The talk of sending troops to Ukraine is yet another cynical manipulation by us imperialism

I regularly watch the Duran and appreciate the perspectives offered by its hosts but I totally disagree with Mercouris and Christoforou’s analysis here. Macron and Cameron are a pair of clowns who think they are playing “hardball” with the Russians by making all these threats when they know damn well that neither the British or the French armed forces would last a week. Macron may be delusional but Cameron is a cynic, not a lunatic. They think that by making these threats that it’ll force the Russians to agree to the new scheme they’ve got cooked up. That new scheme is the “genius” idea that they are somehow going to get back to the position that was almost agreed in Istanbul two years ago. This is of course ridiculous and won’t happen. We must keep in mind what the fall back option for the US imperialists actually is, and that’s to keep the Zelensky regime in place and fighting for as long as possible.

Let us think about this more carefully for a moment. The Kiev regime is in a deep crisis due to losses at the front and divisions within the US regarding the supply of more financing. What keeps Zelensky in place is his ability to appear as if he and Yermak are the “geniuses” who can secure the unlimited backing of the NATO block. If they lose that then they may find their positions under threat. If you get a coup in Kiev then this whole thing can unravel very quickly. So what is the game here? Cameron and Macron are trying to shore up Zelensky by dangling the possibility of a new charge of the light brigade. They are also trying to force the issue in the US congress to get more funding past the opposition of the petit bourgeois nationalist wing of the republican party. This is a gambit they are trying here to keep the Kiev regime in the fight. If they get the money through congress then that will keep the wolves from Bankovas door for a few more weeks.

Some may make the comparison with the summer of 1914 and the drift to war that happened back then. Historical comparisons can illuminate a situation but if you rely too heavily on them they can blind you. Britain and France in 1914 were already on the decline but were still incredibly powerful countries on the economic and the military side of things and in the background stood US imperialism in its early days which was becoming a far greater industrial power than both of them. Even then though the first world war led to the near collapse of Britain and France and would have done so without the loans and arms provided by the US. Now we have two rotted, hollowed out imperial powers with very little industrial capacity to support even a month long intense battle with the Russian armed forces. It is not just that they don’t have the capacity to replace the war materiel lost but that they cannot build this up because they lack the expertise to rebuild the relevant industries. That’s why they were talking about trying to pause the war for five years so they could build themselves up again.

What is being done here is another exercise of brutal cynicism designed to keep the Kiev regime alive. It’s a game that the US imperialists are fully involved in but that they are letting the French and British puppets do the dancing for them. The only true aim is to keep the Ukrainians fighting and dying in the hope that this will somehow “exhaust” the Russians. The Russians understand this very well and they will continue to do exactly what they have been doing which is to slowly and relentlessly destroy Ukrainian (and by extension NATO) fighting capacity. Those expecting one big bang to finish off the Kiev regime will be disappointed as the Russians have no need to change things too dramatically barring the sudden collapse of the Kiev regime. It is this latter factor that would perhaps provoke a scramble for Ukraine and where the risk of actual intervention would be highest.

Imperialism has never been more of a paper tiger than today. It’s industry has been hollowed out, it’s neo-colonial empires are rebelling against them and it’s political institutions are now widely despised domestically. It’s ability to command the support of the masses in the likes of France and Britain has withered away. None of this means that the ruling class is not going to lash out but the danger is not that they are going to try and march on Kiev. Before they carry out any such manoeuvre they would need to secure their domestic position and put themselves in a position where they could realistically reindustrialise. This makes the risk of fascism a very real one but, again, these are not the ruling class that existed in the 1930s when they were much more powerful. A dying beast is indeed a danger but the primary danger posed by the British and French ruling class in the next few years is not external but internal. They can’t wage a war on Russia and they know it but they will try to wage a war on us in order that they can (as they see it) more effectively defend their interests overseas.