Jack Rasmus

The following is an excerpt of my recently posted blog entry, by the same title, with the long historical background commentary deleted for those not interested in the origins of the current crisis in Ukraine and march toward military conflict in that country. The essential argument is here posted: the 10 Reasons.

“Much of mainstream media continues to focus on why Russia is about to invade Ukraine. It refuses to consider the fact there are significant advantages for the US in provoking Russia to invade Ukraine. The US media, the Biden administration, and US war hawks in Congress say they are trying to discourage Putin and Russia from invading. But what they say and what they do are not the same thing. Ample evidence suggests the US and a good part of NATO want a confrontation, so long as it’s a proxy war fought between Russia and Ukraine on Ukrainian ground so that they can stand by, feed the conflagration with arms, and in the process achieve other US-NATO objectives. Just what might these other objectives of US/NATO be?

Here are at least 10 reasons why US political elites in both US parties, war hawks and military-industrial complex capitalists favor a Russian invasion of Ukraine:

1. Reunite NATO and strengthen US hegemony over it once again

In recent years—and especially since Trump—certain members in NATO have questioned whether the US is as reliable a partner to the alliance as it once was in decades past. Nations like France, and now Germany, have had growing doubts. Voices have risen within the EU that it should go its own way with its own defense and strategy. China has made major economic inroads to the EU NATO states. Europe and China are now either first or second biggest export/import traders with each other. Key Europe state leaders are very nervous about the US leading them into a conflict in Ukraine that could have very serious effects on their economy, at the very least, and at a time Europe’s economy continues to struggle to jump start a recovery from the past two years Covid precipitated recession. The US’s track record in the middle east is giving them pause as well: it achieved little, left the area in shambles, and the US then just pulled out to shift its focus on China. The European NATO allies, moreover, are also quite split among themselves. The East Europeans, the recent additions to NATO, follow the US lead in hope of more arms and troops. But big players like France and Germany are not so inclined to follow blindly. If a US provocation of conflict in Ukraine goes poorly, the risks—political and economic—for western Europe NATO states are high.

2. Get Germany to cancel the Nordstream2 Russian Gas Pipeline; get Europe to buy US gas instead; increase US natural gas exports to Europe and thereby create supply shortage in US to justify US domestic gas price hikes & US profits

Germany is particularly uncertain about following the US leading Europe into another middle east-like quagmire in Ukraine. Its new chancellor, Olaf Shultz, is especially nervous about the prospect. There is significant public opposition in Germany to becoming embroiled in Ukraine, even indirectly. And German capitalists themselves are split as well over the fate of the Nordstream2 natural gas pipeline from Russia. Germany desperately needs the supply. Russia’s gas is significantly less costly than would be purchasing natural gas from the US. For years now the US has been pressuring Germany to halt Norstream2 and buy liquefied natural gas from the US—at higher prices. Substituting US gas for Russian would also require Germany to build highly expensive new port facilities to import the US gas. US oil corporations want to sell the gas, to offload a US glut of natural gas supply. That would bring not only profits from more sales to Germany, but create shortages of supply in the US that would enable US corporations to raise prices in the US domestic market as well. The US gas corps—mostly owned by the big oil corporations—will enjoy a win-win profit. Then there’s the German and Europe uncertainty whether the US would even be able to supply the roughly 40% of natural gas Europe gets from Russia. Behind the scenes in the conflict in Ukraine is the looming gray presence of US oil companies who own and control most of US natural gas—who have had their hand in just about every American military adventure since the 1960s.

3. Create excuse to send still more troops & advanced weaponry to Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) & East Europe (Poland, Romania)

There are political forces in the US that want to arm Poland, Romania, and the Baltic countries to the hilt, including stationing nuclear weapons in their countries. Governments in the region are more than happy to bloc with these US war hawks. It means new massive funding from the US, more US arms and troops, and a boost to their economies (and to those politicians’ pockets as well no doubt).

4. Obtain more economic concessions from Ukraine for US business in exchange for more and better US/NATO arms

The US empire does not provide aide without demanding a cost. US investors and corporations have already, post-2014, penetrated deeply into the Ukraine economy. They have funded, acquired, and otherwise controlled a significant number of former all Ukrainian companies in key sectors of the economy. Biden’s son is not the only next generation representative of the US political elite (from both parties) to sit on Ukraine company boards of directors. As the US provides even more funds and weapons to Ukraine, it will exact a price in return. It will demand a still deeper further influence over the Ukraine economy and banking system. Ukrainian elites will more than welcome them, however, since the US form of economic empire integrates the colonial elites by sharing a big piece of the economic pie with them. It’s the Ukrainian workers and consumer that will have to pay the higher price in the end.

5. Grow US political support to go after Moldova to drive out Russian supporters & install US puppet regime over entire country

It is a certainty that should military conflict erupt in Ukraine, the US and its field intelligence services (CIA, State, etc.) will move on Moldova as well in some manner. Moldova is the small state located between southwest Ukraine and Romania. For years it has had an uneasy truce between Russian backed forces running half of the country and pro-western the other half. The US will attempt to change this and turn the country to full pro-western hegemony if NATO absorbs Ukraine, or perhaps even if military conflict erupts there.

6. Justify more US effort & funding to try to destabilize Belarus & Kazakhstan

It is naïve to think that US intelligence and related forces are not deeply involved in the recent public demonstrations and protests in both Belarus and Kazakhstan, the latter just weeks ago as tensions have risen in the Ukraine. At a minimum, the US is testing the extent of anti-Russian opposition in these countries, which are closely aligned economically and politically with Russia. Russia has helped these governments put down the demonstrations, some of which, as in Kazakhstan, were especially violent uprisings. Should the US ‘turn’ Ukraine fully toward NATO it is certain the US will intensify its efforts to further destabilize Belarus and Kazakhstan on Russia’s borders. They will be the next ‘Ukraine-like’ targets, following the template for Ukraine that began with 2014 and now culminating in 2022.

7. Provide major foreign policy distraction for Democrat party before November 2022 midterms

One cannot discount the potential advantages for the sitting president and party (Democrats) of a foreign policy issue such as Ukraine. It allows Biden and the party to ‘look tough’ in an election year, which always seems especially to add support for the party that ‘gets tough with Russia’—so long as it doesn’t lead to direct conflict with the US. Ukraine is a classic US proxy war possibility—the kind the US prefers to fight at a distance and on the ground of another country (Ukraine) using its own troops.

8. Get Congress to approve a further increase in US defense budget in addition to $778B

The US wars in the middle east are over. It will take time to build up new technological weaponry and forces to confront China in Asia. The US is behind in several key technological areas. The US deal to provide Australia with latest US nuclear subs is just one such example of how the US build up in the Pacific will not occur overnight. It will take time to build those subs in Australia. A proxy war in the Ukraine serves as a convenient interim excuse not to reduce defense spending as the US withdraws from the middle east but actually to raise it still more.

US defense spending is clearly out of control. Pentagon spending alone is now $778 billion, and continues to rise even after the US withdrawal from the middle east. However, total US defense spending is well over $1 trillion a year when other departments of government are included as well: Energy, State, AEC, Homeland Security, CIA, NSA, DARPA, etc.) The MIC never wastes time encouraging the US to get into another conflict once it ends one in order to prevent defense spending cuts post-war: Once the USSR imploded in the late-eighties/early nineties the military bete noir became Saddam Hussein. That fueled the 1991 first Gulf War and continued war spending thereafter and turned US attention to the middle east. The US intervention in Somalia in the 1990s and Balkans kept it going. The next convenient enemy was the ‘Terrorist Threat’ in wake of 9-11 attack in the US. That fueled defense and war spending still further over the next two decades, including wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the current US proxy war in Yemen. Now that the US has withdrawn from the middle east direct wars, it needs a new enemy to keep the war spending going. It will take time to build up China as the target. In the interim, however, Ukraine and Russia will do nicely to keep Congress flowing dollars to the US military-industrial complex war machine.

9. Excuse to go after pro-Russian supporters: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba again

A protracted conflict in Ukraine could eventually lead to a spread of the conflict to other ‘proxy’ nations. For Russia that means Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Given a war in Ukraine, war hawks in the US will no doubt find justification to go after these countries with renewed destabilization efforts run by US intelligence units and even perhaps US special ops forces.

10.Test effectiveness of latest US weaponry against Russian forces & Russian weaponry effectiveness against US without having to directly confront Russia; get Russia to reveal state of its cyber capability

Proxy wars provide a good excuse to test new weaponry of the US in a third country battlefield. That means not only testing how well offensive US weapons perform against Russian defenses, but how well Russian weapons perform against US defenses. Weaknesses inevitably appear, permitting the correction and upgrading of the weaponry for potential future use elsewhere. But they are only discernible on a real battlefield. The US especially is interested in testing its cybersecurity weaponry while getting Russia to reveal the extent of much of its capability. Another area of interest to the US military is to test how well US anti-armor missiles perform and how well US/NATO missiles perform against Russian anti-missile systems (like its S-500).

Dr. Jack Rasmus

February 18, 2022