They do not want Ukraine to start ww3, they have been consistently careful about avoiding giving Ukraine enough to actually do anything in Russian territory. They are fully aware that the Ukrainian state does not have full control of its military, with factions militias and groups all willing to do their own thing. As such they have avoided giving them anything they think could take the war out of Ukraine and into other territories.

The point is to keep the war within the borders of Ukraine. Not to expand it into the borders of Russia as well. If the war expanded properly into the borders of Russia nukes would enter the picture.

I am going to go against a lot of people and say this: it’s always about destabilizing Europe, which is a prerequisite for their final confrontation against China.

I recently watched the Chinese economist Wen Tiejun’s assessment about the war in Ukraine (who has similar views to Michael Hudson’s): if the early 20th century conflicts in Europe (WWI and WWII, which was just the continuation of WWI) was an inter-imperialist war between industrial capitalist powers, then the early 21st century conflicts in Europe is an inter-imperialist war between financial capitalist powers. All this is to set the stage for the final confrontation between finance capital (amassed under the US) vs industrial capital (consolidated under China).

The US doesn’t really care about Russia (although destroying it is nice), as Russia’s economy is far too weak to be any major player in the game other than as raw resource supplier. What the US fears to death, though, is the EU alignment with Russia, which would then set the stage for EU integration with China.

So, the war in Ukraine is not really about Ukraine or Russia, ironically. The US doesn’t care about NATO tanks blown up in Ukraine, or a few F-16s getting shot down. Instead, it’s to sever whatever links left between the EU and Russia, and to ensure that European capital flows to the US sphere, and not towards the other direction.

To understand why this is has to happen, we have to go back to the 2009 financial crisis that dealt a serious blow to the US financial sector.

The EU was established in 1993 in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, and the eurozone followed soon after in 1999. European financial capitalists had been able to exploit and cannibalize the vast amount of public assets in the newly collapsed post-USSR states, and through which amassed a powerful financial bloc that poses a threat to the dollar regime. (The EU and eurozone are also replete with their own contradictions and crises, but we’re not going into that today, simply that the euro has for the most part maintained a 30% strength over the dollar exchange rate).

After experiencing a major setback after the 2009 financial crisis, the US realized that it has to depress the growth of European financial capital. Nord Stream 1 came online in 2011, endowing Europe with cheap energy supply that greatly accelerated their post-GFC economic recovery. Thus, the Maidan coup in 2013 was exploited by the US and the sanctions against Russia in 2014 were meant to deal a blow against EU-Russia relations. The US also spoiled the second EU-Russia pipeline project (South Stream) that was meant to go to southern Europe (Russian gas now goes to Turkey instead).

Then Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021, and the US kept finding ways to block its certification process, and the opening of the pipeline was delayed indefinitely when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and then crippled permanently when it was sabotaged in September 2022.

As you can see, the net effects of the war in Ukraine is really the destabilization of Europe, and its financial capital outflow towards the US. Euro was weakened to around parity with the dollar, though it has regained to like 7% stronger than the dollar now, still far from its previous 30% strength against the dollar. Their industries have now fled the region, some to the US (only to be cannibalized by the financial raiders), and some toward the East.

This is also why European neoliberals are so ready to induce self-inflicted wounds against their own economies: the strength of US finance capital takes precedence to European industrial capital. If the US financial sector needs help to fight against China, then Europe is willing to sacrifice themselves if that means the US gets to devour their finance capital.

And we are really getting to the point where the vast majority of the global financial capital has now been consolidated under the US, while industrial capital are amassing towards the BRICS bloc (although it really is just China, as the rest of the BRICS+ countries are still too weak economically).

The heightened contradictions of capitalism have now set the stage for the final confrontation between the two opposing systems: financial capitalism vs industrial capitalism. Can finance capitalism defeat industrial capitalism simply through weaponizing finance and printing currency? Can industrial capitalism resist against the omnipresent, all-pervasive threat of the dollar regime?

The reasoning NAFO types engage in is that western weapons are exceptional and remarkable such that only a small number of them can counter much larger Russian forces.

“Wunderwaffen” is the term for this reasoning.

The more cynical view, our side of things basically, is that the west is only providing enough to keep Ukraine in the fight but not enough to win because the west benefits more from this conflict dragging out than it benefits from any peace settlement.

Ukrainian victory is not plausible without western forces actually deploying, and since the west is not actually willing to bleed for Ukraine, the objective of the west is to prolong this conflict for as long as possible in order to make Russia bleed as much as possible.

The mask slips pretty frequently as US senators or EU presidents boast about how “cheap” this war is because “it’s not US soldiers dying.”

The concept is known as a bleeding sore. The west wants to engage Russia in as expensive a conflict as possible in order to force Russia to expend blood and treasure in Ukraine, with the rationale being this makes Russia weaker in the medium term future.

Secondarily and specifically for the benefit of the USA, it forced europe to cut economic ties with Russia and broke apart the growing links between Germany and Russia which ensures Europe remains firmly under US vassalage. The loss of very cheap energy imports from Russia also dramatically undermines European manufacturing which rather directly benefits US manufacturing since the US is also pushing the EU into a trade war with China.

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In some places I’ve been in, the liberal rationale is that the governments are cowards for not providing more arms to Ukraine and should be giving at least double what’s already given, and that - at least in the US - they’re being blocked by the “pro-Putin” GOP from sending more.

It’s purely nonsensical.

The people actually making decisions have their reasons but as for the public-facing message there is no logic. Liberals just hear that “Ukraine is getting [latest Wunderwaffe fad]” and being idealists rather than materialists they pay no attention to the actual numbers and genuinely believe that ten western tanks made with magic Aryan technology can easily defeat a hundred Russian tanks built with laughably inferior Slavic orc technology. It’s the perfect marriage of bazinga-brain and white supremacy.

Combination of things I think the biggest one is training rate, we saw stuff like MLAWs and Javelins go first because they are easy to train a lot of people on, just grab any infantry person, which is the largest pool of people, and instruct them how to use it, after that you had artillery and rocket systems since those two are fairly easy to train people on training tank crews is considerably harder which is why it took that long and so is training pilots and their crews. If you have to send 20 pilots to learn how to fly a jet that is 20 pilots you don’t have that can maintain air superiority.

So after sending all those first systems out they sent a ton of material hoping that it’d be enough to just upgrade the infantry to western standards. After that you had certain absolute failures like the artillery and rocket pieces they’ve sent over that are just too heavy too expensive and too gutted to function properly. Now they have to keep on sending stuff but they can’t do this because their stockpiles are gone so they’ll get another new thing out of storage hoping that ‘this weapon will change the tide of the war’. They’ve sent a ton of stuff over and they are kind of running dry which is why they have to do the ‘bad optics’ stuff like sending over clustermines because they are out of shells and rockets and sending depleted uranium rounds.

This isn’t exactly the mainstream opinion I don’t think, but I’ll tell you what Oberst Reisner thinks. He’s an analyst and now social media sensation from the Austrian military. He’s got some “superior NATO tactics” brainworms and at least one far-out take, but also generally better analysis than other “experts” touring German media, so there’s that. He thinks this:

The US does not want to escalate too much (being the wise and measured dudes that they are), so they’re providing Ukraine with just enough capabilities to match the Russians. The US wants to convince Russia that they cannot win and the same time avoid WW3, by providing Ukraine with just enough stuff to cause a stalemate whenever the Ukrainians fall behind in some area.

I don’t think that’s correct. While there is certainly some escalation management going on, sending weapon systems is really hard. So I think it’s either the generals saying sending all that stuff is pointless or counterproductive, and then the politicians get pressured into sending it anyway. Or some of it probably just took a while to get ready.

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