War Escalations and Bombings are Just Another Day in the Office for Americans

But the Events of Last Week Are Pushing Boundaries and Patience

If you live in the United States, you live in a perpetual war state. There has almost never been peace in the US. Many Americans support the wars and treat them as an American effort to good in the world. Other’s passively go along with US policy while a minority oppose the wars. What we can all agree on is that war has become normalized in the United States. War is built into our culture. It has seeped into our lives of Americans. Mainstream media provides a steady stream of war propaganda, sporting event promote the military and even universities have come on board by canceling dissenters. The death and destruction these wars cause is seriously underreported. As a result, many Americans treat wars on the other side of the world as unfortunate events, but believe they are insulated and safe from them. After all, experience has shown that the post 9/11 wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq have not come home to the US. The events of the last week, however represent, among other events, serious escalations from the world’s two largest nuclear armed countries.

Before getting to Russia and the US, it should be noted that tensions between Israel and Hezbollah are increasing on the Israeli/Lebanon border. Israel killed a Hezbollah Commander with a drone strike, Hezbollah struck back by shooting over 250 rockets into northern Israel, forcing Israelis to leave the area (I wonder how Israeli’s felt being uprooted from their land). Hezbollah is funded and armed by Iran and is a proxy army for Iran, so the chance of a regional war is rising. Israel would love to have a conflict with Iran but would like the US to do its fighting. So far, the US and Iran have kept it civil, since they don’t have a real reason to fight each other.

At the G7 conference, the US and Ukraine signed a ten-year security pact. The agreement is said to be a pathway to NATO for the Ukraine. The NY Times reported:

Speaking at the Group of 7 summit in Italy on Thursday, Mr. Biden said the agreement was designed to make Ukraine self-sufficient and put the country on the road to NATO membership. The accord is essentially an executive agreement between two presidents.

Russia considers having Ukraine as a NATO nation to be a major threat to its existence. Putin was adamant about this at the NATO conference in 2008 and has not changed his stance since. He has tried diplomacy to try and resolve this through the Minsk accord, but it was ripped-up in 2012 when a new Ukrainian leader was put in place. Zelenskyy and Putin had a peace deal worked out shortly after the war started, but the US nixed it.

Putin has made his stance clear. NATO troops will not be tolerated on Russia’s border. When NATO, the US and Ukraine refused NATO neutrality in 2022, Putin went to war. The worse the war has gone for Ukraine, the more the West as escalated it. The continuing threat of NATO on their border may spur Russia to go further into Ukraine and leave Ukraine more of a fractured state than they are already.

Speaking of NATO, the Secretary General of NATO, Jen Stoltenberg threw more fuel to the fire recently by saying that he believes that NATO needs to take more nuclear warheads out of storage and deploy them. He blames this on the two-headed threat of China and Russia. The NATO chief continues to echo the Biden administration’s sentiments. We can always count on the NATO boss to flex his muscles in times of crisis and raise the hackles a bit more. The longer this war progresses, the more obvious it becomes just how much NATO is a vassal of the United States. The United States has superior military power over all other NATO countries and gets to throw its weight around.

Russia sent nuclear submarines to Cuba last week as well. This came on heels of United States lifting the limits set on the Ukraine and allowing them to strike inside Russia with US/French missiles. The US was quick to write this off as a planned drill. No biggie, the US says, just routine stuff. But the timing seems too close to write off as coincidental. If it was a planned drill, Russia took the opportunity to show off its latest and greatest submarines, the Kazan. This submarine is concerning to the US intelligence agencies because of its stealth abilities to attack land targets. The next day a fast attack submarine arrived in Guantanamo Bay from the US. The US claimed this was a routine visit as well. The day after that, a Canadian submarine arrived in Havana, which was scheduled to leave in 72 hours. Make what you will of all that.

The US also lifted its ban on sending military equipment directly to the Azov Brigade. They are a neo-Nazi group fighting with the Ukraine. The US is suddenly accepting of a Neo-Nazi, white supremacist group after years of the US screaming for more domestic terrorism surveillance on these very same groups. Neo-Nazi groups are considered a danger to the world, the US has said, but now are arming such a group with advanced weapons. This is more of a psyops action against Russia to recreate the WWII scenario of heavily armed Nazi’s fighting against Russia than it is a military move. But every bit counts, and an escalation is an escalation.

The US never seems to learn from experience, or just doesn’t care about arming its supposed enemies. We armed Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Syria. and ISIS in Syria as well. Arming a growing Neo-Nazi group will somehow come back to haunt us. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

Yesterday, Putin and Kim Jong-un of North Korea, both nuclear armed adversaries of the US, signed a pact to protect each other from “Mutual aggression”. It’s hard not believe that this has been the result of the West’s saber rattling. For many years, as the NY Times says, Putin worked with the United States to curb North Korea’s nuclear program, but now has turned to North Korea for allyship. This adds another country to the mix of an already tense situation, a nuclear armed country with a grudge against the West. Perhaps this was meant to counter the ten-year security deal that the US and Ukraine signed.

One last important event. The latest NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes an “automatic draft registration” for people aged 18-26. This will include women and men. This is not actively drafting people but will automatically register them. This NDAA has already passed in the House. Mainstream media has written this off as merely a bureaucratic convenience so that people don’t have to register individually. This is not law yet, but it can’t be a good sign of things to come, considering the circumstances.

What is the goal of the United States and NATO here? Is it world destruction? Is the US willing to sacrifice the planet to protect its economic interests? The US attempt to weaken Russia had the opposite effect, it made Russia more powerful economically. The war also led to the BRICS alliance doubling in size. More and more countries have stopped trading on the dollar, which is bound to injure the US economy.

The best theory I can think of is that the US Security State underestimated Russia’s military power and how the rest of the world perceives the United States. The US security state believed their own jingoism and expected the world to join them against Russia. Almost all African countries bought military equipment from Russia and look to Russia for protection. Most of the Global South has either remained neutral or has leaned towards Russia and China. Even European countries had anti-NATO protests. Russia has found new allies to sell gas. The US then found itself in a bind and is now franticly flexing its muscles to try to preserve the empire.

Or is it simpler? Is it just in the war psychopath’s nature to use weapons, no matter how serious the consequences? Does the thrill of killing people outweigh the threat of dire repercussions? After all, the Biden administration would not have brought in Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Victoria Nuland (who is no longer there) if they didn’t want to wage war in the first place.

The answer may be both reasons combined, and probably other motives as well. Political systems are complicated and have many different moving parts. The Bigger question is: What is Putin’s breaking point? That we don’t know. Nobody knows. Putin may not know either. Another question, what is the US breaking point? That’s anyone’s guess.

Best comment on the last publication goes to

Diana van Eyk

There's something reductionist and almost lazy about cancel culture

In a social climate where there is so much ambiguity, gaslighting, greenwashing and misinformation, our ability to share ideas with each other and to listen and converse intelligently are essential.

Shouting people down doesn't allow for that at a time when we desperately need to be able to discuss things respectfully.