It could justify infinite spending to protect democracy from the evil Russians who are just itching to march on Paris with shining breast-plated cavalry and gleaming bayonets or whatever goofy fantasy the Mainstream Media can dream up.
Perhaps I was too optimistic at the very start of 2022 about the chances that Washington and Moscow could find a compromise position over the Ukrainian Crisis. When the Kremlin sent a list of demands westwards and their counterparts agreed to meet and discuss it, it seemed logical to believe that this nightmare might all finally be over. The offer was essentially to resolve the conflict by clearly defining new spheres of influence (who’s in NATO forever and who’ll never be) in a new Multipolar age. However, when the actual negotiations began, my hopes for a peaceful 21st century were quickly dashed. As many Russians have told me, negotiating with Americans is difficult because of a certain “we understand your concerns…BUT” style of reasoning, that listens but does not process nor desire to comprehend the other side only to double down on their original position.
I have heard this a million times, that we, the sons of liberty, are very good at giving the illusion of listening and sympathizing with those across the table, while not budging even a sixteenth of an inch. And well, to be honest all one can say is “good for us”. For decades the Russians have been utterly duped by our negotiating tactics. Russians perceive the American smile to be a sign of stupidity and weakness, as well as other superficial signs of friendship that lulls them into a false sense of security. I have met surprisingly powerful and influential people in Russia who still believe the problems with America are not geopolitical, systemic or based on zero-sum game power dynamics but of a personal nature that can be solved through some sort of friendly diplomacy and cultural understanding.
In fact, the gullibility of Russia is the reason why we are here in the first place. Reagan made a lot of promises to Gorbachev who bought it hook line and sinker. A few years later, the entire Warsaw Pact is Capitalist and under the control of the West, Russia was enduring the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” and no Hollywood magic was required to film a Mad Max style movie in any major former Soviet city.
Based on this, I probably should have seen it coming that Washington would participate in big theatrical and emotional negotiations that would at their core involve zero actual negotiating with the Americans sticking to their guns.
However, we cannot forget that later there was a secret counteroffer of sorts that was not to be revealed to the public from team Biden. This move will be food for online conspiratorial thinking for years to come, but ultimately the Russians were not exactly thrilled with the offer, probably due to another aspect of how America negotiates with Untermenschen. When they took the Indians’ land, drawing up fancy contracts to offer them shiny beads as compensation, the U.S. government knew exactly what it was doing but had zero shame as they saw them as uncivilized animals, much in the same way that Washington views Russians today. “We’ll do ten horrible things to you, but we will revoke one of them if you sign over X,Y and Z, and you should consider yourselves honored for having the opportunity to reach such a deal with us”.
This type of reasoning made me believe that the U.S. might just give up on around half of the Ukraine, to make the Russians sign off on ALL other territory in Europe and any hints of Soft Power influence it might have there. Essentially, America would get Europe (all the land it won from the Cold War) and Russia would get a portion of its traditional territory back (beads in the form of 50%+ of the Ukraine). This could be easily accomplished by a simple public referendum which would tear this pseudo nation in two instantly. An agreement between these two powers of this nature would be a humane, bloodless solution that would work out to be a long-term win for Washington as they would get almost everything. But people don’t call that entity the Global Hegemon to be cute, you shall have no gods before Washington. This is the American century after all.
The only way to get the results that the Pentagon/Oval Office and the Kremlin can agree on is sadly going to be some kind of proxy war which will divide up Europe, but in a way that is much more potable to Washington. The results of a confrontation of this nature in the Ukraine will be almost identical to a referendum process – it will break it apart with much of the territory going to Russia, but the difference is that conflict allows the Military Industrial Complex to get fed for another generation. They will be able to dump billions worth of old tech onto their allies and build up all sorts of neato defenses on the Eastern fringe of the EU at astronomical costs.
To be clear, I personally believe that many of the things that happen in Washington, including funding the Military Industrial Complex, no longer require neither logic nor justification in order to be enacted. War or a specific enemy is no longer needed to increase military spending, but the power of historical inertia cannot be overstated. Washington is used to needing an enemy to list as some sort of line item and currently the enemies list is looking a bit blank with Afghanistan being closed. We cannot forget that Trump quietly killed the War on Terror while not replacing it. Omnipresent Daesh/ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Islamic Terror have somehow magically vanished and yet no one in power even hinted at reducing defense budgets. There is no actual need to replace Islamic Terror with Russia as target of the day, but Washington is simply used to needing an official enemy.
So a proxy war in the Ukraine could justify infinite spending to protect Democracy from the evil Russians who are just itching to march on Paris with shining breast-plated cavalry and gleaming bayonets or whatever goofy fantasy the Mainstream Media can dream up.
For the Russians, losing thousands of their forced expatriate countrymen in the Ukraine is no laughing matter, but one thing is for sure, in a fight between the Ukrainian Army being backed by Washington and the Breakaway Republics being backed by Russia we all know who is going to win, and so “realpolitik” will probably win the day behind the walls of the Kremlin.
So essentially rather than coming to a peaceful and respectful deal, where Washington gets almost all of Europe with Russia getting back some of its lost territory to avoid WWIII, this exact same outcome is probably going to happen only with thousands of dead bodies, trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars stolen and a generation’s worth of political hostility being thrown into the deal. This scenario explains the secretive nature of Washington’s responses and the fact that both Zelensky and Lloyd Austin made it clear that the U.S. Military is not going to die for “dill” on the outskirts of Kiev.
If the tea leaf reading in this article is correct then we can yet again see why so many people around the world despise U.S. Foreign Policy as it is addicted to war and constantly demands some sort of new sacrifice to keep the fire burning. Right now, with some negotiation we could really be at the cusp of an extremely long-term peace in a clearly divided Europe that would be overwhelmingly dominated by the United States. But that’s not good enough for Washington, so instead, we are probably looking at Cold War 2.0’s first true proxy war which will make all parties involved “happy” on some level. Obviously, I am making a lot of speculations here, but that is part of the job of analysis, to take the known to project what could be and conversely what simply cannot be.
