Dear Readers of Sierra Voices:

I feel that I owe you all an apology for turning this journal from a nice little regional publication, concerned mostly with local issues (things we can actually do something about, like the effort by a Canadian penny-stock mining company to re-open the Idaho-Maryland Mine in Grass Valley, California) … to a semi-obsessed anti-war online magazine. I’m a bit suprised myself, in my ninth decade of life, to be so pre-occupied with our horrendous war with Russia in Ukraine.

Up until now I’ve mostly just reprinted the views of others with whom I agree, in articles and in YouTube videos. But I’ve made little effort to systematically explain my own views, in my own words. So, what follows here is my attempt to do just that. I have strong circumstantial evidence for most of what follows (check each of the links), but rarely direct evidence from primary sources (as they used to say in my graduate history classes).

First, those who are actually running Biden’s foreign policy (the cadre of neocons left over from all the failed U.S. wars in recent decades) deliberately provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, and were delighted when it took place, believing that they had successfully lured Russia into a repeat of the “Afghan Trap,” by means of which they triumphally felt they had brought the Soviet Union to an end in the 1980s.

Second, the actual U.S. goal in the Ukraine War is not to help the Ukrainian people, but instead to weaken Russia. A little thought and familiarity with the conflict should make it clear that these are incompatible goals. The adage about our willingess to fight Russia “down to the last Ukrainian” has been repeated endlessly in different forms by various members of our two war parties (AKA “The Uniparty“). Likewiise the idea that “we are getting our money’s worth in Ukraine,” as measured by Russian soldiers killed, compared to none of ours, is often repeated.  Our only concern is that Ukrainians are becoming “casualty averse.” The moral insensitivity of this attitude is horrific.

Third, contrary to the daily cartoonish propaganda version of the Ukraine War, promulgated in the mainstream media (Washington Post, NY Times, MSNBC, etc) Ukraine has already lost the war and has been essentially destroyed. It has suffered more than 400,000 soldiers killed (about 8 times the death rate of Russian soldiers) and more than 50,000 have lost limbs. It won’t be recapturing Crimea (which Russia seized by means of a “dubious referendum” shortly after the U.S.-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014 resulted in the removal of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych, and left Russia’s control of its naval base in Sevastopol in Crimea, headquarters of its Black Sea fleet,  in doubt … because it was then potentially at risk of being seized by NATO).

Good-hearted Americans who feel they are supporting Ukraine by giving them an endless supply of armaments are in fact doing just the opposite, harming them by enabling the prolongation of the conflict. Russia made several efforts to peacefully resolve the confluict prior to their invasion, and and at least one such effort within a week or so after the invasion, but were in all cases thwarted by the U.S. and Britain.

Good-hearted Americans who feel that to negotiate with Putin is to reward him for his aggression fail to appreciate Russia’s legitimate security concerns about NATO’s aggressive expansion, and thereby fail to appreciate their own role in prolonging the horror of this war.

Wars never end except by negotiation, and the time for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine is tragically long overdue. [Don]

RELATED:

Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism

This War Wasn't Just Provoked — It Was Provoked Deliberately

One Western Official Finally Comes Clean About NATO Expansion

See also Ted Galen Carpenter’s book: