Is Europe facing a nuclear inferno?
by Oskar Lafontaine
[This article posted on June 10, 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=116490.]
“NATO
is brain dead,” Emmanuel Macron said not so long ago. This sentence
hits the nail on the head when it comes to evaluating the actions of the
West. By Oskar Lafontaine, with the kind permission of Weltwoche.
At
the end of the 1970s, Klaus von Dohnanyi was in charge of a NATO
exercise on behalf of the then German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
According to the exercise plan, the Russians were on the advance and
NATO was supposed to stop them. At that point, the US representatives
decided to drop small nuclear devices over Germany to create a security
belt against further Russian advances. Dohnanyi
was surprised, as he reports in his book “National Interests”, that the
USA could make such a decision without asking Germany. He wrote an
angry letter to Helmut Schmidt, who then explained to him that if such
war-like developments were to be recognized in Europe, he would declare
Germany neutral.
The Germans' dilemma
If
Schmidt were still in office, he would have to do so now, following the
decision by the USA and its vassal, Ukraine, to allow it to attack
Russian territory with missiles supplied by the West. He had already
seen the strategic dilemma of the Germans in NATO in his book
“Verteidigung oder Vergeltung” (Defense or Retaliation) in 1961:
“We cannot assume once and for all that all defense policy concepts
that may arise in the United States also correspond to our interests.
[…] We have no interest in a Western defense structure that would be
geared towards seeing the destroyed territory of Germany liberated again
through a final battle. […] Finally, we also have no interest in a
Western defense structure that could be seen as a provocation by the
Soviet leadership.”
If
the warmongers in the government and opposition in Berlin had had
Helmut Schmidt's strategic clarity, Ukraine would not have been
destroyed and Europe would not be at risk of being drawn into a war that
could end in a nuclear inferno.
The
CDU politician and parliamentary state secretary in the Ministry of
Defense, Willy Wimmer, experienced a similar fate to Dohnanyi during the
NATO exercise Wintex-Cimex 89. In this maneuver, Dresden and Potsdam
were to be destroyed by nuclear weapons on the orders of the Americans.
When Chancellor Kohl was informed, he decided to withdraw from the
exercise immediately. “Stop this nonsense,” he said. Compared
to Helmut Kohl, his would-be successor in the chancellery, Friedrich
Merz, who wants to supply the corrupt clique around Zelensky with German
missiles that can be used to destroy strategic targets in Moscow, is an
irresponsible security policy gambler. It
is a frightening prospect for Germany that a politician like Friedrich
Merz could come to power who, like the traffic light government, is
unfamiliar with the iron law of the nuclear age: security can no longer
be achieved by going against each other, but only by working together.
Those who want peace are obliged to engage in diplomacy. The Roman saying “Si vis pacem para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”) has lost its validity in the nuclear age.
Since
the founding of NATO, the European vassals have been living a lie,
believing that the United States would risk the nuclear destruction of
New York, Washington or San Francisco to defend Europe against a nuclear
attack. The opposite is the case. That
is why the United States abandoned the strategy of assured mutual
destruction and developed the concept of “flexible response”, which
means nothing more than that, if the worst comes to the worst, only
Europe will be the victim of a nuclear war.
The
USA takes great care to ensure that North America is not affected by
the many wars that it wages or in which it plays a leading role.
According to the US Congress, the USA has carried out 251 military
interventions in other countries over the last three decades, mostly
thousands of kilometers away from the American mainland. According
to the renowned Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, four and a half
million people have died in the past 20 years alone as a result of the
wars waged by the USA and its allies. If the war provoked by the USA
through the eastward expansion of NATO, i.e. through the deployment of
US troops and missiles on the Russian border, spreads to Europe, then
the famous saying “Fuck the EU” will apply. “It
is the Pentagon's firm intention, with decisive help from NATO, to
force the Russians to attack soon!” wrote playwright Rolf Hochhuth in an
open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck in
2015.
This was the time when Helmut Schmidt also warned:
“It is not completely out of the question that the conflict over
Ukraine could even turn into a hot war. And that does not have to be Mr.
Putin's, Mrs. Merkel's or Mr. Hollande's fault.”
Sentences
like these show the extent to which US propaganda has been successful
and fundamentally changed the way politicians and journalists in Europe
think.
When
the Middle East is in flames, America is far away and the refugees come
to Europe. And if the sparking in Taiwan leads to war, the USA will
make sure that the war is limited to Asia.
Federal government ducks away
In
this geo-strategically unambiguous situation, Europe's politicians and
journalists are reminiscent of the line from Sophocles' “Antigone”:
“Whom God wants to destroy, he strikes with blindness.”
It
has been known for some time that Ukraine is using drones to attack the
Russian nuclear missile early warning system. This is extremely
dangerous, and one might have expected the Europeans to react and the
German government, for example, to threaten Ukraine with the immediate
cessation of military and financial aid in order to protect its own
population if Kiev does not stop its attacks on the Russian nuclear
missile early warning system. But nothing of the sort is happening. As
with the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline by the USA, they
are cowardly ducking away. And they obediently follow Biden and also
allow the Ukrainians to attack Russian territory with weapons supplied
by Germany. They say that this is allowed under international law. Yes,
just as it would have been allowed under international law for the
states attacked by the USA in the Middle East to defend themselves with
missiles supplied by Russia. The US strategists and their submissive
European followers do not think about such consequences.
“NATO
is brain dead,” said French President Macron some time ago. He meant it
differently, but the sentence hits the mark when you evaluate the
actions of Western leaders.
This article first appeared in Weltwoche No. 23.24.
Fateful friendship
On the main features of US imperialism
by Angela Klein
[This
book review posted on 6/7/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.sozonline.de/2024/06/verhaengnisvolle-freundschaft/.]
Werner Rügemer: Verhängnisvolle Freundschaft. Wie die USA Europa eroberten. Cologne: Papyrossa, 2023. 328 pp., 22.90 euros
You'd
think that the register of crimes committed by US governments no longer
contained anything that was not already known – but far from it! In his
new book, Werner Rügemer attempts to explore the systematic nature of
these crimes and to derive them from the process of the United States of
America itself. This results in a number of insights.
It
starts well, with a quote from Henry Kissinger: “It can be dangerous to
be America's enemy, but it is fatal to be America's friend.”
But
who is America's friend? In short, anyone who accepts America's world
domination, who subordinates themselves in terms of foreign policy and
military strategy, and who opens their markets to their corporations.
Anyone who does not do this is an enemy. It does not matter whether the
opponent is a communist or a capitalist. Rügemer emphasizes:
"US
capitalists and their lobby groups... have never promoted capitalism as
a general system, as they suggest, but only US-led capitalism... When,
after 1990, the now capitalist Russia had a US-friendly head of state in
the corrupt Boris Yeltsin, who sold off companies to oligarchs and US
investors... then Russia was a friend. But
when the still capitalist Russia then had a nationalistic leader in
Vladimir Putin, who stopped the sell-out... that's when the USA turned
Russia into a mortal enemy.«
The
self-appointed mission to lead the world into an “American century”, as
the leading media in the USA formulated the global war aim of the USA
in 1940, was based on the experience of the decline of the British
Empire. US capital set about inheriting its closest ally to date – above
all its colonies and military bases.
The
foreign policy objectives of the USA have not changed since then. After
the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, an institution like NATO, which was
founded to defend against an alleged “Bolshevik threat”, was given a new
objective relatively smoothly: the conquest of Eurasia – starting with
the eastward expansion of the EU, in which every state had to become a
NATO member before it was allowed to join the EU. Ukraine is America's “geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia”.
A long history
The
pattern of this land grab is an old one, dating back to the American
Civil War. This was “the largest war in human history in terms of the
number of military and civilian deaths and injuries and the amount of
material used, and a cruel total war”.
Rügemer
sees it, as well as the genocide of the Native Americans – from 1880,
US generals spoke of the final solution of the “Indian problem” – as a
constitutive feature
of US imperialism: “US capitalism contains the seed of a war against
its own states, which will be merciless if necessary – and later also
against ‘allies’... The allies can become opponents or be harmed in many
ways.” The
American Civil War also laid the foundation for the unprecedented,
legendary wealth that was amassed in the decades that followed.
The
pattern of the US's assertion of its claim to world domination was
then, as it is now, one of destruction, reconstruction and
appropriation.
A beacon of democracy?
The
victory of the northern states over the southern states ended with the
liberation of the slaves. In return, the working class was harassed all
the more, becoming the new enemy – to this day, corporate leaders in the
USA are militantly anti-communist, do not allow a welfare state and
prevent the formation of trade unions wherever they can.
The
fear of their growing strength and the spread of communist ideas to the
USA, especially after the failure of the Western intervention against
the young Soviet Republic, drove them in the 1920s, but above all to
the side of dictators and fascists in the 1930s... US corporations and
the US mainstream media first supported Mussolini and Pi?sudski, then
Hitler, Franco and Metaxas in Greece.
The
author explains in detail the many ways in which US corporations, led
by Wall Street, supported Hitler to the very end: even in the last days
of the war, the Allies did not bomb the production facilities of the
arms industry, but the civilian population. Of course, at the same time,
opponents of Hitler were supplied with weapons and military support. The
same hope lay behind this as behind the Munich Agreement of 1938, which
gave Hitler a free hand to annex the Sudetenland and later invade
Poland: that a war of mutual annihilation would break out between
Germany and Russia.
At
the same time, anti-Semitic capitalists rose to the top of corporations
(and not just Henry Ford), which were purged of Jews and Jewish
refugees were turned away (unless they had a lot of money).
Constants
In
his long-term average of the imperial history of the USA, Rügemer works
out constants – this is one of the most interesting aspects of the
book. One of them is: the allies should be strong enough to stand up to
potential enemies of the USA, even to wage war on them on their behalf.
But they should be weak enough that they cannot get in the way of US
interests. Germany can tell you a thing or two about that.
The
book provides a coherent and insightful characterization of imperial
America. However, one may not agree with Rügemer's conclusion: the
alternative is not China, not the G77 and not the BRICS countries. Their
autocratic rule is even more unbearable, even if their imperial
behavior is less aggressive.
However,
the book only deals with the “first stage of the development of US
imperialism”. It therefore promises a second stage, which has been
ongoing since the Second World War. We look forward to it.
Israel has a huge problem
How the international situation has fundamentally changed since October 7
by John Mearsheimer
[This
article posted on 6/7/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://www.sozonline.de/2024/06/israel-hat-ein-gewaltiges-problem/.]
October
7, 2023, has turned the situation in the Middle East upside down.
Before that, many thought that the region had found a certain stability.
Then came October 7, and an end to the conflict is not in sight.
John
Mearsheimer analyzes what has happened, the causes of the conflict,
where we are today, and where we are heading. He looks at two
interrelated conflicts – Israel–Gaza and Israel–Hezbollah–Iran – and at
the consequences for Israel, the United States and Iran. In
a podcast*, he declares Israel (and to a lesser extent the USA) to be
the losers of the Gaza war, and Iran to be its (albeit not decisive)
winner.
John
Mearsheimer is a renowned US political scientist who taught
international relations at the University of Chicago. He belongs to the
so-called neorealist school. This school views international politics
from the purely power-political standpoint of the interaction of the
major powers and assumes that every great state strives for hegemony for
security reasons. This school rejects the moral classification of these
states into good and evil. The focus of interest is the competition between the USA and China.
Angela Klein has summarized his speech.
Israel
is now effectively a Greater Israel: it controls everything between the
river and the sea. It includes Israel within the 1967 borders, plus
Gaza and the West Bank. Around 7.3 million Palestinians and 7.3 million
Israeli Jews live in the territory of Greater Israel – almost equal
numbers. How does the Israeli government intend to deal with this
Greater Israel? According to Mearsheimer, Israel has four main options:
A democratic Greater Israel, but that would no longer be a Jewish
state because the Palestinian population is growing faster than the
Jewish population.
The two-state solution. This will not happen either, as Netanyahu and his government have no interest in it.
The third option is apartheid. This is essentially the current
situation. All the major human rights organizations in the world have
produced detailed reports that prove this.
The fourth option is ethnic cleansing, i.e. the expulsion of
Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and the creation of a Greater
Israel that is completely controlled by Israeli Jews.
Before October 7, the Palestinians in Gaza lived in a gigantic
open-air prison. In 2005, Ariel Sharon, who was prime minister at the
time, decided to withdraw the settlers from Gaza because Gaza was a
hornet's nest. And until October 7, 2024, it looked as if the situation
in Gaza could be kept stable because Hamas was administering Gaza.
Netanyahu was quite happy about that. He is strictly against a two-state solution, whereas Mahmoud Abbas, who administers the West Bank, is in favor of it.
Netanyahu preferred to support Hamas because it also rejected the
two-state solution. He tried to play Hamas off against the PLO and
ensured that it received money. For a while, this worked and the
Israelis thought they had the situation under control. That's why there
was a big surprise when Hamas attacked Israel and initially had a
spectacular success. After that, the Israeli offensive began.
What is Israel's goal in Gaza?
The
Western press writes that Israel's main goal is to defeat and eliminate
Hamas. The second goal is to free the hostages. Israel's real goal is
not discussed in the Western media – that is the ethnic cleansing of the
Gaza Strip. Why is that Israel's goal?
Firstly, because it would enable Israel to find a way out of apartheid.
Secondly,
it is perfectly clear that Israel cannot defeat Hamas. But if all
Palestinians are driven out of Gaza, Hamas will be driven out with them.
Israel would thus solve two problems at once.
Who
says Israel would not do such a thing? It has done it before, and
expulsion was a prerequisite for the creation of the state of Israel. In
1948 and 1967, the Israelis cleared large areas of what is now Greater
Israel of its Palestinian population. The Israeli government also openly
talks about ethnic cleansing.
One
of the criticisms directed at Israel is that it has not announced any
plan for what is to happen to the Gaza Strip once Hamas has been
defeated. Israel's military leadership constantly complains that the
political goal is not being named and that no sense is being given to
the orgy of destruction. The
reason why the Israeli leadership does not talk about how it wants to
administer a Palestinian-populated Gaza is that it does not want Gaza to
be populated by Palestinians.
How
do you do that? To expel the Palestinians, you have to kill a large
number of them – the population, not just Hamas. Secondly, you have to
make the area uninhabitable – that is what they are doing now. And
thirdly, you starve the population. There is already famine in the
north. The Israelis are stubbornly resisting any attempt by the US to
get more aid into Gaza. The
reason is that they want to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza. The
Israelis are committing genocide here because they can't get rid of the
Palestinians any other way.
Where
does Israel stand today? It has not managed to defeat Hamas and cannot
do so either – many unofficial voices in the USA and in Israel itself
admit this. The hostages were not retrieved. And they have not managed
to clear Gaza. They even returned there after they had left in 2005.
This shows that Israel is really in a tight spot.
Israel
also has a big problem with Hezbollah, which is bombing northern Israel
to help Hamas. As a result, some 60,000–100,000 Israelis had to be
temporarily evacuated to the center of the country and cannot return
because Hezbollah has made it clear that it will continue its attacks as
long as Israel bombs Gaza. Incidentally, the Houthis also recently
fired their first missile at Israel. It's only one so far...
Israel
has not achieved its goals. It wanted to get out of apartheid because
it had seen where it led in South Africa. But it has not yet been able
to implement ethnic cleansing either.
On the leash of the USA
Until
April 1, a shadow war was being waged around Iran, and neither the USA
nor Iran had any interest in escalating the conflict. Israel, however,
did: for a long time it has been trying to draw the USA into a war
against Iran.
On
April 1, it provoked such a constellation, so to speak. The Israelis
attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus. The USA is furious about this
and that Israel did not tell them about it. The Iranians immediately
make it clear that they will retaliate against Israel. This happens on
April 14.
In
the meantime, the US and Iran had been working together – through
intermediaries, because there are no direct contacts – to ensure that
the Iranian counterattack was limited, that it could be seen coming and
that the US and Israel had time to prepare for it and to repel it. The
US also insisted that Iran not fire on densely populated areas, but
rather seek out more harmless military targets. The
US has therefore coordinated the response with Iran. When the attack
comes, an informal hotline is set up between the US and Iran, via Oman,
because both sides want to keep the situation under control.
While
Iran is attacking, the US is heavily involved in defending Israel. And
not only the US, but also many other states in the region, as well as
the British and the French, are involved. This is a major problem for
Israel. Israel has always been proud of its ability to respond
independently to enemy attacks. There
are strong indications that about half of the Iranian drones that were
shot down were not shot down by Israel, but by the United States.
Israel,
for its part, carried out a retaliatory strike on April 19. It wanted
to unleash the dogs and hoped for a major attack by the US against Iran.
But the US didn't want that for a second. They wanted to put out the
fire. The Israelis didn't manage to do more than knock out a radar near
the nuclear center in Isfahan. That is a very, very limited response –
because the US wanted it that way. And Israel had no choice but to accept this. So they did not achieve their goal on this front either.
The consequences
So
there are three reasons to say that Israel is the big loser. Firstly,
they are back in Gaza, in the hornet's nest, and have no prospect of
getting out again. But they also have no solution to the problem of
having made Gaza uninhabitable. Now they have the administration of this
area on their hands and the Palestinians are not going away – that's a
big problem.
Secondly,
we have to consider how the Israelis think about deterrence. For them,
deterrence means controlling escalation. That means if someone hits me, I
hit back, but much harder. And in doing so, I prevent someone from
attacking me.
But
it has now become clear that the Israelis no longer control the
escalation vis-à-vis Iran, nor vis-à-vis Hezbollah. Hezbollah has
150,000 rockets and Israel cannot bring the conflict with it to an end
dictated by it.
A
third factor is that the many rockets and drones that Hamas, Hezbollah,
the Huthis and Iran have developed in the meantime can cause Israel
great harm. But Israel is dependent on the USA. It could never have
carried out the operation in Gaza without US help. Israel simply cannot
produce the amount of weapons that it is firing in Gaza. It needs the
USA. So from this point of view too, Israel is stuck.
Its reputation is ruined
Is
Israel becoming a pariah state like no other before it? If you look at
the protests at universities and South Africa's complaint to the
International Court of Justice, it is clear that Israel's reputation has
been severely damaged. There are enough indications to support the view
that Israel is committing genocide.
Polls
in the US show that 56 percent of Democrats believe that Israel is
committing genocide. Among Biden's declared voters, 57 percent think so,
while 27 percent are not sure. This is a remarkable, fundamental change
in opinion. A Jewish state is being accused of genocide – that is a
disaster. And there is no sign that this will change. The situation in Gaza is not improving. There is no solution in sight.
The US has also lost
It
is in the interests of the USA to have peace in the Middle East. The
USA has waged so many wars – the American public is fed up with it, and
it certainly does not want a war with Iran.
But
the US also needs peace in the Middle East so that it can turn its
attention to Asia. From the American perspective, the greatest threat
comes from China, and that must be contained. But as long as the US is
stuck in Ukraine and now also in the Middle East, it cannot do that. The
US needs a situation like it had before October 7.
They
also need friendly relations with as many states in the Middle East as
possible. Why? Russia is already present there, but now China is also
gaining a foothold. China is conducting naval maneuvers in the Gulf of
Aden and is heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. It is
therefore seeking good relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia – and this
is a major concern for the USA. They do not want to have bad relations
with the states there, as this would only drive them into the arms of
China. The
Abraham Accords tried to bring Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US into a
common alliance. That has now been thrown into disarray by what is
happening in Gaza. So the US, but also Israel and Saudi Arabia, have a
problem there.
There
is another problem, the Iranian nuclear bomb. Iran is only a hand's
breadth away from having the nuclear bomb. The US has canceled the
nuclear agreement with Iran under Trump. Iran can currently enrich
uranium to 60 percent; 90 percent is needed to make it nuclear
weapons-capable. This step is no longer difficult.
The
specialist literature says that Iran could have enough fissile material
to build three nuclear bombs in about six weeks; to build the last one,
they would probably need another six months. Imagine if the exchange of
blows in April had taken place under the conditions that Iran had the
atomic bomb. The
bomb on the Iranian embassy in Damascus was almost an invitation to
Iran to build the bomb; there are statements in Iran that point in this
direction.
Iran is the winner
Not
that Iran is in a brilliant position now, but it has maneuvered quite
skillfully. With the exception of April 14, Iran has managed to stay out
of the war. It works very effectively with its proxies in the region –
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the militias in Iraq and Syria.
Iran
now has very close relations with Russia and China, and that is a
result of the power shifts. The US is pushing Russia, China, Iran and
North Korea into a common position of interest. It has therefore become
more difficult to isolate Iran. If Iran becomes a nuclear power and the
US wants to exert pressure on it, Russia and China will not help them
much. But they need them.
Iran
can feel pretty safe, neither the US nor Israel are currently in a
position to harm it. Conversely, for the first time in history, Iran was
able to attack Israel from its own territory with missiles and drones
without Israel retaliating seriously.
Last but not least: the sanctions against Iran are not working.
If
we look at the three theaters of operations – Israel, the US and Iran –
together, we can see how fundamentally the situation has changed since
October 7. It is not good, either for Israel or for the US.
Ukraine aid
The largest part remains in the USA
by Jakub Dymek
[This article posted on 6/7/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozonline.de/2024/06/ukrainehilfe/.]
The
vast majority, 80–90 percent, of the funds recently approved “for
Ukraine” will never leave the borders of the United States.
The
US House of Representatives has voted to provide “$60 billion in arms
aid to Ukraine”. It seems that a breakthrough has been achieved that
only people with bad intentions can question. But I put those words in
quotes because none of it is true. Neither the $60 billion, nor the aid,
nor the fact that it is for Ukraine.
In
fact, less than one-fifth of these funds will ever flow into the
Ukrainian budget and private sector. And even the $10 billion that the
package earmarks for these purposes is repayable unless the president
decides otherwise after 2026. The
rest – the vast majority, 80–90 percent of the funds just approved “for
Ukraine” – will never leave the borders of the United States. How is
that possible?
This
is due to both the aid method chosen and the double accounting of
funds, which increases the nominal value of the “aid packages” by up to
100 percent. I will explain this.
First,
the US has decided to also designate the expenditures for its own armed
forces as “aid to Ukraine” and to transfer them, so to speak, in
addition to the funds that the Pentagon regularly spends – for example,
in the draft of December 2022. Of the $28.5 billion in aid to Ukraine,
$5 billion was reserved for “operations and personnel costs of the US
armed forces”.
In
the current “aid package”, 7.3 to 11.5 billion of the 60 billion
dollars are earmarked for this purpose, so the share is similar. This
money was never intended for Ukraine or the Ukrainian armed forces, but
it covers the costs of maintaining the US armed forces in Europe
(including bonuses, allowances and per diems for soldiers and officials
working outside the United States).
On
this premise, Poland could book a not insignificant part of the defense
ministry budget and a not insignificant part of the new arms contracts,
including contracts for tanks, fighter aircraft and helicopters, as
“aid to Ukraine”.
However,
this is not where the support for the US economy, production capacities
and generous payouts to the private sector from public funds really
ends. In the logic of the successive “aid packages”, the military
support of the USA for Ukraine is in reality an economic stimulus
package for the US defense industry. The
bulk of the funds pledged – two-thirds of the total programs and about
80–90 percent of their military component – will be spent on procuring
equipment and on grants to increase production capacity – or to get
assembly lines back up and running that have been idle for years.
Victoria
Nuland – deputy secretary of state until March 2024 and a leading
proponent of aid to Ukraine in the Biden administration – boasted that
“the vast majority of the money stays in the US, is spent in the US, and
creates good-paying jobs.”
The
belief that aid to Ukraine pays off because it creates jobs in the US
and fills the pockets of Americans has become a campaign message in
recent months, with which Biden and the Democrats are trying to reach
voters. The president himself insists that the money is not spent in
Ukraine, but in Arizona, Alabama, Texas or Pennsylvania.
Moreover,
this money, in the form of subsidies, helps to encourage defense
companies worldwide to invest in the US rather than in Europe.
Good news for the US economy? Definitely.
Double counting
I
know that not only money from orders for military equipment for Ukraine
(and from orders from allies who supply Ukraine), but also from other
orders, is flowing to replenish the country's stocks. It is expenditure
for the replacement of donated equipment, and this too will be recorded
in later aid packages as “aid for Ukraine”. There is a double cash
account.
To
put it bluntly, if the US hands over an Abrams tank to Ukraine and then
provides the funds for the production and purchase of an even newer
Abrams tank, both items will be included in the bill and presented to
the world as “billions in aid for Ukraine” (even if the equipment or
ammunition has not yet been delivered, or even produced).
This
means that everything can be counted twice – and this happens with all
“packages”. It goes without saying that the actual amount of equipment
delivered to Ukraine differs significantly from what we learn from media
reports.
The
situation is different for humanitarian and financial aid – this is the
only direct aid to the Ukrainian state budget that is not double-booked
by the US. The US is therefore providing three times less aid than the
EU countries and institutions.
But
that's not all. The aid packages also include items that have only a
very loose connection to “aid for Ukraine” – for example, the repair and
strengthening of the protective wall around the US embassy, but also
funds to counteract Chinese influence, grants for federal agencies,
loans for various countries and contributions to the World Bank.
In
this way, the US can privatize the profits from the war in Ukraine and
shift its costs, including the costs of the war – in this case to
Europe. All the while, they claim that it is the European Union that is
spending too little on armaments, passing on too little equipment to
Ukraine and not helping it enough.
Of
course, some will say that it is better than nothing, after all,
something is getting through to Ukraine. But the point is not whether
anything is getting through at all, but why the aid packages are
designed in this way. Actual deliveries are delayed as a result, and
their value is always stated as being much higher than it actually is
(with the Polish public in particular accusing Germany and France of not
doing enough).
This
method is useful for buying votes in an election campaign. It also
provides good propaganda for blackmailing other NATO countries into
supplying more and producing even more top-quality arms – they could
also place orders with companies subsidized by Biden! Ukraine is not
receiving US aid either in time or free of charge, but the American arms
industry and its shareholders do not have to go hungry.
If
we were to take everything out of the successive “aid packages” that
does not go to Ukraine and only consider “aid” in the very broadest
sense of the word, it could turn out that Washington does not consider
aid to Ukraine to be the great challenge that we have seen it as so far.
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