Ray McGovern: Corporate Media Deploys the Big Guns on Ukraine - Antiwar.com Blog
A very informative historical dig into all of this with regard to Europe, US, Russia, and Ukraine. Except of linked article below this:
It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom.
Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the
war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now
afflicts approximately thirty countries)?
Do they acknowledge the horrific reality of
hunger that has increased due to this war and the sanctions?
It appears that many of the “certainties” are caught up in the “Cold War mentality,” which views humanity as irreversibly divided on two opposing sides. However, this is not the case; most countries are struggling to craft a non-aligned approach to the U.S.-imposed “new Cold War.” Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is a symptom of broader geopolitical battles that have been waged over decades.
On March 26, U.S. President Joe Biden defined some certainties from his perspective at the Royal Castle in Warsaw,
calling the war in Ukraine “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”
These binaries are wholly a fantasy of the White House, whose attitude towards “rules-based order” is not rooted in the U.N. Charter but in “rules” that the U.S. pronounces. Biden’s antinomies culminated in one policy objective: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said, meaning Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The narrowness of Biden’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine has led to a public call for regime change in Russia, a country of 146 million people whose government
possesses 6,255 nuclear warheads. With the U.S.’s violent history of controlling leadership in several countries, reckless statements about regime change cannot go unanswered. They must be universally contested.
The principal axis of Russia’s war is not actually Ukraine, though it bears the brunt of it today. It is whether Europe can be permitted to forge projects independently of the U.S. and its North Atlantic agenda.
The U.S. strategy was not entirely successful. European countries could see that there was no effective substitute for both Russian energy and Chinese investment. Banning Huawei’s telecommunications tools and preventing NordStream 2 from certification would only hurt the European people. This was clear.
Ukraine: The Broader Geopolitical Conflict
Excerpt from another article linked below this:
Noting that US academics and policy makers don’t believe NATO’s designs on Ukraine represent an existential threat to Russia, Mearsheimer is as blunt as his courteous mien permits. "What people in Washington believe is irrelevant. What matters is what Russia believes." He rejects the "mainstream" view that Putin’s Russia is motivated by expansionist aims, and asks the savants in Washington to put concrete evidence behind their claims. Moreover, "There is no evidence in what Putin has said that he wants to make Ukraine part of Russia," Mearsheimer adds.
So who are these professors, pundits, and politicians who have convinced most Americans that "we have to fight the Russians there so we don’t have to fight them here"?
Whether out of professional courtesy or lack of time, Mearsheimer did not spell this out. As a decades-long practitioner of Russian analysis, however, I am astonished at what passes for analysis of Russia in this day and age. It is as though the Soviet Union never fell apart and that KGB rascal Putin is still trying to take over the world.
The following is what I might call Exhibit A, courtesy of the New York Times,
Putin Has the US Right Where He Wants It by Fiona Hill:
The West’s muted reactions to both the 2008 and 2014 invasions emboldened Mr. Putin. This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s "open door" to Ukraine and taking more territory – he wants to evict the United States from Europe. As he might put it: "Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out."
Mearsheimer: Russia Sees 'Existential Threat,' Must Win - Antiwar.com Original
A few to read over and more to come.
