Originally published by Black Agenda Report
Joe Biden is escalating conflict in the Ukraine proxy war against Russia and endangering the whole world in the process. If Trump is a fascist, then surely Biden is as well.
While every Donald Trump utterance is given great attention and dissected for proof of nefarious intent, dangerous actions taken by Joe Biden are minimized or go unreported altogether. The corporate media have never investigated the likelihood that Biden and his foreign policy team sabotaged the NordStream pipelines in 2022 in order to cut European allies’ connection to the Russian gas they depended upon. Two years went by before the New York Times reported that Turkiye hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine which might have ended the proxy war before thousands of lives were lost. Even as the Times reported that talks had taken place, the “paper of record” neglected to mention that the Biden administration and the former prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson , scuttled the talks and kept a dangerous conflict in place.It is important to remember these and other failures to adequately report Biden administration actions which have very serious consequences. Biden will be president of the United States only until January 20, 2025. Yet with less than nine weeks remaining in his presidency, he has chosen to escalate tensions with Russia in an effort to continue his failed policies and also to prevent Trump from changing them.
On November 17, 2024, the corporate media began to report a serious change in policy which the Biden administration suddenly instructed them to cover. Biden decided to give Ukraine permission to use the U.S. Army Tactical Mission System (ATACMS) and send missiles into Russian territory. ATACMS requires U.S. staffing and technical expertise, which puts the U.S. and all NATO nations in direct conflict with the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin already said that such an action crosses a “red line” and is an act of war. In response to Biden’s decision, Putin changed the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. The new doctrine states, “Aggression from any non-nuclear state, but with the involvement or backing of a nuclear state, will be considered a joint attack on Russia.” While the not-yet-president Trump is routinely labeled as deranged and a danger to the nation and to the world, the current president is behaving very irresponsibly and risking conflict with another nuclear power.
It is not just anti-imperialists and peace activists who oppose this rash act. The Department of Defense, the Pentagon, opposed the administration’s neo-conservatives who recommended allowing Ukraine to attack inside Russia. On September 13, 2024, the prime minister of the UK, Keir Starmer, met with Biden at the urging of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who is the administration leader in advocating for escalation. Starmer wanted to use British-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia. Biden didn’t make the call at that moment but obviously, the subject was not far from his mind.
While the Pentagon gave a thumbs down to the plan, others in the administration never gave up hope that they could carry out an escalation that was unlikely to change the course of the war. They added a dose of war propaganda to their misguided efforts in order to make the case for endangering the rest of the world. Suddenly reports appeared claiming that up to 10,000 troops from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly referred to as North Korea, are stationed in Russia and are assisting in the war effort. While there are countless images of the war in Ukraine, no one has managed to produce a photograph or any video footage of thousands of Koreans. It strains credulity that such a presence could be kept secret or would not be documented in one of the most documented conflicts in modern history.
In the end, it is the neocons who usually win in this and other administrations. It is unlikely they had to do very much convincing to Biden, who as Barack Obama’s vice president was in charge of the policy which used Ukraine to counter Russia. The 2014 coup against Ukraine’s elected president and the subsequent sabotaging of the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements all led to the current moment. In 2022 Ukraine baited the Russians by attacking the Donbas and daring them to leave that region unprotected after years of provocations and many civilian deaths.
Donald Trump has indicated that he would change U.S. policy towards Ukraine, although he also led the republicans to approve $61 billion in funding for this war effort in April of this year. Biden is tenacious in his maniacal determination and remains obsessed with his Ukraine project and with Vladimir Putin. He leaves office with a last gasp, a throw of the dice to force Trump’s hand and give him a war that he would be unlikely to end.
No members of the Senate or House of Representatives have raised their voices to sound the alarm about Biden’s disregard for their prerogatives and for the safety of the nation. The corporate media continue to act like scribes and refuse to provide the analysis that is needed to adequately cover this important story. While liberals stay in a constant state of panic about Trump’s appointments and about what he might do as president, the current president has brought the nation to the brink because of what will ultimately be a futile effort to crush Russia’s sovereignty.
As we enter a new phase of Trump derangement syndrome, it is important to know that he should not be treated as some sort of exception in the pantheon of presidents. The doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance prevails no matter who is president of the United States. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia, George W. Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, Barack Obama destroyed Libya, Donald Trump attempted regime change in Venezuela and Iran, and Joe Biden is determined to continue a bloody proxy war in Ukraine, even as he commits himself to genocide in a gruesome partnership with Israel. The U.S. has entered a new and very dangerous phase of its attempt to dominate the world because of Joe Biden’s unhinged determination.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly at Black Agenda Report and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and and also find it on Twitter and Telegram. Kimberley can be reached via e-mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.
