Let’s examine winners and losers in the Ukraine crisis. Let’s start with the losers.
The biggest loser are the people of Ukraine. They are being killed, injured, and maimed by the Russian invasion of their country. The invasion is also destroying their homes, businesses, and, well, their entire country.
The Ukrainian people are also the big losers because of the person they have as their president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yes, I know, the US mainstream press compares Zelenskyy to George Washington but the fact is that Washington would never have sacrificed his own citizenry for the sake of pleasing a foreign power. That’s what Zelenskyy has done. He’s willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens for the sake of pleasing bureaucrats within the US government.
After all, when all is said and done, Zelenskyy was faced with a choice: give up any interest in Ukraine joining the old Pentagon-CIA-controlled Cold War dinosaur known as NATO or suffer a deadly and destructive invasion by Russia that would inevitably wreak massive death and destruction in Ukraine. Zelenskyy chose his love of NATO over his loyalty to the Ukrainian people. When he chose NATO, he knew full well that the price of that choice would be a Russian invasion that would kill, injure, and maim tens of thousands of his countrymen and destroy untold amounts of homes, businesses, and infrastructure.
I sure wouldn’t want him as my president. There are some things worth fighting for, such as liberty. But to fight for the right to join an old, corrupt, bureaucratic, Pentagon-CIA-controlled, Cold War dinosaur like NATO is not one of those things that is worth fighting for. It’s also not worth sacrificing the life of even one citizen.
Why did Zelenskyy choose NATO over the Ukrainian people? My hunch is that the Pentagon and the CIA induced him in some way to go with them rather than with the Ukrainian people. Regardless, the fact is that if Zelenskyy had instead chosen to reject the old Cold War dinosaur NATO, all those dead Ukrainians would still be alive because Russia would never have invaded Ukraine, and the country would still be intact.
Another loser are the people of Russia. Their government is now mired down in a deadly and destructive invasion of a foreign country, much as the US government has been mired down in foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, and elsewhere. Troops are being killed, leaving family members back home grieving. Other troops will return home maimed or severely injured. The Russian economy is in a tailspin because that’s what wars do. Brutal US sanctions will impoverish and possibly even kill Russians, including children, just as they contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children in the 1990s.
The American people are also losers in this crisis. With the strengthening of the national-security state, the Cold War-era destruction of their rights and liberties will become more solidified. Federal spending, debt, and inflation will continue soaring out of control. Individual consciences will continue to be stultified as people continue to defer to the national-security establishment to keep them safe and secure from the ever-shifting array of scary enemies that the Pentagon and the CIA continue to engender, with the latest being Russia. Perhaps worst of all, many Americans will continue to embody the words of Johann Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
So are there any winners in the Ukraine crisis? As a matter of fact, there is one big winner. That big winner is the US national-security establishment, the entity that brought about this crisis in the first place by threatening to absorb Ukraine into its Cold War corrupt dinosaur NATO, knowing full well that Russia would invade Ukraine to prevent US military bases, missiles, tanks, and troops from being established on Russia’s border.
Consider the benefits of the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s malevolently ingenious gamesmanship and political strategy. Americans are no longer discussing the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s decades-long deadly and destructive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with all the lies that undergirded them. That’s all ancient history now. The focus is now on Russia and its supposed plans to conquer the world. It’s essentially Cold War redux, with Russia rather than the Soviet Union as new official boogeyman that is supposedly coming to get us.
No more discussion of reining in federal spending and debt — not when ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer-funded largess must continue to flood into the “defense” establishment to keep us “safe.” How else can they protect us from the Red, I mean, Russian menace.
Consider the perfect storm of official enemies and crises that the Pentagon and the CIA have engendered.
There is the war on communism. That’s reflected by Red China, North Korea, Cuba, and possibly even Vietnam. It used to include Venezuela but the US media is reporting today that US officials are now seeking Venezuela’s oil, which they need to fund their own war machine. Therefore, US officials will soon advise the American people that Venezuela has moved from the ranks of official enemies to the ranks of official friends.
There is the war on terrorism and the war on evil. There are still countess terrorists and considerable evil in the world to eradicate.
There is the war on Muslims and Islam. Don’t forget the Muslim conspiracy to establish a worldwide caliphate that stretches back centuries and that aims to bring Sharia Law to American communities.
And then there are the many scary subsidiary threats to America, represented by Iran, Syria, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, and many more.
All these scary monsters are supposed to remind us that we need the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA more than ever. We’ll just have to delay the restoration of our founding system of a limited-government republic a few decades longer so that the “defense” industry can keep us “safe” while it continues feeding at the public taxpayer-funded trough. And we’ll just have to delay the restoration of our rights and liberties that the national-security established has continuously destroyed ever since it was brought into existence to fight its Cold War racket.
Yep, the Ukraine crisis has produced lots of losers and one big winner.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
