“I want to appeal to the Ukrainian
people, to the mothers, the fathers, the
sisters and the grandparents. Stop
sending your sons and brothers to this
pointless, merciless slaughter. The
interests of the Ukrainian government
are not your interests. I beg of you:
Come to your senses. You do not have to
water Donbass fields with Ukrainian
blood. It’s not worth it.”
— Alexander Zakharchenko, Prime
Minister of the Donetsk People’s
Republic
February 06, 2015 "ICH"
- "Counterpunch"-
Washington needs a war in Ukraine to achieve
its strategic objectives. This point cannot
be overstated.
The US wants to push NATO to Russia’s
western border. It wants a land-bridge to
Asia to spread US military bases across the
continent. It wants to control the pipeline
corridors from Russia to Europe to monitor
Moscow’s revenues and to ensure that gas
continues to be denominated in dollars. And
it wants a weaker, unstable Russia that is
more prone to regime change, fragmentation
and, ultimately, foreign control. These
objectives cannot be achieved peacefully,
indeed, if the fighting stopped tomorrow,
the sanctions would be lifted shortly after,
and the Russian economy would begin to
recover. How would that benefit Washington?
It wouldn’t. It would undermine
Washington’s broader plan to integrate China
and Russia into the prevailing economic
system, the dollar system. Powerbrokers in
the US realize that the present system must
either expand or collapse. Either China and
Russia are brought to heel and persuaded to
accept a subordinate role in the US-led
global order or Washington’s tenure as
global hegemon will come to an end.
This is why hostilities in East Ukraine
have escalated and will continue to
escalate. This is why the U.S. Congress
approved a bill for tougher sanctions on
Russia’s energy sector and lethal aid for
Ukraine’s military. This is why Washington
has sent military trainers to Ukraine and is
preparing to provide $3 billion in
“anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones,
armored Humvees, and radars that can
determine the location of enemy rocket and
artillery fire.” All of Washington’s actions
are designed with one purpose in mind, to
intensify the fighting and escalate the
conflict. The heavy losses sustained by
Ukraine’s inexperienced army and the
terrible suffering of the civilians in
Lugansk and Donetsk are of no interest to
US war-planners. Their job is to make sure
that peace is avoided at all cost because
peace would derail US plans to pivot to Asia
and remain the world’s only superpower.
Here’s an except from an article in the WSWS:
“The ultimate aim of the US and its
allies is to reduce Russia to an
impoverished and semi-colonial status.
Such a strategy, historically associated
with Carter administration National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, is
again being openly promoted.
In a speech last year at the Wilson
Center, Brzezinski called on Washington
to provide Kiev with “weapons designed
particularly to permit the Ukrainians to
engage in effective urban warfare of
resistance.” In line with the policies
now recommended in the report by the
Brookings Institution and other think
tanks calling for US arms to the Kiev
regime, Brzezinski called for providing
“anti-tank weapons…weapons capable for
use in urban short-range fighting.”
While the strategy outlined by
Brzezinski is politically
criminal—trapping Russia in an ethnic
urban war in Ukraine that would threaten
the deaths of millions, if not billions
of people—it is fully aligned with the
policies he has promoted against Russia
for decades.” (“The
US arming of Ukraine and the danger of
World War III“, World Socialist Web
Site)
Non-lethal military aid will inevitably
lead to lethal military aid, sophisticated
weaponry, no-fly zones, covert assistance,
foreign contractors, Special ops, and boots
on the ground. We’ve seen it all before.
There is no popular opposition to the war in
the US, no thriving antiwar movement that
can shut down cities, order a general strike
or disrupt the status quo. So there’s no way
to stop the persistent drive to war. The
media and the political class have given
Obama carte blanche, the authority to
prosecute the conflict as he sees fit. That
increases the probability of a broader war
by this summer following the spring thaw.
While the possibility of a nuclear
conflagration cannot be excluded, it won’t
effect US plans for the near future. No one
thinks that Putin will launch a nuclear war
to protect the Donbass, so the deterrent
value of the weapons is lost.
And Washington isn’t worried about
the costs either. Despite botched military
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
and half a dozen other countries around the
world; US stocks are still soaring, foreign
investment in US Treasuries is at record
levels,, the US economy is growing at a
faster pace than any of its global
competitors, and the dollar has risen an
eye-watering 13 percent against a basket of
foreign currencies since last June. America
has paid nothing for decimating vast swathes
of the planet and killing more than a
million people. Why would they stop now?
They won’t, which is why the fighting in
Ukraine is going to escalate. Check this out
from the WSWS:
“On Monday, the New York Times
announced that the Obama administration
is moving to directly arm the Ukrainian
army and the fascistic militias
supporting the NATO-backed regime in
Kiev, after its recent setbacks in the
offensive against pro-Russian separatist
forces in east Ukraine.
The article cites a joint report
issued Monday by the Brookings
Institution, the Atlantic Council, and
the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
and delivered to President Obama,
advising the White House and NATO on the
best way to escalate the war in
Ukraine….
According to the Times, US officials
are rapidly shifting to support the
report’s proposals. NATO military
commander in Europe General Philip M.
Breedlove, Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel, US Secretary of State John Kerry,
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Martin Dempsey all
supported discussions on directly arming
Kiev. National Security Advisor Susan
Rice is reconsidering her opposition to
arming Kiev, paving the way for Obama’s
approval.” (“Washington
moves toward arming Ukrainian regime“,
World Socialist Web Site)
See what’s going on? The die is already
cast. There will be a war with Russia
because that’s what the political
establishment wants. It’s that simple. And
while previous provocations failed to lure
Putin into the Ukrainian cauldron, this new
surge of violence–a spring offensive– is
bound to do the trick. Putin is not going to
sit on his hands while proxies armed with US
weapons and US logistical support pound the
Donbass to Fallujah-type rubble. He’ll do
what any responsible leader would do. He’ll
protect his people. That means war. (See the
vast damage that Obama’s proxy war has done
to E. Ukraine here: “An
overview of the socio – humanitarian
situation on the territory of Donetsk
People’s Republic as a consequence of
military action from 17 to 23 January 2015“)
Asymmetrical Warfare: Falling Oil
Prices
Keep in mind, that the Russian economy
has already been battered by economic
sanctions, oil price manipulation, and a
vicious attack of the ruble. Until this
week, the mainstream media dismissed the
idea that the Saudis were deliberately
pushing down oil prices to hurt Russia. They
said the Saudis were merely trying to retain
“market share” by maintaining current
production levels and letting prices fall
naturally. But it was all bunkum as the New
York Times finally admitted on Tuesday in an
article titled: “Saudi Oil Is Seen as Lever
to Pry Russian Support From Syria’s Assad”.
Here’s a clip from the article:
“Saudi Arabia has been trying to
pressure President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia to abandon his support for
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria,
using its dominance of the global oil
markets at a time when the Russian
government is reeling from the effects
of plummeting oil prices…
Saudi officials say — and they have
told the United States — that they think
they have some leverage over Mr. Putin
because of their ability to reduce the
supply of oil and possibly drive up
prices….Any weakening of Russian support
for Mr. Assad could be one of the first
signs that the recent tumult in the oil
market is having an impact on global
statecraft…..
Saudi Arabia’s leverage depends on
how seriously Moscow views its declining
oil revenue. “If they are hurting so bad
that they need the oil deal right away,
the Saudis are in a good position to
make them pay a geopolitical price as
well,” said F. Gregory Gause III, a
Middle East specialist at Texas A&M’s
Bush School of Government and Public
Service (“Saudi
Oil Is Seen as Lever to Pry Russian
Support From Syria’s Assad“, New
York Times)
The Saudis “think they have some leverage
over Mr. Putin because of their ability” to
manipulate prices?
That says it all, doesn’t it?
What’s interesting about this article is
the way it conflicts with previous pieces in
the Times. For example, just two weeks ago,
in an article titled “Who Will Rule the Oil
Market?” the author failed to see any
political motive behind the Saudi’s action.
According to the narrative, the Saudis were
just afraid that “they would lose market
share permanently” if they cut production
and kept prices high. Now the Times has done
a 180 and joined the so called conspiracy
nuts who said that prices were manipulated
for political reasons. In fact, the sudden
price plunge had nothing to do with
deflationary pressures, supply-demand
dynamics, or any other mumbo-jumbo market
forces. It was 100 percent politics.
The attack on the ruble was also
politically motivated, although the details
are much more sketchy. There’s an
interesting interview with Alistair Crooke
that’s worth a read for those who are
curious about how the Pentagon’s “full
spectrum dominance” applies to financial
warfare. According to Crooke:
“…with Ukraine, we have entered a new
era: We have a substantial, geostrategic
conflict taking place, but it’s
effectively a geo-financial war between
the US and Russia. We have the collapse
in the oil prices; we have the currency
wars; we have the contrived “shorting” —
selling short — of the ruble. We have a
geo-financial war, and what we are
seeing as a consequence of this
geo-financial war is that first of all,
it has brought about a close alliance
between Russia and China.
China understands that Russia
constitutes the first domino; if Russia
is to fall, China will be next. These
two states are together moving to create
a parallel financial system,
disentangled from the Western financial
system. ……
For some time, the international
order was structured around the United
Nations and the corpus of international
law, but more and more the West has
tended to bypass the UN as an
institution designed to maintain the
international order, and instead relies
on economic sanctions to pressure some
countries. We have a dollar-based
financial system, and through
instrumentalizing America’s position as
controller of all dollar transactions,
the US has been able to bypass the old
tools of diplomacy and the UN — in order
to further its aims.
But increasingly, this monopoly over
the reserve currency has become the
unilateral tool of the United States —
displacing multilateral action at the
UN. The US claims jurisdiction over any
dollar-denominated transaction that
takes place anywhere in the world. And
most business and trading transactions
in the world are denominated in dollars.
This essentially constitutes the
financialization of the global order:
The International Order depends more on
control by the US Treasury and Federal
Reserve than on the UN as before.” (“Turkey
might become hostage to ISIL just like
Pakistan did“, Today’s Zaman)
Financial warfare, asymmetrical warfare,
Forth Generation warfare, space warfare,
information warfare, nuclear warfare, laser,
chemical, and biological warfare. The US has
expanded its arsenal well beyond the
traditional range of conventional weaponry.
The goal, of course, is to preserve the
post-1991 world order (The dissolution up of
the Soviet Union) and maintain full spectrum
dominance. The emergence of a multi-polar
world order spearheaded by Moscow poses the
greatest single threat to Washington’s plans
for continued domination. The first
significant clash between these two
competing world views will likely take place
sometime this summer in East Ukraine. God
help us.
NOTE: The Novorussia Armed Forces (NAF)
currently have 8,000 Ukrainian regulars
surrounded in Debaltsevo, East Ukraine.
This is a very big deal although the
media has been (predictably) keeping the
story out of the headlines.
Evacuation corridors have been opened to
allow civilians to leave the area. Fighting
could break out at anytime. At present, it
looks like a good part of the Kiev’s Nazi
army could be destroyed in one fell swoop.
This is why Merkel and Hollande have taken
an emergency flight to Moscow to talk with
Putin. They are not interested in peace.
They merely want to save their proxy army
from annihilation.
I expect Putin may intervene on behalf of
the Ukrainian soldiers, but I
think commander Zakharchenko will resist.
If he lets these troops go now, what
assurance does he have that they won’t be
back in a month or so with high-powered
weaponry provided by our war-mongering
congress and White House?
Tell me; what choice does Zakharchenko
really have? If his comrades are killed in
future combat because he let Kiev’s army
escape, who can he blame but himself?
There are no good choices.
Check here for updates:
Ukraine SITREP: *Extremely* dangerous
situation in Debaltsevo
Mike Whitney lives in Washington
state. He is a contributor to Hopeless:
Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK
Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle
edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.