Orthodox Reflections

Being part of a moral outrage mob feels good. Nuance is out the window. All is black and white. You get to be part of the team! Are you with us or against us? There is no middle ground. You can unleash pure hate on the “enemy”, and be rewarded for it with loud affirmation from all sides. A properly outraged mob, drunk on its own moral superiority, is a powerful weapon. It can tear down a city. It can bring down a government. It can condemn the Son of God to death on the cross.

Such a mob can also be weaponized to prolong a hopeless war in a nation most Westerners know nothing about. Have you joined up to fight, in righteous indignation, on behalf of the “Current Thing” the media say is now all-important?

Are you posting tales of the latest “Russian” atrocity on social media? Contacting your government representatives to demand more money, weapons, financial support for Ukraine? Do you advocate for a “no-fly” zone or for NATO “peacekeepers”? Do you downplay the risk of nuclear war, because we have a moral obligation to “do something”? Are you intentionally ignoring or justifying the horrible impact of anti-Russian sanctions on the whole world, particularly the poor? Do you routinely compare Putin to Hitler? Do you refer to the War in Ukraine as genocide? Do you consider the Russian invasion an “existential” threat to the Ukrainian people, whose only chance to survive is to “win” on the battlefield? Do you make excuses for the existence of Ukrainian Nazis, their war on ethnic Russians since 2014, and the West funding them after bringing them to power?

If so, congratulations. You are part of an outrage mob that has been consciously created and manipulated to manufacture consent for prolonging the War in Ukraine, while preserving the illusion of “liberal democracy” in the West.  Russia has been ready to negotiate an end to this war since before it even began. The West has not allowed a peace agreement, because it badly wants this war to continue as long as possible.  Western leaders have their own agenda, and the Ukrainians are just so much cannon fodder to them. By posting Western propaganda, by attending pro-war rallies, by lobbying your representatives for more “aid”, you are not saving Ukrainian lives. You are providing cover for an immoral proxy war with Russia. One that the West hopes to fight to the last Ukrainian.

For the Western establishment, the War in Ukraine is a means to important ends. Below are the goals your Ukrainian flag emojis are supporting. Notice that none of them are for the benefit of Ukraine:

A Unipolar World – Our leading foreign policy strategists believe the US should be the only global power. We must prevent any other nation from being able to compete with us militarily. We must be capable of fighting and winning a war anywhere in the world against any potential enemy.  To maintain our superiority, we ring the world with military bases and spend almost $1 trillion dollars a year on “Defense”. Since WWII, the United States and its allies have killed an estimated 20 – 30 million people around the globe in military “interventions.” The US reserves the right to attack anyone, anywhere, and any time of its own choosing.

Russia is a potential military rival of the US. Keeping Russia in check is the only reason anyone ever cared about Ukraine to begin with. (Aside from the profitable opportunity to rob the Ukrainians blind.)  The US sponsored the Kiev Coup in 2014 specifically to bring to power a regime that would challenge Russia. The goal has always been to leverage Ukraine in bringing down Putin and replacing him with a compliant regime. Or better yet, to break up Russia into smaller, weaker states. Now that a hot war is upon us, the US (and its Western vassal states) believe that Russia can be severely weakened if not utterly brought to heel:

The US wants the conflict in Ukraine to leave Russia too “weakened” to “invade” a neighboring state, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Monday, the day after traveling to Kiev to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and members of his cabinet.

 

He then added that the US would want to see Russia “weakened” by the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

 

“It has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops,” Austin claimed, explaining that Washington “want[s] to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capacity.”

This war is not about a Ukrainian victory. Ukraine is incapable of defeating Russia and taking back its lost territory. The relentless propaganda Westerners consume makes it appear otherwise, but the truth is this war is over. No amount of Western aid will stop the Russian advance. Even full commitment of available NATO forces, assuming nuclear war was avoided, would not change the outcome. For Ukrainians, negotiations are the only way to save lives and stop the destruction. The West, however, is controlling the situation in Kiev. The Western powers do not care about the deaths of Ukrainians, only about how much damage can be inflicted on Russia before the Ukrainian forces ultimately collapse. The Ukrainians are simply means to Western ends.

When you support the continuation of this war, you don’t care any more about saving Ukrainian lives than do the foreign policy ghouls wielding power in Western capitols.

Military Industrial Complex Profits – So far, the US has provided around $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine, with a lot more coming. All that money flying around leads to massive profit opportunities for some of the worst people in the world, especially the US Military Industrial Complex. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently told a meeting of shareholders that, “Everything that ‘s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DOD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business.”

Curiously, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former member of Raytheon’s Board of Directors. The Pentagon has awarded Raytheon Technologies billions in government contracts since his confirmation in 2021. Secretary Austin is now spending considerable effort traveling to Europe, trying to drum up support for continuing a hopeless war that will bring windfall profits for Raytheon. A company to whose board he is almost guaranteed to return, after his “public service” has ended. Nothing to see here, of course. Coincidences just happen.

Many weapons shipments are blown up as soon as they arrive in Ukraine. No matter for the war industry. Governments will just order more to replace them. Many NATO countries are getting in on the grift by dumping a Frankenstein list of old equipment on Ukraine (which will be replaced with new, expensive systems from our favorite arms manufacturers): T-72’s and M-84’s from Poland and Slovenia, Marders, Leopards, and PzH2000’s from Germany, Cesar Howitzers from France, Mastiffs, Wolfhound, and Husky vehicles from UK, Archer artillery systems from Sweden, Humvees, M113 APC’s from U.S., and M777’s from Canada, and on and on and on. Assuming this assorted stuff (much of it more than 30 years old) actually reaches the fight without being blown up, no army can sustain operations relying on this number of non-interoperable systems. This is a complete nightmare with lack of parts and no ability to properly maintain or repair this equipment. Such “help” is worse than nothing.

Further, Russian missiles have cut all the rail lines to the East (where the major fighting is). Even weapons deliveries that are not destroyed have little chance of making it to the front. Most surviving weapons will be stranded in stockpiles, out of the action, waiting to go “missing” and be resold or gifted to bad actors all over Europe (if not the world). Washington has admitted that it has no way of tracking the weapons it is sending to Ukraine, and no way to keep them out of the hands of enemies who might use our weapons against us. This is not even to mention the batches of weapons captured by Russian forces that could find their way onto global markets, when not being used to kill Ukrainians that is.

Even if all of this aid were delivered to the Ukrainians, and even if it were all top-notch, modern systems the Ukrainians could support in the field – it would make no difference to the outcome. Russia will still win. Former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report last week, “I can say with absolute certainty that even if this aid makes it to the battlefield, it will have zero impact on the battle. And Joe Biden knows it.”

Effective or not, the MIC will be more than happy to replace all the equipment that is destroyed or stolen with bright, shiny, and expensive new toys. Profit is all that matters to the Military Industrial Complex. They will rake in billions regardless of how things go on the ground. This is a racket perpetrated at the expense of Ukrainian suffering and funded by Western tax payers to the benefit of war mongering corporate welfare whores.

Those are the people who are benefiting when you “Stand with Ukraine”. Not the average Ukrainian who just wants peace.

More Money for Corruption – Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. That corruption was largely driven by Western political and business leaders who have spent the last three decades robbing the country blind. Hunter Biden was just the tip of the corruption iceberg. Many Western ne’er-do-wells and nefarious corporate interests have used their Western political connections to treat Ukraine as their own personal ATMs. The average Ukrainian has not benefitted from any of this. Ukraine, though potentially a rich country, has been reduced to grinding poverty by Western thievery. Now Zelensky is begging for billions more in direct aid each month to keep Ukraine afloat. Billions that will do little to help anyone but the already rich and powerful. The money will be looted by politically-connected Ukrainians and the Hunter Bidens of the world. If you are demanding more money for the corrupt regime in Kiev, then realize that your tax dollars will fund Nazis and rich kleptocrats, but not the starving people in Ukraine. After all, if the US can’t track what happens to weapons being delivered to Ukraine, how well are we going to keep track of billions of dollars?

This whole situation is a scam, and the average Ukrainian knows it. They know they have been stolen from, lied to, and led to the slaughter. What they know, however, is not important. What matters is that Westerners keep demanding their governments do more of what got us into this situation to begin with. The kleptocrats are happy to oblige.

Distracting from Dismal Policies – The Southern border of the US is completely out of control. While America’s ruling class frets over every inch of Ukrainian territory, US border patrol just this year has logged 1.2 million encounters, over 300,000 “got-aways,” and a couple hundred thousands “turn-backs.” That’s over 1.7 million illegal aliens so far and the year is still quite young. No end is in sight. American cities are plagued by crime and homelessness. The economy is faltering. Inflation is at record levels. Food insecurity is suddenly becoming a First-world problem. We are facing record-high fuel costs and even energy shortages. The anti-Russia sanctions, positively mad money printing, Green energy policies, horrific debt levels, crushing regulatory burdens, and COVID lockdowns have created a growing political storm the Western ruling class is incapable of containing. In truth, the overlords may not even be capable of weathering it.

The powers-that-be are anxious to distract the public from, and provide palatable excuses for, their ongoing failures. (Or successes, if they are truly out to wreck everything and “Build Back Better”.) COVID being over, they have latched onto the War in Ukraine as the current method of mass distraction. By the looks of things, a good percentage of the Western population is falling for it. America and the West should be exploding with protests over the ongoing destruction of our economic life. Europe especially is being set up for an extremely hard hit.

Instead, Westerners are quietly accepting our ruination lest they be called “pro-Putin”. The ruling class in the West doesn’t care about its own citizens any more than it cares about Ukrainians. 

If we are not careful, we will shouting “Glory to Ukraine” in dark houses with very empty bellies and our constitutional liberties but a dim memory. Stop letting them guilt you into thinking you are “sacrificing for the greater good”. The War in Ukraine is not our business. We should never have been involved, and are simply making more of a mess of an already bad situation. Let the Ukrainians settle their war. We need to focus on our own problems at home.

Obfuscating the Culture War – The cultural “left” in the US has had a rough go of it lately. Anger over Critical Race Theory in schools led to stunning Republican wins in Virginia. Abortion keeps getting curtailed in a growing number of states. The insane backlash over the “don’t say gay” bill (fake propaganda name, BTW) in Florida has pushed that formerly swing state even further into the “red” column. Even most Florida Democrats do not support teaching gender identity to six-year-old children. Governor Ron DeSantis was able to capitalize on the bill’s popularity, and revelations that Disney uses its programming to push an LGBTQ agenda on young kids, to score a rare victory over a “woke” corporation. Disney’s foray into culture war politics will cost its shareholders billions. These are just a few examples. In politics and in the corporate world, going woke is going broke.

On the Orthodox Christian side, Archbishop Elpidophoros was called out by four fellow Orthodox hierarchs for back-handedly endorsing a woman’s “right to choose”. Not so long ago, such an occurrence would have been difficult to imagine. Orthodox Hierarchs in the West have tended to live and let live across jurisdictional lines. Now, however, it is clear that progressives in the Orthodox Church have gone too far for the faithful hierarchs to keep silent.

Progressive culture warriors (religious and secular) hope the War in Ukraine War will take the pressure off and provide some much needed “wins”. The war gives them a chance to tar their conservative opponents as “pro-Putin” or “just like Putin”, which really means “fascist” and “just like Hitler”. For conservatives who are reluctant culture warriors, this is their chance to get back to the glory days of the Cold War. No more debating transgender swimmers, CRT, and all that icky stuff about budgets. Now they can be part of the bipartisan anti-Russian team again! Together with their progressive colleagues, they can rally around the flag while sneaking heaping mounds of pork into spending bills. It’s just like the early 80’s all over again! Hate is so darn useful for the ruling class.

Conservative desertion of the culture war, under the pretense of focusing on a foreign threat, is not soley an American problem. It happens even in countries that are known to be more conservative than we are. Michał Krupa is a Polish historian and commentator who wrote about how war hysteria can take the focus off cultural issues:

In the midst of this pro-war fever, it is amusing to hear supposedly conservative and right-wing Polish politicians talking about how Ukraine is defending “Western,” “European,” and “democratic” values. When you ask if those “values” include Transgender Day of Visibility, celebrated by the leader of the “free world” who just days earlier literally called for regime change in Russia during a speech in Warsaw, one usually gets the silent treatment. Everyone knows this is the package of late-stage liberalism that Western elites want to implement in Ukraine, it is just that few conservative Poles have the courage to say so out loud. The mainstream Polish right seems to agree with the sentiment made public by Piotr Skwieciński a few years back during a debate about the effects of Euromaidan, which I had the pleasure of moderating: “I would rather have a gay Ukraine than a pro-Russian Ukraine.” The main issue right now is focusing on hating Putin and Russia and making Volodymyr Zelensky an object of veneration. Who cares about culture, when the Russkies are at the gate.

Raging anti-Russian hate empowers progressives while distracting and silencing many conservatives. Supporters of traditional Christian morality ignore this situation at their own peril. The US has no national interests in Ukraine. We should not be involved. This is not our war. Our war is for our own cultural and religious patrimony.

In that war, Russia is not the enemy.

There Will be a Discussion Over the Morality of this War, But It Must End First

There is no point debating the morality of the war until you end the war. That means getting the West out of the picture and allowing a Ukrainian government to make peace. As part of that effort, the West must drop all sanctions, return stolen foreign reserves, and work to stabilize the world economy.

After peace is secured, then we can have a rational discussion over the morality of all the actions (Russian, Western, and Ukrainian) that led us to this war. The goal of such a discussion should be to build a more peaceful world. Two additional things are required for that to happen.

The Rules Must Apply Equally to All –  The Solomon Islands are 2,000 km from Australia, yet their security pact with China has the West in an absolute tizzy. A Chinese military presence on the islands has been called a “red-line”. There is talk of “regime change” and even a possible invasion. So much for sovereign countries having a right to join any “alliances” or agreements they choose to. The same group of nations that lectured Russia to accept Ukraine’s right to join NATO, are now threatening a small island nation thousands of kilometers from Australia over seeking an alliance with China.

If you want to be a Great Power Politics realist, then by all means go ahead and accept the right of large nations / alliances to dictate terms to smaller, weaker nations. A NATO committed to foreign-policy realism would never have intervened in Ukraine in a way that led to this war. A realist NATO, rather than an ideological one, would have respected Russia’s security. There would have been no war. If you reject Great Power Politics as too cynical, well then, perhaps you are right to do so. Such realism is cynical. However, if you wish to replace Great Power Politics with a kinder, more moral world order, then the rules must be the same for all. If you argue for allowing the West to do as it pleases while holding others to a higher standard, you are not a crusader for a better world. You are just a hypocrite.

Tell the Whole Truth About the War – The officially accepted narrative in the West is that Russia attacked Ukraine without provocation. Russia then prosecuted a vicious war, teeming with atrocities, that rises to the level of genocide.

These are gross lies that would insult the intelligence of a child. In other articles (good example here), we published excerpts from an excellent piece on the origins of this war by a former NATO colonel. Below, we publish part of a recap of the war by Gonzalo Lira, a Western journalist and YouTuber who lives in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. Entire thread is here with an excerpt below:

Crucially—the Russian’s blitz on several axes pre-empted an imminent UKRAINIAN blitzkrieg. The AFU had been about to invade the Donbas. This was the immediate motivation for Russia’s invasion: To beat them to the punch and scuttle Ukraine’s imminent invasion—which they did.

 

What the Russians initially wanted was to:

 

• Short-circuit the imminent Donbas invasion – which they did.
• Scare the Zelensky regime into negotiating a political settlement – which they failed to do.

 

Kiev had no intention of negotiating a ceasefire because of orders given to them from Washington: “Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian!” Also, the Neo-Nazi goons around Zelensky threatened him if he negotiated and surrendered because they are terrified of the Russians.

 

Something else the Russians realized: Sanctions. They hurt but Russia bounced back with remarkable speed. They didn’t really hurt that bad. But the theft of Russia’s $300 billion in foreign reserves by the West DID hurt – badly. The Russians realized they were in a total war with the West and since their foreign reserves were lost forever (likely to be pilfered by corrupt Western politicos), the Russians now have nothing left to lose. By stealing their reserves, the West lost all power over Russia.

 

This has sealed Ukraine’s fate: The Russians now have no incentive to give up what they have conquered. It has cost them too much in terms of men and treasure. And they know that they can’t negotiate a ceasefire. The Zelensky regime will simply break it later.

 

Which means:

 

The Russians intend to conquer and permanently annex all the south and east of Ukraine. This is why their strategy on the battlefield has dramatically shifted: Now they are carrying out a slow, methodical grinding down and destruction of the AFU.

 

The war in the first 30 days was speed, feints, nominally capturing vast swathes of Ukraine territory, with the aim of pressuring the Zelensky regime into a negotiated settlement. But the West’s total financial and political break with Russia means they have nothing to lose. And they have a lot to gain: The Donbas is mineral rich, the really productive farmlands of Ukraine are in the east and south, Kharkov is a major industrial city, the Sea of Azov has untold natural gas reserves.

 

And besides – the people love them. Why would the Russians now give up this hard-won prize?

 

And they *have* won – make no mistake. Ask any military man who is not a system pig, he’ll tell you: There is no way for the AFU to retake their country. They have no armor, no air defense, no fuel, no comms – it’s over.

 

The great tragedy is that so many THOUSANDS of young men will die, and die NEEDLESSLY!!,  in order to postpone the inevitable. These brave boys will have fought so valiantly – and died so young, so cruelly -because of the evil of the Zelensky regime.

 

That’s the hard truth.

Putin is not insane. The Russians are not blood thirsty Orcs. The Russians had reasons for going to war. Whether those reasons are moral, whether the conduct of the war is moral, are questions which must be judged over time taking everything into account. The sooner we end this war, and overcome the crippling effects of massive war propaganda, the sooner we can have that discussion.

Above all, end the war now.

Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America