The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Andrew Bacevich

The war in Ukraine, stoked in part by NATO expansion beyond the borders of a unified German, violating promises made to Moscow at the end of the Cold War, now looks set to become a lengthy war of attrition, one funded and backed by an increasingly bellicose United States. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, after a visit to Kyiv, declared that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things” it has done in Ukraine. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, during her own trip to Kyiv, said that America “will stand with Ukraine until victory is won.” The Biden administration has requested another $33 billion in “emergency” military and economic aid (half of what Russia spent on its military in 2021) for Ukraine, a package congressional Democrats plan to increase by $ 7 billion dollars. And this is on top of the $ 13.6 billion already allocated for Ukraine. The total U.S. troops numbers in Central and Eastern Europe has been increased to more than 100,000. Biden has signed into law a modern-day Lend-Lease Act waiving time-consuming requirements to fast track weapons shipments to Ukraine. What will be the consequences of the US fueling this proxy war? How will Russia respond to the US targeting a dozen Russian generals for assassination and providing the intelligence to sink the Moskva, the guided missile cruiser that was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet?  What will the war mean for the United States, Europe, and Russia? Could it escalate into an open confrontation between the United States and Russia? Why is the same cabal of generals and politicians that drained the state of trillions of dollars in the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia and learned nothing from the nightmare of Vietnam, once again able to push the United States closer and closer towards another conflict? Joining me to discuss the war in Ukraine and the consequences of a resurgent  American militarism is Andrew Bacevich, West Point graduate, retired Army Colonel, and Vietnam war veteran. He is also an emeritus professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the co-founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is as well the author of numerous books, including The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism and his latest, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.

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