A double war crime

Pentagon strategists face a challenge delivering U.S. state-of-the-art weapons to the Kiev puppet army in time for them to prolong the proxy U.S./NATO war with Russia. One top general announced an alternate source of killing machines.

As reported on the Jan. 20, 2023, Voice of America, General Laura Richardson, said, “We are working with the countries that have the Russian equipment to either donate it [to Ukraine] or switch it out for United States equipment.”

Gen. Richardson heads the U.S. Southern Command. The VoA article explains that she means Washington is leaning on Perú, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina to deliver some of their Russian- or Soviet-made arms, especially helicopters, to the U.S./NATO proxy war.

President Joe Biden has promised the U.S.’s own M1A2 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Despite their armor and firepower, the M1s have drawbacks. They weigh up to 80 tons, which means it takes awhile to ship them across oceans. Plus, they’re still in production. And in Ukraine, they might stick in the mud or break down — and who will pull them out or repair them?

Ukrainian troops have to be trained to use and repair them, starting from zero. That means U.S. “advisers” on the front lines, engaged in combat.

Richardson is offering U.S. war equipment to Mexico and the South American countries. The VoA says there are no takers yet and that Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has already ruled it out.

Here’s one example of what Gen. Richardson’s offer means: Washington will ship tear gas, bullets and other weapons useful for massacring Indigenous-led protests, if the coup government in Perú ships Soviet-built helicopters to Ukraine.

Examine that offer a bit more closely: It means the U.S. government, while falsely claiming to fight for democracy in Ukraine, will offer weapons to a coup regime that threw out an elected president, so that regime can murder its population.

The VoA explains that besides the strategic gain from this new policy, there is a collateral gain: profits for the U.S. arms industry oligarchs, also known as merchants of death. If the South American countries can be lured away from using the less expensive Russian-made weapons, it opens their market to the U.S. producers.

Gen. Richardson might see the arms trade as a “win-win” development. The world — and especially the working class — sees a double war crime, one against the workers of Ukraine and Russia, one against the people of South America.