LETTER: Joe Biden’s in the war business
Nato should be disbanded, as invasion of Ukraine attests
Having deliberately and recklessly provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, US President Joe Biden and Nato have proved militarily toothless in assisting Ukrainian resistance. US plus European financial and economic sanctions will likewise fail, as they have against Cuba for more than 60 years and against Iran for more than 40.
In what was known then as the neocon Project for the New American Century, Nato in 1997 unleashed chaos in Yugoslavia, in 2001 in Afghanistan and in 2011 in Libya — none of which has yet recovered.
With Russia and Ukraine producing a third of the world’s grain exports, starvation in many countries will be one of many disastrous consequences.
In 1961, US president Dwight Eisenhower warned about the consequences for peace, democracy and liberty of the American “military-industrial-congressional complex”. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are fundamental parts of the US war business.
During his long tenure in US politics there has never been a war Biden did not support. It was Biden who in 2014 was the driver of the Maidan revolution that deposed a democratically elected Ukrainian president, preparatory to a Nato war against Russia.
The war business doesn’t give a damn what devastation it inflicts as long as the profits flow back to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other war profiteers (with kickbacks, of course, to the politicians). How many million Ukrainian refugees will now seek refuge in the EU?
When will the EU have the guts to disband Nato and end the post-World War 2 US military occupation of Germany and Italy, plus other Nato members? The message to the EU is quite simple: if you don’t want refugees from Asia, Africa or Ukraine, stop colluding with the US war business in unleashing wars around the world.
Betrayed but naive Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is already pleading for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has rationally insisted throughout this crisis that Ukraine must never join Nato. There are more than 800 US military bases around the world targeted at Russia and China. The US agenda is to eliminate Russia before taking on China.
The world presently squanders $2-trillion on war preparations, most of it by Nato members. Instead of so-called military security, a fraction of that could fund urgent “human security” priorities, including climate change, education and poverty — freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to seek a better life.
Terry Crawford-Browne
World Beyond War SA
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