Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky

Moon Over Alabama

The U.S. has responded to the security demands Russia had laid out in two draft treaties. It has rejected all major ones and is only willing to negotiate on secondary issues. Russia will response to that within a few weeks.

Meanwhile the U.S. is still claiming that Russia intends to attack the Ukraine any moment now. But the Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky publicly disagrees with that false evaluation. He sees no war coming and wants to avoid one as much as possible. That might mean that he has to be removed before a war can be launched.

Alastair Crooke sets this into the larger U.S. strategy:

The key to China’s security riposte to the U.S. is linked to two words that go unstated in U.S. formal policy documents, but whose silent presence nevertheless suffuses and colour-washes the text of the 2022 National Defence Authorisation Act.

The term ‘containment’ never appears, neither does the word ‘encirclement’. Yet, as Professor Michael Klare writes, the Act “provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory; and potentially to cripple its economy in any future crisis”.

The current attempt to isolate Russia is part of the overall scheme:

The point here is that ‘encirclement’ and ‘containment’ effectively have become Biden’s default foreign policy. The attempt to cement-in this meta-doctrine currently is being enacted out via Russia (as the initial step). The essential buy-in by Europe is the ‘party-piece’ to Russia’s physical containment and encirclement.The EU is coming under intense pressure from Washington to commit to sanctions – the financial ‘mode’ to encirclement – as EU officials negotiate what would be considered their ‘red line’. Jake Sullivan however, made the new doctrine and what he expects from Europe very clear last November, when he said: “we want the terms of the [international] system to be favourable to American interests and values: It is rather, a favourable disposition in which the U.S. and its allies can shape the international rules of the road on the sorts of issues that are fundamentally going to matter to the people of [America] …”.

The above is by now quite obvious and it makes it a joke that the U.S. is urging China to push Russia to agree with the U.S. Beijing would do that to then become the next target?

I have written that there is no threat of a Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Others have come to similar conclusions:

The notion that Russia is massing troops with an intent of attack doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. First, Russia not unreasonably has service members near its borders. Those who want to depict Russia as a a belligerent are throwing in units not stationed close enough to be part of a strike force. Moreover, while it’s hard to get good numbers, any increase has not been huge (on the order of 100,000 soldiers) and took place early in 2021, contrary to claims of aggressive increases in October and November. On top of that, Russia has not put in place the logistical support needed for combat, such as medical teams. By contrast, the first sign the US was serious about invading Iraq was that it started pre-positioning hospital ships nine months before the attack.

The U.S. wants to ‘secure’ Europe as a proxy force that can be used against Russia and China. The way to do that is by pushing Russia into an invasion of the Ukraine and to then proclaim that it is ‘threatening Europe’. In consequence the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline, on which Germany’s energy security depends, would never be used to provide gas from Russia. Europe’s economy would falter and it would become more dependent on the United States. It would come under full NATO control and could then be pushed to help with the great isolation of China.

But how can the U.S. push Russia to invade the Ukraine? Events in the spring of last year demonstrated how it can be done:

Last March 24, the Ukrainian president decreed that Ukraine would take Crimea back from Russia, with “military measures” to achieve “de-occupation.” The U.S. and NATO voiced “unwavering” support.

In April NATO backed a Ukrainian offensive in its civil war against Russian-allied separatists in the eastern provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk. That is when Russia moved more troops to its borders with Ukraine, signaling it would defend its allies.

After seeing that Russia would response with force Zelensky backed off his plans.

The idea in Washington is that if the U.S. can instigate Ukraine to attack the Donbas region Russia would have to step in at least with extended suppliesto the Donbas rebels. With the help of the media the talk of a ‘Russian invasion’ would then become reality. It would trigger ‘western’ sanctions and Russia would be isolated.

However, the Ukrainian leadership knows what would happen should it attack Donbas and it currently has no interest in fighting for U.S. strategic purposes without any chances to win.

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Via https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/01/why-washington-will-soon-dump-ukraines-president.html