In
2019, the RAND Corporation tentacle of the U.S. Military Industrial
Congressional “Intelligence” Media Academic “Think”
Tank Complex published
a report
claiming to have “conducted a qualitative assessment of
‘cost-imposing options’ that could unbalance and
overextend Russia.”
Here
was one of the “cost-imposing options,” one that U.S.
President Barack Obama had been refusing, but in 2019, RAND was
preparing for a regime change at home: “Providing lethal aid to
Ukraine.”
Doing
that, RAND said, “would exploit Russia’s greatest point
of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and
advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase
the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without
provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of
proximity, would have significant advantages.”
Thus
far the calibration seems to be OK, as a “much wider conflict”
has not yet happened. But Congress/Parliament Members, weapons
dealers, and enthusiastic numbskull onlookers are pushing for it in
the United States, other NATO nations, and Russia. The notion of
being able to properly “calibrate” these things has been
disproven thousands of times. The disgusting arrogance of the RAND
report recommending increased military and nuclear threats to Russia
illustrates how blind people can be to the risks they are creating.
So,
yes, it’s wonderful to have the U.S. corporate media suddenly
against a war and in support of protests, and in sympathy with
victims. One might have thought the U.S. media incapable of such
things after all of these years and all of these wars. But remember
that a pleasant sounding report on “cost-imposing options”
was a plan to risk the murder of little children in Ukraine.
And,
yes, the criminal thugs running the Russian government and military
are, amazingly enough, responsible for their criminal thuggery.
The
Ukrainian government choosing to meet violence with violence, after
having largely initiated the increase in violence in Donbass last
week, is also responsible for that.
But
the steps that the U.S. government, the Ukrainian government, and
NATO allies took in recent months, years, and decades to get to this
point, the refusal to meet perfectly reasonable Russian demands, the
ever-escalating militarization — those governments remain
responsible for those things too.
The
RAND report hoped for nonviolent protests in Russia. That Russians
now protesting their government over its latest atrocity are doing
what RAND hoped for does not mean they are doing the wrong thing. It
just means to watch out for the manipulation of the outcome.
If
the U.S. government can orchestrate a coup in Kyiv in 2014, where
ordinary people also had — as they always do — legitimate
grievances, and then erase that history almost entirely within eight
years, then it can also orchestrate the outcome of a Russian
revolution, something it attempted unsuccessfully in 1919 and has
been attempting ever since — something else that it has
effectively erased from history books.