 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The United States government is in a state of warmongering. Hardly a day goes by when some high-functionary does not want a war breaking out any minute with Russia being the aggressor and Ukraine being the victim. This is despite the fact that Russia has time and again said that it does not intend to invade Ukraine. Even some Ukrainian officials have discounted the possibility of war. What explains this constant drumbeat of war? What are the strategic goals of the United States in the conflict in Ukraine? Eugene Perrier of breakthrough news explains. I think the United States aims in this current moment as it regards the conflict or the potential conflict with Russia is, you know, multi-fold. I think primarily what they are trying to do is drive an even deeper integration of NATO policies into Eastern Europe. I think they want to try to force countries like Germany and others to quote-unquote get off the fence as it were and adopt more anti-Russia policies. I think even if you look in the context of what's going on with the energy politics of what's going on right now, I think there's at least a hope from the United States that they can also lessen the market share essentially for Russian gas in Europe by using this crisis as a moment to find a way to get other producers into the market and to tell European countries not to rely as much on Russia. So I think that this is in many ways sort of an opportunistic attempt by the United States to use what really began as sort of Ukrainian instigated Saber rattling there in Eastern Europe as an opportunity to continue to push their goals to isolate Russia. And if you look at the national defense strategy from 2018, Russia and China are listed as the two major competitors of the United States and essentially the two countries around which US quote-unquote defense or we could say war policy revolves around. So I think this crisis is really yet another attempt to really sign up Europe to a continuation of the Cold War status quo of isolation of Russia and to use this crisis and the potentialities of what could flow from this crisis to find as many little wedge points, whether it's energy policy, whether it's, you know, military forward deployment of military forces in places like Romania and other things like that to create an even deeper integration. And as the United States says, one of the most critical elements of isolating Russia and keeping its foreign power is to develop more interoperability, which is something that's also coming out of this, the coming together of more closer NATO nations coming together more closely in terms of their military coordination. So I think all of that is wrapped up in, again, what I think the underlying strategic goal is here, which is to further the isolation attempts of Russia and to make sure that Russia has the least amount of influence possible in Europe as a whole, but not just Eastern Europe, also Western Europe and countries where there are greater desires to stay out of war and have more cooperation with the Russians. The aggressive rhetoric by the United States comes just months after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which exposed the failures of decades of militaristic policy. However, the approach to the crisis in Ukraine seems to be along exactly those same principles and values. What explains the failure to reckon with the lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq? What role does the military industrial complex in the US play in the continuation of these policies? I think the failure to reckon with the total fairs of US foreign policy is that from the point of view of imperialism, there is no other choice. And I think that that really says quite a bit about what's going on in the world today. But I think the policies of US imperialism to totally dominate the globe essentially require these sorts of massive interventions, the backing of various allies to the nth degree in terms of money and military equipment, and that even if there are a number of failed experiments all around the world, there's really no way to learn the lessons of those experiments without saying that the US should change its policies, draw back, stop trying to manipulate the politics of the entire world, stop trying to use its military on all points of the globe, stop trying to make sure that in every single geostrategic region, the United States writ goes and to open up a new philosophy here in the 21st century of looking towards cooperation and collaboration with other nations rather than domination. Now that's certainly logical. And in the context of climate change, nuclear war, poverty, immigration, all these other major global globe spanning challenges that are out there, clearly the logical moral, humane thing to do is to change these policies. But since we know imperialism is not a bug, but a feature of the US reality that the major elites that control this country control the politics of this country want to see a policy where America is dominant in all spheres, which means using its military power anywhere on the earth using its soft power anywhere on the earth to try to contain, if not disrupt and overthrow anyone who doesn't want to see the US be the sole superpower all over the globe. So I think that it's very clear that these policies are failed, but I think it's impossible to have a reckoning unless you want to break with the imperialist consensus. And I think it's very clear in the major political parties in the United States, there is no will or desire for that because of who's backing them ultimately. I think that when we look at the reality of the sort of broader policy matrix in the United States, I think we have to look at the fact that you have sort of two factors. I mean, you have sort of the deep underlying structural factor of post World War two America, the so called American century, which is now going into the second American century, that is 100% backed by major business leaders. Certainly you see it from all politicians who were in many ways the frontman for major business leaders, that America is the leading nation, that it should be the leading nation, that it's a quote unquote shining city on a hill, that you know the whole idea of the rules based international order that is governed by the United States is essentially good for US commerce, the US economy and so on and so forth, as Thomas Friedman said, McDonald's doesn't work without McDonald Douglas. So I mean, there may be differing views at different times coming out of corporate America, but by and large, the way that the elites in this country relate to foreign policy issues is to maintain that leading edge of the United States because of the fact that it essentially puts the thumb on the scale for America's economic interest everywhere on the globe. And then nested within that, again, to go back to that Thomas Friedman quote, McDonald's doesn't work without McDonald Douglas, you have to have this huge massive military machine, which of course is governed by this military industrial complex reality, which then introduces its own imperatives into the broader matrix of what's going on, because you've got this huge subset of the wealthy elites in America, or at least a significant subset, who all of their money is being made on these military and war policies. So then they become sort of a hardcore of this desire and push to have the US dominate the globe. And when you look at many of the think tanks in Washington DC, the vast majority of them, quite frankly, I can't say everyone, but basically the vast majority of them that deal with foreign policy, and you look at who's donating the money, it's heavily dominated by weapons contractors by people involved in the military industrial complex, including big corporations that are also playing big roles in the quote unquote normal economy bowing companies like that. So you can see that they're trying to shape the ideological environment in order to make sure that there is a strong anchor for these sorts of aggressive and peerless policies that aren't all that popular with the American people. So they've created this massive apparatus of think tanks and media and so on and so forth to help make sure that these ideas are able to maintain pole position in the broader political conversation in the United States. Finally, in the face of this constant push for war, how have peace movements in the United States responded? What are the strategies they're pursuing to make people more aware of the dangers of war? I think the strategy right now of the anti-war movement, the anti-imperialist forces, the pro-peace forces, to take an old term from the old Cold War, the pro-detente forces is really to try to deconstruct a lot of these realities. The biggest challenge really for movements who want to oppose this drive towards war is the fact that there's this massive propaganda apparatus that spreads from the media through the think tanks, through the politicians and really has created a number of just totally false narratives around Russia, around China, around Latin America, around Iran, where there's just a huge amount of false information, there's a huge amount of deeply misleading narratives and to really deconstruct those narratives is critically important and so people are using all the old tools from the protesting on the streets to the newer tools like the webinars and other forms of electronic communication but I think people are really focused on trying to establish for people that they're gut feeling that as as often said here in the United States that the U.S. should not be the quote-unquote policeman of the world, that that gut feeling is in fact correct and here are the reasons why because as we deconstruct these narratives you can see that most of them are gendered up to promote a policy that has nothing to do with what they say it has to do, certainly has nothing to do with the security of people here in the borders of the United States so I think that is a big challenge is going up against this just complete set of distortion and lies but I think that ultimately it offers a lot of opportunities to deconstruct those narratives and build stronger movements here in this country that can push back against them and I think that's what's really on the agenda of the anti-war movement.