The American Establishment is feverishly propagandizing us into preparing ourselves for a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.
Day after day more anonymous sources – who never provide any evidence to substantiate their “frightening” revelations, and are never asked by the corporate media to produce whatever evidence they may have – drop another scary soundbite into our vapid, undiscerning public discourse.
Fear-mongering among the uninformed is one of propaganda’s most useful strategies because the uninformed are easy to mislead.
Fortunately for energetic propagandists, the average American imagines that world history began yesterday, which makes the general public a sucker for lies and disinformation about that scary world looming beyond our glistening shores.
This time-dishonored tactic is now being exploited with wild abandon by every major American news outlet, without exception. I am urging you: do not believe a word of what you hear on this subject from ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, or Newsmax.
Now that the US is firmly rooted in a “second Cold War” with Russian – a needless and very dangerous antagonism manufactured out of whole cloth by our military-industrial-media complex – its time to beat the drums of war again. Or so the Establishment believes.
Why? Because war always makes a lot of money for the military-industrial complex, including US corporations.
The beast must be fed. It’s hungry. It can’t devour Afghanistan anymore, so it needs fresh meat. God help us all.
Here is what every American needs to know, remember, or investigate concerning the history of US, Russian, Ukrainian relations:
(By the way, for one of the best, most sensible discussions of the current
problems, please watch Medea Benjamin’s informative conversation with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – a man who knows his stuff inside and out — right here.)
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 much of eastern Europe was thrown into turmoil. Two events were particularly troubling for Russia as it watched its empire disappear.
First, the Warsaw Pact, the eastern European counterpart to NATO which had served as the guardian of Soviet security, was quickly disbanded.
Second, East Germany reunited with West Germany, creating a unified German republic as a part of NATO.
Russia, quite reasonably, saw these two developments as an immediate threat to its national security. Not only had NATO, Russia’s historic antagonist, expanded, it had just taken a monumental step eastward towards the Russian border. And many other formerly Eastern-bloc countries were lining up to follow suit.
The Russian leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev – who was responsible for the new openness that led to the collapse of Soviet communism – quickly asked for a US guarantee that NATO would not invite any former members of the Soviet Union to join its western alliance.
President George H. W. Bush agreed.
Bush promised that NATO would stop in its tracks, moving no further east
towards the Russian border. (I have always held that NATO should have immediately disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. I was once arrested for demonstrating for this cause. But no one in Washington D. C. listens to me. Alas.)
Unfortunately, Bill Clinton quickly ignored Bush’s pledge to Gorbachev. By manhandling the easily manipulated Boris Yeltsin, Clinton began to expand NATO further eastward.
NATO membership requires that new entrants must possess a certain level of military capability. After all, NATO members all pledge to defend one another in case of an attack.
US weapons companies make a bundle of cash selling new, advanced, American-made weaponry to these fledgling member states. And, of course, all of those missiles, rockets, and guns are generally pointed, you guessed it, towards Russia.
For 30 years, then, Russia has watched its old nemesis, NATO, moving further and further east, coming closer and closer to its western border, in direct violation of the promise given by an American president.
Most recently, NATO invited Ukraine, which borders Russia, to join its
military club. The US wants to begin selling advanced weaponry to Ukraine. Is it any surprise that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees NATO and the United States as a direct threat to Russia’s national security?
Of course, not. He would be stupid not to, and one thing Putin is not, is stupid.
In the current negotiations, Putin’s primary demand is that president Biden not allow Ukraine into NATO. Behaving like a typical American politician, Biden told Putin to drop dead.
And here we are. Unnecessary, dangerous escalation on every front.
Let’s stop and put ourselves in Putin’s shoes.
How would the US respond if an antagonistic country, let’s say China, began to move its military into Canada or Mexico, cheek-to-jowl with the US border?
We all know the answer to that question.
Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?
President Kennedy learned that the Soviets were moving nuclear missiles
into Cuba. He immediately told Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev that the US would not tolerate Soviet weapons near its borders. We came close to a nuclear war over this, and Khrushchev withdrew the missiles.
Why should we expect Putin and the Russians to react any differently?
What we need right now is an American president who will demonstrate the wisdom and humility of Nikita Khrushchev.
There are no two ways about it folks. In this current “confrontation,” the United States is the threatening aggressor. We have always been the mangy wolf salivating at Russia’s western doorstep. We are the ones causing these problems. Not Russia. Not Putin.
No wonder Putin has become antagonistic!
All of the blame – all of it! – falls on the US and now onto president Biden.
Recall that war-mongering is a bipartisan habit in this country. The US loves to be at war. Powerful people make a lot of money, billions of dollars, from it.
But American saber rattling must stop! Please call or write your senators and representatives. Tell them that you strongly oppose this administration’s position on Russia and Ukraine.
Tell them you do not want a new Cold War with Russia, and they need to stop bad mouthing president Putin in public. It doesn’t help. Putin is not the bad guy in this particular drama.
Tell them that Ukraine has no business joining NATO. The US has no business sending American troops into Ukraine or the surrounding nations.
This is very, very serious business, folks.
