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It comes down to weapons

NewAge, by Richard Moser , Jan 22,2023

THE deep divisions in the US left over the Ukraine war can be reduced to a single practical question: Do you support sending weapons to Ukraine?

The answer to that question depends on whether or not you accept the idea that we’re the cops of the world. The two parties accept this without question but the pro-weapons left? Behind a facade of left-sounding words, political practice tells the tale……………..

The pro-weapons left hides their collaboration with NATO behind the seemingly simple idea that ‘Ukraine has the right to get weapons or seek aid from anywhere they see fit.’ Except that ‘anywhere’ does not exist in the real world. Ukraine is not a customer in some free market for weapons. There is a highly structured supply chain for weapons that is a long-standing feature of the US empire and it is directed by the US war machine.  The US has dominated the weapons trade since its rise to global power after WWII. Yes, Russia was often in second or third place, but Ukraine will sure not get its weapons from Russia. The only ‘anywhere’ that actually exists is the US government, which is the primary source for weapons transfers to Ukraine. 

The other flaw in the ‘from anywhere they see fit’ formula is the assumption that weapons given from the US to Ukraine are simply an exercise in Ukrainian self-determination — not one way it’s incorporated into the US-dominated global order. Self-determination is not a by-product of the world’s largest military alliance, whose standard operating procedure is to turn allies into pawns and proxies. The drill begins with the mandatory weapons trade demanded of all NATO members. The Ukrainian defense minister recently admitted that Ukraine is a NATO proxy trading blood for weapons.

No, the existing international order is not some normal, natural state of affairs whose peace and harmony was disrupted by the ‘unprovoked’ Russian invasion. To believe that, you’d have to ignore decades of historical context, including the obvious expansion of NATO that put missiles and troops on Russia’s borders, military advisers inside Ukraine and the less obvious policy of ‘full spectrum dominance’ by which the US seeks to dominate ‘everyone, everywhere, all at once.’ The neoliberal world order is no more based on free markets than self-determination or peace.

Instead, Ukraine found itself between two great powers with a long history of hostility and rivalry. Its only hope for self-determination would have been to maintain the balancing act of neutrality and diplomacy, playing one power off the other. …………………………………………………….. more https://www.newagebd.net/article/192295/it-comes-down-to-weapons

January 23, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war