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Previously: Bulletin 298: (04/25/22) Talk on pits & renewed U.S. nuclear weapons production Tuesday evening 4/26/22; antiwar billboard; what you can do

Bulletin 299: Emergency call to action: stop Biden's proposed $33 billion war escalation

April 28, 2022

Dear friends and colleagues --

In news that ought to shock every person who cares about the well-being of this country and the world, this morning President Biden called for an additional $33 billion in war aid to Ukraine.

We are appalled, nauseated, frightened, and angry.

It is very important right now for everyone, in whatever ways are possible for you, to individually and collectively make known your opposition to continuing and escalating the war in Ukraine.* (*We have written about this previously [Bulletins 292, 293, 294, and 298]; also see right hand column here).

Your opposition must be public, clear, and as politically forceful as you can manage.

The best guides to effectiveness are the political pain felt by adversaries, and the sacrifices we ourselves make (as Gandhi said). Purely virtual opposition, e.g. on social media, will make no difference if that is where it stays.

In the present atmosphere of propaganda and totalitarian control of mainstream discourse, "support for Ukraine" has nothing to do with helping "Ukraine." "Supporting Ukraine" means escalating the war, while supporting U.S. empire and oligarchic control by antidemocratic elites here and in Europe. As Caitlin Johnstone rightly says, "Siding With The US Empire Is Always Wrong."

Whatever you can do, please do it now. Flooding a war zone with massive shipments of weapons will only harm everyone. We are very close to an unseen threshold that leads inexorably to wider war.

Whatever else you may think about this war -- who is most at fault and blah blah blah -- even now, we in the West are sacrificing universally-cherished values on the altar of war, profit, and empire.

(Billboard for Interstate 25 north of Albuquerque, now at the printer's)

Now is the time, please.

Background:

Politico's summary of Biden's war appeal:

The Biden administration is asking Congress for a massive new $33 billion funding request to bolster Ukraine’s military as its war with Russia enters its ninth week, ensuring that Washington, and Europe, remain all in on beating back Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

The package, which is by far the largest single funding proposal of the war and dwarfs the annual defense budgets of most nations, comes as Ukraine and Russia face off in a pivotal battle in Ukraine’s east that will rely on high-tech weaponry such as drones, aircraft and long-range artillery — all things that NATO countries have pumped into the country in recent weeks.

The proposal includes more than $20 billion in new military and security assistance, including new authority to quickly transfer weapons to Ukraine out of military stocks and supercharging a Pentagon program to arm its military. The administration is also proposing billions in economic and humanitarian aid as part of the package.

The massive dollar amount requested also sends a signal to Russia that the United States intends to back Ukraine in the fight for the long run. It will also likely boost Ukrainians who say they want to defeat Russia, not merely settle for a long-term stalemate.

The $20 billion in military aid includes $5 billion in additional authority to transfer weapons and equipment to Ukraine from U.S. inventories, $6 billion for the Ukraine security assistance initiative and $4 billion for the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program.

“The president’s funding request is what we believe is needed to enable Ukraine’s success over the next five months of this war,” an administration official told reporters on a call Wednesday. “And we have every expectation that our partners and allies … will continue to provide comparable levels of assistance going forward.”

The latest request comes after Congress approved nearly $14 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine last month [March 15, 2022], including billions to fund deployments of thousands more U.S. troops in Europe and to replenish depleted U.S. stocks of weapons shipped to Kyiv.

The recently-updated SIPRI Military Expenditure Database tells us that $33 B is larger than the 2021 military budgets of every country on earth except ten: the U.S., China, India, UK, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea.

The military and economic aid package for Ukraine proposed today is half of Russia's entire military budget for 2021 ($66 B, from the same source).

Military aid is also flowing to Ukraine from European countries. As part of his sales pitch, Biden's letter to Speaker Pelosi remarks that "...we expect our NATO allies and EU partners will be making even larger collective contributions than the United States" to support the war against Russia in Ukraine (and possibly elsewhere).

In other words, "our NATO allies and EU partners" are fully on-board, says Biden. Not only is U.S. military aid amplified by theirs, he says, but -- implicitly -- U.S. leadership of Europe could be damaged without approval of this latest, huge, aid package.

The U.S. is already involved in this war in many ways -- directly, through NATO (an alliance the U.S. largely controls), and by U.S. endorsement of separate actions by NATO member states. We have provided equipment, training (over 8 years), covert advisors/participants on the battlefield, and real-time battlefield intelligence, which is being used to target not just Russian assets in Ukraine and the contested Donbas territories but also in Crimea and (other) Russian territory as well as, apparently, Russian ships in international waters.

In other words, the U.S. is now directly waging war against the Russian Federation and doing so more and more openly. I don't think the U.S. has ever fought Russia directly -- or the former Soviet Union for that matter, at least since 1920.

The stakes are very high. As Russia continues to grind down the Ukrainian army, units of which are forbidden to surrender by Zelensky's brutal edict, U.S. and European elites are doubling down and then doubling down again.

Alastair Crooke explains why ("The Dynamics of Escalation: ‘Standing With Ukraine’," Monday 25 Apr 2022):

The conviction that the European liberal vision faces humiliation and disdain, were Putin to ‘win’, has taken hold. And in the Obama-Clinton-Deep State nexus, it is unimaginable that Putin and Russia still regarded as the author of Russiagate for many Americans, might prevail.

The logic to this conundrum is inexorable – Escalation....

The Washington Post already is reporting that “the Biden Administration is shrugging off fresh Russian warnings against providing Ukrainian forces with more advanced arms and new training – in what appears to be a calculated risk Moscow won’t escalate the war”.

The EU élites, by contrast, are not just persuaded (Hungary and one faction in Germany, apart) by the logic of escalation, they are frankly intoxicated by it. At the Munich Conference in February, it was as if the EU leaders were intent on out-bidding each other in their enthusiasm for war: Josep Borrell re-confirmed his commitment to a military solution in Ukraine: “Yes, normally wars have been won or lost on the battlefield”, he said upon arrival for a meeting of the EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg, when asked to comment on his previous statement that “this war will be won on the battlefield”.

Their euphoria is centred around the belief that the EU – for the first time – is wielding its economic power in a globally significant way, and, at the same time, enabling and arming a proxy war against Russia (through imagining the EU as a real Carolingian empire, actually winning on the battlefield!).

The euphoria of the EU élites – so completely de-coupled from national identities and local interests, and loyal rather to a cosmopolitan vision in which men and women of consequence network endlessly amongst themselves and bask in their peer approval – is opening deep polarisation within their own societies....

The Euro-élites are on a crusade – too highly invested in the emotional charge and euphoria of the Ukraine ‘cause’ to have even considered a Plan ‘B’. (emphasis added)

As we have said since 2015, the long-standing goal of U.S. involvement in Ukraine is to weaken and break Russia's sovereignty. Patrick Lawrence, yesterday ("Ukraine & the Strength of Nonalignment," Consortium News, 27 Apr 2022):

During and since their weekend visit to Kiev to promise the regime more weaponry, Austin and Blinken have made it terrifyingly clear that the true objective of the U.S.–NATO campaign in Ukraine is just as the more honest among us have said from the start: This is about “weakening Russia,” as the two secretaries put it — subjugating Russia, in other words, crushing it.

Have two not-quite-competent American officials just declared the start of World War III? Let me know when it is all right to express concern about the danger of a nuclear exchange without being called a treasonous propagandist in Moscow’s behalf.

There is a widespread misconception that the U.S. and NATO can defeat Russia -- with China at its back -- once and for all. This Bulletin is too short to explain why that view is mistaken. Understanding what's at stake, and recalling what happened to their country in World War II -- and more recently in the Yeltsin years -- the Russian people have rallied around Putin. Western economies and societies are far more fragile than Russia's.

What are the risks of escalation, nuclear and otherwise, in Europe and here? Yesterday Russian president Putin, speaking to the Council of Lawmakers in St. Petersburg, said:

But I would also like to note something I spoke about at the beginning of the special military operation. Let me emphasise once again: if anyone intends to intervene from the outside and create a strategic threat to Russia that is unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast. We have the tools we need for this, the likes of which no one else can claim at this point. We will not just brag; we will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know this; we have made all the decisions on this matter. (emphasis added)

Today Southfront offered this assessment ("Military Situation On Donetsk Front On 28 April 2022 And Forecast Of Conflict’s Development," 28 Apr 2022):

NATO countries have stepped up arms deliveries to Kiev, including heavy military equipment and advanced weaponry. The likelihood that the conflict in Ukraine will escalate into a full-scale direct and open war between NATO and Russia by the summer of 2022 is extremely high. Recent statements and actions of the US and EU leadership show that the decision to enter into a war with Russia soon is likely to have been made. (emphasis added)

We agree with this assessment. America's senile President and the incompetent boobs around him are leading this country and Europe toward war -- real, physical war, not just propaganda war, the only kind they understand. And it's happening very fast.

Back in 2015 Joaquin Flores wrote:

When the methods of Information War in Fourth Generation Warfare are used in Total War, it results in a war upon the psyche, a war upon cognition, a war upon our very conception and understanding of reality. This will be an increasing feature of our relationship with reality." (“Russia vs. US: Total War is the Obliteration of Reality,” Fort Russ (blog, now gone or blocked), July 2015)

We've got to step up now, leaving long-standing habits of passivity and cynicism behind. There's community and fellowship to be had in standing up together. We can rediscover that.

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group

PS: If you would like to help contribute to the above billboard or the coming newspaper ads, please do! Thank you!