Russia may start World War III within 72 hours
The war mongers will tell us Russia hates the West and wants to humiliate us, that Putin believes we are a “soft power” that will demand diplomacy, threaten sanctions and ultimately do nothing.
A Russian tank mechanic stands near the T-90 battle tank for which he is responsible for keeping ready for what may be a soon-coming invasion of Ukraine. (Photo: Vladimir Ruskovo/Associated Press) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As we have said before, U.S. involvement in combat with Russian troops should they invade Ukraine is foolhardy, pointless and dangerous.
Yet there are warmongers both on the far Left and on the RINO Right who demand we commit our young U.S. male and female resources in the military to support Ukraine and help prevent a Russian takeover. They have no compunction in seeing American and Western European blood flow in yet another war that benefits no one but the military-industrial complexes of the world.
Though there are multiple reasons to oppose U.S. involvement in combat in Ukraine, the primary cause for concern is that such a commitment of troops to the conflict by Joe Biden could easily explode into conventional warfare across Europe, Africa and western Asia, conflict such as the world has not seen since World War II.
Potential for American citizens in Ukraine to become Russian pawns escalated last week. Biden said that he would not send U.S. military forces into Ukraine to help evacuate Americans, raising the specter of those who were left behind in Afghanistan last summer. Many remain trapped in a country now controlled exclusively by the Taliban.
Biden said such an action in Ukraine could trigger a “world war” and “things could go crazy quickly.”
Asked in his first TV interview of 2022 if there’s a scenario that would result in him sending US troops to help trapped Americans, Biden told NBC News anchor Lester Holt, “There’s not. That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.”
“American citizens should leave now,” Biden told Holt in an interview taped Thursday afternoon. He offered no guidance, however, on how that could be accomplished.
“It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization,” Biden said. “We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”
Biden added that if Russian President Vladimir Putin is “foolish enough to go in, he’s smart enough not to, in fact, do anything that would negatively impact on American citizens.”
Biden’s messaging on Ukraine, as is most of his messaging on anything, has been muddled, confusing and unclear. He has threatened “severe” sanctions against Russia, but horrified Ukrainian officials last month when he said at his second solo White House press conference that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine might result in less-severe penalties. One Ukrainian official said that the remark could give Putin a “green light” to invade.
U.S. intelligence recently alleged Russia may stage a “false flag” attack on its own forces to provide a justification for war. Putin is demanding that NATO rule out accepting Ukraine as a member, but the Cold War-era military alliance has declined to do so.
Senior U.S. officials on Sunday said they could not confirm reports that U.S. intelligence indicates that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine on Wednesday but said they would try to prevent any "surprise attack" by sharing what they knew of Russia's plans.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan repeated that a Russian invasion could begin any day and President Joe Biden has said he will support Ukraine after any invasion and defend NATO territory. The extent of that support is unclear and Sullivan’s comments were broad enough to encompass anything the administration chooses to do, including becoming involved in combat operations.
When Biden was vice president in 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula and then annexed the territory from Ukraine following a disputed referendum. Putin’s government also allegedly supports a pair of pro-Russia breakaway states in eastern Ukraine.
Biden this week threatened to penalize Russia by blocking operation of the Nord Stream II oil and natural gas pipeline. The pipeline is poised to begin piping fuel directly to Germany — rather than through Ukraine — by mid-summer.
“If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again — then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said.
Meanwhile, deep in the flat and featureless landscape of eastern Ukraine, the outline of World War III is taking shape.
Whipped up by the Kremlin propaganda machine and led by Russian military intelligence, armed men are erecting roadblocks, storming police stations and ripping down the country’s flag.
They are demolishing not just their own country — bankrupt, corrupt and beleaguered — but also the post-war order that has kept most of Europe and Great Britain safe and free for decades.
Vladimir Putin is striking at the heart of the West.
His target is the West’s inability to work with allies in defense against common threats. The profoundly depressing fact is that the events of the past few years ― as Russia has annexed the Crimea and suppressed opposition in Ukraine ― have shown the West to be divided, humiliated and powerless in the face of these land grabs.
The U.S. and our allies will soon face a bleak choice. They can choose to surrender any responsibility we have to protect Ukraine and the Baltic states — almost certainly Putin’s next target — from further Russian incursion. Or they can mount a last-ditch attempt to deter Russia from furthering its imperial ambitions.
One may ask, what’s the difference between engaging in combat and deterring Russia’s ambitions? The latter doesn’t have to involve armed conflict. The Western nations have within their possession the very key to forcing Russia to stand down. The problem is that, up to now, they have been reluctant to use it.
That key is the Nord Stream II pipeline. Severe economic sanctions placed on Russia and the Nord Stream pipeline had previously prevented progress on the pipeline’s construction. Germany resented the sanctions but was convinced by a strong diplomatic effort by Mike Pompeo’s Department of State that it was in the overall best interests of the U.S. and Europe to stall the opening of the pipeline.
During his first month in office, Biden lifted those sanctions, the pipeline is now almost complete and could in fact begin carrying limited barrels of oil and cubic feet of gas to Western Europe within a few months.
It is imperative for Biden to return the sanctions in effect and cut off Putin’s money supply with which he can wage war.
Putin is a former KGB intelligence officer and clandestine operative. He viewed the collapse of the old Soviet Union to be a “geopolitical catastrophe.” He believes Russia was stripped of its empire by the West’s chicanery. Quite simply, he wants it back.
When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the former captive nations of Eastern Europe scrambled as fast as they could into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the protection it offered. Ukraine did not go along at the time, being in the power and control of Moscow sympathizers.
The bitter truth is that Russia did not reform its ambitions in 1991. The Kremlin has always retained its imperialist outlook.
While modern Germany has forsworn militarism and empire and is liked and admired even by countries such as Poland, which suffered horribly at Hitler’s hands, Russia has not.
Putin believes its historic destiny gives Russia the right to seize land, intimidate and blockade its neighbors. The Russian leader sees Ukraine not as a real country, but just a Russian territory, one he is determined to dominate.
Putin first took Crimea. Now he has launched an operation on three side of Ukraine. Russian troops are prowling the border as the Ukrainian authorities launch a desperate attempt to regain control of government buildings and police stations in key cities that have been seized and occupied by Russian sympathizeres in recent days.
As of Monday morning in the U.S., there were 130,000 combat troops massed on the borders of Ukraine and reports they were massing for a swift assault. Sunday it was reported that between four and 11 people had been killed as Ukrainian troops re-took Kramatorsk Airfield from pro-Russian forces in east-central Ukraine.
Putin has presented the Ukrainian leaders with an impossible choice. Either they consent to the dismemberment of their country. Or they fight a long, bloody war with heavy casualties on both sides before Russia either tires of stalemateand leaves, throws the entire Russian military into the fight to destroy Ukraine and guarantee victory, or the carnage leads Western leaders to believe they must intervene militarily.
The saber-rattlers in the West are ready to commit troops now. It makes no sense to do so. As Ukraine did not join NATO when the rest of the Eastern Bloc nations did when they escaped Russian rule, they are not our official ally.
We cannot resume the neocon mentality of being the world’s policeman, as has been the dominate theory dating from Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan in this century. Besides, defending the borders of Ukraine when we have an invasion of third-worlders at our own southern border is too great an irony to comprehend.
The U.SA. and other Western powers do not have to make the irrational decision to join in the conflict, but they may nonetheless be drawn into it. That reality is what makes Biden’s commitment of 11,000 U.S. troops partially rational.
If Russia meets strong Ukrainian resistance, as is expected, they may choose to turn toward the other Baltic states, many of which have joined NATO, in order to preemptively stop any interference from them. NATO’s charter will demand that the Western members defend their smaller, weaker brothers.
Our involvement will be unavoidable. British, French and U.S. troops will be forced to directly confront the Russian military.
The warmongers will tell us Ukraine’s army is ill-equipped, ill-trained and poorly trained. That is a lie. Ukraine has been well-armed under the Trump administration and has some of the latest U.S. equipment with which to fight. They have been trained by our very best, Delta Force out of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Their officer corps has been educated at U.S. military academies and war colleges.
The war mongerers will tell us Russia hates the West and wants to humiliate us, that Putin believes we are a “soft power” that will demand diplomacy, threaten sanctions and ultimately do nothing.
The difference is that, were Trump still president, any threats he would make to defend Ukraine would be believed in the Kremlin. His mere presence in the White House would be a sufficient deterrent to Putin’s planned takeover of Ukraine. Putin believes he can bluff Biden to stay on the sidelines, even so far as keeping him from enacting economic punishments.
It is true, under Biden, the U.S. has become a soft power. Backed into a corner, there is no telling what this administration might do to assert its “strength and resolve.” That includes making irrational moves that could start World War III.
Biden should not wait for an invasion of Ukraine to enact severe economic sanctions against Russia and its leaders. Biden should shut down Nord Stream II now. He must deny the financial windfall the pipeline will be for Russia to fund Putin’s folly to invade Ukraine and any other desires to rebuild the Soviet Empire he may harbor. He should freeze the assets Russia’s government and its corporations have in the U.S. and strongly urge Britain and the E.U. to do the same.
The most effective way to deny a tyrant the riches he seeks is to attack the riches he possesses now. The last thing this world needs is another universal conflagration as Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan forced upon it.
Mike Nichols is an advocate of the counterrevolution with a four-step plan to defeat Leftist Fascism: We Organize. We Stand. We Resist. We Fight. He is a regular contributor to several conservative news websites and has a regular blog and Facebook presence at Americas Conservative Voice-Facebook.