Ukraine War - Europe Destroyed by Vulgar Pacifism and Strategic Illiteracy among Western Elites

War of aggression! Criminal Putin! Heroic Zelensky! Barbaric Russians! Glorious Ukrainians! 

 

These designations and other absurdities have been regurgitated to dumb down the masses while the war raged for the past ten months. Despite the damage done, Western political elites are intensifying the propaganda in their desperate attempt to avoid losing face. They duplicate their pronounced security illiteracy, deepen the conflict, and reduce the chances of a negotiated peace. 

 

The false and vulgar pacifist attitude to designate the one who used violent military means first - no matter the reasons and overall context - still prevails in Western political and media quarters. It is totally left out of the picture that Mr. Putin had exhausted all peaceful means and was virtually thrust into violently resolving an existential threat to his nation's security. 

 

No war is an isolated act and should not and must not be regarded as such, as the armchair strategists and self-proclaimed security policy experts on TV have tried to make us believe. But I provided comprehensive political and philosophical analyses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in previous blog entries and publications. Find details here and here.

 

Former radical pacifists of the European green and socialist parties keep pushing for further arms delivery to Ukraine and support of the war effort. Their hatred for Russia and subservience to a U.S. warmongering regime appear even to trump their long-held ideological convictions. And the public, by and large, still mirrors the pernicious bias of their political masters. 

 

According to polls, more than half of the population in Western European countries still prefer an unconditional victory of Ukraine over any deal that would respect Russia's interests. Even politicians and commentators who criticize sanctions want them lifted because they hurt Western nations' interests. They haven't figured or don't dare to mention that the sanctions are unjust and unethical in and by themselves. 

 

The lies - dictator Putin has launched a war of aggression out of pure lust for power to restore the borders of the Soviet Union - seem to persist successfully. The American president dared to declare that Putin started a war completely groundless and without provocation. A transparent falsehood, a convenient political lie in the face of all evidence and the truth of the matter. 

 

Critical voices, if they are even listened to, such as the purveyor of this blog, are denounced as Putin's pro-Russian stirrup holders, right-wing extremists, and anti-Europeans. A critical discourse no longer seems possible. Any vote against the prescribed dogma is considered a victim of Russian propaganda and anti-Western disinformation. But the truth never depends on majority numbers or the loudness of political agitation. And the truth, in the end, always prevails. No matter how long suppressed, shunned, demonized, and distorted. 

 

The blame for this war in Ukraine lies solely with the U.S. and its compliant proxies in NATO and E.U. But, above all, to blame is the megalomaniac President Zelensky. He willingly accepted the U.S.' imposition, had his nation instrumentalized in a proxy war against Russia, and drove his country into ruin. 

 

Although physically beginning a war, Russia is the only side waging a JUST WAR in the ongoing armed conflict. Let me spell it out once again in all clarity and emphasis: 

 

PREEMPTIVE WAR CAN BE JUSTIFIED WHEN ALL PEACEFUL MEANS AND ALL ALTERNATIVES TO USING FORCE HAVE BEEN EXHAUSTED, AND ONLY IMMEDIATE MILITARY ACTION 

CAN PREVENT HIGHER THREATS FROM MATERIALIZING. 

 

Since Western elites have lost themselves in their hasty and self-destructive policies, there is little hope for a long-overdue course correction, and further escalation appears inevitable.

 

Now, heading toward the end of this year, 2022, and ever deeper into the winter, I wager to predict that a major Russian offensive will take place once the low temperatures have sufficiently consolidated the terrain. Russia will bring the war to a decision, secure the conquered and now declared Russian areas, close the southern arc to the border with Moldova by taking Odessa and thus forcing a negotiated peace.

 

As a strategic necessity for her security, Russia must prevail in this armed conflict; the U.S. and the West, having gone so far in their destructive support of Ukraine, won't pull back. Thousands of soldiers from NATO countries (such as the U.S., Poland, and Great Britain) are already fighting on Ukrainian territory; more U.S. forces are on standby in neighboring regions, and Patriot Air Defense systems about to be delivered. Since the Ukrainian military is defeated, most of NATO will soon be involved in the conflict to prevent a Russian victory. A nuclear escalation might ensue if conventional military parity is shattered to Russia's disadvantage. 

 

The West, whose glorification of the megalomaniac Ukrainian President Zelensky reflects the precarious state of mental incapacity of its political elites, has been waging an expendable and easily avoidable war against Russia for almost a year now. A regional armed conflict, based on atrocious falsehoods and outright lies, threatens to turn into a world war unless the political elites are brought to their senses by public pressure.

The Responsibility for this War in Ukraine is on the West's Side

˃˃˃A disclaimer at the beginning. I am a friend of Europe and the US, but not necessarily of their ruling political class and policy decisions. None of my criticism is meant malicious or adversarial. It is only intended to enlighten the discourse, extend horizons, and improve political relations and decisions˂˂˂

 

Although Western political elites and their media unanimously condemn President Putin's decision to recognize the breakaway regions of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) in eastern Ukraine as autonomous people's republics, Putin's strategic maneuver can be seen as one of the last resort.

 

Donetsk and Lugansk broke away from Kiev after the Western-backed Maidan coup in 2014. They did not tolerate the deposition of incumbent President Yanukovych and the installation of the Washington and Berlin henchman Poroshenko, who opened Ukraine to the political, military and economic imposition of the US and the West. Since then, the Ukrainian leadership has rejected – in disregard of the provisions of the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements – concrete considerations for its eastern territories and even tried to forcibly reintegrate the republics in a civil war-like conflict.

 

In 2014, in the wake of the Maidan revolution, it also became immediately clear that Putin would not accept without resistance the attempt to admit Ukraine into NATO and possibly expel Russia from its Black Sea ports in Crimea. For the first time, he was confronted with an anti-Russian regime in Kiev, which is why he annexed the peninsula and began to support the separatists in the Donbass, who refused to accept the transformation of Ukrainian territory into an anti-Russian NATO base. The predominantly Russian population in these areas also resisted the Ukrainian regime's attempts to destroy Russian traditions, language, and culture.

 

The annexation of Crimea and support for the eastern territories would have been easily predictable if the US and Europe had only considered the legitimate strategic claims of the Russian Federation and decided to make a long overdue intelligent assessment of the overall security situation in the region. How would the United States react if, for example, Mexico allied itself with Russia and Putin tried to deploy massive troops on the southern border with the United States?

 

Western political elites have not taken a single step to address Putin's legitimate security concerns. Instead, they asserted their ruthless regional and global dominance policies, with which they had shaped international relations and, above all, relations with Russia for more than a quarter of a century.

 

Resolving the crisis in Ukraine would have required only a revision of the misguided strategic calculations of Washington, Brussels and Berlin and respect for Russia's legitimate security concerns. Unfortunately, the amateurish political governments that currently call the shots in the centers of power in the US and Europe have not been able to muster the minimum restraint to resolve the conflict peacefully.

 

For example, neither the weeks-long Russian troop build-up on the border with Ukraine nor Russia's demands, which were reiterated in a letter to Western leaders before the start of the military action, prompted the US/EU/NATO leadership to recognize Russia's national security interests. They didn't give Putin a chance. The blame for the collapse of diplomacy and the first step towards Russian aggression and the use of military force lies solely with the West.

 

While the public and international discourse on this issue focuses on the Kremlin and the White House, there is little mention of Ukrainian President Zelensky's contribution to this predicament. If he had wisely and sensibly defined the national security interests of his country in the context of geopolitical and strategic factors in the region and in relation to Russia, he could have avoided the conflict and the loss of part of his country's territory. Instead, pushed by his Western backers and arguably megalomaniacal ambitions, he pushed national self-determination beyond the reasonable limits of an adequate security strategy and even advocated full membership in NATO and the stationing of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory.

 

Here is a relevant historical example for Mr. Zelensky to learn from. What would have happened in 1955, a decade after the end of World War II and after ten years of Allied occupation, if Austria had insisted on joining NATO instead of accepting the neutrality status demanded by the Soviet Union as a prerequisite for regaining Austria's national sovereignty? By this time, the Soviets had already pushed their defensive alliance, the Warsaw Pact, to the border with Austria in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and if Austria had rejected the promise of neutrality and joined NATO, this would have been considered a threat to the security interests of the Warsaw Pact and a violation of the 1955 State Treaty. The Soviet Union would inevitably have responded with threats and military action.

 

No country in a geopolitically precarious situation would be well advised to use its political resolve to satisfy power-hungry ambitions and notions of hubris. In the case of Ukraine, a withdrawal from joining NATO, the freezing of all further armaments-related support by the US and its allies, and the transfer of Ukraine to a certain position of neutrality would have created the conditions for a diplomatic solution. If President Zelensky had acted in this direction, he would go down in history as a statesman. So, he will only be remembered as the comedian he was before his election. A role to which he has remained faithful even as president.

In truth, Zelensky and his predecessor Poroshenko, as well as their American-European masters, have been ruining the nation since the Euro-Maidan coup of 2014. It took them only eight years. According to the Ptukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies, economic failure, drastic militarization (Ukraine's defense budget at the beginning of the war was six times higher than in 2013) and the termination of energy contracts with Russia led the country into a deep recession. Agricultural, industrial and energy crises as well as significant demographic changes were the result. Between 2014 and 2021, more than one million Ukrainians took Russian citizenship and over six hundred thousand received work permits for the European Union. One in four Ukrainians wants to leave the country, and almost two-thirds believe that the country is on the wrong track. Not a word about it in the Western media.

 

Putin never intended to go to war with Ukraine and NATO, nor is he driven by a desire to restore the borders of the old Soviet Union. These are all ridiculous accusations that are repeatedly made by the American president and subservient European governments under pressure from the arms lobby and other warmongering and irrational-Russophobe forces. The bottom line is that Western leaders have missed their chances and now have to foot the bill for their folly and imprudence. They have tormented the Russian bear for far too long, neglecting its needs. Now he has taken the strategic initiative.

 

The senile Biden, the neoconservative warmongers in the US State Department, the subservient EU leadership, the naïve NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg – who is desperately looking for an enemy image to justify NATO's existence – they all now stand there like the doused poodles that they are. In their helpless desperation, they also hurt themselves by imposing a new sanctions regime on Russia that further alienated Russia from the West, drove it into the arms of China, and accelerated the economic destruction of large parts of Central and Western Europe. In addition, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who obeys US control compliantly, to the detriment of his country and neighboring states, immediately stopped the ratification of the Nordstrom-2 pipeline, which was supposed to ensure a low-cost and much-needed supply of natural gas to Central and Western Europe.

 

The amateurish circles of American and European policy consultancy – the so-called national security experts in the US State Department and the European Commission – still insist on the correctness of their failed strategic paradigm. They call Vladimir Putin an imperialist invader and a violator of international law because he recognized the breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine as sovereign republics and came to their aid. In doing so, they forgot that the US and its transatlantic partners have often violated international law provisions in recent decades. Indeed, they explicitly based a significant part of their policymaking in the field of international relations on the deliberate negation of international law, in particular its principle of non-intervention. While they had no legitimate reasons for their interventions and regime-change operations, for example in Libya (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2011/03/ us-and-european-foreign-policy-blunder.html) and Syria (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/ 2013/05/disastrous-foreign-policy-failures.html), they demonize Putin for a strategic move to which they cornered him and for which the Russian leader in the interests of the He had legitimate reasons for the survival of his own nation.

 

The true causalities for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as briefly outlined here, remain completely ignored in the public discourse on this topic. Western governments, led by the United States, refuse to acknowledge their misconduct in the malaise.

 

If the news does not soon spread in Western foreign policy circles that any approach to shaping international relations – be it bilateral, multilateral, or global – that ignores geopolitical and geostrategic aspects and the legitimate national interests of other members of the international community is doomed to failure, there will be even worse consequences for European and global security.

 

For the time being, it is important that the transatlantic political centers of power keep a cool head, admit their guilt for the escalation and do not plunge the world into something like a Third World War.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russophobia - Achilles’ Heel of US-Russia Relations

The demonizing of Russia and specifically of Vladimir Putin has been profoundly regretful and damaging to global affairs in recent years. It appears the U.S. could not rise above the old animosity vis-à-vis the follower nation to the Soviet Union that dominated bi-polar relations during the Cold War. In the quarter-century since, the United States, in its leading role in NATO and cooperation with the European Union, has pursued interventionist policies. Those aimed at global predominance and strengthening its position as the sole remaining superpower.

The U.S. and its partners wasted the opportunities to establish a righteous new world order the post-Cold War security environment offered. As I've made clear in my blog entries over the past years, geopolitical misconceptions paired with strategic hubris and ideological delusions as rampant in the White House and the State Department regimes led to utterly folly in foreign affairs international relations. Besides the undermining and destruction of nation-state structures in the Middle East and the intentional armed support of extremists and insurgents, color revolutions have been backed by the U.S. and E.U., for example, in Georgia and Ukraine. Central to the failed policies was the stunning neglect of legitimate national and strategic interests of other players in international relations.

The latter fact became painfully visible in the wake of the regime change in Ukraine. Every reasonably informed scholar of strategic and security studies could have foreseen the control of Crimea and eastern Ukraine's support by Russia. The installation of a puppet regime in Kiev by Washington and Berlin was unacceptable to Russia after the U.S. had pushed toward her borders through aggressive NATO expansion. To drive Russia out of its Black Sea ports and potentially prepare full-fledged membership of Ukraine, as the geostrategic 'Near Abroad,' in NATO would be intolerable for Russia. The blatant disregard of legitimate Russian interests went along with the infamy of blaming Russia for imperialism that had been clearly and unashamedly pushed by the U.S. and the transatlantic alliance.

It is impossible to accurately verify the degree to which strategic ignorance, national hubris, indifferent imperialism, pseudo-democratic universalism, or apparent economic interest and pressure from the military-industrial complex have led to the failed policy design. Yet, the miserable Pax Americana attempted in the last quarter-century was certainly a conglomerate of all these and probably more factors. In conjunction with Putin's demonization and the artificial preservation of Russia as the primary geopolitical enemy, western powers set the course for missing out on establishing a functioning global post-Cold War world order, including meaningful collaboration for containment of radical Islam. The outrageous claim of the Democratic Party that Russian hacking and cyber intervention lost the election for Hillary Clinton –probably one of the biggest scams in politics ever suggested– further exacerbated the relations with Russia. Mr. Obama's decision to expatriate Russian diplomats and impose additional sanctions under the pretense of Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. presidential elections will rank prominently among the many political follies this man has perpetrated.

The new administration under President Donald Trump, which alone gave hope to conquer the old resentments toward Russia and alleviate the damage the previous administration had caused, appears to be succumbing to the Russophobe and Putin-hating pressure forces in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Congress, and the media. The new U.S. Ambassador's aggressive speech to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, and the ousting of security advisor General Flynn based on informal conversations with the Russian ambassador provides sad testimony to that assessment.  

Overcoming the hysteria vis-à-vis Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin has to be considered the number one priority in U.S. foreign affairs. Maintaining Russia artificially as an enemy image for a new Cold War and conventional arms race must be ended. A mindful and critical, yet simultaneously constructive and respectful relationship with Russia from the part of the United States is long overdue, for whose materialization the numerous challenges to international relations and global security offer ample opportunity. Russia has to be part of fighting the Islamic State and radical Islamism worldwide and has to play a role in stabilizing the Middle East. While mutually respecting legitimate national interests, a balance of power should result in the pursuance of common objectives and joint ends in global affairs.

But this might require prominent representatives of society and state in the U.S. to stop calling Mr. Putin a murderer, abandoning the sanctions regime, and acknowledging Russia's legitimate strategic and economic interests concerning the Caucasus, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. It will also necessitate the easing up of U.S. and NATO forces' aggressive posture in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

The new administration must not continue the insanity of the Obama years. The step from considering Russia as a geopolitical enemy toward Russia as a geostrategic counterpart and potential collaborator in global affairs must take place now. In light of Western Christian societies' Islamic subversion, this appears to be a strategic necessity and social obligation.