This is Richard Fields with Report From the Fields. Have you noticed that we are hearing very little about the war between Ukraine and Russia since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7? This new war is capturing the attention of the media and moving Ukraine to page 6. Part of this is because Israel is winning. Israel realizes that war is about killing people and breaking things. And they are doing exactly that. First they told Gazans to flee to Southern Gaza because Northern Gaza would be under attack. Now that Northern Gaza is mostly conquered, the Israelis are going after Southern Gaza. The Gazans have nowhere to flee. The borders to other Arab countries are mostly closed. Like all wars, this war will be bloody and cruel. But Israel will win.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is well on its way to losing its war with Russia. The much ballyhooed Ukrainian summer offensive has been a bust. Both Russia and Ukraine have had horrendous casualties. There is a fortified front line from the Dnieper Delta to the Russian border. Gaining an inch of ground comes at a horrendous cost in human casualties. It's a war of attrition. Both sides are having trouble finding more cannon fodder. But the thing is Russia has three and one quarter times the population of Ukraine. Absent direct NATO involvement with troops, Russia will win this war of attrition. Putin is pulling out all the stops including turning prisoners into soldiers and dedicating a third of its economy's production capability to producing weapons and munitions.
It's important to note our country's role in the leadup to this war. When the Soviet Union fell apart, we agreed that in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, we would not invite them to join NATO. We reneged. In 2014, our CIA was involved in a coup overturning the democratically elected pro-Russian President of Ukraine. Before the war, Putin and Zelensky were close to reaching an agreement that would have prevented war. The U.S. and U.K. sent U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to scuttle the deal.
Now, back in the USA, with trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, the appetite for funding both the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza is beginning to run into roadblocks. The simple truth is, American security is under no threat resulting from who controls Ukraine or who controls Gaza. Israel is more than capable of funding its own war with Hamas. The countries in Europe, the Baltics, Poland, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary which do have security interests in who controls Ukraine may have good reason to come to the aid of Ukraine. We don't. And we cannot afford it.
Since the end of WWII we have stumbled into...or been pushed by the military/industrial complex into countless skirmishes and four major wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. All have been losses or standoffs for us. The only victor has been the bottom line for defense contractors. It's time to stop the loss of blood and money to the war industry. And the place to stop is Ukraine and Israel. The time is now.
I'm Richard Fields with Report From the Fields. See you next week.