U.S. & NATO Battle Tanks sent to Escalate War Against Russia in Ukraine
This article was inspired by Michael Brenner, a wise man beyond his years, who is a Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh; a Senior Fellow at the Center for Trans-Atlantic Relations, SAIS-John Hopkins (Washington D.C.) and; the author of numerous books and contributor of articles on international matters in periodicals like The Globalist and Consortium News ((Neo-Cons: Genesis to Ascendancy – I (vijayvaani.com),
Professor Brenner writes in “War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth”, “the frenzy engendered by the Ukraine conflict reinforces a herd mentality that cries out for critical thinking, But……accurate perception, precise language and objectivity are the first victims of war and conflict. For good reason. Emotion eclipses reason.” (War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth (consortiumnews.com)
As is the case in history with every war, by the time all the killing begins, the participants, on either side of whatever the conflict, already have willingly drank their fill of whatever culture or civilization’s spiked propaganda Kool-Aid.
At that point one can talk until their blue-in-the-face to all the rights and wrongs, why’s and wherefores, truths or fictions, of it all. But, in the end, it won’t make a whit of difference. The killing and mayhem will go on as it always has and will again as it must in every irrational war that will follow until whatever death impulse that forever lives within the self-destructive make-up of Homo sapiens has once again been duly purged, at least until the next time, when all the blood and emotions will again rise to the surface.
So, every movie thus far seen, every book read, every drama portrayed about either the ugly aggressive American capitalist or brutal Russian communist has already long-since been fully ingested, digested and embedded within their followers on either side of Ukraine’s war zone. Each side’s skilled propagandists, adept at playing whatever the pre-conceived notions are of whomever the new chosen enemies are intended to be, and play them like a fiddle, as they will. Beyond that point there is only more closed ears and irrational killing.
TANKS & TRAGEDY, THE MORE THE WORLD CHANGES THE MORE IT REMAINS THE SAME
In his latest article “Tanks & Tragedy”, Prof. Brenner notes, “Never in memory has it been so daunting to figure out what’s going on during a major international crisis, as is what is occurring in the Ukraine War Zone.” He goes on to say, “That sad truth owes much to the total absence of truthful reporting and honest interpretative analysis by the world’s collective corporate mainstream media (CMSM). “We are being served”, Brenner warns, “heavy portions of falsity, fantasy and farrago crudely mixed into a narrative whose relation to reality is tenuous. The near universal swallowing of this confection is made possible by the abdication of responsibility – intellectual and political – by America’s political class, from Washington’s high & mighty down through the galaxy of unthink tanks and self-absorbed academia.”
In “Tanks & Tragedy”, Brenner goes on to point out how the legions of Dark Forces in the Western world’s corporate mainstream media, with arrogant impunity, continue to work with renewed vigor and cunning malevolence in Ukraine’s war zone, and can’t nor ever will find or use the kind of diplomatic dialogue that will eventually de-escalate rather than endlessly escalate whatever anti-Russian, war mania sentiments.
One patently-obvious example of the kind of flagrantly-biased, ‘Yellow Press” reporting that has regularly appeared in the Western press in wars of the past, and now speaks to the current realities in Ukraine’s war zone, recently boldly appeared on the front page of the Sunday Times in the U.K (Jan. 23rd. Issue# 10,349).
In war-sized, 1” tall letters, its banner headline screamed, “It’s Like The First World War…If We Kill Them, They’re Just Replaced. As Ukraine Fights From Trenches, Waves of Russians Are Routinely Sent Over The Top To Their Death”. Really? This sounds like the ‘Yellow Peril’ the press described during the Korean War.
Such demeaning journalism in the Western Press, reduces the meaning and purpose of all so-called ‘enemy’s’ lives, whomever they may be, as if they were nothing more than mindless, faceless, inter-changeable zombies simply following orders. Such screed could have been written, and actually was, not only about Russian soldiers in 2023, but once-upon-a-time about ‘The Huns’ in WWI, the ‘Nips’ in WWII, ‘The Chinks’ in the Korean War, ‘Rag Heads’ in the Middle East and ‘Gooks’ in Vietnam. But, today, it would be utterly laughable if it wasn’t so sad that this same mentality in the Western Press and Military still speaks this way to its readers in 2023. What on earth have we come to as a race and species?
The CMSM’s latest propaganda now refers to Biden and NATO’s momentous decision to send some 100 battle tanks or more into Ukraine’s theatre of war as a major “game changer”. Again, there’s no mistaking the intended goal here. It has nothing to do with actually trying to find peace. If the battle tanks are actually meant to be game changer’s it’s only meant to extend the war’s maiming and killing for however much longer; while further strengthening and emboldening Ukraine’s faltering military forces that, incrementally, are currently being dismantled or totally destroyed by Russia’s superior military forces.
GERMANY DROPS THE WWIII HAMMER
Of course, as the continued loss of Ukrainian lives mounts, no NATO, American, Canadian or other EU nations lives have yet been thrown into the meat grinder, even though Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock recently let the ‘cat out of the bag’ when she boldly declared, “Germany is at war against Russia. Yes, we have to do more on tanks to Ukraine. Germany is at war with Russia. So, the most important and the crucial part is that we (NATO, U.S., Canada, the EU) must do it together. And we do not do the blame game in Europe because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.” Wham! There it is -A bald-faced, hard-nosed declaration of war.
Minister Baerbock’s crystal-clear admission came just days after the speaker of Russia’s Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned of a “global catastrophe” (i.e. ‘nuclear war), should escalation from foreign countries continue.”
Is this not now an admission that with the addition of a complete battle tank battalion, with many more coming, and the obvious need to provide NATO troops to repair and service this new armored division, and make it battle-ready and keep it operative in the field, flies in the face of the real possibility of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons now is on the table? (Germany’s defense minister declares war after Russia warns of ‘global catastrophe’ – The Counter Signal) Pure insanity!
Meanwhile, the world’s masses are constantly being prepared for what this new infusion of tanks and other cutting-edge armored forces augurs for the war’s future trajectory. What’s next beyond the 100 Battle Tanks? Manning the tanks with tanks crews from each respective NATO Nation, the U.S. and Canada? Protective cover from the air? Supersonic missile systems that come with their own crews, and support teams, as well?
The West’s CMSM continues to prepare the world’s masses for such an eventuality by feeding them the illusion that “Putin’s army is a paper tiger, or; that “Democracy” and the “Free Market” will ultimately prevail over Russia and China’s “communistic despotism”. Or their “Nuclear Bombs and Defenses Aren’t As Good as Ours.” Professor Brenner refers to such propaganda as so much “stomach-churning doses of snake-oil.”
A LONG-STANDING CIVIL WAR TURNS INTO A WORLD WAR
But as the world approaches the one-year anniversary of this ‘new-old’ war mentality in Ukraine, it actually is and has been, clearly, all along, a civil war between the Fascists and Communists, going back to World War’s I & II, on through the Korean and Vietnam wars, to the present day, and now is being endlessly goaded and provoked by the U.S., NATO and Western World into yet a WWIII, with the very real possibility that it could well turn Thermonuclear in the blink of an eye.
The world shouldn’t forget that it need not have ever been this way. As far back as 1992, when Russia’s President, Boris Yeltsen, of the newly-independent Russian Federation, extended an invitation and proposal to America and the West to “embrace relations of deep potential trust and alliance between our worlds”, President George H.W. Bush’s administration, the U.S. and the West were reluctant to go there, (nsarchive.gwu.edu).
Yet, this absurd war construct in 2023 methodically-continues to proceed ever-forward in slow motion, in real time, like water steadily-dripping from a leaky tap, before the whole world’s stark eyes, staring like a bunch of helpless frozen deer caught in the headlights. This absurd reality, in spite of all the seasoned war analysts, wise international affairs experts and skilled international diplomatic conflict-resolution specialists out there, who, for over the past year, have been able to clearly see through and beyond all the propaganda and lies, and yet too many still just: sit there on their thumbs; whistling in the dark, still in total denial or are simply out-to-lunch.
Wise ones like Professor Brenner exist everywhere on sites like YouTube.com doing whatever they can, 24/7, while there still is time, beating their heads against the stone wall, however superfluous and futile that may be, ‘hoping against hope’ to find some way to breach the CMSM’s overwhelming deaf, dumb and blind wall of resistance and silence.
THERE IS A WAY TO BREAK THROUGH THE PROPAGANDA CURTAIN
Those who really care what happens to the planet and all living things, must immediately stop listening to the CMSM and all robotic ‘talking head’ politicians. If they haven’t already done so, they need to seek out those ones, wherever they may, who are the real experienced and thoughtful analysts who actually know what they’re talking about, and are prepared to speak truth to power at every turn, to counter all the phony spin on the war, and black reality that exists in the world.
They need to listen intently to those brave, courageous, forthright commentators who regularly appear on sites like YouTube.com, such as:
- Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University Professor, former director of The Earth Institute of Columbia, American economist, public policy analyst, former special advisor to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annon
- Colonel Douglas Macgregor: retired West Point U.S. Army Colonel in the Gulf War in 1990 and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999; and former Senior Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense under President Trump.
- Scott Ritter: of You Tube’s “Scott Ritter Extra”, a former U.S. Marine Corp Intelligence Officer, UN/UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990’s, who served as a junior military analyst during Operation Desert Storm. See Colonel Scott Ritter’s “Nightmare of NATO Arms to Ukraine”, (Ukraine (consortiumnews.com)
- Chris Hedges: Presbyterian minister, clergyman, former Freelance War correspondent in Central America for the Christian Science Monitor, former Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the N.Y. Times, 2022 Political Prize recipient for Exploratory Reporting, Host of “On Contact” for Russia Today from 2016-2022
- George Galloway: podcaster, Mother of All Talk Shows (MOATS), British politician, leader of the Workers Party of Britain, The Open University of the Airwaves
- Lee Camp, American comedian, activist, writer, news journalist, commentator and head writer of “Redacted Tonight” on Russia Today (RT)
- Judge Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey Superior Court judge, Fox News commentator, Senior Judicial Analyst, visiting professor at the Brooklyn Law School, national syndicated columnist, author of nine books on legal and political subjects
- Danny Haiphong – socialist activist, writer, political analyst, contributor to: Patreon.com; the Center for Global Research; Russia Today, and; Sputnik International commentator on YouTube’s “The Left Lens”
- Brian Berletic – military analyst, commentator, and contributor on a host of news and analysis websites, independent writer on articles about Ukraine (“Beyond NATO Propaganda: The Reality in Ukraine”); 21st Century Wire & TNT Radio contributor.
- Abby Martin – media journalist on RT Network, creator/host of “Media Roots News”. “Dosed” and “Empire Files”, (“How Media Manufacturers ‘Blood Lust’ for War”)
- Freddie Sayers, foreign policy scholar, writer-creator of the British Covid-19 TV show Lockdown TV, contributor to: The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, Prospect Magazine and the Evening Standard; Executive Editor of the online You Tube.com magazine
THE CONUNDROM OF A POTENTIAL NUCLEAR WWIII
One especially thought-provoking YouTube.com interview addresses the dangerous political-military nuclear war game of Russian Roulette that America and NATO currently continue to wage against Russia, as they have over the past year since hostilities first began in Ukraine. It speaks not just from the perspective of the potential loss of life that has occurred inside Ukraine, but also about the on-going threatened ‘Damocles Sword’ that hangs over the world’s head about the use of nuclear weapons and the threat it poses to the lives of the entire world’s communities of human and all other non-human species of life.
They point to how the actual carrying out of any nuclear threat by either side will depend entirely upon the outcome of the life-and-death, head-on Chicken Race, that the West recklessly continues to play with Russia to see who blinks first; the irresponsible political-military dynamics of which already may have set into motion, and at some point in time set off an unavoidable and inevitable, nuclear holocaust between them.
The critically-important discussion about this reckless behavior by the U.S. and NATO aired two months ago, in Nov 2022, on the YouTube magazine UNHERD that was created by its Executive Director Freddie Sayers, a polished British-Oxford journalist and media executive of the Westminster-based political news website Politics Home.
During the Nov 22 ‘UnHerd’ segment, a critically important dialogue was created between Sayers and Professor John Mearsheimer, a U.S. Military Academy graduate; renowned international relations scholar and; holder of the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science chair at the University of Chicago. It was Mearsheimer who developed the seminal theory of offensive realism, which describes the interactions between the three great powers (China, Russia, and U.S.), as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an archaic international political system. See ((John Mearsheimer: The West is playing Russian roulette – YouTube)
In accordance with his theory, Mearsheimer believes China and Russia, as the other two great world powers in the world besides America will likely naturally bring them both many times into conflict with the United States. In his 2007 book, “The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer also argues that the Israeli ultra-right-wing, fascist lobby, as well, wields disproportionate influence over U.S. foreign policy, which also plays into the current war in Ukraine
IS THE RISK OF INCINERATING CITIES WORLDWIDE WORTH IT?
The discussion between Sayers and Mearsheimer raises the deadly dangerous duplicitous saber rattling war games the West has been engaged in with Russia over the past year since war broke out, that Mearsheimer says may already have gone too far to the point that, perhaps, already, the war in Ukraine will prove to be a fatal one.
As keen international observers of the political scene, as those like Sayers, Mearsheimer, Brenner and others are wont to do, they each seek to cut through the massive fog of so many fabrications, lies and calculated distortions that the CMSM has purposely and continually obscured in this war, which now should be far more self-evident, politically, than it is inside or outside Ukraine’s war zone.
Among the first points that Mearsheimer sought to make crystal-clear in his interview with Freddie Sayers is that it is the West (NATO, the EU) at large, but especially the U.S., who intentionally has created an existential threat for Russia by their hostile political, economic and military actions over the past thirty years that have deliberately sought to: wreck Russia’s economy; create a violent regime change in Russia and Ukraine’s government, and further continues to fuel a long-standing violent civil war between East & West Ukraine. The demand that Russia totally leave Eastern Ukraine and stop interfering with the actions of Western Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist government goes back to the WWII days of Stephan Bandera’s brand of Nazism and its antagonism towards communism and all communists.
Over the years, the U.S., NATO and Ukraine have consistently given mixed messages to Russia that led to the failure of the Minsk II Accords in 2015 that sought to address the unresolved grievances and hostilities of the civil war between ethnic Ukrainian-speakers in Western Ukraine and ethnic Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine, and the many over-arching issues that led to the outbreak of hostilities in February 22, 2022.
In his interview with Sayers, Mearsheimer raised a number of emphatic points from both sides of the conflict that he bluntly made crystal -clear to all who listened and watched the UNHERD interview. For starts:
(1) the U.S./NATO are not interested in negotiating peace talks one bit with the Russians,
(2) no concessions are remotely possible
(3) the U.S. and NATO are in the war to the bitter end, until they either win and defeat Russia or vice versa
(3) More escalation, nuclear or not, is now the only possibility
(4) There is no deal to work out. The West has clearly said to Russia nothing is going to change until Russia either sues for peace or is willingly to withdraw in toto from Ukraine
(5) Russia was acting rationally when it undertook its pre-emptive Special Military Operation (SMO) in Feb 2022 to protect itself against an impending military operation by Ukraine with U.S, NATO Support
(6) The West should be careful about pushing a great nuclear power like Russia into a corner when they finally only have one way out
(7) When great nuclear powers are pushed into a corner, and the existential threat becomes too desperate they are prepared to roll the dice and take their chances with the outcome
(8) The U.S. & NATO must get it through their hard skulls that Ukraine in NATO, as a Western bulwark up against Russia’s borders, is an absolute NO-GO
(9) Russia is now determined to create a dysfunctional rump state in Ukraine to make sure that reality doesn’t ever happen
(10) The more successful U.S./NATO/Ukraine are in defeating Russia, the more the ante is raised that Russia likely would consider using nuclear weapons
(11) There is zero-evidence that Russia has ever been interested in conquering the whole of Ukraine or, for that matter, any other country in Eastern Europe. It was only meant as a limited Special Military Operation for a specific purpose, PERIOD, to remove the threat to Russia’s borders and its Motherlands
(12) the West should now be backing off and using a different modus vivendi with Russia to settle this international dispute
(13) Before U.S. government officials and covert elements helped to foster the Maidan coup in 2014, no international power was making the argument that Putin was an imperialist
(14) one of the biggest false impressions made by the West’s CMSM is that the U.S. and NATO are the good guys and the Russians are the Bad Guys
(15) It’s not worth the risk of nuclear war to think that either the Russians or U.S. will eventually give up
(16) JFK did the right thing to end the Cuban Missile Crisis, but where does there exist a JFK today when the world desperately needs him?
In short, at present, as everything stands, the Western World and World at large is screwed
Other key points raised in that key interview between Sayers and Mearsheimer was that, clearly, the Maidan coup in 2014 was the culmination of a deeply rooted, long-standing American objective, going back to at least 1991, and even further back in modern history, to aggressively incorporate an anti-Russian Ukraine into the Western organizational orbit of NATO.
The intent by the West all along has been, above all; to create the picket-fencing of a Russia, to be kept at the margins of an American dominated and-directed ‘United NATO States of Europe.
The emergence of a strong, effective, assertive leader in the person of Vladimir Putin has now simply quickened the perceived need among America’s Neo-Cons to keep Russia permanently weak and boxed in for the remainder of the 21st century and beyond.
The Donbass uprising/secession, provoked by the Maiden coup, was attended by the coming into power of rabid Ultra-Nationalist Ukrainian elements dedicated to subjugating the country’s 10 million or so Russians.
This resulted in the autonomy of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, as well as the integration of the Crimea (historically and demographically part of Russia) into the Russian Federation. From that moment on, the United States fashioned and executed a strategy: to reverse both geo-political shifts; put Russia back in its place, and; draw a stark line of separation between it and all of Europe to its West.
The result is that Ukraine has since virtually become a de facto American protectorate. Key ministries were salted with American advisers, including its Ministry of Finance, headed by an American citizen dispatched from Washington.
In the Obama years, the massive project to arm, train and generally reconstitute the Ukraine army was overseen by Joe Biden, himself. Washington also used its influence to undercut the Minsk II accords wherein Ukraine and Russian signed onto a formula for peaceful resolution of the Donbass issue, supposedly underwritten by Germany and France.
Candid public testimony has since revealed that Kyiv, Berlin and Paris never had any intention from the outset to implement it. It was simply a ruse to buy time for militarily strengthening Ukraine to be able to retake the ‘lost’ territories by inflicting a military defeat on Russia.
Heightened tensions continued to serve as provocations until armed conflict became inescapable. The sporadic shelling of Donetsk city (where 16,000 civilians were killed between 2015 and 2022 – official estimate by a UN commission) continued to increase, with Ukrainian army units assembling in ever greater numbers along the demarcated boundary. Finally able to see the handwriting on the wall, Russia simply beat Ukraine to the punch and made a pre-emptive SMO strike itself. The rest is history.
WHERE ARE THINGS AT NOW IN THE UKRAINE WAR ZONE?
The Biden administration has totally committed itself to further escalate the war with the deployment with however much previously precluded heavy weapons systems. It continues to strong-arm its Western European allies to do likewise. But Why? What are the real reasons?
Because the people driving policy in Washington cannot stomach the prospect of a defeat. That is to say: a Russian Army crushing of the Ukrainian army; its incorporation of the claimed four provinces, and; the fatuous Western narrative shown to be little more than a string of lies. Too much political capital, personal prestige and money has been invested for that outcome to be tolerated.
Moreover, just as Ukraine has been used cynically as an instrument for bringing Russia to its knees, so, too, is the denaturing of Russia as a power seen as integral to the eventual global confrontation with China that dominates the strategic long-range planning of the Washington Beltway’s think tanks and White House strategic thinking. The option of working out terms of co-existence and non-coercive competition with Russia and China is a non-sequitur that has been rejected outright. America’s entire political class is determined to reinforce the country’s global hegemony.
PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY THE REAL START OF WWIII
By now, with all the distractions of world war afoot, America and the world at large has all but forgotten: THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (PNAC).
As laid out by the Neo-Con think tank PNAC in 2000 for the likes of: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld Paul Wolfowitz and other Neo-Cons, the PNAC has become Scripture for America’s fascist foreign policy community. Ever since, it’s contents, along with the genesis of the imperialist Neo-Cons who adopted it long ago as holy writ – and made the historic transformation from it being just one sect to being the semi-official doctrinal faith of the entire American imperium – it now is the driving force behind the collective dream of the American Empire.
The absolute failure to crash the Russian economy, thereby kick open the door to regime change in Moscow, is a severe disappointment. But the United States has now shifted gears, and by putting the Collective West on a virtual war-footing, has turned NATO and the EU into willing pawns prepared to acquiesce to whatever moves Washington dictates to them.
The signal event that punctuated this extraordinary subordination was the Germany’s agreement to allow the United States (and associates) to blow up the Nordstrom II Pipelines, which successive Berlin governments had previously deemed essential to meet German industry’s energy needs. One can rationalize it as a readiness of the Germans to “take one for the team.” But what team? And whose overriding national interest? For such a sovereign state to inflict such severe damage on itself, of its own volition, is almost unthinkable and without precedence in the modern world. And now it’s even Germany acting as the cheer leader who has boldly gone on record to declare, “Germany is at War Against Russia?”
Professor Michael Brenner notes that with Germany’s latest admission all members of the Collective West have now signed on to the Biden escalation plan for the war to the bitter end, with no worries about anyone getting cold feet. “They’re all in now!”, says Brenner, “with whatever the prospect of Ukraine becoming the eventual battleground for a Russo-American war with effects similar to what it had endured from 1941 – 1944. Zelensky, himself, as well has now become too much of an asset as the heralded savior of Ukraine to be disposed of, as was Diem in Vietnam in 1963.”
STARING INTO THE ABYSS
Brenner further states, “It is near impossible to see how the United States’ objectives can be reached in Ukraine. However, the neo-cons have no ‘reverse gear’ – to use Alexander Mercouris’ apt phrase. They have instigated a crusade aimed at securing America’s global dominance – forever and anon. Ukraine is a waystation on the road to that visionary Jerusalem. In their grand scheme, though, they have failed to bother with a coherent, feasible strategy for resolving the current crisis.”
Brenner further adds, “As for President Biden, he looks to be only nominally in charge. He has been entirely captured by the Neo-Cons. He hears no other voices. As a life-long, instinctive hawk, he leans in their direction. He is old, weak and perhaps suffering from early-stage Parkinson’s.”
Before the end of the year, the world is likely to face the moment of truth in which the whole world is trapped. Russian forces will no doubt be on the Dnieper and, in some places, beyond it. Ukraine’s army will be on its last legs – Abrams, Leopard IIs, Challengers, Bradley Battle Tanks, notwithstanding. What does the outwitted and feckless Biden bunch do then? Anything is possible when a desperate nation has been painted into a corner and only has one way out.
As Country Joe & The Fish sang at the beginning of the Vietnam War, “And it’s One, Two, Three, What Are We Fighting For, Don’t Worry I Don’t Give a Damn, Next Stop is Vietnam. And It’s Five, Six, Seven, Open Up The Pearly Gates. Well, There’s No Reason To Wonder Why. Whoopie We’re All Going To Die.”
Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer-activist who, for decades, has sought to call attention to problems of sustainability caused by excessive mega-development, over-population and the ensuing horrors of degradation to the earth and host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues and concerns that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
Email: [email protected]
