejumping head-first into a major war. But these were precisely the questions declared to be unpatriotic, proof of one’s status as a traitor or pro-Russia propagandist, as the hallmark of being pro-Putin. These are the standard tactics used to squash dissent or questioning when war breaks out. That neocons, who perfected these smear tactics, are back in the saddle as discourse and policy leaders — due to their six-year project of ingratiating themselves back into American liberalism with performative anti-Trump agitprop — makes it inevitable that such sleazy attacks will prevail.
As a result, the U.S. now finds itself more deeply enmeshed than ever in the most dangerous war it has fought in years if not decades. It may be too late for those questions to be meaningfully examined. But given the stakes, this is as clear a case of better late than never as one will ever encounter.
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http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/we-are-in-so-much-trouble
We Are In So Much Trouble
What we are witnessing is truly the beginning of the end. In recent months I have focused a lot on the economic implosion that is now taking place, but what we are facing is so much broader than that. Our society is literally falling to pieces all around us, and now World War 3 has begun. Many regard the war that has erupted on the other side of the globe as just a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, but the truth is that it is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia. And since neither side seems much interested in diplomacy at this point, this proxy war could eventually become a shooting war between the two greatest nuclear powers on the entire planet.
Before the war started, events were already starting to accelerate substantially. Inflation was out of control, a new energy crisis had flared up, and global food supplies were getting tighter and tighter. But now we are truly in unprecedented territory. If you doubt this, just look at what is happening to the price of fertilizer.
That chart should chill you to the core, because it clearly tells us that food shortages are coming.
In fact, even Joe Biden is now publicly admitting that food shortages are coming. On his show the other night, Tucker Carlson broke this down in a way that only Tucker Carlson can…
In the video that you just watched, we are told that some fertilizer prices are now four to five times higher than they were a year ago.
Here in the western world, most farmers will simply bite the bullet and pay the higher prices. In turn, we will pay higher prices for food at the grocery store.
But in poorer parts of the globe, many farmers will use a whole lot less fertilizer or none at all. As a result, global food production will be way down in the months ahead.
To turn this crisis around, what we really need is for the proxy war in Ukraine to end. Unfortunately, both sides just continue to escalate matters instead.
For example, on Saturday Joe Biden shocked the entire world when he stated that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”…
President Joe Biden on Saturday said Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” ratcheting up international pressure and further uniting NATO allies against Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
“A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty,” Biden said at the end of a sweeping speech in Poland. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”
That was a call for regime change in Russia.
Russian leaders were already paranoid about western intentions before, and now their paranoia is going to be off the charts.
Biden administration officials are trying to walk back Biden’s comments, but the damage has already been done.
Meanwhile, we just learned that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have not spoken at all since February 15th…
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov have not spoken since February 15, over a week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the State Department told Antiwar.com on Friday.
Earlier this week The Washington Post cited US officials who said Blinken hasn’t attempted to speak with Lavrov since the start of the conflict. When asked to confirm the story, a State Department spokesperson said, “We can confirm that the last time Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke was on February 15.”
Even during the darkest days of the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. officials always kept talking to the Russians.
So this is something that should alarm all of us greatly.
On top of everything else, Joe Biden just told U.S. troops in Poland that they will see what conditions in Ukraine are like “when you’re there”…
According to The Associated Press, Biden’s remarks were given in front of U.S. troops who “had been sent near Poland’s border [with Ukraine] to assist with the humanitarian emergency and to bolster the U.S. military presence on the eastern flank of NATO.” The words, “and you’re gonna see when you’re there,” were spoken right after the president mentioned the bravery of Ukrainian citizens. Later, the White House once again told reporters that U.S. troops would not be deployed to fight in the war in Ukraine.
Every time Biden opens his mouth, he makes things even worse.
If he isn’t careful, he could drag the entire world into a global war. Earlier today, I was horrified to learn that Biden has decided to reaffirm “America’s right to use nukes in a first-strike scenario” at such a tense moment…
President Joe Biden is abandoning a campaign vow to alter longstanding US nuclear doctrine, and will instead embrace existing policy that reserves America’s right to use nukes in a first-strike scenario, according to multiple reports.
As Russian forces continue their bloody assault on Ukraine, Biden is under pressure from NATO allies not to abandon the right to use nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks.
Many had thought that the war in Ukraine would help to unite America and would provide a boost to Biden’s extremely poor approval ratings.
And in the initial days of the war, that seemed to happen.
But now Biden’s approval ratings are falling once again…
President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings keep falling in his second year in the White House, with just 40% of Americans approving of the job that he is doing, a new NBC News survey finds.
That is the lowest rating Biden has seen in his presidency.
We were warned that 2022 would be a very troubled year, and we are still in the very early chapters.
If the Biden administration continues with all of this insanity, things are going to get a whole lot worse. I really like how Gerald Celente summarized matters during his recent interview with Greg Hunter…
“We are headed for an economic calamity the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime. They are getting our minds off it with the war in Ukraine. . . . You know, I wrote in the magazine in the beginning of the year, we said that the Covid war would wind down by late March and mid-April. It’s winding down. . . . So, now, as we said in the magazine, we went from the Covid war to the Ukraine war, and now to world war. We are headed to World War III. . . . There is not a peep about a cease-fire. Biden is only bragging about more weapons being sent in. Biden says we are going to defeat the Russians. We are not backing down. No one is talking about a cease-fire, and no one is talking about peace. If we don’t unite for peace, we are all going to die in war.”
A thermonuclear war with Russia would be more horrible than most people could possibly imagine, and our leaders should be doing all that they can to prevent that from happening.
But right now Biden administration officials apparently don’t even see any point in talking with the Russians.
We are steamrolling down a road that leads to nuclear war, and meanwhile the global economy is starting to implode at frightening speed.
If you are still delusional enough to believe that everything will work out “just fine” somehow, then I really feel sorry for you.
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