NATO’s Ukraine proxy war seeks to weaken Russia and topple Putin. To launch an economic, information and ground war, NATO needed Russia to invade. Now it needs Russia to attack a NATO nation to justify direct war. Watch the replay.
Guests: Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter. Host: Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Is NATO provoking a direct war with Russia?
In 2022, the U.S. provoked Moscow to invade Ukraine so Washington could attempt to destroy Russia’s economy with sanctions, orchestrate worldwide condemnation in an information war and lead a proxy ground operation to bleed Russia — all part of an attempt to bring down its government.
In case there’s any doubt that this is the goal, recall what President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government said right after Russia’s intervention.
On the day Russia invaded, Biden admitted that the sanctions weren’t meant to prevent an invasion. “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. … This is going to take time. And we have to show resolve so he [Putin] knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.”
On March 1, [2022] Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said the sanctions on Russia “we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.”
Biden said on March 26, 2022 at the Royal Castle in Warsaw: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
A month later Biden confirmed that the purpose of the draconian U.S. sanctions on Russia was never to prevent the invasion of Ukraine, which the U.S. needed to activate its plans, but to punish Russia, get its people to rise up against Putin and ultimately to restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow.
“Let’s get something straight,” Biden said. “I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. … The maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.” Of course it’s taken NATO more than a year but they haven’t given up.
The United States could have easily stopped Russia’s intervention in Ukraine’s civil war from happening by doing four things: forcing implementation of the 8-year old Minsk peace accords; dissolving extreme right Ukrainian militias; saying Ukraine would not join NATO and engaging Russia in serious negotiations over Moscow’s proposed December 2021 treaties about a new security architecture in Europe. Russia threatened a “technical/military” response if NATO and the U.S. did not take those two treaty proposals seriously.
So the U.S. knew Russia would invade if it rejected those proposals, which called for Ukraine not to join NATO, for missiles in Poland and Romania to be removed and NATO troops in Eastern Europe withdrawn. Instead, the U.S. refused to move the missiles and provocatively sent even more NATO forces to Eastern Europe, knowing full well it would lead to war. Washington was singularly uninterested in preventing Russia’s invasion.
Instead the U.S. essentially set a trap for Russia. Using the precedents of the Afghan trap set for the Soviets in 1979 and the Kuwait trap set for Saddam Hussein in 1990, the U.S. forced Russia’s hand by rejecting the treaty proposals while thousands of Ukrainian troops (Russia claimed as many as 122,00) amassed for an offensive against ethnic Russians in Donbass. Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.
On March 16, 2022 — the same day it was revealed Russia and Ukraine had worked out a 15-point peace plan that later resulted in a tentative agreement to end the war — Biden announced another $800 million in military aid for Ukraine. As we now know, Emmanuel Macron tricked Putin into withdrawing his troops from outside Kiev to make that agreement work, only for Boris Johnson to intervene to stop the deal once the troops had been removed.
Having lost on the ground in Donbass over the subsequent four years, NATO has turned to an air war, hitting targets deep inside Russia with NATO-operated, long-range missiles and swarms of drones fired from Ukrainian territory. These attacks have damaged Russia’s oil exports and killed civilians. The most prominent provocation was last week in Donbass in which NATO and Ukraine slaughtered 21 Russian students in their sleep.
As our guest Scott Ritter pointed out, these attacks are designed to put internal political pressure on Putin. Either he acts more decisively, or risks his hold on power. Thus Russia has warned embassies in Kiev to evacuate their personnel as Moscow threatens to hit “decision-making centers” in the Ukrainian capital. There are also hardline demands on Putin to hit facilities in Germany and Britain that provided the munitions that murdered the students.
Until now Putin has studiously avoided direct war with NATO. But in the same way that NATO provoked Russia to invade in 2022, NATO now appears to be provoking Russia to strike a NATO country to start a direct war with the aim of a strategically defeating Moscow.
Either way Europe thinks it may get what it wants. If Putin doesn’t act against Europe it could threaten his position at home. And if he does hit Europe it could be the casus belli Europe seeks for a direct NATO-Russia war. German and British generals tell their nations to be ready for conflict with Moscow by 2029.
Last week an errant drone — ostensibly Russian — hit a Romanian apartment building near the Ukrainian border. All hell broke loose with calls for an invocation of NATO’s Article 5. It could be a harbinger of what would come if Russia not only devastates Kiev, but conventionally attacks a NATO nation too.
Absent the provocative NATO attacks on Russia, Moscow has shown zero interet in threatening war on Europe.
The big questions are: How would Europe react if decision-making centers are wiped out in Kiev? How would the United States react if Russia hits a NATO country? Donald Trump is no fan of NATO, but would he succumb to pressure from Europe, Congress and his cabinet to directly attack Russia? Without the U.S., NATO could hardly act.
In provoking Moscow with increasingly effective strikes deep inside Russia, why are Britain and Germany — the NATO ringleaders — seemingly so confident that direct war with Russia would not turn nuclear?
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News.
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The sheer criminal energy, the western “elites” are demonstrating, is mind-boggling.
Not “only” regarding attacking the Russian Federation’s people.
Those pulling the strings must be individually identified, exposed and held accountable as quickly as possible.
Part of the problem, IMO, is the political set-up in the west that enables the worse examples of humanity to get into power.
– Career politicians – people who devote their entire careers to just politics have no experience of real life and thus should be banned from a role in government;
– First Past the Post(FPTP) voting – a system of proportional representation is the only way to ensure joe public actually has a voice, and mandate referendums for all major decisions;
– Lobbying – influential and rich groups should have no more rights than any single member of the public. Ban lobbying and make all politians public servants, paid accordingly;
– Political Parties – Parties (republican, democratic, conservative, socialist, green, etc) demand loyalty to ‘the party’ before loyalty to the voter or to morality or to professed beliefs, an alternative set-up is needed that is more honest and representative.
“Instead the U.S. essentially set a trap for Russia. Using the precedents of the Afghan trap set for the Soviets in 1979 and the Kuwait trap set for Saddam Hussein in 1990…”
A PBS documentary series about the Bush family shows George H.W. Bush pretending to be surprised when Reagan announced that Bush would be his running mate in 1980.
Move forward 10 years to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, and it is clear that Bush’s ability to act surprised had improved markedly.
Although he does not state his reasons, Reagan supporter Roger Stone wrote in one of his books that the appointment of Bush was the worst mistake Reagan ever made.
What stands out to me in all of this is not only the geopolitical maneuvering, but the level of consciousness behind it.We are watching nuclear?armed nations behave with the emotional maturity of children playing with matches — quick to provoke, slow to reflect, and strangely proud of their own recklessness. At this level of awareness, every side believes it is acting defensively, every escalation feels justified, and no one pauses long enough to ask the most basic human question: What are we actually doing to one another?
Ordinary people — in Russia, Ukraine, Europe, the U.S. — do not want a wider war. But the systems governing them are driven by fear, rivalry, and the old reflex to dominate. Until the consciousness guiding global power grows up — until it becomes capable of restraint, humility, and genuine dialogue — the world will continue to be endangered not only by weapons, but by the immaturity of those who wield them.
This is not just a military problem. It is a developmental one.
I wonder whether today’s governments differ from those of apes.
Die ersten Menschen waren nicht die letzten Affen!
Your insightful commentary brings to mind the events that occurred in July, 1914.
Putin is not Russia and in fact I’d suggest Putin is to a degree the west’s friend. Some of the alternative Russian leaders would very likely take a different and more aggressive approach to the west’s warmongering. Experience shows time and time again that every leader the west deposes is replaced by someone that is much ‘worse’, for the west. But the idiots never learn.
Rats know where the cheese is.
or as AI would put it
“Politicians navigate a self-serving theater of performance, trading long-term societal well-being for immediate personal advancement. They operate as opportunistic brokers within a deeply compromised system of influence.”
Yes, probably correct.
Europe and NATO need a big wake-up call – big enough to shock them out of their delusions to force them to understand exactly what they would be up against in a direct war with Russia, even one without nukes.
Russia should give them early warning of a series of Oreshnik hypersonic missile ‘demonstration’ strikes on selected targets around Europe, primarily in Germany and the UK [as the main protagonists].
The targets should be on abandoned or disused military or industrial facilities a long way away from residential areas. The strikes should be on a specific day, and the warning should instruct the countries on how to observe and measure their impacts.
Psychologically, the speed and devastation, that none of the belligerent Europeans have witnessed firsthand, should shock them out of their stupor and complacency and make them understand just how easily they would be defeated in a direct confrontation.
This might be the only way that a direct war could be avoided.
Whatever the strikes’ effects on the UK and Germany, will it stop the latter’s USraeli overlords, puppet masters, etc. from using it and many others in Europe for that matter as dispensable pawns against Russia?
when the Russian Mother Bear is provoked it’s enemies will truly suffer.
Regarding the MICIMATT Complex, some images I associate with it came from the movie “Brazil” which I saw long ago. I had two ideas about a group in the movie that walked briskly in a corridor trying to keep up with this important man. I wanted ChatGTP to tell me what it thought. On this I’d say AI has to be right…
I’ll include three more parts to its answer.
Mimesis. Yes, the deal is they have to become interchangeable. All of such packs are mainly involved in imitating the guy/gal who’s next one up on the power scale. I picture them running around like this in circles. Trumpian “motion.”
As an additional Afghanistan tactic being recycled was attempts after the Ukrainian coup to also boycott the Sochi Olympics like the west did the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the USSR going to the ais of Afghanistan. Recycling strategic tricks,
The so-called west is ruled by idiots. Ridding the world of humans would be a good thing, as long as the place wasn’t left as a nuclear wasteland, with little life of any sort still around. Given the quality of current human “leadership” that is exactly what likely would result.