“Loud Drums of War”: The Dangers of a “Longer and Extended War” in Ukraine. Towards a Unipolar World?
We bring to the attention of Global Research this important article (translated from German, minor edits by GR) by renowned German author and geopolitical analyst Wolfgang Effenberger
See also his earlier article entitled:
Dangerous Crossroads: The World on the Brink of War. The New Cold War Goes Hot?
By , January 04, 2022
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After EU Council President Charles Michel proposed to make Ukraine and Moldova candidates for EU membership, the draft final declaration of the June 23-24 EU summit in Brussels on June 21, 2022, stated,
“The European Council has decided to grant candidate country status to Ukraine and Moldova.”(1) (Georgia is to be granted candidate status as well.) It is assumed that the 27 heads of state and government will follow the EU Commission’s recommendation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that he believes Ukraine already belongs to Europe. The country attacked by Russia proves every day that it is already part of a united European value area, he said.
Since June 21, the self-propelled howitzer 2000 promised by Germany “has finally become part of the 155-millimeter howitzer arsenal of the Ukrainian artillery,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Resnikov wrote on Twitter. In doing so, he thanked Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) “for all efforts” to support Ukraine.(2)
On the eve of June 22 – on this day in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the then-Soviet Union (killing over 26 million people) – shells from Western-supplied guns hit Luhansk and Donetsk. In Russia, candles were lit to commemorate the Great Patriotic War.
This June 22 would have been an opportunity to pause once to remember the catastrophe of World War 2 and to look for ways to peace. But the opposite was the case. On that day, the German mainstream media again incited actioagainst Russia.
While British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns the West of a “long war” in Ukraine(3) in the Times, the Chief of the British Army Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, tunes soldiers to fight alongside their allies to defeat Russia: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underlines our core mission to protect the United Kingdom – by being prepared to fight and win wars on the mainland,”(4) Sanders said on Sky News on June 19.
British army chief warns ‘must prepare to fight in Europe'(5)
On the same day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also expressed his concern in an interview with the Bild newspaper that the war could drag on for years; should support for Ukraine weaken, a heavy price would be paid.(6)
The most incredible statement was made on Friday, June 17, 22 by Germany’s Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz (56) at the Kiel International Sea Powers Symposium:
“For credible deterrence, we need both the means and the political will to implement nuclear deterrence if necessary.”(7)
History
In view of the ever louder drums of war that can currently be heard, a reference to the parallels of the present situation to that before 1914 seems not only permissible but even necessary.
After the imperial wars of 1898 (USA against the great power Spain in Cuba and the Philippines), 1899- 1901 (UK against the Boers in Africa) and 1900 (the “value West” against China), tensions were building up in the world and especially on the part of Great Britain, France and Russia against Germany. From early December 1907 to February 1909, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt(8) had a large part of his new war fleet steam around the globe in sensational voyages, to the delight of naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan.(9) Sixteen modern armored battleships and cruisers demonstrated their superiority in striking power and mobility all around the world.
Today, 11 nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carriers are in service on the world’s oceans along with their accompanying fleets.
In 2020, NATO and U.S. military spending totaled $1,102 billion, while that of China and Russia was $314 billion. Of this, Germany and Russia’s spending balanced out at about $60 billion.(10)
Such an imbalance(11) was also evident before World War I(12):
Armament budgets 1880-1913 in U.S. Dollars (in thousands)
Only a few weeks after the assassination in Sarajevo on July 28, 1914, the time had come. On the morning of August 5, 1914, the New York Times ran the headline,
“ENGLAND DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY – 17,ooo,ooo MEN ENGAGED IN GREAT WAR OF EIGHT NATIONS.”
In the same issue, the NYT published a column by H.G. Wells in which he wrote that “the sword is now drawn for peace” and “never was a war so just as the war now against Germany.” Wells was convinced that Germany would be crushed and ripe for revolution in 2 to 3 months.(13)
Even before this issue of the NYT appeared, the British cut the German-American Atlantic cable in the early hours of the morning; thus, news from Berlin no longer reached the U.S. and vice versa.
With the beginning of the war, Russian news portals were blocked and further dissemination of Russian news was made a punishable offense.
One day after Woodrow Wilson’s pledge of neutrality on August 19, 1914, the naval blockade of Germany by Great Britain, which was contrary to international law, began without any major protest from the United States. This blockade was intended to isolate and economically strangle Germany. According to the official historian of the Royal Navy, Sir Julian Corbett, this blockade had been planned from 1908 by Lord Hankey in the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) with “an orderly completeness of detail which has no parallel in our history”(14).
In fact, little is known to this day about “how and why a scant dozen leading U.S. investment bankers supported Britain from the beginning through illegal acts of war.”
With the election of a clueless U.S. president in late 1912 and the creation of the FED in 1913 (unlimited debt), the decision to go to war had been made.(15)
Realignments after World War I
Three times in the 20th century the international order was “reordered”(16)
1) With the Versailles system of peace treaties and the creation of the League of Nations in 1920,
2) With the Potsdam Agreement and the creation of the United Nations in 1945, and
3) After the end of the Cold War in 1990 with the “Charter of Paris” and the creation of the OSCE.
With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (and the Soviet Union), the world hoped for a peaceful future.
US-NATO Wars of the Post Cold War Era
But after the victory of the “West” in 1990, “wars of order” [responsibility to protect] were instigated in many places in the world, such as the war against Iraq orchestrated by Bush Sr. in 1991. Some may still remember the unsavory Kuweit “incubator lie” that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the UN’s blessing for that war.
When, on March 24, 1999, NATO launched the first war of aggression in its history without a UN mandate and thus in violation of international law against a sovereign country, it was immediately followed by a new doctrine permitting future interventions without a UN mandate.
The wars of the so-called “Value West” [“Humanitarian West”, under “Responsibility to Protect”] in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria did not reorganize anything, but only led to “failed states”, i.e. into never-ending chaos – also a war crime.
NATO’s war in Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999 – 12 days earlier Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had joined NATO. Was this just another war in the wake of the post-Yugoslav secession wars since the early 1990s? Certainly not, because 4 imperial motives of the USA can be identified(17)
1) A war of NATO Against the rest of Yugoslavia in order to insert it into the periphery of the West.
2) A war of the USA, in order to subjugate EU-Europe further to their subordination.
3) “A war whose long-distance effect was also aimed at further chastening Russia”; and
4) A war to demonstrate “NATO or US superiority over China”(18).
Color Revolutions
After the Yugoslav war, so-called “color revolutions” were concerted in Eastern Europe, most of which then led to regime change and desired EU and NATO accession.
Canadian professor of economics, Michel Chossudovsky, drew attention in June 2015 to the fact that behind the Ukraine crisis lies a broad military strategy that goes far beyond Ukraine:
“NATO – and when we say NATO, we also mean the United States – is engaging in war games on Russia’s doorstep … Now they are threatening Russia with nuclear weapons, and it’s obvious that the nuclear option has been discussed in the U.S. Congress.”(19)
Then, in the summer of 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law to that effect,(20) stating that deployment of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction on the soil of Ukraine would be legal “until the deployment target is reached.” Previously, this was ruled out by law.
From 2015, NATO’s maneuver frequency (such as DEFENDER 20/21) on Russia’s doorstep increased dramatically. In parallel, the military infrastructure road and rail from Antwerp/Bremerhaven/ Hamburg towards Görlitz, Krakow and Kiev was made fit for war.
The Role of Germany
Three days after the Russian attack on Ukraine – just as illegal under international law as all U.S. wars since the attack on Yugoslavia – Chancellor Olaf Scholz introduced his government’s statement on Feb. 27 with the words:
“February 24, 2022 marks a turning point in the history of our continent.”(21)
In a firm voice, Scholz castigated Vladimir Putin’s cold-bloodedness and ruthlessness over his war of aggression, which he said could not be justified by anything, and asked:
“May might break right?”. The rhetorical answer (with respect to Russia) is clearly no. However, different standards seem to apply to the United States.
Furthermore, Scholz announced ambitious foreign and military policy goals to the applause of the Bundestag majority: Not only to increase the current German military budget to more than 70 billion euros, but in addition to that, to increase the striking power of the Bundeswehr, a so-called “special fund” of 100 billion euros from the current budget. As a reminder: Three days after the start of the war in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II convened the Reichstag on August 4 to vote on the war credits. At that time, the term “war loans” was used in all honesty, whereas today the term “special assets” is used to conceal from the public that this is once again a matter of debt.
The fact that Scholz was able to announce within three days “a complete and detailed concept for a no-alternative swing to the foreign policy course of the U.S. and the abrupt transformation of the Federal Republic into a fiscal warfare state suggests that the state apparatus had drafts already at its disposal.”(22)
It would be interesting to know who was involved in drafting Scholz’s speech and when Scholz first read it.
Two days before the governmental declaration, the SPD newspaper “Vorwärts” stated:
“According to media reports, top U.S. diplomats – and also Foreign Minister [Secretary of State] Blinken himself – are engaged in these hours in direct talks to bring about the broadest possible condemnation in the General Assembly.”(23) In a speech to the United Nations that was celebrated as “emotional,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90/The Greens) condemned Russia in a way “that elevates Germany, the old World War II loser, to the role of moral judge and demonstrates what “values-based foreign policy” means.”(24)
After three days of debate, 141 nations voted yes on March 2 to the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion, with five votes against (Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea, and Eritrea) and 35 abstentions (Including China, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, which together make up about half of humanity). Twelve nations were absent from the vote. According to Michael von der Schulenburg, a former top diplomat working for the UN and OSCE, the support for the resolution by most of the small and medium-sized countries had the background that they wanted to strengthen the UN Charter and the ban on all military action as a whole for political reasons. So far, three other permanent members of the Security Council, the U.S., Britain and France, had also broken international law and waged illegal wars without consequences.
In Asia, only the usual allies of the West, i.e. Japan, Australia and Singapore, participate in the comprehensive sanctions packages against Russia, while the other states in Asia, Africa and Latin America did not. For the Global South, this is again a white man’s war in the North, like the first and second world wars of the 20th century and the cold war.
The supposed winners of the Cold War had expected the loser to cave in, submit to its role as a “regional power” (Obama) and serve as a junior partner to the West. Even today, they are waiting for a coup by a Moscow elite that would rather be the junior partner of the U.S. than that of the Chinese.
With the attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, the European order that had more or less held since 1950 had come to an end, said the two “European activists and publicists” Vincent-Immanuel Herr and Martin Speer on April 2 in the guest commentary
“After the war of aggression: the birth of geopolitical Europe” in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. They demand that the EU must now develop into a “value superpower” capable of defense, and in their article they focus on two subjects in particular: “military and security policy issues” and the development of a “European we-feeling.”(25)
That this defensible “value superpower” allows whistleblower Julian Assange to languish in a British prison for years and soon even be extradited to the U.S., and refused asylum to Edward Snowden, so that he had to flee to Russia, is more than shameful. A real “value superpower” must be built on a different foundation than that of the military and a questionable “European we-feeling”.
This foundation was laid more than 200 years ago by Immanuel Kant in his work “Perpetual Peace”, the formulations of which are the basis of our international law today.
Concluding Remarks
At the moment, unfortunately, it looks like the ever-increasing bellicosity of government and media will expand the war and eventually lead NATO into active war participation as outlined in the U.S. long-term strategy TRADOC 525-3-1 “Win in a Complex World 2020-2040” (2014).
Meanwhile, the German people are being attuned to blood, sweat and tears. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck predicted,
“We are all getting poorer”(26).
And Christian Lindner, Germany’s Minister of Finance declared on the memorable June 22 day that he expects: “three to five years of shortages”(27). The task now, he said, is to defend “the substance of the German economy in these times of uncertainty.”
So we should be prepared for a prolonged war – making a “A European security order encompassing the EU as well as Russia” a very distant prospect.
Notes
2)Ibid
4) Ibid
5)https://www.merkur.de/politik/ukraine-krieg-news-grossbritannien-armee-chef-warnung-kampf-europa-vorbereitung-91618815.html 20. Juni 2022
8)Als Imperialist der Mahan-Schule verfolgte Theodore Roosevelt eine offensive Außenpolitik mit zahlreichen Militäreinsätzen zum „Schutz amerikanischer Interessen“, so etwa in Dom.Rep., Honduras, Kolumbien, Kuba, Marokko, Syrien.
9)Vgl. Henry F. Pringle: Theodore Roosevelt, a Biography, New York 1931, S. 409 ff.; XX, pp. 535 ff
10) SIPRI Military Expenditure 2020 (April 2021)
11) Zahlen aus Engelbrecht, Helmut C./Hanighen, F.C.: MERCHANTS OF DEATH A Study of the International Armament Industry, Carter Lane 1934, S. 263
12) Da die Angabe für 1914 fehlte, wurde die von 1910 (348.032.000 )genommen. Die tatsächlichen Ausgaben dürften deutlich darüber gelegen haben.
13) Walter Millis: Road to War, America 1914 -1917, Boston/New York 1935, S. 47
14) Corbett, Julian: Official History. Naval Operations, London 1921,Vol. 1, p.18
15) Helmut Roewer: Unterwegs zur Weltherrschaft Warum England den Ersten Weltkrieg auslöste und Amerika ihn gewann. Zürich 2016, S. 16
16) Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung, Nr. 130, Juni 2022, S. 16
17)Ibid, S. 15
18)Erhard Crome: In tempori belli, in: WeltTrends, Nr. 23, 1999, S. 138
19)Zitiert in Peter Orzechowski: Ist die Gefahr eines Atomkriegs real? KOPP exklusiv 24 /22, S. 7
20)„Gesetz Über die Bedingungen der Streitkräfte anderer Staaten auf dem Territorium der Ukraine“.
21) https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/zeitenwende-im-bundestag,SyfVl4E
22)Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung, Nr. 130, Juni 2022, S. 12
23)Zitat aus der SPD Zeitung “Vorwärts”. 25.02.2022
24)https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Was-die-Zeitenwende-von-Bundeskanzler-Scholz-bedeutet-6665130.html?seite-all
25)Zeit-Fragen 14. Juni 2022/ 30. Jahrgang , S. 4
26)https://www.fr.de/meinung/kolumnen/ein-einziger-satz-91456992.html
27)https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/wirtschaft/Lindner-warnt-vor-drei-bis-fuenf-Jahren-der-Knappheit-article23414488.html
Translated from German. Minor Editing by Global Research.
Wolfgang Effenberger, born in 1946, a former officer in the German armed forces, has been a committed peace advocate since his first book, “Pax americana” (2004). In April 2022, he published “Die unterschätzte Macht: Von Geo- bis Biopolitik – Plutokraten transformieren die Welt”. Other books by him on the subject: “Wiederkehr der Hasardeure” (2014, Koautor Willy Wimmer), die Trilogie „Europas Verhängnis 14/18“ (2018/19) sowie “Schwarzbuch EU & NATO” (2020).
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