January 24, 2023
The finest modern military thinker, Maj. Gen J.F.C. Fuller, wrote “the true objective of war is not military victory but the peace that follows it.’
Amen. Besotted by tribalism and propaganda, we often forget why we are fighting and what changes the current war will bring. We think killing fellow humans is a noble quest rather than the basest Stone Age behavior.
Case in point, the current war in Ukraine. There, ex-Russians now rebranded “Ukrainians” are battling Russia’s not so competent armies.
The United States and its vassals are pouring arms and money galore into the rebellious Ukraine – over $100 billion to date. This is an amazing amount of money considering hardly anyone in the US had ever heard of Ukraine and certainly couldn’t find it on a map, and that this flood of money comes from the US which is itself on the financial ropes and operating on borrowed money.
Getting America so deeply involved in the obscure Ukraine War was thanks to truly monumental propaganda produced by the six US government-controlled TV channels and court newspapers. Its 24-7 happy news about Ukraine and constant vilification of re-demonized Russia.
We are in fact involved in a war that dares not speak its name. Russia denies it’s a war at all and claims to be fighting a recrudescence of Euro fascism. The US and its subservient allies also deny a war is going on, while pouring arms and munition on an almost WWII scale into Ukraine – whose government the US spent $5 billion overthrowing.
Russia won’t call this war a war, still pretending it’s a `police action’ – rather like the past US invasions of Panama, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. But, as western arms and covert troops pour into Ukraine and Russia can’t manage to field adequate troops or weapons, holding on to the ‘police action’ fiction is preposterous.
What’s happening in Washington is that the Democrat neo-liberals smell Russian blood and are intoxicated by the prospect of first Russian defeat in Ukraine, then the collapse of the current Russian federation made up of 83 supposedly sovereign units. Russia is very fragile and vulnerable to foreign-engineered unrest. Russia’s Far East is dangerously exposed between US and Chinese ambitions.
The dramatic transformation of most of the formerly staunch communist republic of Ukraine into an arch-anti-communist Kiev republic is a dire warning signal for Moscow. Russian leader Dimitry Medvedev just warned that Russia’s defeat in Ukraine would trigger a nuclear war. He could be right.
The leading American neocon, Victoria Nuland, boasted that it cost only $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine’s former inept communist regime and replace it by a TV actor, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine don’t even have a capable spokesman.
It’s by now clear that the so-called non-war in Ukraine is dangerously escalating towards a full-scale US-NATO-Russia war that might turn into World War III. The duty of great powers is to keep world affairs calm.
Instead, the US and its European satraps keep pouring fuel on the fire. Ukraine, once infamous as Europe’s most corrupt nation, is happily gulping down the billions from the US and Europe. Swiss banks are making a killing. So too arms manufacturers who had been facing flat or declining sales before this jolly little war.
Germany, the keystone of NATO power, is caught between its sensible goal of keeping good relations with Moscow and its subservience to Washington. If the Ukraine war intensifies, Germany will be caught in the middle – an obvious target for Russian tactical nuclear strikes.
Who in Washington has begun to add up the costs of keeping post-war Ukraine going. Without a steady inflow of billions from the US and its rich allies, Ukraine will likely collapse into warring fiefs. Worse, if Russia is somehow defeated, who will assume its financial upkeep and prevent this nuclear superpower from running amok? Will China sit back and allow its only major ally to be splintered? Would militants in China’s leadership not beat the war drums to re-occupy border regions lost in the 19th century to Imperial Russia?
Time for the Great American power to act to bring peace and stability, not more war.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis
New York and Toronto
I do not believe President Biden is competent to fulfil the duties of his office. The kleptocracy that runs the US is not representative of her citizens. I do believe that most Americans do not want to be involved in a war in Ukraine. Recent American interventions around the globe have been a disaster for both Americans and the victim nations. This war is an existential matter for Russia, but not America. This conflict must be resolved by diplomacy.
Absolutely correct. The US has wanted to weaken Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union more than 30 years. The US planned the Ukraine War, organized it, provoked it, instigated it, funded it, sponsored it, and escalated it.
I think history is the ‘winners side’ of the story, or events. Not wanting to stipulate the real reasons for a war, I suspect the general that stated, “…the true objective of war is not military victory but the peace that follows it.”, is being disingenuous. It tries to ‘gloss over’ the treatment and killing of others for gain.
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I suspect the real reasons for war, for time immemorial are related to economic embetterment or territorial expansion. Occasionally an ethinic/religious slight may be the cause. The latter is likely an excuse for the real reasons, but there is degree of fanaticism ‘out there’.
Eisenhower was right. It’s really the US military/industrial complex which runs their foreign relations, not the US presidents. Tons of money will be made on the corpses of Ukrainians and Russians.
Dear Mr. Margolis:
Excellent analysis which is shared by many. This morning I read on the news that Zelensky was in the UK and France begging for more equipment while his casualties are in the hundreds of thousands. This war must end ASAP to avoid a nuclear disaster. Twenty years ago I was in Moscow at dinner talking to a couple of senior military officials. They couldn’t understand why Russia, Europe and North America should not be united to meet the various other threats facing the West – Islamic terrorism, Rising China, etc. Unfortunately, we have a political class that believes in US global hegemony fueled by financial interests and some sort of secular messianic belief of an autocratic new world order. Thank you very much for your great work, Patrick
May I amend the last sentence of my post to be more collegial-
Wake up, Bro, this is serious !!!
The Americans just shot down a Chinese weather balloon. They let it float over their country and waited until it was over the Atlantic ocean before shooting it down. Someone is just not thinking very much any more. Who knows where this will lead.
I always have respected your wise words Eric Margolis. The trouble is, the rest of the world isn’t interested in the facts. They are certain they already know them. But thank you for being a sane voice in an increasingly insane world.
When the American Corporate Empire starts a war their goal isn’t victory it’s to profit off of it and they will intentionally do everything they can to make it as expensive as possible and drag it out as long as they can to make every penny they can out of it. That is why they are so destructive every bomb they rain down is profit in the bank. That is why they laundered through Ukraine over double Russia’s yearly military budget most of which is headed straight for the tax havens of the war industry.
That is why they are sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine knowing full well Ukraine does not have the capability to supply or maintain those money eating monsters.
Thank you, Eric, for your continuing efforts to restore peace and sanity to the world. Please continue to speak out: you, John Dear, and the pope.
Where are the other religious leaders?
Their silence is deafening.
Thank you Eric. One of the few speaking to the truth of this war. When I say the same thing I’m called a Putin lover or a Boris lover. Not ironically a good friend of mine who is Russian is actually deeply concerned that Russians in this country will be rounded up and sent to concentration camps just like the Japanese and others in WW2 and WW1.