As Henry Kissinger said, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Ask Afghanistan, or South Vietnam, or South Korea for decades (and divided and traumatized still). Now you can ask Europe as well. Using the proxy war they provoked in Ukraine (start pushing Russian military into Mexico and see how the US reacts), the US is completely stripping Ukraine and de-industrializing Europe itself. It’s World War II again. Europe gets destroyed between the US and Russia, while countries in the South get mysteriously couped and destabilized. As Rocky Horror sang, “let’s do the time warp again.”

I won’t even get into the idea that Russia vis-à-vis Putin is pure evil, that’s just the latest advertising from arms dealers and if you’re fooled by the latest evil after the wreckage in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, and all the other people you were told to hate, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you. Let’s just follow the money.

The United States—while its own people are suffering—is shoveling money into the fiery furnace into its military industrial complex. The logic is actually pretty simple and they keep repeating it. Create some conflict thousands of miles away, get the corporate media to advertise that its some inherent threat to White Empire, and profit. You don’t even need to win the war. There’s actually more money in losing.

Adjusted for inflation, FY2023 looks like it’ll have the fourth-highest military budget since World War II. The only time military spending has been higher in real terms was the stretch between 2008–2011, when there were no fewer than 141,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Stephen Semmler)

Like the $2 trillion dollar scam in Afghanistan (the amount looted by corporate Bethesda warlords), this is all looting and pillaging disguised as aid.

All of this military ‘aid’ is really only aid to American arms dealers. It’s just death and debt to Ukraine. Those hapless people are trapped in a hopeless land-war with Russia, losing hideous amounts of men, and power to their entire country, not to mention their Democracy™ (Zelensky is banning political parties and attacking trade unions). Ukraine is losing people to migration, they’re advertising Ukrainian brides in the UK, and the countries entire infrastructure is being destroyed and the country divided. But the arms dealers don’t care. It’s a playground for them, and they’ve got an unlimited budget for their deadly toys. They even openly talk about it as a testing ground for weapons. Testing them on the body of Ukraine. With allies like this, who needs enemies.

At the same time, the pipeline connecting Russia to Europe has been mysteriously blown up. Who done it? Cui bono? Who benefits? Again, follow the money, not whatever smokescreen the western media (privatized propaganda, direct from oligarch owners) puts up. American arms dealers profit from the death of Ukraine and American fossil fuel (LNG) profit from the destruction of Europe. It’s a win-win, unless you’re in either of these places.

Sanctions on Russia were supposed to hinder its war-making effort (we’re reducing the Ruble to rubble, Joe Biden crowed), but they don’t (and can’t as Seshadri Kumar deeply gets into). All they do is hurt Europe, while Russia just sells LNG to other countries, who resell it to Europe at higher prices.Meanwhile American producers have a literal captive market in Europe. They’re effectively in a hostage situation, and the hostage taker is their supposed ally, using the big-bad Putin to justify doing their worst. American foreign policy is broadly a Mafia protection racket. Nice country, shame if something should happen to it. They come in with their military bases to ‘protect’ you but all they’re doing is protecting profits. Your country and your people get screwed.

As Gerald Haug, the President of the German National Academy of Sciences, said in October 2022 (via Seshadri Kumar again, read him).

“I’m very worried that if we don’t act now, we’ll lose entire industrial sectors — especially in the raw materials industry,” warned the Leopoldina President. “That would mean a much higher dependency on Asia and especially China.” For example, outsourcing the chemical industry completely from Germany and Europe would be a “fundamental mistake” — especially in view of the goal of climate neutrality by 2045.

While Angela’s Merkel’s milquetoast replacement as leader of Germany is calling for negotiations, nobody listens to him. Germany is an occupied colony of America (has been since WWII), with no meaningful control over military or financial affairs. As long as America is profiting from the war in Ukraine, the profits will continue, regardless of whether Germany sheds industry or its people go cold. What does America care? German industrial giants will just move to America. It’s win-lose. Again via Kumar:

To combat those exorbitant European gas prices, BASF has already cut ammonia production at Ludwigshafen and another Verbund site in Antwerp, Belgium, and is now relying more on ammonia production in Freeport, Texas, where gas is much cheaper. Its complexes in the U.S., Malaysia, and China may help the company weather this crisis to an extent, but Mayer noted that it’s not just BASF that’s in trouble. “Energy-intensive businesses will partly or fully be closed down in Germany in particular,” he said, “but all across Europe there will be a capacity reduction.”

Nobody profits from a land-war with Russia, unless of course your land is thousand of miles away, you have no business there (both literally and figuratively) and you can just goose your economy over the destruction of Europe. This was the American development model after World War II and they’re just repeating it. They’re profiting from the destruction of Europe, again. History repeats, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

The other point is that Europe was relying on Russian natural gas in order to transition to renewables. Now that’s in the shitter, they’re scrounging around for fossil fuels from anywhere, and opening new coal planets. Is temporary control of land in Ukraine worth destroying the atmosphere forever. If it makes money, sure.

Note that in this article I haven’t got into who’s right or wrong in Ukraine and I’m not laboriously rebutting arguments about how evil Russia is. It’s irrelevant. Don’t follow the media, follow the money. As the dialogue in The Departed goes:

Ellerby (good cop, insomuch as that’s possible):
Yeah, but cui bono? Who benefits?

Colin Sullivan (bad cop):
Cui gives a sh*t? It’s got a f***in’ bow on it.

Ellerby:
I think you are a cop, my son.
[he dunks his face into the bowl of ice water]

These two cops are part of a corrupt system enmeshed with the supposed criminals and all the arrests are really just for show. It’s the same thing with the White Empire’s war machine. America made its bones over the carcass of Europe in World War II and that’s all they know. They have never drawn down since. They’ve been dropping expensive bombs on poor brown people for decades and this is a wet dream for them, land war with Russia. What the fuck do they care about the history of how that goes? It’s not their land. They make even more money by losing, which is how it’s going. Certainly for Europe, and absolutely for Ukraine.

What else could they do? Fucking nothing. In all instances, nothing is the best America could do. America has no place in conflicts thousands of miles away, everywhere they go they make things worse. People get fooled by the details of the latest conflict, the latest villain, but that’s all just advertising carried by their corporate media. Forget the dick pills and car insurance sold between the TV news, the news itself is marketing for arms dealers. They sell you some evil (once Saddam, now Putin), and some reason why your money needs to go for that, even while you can’t get food on the table. And too many people, including far too many ‘liberals’ follow the latest moralizing bullshit, and march other people into war. Quite sanctimoniously. The last war was always wrong and regrettable, but this war? This war is always good.

So again, forget the details of this particular devastation. Follow the money, and follow the history. The White Empire is at war again and while it’s bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe, and catastrophic for the human climate, it’s good for imperial profits. And that’s all soul of White Empire is. Follow the money, strip away the moralizing marketing, and you’ll get to the black holeat its core. Sucking in lives, sucking in resources, sucking in entire regions and atmospheres into its relentless military-industrial maw. And what’s the usual response to this, do the simple question cui bono?

Cui gives a shit. To American arms dealers and fossil fuel dealers, it’s got a fucking bow on it. That’s all you need to know.

Read Seshadri, much detail: The Coming European Economic Apocalypse