As the Ukraine crisis causes global havoc, US officials won't negotiate with Russia to end the fighting -- and are even willing to "countenance" mounting hunger as a result.
Your statement, "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.", seems to be undercut later in the piece where you point out that Ukraine intentionally used Minsk2 to "buy time" and prepare for war with Russia.
I have been following this situation closely since February and I think it is clear that Russia worked for a diplomatic solution continuously from 2014 to early 2022, at which point the Russian government concluded that their diplomatic adversaries were not and had never been negotiating in good faith.
I'm glad you brought this up, Bob. Some of us have been asking Aaron to explain what those diplomatic options were. And yes, this makes obvious that if Russia had not been played for a fool, and had 'invaded' Ukraine in 2014 when the US broke the agreement of neutrality, 14,000 Russo-Ukranian lives would have been saved and all of the Eurokranian lives lost since. The bio-terrorism labs wouldn't have been built, which might have been breeding ethnically-targeted viruses. All of the NATO weapons and NATO-ready training wouldn't have occurred. The question isn't whether Russia is wrong for NOT pursuing diplomatic options but whether they were negligent in their obligations to Ukraine for having fallen for them the last eight years.
In terms of the shipments of wheat from Ukraine, Aaron also validates Putin that it's Ukraine stopping them by mining their own harbor. Russia has no control over that.
By this winter, at the latest, I expect that European countries will revolt to throw NATO out. And only corrupt African dictators think this is a dilemma. For 80% of the world, Russia is offering a way out of economic sanctions and petrodollar politics. It's only a matter of time before they take that opportunity.
I have an episode on Russia: A Wrench in the Reset Gears? It includes Putin's domestic economic policy, which I think is written by his brilliant economic advisor, Sergey Glazyev. For anyone who thinks governments should support the self-reliance of their people, we can only be envious. It includes the link to Putin's St. Petersburg address, where he outlines it:
I think the reason Putin didn't take this action in 2014 is two-fold: 1) Putin genuinely tends to prefer a diplomatic solution, if at all possible, and 2) the Russian economy could not have withstood the sanctions as well as it is doing now in 2014. He used those intervening years to fortify the Russian economy.
Completely agreed! His timing, in fact, couldn't have been better for a complete break from petrodollar hegemony. And as a bonus, the US seizures of foreign Russian assets completely cut the cajones (or whatever is the Russian equivalent) off the oligarchs who had been holding him hostage. As a chess move, it was brilliant.
Jack Sirius, who's on this thread, has been reading his economic adviser, Sergey Glazyev's, book from 23 years ago and he says it seems like it was written yesterday. So absolutely, these last eight years have been critical and he would never have the moral upper hand without the complete repudiation of diplomacy and former treaties from the US.
Putin or Glazyev, his economic advisor who wrote Genocide: Russia and the New World Order, a strategy for economic growth on the threshold of the 21st century (1998).
He wrote back then, "The rate of annual population loss has been more than double the rate of loss during the period of Stalinist repression and mass famine in the first half of the 1930s... There has been nothing like this in the thousand-year history of Russia." In Boris Yeltsin's first cabinet, he was the only member of the Russian government to resign in protest of the abolition of the Parliament and the Constitution in 1993.
Putin talks about the 13% decline in the birth rate from this time last year. His policies are the opposite of the Great Reset--repopulation by supporting mothers from the first few months of pregnancy until their child is 17, and repossession by supporting small businesses and home ownership.
It is sad, but it looks look Aaron feels that he must include at least some ritualistic condemnation of Russia so as not to be completely discredited by "serious" analysts and the mainstream media. "Maté is just a Putin bot!"
What he is missing, that unless he completely agrees with all their memes, and until he bangs the tocsin; that is what they will call him anyway.
IMO EU and US are too closely aligned, particularly in banking, for EU countries to "throw NATO out." Watching this from central Europe, our news, most importantly the news out of Germany, is slowly moving in the direction of, "we will be destroyed without Russian gas" without ever saying, "we reject the US plan."
I expect there will be an EU response ironically similar to Democratic plans to deal with abortion, climate change and gun control. Everyone will say how important it is to support the sanctions against Russia while ignoring or working around them as much as possible wihtout being completely open about it.
You could well be right. In the end, the US and EU are both consumer societies heavily dependent on the other 80% of producer nations. Those countries are jettisoning their dollars, as slowly as they can until the oligarchs can trade them for other currencies, gold, or things of actual value--in the US there's a feeding frenzy of foreign investment in real estate paying up to 50% over the asking price in cash. But as soon as they've gotten out, they'll let their economies crash along with the freefall of the dollar. That's how Michael Hudson explains it here:
So the EU may delay the revolt in the same way the US is--ricocheting us off the pinball bumpers of Dem & Rep while we go down the tubes. But at some point that won't work. I'm pushing for us to develop a plan for what we want now, before the riots. There's no point in rioting if you don't know what you want.
That sounds about the right assessment - current crop of EU "leaders" is good only for muddling through crisis, not resolving it in any way. Recent examples: Covid, refugees. The only time they were somewhat efficient and organized was during Greek debt crisis when interests of German and French banks had to be protected.
On wikileaks, one can find US diplomatic cables specifically about GMO adoption in Ukraine. Concern how it is not going well before Maidan, and how finally the problem is resolved after Maidan. Some of the Maidan coup cost has probably been covered by big agro-business.
Ooooh, Firefox won't let me see this link. You're definitely on to something. I'm sure it was our Big Ag subsidies that covered that cost or not even, likely just another gift from the gov't to Big Ag. If you check out the link to Putin's speech in my Wrench in the Reset, he talks a lot about organic food and cleaning up industrial pollution and eco-friendly tourism. He does seem to be squared off against everything the GR stands for.
Woah! Hunter was on the board of the World Food Program USA? And a McGovern-Dole Leadership Award is like a McDonnell-Douglas Peace Prize.
In the first episode linked below in response to cnico, The West vs the Rest, I present Kanekoa's research on the oligarch who put Zelensky in power, funded Hunter, and used the neo-Nazis as his private thugs. The truth is darker than I ever imagined. I also present Aaron's research on Syria and quote Moon over Alabama and Scott Ritter on Ukraine. This whole thing runs deep and dark.
Let's just go easy on the guy, please! After all, he is an accomplished artist too, not just food and gas industry expert! Judging by the sales volume alone, Hunter Biden is already greater painter than Van Gogh! /s
ha! I just made the same point before reading yours. You provide more direct evidence. Aaron, don't fall for US propaganda.. there is no equivalency between the US and Russia.
Hi Bob, I believe I heard Aaron actually explain what he meant with exhaust all diplomatic solutions, ie he believes that Russia should have used turning off the gas as leverage. The point that we should remember here is that economic warfare is primarily a Western type of behavior; and the Russians quite rightly think that to use their goods as leverage is economic suicide, in that it will decrease their credibility as a reliable supplier of energy not just to those that are self-declared enemies, but also to its friends. We can see from the suicidal boomerang effect these economic sanctions are having that the Western approach is folly, and makes the opponent more determined.
Ahh. Thanks. That is a position I can respect, although that would not have prevented Ukraine from ramping up their attack in the Donbass as they were planning to do prior to Russia beating them to the punch. And Russia's gripe was first and foremost with Ukraine, so shutting down the gas supply could have led to a direct confrontation with NATO and an even worse situation IMO.
In Vladmir Putin's address he claims that Russian government's talks with the United States in December 2021 where they could not ensure that Ukraine would not be granted NATO membership that lead to the decision to invade Ukraine.
That makes sense. Putin lays out the UN protocol for just military action and shows why they adhered to the criteria and met all preconditions for diplomatic attempts to resolve it. Scott Ritter says that Russia is constrained by their own imperative to limit civilian casualties but they're winning decisively. On the economic front he writes:
"Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind."
Aaron, Just a thought - "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis." I would argue that Russia tried very much to avoid direct conflict. They knew early on that the US was upgrading Ukraine's military with direct training and equipment to NATO standards as early as 2014. This went on for 7-8 years. In that time Russia issued many statements about red lines and warnings. The coup in 2014, clearly sponsored by the US could have sparked a military response at that time. If roles were reversed there is not doubt how quickly the US would intervene militarily. I would argue that Russia had no choice but to invade, given Ukraine's nazification, and build up on troops in the Donbas region. I would argue that Russia did exhause all diplomatic solutions...
I think Mate knows they didn't have a choice, and knows even if they exhausted all diplomatic solutions, and maybe they did, it would have made no difference. We were determined to bring Russia down, they know it, knew it. From the get go we didn't keep our promise to Gorbachev, and Clinton was the first to break that promise of not inviting more nations into NATO. The coup backed by neocons and Obama, since i refuse to let Obama off the hook as many do, said to Russia we're coming to get you soon.
'nazification of Ukraine' is nonsense. US, Germany, Serbia, etc., can be accused of harbouring significant elements of "Nazis". Besides, criminally acting like Nazis is Israel, which gets rave reviews from western fans. Let's condemn and sanction them harshly.
The Western media, who once reported copiously on that fact, are now silent, or worse they lie.
Do they name streets, "Himmler Avenue" in America? No, they don't. In the Ukraine though, you can stroll down the Bandera Strasser in Kyiv at will. The street is located in the Darnitsky District of the city and is officially known as "Stepan Bandera Avenue" (prospekt Stepana Bandery in Ukrainian).
American allies are always good and pure, with the noblest of intentions. Like America itself who is "force for good" in the world. Or so they tell us over and over in their propaganda.
While an accurate summary of US overt actions to date, seems like you have ignored the elephant in the room with no mention whatsoever of the CIA or the Nazi involvement/causation.
CIA has promoted Nazism in Ukraine for decades. Zelensky was elected on promises to enact the Minsk accords. But shortly theteafter, due to pressure from the Azov neoNazis (CIA), he backed off from that entirely and eventually the Azovs became part of the official military of Ukraine as the National Guard. Other neoNazi groups flourished in Ukr as well including the large group called the Right Sector. Huge youth camps trained children every year.
Zach Dorfman well-documented the CIA training of Nazi troops for past 8 yrs in two articles published this year. They trained them both in Ukraine and in US. Canada and UK did the same. You mention Ukraine being trained for war, but you omit by whom and why.
Thiery Mayssen who does incredible work at voltairenet.org has written extensively on the CIA and MI6 involvement in Nazism in Ukraine, among many other things such as the history and involvement of the Straussians (aka Nuland/Blinken/Kagan et al.) in destabilizing Ukraine.
The reason why this Nazi backstory is crucial is because with the CIA's careful curation over the past decades, hatred of Russian-speaking people in Ukr has been fanned to the extreme. To the point where many Ukrainians actually believe that Russians are not actually "people." They are taught this in school! There are textbooks for children stating that Russians "look like people, but are not actually people." They actually refer to them as orcs. As incredible as that sounds it is true and this propagandized mindset led to the rise of Nazism and extreme hatred of Russians and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.
THAT is why they bombed shelled tortured and murdered the Russian-speaking people in the Donbass for the past 8 yrs after the Nuland Maidan US coup.
They are now using US HIMARS MLRS systems to shell/kill innocents in Donbass! And the indiscriminate shellings/murders of the innocent civilians have exponentially increased in the past 2 months! It is way worse now than it was for the previous 8 years.
Why? Because they do not consider Russian-speaking people as humans and are clearly bent on their annihilation.
There are videos of CIA-trained Nazis gloating about all the equipment the CIA gave them... More equipment and weapons than they knew what to do with they said. Laughing about how they learned it was fun to kill.
The CIA created and curated this war along with the Straussians who now control the Biden administration. They worked hard to get to this point and they are not going to let it go now.
I do believe their ultimate goal is to break up Russia and then China. Global hegemony. Which is why they do not care about the suffering of poor people around the world. It is probably part of their new world order. They certainly planned to drag down Europe which they are successfully doing, so why not the world too.
And to add, regarding your statement that Russia is to blame, it's well-documented that there were plans for a full-fledged Ukrainian military neoNazi attack on the Donbass in March of this year. Captured militants have said this plus detailed reports with the military strategy were found early on. I disagree that Russia is responsible for the global crisis... I blame the US and the CIA.
Excellent summary, cnico. My only modification is that the US is taking on Russia, China and Iran all at the same time! I didn't know about the plans for March, but that makes sense as to why US journalists were all salivating that Russia was going to invade before it happened.
I wonder if the Straussians are the same oligarchs behind Ukraine and PNAC and the neoliberal/neocon petrodollar hegemony. There may be more than one set of rats. That's what I explore in the episode I referenced above. But I have plenty more validating all the points you're making, many of which quote Aaron. And this one reiterates his point, that this is a war against everyone: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-west-vs-the-rest
Ps... You probably know this, but to add Nuland is married to a Kagan, and his brother co-founded the PNAC. Mayssen at voltairenet.org has a great article detailing their origins in Chicago years ago and following the threads to the Biden admin. Mind-blowing really how they hung in there and are now in the driver's seat.
Yes, for anyone into this and familiar with Harry Potter, I think my cleverest episode is Escape from Azkaban: Victoria Nuland is Dolores Umbridge. My daughter even photoshopped a large black fly onto the famous picture of her looking particularly toadlike when she admits there are bio labs. I really wanted to use "A Coup of One's Own" and "Project for a Nuland American Century" but haven't figured out how to do black screen text ;-) I'll check out voltairenet.org.
If you have dishes to do or other mindless tasks, they're fun to watch. I don't do transcripts so the videos and text aren't redundant. I put more commentary into the video and put longer quotes and links in the text. Enjoy!
Hi Tereza. Thanks for your comment. Yes it is a tangled web isn't it?
Shortly after I commented above, this post showed up in my tg feed from Viktor, vicktop55 channel. It's So right on.
"My attitude towards Russia and the Russians has never changed, and Russophobia that originated in Ukraine is a mental disorder caused by deceitful Western propaganda."
Bogdan Stupka is a Soviet and Ukrainian theater and film actor. Minister of Culture and Arts of Ukraine. Hero of Ukraine." https://t.me/ukraina_ru/85972
Ukr has gone insane and the CIA did it. A commenter said that CIA used Nazis in the overthrow of Allende, which I did not know. Apparently it's in their playbook. 👿👿
Thanks for the links, look forward to reading them.
That's so interesting about Nazis and Allende. You probably know this too but a couple of the best sources I've found for info have been The Great Kanekoa and Moon over Alabama. Kanekoa reported on a 28 yr old German journalist living in Donbas. Germany has closed her YT and bank accounts (including her dad's), cancelled her PayPal, and sentenced her to three years in prison for reporting on it. There's also George Galloway who interviewed Johnny Miller, reporting live from Donbas in eastern Ukraine: "He explains that there are almost no western reporters on the ground in the region leading to a very incomplete view of what is happening, where civilian areas are being bombed daily by Ukrainian forces with weapons supplied from the US and Europe. He says the Russian speaking citizens say that they have been under attack since 2014, and that both the Russian and Ukrainian sides are misreporting events and the roots of the conflict." In particular he's viewing an elementary school, one of 100 hit, and how traumatized children are by attacks that specifically target them. I hope Aaron looks at things like this before he concludes there were diplomatic solutions.
"I hope Aaron looks at things like this before he concludes there were diplomatic solutions."
I hope that Aaron is only spouting nonsense like this so as to maintain "credibility" in the minds of those are still in the thrall of the official story.
A good piece in general. But Aaron, you undermine your own credibility and integrity by obsequiously including statements like this in everything you write about the Ukraine conflict: "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis."
What diplomatic solutions are you talking about? Those were clearly all exhausted before Russia sent in troops. Your own words belie your a-plague-on-both-your-houses stance:
"There is every indication that the US was on board with Ukraine's exploitation of Minsk to prepare for war. ...The White House is in fact so committed to avoiding the diplomatic front with Russia that it is willing to tolerate hardship at home."
Yes, the special military operation was clearly a desperate last ditch attempt to defend Russia in the face of endless and ever increasing Empire aggression.
He told them, over and over, that Nato in the Ukraine was a Red Line. No strong country would, could, or should allow itself to be literally surrounded by their enemies. Rather than respect that, America saw it as a great opportunity to start a shooting war with Russia. One that they obviously think that they can "win". They can't but The Empire believes their own propaganda. They also are inevitably utterly clueless about their many enemies. They thought for instance, that the "Japs" (portrayed in their propaganda as sub-human insects), were weak rice eaters who could not see in the dark. And then they landed on Iwo Jima.
It seems like the 30,000 kilos of plutonium (unclear whether separated or not) and 40,000 of highly enriched, weapons grade uranium that the Russians found within the Zaporizhzhia power plant—per the IAEA at Davos & on its own website—isn’t getting enough attention. It would seem to me that the presence of nuclear materials capable of yielding several thousand Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs might perhaps warrant a military operation all by itself.
Still shocking to think how much is kept from the American public (tax-payers for the Pentagon) such as this about nuclear material for bombs inside the power plant.
"A western official told the Financial Times that once NATO weapons shipments cross over into Ukraine from Poland, "from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country."
Same failure to track is used for Pentagon spending.. pinpoint accuracy is reserved for peaceful protesters, Indy media and Youtube critics who have funds frozen for dissenting narratives. Maybe if we tag weapons with inflammatory tweets NATO can track those as effectively as they do critics.
That’s what most stood out to me. I want to know why or I’m calling the lie. Nobody asks these people how the paper trail for weapons just dies. Who was the last official to sign the papers over to Just Some Guy buying the weapons? Get that official along with the official who supposedly received the weapons - and would presumably be denying receiving them - and put them both in jail until they confess. A problem with illegal weapons sales and yet no safeguards are put in place. It’s a bold, blatant lie that people just accept.
Aaron, I unapologetically pile on regarding your statement that “By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.”
That statement not only mars an otherwise excellent pot, it nearly invalidates it. And since you offer no historical or political context for such a fundamental and conversation-ending claim—not to mention that it is right out Jake Sullivan’s mouth—it sticks out like a trite allusion to a supposedly settled superior western morality that is ultimately nothing more than the usual kind of virtue signaling you so often and appropriately decry.
I fully respect and agree with most pacifistic and anti-war sentiments regarding this war and any other war (including WWII). I also fully understand how polite people often must offer the usual qualifications as the lead-in to discussing unwelcome claims. (The most obvious example being something like, “Trump was a dumpster fire, but…”) However, considering your audience, that kind of qualification—if that is what is was—is way off base in your Substack. Am I wrong to believe that most of us reading your posts are tired of namby-pamby manipulation of our moral values by imperialists to play down their own daily, world-wide, intentional, conscienceless death and destruction?
Also on your behalf, I understand how a statement like this perfectly illustrates the power of the dominant narrative to infiltrate our thinking and fatally weaken criticism of the empire. We all suffer from the mind rape (sometimes referred to by the clinical euphemism “mass formation”) done to us by well-trained and infinitely funded imperial psychological operators. But please, enough with such bullshit.
Just as a matter of adding badly needed historical context to your statement, during the 1990s and 2000s the clear objective of the US and NATO was to colonize the fractured remnants of the USSR, which has essentially been a successful project for most of the last 30 years. To enhance your context, perhaps read, for example, Glazyev’s 1999 book, “A Genocide: Russia and the New World Order.” Without such context, your statement fails miserably to give the Russian perspective even dismissive acknowledgement.
Also, as trivial a comparison as it may seem, it is useful to look at this “blame” issue in terms of the classic struggle between a bully and the victim. Your statement strikes me as a kind of victim shaming on an international diplomatic scale?
Or, more accurately, perhaps reflect on the mythic fight between David and Goliath. No one would know David’s name today if he had waited for Goliath to take the first sword swing.
Every word. Aaron needs to do better and make up his mind.
The libs and the dems are never going to love him until he stops "defending Russia". He'll need to go "the full retard" for that.
He's still trying to have it both ways.
It would be nice if he, like so many, got off his high horse and 'descended' into the plebian comment section so as to address our concerns and questions. I expect lofty pronouncements of The Truth from the MSM, but hope and expect that a real journalist would do better.
Nuland, blinkin, vindman are all zios with ukrop ancestry. Russia will not stop until all delusions of a revived khazar kingdom right next to Russia are dashed, that means capturing Southern Ukraine all the way to Transintra.
By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.
All diplomatic solution were exhausted because NATO/US not just rejected any compromise, but even the idea of serious diplomatic engagement. It was all about mocking Russian concerns and intentionally humiliating them with dismissive attitude - this was not long ago, November to January. Then February came along and Kiev regime ramped up bombardment of Donbas (OSCE monitors, while partial to Ukraine, documented this) in anticipation of offensive to retake it, and Zelensky started making noises about acquiring nuclear weapons. At that point, it was clear that "collective west" is not interested in any peace. And still isn't. If Afghanistan was a self-licking ice-cream Ukraine is that on steroids:
All my adult life I have been neutral on Russia, much of it resisting the unrelenting propaganda about that evil empire, the Soviet Union. But now, the colossal stupidity and arrogance of US Empire has me rooting for Russia and lamenting that the Ukrainian people cannot see what is happening to them, with leaders that make them as expendable as the US is cynically turning their country. We have more than just bad actors here. The US, NATO, and Ukraine brought this on, but it would appear that most Americans are confusing empathy for innocent Ukrainian citizens with unjustifiable war to topple a competing power most of us know very little about. My question is: will the US war mongers actually think they can pull that game with China? My only sadness is that my family and I are caught in the collateral damage our foolish President is causing. I didn't even vote for the man because I suspected this is where would be - but it's so much worse. We're harboring a wounded animal who hates to lose.
That has been clear to me for many years. What I am impressed by is the neoliberal establishment's near-total capture of the North American mindset and realization of an Orwellian reality I never really thought I would live to see becoming so entrenched, and against which we have been warned by everyone on the honest left, from Chomsky, Vijay Prashad to Sheldon Wolen. Before I die it would please me greatly to see the end US Imperial thuggery - even if in an unstable geopolitical reality without fossil fuel dependence.
Russia is not to blame for what is happening. NATO is and in first order, the US. We planned this all out, a win-win for the Home Team -- if they don't invade, we just push in and arm Ukraine up to the hilt and up to the Russian border. Then Russia won't have an inch of wiggle-room when we issue our demands. If they do invade, we "crush and annihilate them!" If somebody puts a gun in your face and you pull a knife on him, are you to blame? The "caste" of characters running the show in Washington do not care about starving Asians or Africans or Latin Americans. They care about money and power and being ruthless so "nobody gets any ideas" is part of it. They are actually, in my view, deranged in a real sense. They cannot comprehend that all their shallow calculations are wrong and doomed to fail. I suppose we must all go along with them to that doom.
It is good to see all the comments criticizing the "exhausting all diplomatic solutions" canard. Aaron, give us one -- one! -- possible route to a negotiated settlement in the run up to the SMO.
The U.S. intended to instigate this conflict because the Biden administration thought that it could collapse the Russian political economy in jiffy. Democratic Party propagandist Paul Krugman wrote a column in the early days of the SMO which argued that so much Russian wealth was offshored in Western banks that the Russian president could be easily brought to heel by seizing that wealth. Russian oligarchs would squeal and Putin would promptly kowtow.
It didn't work. (I guess Krugman assumed Russia is run like the United States.) Now the Biden administration is stuck. U.S. leadership is so stupid and straitjacketed by militarism it can't imagine a negotiated settlement.
I suppose that Aaron feels obligated to include such claptrap in his posts, otherwise he will be utterly dismissed as a "Putin bot" and put into the same cultural drawer as Alex Jones and the like.
In your last paragraph you summarise well my feelings on this horrific war. All efforts should be put into diplomacy and de-escalation rather than another unwinnable forever war likely to cause famine.
Ukraine is simply a substitute for Afghanistan. US policy is always a prolonged, expensive proxy war - necessary to siphon money off to the politicos and oligarchs involved. A good article- the constant USA escalation and complete lack of diplomacy show the intent of a proxy war for a long time. Not what the USA people want, but corrupt politicians require it.
All agreed, however one stark fact is left out of the picture: The Ukrainians are utterly united in their determination to kick out the invaders once and for all! One must consider the history of Ukrainians suffering under the boots of Russia, to understand how strong this dedication is.
I was there several times. I consider the Ukrainians to be intelligent, extremely courageous, beautiful people. They were left hanging without the right weapons for far too long, and that may yet hit home. Whatever the guilt of the US cowboys in Washington, Ukrainians have no choice at this point. They must win this horrific blood fest, lest psychopath Putin gets his way, and all the thousands of lives already lost would be for nothing.- As to the 'Nazis' in Ukraine, that is a red herring. Yes, there are right wing nationalists and even Nazis, but far more of them are to be found in Russia, the US, Germany, etc. Stephan Bandera used to the German Nazis for his nationalist goals, to fight the Russian army. So, did the Zionists in Palestine, to get their way of stealing territory, but nobody in the west has a problem with that incredible deal! High time to denounce the israeli terrorists who have had free reign for 75 years, and finally now show their true colours with BenGvir and Smutrich screaming their fascist, racist rethoric into the world. Nobody speaks about their 'Nazi'-nature. Because their aggressive propaganda keeps everyone quiet.
Your statement, "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.", seems to be undercut later in the piece where you point out that Ukraine intentionally used Minsk2 to "buy time" and prepare for war with Russia.
I have been following this situation closely since February and I think it is clear that Russia worked for a diplomatic solution continuously from 2014 to early 2022, at which point the Russian government concluded that their diplomatic adversaries were not and had never been negotiating in good faith.
I'm glad you brought this up, Bob. Some of us have been asking Aaron to explain what those diplomatic options were. And yes, this makes obvious that if Russia had not been played for a fool, and had 'invaded' Ukraine in 2014 when the US broke the agreement of neutrality, 14,000 Russo-Ukranian lives would have been saved and all of the Eurokranian lives lost since. The bio-terrorism labs wouldn't have been built, which might have been breeding ethnically-targeted viruses. All of the NATO weapons and NATO-ready training wouldn't have occurred. The question isn't whether Russia is wrong for NOT pursuing diplomatic options but whether they were negligent in their obligations to Ukraine for having fallen for them the last eight years.
In terms of the shipments of wheat from Ukraine, Aaron also validates Putin that it's Ukraine stopping them by mining their own harbor. Russia has no control over that.
By this winter, at the latest, I expect that European countries will revolt to throw NATO out. And only corrupt African dictators think this is a dilemma. For 80% of the world, Russia is offering a way out of economic sanctions and petrodollar politics. It's only a matter of time before they take that opportunity.
I have an episode on Russia: A Wrench in the Reset Gears? It includes Putin's domestic economic policy, which I think is written by his brilliant economic advisor, Sergey Glazyev. For anyone who thinks governments should support the self-reliance of their people, we can only be envious. It includes the link to Putin's St. Petersburg address, where he outlines it:
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russia-a-wrench-in-the-reset-gears
I think the reason Putin didn't take this action in 2014 is two-fold: 1) Putin genuinely tends to prefer a diplomatic solution, if at all possible, and 2) the Russian economy could not have withstood the sanctions as well as it is doing now in 2014. He used those intervening years to fortify the Russian economy.
Completely agreed! His timing, in fact, couldn't have been better for a complete break from petrodollar hegemony. And as a bonus, the US seizures of foreign Russian assets completely cut the cajones (or whatever is the Russian equivalent) off the oligarchs who had been holding him hostage. As a chess move, it was brilliant.
Jack Sirius, who's on this thread, has been reading his economic adviser, Sergey Glazyev's, book from 23 years ago and he says it seems like it was written yesterday. So absolutely, these last eight years have been critical and he would never have the moral upper hand without the complete repudiation of diplomacy and former treaties from the US.
Putin is brilliant and chess master extraordinaire.
Putin or Glazyev, his economic advisor who wrote Genocide: Russia and the New World Order, a strategy for economic growth on the threshold of the 21st century (1998).
He wrote back then, "The rate of annual population loss has been more than double the rate of loss during the period of Stalinist repression and mass famine in the first half of the 1930s... There has been nothing like this in the thousand-year history of Russia." In Boris Yeltsin's first cabinet, he was the only member of the Russian government to resign in protest of the abolition of the Parliament and the Constitution in 1993.
Putin talks about the 13% decline in the birth rate from this time last year. His policies are the opposite of the Great Reset--repopulation by supporting mothers from the first few months of pregnancy until their child is 17, and repossession by supporting small businesses and home ownership.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russia-a-wrench-in-the-reset-gears
I completely agree with you on these two points. You are absolutely right.
It is sad, but it looks look Aaron feels that he must include at least some ritualistic condemnation of Russia so as not to be completely discredited by "serious" analysts and the mainstream media. "Maté is just a Putin bot!"
What he is missing, that unless he completely agrees with all their memes, and until he bangs the tocsin; that is what they will call him anyway.
Russia tried diplomacy, for a couple of decades.
Bully don't care.
IMO EU and US are too closely aligned, particularly in banking, for EU countries to "throw NATO out." Watching this from central Europe, our news, most importantly the news out of Germany, is slowly moving in the direction of, "we will be destroyed without Russian gas" without ever saying, "we reject the US plan."
I expect there will be an EU response ironically similar to Democratic plans to deal with abortion, climate change and gun control. Everyone will say how important it is to support the sanctions against Russia while ignoring or working around them as much as possible wihtout being completely open about it.
You could well be right. In the end, the US and EU are both consumer societies heavily dependent on the other 80% of producer nations. Those countries are jettisoning their dollars, as slowly as they can until the oligarchs can trade them for other currencies, gold, or things of actual value--in the US there's a feeding frenzy of foreign investment in real estate paying up to 50% over the asking price in cash. But as soon as they've gotten out, they'll let their economies crash along with the freefall of the dollar. That's how Michael Hudson explains it here:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/07/15/michael-hudson/
So the EU may delay the revolt in the same way the US is--ricocheting us off the pinball bumpers of Dem & Rep while we go down the tubes. But at some point that won't work. I'm pushing for us to develop a plan for what we want now, before the riots. There's no point in rioting if you don't know what you want.
That sounds about the right assessment - current crop of EU "leaders" is good only for muddling through crisis, not resolving it in any way. Recent examples: Covid, refugees. The only time they were somewhat efficient and organized was during Greek debt crisis when interests of German and French banks had to be protected.
On the global food security front and Ukraine, here is an important angle:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/05/23/gmo-colonization-of-ukraine/
On wikileaks, one can find US diplomatic cables specifically about GMO adoption in Ukraine. Concern how it is not going well before Maidan, and how finally the problem is resolved after Maidan. Some of the Maidan coup cost has probably been covered by big agro-business.
Ooooh, Firefox won't let me see this link. You're definitely on to something. I'm sure it was our Big Ag subsidies that covered that cost or not even, likely just another gift from the gov't to Big Ag. If you check out the link to Putin's speech in my Wrench in the Reset, he talks a lot about organic food and cleaning up industrial pollution and eco-friendly tourism. He does seem to be squared off against everything the GR stands for.
Maybe this link is not blocked, but you will figure out the rest :-)
https://sanantonioreport.org/before-hunter-biden-there-was-billy-carter-neil-bush-and-others/world-food-program-usas-annual-mcgovern-dole-leadership-award-ceremony/
Woah! Hunter was on the board of the World Food Program USA? And a McGovern-Dole Leadership Award is like a McDonnell-Douglas Peace Prize.
In the first episode linked below in response to cnico, The West vs the Rest, I present Kanekoa's research on the oligarch who put Zelensky in power, funded Hunter, and used the neo-Nazis as his private thugs. The truth is darker than I ever imagined. I also present Aaron's research on Syria and quote Moon over Alabama and Scott Ritter on Ukraine. This whole thing runs deep and dark.
Let's just go easy on the guy, please! After all, he is an accomplished artist too, not just food and gas industry expert! Judging by the sales volume alone, Hunter Biden is already greater painter than Van Gogh! /s
ha! I just made the same point before reading yours. You provide more direct evidence. Aaron, don't fall for US propaganda.. there is no equivalency between the US and Russia.
Hi Bob, I believe I heard Aaron actually explain what he meant with exhaust all diplomatic solutions, ie he believes that Russia should have used turning off the gas as leverage. The point that we should remember here is that economic warfare is primarily a Western type of behavior; and the Russians quite rightly think that to use their goods as leverage is economic suicide, in that it will decrease their credibility as a reliable supplier of energy not just to those that are self-declared enemies, but also to its friends. We can see from the suicidal boomerang effect these economic sanctions are having that the Western approach is folly, and makes the opponent more determined.
Ahh. Thanks. That is a position I can respect, although that would not have prevented Ukraine from ramping up their attack in the Donbass as they were planning to do prior to Russia beating them to the punch. And Russia's gripe was first and foremost with Ukraine, so shutting down the gas supply could have led to a direct confrontation with NATO and an even worse situation IMO.
I absolutely agree with you that Russia had exhausting all diplomatic solutions since 2014.
In Vladmir Putin's address he claims that Russian government's talks with the United States in December 2021 where they could not ensure that Ukraine would not be granted NATO membership that lead to the decision to invade Ukraine.
That makes sense. Putin lays out the UN protocol for just military action and shows why they adhered to the criteria and met all preconditions for diplomatic attempts to resolve it. Scott Ritter says that Russia is constrained by their own imperative to limit civilian casualties but they're winning decisively. On the economic front he writes:
"Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind."
Aaron, Just a thought - "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis." I would argue that Russia tried very much to avoid direct conflict. They knew early on that the US was upgrading Ukraine's military with direct training and equipment to NATO standards as early as 2014. This went on for 7-8 years. In that time Russia issued many statements about red lines and warnings. The coup in 2014, clearly sponsored by the US could have sparked a military response at that time. If roles were reversed there is not doubt how quickly the US would intervene militarily. I would argue that Russia had no choice but to invade, given Ukraine's nazification, and build up on troops in the Donbas region. I would argue that Russia did exhause all diplomatic solutions...
I think Mate knows they didn't have a choice, and knows even if they exhausted all diplomatic solutions, and maybe they did, it would have made no difference. We were determined to bring Russia down, they know it, knew it. From the get go we didn't keep our promise to Gorbachev, and Clinton was the first to break that promise of not inviting more nations into NATO. The coup backed by neocons and Obama, since i refuse to let Obama off the hook as many do, said to Russia we're coming to get you soon.
I think he knows but his statement doesn’t reflect reality.. it contradicts what I am sure he knows. So why make the statement?
Because if one does not drop some ritualistic condemnation of Russia, one will not be taken at all seriously.
"Of course PTUIN is EVEL, but..."
'nazification of Ukraine' is nonsense. US, Germany, Serbia, etc., can be accused of harbouring significant elements of "Nazis". Besides, criminally acting like Nazis is Israel, which gets rave reviews from western fans. Let's condemn and sanction them harshly.
It's full of Nazis. That's just a fact.
The Western media, who once reported copiously on that fact, are now silent, or worse they lie.
Do they name streets, "Himmler Avenue" in America? No, they don't. In the Ukraine though, you can stroll down the Bandera Strasser in Kyiv at will. The street is located in the Darnitsky District of the city and is officially known as "Stepan Bandera Avenue" (prospekt Stepana Bandery in Ukrainian).
American allies are always good and pure, with the noblest of intentions. Like America itself who is "force for good" in the world. Or so they tell us over and over in their propaganda.
While an accurate summary of US overt actions to date, seems like you have ignored the elephant in the room with no mention whatsoever of the CIA or the Nazi involvement/causation.
CIA has promoted Nazism in Ukraine for decades. Zelensky was elected on promises to enact the Minsk accords. But shortly theteafter, due to pressure from the Azov neoNazis (CIA), he backed off from that entirely and eventually the Azovs became part of the official military of Ukraine as the National Guard. Other neoNazi groups flourished in Ukr as well including the large group called the Right Sector. Huge youth camps trained children every year.
Zach Dorfman well-documented the CIA training of Nazi troops for past 8 yrs in two articles published this year. They trained them both in Ukraine and in US. Canada and UK did the same. You mention Ukraine being trained for war, but you omit by whom and why.
Thiery Mayssen who does incredible work at voltairenet.org has written extensively on the CIA and MI6 involvement in Nazism in Ukraine, among many other things such as the history and involvement of the Straussians (aka Nuland/Blinken/Kagan et al.) in destabilizing Ukraine.
The reason why this Nazi backstory is crucial is because with the CIA's careful curation over the past decades, hatred of Russian-speaking people in Ukr has been fanned to the extreme. To the point where many Ukrainians actually believe that Russians are not actually "people." They are taught this in school! There are textbooks for children stating that Russians "look like people, but are not actually people." They actually refer to them as orcs. As incredible as that sounds it is true and this propagandized mindset led to the rise of Nazism and extreme hatred of Russians and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine.
THAT is why they bombed shelled tortured and murdered the Russian-speaking people in the Donbass for the past 8 yrs after the Nuland Maidan US coup.
They are now using US HIMARS MLRS systems to shell/kill innocents in Donbass! And the indiscriminate shellings/murders of the innocent civilians have exponentially increased in the past 2 months! It is way worse now than it was for the previous 8 years.
Why? Because they do not consider Russian-speaking people as humans and are clearly bent on their annihilation.
There are videos of CIA-trained Nazis gloating about all the equipment the CIA gave them... More equipment and weapons than they knew what to do with they said. Laughing about how they learned it was fun to kill.
The CIA created and curated this war along with the Straussians who now control the Biden administration. They worked hard to get to this point and they are not going to let it go now.
I do believe their ultimate goal is to break up Russia and then China. Global hegemony. Which is why they do not care about the suffering of poor people around the world. It is probably part of their new world order. They certainly planned to drag down Europe which they are successfully doing, so why not the world too.
And to add, regarding your statement that Russia is to blame, it's well-documented that there were plans for a full-fledged Ukrainian military neoNazi attack on the Donbass in March of this year. Captured militants have said this plus detailed reports with the military strategy were found early on. I disagree that Russia is responsible for the global crisis... I blame the US and the CIA.
Excellent summary, cnico. My only modification is that the US is taking on Russia, China and Iran all at the same time! I didn't know about the plans for March, but that makes sense as to why US journalists were all salivating that Russia was going to invade before it happened.
I wonder if the Straussians are the same oligarchs behind Ukraine and PNAC and the neoliberal/neocon petrodollar hegemony. There may be more than one set of rats. That's what I explore in the episode I referenced above. But I have plenty more validating all the points you're making, many of which quote Aaron. And this one reiterates his point, that this is a war against everyone: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-west-vs-the-rest
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-hegemons-last-stand
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/what-zelensky-should-keep
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/putin-peace-petrodollar-pain
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/yanis-varoufakis-is-naive-on-ukraine
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/ukranian-peace-and-us-petropocalypse
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-is-dolores-umbridge
Ps... You probably know this, but to add Nuland is married to a Kagan, and his brother co-founded the PNAC. Mayssen at voltairenet.org has a great article detailing their origins in Chicago years ago and following the threads to the Biden admin. Mind-blowing really how they hung in there and are now in the driver's seat.
Yes, for anyone into this and familiar with Harry Potter, I think my cleverest episode is Escape from Azkaban: Victoria Nuland is Dolores Umbridge. My daughter even photoshopped a large black fly onto the famous picture of her looking particularly toadlike when she admits there are bio labs. I really wanted to use "A Coup of One's Own" and "Project for a Nuland American Century" but haven't figured out how to do black screen text ;-) I'll check out voltairenet.org.
Lolol! 😂😂
If you have dishes to do or other mindless tasks, they're fun to watch. I don't do transcripts so the videos and text aren't redundant. I put more commentary into the video and put longer quotes and links in the text. Enjoy!
Wait! Nuland is NOT a toad?
Wow, I learn something every day! :)
Hi Tereza. Thanks for your comment. Yes it is a tangled web isn't it?
Shortly after I commented above, this post showed up in my tg feed from Viktor, vicktop55 channel. It's So right on.
"My attitude towards Russia and the Russians has never changed, and Russophobia that originated in Ukraine is a mental disorder caused by deceitful Western propaganda."
Bogdan Stupka is a Soviet and Ukrainian theater and film actor. Minister of Culture and Arts of Ukraine. Hero of Ukraine." https://t.me/ukraina_ru/85972
Ukr has gone insane and the CIA did it. A commenter said that CIA used Nazis in the overthrow of Allende, which I did not know. Apparently it's in their playbook. 👿👿
Thanks for the links, look forward to reading them.
That's so interesting about Nazis and Allende. You probably know this too but a couple of the best sources I've found for info have been The Great Kanekoa and Moon over Alabama. Kanekoa reported on a 28 yr old German journalist living in Donbas. Germany has closed her YT and bank accounts (including her dad's), cancelled her PayPal, and sentenced her to three years in prison for reporting on it. There's also George Galloway who interviewed Johnny Miller, reporting live from Donbas in eastern Ukraine: "He explains that there are almost no western reporters on the ground in the region leading to a very incomplete view of what is happening, where civilian areas are being bombed daily by Ukrainian forces with weapons supplied from the US and Europe. He says the Russian speaking citizens say that they have been under attack since 2014, and that both the Russian and Ukrainian sides are misreporting events and the roots of the conflict." In particular he's viewing an elementary school, one of 100 hit, and how traumatized children are by attacks that specifically target them. I hope Aaron looks at things like this before he concludes there were diplomatic solutions.
https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/germany-labels-journalist-criminal
"I hope Aaron looks at things like this before he concludes there were diplomatic solutions."
I hope that Aaron is only spouting nonsense like this so as to maintain "credibility" in the minds of those are still in the thrall of the official story.
A good piece in general. But Aaron, you undermine your own credibility and integrity by obsequiously including statements like this in everything you write about the Ukraine conflict: "By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis."
What diplomatic solutions are you talking about? Those were clearly all exhausted before Russia sent in troops. Your own words belie your a-plague-on-both-your-houses stance:
"There is every indication that the US was on board with Ukraine's exploitation of Minsk to prepare for war. ...The White House is in fact so committed to avoiding the diplomatic front with Russia that it is willing to tolerate hardship at home."
Yes, the special military operation was clearly a desperate last ditch attempt to defend Russia in the face of endless and ever increasing Empire aggression.
He told them, over and over, that Nato in the Ukraine was a Red Line. No strong country would, could, or should allow itself to be literally surrounded by their enemies. Rather than respect that, America saw it as a great opportunity to start a shooting war with Russia. One that they obviously think that they can "win". They can't but The Empire believes their own propaganda. They also are inevitably utterly clueless about their many enemies. They thought for instance, that the "Japs" (portrayed in their propaganda as sub-human insects), were weak rice eaters who could not see in the dark. And then they landed on Iwo Jima.
It seems like the 30,000 kilos of plutonium (unclear whether separated or not) and 40,000 of highly enriched, weapons grade uranium that the Russians found within the Zaporizhzhia power plant—per the IAEA at Davos & on its own website—isn’t getting enough attention. It would seem to me that the presence of nuclear materials capable of yielding several thousand Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs might perhaps warrant a military operation all by itself.
Still shocking to think how much is kept from the American public (tax-payers for the Pentagon) such as this about nuclear material for bombs inside the power plant.
"A western official told the Financial Times that once NATO weapons shipments cross over into Ukraine from Poland, "from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country."
Same failure to track is used for Pentagon spending.. pinpoint accuracy is reserved for peaceful protesters, Indy media and Youtube critics who have funds frozen for dissenting narratives. Maybe if we tag weapons with inflammatory tweets NATO can track those as effectively as they do critics.
Yeah, I'm wondering how long it will be before we see the first terrorist attack on an airliner with a Stinger missile.
The maniacs provided daesh scum MANPADS too.
When and if an airliner is shot down over Europe though, no matter who does it, it will be blamed on !PTUIN!.
That’s what most stood out to me. I want to know why or I’m calling the lie. Nobody asks these people how the paper trail for weapons just dies. Who was the last official to sign the papers over to Just Some Guy buying the weapons? Get that official along with the official who supposedly received the weapons - and would presumably be denying receiving them - and put them both in jail until they confess. A problem with illegal weapons sales and yet no safeguards are put in place. It’s a bold, blatant lie that people just accept.
Aaron, I unapologetically pile on regarding your statement that “By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.”
That statement not only mars an otherwise excellent pot, it nearly invalidates it. And since you offer no historical or political context for such a fundamental and conversation-ending claim—not to mention that it is right out Jake Sullivan’s mouth—it sticks out like a trite allusion to a supposedly settled superior western morality that is ultimately nothing more than the usual kind of virtue signaling you so often and appropriately decry.
I fully respect and agree with most pacifistic and anti-war sentiments regarding this war and any other war (including WWII). I also fully understand how polite people often must offer the usual qualifications as the lead-in to discussing unwelcome claims. (The most obvious example being something like, “Trump was a dumpster fire, but…”) However, considering your audience, that kind of qualification—if that is what is was—is way off base in your Substack. Am I wrong to believe that most of us reading your posts are tired of namby-pamby manipulation of our moral values by imperialists to play down their own daily, world-wide, intentional, conscienceless death and destruction?
Also on your behalf, I understand how a statement like this perfectly illustrates the power of the dominant narrative to infiltrate our thinking and fatally weaken criticism of the empire. We all suffer from the mind rape (sometimes referred to by the clinical euphemism “mass formation”) done to us by well-trained and infinitely funded imperial psychological operators. But please, enough with such bullshit.
Just as a matter of adding badly needed historical context to your statement, during the 1990s and 2000s the clear objective of the US and NATO was to colonize the fractured remnants of the USSR, which has essentially been a successful project for most of the last 30 years. To enhance your context, perhaps read, for example, Glazyev’s 1999 book, “A Genocide: Russia and the New World Order.” Without such context, your statement fails miserably to give the Russian perspective even dismissive acknowledgement.
Also, as trivial a comparison as it may seem, it is useful to look at this “blame” issue in terms of the classic struggle between a bully and the victim. Your statement strikes me as a kind of victim shaming on an international diplomatic scale?
Or, more accurately, perhaps reflect on the mythic fight between David and Goliath. No one would know David’s name today if he had waited for Goliath to take the first sword swing.
Every word. Aaron needs to do better and make up his mind.
The libs and the dems are never going to love him until he stops "defending Russia". He'll need to go "the full retard" for that.
He's still trying to have it both ways.
It would be nice if he, like so many, got off his high horse and 'descended' into the plebian comment section so as to address our concerns and questions. I expect lofty pronouncements of The Truth from the MSM, but hope and expect that a real journalist would do better.
Nuland, blinkin, vindman are all zios with ukrop ancestry. Russia will not stop until all delusions of a revived khazar kingdom right next to Russia are dashed, that means capturing Southern Ukraine all the way to Transintra.
Great article, except this part:
By invading Ukraine rather than exhausting all diplomatic solutions, Russia bears obvious responsibility for the crisis.
All diplomatic solution were exhausted because NATO/US not just rejected any compromise, but even the idea of serious diplomatic engagement. It was all about mocking Russian concerns and intentionally humiliating them with dismissive attitude - this was not long ago, November to January. Then February came along and Kiev regime ramped up bombardment of Donbas (OSCE monitors, while partial to Ukraine, documented this) in anticipation of offensive to retake it, and Zelensky started making noises about acquiring nuclear weapons. At that point, it was clear that "collective west" is not interested in any peace. And still isn't. If Afghanistan was a self-licking ice-cream Ukraine is that on steroids:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-spending-counter-russia-war-effort-exceeds-first-5-years-war-costs-afghanistan
All my adult life I have been neutral on Russia, much of it resisting the unrelenting propaganda about that evil empire, the Soviet Union. But now, the colossal stupidity and arrogance of US Empire has me rooting for Russia and lamenting that the Ukrainian people cannot see what is happening to them, with leaders that make them as expendable as the US is cynically turning their country. We have more than just bad actors here. The US, NATO, and Ukraine brought this on, but it would appear that most Americans are confusing empathy for innocent Ukrainian citizens with unjustifiable war to topple a competing power most of us know very little about. My question is: will the US war mongers actually think they can pull that game with China? My only sadness is that my family and I are caught in the collateral damage our foolish President is causing. I didn't even vote for the man because I suspected this is where would be - but it's so much worse. We're harboring a wounded animal who hates to lose.
Russia is defending itself from ceaseless American, and to a lesser extent, UK and even German aggression.
It's an old old old story.
That has been clear to me for many years. What I am impressed by is the neoliberal establishment's near-total capture of the North American mindset and realization of an Orwellian reality I never really thought I would live to see becoming so entrenched, and against which we have been warned by everyone on the honest left, from Chomsky, Vijay Prashad to Sheldon Wolen. Before I die it would please me greatly to see the end US Imperial thuggery - even if in an unstable geopolitical reality without fossil fuel dependence.
Love the honesty aaron
Russia is not to blame for what is happening. NATO is and in first order, the US. We planned this all out, a win-win for the Home Team -- if they don't invade, we just push in and arm Ukraine up to the hilt and up to the Russian border. Then Russia won't have an inch of wiggle-room when we issue our demands. If they do invade, we "crush and annihilate them!" If somebody puts a gun in your face and you pull a knife on him, are you to blame? The "caste" of characters running the show in Washington do not care about starving Asians or Africans or Latin Americans. They care about money and power and being ruthless so "nobody gets any ideas" is part of it. They are actually, in my view, deranged in a real sense. They cannot comprehend that all their shallow calculations are wrong and doomed to fail. I suppose we must all go along with them to that doom.
It is good to see all the comments criticizing the "exhausting all diplomatic solutions" canard. Aaron, give us one -- one! -- possible route to a negotiated settlement in the run up to the SMO.
The U.S. intended to instigate this conflict because the Biden administration thought that it could collapse the Russian political economy in jiffy. Democratic Party propagandist Paul Krugman wrote a column in the early days of the SMO which argued that so much Russian wealth was offshored in Western banks that the Russian president could be easily brought to heel by seizing that wealth. Russian oligarchs would squeal and Putin would promptly kowtow.
It didn't work. (I guess Krugman assumed Russia is run like the United States.) Now the Biden administration is stuck. U.S. leadership is so stupid and straitjacketed by militarism it can't imagine a negotiated settlement.
Yes! It is.
I suppose that Aaron feels obligated to include such claptrap in his posts, otherwise he will be utterly dismissed as a "Putin bot" and put into the same cultural drawer as Alex Jones and the like.
In your last paragraph you summarise well my feelings on this horrific war. All efforts should be put into diplomacy and de-escalation rather than another unwinnable forever war likely to cause famine.
Ukraine is simply a substitute for Afghanistan. US policy is always a prolonged, expensive proxy war - necessary to siphon money off to the politicos and oligarchs involved. A good article- the constant USA escalation and complete lack of diplomacy show the intent of a proxy war for a long time. Not what the USA people want, but corrupt politicians require it.
All agreed, however one stark fact is left out of the picture: The Ukrainians are utterly united in their determination to kick out the invaders once and for all! One must consider the history of Ukrainians suffering under the boots of Russia, to understand how strong this dedication is.
I was there several times. I consider the Ukrainians to be intelligent, extremely courageous, beautiful people. They were left hanging without the right weapons for far too long, and that may yet hit home. Whatever the guilt of the US cowboys in Washington, Ukrainians have no choice at this point. They must win this horrific blood fest, lest psychopath Putin gets his way, and all the thousands of lives already lost would be for nothing.- As to the 'Nazis' in Ukraine, that is a red herring. Yes, there are right wing nationalists and even Nazis, but far more of them are to be found in Russia, the US, Germany, etc. Stephan Bandera used to the German Nazis for his nationalist goals, to fight the Russian army. So, did the Zionists in Palestine, to get their way of stealing territory, but nobody in the west has a problem with that incredible deal! High time to denounce the israeli terrorists who have had free reign for 75 years, and finally now show their true colours with BenGvir and Smutrich screaming their fascist, racist rethoric into the world. Nobody speaks about their 'Nazi'-nature. Because their aggressive propaganda keeps everyone quiet.