’ve been following the developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the clearest observation I can make so far is that America is obviously going to sit out this conflict.
All those economic sanctions announced by US President Joe Biden are useless. They are more bark than bite. They will not deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from pursuing his military agenda. I highly doubt if those sanctions even hurt at all.
Sanctions only work on small banana republics. They don’t have any daunting effect on nuclear superpowers. The US has imposed sanctions on China and North Korea for years, with little or no effect on these countries. Why, sanctions could not even bring a Lilliputian country like CUBA on its knees, to say nothing of resilient IRAN which the Americans have been trying to cripple with severe sanctions unsuccessfully for decades.
Economic sanctions do not work, period. Freezing the ill-gotten wealth of Putin and other Russian elites is as juvenile an approach as anything. The Americans can’t even sniff out Ferdinand Marcos’ loot, and he’s the biggest thief of them all, say the Guiness Book of World Records people.
So the suggestion that Russia is somehow going to lose any sleep over the fact that they can’t do any on-line shopping on Amazon and eBay for a while is just laughable. And yet, when these sanctions fail, as they inevitably will, don’t look for America to flash more fangs at Russia. The middle finger, perhaps, but that’s about it.
What are the chances that America would get involved in a shooting war with Russia? Zero.
US foreign policy is very predictable. Even my first year students in Political Science can tell you that every time the US goes to war, their first focus is setting up the cheering squad. When you watch period films about the American Revolution of 1766 or even the American Civil War of 1861, you will always come across this ridiculous scene where you have a marching band at the head of the fighting column, playing “Dixie” or “Yankee Doodle” on bagpipes and flutes, making no effort to even dodge bullets whizzing by.
These bandplayers were unarmed so perhaps there was an unwritten rule back in the day that enemies cannot shoot these musicians on duty—for both sides. After all, they provide background music for all the carnage happening around them. Or it could just be artistic license by these post-modern film noir depictions of early day infantry wars.
The point is, that comical principle has endured and today that’s STILL how America fights wars—by paying a lot of attention on morale boosting, pep talking and motivational sloganeering.
To begin with, wars are given names—Operation Just Cause, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Rolling Thunder, Operation Overlord, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc. It seems as if Americans have this need to dial-in on ‘war-cry’ names like these first to get into the right fighting mood.
Then the US president must spell out to the American public the “theme” of the war. In Vietnam it was “to win the hearts and minds” of the oriental peasantry. The aim is to endear them to Western-style democracy to prevent the dreaded “Domino Principle”—one democratic Asian country after another falling into communism which, in turn, is labeled the “godless ideology” promoted by the “evil empire.” As the ancient Chinese adage goes, the beginning of wisdom is getting things down by their right names.
In the Gulf War if the 90s, the theme was to stabilize the Middle East by ridding it of “weapons of mass destruction” of which, of course, none was ever found. The pattern repeats itself throughout history so there’s no reason to think it won’t happen this time in Ukraine.
And this is the spoiler for all the hawks and war junkies out there, waiting in vain for dramatic dogfights between American F-35’s and Russian MIG-29’s. Sorry, not happening. The US has not done enough prepping to indicate it wants to fight.
Do you know what President Biden calls this war? The “War of Choice.”
If you tuned in late, you might think that Biden and Putin were arguing over abortion. Biden talks about Putin accepting responsibility—shades of “responsible parenthood.” Putin is talking about everyone leaving Russia alone to do what it believes to be is for its own good—hey, “my body, my choice.”
Besides, if we go by the record, the US has never been willing or even excited to confront Russia face-to-face and mano-a-mano. US sanctions, in fact, are all that's still in place for Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Back then, the US howled and bawled and gnashed its teeth just as fiercely—but did nothing more.
Which is the same thing (nothing) the US did when Russian tanks rolled into Kabul during the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In fairness, the decade of the 1980s was the beginning of the American regime of the ‘Budget Deficit.’ Balancing the federal budget became an “existential issue” in Capitol Hill so funding foreign wars was way down in the priority list. It was thought by many that cost-wise, it was more practical to simply destabilize unfriendly regimes than go to war with them.
So Congress just gave some loose change to the CIA to underwrite cultivating local insurgencies in those hotspots, instead—the mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua.
In short, if you’re an attentive student of history, you know that all Uncle Sam will do in Ukraine today is huff and puff and try to blow the Russian house down. And the final outcome would be the same as the classic children’s bedtime story.
Of course you wouldn’t know it if all you watched is that bunch of overacting and sensational teleprompter readers of CNN.***
(Read my other articles like this here “theunheardside.blogspot.com” )
