Though their number is steadily dropping, especially among Republicans, most Americans support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

I have a question for you pro-Ukraine peeps: Imagine you were Russian President Vladimir Putin just shy of a year ago. What would you have done in his place?

Putin faced an impossible situation. He knew that an invasion would bring Western sanctions and international opprobrium. Staying out of Ukraine, however, would weaken Russia’s geopolitical position and his political standing. Caught in an updated version of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1979 “Afghan Trap,” he acted like any Russian leader. He chose strength.

The story (now disputed) is that national security adviser Brzezinski convinced then-President Jimmy Carter to covertly support the overthrow of the Soviet-aligned socialist government of Afghanistan and arm the radical-Islamist mujaheddin guerrilla fighters. 

Determined not to abandon an ally or allow destabilization along its southern border, the USSR was drawn into Brzezinski’s fiendish “Afghan Trap” — an economically ruinous and politically demoralizing military quagmire in Afghanistan analogous to America’s ill-fated intervention in Vietnam.

A year ago, Ukraine was a trap for Russia. Now, as Ukraine’s requests for increasingly sophisticated weaponry pile up on Biden’s desk, it’s one for the US as well.

All nations consider friendly relations with neighboring countries to be an integral component of their national security. Big countries like the United States, China and Russia have the muscle to bend nearby states to their will, creating a sphere of influence. The Monroe Doctrine claimed all of the Americas as the US’ sphere of influence. Russia sees the former republics of the Soviet Union the same way, as independent, Russian-influenced buffer states.

None of the 14 countries along its 12,514 miles of land borders is as sensitive for Russia as Ukraine. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 they passed through Ukraine across its 1,426-mile border with Russia. Four years later, 27 million Soviet citizens, 14% of the population, were dead.

Adding insult to injury from a Russian perspective was the fact that many Ukrainians greeted the Nazis as liberators, collaborated with the Nazisand enthusiastically participated in the slaughter of Jews.

America’s most sensitive frontier is its southern border with Mexico, which the US has invaded 10 times. We freaked out over China’s recent incursion into our airspace by a mere balloon.

Imagine how terrified we would be of Mexico if the Mexican army invaded us, butchered one out of seven Americans and destroyed most of our major cities. We would do just about anything to ensure that Mexico remained a friendly vassal state.

Post-Soviet Ukraine had good relations with Russia until 2014, when then-President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in the Maidan uprising—either a revolution or a coup, depending on your perspective—and replaced by Petro Poroshenko and subsequently Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ethnic Russians, a sizable minority in Ukraine, read the post-Maidan tea leaves. They didn’t like what they saw. The Maidan coalition included a significant number of neo-Nazis and other far-right factions. It was backed by the US to the extent that Obama administration officials handpicked Ukraine’s new department ministers. 

Poroshenko and Zelensky were Ukrainian nationalists who attempted to downgrade the status of the Russian language. Statues of and streets named after Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera went up across the country.

Low-grade civil war ensued. 

Russian speakers in the eastern Donbass region seceded into autonomous “people’s republics.” When Russia annexed Crimea, the local Russian majority celebrated. Ukraine’s post-coup central government attempted to recapture the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics for eight years, killing thousands of Russian-speaking civilians with shelling.

Try to imagine an analogous series of events in North America. Mexico’s democratically-elected pro-American president gets toppled by a violent uprising supported by communists and financed by Russia. Mexico’s new president severs ties with the US. Their new government discriminates against English-speaking American ex-pats and retirees in beach communities near Cancun, who declare independence from the Mexican central government, which goes to war against them.

Next, Mexico threatens to join an anti-US military alliance headed by Russia, a collective-security organization similar to the former Warsaw Pact. The pact’s members pledge to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. If Mexico joins the pact and there is a border dispute between the US and Mexico, Russia and its allies could respond with force up to and including nuclear weapons.

Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his desire to join NATO—an anti-Russian security alliance—since assuming power in 2019. Ukraine probably wouldn’t qualify for NATO membership anyway. But it’s easy to see how the Ukrainian leader’s statements would cause offense, and fear, in Moscow.

Like Ukraine, Mexico is a sovereign state. But independence is relative. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao observed. So when you are a smaller, weaker country bordering a bigger, stronger country—Mongolia next to China, Ukraine next to Russia, Mexico next to the United States—prudent decision-making takes into account the fact that you have fewer gun barrels than your neighbor. Offending the biggest dog in your neighborhood would be foolish. Spooking it would be suicidal.

Supporters of Ukraine call the Russian invasion “unprovoked.” Justified or unjustified? That’s subjective. But it was provoked.

I have asked pro-Ukraine pundits what Biden or any other American president had they faced the same situation as Putin. They refuse to answer because they know the truth: the United States would behave exactly the same way.

Look at Cuba: the Bay of Pigs, silly assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, six decades of severe economic sanctions. Then there’s Grenada. Reagan invaded a tiny island 2,700 miles away from the southern tip of Florida in order to overthrow a socialist prime minister and save American medical students who neither needed nor wanted saving. 

If Mexico, which shares a long border with the US, were to turn anti-American, how long do you think it would be before the US Army invaded an 11th time?

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

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https://sputniknews.com/20230211/the-ukraine-trap-one-year-later-1107333172.html

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by Kaddour Naimi

Following reflections on civil rights1, let us examine why and how the imperialist oligarchies, contrary to their declarations, are hostile to any form of democracy in their own nation as in those where they claim to export it.

To all Lord all honor, first of all, what about the Holy of Holies, the world "Model", with its "Rules" and its "Values", the nation which, to exist, exterminated the indigenous people : United States ?

In this nation “chosen by God”, “democracy” is the Creed of creeds.

Note, first, that the word does not exist in the United States Declaration of Independence. It's up to you to discover the reason.

Moreover, when only two political parties (“Democrat” and “Republican”) alternate in power, without ever another political party being able to exist and conquer power, are we really in a democracy? In reality, isn't this a form of Two-headed single party ?... Indeed, how do these two parties differ when one of them is in power?... Some new social measures (with the "democratic" party) or suppressed (with the "republican" party), but all both parties maintain the domination of the wealthy minority (oligarchy) over the majority of the population; and, since the end of the Second World War, external military aggression has ensured the domination of this same hierarchy on the planet.

« Basta with conspiracy! we would object with a scandalized accent. Here, then, is the icing on the cake:

« Capital must ensure its own protection with all possible means, thanks to our union and our laws. Debts must be recovered as quickly as possible as well as the value of mortgages on property. Thus, when for example ordinary people lose their homes, they become more docile and are more easily directed thanks to the strong arm of the government represented by the main financial actors.

« These truths are well known to our representatives who act to create an imperialism to rule the world. Through the political party system that divides citizens, we manipulate them into spending their energy on unimportant issues. By acting with discretion, we guarantee the sustainability of what we have so well planned and carried out. ". Author of this statement: the United States Bankers Association, in 1924.

But how many people know this statement? As for "problems without any importance", have a look on the side of current wokism.

It is therefore to see how much the social system imperialist capitalist remains the Sacred Cow, the Hen with the golden eggs; and woe to anyone who questions the domination of the Saint Dollar: Thomas Sankara, Muammar Gaddafi and, today, Russia and, after it, the other members of the Bric, and candidate members like Algeria.

Let's come to the “noble” and “admirable” purpose of exporting “democracy” to the world.

« The United States supported, and in many cases spawned, every right-wing military dictatorship that emerged around the world after World War II. I mean Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror that the United States inflicted on Chile in 1973 will never be expiated and can never be forgotten.

« Hundreds of thousands of deaths have taken place in all these countries (...)

« The invasion of Iraq was an act of banditry, an act of patent State terrorism, showing an absolute contempt for the concept of international law »2.

Declaration of a conspirator, enemy of democracy and agent of dictatorships?… It's up to you to judge: the author is Harold Pinter, speech on the occasion of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in Stockholm, in 2005.

To what the writer has mentioned, let us add the military aggressions of certain European "democracies" against Libya and Syria, without forgetting the operations to export democracy through the strategy of "colored revolutions", the most " successful” is the one operated in Ukraine, in 2014. In this country, here are the marvels of democracy: we “ purified the libraries3, took control of all media in the country, banned 13 political parties and the Orthodox Church, and ultimately established an authoritarian regime. (…) most journalists were arrested and (that) most lawyers fled abroad »4. In this list of "successes" of democracy, we must add the ban on practicing the mother tongue by Russian-speaking citizens and their bombardment since 2014, as well as the multiple corruption scandals involving a man addicted to drugs, Hunter Biden , son of US President Joe Biden5.

« Yeah!… one would object. You forget that in the United States citizens are totally free to choose their representatives! »

Issues. Why, in this country, never a political party other than the two-headed one manages to win the elections? What about the power of citizen brain conditioning from the medias (whose owners are directly or indirectly financed by members of the oligarchy), to those that appear neutral (Hollywood films, advertising and social networks). On this subject, we recommend reading the “canonical” reference text: “ Propaganda by Edward Louis Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud was so brilliant that he managed to use Hollywood films to make women smoke, making them believe that this was a sign of emancipation, and cashing in on him a share of the profits. financiers of tobacco multinationals.

We come, then, to vassals of the Lord: the European nations, these "cradles" of world "Civilization" (whose prowess is known in the countries where they exported their "civilization", and, also, Blessed Region of "Democracy" and "Rights of Man”.

The thurifers of these European nations proclaim urbi et orbi: “In Europe, there is a plurality of parties, of 'right' and 'extreme right', as well as of 'left' and 'extreme left'.

How to explain, then, that the extreme parties have never been able to win the elections, at least since the end of the Second World War? As for those on the 'right' and 'left', from the 'liberals' to the 'socialists', the latter have taken some social measures that are certainly useful for the people, but have never questioned the system: the domination of the imperialist capitalist oligarchic. And woe to anyone who tries to question it, like the Italian Enrico Mattei in the oil sector.

Consequently, thanks to the grip of the capitalist imperialist oligarchy in all sectors of social activity (industry, economy, military, laws, culture, "entertainment", tax havens), the "democratic" game is totally controlled for guarantee the sustainability of the “Eternal and Unsurpassable Model”: the imperialist capitalist system, called (“Hide this breast that I will not be able to see!”) “liberal”, a pretty word that refers to the very enchanting term “freedom”. But how many understand that it is about the freedom of the wolf in the fold? And this since the birth of this “liberal” system. Here are recommendations from one of its Popes: Be greedy, selfish, spendthrift for your pleasure as much as you can. This is how you will make your nation prosperous and your fellow citizens happy.. (Bernard de Mandeville, 1670-1733.)

Let's come to the export of democracy to economically less developed nations. Its prophets always proclaim, in the most biblical way, that this export serves the interests of the targeted people. So, let's think like a modest peasant, illiterate but endowed with good practical sense.

In the case where democracy, the real one, is established in an economically less developed nation, what are the main practical consequences?

First of all, it is the citizens themselves who choose freely, and without any conditioning whatsoever, their representatives; this implies that they honestly serve their constituents.

What logically follows?… That the nation will act to become economically developed. What does that mean ?

On the one hand, the leaders of the nation manage the natural resources of the country in the well-understood interest of the citizens. This means selling natural resources on the international market according to the capitalist law of supply and demand, therefore at the maximum possible price. What would be the consequence?…Economically developed nations would have to pay the highest price for these natural resources. Question: is it in their interest, more exactly that of the financial oligarchies which dominate these nations?… Well! No.

On the other hand, the leaders of the economically less developed nation, to develop it, will create an economic base for the production of material goods, therefore will import less or not at all those produced in the economically developed nations. What would be the consequence?… “Democracy” exporting nations will no longer have outlets for their products to sell to economically less developed nations. Question: is this in the interest of the oligarchies which dominate the exporting nations of “democracy”?… Well! Still no.

Doesn't it become, then, of a luminous clearness the fact that the exporting nations of “democracy” have absolutely no interest to see the real democracy being established in the economically less developed nations.

Examining the case of the “militants” who, in the candidate nations for the importation of “democracy”, “struggle” for its establishment.

Let's get rid of a misunderstanding: of course, in these nations there are citizens who are fighting for real democracy, but relying solely on their own strengths and on their relations with the citizens of their country. Of course, these militants meet enormous difficulties in their actions which are placed in an authentic economic development of the nation, which requires the truly democratic election of the rulers, in the real service of their nation. This authentic militant social action is opposed by two adversaries: on the one hand, the internal caste which dominates the nation, and, on the other hand, the external oligarchies which want to manage its natural resources.

Of this category of social activists, the media not only never speak, but exercise all possible repression, as is the case, for example, of Nathalie Yamb by the French authorities. 

But there is another category of "activists" for "democracy" in economically less developed nations. If it is true that the latter suffer from a lack of democracy which really serves the interests of the citizens, can we believe in the good faith of this second category of "militants" when the representatives of the imperialist capitalist oligarchies grant them:

– in the media the maximum of publicity?

– substantial financial aid, more or less hidden, in terms of logistics, residence visas, scholarships, creation of the media, etc. ?

– support from lawyers whose meticulous research shows their affiliations with the interests of the imperialist capitalist oligarchies?

– exfiltration by state “services”?

And, again, can we believe in the good faith of this second category of “activists”:

– when they declare that they are fighting for democracy in their nation of origin, without ever mentioning the attacks on democracy in the nations that export “democracy”?

– when they defend Israel's right to exist, without ever speaking of the right of the Palestinian people to a free and autonomous territory?

– when they denounce the aggressions of certain nations, for example Russia in Ukraine, without denouncing even more destructive aggressions, such as those operated by the US army and other NATO countries, and that since the Second World War ? Or, again, the armed intervention of Saudi Arabia in Yemen?

– when they denounce a military dictatorship in their country without mentioning the dictatorship of the financial oligarchies, in particular that of the military-industrial complex, in the exporting nations of “democracy”?

General question: when one defends and fights for "the Good, the Truth, the Right, the Democracy", etc., shouldn't one do it on all nations of the planet, without excluding any? Even more, to defend these rights in the nations that claim them the most? Question of common sense: can we call on the help of a fox to save a chicken coop? Answer : "When a government depends on the bankers for its money, it is the latter who control the situation, because “the hand that gives is above the hand that receives”. ". (…) Money has no country; the financiers have no patriotism or decency; their sole objective is gain." Napoleon Bonaparte.

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https://en.reseauinternational.net/les-demons-crates-jouent-aux-democrates-ou-qui-est-contre-la-democratie/

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Like Cicero in the Roman Republic, there are always a handful of chroniclers who can see and articulate clearly the social, cultural, and political realities of empires in terminal decline. They call out the bankruptcy of an inept and corrupt ruling class, blinded by hubris, as well as a populace that has checked out of civic life and is entranced by bread and circus spectacles. In his trilogy “Blowback,” “The Sorrows of Empire,” and “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,” Chambers Johnson does a masterful job of showing how and why we are disintegrating.

So does Andrew Bacevich, who, in his newest book of essays, “On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century,” writes about the debacles that have beset the American empire since the Vietnam war, a conflict he fought in as a young army officer.

Bacevich warns that Americans’ inability to be self-critical, to dissect and understand the litany of disasters that have followed on the heels of Vietnam, including decades of fruitless warfare in the Middle East, will have terrible consequences for us and much of the rest of the globe. Andrew Bacevich is a retired army colonel and Emeritus Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University.

He is the cofounder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author of numerous books, including “The New American Militarism,” “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,” “America’s War for the Greater Middle East,” and “After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0XjR1NXl7Q

THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING CONVERSATION IF WE ELIMINATE THE GOD REFERENCES. TRUE, THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WAS FOUNDED WITH THE IDEA OF GOD IN TOW, LIKE MANY OTHER CIVILISATIONS BEFORE, INCLUDING THE MUSLIM WORLD. BUT GOD DOES NOT RULE ANYONE. GOD DOES NOT EXIST. THE ONLY THING THAT EXISTS IS OUR SELF-IMPORTANT HUBRIS THAT WE INFLATE AS IF WE WERE THE "CHILDREN" OF SOME SUPERIOR BEING. WE'RE NOT.... WE'RE INTELLIGENT ANIMALS AT BEST, BUT SOME OF US ARE PSYCHOPATHIC ENOUGH TO RULE OUR ROOST OF DUMB BEASTS.

FROM TIME TO TIME WE NEED TO CLEAN THE COOP. WE NEED TO GET RID OF THE LIARS, THE BULLSHIT ARTISTS AND THE WARMONGERS. SIMPLE. PRESENTLY THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS LIKE A COOP FULL OF POOP AND NEEDS TO BE CLEANED UP. 

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By Bruce Fein
Special to Consortium News

Whom the gods would destroy, they have first to listen to Robert Kagan.

Kagan postulates in a profusion of books and articles that Americans are God’s chosen people, that the United States is the indispensable nation, and that the putative cures America has for the infinite ills of the world are superior to the diseases. Fleas are magnified into elephants to justify projecting the military strength of the United States everywhere under the Orwellian banner of anticipatory self-defense, i.e., destroy first, ask whether you killed innocents later.

Kagan’s latest cri de coeur blazed forth in an Opinions Essay in The Washington Post on March 31,“Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. Americans rejected it then. Will we now?”(p. A20-21). He absurdly assumes that the national security of the United States will be imperiled unless we provide Ukraine with infinite funds and weapons to defend against Russia’s attack launched in 2022.

The fate of Ukraine, whose borders have changed on multiple occasions throughout its history, is irrelevant to the peace and safety of the United States. Indeed, a Russian occupation or conquest would weaken Russia as a military power. 

It would be engaged in chronic and expensive efforts to quell inevitable Ukrainian rebellions reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s post-World War II bedevilments in Central and Eastern Europe which fueled its dissolution, e.g., East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Warsaw Pact was a costly paper tiger.

Invincible self-defense from actual or imminent aggression is the optimal national security policy of the United States. That policy and its justification was best articulated by secretary of state John Quincy Adams in his July 4, 1821, address to Congress.

The secretary warned against military force to eliminate the crooked timber of mankind. Constant warfare would destroy liberty at home, he said, echoing Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. That truth has been more than amply vindicated by experience.

Hamilton observed:

“The violent destruction of life and property incident to war – the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

John Quincy Adams made the same point more powerfully:

“[The United States] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.:

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force….

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

Abraham Lincoln also discredited the delusion that without a garrison state bestriding the world like a colossus the United States would be destroyed by enemies without:

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

… [If danger]ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Kagan is deaf to the timeless wisdom of Hamilton, Quincy Adams, and Lincoln. He scampers away from endeavoring to refute their arguments (fortified by volumes of history), like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge without consulting Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

The ultra-war hawk envisions the end of the free world if the United States neglects to stand with Ukraine whatever it takes. Russia will conquer the Baltic States and invade European members of NATO. China will attack Taiwan. The world will surrender to enemies of freedom. Western civilization will end.

Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden similarly proclaimed in 1956 that international order and peace would disappear unless Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was destroyed for nationalizing the Suez Canal. History proved the stupendous error and drove the Prime Minister from office.

In any event, Kagan’s reputation for clairvoyance is suspect. Cajoling Americans to support the impending U.S. war of aggression against Iraq, he trumpeted in 2002 that, “No step would contribute more toward shaping a world order in which our people and our liberal civilization can survive and flourish.”

The war came. Trillions were expended on a fool’s errand that made arch-enemy Iran a Middle East hegemon dominating Iraq. A precedent was set, which Kagan championed, that Russia followed in invading Ukraine. Hasn’t he been hoisted on his own petard?

The optimal influence of the United States abroad is the influence of example. To be sure, that modesty will leave many evils and imperfections in the world unaddressed. But it is superior to any other national security policy ever attempted or conceived.

Don’t sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect.

Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and author of American Empire Before The Fall.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/08/kagans-latest-bugle-for-ruinous-em...

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

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