Menu
Paynal © 2008
War Is a Racket-- Tanks a Lot, Now Give Us F-16s!!
(2023-01-31 at 01:00:50 )
War Is a Racket-- Tanks a Lot, Now Give Us F-16s!!
The vampiric orgy of weapons going to Ukraine could provoke a terrifying world war and global catastrophe.
No sooner had the United States, Germany and other NATO powers announced the major release of main battlefield tanks for Ukraine, the Kiev regime immediately started demanding the supply of American-made F-16 warplanes.
The attitude is incorrigible. Chutzpah on steroids, or perhaps cocaine.
As Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky gloated this week shamelessly and without a hint of irony to corporate honchos in Florida, the war in his country means "big business opportunities" for the West. This clownish figure was formerly a comedian and actor before becoming a politician. Now he can add pimping to his grubby career.
For weeks in the Western states there have been tortuous public discussions about whether to send tanks to support the Kiev regime against Russia.
Then abruptly, the United States, Germany and other NATO allies have one by one unceremoniously shirked the taboo and are promising delivery of the heavy armor weaponry.
The Biden administration declared it will send around 30 units of M1 Abrams. Germany is to send about 14 Leopard 2 tanks as are several other European NATO members who have the German-made vehicle in their inventories. Britain has announced it will supply about 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks and France is considering supplying Leclerc main battlefield units.
The numbers involved are way short of the 300 demanded by the Kiev regime and will not deliver the much-vaunted and totally unrealistic "victory" over Russia.
The tokenism is, however, part of an enormous war racket. It is all about pumping up more profiteering rather than any principle or serious strategic objective in Ukraine, apart from destabilizing Russia and trying to isolate Moscow internationally. The danger is, however, if the powder keg is stoked any further, the risk of an unintended conflagration becomes a growing probability.
It is almost farcical - if it was not so grave - how reckless is the rush by NATO powers to outdo each other in military madness.
Moscow has condemned an "extremely dangerous escalation" which puts NATO in direct conflict with Russia on a path of full-blown war in Europe. Any such war will not be confined to Europe. This is a step off the abyss towards a world war at grave risk of unleashing nuclear annihilation.
Over the past year since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine to neutralize a NATO-sponsored NeoNazi regime that had for eight years been aggressing ethnic Russian people formerly in eastern Ukraine (now integrated into the Russian Federation after popular referenda), the United States and its allies have scaled up weapon supplies to Ukraine at a staggering blitzkrieg rate.
The financial and military aid funneled into Ukraine over just 12 months from the United States, NATO and European Union amounts to around $100 billion.
This is while these states are telling their own citizens that there is not enough money for funding essential public services and welfare needs, amid crushing economic inflation caused in large part by energy prices soaring from unilaterally cutting Russian gas supplies.
The nature of the weapons has graduated to increasingly offensive firepower and quantity. The readiness by the NATO powers to mobilize military resources indicates that this war was anticipated as a showdown with Russia.
Ukrainian defense official Yuriy Sak cockily commented about the relative ease of the "next big hurdle" of acquiring F-16s fighter jets.
"They did not want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They did not want to give us HIMARS [missiles], then they did. They did not want to give us tanks, now they are giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get."
That means F-16s are up next.
It is not clear who the "they" who "did not want to" supply weapons are.
Every step of the way, Western leaders have quickly jettisoned any supposed scruples or reservations about supplying weapons.
The so-called "reservations" seem in hindsight now to have been nothing but cynical deception to hoodwink the Western public about what their politicians are doing - which is opening the gates of hell for war by plying Ukraine with weapons and suppressing any attempt at ending the conflict through politics and diplomacy.
Lest it should be forgotten, politics and diplomacy should be the first and most urgent effort. The negligence, indeed repudiation, of diplomacy by Western powers is tantamount to criminal conspiracy for fueling hostility.
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin, the American maker of the F-16 has cheerily chimed in on cue that it is ready to supply the fighter jet to Ukraine as soon as NATO leaders agree to give the go-ahead. Lockheed Martin is also the maker of HIMARS and Javelin missiles. The American military-industrial complex is raking in record profits over this war in Ukraine. United States global exports of weapons have surged by an estimated 50 per cent year-on-year, mainly due to selling to European allies who have emptied their arsenals for Ukraine.
There is a sense of inevitability that the "hurdle" of F-16s and other advanced warplanes will be dispensed with in due course in the same way that Washington,D.C. and its allies overcame their lame hesitance about missiles and tanks. What can be expected is more long-range missiles as well as advanced warplanes.
President Joe Biden declared preposterously that the tanks being sent to Ukraine are not "offensive" nor a "threat to Russia". He called them "tanks for freedom".
This is the same nonsense as other NATO leaders claiming that the best way to peace in Ukraine is to arm the Kiev regime with even more lethal weapons.
President Biden also asserted that if Russian troops withdrew from Ukraine then the war would be over. This is dissembling about the causes of the conflict and what Washington,D.C.s geopolitical agenda really is about: salvaging hegemonic ambitions with regard to Russia, China and any other perceived rival.
The war would not simply stop, as Biden lied through his teeth. The war in Ukraine is but a battlefield in a much bigger war for asserting United States of American supremacy, which is no longer viable in an emerging multipolar world amid collapsing United States economic power.
Germanys Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it best this week, albeit inadvertently. "We are fighting a war against Russia," she blurted out during a Council of Europe parliamentary debate in Strasbourg regarding the dispatch of Leopard tanks.
The war in Ukraine is nothing more than a racket in the same sordid tradition as condemned by United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D Butler in the 1930s.
President Zelensky and his cabal are rife with corruption and profiteering as the mass sacking of his cabinet officials this week demonstrates. Even the Western media could not ignore the scandal, despite doing their best to whitewash the fiasco as a crackdown on corruption. Those sackings only came about after Mr. Zelenskys aides were exposed as being up their eyes in embezzling, fraud and bribery!!
The huge sums of money being pumped into the Kiev regime by Western governments courtesy of Western taxpayers and the debt of future generations is a driver of the corruption. Of course, the Kiev racketeers are demanding more and more weapons from the West because the "big business" is lining their pockets, offshore properties and bank accounts.
And of course, the Western weapons companies are all too happy to ramp up production, sales and profits. Western politicians and governments are feeding at the trough of the military-industrial complex through lobbyists and board member sinecures, like the United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who is hooked up with Raytheon, another Pentagon firm that has enriched itself from the Ukraine conflict.
Despite Western media propaganda about "defending Ukraine" and "fighting for democracy", the reality is the United States and its NATO minions are all in for greasing the war-machine capitalist economies and for their own personal gain.
The tragedy is that the weapons pipelines will not help Ukraine. Russian forces are decimating the NATO-sponsored NeoNazi regime. Not even tanks or warplanes will salvage the military disaster.
The West is filling a bloodbath in Ukraine for their merchants of death. The obscenity of callously shoving people into a slaughter for no moral or just cause, but all for the profit-making of corporations, themselves and the corrupt cabal in Kiev is despicable beyond words!!
The real danger is that the vampiric orgy of weapons going to Ukraine could provoke a terrifying world war and global catastrophe.
That is the measure of the evil at the heart of the Western powers and their puppet masters. The First and Second World Wars were manifestations of the same evil imperialist system. If it has its way, that is without Russias restraining power, then the world is facing another calamity brought about by the same criminal system!!
Reprinted here from the "Strategic Culture Foundation" provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Since 2005 our journal has published thousands of analytical briefs and commentaries with the unique perspective of independent contributors. SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas.