Political actions taken by the West have reignited a threat to European stability

In 2014, Henry Kissinger warned that continuing to talk of the Ukraine joining NATO risked war and ‘to treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West – especially Russia and Europe – into a cooperative international system’. He went on to say, ‘A place has to be found for Ukraine and a place found for Russia – if we don’t want Russia to become an outpost of China in Europe’.

But his wise words were ignored. In the last few years, we have seen the people of Western Europe conditioned into accepting the risks of international conflict over the Ukraine – one of the most corrupt countries in Europe – by a massive, sophisticated anti-Russia propaganda campaign.

I am certainly no apologist for Russia but a lifetime of interest in politics has taught me to recognise propaganda when I see it. When propaganda enters truth exits. A regional, territorial dispute has been manipulated and exploited into becoming a proxy war by the US and its allies against their bete noire, communist Russia.

We have seen Russia, albeit reluctantly, accept the loss of many of its western buffer states against continuing Western political and commercial imperialism and those states being accepted into NATO. However, attempts to deprive Russia of its access to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea have had the inevitable (intended?) result. They are, as far as Russia is concerned, a step too far. No president of Russia could have remained in office if he failed to respond.

However, the demonising of Putin and of Russia continues unabated, whilst in the West, the elephant in the room is conveniently ignored. We are facing the real and present danger that the Russia/Ukraine conflict may be being escalated into (a nuclear) WW3.

Was not Russia’s reaction to former parts of the USSR being invited to join NATO sufficient warning against the risks of a major world power provoking a response that could lead to nuclear conflict? As Henry Kissinger argued ‘for the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one’.

Regardless of the tortuous historical legacy of the Ukraine and its constituent parts, the realpolitik of the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine is that political actions taken by the West in recent years have reignited a threat to European stability. What we have seen unfolding in the Ukraine was the inevitable outcome, once the EU, supported by the US, sought to expand its empire by enticing the Ukraine away from its historical ties to Russia, thus cutting off Russia from its main all-year ice-free access to international waters through Sevastopol.

Supplying the Ukraine with apparently limitless conventional arms, advanced technical weapons and huge financial support* has impeded Russia in its determination to recover its access to the Black Sea. By doing so, the US and its henchmen have turned what would have been a short, albeit murderous, local conflict into a major European war. This may well help the US to again demonstrate its technical superiority by means of its proxy war but it has exponentially multiplied the sufferings of ordinary Ukrainians.

Furthermore, it is risking an even greater tragedy. It is risking provoking the wounded bear to strike with battlefield nuclear weapons. Then, what next? Will this be used as an excuse to launch a ‘retaliation’ against Russia with strategic nuclear weapons? Nobody should fool themselves into thinking that there are not militaristic people in the West who could be so reckless! Dr Strangelove’s descendants are alive and kicking.

Never mind, the financial and industrial forces that instigated two world wars and the Iraqi conflict have again emerged from the shadows to profit from the chaos and destruction that is inevitable in wartime.

As after WW1, WW2, Afghanistan and Iraq, huge profits will accrue to western financiers, armaments manufacturers and construction industries, which will again flock east to offer ‘assistance’ to rebuild war-torn areas and industries**. These people will be the only beneficiaries. Not only have they brought unnecessary suffering on countless ordinary people but are currently risking provoking the ultimate tragedy of a nuclear conflict.

Bear in mind the millions of Russians who died resisting the German invasion of the Ukraine in 1941 and the number of ethnic Russians who live in the Ukraine.

Is it any wonder that, when Russia was faced with the West’s attempt to deny it access to the Black Sea and NATO’s decision that Ukraine would become a member, its response was ‘so far but no further’?

But the EU, with the support of its hypocritically fervently obsessed anti-communist American backers, could not be content. Like all inherently unstable powers, the EU could not resist the temptation to divert attention from its internal problems by expanding its empire. It has chosen to risk a pyrrhic victory that can easily become its epitaph.

It ignored a cardinal maxim of war – always avoid a battle you cannot win (even with American money).

For many decades, I was vocally anti-communist. However, the aftermath of the Iraqi War made me realise that politics is not a line ranging from left to right, but a circle upon which the nearest bedfellows are communism and national socialism. More importantly, I also learnt that politics is a game that is used by those who profit from war – those who really pull the levers of power in our world.

* The UK alone has pledged £12,500,000,000 over three years.

** For example, one US Corporation alone gained $39,500,000,000 in ‘Federal contracts related to the Iraq war’.

Michael A Ward