No Way Out but War
chrishedges.substack.com
chrishedges.substack.com
Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.
There's some truth to that; the US current level of debt is only possible because the US effectively controls the world's money supply. But, can it happen? Can the dollar be dethroned? How, and by whom?
That process is now complete as China has reached the top of the value chain. They can make widebody jets and microprocessors and cars and phones every bit as good if not better than the US can.
China didnt buy treasuries for the same reason an american pension fund does. It will continue the process of divestment over the next few years, probably speeding it up after seeing what happened to russias USD reserves.
> China held US treasuries as means of manipulating its currency down in order to maintain a positive trade balance so it could engage in export oriented industrialization.
> That process is now complete as China has reached the top of the value chain. They can make widebody jets and microprocessors and cars and phones every bit as good if not better than the US can.
> China didnt buy treasuries for the same reason an American pension fund does. It will continue the process of divestment over the next few years, probably speeding it up after seeing what happened to russias USD reserves.
Where is China going to put all that money? The Yuan? Ok there goes your export economy. The Ruble? Not even China trusts Russia that much. The Euro? Back to Western sphere of influence. There is no better alternative. That's not to say the US has all the cards, it just isn't the "China outplayed everyone and is going to dethrone the US 100%" scenario you keep playing out.
This particular bit is such a weird take. Speaking as someone who marched against the invasion of Iraq and also wants us to support Ukraine, the position isn't "war is good now actually," the position is "hey maybe don't go invading people for fun." I didn't want to see Iraq invaded on false pretenses and I don't want to see Ukraine taken over by a bully either. There's nothing inconsistent about this.
Sorry, I don't follow. The parent is consistent: they are against the oppressor (the US in the former case, Russia in the latter).
The alternative to military aid is allowing Russia to continue to act out its fantasies of conquest. This has knock-on effects to any other countries currently deliberating land-grabs.
Merkel repeatedly brought the EU to bed with dictatorships and now finds itself unable to rapidly respond to a humanitarian crisis. The US, once again, is pulling the heavy weight of sending materiel, without which it is almost certain Ukraine would fall. What's after Ukraine? Other former Soviet states who are denied agency by Putin. Poland, after 123 years of being conquered and oppressed, 2 world wars and 50 years of communism is one of the few powerful EU states who recognizes the immediate existential crisis at hand.
It is disheartening to see authors use the invasion of Ukraine as a hitpiece for the global narrative of US oppression. Undoubtedly the US is no shining paragon of goodness but people forget that it was the US who saved Europe from Nazi Germany and once again it is the US pulling Europe out of another mess.
Perhaps if Merkel had done a better job the EU could finally fight for itself.
That wasnt the alternative. This war was 100% avoidable. The US took Ukraine's hand and led it directly into it.
It took six years of NATO slowly bringing Ukraine under its arm (with joint exercises, etc.) where three separate promises that it would join and three months of Putin sitting on the border asking for it not to join. This wasnt like Iraq.
This is the defensive alliance destroyed three separate countries in a fit of unprovoked pique. It's an aggressive defensive alliance.
Ukraine is the clash of empires that the US military industrial complex has been craving. It gets to spend only Ukrainian lives, stratospherically boost military budgets and create a European dependence on American LNG. For the US it's win/win/win.
This is propaganda. If you recall, Russia annexed bits of Georgia and Crimea. Russia wanted a warm water port so it took one by force.
Former Soviet states flocked to join NATO because of Russian imperialism: they wanted protection from a former master eager to see them rejoined. Sweden and Finland now both make their bids to join NATO because of Russian imperialism, just like every other time a country has begged entry.
Putin published [1] a long screed denying Ukrainian agency and statehood. How do you defend that?
Preceded in each case, if you recall, by attempts by those countries to join NATO.
In Georgia and Ukraine the US NED were paying activists the equivalent of $100k / year salaries to publish propaganda and start protests on behalf of pro western candidates. Once those pro western candidates were elected they tried to join NATO, whereupon Russia tried to invoke NATO's frozen conflict clause in order to try and prevent NATO military bases being set up on vulnerable sections of their border.
Rule #1 of empire is stir up trouble on the borders of rival empires. The British knew this well.
This is also why Putin tried something similar in the US 2016 election with a fraction of the resources where Americans apparently "flocked to vote in a Russia friendly president".
And you still have not responded to my question regarding Putin's screed denying Ukrainian statehood. Giving Putin anything (appeasement) when he actively denies the legitimacy of a state is and uses falsehoods such as "denazification" as a casus belli is not a good strategy.
No, that still doesnt make what Russia did ok.
>And you still have not responded to my question regarding Putin's screed denying Ukrainian statehood
Coz you edited it in and I didnt see it. It's propaganda for the Russian masses / Russian speakers in ukraine. It's their WMDs. Im not defending it. It's bullshit.
Nonetheless when peace negotiations happen that screed will be irrelevant. It's NATO military bases in mariupol and odessa Putin cared about not some nebulous sense of Ukrainian identity.
>uses falsehoods such as "denazification"
Eh, if this were all made up lies German magazines probably wouldnt be publishing photos of Ukrainian soldiers with swastika tattoos.
Zelensky actually asked Azov (the Ukrainian army batallion founded by an avowed white power advocate) to back down after he was elected to try and end the war in donbass. They told him no, presumably because they dont take orders from a Jew.
They did very badly when they tried to get elected but being able to say "fuck off we actually want to continue this war" and having your president defer to you does signal that your country has something of a nazi problem.
Iraq wasn't a NATO mission: "NATO as an organisation had no role in the 2003 campaign since opinions among members were divided."
First, all attempts were rejected. It was not that NATO was pushing some global agenda to expand. This is Putin's propaganda and it makes no sense. NATO countries were opposed to these countries joining because they didn't want to engage in a war with Russia over them. "You are not important to us enough to die for". Georgia is the opposite of Sweden in this respect.
Kremlin's propaganda is aimed at two groups: the Russian society in general, and this lands well with them as nobody wants to be the bad guy, and Westerners with an anti-American sentiment. And they're really successful. Every now and again my colleagues send me links to Mearsheimer's videos trying to convince me all this war is only the fault of the USA, NATO, Ukraine etc. Seems like everybody is guilty except Russia.
They joined the "pathway to peace" or whatever its called. That wasnt rejection that is the road to admission - the same one Ukraine joined.
>This is Putin's propaganda and it makes no sense.
Google for georgia NATO relations and click on wikipedia. Its the first thing it says. Note the lack of the term "rejection".
>Kremlin's propaganda
Im well aware of how the Kremlins propaganda operates (selective emphasis on particular truths mostly). Mearshimer isnt a kremlin operative hes an american imperialist who wants Russia to be an ally to present a united front against China.
If you and your friends were well versed in the "odessa trade unions massacre" i could imagine that youve been subjected to putins propaganda but I suspect, the flavor of propaganda you imbibe would avoid mentioning it.
>Seems like everybody is guilty except Russia.
Russia's guilty too, but you want to believe in a good guys (us) vs bad guys narrative which doesnt exist. This clash is evil empire vs. evil empire with ordinary ukrainians trapped in the middle, gladly sacrificed by chickenhawk Americans in the name of taking Russia down.
This is what Putin says. Moreover, he argues that Ukraine has never been a real country and that it is his duty to make it share the fate of Belarus.
Unfortunately, this argument completely ignores the will of Ukrainians. They did not want to join NATO because they wanted a war but because they wanted to avoid it. This is clear to any sane person. In 2014 Putin lost Ukraine so he conquered Crimea and decided to start a war in Donbas, meantime Ukrainians tried to do what they can to avoid the catastrophe, and in the end Putin decided other countries will be too scared to help Ukraine and started a full-scale war. If we let Ukrainians be slaves of Putin, we only have ourselves to blame.
Yes it is. Everything he says is propaganda, but not everything he says is false.
>Moreover, he argues that Ukraine has never been a real country
This is bullshit for the domestic propaganda mill. The equivalent of Iraqi WMDs. It's disconnected from the geostrategic reasons for the invasion.
>Unfortunately, this argument completely ignores the will of Ukrainians
Yes, just as WMDs completely ignored what was true and what was false. Grist for the propaganda mill is not designed to be true its designed to appeal to domestic audiences (& eastern ukrainians who are pissed off that their politicians are imprisoned, their media is shut down and their language rights are revoked).
>They did not want to join NATO because they wanted a war but because they wanted to avoid it.
I cant really believe that. Zelensky chose the exact point when Russia started sending troops home after months of saying "dont join NATO" to say "we are absolutely committed to joining NATO". They were years off membership at this point and had thumbed their noses at minsk 2 for six years. I cant really see any other reason to choose to say that at that particular time other than as a geopolitical "come at me, bro".
I think plenty of Ukrainians do want NATO membership purely for its defensive protection, just as cuba wanted nukes for domestic protection from US invasion.
This isnt why NATO wants Ukraine though. They want to use Ukraine as a bridgehead to balkanize Russia.
I have no idea what Zelenskys thinking but he either wanted this war, is a colossal idiot who sleptwalked into it coz he had multiple chances to avoid this invasion and turned down every one.
Ironic that you ignored the outsized role Russia played in defeating Nazi Germany, in a thread about Russia. Most historians would argue that Russia played an even larger role than the US on that front.
Perhaps it's not right, but it feels like the present-day US is a country forged out of a war. WWI brought it to the high-stakes table. Then the Great Depression was, it seems, "saved" by WWII - massive mobilisation of economy, industrialisation and subsequent recovery boom. Had WWII not happened, could the US have collapsed there and then in 1940s?
I'm getting really tired these doomer posts regarding the US. Yeah, the US spends a lot on military power (both hard and soft). Guess what, it's the world's hegemon and I'd rather have the US be there than China or Russia.