Last week, the world narrowly escaped possible nuclear destruction as the Biden administration considered a Ukrainian request to allow U.S. missiles to strike deep into Russian territory. While the request was being considered, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that these missiles could not be launched without the active participation of U.S. forces and NATO, and that if they were launched, Russia would consider itself at war with both NATO and the U.S. This was a major Cuban Missile Crisis.
Thankfully, permission to strike deep into Russia was reportedly not obtained from Washington, but as we have seen throughout this war, weapons systems are often initially denied and then ultimately authorized by Washington's proxies in Kiev. Even if nuclear war has been temporarily averted, we should not feel complacent.
Would a missile strike deep into Russia help Ukraine win the war? Not even the Pentagon thinks so. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin himself said earlier this month that giving Ukraine permission to fire missiles at Russia would not be a “game-changer” in the two-and-a-half-year-old war.
Risking nuclear destruction for no real purpose? Have these people gone mad?
Even the “game changers” have barely changed anything in this war. How many times has the pro-war mainstream media told us that a weapons system would be a “game changer” for Ukraine? Remember the Javelin missile? The Leopard tank? The HIMARS? And yet none of them have been able to turn the tide in Ukraine's favor, leaving the neocons and their media buddies to demand more.
The fact is that Russia is winning the war, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the best weapons systems from the US and NATO countries. New shipments of increasingly sophisticated weapons do not bring Ukraine battlefield victories; they only bring more dead Ukrainian soldiers and more profits to arms manufacturers.
Even the mainstream media, which has strongly supported the Ukraine war, is starting to report the huge losses and desperate situation in Ukraine. But while more and more people are starting to wake up to this disastrous proxy war, there is only one direction Washington knows when it comes to the war: forward. Just a week ago, the Pentagon announced a new $250 million arms package for Ukraine. No one believes this will reverse the progress Russia has steadily made on the battlefield, but it will bring further profits to U.S. arms manufacturers, the real power behind the U.S. ultra-interventionist foreign policy.
The unlikely duo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump Jr. put it aptly in a recent editorial in The Hill: “We can't get any closer to the crisis. For what? To 'weaken Russia'? To control Ukraine's mineral wealth? America's vital interests are not at stake. It would be insanity to risk nuclear conflict for the neoconservatives' fantasy of global 'total dominance'.”
They are right: it is insanity to risk our country and the future of our children and grandchildren for a war that has nothing to do with us and is not in the national interest of the United States. This certainly applies to the war in Ukraine, but also to the wars in the Middle East that the United States supports. When will this madness end? It is time for the people to speak up and demand change.
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas. This article originally appeared on the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and is reprinted here with permission.
