Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
As we hydroplane toward the brink of nuclear armageddon while Bono and the Edge play U2 songs in Kyiv, it’s probably worth taking a moment to highlight the fact that this entire war could have been avoided if the US had simply pledged military protection for Zelensky against the far right extremists who were threatening to lynch him if he enacted the peacemaking policies he was elected to enact.
To be clear, what we are indulging in here is entirely an act of fantasy. In imagining what would have happened if the US had pledged to protect the Ukrainian government from an undemocratic violent overthrow at the hands of fascists instead of waging a horrific proxy war, we are imagining a world in which the US government acts in the highest interest of all instead of working continuously to dominate the planet no matter how much madness and cruelty it needs to inflict upon humanity. A world in which the US hadn’t been taking steps toward the orchestration of this proxy war for many years.
With that out of the way, it’s just a simple fact that for a fraction of the military firepower the US is pouring into Ukraine right now, it could have prevented the entire war by simply protecting Ukrainian democracy from the undemocratic impulses of the worst people in that country.
When he was asked by The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel last month what he thinks is preventing Kyiv from signing a peace agreement with Russia, John Mearsheimer, whose analysis of this conflict has been prophetic for many years, replied as follows:
I think that when Zelensky ran for president he made it very clear that he wanted to work out an arrangement with Russia that ended the crisis in Ukraine, and he won. And what he then tried to do was move toward implementing the Minsk II agreement. If you were going to shut down the conflict in Ukraine, you had to implement Minsk II. And Minsk II meant giving the Russian-speaking and the ethnic Russian population in the easternmost part of Ukraine, the Donbas region, a significant amount of autonomy, and you had to make the Russian language an official language of Ukraine.
I think Zelensky found out very quickly that because of the Ukrainian right, it was impossible to implement Minsk II. Therefore even though the French and the Germans, and of course the Russians were very interested in making Minsk II work, because they wanted to shut down the crisis, they couldn’t do it. In other words, the Ukrainian right was able to stymie Zelensky on that front.
When Mearsheimer says that the Ukrainian right was able to stymie Zelensky, he doesn’t mean by votes or by democratic processes, he means by threats and violence. In an article last month titled “Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, US sabotaged Zelensky’s mandate for peace,” journalist Aaron Maté wrote the following:
In April 2019, Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming 73% of the vote on a promise to turn the tide. In his inaugural address the next month, Zelensky declared that he was “not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings,” and was “prepared to give up my own position – as long as peace arrives.”
But Ukraine’s powerful far-right and neo-Nazi militias made clear to Zelensky that reaching peace in the Donbas would have a much higher cost.
“No, he would lose his life,” Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Anatoliyovych Yarosh, then the commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, responded one week after Zelensky’s inaugural speech. “He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk – if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War.”
Unlocked: Siding with Ukraine's far-right, US sabotaged Zelensky's historic mandate for peace, by @aaronjmate https://t.co/3rYOdIcob2
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 15, 2022
In a 2019 interview with Maté, the late great scholar Stephen Cohen made the following comments:
But ultimately you have a situation now which seems not to be widely understood, that the new president of Ukraine, Zelensky, ran as a peace candidate. This is a bit of a stretch and maybe it doesn’t mean a whole lot to your generation, but he ran a kind of George McGovern campaign. The difference was McGovern got wiped out and Zelensky won by, I think, 71, 72 percent. He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. And there are various formats, right? There’s a so-called Minsk format which involves the German and the French; there’s a bilateral directly with Putin. But his willingness—and this is what’s important and not well reported here—his willingness to deal directly with Putin, which his predecessor, Poroshenko, was not or couldn’t or whatever reason—actually required considerable boldness on Zelensky[‘s part], because there are opponents of this in Ukraine and they are armed. Some people say they’re fascists but they’re certainly ultra-nationalist, and they have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin.
…
Zelensky cannot go forward as I’ve explained. I mean, his life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine, he can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back. Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war, so the stakes are enormously high.
Why Russia Went to War Now
by Ted Snider#Ukraine #Russia #NATO https://t.co/mhSYkZiMbk pic.twitter.com/kXz9HRLJfb— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) May 2, 2022
In an article titled “Why Russia Went to War Now,” Antiwar’s Ted Snyder explains that Putin likely made the decision to invade because Kyiv wasn’t respecting Minsk II and because future NATO membership with Ukraine was being kept on the table while weapons poured into the country from the US.
“Zelensky wouldn’t talk to the leaders of the Donbas, Minsk was dead and Russia feared an imminent operation against the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas,” Snyder writes. “At the same time, Washington had become a leaky faucet on promises of flooding Ukraine with weapons and open doors to NATO: two red lines Putin had clearly drawn.”
But, again, Zelensky couldn’t enact Minsk because it had been made abundantly clear to him that he faced a horrific death by fascist lynch mob if he did. If the choice is between taking a chance on a US proxy war and getting Gaddafied in the public square, I think many leaders around the world would opt for the former.
So Zelensky made peace with the Nazis, whose will for Ukraine aligned with Washington’s.
Despite his branding in MSM as a Jewish leader against including Nazis in Ukrainian's government & military, Pres. Zelensky caved when they challenged him, has honored them, offered seats at the table & relies on them as a frontline force against Russia https://t.co/tFNyPDSCNk
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) March 4, 2022
But what this means is that every major factor which led to Russia’s decision to invade could have been nullified by the US government. A guarantee of no NATO membership for Ukraine could have been made. The weapons supplies could have been stopped. And Zelensky and his government could have received protection from the US military against the armed fascists who would repeat their violent acts of 2014 upon them.
It would have been wins all around. We wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of nuclear armageddon. Ukraine would have been spared the horrors of an insane proxy war. Western powers wouldn’t be sending arms to literal Nazi factions. And the US would actually be protecting Ukrainian democracy, instead of just pretending to.
But, again, we are only indulging in fantasy here. Fighting Nazis, protecting democracy and waging peace are not things the US empire actually does in real life. The US is the most tyrannical and murderous regime on earth, by a truly massive margin, and it will happily risk the life of everyone on earth if it means securing planetary rule.
But sometimes it’s nice to imagine the kind of world we might be living in if we were not ruled by psychopaths.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
95 responses to “The US Could’ve Prevented This War Just By Protecting Kyiv From Nazis”
” But his willingness—and this is what’s important and not well reported here”
It is worse than that. You have reporters and political operatives that will destroy their own to advance their own political agenda. They will set up, frame, and manipulate to achieve their agenda. They they blame the audience and commenters for misinformation being circulated. When soldiers tried to defend worker rights a still famous general attacked them. You see this among the elites to this day. If you are not on board, then you are a threat even though we have a nation that has secret societies and organizations as well as having made legal the ability to propagandize our own people. So if you are not on the “inside” how are you supposed to know? All you can do is present what you are hearing. What are the ordinary people to do? The people with nothing are being downtrodden by the people with everything. This is why the story of the general attacking soldiers who were fighting for worker rights is so significant. A good lesson from history. I believe (not certain) that it was Obama that allowed for propaganda in the USA. What I wonder are the people to do when the people in power are setting them up and using them for their own agendas when all they had to do was pick up a phone and help them get a job or something. Think of all the work that they do to advance their agenda when often times all they had to do was pick up a phone and make things happen. A couple of minutes and problem fixed over writing articles making movies surveilling the people. Funny how fast any world class lawyer can forget how to pick up a phone and get things done when it is not in their interest to do so.
I first met Vladimir Putin at a do he was holding in Sochi in 2018 for some charity or other, cannot remember the one but I do recall he was talking fluent French with Gerard Depardieu and laughing with him about the motor scooter incident that led G.D. to take up Russian citizenship. I was impressed that during the course of their conversation Depardieu’s rather large nose looked somewhat diminished in size as if recoiling a little from Putin’s incisive remarks concerning the respect and treatment one should offer a Vesper.
I’ll try to remember the rest later
As with any popular left-wing blog that seeks to get the truth out there and also expose the lies of the official narrative, the PTB will send in their paid shills to try and ridicule and/or dismiss the truth (and the messenger themselves), and I have no doubt that Caitlin’s site has been infected by such shills for some time, but they really seem to be upping the ante over Ukraine!
.
NB It could of course be just one paid full-time shill with a variety of user-names, and most likely IS.
Lots of Putin boot lickers here on this site! Realistic appeasement of Putin was not possible in any scenario. Putin wanted a special military operation regardless of the diplomacy because he wants Ukraine to be part of Russia. No one is blameless in this conflict but most here seem to think that EVERYTHING is the US/NATO/West’s fault. Both Russian, Ukraine, & NATO are to blame. Now Finland and possibly Sweden will joining NATO due to Putin’s over reaching military operation, talk about back fire.
What I see happening is Russia being economically and militarily diminished and pushed into a corner by it’s own actions. To save face Putin use selective Nuclear strikes (New York, London, Geneva) within the next 12 months by justifying that the entire European continent and North America are Nazi’s. This will destroy the West’s economy and all of us in the West will be in a lot of economic pain including all of you down in Australia.
I find it amusing how all of these Western people can comment on this site and people like Caitlin can have this site and publish their opinion in this supposed Nazi/Fascist West which Australia is part of.
… you imagine.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/11/sleepy-joes-33-billion-abomination/#comment-34030
They don’t SEEM to think it’s all US/NATOs fault Bob, they KNOW that Biden et al forced Putin’s hand so that they could start the process of destroying Russia economically.
.
Put it this way Bob, were all the millions of people who came to realise that the claims about Iraq having WMD were a lie Saddam Hussein boot lickers. Yeah, they killed over a million people and destroyed and devastated a whole country based on a massive Big Lie.
.
And did so for the OIL!
PS And it is odd that you seemingly didn’t read the above article! Because if you HAD…..
Everything you think you “know” is wrong, then. Nobody forced Putin to invade Ukraine. He did it because he wanted to.
Wow, your ignorance is impressive.
Medication compliance is not just a river in Africa.
So, in other words, all the negotiations that have been going on between Ukraine and Russia were just a front (on Ukraine’s part), and they were never – and COULD never – come to fruition – ie an agreement to end the conflict.
And one can only conclude that Putin and his advisers were aware of the situation at the time, in 2019, and that Zelenskiy would be risking his life if he came to an agreement with Putin, and THAT is why he – Putin – said that one of the aims of the ‘Special Military Operation’ was to denazify Ukraine – ie the Denazification of Ukraine.
Wow, knowing this certainly puts a different complexion on it all!
I believe the Russians had some legitimate issues but the brutality of its military is self defeating.
Well, if only their legitimate issues – legitimate concerns – had been addressed Doug, then Russia wouldn’t have invaded, and all the death and destruction and devastation and carnage could have been prevented. The reality is that Biden and his NATO allies deliberately forced Putin’s hand so that they could then, through endless sanctions, begin the process of destroying Russia economically. Which is precisely what they are doing.
That’s the problem, Russia’s “concerns” weren’t actually legitimate at all.
Oh, right, and obviously the Cuban Missile Crisis was all a storm in a teacup, and there was absolutely no legitimate reason for the US to react the way it did. Is that right Cal?
Russia is finally reaping what it has sown for the last 125 years. If they truly tricked Putin into his “special military operation” then America has pulled off a brilliant coup, just have to see it through till Russia is shattered and Putin is no more. Many countries receive sanctions for various reasons, same as a single citizen is any country can get a speeding ticket. Russia defies the global order in anyway it can and believes they have carte blanche to act this way due to the perception of their military as world class. The war will end upon the death of Putin, which could be in a couple weeks or in a decade, so now we wait. Ridding the world of a criminal dictator is a big deal and I hope it leads to a new Russian golden age in a much smaller country based around Moscow and its environs. Finland gets some land back and pushes the border further east. Poland absorbs Kaliningrad and pushes its borders a few hundred Kilos east. Ukraine seizes Donbass and Crimea, is welcomed into NATO, with Land-Lease and hefty reparations from Moscow they enjoy booming economic growth and emerges as a strong bulwark against Asiatic Hordes from the eastern plains. If that is the plan and it plays out close to this, America and NATO deserve a pat on the back for sure!
The vast majority of people – as I did myself for many years – think in terms of psychopaths being murderers and violent rapists etc, and have absolutely no idea that the planet is run and controlled by psychopaths, and that, in itself, is one of the highest highs for the Psychopathic Brother/Sisterhood – ie that most people are unaware that they are what they are. They are hidden in plain sight, doing their evil and, at the same time, manipulating hundreds of millions of minds to believe they are good and honourable etc, via their propaganda machine, the MSM, along with Hollywood, etc, etc.
.
So here we are, floating through space on a planet that gave birth to life and sustains us, and it’s owned and controlled by the most evil people on it, and who, because of the evil that drives them, will, one way or another, totally destroy the Earth and all life that exists on her.
.
Astonishing really.
.
http://ponerology.com/evil_2b.html
The whole Bono thing in Kiev gets a little cringier if you click through one of the article’s links. Turns out that Nancy Pelosi herself read a poem penned by Bono, in which he compares Zelensky to St. Patrick, at an Irish luncheon of some sort. It reads:
Oh St. Patrick, he drove out the snakes
With his prayers, but that’s not all it takes
For the snake symbolizes
An evil that rises
And hides in your heart
As it breaks
And the evil has risen my friends
From the darkness that lives in some men
But in sorrow and fear
That’s when saints can appear
To drive out those old snakes once again
And they struggle for us to be free
From the psycho in this human family
Ireland’s sorrow and pain
Is now the Ukraine
And Saint Patrick’s name now Zelenskyy
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nancy-pelosi-st-patricks-day-poem-bono-1323075/
The US has a war-based economy. George Kennan spelled it just a few years before the USSR ended.
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
Let what Kennan said sink in.
It meant than that Russia was ASSIGNED the role of “enemy” literally the day that the USSR ended and that literally nothing that Russia could have said of done would have prevented that assignment.
It means now that World Peace is today much more of a threat to the US’s war-based economy than perpetual wars! (Hatred of Russia has NOTHING to do with why the US and its ass-licking vassals are doing what they’re doing.)
It explains exactly why US government VIPs say what they say about the necessity of sending weapons to Ukraine — forever, if necessary — to defeat Russia.
It explains exactly why Zelensky can not, and will not, be allowed to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Russia.
It explains exactly why Minsk II could not be followed by Poroshenko or Zelensky, and exactly why none of the signatories to that agreement (and the UN resolution making it international law) forced “Ukraine” carry out its commitment to that law.
It explains exactly why law, international or otherwise, no longer matters to “the US” (the microscopic percentage of the US population that actually IS “the US”)…………. because following laws may lead to peace and, shortly thereafter, collapse of the US’s war-based economy.
To boil it all down, Russia making ANY arrangement with the US and its ass-licking vassals that results in a peaceful world WILL. NOT. BE. ALLOWED because a peaceful world would be “an unacceptable shock to the US economy”.
But why do the US vassals’ leaders go along with all of this? They go along with it because of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and the Fed’s bail-outs of the domestic and foreign TBTF banks and their Elite owners. That Act and that Act alone kept the fatally-flawed “present arrangement” on life support. That Act created a legalized “coordination between financial authorities” and central banks of the world which results in a sort of “circle jerk” in which a group of central banks and “financial authorities” (like hedge funds) purchase EACH OTHER’S governments’ bonds (and stocks in certain TBTF transnational corporations) with a literally infinite amount of printed-out-of-thin-air money (AKA money created “by government fiat”) in order to keep the present arrangement going.
What exactly is “the present arrangement”?
It would be politically impossible for the US to collect enough tax money or sell enough assets to provide the necessary funds – say between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion annually — to fund the vitally necessary US’s war/military-base spending “up front”, not for just one year, but every year from here to literally eternity. Therefore, the US government must sell bonds – to “borrow” money from “investors” — in order to, again, finance the government’s spending on the soldiers, mercenaries, wars, MIC jobs, weapons systems and foreign bases that it, again, cannot afford up front, from here to eternity.
Investors must invest the USD they hold in something. In this case, investors buy US treasuries with USD and, by so doing, invest in US war-making – an investment that investors hope will end up generating a profit on the stocks in war corporations (Lockheed, etc.) that those same bond-investors are also heavily investing in.
Again, investors lend money to the US government by buying low-interest bonds of whatever maturity period. There is not that much profit there. But by so doing, “the US government” then has the money to continue its perpetual wars, perpetual weapon-systems purchases, etc. and, therefore, stocks in war corporations increase in value as more and more buyers/investors bid-up / compete-for those irresistibly profitable shares! The war corporations’ share-price increases are where the really big money-profit is. A lot of congresspeople over many decades have made a lot of money by investing in the wars they create.
Again, the US’s 800+ military bases outside the US are also funded by the US government’s borrowed money. That funding pays for those foreign bases’ weapon systems, US soldiers’ salaries, benefits, off-base housing, local employees, food, gasoline, other consumables, infrastructure provided by US manufacturers, maintenance, etc. The local (foreign) communities that “host” those US bases become economically dependent upon those bases’ continuing presence, from here to eternity. For example, what happened when the Donito Assholeini said he was going to reduce NATO’s presence in Germany?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/19/german-states-appeal-to-us-congress-not-to-withdraw-troops
The totality of what we see going on before our eyes today is as simple as the above. Nobody, certainly not investors, foreign or domestic, wants the US government to stop borrowing and spending the way it does today; they want that to go on and on, again, from here to eternity. In order for those millions of wishes to be fulfilled, the US’s wars must go on from here to eternity.
From the point of view of this whatever-you-want-to-call-it system’s beneficiaries, again, there’s too much at stake to allow “it” (ultimately, the US’s perpetual wars) to stop. In other words, perpetual war itself is Too Big To Fail.
OTOH, from the point of view of the victims of perpetual US aggression, “This” Must Fail!, or the victims will inevitably flee their destroyed homes and economies to live in, ironically, those of their oppressors. Do the Ukrainians fleeing Ukraine for the open arms of EU countries, the UK, the US, Australia and “Canada” realize that they are the inevitable collateral damage of US-treasury-bond-investor profit-taking?
You know what’s ironic? Humanity is now funding / investing in (demanding!) an escalating, growing-like-a-cancer vicious cycle that is, as if by the action of an “invisible hand” (of infallible, insatiable greed; infallible, insatiable profit-motive), inevitably going to lead to its own nuclear extinction! If this situation is not the ultimate, tragic irony, I do not know what else could be.
As long as the tens of millions of US voters directly or indirectly employed by war corporations continue to vote for more and more severe warmongers in order to protect their jobs
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/03/30/bath-shipyard-looks-for-a-new-shipbuilding-contract-while-awaiting-the-navys-next-ship/
rather than vote for peaceniks; and small-to-central-bank-sized financial entities CONTINUE to buy US treasuries in perpetuity — again, lending money to the US so that the US will CONTINUE to do what it’s doing around the world — what future is possible for humanity other than all-out nuclear war? When you vote for more war and you invest in more war, WTF do you think you’re going to get — heaven on earth or hell on earth?!
There is only one possible way off the road to WWIII. By hook or by crook or by bombs landing on Main Street, USA, or by divine intervention, US voters must somehow be made to vote for peaceniks, even though their doing so might lose them their jobs; and investors must somehow be made to stop buying US treasuries, even though their doing so might deprive them of a great deal of money-profit.
Which is the more powerful human instinct – ancient animal greed or the evolved intelligence to recognize that unfettered greed is the number 1 threat to human survival?
I agree with your analysis of the “current arrangement.”
What happens if the US$ is no longer the favored currency for international transactions?
And/or what happens if the value of the US$ is highly volatile or retreats to a much lower plateau of value?
IMO, I think one of these possibilities is likely in the not too distant future.
Voting for peaceniks will make not the slightest difference. The state is not run by the elected, and most of the time those for whom we vote are not elected anyway. The state is run by globalist corporations hand in hand with security agencies. The voters are just an annoyance to be tolerated and propagandized. No president or elected official of any kind is in charge.
LINDA HAGGE, how can you be so absolutely certain that electing 536 non R or D peaceniks to the legislative and exectutive branches of the federal government “will not make the slightest defference”? Has this happened in the past and those 536 did not make the slightest difference, or is this an assumption — a hunch — on your part?
If whom people vote for is not important, why on earth are billionaires and their MSM going to waste billions of dollars between now and Nov. 2022 and Nov. 2024 to make sure that the voters who step into voting booths will vote for Rs or Ds only?
Where voting does NOT make any difference is when voters step into voting booths and vote for either an R or a D. Voting for either of those just gets you More Of The Same that voters have gotten when they’ve done that in every election in the past.
If you DO want MOTS in the future, just vote for an R or D, makes no defference which.
But I will grant you this concession. When, not if, not potentially, not maybe, 536 non R or D peacenik candidates are elected to federal public offices and those 536 peaceniks only bring MOTS, THEN I will agree that electing 536 peaceniks to federal offices “did not make the slightest difference”.
Let’s elect 536 peaceniks to federal public offices for the first time ever and find out for sure what the result of that would be.
So you’ve observed Republicans or Democrats doing what they promised during election season, have you? A few years ago a Princeton study showed there was no correlation whatsoever between what the American public voted for and the ultimate policies passed by Congress or the Senate. That is because the only purpose of elected office is to give the illusion of democracy. No elected official has any say in how the country is run. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
Both Republicans and Democrats probably do what they’ve promised their corporate donors.
LINDA HAGGE said:
“So you’ve observed Republicans or Democrats doing what they promised during election season, have you?”
No, I have not observed Rs or Ds doing what they promised during election season and I did not say that I had. How the hell could you interpret what I said as meaning that?! I said that 536 NON Rs and Ds (candidates OTHER THAN Rs and Ds) have never been elected to federal public offices and, therefore, that neither you nor I nor anyone else can know what they would do if they were in fact elected. Just because Rs and Ds lie like hell and only bring More Of The Same after they are elected does not mean that candidates from other parties will do the same. I say elect 536 NON Rs and Ds and let’s find out what they’ll do.
Liars and the lies they tell are the the biggest hazzard to our species or groups of subspecies. Fear leads to lying and lying leads to murder or worse.
George Kennan was quite possibly the most evil man who ever lived.
The 2014 coup was by Nazis. Zelensky would’ve been replaced if he didn’t play ball. NATO really couldn’t protect him. NATO isn’t pro-Nazi, they are backing anti-Russian elements throughout Eastern Europe. It’s a chess game that went South. It will get really interesting after the hostilities end. There will be a new Albright to tell us it was worth it.
There was no 2014 coup, and Nazis do not hold any power in Ukraine.
ROFL–OMG. Well that just says it all. JFC.
Caitlin, The reason the US couldn’t (wouldn’t) protect Ukraine from Nazis is quite simple….the US was backing the Nazis from the get go. in reality, the US threatened Zelensky through their puppet “far right Ukrainian” organization. We’ve seen this movie a dozen times in the past decade.
And, did that perception of reality enhance your credulity for whatever Washington has to say about anything? No, because at some point you learned well how little credibility that Washington has. They are innate liars and hypocrites. Most Americans fail to catch on.
~
Even Dubya caught a fleeting glimpse of the never-ending dance between reality and blather in his own botched retelling of the homily about repeatedly falling for lies. (“Fool me once… won’t get fooled again!” Right up there with Plato!)
~
Most Americans are rather like the frog in another relevant fable. They damned sure won’t ever get bitten by that scorpion again! (Because the venom worked!)
– “And Zelensky and his government could have received protection from the US military against the armed fascists who would repeat their violent acts of 2014 upon them.”
I’m not sure what this statement means in terms of Russia’s reaction to the U.S. putting troops into Ukraine to protect Zelensky. Wouldn’t Russia see this as a threat to have US/NATO troops there?
I’m not advocating for the US position, but I don’t see how the proposal stated here would be practical or successful.
imo, they wouldn’t have objected if minsk II had been implemented in the process. they’d probably suggest joint operations.
I would like to offer a censorship guideline for the US Ministry of Truth.
Any and all wars’ real targets are children, because they are easier to kill.
Any other explanation of war can be blacked out as misinformation that it is.
Corpus delicti even for SS azov!!!
Z-Elenski “right hand” / main adviser, publicly talk in 2019 about what will happened and when with 100% prediction accuracy in this twit. So if anybody want to speak about Ukraine must watch this:
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1507786886957645824?s=20&t=R9KYhf5kzPt_8c_7cCNn8g
But Caitlin, you forget that despite all the horrendous death and destruction, this is a virtual war, the outcome of which depends upon media spin and propaganda, with victory to be achieved by complete cultural cancellation of the enemy. The West is winning that war hands down, while the Russians stupidly believe they’re fighting a real war over physical control of territory. Worse yet, the Russians foolishly disregard what others think about them, meaning that even when they control as much Ukrainian territory as they deem necessary, they will still be losers because of their shitty image in Western minds. What IS, the Russians fail to grasp in their backward way, no longer matters. All now hinges on how things APPEAR.
Large parts of the world still aren’t on board with the Western narrative, wonderng why, for instance, if invading other nations is such a heinous crime, Bush and Blair are still free, and the US and UK haven’t imposed crippling sanctions on themselves and their oligarchs.
The West, generally anti-Russian for decades, remains anti-Russian.
Hasn’t Caitlin’s main take-home lesson since all this bullshit began been that it’s the narrative, not the reality, that is the empire’s chief concern–its chief trick to capture your little brain where all the biases and loyalties hide out through most of the day?
~
Surely an Australian would not miss that since Oz is where “the Matrix” was filmed, just as no Chicagoan would, since all the street names were taken from that city.
~
To me, Caitlin seems utterly consistent and reliable in what she is trying to teach to some minute fraction of the population that will discern it, because they pay attention to the critical details not the hand feints, and accept it, because they keep an open mind rather than reflexively follow the herd. She’s done it now a thousand ways from Sunday in her personal column and has never lost any clarity.
~
Vulcans and Putin don’t bluff, and I don’t brown nose.
Yeah, the Russians may achieve all their so called “strategic military objectives” but they’ve clearly lost the snit war. No prom date for them.
Weren’t they told that before hand by Lord Biden, court jester Blinken and 535 yapping clowns otherwise known as congressmen? Basically, they knew they had nothing to lose, that they were gonna continue to be shafted with sanctions and total exclusion from Western civilisation regardless of their actions (as long as their military performed to expectations). This is why some pundits, like PCR, repeatedly take them to task for pulling their punches in this war with Ukraine, virtue generally being its own punishment.
The empire’s compulsion to “end Russia”, break it apart, then pivot to China, is what has forced Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Putin clearly recognizes that the USA is already a belligerent in Ukraine with finance, weapons, advisors and military intel. And both Russia and China see clearly what “full-spectrum dominance” would mean for them — the end of sovereignty — economic, political, and cultural. They know this is an existential struggle. To dismiss Russia’s strategic analysis and tactics as stupid is to be trapped in the regime-media’s propaganda bubble.
—
This war is virtual only in the empire’s virtual reality, built on propaganda and censorship. That is what sustains its unshakable faith in its supreme exceptionalism. However, this faith-based illusion is about to collide with the reality-based world of Russia and China — and then its “virtual” war will become far more kinetic than it already is. In a wider war, Russia is likely to prevail over US/NATO with conventional weapons alone, China aside. Beyond this, escalation becomes nuclear. That is why Russia’s strategy has been cautious and methodical to date. It is presenting America with its own Afghanistan 2.0 in an effort to prevent Armageddon while creating a new multi-polar world. Putin has already proven that the Empire of Lies is not “agreement-capable”. Is it reality-capable?
Of course, Doug. That’s precisely how I see it and tried to say it tongue-in-cheek.
Sorry, hard to tell because US propaganda itself is so cartoonishly divorced from reality it’s indistinguishable from paroday and satire. It’s baffling that so many people can swallow such surreality.
The special military operation was necessary to address the Nazi problem and to protect Russia from the threat of regime change & WW3 by US/Nato. Excellent post clarifying these issues. Probably should have mentioned George Soros, the Bilderbergers and the Hollow Earth Nazis, but otherwise comprehensive.
I’d never heard of the Hollow Earth Nazis. Thanks for enlightening me!
https://www.liveabout.com/nazis-and-the-hollow-earth-2594410
@Righteous Impaler – What about those Lizard People, too? Going around impersonating Queen Elizabeth and others, damn their beady little eyes!
a huge amount of death, suffering and destruction in the world correlates with US political/economic attention. Perhaps someone should look into it. There may be causality.
/conspiracy theorist
If Washington was depraved enough to recruit the same Al Qaeda outfit that supposedly brought down the twin towers in NYC and part of the Pentagon with hijacked jet-liners to help overthrow the Assad administration in Syria, whilst employing only the slightest cosmetic change of giving this army of thugs a few different noms de guerre like ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, etc, that fooled nobody but the American nightly news audience, I am sure they are quite capable and willing to stoop to any elevation, including the depths of the Challenger Deep, to aid the modern-day legacies of true Hitlerian Nazis that the Ukrainian Banderites represent. In the atrophied mind of Lord Biden and his neocon handlers it only makes sense to thoroughly betray the well-being of the Ukrainian people and the existential security of the democratic Russian Federation using that same Ukraine as a cudgel against it, if it means the opportunity to add more territory, more turf defiled by marking with its own waste products just as any “big dog” or alpha male in the pack that calls itself “Nato” or “the American Empire” would do. This big dog will never stop defiling our earhtly environment with its excrement until the entire planet is knee deep in it. I often feel the sense of a totally insane and illogical vibe emanating from the Washington Banderites that they would rather “win” a world war and rule over a planet of incinerated corpses and completely sterilized residual biomass than to share this thing they call “power” with anyone or anything else, and the latter probably even includes nature itself. Unlike Alexander, they won’t cry about it when they have no more worlds to conquer, their lacrimal glands being destroyed along with every other bit of their vaporised bodies.
Seriously Caitlin, what does it take to get the message thru to you ?? I quote, “The US Could’ve Prevented This War Just By Protecting Kyiv From Nazis” Unquote.
Firstly, it pains me to have to point this out AGAIN, and again and again, the U.S. has orchestrated events deliberately to position Russia into this war. That’s the whole point since 2014. They did not spend all that money in Ukraine out of the goodness of their hearts. They have an agenda, that is to destroy Russia was we know it today. End of story. So babbling on about what “could” have been done to prevent this war, is a bit like closing the paddock gate after all the cows have taken to the hills and ignoring the obvious. Waffling on about it, is totally pointless, IMHO.
She’s just calling them out for being hypocrites. They might say they are appalled at the death and destruction of this war, but as you say, that’s bullshit. They wanted the war. They meticulously acted to create all the pretexts for it. I am dead certain that Caitlin knows this and will soon tell you so.
It’s weird how many people comment after just reading the headline.
It’s not at all weird for histrionic people to make uninformed hyperbolic assertions. The double question marks are a tip off.
Classes in remedial reading are available. You clearly missed the core thesis.
Read the article – then consider a comment.
As with any popular left-wing blog that seeks to get the truth out there and also expose the lies of the official narrative, the PTB will send in their paid shills to try and ridicule and/or dismiss the truth (and the messenger themselves), and I have no doubt that Caitlin’s site has been infected by such shills for some time, but they really seem to be upping the ante over Ukraine!
.
NB It could of course be just one paid full-time shill with a variety of user-names, and most likely IS.
John Mearsheimer may not be promoting outright a no-fly zone here, but he is making it clear that if we do wan’t to set one up, pop the old umbrella over Ukraine, it will be a piece a cake.
When it comes to “air to air engagements (and even on the ground)” … “the United States will clobber the Russians.”
Makes me pine for the old days, when around Day 10 a half inebriated Nancy Pelosi was expressing her disappointment that she couldn’t just bomb the armored columns of the enemy into oblivion, because someone had told her that the Russians have these thingy dingies that come up from ground that might interfere with the process.
At least she was talking some sense.
Mearsheimer isn’t just fighting the last war, he is stuck intellectually somewhere several wars in the past, the ’73 war maybe, when there actually was some “air to air.”
DOGFIGHTING!!! Remember that Ms. Johnstone? How I pointed out that the love of it wasn’t just the purview of gamers and war nerds? Everybody wants to see dogfights, including most if not all of our politicians and leading intellectuals.
There is just something about it. It’s “romantic”, is what is. Martyanov is right, everything we in the West know about modern war comes from our movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgIgXjSnCJM
I never trusted Mearsheimer. Just something about him. Here has seen into Putin’s heart, and there is no question in his mind that Putin wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, that is the ultimate aim, but Putin has put aside such grandiose ideas for the moment due to practical considerations.
Also, if this does all come down to who will toss out the first nuke, it will be the Russians, according to Mearsheimer. Presumably for the reason, that’s just the way those Russian’s roll.
Color me a me a Conspiracy Theorist, but I do not trust those who are employed by the University of Chicago Neo-liberal Complex, or who’s side work includes working for the Council of Foreign Relations.
Or card carrying members of the Council of Foreign Relations, like Vanden Heuvel, for that matter.
Did Mearsheimer get this right, years ago, that if Nato kept advancing towards Russia’s borders it would lead to a major confrontation with Russia somewhere is Eastern Europe? Yes he did. But so did a lot of other folks who follow such kindergarten-level geo-political developments.
The question is not whether this conflict was inevitable because the US was reading Russian concerns wrong, but rather, was the whole point of Nato’s expansion Eastward a direct result of the US understanding Russian concerns perfectly all along?
The Russian bear is in the trap, exactly where I predicted it would be 15 years ago, mainly because of Vlad the MORON’s inability to fully grasp that not only was he never going to be allowed in the Western neo-liberal club, the West was looking to put their boot on his neck.
So we could influence his every action, or eliminate him, whichever was required.
Unfortunatley for the West, this particular bear in the trap has nukes, and it also has layered surface to air defense systems stretching for hundreds of miles in this current theatre of war, most of it based around what every war nerd out knows is the best selling weapons’ system on the this free market planet, the S-400 surface to air missile battery.
Dogfighting.The Russians think engaging in air to air combat to set up “no-fly zones” is the equivalent of massed cavalry charges against machine guns, and the deeper we get into this, the more I’m getting the feeling that the Russian Federation is equally intersted in finding out what exactly a modern conventional war might look like between superpowers.
To test out some of those, competing theories.
You’re not shitting us now, are you? Russia has not had the slightest need to whip out their S-400 (or is it 500 by now?) ground to air missile defense systems, or even to do much bombing of infrastructure after destroying most military targets. So, nobody’s superiority in the air has been established. At best, it’s still an unknown quantity as far as the Americans are concerned. They seemed not to want to test it in Syria mano a mano against the Russians. And before anyone goes nuclear, I’m sure we will see the battle of the hypersonics. Oh, that’s right, Washington does not yet have them. Well, then, in the normal course of the escalatory spiral, Washington’s gap would be filled with the first nuclear response, unless they decided to surrender which no one ever expects from those maniacs. You sure this is the same Mearsheimer of recent acclaim for his “realism?”
“And before anyone goes nuclear, I’m sure we will see the battle of the hypersonics. Oh, that’s right, Washington does not yet have them.”
Lmao …
“So, nobody’s superiority in the air has been established.”
Exactly. We are in a moment in military history when every Western war nerd’s favorite weapon, the dogfighting fighter plane, may no longer be the preeminent component in ruling the battlespace.
Martyanov for one believes this is the case. As he often says when discussing US/Nato dreams of ridding the skies over Urkaine of Russian flying objects, “Hey, if you think you can do it, what can I say guys, go for it. See if things have improved since Vietnam, when more than 200 of your fixed wing aircraft were shot down by Soviet SAMs designed in the early 50s.”
“And hey, where not even talking about the 5,000 helicopters you lost to groundfire. But, you know, whatever? If that’s what you want to do, maybe it will work it for you. I mean, who knows?”
All the US/NATO had to do was simply *not support the Nazis*
Nothing else was necessary.
That’s a fantasy alright, especially since the nazis were installed by the US in 2014 and in short order were integrated into the Ukrainian state apparatus, especially its repressive core (the cops, military and secret police), all with full material support and encouragement of the US. When Zelensky came to power with an electoral mandate that went somewhat against what the US, EU, NATO and nazis had been aiming for since Maidan, he was quickly made an offer he couldn’t refuse and he chose to be made ‘hostage’ to the US-created nazi state. Now Zelensky evidences an advanced case of Stockholm syndrome, which no doubt a few hundred million dollars serve as soft ‘handcuffs’.
.
The US regime and its Ukraine nazis, glued at the hip by the CIA which over seven decades has an impeccable track record of recruiting and training nazis for its ’causes’ (including the Banderaites who killed ~300,000 Ukrainians in the 1950s), are inseparable in striving for the US overall aim of dismembering Russia. To undercut the nazis by somehow ‘protecting’ Zelensky from them means undermining a strategic relationship that cannot but ruin any chance the US has of using Ukraine as its principal spear to destroy Russia. One can’t separate one from the other.
The Nazis have been in Ukraine since the 1930s. The US did not install them. But the US did promote them.
Nazis have existed in most countries since their origins. The difference in Ukraine is they hold state power, and the US installed them. Nuland and all the other US politicians and operatives were on the ground coordinating Maidan, and they knew exactly who the muscle were behind the coup (it wasn’t ‘the people’). The CIA trained the nazis in how to perform all the measures of repression normally (and abnormally) associated with state repression. It’s all in line with the CIA playbook on its colour revolutions, and as far as the US regime is concerned it was $5 billion well spent.
Obviously the US wasn’t going to avert a war it actively instigated, but there’s no shortage of wars the US could have easily averted. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which the US knew was coming, could have been stopped with a phone call. It wasn’t a coincidence the invasion happened right after the fall of the USSR, any more than it was a coincidence Ukraine was invaded just after the end of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Peace is bad for business.
Maybe Zelensky’s got a rat line out, maybe to Israel. I would.
I like “hydroplane toward the brink of nuclear armageddon”. I don’t like actually doing it of course, but it’s an evocative way of putting it.
It was 1989 when the revolutions swept Eastern Europe but the Soviet Union didn’t officially break up until December 25, 1991. I even recall the Soviets attempting diplomacy to avert the war after the Iraqi invasion but after the August 1990 coup attempt against Gorbachev the USSR was a spent force and I think I remember that the Soviets no longer being a deterrence was acknowledged as being a factor in the US decision to go to war.
Two thoughts:
– The Ultranationalists have been armed, trained and put into important positions by the US, since they were the ones orchestrating the 2014 coup on the ground (a fact which they bragged about). Maybe Selensky didn’t know this when he took office, but at some point he must have learned, that his promise was futile.
– In theory the defeat at Mariupol and Asovstal would have reduced the threat on his life and strengthened his negotiation position, but now ofc the external pressure is overwhelming and i hardly think he is anything but an actor anymore.
These are the kind of posts where you are at your best, providing relevant history and background information and then connecting the dots to come to a conclusion and provide a reasonable explanation. The who, what, why, and wheres. Oftentimes, even your sources, with the same information and attempting to make the same points (or sometimes not), don’t explain things as well as you do in your conclusions.
Once President Trump is back in, he will have nobody in the US to watch his back… so whatever happens to him, happens. I have no sympathy for a nazi supporter nor kiddie or human traffickers. Life by the sword, die by the sword. He will just have to take his chances with the rest of us minions.
For crying out loud, when are you folks going to, accept TRUMP is GONE, period. Busted, dusted, crapped out blown away, call it what you want, but he’s never going to be allowed anywhere near the W.H. ever again, and IMHO, good riddance to rubbish.
You are entitled to your opinion and I’m entitled to mine….. and I beg to differ.
But only time will tell… and can I advise you not to get your knickers in a twist?
I am only guessing, but I don’t think you like Trump and that’s fine, but let others believe what they want to…… have a great day ♥️ ✌
Honestly though, I give a 40% or so chance he gets fairly re-elected in 2024. He only barely lost 2020. The population is split just about down the middle and both sides are rabid and just want to deport the others. If he is the Republican Nominee, even if he loses, it will probably be tight again.
Trump is by no means ‘GONE’. He’s currently not in the White House, but he’s still wildly popular with many, and has wide support among Republicans. I receive daily emails from him*, or at least in his name, as he continues campaigning. You may hope he never bcomes President again, but that doesn’t make it a certainty.
.
* Eg. “Friend, I need your help.
Joe Biden is determined to DESTROY my Administration’s incredible America FIRST legacy.
If Patriots like YOU do not step up NOW, there will be absolutely nothing left to STOP Biden & the radical Left from dismantling and ruining everything we worked for.”
I never did, nor would I, vote for Trump or Biden, but I would wear a Trump 2024 hat to my Democrat Congressperson’s office saying my switch was a response to the pro-war, don’t talk to Putin policy that was NOT Donald Trump’s position before his being demonized by the Democrats for not being as cowardly as they are.
OMG!! Trump back? Total chaos. The majority of Americans will have to fight tooth and nail to subdue the l nutcase MAGAT (Make America Great Again Trump) Base. From trying to impose their insane view as law on everyone else.
So…. Would you rather keep biden in there, trying with his great reset cronies creating wars etc?
There were no wars under Trump.
If Trump is as bad as you’re making out, why are so many backing him to get back in and the left are trying SO hard to keep him out?
Convince me!!!!
Once President Trump is back in, he will have nobody in the US to watch his back… so whatever happens to him, happens. I have no sympathy for a nazi supporter nor kiddie or human traffickers. Life by the sword, die by the sword. He will just have to take his chances with the rest of us minions.
Well, that’s odd. My comment didn’t upload.
Forcing Ukraine INTO war with Russia after forcing the 2014 coup detat, then building up the Ukrainian army and Nazi Batttalions, training and equipping them was to this end.
“Joe Biden” said Russia would invade.
He knew the Ukrainian/Azov forces were poised, including command center, to invade the Donbass.
They increased shelling of civilians to 1200 rounds per day.
They forced Russia to invade.
Russia did not collapse.
Russia used 20% of it’s armed forces and 1970s era equipment on the ground.
Russia is pounding the surviving Ukrainian military with the best artillery in the world.
That turns a person to jelly pretty soon.
The Ukrainians are ordered to sit there and get shelled day and night until they die.
That’s “support” from the west.
“In imagining what would have happened if the US had pledged to protect the Ukrainian government from an undemocratic violent overthrow at the hands of fascists”
I had to double check this one, since it was the uS that in fact, installed the current ukie regime in a an undemocratic violent overthrow at the hands of CIA-trained, or possibly just plain CIA), fascists. I mean, is it not kind of funny suggesting the uS could, or should have offered protection to an illegal coup regime from being overthrown by the very same elements they used to install the coup regime in the 1st place? I mean, since the people zelensky is allegedly so fearful about, are the ones that provided the ‘street muscle’ that put him in he predecessors in power in the 1st place back when, Id think the uS would be the last ones to (ever) ask for more ‘help’. I would say they have done ‘more than enough’ in Ukraine, and everywhere else for that matter.
Thank you for your keen insight that many posters seem to have missed on here.
I have shared all of your columns for years -until this one.
Love you but can’t help spread the “Nazi” Ukraine stuff
Charles Keener
Too bad, Charles. The Ukranian government IS in fact run by NAZIS, supporters of Stepan Bandera, who once worked for Adolf Hitler, murdering slavs, jews, socialists, roma and anybody else Hitler didn’t like. You are living in a fantasy world if you believe otherwise. Wake up, fool.
Well that’s silly. No serious person disputes that Ukraine has a Nazi problem and the fact that they threatened to murder the Ukrainian president if he made peace with Russia is one of the most important things anyone could possibly discuss.
Thing is Caitlin, the threats are on record in writing made by various MSM’s, so whoever disputes that claim, they need to back it up with verifiable evidence.
Very true, and there’s a massive Nazi problem here in Britain, too. We obviously need a massive war waged by a military superpower to clear that up.
If the Nazis held your political leaders hostage and forced them to violate treaties that were responsible for keeping the peace with that nation, it wouldn’t seem so absurd.
~
I don’t know if I agree with everything in this article, but at least attack it on the merits of what is being said, not some reductio ad absurdum.
Charles, don’t be ignorant. Ukraine has been dominated by Nazis since WW2, and the US has encouraged and capitalized on that since WW2 for our own ends. Ukraine’s Nazi problem is well documented by MANY journalists, and the US deliberately fostered, trained, supported and encouraged the Nazi Azov battalion to kill 15,000 ethnic Russians in Donbass. The entire situation in Ukraine was invented by the US to weaken Russia. You are smarter than this.
Indeed, it’s overrun by Nazis. Which is why we need these massive military interventions to clear things up. There are a lot of Nazi infestations all over the world – it’s well-documented. We just need lots of massive military interventions – huge wars like the one waged by Putin in Ukraine – in order to clear up this Nazi problem worldwide.
your comment reminds me far too much of the typical ignorant response by an American who swallows the NATO propaganda whole. it’s just astonishing how people are going to pretend the last 25 years of NATO expansion doesn’t exist, or the long history of the Nazi supporting far right in Ukraine doesn’t exist.
Caitlin quotes Stephen Cohen as saying, “Some people say they’re fascists but they’re certainly ultra-nationalist, and they have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin.” They used to proudly flaunt Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, though of late these are less often to be seen, except for the ‘wolfsangel’ – because they’ve renounced Nazism, or because they prefer a different public image? Biletsky, the founder of the Azov Battallion, spoke of leading the white races of the world in a final crusade aganst the Semite-led ‘Untermenschen’, or inferior races and people.
Call them Nazis, neo-Nazis, fascists, quasi-fascists, or ultra-nationalists – they have few qualms about working alongside plain Nazis seeking to implement the Nazi agenda.
Zelensky will now face the wrath of the Ukrainians, if they can get past his armed goons, for betraying them and for colluding with the US and allowing their country to be destroyed. He has become the worst traitor of them all.
No matter where he goes afterwards, his life will be in danger. His family will be targeted. His stolen millions might help him get round the clock armed protection, but he will be hunted for the rest of his life.
Is the US going to protect him or will they just abandon him to his inevitable fate?
The U.S. usually abandons its puppets.
History verifies this very clearly. But, seriously imagine YOU are Zelensky, and are approached by CIA operatives offering you millions of dollars in U.S. bank accounts all you need to do is abide by the instructions given to you to the letter.
Alternatively, rejection could result in the painfull murder of your family and yourself.
Make your choice wisely.
What would YOU do ? How do we know, this wasn’t Zelenski’s options ? After all, this IS U.S. Modus operandi.
As Kissinger put it, being an enemy of the US can be dangerous but being its friend is fatal.
Now that I would love to see, however I fear I’m going to be disappointed. Explain to us all, who is going to do the hunting ???????