Editorial
May 20, 2022
© Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

The move by Finland and Sweden this week to join the NATO military alliance is another reckless escalation in the United States-led proxy war against Russia.

It is no coincidence that the Nordic leaders were hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden in a joint press conference at the same time that the American Congress approved a $4o billion – largely military – aid package to Ukraine. (To date, that would tally to $54 billion that the Biden administration has pumped into Ukraine over the past two months. Most of that capital equates to military weapons.)

The combined development clearly signals that the Biden administration is doubling down on its war agenda toward Russia. This is an incredibly irresponsible and incendiary move by Washington and its transatlantic allies in Europe that is pushing conflict with Russia towards an all-out war. That would inevitably mean a world war involving nuclear weapons that, in turn, could bring about the destruction of the entire planet.

The Biden administration and the U.S. and European political establishments have evidently resiled from any diplomatic effort to resolve historic problems of security in Europe. The current war in Ukraine is but the manifestation of these wider security problems. Russia over the past year had repeatedly appealed for a mutual security arrangement with the U.S.-led NATO bloc. Specifically, Moscow had urged that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics be precluded from joining the military alliance. Moscow’s position was consistent with principles of collective security that NATO powers had in the past also endorsed.

When the NATO-backed Kiev regime and the United States pointedly rejected Russia’s appeals for mutual security and given the ramping up of offensive attacks on the Russian people in the Donbass, Moscow had no choice but to intervene in Ukraine. That the Ukrainian military is dominated by Nazi-affiliated regiments eloquently demonstrates the belligerent mentality of Washington and the NATO sponsors of the Kiev regime. Russia’s special military operation has succeeded in securing a large part of the Donbass and delivering peace to its inhabitants who had long endured the violence of Ukrainian Nazi death squads. See our interview this week with Russell Bentley. The liberation of Mariupol is a major achievement by the Russian forces. The final surrender this week of over 1,900 remaining Nazi foot-soldiers belonging to the crack Azov Battalion at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol is a stunning victory. And it is telling that the Western media have quietly lamented the defeat.

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – launched on February 24 by President Vladimir Putin – is nearly into its fourth month. Moscow is pushing for a negotiated settlement but the Kiev regime is controlled by Washington, London, and other NATO powers. These powers evidently do not want to see the conflict end any time soon. They want to push a protracted proxy war against Russia in the misguided if the not malevolent belief that such a war will cause serious attrition to Russia and its people. Biden has already let it slip that the U.S.-led NATO objective is “regime change” in Moscow.

The point is that all this mayhem, suffering, and destruction could have been avoided if Russia’s diplomatic appeals for a negotiated security architecture with NATO had been reciprocated in the first place.

Why not?

Obviously, because the U.S.-led transatlantic axis is predicated – irredeemably – on confrontation with Russia. The de facto continuity with the Cold War against the Soviet Union is extant and must be maintained at all costs. The U.S. ambition for hegemony over Europe and the world for that matter and the essential functioning of its militarized capitalist economy all crucially depend on conflict with Russia. The same is true for American relations with its other perceived rival – China. Or, indeed, any other nation that does not subordinate itself to the writ of American imperial power. One can safely bet their life on the fact that if Russia were somehow cowed by U.S. demands, the next stage would be the ramping of Washington-led aggression against China, and so on.

American imperial power and the elites of its European satellites depend on Cold War geopolitics. The world must be carved up and demarcated into rival camps of “allies and enemies” in order to give the U.S. a cover for its imperialist domination. Washington’s geopolitics is really more akin to the modus operandi of a criminal organization syndicate.

On one level, the U.S. and its transAtlantic cronies have succeeded, at least so far. Relations with Russia have never been so polarized and poisoned. Russia  – the largest country on the European continent – has been cast as a pariah by the Western political establishments and their media propaganda machine. The former good neighborly relations have been ransacked. Russia’s natural position as the energy supplier of choice to the rest of Europe has been severely damaged. This, of course, totally suits the agenda of U.S. hegemony over Europe. The war-like confrontation is just what the American doctor ordered, so to speak, to salvage failing and increasingly bankrupt American capitalism.

The drawing in of Finland and Sweden into the U.S.-led NATO alliance is such a short-term fillip for the transAtlanticists. The two Nordic countries were officially non-aligned for eight decades since the end of the Second World War. That was partly due to the careful deference of the U.S. towards Soviet security concerns.

Russia has repeatedly warned about Finland and Sweden joining the U.S. military alliance. If their application is approved by the current 30 members of NATO, the alliance will immediately double its border with Russian territory. Moscow has already said that it will respond to this outcome with “military-technical measures”. In other words, the unprecedented security tensions and impact on the global economy that the world has seen over recent months will intensify.

It seems clear that Washington has been pressuring Finland and Sweden to join the NATO bloc for months prior to the eruption of conflict in Ukraine. The latter is not the cause of the Nordic maneuver. The U.S. has been goading the Scandinavians for a long time. The agenda is the underlying geopolitical ambitions of U.S. hegemony over Europe and also perhaps equally important the race for control over vast natural resources in the Arctic. It is significant that the Arctic Council of nations will now be dominated by NATO members if Finland and Sweden go through with their application.

Biden wants to fast-track the application process – hence his fawning over the Finnish and Swedish leaders this week. For the process to succeed, however, there must be unanimous approval by all 30 NATO members. Both Turkey and Croatia have expressed disapproval. Ankara charges the Scandinavian countries with being lenient towards Kurdish separatists. One can be sure that Washington will pile on the pressure and blackmail to leverage its desire.

All in all, the sluicing of military aid to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev that is irrationally Russia-hating, in concert with the heedless induction of Finland and Sweden to NATO, points to a one-way direction of war against Russia. The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

Sweden, Finland Joining NATO… Another U.S.-Led Lurch Towards Abyss

The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

The move by Finland and Sweden this week to join the NATO military alliance is another reckless escalation in the United States-led proxy war against Russia.

It is no coincidence that the Nordic leaders were hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden in a joint press conference at the same time that the American Congress approved a $4o billion – largely military – aid package to Ukraine. (To date, that would tally to $54 billion that the Biden administration has pumped into Ukraine over the past two months. Most of that capital equates to military weapons.)

The combined development clearly signals that the Biden administration is doubling down on its war agenda toward Russia. This is an incredibly irresponsible and incendiary move by Washington and its transatlantic allies in Europe that is pushing conflict with Russia towards an all-out war. That would inevitably mean a world war involving nuclear weapons that, in turn, could bring about the destruction of the entire planet.

The Biden administration and the U.S. and European political establishments have evidently resiled from any diplomatic effort to resolve historic problems of security in Europe. The current war in Ukraine is but the manifestation of these wider security problems. Russia over the past year had repeatedly appealed for a mutual security arrangement with the U.S.-led NATO bloc. Specifically, Moscow had urged that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics be precluded from joining the military alliance. Moscow’s position was consistent with principles of collective security that NATO powers had in the past also endorsed.

When the NATO-backed Kiev regime and the United States pointedly rejected Russia’s appeals for mutual security and given the ramping up of offensive attacks on the Russian people in the Donbass, Moscow had no choice but to intervene in Ukraine. That the Ukrainian military is dominated by Nazi-affiliated regiments eloquently demonstrates the belligerent mentality of Washington and the NATO sponsors of the Kiev regime. Russia’s special military operation has succeeded in securing a large part of the Donbass and delivering peace to its inhabitants who had long endured the violence of Ukrainian Nazi death squads. See our interview this week with Russell Bentley. The liberation of Mariupol is a major achievement by the Russian forces. The final surrender this week of over 1,900 remaining Nazi foot-soldiers belonging to the crack Azov Battalion at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol is a stunning victory. And it is telling that the Western media have quietly lamented the defeat.

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – launched on February 24 by President Vladimir Putin – is nearly into its fourth month. Moscow is pushing for a negotiated settlement but the Kiev regime is controlled by Washington, London, and other NATO powers. These powers evidently do not want to see the conflict end any time soon. They want to push a protracted proxy war against Russia in the misguided if the not malevolent belief that such a war will cause serious attrition to Russia and its people. Biden has already let it slip that the U.S.-led NATO objective is “regime change” in Moscow.

The point is that all this mayhem, suffering, and destruction could have been avoided if Russia’s diplomatic appeals for a negotiated security architecture with NATO had been reciprocated in the first place.

Why not?

Obviously, because the U.S.-led transatlantic axis is predicated – irredeemably – on confrontation with Russia. The de facto continuity with the Cold War against the Soviet Union is extant and must be maintained at all costs. The U.S. ambition for hegemony over Europe and the world for that matter and the essential functioning of its militarized capitalist economy all crucially depend on conflict with Russia. The same is true for American relations with its other perceived rival – China. Or, indeed, any other nation that does not subordinate itself to the writ of American imperial power. One can safely bet their life on the fact that if Russia were somehow cowed by U.S. demands, the next stage would be the ramping of Washington-led aggression against China, and so on.

American imperial power and the elites of its European satellites depend on Cold War geopolitics. The world must be carved up and demarcated into rival camps of “allies and enemies” in order to give the U.S. a cover for its imperialist domination. Washington’s geopolitics is really more akin to the modus operandi of a criminal organization syndicate.

On one level, the U.S. and its transAtlantic cronies have succeeded, at least so far. Relations with Russia have never been so polarized and poisoned. Russia  – the largest country on the European continent – has been cast as a pariah by the Western political establishments and their media propaganda machine. The former good neighborly relations have been ransacked. Russia’s natural position as the energy supplier of choice to the rest of Europe has been severely damaged. This, of course, totally suits the agenda of U.S. hegemony over Europe. The war-like confrontation is just what the American doctor ordered, so to speak, to salvage failing and increasingly bankrupt American capitalism.

The drawing in of Finland and Sweden into the U.S.-led NATO alliance is such a short-term fillip for the transAtlanticists. The two Nordic countries were officially non-aligned for eight decades since the end of the Second World War. That was partly due to the careful deference of the U.S. towards Soviet security concerns.

Russia has repeatedly warned about Finland and Sweden joining the U.S. military alliance. If their application is approved by the current 30 members of NATO, the alliance will immediately double its border with Russian territory. Moscow has already said that it will respond to this outcome with “military-technical measures”. In other words, the unprecedented security tensions and impact on the global economy that the world has seen over recent months will intensify.

It seems clear that Washington has been pressuring Finland and Sweden to join the NATO bloc for months prior to the eruption of conflict in Ukraine. The latter is not the cause of the Nordic maneuver. The U.S. has been goading the Scandinavians for a long time. The agenda is the underlying geopolitical ambitions of U.S. hegemony over Europe and also perhaps equally important the race for control over vast natural resources in the Arctic. It is significant that the Arctic Council of nations will now be dominated by NATO members if Finland and Sweden go through with their application.

Biden wants to fast-track the application process – hence his fawning over the Finnish and Swedish leaders this week. For the process to succeed, however, there must be unanimous approval by all 30 NATO members. Both Turkey and Croatia have expressed disapproval. Ankara charges the Scandinavian countries with being lenient towards Kurdish separatists. One can be sure that Washington will pile on the pressure and blackmail to leverage its desire.

All in all, the sluicing of military aid to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev that is irrationally Russia-hating, in concert with the heedless induction of Finland and Sweden to NATO, points to a one-way direction of war against Russia. The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

The move by Finland and Sweden this week to join the NATO military alliance is another reckless escalation in the United States-led proxy war against Russia.

It is no coincidence that the Nordic leaders were hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden in a joint press conference at the same time that the American Congress approved a $4o billion – largely military – aid package to Ukraine. (To date, that would tally to $54 billion that the Biden administration has pumped into Ukraine over the past two months. Most of that capital equates to military weapons.)

The combined development clearly signals that the Biden administration is doubling down on its war agenda toward Russia. This is an incredibly irresponsible and incendiary move by Washington and its transatlantic allies in Europe that is pushing conflict with Russia towards an all-out war. That would inevitably mean a world war involving nuclear weapons that, in turn, could bring about the destruction of the entire planet.

The Biden administration and the U.S. and European political establishments have evidently resiled from any diplomatic effort to resolve historic problems of security in Europe. The current war in Ukraine is but the manifestation of these wider security problems. Russia over the past year had repeatedly appealed for a mutual security arrangement with the U.S.-led NATO bloc. Specifically, Moscow had urged that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics be precluded from joining the military alliance. Moscow’s position was consistent with principles of collective security that NATO powers had in the past also endorsed.

When the NATO-backed Kiev regime and the United States pointedly rejected Russia’s appeals for mutual security and given the ramping up of offensive attacks on the Russian people in the Donbass, Moscow had no choice but to intervene in Ukraine. That the Ukrainian military is dominated by Nazi-affiliated regiments eloquently demonstrates the belligerent mentality of Washington and the NATO sponsors of the Kiev regime. Russia’s special military operation has succeeded in securing a large part of the Donbass and delivering peace to its inhabitants who had long endured the violence of Ukrainian Nazi death squads. See our interview this week with Russell Bentley. The liberation of Mariupol is a major achievement by the Russian forces. The final surrender this week of over 1,900 remaining Nazi foot-soldiers belonging to the crack Azov Battalion at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol is a stunning victory. And it is telling that the Western media have quietly lamented the defeat.

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – launched on February 24 by President Vladimir Putin – is nearly into its fourth month. Moscow is pushing for a negotiated settlement but the Kiev regime is controlled by Washington, London, and other NATO powers. These powers evidently do not want to see the conflict end any time soon. They want to push a protracted proxy war against Russia in the misguided if the not malevolent belief that such a war will cause serious attrition to Russia and its people. Biden has already let it slip that the U.S.-led NATO objective is “regime change” in Moscow.

The point is that all this mayhem, suffering, and destruction could have been avoided if Russia’s diplomatic appeals for a negotiated security architecture with NATO had been reciprocated in the first place.

Why not?

Obviously, because the U.S.-led transatlantic axis is predicated – irredeemably – on confrontation with Russia. The de facto continuity with the Cold War against the Soviet Union is extant and must be maintained at all costs. The U.S. ambition for hegemony over Europe and the world for that matter and the essential functioning of its militarized capitalist economy all crucially depend on conflict with Russia. The same is true for American relations with its other perceived rival – China. Or, indeed, any other nation that does not subordinate itself to the writ of American imperial power. One can safely bet their life on the fact that if Russia were somehow cowed by U.S. demands, the next stage would be the ramping of Washington-led aggression against China, and so on.

American imperial power and the elites of its European satellites depend on Cold War geopolitics. The world must be carved up and demarcated into rival camps of “allies and enemies” in order to give the U.S. a cover for its imperialist domination. Washington’s geopolitics is really more akin to the modus operandi of a criminal organization syndicate.

On one level, the U.S. and its transAtlantic cronies have succeeded, at least so far. Relations with Russia have never been so polarized and poisoned. Russia  – the largest country on the European continent – has been cast as a pariah by the Western political establishments and their media propaganda machine. The former good neighborly relations have been ransacked. Russia’s natural position as the energy supplier of choice to the rest of Europe has been severely damaged. This, of course, totally suits the agenda of U.S. hegemony over Europe. The war-like confrontation is just what the American doctor ordered, so to speak, to salvage failing and increasingly bankrupt American capitalism.

The drawing in of Finland and Sweden into the U.S.-led NATO alliance is such a short-term fillip for the transAtlanticists. The two Nordic countries were officially non-aligned for eight decades since the end of the Second World War. That was partly due to the careful deference of the U.S. towards Soviet security concerns.

Russia has repeatedly warned about Finland and Sweden joining the U.S. military alliance. If their application is approved by the current 30 members of NATO, the alliance will immediately double its border with Russian territory. Moscow has already said that it will respond to this outcome with “military-technical measures”. In other words, the unprecedented security tensions and impact on the global economy that the world has seen over recent months will intensify.

It seems clear that Washington has been pressuring Finland and Sweden to join the NATO bloc for months prior to the eruption of conflict in Ukraine. The latter is not the cause of the Nordic maneuver. The U.S. has been goading the Scandinavians for a long time. The agenda is the underlying geopolitical ambitions of U.S. hegemony over Europe and also perhaps equally important the race for control over vast natural resources in the Arctic. It is significant that the Arctic Council of nations will now be dominated by NATO members if Finland and Sweden go through with their application.

Biden wants to fast-track the application process – hence his fawning over the Finnish and Swedish leaders this week. For the process to succeed, however, there must be unanimous approval by all 30 NATO members. Both Turkey and Croatia have expressed disapproval. Ankara charges the Scandinavian countries with being lenient towards Kurdish separatists. One can be sure that Washington will pile on the pressure and blackmail to leverage its desire.

All in all, the sluicing of military aid to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev that is irrationally Russia-hating, in concert with the heedless induction of Finland and Sweden to NATO, points to a one-way direction of war against Russia. The U.S. political establishment and its European lackeys are the embodiment of a drunken madman driving a busload of people on a cliff edge.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

See also

April 11, 2023

See also

April 11, 2023
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.