Retired US Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has made a last-minute Christmas Eve appeal to Congress to urgently approve more weapons to Ukraine before it’s too late.
“We’ve got to provide the military support to Ukraine. Their cause is just,” Stavridis said in an interview with New York billionaire John Catsimatidis on Sunday.
“It is a very dangerous situation. And here the real action is actually not in Kiev. The real action is in Washington,” the ex-NATO military commander said, confirming Moscow’s long-standing view that the Ukrainian crisis is not really a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but a “proxy war” between Russia and NATO in which Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder for the sake of Washington’s geopolitical interests.
Citing the ‘success’ of the US strategy to date in targeting Russian forces “without a single US soldier being killed or even placed at risk,” Stavridis stressed that the strategy has cost Washington only “the equivalent of 5 percent of the US annual [defense] budget.”
“We can afford to do this, and we should. So I’m worried about the war in Ukraine only if the US and our European allies fail to live up to the commitment we’ve made to support Ukraine,” Stavridis said.
The retired admiral went on to push another proxy war he apparently thinks the US should get involved in, citing “Iranian bad behavior” as the cause of escalating tensions in the Middle East amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“The Iranians are encouraging a rebel group known as the Houthis to attack shipping in the Red Sea and the north Arabian Sea. They are encouraging Hezbollah, a terrorist group to the north of Israel to continue to inflame the situation there. Above all they’re giving direct military support to Hamas. So in response the United States has sent two carrier strike groups, a Marine expeditionary unit, half a dozen squadrons of attack aircraft, so that unfortunately the possibility of this Israel-Hamas war expanding to include combat from Iran with the United States getting involved, John we just can’t rule that out,” Stavridis said.
The former NATO commander made headlines earlier this year over his hawkish sentiments regarding the Ukrainian crisis. This summer, Stavridis suggested that NATO forces should be deployed in the Black Sea to target Russian warships if they tried to stop ships streaming into and out of Ukrainian ports, ignoring the potential for such a strategy to spark World War III.
Stavridis has also been outspoken in his opposition to forces inside the US which he fears could prompt Washington to scale back its global imperial activities. Earlier this month, he warned that a second Trump presidency “would be an enormous strategic and historical failure on the part of our nation.” Trump has said repeatedly that he could end the Ukrainian conflict in “24 hours,” without elaborating how.
The US and its allies have doled out nearly $200 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine to date, with Western officials desperately brainstorming ways to continue sending more cash east amid faltering public support and growing economic difficulties at home.
Among the measures under debate is the possible illegal seizure of $300 billion in frozen Russian assets and their delivery to Kiev, having Germany pick up the slack for Washington amid the congressional deadlock over additional Ukraine aid, and other proposals.
Across the Atlantic, European officials have echoed Stavridis’ pleas for more Ukraine support, and expressed concerns that the elections to the European Parliament next June could sweep them from power. “If we don’t change course rapidly, if we don’t mobilize all our capacities, it will let [Russian President Vladimir] Putin win the war in Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told British media on Sunday.
Further US aid to Kiev has been lumped in among a $105 billion funding package which also promises additional assistance to Israel, money for US efforts to challenge China in Asia, and resources to address the crisis at the US’ southern border with Mexico.
The House adjourned in mid-December without reaching a deal on the mammoth new funding package, with the Senate doing so on Wednesday. The House is expected to reconvene on January 2, with senators returning to Washington on January 8.