46 Comments

Unfortunately I do not subscribe to anything so I could not hear your or Ben Abelow's answer to Katie's last question about what if any alternatives to invading Ukraine Put had. Nor have I heard anyone else ask the question, much less answer it. I would be most grateful for a reply.

Expand full comment

Dear western guys, please do anything you can, protests, demonstrations, rallies etc. to stop the western support to the Kievan regime.

Expand full comment
Sep 23, 2022·edited Sep 23, 2022

"To policymakers like Sullivan, there is not only an endless pool of money to “re-up” the war, but a “fundamentally” indifferent posture toward the taxpayers footing the bill." If taxpayers were the source of federal spending then the supply could not possibly be endless. All federal spending is newly created currency. The volume afforded the MIC gives them unprecedented market leverage for all products and services offered, yet it is the austerity policies for job creation, infrastructure and social welfare commons that cause poverty, not so much, but somewhat, the regressive taxation. The "taxpayer dollar" trope is a dis-service, classist, racial distortion that looses the speaker credibility due to macroeconomic illiteracy.

Expand full comment

This reminds me of Bosnia. Before the war in Bosnia started, the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Muslims all agreed to a peace plan that had been brokered by a Portuguese diplomat named Jose Cutileiro, in Lisbon, under the auspices of the European Community.

The Lisbon Agreement (also known as the Cutileiro Plan) had been accepted by all three parties until the American ambassador, Warren Zimmermann, convinced the Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, to withdraw from the agreement.

Zimmermann encouraged Izetbegovic to fight for a unitary Bosnian state (as opposed to the tripartite state negotiated at Lisbon) and promised him American support. Consequently, Izetbegovic withdrew from the peace process and instigated the war.

The Bosnian Muslims suffered the heaviest losses in the war, but in the end the Dayton Peace Agreement didn't really give them anything they couldn't have had under the Cutileiro Plan.

Goading the Bosnian Muslims into withdrawing from the peace process and starting a war gave NATO a pretext to establish a military presence in the former Yugoslavia, but it certainly didn't benefit any if the people who lived there.

In 2005, a Serbian nationalist politician named Vojislav Seselj said something that I dismissed as crazy at the time, but now I think he may have been on to something.

He said, "NATO has strategic interests in fully diluting Russia and therefore they need a foothold in the Balkans, in the Ukraine, and in central Asia. Their ultimate objective is to break up all of Russia. It wasn't enough for them to break up the Soviet Union. They do not want to have a single factor in the background that is not reliable in their intentions of this nature.

"So why were we Serbs always subject to NATO attacks and why did NATO always support our enemies in all the civil wars that were waged? They see us as potential Russian allies in all wars in the Balkans and they want to destroy us as the only nation, the only army, the only force that would not subject itself to a dictate."

Expand full comment

"...taxpayers footing the bill..."

Note that the US appropriations for Ukraine defense are not paid with taxes—it's paid with bond issue.

This of course makes it easier to wage the proxy war indefinitely.

Expand full comment

Quote: War being fluid – and US-led military support for Ukraine ever-expanding – it is of course possible that Ukraine will continue to defy expectations and drive out the invading Russian forces. End Quote

Let me perfectly clear about this. It is physically impossible for Ukraine to win against Russia - short of using nuclear weapons supplied by or used by the US or NATO. It is also physically impossible for Ukraine to defeat the minimal forces Russia has committed to the field so far, not counting the additional 300,000 reservists which have been called up (and most of whom will be used in the rear areas, not the front lines anyway.)

This is because of the simple military balance between the two countries. Russia has a far larger military, both standing and potentially, far more and better weapons than either Ukraine possessed at the beginning of the war or those supplied by the collective West during the war, and a far better General Staff trained and experienced historically in major combined arms operational planning and execution.

As for the reasons behind the war, I posted a detailed analysis of this on my Substack post:

UKRAINE - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW - BUT DIDN'T DARE ASK

https://richardstevenhack.substack.com/p/ukraine-everything-you-need-to-know

Those who want accurate analyses of the Ukraine conflict, both politically and militarily, should follow these analysts that I recommended in my post:

Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou at The Duran

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwGpHa6rMLjSSCBlckm5khw

https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexChristoforou/videos

https://odysee.com/@theduran:e

Moon of Alabama

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

Vineyard of The Saker

https://thesaker.is/

Andrei Martyanov

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/

Brian Berletic

The New Atlas - Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/c/thenewatlas

Expand full comment
Sep 21, 2022Liked by Aaron Maté

By far , the best work and analysis i've ever read on the Ukraine- Russia conflict.. This piece is truly outstanding.. Can't wait to read any follow through

Expand full comment

"You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line." --Hopper the Grasshopper, in "A Bug's Life"

This is it, in a nutshell. The US has been suffering numerous setbacks around the world in recent years, leaving the world questioning the unipolar order. And here is Russia, standing up to the US. If they succeed, then it sends a huge signal to the rest of the world, and also shows the way to do it. Sooner or later, they might figure out that US power is based on an immense financial bubble that underpins dollar hegemony, and then it all comes crashing down. There is no way that the US (and USD-invested allies) will let that happen without a struggle. The stakes are enormous!

Expand full comment

thanks for this. Much appreciated. On a different note. Please stop hustling so much for likes and subscriptions on Useful Idiots! I make a point of not liking when you request it.

Expand full comment

Thanks for this... I have watched useful idiots since its beginning. I wish you would stop hustling for likes etc.! It is offensive, and when you ask for likes I make sure not to. Everyone who watches you knows about likes and how to insert them. Either that, or I suggest that you modify the hustle, to the beginning and end of the program. I Prefer you here.

Expand full comment
founding

Putin removed the grip of the khazar (browders) over Russia and he will do the same for Ukraine, even the banderas will thank him for it eventually. Its a straight fight between the Russian Orthodox Church and the synagogue of satan.

Expand full comment

So amazing! ‘We don’t care what our voters think, we don’t care if (our) people are freezing and spending ridiculous sums on living expenses, by god we’re not gonna stop until we get those Commies!’ Cuz we’ve all decided this needs to happen! ‘To the last Ukrainian’!

Disgusting.

Expand full comment
Sep 20, 2022·edited Sep 20, 2022

NATO and the US have consistently described Russia as a significant military danger to Europe. Putin is a madman with designs on expansion . But his military has consistently failed to achieve its goals in Ukraine. He has limited the scope of the military's actions leaving rail service and other infrastructure intact. Putin is not really living up to the fearful rhetoric employed by the Western leaders to capture the public's support.

The US alone has promised over $50 Billion in aid to Ukraine which is paid by tax dollars. As Aaron details, the additional costs to the taxpayer in increased living expenses resulting from the war will hit hard this winter at a time when inflation is already diminishing everyone's standard of living. And the economic sanctions imposed by the West have accomplished little, with the Ruble strong and Russia's economy in decent shape.

It will be fascinating to see how the American electorate reacts. Will it continue to buy the Russian menace argument, one that is a continuation of the Russian bogeyman horror story pushed for the last six years by the anti-Trump hysterics? Or will economic realities cause voters to question at least the basis for the Ukrainian financial adventure Biden has undertaken?

History suggests that Americans love a good war, especially one in which American troops are not endangered. If the government can get others to pay for it, like with Desert Storm, then even better. In this case will Biden be able to sell the argument that as the Europeans are paying a heavier financial toll in food and heating costs be enough to satisfy the electorate to bear up under the financial burden imposed by the Ukraine war? Add a fully realized recession next year with a lagging stock market eating away at retirement savings and the older voter who traditionally supports military ventures may also question Biden's proxy war.

Simply put- is there an economic breaking point where the American electorate will reject the pro-war rhetoric pushed by the neo-con Dems and their corporate masters? The next year will tell that tale.

Expand full comment

With regards to Biden, his administration officials, and his Democratic colleagues in Congress, well, they are all neocons now..

Expand full comment

Sources such as The Duran, The New Atlas and Scott Ritter do not indicate the Russians were routed, but rather the light forces they had stationed there fought an orderly withdrawal at a heavy cost to the mechanised units of Ukraine. That said, the Russians and Allies were caught out by the NATO tactics and questions need to be asked about lapses in intelligence. Overall what happened at Kharkiv has little affected the overall situation or objective of the SMO and has merely drained the Ukraine of many more soldiers and much equipment.

The whole thing is a tragedy, as Aaron indicates, being fuelled to no foreseeable end by the ‘West’ and stealing thousands of precious lives of, mainly, young men from Ukraine and Russia.

Expand full comment

Our last Vietnam, our war against Russia exposes everything that is wrong with Nato, with European and American uni-polar neo-liberalism, and with the regime, totally corrupt in every corner, in Washington DC.

Expand full comment