American militarism, war-making and imperial” nation-building “will continue. Because that is endemic to U.S. industrialism and its hegemonic
addiction. There was a staggering screen of double-think this week from U.S. President Joe Biden. In reverse order, Biden hosted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at the White Home on Wednesday and revealed that the United States was to offer an additional $60 million in military support to the Kiev routine “in the face of Russian hostility”.
The day previously, nevertheless, Biden delivered a solemn address to the country in which he stated “the period of wars for nation-building was over”. The U.S. president was marking the final end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan when the last American military airplane removed from Kabul at midnight on Monday. The departure topped the shambolic and shameful defeat of the United States by the Taliban insurgents who have returned to power practically twenty years after they were ousted by a U.S. military intrusion of the Main Asian nation in October 2001. The longest war was for absolutely nothing.
In his nationwide address, Biden restated his belief that he took the best decision to unwind the trillion-dollar military occupation. He stated the United States need to gain from its mistakes in Afghanistan and not end up being involved again in wars for “nation-building”. He included that the U.S. withdrawal was not practically Afghanistan. This was a tactical watershed in Washington’s foreign policy whereby there should be an end to “major military operations to remake other countries”.
If Biden’s address appeared to indicate a significant curb in U.S. imperialism, that concept was quickly disabused within just a couple of hours when he subsequently hosted the Ukrainian president.
The Biden administration alerted Congress it was increasing military assistance to the Kiev program since of the increasing “threat from Russia”. The additional supply of $60 million worth of equipment consists of Javelin anti-tank rockets “to protect Ukraine versus a Russian attack”.
“Ukraine’s significant ability spaces need to be urgently dealt with to reinforce deterrence due to the present Russian risk,” declared the Biden administration in its alert to Congress which duly rubber-stamped the extra stock of deadly military firepower.
This brings the total U.S. military supply to Ukraine this year alone to $400 million. Because the Washington-backed coup d’état in Kiev against a chosen federal government in 2014, the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with over $2 billion in military assistance. That has sustained a seven-year war versus the ethnic Russian population in Eastern Ukraine who do not acknowledge the 2014 coup as legitimate. It is the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces under Kiev’s command that constantly break a nominal ceasefire by assaulting civilian centers in the Donetsk and Luhansk self-declared self-governing regions. Yet Washington and its puppet routine in Kiev implicate Russia of hostility.
The declared “addition” of Crimea by Russia is another red-herring that Washington keeps flogging in spite of a legal referendum in 2014 held by the ethnic Russian people of Crimea to withdraw from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. They likewise repudiated the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 in Kiev which brought Neo-Nazis to power. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared history and culture with Russia. The U.S.-installed regime in Kiev has ominous antecedents as collaborators with the Nazi Third Reich in helping the genocide during the Second World War against Slavic individuals. How about that for historic denouement on the genuine nature of Washington’s power and what it connects with regardless of all the pious, self-preening platitudes of democratic virtue?
Moscow today condemned the boost in U.S. military hardware being sent to Ukraine. Together with intriguing rhetoric from Biden about “protecting Ukraine in the face of Russian aggressiveness” the development is deeply destabilizing for the country which shares a border with Russia. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated the brand-new military help “might possibly cause unforeseeable actions by the Ukrainian side in terms of trying to solve the Ukrainian conflict by force,” including, “this is extremely dangerous.”
Meanwhile, Denis Pushilin, president of the self-declared Donetsk Individuals’s Republic, commented that the meeting in between Biden and Zelensky revealed “not a single hint of peace settlement”.
Undoubtedly, Biden’s conference at the White Home was a recapitulation of false allegations against Russia over Ukraine and a brazen distortion of who the assailant celebration is. There was no reference by the U.S. president of the Kiev routine’s commitments to implement the Minsk Peace Accord which was mediated by France, Germany and Russia in 2015.
Still, it was reported that Zelensky was not entirely pleased by the additional dispensation of American military aid. He desires a lot more from Washington as well as instant approval into the NATO military alliance, a relocation that Moscow has actually consistently cautioned against as being a hazard too far to its nationwide security.
Other U.S. experts were likewise promoting the Biden administration to ramp up materials of “big-ticket” weapons to the Kiev routine. Alexander Vershbow, a previous ambassador to Russia who is now with the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington DC, prompted the White House to release anti-aircraft missile systems in Ukraine. Such people– who are priced quote in U.S. media as supposedly intelligent commentators– are in reality nothing more than war-mongering lunatics of Dr Strangelove ilk who drool and daydream about “l-l-l … luvving” bombs.
The year-on-year funneling of military power into Ukraine by Washington is worsening the dispute because country and stiring explosive tensions with Russia. If the Kiev program intensifies its aggressiveness towards the eastern Donbas area, therefore additional endangering ethnic Russian civilian populations, then Moscow’s hand might be required to protect its national security interests. Washington’s oblivious, or negative, support for the Kiev regime and its intensely hostile Russophobia, has actually created powder-keg conditions.
What’s more, Washington keeps that its military backing for Ukraine is conditioned on enhancements in the Kiev regime’s record on human rights, anti-corruption procedures, reforms to its judicial system and adopting U.S.-approved economic policies. In short, that sounds a lot like nation-building by Washington decree.
That shows the United States’ rulers have actually learned absolutely nothing from their straight-out catastrophe in Afghanistan. American militarism, war-making and imperial “nation-building” will continue. Because that is endemic to U.S. commercialism and its hegemonic addiction.
Thus, Biden’s words of solemnity about ending wars are simply a sop to a country that is chronically sick of harmful U.S. imperialistic violence. In the rawness of Afghanistan and the festering injuries of that disaster, Biden is obliged to console a war-weary nation. However his words are empty.
As his next conference on Ukraine would quickly show, it’s imperial business-as-usual.