Wolfgang Effenberger

On June 7, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodimir Selenskyi told the Financial Times that "victory must be won on the battlefield."(1) Ukraine's short-term goal, he said, was to return to the situation before the Russian invasion on February 24. Selenskyi cited the recapture of all Russian-controlled territory, including Crimea, as a long-term goal.
Selenskyi's statements are consistent with Resolution 758, passed overwhelmingly (410-10) by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2014: "Resolved, That the House of Representatives .... strongly supports the efforts of President Poroshenko and the Ukrainian people to achieve a lasting peace in their country.
which includes the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory,
the complete control of Ukraine's international borders,
the disarmament of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine, the adoption of measures that limit the Russian Federation's ability to use energy exports and trade barriers as a means of exerting economic and political pressure,
 and ending Russian Federation interference in Ukraine's internal affairs;"(2)

Selenskyi is only a mouthpiece of this resolution, in which the preliminary goal of the U.S. is firmly outlined and on the basis of which Ukraine has been militarily prepared by the U.S. for this war. This also explains why the security guarantees demanded by the Russian president since mid-December 2021 from the U.S. and NATO were never seriously negotiated.
Since 2014, a war unnoticed by Western media has been taking place in the Donbass until February 24, 2022. The first images of Ukrainian military exercises were published in the West in early March 2021, when the Ukrainian population was purposefully tuned into a conflict with Russia. On March 14, the FAZ headlined, "Klitschko trains anti-tank in shooting exercise." The former world boxing champion Klitschko, mayor of Kiev, and in 2014 Merkel's aspirant for the Ukrainian presidency, had moved into the maneuver with his staff and the city district mayors to let himself be rolled over in a hole in the ground by an approaching tank, followed by throwing hand grenades and firing a machine gun in a publicity-grabbing manner. Images showing Klitschko at the Soviet SU-23 anti-aircraft cannon were also impressive. "I am convinced," said the mayor, "that we must be well prepared to defend our city and its residents and our state if necessary."(3)Ten days later, the ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE N2117 / 2021 "On the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021, on the Strategy of De-occupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol" came into force. 

"In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I (President Volodymyr Selenskyi) resolve: 


1. implementation of the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 "On the Strategy of De-occupation and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol" (attached).

2. approval of the strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).

3. The control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine issued by this decree shall be vested in the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine."(4)

This decree comes very close to a Ukrainian declaration of war on Russia. On April 6-7, 2021, the Ukrainian President and his Chief of General Staff Khomchak met with the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Britain's Stuart Perch, Chief of the Royal Air Force, who subsequently stated, "NATO members are united in condemning Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and its aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine."(5) The U.S. President and Chief of General Staff Khomchak are also on the ground of the U.S. resolution. Thus, with the "forcible annexation" version of Crimea, a senior British officer is also on the ground of the U.S. resolution. According to this version, the West indeed had to take coercive measures - similar to the approach taken in the forcible annexation of Kuwait by Iraq. But the circumstances in Crimea are different. Here, on March 16, 2014, the population living in Crimea overwhelmingly decided in a referendum to break away from Ukraine and return to Russia (Crimea had only been assigned to Ukraine within the Soviet Union in 1954).(6) As commander-in-chief, on April 8, 2021, state leader Selenskyi traveled to Crimea. April 2021, head of state Selenskyi traveled in combat gear to the front lines in the east to motivate Ukrainian soldiers loyal to the government.(7) Nothing remained of his campaign promise to ensure peace in the Donbass first and foremost - or had it been just a lie anyway?

On October 21, 2021, the Süddeutsche Zeitung ran the headline: "NATO gears up for conflict with Moscow"(8). The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 had led to a reassessment at NATO of the threats from Moscow. As a result, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, a defense plan was defined to respond to possible attacks from Russia. Twenty years before the Western-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, which violated international law, a long-term strategy "for the development of full-dimensional operations for the strategic army of the early twenty-first century" had gone into effect in the United States in TRACOC 525-5.(9)
This document describes a dynamic era, a world in transition. In the two decades (1990-2010), the transition was to be through the stages of turmoil (turmoil), crisis (crisis), conflict (conflict) ultimately leading to war (Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria).

Instead of fighting communism, the 21st century will have to fight national and religious extremism. If in the 20th century one had permanent allies, in the 21st century they are only temporary allies. The U.S. Army should adapt to this, he said, and pay attention to two premises: rapid technological change and the reordering of geostrategy. Modern war theater relies on more advanced technology such as combat robots and drones, as well as "non-nation forces" - mercenary armies that do not have to abide by any laws and are paid according to measured success.

In Ukraine, the stages of escalation described in 525-5 are readily observable: Turmoil (Maidan), Crisis (Slavyansk), Conflict (Crimea), and, since February 24, 2022, All-out War.

"According to 525-5, the path to the intended war leads via the targeted destabilization of the state, in which one wants to bring about a "regime change" for one's own advantage. An important tool here: operations other than war (OOTW) - meaning operations ranging from financial to cyber warfare, the use of covert special forces to drone warfare, and all facets of shadow warfare." At the lowest level of the dynamic is "democracy promotion" in the style of the National Endowment for Democracy.

In early October 2014 - eight months after the Maidan and two months before Resolution 758 - at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference, senior officers and representatives of the U.S. Department of Defense showed the vision of future armed conflicts and presented the document Army Operating Concept (AOC) "Win in an Complex World 2020-2040"(10)-surrounded by lobbyists of the weapons industry, whose companies presented the latest weapons systems.
This event prompted Bill Van Auken and David North to write a scathing article in the mouthpiece of the "International Committee of the Fourth International" (ICVI): "US Army Drafts Blueprint for Third World War."(11) Both authors conclude that the text of the document has extremely threatening implications. Bluntly, it admits that the coming military operations will be about changing the geopolitical landscape due to competition for power and wealth. Any country on the globe that opposes the U.S. hegemon will feel the harsh guiding hand of the United States. To that end, the U.S. Army is to develop appropriate capabilities. Future adversaries are to be made unable to respond effectively to U.S. aggression.
The competing powers China and Russia are cited as harbingers of future conflicts. Russia is accused of acting imperially and expanding its territory. A grotesque accusation in view of NATO's expansion and the color revolutions in the former Soviet republics - but one that is used to justify the necessity of stationing American ground troops in Central Europe. In second place are adversarial "regional powers" - e.g., Iran.
The trigger for the processes pointed out is not least the Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) - the unofficial name for the original version of the Defense Planning Guidelines for fiscal years 1994-1999, which allowed NATO to be used as an instrument of bloody aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya after the Cold War.
In 2019, the RAND Corporation revised the Wolfowitz Doctrine and outlined ways to "overstretch" and, in Kissinger's words, "break" Russia.

Another U.S. Army strategy paper for 2025 to 2040 projects that enemies will launch increasingly massive attacks in a variety of domains - land, sea, air, space, and online-with the lines between war and peace blurring.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is preparing for decades of hybrid wars 2025-2040.(12)

Currently, as part of a new security package, the U.S. is supplying Ukraine with modern multiple rocket launchers to defend against the Russian invasion. In an op-ed for the New York Times, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote that the missile delivery will enable the invaded country to more precisely hit "key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine."(13) Russia must pay a high price for attacking Ukraine, he said, or it could lead to the end of the rules-based international order and catastrophic consequences worldwide. Since the war of aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, which violated international law, the U.S. has undermined international law and the UN's monopoly on the use of force by introducing the vague term "rules-based international order," which in reality describes an order based on "U.S. rules" so that Washington can continue to pursue its unipolar power goals.

For the tireless critics of the public broadcasters Friedhelm Klinkhammer and Volker Bräutigam, the "rule-based order" is linguistically as wrong as the "white white horse"; any order already represents a set of rules itself, it does not need to be additionally "based" on rules.(14)

For both, the notion of "rules-based world order" serves only to camouflage the political intentions of the U.S. empire to advance its interests in violation of international law.
Russia and China, which oppose the "Western community of values," WWG, are usually accused of disrupting the "rules-based international order."(15)
The WWG ruthlessly targets weaker states with sanctions and often with brutal military force. Iraq, Syria, and Libya are recent examples of the WWG's permanent breach of international law. The United Nations Charter, international law, is the only globally valid civil order. However, it does not prevent the WWG from its modern colonial wars.
Biden's assurance that "we do not want a war between NATO and Russia" should also be interpreted against this background. Ukraine's assurance not to attack targets on Russian territory with the U.S.-made HIMARS artillery system must be interpreted to mean that Crimea is still seen as Ukrainian territory and that an attack on the Russian naval arsenal in Sevastopol cannot be ruled out. This would then be the final step into the Third World War.
Russia's head of state Putin still takes a relaxed view of the arms deliveries to date. However, should Ukraine receive long-range missiles, he warns of a Russian reaction.(16)

For grassroots organizations like "Fridays for Future", "Campact" or "CORREKTIV", the war in Ukraine does not have the same importance as e.g. climate protection, although the military (armament, maneuvers and wars) is the biggest environmental destroyer. The demand for "outlawing war" is nowhere to be heard. Is it perhaps also because this demand would be directed primarily against the interests of U.S. corporations?
"No wonder," writes Willy Wimmer, "that the public has the impression that the war in Ukraine is the first NGO war in history. One only has to look at the media, which have been brought into line anyway, and their rounds of experts. The NGOs, from whose ranks the ladies and gentlemen represent the NGOs, are all trimmed for total war against Russia and its president."(17)

According to Wimmer, the way of thinking and the choice of words of today's experts in the German media reveal not only whose brainchild they are, but also what their clients expect from them. The public statements of the German Foreign Minister about Russia and its president are not inferior to this.(18)

The constant escalations lead the Ukraine war closer and closer to the edge of a pan-European conflict. In its wake, Europe could be destroyed and the world economy and financial market could be thrown into unprecedented turmoil.
US and EU sanctions policies will cause global supply chains to collapse, leading to an international food crisis. In parallel, runaway inflation will make the poor even poorer and the rich even richer. With the destruction of the legal system, disenfranchisement will continue. There will probably be further eruptions along all the fault lines of the First World War.
Each war-prolonging day will make peace and a necessary reconciliation more difficult.
But where is the resistance to the all-out war propaganda? Where are the peace movements?

Comments

1) https://article.wn.com/view/2022/06/07/selenskyj_x201eder_sieg_muss_auf_dem_schlachtfeld_errungen_w/
2) https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-resolution/758/text
3) Klitschko trainiert bei Schießübung Panzerabwehr unter https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/bei-bedarf-kiew-verteidigen-klitschko-trainiert-bei-schiessuebung-panzerabwehr-17244659.html vom 14.3.2021
4 https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/1172021-37533
5) https://www.voltairenet.org/article212706.html
6) Laut einer Umfrage des 2015 vom Deutschen Bundestag eingerichteten Zentrums für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien (ZOIS) betrachten sich 80 Prozent der Krimbewohner als russische und nur 3 Prozent als ukrainische Bürger. 13,3 sehen sich nur als Bürger der Krim, darunter viele Tataren, von denen sich rund die Hälfte auch als Russen bezeichnen. Privat sprechen mehr als 80 Prozent nur Russisch, 1 Prozent nur Ukrainisch und 2 Prozent nur Tatarisch
7) https://www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/zelensky-visits-front-line-amid-russian-escalation-in-donbas-photos
8) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/allianz-nato-ruestet-sich-fuer-konflikt-mit-moskau-1.5445998
9) https://www.help4you.info/pdf/19940801_TRADOC_Pamphlet_525-5.pdf
10) http://www.tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/tp525-3-1.pdf
11) http://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2014/10/15/pers-o15.html
12) https://astutenews.com/2017/10/us-army-is-preparing-for-decades-of-hybrid-wars/
13) https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/usa-waffen-ukraine-krieg-russland-100.html
14) https://www.cashkurs.com/demokratieplattform/beitrag/regelbasierte-ordnung-faustrecht-geht-vor-voelkerrecht
15) https://verfassungsblog.de/voelkerrechtswidrigkeit-benennen-warum-die-bundesregierung-ihre-verbuendeten-fuer-den-syrien-luftangriff-kritisieren-sollte/
16) https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Warnung-aus-Russland-Putin-will-Lieferung-von-Raketen-mit-hoher-Reichweite-an-Ukraine-verhindern-article23379014.html
17) https://seniora.org/politik-wirtschaft/deutschland/voelker-sehet-die-signale
18) Ebd.