A Manufactured Crisis in Ukraine
is Victimizing the World's Peoples
With
the conflict in Ukraine entering its third month, the likelihood of a
successfully negotiated peace — an immediate necessity — is becoming
ever more remote. This proxy war by the United States is designed to use
the Ukrainian people to mortally disable Russia. Those who profit from
war benefit, while those most vulnerable suffer: Ukrainian civilians,
but more broadly working people internationally and especially in the
Global South.
It
was expected that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 would put
an end to the first Cold War and the threat of world nuclear
annihilation. Instead, the world’s remaining superpower continued its
imperialist quest of global “full spectrum dominance” to prevent the emergence of “any potential future global competitor.”
Domestically,
instead of a “peace dividend” in 1991, the bi-partisan consensus of
Democrats and Republicans has been a policy of relentless military
expansion. The U.S. military now consumes over
half of the federal discretionary budget, which is 12 times the size of
Russia’s defense spending. The Ukraine war has been used to justify
Congress’s most recent obscene additional $29 billion in war
appropriations over what the Pentagon itself had requested, $800
billions of which will go directly to Ukraine in the form of hi-tech
military weapons.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine is providing convenient cover for the current administration to renege on promised social
programs such as COVID protections, full student loan debt relief, free
community college, or the public option for Medicare, and the promised
seven days guaranteed paid sick leave for the workers. The war has been
used to encourage fossil fuel production and blocking fracking on
federal land has been forsaken.
A U.S.-Manufactured Conflict
Russia’s
military intervention in Ukraine could have been avoided if the U.S.
had not relentlessly provoked it. The U.S. provided weapons and military
training to the fascist-infiltrated Ukrainian army that has targeted
ethnic Russians in Ukraine since the U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2014.
Some 14,000 people had died in the conflict before Russia directly
intervened.
Russia
repeatedly called for respecting the ceasefire outlined in the Minsk
Accords. The 2015 Minsk II Agreement called for autonomy for the
separatist Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where the majority are
Russian-speaking, along with release of prisoners of war and withdrawal
of heavy weapons.
Instead,
the Ukrainian army increased its attacks on its own citizens, although
the peace agreement had been signed by representatives of Ukraine along
with Russia, the separatist provinces, and the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for western Europe. Then in late February,
a planned full-scale assault by the Ukraine army on the separatist
region immediately precipitated the Russian invasion.
The
conflict could not have continued without weapons and intelligence
openly provided by the U.S. In a hearing before the Senate Armed
Services Committee, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, reported that the U.S. and NATO had supplied 60,000 anti-tank
and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to the Ukrainian army. In recent weeks,
the Biden administration ordered another $1.6 billion of “lethal aid”
to Ukraine further escalating the conflict.
NATO — the U.S.-Dominated Global War Machine
Contrary
to its claims, NATO is not a defensive organization. Its purpose from
the start has been to act as an instrument for U.S. world domination and
to prevent all challenges to the U.S. hegemony. That is why it was not
dissolved in 1991 after the dissolution of the Socialist Camp’s Warsaw
Pact. On the contrary, despite the promises made by high U.S. officials
to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would expand “not one inch east,” it was
expanded into fifteen new countries. This relentless eastward expansion
of NATO during the past decades has been an existential threat to a
nuclear-armed Russia and the main cause of the present military conflict
in Ukraine. Now, driven by the war in Ukraine, NATO may be able to add
Sweden and Finland in western Europe and Ukraine and Georgia in eastern
Europe to its list of members.
NATO
is not a true alliance. It is in fact an integrated imperialist army
under direct U.S. command. Its constituent states are bound to dedicate
significant portions of their national budgets to maintaining this war
machine and to offer up their youth as soldiers.
Nor
is it serving the interests of Europe, where U.S. nuclear weapons are
stationed — in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey —
making them immediate targets if the cold war turns hot; likewise for
Poland and Romania, which now host the U.S. “missile defense” facilities
for NATO aimed at Russia.
Severing Russia from Europe Through Weaponizing Ukraine
Not
only has the Ukraine conflict been used to oblige NATO members to buy
more weapons from U.S. military contractors, but the larger U.S.
objective of economically severing Russia from Europe is being advanced.
Precluded is an integrated Europe with peaceful commerce between Russia
and its neighbors. Instead, Germany, for instance, is being compelled
against its economic self-interest to buy U.S. liquified natural gas
rather than getting supplied from Russia via the Nord Stream II pipeline
at a fraction of the cost.
The
eventual peaceful integration of Russia with the rest of Europe has now
been forestalled for the foreseeable future. Such a potential
integration could have served in the long-term as a counterbalance to
U.S. hegemony. Thus, severance of Russia from Europe has been a
paramount strategic geopolitical objective for the U.S. And forget about
pledges to restore engagement with Cuba, rejoin the Iran nuclear deal,
or negotiate with North Korea for a denuclearized zone.
Weaponizing Ukraine as a part of NATO is the key to, in the words of the semi-governmental Rand Corporation,
“overextending and unbalancing Russia.” Early on, U.S. strategic
planners, such as President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski, put into play the elements that would eventually precipitate
Russia’s military response on February 24th.
For
all the reasons stated above, the U.S. government has pursued trapping
Russia in the Ukraine conflict and has every incentive to prolong the
conflict. Ukraine’s hands are tied, as it cannot negotiate a settlement
without permission from the U.S., which is unlikely to be forthcoming.
Global Consequences
The
reverberating consequences of the conflict and the associated sanctions
by the U.S. and its allies on Russia have been devastating, causing
food and fuel shortages globally and an ensuing inflation in the cost of
living most impacting those who can least afford it.
Climate
chaos, the ongoing pandemic, and inflation are all exacerbated by the
conflict. Instead of international solidarity and cooperation to combat
these threats, the opposite is occurring with global fragmentation. The
U.S. is threatening to sanction countries such as China and India, home
to 35% of the world population if they do not cut economic ties with
Russia. Pakistan recently experienced a U.S.-backed coup, in part for
continuing to have a friendly relationship with Russia.
Call for Peace
With
the U.S. imperialist thrust to prolong the proxy war to weaken Russia,
the voices for peace are regrettably few. Liberals in the U.S.
supporting the Democratic Party are reluctant to take a principled stand
for peace. Rather, they fully call for the overthrow of Putin and
punishing the Russians for their transgressions.
Although
liberals were quick to invoke the specter of fascism when it could be
associated with President Trump, they exhibit little concern about
aligning with real self-avowed fascist elements in Ukraine. Yet the
resurgence of a radical right is directly tied to the capitulation of
liberals to a failed neoliberal agenda (along with an embrace of a
neoconservative outlook on foreign relations), which has alienated and
victimized many workers who previously supported liberal and social
democratic alternatives.
The
Republicans, viewing the upcoming midterm congressional elections, have
taken the tactic of advocating for an even more adventurous jingoism.
Meanwhile, many alternative views to the imperialist narrative have been
de-platformed from social media leaving the U.S. public with a steady
diet of Russophobia.
Even
the left is not entirely unified on a peace platform. Some view the
conflict as simply an inter-imperialist rivalry between a capitalist
U.S. and a capitalist Russia primarily over natural resources in which
the working class has no stake. While there are elements of truth in
such a view, it ignores larger and far overriding issues, especially the
destructive impact of NATO’s success in Ukraine on the lives of the
working people throughout the world.
On the basis of this assessment of the present situation in Ukraine, the U.S. Peace Council reiterates its statement of
March 24 calling for rapidly de-escalating the violence and negotiating
a peaceful resolution. Analysts across the political spectrum agree
that never has the world been so close to nuclear holocaust.
We
call upon the Biden Administration to stop fueling the fire and
prolonging the war by sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to
Ukraine. It is time for these funds to be spent on critically-ignored
human needs instead of waging imperialist wars against other nations.
U.S. Peace Council
May 10, 2022
