Call for an end to war
The North Atlantic media are entangled in an unprecedented information war. It is characterized by a relentless erosion of the distinction between facts and the manipulation of emotions and perceptions, between conjectures and unassailable truths.
I saw this kind of information war in the United States first-hand during the last years of the war on Vietnam and in the lead-up to the war on Iraq - both wars driven by political hoaxes that led to numerous war crimes.
Manipulation of the news around Russia's war on Ukraine is aimed at preventing public opinion from seeking a lasting peace for both Ukraine and the region. The aim of this information war is to prolong the Ukraine conflict to serve the interests of those who wish to promote it.
How does one know what constitutes facts and what constitutes lies, and how can one learn how to explain events without being accused of justification?
To demonize your enemies, you must first dehumanize them. They must be defined as having acted criminally and without provocation.
I have unconditionally condemned the illegal invasion of Ukraine, but I am nonetheless still interested in how we got to this point. The late Stephen Cohen's 2019 book War With Russia? provides a thorough analysis of the relations between the United States and Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and the dynamics of these relations with respect to Ukraine since 2013.
Cohen considered the conflict in
Ukraine a "proxy war," but one that involved "too many American and Russian trainers, minders, and possibly fighters." He reminded us of the wars in Georgia (2008) and in Syria (2011).
"The risk of a direct conflict" between the United States and Russia "continues to grow in Ukraine," Cohen wrote in his book in 2019.
The US government sees the world divided into democracies and autocracies. Governments that are deemed by Washington to be hostile to it are defined as autocracies.
For its Summit for Democracy, which took place in December 2021, the United States, for example, did not invite Bolivia, even though the country had recently gone through the election process.
Meanwhile, the US invited Pakistan, the Philippines and Ukraine, even though the US government said it had misgivings about these states (in the case of Ukraine, only a few months earlier, the Pandora Papers revealed the depth of corruption among
Ukraine's elite, which included President Volodymyr Zelensky).
Because Ukraine represented the struggle of "democracy" against Russian "autocracy," Zelensky was invited to the summit.
The concept of "democracy" is robbed of much of its political content and weaponized for purposes of promoting changes of government that are beneficial to the United States' global interests.
Real and manufactured threats to justify war
While Russian President Vladimir Putin's exaggerated claims of the threat of Nazism in Ukraine that he is using to try to justify his illegal invasion of Ukraine are not valid, the far-right paramilitary elements and their recruitment of foreign fighters that have pervaded Ukraine are worth examining.
It is not unthinkable that the arming and financing by Europe and the United States of democracy-minded Ukrainian forces, even if this aid is not directed at known farright extremist militias in Ukraine, could still bleed over. There is a risk that far-right extremists could gain a foothold, and one that is not merely confined to Ukraine.
In a 1998 interview with L'Obs, previously known as Le Nouvel Observateur,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said that in 1979, the US "knowingly increased the probability" of the USSR invading Afghanistan, in the hopes of giving the former Soviet Union "its Vietnam war."
Similarly, in February this year, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told MSNBC that she hoped the United States would do to Russia in Ukraine what it had done to Russia in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that this war "may last for a long time, for many months, for even years," which should have set off alarm bells among Europe's political leaders.
The consequences of a second Vietnamstyle war by Russia could be disastrous for both Ukraine and Europe. Russia, which is part of Europe, will not be a threat to Europe unless Europe becomes a huge US military base. Therefore, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the real threat facing Europe.
Double standards for international pact membership
Turned into a mere sounding board for US strategic choices, the European Union is advocating Ukraine's right to join NATO as being the legitimate expression of universal values (and European values, but no less universal for that reason).
At the same time, the United States has stepped up integration with Ukraine, as was seen in the November 2021 US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.
One wonders whether Europe's leaders are aware that the recognition of Ukraine's right to join a military pact like NATO is being denied to other countries by the United States.
“Therefore, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is the real threat facing Europe. Double standards for international pact membership Turned into a mere sounding board for US strategic choices, the European Union is advocating Ukraine's right to join NATO as being the legitimate expression of universal values (and European values, but no less universal for that reason). At the same time, the United States has stepped up integration with Ukraine, as was seen in the November 2021 US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership.”