The Washington Post has a new article out bemoaning the fact that Russian military commanders are declining calls from the Pentagon to discuss their operations in Ukraine (I dunno guys, might have something to do with the fact that the US is sharing extensive military intelligence on exactly those operations directly with the Ukrainian government). Tucked all the way down in the eighteenth paragraph of the article, we find a much more interesting revelation: that Washington’s top diplomat has made no attempt to contact his counterpart in Moscow since the war began on the 24th of February.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict, according to U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reports.

So the US government is continuing its policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that’s being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow.

The amazing part of this column is that U.S. officials are saying out loud that they want the war to last in order to “bleed Putin”. They don’t care a fig about Ukraine. It stands completely alone (and Zelenskiy knows it, btw). https://t.co/NBOKvmT63K

— Leonid Bershidskiy (@Bershidsky) March 22, 2022

Building on an earlier report from The New York Times that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire,” Ferguson writes that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this:

“The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s №1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Earlier this month when The Intercept’s Ryan Grim was able to get a word in edgewise at a White House press briefing amid the throngs of mass media reporters demanding to know why Biden still hasn’t started World War 3, Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a very revealing answer.

“So, aside from the request for weapons, President Zelensky has also requested that the US be more involved in negotiations toward a peaceful resolution to the war. What is the U.S. doing to push those negotiations forward?” asked Grim.

“Well, one of the steps we’ve taken — a significant one — is to be the largest provider of military and humanitarian and economic assistance in the world, to put them in a greater position of strength as they go into these negotiations,” Psaki answered, completely dodging the question of whether the US was actually doing anything to help negotiate peace.

This is wild pic.twitter.com/CNZZ1wVzcz

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) March 16, 2022

As we’ve discussed previously, the US government has a well-documented history of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires with the goal of preoccupying its military forces and draining its coffers. Former US officials are on record publicly boasting about having done so in both Afghanistan and Syria. This is an agenda geared toward sapping the Russian government, manufacturing international consent for unprecedented acts of economic warfare designed (though perhaps ineptly) to crush the Russian economy, to foment discord and rebellion, and ultimately to effect regime change in Moscow.

The US empire doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives, and it’s insulting that its operatives continually pretend to. The empire will happily feed every man, woman and child in the entire nation into the mouth of this war if it means unseating a disobedient leader from a nuclear-armed seat of power which has become unacceptably cozy with Beijing and intolerably comfortable with intervening against US imperial agendas. And all the Ukrainian-flag-waving propagandized westerners with their #StandWithUkraine Instagram activism and blue and yellow profile pics will cheer for it every step of the way.

I hope this brutal proxy war ends and peace comes to Ukraine very quickly. But from what we’re seeing today there appears to be an immense globe-spanning power structure holding its foot against the door of the only exit from this horror.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

U.S. President Joe Biden put on his best disdainful face to tell the American nation how unacceptable it was for Russia to recognize Ukraine’s breakaway republics.

Biden was commenting after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Russia would recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

“Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors?” The American president demanded his nation in exasperation. “This is a flagrant violation of international law and it demands a firm response from the international community.”

The squawk of hypocrisy is laughable. In his half-century as a top politician, Biden has been instrumental in the U.S. breaking up dozens of countries and redrawing borders sometimes with new names. He was involved in the dismemberment and bombing of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the destabilization of the Balkans which continues to this day, as well as engineering the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine that has led to today’s crisis.

Meanwhile, Washington’s European allies are resembling the fluster of headless chickens as they scrabble to unite a response to Russia’s move to recognize the Donbass republics.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned of new sanctions that “will hurt Russian very badly”. But the headless chickens can’t seem to find a lockstep approach on what more economic sanctions they can impose on Russia without also deeply hurting their own economies. Already, the mere talk of suspending the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is sending gas consumer prices to new heights. It is conceivable that already unbearable fuel prices could double over the next months. That will be devastating for European households and businesses. Are EU political elites really that stupid to inflict so much pain on their populations and not expect violent social unrest on the streets?

The disconnect between the American and European political classes and the rest of their societies is emerging like a canyon.

Joe Biden is warning ordinary Americans to expect even higher prices at the pumps for fuel because of the U.S. policy of confronting Russia. Confronting Russia about what? A distant country called Ukraine that has been turned into a mess because of U.S. meddling for which Biden bears huge personal responsibility from the time he was vice president in the Obama administration? It just doesn’t sound credible. In fact, it sounds absurd.

Russia’s intervention this week to recognize the Donbass republics was necessitated because Washington and its NATO partners have weaponized a Russophobic regime in Kiev. That regime last week ramped up its military offensive against the ethnic Russian population in the Donbass. The Western powers have indulged the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime in its incessant repudiation of the Minsk peace process that was brokered in 2015 by Russia, France and Germany. Moscow’s recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics may just be enough to halt the genocidal aggression from the NATO-backed Kiev regime.

Not to belittle what is happening in Ukraine, but does the response of the U.S. and its European allies really merit the seeming priority its politicians are ordering? (If we can overlook the stench of hypocrisy and duplicity, that is.)

So, Biden is moving troops and warplanes all around Eastern Europe to “defend NATO allies” from alleged Russian aggression. He’s putting the U.S. on a war-footing. And American citizens are told they will have to brace for impact from global energy disruption and inflation.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Liz Truss – who doesn’t know the difference between Ukraine and Russia on a map – has promised to guarantee $500 million in bank loans to support the Kiev regime.

She said: “We are putting our money where our mouth is and using Britain’s economic expertise and strength to support the people of Ukraine. These guarantees can help inject vital capital into Ukraine and help its economy weather the storm of Russian aggression.”

Funny how Truss talks about helping Ukraine “weathering a storm”. The recent Atlantic hurricanes over the last week that have battered Britain are estimated to cost more than $500 million in damage to public infrastructure.

Isn’t it bizarre how the British government seems to be more concerned about providing money to a corrupt regime in Kiev than to fix the problems at home?

The risible disconnect from squawking Joe and his headless chicken allies is not lost on their own increasingly impoverished and deprived people. It’s just one more reason on top of a pile of rancor for the citizenry to have absolute contempt for their supposed governors.

Russia has put forward an eminently reasonable set of proposals for guaranteeing security in Europe with the U.S.-led NATO bloc. Ukraine is only a small part of the bigger picture requiring a legally binding treaty to ensure mutual security between Russia and the West. The U.S. and its NATO allies have arrogantly ignored Russia’s concerns for too long, treating Moscow as if it were an after-thought in their expansion of existential threat.

Washington and its European minions simply cannot bring themselves to recognize Russia’s strategic concerns. That would necessitate seeing Russia as an equal and accepting Russia’s rightful place as a vital strategic economic and security partner in Europe. Such an arrangement is anathema to American ambitions of hegemony and thus we have a Cold War crisis blown out of all proportion to the objective reality. That disproportion is correlated with the disconnect that is becoming all too apparent to the Western public who are being told by their Catch 22 political elites to buckle down for pain.

There’s a whole lot of theatrical squawking and feathers in the surreal world of Western politicians.

This weekend marks Joe Biden’s first year in office since his inauguration on January 20, 2021, as 46th president of the United States. In that time, it’s quite staggering how rapidly relations have deteriorated between the U.S. and Russia on the one hand and China on the other.

Right now, Europe is on the cusp of a war breaking out between a U.S.-backed regime in Ukraine and Russia. The volatile situation has the potential to drag the U.S. and other NATO powers into a proxy war with Russia, if not a full-blown international military conflict that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

Washington’s baleful relations with Beijing have been eclipsed by the recent stand-off with Russia. But make no mistake, U.S.-China tensions have also been heightened with the attendant risk of war. Much of the tension has been increased by the Biden administration’s provocations towards China over the breakaway island province of Taiwan. Under Biden, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have burgeoned as have the large-scale maneuvers of American military forces near Chinese territory – in the name of “freedom of navigation”.

Let’s rewind to Biden’s inauguration on that cold, sunny day of January 20 last year. There was the usual jamboree that often accompanies a new Democrat president. We saw it when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were installed in the White House. Likewise, with Biden’s tenure, there were expectations of a more professional president, a more multilateral president, a more proficient president on foreign policy, and, dare we say, a more refined and law-abiding president. As usual, there was rosy rhetoric about how Biden would recover America’s international image that had been tarnished under his boorish predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden declared over and over again that “America was back” as he took office. European leaders swooned at the prospect of again having an American ally who respected them. The expectation was that the “adults were back in control” of U.S. policy (whatever that’s supposed to mean) and that the feathers ruffled by Trump would be smoothed.

Strategic Culture Foundation can take pride in not having bought into any of the wishful thinking regarding a Biden administration. We predicted in several articles at an early stage of his presidency that international relations would take a serious turn for the worse under Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Take, for example, this interview on November 23, 2020, with Christopher Black. It was headlined: “A Biden Administration Will Be Dominated by More U.S. Aggression”. It predicted that the world “would see more intensified militarism and aggression under a Joe Biden presidency than under the outgoing Trump administration.”

Another observation in the same interview was “the Biden administration will be bent on war… in particular against Russia and China… we can expect U.S. provocations to accelerate.”

See also our weekly editorial on January 22, 2021, entitled: “President Biden’s New Administration, Old Aggression”.

In a subsequent column, on January 28, 2021, Strategic Culture Foundation highlighted how the Biden administration would ramp up efforts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 gas project between Russia and the European Union. This unspoken objective has come to a head in the present crisis over Ukraine. It is driving the geopolitical dynamics behind the conflict between the U.S. and Russia, as explained in a later SCF article published on June 8, 2021, – some five months before the crisis erupted in Western media coverage.

Virtually every U.S. president has gone to war or overseen some form of criminal foreign aggression. Barack Obama – the “hope and change president” went on to unleash American wars and bombing in seven countries. Obama’s vice president was Joe Biden who owns some of the past criminality. Donald Trump didn’t start any new American wars but he too was up to his neck in waging aggression abroad.

Republican and Democrat presidents are all the same. They are tools of U.S. imperialism.

So far, Biden hasn’t actually started a new war. He has continued some of the existing militarism. And if he keeps going in the same mode, a war against either Russia or China or both is a “distinct possibility” to use Biden’s words this week about an alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Underpinning the intensified aggression under Biden is the objective historic condition of failing U.S. imperial power. This has nothing to do with whether the president is Democrat or Republican. From the early post-Cold War years we had the Wolfowitz Doctrine, coined under a Republican president as it happened, that set out the objective of staving off U.S. imperial decline and in particular staving off the challenge to U.S. power from a resurgent Russia or an ascendant China.

Under prevailing U.S. establishment politics and the national security state, the Cold War policy against Russia and China would inevitably continue. American power relies fundamentally and intrinsically on confrontation with perceived rivals who must be treated as enemies to be subjugated.

It just so happens that Biden and his administration are more in tune with the U.S. political establishment and the national security state than, for example, the maverick egomaniac Trump. That’s why there has been a more determined and discernible deterioration in U.S. relations with Russia and China over the last year.

Biden hasn’t started a war yet. But he’s still got three years to go and the first one fills the outlook with dread.

One final note: Strategic Culture Foundation has come under fire from the U.S. authorities who have banned America-based writers from publishing articles in our journal. The U.S. government accuses SCF of being an agent of Russian foreign intelligence. See this recent hit-job on ABC news which cites some of our headlines without providing links to the articles. SCF is not an agent of the Russian government. It is an independent journalistic forum for analysis and comment. The prescience of our articles cited above on exposing the criminality of U.S. imperial power would suggest that is the real reason why SCF is being targeted with American slander and sanctions.

By Joe LAURIA

The extent to which the White House will not tolerate any dissent against its war messaging on Russia was revealed when President Joe Biden’s press secretary on Wednesday condemned a sitting member of the United States Senate as a Russian propagandist for simply questioning the drive to war over Ukraine.

Jen Psaki accused Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of “parroting Russian talking points” for sending a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken questioning the drive for war.

The White House putdown of Hawley shows how the administration is shutting down debate on the issue most deserving of it in a so-called democracy, namely the question of peace or war.  That the White House target is a member of the Senate, which is constitutionally charged with declaring war, is even more alarming.

consortiumnews.com

As quoted from the longtime Democratic Party politico Leon Panetta:

“But I think this comes down still to a military issue because I think what will persuade Putin is whether or not, if he engages in war, he could get a black eye. And one thing bullies don’t like to do is to get a black eye,” Panetta explained. “And I think that’s where our strongest leverage is.”

When it comes Russia and some other topics, projection is something American political elites like Panetta typically exhibit. While personally preferring a civil approach, I’m reminded of my view (at the 17 minute mark) that referring to Vladimir Putin as a bully, is on par with calling Joe Biden the same. Likewise with saying Volodymyr Zelensky is a twerp and the former president of Estonia (Toomas Hendrik Ilves) is a bigoted scumbag. (Stressing my preference against making these type of characterizations and simultaneous objection to the hypocrisy some exhibit on what is and isn’t ad hominem.)

Recall how Biden treated some Americans during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Specifically, his treatment of a senior citizen and a young woman in verbally confrontational instances. Note Biden confidently bragging about how he threatened to cut off aid from Ukraine, if it didn’t fire the attorney investigating the Ukrainian firm Biden’s son was working for.

Biden has supported US wars abroad. His Russia-Ukraine takes bring to mind that bullies are inclined to exaggerate a given circumstance to seek confrontation. Such people are known for making insulting threats beforehand, in an effort which serves to further provoke a confrontational situation. With inaccurate innuendo, bullies are prone to attacking those they disagree with.

This last point touches on Biden calling Putin a killer, when prodded by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. In a not too distant CSPAN aired discussion, former CIA analyst Joseph Weisberg, delves into the projection that some American elites make towards their Russian counterparts. (Weisberg is the creator of the FX TV aired series “The Americans“.

Hyping a Russia-Kiev regime conflict draws some attention away from Biden’s low poll numbers, having to do with US domestic issues. Increased Russia-Kiev regime tension benefits the US military industrial complex, as well as the flat out anti-Russian advocates, who’ve influenced the US body politic.

One of numerous examples is New Jersey’s longtime time Democratic Senator Robert Menendez. He spoke of Russians coming home in body bags in a Russia-Kiev regime war. On Fox News, Victor Davis Hanson observed an obscene approach in the manner of Menendez’s remark.

Menendez has been honored by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, known for strident anti-Russian activism. In the unfortunate event of a Russia-Kiev regime war, Menendez should be aware it’ll not be Russia needing the most body bags.

In stark contrast to Panetta and a good portion of the Western political establishment, German Vice Admiral Kai-Achim Schönbach felt compelled to resign after he said that Putin should be respected, Crimea will remain part of Russia and there should be a greater critical concentration on China.

Some might say it’s not for an armed forces officer to express their opinion on such issues. In the US, Schönbach’s peer, Mark Milley, has been noticeably critical of Russia, while exhibiting a comparatively gentler prose towards China. Free expression has apparent limits.

Schönbach’s comment runs counter to a discussion on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN aired GPS show of January 30. In this segment, The New York Times’ Katrin Bennhold appears to favor Germany having a harder line towards Russia. The same is more evident of Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andrey Melnyk.

Within US establishment circles, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, continues to get flack for being critical of the overly confrontational stance towards Russia and softer position accorded to the Kiev regime. Ukrainian-American activist Alexandra Chalupa tweeted that Carlson should be prosecuted for not being a registered foreign agent.

Coming from Chalupa, this is pretty rich, seeing her involvement with some Ukrainian government connected folks for the purpose of doing “opposition research” (finding dirt) on Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Is Chaulpa a registered foreign agent?

Carlson’s Russia-Ukraine observation refers to the Kiev regime not being threatened with sanctions for its military buildup near the Donbass rebel area, while evading the UN approved Minsk Protocol, advocating a negotiated autonomy settlement between the two conflicting sides in the former Ukrainian SSR. Similarly, no sanctions were put in place against those who violated the internationally brokered power sharing arrangement between Ukraine’s democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych and his main opposition.

Yanukovych’s overthrow put in place a non-democratically selected regime, which was top heavy with anti-Russian advocates. In turn, the more pro-Russian elements in the former Ukrainian SSR (notably in Crimea and Donbass) expressed their opposition to the coup.

The increased Russian troop buildup in European Russia is in line with the existential threat NATO poses to that country. In addition to having been militarily active in some non-NATO countries, NATO exhibits an anti-Russian bias.

Prior to the aforementioned Russian military buildup, the Russian government stated its opposition to NATO expanding near Russia for a period running over twenty years. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has referenced the 1999 Istanbul and 2010 Astana declarations, stipulating that an expanded military bloc shouldn’t threaten another country.

When noting this particular, Lavrov said his US counterpart Antony Blinken gave a shrugged shoulders reply.

eurasiareview.com

Realpolitik minds struggle to find a point in this gratuitous provocation, intervening less than two months before the start of the show, on February 4, 2022 at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing.

According to White House reasoning, “the Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”

To start with, no one among the Joe Biden handlers in the administration or any other officials were invited in the first place. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, remarked the US was “hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the Games”.

Zhao also stressed the Games are not “a stage for political posturing”, and added the “blatant political provocation” constitutes “a serious affront to the 1.4 billion Chinese people.” He left hanging in the air the possibility of “resolute countermeasures”.

What that implies is the recent Xi-Biden virtual summit also melt in the air when it comes to promoting a more diplomatic entente cordiale. Predictably, Washington politicians who prevailed are the ones obsessed on demonizing Beijing using the perennial human rights pretext.

Top billing goes to Polish-American Democrat Senator Tom Malinowski from New Jersey, the vice-chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Malinowski is not strange to dodgy dealings. On October 21, 2021, the House Committee on Ethics issued a report confirming he had failed to properly disclose his stock trades since early 2020, as he

bought or sold as much as $1 million of stock in medical and tech companies that had a stake in the response to Covid-19. The trades were actually just one aspect of a stock buying and selling spree worth as much as $3.2 million.

All throughout 2021, with multiple ethics complaints and an ethics investigation piling up, Malinowski was forced to direct his financial advisor to cease with stock market shenanigans, and announced he set up a blind trust for his assets.

Yet Malinowski’s main line of business is actually China demonization.

In June, Malinowski, alongside Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Michael McCaul (R-TX) was the key articulator of a resolution  urging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move the 2022 Games “away from Beijing” unless the PRC government ended “ongoing crimes against the Uyghur people”. The Americans were supported by legislators in nine European nations, plus the European Parliament.

At the time, Malinowski said, “there’s no such thing as non-political games – dictatorships like China host the Olympics to validate their standing…even as they continue to commit crimes against their people.”

Malinowski is very close to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – who is fervently pro-boycott. So this directive comes from the top of the Democrat leadership: the White House imprimatur was just a formality.

The “genocide” perpetrator

Considering the rolling color revolution in Hong Kong ended up as a total failure, human rights in Xinjiang remains a predictable pretext/target – on a par with the imminent “invasion” of Taiwan.

Arguably the best contextualized exposition of the real situation in Xinjiang is here. The “genocide” fallacy has been completely debunked by thorough independent analysis, as in here and here. The White House essentially regurgitates the “analysis” of a far-right religious nut first endorsed by Mike “we cheat, we lie, we steal” Pompeo. Talk about a continuity of government.

During the Cold War, the Olympics did become hostage to diplomatic boycotts. In 1980, the US under then president Jimmy Carter snubbed the Moscow Olympics along with other 64 nations in protest for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR for its part, alongside the Iron Curtain, boycotted the 1984 games in Los Angeles.

What happens now falls under the seal of Cold War 2.0 and the demonization of China across the spectrum, mostly via Hybrid War tactics.

Xinjiang is a prime target not because of the Uyghurs, but because it is the strategic connector between western China and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) corridors across Central Asia, South Asia and West Asia all the way to Europe. BRI – which is the centerpiece Chinese foreign policy concept for the foreseeable future – is an absolute anathema in Washington.

The fact that the US has been staging countless, costly, devastating declinations of humanitarian imperialism in Muslim lands, directly and indirectly, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond, but now, suddenly, is in tears about the fate of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, speaks for itself.

“Rights” groups barely disguised as CIA propaganda fronts have predictably been shrieking non-stop, urging the “international community” – an euphemism for NATOstan – to boycott the Beijing Olympics. These are irrelevant. Governments are a more serious matter.

Twenty nations refused to sign the Olympic Truce with China. This tradition, originating in Ancient Greece, makes sure that political upheaval does not interfere with sport. The – Western – justification for yet another provocation: we’re “sending a message” to Beijing.

In the UK, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg remarked recently that “no tickets have been booked” for the Olympics. The Foreign Office said earlier this week, “no decisions have yet been made” about sending officials to Beijing.

France will “coordinate” with other EU members, although the Elysée made a point that ‘when we are worried about human rights, we tell the Chinese…We adopted sanctions on Xinjiang last March.” That was a reference to the US, UK, EU, Canada and a few other allies sanctioning some Chinese officials for the glaring fake news the White House officially describes as “genocide”.

So any adherence to the White House directive this coming February will come essentially from NATOstan members and of course AUKUS. In contrast, across Asia and the Global South, no one could be bothered. South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Choi Yong-sam, for instance, stressed that South Korea supports the Olympics.

President Putin for his part accepted a personal invitation from Xi Jinping, and he will be at the inauguration.

Extremely strict Covid-19 control measures will be enforced during the Olympics, so for the organizers a smaller number of Western official guests flying in, in terms of cost, is actually a benefit.

So in the end what’s left of this fit of hysteria? Elon Musk may have nailed it this week at a CEO Council Summit, when he remarked that China’s economy could soon be two or three times the size of the US economy. That hurts. And there’s no way any boycott will solve it.

One of the mantras espoused by the Biden administration since he was inaugurated as 46th U.S. president nearly 10 months ago has been the stated desire to seek “stable and predictable relations with Russia”.

That formulation has been articulated by President Joe Biden and his top aides. It sounds high-handed, albeit with a begrudging tone of willingness to cooperate.

Why not “normal and cordial relations”? That seems too much to ask from an American political establishment that is encumbered with a Cold War ideology of “great power competition” and of viewing international relations through a simplistic Manichean prism of “good versus evil”. And, of course, one where the good guys are always, preposterously, yes, you guessed it, the Americans.

On a slightly positive note, there was President Biden’s early move to extend the New START accord limiting stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons held by both the U.S. and Russia. The previous Trump administration menacingly intimated that the crucial treaty would be scrapped along with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) accord and the Open Skies Treaty.

Also, five months into his White House tenure, Biden held a face-to-face summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The meeting appeared to be cordial and productive, despite earlier denigratory and baseless remarks by Biden alleging Putin to be a “killer”. Out of the Geneva summit, there were mutual exchanges on the topics of strengthening arms control, cybersecurity and other areas of concern.

As with the other mantra favored by the Biden administration, namely “rules-based global order”, it sounds like Washington simply wants to impose its unilateral view of what suits its own interests. Rules-based global order sounds legalistic and reasonable, but what it really means is U.S.-dictated terms.

So too it is with “stable and predictable relations” regarding Moscow. There is little mutualism or discussion intended. It is all about dictating what is stable and predictable for Washington.

The proof of that tacit American logic is the report this week that the United States repudiated a proposal from Russia for the lifting of all diplomatic restrictions between the two nations. Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said the proposal to normalize relations was rejected by both the State Department and the White House. In other words, the stance would appear to be endemic in the U.S. political establishment and cannot be attributed to some anomalous decision.

During the Trump administration, Russia’s consular offices in the United States were closed down by the U.S. authorities and several rounds of expulsions of Russian diplomats were carried out. The measures were reasonably countered by reciprocal Russian moves curbing American consular services on its territory.

The deterioration in diplomatic relations has been largely driven by unsubstantiated U.S. accusations of Russian interference in its internal affairs. The so-called “Russiagate” scandal alleging Russian interference in U.S. elections is a giant hoax in desperate need of facts. The indictment by the FBI this week of a source behind much of the claims is yet more proof of how crassly false the whole saga is. The real scandal here is the internal corruption of politics and law and order in the United States which has nothing to do with alleged Russian malign conduct.

Nevertheless, rather than undoing the damage to diplomatic relations, Washington persists in maintaining abnormally minimalist channels.

Moscow’s reasonable offer of unconditionally removing all restrictions was rebuffed. That inevitably means that the normal work of diplomats and inter-state communications are hampered. How does that reality square with the Biden administration’s ostensible commitment to cooperating on vitally important global security matters, such as strategic arms control? At a time of increasing, dangerous tensions between the two nuclear superpowers due to NATO moves in the Ukraine, Georgia and the Balkans, surely the most plausible policy would be to try and expand communications, not minimize them.

As with much else about this Biden White House, there is a lot of talk and very little walking. Biden talks about not wanting a Cold War or confrontation with Russia and China, yet his administration is riven with contradictory signals.

When this U.S. president talks about “stable and predictable” relations with Russia, the translation appears to be wanting to have stagnant and predictably bad relations.

Such a negative, non-productive position is contemptible, especially from a nation that claims, risibly, to be the world’s most powerful and most enlightened.

Of course, the explanation for this conundrum is rather mundane. American corporate capitalism cannot abide peaceful international relations because such a benign state of global affairs is anathema to its hyper-militaristic economy. Under prevailing conditions of dysfunctional U.S. capitalism, relations with Russia (and China, Iran, and so on) are designed to, necessarily, be bad. Hence, the perverse position in Washington this week of destroying any diplomatic opening with Russia.

It is sometimes difficult to absorb how much the United States has changed in the past twenty years, and not for the better. When I was in grade school in the 1950s there was a favorite somewhat simplistic saying much employed by teachers to illustrate the success of the American way of life that prevailed at that time. It went “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” and it meant that the U.S. version of a robust and assertive capitalist economy generated opportunity and prosperity for the entire nation. Today, having witnessed the devastation and offshoring of the domestic manufacturing economy by those very same corporate managers, such an expression would be rightly sneered at and considered risible.

Currently the politically motivated expressions of national greatness tend to honor America’s quality rather than the jobs and prosperity that it is able to generate. Presidents speak of the country’s “Exceptionalism,” as well as it being a “force for good” and “leader of the free world” with all that implies. That Americans are now in fact both poorer and less safe has generated its own national myth, that of a country beleaguered by terrorists who despise “our freedom” and which has been stabbed in the back by others, mostly in Asia, who have been engaging in unfair practices to bring America down. President Joe Biden’s gang of apologists has as well been fixated on the positive assertions that “America is back” and that the president will “build back better,” surely meaningless expressions that reflect the vacuity of the Democratic Party pre-electoral hype that Donald Trump had led the country to perdition.

President Joe Biden’s United Nations address three weeks ago was indeed largely Trump without all the bluster, threats and admonishments. He lied to the world leaders that: “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” According to the latest available information, the U.S. was involved in seven wars in 2018: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. Now that Afghanistan is nominally over, the number of current American wars is six officially, though none of them are actually declared by Congress as demanded the Constitution. If one includes clandestine counter-terrorism operations the real number is certainly much higher.

Joe Biden issued a call for all nations to work together to deal with transnational and even global threats like climate change and the pandemic, promising “relentless diplomacy” from the United States with a pledge that “we will look ahead, we will lead.” The response by the audience was predictably tepid as no one asked Joe whether anyone really wanted to be led any more, most notably America’s oldest friend and ally France, which was recently stiffed on a submarine deal by the White House. There are even reports that Biden is on bad terms with Great Britain, usually a completely reliable partner in crime. It was as if the U.S. president were reading from the “General Motors” script, having forgotten to refresh himself on what happened more recently in the debacle retreat from Afghanistan, which was not mentioned at all.

But it wasn’t all sugar and spice as Biden demonstrated his required toughness, cautioning Iran and skewering those who do not “…give their people the ability to breathe free, …who seek to suffocate their people with an iron-hand authoritarianism. The authoritarians of the world, they seek to proclaim the end of the age of democracy, but they’re wrong.” He was speaking, somewhat gratuitously, about Russia and China while also failing to mention the chaos on the U.S. southern border, demonstrating once again that everything is susceptible to change, but not in Washington.

To be sure, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the speech was the complete lack of self-awareness that the world has moved on without the United States, which has been locked into a certain foreign policy mindset since 9/11. In the past two decades Washington has invaded and brought about regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has attempted to do the same unsuccessfully in Syria. It has openly intervened in the electoral process in Ukraine, which brought about a change of government that also generated a major crisis with Russia. It joined together with European allies to overthrow the Libyan government, reducing that stable and prosperous country into what is currently little better than a gangster and terrorist stronghold. It has more recently been seeking to undermine the elected government in Venezuela and has worked assiduously to wreck that country’s economy. It has interfered in Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador and has dealt out devastating economic sanctions on adversaries like Iran.

It should be noted that all those initiatives, which Joe Biden might describe as “leadership,” took place under both Democratic and Republican Administrations, suggesting that if there is consensus in Washington it likely can be found in the willingness to wreck other nations. And Joe denounces “authoritarian” regimes without recognizing that many Americans have observed how the United States is itself becoming a model totalitarian state, irrationally obsessed with war while also having a health care system that has been ranked as one of the worst in the developed world. Witness the Patriot Act and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which have empowered any president to go to war without being endangered by a foreign threat. And then there is the Military Commissions Act which permits the indefinite imprisonment of terror and other suspects without having to charge anyone with a crime. And what about the prisoners still held without trial at Guantanamo after twenty years, or the Obama initiated policy of assassinating U.S. citizens overseas using drones? Or using drones to wipe out entire wedding parties while imprisoning the whistleblower Daniel Hale who had the temerity to reveal that 90% of the drone deaths in Afghanistan were of innocent bystanders who fit a “profile”?

And then there is the handling of the COVID-19 virus vaccination program at home, making it mandatory if people want to stay employed or in school. Or have a government job. The Biden Administration is now making health care decisions that impact directly on all Americans. Joe Biden is all for that and some in his administration are calling for mandatory booster vaccinations to include everyone who is already allegedly protected. Many Americans are resisting the government policies and there is growing dissent from the scientific and medical community over the efficacy of the vaccines, to include some legitimate concerns that they do more harm than good.

The government is also planning on looking at everyone’s bank accounts, an enormous invasion of privacy. A proposal working its way into law would require all banks to report directly to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) all relevant information on any account that has more than $600 in transactions in a year. That would mean nearly all accounts and one can combine that with continued government surveillance of the phones and emails of citizens who have not been involved in any criminal activity plus increased broadening of domestic terrorism legislation and guidelines which will turn half the population into “suspects.”

So, the myth of America trudges on with some new labels attached but otherwise pretty much the same. Many would argue that it is time for a reboot, to return to constitutionalism, small government and an end to pointless foreign wars and interventions. But to do that would pit individuals and small groups against some very powerful interests, i.e. the defense industry, big pharma, and government itself, which sees its natural role as one of growth. It is an unbalanced struggle, but it must be won if the United States of America is to survive with some basic freedoms intact into the 22^nd century.

An ill-judged attempt to find out who is to blame for failing to predict the swift victory of the Taliban and the disintegration of Afghan government forces is masking the most significant strategic lessons of the Afghan war.

Turning points in history usually come by surprise because, if the powers-that-be of the day could see those turning points coming at them, they would take steps to avoid them. Governments and the public like to believe that there is more inevitability in history than there really is. Unexpected events of great significance, such as the fall of France in 1940, the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 were followed by inquiries into why experts did not foresee them.

These investigations dig down deep in search of root causes of historic change and always find them. But, as Lord Northcliffe said, one “should never lose one’s sense of the superficial”. Key ingredients in important historic developments may be decisions and actions occurring that could easily have gone the other way. For instance, there were long-standing reasons for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990, but none of these would have mattered if the Iraqi leader had changed his mind at the last minute.

There was a staggering display of double-think this week from U.S. President Joe Biden. In reverse order, Biden hosted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at the White House on Wednesday and announced that the United States was to provide an additional $60 million in military support to the Kiev regime “in the face of Russian aggression”.

The day before, however, Biden delivered a solemn address to the nation in which he declared “the era of wars for nation-building was over”. The U.S. president was marking the final end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan when the last American military plane took off from Kabul at midnight on Monday. The departure capped the shambolic and shameful defeat of the United States by the Taliban insurgents who have returned to power almost two decades after they were ousted by a U.S. military invasion of the Central Asian country in October 2001. The longest war was for nothing.

In his nationwide address, Biden reiterated his belief that he took the right decision to wind down the trillion-dollar military occupation. He said the United States must learn from its mistakes in Afghanistan and not become involved again in wars for “nation-building”. He added that the U.S. withdrawal was not just about Afghanistan. This was a strategic watershed in Washington’s foreign policy whereby there must be an end to “major military operations to remake other countries”.

If Biden’s address appeared to signal a major curb in U.S. imperialism, that notion was quickly disabused within only a few hours when he subsequently hosted the Ukrainian president.

The Biden administration notified Congress it was boosting military support to the Kiev regime because of the increasing “threat from Russia”. The additional supply of $60 million worth of equipment includes Javelin anti-tank missiles “to defend Ukraine against a Russian incursion”.

“Ukraine’s significant capability gaps must be urgently addressed to reinforce deterrence in light of the current Russian threat,” claimed the Biden administration in its notification to Congress which duly rubber-stamped the additional inventory of lethal military firepower.

This brings the total U.S. military supply to Ukraine this year alone to $400 million. Since the Washington-backed coup d’état in Kiev against an elected government in 2014, the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with over $2 billion in military support. That has fueled a seven-year war against the ethnic Russian population in Eastern Ukraine who do not recognize the 2014 coup as legitimate. It is the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces under Kiev’s command that continually violate a nominal ceasefire by attacking civilian centers in the Donetsk and Luhansk self-declared autonomous regions. Yet Washington and its puppet regime in Kiev accuse Russia of aggression.

The alleged “annexation” of Crimea by Russia is another red-herring that Washington keeps flogging despite a legal referendum in 2014 held by the ethnic Russian people of Crimea to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. They also repudiated the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 in Kiev which brought Neo-Nazis to power. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared history and culture with Russia. The U.S.-installed regime in Kiev has sinister antecedents as collaborators with the Nazi Third Reich in assisting the genocide during the Second World War against Slavic peoples. How about that for historical denouement on the real nature of Washington’s power and what it associates with despite all the pious, self-preening platitudes of democratic virtue?

Moscow this week condemned the increase in U.S. military hardware being sent to Ukraine. Together with provocative rhetoric from Biden about “defending Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression” the development is deeply destabilizing for the country which shares a border with Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the new military aid “could potentially cause unpredictable actions by the Ukrainian side in terms of attempting to resolve the Ukrainian conflict by force,” adding, “this is very dangerous.”

Meanwhile, Denis Pushilin, president of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, commented that the meeting between Biden and Zelensky showed “not a single hint of peace settlement”.

Indeed, Biden’s meeting at the White House was a recapitulation of false accusations against Russia over Ukraine and a brazen distortion of who the aggressor party is. There was no mention by the U.S. president of the Kiev regime’s obligations to implement the Minsk Peace Accord which was mediated by France, Germany and Russia in 2015.

Still, it was reported that Zelensky was not entirely satisfied by the additional disbursement of American military aid. He wants much more from Washington as well as immediate acceptance into the NATO military alliance, a move that Moscow has repeatedly warned against as being a threat too far to its national security.

Other U.S. analysts were also advocating the Biden administration to ramp up supplies of “big-ticket” weapons to the Kiev regime. Alexander Vershbow, a former ambassador to Russia who is now with the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington DC, urged the White House to deploy anti-aircraft missile systems in Ukraine. Such people – who are quoted in U.S. media as supposedly intelligent commentators – are in reality nothing more than war-mongering lunatics of Dr Strangelove ilk who drool and fantasize about “l-l-l… luvving” bombs.

The year-on-year funneling of military power into Ukraine by Washington is exacerbating the conflict in that country and stoking explosive tensions with Russia. If the Kiev regime escalates its aggression towards the eastern Donbas region, thereby further endangering ethnic Russian civilian populations, then Moscow’s hand may be forced to defend its national security interests. Washington’s ignorant, or cynical, support for the Kiev regime and its intensely hostile Russophobia, has created powder-keg conditions.

What’s more, Washington maintains that its military backing for Ukraine is conditioned on improvements in the Kiev regime’s record on human rights, anti-corruption measures, reforms to its judicial system and adopting U.S.-approved economic policies. In short, that sounds a lot like nation-building by Washington decree.

That shows the United States’ rulers have learned absolutely nothing from their unmitigated disaster in Afghanistan. American militarism, war-making and imperial “nation-building” will continue. Because that is endemic to U.S. capitalism and its hegemonic addiction.

Thus, Biden’s words of solemnity about ending wars are just a sop to a nation that is chronically sick of destructive U.S. imperialistic violence. In the rawness of Afghanistan and the festering wounds of that catastrophe, Biden is obliged to console a war-weary nation. But his words are empty.

As his next meeting on Ukraine would quickly demonstrate, it’s imperial business-as-usual.