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As Biden warns of 'Armageddon,' more off-

ramps explode
While President Biden claims that he's pondering an "off-
ramp" for Russia, the White House is escalating the proxy war
at every pass.
Aaron Maté
Oct 9

SAVE
At a Manhattan fundraiser, President Joe Biden shared with Democratic
donors that, from his vantage point, the world faces “the prospect of
Armageddon” for the first time “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile
Crisis.”

Vladimir Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical
nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his military,
you might say, is significantly underperforming,” Biden added.

The Commander-in-Chief’s comments inevitably stoked an already elevated

global panic over a Ukraine proxy war that pits the world’s top nuclear
powers on opposing sides. In US media, there was virtually no
acknowledgement that Biden’s characterization of how Putin “talks” was
false. Although Putin has made bellicose comments, he has never
threatened the “use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical
weapons,” as Biden claimed.

Biden’s alarmism overshadowed what could be taken as encouraging news.

For the first time, the US president suggested that his administration is as
least pondering a diplomatic path that could bring the Ukraine conflict to an
end.

 “We’re trying to figure out: What is Putin’s off-ramp?,” Biden said. “Where
does he get off? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself
in a position that he does not — not only lose face, but lose significant
power within Russia?”

Biden’s remarks offer a sharp contrast to his declaration in March that

Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” On the other hand, there is no
indication that US policy has undergone any significant change. If anything,
the recent actions of the White House and its client government in Kiev are
blowing up off-ramps at every pass.

“White House and military leaders are transitioning to a sustainable model

Kyiv can depend on for an open-ended war with Russia,” the New York
Times reports. That sustainable warfare will be “roughly modeled on U.S.
train-and-assist efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades,”
– a model that, while highly sustainable for weapons contractors, was the
opposite for the nations subjected to it. 

The “open-ended war with Russia” will be waged with a $12.3 billion
package newly approved by Congress, bringing the total US commitment so
far to more than $66 billion. With that most recent vote, the Times notes,
“Congress has now committed more military aid to Ukraine than it has to
any country in a single year since the Vietnam War, reflecting a remarkable
bipartisan consensus in favor of pouring huge amounts of American
resources into the fight.”

As the audacious truck-bombing of the Kerch Strait bridge shows, Ukraine

is bringing the fight to Crimea, home to Russia’s most important naval base.
In June, a Ukrainian commander identified the Kerch bridge as a “number
one target,” and a Ukrainian official has now taken credit for Saturday’s
successful operation. Days earlier, senior Pentagon official Laura Cooper
signaled that the US has given Ukraine the green light to use US weaponry
there. “We think they can reach the vast majority of targets, including
Crimea,” Cooper said. “And just to be clear, Crimea is Ukraine.”
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is explicitly rejecting
any off-ramp for Putin. Zelensky greeted Russia’s annexation of four
Ukrainian regions with an application for fast-tracked NATO membership.
When that was swiftly rejected, Zelensky signed a decree ruling out peace
talks with Moscow so long as Putin is in power. Not content with calling for
regime change, Zelensky followed that up with his most direct plea for
World War III to date, urging NATO to launch “preemptive strikes” inside
Russia. (After an uproar, a spokesperson claimed that Zelensky meant
preemptive sanctions.)

Meanwhile, the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines has ensured, for now,
that NATO members have no off-ramp from the proxy war coalition – nor, it
seems, from the economic crises that they face as a result.

When he greeted the Nord Stream sabotage as a “tremendous strategic

opportunity,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged some
pitfalls.

Cut off from their traditional cheap Russian gas supply, “European allies,”
Blinken said, will now “prepare for a difficult winter ahead.” To address that
difficulty, he vowed, “we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to
make sure that the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in
our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”

But the United States’ European allies are quickly learning that there are
limits on what the US can “possibly” do for them...
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