Total War’ Rhetoric Betrays Systematic NATO Hostility Towards Russia

 EDITORIAL

The conflict and suffering in Ukraine are regrettable. But what is even more regrettable and deplorable is the way NATO powers have created the conflict.

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire revealed more than he intended when he declared this week that Western states were waging a “total war” on Russia’s economy. That he quickly sought to retract his words as inappropriate shows that the senior French government official realized the gravity of what he was disclosing about the response of NATO powers to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

It is two weeks since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s military into Ukraine in what Moscow claims to be a “special operation” primarily to defend the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. The Donbass self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – now officially recognized as independent states by Russia – were coming under intensified military attack from the NATO-backed forces of the Kiev regime. Former Ukrainian prime minister Nikolay Azarov claimed this week that Russia’s intervention prevented a NATO-Kiev offensive that would have resulted in thousands of deaths.

It should also be noted for important context that Moscow’s repeated calls for a security treaty with the NATO powers concerning the future exclusion of Ukraine from the alliance were roundly and arrogantly rebuffed. The neighboring country posed an existential security threat to Russia that no Western power would remotely tolerate on its borders.

In any case, the response by the United States and its European NATO allies to Russia’s intervention has been one of blankly denying that Moscow had any reasonable cause. Indeed, the Western media has dutifully mounted a massive campaign of smearing Russia as “an aggressor without any provocation”.

Rather than recognizing any of Russia’s long-held security concerns regarding NATO’s expansion and in particular the role of Ukraine in projecting a threat to Russian national security, the Western states have doubled down on an agenda of systematic hostility. The extremely dangerous situation is at risk of sliding into direct war – a Third World War – between Russia and the NATO powers which would inevitably lead to nuclear annihilation, as Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned this week.

The concerted response by Washington and other Western capitals to mount an economic blockade on Russia over the Ukraine crisis is a sign of the strategic agenda to subjugate. An agenda, it has to be said, that is criminal and a violation of the UN Charter. American, British, French and other NATO leaders have relished the prospect of collapsing the Russian economy. (The same kind of state-sponsored economic terrorism that Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and others have to endure for not bending the knee to Western demands.)

In addition to this economic warfare, the NATO powers are continuing to pile weapons and private military contractors into Ukraine to fight what is becoming a proxy war against Russia. Over the past year alone, it is estimated that the Biden administration has assigned $1 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Britain has also been plying Ukraine with weapons and now Germany this week – breaking a decades-long taboo – has joined other NATO members to supply arms.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claims that the alliance is not a party to the conflict. But that assertion is a barefaced lie. NATO has weaponized the Kiev regime ever since the CIA-backed coup d’état in 2014 which brought to power a Neo-Nazi cabal. Special forces from NATO countries have been training ultranationalist battalions donning Waffen SS insignia in the use of weapons to attack the ethnic Russian population in Donbass who refused to recognize the Kiev regime.

The economic and proxy military war is concomitant with the overwhelming media propaganda campaign across Europe and North America to demonize and criminalize Russia. U.S. politicians are openly calling for the assassination of Russia’s President Putin, while British parliamentarians are demanding the deportation of all Russian nationals. Russian cultural and sports figures are being banned. In a frenzy of Russophobia, even international events such as cat shows are being targeted with bans. The latter example is almost laughable but it does illustrate the total effort underway to demonize and isolate Russia.

The next logical step is the nefarious one of making war on Russia and its people a “just cause” by the Western powers.

In this hysterical geopolitical climate, it is vital to retain a historical analysis of why the present conflict pertains.

For years now, it has been openly advocated by imperial planners in the U.S. and its NATO surrogates to label Russia (and China) as an enemy preventing American-led global dominance. The Rand Corp, for instance, has brazenly touted regime change in Moscow.

The orgy of wars that Washington and its European allies have waged over the past three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union has all been driven by an agenda of asserting hegemony and curtailing any opposition from Russia, China and others. The relentless, threatening eastward expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders is integral to that as was the coup in Ukraine in 2014.

We are where we are because of this U.S.-led strategic hostility towards Russia.

This is not merely about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Western media aim to present that as Moscow’s alleged aggression against Europe even though Putin this week reiterated for the nth time that Russia has no ill intention towards Europe. Western pundits pontificate about Putin’s purported revanchism to restore the Soviet Union. Sanctions are imposed supposedly to demonstrate Western defense of “democratic values” – as the U.S. and Europe use every available instrument to censor Russian media from giving an alternative view.

The “Total War” rhetoric is not a slip of the tongue or an unfortunate malapropism. The repeated expressed desire and preference to confront Russia – including to kill its leadership – shows that there is a strategic, long-term dynamic to what is unfolding. If Washington and its NATO partners were genuinely interested in peaceful relations they would not have repudiated Moscow’s security proposals put forward in December. They would not be weaponizing the Kiev regime. To that end, it is disturbing that the NATO powers seem to be impeding discussions currently taking place between Russia and Ukraine to find a peaceful settlement to their conflict.

More sinisterly, perhaps the last time the phrase “Total War” was heard articulated in public with regard to Russia it came out of the mouth of Nazi Germany’s Josep Goebbels.

The conflict and suffering in Ukraine are regrettable. But what is even more regrettable and deplorable is the way NATO powers have created the conflict. And what’s more, now Western elites and their malleable media are forging a casus belli against Russia under the cynical guise of concern for Ukraine, democracy, international law, and peace.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/03/04/total-war-rhetoric-betrays-systematic-nato-hostility-towards-russia/

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/03/04/total-war-rhetoric-betrays-systematic-nato-hostility-towards-russia/