Western officials and media pundits are now directly acknowledging that Ukraine’s much-touted “spring counteroffensive” has been a catastrophic failure, but rather than seeing this as a reason to reconsider the mainstream political consensus on this war, they are instead telling everyone that the counteroffensive’s failure means we must commit to the status quo of bloodshed and nuclear brinkmanship for years to come.
In a recent article titled “U.S. and G-7 Allies Expect War in Ukraine to Drag On for Years,” Bloomberg reports that the U.S.-centralized power structure expects to be backing its proxy conflict against Russia for a very long time, potentially into the 2030s.
Bloomberg reports: “The U.S. and its allies in the Group of Seven now expect the war in Ukraine may drag on for years to come and are building that possibility into their military and financial planning. “A senior official from one European G-7 country said the war may last as much as six or seven more years and that allies need to plan financially to continue support for Kyiv for such a long conflict. “That’s much longer than many officials had expected earlier this year, but slow progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive in recent months has tempered expectations.”
In a recent interview with CNN, outgoing Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley said that achieving Kyiv’s official goal of fully recapturing all Ukrainian territory is going to require “very significant effort over a considerable amount of time.”
“I can tell you that it’ll take a considerable length of time to militarily eject all 200,000 or plus Russian troops out of Russian-occupied Ukraine,” Milley added. “That’s a very high bar. It’s going to take a long time to do it.”
In a recent interview with German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also pounded home the point that this war will drag on for a very long time.
“Most wars last longer than is expected when they first start. Therefore, we must prepare ourselves for a long war in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
“We are all wishing for a quick peace,” Stoltenberg added. “But at the same time, we must recognize: If President Zelensky and the Ukrainians give up the fight, their country would not exist anymore. If President Putin and Russia laid down their weapons, we would have peace. The easiest way to end this war would be if Putin withdrew his troops.”
You see this claim from empire managers and their apologists all the time: that the only obstacle to peace in Ukraine is Russia refusing to leave. This of course ignores the many extensively-documented western aggressions which are known to have provoked Russia’s invasion, a fact that Stoltenberg himself admitted to earlier this month.
Demanding that Russia end its aggressions without the west agreeing to end its own aggressions which led to this conflict is just demanding that Russia lie down and submit to being ruled and dominated by the western empire. It’s not a call for peace, it’s a call for the total victory of Washington and its cohorts.
Stoltenberg reinforced his point that this war will drag on for years by affirming that Ukraine will gain NATO membership when this war is over, which is effectively a message to Moscow that if it still finds NATO membership for Ukraine unacceptable it must either annex Ukraine into the Russian Federation entirely or keep this war going on forever.
“Ukraine will become a member of NATO — all allies have made that clear,” Stoltenberg said, adding that Ukraine will need NATO protection when the war ends, otherwise “history could repeat itself.”
The western media are conveying the same message. Notorious empire propaganda rag The Economist has a new article out titled, “Ukraine faces a long war. A change of course is needed,” featuring a Ukrainian flag with the words “TIME FOR A RETHINK” scrawled across it.
If you didn’t know anything about The Economist you might assume at first glance that this was an article about rethinking the approach of backing an endless proxy conflict — especially after its opening paragraphs acknowledge that “The plan is not working” and “Ukraine has liberated less than 0.25% of the territory that Russia occupied in June.”
You would be wrong though. What The Economist means is that we should switch from thinking of this as a war that can be won in a timely fashion to one which will continue for the foreseeable future: “Both Ukraine and its Western supporters are coming to realise that this will be a grinding war of attrition. President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington this week for talks. ‘I have to be ready for the long war,’ he told The Economist. But unfortunately, Ukraine is not yet ready; nor are its Western partners. Both are still fixated on the counter-offensive. They need to rethink Ukraine’s military strategy and how its economy is run. Instead of aiming to ‘win’ and then rebuild, the goal should be to ensure that Ukraine has the staying power to wage a long war — and can thrive despite it.”
So western empire managers and their agenda-setters in the mass media are making it as clear as could be that the U.S.-centralized empire has found itself in yet another endless war, another “grinding war of attrition” featuring unfathomable destruction and suffering with no exit strategy, which once again pours vast fortunes into the coffers of the military industrial complex. The only difference is that this time it comes with the added bonus of the threat of nuclear annihilation.
All for what? To advance the U.S. empire’s goal of total planetary domination, a status quo that it can only maintain by brandishing armageddon weapons at its enemies with increasing hostility year after year.
When it comes to the war in Ukraine it is definitely time for a rethink, but not by the same monsters who thought us into this horror in the first place.
Photo: U.S. airman prepares weapons and other equipment bound for Ukraine during a foreign military sales mission at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Jan. 21, 2022 © U.S. Air Force / Mauricio Campino.
Source: Consortium News.
