The US government opposed Nord Stream, ostensibly because it would make Germany too dependent on Russian energy. Merkel obviously did not share America's concerns.

US president Donald Trump nonetheless imposed sanctions against companies involved with Nord Stream. For unclear reasons, Nord Stream had become a part of Trump's“Make America Great” agenda.

The then-president signed a very deep-state piece of legislation, known as the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which enabled the US to sanction any company that was working with German and Russian companies on Nord Stream to“protect the energy security of US allies.”

With friends like this, who needs enemies or, as Henry Kissinger reportedly said in a rare moment of candor:“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

The Ukraine war resulted from the Western failure to remold Russia in its own neoliberal image. After the collapse of the USSR, the US had an ally in Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev's successor.

Yeltsin took the advice of American economists to turn Russia cold turkey into a neoliberal economy. Only shock therapy could get Russia on track to become a democratic market economy, they advised.

The subsequent“market reforms” resulted in the plundering of Russian resources by well-connected entrepreneurs who formed a class of oligarchs that made billions.

They immediately moved their wealth abroad and bought soccer clubs in England and trophy real estate on the French Riviera while Russian pensioners were sitting in the streets of Moscow selling their medicine to buy food.

When the nationalist Putin replaced the globalist Yeltsin, the West doubled down on NATO expansion.

Whether under Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Putin, the US never stopped its Cold War policy of undermining Russia. President Jimmy Carter provided support to the Afghan Mujahedeen, the precursor to the Taliban, and every successive US president, Democrat and Republican, continued covert and overt interference in countries on Russia's southern border.

The ideological architect of the strategy to contain Russia was Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Carter. Ukraine plays a pivotal role in the so-called Brzezinski Doctrine, which identifies it as the key to preventing Russian-European economic integration. Still today, the US foreign establishment is rife with Brzezinski proteges.

With Ukraine, the West made a major strategic bet that failed. The crippling sanctions against Russia should have cratered the Russian economy, resulting in a popular uprising and leading to the replacement of Putin with a pro-Western leader. It should have been the mother of all regime changes.

Another globalist in the Kremlin would have been a boon for Wall Street as Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural wealth. With the growing importance of natural resources, Russia represents a rich investment opportunity for the next 100 years.

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

• The Daily Report Start your day right with Asia Times' top stories
• AT Weekly Report A weekly roundup of Asia Times' most-read stories

End game

After the espionage attack on Nord Stream in 2022, Western governments floated various“leads” for identifying the perpetrators. They offered no proof, but the tips helped to muddy the waters and provided an alternative narrative to Biden's bold statement on Nord Stream.

Germany, Denmark and Sweden conducted pseudo-investigations into the Nord Stream sabotage and refused to share their findings while the West vetoed a Russian request for an independent UN investigation.

In early August, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on new Nord Stream leads, suggesting that Ukrainian operatives executed the attack with the knowledge of Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky,

An optimistic reading of the WSJ narrative is that the West is preparing public opinion for throwing Zelensky under the bus, opening the way for his replacement to negotiate peace with Russia. Zelensky has admitted that earlier Minsk negotiations with Russia were meant to buy time to build up Ukraine's army, disqualifying himself as a good-faith negotiating partner.

Apart from Ukraine itself, the West is the war's big loser. Ruled by a generation of neoliberals and Atlanticists for whom ideology trumps economic, military and historical common sense, they have encouraged and facilitated Ukraine to fight a war against a nuclear and industrial-military superpower it had no chance of defeating.

For Atlanticists, ideology even trumps ethics and morality.

Already have an account? Sign i Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories OR

Thank you for registering!

An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.