Volodymyr Zelensky now says he wants to show Biden, and subsequently Harris and Trump, his “plan for victory over Russia.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the military alliance’s Washington summit in July. (NATO/Flicker, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
ScheerPost
The Biden White House and the Democratic Party machine trying to advance Kamala Harris from No. 2 in the regime to No. 1 gets more interesting by the week, I have to say.
The Harris campaign has at last, two months after the party’s elites and financiers railroaded her candidacy past any semblance of a democratic process, published a platform it calls A New Way Forward, and I will get to this in due course.
I am less interested now in words posted on a website than in two recent developments we ought to consider together even if no one has yet thought to do so.
Slowly and very surely, it becomes clear by way of these weekly turns how a new Democratic regime, should Harris win on Nov. 5, proposes to manage the imperium’s business.
And however many foolish voters may be illusioned otherwise, if Harris takes the White House her business will be neither more nor less than managing the imperium —the wars, the provocations, the illegal sanctions and other collective punishments, the terrorist clients in Israel, the neo–Nazis in Kiev.
Last Wednesday, Sept. 4, Liz Cheney surprised Washington and, I suppose, most of the rest of us when she announced she would support Harris’s run for the presidency.
The onetime Wyoming congresswoman, a coup-cultivating warmonger who remains among the hawkiest of right-wing foreign-policy hawks, was not the first Republican to jump across the aisle this political season, and she was also not the last: Two days later, Liz’s pop did the same. Dick Cheney, of course, needs no introduction.
Instantly, the Harris campaign declared its delight in having the support of these courageous patriots, as the organization called them in its official statements.
A week after all this high-caliber politicking, President Joe Biden convened in the Oval Office with Keir Starmer, the new British prime minister, to consider Ukraine’s proposal to fire Western-supplied missiles at targets well inside Russian territory.
The Brits are ready to oblige the Kiev regime, as are the French, but everyone — London, Paris, Kiev — needs Biden’s permission to widen the war in this fashion.
At the moment, Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are in their “Well, maybe” phase, and we are meant to be on the edges of our seats wondering whether they will assent to these plans. But haven’t we seen this movie before and don’t we know how it ends? Wasn’t it, “Maybe we will send HIMARS rocket systems,” “Maybe M–1 tanks,” “Maybe Patriot missiles,” “Maybe F–16s”?
Biden, center, meeting with Starmer on Sept. 13 at the White House; Blinken on left and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on right. (White House/Adam Schultz)
Even before the Biden–Starmer encounter last week, Blinken and David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, during a visit to Kiev for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, were already dropping heavy hints that Biden will once again acquiesce to the plans the Ukrainian president and the British PM were choreographed to present to him.
The stipulation Biden and Blinken now purport to insist upon is that they will not assent to letting Kiev use weapons provided by the U.S. — which seems to be different from weapons made by the U.S. — against targets in the Russian interior. This is no more than one of those hair-splits in which the Biden White House trades when it wants to look thoughtful and cautious but is neither.
Will someone tell me what damn difference it will make to Russia if Moscow takes a hit from a missile sent from Britain, France or the United States?
These people are convening to plan the Western powers’ reckless escalation of a proxy war they have no way of winning and know they have no way of winning. Desperation is as desperation does: This is my simple read of these deliberations.
Between the war-planning and the shifting political loyalties, what have we witnessed over these past couple of weeks? This is our question.
Cheneys in the Hive
Liz Cheney taking the congressional oath of office in January 2017 with her father Dick Cheney. (Office of Representative Liz Cheney, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
When the Cheneys, père et fille, enlisted in the Harris campaign’s ranks, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign’s chairwoman, lauded the former for his courage and the latter for her patriotism.
Elsewhere in the Harris “hive,” as I gather we are calling it, liberal commentators stopped just short of gushing over Liz and Dick Cheney’s political migration, ignoring the fact it appears to be mere opportunism.
James Carden had a pithy piece on this, “Cheneymania Seizes the Democrats,” in the Sept. 12 edition of The American Conservative.
“The wild applause that met Liz’s announcement … is indicative of where liberals now place their priorities,” the longtime Washington commentator wrote, “and goes a long way toward explaining why they cannot be trusted on matters of national security.”
There is a lot of politics in the Democrats’ exuberant greeting of the Cheneys, of course. Harris’ people want to make the most of divisions among Republicans, and, in the case of Liz Cheney, to exploit the animus that has arisen between her and Donald Trump.
But we must look more closely than this fully to understand this political ballet. Liz Cheney once had a public spat with Rand Paul over who was “Trumpier.” Dick Cheney is guilty of more war crimes, crimes against humanity and war-profiteering than Donald Trump could dream of in his sweetest dreams.
This ticket is fighting for a new way forward. ? pic.twitter.com/x5dP1rwj8C
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) September 19, 2024
No mention of this as we think about these two political defections? I have read or heard of none from within the Harris hive.
Stephen Cohen used to joke, except that he wasn’t joking, that there is one party in Washington and it is rightly called the War Party. We have just had a reminder of the late and eminent Russianist’s prescience.
There is no intent among the people telling Kamala Harris what to profess to question this nation’s numerous aggressions and illegalities, or even to reconsider the Biden regime’s disastrously miscalculated foreign policies, which are indistinguishable from the neoconservative agenda Democrats, once upon a time, pretended to oppose.
Read A New Way Forward, a 13–page document. The one and a half pages given to national security and foreign affairs amount to a screed dedicated to Russophobia, Sinophobia, NATOphilia and “the most lethal fighting force in the world,” which seems to be Harris’ idea of a diplomatic corps.
This is how Steve Cohen’s War Party thinks and what it sounds like. As a statement of intent, the Harris–Walz platform is entirely accommodating of the Biden White House’s very likely decision to escalate the Ukraine conflict to the point of risking the World War III Biden pretends not to want.
Putin’s Analysis
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in August. (President of Russia)
The clearest, most sobering analysis of the Biden–Blinken thinking —is this my word? — about authorizing Kiev to attack targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles came from Vladimir Putin.
The Russian president spoke last Thursday, the day before Starmer’s talks with Biden, in response to a reporter’s question. His statement is worth reading in full, given the obvious gravity he attaches to the West’s deliberations:
“What we are seeing is an attempt to substitute notions. Because this is not a question of whether the Kiev regime is allowed or not allowed to strike targets on Russian territory. It is already carrying out strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But using Western-made long-range precision weapons is a completely different story.
The fact is that — I have mentioned this, and any expert, both in our country and in the West, will confirm this — the Ukrainian army is not capable of using cutting-edge, high-precision, long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites, which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or U.S. satellites — in general, NATO satellites. This is the first point.
The second point — perhaps the most important, the key point even — is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not.
If this decision is made, it will mean nothing short of direct involvement — it will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.
This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
There are clearly people of sound mind within the Washington policy cliques who can read this statement for what it is and understand the risk the Biden regime contemplates as it inches toward an official decision on the missiles question.
But these wiser heads do not appear in the ascendant. The prevailing view seems to lie with people such as William Burns, the C.I.A. director, who thinks Putin is bluffing and, nonsensically enough, are willing to find out if they are right by calling said bluff.
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Here is part of a letter 17 former ambassadors and generals sent to the Biden administration last week, as quoted in The New York Times. As you read these sentences, think about why the signatories of this letter wrote it and how it is they are as confident of their judgment as they profess:
“Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate. We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own—including Crimea and Kursk — with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.”
Now think about whether those who wrote and signed this letter, and by extension those running Ukraine policy, are sane or insane.
Among the Biden regime’s purported concerns as it considers authorizing Ukraine to widen the war is what difference attacks on the Russian interior would make. The White House and the Pentagon want to see a plan, it has been reported.
It is a good question, asking about the point of this kind of escalation, but I am not sure an answer matters much to those who sit at the table in the White House cabinet room. As I have argued severally in this space, the Biden regime has foolishly cast this war as one between democracy and autocracy.
Accordingly, it can afford to risk all manner of precipitous escalations, but it cannot afford to lose.
Entering stage right, possibly on cue, Volodymyr Zelensky now says he wants to show Biden, and subsequently Harris and Trump, his “plan for victory over Russia.”
The Washington Post reported last Friday this will consist of very few parts. “All the points depend on the decision of Biden,” the Ukrainian president said at a recent forum in Kiev.
As the Post noted, Zelensky is to date shy of revealing these points, but there are reports, well short of confirmed, that there are three of them.
The first is the missile authorization, the second is an assurance that NATO will deploy air-defense systems to protect western Ukraine, and the third — get a load of this — is a guarantee that NATO will dispatch ground troops to rear areas of the conflict so that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can deploy more of its own troops to the front.
These proposals, if confirmed as Zelensky makes his next trip to Washington, all align in one direction: The Kiev regime’s running theme remains dragging the West further into the war rather as the Netanyahu regime in Israel is forever trying to do the same in West Asia. Zelensky, the Israeli prime minister, Biden: The world’s problem right now, or one of them, is that none of these people can afford to lose the wars their hubris led them to start.
The Anglos and the Americans are likely to make an official announcement about the use of long-range missiles against Russia after the U.N. General Assembly concludes its business on Sept. 28.
Starmer has recently indicated as much. In the best outcome we will find that Putin has rattled Washington and London such that they will step back from this latest plan to escalate. It is possible. But the U.S. and the other NATO powers have not done much stepping back to date, we are well to remind ourselves.
M.K. Bhadrakumar, the former Indian diplomat who publishes the consistently thoughtful Indian Punchline newsletter, put out a piece Monday, Sept. 16, arguing that the Anglo–American powers are turning the proxy war in Ukraine into Russian roulette.
Here is part of Bhadrakumar’s reasoning. Storm Shadows are the missiles Starmer would allow Kiev to fire into Russia if the Biden regime approves of the plan:
“Moscow anticipates that the U.S.–U.K. ploy may be to test the waters by first (openly) using Britain’s Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missile, which has already been supplied to Ukraine. On Friday, Russia expelled six British diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy in a clear warning that U.K.–Russia ties will be affected. Russia has already warned the U.K. of severe consequences if the Storm Shadow were to be used to hit Russian territory.
What makes the developing situation extremely dangerous is that the cat-and-mouse game so far about NATO’s covert involvement in the Ukraine war is giving way to a game of Russian roulette that follows the laws of Probability Theory.”
Bhadrakumar has this exactly right, in my view, but with one minor flaw in his argument. The Americans and the Brits can be said to be playing, unserious as they are, but the Russians are not.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
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A sad day for anyone when Dick Cheney supports you.
How, anyone, in their sane minds can ever support Harris after she has been backed by a monster like Dick Cheney?
That’s not to say that Trump was a better choice than Harris before this backing but after seeing 4 years with Trump and 4 years with Biden/Harris, I can safely say that Trump plays for the little league compared to Dick Cheney and those whom he backs (as this article shows).
Well chaps, I guess this is the final curtain. In one sense the whole sordid global farce has come around full circle, and I suppose that those cretins are now, has they always have been, in control of the positions of power from the outset. Victoria Nuland and her cohorts come easily to mind for this type – devoid of any sense of realism and humanity. In this sense we have a new religion based on the old one which refused to die.
”But never, perhaps at any time has the attack on REASON been more violent than in ours.”
Albert Camus 1955
I’ll try to piece together here things I’ve had to piece together for myself prior. Possibly Storm Shadows are more easily converted into nuke weapon toting vehicles than ATACMS (such that Russia couldn’t tell if they had been)? Though can’t remember perfectly who was saying it, it seems I have heard some mention of jamming-evasion-tech Storm Shadows can be upgraded with, and that the Pentagon doesn’t want it on Storm Shadows that are given to Ukraine. Am I right…is it Storm Shadows?
For a nation that has been continuously at war for 23 years, its amazing that American’s don’t seem to know much about war.
Case in point: At the end of a war, the settlement terms are set by the victors. The losers do not get to set the terms.
Example: At the end of World War II, the Japanese did not get to write the treaty that they signed on the deck of that battleship. The losers will usually consider themselves lucky if the winners bother to translate a copy for them.
The winners of a war get to both set the peace terms and write the histories. Sorry America, them’s the Rules.
From the beginning of the Ukraine War, anyone old enough to remember the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction should have known that the world is at more risk of a nuclear war if Russia is losing than if they are winning.
When you have nothing left to lose, it’s not hard to imagine wanting to take your enemy down with you in a nuclear fireball.
Also, given the neoliberal shock treatment the West gave Russia after the collapse of communism, they have no reason to expect mercy if they surrender.
It’s interesting how these actions destroy the narrative that Putin is another Hitler, thug, etc. who won’t stop with the territory thus gained and is out to sweep across Europe. Evidently the 17 who bluff Putin won’t respond are not buying this story and Biden isn’t either or he’d have the excuse to accept long-range strikes. All this, additional to the alarming flimsiness of how a form of restraint has come about, indicates the level of bluster and confusion coming from US “leadership” at this time. I think Putin sees this, and it accounts for his sober response at this time.
I believe I heard yesterday from either Larry Johnson or Ray McGovern that Biden changed his mind in a moment of clarity brought about by the comments from–of all people–Lloyd Austin, and backed off.
CIA Burns calling “Putin’s bluff;” shouldn’t he know better since
back in 2008? he studiously wrote “Nyet means Nyet” that Russia
will not accept NATO in Ukraine?
Or is he so sick with imperialist power that he figures Russia
can’t use its nuclear bombs on European capitals much less
the U.S. And if it did the American demonic duo, Blinken and Biden,
will be licking their chops to unleash the American arsenal of
death and destruction on its provoked attacker
I’ve got grey hair, and I can’t think of a time in my lifetime when believing that the Russians were bluffing was anything but crazy.
The Americans are the BS artists who think that they can bluff their way to winning the World Series of Poker. But that has never been the Russians’ style. Believing that the Russians are bluffing is never a good, or a safe idea.
Odd as it may seem, we may have to depend upon saner people in the Pentagon who absolutely KNOW that the U.S. and its candy-ass EU and UK allies are not prepared to fight a war with nuclear-armed Russia, nor with Iran or China, should it come to that. Lots of things go before a fall, but hubris is certainly at the top of the list. That the war party is arrogant is one thing, but to be delusional and reckless risks all our lives. I pray every day that these psychopaths don’t take us into Armageddon. May their tribe decrease. Putin is clearly the adult in the room: sober, rational, methodical, cool–and absolutely serious about the security of the Russian Federation. One needn’t be in love with President Putin to respect his sobriety and reserve. Washington, on the other hand, is a Ship of Fools, cruising blithely toward disaster. Sometimes I feel I’m living a nightmare.
Totally agree. The adults in the room are few and far between and, I suspect, are being deliberately excluded for trying to urge caution.
The calculus is simple – call Putin’s bluff, and it isn’t a bluff, then it might be game over if the Russian, likely non-nuclear, retaliation causes a likely western escalation into nuclear war.
For those of us that take him and his government seriously, and actually listen to what they are saying and doing, I’d say he is very definitely not bluffing. Not at all.
After all, he has a population behind him that now understands fully just how much the collective west is out to destroy Russia, and is pushing him to exercise less restraint.
Excellent article, and well written comments of Patrick Lawrence.
It seems odd Zelensky would invite Trump because he’s running for Office when he’s not in the White House yet and might not be again. If Trump was President-elect and this was post-election before inauguration then it would make absolute sense to invite Trump, but to do it now seems somehow impolitic. Especially as Trump has claimed he will stop funding Ukraine’s war. Maybe the plan is to lay the blame on Trump if he becomes President then this all falls apart. It’s been made to sound like he was made a confidante by Zelensky, but perhaps it’s Biden or the Dems laying the groundwork for something else.
I think Trump should be cautious about what’s in play here but it’s not easy yet to pinpoint quite why.
The Democrats have become nothing but a bunch of meddlesome war mongers who could easily start a Third World War if they get more deeply involved in the war with Ukraine on Russia’s border. Russia is not the aggressor here. The U.S. conducted a coup against a Russia friendly government in Ukraine in 2014. Ever since then, the U.S. and Britain have been trying to turn the ensuing Russia Ukraine war into one of the West against Russia, that is World War Three. I am emeritus professor of U.S. History at Cal. State Long Beach. I taught U. S. since 1945 for over thirty years. And I can only say that the outrageous war mongering of the Biden administration in Ukraine, a war the U.S. ginned up, is the most dangerous thing in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Do they really want a war with Russia? The Democrats have gone completely our of their mind. If Harris becomes president, she may well preside over this massive catastrophe. She is anything but a deep thinker or seeker of peace.
Outside of America, commentators have noticed the connections between the latest wanna-be-assassin and Ukraine. The would-be-shooter bragged about regular meetings with the Ukraine War Ministry as a recruiter of mercenaries. Does Ukraine see a Trump victory as a threat worthy of the attention of their ‘secret services’? Zelensky wanting to meet Trump could be another way of trying to avoid the loss of the war when Americans vote against it?
America now regularly meets with ‘opposition candidates’, and American candidates have had their own foreign policies since Reagan-Bush and former CIA director with the Iran hostage deals. Any ‘red lines’ about waiting to talk to people once actually elected are far in America’s rear view mirrors. At this time, both Trump and Harris are conducting foreign policy with regards to the election, and to make sure the other side doesn’t get an ‘October Surprise’.
At what point do the people of the US and it’s colonies decide they’ve had enough of this insane brinkmanship and call for a national strike until these lunatics step back, concede defeat, call for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations?Nothing less is acceptable. They are terrorizing the whole of humanity to further their imperialist agenda that only benefits a tiny oligarchy.
Never
FOMO is real. Fear of Missing Out on that next promotion, or that next invite to a cool kids party, or of being ostracized by people you thought were your friends has paralyzed western society. Just look at what has happened with families and friends freezing out members because of political beliefs since 2016, or because of unwillingness to take a vaccine in 2020, or because of lack of support for war in Ukraine, or lack of support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Social media has driven the world mad overt the last decade. People once used to be able to put political or religious differences aside, but now everything has to become a Manichean decision. You are either with me or I will cut you out of my life. So people have become terrified to actually say what they believe. People are becoming isolated and no longer have solid, nigh-unbreakable relationships with friends and loved ones. Is it any wonder that depression and suicidal ideation are at all-time highs?
I’d love to think it could happen, but we are about to have an election, where, just like in the last election, well over 95% of Americans will vote for candidates that support war.
There’s not even a hint of a peace party in this country. The only thing that can be found is warmongers who tactically say that they are against a particular war. Or the Obama tactic of complaining that the war is being mismanaged and that they can do better. All such anti-war candidates would of course would give even more money to the military. But, in America, a Partner for Peace is not anywhere in sight.
When they tally the votes for this election, they will find War with about 98-99% and Peace with maybe 1%.
I take Trump, Harris, Stein, and Oliver as War Votes. I’ll give West some credit for being anti-war, but mostly because of past work. The Green’s total silence on the Ukraine war for two years gets them into the War category, no matter what they spin today. Greens are really Democrats and Libs are really Republicans anyways … both “third” parties stay under close control. Which leaves West and even more minor candidates against the war that would be very very lucky to add up to 2% of the votes. Maybe 3% if you actually count the Greens and Libs as anti-war for the moment until they support it again.
In an election with uncertainty about whether an even bigger war might erupt even before the computers announce the victor, that is how America is going to vote. War, War, War and more Wars out the Wazoo is the way to America’s heart. Nobody proposes big cuts to the military for prosperity at home. A candidate proposing Peace would get stoned by the mob.
President Kennedy once gave a Peace Speech. One can still find it on Youtube, or at least you could the last time I looked. The Dems might have classified it as Russian Propaganda by now. But, he did make such a speech. JFK never got a chance to see if that might have been a popular way to run for re-election.
I did enjoy the thought of a popular uprising against war. For a minute or two. Then I remember that I made the big mistake of not leaving America when I might have had the chance.
thank you Patrick Lawrence for speaking/writing truths to those in power. If only your writings reached a wide audience.
I will forward your article to some friends, but most are liberals/progressives and seem, at this time, unable to criticize the current Democratic government. Is this because of the Never Trump syndrome? and/or the Freud analysis that those who think they are the enlightened ones, the “we know best” are dangerous in their self-praise in terms of wars….Freud saidL “they have the narcissist’s sense
of being better than others . . . leading to wars”
Basic Mind Control really.
Talk to people about why they vote a particular way. In this modern era it will be a very, very simple message.
“Obama is Black”
“Hillary is a Woman”
“Trump will make America Great”.
America elections are not rational decisions about the platforms of candidates. American elections are billions of dollars worth of advertising and mind control to set messages like the above into people’s minds to get them to vote a particular way. This is why reasonable discussion and analysis has left American politics. By now, the people under the mind control will punch you for talking reasonably …. or shoot at you.
Among the voters I know and can try to talk with, all the women are going to vote for Harris to make sure that the shadows left on the walls after the nuclear blasts have the right to an abortion. Seriously.
BTW, if you want to “protect abortion”, you have to vote for peace. Anyone who’s read any post-apocalyptic science fiction knows that there will be no abortions in a world that is struggling to have the birth rate match the death rate. Abortion is a privilege that goes away when survival becomes the key question.
His plan is to drag the whole damn world into his war with Russia.
Ditto for Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran trying to drag the whole world into their war.
And it’s only a matter of time before China and Taiwan do the same.
It’s a shame the political class has forgotten the founders admonishment to avoid getting into ‘foreign entanglements’.
“There are clearly people of sound mind within the Washington policy cliques who can read this statement for what it is and understand the risk the Biden regime contemplates as it inches toward an official decision on the missiles question.”
This is a key point by PL.
There used to be more level headed analysts, bureaucrats and officials in Washington who were able to talk the neocon crazies down from launching this or that potentially catastrophic intervention or missile strikes. These cool headed professional people are slowly dwindling away. We’re left with truly demented sociopaths who could start to totally dominate the entire ballgame.