EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY MAY 17, 2023

Making America Good Again

May 16, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Before making fun of President Zelenskyy’s meltdown the other day, put yourself in his shoes for a moment. You’ve hitched your wagon to a Western world that has a systemic financial breakdown on its hands. Your Western allies are so “post-industrialized” that they have trouble being the war machine they fantasize about, leaving you way short of ammunition. Worse, they will have Ukraine fight to the last Ukrainian, bleeding itself to death in a proxy war, designed to sap as much strength from Russia as possible. And what regime change in the last many decades, engineered by London and Washington, has resulted in the country getting stronger going forward (or going forward at all)?

Zelenskyy ends up as a talented dancing puppet who, as he gets all used up, as his “show” gets repetitive, has to worry about being thrown on the junk heap. He’s tried every trick in the book, attempting to turn the proxy war into a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S. So, when the Washington Post asked whether he and his head of Ukraine’s Military Directorate Kyrylo Budanov had actually discussed a scheme to destroy the head of Russia’s “Wagner” military grouping, Yevgeny Prigozhin—as the leaked Pentagon documents indicate—Zelenskyy simply lost it. Wild verbal gyrations reflected paranoia, possible traitors in Ukraine, the Washington establishment throwing him to the wolves, Russia controlling the Pentagon, etc.

The last 24 hours in Ukraine saw the head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court detained, and the leading judges of Ukraine in an emergency session paying obeisance to Zelenskyy’s administration. And Kiev’s citizenry heard a massive explosion, which was a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile knocking out Kiev’s Patriot air defense system—while the Zelenskyy administration bragged about having shot down six Kinzhals!

But once one turns off the reality show, there actually is reality. The Presidents of five Central Asian nations gathered today in China for a week of summit meetings with President Xi Jinping on rebuilding the vast region, beginning with core infrastructure development. The Arab League gathered in Cairo, with a new-found unity, featuring the welcoming back of Syria. The question of oil profits going into regional development and outside of dollar-denominated trade is now a very practical question.

In the United States, a full-page ad in the New York Times, signed by a group of national security experts, stated the obvious: Permanent war is designed for a military-industrial-congressional greed party, but “the U.S. should be a force for peace in the world.” It explains how diplomacy works and how neo-cons have deliberately sabotaged diplomacy. And it quotes from the June 10, 1963 speech of John Kennedy:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

The U.S. can stop sabotaging itself and actually negotiate a peace.

And two days ago, a U.S. Presidential candidate, JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., dared to call out the assassination machine that has taken up residence in Kiev, putting the ugly reality of the present-day military-industrial-congressional apparatus on the table.

Reality is a lot more interesting, and healthy, than reality shows—or Zelenskyy’s living hell. The U.S. can be a force for peace in the world. Make America good again.