{"id":130940,"date":"2022-12-26T16:12:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T23:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=130940"},"modified":"2022-12-26T16:12:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T23:12:59","slug":"why-putins-winter-offensive-will-prompt-us-entry-into-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/12\/26\/why-putins-winter-offensive-will-prompt-us-entry-into-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Putin’s Winter Offensive Will Prompt US Entry Into the War"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIKE WHITNEY<\/a>\u00a0 Courtesy The Unz Review<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n


The war in Ukraine is not a Call of Duty fantasy. It is an enlargement of the human tragedy that NATO\u2019s eastward expansion created. The victims do not live in North America. They live in a region that most Americans can\u2019t find on a map. Washington urged the Ukrainians to fight. Now Washington must urge them to stop.\u201d Colonel Douglas MacGregor<\/a>, The American Conservative<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Volodymyr Zelensky did not fly across the Atlantic so he could deliver a speech to the US Congress. That was not the purpose of his trip. The real objective was to produce a galvanizing event that would create the illusion of broad-based public support for the war. That is why the speech was broadcast on all the mainstream media channels and that is why Congress repeatedly greeted Zelensky with raucous applause. Once again, the cadres of voracious elites who control the political levers of power in America, are determined to drag the country to war, which is why they portray a cross-dressing thug in a gym suit\u201d as a Churchillian figure of unshakable principles. It\u2019s all public relations. It\u2019s all an attempt to garner support for a conflict which will soon involve young American men and women who will be asked to die so that wealthy elites can maintain their grip on global power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelensky\u2019s trip to Capitol Hill was timed to coincide with Putin\u2019s winter offensive, which is expected to crush the Ukrainian Armed Forces and bring the war to a swift end. The Biden administration understands the situation but does not have weaponry or manpower to impact the outcome. That doesn\u2019t mean, however, that Washington doesn\u2019t have a plan for prolonging the conflict or beefing up its combat forces. It does have a plan, that is evident by the way the administration has rejected negotiations at every turn. What that tells us is that Washington is still committed to defeating Russia whatever the cost. In practical terms, that means that the US must create an incident that will serve as a justification for escalation.<\/strong> The incident could be related to Zelensky\u2019s unexpected trip to Washington or, perhaps, it could be linked to the detonation of a nuclear device somewhere in Ukraine. Check out this excerpt from an article at RT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk of Kiev attempting to build a so-called \u2018dirty bomb\u2019 remains,<\/strong> a senior Russian diplomat has said\u2026.<\/p>

Ukraine has the potential necessary to make a \u2018dirty bomb,\u2019 it doesn\u2019t take much effort. Especially since Ukraine has been a nation advanced in nuclear technology since the Soviet times, [and] has many technologies and expertise,\u201d Mikhail Ulyanov told journalists on Wednesday, as quoted by RIA Novosti\u2026<\/p>

General Igor Kirillov, the commander of the Russian military branch responsible for protecting troops from weapons of mass destruction, claimed in October that Kiev was at the final stage\u201d of producing a dirty bomb.<\/strong>\u201d (Radioactive threat from Kiev persists \u2013 Moscow<\/a>, RT)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The means by which a false flag is carried out, is completely irrelevant. What matters is that \u2014 according to political analyst John Mearsheimer\u2013 The United States is in this to win\u201d<\/strong>, that is, the US foreign policy establishment is not prepared to let the Russian army prevail in Ukraine and impose its own settlement. They\u2019re going to find a way to intensify the conflict and bring foreign troops into the theater. That\u2019s the objective, and that\u2019s what they\u2019ll do once they\u2019ve figured out an excuse for escalation. Bottom line: The US is not going to throw in the towel and call it quits. This is a long-term project that could drag on for years if not decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political analyst Kurt Nimmo thinks that NATO might join the fighting. Here\u2019s a short blurb from Nimmo\u2019s latest at Global Research:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Olga Lebedeva and Pravda.ru can be believed, NATO is on the verge of entering the war in Ukraine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such announcements were heard from officials of the Polish Ministry of Defence, the General Staff of the NATO alliance, officers of the French army and (of course) the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence,\u201d according to Lebedeva.<\/p>

The main reason would be the very next Russian general offensive that NATO is planning and which according to it would decimate the Ukrainian army not only in the Donbass but also on the Kiev side (many Russian units are in combat situation in Belarus at the borders with Ukraine),\u201d explains Rusreinfo.ru, a Russian website.<\/p>

But NATO has always been very clear: Ukraine CANNOT LOSE. For Washington, the only solution would therefore be for NATO forces to enter Ukraine, hoping that this will end the Russian offensive. The calculation is that Vladimir Putin will not want to directly face NATO with the possible (nuclear) consequences, and will therefore then retreat.<\/strong>\u201d (NATO Decides to Attack Russia in Ukraine\u2013 Ukraine is unable to defeat Russia. The next step is for direct NATO involvement<\/a>, Kurt Nimmo, Global Research)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Nimmo could be right but, maybe not. It appears to me that NATO is hopelessly divided on the issue. A number of NATO countries will not join in a war against Russia regardless of the circumstances<\/strong> or the amount of pressure from the White House. The more likely scenario was presented by Colonel Douglas MacGregor who laid it out in an article at The American Conservative on Tuesday. Here\u2019s what he said: .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration\u2019s unconditional support for the Zelensky regime in Kiev is reaching a strategic inflection point not unlike the one LBJ reached in 1965\u2026 Like South Vietnam in the 1960s, Ukraine is losing its war with Russia\u2026 The real danger now is that Biden will soon appear on television to repeat LBJ\u2019s performance in 1965, substituting the word Ukraine\u201d for South Vietnam\u201d:<\/strong><\/p>

Tonight, my fellow Americans I want to speak to you about freedom, democracy, and the struggle of the Ukrainian people for victory. No other question so preoccupies our people. No other dream so absorbs the millions who live in Ukraine and Eastern Europe\u2026 However, I am not talking about a NATO attack on Russia. Rather, I propose to send a U.S. led coalition of the willing, consisting of American, Polish, and Romanian armed forces into Ukraine, to establish the ground equivalent of a no-fly zone.\u201d The mission I propose is a peaceful one, to create a safe zone in the Western most portion of Ukraine for Ukrainian Forces and refugees struggling to survive Russia\u2019s devastating attacks\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>

NATO\u2019s governments are divided in their thinking about the war in Ukraine. Except for Poland and, possibly, Romania, none of NATO\u2019s members are in a rush to mobilize their forces for a long, grueling war of attrition with Russia in Ukraine. No one in London, Paris, or, Berlin wants to run the risk of a nuclear war with Moscow<\/strong>. Americans do not support going to war with Russia, and those few who do are ideologues, shallow political opportunists, or greedy defense contractors.\u201d (Washington is Prolonging Ukraine\u2019s Suffering<\/a>, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, The American Conservative)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This, I think, is the much more plausible scenario. The Biden Administration will enlist a handful of countries that agree to troop deployments to west Ukraine ostensibly for humanitarian reasons.<\/strong> At the same time, they will allow disparate Ukrainian forces to continue the random shelling of Russia-controlled areas as well as locations on Russian soil. There will undoubtedly be an effort to control the skies over west Ukraine (no-fly zone) and to conduct attacks on Russian formations in the east. Most important, vital supplylines from Poland will remain open to accommodate the flow of men, munitions and lethal weaponry to the front. MacGregor appears to anticipate these developments given his comments at the beginning of the article. Here\u2019s what he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a speech given on November 29, Polish Vice-Minister of National Defense (MON) Marcin Ociepa said: The probability of a war in which we will be involved is very high. Too high for us to treat this scenario only hypothetically.\u201d<\/strong> The Polish MON is allegedly planning to call up 200,000 reservists in 2023 <\/strong>for a few weeks\u2019 training, but observers in Warsaw suspect this action could easily lead to a national mobilization.<\/p>

Meanwhile, inside the Biden administration, there is growing concern that the Ukrainian war effort will collapse under the weight of a Russian offensive. And as the ground in Southern Ukraine finally freezes, the administration\u2019s fears are justified. In an interview published in the Economist, head of Ukraine\u2019s armed forces General Valery Zaluzhny admitted<\/strong> that Russian mobilization and tactics are working. He even hinted that Ukrainian forces might be unable to withstand the coming Russian onslaught.\u201d<\/strong> (Washington is Prolonging Ukraine\u2019s Suffering<\/a>, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, The American Conservative)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The plan to lure Russia into a war in Ukraine goes back at least a decade. And what we know now from comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel<\/a>, is that Washington never sought a peaceful resolution to the conflict but worked tirelessly to install a Russia-hating regime in Kiev that would help it to prosecute its war on Russia. The gathering of nearly 600,000 Russian combat troops in or around Ukraine threatens to derail Washington\u2019s strategy and end the war on Russia\u2019s terms. Washington can\u2019t allow that to happen. It cannot allow the world to see that it was beaten by Russia. Thus, Washington must pursue the only option left to them, the deployment of US troops to Ukraine.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, cooler heads will prevail and the administration will pull back from the brink, but we think that is highly unlikely. We think the decision has already been made: We think the United States is going to war with Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIKE WHITNEY\u00a0 Courtesy The Unz Review The war in Ukraine is not a Call of Duty fantasy. It is an enlargement of the human tragedy that NATO\u2019s eastward expansion created. The victims do not live in North America. They live in a region that most Americans can\u2019t find on a map. Washington urged the Ukrainians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}