The ‘Kuwait precedent’ applied to Ukraine

The US planned and triggered this war, and remains intent on prolonging it

It is becoming increasingly obvious to a range of Western observers — from the warmonger former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to the anti-war American journalist Ted Snider — that the Biden administration planned to ignite the Ukraine war long before it broke out, and has since been intent on prolonging it and blocking all attempts to negotiate any solution that could bring it to a peaceful end.

In his recently published memoir, Sarkozy said he opposed Ukraine’s accession to NATO when he was in power, and was supported in that stance by German chancellor Angela Merkel. He acknowledged that Crimea was part of Russia with a predominantly Russian population, and thought Ukraine should be a neutral state acting as bridge between Europe and Russia.

Washington’s determination to prolong the war there is not in Europe’s interest, and it should muster the courage to say that and renounce the Western habit of launching wars by proxy — a clear reference to the US.

Ted Snider’s article in The American Conservative magazine detailed how the US sabotaged three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine held in Belarus and Istanbul in the early days of the war. They had reached preliminary agreement on ending the war by Russia offering concessions (to withdraw from the Kyiv area, not target President Volodimir Zelensky, and cease demanding Ukraine’s disarmament), in exchange for Ukraine undertaking not to join NATO.

Former Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who chaired the Istanbul talks, said afterwards that certain NATO members want to prolong the war and scupper any agreement to halt it — another clear reference to the US.

Biden has always been, and continues to be, eager to keep the war going. He believes it could result in the destruction of Russia, just as his country destroyed Iraq, Syria, and Libya with policies combining economic siege, impoverishment, and military invasion pursued by successive US administrations.

We are witnessing a replay of the ‘Kuwait precedent’ where the US planned and provoked a war and sought to drag it on for as long as possible in pursuit of its goals. The George Bush Sr. administration lured Iraqi President Saddam Hussein into the trap of war in Kuwait and opposed Saudi efforts to prevent its outbreak at last-minute talks held in Taef. It pressured the Kuwaiti side to reject Saudi proposals aimed at avoiding hostilities just two days before they began.

History is now repeating itself in the Ukraine crisis, the major difference being that this time the US’ enemy is a nuclear-armed superpower fighting to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

American calculations in Ukraine have been wrong-headed since day one of the war. Persisting with them is not in the interest of the US or its European partners who have begun to pay the price of their involvement in the form of economic crises, inflation, and falling living standards for their citizens.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who came up with the idea of holding the Ukraine peace summit in Jeddah, imagined it would be a forum to celebrate Russia’s surrender like a latter-day Versailles conference. But the outcomes have proven completely contrary to these naive assumptions.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive which the US was banking on failed miserably. Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that US intelligence agencies warned Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that this offensive, so loudly trumpeted by the Biden administration, would not lead to Russia’s defeat and was merely a stunt by Zelensky.

The Biden administration has now authorised countries like Denmark and The Netherlands to send F-16 warplanes to Ukraine military, ostensibly to end Russian air force’s dominance of Ukrainian airspace. But these planes will be easy prey for Russia’s air defences and will no more tip the military balance than did the previously supplied Patriot and other missile systems or the US Abrams, German Leopard, and British Challenger tanks.

The sending of drones to strike central Moscow or blow up the Crimean bridge is no more than a desperate show staged by Zelensky and his handlers to conceal the reality of defeat as Russia consolidates its control of Crimea and the four annexed eastern provinces.

I’ve always said this and will say it again: Nuclear powers cannot be defeated, and as winter begins to set in in weeks to come, ‘General Frost’ will join the fight alongside the Russian army, promising more unpleasant military surprises for Biden.

The ‘Kuwait precedent’ applied to Ukraine