US and allies warned on ‘violations of a neutral’s duties of impartiality and non-participation in the conflict’
Airman 1st Class Olabode Igandan, of the 436th Aerial Port Squadron passenger services, prepares ammunition, weapons and other equipment bound for Ukraine at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on January 21, 2022. Photo: WikiCommons / US Air Force / Mauricio Campino
Conversations over the past week with current and former US officials about whether, to their knowledge, there is any real debate inside President Joe Biden’s administration over the approach it is taking in Ukraine has produced only slight variations of the same answer: “Not really.”
As of now, what the Biden policy amounts to is a replay along the lines of president Franklin D Roosevelt’s policy toward the war in Europe from 1939 to December 1941, during which the US was a co-belligerent all but in name.
In their public statements, Biden and his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin seem intent on obfuscating the true extent of American involvement. A story in the defense-industry-sponsored Politico quoted unnamed US officials as saying “military options in Ukraine aren’t on the table – echoing Biden’s repeated position of not wanting to spark World War III.”
If taken at face value, Biden’s policy would seem to be at odds with itself. Not wanting to start a third World War is a prudent, appropriate policy objective, but if that’s the goal, the administration is taking the long way around, because whether they admit it or not, the US is, and has been for some time, a co-belligerent in the war.
“We have consistently been sharing intelligence that includes information the Ukrainians can use to inform and develop their military response to Russia’s invasion,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in March.
On April 13, Biden authorized US$800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total amount his administration has spent on aiding Ukraine to roughly $3 billion.
The open spigot of funding has naturally attracted the attention of the defense industry, and last week, the chief executives of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and L3Harris Technologies met at the Pentagon with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.
But US involvement goes deeper than arms sales and intelligence sharing. A Pentagon official who requested anonymity told me it is “likely we have a limited footprint on the ground in Ukraine, but under Title 50, not Title 10,” meaning US intelligence operatives and paramilitaries – but not regular military.
Bruce Fein, a constitutional expert and former associate attorney general in the Ronald Reagan administration, told me this week that in his view, “the United States and several NATO members have become co-belligerents with Ukraine against Russia by systematic and massive assistance to its military forces to defeat Russia.”
According to Fein, the US and its NATO allies are now vulnerable to attack by “an enemy belligerent,” meaning Russia, because of their “systematic or substantial violations of a neutral’s duties of impartiality and non-participation in the conflict.”
“Neutrality,” continued Fein, “is violated by permitting a belligerent to violate its territorial integrity (as Belarus and Russia have done to Ukraine), or by supplying warships, arms, ammunition, military provisions or other war materials, directly or indirectly, or supplying military advisers to a belligerent,” as the US has done.
“Under the Declare War Clause of the constitution, co-belligerency, which displaces the status of the United States as neutral, requires a declaration of war by Congress,” said Fein. But instead of fulfilling its constitutional duties, Congress has been aggressively pushing the administration to deepen its involvement in what is clearly now a US-Russian proxy war.
On. March 2, the US House of Representatives voted 425-3 in favor of a non-binding resolution “Supporting the People of Ukraine.” The following week, on March 10, the House overwhelmingly voted to send $14 billion in military funding to Ukraine as part of an omnibus spending package.
And on April 7, the US Senate passed Republican Senator John Cornyn’s Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, which “temporarily waives certain requirements related to the President’s authority to lend or lease defense articles if the defense articles are intended for Ukraine’s government and necessary to protect civilians in Ukraine from Russian military invasion.”
In the end, Congress and the Biden administration are wading into dangerous waters. Fein warns that the US has “employed the concept of co-belligerency to target for extermination any group or individual who provides material support to al-Qaeda or ISIS” – and there is a real risk that Russia may take a page out of America’s playbook.
By James Carden
James W Carden was for six years the principal foreign affairs writer for The Nation magazine and has had his reporting and essays featured in a wide variety of publications. Previous to that he served as an adviser to the US State Department. He is a member of the Board of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy and senior consultant to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord
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Biden isn’t running the show; it’s most likely the neocons itching to start WWIII. Thing is, we may get to the bottom of our own corrupt Biden crime family; Putin may have some aces to play in the crime info category. And that’s what makes this so dangerous…we have a severely compromised chief executive who is also mentally deficient.
They could have Biden committing rape on tape and the press won’t cover it and nothing would happen.
I’m willing to bet that you can’t even DEFINE the word “neocon”.
If you want to accurately describe these people, call them what they truly are…cock sucking, child raping lizard people.
If you think this is about politics, you are woefully mistaken. This is about global genocide by a superior class of beings using our own people against us. This has been the plan for over 2000 years. It’s been operational the entire time…and it remains remarkably effective today.
“You’d best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You’re IN ONE!” – Captain Barbosa
Here’s an interesting detail. Work on S.3522 – Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 started at least before 19th January 2022 when it was introduced to the Senate. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February. So if we were working on “bi-partisan” legislation to arm Ukraine before Russia had invaded, then wouldn’t it make sense that all these nonsensical sanctions, supply chain chaos, and coming shortages of everything including food were in the works for some time as well? Is this Agenda 2030 (at last with regards to energy) by other means? Kinda like how that Patriot Act just materialized after the 9/11 Mossad false flag.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3522/all-info
And…
https://thesaker.is/the-russian-ministry-of-defen%D1%81e-original-documents-planned-offensive-operation-against-donbass-in-march-of-this-year/
Yes indeed. And who are the players behind Agenda 2030? Lucifarians. Satan worshipers. Lizard people.
How can our Government boldly claim to be IN POSSESSION of OFF WORLD SPACECRAFT and simultaneously say they have no idea where it came from? As brother Gary Stearman would say, “they know who made the hubcaps”. The “kings” of this Earth have been collaborating with Satan for technology…all hoping to be eaten last. The result would be complete extinction of the human race if not for the return of King Jesus…which was promised us.
Your instinct that we are ALL being played serves you well.
That 22 yr old fool who just got greased over there was technically still in the US miltary. Unless it has changed you are still in the Reserves for six years after separation?
I believe that an enlistment contract is for 8 years. That could be anywhere from 3-6 active years and the remainder in an inactive or active reserve status.
Factually correct, if incomplete. It’s a little more complicated than that, but you nailed the basic premise well enough. 99% of the time that’s the way it plays out.
That depends entirely upon the type of discharge received. For instance…anything below a General Under Honorable Discharge would not include ANY reserve time…because, cull. They don’t WANT those people back…being seen as some form of substandard. Those folks receive a DD-214 immediately upon separation. No reserve time at all.
Also, our “gov’t” would not for one second hesitate to disavow ANYONE if it meant an extra dollar in their pocket.
Never
Again
Volunteer
Yourself
Ukraine is like Epstein’s island. Americans who go there – with names like Biden, Pelosi, Romney and Roger Cloutier – are up to no good.
Greetings,
The United States is Italy in 1941. Hear me out.
Italy was the first European country to rearm itself after WWI. Between 1934-1936, it fought wars in Albania, Libya, Ethiopia and Spain. In other words, Italy was already worn out and low on equipment and ammunition when the varsity squad took the field in 1939. Also, everyone could plainly see how the next war was going to play out by how the Spanish Civil War had played out and could plan accordingly.
Does this sound familiar? The United States has been in a state of constant warfare for 20 years. How we fight, our order of battle, our communications, the radar signature of all of our aircraft, etc, have all been studied these last 20 years as we fought adversaries on the doorstep of our potential adversaries.
Italy was sanctioned for using poison gas while fighting in Africa. Consequently, it didn’t have access to the raw materials it needed to rearm itself during the crucial time right before it all got very serious.
Sanctions on Russia are, in effect, sanctions on ourselves. As we pour the last of our munitions into Ukraine, the means to make more extremely complex weapons and munitions are just as lacking for us as they were for fascist Italy.
Italy found itself in a treaty obligation with a maniac. Italy was required to go to war with anyone that the Germans choose to go to war against and Germany found no shortage of nations to wage war with.
The United States, too, is obligated to go to war should any one of the Nato countries be attacked. We are also obligated to dozens of countries not even in Nato. We could wake up one day and discover that we are at war with several billion angry people.
The Italian government was not very popular. Italy had only even been a country since 1871 and people were still more loyal to their traditional city state than they were to a centralized fascist dictatorship. The moment they could escape it, they did.
The Biden administration is the most unpopular in all of American history. People are not in any hurry to take up arms and bleed out in some far away land so that Disney can groom their children or so someone with purple hair can have a post birth abortion. People are sick of the wokeism.
The problems that Italy faced in 1940 are very similar to the problems we face now in 2022. The days when our dockyards could turn out a warship every single day are long gone. That kind of heavy industry sits in scattered ruins in the Rustbelt. Frankly, it appears that we are going to have to take on two superpowers with what we’ve got on hand just as Italy found itself in.
Some correct points, but quite a few times you go way off the rails.
“Italy [in 1941] found itself in a treaty obligation with a maniac.” Ohh, poor Italy!
“The United States [today], too, is obligated to go to war should any one of the Nato countries be attacked.” Ohh, poor US! How, pray tell, did it get itself into that pickle? (Bonus question: who is the maniac these days?)
“Sanctions on Russia are, in effect, sanctions on ourselves. As we pour the last of our munitions into Ukraine, the means to make more extremely complex weapons and munitions are just as lacking for us as they were for fascist Italy.”
Now you’re just bullshitting.
Let’s start with the US’ non-reaction to Putin’s announcement of hypersonic weapons in 2018, and to the famed S-400 systems since long before.
– Did the US even seriously try to find the means to make more extremely complex weapons too, with an emphasis on “which really work, even under duress”?
– Even assuming Yes, was it lacking [sanctioned] raw materials to do so?
– Or was it maybe more a lack of production capabilities, which had in large part been transferred to China, and dismantled at home?
– And isn’t the US even more severely lacking in capable young engineers, due to the watering-down of universities to now mainly offer ‘advanced shoe-tying’, excuse me ‘diversity and inclusivity’, courses?? Meaning we can’t design those new complex weapon systems – plus couldn’t rebuild our production capabilities [on the quick], even if we wanted to.
I’m not BS’ing one bit. Your counter-arguments were pathetic.
Wake up.
Wow… snore… uh, maybe you could expand on which are pathetic arguments and why?
Not worth my time. Read a book.
Keep on BS’ing.
Putin has already said that the Ukraine war is really a war between Russia and the west. Ukraine is just a convenient excuse to heat the war machine up. I always thought D.C. was stupid, but never stupid enough to push the envelope with a nation that has 6000 nukes at the ready. After the first one lifts off, there won’t be any place to hide. What a waste to turn to toast over a POS country like Ukraine.
Since the day the lunatics took over the asylum, the Clownworld they created has become an increasingly dangerous place to be. Now that they’ve started flicking matches at each other it’s only a matter of time until they burn the place down and kill us all in the process.
Ephesians 6:
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
We can’t win this contest on our own. The Good News is that help is here and more is coming! In the end…they lose…biggly.
The author is still behind the curve, WWIII [between the US/NATO and Russia] already started in 2014 or 2015, in Donbass.
It only now has become openly visible to all.
Proof, from 2018:
as found here
Fabulous stuff ‘m’ thanks. I will watch it later this week and I am sure my Chinese people would like to see it and respond perhaps.
The US is directly responsible for the sinking of the Moskva, as the Ukrainians could not have done that alone, and have openly stated ramping up “information provision” to support the Ukies, including satellite imagery along with other forms of sophisticated information gathering the Ukies could never do on their own. To say the US is not taking part in the hostilities is a fallacy. So far the Russians have been very reserved in their response to these actions.
How come Russia or China was never called a co-belligerent when we were in Vietnam or South Korea? Never heard that mentioned about them.
I wasn’t aware Russia or China ever tried to pretend they weren’t directly involved or supporting a party, in Vietnam or Korea (and there was no “South K.” back then)…