The West’s Ukraine Intervention Advocates Are Driving Us Towards War With Russia

Professor Stephen Cohen, one of the few commentators with the integrity to challenge the anti-Russia groupthink that’s appeared in mainstream foreign policy analysis, has said that the new U.S./Russia cold war is more dangerous than the last one was. The peril is greater this time, he believes, because now the tensions involve proxy conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, which multiply already unprecedented risks of a third world war.

Neither of these proxy wars would be happening if the U.S./NATO empire didn’t have a strategic interest in taking control of Ukraine and Syria. The U.S.’ attacks against the latter country are mainly motivated by a desire to secure Golan Heights oil and to dominate trade throughout Asia, while the attacks on the former are about expanding NATO into Ukraine. This make it ironic that Western foreign policy elites claim to support Ukraine and Syria’s sovereignty over Russia; they only care because they want to seize control of these countries.

And in the case of Ukraine, this transparently selfish motive on the part of the West has lately been bringing us very close to a U.S./Russia confrontation. When Russia fired on Ukrainian vessels last month-a move that Ukraine fully knew it would provoke when it sent warships into the other country’s waters-Western leaders made the incident out to be Russian aggression. This “provocation” by Russia is essentially a false flag, and Russia hawks have used it to advocate for more Western intervention in Ukraine.

Politicians and pundits, using the Russia collusion allegations, are pressuring President Trump towards taking ever tougher stances against Putin in Ukraine. Consequently, the new cold war has reached maybe its most risky moment yet. As Hungarian scholar George Szamuely said in an interview this week about which percentage number he puts for the likelihood of a U.S./Russia shooting war:

Several weeks ago, when we first talked about this, I said 60 percent. Now I’d say, maybe 70 percent. The problem is that Trump seems determined to be the anti-Obama. Obama, in Trump’s telling, “allowed” Russia to take Crimea and to “invade” Ukraine. Therefore, it will be up to Trump to reverse this. Just as he, Trump, reversed Obama’s policy on Iran by walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. So expect ever-increasing US involvement in Ukraine.

Indeed, even if war doesn’t break out by the end of this month, the tensions around Ukraine are no doubt going to continue. There’s still no evidence that Trump is “taking orders from Putin.” Like every other recent American president, he’s going along with the empire’s agenda.

And in the case of Ukraine, this agenda is to ratchet up military threats against Russia until Putin hands Ukraine over to the West, which is a strategy that could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange even if neither side wants it to. The Western ruling class seems to be comfortable with this gamble between atomic annihilation and between a win for NATO’s expansionist goals.

They’re so willing to take that risk because at this moment in history, any setbacks for the West represent a massive blow to the U.S./NATO power establishment. The Pentagon’s own analysts have assessed that America’s worldwide influence is declining rapidly, and countries like Russia, China, and Iran are filling the power void that it’s leaving. If the U.S. backs down from Ukraine, it will be decidedly giving up its control over the world.

This competition between the world’s capitalist oligarchs is ultimately the issue that we’re being asked to care about when we hear that it’s time to “defend” Ukraine. Instead of fighting another war for these oligarchs, let’s work to overthrow them.