Ukraine Conflict is a ‘Proxy War of Combined West Against Russia’ (Interview)

The so-called Ukraine conflict is “a proxy war of the combined West against Russia,” American writer and geopolitical analyst Daniel Patrick Welch says.

Welch said in an interview with the Press TV website on Tuesday that the United States and its allies trying to use Ukraine as a bludgeon to subdue the world are instead hastening the demise of their own empire of shame.

“This whole Ukrainian episode of the Forever War is more and more like a caricature every day,” Welch said.

“In the first place, it’s not a Ukrainian war. We have to abandon that propaganda narrative that we’ve been aiding and abetting,” he added.

Asked to explain, Welch pointed out that even the most careful reporting is incorrect. “It’s not a war where ‘the Ukrainians did this, the Russians did this, the Ukrainians, the Russians…’ and on and on. That’s not what’s happening. It is–and has always been–a proxy war of the combined West against Russia. Absolutely every bit of that is true.”

On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with German leaders in Berlin and pressed them for faster deliveries of advanced weapons and fighter jets, in a visit that aims to nudge Germany towards potentially replacing the United States as Kiev’s most prominent supplier of arms.

Zelensky, who was escorted to Berlin by German fighter jets for his first trip, noted that Germany was now Ukraine’s second-largest backer after the United States.

“We are working to bring Germany to first place on that,” he said at a news conference.

Welch further thinks that avoiding mention of direct Western involvement is becoming a fig leaf. “Now even the word ‘proxy’ is getting to be a little creaky. Because all they are using is foreign investment in weapons: missiles that shoot farther, uranium-depleted weapons. All those things are overseen by NATO and by the US.”

But there are Ukrainian roles in what is happening, in which Welch sees another amazing twist. “What provides an interesting light shone on this idea of it being just another chapter in the Forever War is this weird foreign trip of Zelensky. You now have the president of Ukraine going to the Germans. To ask the Germans to be the greatest provider of weapons in his fight against Russia.”

Replay of the end of World War II
Welch is almost apoplectic at the historical déjà vu. “Is this 1939? Is W.H. Auden going to write about this? Is Stepan Bandera actually alive? What is this?”

However, he continues, the biggest danger in this repeat of history may be dragging up ghosts from the past. “The trouble is that this is exactly what it is– to replay the end of World War II. Which, let’s be honest—let’s be completely honest— it didn’t quite end the way the West wanted,” Welch explains.

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“From that space that the Nazis share. All the Nazis! I don’t mean the German word ‘Nazi.’ I mean it sounds cool, and it’s fun to say the word, Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! But Nazi isn’t a German tradition. And they certainly weren’t the only Nazis around!”

What does he mean on this point? The writer elaborates on how the rewriting of history has isolated Hitler’s group as unique when actually the philosophy was more widespread. “In fact, they shared all that space with Bandera, with half the aristocracy of the British Empire, with all the great titans of American corporations that were building up Hitler to ruin Russia.”

This is what happens with exceptionalists, supremacists. It’s okay to kill the people who live on the land you want to take. And you can flip Auden either way you want from that time until now: ‘I and the public know./ What all schoolchildren learn,/ Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.”

While it is common these days to downplay the enormity of the Soviet losses, Welch argues, there is no way that a ‘reboot’ of this history could change the outcome. “This is what is happening. And what is going to happen? The ending is no different. The movie is the same. The Russians (Soviets) lost 27 million people. And it might as well have happened yesterday. The same people are providing the same weapons to the same people (with the details slightly tweaked).”

‘Proxy war is the most common tactic of US foreign policy’
The proxy war became the most common tactic of US foreign policy, starting with choosing a proxy. “These are the Somozas! This is the very origin of the Proxy. Older than Somoza. Older than SAVAK. Older than settlers in South Africa—well maybe not, I don’t know. But certainly, Bandera is revered in this corner, in this northwest corner of Ukraine, for ‘making it free from 1939 to 1945.’ How? By slaughtering tens of thousands of Poles, Russians, and Jews. Friends of Hitler!”

Again, Welch says revisionist history has not only minimized the contribution of the Red Army, but overstated the West’s denunciation of the Axis powers. “Friends of Hitler have never been enemies of the United States in its policy machinations. They’re the first ones they went to!”

“And one of the first things they do is to demonize the hell out of anything that has to do with those people targeted,” he explains.

Mind-blowing attacks Russia
“The attack–the slaughter—on the Russian language, Russian tradition, and Russian history is mind-blowing. So much so that Americans don’t even know how brain-dead they are. And they should. I mean, if so many of us come from Ireland, and we had to suffer historically what the British do, which is sell the narrative that says Ah, the Irish are all drunks anyway. And they’re lazy. And they’re most likely terrorists. So we just march in with Cromwell and slaughter them all. And take that land!” says Welch, whose forefathers were Irish.

He continues, “So you always have the resonance of that war, of World War II…all the wars come back and feed into each other. What the Wolfe Tones sang in the 80’s: ‘Round the world, the truth will echo/ Cromwell’s men are here again! England’s name again is sullied in the eyes of honest men.’”

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Repetition, he believes, can’t change the outcome. “No. It is ridiculous to think that you can change that. That history is just the long arm of a clock that if you have enough neocons running things and enough capitalists on your payroll, you can stop that hand. You can move it! Guess what? You can’t.”

West miscalculating Russian thought
The West, Welch feels, is making a huge mistake by miscalculating Russian thought. “The Russians know it. What are you going to do? Bring in all sorts of long-range missiles? Well, we’ll blow them up where they are. Do these go 300 or 400 kilometers? Then I guess that is how far we have to push in.”

They have no choice but to stand their ground, Welch says. “None of this shi*t is going to be a threat to Russia. Period. “

Compounding the problem, he thinks, is that the US seems unusually oblivious to the danger. “Americans? The neocons who run things? They don’t understand that. Partly because they come out of this tradition. The King of England! Was pro-Nazi. He had to abdicate partly because of that. Truman said Eh, if the Russians win, we’ll help the Germans, and if the Germans win we’ll help the Russians. Today. Today, in 2023, there is a woman sitting as an advisor to President Biden, who actually said you know what? Hitler might have been controversial, but no one really sings his praises for fighting communism to the death.”

‘It’s okay to be soft on Hitler now?’
The writer finds this beyond belief. “What is this? It’s okay to be soft on Hitler now? Then what the hell was that all for? Ah, we know. We know what it was all for. And guess what? It had very little to do with communism.”

It’s a very familiar narrative, but Welch rejects it, saying Napoleon and Hitler have more in common than anti-communism. “I’m sorry. I don’t buy that. I know that that is the narrative. But it’s about Russia—it’s not about Lenin, Stalin, or even Marx. It’s about Mackinder! Says Welch, referring to early 20th-century writer Halford Mackinder, who theorized that whoever controls the ‘Heartland’ controls the ‘World Island.’

“It’s about The Heartland,” Welch says. “About preventing anyone from uniting that central part of—fast-forward now–Russia and China. And that is the threat! And the irony is that these people are so arrogant and so full of themselves that they can’t see that they have made that even more inevitable than time itself. Russia and China are now joined at the hip because they know their existence depends on it.”

The party’s over, the gloves are off
Welch says that it is no longer possible for the West to hide behind its Forever War. “These wars are not proxies. These are the fingers of a LONG armed puppet. They are dangerous. And they are threats everywhere.”

The world’s response, he thinks, especially that of Russia and China, has to be deft and very cautious, given the power of those who currently hold so much.

“So just like you do at a dinner party with friends you don’t really like or trust. You nod and smile. Find the exit. And jump and run to it—quick as you can—when it feels like you’re in danger. And—unknowingly, apparently–that is what the West is facing.” Why does he think they won’t stop making things worse? “ They can’t help it,” he offers simply.

“It is the demise of their control for the last five hundred years. It will yield incredible shortages and difficulties for the hundreds of millions of us who live under the Western regime. But the party is over,” he concludes.

Daniel Patrick Welch is a writer of political commentary and analysis. He lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife. Together they run The Greenhouse School. He has traveled widely, speaks five languages and studied Russian History and Literature at Harvard University. Welch has also appeared as a guest on several TV and radio channels to speak on topics of foreign affairs and political analysis.

(PressTV)