The conflict between Ukraine and “Vlad the Invader” has prompted all sorts of prediction about the possibility of something causing an all out world war……the amount of weapons being deployed by NATO in Ukraine and the surrounding member states does not bode well for any peace any time soon.
Supposedly the Cold War ended in 1989….but the death merchants have done what many thought was a dead subject…..
The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism.
That is why they have resurrected it.
The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”
This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance. This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of US troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a cynical goal of the Western alliance, has now solidified an expanding and resurgent NATO and a rampant, uncontrollable militarism. The masters of war may be ecstatic, but the potential consequences, including a global conflagration, are terrifying.
Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death
Some even thinking that the dreaded third world war may have just begun when “Vlad the Invader” sent his forces into Ukraine….
Lawmakers and media outlets are warning that the war in Ukraine could trigger World War III, but some say it has already started—perhaps even years ago. Among them is billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who argued Saturday on Twitter that “WWIII has likely started already” while NATO members, fearful of Vladimir Putin, let Ukrainians do the fighting. “We are in the early innings of Putin’s global aspirations,” Ackerman added, per CNBC. “With each ‘victory,’ he is emboldened to take more. He is testing us, and we are failing the test each time.” Ackerman still sees room for stricter sanctions and tougher negotiations to work, especially if China gets involved, but “time is running short.” Among other voices:
- Look at history: “We’re already in it,” said Russia expert Fiona Hill of World War III. She recently told Politico that “we keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I,” much like the Russia-Ukraine war grew out of changes in Russia in the twentieth century. “We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.”America’s battle, too’: “Ukrainians are fighting for us, for the United States, for Europe, for you, for me,” writes columnist Trudy Rubin in the Philadelphia Inquirer under the headline “World War III has already started in Ukraine.” She understands NATO’s desire to avoid a hot war, but urges President Biden to consider options including a no-fly zone to protect Ukrainians from air assaults. “And—crucially—GOP leaders must finally chastise those in its ranks, including Donald Trump and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who praised Putin after this war began. They are enabling a war criminal, who feeds off the US political divisions they sow.”I will be very blunt’: “We do feel supported and we are grateful for all the help that we are getting,” Ukrainian parliament member Kira Rudik said Friday on MSNBC, adding that “the next step that we see is a no-fly zone over Ukraine. And I know that everybody is saying no, no, no, the Third World War will start. I will be very blunt with you: It has already started, because the attack on a nuclear plant … affects everybody.” Disaster at the Zaporizhzhya facility was narrowly averted, but Rudik noted that “radiation doesn’t really care what passport you’re holding.”
- Article Five: Analysts warn that fighting in Ukraine could easily spark a wider war. “A dangerous and tragic case would be if Russian forces were to inadvertently, and I want to emphasize inadvertently, launch a missile that landed in a bordering NATO country, such as Poland,” Glennys Young, Russian expert and chair of the University of Washington history department, told Fortune. “If this were perceived by NATO commanders as an attack, and hopefully it wouldn’t, this would trigger the provisions of the NATO alliance’s Article Five.”
Dire predictions…..as an antiwar supporter I see all the weapons being spread around the region like peanut butter reminds me of the days before the beginning of WW1.
But that is just me.
Any thoughts on what will transpire over this invasion?
Before you answer you might want to check out a little history of US foreign policy…..it has, from the beginning, an aggressive policy…..
Note that by beginning our examination in the late nineteenth century, from the outset we pass over the aggressive and violent expansion of the territorial bounds of the United States up to the dawn of the twentieth century, when the size of the United States increased almost twelvefold. During that early period, besides the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Barbary Wars, and the Mexican-American War, the US fought no less than four dozen wars against the various Amerindian tribes and confederations that had previously held sway over the vast bounds of the western North American continent. So, too, we pass over its involvement in East Asia, in the Opium Wars, and in Korea and Japan—which it forced open at gunpoint in 1853. But the plain fact is, from its inception to the “closing of the frontier” in 1890, the US was engaged in armed conflicts of one kind or another with its various neighbors for almost 80 percent of its existence.
But by 1890, having officially declared complete its self-appointed manifest destiny, to expand the United States from Atlantic to Pacific, its gaze quickly turned abroad. The transformation of the relationship of the states to the federal government during the Civil War, as well as rapid industrialization and the spread of telegraph and railroad lines, meant the US was increasingly capable of projecting concentrated force abroad. Its interactions with other major powers over the following decade illustrate plainly one of the foundational realist principles of international relations: as its relative power increased, so too did the US’s demands for deference in its immediate vicinity. Indeed, as soon as it had achieved the requisite levels of internal cohesion and industrial might, the US set about enforcing its hitherto nominal regional hegemony.
https://mises.org/wire/us-foreign-policy-has-always-been-aggressive
Now you are armed with some thoughts on the current conflict…..so whatcha think?
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