REPUBLICANS in the US Senate have been urging the White House to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles that can strike deep into Russia. Such is the madness of pro-war sentiment.
America’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has apparently confirmed that Washington plans to shortly deliver such strategic weapons to Ukraine. This week, Britain’s new prime minister arrived in Washington to discuss more strategic arms for Ukraine.
One is vividly reminded of the mobs who thronged Paris train stations in August 1914, screaming “on to Berlin”. As a British historian aptly noted, “if patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, then war is the first platform of fools”.
US-supplied long-range missiles are the last step between what was a border conflict and an all-out war that will likely go nuclear.
Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he reduced conventional forces to divert funds to Russia’s stunted civilian economy. Nuclear weapons, said Putin, will be used to replace conventional forces if Russia is attacked. We must take him at his word.
The border war with Ukraine, which began in 2014, has shown how much Russia reduced its former conventional might. The once mighty Red Army has proven a shadow of its former self. Under Putin, armies of tanks have been replaced by new apartments across the sprawling nation.
The idea of sending more long-range missiles to Ukraine is sheer madness. Ukraine is slowly being ground down in this long war of attrition.
Ukraine’s current strategy is to provoke a direct clash between Russia and the US. Interestingly, Israel used the same strategy to provoke direct US military intervention against Syria and various Arab militias.
The US, dominated by pro-war Republicans and wealthy pro-Israel special interests, appears eager to promote war with Russia. Most importantly, neoconservatives are urging intensified war against Russia to advance their goal of breaking up the Russian Federation into small, weak pieces dominated by Washington.
Such was the case under former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, who allowed US financial interests to dominate Russia while he made merry. Former KGB officer Putin put an end to Washington’s attempt to turn Russia into an American satrapy.
I interviewed the leaders of KGB at Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison in 1991. They expressed disgust with Russia’s then-Communist leadership and said there would be a housecleaning. The result was, of course, Putin’s surprising rise to power.
Putin quickly became the target of US media hate. He committed terrible brutalities in Chechnya, but without him, Russia may have ended up as today’s supine Germany.
The US overthrew Ukraine’s last pro-Russian government. Ukraine had been part of the Russian state for hundreds of years and the centre of its heavy industries. This coup cost the US $5 billion (RM21.44 billion), according to leading State Department neocon Victoria Nuland.
An actor, the amiable Volodymyr Zelensky, was put in charge by Nuland. US funds and arms poured into Ukraine. Efforts by Washington to shatter the old Soviet Union were a brilliant success, except that Washington had to foot the bill, which has so far reached an astounding US$44 billion, depriving the US military of many important weapons systems.
One also wonders why former president Donald Trump did not raise the issue of Ukraine’s payments to President Joe Biden and his son.
As a veteran war correspondent and old friend of Ukraine, I see the US and Russia heading to a major war. The Western powers have been relentlessly provoking Russia. The idea of supplying Ukraine with a new class of long-range missiles will likely ignite a dangerous war that may likely go nuclear.
Now is the time for the great powers to impose peace, not supply arms. Time to end the unnecessary sufferings of Ukrainians and Russians. Genuine diplomacy, not more weapons, is the answer.
THE writer is a syndicated columnist.
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