The 3 Contending Fascist American Views of Ukraine’s War

Eric Zuesse

In America, the only mainstream views of the war in Ukraine are fascist, but that breaks down into different types of fascism. The fascists who accept that they are fascists are at least honest about themselves in this regard, but most are not so honest, and the analysis here will discuss these — less honest and more mainstream — American fascists. 

The main view that America’s super-rich hold regarding the war in Ukraine has been expressed the most fully by the extremely successful conglomerate entrepreneur and local-newspaper publisher and ideological libertarian Paul Belogour, in one of his Vermont newspapers, the Brattleboro Reformer, under the headline, “War is the answer”, which he published 22 February 2022, only two days before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th (which is excerpted here):

The war between Russia and Ukraine can solve many pressing issues for the U.S. There are few options for countries to compete in the global economic and political arenas and stay relevant. One way is to be the best at everything, that is to keep innovating, evolving technologically, growing the internal market, keep exporting goods and services to the rest of the world, while simultaneously delivering a political message of economic and military strength.

The other way is to make sure all other countries fail in all the above, leaving one by default as a winner. The rampant inflation, failure in Afghanistan, astronomical rise of the national debt, declining size of the economy, diminishing political and military influence and a potential threat to the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency can all be solved for the U.S. in a single shot, the shot between Ukraine’s and Russia’s militaries.

The U.S. rose to the status of superpower right after World War II when the rest of the developed world was in ruins, and the U.S. by default became the only bright spot. There is a chance that the war between Russia and Ukraine can help the U.S. to make this happen again. …

Let’s start with Europe. The war conflict in the fringes of Europe will make the region depend on U.S. natural gas and oil supplies, as Europe will be cut off from Russian shipments. This is a good thing for the U.S. liquified natural gas and oil producers, who cannot compete with the Russians until that moment. The war and the sanctions will correct this in an instant. The European economies that were hit hard by the pandemic would have no choice but to turn to the U.S. for economic and military help, as the conflict will make depressed nations even weaker. This is good news for the U.S. military industrial complex as NATO will ask more military hardware to protect Europe from the Russians. The flood of millions of refugees from Ukraine will put a tremendous stress on the already weakened EU economy, prompting the EU to ask for the U.S. assistance.

Now, let’s not forget about the Russians. In the past 20 years, Russia has gone from a failed state with the dilapidated economy and military left from the Soviet times to a country where not a single global issue can be solved without involving Russia. Putin and Russia are on everybody’s radar. Russia has rebuilt its economy, modernized its military and become a smaller but potent superpower again. Russia tampered with the U.S. elections and neither the republicans nor democrats five years later can forget or stop talking about it. Russia is a constant perceived threat to Europe, especially to the former Eastern Bloc countries.

The Russian gas, oil, wheat and many other agricultural products being exported to Europe, China and many other countries, [are] directly competing with U.S. producers. Russia, the country with the largest land mass, roughly two times the size of the U.S. with unlimited natural resources, has become a player in the global market. The increased economic, monetary, political and military cooperation between Russia and China is one of the major threats to the U.S. global domination. The war between Ukraine and Russia will roll back most of those achievements in an instant. …

With the war in Europe, there will be a dramatic decrease in demand for Chinese-made goods. Europeans would need to choose between heating their houses, putting food on a table or buying Chinese consumer goods. The war in Europe will threaten the largest and most ambitious Chinese project, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The Chinese government is spending close to $1 trillion while attempting to link China by building connecting railroads and roads through Central Asia, parts of Middle East and Russia, to deliver Chinese goods to Europe in days and weeks rather than months. With the war in Europe and sanctions over Russia, the Europeans will make sure that not a single train from China crosses the Russian territory and enters the EU, only adding to the pain of Chinese manufacturers.

All in all, the war in Europe is the answer to many pressing issues of Biden’s administration, as well as administrations before and after Biden. The war in Europe will leave the U.S. to be the only superpower by default again.

That is a superb zero-sum-game (which is a core aspect of fascism) statement about international relations; or, as the Rhodesists (England’s version of their hegemoniacal racist-fascism) call it, “The Great Game.” It is an endorsement, in other words, of imperialism (or, as the Rhodesists present it, it’s even beyond mere imperialism, to all-encompassing global empire or “hegemony” over the entire world: an all-encompassing global colonial dictatorship over the world’s nations — an all-encompassing empire — replacing and annihilating Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan for the U.N. to become the global federal democracy of all nations, which is no imperialism at all).

On 7 April 2022, a Boston Globe columnist, Kevin Cullen, headlined “In landlocked Vermont, an ambitious flatlander makes waves: Paul Belogour, a native of Belarus, made millions in currency trading and software and is now spreading his wealth around southern Vermont, along with ideas that make some locals uneasy.” He wrote: 

Belogour’s take on an impending war seemed to confirm the worst fears some in Vermont have about him. Belogour scoffs at such talk, noting he was writing specifically about the economic and political ramifications of war, not the hardship it causes. … In a state that sends Bernie Sanders to the Senate, his unabashed embrace of capitalism creates a narrative he can’t counteract.

That brings us to the two contending U.S. liberal (or pro-empire but hypocritical about that) political views, regarding the war in Ukraine: 

U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, stated his case regarding what America’s policy should be toward the war in Ukraine, in a debate on the Senate floor on 10 February 1022, which was 34 days after Biden and NATO finally and derisively rejected Russia’s demand for Ukraine — the nation with the nearest-of-all borders to Moscow, just 353 miles away — to be prohibited to enter into America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO, prohibited on the same basis that in 1962 U.S. President JFK rejected the Soviet Union’s placing its missiles in Cuba 1131 miles away from Washington DC.

Sanders’s opponent in that debate was U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, who openly supported America’s, and Ukraine’s, right to place America’s missiles as close to Moscow as they want. Here are highlights of that debate, between these two liberal American fascists:

SANDERS: Now, I know it is not very popular or politically correct, I guess, in Washington, to consider the perspectives of our adversaries, but … when Ukraine became independent after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russian leaders made clear their concerns about the prospect of former Soviet states becoming part of NATO and positioning hostile military forces along Russia’s border. U.S. officials recognized these concerns as legitimate at the time. One of those officials was William Perry, who served as Defense Secretary under President Bill Clinton. In a 2017 interview, Perry said:

       ‘In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame.’

  Further:

       ‘Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia.’

  That is former Secretary of State William Perry.

  Another U.S. official who acknowledged these concerns is former U.S. Diplomat Bill Burns, who is now head of the CIA in the Biden administration. In his memoir, Burns quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1995. Hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.

  Over 10 years later, in 2008, Burns wrote in a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

       ‘Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players. I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.’

  So, again, these concerns were not just invented yesterday by Putin out of thin air. Clearly, invasion by Russia is not an answer, neither is intransigence by NATO. …

  Vladimir Putin may be a liar and a demagogue, but it is hypocritical for the United States to insist that we as a nation do not accept the principle of spheres of influence. For the last 200 years, our country has operated under the Monroe Doctrine, embracing the principle that as the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, the United States has the right — according to the United States — to intervene against any country that might threaten our alleged interests. That is U.S. policy. And under this doctrine, the United States has undermined and overthrown at least a dozen countries throughout Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

  As many might recall, in 1962, we came to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Now, why was that? Why did we almost come to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union?

  Well, we did that in response to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from our shore, and the Kennedy administration saw that as an unacceptable threat to national security. We said it is unacceptable for a hostile country to have a significant military presence 90 miles away from our shore. …

DURBIN: Where I think we disagree, Senator, is on this whole question of sphere of influence. I am afraid that that suggestion is the green light for Vladimir Putin. If you will concede that he is somehow entitled because of the size of his country to reclaim Soviet Republics or to move into other theaters, I am sorry, but I have to part company with you at that point. … If you are saying that in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, to protect ourselves in this hemisphere we have done things which we are not proud of today, interfering with the sovereignty of nations — the term ‘banana republic’ emerged from that Monroe Doctrine. And what happened in many of these countries is that they became vassals of the U.S. economy, and I don’t say that with any pride. We wouldn’t want to welcome that to happen in Europe, would we, I mean, Putin invading some sphere of influence and the sovereignty of other nations?

SANDERS. No, we would not. But my point is, the Monroe Doctrine remains in existence today. It is not just history. …

There is no disagreement that if Putin were to commit the horrible, horrible blunder of invading Ukraine, count me in as somebody who will go as far as we can to make sure there are real consequences against the oligarchs and that policy. … 

DURBIN. I would only disagree in this respect: I believe Ukraine has been a victim of Russian aggression for a long period of time. The leader Yanukovych who was deposed in Ukraine when the Maidan demonstrations took place was clearly a servant and vassal of Moscow. … To suggest the notion that this is somehow within Putin’s sphere of influence is to rationalize Putin’s conduct, to forgive his conduct. And I am not about to do that. I don’t think we should. …

SANDERS: I am strongly supportive of major, major, major consequences if Putin invades Ukraine, and we have got to do everything we can to protect Ukrainian sovereignty.

In other words: Sanders spouts the same lies as Durbin does, that neutral Ukraine before 2014 was instead a “vassal” of Russia, and that Russia invaded it without provocation, and that there was no U.S. coup that captured Ukraine in February 2014 but instead a democratic revolution there, and that the Monroe Doctrine was imperialistic instead of anti-imperialistic (which it was — against imperialism) and must be enforced by America as an American right to foreign empire, and that Vladimir Putin has been representing the interests of Russia’s oligarchs instead of the basic national-security interests of the residents in Russia, and that “Putin may be a liar and a demagogue, but …,” and that whereas the U.S. had a right to prohibit Soviet missiles 1131 miles from DC in 1962, Russia has no right to prohibit U.S. missiles 353 miles from Moscow in 2022.

Both of those contending liberal Senate debaters were adhering to the Goebbels-Hitler Big-Lies technique, of fooling their national public, and fooling any foreign suckers as well. 

The only substantive difference between, on the one hand, the liberal Senators, and, on the other, the super-rich libertarian investor, Paul Belogour, then, is that whereas the liberal politicians are serving the interests of the super-rich, Belogour was instead stating and defending (and with remarkable clarity) the interests of the super-rich. That’s the difference between liberals and libertarians. So: instead of there being “3 Contending Fascist American Views of Ukraine’s War,” there are really just two: libertarian versus liberal — but, since Sanders calls himself a “progressive” instead of a “liberal,” he is aiming to attract voters who are liberal but think themselves to be, instead, progressive. All of the constant lying by fascists is directed to make suckers of different types of fools. The libertarians are simply more honest about it.

Another interesting aspect of the liberal Senators’ view is that (though both caucus as Democrats) it entirely ignores the pre-1945 history of the Democratic Party itself, especially FDR’s 12 years as President, in which imperialism, of ANY sort, was anathema. In fact, not only did FDR turn against Mussolini when Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935 to declare it as being a colony, but, in conversation with Churchill on 10 August 1941, when they were already discussing their respective visions for the post-WW-II world, FDR went rabid against Churchill on imperialism and insisted that all empires must be abolished. That’s when FDR first formed his goal of a U.N. replacing those international dictatorships, with a democratic international global federal government that will set and enforce all international laws. As Sumner Welles, in his 1946 book, Where Are We Heading?, made clear on its page 5, he and FDR were already planning, on 11 August 1941, how much more extensive and powerful than the League of Nations the future U.N. (which didn’t yet have any proposed name) must be. (Churchill was already planning instead for what became NATO, so that a combined UK/U.S. empire would control the whole world.) Whereas FDR was rabidly against all imperialism, Truman and almost all of his successors have been, and are, imperialistic fascists, just as hegemoniacal as was Hitler, only liberal, not conservative like Hitler was. FDR and Lincoln were the only two progressive American Presidents. Ever since Truman (who castrated FDR’s U.N.), America has been at its worst, and gets worse still. The progressive tradition in America got killed during the Presidency of Truman, who privately despised FDR. Democrats ignore the wrenching change that Truman brought to their own Party, because the billionaires who fund the Party want it not to be made known to the public. And in 1944, the Party’s billionaires had forced FDR to accept Truman as his running-mate. That appointment turned out to have been tragic. It powerfully shaped today’s world.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.