Some things to consider before encouraging World War III.
Is Ukraine worth sending our men and women to die overseas in a war against Russia?
Is Ukraine worth sending our men and women to die overseas in a war against Russia?
While we may have – and probably should have – passionately held views on the horrible situation unfolding in Ukraine, it’s vital that those opinions be well informed. Passion and cluelessness are a very bad and very dangerous combo. The more serious the issue, the more important it is that we have well-founded reasons for believing what we believe, especially when the issue requires us to make life-or-death decisions. Since NATO directly joining a war against Russia would basically be the beginning of World War III, and World War III would have great potential to go nuclear, supporting such a plunge into such a war is a life and death decision on a massive scale that should preclude us from making or supporting such a decision casually.
So what should we make of the war in Ukraine?
More specifically, should we favor direct US or NATO involvement in that war?
If we’re going to allow ourselves to be led into World War III over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we should have a solid, well-researched understanding of what inspired the Russians to invade Ukraine. And if we’re going to understand what inspired Russia to invade Ukraine, we are going to have to understand at least five points:
The nature and behavior of NATO. NATO is a military alliance formed in opposition to Moscow. This military alliance is US-dominated and has been expanding toward Moscow for decades. This expansion will be chronicled in detail below.
Ukraine’s role as a tool of the US-led Globalist West. – Back in February of 2014, Paul Craig Roberts posted a helpful and to-the-point article simply titled Washington Destabilized Ukraine. The article is both prophetic and a very good history recap (as of 2014). I highly recommend checking it out while remembering that he wrote it over eight years ago.
Ukraine’s identity as a deeply corrupt and “Nazified” state. – In 2021 Ukraine was ranked #120 out of 180 countries monitored for corruption by Transparency International. The country is also relatively loaded with outright Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, including the infamous Azov Battalion with is headquartered in Mariupol (which is why Russia has focused on Mariupol since the beginning of the war).
Ukraine has waged a brutal war on pro-Russian regions since 2014. – After the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected (but intolerably Russia-friendly) President, protests erupted in pro-Russia regions of Ukraine. By April of 2014 the newly installed pro-Globalist/West government began to put the hammer down on these pro-Russian separatist regions. In December of 2021, after seven years of war on the pro-Russia region, Russia expressed concern that Ukraine had deployed half of its army (125,000 troops) against the separatists.
Whatever we might think of it, this long Ukrainian war on these pro-Russian regions has killed many thousands of people and has been cited by Russia from the beginning of the war as a primary reason for invading.Ukraine is hosting US-funded bioweapon labs. – You may have heard of a certain US-funded bioweapon lab in China that produced a certain bug that somehow found its way into the world and caused trouble. It made some headlines, so you might recall what I’m talking about. Now consider how Russia might feel if it was to become aware of US-funded bioweapons labs operating in Ukraine. For more on this aspect of the story, I highly recommend Glenn Greenwald’s coverage, starting with this article in which he eviscerated the laughably moronic narratives attempting to spin this into a defensible position for the US while also exposing a key member of the Globalist Clown Show, Victoria Nuland (who will pop up again below).
The last four of these five points – the ones focusing on Ukraine as opposed to NATO – must be considered while constantly remembering that Ukraine directly borders Russia, and in a major way. The shared border between the two is massive (over 1,200 miles).
US citizens would be well-served to consider what it might be like to have a country like, let’s say China, advocate for Mexico to be included in a China-led military alliance created in direct opposition to Washington DC.
We might also take a moment to honestly ponder other worthwhile and instructive hypotheticals, like:
What if a China-led anti-US alliance was discovered to be funding or operating bioweapon labs in Mexico or Canada?
What if a China-led anti-US alliance decided to routinely dispatch naval fleets to patrol the Gulf of Mexico or base a major fleet there permanently? (For those wondering why we should be asking this, it should be noted that NATO has been poking around quite a lot in the Black Sea for a while now.)
What if a China-led military alliance funded and supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Canada or Mexico so that a pro-China government could take its place?
What if a China-led military alliance spent the last twenty years or so expanding by adding member nations that were closer and closer to the US mainland, and were now advocating for Mexico or Canada to be added as a member of that anti-US military alliance?
These are quite reasonable hypotheticals to compare with the real-world situation in which Russia finds itself.
Of the many laughably baseless bits of anti-Russia propaganda being spewed by the Globalist-controlled West’s politicians and media outlets, the most idiotic of them all has been that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked”.
Unprovoked?!
When, after many decades of encroachment and open provocation of Russia through NATO expansion and other overtly illegal activities (some of which will be chronicled below), we arrive at a place where NATO threatens to incorporate a very large country directly on Russia’s border, we cannot be surprised that Russia would view this culmination of hostile, threatening behavior as an existential threat. And that’s before we even get to the bioweapon labs.
One thing we need to understand is that it is utterly reasonable for Russia to feel existentially threatened in this scenario.
We don’t have to agree with that assessment to understand it. We don’t have to agree with it to see it as reasonable. We might even completely disagree about the threat being that serious, much less existential, but we must admit that Russia’s perception of the threat as serious or even existential is not irrational or unreasonable. And we absolutely must seriously consider these things as mature, thinking, responsible adults if we are going to even consider allowing ourselves to support the Globalist-owned, Nazi-drenched side in what could easily become a nuclear World War III.
We can’t allow ourselves to be emotionally manipulated and played as ignorant lemmings to be led by the nose into supporting potentially a worldwide mega-war. Thinking these things through and treating all available facts seriously is not optional. It’s necessary.
So let’s roll through some simple, relevant points related to our five areas of concern,
starting with a timeline and context for the NATO military alliance’s long-running expansion toward Russia:
September 12, 1945 – World War II ends.
~March, 1947 – The Cold War begins.
April 4, 1949 – NATO is founded to create a counterweight to Soviet control and military presence in central and eastern Europe after World War II.
November 9, 1989 – The fall of the Berlin Wall.
February, 1990 – The U.S. promises Moscow that NATO will not expand “one inch eastward” of Germany. While in recent decades many attempts have been made to rewrite history and dismiss this promise, even the L.A.Times has chronicled the reality of the “iron-clad guarantee” that the U.S. made regarding NATO expansion.
December 31, 1991 – The Soviet Union formally dissolves into fifteen independent countries.
March 12, 1999 – NATO accepts Czech Republic membership. (The Czech Republic is east of Germany.)
March 12, 1999 – NATO accepts Hungary as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 12, 1999 – NATO accepts Poland as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Bulgaria as another east-of-Germany European member.
(I’m not listing each of these new NATO memberships separately to be a jerk or to be annoying. I’m listing them separately because they each constitute a major development that could very well be perceived as “provocative” by Moscow, especially since NATO was literally formed to oppose Moscow and Moscow was promised that NATO would not expand east of Germany.)March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Estonia as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Latvia as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Lithuania as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Romania as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Slovakia as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 29, 2004 – NATO accepts Slovenia as another east-of-Germany European member.
April 1, 2009 – NATO accepts Albania as another east-of-Germany European member.
April 1, 2009 – NATO accepts Croatia as another east-of-Germany European member.
June 5, 2017 – NATO accepts Montenegro as another east-of-Germany European member.
March 27, 2020 – NATO accepts North Macedonia as another east-of-Germany European member.
With that backdrop of anti-Moscow NATO expansion in mind, let’s roll through just a handful of key events from the past nine years of US-led manipulation and (ab)use of Ukraine as a tool of anti-Moscow aggression:
February 4, 2014 – Victoria Nuland’s infamous “F*** the EU” recording is leaked and posted online (here’s a YouTube version). The recording chronicles two U.S. officials (Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt) basically hashing out who the U.S. wanted to install atop Ukraine’s government after a U.S. sponsored overthrow of the existing democratically-elected government.
The Guardian covered the situation this way at the time:“The frustration of the Obama administration at Europe’s hesitant policy over the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine has been laid bare in a leaked phone conversation between two senior US officials, one of whom declares: “F*** the EU”.
The US state department did not directly confirm that the leaked audio clip posted on YouTube captures the voices of the top US diplomat for European and Eurasian affairs,Victoria Nuland, and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. However, the department’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Nuland, who made the disparaging remark about the EU, “has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologised for these reported comments”.
In an attempt at damage limitation, US officials tried to turn focus onto Russia, suggesting that Moscow had leaked the audio recording . . . ”
It’s interesting to see good ol’ Jen Psaki in the mix there, isn’t it? And right in the middle of an attempt to blame the Russians for the whole thing…classic!
February 22, 2014 – Ukraine’s democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown.
March, 2014 – After the successful regime change and overthrow of the elected President in Ukraine, protests took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (political subdivisions) of Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbass.
April, 2014 – The newly minted pro-Globalist/West Ukraine government goes to war against separatists who won’t swallow the Globalist-sponsored regime change that has just occurred.
March, 2016 – Former-Vice President Joe Biden brags on camera about how he bullied Ukraine officials into firing a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma, a large natural gas company that had given Biden’s son Hunter a remarkably lucrative gig despite Hunter not having actual job experience that would warrant anything resembling that position.
John Solomon described it this way via The Hill:
“. . . In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.
Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.
But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member. . . ”February 23, 2022 – Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was launching a “special military operation” in Ukraine to protect people who have been facing “humiliation and genocide” perpetrated by the Kiev regime.
“We will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation,” he said in the speech, which you can (and should) read in its entirety here.
Putin closed his speech with an appeal to members of the Ukrainian armed forces:
“. . . I would also like to address the military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.Comrade officers,
Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine. You swore the oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people and not to the junta, the people’s adversary which is plundering Ukraine and humiliating the Ukrainian people.
I urge you to refuse to carry out their criminal orders. I urge you to immediately lay down arms and go home. I will explain what this means: the military personnel of the Ukrainian army who do this will be able to freely leave the zone of hostilities and return to their families.
I want to emphasise again that all responsibility for the possible bloodshed will lie fully and wholly with the ruling Ukrainian regime.”February 24, 2022 – Facebook reverses it’s ban on supporting Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion. Apparently, Nazis are the good guys when they fight for the Globalist/Technocratic elite.
February 28, 2022 – The New York Times basks in the glow of the collapse of the Russian Ruble and stock market after a US-led wave of sanctions hit Russia. This didn’t play out as the Times’ propagandists had hoped, but it fit the narrative for a few minutes, so they ran with it. (More on this later.)
March 8, 2022 – Russia publishes documents alleging that Ukraine and US were working on Anthrax and plague in biolabs. The next day Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said evidence of the alleged bioweapon program had been uncovered during its military operation in Ukraine.
After the March 8 publication, Victoria Nuland (yes the same goon who said “F*** the EU!” while plotting the overthrow of the Ukraine government in 2014), now playing the role of Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs under Resident Biden, offers up some of the most unintentionally comical spin imaginable when, while testifying in a Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on Ukraine, she admits that yeah, the labs exist, but they’re “biological research facilities” and that the only way anything bad could come out of those labs is of the evil Russians made it happen after capturing the labs.
Aiding Nuland in this desperate attempt to recapture an escaped narrative was Senator Marco Rubio, a robotic Neo-Con from Florida, who did his best to help her lay the groundwork for blaming Russia for anything related to US-funded bioweapons in Ukraine. (You really should read the aforementioned Greenwald article covering much of this here.)
All of this dark comedic Deep State incompetence inspired a lot of fallout, including China demanding answers from the US for “26 biolabs in Ukraine”.Throughout Early March – “NO FLY ZONE” MANIA! – Ukraine President Zelenskyy makes the rounds begging Western nations like the US and Canada to participate in securing a “no fly zone” over Ukraine, knowing full well that this would effectively mean the beginning of World War III because enforcing such a zone would require US/NATO forces to shoot down Russian aircraft.
One of the more remarkable aspects of this period is the way that so many in the media-programmed public reflexively jumped on board without seriously thinking about the idea. For a short while masses of people seemed to actually believe that declaring a “no fly zone” was something like a mystical incantation that magically prevented Russian jets from flying over the area where the incantation had been invoked. When subsequent reports covered the fact that a no fly zone would have to be enforced by actions of the sort that would practically guarantee war between NATO and Russia and its allies, at least some of the “magic no fly zone” camp woke up and reversed their support for the idea.March 16, 2022 – After monolithically acting to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story heading into the 2020 election and calling it “Russian propaganda” so awful that only a tinfoil hat-wearing nut could take it seriously, corporate media pivots abruptly and admits: Hey, the Hunter laptop is real after all! No joke.
This matters greatly in the unfolding Globalist vs. Russia WWIII scenario for many reasons, not the least of which is Hunter’s insanely illegitimate yet massively profitable gig on the board of Burisma, a major Ukrainian company.March 20, 2022 – Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, championed relentlessly as a leader fighting for freedom and democracy, nationalizes television news and cracks down on opposing political parties.
Even corporate-controlled media had a hard time spinning this one. Here’s an example summary that ran on Yahoo! News:On Saturday and Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked his emergency powers under martial law to suppress several opposition political parties and implement a "unified information policy."
In an address to the nation delivered Sunday, he announced a temporary ban on "any activity" by 11 political parties. . .
. . . Zelensky's information policy involves "combining all national TV channels, the program content of which consists mainly of information and/or information-analytical programs, [into] a single information platform of strategic communication" to be called "United News."April 2, 2022 – Poland declares itself “open” to hosting US nuclear weapons. (Poland is one of those east-of-Germany countries that NATO added after Moscow was promised that there would be no more east-of-Germany NATO expansion.)
April 6, 2022 – After crashing to a record low against the dollar and being mocked by Resident Biden as the “Rubble”, the Russian Ruble recovered to roughly where it was before the war began. This has been accomplished in large part due to creative ways in which Russia has moved to attach the Ruble to gold and other commodities that it exports in large quantity. This re-basing of the Ruble on gold/oil/gas has been perceived by many as a historic shift in global economic policy and could end up playing a major role in bringing down the dollar, which is backed by nothing more than “the full faith and credit of the United States” (LOL!).
April 7, 2022 – China sided with Russia in a key UN vote that suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights council. This vote followed China’s foreign ministry issuing a scathing critique last month concerning the US/NATO role in creating the current situation in Ukraine. The statement from China quoted former US statesmen and officials, including George Kennan: "International media lately mentioned many times that George Kennan, former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, suggested to the US government in 1990s that expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders would be the most fateful error of American policy. Regrettably, the US government turned a deaf ear to this."
April 8, 2022 – The Ruble surged to a 5-month high after the Russian Central Bank unexpectedly slashed interest rates (something the Federal Reserve in the US cannot do because it has already squandered that option in order to keep massive asset bubbles inflated with near-zero interest rates).
That brings us to the publication date of this post. Obviously, this is nowhere near a comprehensive list of points worthy of consideration where assessing the Russia/Ukraine situation is concerned. There are also many reported atrocities that are difficult to accurately hash out in detail or confidently attribute to one side or another due to the fog of war and the surprising (at least to me) lack of on-the-ground images, recordings, and reports. Even so, I hope that at least some of the history and developments highlighted here will shed some light onto the dark path ahead.
As we decide whether to continue down that path, we should be asking hard questions, testing narratives (including this one), and always following the money (or the fiat currency, as the case may be).
One final thought: Let’s resist the urge to instantly brand anyone seeing things differently than we do as crazy, evil, or both. If there’s one thing we should all know, it’s that we are all works in progress, we are all learning (and making mistakes) as we go, and we can all be wrong about very important things.
So let’s err on the side of grace with one another whenever we can.
If we can actively model a real commitment to both truth and grace, we will become the best of people and the worst of nightmares to those trying to lead us into World War III.