What is Behind Washington's Persistence in Funding Ukraine Despite Public Sentiment?
14:45 GMT 29.09.2022 (Updated: 20:57 GMT 19.10.2022)
CC BY-SA 4.0 / Juliusz Sabak / M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)
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Moscow has repeatedly denounced the continuous flow of weapons to Kiev from Ukraine’s western allies, first and foremost the US, which Russia claims “has actually turned Washington into a part of the Ukraine conflict”.
Despite the current “intense propaganda to ‘support Ukraine’” in the United Stated, “most US citizens could not find Ukraine on a map,” Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and author, has told Sputnik.
Sterling suggested that “if it was put to a vote, most US citizens would oppose the transfer of all these tens of billions in weapons to Ukraine.”
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced a further $1.1 billion in security assistance for Kiev, bringing Washington’s commitment to more than $16.2 billion since the beginning of the ongoing Russian special military operation on February 24.
The announcement came as a new poll revealed that almost half of US citizens are opposed to sending military assistance to Ukraine if the US is not involved in diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict. The survey, conducted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also revealed that roughly 58% of respondents would oppose the US providing military assistance to Ukraine at current levels if their own country suffers higher gas prices and a higher cost of goods.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that Washington allocating more hefty financing to the Kiev regime “has actually turned Washington into a part of the Ukraine conflict”.
27 September 2022, 21:57 GMT
When asked why Washington is now engaging in yet another unpopular military conflict overseas, Sterling asserted that the US is “the land of imperial impunity” and that “despite the costly disasters of foreign policy going back to Vietnam, the [US] foreign policy elite pays no price and continues”.
“US foreign policy is bipartisan - most Democrats and Republicans agree on US exceptionalism and hegemony. With media support of US foreign policy, the public goes along until the costs are clear. Support for record transfers to Ukraine is very thin. Working class and poor [people] are rightly wondering why there is no money for essential services at home,” Sterling commented.
He remained downbeat about chances that the US government would listen to the sentiments of its citizens, reflected in the poll, describing the US as “a class system with working and lower middle class with no influence despite their being a majority of the population”.
The journalist referred to the US “foreign policy elite”, which “determines policy according to the interests of military contractors, Wall Street corporations and others who depend on US global supremacy”. Sterling stressed that “Some of the key people running US policy today have been there for over 20 years,” including President Joe Biden and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who “have learned nothing from past failures” and “persist in promoting US aggression and provocations, trying to sustain US hegemony.”
'Three Things' That May Erode US' 'GroupThink' on Ukraine
Touching upon the Quincy Institute poll in an interview with Sputnik, former US Senate candidate Mark Dankof, for his part, singled out “three things” that “have now begun to erode the GroupThink on Ukraine while heightening worries among Americans in more recent months about neo-Conservative and neo-Interventionist policies toward” Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia.
According to Dankof, the first aspect pertains to “the idiotically calamitous economic war of attrition waged by the United States and the EU”, which “has backfired both in terms of precipitous increases in consumer prices, especially in energy and food”. Secondly, the ex-Senate candidate went on, “Biden's refusal to do anything to stem the tide of people illegally crossing into the United States has exacerbated political, demographic, and economic fault lines entering the November off-year elections”.
“Thirdly, at least some of the American public has begun to register concern over the possibility of a global war with a nuclear power over a country and situation not directly relevant in any sense of the word to the national security of the United States. This war might add China, Iran, and possibly India to the considerable might of the Russian military itself,” Dankof underlined.
He argued that the US government “doesn't really give a damn about its citizens, their sentiments, or ‘democracy’”, and that Washington “will only care when lack of food, potable water, and affordable housing and energy produce a level of fury in the populous that brings a confrontation between those who govern and those enslaved that can only produce one winner.”
On Washington injecting huge sums into the Ukraine fund, he stressed that it comes “in the midst of [the US’] $32 trillion dollar national debt, a $6 trillion dollar increase in money supply (M2) in the last two years which has ignited inflation, coming increases in interest rates which now threaten economic recession, the war-zone violence enshrouding American cities, and ongoing chronic problems with American infrastructure and crises in the educational and health realms.”
Wondering how “bankrolling” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “helps average American citizens in crisis in their own communities”, Dankof said that it doesn’t, “unless conscripting American kids to fight in World War III is considered a viable policy”.
9 September 2022, 12:45 GMT
The former Senate candidate also voiced his most serious concern over “the evidence that the criminally-oriented American GloboHomo cabal has raised the stakes in new levels of criminality”. GloboHomo, a philosophy endorsed by the western economic elite, is formally known as “neoliberalism”.
“The Odessa Trade Union fire of 2014 was evil enough. But now we see new lethal attacks on civilians in Donbass by Zelensky's forces, the [Darya] Dugina Assassination in Moscow, and what may well prove to be direct American involvement in sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines. How much further will the Cabal go to achieve its vision of a monolithic control of a world government? That is the compelling question of the hour,” Dankof concluded.
On February 24, Russia launched a special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, with the US and its allies responding by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Russia and ramping up their military support for Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly slammed the West for its weapon supplies to Kiev, with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warning that "any weapon, any arms shipment on the Ukrainian territory" would be considered “a legitimate target” by the Russian military.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova for her part stressed that “Washington has once again demonstrated how much it has lost touch with reality, having actually become a party” to the Ukraine conflict. According to her, “further evidence of this is the US Congress recently agreeing on the allocation of a new assistance package to the Kiev regime worth almost $12 billion”.
