Since the Russian incursion into Ukraine on February 24, the American and Western European media have been almost unanimous in pushing the template which they wish us to believe and the agenda which they wish us to follow. In the US Congress, as in most deliberative bodies in Western Europe and in such international entities as the United Nations (UN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the refrain has been almost identically the same: that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s heroic and noble “liberal democratic” Ukrainian government stands for and defends “our liberal democratic values,” and that it has been brutally attacked in an unprovoked assault by the evil Russians under their evil president—the new “reincarnation of Hitler”—Vladimir Putin, who, of course, wishes to re-establish the old Soviet Empire which expired thirty-one years ago.
It’s as if nothing has changed since 1991—thirty-one years ago—when Russian Communism perished in an ignominious death, scorned and despised by the Russian people. It’s as if no history has elapsed since then, and that somehow the spectre of Soviet Communism, or some newfangled form thereof, still critically threatens “the West.” And thus, we must engage in a new and very dangerous “cold war,” which now in Ukraine turns increasingly “hot.”
Among establishment “conservatives”—in particular, those we denominate Neo-conservatives—this refrain finds strong resonance, as well as among Republican members of the US Congress. It is fascinating, to say the least, to see a Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell joined at the hip—no daylight between them—to a Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, as one, zealously advocating a rapid escalation in American involvement in Ukraine, no matter whether such offensive actions (e.g., no fly zones, US troops on the ground) might bring on nuclear Armageddon. Graham and other political leaders seem to welcome such tactical nuclear exchanges with “acceptable levels of civilian and combat casualties,” oblivious to what actually would happen.