They lied about Afghanistan. They lied about Iraq. Now they’re lying about Ukraine Russia’s invasion was a war crime. That’s no excuse for the disastrous, destructive path of endless war
-Chris Hedges

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules-based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by U.S. backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup, which ousted democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the EU, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.

But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.

“First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

“Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia. Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: This assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American service members.”

Once the truth about these endless wars seeps into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought.

The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, the Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution — funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to ignite a war with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already menacing and encircling China. God help us if we don’t stop them.

These pimps of war con us into one conflict after another with flattering narratives that paint us as the world’s saviors. They don’t even have to be innovative. The rhetoric is lifted from the old playbook. We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag — this time blue and yellow — to become unwitting agents in our self-immolation.

Since the end of the Second World War, the government has spent between 45 to 90 percent of the federal budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest sustained activity of the U.S. government. It has stopped mattering — at least to the pimps of war — whether these wars are rational or prudent. The war industry metastasizes within the bowels of the American empire to hollow it out from the inside. The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services.

Wasn’t the Russian military — because of poor morale, poor generalship, outdated weapons, desertions, a lack of ammunition that supposedly forced soldiers to fight with shovels, and severe supply shortages — supposed to collapse months ago? Wasn’t Putin supposed to be driven from power? Weren’t the sanctions supposed to plunge the ruble into a death spiral? Wasn’t the severing of the Russian banking system from SWIFT, the international money transfer system, supposed to cripple the Russian economy? How is it that inflation rates in Europe and the U.S. are higher than in Russia despite these attacks on the Russian economy?

Wasn’t the nearly $150 billion in sophisticated military hardware, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged by the U.S., EU and 11 other countries supposed to have turned the tide of the war? How is it that perhaps a third of the tanks Germany and the U.S. provided were swiftly turned by Russian mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, air strikes and missiles into charred hunks of metal at the start of the vaunted counteroffensive? Wasn’t this latest Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was originally known as the “spring offensive,” supposed to punch through Russia’s heavily fortified front lines and regain huge swathes of territory? How can we explain the tens of thousands of Ukrainian military casualties and the forced conscription by Ukraine’s military? Even our retired generals and former CIA, FBI, NSA and Homeland Security officials, who serve as analysts on networks such as CNN and MSNBC, can’t say the offensive has succeeded.

And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in February 2022? How do we explain the killing of more than 14,200 people and the 1.5 million who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year?

How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban 11 opposition parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as the Banderite Azov Battalion and other extremist militias, to flourish?

How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists” sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBTQ community, the Roma population and anti-fascist protesters, and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty?

I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union. NATO, we assumed at the time, had become obsolete. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker, along with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S. would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries.

The so-called “peace dividend,” however, was a chimera.

If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in Western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.

It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

In a classified diplomatic cable — obtained and released by WikiLeaks — dated Feb. 1, 2008, written from Moscow and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the NATO-European Union Cooperative, the National Security Council, the Russia Moscow Political Collective, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine:

Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. …

Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership. … Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the Western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO beyond Germany’s borders and Ukraine had remained neutral. The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single-minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China.

The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.

  • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Any NATO member can veto a new country from being admitted to NATO. If the USA wanted to avoid the carnage unleashed by this devastating war, why not make assurances that Ukraine will not join NATO? That would have saved so many lives and so much human misery. Instead, they armed Ukraine to the teeth and are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.

    • dlove67
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      1 year ago

      Because this war isn’t, and never was, about NATO?

      • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        I am pretty sure it was explicitly cited by Russia when the invasion started, and in the run up to the war they said over and over it would be avoided if the US could assure them that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO. Blinken publicly said forbidding Ukraine from NATO or assuring any security guarantees was a “non-starter” … so I guess if they just ignored everything Russia was saying, then maybe they didn’t believe NATO had anything to do with the invasion… but that still wouldn’t make it true.

        • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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          1 year ago
          • take hardline position you know your opponent will never agree with
          • say you’ll do X if they don’t agree
          • opponent obviously doesn’t agree
          • you do X

          you’re right we should take everything the kremlin says at face value

        • Montagge@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Why should any country bow to Russian demands to stifle another country’s desires?
          What right does Russia have to determine what Ukraine does or doesn’t do?

          • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 year ago

            If it stopped a war, why not say that they won’t let Ukraine join NATO? Ukraine doesn’t have the right to join NATO just as much as Russia. And just as much as Russia doesn’t have the right to “call the shots.” It is an offensive military alliance, there are consequences for how its membership grows and it affects the security concerns of other countries. It is so fun to just hear US government talking points repeated back endlessly.

        • dlove67
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          1 year ago

          Have you not learned that the Russian government lies? Like…a lot?

          NATO wasn’t the reason Russia started this war, Putin and his cronies were.

          Edit: also, NATO is a defensive alliance. The easiest way to not trigger article 5? Don’t fucking attack a NATO country unprovoked.

          • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 year ago

            The USA lies much more than Russia. The US press dutifully reports every word the US wants it to, in order to maintain access and credentials and be taken “seriously”.

            NATO is not a defensive alliance, and it never has been. It was set up as an anti-communist alliance, but it is not essentially just a tool for US dominance. Its first action was an offensive action against Yugoslavia, who never attacked NATO. Its next action was to invade Afghanistan, who had offered up Bin Laden in exchange for avoiding the invasion (but the US refused, and stated they don’t negotiate with terrorists). Also, Afghanistan never attacked the USA or any NATO member state

    • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      If the USA wanted to avoid the carnage unleashed by this devastating war

      “it’s the USA’s fault that Russia invaded Ukraine” is such a big brain chess move i just don’t know how to respond

      • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What do you think Victoria Nuland and John McCain was doing over there in 2014? Everything Nuland touches results in war, she’s fucking Kissinger’s replacement.

      • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Hmm, it isn’t big brained if you followed what was happening. Why would the US dump $150 billion into arming Ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests? that kind of money could solve so many problems the US has at home but they are wasting it on weapons and ammunition for a right-wing, failed state that was trying to ethnically cleanse 30% of its country

        • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Why would the US dump $150 billion into arming Ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests?

          why would russia dump $8.9T into invading ukraine if it wasn’t in their interests?

          for a right-wing, failed state

          russia can’t win a war against a failed state?

          that was trying to ethnically cleanse 30% of its country

          lmao

          • niceboysummer@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 year ago

            Russia and Ukraine are both right-wing failed states, but Ukraine is explicitly fascist. They have made every party left of Zelenky’s party illegal, they have citizens committing pogroms against roma people without any consequence(I have seen it), even empowering neonazi groups to attack minority groups in Ukraine, and burning down buildings full of communists (who have nothing to do with Russia, this is long before the invasion), they have folded nazi paramilitaries into their armed forces and appointed ultra-nationalists (who openly speak of exterminating races of people) in key positions of the military (who openly refused to obey Zelensky’s order to follow the Minsk Accords).

            That $8.9T article is a joke, it even puts a literal price on human life. Your argument also doesn’t even support what you think it does. The liberals in this thread keep accusing me of being a Putin apologist and blaming the war on his whims. They never admit Russia has legitimate security interests in the region. But the argument that the war was within Russia’s interest because they felt that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat to their security is exactly what anyone with two brain cells is trying to tell them. The US government knows this, they have known it since 2008 if not long before, but they continue to tell the people of the US that it isn’t the case at all. Liberals eat it all up. The Democratic party is run by neoconservatives with a bigger death wish than the ones who go us into Iraq, and nobody who votes for the Democratic party seems to even notice.

            • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              essentially everything you just listed is ukraine combating russian state-sponsored actors attempting to overthrow their democracy, reframed by the most utterly deranged russian propagandists

              they have folded nazi paramilitaries into their armed forces and appointed ultra-nationalists

              Some founding members of Wagner belong to the far-right ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement.[108] Wagner’s first commander, Dmitry Utkin,[110] is reportedly a neo-Nazi and has several Nazi tattoos,[111][112][107][109] to have greeted subordinates by saying “Heil!”, to have worn a Wehrmacht field cap around the unit’s training grounds, and to have occasionally signed his name with the two lightning bolt insignia of the Nazi S.S.

              That $8.9T article is a joke, it even puts a literal price on human life.

              because a human that’s dead in a ditch in ukraine isn’t a productive member of society back in russia

              i literally don’t care what figure you use; war is essentially the most expensive thing a country can engage in

              they’ve obviously spent more than 150bn

              They never admit Russia has legitimate security interests in the region

              your argument was literally “they’ve invested money so they must have started this war”

              so which is it? did the us start the war or did russia start the war? please pick a side thank you