Progressives’ Democratic tribalism forces their support of US proxy war on Russia

As a proud progressive libertarian, I support virtually every Democratic position on domestic issues. In that regard the Democratic Party is my tribe. Nearly every other political partisan has now gravitated to political tribalism in the US, either 100% Democratic or 100% Republican. That relatively new phenomenon has unintended consequences.

One is that is snuffs out nearly all policy debate that could lead to compromise.

The most problematic to our planet’s survival, however, is the current unified Democratic support for proxy war against Russia. This proxy war did not start with the February 24, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It began 31 years earlier with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Not just Democrats, but Republicans and the entire US national security establishment, signed on to maintaining the now pipsqueak Russia as a mortal enemy to be isolated and weakened.

How? Instead of abolishing NATO as unnecessary, the US expanded it from 16 to 30 countries, right up to Russia’s borders in former Soviet Republics. In the West’s version of the Iron Curtin, NATO could now put troops and nuclear capable weapons on Russia’s doorstep.

Why? Maintain Europe’s dependence on the US to sell expanded NATO hundreds of billions in weapons to protect against a now phantom enemy. In addition, keep Russia from engaging in the European political economy so US could maintain economic control over Europe. Allowing Russia in commercially would wean Europe off that economic dependence. Resource rich Russia was a threat to that gravy train.

From 1991 till 2014, this proxy war simmered largely out of sight. That changed abruptly in February, 2014, when the US intervened to birth a nationalist Ukrainian coup against their President Yanukovych on the brink of linking Ukraine to Russia economically. Besides stopping Russian engagement with Europe, the coup ignited a murderous civil war in the Donbas against Russian leaning Ukrainians. Over 14,000 dead now with the help of hundreds of millions in US weapons to kill Donbas Ukrainians.

Eight years later, after fruitless negotiations and pleas to deny Ukraine NATO membership and give independence to Donbas, Russia had enough and invaded.

Thirteen months later too many good, peace loving progressives, tied to their Democratic tribalism, remain in denial of the US proxy war on Russia that made their illegal Ukraine invasion virtually inevitable.

They are oblivious to the fact that their Democratic leader Biden was an enabler of the Iraq war 20 years ago as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden’s hearings the summer before, promoted Bush administration lies without allowing a single dissenting witness. His committee staff director Tony Blinken, who helped Biden orchestrate those hearings, now serves as Secretary of Proxy War (opps, State). His third highest official at State is Victoria Nuland, another Iraq war enabler as assistant to VP Dick Cheney. Nuland also was Obama’s chief facilitator of the US war on Ukraine democracy that birthed the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Progressives supporting endless weaponizing of Ukraine, helping bankrupt America while destroying Ukraine, need to check their Democratic tribalism at the doorway to peace. I did and will continue to do so till my last breath.