For immediate release May 16, 2022

Grave dangers loom in Ukraine war votes and escalations; opportunities open for journalists and citizens

We urge news media to widen debate, pose questions, create accountability

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Permalink * Prior press releases

Albuquerque, NM -- We believe the unprecedented lack of debate, speed, and scale, of executive and congressional war actions against nuclear-armed Russia, in the absence of any prior specific or credible national security threat to the United States, and in the absence of any diplomatic efforts whatsoever, instead with the stated intent to deepen and extend the war "months or years" for purposes that now explicitly include the destruction of Russia's military and hence sovereignty -- constitute a grave danger to United States.

This danger is unprecedented and unbounded. Even throughout the Cold War, the U.S. was not participating daily in targeting and killing Russian soldiers in war, as is now happening. In these U.S. government actions, and the breakneck way they are occurring, we see severe threats to U.S. democracy, national security, economy, and society in both the short and the long term.

We also see in these rapid, extremely consequential decisions, taken without significant debate, an objective "tell" for deeper changes we have been seeing in our national politics that transcend this particular issue -- changes in how the public as well as government are informed, form opinions, and how the U.S. government functions, or doesn't.

In short, we see a relatively sudden decline of democracy from an already low level, and a dysfunctional federal government out of touch with reality. Some but not all of these changes are coming from what we see as the great and rising dominance of national security institutions.

These same negative qualities of a) lack of debate, b) speed, c) scale, and d) creation of unnecessary risk do create opportunities for news media and citizens alike. The field of leadership is wide open. If there were ever a time for journalistic curiosity and professionalism -- and for all of us, moral courage and intellectual freedom -- this is it.

We urge members of the news media as well as citizens to immediately request explanations from members of Congress for their legislative actions vis-a-vis the Ukraine war, getting members on the record and to the extent possible asking the obvious tough questions before this week's Senate vote.

Being based in New Mexico, we urge the New Mexico media to press our own delegation regarding U.S.-led escalations of the Ukraine war.

Comments can be found below.

Briefest background

H.R.7691, the "Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022," which would make $40 billion in "emergency supplemental appropriations for assistance for the situation in Ukraine for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, and for other purposes"), was introduced in the House on May 10 and passed that same day by a recorded vote of 368-57. All the nays were Republicans.

The bill has gone to the Senate for consideration. Leaders of both parties seek fast-track passage. Senator Rand Paul (speech) opposes the bill. We do not know who else in the Senate does, or will.

The Senate will take up this bill this afternoon at 3:00 EDT. New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich is one of the senators urging no further debate (cloture) on the bill.

One Senate icon of the political left, Bernie Sanders, apparently does not oppose the bill. “We should always have a debate, but the problem is that Ukraine is in the middle of a very intense war right now. I think every day counts, and I think we have to respond as strongly and vigorously as we can.” (undated remarks cited in "Democrats fund Ukraine war at the expense of American workers," Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site, 11 May 2022).

Prior to this bill some $14 B in spending packages for the Ukraine war had already been approved over the war's first 10 weeks. ("Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?", Glenn Greenwald, May 10, 2022, so with passage of H.R. 7691 the total U.S. spending on the war would rise to $54 B.

This is a gigantic amount of money. Greenwald again:

While a small portion of these funds will go to humanitarian aid for Ukraine, the vast majority will go into the coffers of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the usual suspects. Some of it will go to the CIA for unspecified reasons. The extreme speed with which this was all approved means there is little to no oversight over how the funds will be spent, who will profit and how much, and what the effects will be for Ukraine and the world.

To put this $54 billion amount in perspective, it is (a) larger than the average annual amount that the U.S. spent on its own war in Afghanistan ($46 billion), (b) close to the overall amount Russia spends on its entire military for the year ($69 billion), (c) close to 7% of the overall U.S. military budget, by far the largest in the world ($778 billion), and (d) certain to be far, far higher — easily into the hundreds of billions of dollars and likely the trillion dollar level — given that U.S. officials insist that this war will last not months but years, and that it will stand with Ukraine until the bitter end. ("The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package to Raytheon and CIA: 'For Ukraine'," Glenn Greenwald, May 14, 2022).

Abandonment of prior war opposition by the progressives in Congress and among prominent nuclear arms control figures is a momentous political realignment ("American progressives join the War Party," James Carden, Asia Times, May 6, 2022).

Americans care about this war. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, while a strong majority of Americans back sanctions against Russia and aid to Ukraine, 72% oppose the United States taking direct military action against Russian forces. (That is exactly what is happening, behind the thinnest of veils.)

When Noam Chomsky says that Donald Trump, whom he otherwise regards as a deeply dangerous figure, is the one U.S. statesman in the West "who has made a sensible statement about how you can solve the crisis" in Ukraine, you can be sure that the politics of this issue are interesting, and wide-open.

You can easily find speeches opposing H.R. 7691, all from Republicans. The questions they pose are certainly germane.

Some might ask why this proposed war funding should not be taken directly from the existing U.S. military budget, which is huge. Clearly, adding to that bloated budget under "emergency" pretenses destabilizes already-tenuous democratic oversight of national security budgets and functions.

Even the New York Times, a staunch supporter of the war in Ukraine, is questioning this process:

[L]awmakers in both political parties who have previously railed against skyrocketing military budgets and entanglements in intractable conflicts abroad have gone largely silent about what is fast becoming a major military effort drawing on American resources….many lawmakers have put aside their skepticism and quietly agreed to the sprawling tranches of aid, keeping to themselves their concerns about the war and questions about the Biden administration’s strategy for American involvement….And as Mr. Biden’s requests to Congress for money to fund the war effort have spiraled upward, leaders in both parties have largely refrained from questioning them…..The result has been that, at least for now, Congress is quickly and nearly unanimously embracing historic tranches of foreign aid with little public debate about the Biden administration’s strategy, whether the volume of military assistance could escalate the conflict, or whether domestic priorities are being pushed aside to accommodate the huge expenditures overseas. ("House Passes $40 Billion More in Ukraine Aid, With Few Questions Asked," Catie Edmondson and Emily Cochrane, May 10, 2022).

In response to this crisis, the Los Alamos Study Group has been active in various small ways -- internal and public discussions, a billboard ("Educate yourself. Oppose the war."), and a few published writings and discussions available on this draft, incomplete web page.

Comments

Study Group director Greg Mello: "The war in Ukraine is a grave national commitment that touches upon the nature of the United States, the future of what democracy remains here, and even our physical survival.

"It is very important not to throw more gasoline on the Ukraine fire. When there is a fire, and lives are at stake, the most important thing is not to indulge in a frenzy of blame about who or what might have caused the fire, but to put cooling water on it. The worst would be to pour on more explosive fuel, but that's exactly what we are doing.

"We need diplomacy, not weapons. Sending more weapons to Ukraine, and otherwise helping Ukraine fight, will only kill more Ukrainians and Russians. We are using Ukrainian farmers and shopkeepers, young, old, and in between, literally as cannon fodder. The U.S. is destroying Ukraine in order to save it. From what, exactly?

"News organizations and Congress appear to be caught up in a vicious, self-amplifying cycle of war hysteria, based far less on reason and rationality than on our own propaganda -- and on political loyalties and objectives, media and military contractor profits, and the group-think that develops in closed bureaucracies. The all-but-leaderless White House is one such bureaucracy. The war hysteria we see has nothing noble about it. It is pure jingoism and blood-lust and it is despicable.

"This war, in both its military and economic aspects, is not isolated in space or time. Its effects are likely to spread over the whole world. Deepening and extending the war against Russia will directly and indirectly cause the deaths of millions as commodities run short and supply chains break down. Extending the war will hamper international cooperation on existential issues like climate, food, and energy. There will be civil disorders, as economies come under increasing pressure. Governments will fall and some will fail altogether. Under enough strain, societies are likely to split along existing fault lines such as race or religion. Financial crises may occur. Frozen military conflicts may flare up and new ones arise. None of this will be under anybody's "control."

"It is likely that the economic warfare being practiced by the broader West against Russia will accelerate global realignment along more pragmatic and frankly more peaceful lines, more favorable to China and Russia and less favorable to the West. Sanctions are another form of war, after all. The neoconservatives which now run U.S. policy are overplaying the U.S. hand, to the detriment of all.

"In some ways the 8-year Ukraine war is a continuation of World War II, because of the strong Nazi and related far-right participation in Ukraine's government and armed forces. The atrocities committed over this recent period* by today's Right Sector, Azov Battalion, and related formations as well as by Zelensky's own actions are echoes of those committed by Ukrainian ultranationalists during World War II. The U.S. protected Ukrainian mass murderers from prosecution after that war because they were thought useful in the Cold War struggle against the old Soviet Union. The U.S. is using ideologically-similar groups to do much the same thing today.

"This is also the first true military battle of World War III. It is being conducted to degrade and defeat Russia, in part to gain access to Russia's resources and take Russia "out of the game" in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, which is deemed an essential first step in controlling and defeating a rising China. Control over Eurasia has been an Anglo-American goal for more than a century, going back to before World War I. The Ukraine war is that old disease breaking out with fresh virulence."

(End of comments)

*Violent Nazism in Ukraine and its substantial control over the Ukrainian government is one of the best-documented realities in modern political history. To pick just one recent source from dozens over the past eight years, see "One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition," Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy, GrayZone, April 17, 2022.

***ENDS***