In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama met privately in the White House with the democratically elected (in 2010) new President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, to get him to end Ukraine’s neutralist position ever since 1991 and join the U.S. Government’s EU and NATO alliances against Ukraine’s next-door neighbor Russia, but Yanukovych said no. And, then, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled in 2010 to Kiev to give this another try, and again Yanukovych said no. By the time of June 2011, the Obama Administration started planning the coup to replace Ukraine’s Government with one that the U.S. would select. This plan started being implemented by no later than 1 March 2013 inside America’s Embassy in Ukraine, to train Ukraine’s racist-fascist, or ideologically nazi, haters of Russians, how to use the internet in order to organize ‘anti-corruption’ demonstrations against — and to overthrow and replace — the neutralist Yanukovych by a Ukrainian regime that would be committed against Russia. On 27 January 2014, Obama’s agent overseeing the U.S. coup told the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev that Arseniy Yatsenyuk should be placed in charge when the coup would be completed, and this was done on 27 February 2014. Obama’s plan to turn Ukraine rabidly anti-Russia succeeded. (The only part of it that failed was Obama’s plan to grab Russia’s largest naval base, in Crimea, and turn that into yet another U.S. naval base.) It also succeeded in turning Ukrainian public opinion vastly more against Russia than it had been before.
The objective of all this was ultimately to achieve a 1962 Cuban-Missile-Crisis in reverse, by which the U.S. will ultimately place at least one nuclear missile only about 300 miles away from Moscow and then demand Russia’s capitulation. If Russia says no, then within only five minutes from America’s firing its knockout missile, Moscow can be annihilated, Russia’s central command beheaded, and that is too fast for Russia to be able to recognize that it had been done and then to launch its retaliatory weapons against America. So, there might be a reasonable chance for America to eliminate Russia by a blitz-nuclear attack from Ukraine — or at least there are influential people in the U.S. Government and academe who think so (including virtually the entire Biden Administration, just like in Obama’s and Trump’s).
Ever since at least 2006, the idea had become mainstream in American geostrategic planning circles for America to abandon the prior nuclear meta-strategy — “Mutually Assured Destruction or “M.A.D.” — of using nuclear weapons in order to avert a nuclear war, to becoming instead “Nuclear Primacy,” to use nuclear weapons in order to win a nuclear war. Obama pushed it almost beyond the point of no return until Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022 so as to push back Ukraine’s nearest border from its present roughly 300 miles away from Moscow to perhaps a thousand miles away. However, even that would be nearer to Moscow than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis’s standard, which was Cuba being 1,331 miles away from Washington DC. And now Finland, which aims to join NATO, might move that to only 507 miles; so, America’s goal of conquering Russia is still very much a national-security threat to the people in Russia. In fact, by 2017, America already had become frighteningly near to being able to perpetrate a ‘victorious’ blitz-nuclear attack against Russia.
By contrast, Russia has never tried to place its ground-based nuclear missiles that near to Washington DC. Cuba was the last opportunity to do that, and it was during the Soviet Union, and it was instead 1,331 miles away from DC. Russia, today — now that NATO has grown to surround it (especially in Ukraine, which has the nearest border to Moscow) — is in enormous danger from this. On 17 December 2021, Russia formally presented separately to America and to NATO Russia’s fundamental national-security concerns, and on 7 January 2022 both America and its NATO said no to all of them — not even for negotiation. Russia’s only remaining option then was to invade and conquer Ukraine. America has no national-security interest in Russia’s nearest neighbor, Ukraine, but Russia certainly does and must win this war or else capitulate to the U.S. regime. Russia doesn’t have the option of allowing this Ukraine to serve as an American nuclear launching-pad against The Kremlin. Whether it will allow Finland (the second-nearest) to become that is not yet clear.
If Russia’s Government were like America’s Government, then Russia might now be considering to turn Mexico against America like America has turned Ukraine against Russia. On March 21st, Ben Norton headlined “‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO condemns invasion threats, celebrates nationalization of oil, lithium” and quoted from recent speeches by Mexico’s President, who has made clear the depths of the mutual hostility on both sides of that border, and the current Mexican President’s transformation of his country’s international policies into a clear condemnation of the arrogance and psychopathic greed of America’s billionaires and their Government. What is remarkable is that Russia has given no sign of trying to turn Mexico into a Russian launching-pad against America as America is now straining to bring to culmination Obama’s plan for Ukraine to become America’s launching-pad against Russia.
Clearly, Russia’s Government is fundamentally different from America’s, vastly less aggressive. It’s obvious to any rational person. For Russia to lose the war in Ukraine would be disastrous, whereas for America to lose it would be just another defeat for America, like Vietnam was, and Afghanistan was, and Iraq was, and Syria was, and Libya was, and so many others have been — and none of those defeats after 1945 has even nicked the U.S. regime’s ability to dictate to the rest of the world like it demands to do. Maybe this one would, but that would be all to the good, for the entire world — if America doesn’t resort to nuclear war in order to try to assert its supremacy. What’s at stake for Russia in this matter is its very existence as an independent country. What’s at stake for America in it — this war on Russia’s border, not on ours — is whatever America’s billionaires will choose it to be. And if they choose to lose, then everyone (including especially in Europe) will be better off as a result. But if America’s billionaires choose to ‘win’ (if they’re that power-crazed), then the world won’t survive this. So, yes: after 1945, there’s a huge difference between Russia’s Government, and ours.
By Eric Zuesse