By Paul Craig Roberts - May 12, 2022

My forebodings/predictions about the Kremlin’s limited go-slow war in Ukraine are proving correct. Putin and Russia are demonized. Unprecedented sanctions amounting to piracy and theft have been imposed on Russia. The US and Europe are joining the war as de facto combatants. More countries are joining NATO with the result being the prospect of more US missile bases on Russia’s borders. The Western media controls the narrative, which is Russia is losing and can be defeated with more many billions of dollars from the US and more weapons that enrich the US military/security complex. Why any Russian government would expose itself to this and so many chances for miscalculation that ends in WW III is a mystery. What did the Kremlin imagine it was achieving by creating a situation that exposed Rusaia to many months of war propaganda, punishment, and Western preparations for wider war?

What peace needed was a quick decisive Russian victory that demonstrated extraordinary military power that completely stopped any further Western provocations of Russia. But the Kremlin was too liberal-minded to do what was neccessary. Consequently the Kremlin made a strategic error, dropped the ball and has failed to protect Russia from provocations that are leading to WW III.

Instead, the Kremlin filled with liberal delusions long discarded in the West decided to show a good side by limiting itself to the rescue of the Donbass Russians. This gave the West all it needed to present Russia as a military incompetent upstart. Among the Kremlin’s errors, the Kremlin overlooked that Ukraine’s distress from the limited Russian intervention created an opportunity for Poland to claim former Polish territories in western Ukraine where there are no Russian troops engaged. It is possible that the Polish government, disinformed by Western media’s picture of Russian military failure in Ukraine, will occupy western Ukraine as preparation to reclaiming it as Russia did Crimea and now Donbass. As Russia will have eastern and southern Ukraine, the country could simply disappear as Poland resurrects greater Poland. In its history, Ukraine has either been part of Poland’s empire or part of Russia.

If Poland moves into western Ukraine as it is tempted to do, opportunities for Polish-Russian conflict arise. As Poland is a NATO member, Washington has given Poland, as the British government did with World War II’s “Polish Guarantee,” the power to start a world war.

The Polish government has a penchant for emotional decisons, not responsible decisions. Just as the Polish military dictatorship thought the “British Guarantee” protected them, causing them to spurn Hitler’s demand for the return of German territory stripped from Germany in the Versailles Treaty despite President Wilson’s “guarantee” of no territorial losses, the Polish government thinks today that NATO membership protects Poland from Russian retaliation.

The government in Warsaw does not comprehand that the “NATO Guarantee” is worth no more than the British Government’s guarantee that launched WW II.

The governments that comprise the Western World have given Poland, once again, the decision whether there is to be a World War.

This deplorable and unsettling fact stares us in the face, but no Western media, not even online media, acknowledges it.

The situation that exists today is that either Russia and China must accept US hegemony or the neoconservaties will push Russia and China into war with the West. The hegemonic ambition of the neoconservatives is inconsistent with a peaceful world.

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