(This is a shortened version of a Ron Paul Institute free update. Subscribe here) A few reflections about the current status of the US/Russia war. Yes, I wrote it: US/Russia war. Let's call things what they really are. In fact, this is no conspiracy theory at all. The true goal of US policy in the region was revealed this past week by none other than US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, when he clarified that the aim wasn't really to help plucky upstart Ukraine recover its "democracy," but rather to weaken - and hopefully disintegrate - Russia itself. He said: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”That's a much different set of objectives, and in fact it comes closer to what Dr. Paul asked in mid-March, "Is Washington Fighting Russia Down to the Last Ukrainian?"That explains why the US is pouring billions of dollars in military equipment into notoriously-corrupt Ukraine - with another $33 billion on the way!Suddenly the narrative of brave Ukraine fighting for its freedom and the sanctity of its borders has dropped, as the real goals are being revealed by those in charge. Just like the 2003 US attack on Iraq was initially sold to us as gifting democracy as a "favor" to a grateful Iraqi people. We all know how that turned out. Odd that people resent having their infrastructure decimated and a million killed. Ingrates.Likewise Ukrainians are waking up and seeing that all's not as meets the eye. Wives and mothers in the western Transcarpathia region of Ukraine took their antiwar sentiment to the local Recruitment Office, demanding that their sons and husbands stop being sent to the meat-grinder at the front lines in eastern Ukraine. Turns out the people in the middle aren't all that crazy about being victims in a proxy war between two great powers. People on the ground know very well that the "Ukraine's winning" narrative is just propaganda for gullible Western consumption.Giving Russia it's own Vietnam? Hmmm...it seems like we've seen this movie before. Oh yes...we have!It all reeks of the grand scheme of the late, not-so-great, global chessboard player Zbigniew Brzezinski, who fondly and famously recalled his master plan for the Soviets in Afghanistan during an interview in Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76:
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Yes, just some "stirred up Moslems." Including a guy called "Osama bin Laden." That makes it all the more disturbing that the Pentagon admitted it has "no idea" what happens to the billions of dollars in advanced weaponry it's pumping into Ukraine. CNN quotes one US intelligence official on the weapons Washington is sending to Ukraine:
We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero... It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.
That's reassuring. Especially as the Pentagon revealed last week that it "gifted" the Taliban (who Washington had fought for 20 years) with seven billion dollars in weapons when Biden's horribly-botched evacuation took place last year.And just as in Afghanistan, Ukraine has its own little extremist problem...Remember: the same people who botched Afghanistan for 20 years and then botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan are in the process of botching our involvement in Ukraine.Going full Brzezinski on Russia - using Ukraine as a battering ram - may sound good to Brzezinski's "intellectual" heirs like Victoria Nuland and Tony Blinken, but the big wild card in their grand scheme is that Russia this time sees through it and (correctly) views the Biden Bros scheming as an existential threat to the country (as we would were the shoe on the other foot). So it has openly admitted that it is willing to use its vast nuclear arsenal to fend off any such Beltway efforts.Whatever your views of Russia and Russian policy in Europe, ask yourself one question: is all of this worth a nuclear war? Is it that important to average Americans - who themselves are being fed through the metaphorical meat grinder of economic collapse - who governs Russia and where Ukraine's ever-changing borders might wind up? Does any American really believe that if we fail to fight Putin to the death we'll be speaking Russian in Peoria next year?Time to fight back against the Beltway war machine!