Ukraine is becoming a forever war
Reading corporate news like Noam Chomsky reveals how the U.S. and Ukraine is strategizing to turn the war with Russia into a forever war
Noam Chomsky has said for years that “It’s all there in the historical record.” By that he means anyone can uncover the reality about American Empire simply by reading the corporate media, official pronouncements, and writings of the architects of U.S. hegemony.
To do so requires a critical eye and to consume media voraciously. It also helps to be aware of how the media is hostile to history, treats state propaganda as objective fact, and to prefer specificity and on-the-ground reporting over sweeping claims from high-level officials.
I thought of Chomsky when I read this three-paragraph passage in the New York Times.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is eager to show progress to its Western backers so they will keep supplying weapons and financial support.
Ukraine also wants to join NATO, but alliance leaders have made clear that will not happen as long as the conflict is underway, and even the longer-term prospects for membership are murky. In July, NATO said it would invite Ukraine to join at some point, but has not offered a timeline — essentially restating a commitment it made 15 years earlier.
Mr. Zelensky said on Sunday that he expected Washington to instead offer something like its relationship with Israel, which the United States designates as a “major non-NATO ally,” with a long-term commitment to supplying billions in military aid and cooperation on defense and intelligence.
The passage is remarkable. It lays out the U.S. strategy for the war — for a forever war.
The Times article, from August 28, is about Ukraine seizing the ruins of the tiny village of Robotyne. The first graf admits politics is driving the conflict. Others have analyzed how Ukraine’s offensive against a far-better resourced Russia was doomed before it began. Unable to triumph on the battlefield, Ukraine is mainly waging a PR war. But to create the perception it is succeeding, Ukraine is shoving thousands of soldiers into a meatgrinder to maintain U.S. support.
This explains months of reporting that swings between mounting evidence that Ukraine’s offensive has failed and official pronouncements it is succeeding.
The second graf is even more remarkable, namely that Ukraine cannot join NATO “as long as the conflict is underway.” The Paper of Record admits the implications. On July 13, right after NATO made its “murky” offer for Ukraine to join, the New York Times reported, “promises of Ukraine’s eventual accession to NATO — after the war is over — create a strong incentive for Moscow to hang onto any Ukrainian territory it can and to keep the conflict alive.”
Others are more explicit. The former president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, told the Times, “If we declare Ukraine must not be a member until the end of the war, the war will never end.”
Why would Moscow want the war to end if what awaits it is U.S. tanks, advanced planes, and nuclear weapons on its border with Ukraine. Leading Western voices are warming to a forever war. Retired Australian Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Ukraine War is a “generational struggle.” The Wall Street Journal suggests it could last as long as the Korean War that “was never settled” 73 years after it began, with a “tense demilitarized zone [that] divides the heavily armed Korean Peninsula” to this day. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says, “Even if the war were to end tomorrow,” Putin’s Russia would remain “in constant confrontation” with NATO.
Adding evidence to the possibility of a forever war is the third graf in the Times article. If NATO membership isn’t possible, Zelensky has another idea: “the Israel model.” He wants the U.S. to designate Ukraine “as a ‘major non-NATO ally,’ with a long-term commitment to supplying billions in military aid and cooperation on defense and intelligence.”
If Ukraine becomes the Israel of Europe, the Times says it would mean the U.S. “cooperating on defense, supplying weapons, coordinating spy agencies and offering billions in military aid.” It would mean bipartisan support so “Ukraine could benefit from a long-term aid agreement that would help it build up its military over a matter of years.” It would mean Ukraine acts as a deterrent to Russia.
The Israel model is not the staggering amount of U.S. weaponry and cooperation it receives. It is the domination of a strategic region. Israel targets anyone who strikes a path independent of the U.S. It has unilaterally attacked Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. It engages in far-flung covert operations. It oversees a long, savage occupation against Palestinians.
Israeli aggression is not besides the point. It is the point. It is a form of neo-colonialism, and it provides the U.S. with a unique laboratory to study real-world battlefield tactics and strategies, and the effect of new weapons on human bodies.
Powerful forces in White House, NATO, and Kyiv want Ukraine to become a hyper-militarized state that can contain and destabilize Russia and its allies. It’s not hard to guess what it would entail: massive and rapid military attacks, drone strikes, covert ops, and assassinations. All capacities Ukraine is developing.
Barring a miracle, Ukraine’s summer offensive has failed. It has advanced six miles after three brutal months, one-tenth of its goal to barrel 60 miles to the Sea of Azov and slice through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. But it keeps throwing men and material into the meatgrinder. Its short-term goal is not to oust Russia. It’s to convince the U.S. to keep the weapons and financial spigot open at full force.
Whether or not Ukraine’s strategy can survive the buzzsaw of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and Trump’s bromance with Putin will determine if an unfair peace or a forever war prevails.