Ukraine is a proxy war of the globalists who did so little to prevent it

‘Strategic incompetence’: US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley oversaw the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Picture: AFP

We live in an age of contradictions, protected by a bodyguard of strategic incompetence. The evidence is all around us.

During the Covid pandemic, experts we trusted told us natural immunity no longer existed. For the right cause, burning, looting and rioting are peaceful. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet fly thousands of kilometres each year to a resort in Switzerland and tell the rest of us soon you will own nothing and will be happy eating bugs. And the war in Ukraine that cannot be questioned is about our freedom.

Sadly, for Ukraine, it is the knot between two ends of the rope of great-power politics. Like almost all great-power wars, the war in Ukraine is about resources and allies and the fear that others may control them. It is a proxy war of the globalists – those at the source of the West’s strategic incompetence, who did little to prevent this so-called war for democracy.

In his History of the Peloponnesian Wars, Greek general and historian Thucydides (5th century BC) observed an age of contradictions where “the regular meaning of words changed to fit the state of affairs”. A thoughtless act of aggression was regarded as courage, considering the future was cowardice and considering an issue from all sides meant one was unfit. Importantly, those with violent opinions could always be trusted, those who questioned became suspect. For globalists, war in Ukraine is for peace, and the fewer critical questions you ask the better it will be for you. Raising questions about Ukraine and empathising with the enemy means you are Vladimir Putin’s stooge; an enemy of democracy even.

During the Sri Lankan civil war, those suggesting negotiations were labelled “peace-mongers”. The globalists are bravely willing to fight for their cause down to the last Ukrainian soldier. To hell with Russia’s red line over Ukraine joining NATO.

US President Joe Biden and General Milley at the White House last year. Picture: AFP

Anyone who appreciates the concept of strategy knows it requires a narrative. A narrative controlled by those at the strategic level of a government’s ability to deliver power and security should be taken seriously. At the height of the Iraq War in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, a surreal discussion took place between a reporter and an aide to US president George W. Bush: “The aide said that guys like me (a reporter) were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’. Which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’ … ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore’ (he said) … ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will, we act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too. And that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ”

One of the best examples of the bodyguard of Western strategic incompetence is the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. Milley is the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces and principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defence. If there were a general to whom wars should not be left, it’s this one. He’s the guy worried about something called “white rage”. In January 2020, Milley said he’d give his Chinese counterpart a heads-up if the US was preparing to attack. Milley oversaw the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and in February last year said Ukraine would fall within days. Never mind; under AUKUS if stuff gets real with China over Taiwan, Milley will be there for Australia.

In March, Milley announced Russia had lost the war “strategically, operationally and tactically”. An incredibly stupid statement. Russia is a nuclear power, its borders have not been compromised and it retains about 15-18 per cent of the territory taken from Ukraine, including Crimea. And has now taken Bakhmut.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said there would be a “world war” if China provided arms to Russia. Now he is entertaining China as a potential peace broker. Hang on; if Russia has lost “strategically, tactically and operationally”, isn’t it over? Perhaps it’s unfair to pick on Milley, because this generation of Western strategic actors is responsible for single-handedly unifying Russia and China. Milley and those to whom he reports failed to give Ukraine the ability to inflict an invasion-stopping defeat. And President Joe Biden never gave Putin an ultimatum not to invade. Putin saw a weakness.

Volodymyr Zelensky listens to Pope Francis' peace envoy to Ukraine, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, left, during their meeting in Kyiv. Picture: AFP

During the Obama administration, then vice-president Biden was point man on Ukraine, where in 2014 a Western-backed coup unhinged president Viktor Yanukovych. After the coup, Ukrainian gas company Burisma found it was on the wrong side, so it put Hunter Biden on its board, allegedly at a cost of $US50,000 a month. One of Joe Biden’s first acts of his presidency was to remove the sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 (NS-2) pipeline. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said on January 27 last year “if Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, NS-2 will not move forward”. Wait, what? Never mind, that’s the old reality.

Why is this old reality so important, apart from how we got here? It’s not to reject the right of a country to defend itself with all its might. It’s that our future, our real freedoms, are in the hands of a bodyguard of strategic incompetents at one of the most precarious times since before World War II. Once big wars start, they are hard to stop. And no one is interested in stopping this one; just the opposite.

Jason Thomas teaches risk management at Swinburne University of Technology and is director of Frontier Assessments.