USA & NATO vs Russia in Ukraine: Washington's Geopolitical War X

 

From the first day that Russia succombed to Washington's trap on February 24th, I have worried about the trajectories of the Ukraine War, the risks and effects of various policy moves by the engaged antagonistic political actors to achieve their ends. I have also felt that a better understanding emerges if we recognize the plural and complex character of four encounters—on the battlefields pitting Russian aggressors against Ukrainian resisters, inside Ukraine as various dangerous Neo-nazi elements struggle for control; in the geopolitical matrix by which the U.S. is intent on humiliating Russia by shattering its will and exposing its weaknesses as a challenger of U.S. global primacy, while Russia is determined to regain control over its borders and push back against NATO influence around its territory; and, finally, in cyberspace whereby  war-mongering propaganda, fake news, and truth have become indistinguishable for the Western public, as they all come from the same sources: Washington and Kiev. The overall effect of such an inflammatory information and malicious exaggerations is to prolong the killing and heighten the strategic stakes for the USA, and given the horrifying aspects of the Ukraine Crisis making the conflicts unfit for diplomatic resolution.

In light of this mélange of considerations how can a mere human being hope to achieve a clearer understanding of what is happening, what are the relative risks, and what could yet be done to end the destruction, to avoid any further deaths and safeguard humanity from present risks of escalation to a wider war, possibly fought with nuclear weapons? A first step in the right direction is to pronounce that the ideological silos of both extreme left and right slant policy advocacy toward extremism, cause confusion, and to the extent influence is exerted, the effect is confound the search for viable and humane modes of deescalation. Extremist policy vectors are unsatisfactory cognitively, normatively, and prudentially.

It is clear for those who know history and USA’s will of dominating the world, that the Ukraine Crisis as essentially an outcome of inflated post-Cold War global imperial overreach orchestrated by the U.S., manifesting itself by way of neoliberal globalization in close conjunction with the projection of military dominance on a planetary scale.

However, the great majority, which enjoys far greater access to elite circles of government and media than independent media, “explains” the Ukraine Crisis as an essentially “evil plot by a Russian autocrat to destroy sanctity of the territorial rights of a sovereign state, violating the most basic rule of a state-centric world order, and mounting an unacceptable challenge to the exclusive global responsibilities of the West, led by the U.S., to uphold security throughout the world in accord with democratic values and humanitarian principles”. Oblivious to the geopolitical storm clouds of a wider war that unleashes nuclear weapons.

In my view, silos of thought are not helpful guidelines for prescriptive or normative approaches to the various elements at play, and a more useful understanding comes from focusing on the debates, perspectives, and shortcomings in the gray zones where ‘group think’ and special interests exert a decisive influence in shaping the worldview of advisors and leaders. In this respect, it is important to assess the degree to which foreign policy elites in the geopolitical “West”, especially the U.S., are responsive to the priorities and justifications put forward by the military-industrial-intelligence-congressional-think tank-media complex (MICTIM), and how its impacts relate to degrees of engagement and detachment from various conflicts, and yet need to convince enough of the citizenry to lend support depends on rationalizing wars by referencing the evil and menace of the other, and in this case reviving Cold War memories of Russia as a menacing enemy of all that the transatlantic alliance stands for. To this extent there is a sharp distinction between the so called “autocratic” Russia and “democratic” U.S. As notoriously acknowledged in the 2002 Report of the neocon Project for a New American Century, despite the strength of MICTIM it cannot make war without a high level of societal support. The citizenry needs to be mobilized by being made fearful, angry, hostile, and confident enough to bear the costs and risks of war, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union as its necessary enemy this would require ‘a new Pearl Harbor’ to be depicted as a strategic threat as well as an evil, criminal act.

Obviously, Russian induced aggression against Ukraine was not itself a direct enough assault on the U.S. homeland to be that new Pearl Harbor event, which for two decades 9/11 performed as the demonic actor in this geopolitical theater of the absurd. Attacking Ukraine was sufficiently indirect and distant from the homeland and posed no obvious security threat to the U.S. Yet Washington labelled it as “provocative” in other ways useful for the center-right nexus of foreign policy advisors in the White House. It could be credibly cast as a barbaric attack on a white Christian nation (by a Christian nation, nonetheless) that was used to  arouse feelings of identification and induce an outpouring of humanitarian sympathies sufficient to support immediate “diplomatic” of Ukrainian sovereign rights and the demonization of Putin by Biden and the media. This was in the very early phase. Soon the public “restrained engagement with Ukrainian resistance” intensified as the propaganda against Russian “atrocities” mounted and the strategic stakes attached to the political outcome rose.

Most relevantly, Ukrainian Azov militias proved more formidable than expected, and it began to be believed that in the course of helping Ukraine avoid being overrun by its “gigantic” Russian neighbor, the OTAN could solidify its global dominance that was attained back in 1992 when the Cold War ended. Not surprisingly at this point that the parameters changed, the U.S. began to increase the extent of its involvement, not primarily for the sake of Ukraine, but to push back against this Russian challenge, and indirectly message China to lie low or else. Concerns about underscoring geopolitical primacy took precedence over safeguarding Ukraine. Nothing less than the legacy of the Cold War was at stake, whose aftermath was characterized by the United States as the self-anointed unipolar architect of world order. It is this shift of emphasis that is hidden beneath the current attachment by MICTIM to ‘a victory scenario’ and the notable silence of the leadership in Washington about framing ‘a peace scenario’ as if diplomacy was either futile, unnecessary, and undesirable. Futile because Moscow was allegedly unresponsive, unnecessary because the risks associated with inflicting defeat of Russia worth taking, undesirable because ending the war on Ukrainian soil too soon would deprive the U.S. of the major geopolitical victory that Washington seeks and believes within its grasp.

This is an accurate account of why there is no effort being made to stop the killing as leading moral authority figures such as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres  and Pope Francis have urged without generating a peace-oriented counterforce.

This discouraging portrayal of the global scene when it comes to the agendas relating to war/peace, leaves the future dependent on civil society activism, a calling of accounts from below. Remembering that the political leaders of the victorious states in World War II agreed before the guns went silent that there was no point establishing a UN which had an effective normative mandate and sufficient material capabilities to implement the Charter against the world’s most powerful states. It did not hide this unseemly institutional modesty, but endowed this geopolitical right of exception with normative authority by giving the five permanent members of the Security Council a virtually unrestricted authority to veto any decision of the only body in the entire UN system than could decide rather than recommend or advise. True, the International Court of Justice can render decisions, but its jurisdiction is limited to voluntary acceptance by states in conflict and although its decisions are subject to implementation if the Security Council can muster a consensus. Otherwise decisions by the World Court can be ignored or nullified without adverse consequences.

The Ukraine Crisis highlights the many fragilities of world order at a time when geopolitical alignments are in flux, with Russia challenging USA’s supremacy, China rising as the biggest financial world game player, and the U.S. struggling to maintain the status quo it has been losing since 2001.

Such circumstances are dangerously diverting attention of leaders and publics from Israel's recurrent crimes in Palestine. As well as from the monumental tasks of achieving food and energy security at a time of the menacing ecological instabilities associated with climate change. For everyone knows that in case that the US pushes NATO far enough, the World will be facing a global nuclear that could erase us all.