RANT: WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

 

“WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!” The terrible consequences of warfare, particularly our modern way of waging it, with industrial-scale production of armaments, rapid mobilization, and the ability to have entire populations engaged in the war effort; along with extensive transportation, and communication networks, the increased use of IT and AI—all these facilitate the most destructive and destabilizing method we have to resolve conflicts since Ugluk first took up his clobbering stick. War, in some form or other, seems to be always with us. It’s almost a part of our DNA.

NOW, for arms manufacturers, lobbyists, and politicians, war turns on the spigot. It releases the flow of taxpayer money, funding today’s militaries and providing them with armaments, and supplies. War is where fortunes are made in corporate profits, lobbying fees and political donations. War, for these folks, is a win-win endeavour. 

 

FOR THE REST OF US, it’s more problematic. For the people of Ukraine it is a painful, frightening reality. Civilians and soldiers (on both sides) have died in a conflict more and more people today think could have (and should have) been prevented. What’s left when the rubble stops bouncing is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be the same place. There is even the possibility that Ukraine may no longer exist as a separate country when the fighting is done. One thing about war is its unpredictable nature. And once set in motion, the forces it unleashes take on a will of their own.

BUT WE MAY BE ABLE TO SAY, with a certain amount of confidence, that the Russian offensive seems poised to fall upon the embattled Ukrainian lines, in the east, especially. The town of Bakhmut, considered a “linchpin” of Ukrainian defences in the Donetsk oblast may be set to fall after months of fighting, and with its capture the road is open for Russia to clear the Donbas region of Ukrainian forces. What hundreds of thousands of additional Russian troops will do in shaping this war, and how they will affect its outcome depends on a number of factors, perhaps the most important being the supply of weapons and materiel that the EU, NATO and the United States funnels to Ukraine. IN RECENT WEEKS, there has been increased debate, even acrimony, within the NATO alliance over the type and volume of heavy weaponry—cannon, missiles, and tanks--that members are sending. Tanks, especially are at issue, involving debates between Germany and Poland, and other NATO member states, over the advisability of sending German Leopard-2 tanks into Ukraine, given the history of German invasions of Russia during the First and Second World Wars. It's bad PR in other words. 

 

MOST COUNTRIES have been laggard in sending any from their stockpiles, fearful their militaries will be stripped of necessary equipment, while others have tanks in various states of repair. But, why am I not surprised that ever-the-toady Canada has sent several leopards to Ukraine, along with mucho dinero (over one billion dollars in military aid), and has promised more. The United States has (kind of) promised to send its high-tech Abrams tanks. Just how many and when is TBA (i.e. don’t count on it any time soon). Besides, any tank they send will need to be modified by removing the special armour plating made from depleted uranium.* (Wouldn’t they glow in the dark?) The U.S. doesn’t want the tank’s secret alloys to fall into the wrong hands. 

  Is this next on the list for Darth Z?

MY POINT IS that the weapon spigot is slowly being stoppered. Stocks of weapons are running low in Western countries in their mad dash to send begging-bowl-in-hand Zelensky as much military hardware and financial aid as they can. The embattled comedian-turned-President wants fighter jets and even nukes! YGTBKM! Some commentators have mentioned that at the recent Munich Security Conference this month the mood was less celebratory than last year, when the air was filled with talk of sanctions and how to challenge Putin’s “unprovoked” invasion of its neighbour. A year on, with another sanctions package proposed (the tenth! The other nine apparently not doing the job), and Ukrainian forces on the back foot (if those watching and analyzing the conflict are honest about it, though most aren’t), NATO solidarity is being tested. Will the thirty countries of the military alliance, and members of the collective West in general, be able—or willing—to continue supporting Ukraine in this war for much longer?

 

O, Canada’s “three bags full, sir” Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau⁺, may be gung ho and willing to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine and to continue maintaining a NATO contingent of Canadian troops in Lithuania, but is he ready to have those troops fighting in Ukraine against Russia? Shouldn't he and his government be talking with the Russians, for many reasons, not the least of which is the future of the Arctic and how our two countries will (or will not) work together there in the coming decades.) 

Where is Canada’s leadership as a “middle power” in helping to bring this conflict to an end through diplomacy? Global Affairs Canada is AWOL as far as I can see.

 

SOME POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND when watching the MSM news:         

—EUROPE IS SUFFERING more than Russia is with respect to sanctions. Their sanctions against Russia have boomeranged spectacularly, as that country decouples not only from its ties to Europe, but also from Western financial and monetary systems that have dominated the globe since the end of WWII. China is following suite, as are a growing number of countries, especially from the global south. Good job, guys!

 

—RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE was an illegal act, BUT it was not “unprovoked”. Russia expressed concerns, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, around NATO’s eastward expansion to its borders, something it saw as aggressive and threatening. In 2007, President Putin gave what has come to be called his “Munich Speech”, where he clearly stated his country’s concerns over further NATO encroachment closer to Russian territory. The West, he correctly challenged, acted in bad faith when they made assurances in 1993 to Russia’s then-President Boris Yeltsin that NATO would not expand east beyond the borders of Germany. Since that time Putin's own concerns have been summarily ignored by hawks in Washington and Brussels as they continue with their plans to encircle Russia with NATO member-countries, Ukraine being the ultimate prize.

—FOR THOSE historically challenged, twice in the last century German armies have used the flat lands of Ukraine to invade Russia. Thus, for Russia, Ukraine as part of NATO poses an existential  threat to its security. 

—THE 2014 “MAIDAN COUP” saw a democratically elected (if corrupt; aren’t they all?) Russia-friendly president overthrown and a US/EU puppet elected in his stead. Dissatisfaction in the (majority Russian speaking) eastern half of the country,  following the violent overthrow of their duly elected President, led to a slow-burning civil war in the Donbas region, with the two oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk initially demanding greater autonomy. In addition, Ukrainian plans after the 2014 coup to revoke Russia’s long-term lease of Crimea, where Sevastopol operated as an important naval base, and to replace it with an American one, led the Russian Federation to annex the peninsula, following a referendum where a majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia. 

TENSIONS RATCHETED UP as Ukrainian forces shelled towns and cities in the rebellious provinces. Russia supplied arms and military assistance for the Donbas  militias and protested—for years—about the indiscriminate shelling by Ukrainian forces. To no avail. 

 

—IN 2015 THE MINSK ACCORDS were signed by Russia and Ukraine, with Germany and France as guarantors. The treaty was to allow the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk more autonomy in a loosely-federated Ukraine, as well as having Crimea accepted as Russian territory and, perhaps the most important demand:

“To ensure the permanent monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border and verification…with the creation of security zones in the border regions of Ukraine and the Russian Federation.”

THE ACCORDS were put in place to stop the shelling of the civilian populations of the Donbas. They didn’t succeed in stopping the shelling and many people died. In the end, the Accords were never adopted by Ukraine and, as recent revelations show, Germany’s Merkle and France’s Orland, for their part, also acted in bad faith. Both politicians, while signatories to the deal, apparently had no intention of enforcing Ukraine’s compliance with the legally binding treaty. Thus the agreement was never implemented. It was never meant to be implemented. Instead, it was meant to “buy time” so that Ukraine could build up its military and become a bulwark against Russia as the newest member of NATO.

 

—IN NOVEMBER 2021, Putin again urged compliance with the Accords, as he had done since 2015, but he grew alarmed at the large buildup of Ukrainian troops along the Donbas border. To prevent what he thought might well be a genocidal attack on the eastern breakaway provinces, Putin launched his Special Military Operation on 22 February 2022. 

 

—THE PURPOSE OF THE OPERATION was not to conquer Ukraine. The long line of tanks the world witnessed on the road leading to Kiev were there to underscore that it was imperative for Ukraine and Zelensky to adopt a negotiating position, and to hammer out a peace treaty honouring the wishes of the citizens of Donbass, respecting the sovereign integrity of Crimea as part of the Russian Federation, and a pledge that it would never join NATO, and would become a neutral state like Austria or Switzerland.

—RUSSIAN FORCES WERE UNDERMANNED for the task because the leadership in Moscow did not anticipate Ukraine intransigence to negotiate, nor did they anticipate the deluge of weapons, supplies and money from the collective West to gin up and run what was an obvious, and reckless, proxy war between Russia and the United States. However, Putin learned from his mistakes and he and his generals have since expanded their army in Ukraine by several hundred thousand additional troops. When the hammer will fall is anyone guess…

—…but this was a COMPLETELY avoidable conflict if only Washington, the seat of hubris amid a fading empire, had acted in good faith and taken Russia’s genuine security concerns seriously. They ignored them instead for decades and goaded their client-states to do the same.

 

—PEACE TALKS BEGAN AS EARLY AS March, with several starts and stops in a number of locations, ultimately coming to naught. Interestingly, one set of talks, the sixth that were scheduled to begin in April, were kiboshed after the British PM Boris Johnson visited Kiev on April 6/22 carrying, as a number of commentators have suggested, the 'thumbs-down' from Washington for any deal-making with Russia. 

AND FORMER PREZ of Israel, Naftali Bennett, in a recent interview,  made a similar claim that his earlier, February efforts to broker a peace deal were scuttled by Britain, France and the United States: "...'[T]hey blocked [it] and I thought they were wrong,' Bennett responded." So, peace, apparently, was not in the forefront of Western elites' minds. All of us should be asking "Why?".

 

—OH, YEAH. Last September they blew up their allies’ gas pipeline, the one between Russia and Germany, thus denying Germany and Europe access to reasonably priced Russian natural gas for their industries and civilian populations. As the brilliant investigative journalist Seymour Hersh outlined in his Wowzers! of a story, American Navy divers planted explosives on a section of the Nord Stream gas pipeline using the cover of naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. Norway planted a buoy containing electronic equipment set to trigger the bomb when the White House gave the green light. IT'S SHOCKING, REALLY, to see America act like a Mafia don! Some would say sabotaging the pipeline was an act of war, in this case one NATO member against another.  And the reasons for the bombing are as murky as the waters where the pipeline lay, but if it was meant to further sever Russia from Europe and strengthen America's hold over the continent, then: Mission Accomplished! Hersh lays out the how, when, who and why of the sabotage, so check out his article at Substack. BTW, Russell Brand does an excellent interview with him here.

"Oopsy daisy, Mr. President!"

THE WAR CONTINUES and there’s more to be said about it. But, honestly, I’m more disheartened and upset with the collective West (and that includes Canada) for its failure of leadership, with the levels of dishonesty and bad faith dealing, with the amount of arrogance and self-aggrandizement that wafts through our political classes and elites like a bad smell. IT'S TIME these bad actors left the stage. Before it’s too late.

 

Cheers, Jake.

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*The tanks apparently fire depleted uranium rounds, as well, because uranium is a dense, heavy metal that punches through most objects—tanks, bunkers, people and so on. The wonders of science never cease to amaze!

 

+ I’m surprised we don’t have any photos of Justin, his hair perfectly coiffed, sitting atop one of the tanks as it drives up into a cargo-plane. It’s not like him to miss a photo op. Just sayin’. 

 

 

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