Summary
The evidence and probability are that the Ukraine war is the implementation of a USA plan to occupy and annex Russia’s territory with the aid of the EU/NATO countries and Asian allies, particularly Japan. Failing that, to destroy it territorially or functionally. This appears to be preliminary to a plan to suppress China and India.
An explanation is required for the European Union’s reversal of policy from the 2010 Deauville Agreement for integration of the EU and Russian economies to currently treating Russia as an enemy. The hypothesis is coercion
Russia is not an existential threat to the USA. The existential threat is to the USA’s ambitions of world hegemony by the rise of China and India as major economies and nuclear powers.
The USA’s elites’ close relationship with Japan’s elites appears to be based on immense treasure looted from China and South East Asia during the Pacific war which is reportedly shared by the two countries. This has the potential as a war chest.
Discussion: The logic for annexing Russia
We must consider the Ukraine war in the context of the USA's publicly stated ambition to remain the sole world super-power and to 'contain' Russia and China to that end.
Let’s note the USA’s response to China’s President Xi’s offer to mediate a cease-fire and political solution to the Ukraine war with Russia’s willingness to comply. The USA’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed it, saying that China’s support for Russia goes against Washington's interests. Clearly the USA elites have no interest in saving lives and arranging a cease-fire themselves. It’s further confirmation that the USA wants a war for reasons other than the protection of the Ukrainian people who are being killed in tens of thousands. If it were concerned about Ukraine and its people the USA wouldn't have murdered the 'Maidan Heavenly Hundred', staged the 2014 coup and backed Kiev's attack on the Donbass Russians.
In the early 21st century the world outside Europe/USA is rapidly changing. The USA and Europe built their power and prosperity on warfare, colonialism, neo-colonialism, (eg World Bank and IMF loans), free market capitalism and bribery as well as subversion of many varieties, including political assassination. With increasing economic development, education and political sophistication in developing countries, these methods have become increasingly difficult. In particular, China, India and Russia are now rivals to USA and European economic and military power. African and South American countries are finding their voices. Because of its declining ability to compete in international markets as well as the visibility of previous means of gaining advantage the USA has increasingly committed to a policy of overt warfare, military intervention and sanctions to advance its interests.
European elites have been induced to follow the USA in this policy under NATO control. This was initially the case in the wars against Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It is currently the case with NATO’s war against Russia that appears to have the seizure of Russian territory and resources as the objective of this USA-planned war. If this is not the case, moving NATO eastward, the initiation and perpetuation of this war make no sense. It seems that Russia will be ‘contained’ by the USA annexing its territory with European and Japanese participation. How China will be ‘contained’ is not entirely clear but it would be weakened by the defeat of Russia. If the USA should succeed in annexing Russia, having the USA control the territory on China's northern border would be a grave danger. With these possibilities, open warfare with Russia, China or both is inevitable and the use of nuclear weapons almost certain.
The mood in the USA is not to avoid nuclear war but to ensure that the USA is capable of winning a nuclear war. The idea of the ‘limited nuclear war’ from the 1960s has taken hold in the USA again. Nuclear war is no longer unthinkable. As the Wall Street Journal of April 27 2022 clearly implies, what is important is winning, not avoiding nuclear war. This article The US should show it can win a nuclear war (text: ...at least in Europe) reflects a reckless mood in the USA that has definitely filtered down from military speculation.
The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists comments that “...many in the US defense establishment - the military, government, think tanks, and industry-promote the perception that a nuclear war can be won and fought.” In Europe there seems to be no recognition of what this means.
To retain its claimed position as the benevolent hegemon, 'world leader' the ‘essential country’ 'bright light on the hill' with 'exceptionalist' privileges as it publicly asserts, the USA must increase its economic power and suppress its rivals China, India and Russia. Merely suppressing the development of these primary rivals would give the USA relative advantage but no absolute gain. A world hegemon needs overwhelming economic power to support overwhelming conventional military power. Nuclear weapons alone are not enough. Increasing its economic power by annexing Russia would increase the range of the USA state from Alaska to Europe’s borders, together with incorporation of Europe, now subjugated to the USA’s military rule. Above all it would have control of Russia’s immense natural wealth and development potential, not as a colony but as part of its sovereign territory.
Europeans are accustomed to think of the USA as nearly 6,000 km away (Paris-New York) or perhaps from Moscow 7,500 km. In the east however, the distance between the continental land territories of Russia and Alaska which was once Russian territory is only about 100 km. It’s arctic territory but doubtless there’s a suitable route for a summer invasion. You can see how the idea might occur to the USA’s strategists. I’m firmly in the analysis camp with John Meersheimer and Colonel Douglas Mcgregor, although not with their pro-USA sentiments (nor am I pro-Russian). We need to take a longer term view of the USA's objectives, however. Even a short term projection of the Ukraine war's trajectory shows the danger to be so great that it must be diverted.
The USA isn't making Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders because it doesn’t need to. Russia isn’t a threat to Europe. We know that the Russians have been willing to trade and even integrate their economies with the EU. It’s all about the USA’s military-globalists’ ambition of world hegemony. Preventing the EU and Russia proceeding with the 2010 Partnership for (Russian) Modernization and the 2010 Deauville Agreement was the first step. The second step would be to see how far Russia can be subdued and ideally annexed. Colonel Macgregor speaks of his experience with rather stupid military men. There are some smart strategists at work here however. Setting up Russia for the Ukraine war wasn't done by over-promoted generals. Victoria Nuland has been scheming with serious strategists.
World competition for all natural resources is increasing, not merely for advantageous access to them as in the recent past but now for their direct control due to scarcity and the economic needs of increasing populations. The low hanging fruit of resources has been taken. What is left will be controlled by and reserved for the elites.
Analysts such as John Meersheimer (2015) assert that Ukraine is not of vital strategic interest to the USA and Meersheimer does not appear to have changed his view. The existential threat that the USA perceives is to its self-appointed position as benevolent world hegemon, not from Russia but from the development of China and India. Further, the USA would need resources for greatly increased economic power than only negative suppressive action. Ukraine has a role in that. Russia is not a direct threat to Europe or the USA. It is an indirect threat in that its resources support these competitors to the USA. Viewed otherwise, Russia’s resources would support the USA’s ambitions. Together with control or incorporation of Europe and its economy it would be a major advancement toward its desired position as world hegemon. Having wars and sanctions against everyone doesn't take it anywhere.
The USA recognizes that if it is to act against China it needs to do so soon. Its increasingly provocative statements, abandoning its one-China policy on Taiwan, selling Taiwan advanced weapons, its own ships and aircraft patrolling China’s coast indicate that it is escalating military measures. China’s increasing militarization due to its awareness of a coming clash will soon make ‘containment’ impossible, if that is not already the case, without nuclear warfare. The USA is certainly contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in Europe since it refused to remove its nuclear weapons, shown here, in 2008, well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At that time Russia was seen as a cooperative partner to the EU in the EU/Russia Partnership for Modernization (of Russia) Program and was cooperating with the USA. The USA could not have seen Russia as a threat at that time but appears to have viewed it as an opportunity.
The economic development of China and India will on present trends soon relegate the USA to third most powerful economy in the world. The USA has publicly stated its doctrine of ‘full spectrum dominance’, ie in military, economic, information etc. How it will do this has never been clear although ‘containing’ Russia and China are clearly involved. It justifies its claim to world hegemony on the basis of a further doctrine of ‘exceptionalism’, that is, its right to exemption from the laws and rules that it expects other countries to follow. ‘Exceptionalism’ justifies its military centres or ‘Commands’ covering the entire world and its record of warfare, subversion, intervention and assassination in its own interests.
The Deauville Agreement is of critical importance as both a marker of the EU’s perception of Russia in 2010 and Russia’s willingness to cooperate with Europe. Only four years later the murders to effect the 2014 Kiev coup and attack on the Donbass Russians were organized by the USA. It was clear that the USA was not going to let EU/Russian integration happen.
The USA and Europe have always viewed Russia with hostility, envy or avarice, as the case might be, due to its natural wealth and strength. Wars against Russia have inevitably followed and the motivation for NATO’s continuous shift Eastward after the dissolution of the Soviet Union follows the same pattern. The European Union’s 2010 Agreement with Russia to form a joint economic and security region was Europe’s solution to gaining access to Russia’s resouces without warfare and to mutual benefit. Their cultures are compatible and the planned merger was in accordance with the EU strategy to avoid warfare by economic integration.
It is now clear that the Ukraine war is a manipulted NATO war against Russia by the elites of the USA and Europe. What is the objective? Merely to bring Ukraine into NATO? To weaken Russia and leave it to recover with a grudge? Impossible.
Angela Merkle (with Nicolas Sarkozy) was a negotiator with Russia in signing the Deauville Agreement to cooperate with Russia as well as a mediator in the deception of the Minsk Agreement over eight years to prepare for war with Russia. We should reflect on what would cause Germany and France (and Angela Merkle in particular) to sign the Deauville Agreement with Russia as a cooperative country and four years later collude with murder in Kiev as part of the USA’s coup followed by the Minsk deception to take Europe to war with Russia. Angela Merkle’s views are of particular importance due to Germany’s position as the dominant economy in Europe and its close relationship with Russia.
Let us assume that the EU’s leaders have not been bribed financially like Tony Blair and Boris Johnson. Nevertheless, they have rejected the Deauville Agreement and appear to believe that it is more to the advantage of the EU to treat Russia as an enemy than a friend. What advantage can they gain? What has the USA promised? The only positive advantage that one can envisage is acquistion of the spoils of war which would mean annexation of territory and access to Russia’s resources. Surely, the risks of such a war would far outweigh the possible advantages. Why have a war to gain advantages that have been offered freely? Why treat a country as an enemy when there are risk-free benefits in having it as a friend? The Deauville Agreement was initially only to achieve visa-free travel, then free trade followed by more complex political matters obviously dependent on experience. From this perspective the Ukraine war does not make sense.
We can only make sense of the EU's position by supposing that the USA has resolved that it will not relinquish its military presence in Europe and control of NATO. It has probably informed the EU that ‘You are with us or against us’ which was GW Bush’s attitude. On the legal basis of the EU’s membership of NATO the USA would consider itself justified in military action against those EU states reluctant to follow NATO to war with Russia. Some states such as the UK, Poland and other former Soviet Union states would support this. The EU’s choice would therefore be between certain war within the EU or external war against Russia with the possibility of spoils of war. Faced with this choice Europe's elites apparently decided to cooperate with the USA and see what happens.
An indication of a senior politician's reluctance to agree this might be the the strange case of Christine Lagarde. In December 2016 Mme Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty of criminal negligence involving a fraud of €400m when she was the French Finance Minister. It seemed uncharacteristic. Further, astonishingly, rather than being fined or sent to prison, she received no penalty and not only continued in her job but was voted into her current position as President of the European Central Bank. What was that all about? The EU Establishment caring for it’s own? If that were so there would have been no court case.
What that was all about, I suggest is that this is how the USA/EU warfare conspirators keep people of principle who learn the truth from speaking out: Speak out and be ruined, cooperate and be rewarded. I suggest that the case against Lagarde was completely false. Lagarde knows the truth as all elites do, but she publicly blames Russia for the war. I had always rather admired Lagarde for her integrity. She used to have a characteristic élan of manner. That has gone.
If the USA did not plan to conquer Russia prior to the 2010 Deauville Agreement, that Agreement probably prompted the formation of a plan for the USA together with the EU and Japan on Russia’s east to annex Russia’s territory and form a USA/European/Asian economic region that would be under USA control. This would be an economic base for maintaining its position since WWII as the sole superpower, able to dominate the world as it publicly claims to be its right.
In my article dated 6 February 2023 I outlined the sort of plan that the USA might model, in this case of the USA manipulating Russia and China to attack each other with risks carried by the EU and eastern proxies. Such a plan has doubtless been modelled, since a direct attack by the USA on Russia would bring immediate and massive direct retaliation. It has been the USA’s strategy since the Vietnam war to use proxies to avoid high USA casualties that cause domestic unrest. There are signs that the USA is attempting to groom India, its second rival, as a proxy or ally against China by participation in Indian military exercises on China’ border.
On December 9 2022 the USA gave India intelligence on Chinese activity at the border that enabled India to repel a Chinese incursion. This was active intervention and the commencement of a grooming strategy. There are also Indian joint exercises with the UK and Australia (AUKUS) and France. India would need to be given appropriate inducements to take up a role to support the USA against China but border disputes, cultural differences and Tibet’s annexation by China indicate good possibilities for manipulation. It appears that the USA is attempting to gain a military foothold in India as it did in developing NATO in Europe.
A plan for a war to conquer and annex Russia’s territory by the USA is the only explanation for what would otherwise be a diplomatic dispute over Ukraine’s accession to the EU and membership of NATO. That was how Russia had treated it prior to the 2014 USA-arranged murders and coup in Kiev. Such a war would enable the USA, through NATO to mobilize Europe’s military potential to attack and contribute to conquering Russia as Germany attempted to do in 1941 and in 1812 Napoleon for the same reason.
Currently the USA and European countries are emptying their arsenals to give their weapons to Ukraine. They will need to increase their present production volume and speed with re-tooling their factories in order to replenish. This simultaneously means that within 1-2 years they will have the capability for an extended conventional war with Russia. One would expect the European countries of NATO to fight a proxy war on behalf of the USA in the same way as Ukraine is the USA’s proxy at present. In such a plan, Japan and possibly other allies, South Korea and the Philippines would attack Russia’s east. This would almost certainly be a war involving the use of defensive nuclear weapons by Russia or aggressive strikes by the USA/NATO.
It is unarguable that EU elites switched from supporting an integrated EU/Russian economic region to supporting a USA/NATO proxy war against Russia. Projecting events into the future and bearing in mind the USA’s doctrines of ‘full spectrum dominance,’ its ‘exceptional’ status and doctrine of global hegemony, the Ukraine war only makes sense if there is a plan to invade and annex Russia consistent with these. The USA’s publicly announced strategy to ‘contain’ Russia and China conceals many possibilities, but inevitably means war.
To Russia’s East, Japan is re-arming, having recently doubled its defence budget to include potentially offensive weaponry. In September 2022 it had the keen sword naval drills with the USA and has within the last few days signed a joint defence pact with the UK that permits the UK and Japanese military personnel to be deployed reciprocally in a ‘tilt to the Pacific’.
Occupation of Russia could cut off China’s energy supplies but it’s more likely that destruction of China as an effective state will be also be part of the occupation of Russia plan. On Monday 27 March 2023 the US Army Secretary is quoted as laying out a strategy for war on China over Taiwan, also saying, “I personally am not of the view that an amphibious invasion of Taiwan is imminent,” U.S. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She continued, “But we obviously have to prepare, to be prepared to fight and win that war”.
It is in the USA’s interests to supply weapons to Taiwan as it does in Ukraine, but not necessarily to have a direct war with China over Taiwan. War does give opportunity however. In a direct attack on Russia, there is immense value in having allies and troops on a war footing in that region in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the Phillipines. It would also be well worthwhile abandoning Taiwan to China as the USA and allies attack Russia’s east while Europe wages war in Russia’s west.
Japan
With the UK’s recently created military link with Japan it has a NATO operational base close to Russia’s Eastern regions. On 11 January 2023 the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed a defence agreement with Japan that the UK Government website tells us:
“Years of negotiation will ... allow the UK and Japan to deploy forces in one another’s countries. It will also cement the UK’s commitment to Indo-Pacific security, allowing both forces to plan and deliver larger scale, more complex military exercises and deployments”.
The USA is preparing Japan for war in coordination with NATO and the UK Prime Minister is preparing for UK forces to fight in cooperation with the Japanese in the Pacific. One of the primary factors in the USA’s relationship with Japan is their joint opposition to Communism and China. Let’s examine a few Japanese basics of that relationship. We might note that Russia’s abandonment of communism and embrace of market capitalism has made its relationship with the USA worse.
In 1945 Toshikazu Kaze had been assistant Foreign Minister during the war years. He was present at the signing of the Japanese surrender treaty on the USS Missouri. In his book Eclipse of the Rising Sun, Kase gives insight into the thinking of the senior Japanese policy-makers at that time. Their consensus was that with the advent of nuclear weapons, warfare is no longer a viable option of policy. That was the basis of Japan’s pacifistic post war constitution. From a Japanese viewpoint it was the obvious truth. From the USA’s viewpoint the truth was the converse - nuclear weapons win wars.
Japan is now arming as rapidly as possible. The USA has persuaded Japan to ignore its direct experience of what are now considered to be small fission tactical weapons at a time when they had to be delivered by slow, short range aircraft. It has reversed its policy of pacifism to arm for warfare in cooperation with the USA, the country that delivered the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, in the age of hypersonic missiles carrying intercontinental thermonuclear weapons. That is so extraordinary and dangerous that it requires an extraordinary explanation. Let us briefly touch on some motivators why Japan, the UK and Europe might consider invading Russia.
Japan has a history of warfare with neighbouring countries with annexation of territory - Taiwan 1895, Korea 1905, Manchuria 1932 and China 1937 with conquest of further countries in south east Asia until 1945. This appears to be driven by the country’s lack of natural resources. It is mountainous with essentially no minerals, arable land having decreased from 15% 1970 to 11% 2020 and has a large population. Japan currently imports all its raw materials and about 60% of its food. By comparison the UK imports about 50% of food consumed and similarly has few natural resources, although the UK has some coal, oil and natural gas resources. It has 24% arable land but is not self-sufficient in food.
Both the UK and Japan have similar interests in having secure access to energy, raw materials and more arable land. Europe as a whole is a natural-resource-poor region which is one reason why the Deauville Agreement with Russia was very attractive. Historically, colonialism gave the UK and Europe the basis for building their prosperity, wealth and power through access to natural resources and cheap labour. It is therefore a persuasive argument for the USA to make to the UK, EU and Japan that annexing Russia would be to their benefit, if it could be done with low risk. A conventional war, even with very high casualties would be acceptable to Europe and particularly to the USA if it could manage it on a proxy basis, avoiding major casualties itself. In a proxy war, if Russia were to defend itself with nuclear/thermonuclear weapons, the European countries, Japan and any other participants would be the planned casualties. The risks are immense to everyone involved.
The public media story is that Japan is arming due to China’s belligerence and a probable war with Taiwan. That’s a civil war in which Japan has no great interest if it should happen. Nor has China any interest in a neutral, defensive Japan that isn’t going to fight on behalf of Taiwan. There’s a dispute about ownership of the tiny Senkaku islands with implications for fishing, oil and passage rights. Would Japan go to war with China over them? Very unlikely due to the disparity in power. The USA has recruited Japan to re-arm for bigger things, it appears. What’s more, the Japanese have the wealth to buy all the weapons that the USA would like to sell them. This is a fascinating story:
Sterling Seagrave, a US historian specializing in the 20th century political history of East Asia, in his book Gold Warriors - America’s secret recovery of Yamashita’s gold gives a well researched account of Japan’s activities during its 1931-45 occupation of the China and south east Asia. Japan occupied countries from Manchuria (1931) through China (1937) to present Myanmar, the Philippines and all the islands between Japan and Australia, a dozen prosperous countries with rich ancient cultures. The Japanese army looted every country, stripping banks, museums, palaces and weathy individuals of their gold, silver, platinum, gemstones, art and cultural treasures with the help of Japanese gangsters, museum and university experts.
The Japanese shipped back to Japan the accumulated wealth, documents and art from over a thousand years of these countries’ cultures in fantastic quantities. Seagrave claims evidence of, not tens of thousands of tons of gold, but hundreds of thousands of tons, with other treasures in similar unbelieveable quantities. At the end of the war USA Intelligence found out about it and recovered a great deal of gold hidden in the Phillipines which was a staging-point on their transfer to Japan. The loot that was taken to Japan still appears to be there, controlled by Japanese elites. The USA/CIA controls an unknown proportion and there still remains a great deal hidden and undiscovered in the Philippines.
The USA made a deal with the Japanese elites about the disposition of this vast treasure, particularly for maintaining a government friendly to the USA, which is what Japan has had since the end of the Pacific War. It appears that this treasure hoard is the basis of close cooperation between Japanese and USA elites, with the CIA having a watching brief on Japan and access to some of this wealth.
War-loot, even though enormous, is no substitute for territory with arable land and natural resources. The one thing that would definitely tempt Japan to abandon its constitutional pacifism and undertake an aggressive adventure with the USA is the prospect of obtaining continental land with support from the USA.
Now that the Japanese adventure to seize empire has passed into history and legend, the USA and Japan appear to be putting their stolen treasure to strategic use. Of course, given the USA’s ruthlessness it is doubtful that Japan would receive the reward it would expect should such an adventure succeed.