Ministry of Truth Redux: Media Lies, NATO Expansion, and the Road to Kyiv

The Architects of Conflict: How the West Was Manufactured Into War in Ukraine 

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth rewrote history to fit the Party’s latest lies, and the Ministry of Peace waged endless wars in the name of harmony. Today, Orwell’s fiction has become our foreign policy. The war in Ukraine is not just a tragedy, it is a meticulously scripted performance, choreographed by the empire and sold to the public as liberation.

In a rare moment of candour, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, offers a devastating account of how Washington’s foreign policy machine manufactures war through manipulation, propaganda, and covert influence. This is not speculation or fringe theory; this is a senior U.S. military insider pulling back the curtain on how the empire operates. 

His words matter now more than ever. Because while British media continue to distract away from poverty and corruption, a new generation of European leaders, Starmer, Macron, Merz, and Tusk, have flown into Kyiv to pledge further support for the grinding war in Ukraine. More arms, more sanctions, more bloodshed. All in the name of “Peace.” 

As Orwell warned us, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” The doublethink required to sell endless war as the path to peace would make the Ministry of Truth proud, but that is the reality we live in today. 

The Memory Hole: NATO’s Forgotten Promises 

The official narrative tells us that NATO is a defensive alliance, merely responding to Russian aggression. What vanishes down the memory hole is that in 1990, as the Soviet Union collapsed, Western leaders promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” This inconvenient fact has been scrubbed from mainstream discourse, relegated to the category of “Russian propaganda,” despite declassified documents confirming these assurances were indeed given. 

Colonel Wilkerson reveals that by 2002, the United States had already embarked on a deliberate strategy to break this promise comprehensively, targeting neutral nations like Sweden and Finland. 

“The efforts began in 2002, during my administration, and they started aggressively with Jens Stoltenberg,” Wilkerson explains. “We wanted Stoltenberg to be the new Secretary General of NATO, and we were absolutely committed to that. Why? Because we knew he was our man. We knew he would do what we wanted, that he was aligned with us on NATO expansion.” 

The goal was breathtaking in its ambition, “We were talking about eventually bringing every country in Europe into NATO, no matter how small, how criminal, or how undemocratic. Every single country in Europe was going to be a member.” 

The Ministry of Truth: Manufacturing Consent 

How does one convince populations with no interest in military alliances to abandon neutrality? Through what Wilkerson candidly calls “colour revolutions,” the same template used repeatedly across the globe. 

“We started doing what we do in what we call ‘colour revolutions,'” Wilkerson explains. “These were orchestrated within each country, tailored to their specific circumstances. The approach included everything from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to quasi-governmental organizations (QUANGOs), government bodies, and political visits from senators and representatives.” 

The parallels to Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” are unmistakable. A centralizing power that rewrites reality through coordinated messaging, creates artificial consensus, and labels dissent as treason or foreign influence. 

“We orchestrated campaigns to create what I call ‘tyrannies of the minority,'” Wilkerson continues. “We found the political factions that desperately wanted NATO membership, even if they were a minority, and backed them to the hilt. We bought newspapers, magazines, and articles.” 

This isn’t a new playbook. “It’s the same playbook we used in Italy in 1948 to prevent communist elections, in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, and so on,” Wilkerson admits. 

Newspeak: Weaponizing Liberal Democracy 

In Orwell’s 1984, language itself becomes a tool of control through “Newspeak,” where words are emptied of their meaning and refilled with their opposites. Today, terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights” have been similarly hollowed out and weaponised. 

“A CIA agent once told me, ‘There’s never been a weapon as potent as liberal democracy,'” Wilkerson reveals. “We’ve weaponized it, using NGOs, media, and political pressure to shape nations to our will.” 

Ukraine provides the perfect case study. “Even before 2014, we were involved,” Wilkerson confirms. “The 2004 Orange Revolution was blatant, Yushchenko openly credited the EU and the U.S. as its ‘godfathers.’ There was genuine discontent in Ukraine, but it was hijacked for geopolitical goals: pushing NATO membership, even though polls showed only about 20% of Ukrainians supported it. Most preferred security arrangements with Russia.” 

The manipulation of Ukrainian politics culminated in the 2014 Maidan coup, which Western media universally portrays as a spontaneous democratic uprising, never mentioning Victoria Nuland’s infamous intercepted call with Ambassador Pyatt, where they discussed handpicking Ukraine’s post-coup government. 

What followed and what our media has memory-holed with Orwellian efficiency was eight years of civil war in Eastern Ukraine. From 2014 until Russia’s intervention in 2022, over 14,000 people died in the Donbass region as Ukrainian forces, including neo-Nazi battalions like Azov, shelled civilian areas in Donetsk and Luhansk. This brutal internal conflict completely disappears from Western narratives, which insist the war “began” when Russia crossed the border.

Yet NATO’s own Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, accidentally spoke the truth: “The war didn’t start in February last year, the war started in 2014.” In the same revealing admission, Stoltenberg confirmed NATO has been arming Ukraine since 2014, years before Russia’s intervention, and throughout a period when the Minsk Agreements (designed to give autonomy to the Donbass) were supposedly being implemented in good faith.

This is Newspeak in action: the civil war becomes “Russian aggression.” The neo-Nazi battalions become “freedom fighters.” The people of Donbass become “separatists” rather than civilians seeking protection from a government that bombed them for eight years. And NATO’s long-term arming and training of Ukrainian forces becomes “defensive support” rather than preparation for the proxy war that was always the goal.

The Home Front: Poverty for Peace

Back in Britain, Orwell’s dictum that “war is a way of shattering to pieces materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable” plays out with cruel precision. Labour cuts disability benefits while funding the war machine. PIP payments slashed. Pensioners told to tighten their belts. Social care crumbling. NHS waiting lists lengthening. Yet as if by magic, there’s always enough for another billion-pound arms package. Always more for Ukraine. Just less for you.

This is not accident but design. Domestic austerity and foreign militarism are two sides of the same coin, a deliberate transfer of public wealth from social welfare to weapons manufacturers. The suffering of Britain’s vulnerable becomes the collateral damage in a war fought thousands of miles away, their needs sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical ambition.

And now, in the glimmering city of Kyiv, four Western leaders arrive: Starmer, Macron, Merz, and Tusk. All speak the same script. All declare the same holy war. Their visit is a pilgrimage to the new Temple of War, where sacrifice is made not by them, but by the poor, the disabled, the conscripted, and the forgotten.

The British public is funding this butcher’s bill to the tune of £14 billion and counting. Starmer has committed £3.5 billion a year to Ukraine “for as long as they need it.” And when war is the economy of Britain, when the defense industry is “the engine of national renewal,” then that need will, Starmer hopes, be a very long time indeed.

In perfect Orwellian doublespeak, the so-called coalition of the willing declared they were “ready to support peace talks as soon as possible.” But in the same breath warned they would continue to “ratchet up pressure on Russia’s war machine” until Moscow agrees to a lasting ceasefire. Peace through escalation. Diplomacy through destruction. Freedom through subjugation.

“We are clear the bloodshed must end,” they declare, while sending more weapons to ensure it continues. “Russia must stop its illegal invasion,” they insist, while funding the very conditions that made diplomatic resolution impossible. “Ukraine must be able to prosper as a safe, secure and sovereign nation,” they proclaim, while using it as a sacrificial pawn in a geopolitical chess game. “We will continue to increase our support for Ukraine,” they promise, ensuring that more Ukrainians and Russians will die each day.

The contradiction would be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious. As Orwell wrote, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

Big Brother: The Unaccountable State Within a State 

Wilkerson’s most chilling revelation concerns the lack of democratic oversight within the American empire. “The reality is, our country teams operate with layers of secrecy. Often, even ambassadors don’t know what the CIA is doing in their host countries. If the CIA doesn’t want them to know, they won’t.” 

This shadow government, unaccountable even to elected officials, resembles Orwell’s “Big Brother,” an all-seeing entity whose actions remain hidden while it surveils and manipulates others. 

“This lack of oversight has turned the CIA into an independent actor within the national security apparatus,” Wilkerson warns. “Trump promised to reform this by giving the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) real budgetary and personnel control, but it hasn’t happened.” 

Trump, for all his contradictions, says it plainly: “This war is losing 5,000 people a week. End it.” Not because he is moral, but because even he sees the machine is out of control. And unlike Starmer, he is not a true believer. He is an opportunist who sees a bad deal.

Yet the machinery of empire grinds on. Even as Trump calls for peace, the assembled European leaders in Kyiv promise more weapons, more sanctions, more conflict. 

The Endless War 

Starmer audaciously states: “The British defence industry will be the engine of national renewal.” This is not a gaffe or a misspoken moment… it is the logical endgame of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against.

The Prime Minister’s words reveal the grim economic calculus behind perpetual conflict: Britain’s prosperity now depends on an endless cycle of weapons production. “If you build your economy on bombs, don’t act surprised when the world keeps exploding”. When your GDP relies on missiles and munitions, peace becomes an existential threat to national prosperity.

This perverse inversion of values is pure Orwellian doublethink. War is not just peace—war is prosperity. War is jobs. War is growth. War is the future. The suffering of others becomes the foundation of our economic well-being, their destruction our construction, their death our life.

“This is the mess of empire,” Wilkerson concludes, “too big, too unaccountable, fuelled by printed money and unchecked power.” 

While Starmer, Macron, Merz, and Tusk pose for photo opportunities in Kyiv and promise ever-escalating support for a war they pretend can be “contained and controlled,” the reality is starker. These are not independent actors making sovereign decisions; they are the product of decades of careful cultivation by an empire that has mastered the art of manufacturing consent. 

The architects of war don’t care about borders or lives, they care about influence, resources, and markets. NATO is not a shield; it’s a spear. And the people of Europe are once again being marched into war without ever being asked.

Colonel Wilkerson has given us a rare glimpse behind the curtain. The question remains whether enough people will listen before this manufactured conflict spirals beyond anyone’s control. 

Wilkerson’s final warning should chill every citizen who still believes in democracy. He describes how the CIA and its proxy organisations—operating beyond any real oversight—now shape entire nations. Even U.S. ambassadors are often unaware of what’s happening under their own command. This isn’t freedom. It’s oligarchy with a smile.

So the question remains: how long will we keep buying the lie?

Because if Orwell was right, and he usually is, the endgame isn’t peace or justice. The endgame is power. Pure, permanent, and total.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.” -George Orwell

Paul Knaggs