The near hysterical calls to support Ukraine as a bulwark of liberty and democracy by the mandarins in Washington are a response to the palpable rot and decline of the U.S. empire. America’s global authority has been decimated by well-publicized war crimes, torture, economic decline, social disintegration — including the assault on the capital on January 6, the botched response to the pandemic, declining life expectancies and the plague of mass shootings — and a series of military debacles from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The coups, political assassinations, election fraud, black propaganda, blackmail, kidnapping, brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, U.S. sanctioned massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars and military interventions carried out by the United States around the globe since the end of World War II have never resulted in the establishment of a democratic government. Instead, these interventions have led to over 20 million killed and spawned a global revulsion for U.S. imperialism.

In desperation, the empire pumps ever greater sums into its war machine. The most recent $1.7 trillion spending bill included $847 billion for the military; the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction, such as the Department of Energy, which oversees nuclear weapons maintenance and the infrastructure that develops them. In 2021, when the U.S. had a military budget of $801 billion, it constituted nearly 40 percent of all global military expenditures, more than the next nine countries, including Russia and China, spent on their militaries combined.

Discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war in Washington is increasingly dominated by the question of how it might end. To inform this discussion, this Perspective identifies ways in which the war could evolve and how alternative trajectories would affect U.S. interests. The authors argue that, in addition to minimizing the risks of major escalation, U.S. interests would be best served by avoiding a protracted conflict. The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine are significant and outweigh the possible benefits of such a trajectory for the United States. Although Washington cannot by itself determine the war's duration, it can take steps that make an eventual negotiated end to the conflict more likely. Drawing on the literature on war termination, the authors identify key impediments to Russia-Ukraine talks, such as mutual optimism about the future of the war and mutual pessimism about the implications of peace. The Perspective highlights four policy instruments the United States could use to mitigate these impediments: clarifying plans for future support to Ukraine, making commitments to Ukraine's security, issuing assurances regarding the country's neutrality, and setting conditions for sanctions relief for Russia.

Some blurbs I recently came across:

"The decision by western nations to deploy battle tanks to Ukraine does not mean the end of the conflict. In fact,
it may have prolonged the dispute as it allows Ukraine to defend itself against a potential Russian assault in
the spring and it allows the potential to retake lost territory. The consensus view among western intelligence
sources is that this war will end in a stalemate. Both sides are near exhaustion and the time is nearing when
even Putin realizes his ability to “win” has vanished. This may end up as similar to the decades long armistice
that ended the Korean War or it may just become a constant stream of skirmishes that keep both sides
engaged. The expected outcome is a split Ukraine with the eastern side allied with Russia and the western
side allied with Europe and the US. A continuation of this drawn-out conflict places a huge financial burden on
Europe and ultimately on the US as well. Ukraine will need military support but also rebuilding money and that
is likely to be hard to extract from Europe or the US given their own economic constraints and issues."

"Ostensibly the South African government has taken a neutral position on the Russia-
Ukraine war but the recent visit to Pretoria by Russia’s Foreign Minister makes a mockery of that “neutrality”. The South
African government has been highly supportive of Russia and asserts that Ukraine is responsible for the invasion. It
seems that funneling money into the hands of South African politicians directly has the desired impact. This is
not aid going to the country as a whole – it is cash directly to politicians in South Africa. These leaders assert they
are motivated by suspicion of US colonialism. Somehow, we missed the part where the US colonized South Africa."