Powell got it right.
In addition, there's an
Economist article that states that Russia has spent something like $67 billion on the war, but NATO a lot higher, and its members are now complaining about giving more money to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, even as Pentagon has failed its fifth audit, there are now complaints that money is being mishandled, with both U.S. politicians and their Ukrainian counterparts getting their respective cuts. It doesn't bother the military industrial complex because it's been experiencing record sales plus the opportunity to test new weapons on Russians and Ukrainians:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/world/europe/ukraine-weapons.htmlThe U.S. rich, which make up only 10 pct of the population of the states but own 70 pct of total wealth of the country, want to take control of the Ukrainian economy, and likely in return for all of that "aid":
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/zelenskyy-blackrock-ceo-fink-agree-to-coordinate-ukraine-investment.htmlwhich is passed on to the public as debt:
https://www.usdebtclock.org/But this creates problems, as debt levels are now so high that the country needs to take on more debt just to pay for part of the interest on previous ones.
Meanwhile, the Raytheon CEO (the company is one member of the military industrial complex) was interviewed by FT and stated that China has the U.S. "by the balls" because what it needs to maintain its war machine is China.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/raytheon-ceo-china-has-us-military-balls(There is a link to the FT article in it. I use the ZH report because it shouldn't get paywalled.)
China and other members of the Global South have been slowly de-dollarizing and making new arrangements:
https://www.dw.com/en/a-new-world-order-brics-nations-offer-alternative-to-west/a-65124269https://www.tbsnews.net/world/de-dollarization-happening-stunning-pace-jen-says-619306and likely because several of them were abused, manipulated, and attacked by the U.S. and NATO across decades. For part of that alone, Brown U reports casualties in the millions:
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/humanIn short, we're looking at one one war machine vs. several. The latter are too weak against the former because they don't have something like the U.S. dollar but have been gaining economically throughout the decades, and ironically because they don't have something like the U.S. dollar. For the former, most of its people don't want to serve or are not fit to serve, especially its youth:
https://www.ksnblocal4.com/2023/03/20/80-americans-ages-17-24-are-unfit-military-service/and many are now complaining that the money being sent to Ukraine should be going to them because the new jobs they're getting pay poorly, their savings are drying up, the cost of living is rising, and infrastructure is falling apart. More of them also don't want to send troops: instead, they want other people to die in fights, which is what proxy wars are about.
Finally, the latter is the reason why NATO is reluctant to send troops. There are more details here:
https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1672178339845373952The gist is that they'd rather bully weaker opponents, like Afghans, and are more used to things like low intensity conflict, or manipulating and destabilizing other countries. That's one reason why their so-called "defensive" alliance wants to open shop even in places like Japan:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Japan-and-NATO-to-level-up-cooperation-with-eye-on-China-Russiabecause, as explained in another thread, their real goal isn't to promote "freedom and democracy" but to maintain U.S. superpower status by encircling rivals.
Finally, for those who think that these are all separate points, here's what puts them together:
The U.S. wants a unipolar world, where it leads and everyone obeys. The only way it can do so today is for everyone to keep using the dollar (which is part of being obedient), which in turn allows them to rack up tremendous levels of debt, so that they can spend on their military, which they need to make sure that everyone obeys.
More--BRICS and Global South, or over forty emerging markets--were being forced to obey for decades, but are now answering back, and what triggered it is the current conflict. They have been able to answer back because they grew stronger economically, which is why instead of a unipolar world, we are now seeing a multipolar world, where are multiple centers of influence.
Meanwhile, more allies are also fighting with each other, like European countries buying oil from Russia indirectly (via India) and Japan now buying oil from Russia directly, France answering back at the U.S. because the latter botched submarine sales to Australia, which in turn is now trying to appease its major trading partner China, and even now the U.S. re-affirming its one-China policy in order not to anger China, and at the expense of Taiwan.
