[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [marxmail] Anthony Cordesman on the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine

[C. G. Estabrook]

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> From: John Edmundson <johnedmundson4 at gmail.com>
> Date: December 5, 2022 at 11:24:52 PM CST
> To: marxmail at groups.io
> Subject: Re: [marxmail] Anthony Cordesman on the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine
> Reply-To: marxmail at groups.io
> 
> 
> I'm not in a US microsect; I'm not even in the US, but it seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that the question is not whether or not the US/NATO is waging a proxy war. Every time a major power bankrolls and/or supplies weapons to another country's war effort it's fighting a proxy war. That's what proxy war is - war by proxy.
> 
> So of course the US has used the tension, and subsequent armed conflict, in Ukraine to fight a proxy war. But it was begun when Russia annexed the Crimea and the Donbas regions. Does the US and NATO seek to use this to weaken Russia? Of course it does. But we're not in the 1960s or 70s, when, whatever your opinion of the USSR, there was a conflict between fundamentally different and mutually opposed systems. This is not the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, where, right or wrong, there was a movement that at least purported to be socialist, being 'aided' by that intervention. Now it's capitalist US/NATO vs capitalist Russia. There's no Ukrainian socialist movement begging for Russian aid, and to be sure, if there was, Putin wouldn't care a jot about it. So the stakes are different. And in all of this is a whole bunch of Ukrainians who are defending their country from invasion, and that actually matters.
> 
> Comradely,
> John
> 
>> On Tue, 6 Dec 2022, 14:22 Marv Gandall, <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Those on the list who recoil at the notion that the US is engaged in a proxy war with Russia either don’t appreciate or acknowledge that this view is not only widely held by most Marxists and others on the international left, but is shared by well-connected analysts across the political spectrum. For a recent example, see veteran US strategist Anthony Cordesman’s commentary on the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies entitled "United States Aid to Ukraine: An Investment Whose Benefits Greatly Exceed its Cost"
>> 
>> Cordesman, writing for an elite rather than a mass audience, doesn’t hesitate to describe the conflict as a US proxy war designed to weaken Russi, justifying the massive aid  extended to the Ukrainians before and after the Russian invasion.
>> 
>> "Focusing on the price tag of aid. instead of the value of what it buys", says Cordesman, "ignores the fact that the war in Ukraine has become the equivalent of a proxy war with Russia, and a war that can be fought without any U.S. military casualties..it ignores the fact that Russia is far poorer than the U.S. and its allies. It ignores the fact that Russia is already paying far more of its Gross National Product and economy to fight the war in the Ukraine than the U.S. and its partners, and that Russia has suffered massive losses of weapons, war reserves, and military personnel.
>> 
>> "Providing aid to Ukraine effectively has forced Russia to fight a proxy war in which both the U.S. and Europe could exploit the fact they have a massive strategic advantage in both defense spending and total economic resources.”
>> 
>> As Cordesman notes, the  proxy war was well underway before the invasion. "Ukraine only survived the initial Russian attack”, he writes, "because of the past flow of aid, extensive and detailed warnings from U.S., British, and other intelligence sources, and the early aid efforts of the U.S. and its partner nations...any U.S. failure to provide massive continuing aid after the Russian invasion began would have been the equivalent of a proxy war that the United States had decisively lost in spite of all its military strength.” He could also have added US pressure on the Zelensky government to abandon the Minsk Accords in favour of armed action against the pro-Russian Donbas separatists.
>> 
>> So long as Putin rejects a peace settlement on US terms, Cordesman concludes, “the worst case becomes a continuing the flow of aid in what will remain a proxy war, and one where the U.S. will continue to receive major strategic gains by weakening one of its two major threats. It will also be a struggle that will keep sending a clear message about U.S. resolve to China."
>> 
>> Full: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-aid-ukraine-investment-whose-benefits-greatly-exceed-its-cost
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
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