NATO Recklessly Escalates War Against Russia || De-Facto War Between Russian & NATO Forces in Ukraine
- NATO Recklessly Escalates War Against Russia
by Andre Damon, https://www.wsws.org/en , 8 Jan 2023
The rapid escalation of the conflict in Ukraine has shattered the claim that NATO is not a party to the war against Russia. Not a week goes by without a major new expansion of NATO involvement:- On December 10, a US official told the Times of London that the US had officially endorsed Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia, declaring, “We’re not saying to Kyiv, ‘Don’t strike the Russians [in Russia or Crimea].’”
- On December 21, the Biden administration announced that it would send a battery of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, the most advanced weapons system sent to date.
- On December 29, Biden signed into law the appropriation of another $50 billion for the war, doubling with the stroke of a pen the level of US involvement in the conflict.
- On January 4 and 5, France, Germany and the United States announced they would send tanks and armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine.
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These are the very actions that Biden and other NATO leaders previously asserted would lead to a direct war between the US and Russia. In March, Biden said, “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews… that’s called World War III.”
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To buttress his claim that “we do not seek a war between NATO and Russia,” Biden wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in May that stated, “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders”—a position that is now openly contradicted in press statements by US officials.
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In June, French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “We are not entering the war… Thus, it has been agreed not to supply certain weapons—including attack aircraft or tanks—and President Zelensky is aware of this agreement.”
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In internal publications, the strategists of US imperialism admit that the Ukrainian army has been effectively hired as a mercenary force by the United States, with the aim of destroying the Russian military.
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“In cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives,” wrote Timothy Ash of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
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“US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment,” Ash added, concluding, “The US military might reasonably wish Russia to continue deploying military forces for Ukraine to destroy.”
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Increasingly, the physical destruction of the Russian state is being articulated as a goal of NATO policy. Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, the think tank founded by nuclear war advocate Herman Kahn, said that “the war in Ukraine… will likely mark the dissolution of the Russian Federation (the legal successor to the Soviet Union) as it is known today.”
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The United States and NATO have instigated, prolonged and escalated the war. The Russian government, in a colossal and reactionary blunder, attacked Ukraine in the hopes of working out a security agreement with the US and Europe. Instead, it fell into NATO’s trap, with catastrophic consequences.
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With every escalation, the US and NATO are betting that they can push further than the last time without a major response. Last month, the New York Times explained this rationale by pointing to “the sense widespread in Kyiv among officials and civilians that, short of nuclear intensification, Russia cannot do much more to Ukraine that it is not already doing.”
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