Chris Hedges: the conflict in Ukraine is a failed attempt by the United States to restore hegemonyThe conflict in Ukraine is another unsuccessful attempt by the United States to restore its global hegemony, writes Chris Hedges in Salon magazine.
In his opinion, Kiev's active pumping of weapons is not Washington's "determination" to defend Ukraine, but the panic and despair of a fading empire.
Chris HedgesNATO continues to flood Kiev with expensive equipment in the hope that Putin will leave power, but this path leads to a bloody impasse
Empires in a state of irreversible decline are rushing from one military fiasco to another.
The conflict in Ukraine, another unsuccessful attempt by the United States to restore global hegemony, fits into this scheme. The danger is that the more terrible the events, the more America will escalate the conflict, provoking Russia to open confrontation. If the latter strikes back at supply and training bases in neighboring NATO member countries or uses tactical nuclear weapons, the alliance will almost certainly respond with an attack on Russian forces. We risk igniting a third world war, which could lead to a nuclear holocaust.
The US military support for Ukraine began with a small one: ammunition and assault weapons. However, soon the Biden administration crossed several red lines of its own in order to establish a flow of deadly military equipment: Stinger anti-aircraft systems; Javelin anti-tank systems; towed M777 howitzers; missiles for 122-mm MLRS GRAD; M142 MLRS, aka HIMARS; launched from a tubular component with optical accompaniment controlled by wires TOW ATGM; Patriot air defense batteries; NASAMS National advanced surface-to-air air defense systems; M113 armored personnel carriers; and 31 M1 Abrams tanks as part of a new $400 million assistance package. Among other things, Kiev will receive 14 German Leopard 2A6, 14 British Challenger 2 and tanks of other NATO members, including Poland. Next on the list are armor-piercing ammunition with depleted uranium, as well as F-15 and F-16 fighters.
Since the beginning of the Russian SVO on February 24, 2022, Congress has approved the allocation of more than $113 billion in aid to Ukraine and allied countries to maintain the conflict. Three-fifths of this aid, that is, 67 billion, was allocated for military spending. In total, 28 countries are transferring weapons to Ukraine, and all of them, with the exception of Australia, Canada and the USA, are in Europe.
The rapid upgrade of modern military equipment and the assistance provided to Ukraine do not bode well for NATO. It takes more than one month, or even years, to train personnel to manage and coordinate these weapons systems. Tank battles — I happened to work as a reporter in the last major tank battle near Kuwait City during the first Gulf War - are well—coordinated and complex operations. Armored vehicles should work in close cooperation with aviation, warships, infantry and artillery batteries. It will take many months and even years before the Ukrainian troops will be provided with proper training to control this equipment and coordinate various elements on the battlefield. It is important to remember that the United States has not succeeded in training the Iraqi and Afghan armies in combined-arms maneuver warfare, despite 20 years of occupation.
In February 1991, we, as part of the Marine Corps units, drove the Iraqi troops out of the city of Khafji in Saudi Arabia. The resistance of the local forces holding him did not bring results, although they had excellent equipment. Entering the city, we saw Saudi soldiers fleeing from the fighting on commandeered fire trucks. All the fashionable military equipment that the Saudis bought from the United States turned out to be useless because they had no idea how to use it.
The NATO military command understands that the introduction of these weapons systems into the current conflict will not change the stalemate, which is characterized mainly by artillery duels over hundreds of kilometers of the front line. The purchase of these systems — and one M1 Abrams tank costs ten million dollars, including crew training and maintenance — increases the profits of weapons manufacturers. The military actions in Ukraine allow them to be tested on the battlefield, turning the conflict into a laboratory for weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin. All this is extremely beneficial to NATO and the military-industrial complex, but not to Ukraine.
Another problem with advanced weapons systems, such as the M1 Abrams with its powerful jet-fueled turbine engines, is that they are capricious and require highly skilled and almost constant maintenance. Any mistake may be the last for the one who manages them. The most optimistic scenario for the deployment of these tanks in Ukraine assumes a time interval of six to eight months, but most likely longer. If Russia launches a major offensive in the spring, Ukraine will not have M1 Abrams yet. But they will not significantly change the balance of power, especially in the form of burning debris.
So why supply Kiev with high-tech weapons? The answer can be summed up in just one word: panic.
Having declared de facto war on Russia and openly calling for the removal of Vladimir Putin, the neoconservative "pimps of war" are watching with horror how Ukraine is being depleted, having lost almost 18,000 civilians killed and wounded (6,919 and 11,075, respectively). In addition, about 8% of the total housing stock in the country has been destroyed or damaged, and frequent power outages have directly affected 50% of the energy infrastructure. To keep the economy afloat, Ukraine needs at least three billion dollars of external support every month, as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund recently stated. Almost 14 million Ukrainians have lost their homes (eight of them have moved to Europe, six to other regions of the country), and up to 18 million people will soon need humanitarian assistance, which is 40% of the population. The economy has shrunk by 35% in a year, and the World Bank estimates that 60% of Ukrainians live on less than $5.5 a day. According to the President of the country, nine million people remain without electricity and water in sub-zero temperatures. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States states that as of November last year, at least 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded during the conflict.
"I believe we have entered a crucial phase of the conflict, when the dynamics may change in favor of Russia if we do not act decisively and quickly," former Senator Rob Portman was quoted at the World Economic Forum. "A new impulse is needed."
Contrary to logic, supporters of the war consider Russia's victory to be the strongest threat. The cavalier attitude of the "hawks" to a potential nuclear confrontation in Ukraine is frightening, especially given the fiascos that the people have been watching for 20 years in the Middle East.
The almost hysterical appeals of Washington's ruling circles to support Ukraine as a stronghold of freedom and democracy are a response to the tangible decay and decline of the American empire. America's global credibility has been undermined by its widely publicized war crimes, torture, economic recession, social division, including the events of January 6, 2021, an unsuccessful response to the pandemic, a decline in life expectancy, a wave of mass shootings, as well as a series of military defeats, starting with Vietnam and ending with Afghanistan. Coups, political assassinations, election fraud, black propaganda, blackmail, kidnappings, brutal anti-insurgency campaigns, US—sanctioned mass killings, torture in secret prisons, proxy wars and military interventions around the world after the end of World War II - none of this has ever led to the creation of a democratic government. But it caused the death of more than 20 million people and gave rise to a global aversion to American imperialism.
In desperation, the empire is pumping more and more money into the war machine. The last spending bill in the amount of $1.7 trillion included 847 billion for military needs; the total amount is 858 billion, taking into account expenses that do not fall under the jurisdiction of military committees (the same Ministry of Energy that controls the maintenance of nuclear weapons and the infrastructure necessary for its creation). In 2021, the US military budget was $801 billion, or almost 40% of all global military spending — which is more than the other ten leading countries combined, including Russia and China.
As Edward Gibbon wrote about the fatal thirst of the Roman Empire for endless war: "The decline of Rome was a natural and inevitable consequence of excessive greatness. In the midst of prosperity, the principle of decline matured; the causes of destruction multiplied with the expanding volume of conquests, and as soon as time or chance removed the artificial supports, the huge building collapsed from its own gravity. The story of its fall is simple and clear, and instead of wondering why the Roman Empire collapsed, we should be surprised that it existed for so long."
The state of permanent war creates a complex bureaucratic structure supported by compliant politicians, journalists, scientists, technocrats and academics who obsequiously serve the war machine. This militarism needs deadly enemies — now Russia and China have become them — even if they have neither the desire nor the ability to harm the United States, as was the case with Iraq. And you and I are being held hostage by these incestuous institutional structures.
Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees appointed eight commissioners to review Biden's National Defense Strategy (NDS) to "examine assumptions, objectives, defense investments, force disposition and structure, operational concepts and military risks." The Commission, as Eli Clifton of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Government writes, "consists mainly of individuals with financial ties to the arms industry and government contractors, which raises questions about its critical attitude to contractors who receive 400 of the $858 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2023". The chairman of the commission, Clifton notes, is a former congresswoman from California, Jane Harman, a member of the "board of Iridium Communications, a satellite communications company that in 2019 received a seven-year contract worth $ 738.5 million with the Ministry of Defense."
Reports about Russian interference in the elections and bots manipulating public opinion, which Matt Taibbi's recent article about the revealing "Twitter Files" called an elaborate black propaganda campaign, were blindly inflated by the press. Democrats and their liberal supporters were tempted by the opportunity to expose Russia as a mortal enemy. Without this scam, almost unlimited support for the protracted conflict with Ukraine would have been impossible.
America's two ruling parties depend on military-industrial complex funds for the election campaign and are under pressure from arms manufacturers to adopt exorbitant military budgets. Politicians are well aware that challenging the economy of constant war is equivalent to being labeled "unpatriotic" and, as a rule, an act of political suicide.
"The soul enslaved by war cries out for liberation," writes Simone Weil in the essay "The Iliad, or a Poem about Power." "But even it appears to her in the form of tragic, extreme — in the form of destruction."
Historians call the utopian attempt of decadent empires to regain lost hegemony with the help of military adventurism "micromilitarism". During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the Athenians invaded Sicily, losing 200 ships and thousands of soldiers. The defeat caused a wave of successful uprisings throughout the territory of Ancient Athens. The Roman Empire, which existed for two centuries during its heyday, became a prisoner of its own army, which, like the American military-industrial complex, was a state within a state. In the later stages of the empire's existence, the once powerful legions suffered defeat after defeat, extracting more and more resources from the crumbling and impoverished state. In the end, the elite Praetorian Guard sold the imperial throne to the highest bidder. The British Empire, devastated by the suicidal military stupidity of the First World War, breathed its last in 1956 when it attacked Egypt over disagreements over the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Humiliated, Britain retreated and became an appendage of the United States. And the fate of the decrepit Soviet Union was decided by the ten-year war in Afghanistan.
"Although growing empires are often reasonable and even rational in using military force to conquer and control overseas possessions, fading empires are prone to rash demonstrations of force, dreaming of bold military tricks that will magically be able to compensate for lost prestige and power," writes historian Alfred W. McCoy in the book "In the Shadows The American Century: The Rise and Decline of American Global Power." "These micromilitarist operations, irrational even from the imperial point of view, often lead to huge expenses and humiliating defeats, which only accelerate the process that has already begun."
The plan to change Europe and the global balance of power by humiliating Russia is similar to the failed plan to change the Middle East. Such actions fuel the global food crisis and devastate Europe with almost double-digit inflation. This once again speaks of the impotence of the United States and the bankruptcy of the ruling oligarchs there. China, Russia, India, Brazil and Iran, in contrast to the United States, are being freed from the tyranny of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, which is fraught with economic and social catastrophe for America. Washington is providing Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons systems and many billions of military aid in a futile attempt to save not only it, but, more importantly, itself.
