20th May 2023
Biden and Zelensky – partners in crime
It is without any sense of shame or irony that the G7 leaders of the capitalist world are meeting this weekend in Hiroshima, Japan. The city is the scene of one of the twentieth century’s most heinous war crimes, resulting in the death of an estimated 330,000 people as a result of the atomic bombing on 6th August 1945. Add the death toll from the bombing of Nagasaki, three days later, and the combined death toll is well in excess of half a million people.
These are war crimes for which the United States has never even apologised, let alone been brought to any international body to answer for its actions. The US justification for the bombings has always been that they were necessary to end the war in the Pacific. There is evidence to suggest that the Japanese surrender was already in preparation and fighting would have concluded with Japan surrendering to the Red Army in the East. This was a scenario the West could not tolerate.
The failure of Britain and the US to open an effective Second Front in Europe, while prioritising imperialist assets in North Africa, had seen the Soviet army push the Nazis from Soviet soil and all the way back to Berlin. By the time of the much celebrated D-Day landings the German army was well on its way to becoming a beaten force in Europe. So, Japan falling into Soviet hands was not in the interests of imperialism and had to be stopped. The atomic bomb was the answer.
Given this context it is perhaps fitting that US President, Joe Biden, has taken the opportunity to further ramp up the war in Ukraine. Biden has promised to support the training of Ukrainian pilots in the use of US F16 fighter jets, along with several other NATO countries. The fighters involved also include Britain’s Eurofighter Typhoon and France’s Mirage 2000. The decision opens the door for the US to licence the sale of F16’s to Ukraine, thus promoting a dangerous escalation in the conflict with Russia.
While training will take some time, and jets are unlikely to be supplied overnight, the Ukrainians have indicated that F 16’s could be in operation within four months of the start of training. Western observers suggest the timescale may be nearer six to nine months. In any event such timescales would certainly see the possibility of a significant escalation in the conflict before the end of the year or into early 2024 at the latest.
Since the war began, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress alone have directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute.
Military aid alone from the US totals over $46 billion, far in excess of second placed Britain at $5.1 billion and the EU at $3.3 billion, although $2.5 billion each from Germany and Poland needs to be added to that total, alongside smaller contributions from Netherlands, Italy, France and Norway.
There can be little doubt that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war initiated and fought by NATO against Russia, as part of the West’s 30 year long strategy of encirclement and containment of Russia. Having initially courted capitalist Russia as a partner, during the brief G8 period, the US quickly saw the dangers for its hegemonic unipolar position in the world from a strong capitalist Russia. The US has been working to weaken Russian influence ever since.
Ironically, over the same period, the US has seen its reliance on imports from China grow from $4 billion in the 1980’s to over $500 billion at present. Loading guns and weaponry into Ukraine may yet result in a weakened Russia as the outcome but the trade lock between the US and China will be more difficult to shake, however belligerent the US continues to be against the People’s Republic.
The danger for the world is that the US fails to acknowledge that the dream of unipolar world dominance is not sustainable and continues its pattern of aggression and military intervention to try and maintain its position. Recent decades have seen the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Syria paying the price for this strategy. The people of Russia and Ukraine are currently paying that price as a result of US led NATO intervention.
Peace protesters have greeted G7 leaders in Hiroshima, calling for an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the eradication of the world’s estimated stockpile of 12,705 nuclear warheads. It is unlikely that they will get as much news coverage as the visit of Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, a willing partner in crime with the West, a faux man of the people in danger of colluding in leading his people, and many others, over the precipice.
Avanti Populo 