My liberal friends and family are exited about the Biden administration’s domestic policies: the $1400 checks; the assistance to children; potential infrastructure spending; and progressive cabinet picks. The liberal corporate media, exemplified by the New York Times, probably has something to do with it. For example, the ridiculous accolades about the Biden administration’s pathetic, paltry relief package demonstrates how the corporate media is in the bag for the new administration after their horror at Trump.

There is little mention, however, of Biden’s foreign policies.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration appears to be moving towards war in a number of areas. Not war, where the US commits troops–silly. Those days are over thanks to the ham-fisted efforts of the Bush neocons: the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Now the US wages war via proxy with some special-forces training super-sauce, covert weapons provision and support.

I’ve discussed it before but my method to make sense of our world is to watch the movements of money, resources, weapons, and ignore all the corporate media narrative.

Following that logic, it sure looks like the US is determined to continue a Cold War with Russia.

They’re hardly being shy about it.

A new report from the US National Intelligence Council assesses that Russia attempted to meddle, once again, in our sacred elections. “We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US,” the report informs us. “The Biden admin is expected to announce sanctions related to election interference as soon as next week,” sources say.

To no ones surprise, this completely unevidenced narrative is being used to justify support for increased “defense” spending, and new Cold War escalations. Going further, I believe that this report is a continuation of Russia-gate despite the failure of the three-year Mueller investigation to find a scrap of evidence. Also, to no ones surprise, the corporate media all rushed to treat it as gospel: no questioning of it, no skepticism, no demands to see evidence for it, not even any acknowledgement that no evidence was provided. They just instantly enshrined claims from US intelligence agencies as Truth. 

One of the features of this new and improved Cold War is to provoke multiple crisises in the former Soviet republics. From the Balkans to Georgia to Armenia to Belarus, well, you get the picture.

Yet nowhere is the potential for violence greater than in the Ukraine. Several Russia watchers – Patrick Armstrong, Andrei Martyanov and Andrei Raevsky–are warning of a renewed attack by the government of Ukraine on its eastern Donbass region. The Donbass separated in 2014 after the U.S. driven coup in Kiev installed an anti-Russian government which then waged a war on its ethnic Russian east.

To make sense of this it’s crucial to remember that Washington’s role in the ouster of the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was democratically elected, caused Russia to annex Crimea, rather than the oft repeated canard about the Russians “invading”. The US fully supported the opposition in Ukraine during demonstrations in 2013 and 2014, an opposition that even had a neo-nazi element. They were hardly shy about it. A few weeks before Yanukovych was forced out, a recording of a phone call between then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, who was working in the State Department at the time, was leaked and released on YouTube.  In the now-infamous phone call, Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should replace the government of Yanukovych.

Like the ethnic Russians in Crimea, the ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region vehemently rejected the post-coup government in Kyiv, sparking the war that has killed tens of thousands. The context of US involvement in the coup that sparked these events is crucial, especially when discussing US foreign policy in the years since the dissolution of the USSR with the maniacal focus on color revolutions and regime change. There’s an argument to be made that neither the annexation of Crimea nor the war in the Donbas would have happened the way it did if not for US intervention.

Since the coup, the Ukrainian military has received a great deal of assistance from the US, both in terms of equipment/money and in terms of training. And now, most ominously, there are clear signs that the Ukrainian military is moving heavy forces towards the line of contact in the Donbas.

What would happen if the Ukrainians restart the conflict and attack? I’ve come to believe that the real point of a Ukrainian attack on the Donbass would not be reconquer the region, but to force Russia to openly and, therefore, undeniably intervene. This is the Biden administration’s unspoken objective and has been a Neocon wet dream since 2014 and it is still their ultimate endgame. 

Thus nothing will happen on the frontline without the consent or even encouragement from Washington DC. The Biden administration is filled with the same delusional people who managed the 2014 coup in Kiev. They may believe that the NATO training the Ukrainian army received and the weapons the U.S. delivered are sufficient to defeat the separatist. But the state of the Ukrainian military is worse than one might think and the separatist will have Russia’s full backing. There is no question who would win in such a fight.

Perhaps updating Edwin Starr’s classic R&B hit to War (Who is it good for?) would help provide a clue as to why the US seems determined to accelerate a new Cold War that threatens to turn hot at any time. The Military/Industrial/Complex (MIC), with its interlocking nodes in every congressional district, spurred on by the financial aristocracy on Wall Street, is the ultimate beneficiary of any such conflict, with trillions of dollars at stake. While a continuation of the Cold War with Russia does nothing for the average American, for the MIC–war is good for them. Very good. As the saying goes–there’s gold-in-them-thar-hills.

The MIC depends on influential think-tanks for its ideological justification and legitimacy, and a great representation of the MIC’s ideology would be the Atlantic Council. The think tank receives contributions from the top US weapons makers, including Raytheon, General Atomics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The Atlantic Council is also funded by NATO, an alliance that has an interest in keeping tensions high and presenting Russia’s annexation of Crimea as an unprovoked “invasion.”

Red and blue partisans are equally convinced that their team is on the side of the angels, while the other team is the devil incarnate. However, observing our bipartisan foreign policy suggests that the both have a passing familiarity with Satan.

How surprising.