When a world leader of a superpower calls another world leader of equal status a "butcher” a "scum” and a "mass murderer” with added insinuations for a "regime change” and "genocide” accusations, it breaks all rules of diplomatic coexistence among civilized nations. Offensive rhetoric is certainly not befitting for any statesman! Those personal insults were actually made by the US President against President Vladimir Putin in retaliation to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The war bombardment and atrocities in the killing fields of Ukraine certainly cannot be justified, at least not by reasonable-minded persons or civilized societies! A limited armed conflict could be stomached but the death-of- thousands belong in a dark theatre of insanity!
NATO's grooming of the Zelenskiy government to join the alliance has been at the crux of the problem! Moscow considers Ukraine's ambitions to join NATO a military threat and Putin's warnings were totally ignored to respect Russia's security anxieties.
The same security anxieties were expressed by the USA in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. John Kennedy considered Russian missiles close to its borders presented a serious threat to American security and had to be stopped! Luckily, common sense prevailed at the time and the crisis was defused with President Kennedy seen as a hero for averting a nuclear war from starting; and rightly so!
Compare those same anxieties shared by Russia, and the war in Ukraine could equally have been avoided. But that was not part of the greater plan and the Zelenskiy regime has chosen conflict instead of negotiating a peaceful solution! Three months into the war and it's quite obvious that Ukraine is used as a proxy for ulterior motives.
The rabblerousing propaganda fortified by sanctions by the US, EU and NATO appears to be well synchronized for maximum impact to isolate Russia on the world stage. It is not the first time Pentagon used demonizing tactics to destabilize perceived "enemies of the west” to spark yet another conflict thousands of miles away from the American coast.
Winning or losing wars is all a part of the bigger game by the Dark State within a State; those are the powerful military arms manufacturers, banking institutions and corporations that always prosper on wars and conflict! Antony Blinken the US Secretary of State has recently introduced a new US foreign policy to "relax red tape on arm sales” so US weapons can be exported much quicker to EU and other countries.
Even so, political amnesia seems to be more common than reality; The 1945 US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over half a million civilians; the ugly carnage and genocide during the USA-Vietnam war (1955-1975) over three million people have lost their lives; just like the Armenian and Greek Genocide by the Turks and Hitler's Holocaust of the Jews; the Afghanistan war (2001-2021) was another war of expediency with the loss of nearly one million lives including the US-NATO invasions of Iraq (2003-2011) with thousands of casualties.
War fatigue and lied to, citizens today expect global leaders to be judged not only by their actions but also by their words! Words play an important role but the propaganda and rousing rhetoric spawned out of the Ukraine-Russian war have broken all the rules of dignity, trustfulness and common sense.
Instead of defusing the conflict by negotiation, the killing frenzy continues to no end in sight! Meanwhile, Zelenskiy demands more and even heavier weapons to defend his country "to the very last Ukrainian citizen”. It seems as if war madness has consumed logic and humanity.
Another world power used a similar strategy in 1806. The Continental Blockade (Blocus continental) was a foreign policy of Napoleon Banaparte against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. The Berlin Decree of 1806-1807 proclaimed a far-reaching political and trade embargo against the British Empire. It decreed that French allies including all other non-aligned countries must not trade with Britain! Any country that broke the rules of the embargo was treated as an enemy of France and military reprisals were taken against the offending state.
All relations with Britain were cut off including the mail and in due course the Continental Blockade proved useless. Napoleon realized the French embargo did not succeed because trade continued clandestinely through Spain and Tsar-Alexander's Russia. In response, his armies invaded both countries but suffered severe losses and ultimately he retreated from Russia in 1812.
The affects of the embargo against Britain caused little economic damage to Britain's overall world trade. In fact, losing Britain as a trading partner backfired and hit the economies of France and its allies the hardest. Angry governments finally ignored the Continental Blockade, which led to weakening Napoleon's coalition and eventual downfall.
There is a canny similarity of Napoleon's failed Blocus Continental! The US, EU, NATO sanctions on Russia can in fact boomerang and generate self-inflicting toxic results at the threat of triggering War World III!
The unwavering commitment to provide weapons and western military planning advisors to Ukraine raises eyebrows!
These are questions that plague the sane-minded but none offer real answers depending on which side one talks to; the Russians or the Ukrainians?
Under the 2017 Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanction Act (CAATSA), the Act targets three countries: Russia, Iran and North Korea with economic and political sanctions! It also prohibits any country from signing defence deals with these nations. The Act has now been applied to cover a network of embargoes against anyone that refuses to abide with the US directives.
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is pushing for sanctions against China (1.4 billion population) for not condemning Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Washington-Delhi relations are also under scrutiny! Moscow has been Delhi's ally (1.38 billion population) and the largest supplier of arms, which accounts for more than 50% of its imports. Mr Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister has visited India on a "trade mission” and to dissuade India's long-time Russian affiliation while Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker of the US Congress has made a surprising visit to Kiev in support of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, NATO has called a meeting of 40 countries at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany to co-ordinate a strategic plan to deal with Russia's operations in Ukraine. The UK on the other hand, is the first NATO country to announce that it's sending 8,000 troops to Eastern Europe while President Biden has authorized another $33 billion aid for Ukraine, "to fight the war, but the United States is not at war with Russia!”
It looks as if sanctions so far have not been as effective to change the turn of events and have boomeranged with self-inflicted wounds! Instead, they caused instability and harmed the economies for all the European partners. The IMF has already expressed concerns of the rising national debt, inflation and crippling recession that "would severely set back the global economy”.
But the flow of Russian oil and gas into Europe will cause the greatest harm of all! Nearly 60% of Russian supplies of energy go to the EU to keep the wheels of industry turning. If Russia decides to turn the taps off, the Eurozone will be the one to suffer the worst and not the United States!
In retaliation to the plethora of sanctions and military support for Ukraine, Moscow may have just pulled a rabbit out of the hat; it has set a peg to rouble 5,000 per gram of gold! This means that Russia demands that all payments for Russian oil and gas are to be either made in roubles or in gold. This monetary sleight of hand will force the international banks and countries-but primarily the EU- to transfer roubles or gold into the Russian coffers instead of dollars or euros.
To the dismay of EU and the USA, the move will degrade the US dollar and the euro-being paper money and not pegged on gold-on the international market and devalue those two currencies in a self-perpetuating rollercoaster.
Actually, the decision by the Russian Central Bank to peg its currency with gold is the financial equivalent of detonating a nuclear bomb on the global monetary system! Since the dollar and euro are fiat money (paper money) and not backed by any physical assets or tied to the value of gold they are most vulnerable.
The last person who tried to peg his country's currency with gold was Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya and a country rich in oil and gas. A NATO-led coalition in 2011 began a military intervention in Libya to "implement UN Resolutions” and primarily force a regime change. In the process, they destroyed Libya to protect the monetary system and western interests.
However, similar to the Blocus continental some EU member-states are planning to open accounts with Gazprom and pay in roubles for supplies in breach of EU-NATO imposed sanctions! In response, the Commission has threatened maverick states with serious economic consequences for disloyalty.
Meanwhile, Poland and Bulgaria are the first two countries that Gazprom has halted gas exports to them for not paying in roubles or in gold. The move has shocked the EU bureaucrats and called it "blackmail” worried that other member states will become the next casualties of Russia's demands.
In conclusion
Irrespective of the political reasons behind the war, both Putin and Zelenskiy cannot be exonerated for the endless massacre that's taking place in Ukraine. NATO on the other hand cannot wash its hands from the blood of the innocent, and neither the US playing guiltless for its involvement in the theatre of killing madness.
In the end, it takes a good statesman to prevent a war from starting but a wiser and a much greater statesman to end it! But as always, there are piranhas lurking in the Dark State to share the lucrative spoils of the war handed to them on a platter in the very heart of Europe- both in cash and in blood!