21 year old American Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested and charged in the US District Court in Boston for leaking highly classified intelligence documents of the US defence force concerning the NATO-led war in Ukraine. These documents have come to be known across international media as the “Pentagon leaks”. The top brass of the US military had earlier tried to minimise the extent of these leaks and going to the extent of labelling some of them as fake.
But the spokesperson of the Pentagon Chris Meagher has finally confirmed that the documents are similar to the ones they gave to their senior military leadership and, he said, “they pose a very serious risk to national security”. In addition, some of the documents show classified writings such as “top secret”, which is the highest level of classification in the US intelligence. Classifications and labels of such as kind on US defence force documents indicate that the files were prepared by the chief of staff of the US military.
In plain language therefore, the documents are real and that is why Jack Teixeira was hunted down within a space of a few days and was brought to book. But the gain that we have received as the public out of these documents is a clear picture of what is going on in Ukraine and around the world concerning conflicts, wars and peace efforts.
For too long, we have relied on politicians driven by their interests and biased media who all have been providing distorted reports, exaggerations and minimisations about instances of violence, occupation, power and future projections about important issues such as the world economy.
Three things are now clear from these leaks.
Firstly, the US is highly involved in the invasion of Ukraine together with NATO. Their occupation of the Russian territory, the Eastern Europe border and the rest of Global North is a continuation of decades and centuries of imperialism, settler colonialism and genocide in the region. To achieve these evil deeds across many generations – from the Cold War, to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, and up to the present times – they have used wars and sanctions as weapons to dominate and control the colonised territories.
The coalition of the US and NATO to invade countries, steal land, occupy, kill and drive regime change in the name of protecting human rights is not a new phenomenon. In 2011, the US and NATO both invaded Libya, killing innocent civilians and children in the process, and they again drove regime change activities when US President Barack Obama executed the assassination of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.
Till today, Libya has never been the same place again. It is now ravaged by high levels of poverty, disease, malnutrition and child mortality. The International Criminal Court has never issued warrants of arrests against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Anders Fogh Rasmussen for committing these war crimes.
Today, Russia under President Putin has finally decided to use its own military force to resist this NATO-US cruel invasion of Ukraine and its territory – similarly to how the anti-apartheid movement of Palestine also decided to fight for its own land by taking up arms to fight against the settler colonialist state of Israel. Russia is involved in a war of resistance, an anti-Western war aimed at resisting and dismantling the neocolonial domination coalition of the US, the UK, the EU and NATO.
Secondly, the Pentagon leaks show that the coalition of the US and NATO was caught unprepared to stand against Russian forces. In addition, the Ukraine military itself is very small, inexperienced and so disorganised to match the force of the Russian military. This information is so different from the false public statements that have been made by Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy lately whom present their side as being more powerful against Russian forces in the battlefield.
Thirdly, the Pentagon leaks shows that the US is spying on everyone involved in Ukraine – including its own allies. The US and NATO have huge egos of violent dominant and they want to perpetuate the war for as long as possible. They have no interest in ceasefire and peace agreements despite the devastating cost of the war on the people of Ukraine.
The Ukraine leadership is fully aware of this and it is willing to cooperate with US-NATO military violence propaganda in order to gain economic and political benefits from other Western allies in the EU – even if it means putting the lives of its people and children to achieve its selfish interests.
As Dr Matteo Capasso argued in the People’s Forum in New York last week, people must not be surprised when Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy earns a Nobel Peace Prize soon for cooperating with the colonial intentions of the US and NATO on Russia. This is the same Nobel Peace Prize that was given to the biggest war criminals such as Barack Obama and the biggest Israel apologists and apartheid genocide architects such as FW De Klerk.
Therefore, the public needs to now understand that the war in Ukraine is supported by the EU, the US, NATO and all colonial powers as a proxy war to continue the Western domination of the world. The main target of the US in this conflict is China – and they are willing to use all means necessary to dethrone it, even if it means utilising nuclear weapons when their losses become more desperate. The sudden interest of the US in neighbouring Taiwan is the beginning of a gateway to occupy a vulnerable territory that can be used to invade China in the name of protecting human rights.
The US has realised that it is losing its world dominance to the alternative world order that China is providing in alliance with Russia and the rest of the Global South where the world’s majority resides supports an alternative world but they remain silenced with sanctions and threats of disinvestment.
This is precisely why South Africa, a BRICS partner under neocolonised Africa, is unable to speak confidently and in condemnation of the US-NATO war in Ukraine. Our domestic media perpetuates the Western propaganda of presenting Russia as the evil of the world that is responsible for the energy crisis and rising living costs. The Western agenda is actually much bigger and we must seek alternative sources of information to pay attention.
Dr Pedro Mzileni is a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free State, South Africa
Twitter – @PedroMzileni
