by Bernhard at Moon of Alabama
Due to the stupidity of Europe’s political leadership the U.S. has managed to push it towards committing economic and social suicide.
On February 8 Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, wrote about the then upcoming conflict in Ukraine which the U.S. was intentionally provoking.
Michael Hudson: America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies
The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages.
What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?
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Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat. …
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The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor.
To provoke a war in Ukraine was easy as the movie production team ruling Ukraine was willing to sacrifice its people and country in a unwinnable war against Russia. The Ukrainian actor and president Vladimir Zelensky had already announced that the Ukraine would, by force, take back Crimea and the Donbas republics that were in the hand of a Russia aligned Ukrainian resistance.
On February 15 Professor John Mearsheimer gave a talk (vid) in which he documented how the U.S. had caused, and is responsible for, the whole Ukraine crisis.
Since last year about half of the Ukrainian army was positioned in the county’s southeast at the ceasefire line with the Donbas republics. On February 17 it opened preparatory artillery fire against the resistance positions. Over the next days the barrage steadily increased.
The observers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE), positioned at the frontline, counted and documented each artillery strike and published daily summaries on its website. From 80 artillery impacts on February 16 the attacks increased each day to over 2,000 per day on February 22.
The OSCE observers also provided maps of where the grenades exploded (here of February 21):…
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