Tension have been mounting between Russia and the Unites States since Democrat President Joe Biden took office.
While the relationship has been far from great for a long time, it had improved somewhat since the Cold War era.
On January 7, an emergency NATO meeting on Russia was held, ahead of last weekโs European security negotiations.
Could it be all for show, pageantry for a fix thatโs already in?
Weโve done it before, in 1999 going through the motions with Belgrade at the Rambouillet Accords before bombing it. That was the last time our government, media, military, and public were this aligned on an issue.
For months, Ukrainian soldiers have been on the move with great confidence against a much stronger neighbor, as if war were a foregone conclusion.
What do they know that we donโt?
Headlines from the talks have been uniformly downbeat, lowering expectations and narrowing options outside of war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefed the press that โWeโre prepared to respond forcefully to further Russian aggression.โ
He promised โmassive . . . economic, financial and other consequences.โ
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg came closest to spilling the beans, saying we needed to โbe prepared for the possibility that diplomacy will fail.โ
According to Politico, he โwas cryptic when pressed for details.โ
Naturally, weโre projecting such tactics onto our target, with an ABC report characterizing Russiaโs insistence on being taken seriouslyโafter decades of eye-poking by usโas Vladimir Putin โseeking a pretext for war.โ
American officialsโ โconcern is that the Russians will emerge . . . declaring that diplomacy has failed,โ a New York Times article read, โand that Mr. Putin will . . . carry out cyber [attacks on] Kyiv.โ
Lo and behold, the talks ended and Reuters informed us of โUkraine suffering a massive cyberattack.โ
Yet they call it โRussian paranoiaโ when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu asks what the United States was smuggling into Donetsk the week beforeโapparently โcontainers with unknown chemical components.โ
As if convenient and sudden chemical attacks by our designated enemies havenโt been the M.O. when United States protรฉgรฉs are involved.
Should we brace ourselves for some sort of โincidentโ that could scuttle all diplomatic and economic approaches, and โnecessitateโ war?
No, thanks to our media dutifully citing Ukrainian military intelligence, weโre to expect only provocations being prepared by Russian special services.
โRussia may try to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine,โ reports Reuters citing our own trusty intelligence agencies.
So even if Joe Biden was โhopefulโ last month and ruled out U.S. military action over Ukraine, some things are as out of his hands as they were out of President Trumpโs.
Meanwhile, any attempt to avert World War III is pounced on by Republicans as Biden caving to Putin.
Witness Senator Ted Cruzโs (R-TX) reaction last week to an NBC headline (called inaccurate anyway by NSC spokeswoman Emily Horne) that read, โBiden admin weighs proposing cuts to U.S. troops in Eastern Europe.โ
Cruz tweeted, โIf Biden was trying to signal weakness & surrender to Putin, what would he be doing differently?โ
Weโre supposed to believe that the current crisis started with Russiaโs troop buildup and draft treaty demanding security guarantees, such as no staging of weaponry in the newer NATO states (states we had promised Mikhail Gorbachev would never become NATO states).
In fact, these are a response not only to NATO advancing on Russia over the last two decades, but as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlined last month in a protest letter, โThe US military and its NATO allies have gone from attempts to test the strength of our border protection system to provocations against civilian aircraft . . .
“US and NATO military aircraft [have been] flying without radio communication or flight plans and failing to obtain air traffic control clearances . . . which violates basic principles of international air navigation.โ
Russiaโs military buildup is an attempt to be heard, to underscore the seriousness of what weโve been doing there.
Russia has been trying to tell us it has nowhere to which it can retreat.
โWe are not deploying our missiles over at the border of the US,โ a Sky News report quoted Putin as saying.
โThe US is deploying its missiles . . . on the doorstep of our house. . . .
“And you keep demanding some guarantees from us.
“You must give us the guarantees.โ
The Russian leader recalled that in the 1990s Russia did much to build good relations with the United States.
โHe added that CIA advisers were able to visit Russian military nuclear sites . . . โWhat else did you need? Why did you have to support the terrorists in the North Caucasus . . . to reach your goals and break down the Russian federation?โโ
But we donโt talk to prey.
Thatโs why, days later, there was still no response from the State Department to the letter about our illegal air maneuvers.
And itโs why our political class scoffs at the idea of giving any heed to Putinโs terms, practically everyone calling his proposal a โnonstarter,โ despite his conditions essentially being an opportunity for us to unbreak our promises and show some integrity as the good-guy winner of the Cold War.
โNot gonna happen,โ former CIA Director Leon Panetta recently swaggered on โMeet the Press.โ
Then Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), as if we havenโt been encircling Russia, deaf-toned with โIf they do invade . . . we will move more NATO assets closer to Russia.โ
How much closer can we get?
Russia is damned if it does, and damned if it doesnโt.
As with Bosnia, our politicians are being egged on by the press.
Reporters goaded Biden during his June summit with Putin, and last month Chuck Todd told former Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor, โI worry that we have not given [Putin] consequences.
“He messed with Georgia, not a lot of consequences.
“He took Crimea, not a lot of consequences.โ
Oh yes, the Putin of our imaginations just โmesses withโ neighbors.
He invaded Georgia just because he wanted to, and not because we gave Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili the nod to invade South Ossetia; then Putin up and โtookโ Crimea, surely not because our Soros-sponsored operatives helped stage a Ukrainian coup against the Moscow-friendly government of Viktor Yanukovych, spurring a Crimean referendum that chose Russia.
These events facilely enter the American lexicon as โRussian aggression,โ such that right now Putin is about to โinvade Ukraineโ just because and not because weโve been amping up Ukraineโs war preparations, practically buzzing Russian planes, or going on fly-alongs with trespassing British ships (see the HMS โDefenderโ incident).
Thatโs without mentioning our performing military exercises on Putinโs borders, stoking his neighborsโ alienation of him, or liquidating nearby Yugoslavia, where Americaโs second-largest from-scratch military base promptly went up..
Provoke a reaction from the strawman, then start the clock for the public at the point of the reaction.
Itโs our Yugoslavia M.O. again.
Watch for acts of self-defense in the early days of the war to be used as retroactive proof of hostility, where it had been missing in โhackingโ; โbounties on Americans in Afghanistanโ; โelection meddlingโ; โelectric-grid tampering,โ and every other concoction against Russia thatโs fallen apart.
โLook what Russia is doing!โ weโll scream as we continue on with our gushing, unifying, politically correct hatred of Vlad the Paler and consume a glut of Russian-villain TV and film, instead of understanding that itโs our government thatโs brought us to the brink of Armageddon.
After all, if they can do to us what theyโve been doing these past two years, why would we think they wouldnโt subject us to potential thermonuclear war?
Our expendability is now a known quantity.
Is this where anyone thought weโd be 15 years after Putin was on hand in Bayonne, New Jersey at the groundbreaking of the 100-foot September 11 monument that Russia gave us?
โIt is not every day that the president of Russia comes to visit a blue collar New Jersey town,โ the New York Times coverage read, โbut here he was, Vladimir Putin . . . clasping hands with the mayor, and speaking of Russiaโs โunityโ with the United States.โ
Even conservatives, usually more immune to propaganda, donโt recognize theyโve been conditioned by a protracted, skewed presentation of events.
So Putin doesnโt even get points for warning against Wokeism, nor for vocalizing that January 6 prisoners are victims of political persecution and reeducation?
In case some do give him points, trusted luminaries such as National Review editor Rich Lowry are there to keep us on track to war.
โVladimir Putin Shouldnโt Be a Right-Wing Hero,โ read his headline in Politico last month. Russian-born libertarian columnist Cathy Young beat him to it in 2013 with the Boston Globe column โVladimir Putin is no Ally for the Right.โ
At the same time, the Rightโs taunts that our effeminate military canโt win wars have likely gotten under the skin of our military brass and given them something to prove.
โAnd what better way to do that than to kill people,โ Tucker Carlson recently quipped.
Add our โdangerously angryโ American public, and the pressure cooker needs a release.
Russia is the proverbial It.
So will the by-now anti-Russian Right unite behind Bidenโs America at war? Sure.
Theyโll be glad to fit in for a moment with the lobotomized, left-molded mainstream, and show they can eschew partisanship when itโs โtruly importantโ (watch for those op-eds), not stopping to question whether an administration that has all but dehumanized them is fighting a war for us, or for itself.
Indeed, a war with Russia would fix everything: show strength, distract, and unite.
Russia makes for the perfect target: the public is already primed against it; there are no ethnic tripwires; and weโre not economically dependent on it as with China.
Which is why, as former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe complained to Maria Bartiromo in late 2020, when he would brief Congress on election security threats posed by China, Russia and others, lawmakers would immediately start leaking just the Russia parts.
And itโs why Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley said in a 2015 interview, โI consider Russia the number-one threat to the United States . . .
“Russia is the only country on earth that has the capability to destroy the United States of America. . . .
“China is not an enemy.
“They are . . . developing themselves into a great power.โ
As we know, in 2020 Milley phoned China behind President Trumpโs back, to reassure his counterpart that we werenโt planning an attack.
โIf weโre going to attack,โ he said, โItโs not going to be a surprise.โ
But China may have a surprise for him.
The memory of Chinaโs NATO-bombed embassy in our last Eastern European war of convenience isnโt so distant, so no doubt President Xi Jinping and Putin have gamed out what happens in the event of a NATO attack on Russia.
Ironically, our inability to forgive Russiaโs abandonment of communism and return to Christianity has pushed it into an alliance with todayโs most powerful communist regime, one that we do fear jabbing.
Only Russia can destroy America, say Americaโs destroyers.
Have they missed 2020-21?
And yet, these past two years of COVID that we complain so bitterly about may turn out to have been a reprieve, a comparative quiet before the storm.
We naively ask for a better 2022, when things really could get even darker.
The overgrown boys with four stars on their lapels are eager to play with their explosive toys and thereโs nothing we can do about it.
But the powerful are prone to forgetting whoโs actually in control.
They consistently forget that they live in a diorama and are themselves mere figurines who, along with their high-tech death machinery, can be folded like paper at the Creatorโs whim.
They donโt have the right to destroy His diorama, and He may have sent emissaries to prevent it.
Last year, the all-mighty Pentagon formally admitted to the existence of UFOs, to their constant presence since the dawn of the nuclear age, and to their recent crescendo.
Early last month, TMZ and others broadcast footage from above Chino Hills, California, of what has been called a โswarmโ of UFOs.
One senses that such a display at this time isnโt mere coincidence.
Nukes have gone offline mysteriously before.
For now, however, we can only plead futilely, like victims to their killers, โWashington, you donโt have to do this.โ