Washington’s End Game for Ukraine is a New “Charlie Wilson’s War”
The US and the UK have invested billions of dollars over the past 80 years in Ukraine as a covert “battering ram” against Russia. They are not going to give it up.
Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, but the West’s goal remains the same: regime change and economic collapse in Russia. Now the US hopes to achieve their ends with a replay what they did in Soviet Afghanistan.
In the 1980’s the Soviet Union was fighting a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan to defend their Afghan socialist ally, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, against an uprising by Islamic extremists, called Mujahideen, led by Osama bin Laden.
As Former British Foreign secretary, Robin Cook said:
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
The rebellion against the socialist government in Kabul had started years earlier, when religious tribal elements of the Afghan population rose up against the Marxist government in Kabul, which was promoting women’s rights, education for girls, land reform and other measures that offended the conservative tribal elders.
The rebels were being supplied and assisted by the Western powers — including the USA — via Pakistan, but the funding was modest — until the Soviets intervened directly in 1979. Then the US and Britain (via the CIA and MI6) swung into full Cold War covert mode, with the US eventually supplying “game-changing” technology such as Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen to help them shoot down Russian aircraft.
The support for the Afghan rebels was named Operation Cyclone, “one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken”. Backed by some true believer supporters in Congress, the CIA worked with the Islamic radicals to “give the Soviets their own Vietnam”.
How Money and Technology beat the Russkies
The story of Operation Cyclone was depicted in the 2007 film, Charlie Wilson’s War. The film does a good job of explaining how funding was key to the success of the mission. Even the Wikipedia entry on Operation Cyclone highlighted the financial aspect:
Funding officially began with $695,000 in mid-1979, was increased dramatically to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987, described as the “biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency”.
The second key aspect of the program was the “superior Western technology” that allowed the Mujahideen to defeat the mighty Russian forces:
“by September 1986 the program included U.S.-origin state of the art weaponry, such as FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, some 2,300 of which were ultimately shipped into Afghanistan”.
A direct link to the collapse of the USSR
There is little doubt that the US funding and arming of the Mujahideen, coupled Britain’s MI6 funding and arming of other rebel groups, turned the tide of the Soviet-Afghan War.
Moreover, there seems to be a direct link between the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and the collapse of the USSR itself. The Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed in May, 1989. A few months later (1990) Lithuania declared full independence from the Soviet Union. The other Baltic States immediately followed suit and started a wave of collapse that resulted in the complete breakup and dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
An intoxicating mix for American leaders
This combination of massive funding and high-tech weaponry seemed a perfect solution for US legislators and White House decision-makers. Leveraging what they considered to be America’s inherent superiority over the USSR — namely, the power of the US dollar and the might of America’s military industrial complex — to them seemed the perfect way to defeat what Reagan called “The Evil Empire”.
And best of all, it was a way to wage war against the Soviet Union without having to risk “American boots on the ground”.
For the CIA, Charlie Wilson’s War and the “Stinger Effect” defeating Russia became the stuff of legend. The Agency even commissioned a painting of the first Stinger kill, which hangs in the official CIA Museum.
Operation Cyclone as a template for Ukraine
If one looks at the US strategy in Ukraine, it is plain to see that, for the CIA as well as for the US politicians in Washington, the old Operation Cyclone playbook is still the one to use.
For our geriatric leaders in the West, the success of Operation Cyclone seems recent, and the changes that have taken place in the intervening decades are unimportant: Russia is still Russia, and America is still richer and more advanced technologically than the “backwards” Russkies.
Or so they believe.
As I detailed in my article “How the West Descended into Idiocy”, American leaders suffer from a blinding Russophobia that keeps them from seeing reality. They honestly thought that by providing enough arms and training to the Ukrainians, they could actually inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.
Moreover, they were convinced that this great defeat would be hastened by the sanctions they had imposed on Russia. The battlefield losses on the fields of Ukraine would combine with the economic hardships at home to plunge the “Putin regime” into peril, and cause a general collapse of the entire Russian economic and political system.
In short, the Javelin anti-tank missiles were the new Stingers.
Project Ukraine moves to insurgency
Now that Ukraine is losing on the battlefields, many are wondering what’s next for “Project Ukraine”. Western leaders are preparing their populations for an extended conflict, but what does that really mean?
It means a low level insurgency of the type the USA has been funding and supporting all over the world for the past 80 years — ever since WWII.
Indeed, if our octogenarian oligarchs seem stuck in the year 1990, America’s CIA is frozen in the year 1950.
To the CIA, Russia is and has always been the threat. Just look at how often we see our security mavens “misspeak” and refer to Russians as “communists” and “soviets”. Even today, the conflict in Ukraine is often framed as a “clash of civilisations” or an historic struggle between “democracy and autocracy”.
Like the struggle against communism, the current conflict with Russia is depicted by the globalist elites in the same context of a “forever war”.
Ukraine will become a “rump state”
As I described in my article, “This is How Ukraine Ends”, Russia will not occupy all of Ukraine — why should they? The people in Western Ukraine are not Russian; they are Catholic, not Orthodox; they have no desire to be part of Russia. And nore importantly, for the history-obsessed Putin — that part of Ukraine has never been part of Russia.
Instead, Russia will reclaim those oblasts that were always historically Russian. The resultant state of Ukraine will most likely consist of those areas delineated in red and pink below.
Indeed, Putin told Tucker Carlson in their recent interview that Russia wants to negotiate an end to the conflict, and indeed they already had such a negotiation in March 2022, when Russia and Ukraine held peace talks in Istanbul.
The result of those negotiations was an 18-point plan that outlined the goals and precepts to be implemented as part of the peace deal, and these points were agreed and initialed by both sides.
Unfortunately, at that time, the peace plan was infamously scuttled by Boris Johnson, acting at the behest of the Biden Administration. Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Pravda), reported that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived suddenly, “without warning” on April 9, swooping down like some perverse deus ex machina to kill the infant peace deal in its crib.
It is logical to assume that the next negotiated peace plan will be similar to the one that was trashed in 2022, to include:
A promise for Ukraine to remain neutral and to never join NATO;
Removal of all NATO installations, personnel and equipment;
Limited military structures and armaments for self-defense only;
De-Nazification of Ukraine.
What will “de-Nazification” look like in post-war Ukraine?
Thanks to the interview that Tucker Carlson conducted with Vladimir Putin, we now know what the Russian President means by “de-Nazification”.
As Putin explained in the interview, the scope and methodology of the de-Nazification process “can be handled as part of the negotiations”. This will mean:
Purging the Ukrainian government of all Nazi and ultranationalist elements;
Outlawing the practice of Nazism and the use of Nazi slogans and symbols;
Prohibiting Nazis and ultranationalists from running for election;
Prohibiting the worship and exaltation of Nazi heroes such as Stepan Bandera.
The end result is that the Nazis in Ukraine, the so-called “Banderites”, will be driven underground and out of public life. They will once more become a fringe element with no official power and no ability to decide public policy or influence public opinion.
And THAT is when the covert intelligence services of the West will swing into action.
Enter the CIA — again
While the current land war in Ukraine may be settled by negotiations and a peace treaty, the West — ultimately — will not accept anything but ultimate victory. So while the open, large scale battles may end, the fighting will still go on — just “on the down low”.
This is the CIA’s specialty, and always was. Since the end of WWII, CIA has been fighting “The Enemy” in every region, from Western Europe to Africa and of course, Latin America. But nowhere was the “covert service” more active than in Eastern Europe, and especially — ESPECIALLY — in Ukraine.
CIA: fighting Russia in Ukraine since 1947
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin drew attention to the fact that a “Ukrainian-Canadian patriot” was celebrated in the Canadian parliament, even though that person had been a Nazi soldier, serving in the Waffen SS no less.
In fact, Canada, as well as the US, became a refuge for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators after WWII. Like the German Nazis, Ukrainian Nazis were recruited by the CIA in the anti-Soviet campaign, and those who did not remain in Europe to serve in “stay behind” programs like Operation GLADIO were given free passage to North America to live out there lives.
Such was the case of Yaroslav Hunka, 98, an ex-Waffen SS fighter who received a standing ovation from Justin Trudeau, Zelensky and the entire Canadian Parliament for having “fought against the Russians” in WWII.
1949: Operation Red Sox
The CIA operation to utilise Ukrainian nationalists against Russia started in 1949 and continued up until 1990. During this time, the mission was modified and renamed, but it was always aimed at the USSR, and relied on the anti-Russian sentiments of Banderite Ukrainian nationalists who were fanatically anti-Russian — both in Ukraine and in exile.
The original Project is described in a declassified CIA file from 1950.
Operation Red Sox was followed by other operations such as Aerodynamic in the 1960’s and QRPLUMB in the 1970’s. The CIA’s Operation Aerodynamic, with its concentration on anti-Russian media propaganda, is today STILL operating under various other names as part of the NED’s activities.
In short, the CIA has maintained steady relationships with the inheritors of the OUN for decades.
The NED, Orange Revolution and Maidan
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of an independent Ukraine, the CIA handed off its anti-Russian operations to the newly formed National Endowment for Democracy (NED). As observers and analysts know, NED is a “cut-out” of the CIA.
It is no secret that the CIA (operating through NED) and the US State Department and other pro-Western “NGOs” have been fomenting so-called “colour revolutions” all over the world.
Ukraine’s colour was orange.
The US-led Orange Revolution was years in the making — NED and the other groups set up organisations and movements in Ukraine to promote “Western values” and above all, to alienate Russia. For this, of course, they relied heavily on the Ukrainian nationalist groups the CIA had been cultivating and finding since the end of WWII.
But operating a phalanx of violent Ukrainian neo-Nazis was not enough for Washington. They wanted to turn the entire nation of Ukraine against Russia.
2014: The Maidan Coup
The coup that toppled the Yanukovych government in Kiev was powered by far-right neo-Nazi militias such as the Right Sector and C14, who were funded and armed by the CIA.
Once the CIA had ginned up the coup, it was passed to the State Department and Victoria Nuland, who created the current Ukrainian government and set about providing weapons, training and all means of support to turn Ukraine into a de facto NATO state.
The war for regime change
The strategy of Washington was to leverage Ukraine to fight a costly war with Russia that would weaken the Putin regime and lead to a “Moscow Maidan” and the collapse of the Putin government and the Russian society in general. This has, after all, been the goal of American foreign policy for the past 100 years.
The US and Western governments believed that the sanctions they imposed on Russia would cripple the Russian economy, making it weak and ripe for toppling. All they needed was to have Ukraine fight an expensive war of attrition with Russia until Russia could no longer afford to keep up the fight.
Well, that didn’t happen. The Russian economy is stronger than ever; the Russian military industrial complex is pumping out war machines and ammunition at rates that dwarf those fo the collective West.
The Ukrainian armed forces are the ones that are collapsing, and a peace negotiation is imminent.
Nazi rehabilitation — take two
Once Russia “wins” the war in Ukraine, the CIA will do what it did in 1945: they will recruit the now outlawed Banderite Nazi groups into a new, revitalised version of the OUN/UPA brigades that the CIA enlisted to fight the Soviets. A new “Operation Red Sox” will be launched, and the CIA will go back to doing what it always did in Ukraine — manage a fanatical group of Ukrainian nationalists to fight agains the “Russian occupiers”.
With the help of NATO allies like Poland and Romania, the US will be able to smuggle a steady supply of explosives, small arms, munitions and of course those magical Javelin missile systems into Ukraine in order to wage a counterinsurgency war against Russia.
It will be Afghanistan 1986 all over again.
The CIA Playbook has not changed
The goal of the “true believers” in the CIA and the State Department has not changed: they want to see Vladimir Putin taken down, they want to see the Russian Federation dissolved into disparate parts that they can then conquer individually.
They want a replay of the fall of the USSR, only this time they will do it right — they will make sure that the Russian Federation can never reconstitute itself, that all the various parts of the Federation will be ripe for the plucking, and ready to be raped of their natural resources.
For this, they are willing to wage another “dirty war” such as they waged in Syria, and all throughout Latin America in the 1980’s. And of course in Afghanistan as well.
A new plan from the ultimate Cold Warrior
I am not the only person who foresees a new Cold War once Ukraine finally loses on the battlefield.
Elliott Abrams, who may well be the most bloodthirsty, ghoulish and downright evil Neocon on the planet, views a “new reality” emerging from the Ukrainian conflict.
Abrams wrote a blog post shortly after Russia invaded in 2022 that starts with the usual “Putin as madman bent on Empire” trope:
“The first and quick U.S. reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should be to understand that aggression will be repeated unless it incurs a heavy price…Putin must learn that crime does not pay, or else he will try it again — even against NATO countries we are pledged to defend. If we are cowed by his threats…we are telling him that we will not stop him from reestablishing Russian domination over all of Eastern Europe — the Soviet empire rebuilt”.
Abrams, however, envisions a world in which Ukraine loses, and that loss leads to a protracted and expensive “low level” ”proxy conflict between Russia and the West:
“That means a permanent refusal to recognise Putin’s conquest and the quisling government he may install. The United States refused to recognise Stalin’s 1940 annexation of the Baltic states, even as decade after decade rolled by. The same adamant refusal should govern here, however long it takes for Ukraine to be free again”.
In other words, endless war. A war that will keep America’s Military Industrial Complex and National Security apparatus well-funded for, as Abrams puts it, “decade after decade”.
But that is not all. Abrams also foresees a sort of Ukrainian version of Operation GLADIO:
“And real resistance to Putin means backing a Ukrainian resistance and supplying it with the money and weapons it will need to bleed Putin. Facing a determined and effective Ukrainian insurgency is the best way Russians may come to conclude that Putin’s gamble has been a disaster — and turn against him”.
Here we go again, “weakening Russia”. It seems that is all these guys think about.
Abrams suggests basing the Ukrainian partisans out of Poland, which will of course lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO (yikes).
The end goal is wealth and power
These new cold warriors believe, when final victory is achieved, and Putin is gone, and the Russian regime lay in ruins, the vast wealth of the Russian land mass will rejuvenate the sclerotic Western economies, leading to a new boom in investment and profit-taking.
Most of all, the demise of Russia as a strong, independent power will mean that the US and its Western allies will be able to leverage Russian resources in order to take on China.
In the meantime, the US military industrial complex will be able to sell as many Javelin missiles as they can make.
And, they believe, when final victory is achieved, and Putin is gone, and the Russian regime lay in ruins, the vast wealth of the Russian land mass will rejuvenate the sclerotic Western economies, leading to a new boom in investment and profit-taking.
Most of all, the demise of Russia as a strong, independent power will mean that the US and its Western allies will be able to leverage Russian resources in order to take on China.
Meanwhile, the US military industrial complex will be able to sell as many Javelin missiles as they can make.
#End.
Not just the US and Canada but significantly the UK was a post-WW2 refuge for Ukrainian SS, Nazis and others. In fact the Ukrainian presence in Canada could be seen as just a spillover of the much larger UK contingent. The difference I think is that the UK contingent largely integrated and disappeared, where the Canadian diaspora - including Canadian de facto deputy minister Khrysta Freeland - actively preserved their identity and their Banderist (fascist) politics.
Fantastic synopsis of a century of American mischief and how it is being primed to repeat. Thank you for laying it out so clearly. One can only hope for an alternate ending of this sequel. Can’t imagine Putin is not aware and prepping accordingly...