As John Helmer points out, sanctions can become an incentive for beneficial restructuring of the Russian economy that eliminates constraints imposed by Western-influenced Central Bankers. Similarly, Andrei Bezrukov remarks that "We've been through this before. The young Soviet Republic was encircled and even worse off," and sees that sanctions provide an opportunity, if not necessity, for reforming the Russian economy as a whole: "now we have been practically forced, especially after the latest packet of sanctions, into a position where we have no other choice but to totally restructure our economy, financial system, and in essence our domestic policy."
But, most importantly, sanctions just demonstrate to Russia precisely why this fight is necessary-to end the U.S.'s control of the world order that enables it to punish and blackmail countries at will. In fact, these sanctions demonstrate to every country in the world-and even to the oligarchs!-that they are all under Washington's thumb, and every single dollar of theirs can be stolen in an instant, unless and until the world order changes, as Russia is seeking to do.
These sanctions demonstrate that what's happening in Ukraine is a battle in a larger war that's about whether the US will continue to control the whole world in every way, with impunity. If you doubt that, here's Juan Gonzalez, Special Assistant to Biden and Senior Advisor for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council, telling you so:
If Russia loses, so does Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Those countries and China (even though it is very reluctant to support separatism) understand that, which is why they support Russia in this fight. Not because they share a global ideology with Russia, but because they understand the material consequences for their own societies.
Ukraine has been nothing but a pawn in the US game. The US (along with internal fascists) chose to make Ukraine the front line of a war against Russia. Russia has chosen to fight back, starting on that front. The result will either extend or weaken U.S. unipolar control of the world. That's the central stake. That's what the U.S. rulers want you to be willing to go to war-including WWIII-for. They know and say it. Everyone should.
No Way Out
WWIII is not a remote possibility. We are already in it. The only question is: How much worse will it get?
First of all, the hellish economic, diplomatic, and cultural sanctions now being imposed on Russia, designed to enforce its complete isolation from the US-defined "international community," go beyond anything we've seen since the Second Word War-including the Japanese oil embargo that preceded the Pearl Harbor attack.
This is a form of economic warfare that will seriously disrupt economic life everywhere, at least as much in the sanctioning countries as in Russia. You cannot exile the largest nation on earth. Russia will mount its own retaliatory and effective economic siege measures. That situation must be resolved. Can U.S. and Western leaders be delusional enough to think that will happen via Russia withdrawing from Ukraine, abandoning the LDPR and Crimea, agreeing to infinite NATO expansion, etc., without being militarily defeated?
We are in midst of a ubiquitous, unconstrained, and orchestrated campaign of destroying the possibility of non-conflictual, state-to-state relations. For its part, Russia has gotten the message, and considers that relations with the West have reached "the point of no return." It's hard to see where this can go that doesn't involve military conflict.
Second, this is just beginning. The war we are all in now is not about, and won't stop with, Ukraine. If Russia prevails in Ukraine (and perhaps even if it fails), it will go on to insist on the drawdown of threatening NATO forces in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. It will not accept the already emplaced first-strike-enabling missile systems in Poland and Romania, or new projects like the $152 million US-funded transformation of a Romanian airbase into a "NATO Black Sea hub." If these undeniably threatening encroachments are not negotiated away quickly, Russia will neutralize them with "military-technical" means, which may include cyber-attacks, counterpart placement of threatening systems near Europe or the United States, or direct missile attacks that will take them out, as Russia deems necessary. Listen to what the man says and believe it. Russia is not bluffing.
The Battle of Ukraine only leads into the larger campaign to constrain NATO in a way that effectively destroys it, because it negates its actual raison d'????tre: to attack Russia. As Noam Chomsky said, the reason why there is still a NATO after 1991 (and why NATO wouldn't accept Putin's offer to join in 2000) is because NATO is, and always was, an offensive alliance aimed at destroying, dismembering, or subjugating Russia, whether Soviet or capitalist.
The war we are in could be ended if the US/NATO agreed to abjure the prerogative of unlimited expansion-and that is what everyone should call for. Of course, the US/NATO is not going to accept any constraint, except by force or the unanswerable threat of force.
So this war will be settled by force and the threat of force. Russia introduced a large dose of military force in Ukraine, and the US responded with enormous economic and financial force, with some military force in the background ($100s of millions in weaponry, intelligence and probably special ops) . But both sides will use all the levers of force at their disposal, as they think necessary.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
3
