The Ukraine-Russia War: Sacrificing the Domestic for the Imperial

The War Must Go On! Pax Americana…

World leaders are applauding the US House for approving a massive $61 billion aid package for Ukraine. This, coupled with significant support from the UK and EU, raises a crucial question: can the West afford this unwavering support in the face of its own economic struggles? Billions upon billions haemorrhaged into the gaping maw of perpetual conflict.

No wonder President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his gratitude to the US House of Representatives for approving a new $61bn (£49bn) package of military assistance for Ukraine after months of delays. He said the aid could save thousands of lives, no mention of the tens of thousands already lost.

Coupled with the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine, pledging £7.1 billion and a staggering amount of Military aid worth around 28 billion euros that’s some war machine they are building, you would never think there is a recession on.

Collectively EU and EU Member State support to Ukraine includes over $51 billion in financial and budgetary support and in humanitarian and emergency assistance. This support is as essential as military assistance to ensure Ukraine’s success on the battlefield. More rhetoric than reality.

While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a post on social media.”I welcome that the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a major new package of aid to Ukraine,” “Ukraine is using the weapons provided by NATO allies to destroy Russian combat capabilities. This makes us all safer, in Europe and North America.”

Safer, he says? From what precisely? The spectre of the Soviet menace died an ignoble death decades ago, consigned to the ash heap of history alongside other failed ideological experiments. To persist in viewing the Russian Federation through the prism of its defunct predecessor is not only intellectually dishonest but a grievous strategic miscalculation.

Let us be candid – the only existential threat Russia poses to the West lies in its vast stocks of nuclear armaments. A grim reality, to be sure, but one that necessitates a policy of pragmatic deterrence and diplomatic engagement, not the reckless escalation of tensions we currently witness.

Even as the drums of war echo across the steppes, we have to understand this is not the continuation of a cold war, this is a theatre of the Forever War where we are fed a steady diet of lies and false narratives, each one more insidious than the last. We are told that this is a noble crusade against the forces of tyranny, a valiant stand in defence of freedom and democracy.

Yet to poke the Russian bear with the sharp stick of NATO expansionism and ceaseless military provocations is to court a conflagration of unimaginable proportions. A folly that could undo in an instant all that we have strived to build and preserve.

But strip away the propaganda, and what remains is a sordid tale of great power rivalry and corporate profiteering, where the lives of ordinary Ukrainians and Russians are mere collateral damage.

For those who pretend that Ukraine is single-handedly holding back the Russian hordes along the Donbas line and the Dnipro River, they are deluding themselves. The reality is far more nuanced and complex.

Ukraine’s conflict, dating back to 2014 is an escalation of a civil war, exacerbated by Russia and the US. The Dnipro River, now a key battleground, underscores the conflict’s complexity.

The Dnipro, Europe’s fourth-longest river and a historic trading route has become a key battlefront where the Russians have dug in. This winding waterway, stretching the length of the country from north to south before emptying into the Black Sea, now serves as a demarcation line separating the two armies. This is the halting line.

The situation in Ukraine transcends a straightforward invasion narrative. Russia has dug in its heels, portraying itself as a liberator protecting the people of Donbas from a “Nazi” Ukrainian regime. Conversely, Ukraine paints a picture of Ukrainian citizens under Russian occupation, yearning for liberation.

Further complicating the picture, Russia held referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya oblasts, seeking to legitimize its control by offering them a path to join Russia, mirroring the annexation of Crimea. Of course, the legitimacy of these votes is widely disputed.

However, if Russia had the intention of a full-blown invasion as the media like to promote, if this were truly a conventional invasion, Ukraine would have been cut off, isolated from the West, its supply routes severed, and its industries decimated. Yet we witness a surreal reality where celebrities, foreign dignitaries, and politicians can casually visit Kyiv for photo ops with Zelensky, as if this were merely a theatrical production rather than a brutal conflict.

This state of affairs raises a more profound question: If a rag-tag army of borrowed equipment and foreign funds can hold back the might of the Russian military, what need is there for NATO? An alliance that demands 2% of its member’s GDP to be spent on arms.

The inescapable truth is that this conflict is part of the perpetual cycle of “forever wars,” fueling the profits of the military-industrial complex while consigning the poor to untold suffering and loss.

The lines between aggressor and defender, liberator and oppressor, have become hopelessly blurred in this proxy struggle between global powers. Ukraine stands as a tragic pawn, its people caught in the crossfire of geopolitical machinations far beyond their control.

But what we do know is the West is feeding this monster while leaving its own citizens hungry.

While the official rhetoric touts lofty ideals of defending democracy and freedom, the grim reality on the ground tells a different story. With each lethal payload delivered, each long-range missile launched, it is the most vulnerable amongst us who bear the brunt of these hawkish policies.

In the UK, where millions already grapple with the vice-grip of austerity and a crippling cost-of-living crisis, the diversion of vital resources towards this proxy war represents nothing less than a callous betrayal of the nation’s most sacred obligation – the well-being of its people.

As the government funnels billions into fueling the insatiable maw of the military-industrial complex, one can almost hear the echoes of General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and former United States president as he issued that dire warning rippling through history: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

With each commitment to arm and fund Ukraine’s in its resistance proxy or not, the stark opportunity costs become increasingly apparent. These billions could have uplifted entire communities from the clutches of deprivation, funded comprehensive healthcare initiatives, or shored up the nation’s crumbling social safety nets. Instead, they are sacrificed upon the altar of imperial ambition, destined to sow further death and destruction in a conflict that grows more intractable by the day.

Instead our government conduct a war on the poor, a frontal attack on the disabled.

And for what ultimate end? To serve as proxies in a geopolitical chess match between the United States and Russia, mere pawns in a game of global hegemony where the lives of ordinary citizens are mere collateral damage?

While the Dnipro River flows inexorably towards the Black Sea, it carries with it the echoes of a conflict that has transcended its origins, morphing into a grotesque spectacle of great power posturing and profiteering.

And what of those who do the real fighting in this conflict? The cream of Russian and Ukrainian youth, consigned to the meat grinder of war, their names destined to be etched upon forgotten soldiers’ tombs, mere statistics in a war of attrition that knows no victors, only an ever-mounting toll of death and destruction.

It is a bitter irony that as the UK and its allies claim to be defending the ideals of democracy and freedom, they are simultaneously laying the foundations for a future where such notions are little more than hollow platitudes. For in the shadow of the military-industrial complex, true self-determination and economic enfranchisement are inexorably sacrificed upon the pyre of perpetual warfare, as shifting battlegrounds break out wherever best suits the profits.

Meanwhile the oligarchs and war profiteers – grow ever more emboldened, secure in the knowledge that their fortunes made on our money are assured even after the fires of conflict have turned to ash.

Already Zelensky has signed away the rich Ukrainian farmland and its economy to BlacRock. He has indented the nation while the EU wait patiently to sup its gas lines like a vampire of old forcing it to open its arteries to feed the industrial might of Germany and the shopping habits of the Western middle class.

If there is any hope to be found in this morass, it lies in the collective resolve of the people to reject the lies and false narratives that have been peddled to justify this senseless bloodshed. To demand accountability from those who have so callously sacrificed Ukrainian and Russian lives upon the altar of geopolitical brinkmanship.

For only through a radical rejection of the paradigms that have propelled us towards this abyss can we hope to forge a path towards true peace and reconciliation. A path that transcends the myopic confines of nationalist fervor and great power rivalries, and instead embraces the common humanity that binds us all.

The choice before us is stark: to continue enabling the perpetuation of this cyclical madness, or to muster the moral courage to demand an end to the forever wars that have bled the world dry. The future remains unwritten, but the path forward is clear to any with eyes to see.

Reject the hawks, embrace the doves…

Meanwhile, as the war grinds on, its toll mounting with each passing day, you cannot help but be reminded of the haunting words of Tupac Shakur: “They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor.” For in the twisted calculus of militarism, the suffering of the downtrodden is deemed an acceptable cost – a mere line item in the grand ledger of empire.

However, no matter the cost, one question remains – where are the Doves, where is the diplomatic mission for peace?

I suppose there are 61 billion reasons why I can’t see them…

Paul Knaggs