Secretary of State Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley stated on 28 January that a military standoff over Ukraine is not inevitable and that "a diplomatic outcome is the way to go here". Nevertheless, US President Joe Biden announced on Friday that he would dispatch American military personnel to NATO allies in Eastern Europe in the "near term", with 8,500 US troops having been placed on alert earlier this week.
Moscow has repeatedly shredded the "invasion scare" peddled by the US and its NATO allies as nonsensical.
'Current Crisis Over Ukraine is Result of US-Backed 2014 Coup'
The position of the United States government on Russia and Ukraine is "certifiably insane", according to former US Senate candidate and investigative journalist Mark Dankof.
Per Dankof, the recent East European crisis can be "boiled it down" to the three essential facts:
· First, the US lied to then-Soviet leader Gorbachev when it promised not to recruit ex-Soviet republics for NATO membership, or to move American and NATO military assets and exercises closer to Russia's borders.
· Second, "the current crisis over Ukraine is the direct result of an illegal American and EU coup d'etat in Kiev in February of 2014 which overthrew the legally elected government there."
· Third, "the United States has absolutely no true national security interest in meddling in what is none of our business in Russia's backyard".
Meanwhile, Washington's attempt to simultaneously "hold a dagger at Russia, Iran, and China's throats" in their respective backyards is dangerous for the US, which is overstretching itself, according to the investigative journalist.
11 December 2021, 14:00 GMT
What's Behind US Politicians' Calls for War?
However, the bottom line of the bellicose American rhetoric is that it is fanned by influential neo-conservative NGOs and is generously sponsored by US defence contractors, Dankof notes.
To illustrate his point, the investigative journalist refers to a 20 January Washington Post op-ed written by Michael Vickers, ex-American undersecretary of defence for intelligence and a former special forces and CIA operations officer. Vickers advocated moving US combat aircraft and ships forward to Europe to deter Russia. If Moscow does not back down and invades Ukraine, the "US strategy should shift to deterrence by punishment", according to the former CIA operations officer.
Vickers insists that the "punishment" should be broader than tough anti-Russia sanctions, and include fomenting a guerrilla war against the Russians in Ukraine; stepping up the resistance to Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus; and "employ[ing] cyber and other covert means to undermine Putin’s rule in Russia".
"The Post failed to mention that Vickers is on the Board of Directors of the British BAE Systems, the largest weapons company in Europe, and whose stock value rose 10% in this crisis", remarks Mark Dankof.
10 December 2021, 15:01 GMT
US Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi in early December 2021 discussed the idea of a preventive nuclear action against Russia in case of escalation in the Ukrainian internal crisis. The senator came under heavy criticism from both sides of the US political spectrum for his remarks. However, Wicker has long been advocating for a US "muscular foreign policy", apparently appeasing US defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Atomics, which have offices in his state.
This club is joined by Republican Congressman Michael R. Turner of Ohio's 10th Congressional District, which includes Dayton's Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), according to Dankof. Earlier this month, Turner, the new top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, urged Biden to step up military and intelligence support for Ukraine.
It's not only Republicans who are beating the drums of war: Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and ex-Obama administration official Evelyn Farkas called on Joe Biden to "impose military costs" on Moscow and "use our military to roll back Russians", as Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic remarked in his latest op-ed for the WaPo.
This bipartisan interventionist consensus is "all about maintaining the supremacy of the Western central banking system, the American petrodollar, the profits of armaments manufacturers", according to Dankof.
"There is no dialogue, only a pack of lies backed by military deployments and threats, economic sanctions and blackmail, black operational subversions in these countries, all couched in diplomatic language and the Orwellian use of terms like 'democracy', 'human rights', and 'negotiations'", he says.
29 January 2022, 15:47 GMT
Zelensky Realises That the West's Alarmism Harms Ukraine
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian leadership appears to have become weary of the US-backed hysteria, especially as the US president and NATO chief made it clear that they would not be directly involved in a potential Russo-Ukrainian standoff.
"There are signals even from respected leaders of states, they just say that tomorrow there will be war. This is panic - how much does it cost for our state?" Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference on 28 January, stressing that he did not see a greater threat now than during a similar concentration of Russian troops last spring. According to Zelensky, the "destabilisation of the situation" inside Ukraine poses a far bigger threat.
Speaking to the BBC earlier this month, Ukraine’s Security Council chief Oleksiy Danilov noted that Western allies are fuelling panic which by no means benefits Ukraine. Danilov suggested that alarmist statements made by the US and NATO leaders were prompted by domestic and geopolitical interests.
"Perhaps Zelensky realises that he's in over his head in this", says Dankof. "The European members of NATO need to reflect on their respective situations as well. Their own innocent populations will be the first to be hit en masse. For what? Joe Biden? Lloyd Austin? Michael Vickers? Mike Turner?"