Analyst: Ukraine war a triple-plundering of Americans

The majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities, are being “triply plundered” by the Ukraine war, American political analyst and anti-war activist Bill Dores has said.

“First we have our taxes - funds that should be spent on human needs - spent on weapons. Then there is the inflation caused by printing money for the Pentagon. And then there is the price of food, energy and everything else pushed still higher by the shortages caused by war and sanctions,” the analyst explained.  

Dores, a writer for Struggle/La Lucha and longtime antiwar activist, made the remarks in an interview with the Press TV website Thursday while commenting on US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's statement that US aid to Ukraine is a “direct investment” in Washington’s interests.

McConnell said that US national security is tied to stability and security in Europe and preventing Russian forces from advancing in the continent.

“As my fellow leading Republicans and I have explained, it is not an act of charity for the United States and our NATO allies to help supply the Ukrainian people’s self-defense,” the former Senate Majority leader said. “It is a direct investment in our own core national interests.”

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McConnell pointed out that the United States has largely been sending older weapons from its stockpile to Ukraine.

He urged the Biden administration to act more resolutely in ensuring that its military assistance to Ukraine and investments happen at the “speed of relevance.”

‘Both US parties serve US corporate war machine’

“Senator McConnell apparently feels the tens of billions of our tax dollars the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine is not enough. His remarks underscore how both major US parties serve the corporate war machine,” said Dores.

“The Republican Senate leader is not lying though when he calls that money an ‘investment.’ That is exactly how the bankers, financial managers and corporate bosses making billions off this war see it. For them, the bloodbath in Ukraine is a gold mine. That’s what McConnell means when he speaks of ‘core national interests,’” the activist explained.

He added, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the paid corporate shills in US Congress the same thing when he addressed them last November: ‘Your money is not charity, it’s an investment.’”  

‘An investment that won’t benefit the majority of Americans’

Dores said, “It is not an investment that will benefit the majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities.”

“But this ‘direct investment’ is already paying off big time for US and British energy monopolies, arms corporations and the banks and asset managers that control them. ‘US oil producers reap $200 billion windfall from Ukraine war price surge,’ the Financial Times wrote in November,” he added.

“‘ExxonMobil reached record profits amid high gas prices, war in Ukraine,’ PBS reported in January. ‘How the Ukraine war is fueling massive profits for energy firms and arms dealers,’ read a February headline in the Times of London. The war in Ukraine rescued the US energy industry from the price collapse of 2020,” he said.

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An American political analyst says the United States engineered “the Ukraine crisis in order to hurt not only Russia but the emerging bloc of countries seeking economic independence from the US."

“BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, is already raking in war profits through its arms and energy holdings. And in December, UPI reported, ‘Zelensky, BlackRock CEO agree to coordinate Ukraine rebuilding investment,’” the analyst said.  

“Ukraine could be a ‘beacon about the power of capitalism,’ BlackRock CEO Larry Fink bragged in Davos last month.”  

Why is the US ruling class targeting Iran, Venezuela, Russia 

“This profit bonanza is not a windfall or accident,” said Dores. “In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, Washington embarked on a global drive to recapture control of the world’s energy supply. The first target was Iraq. Libya and Syria were next, along with sanctions and covert operations against Iran and Venezuela. Russia was the ultimate target.”  

“These countries are very different, but they have committed a common crime in the eyes of the US corporate ruling class. They have large energy reserves and they don’t pay tribute to Washington and Wall Street,” he explained.

“Cutting Europe off from Soviet/Russian energy supplies has been a prime US objective since the 1980s, when the Reagan regime tried to sabotage the Trans-Siberian Pipeline. It was an object of the US-backed 2014 coup in Kiev and eight years of US military investment in Ukraine,” he noted.

“It is why the US encouraged the Kiev regime’s bloody eight-year war against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk. Washington has pushed NATO expansion precisely to build a wall between West Europe and Russia. “

Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.

Since the onset of the conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.

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“On September 23 of last year, explosives planted by US Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines deep in the Baltic Sea. Stopping the pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas to Germany, has been a declared objective of the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. The revelation by acclaimed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the sabotage was a US military operation has been suppressed in the US corporate media,” said Dores.

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“It gives the lie to Mitch McConnell’s claim that Russia aims to ‘destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will.’ Russia has neither the need, desire or capacity to do that. For the US military-financial state, however, confrontation with Russia is a means to bring Europe back under its thumb,” he noted.

“In a February 26 interview with the TV channel Rossiya 1, Vladimir Putin said that the US seeks to maintain a unipolar world that revolves around its interests. He gave the example of the US forcing Australia to cancel a deal to buy French submarines in favor of those made by US contractors General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls. So much for allies,” the peace activist said.

“Indeed. Washington seeks to wreck any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t pass through Wall Street. It sees war as the only means to restore its obsolescent position at the center of the world economy,” he observed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia is opposed to the emergence of a unipolar world that revolves around Washington’s interests.

Putin said his country is striving to create a multipolar world rather than one that is centered around the US.

Some of Washington’s allies also see confrontation with Russia as a unifying cause, eclipsing any differences between them and the US, Putin noted.

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