To hear Western leaders talk of Russia breaching “international law” for invading Ukraine is to be verbally assaulted with the height of hypocrisy. For the best part of two decades, the US has used Ukraine as a pawn for NATO expansion. Big deal? NATO expansion in Ukraine is a direct threat to Russian security, and the methods used by the US for doing this were decidedly underhanded, destroying Ukraine politically and economically in the process.

Further, they want you to forget that in order to augment or maintain their global military dominance, the US government and its allies have invaded or abused whomever they pleased for much of contemporary history. Ukraine is no different. This doesn’t fully justify Putin’s actions but puts them in context.

Putin is no saint nor is Russia free of guilt, historically. At this point however, Ukraine is a Western puppet state with no real sovereignty. By attacking Ukraine, Putin is indirectly in pre-emptive defence (an American tactic if ever there was) against the US itself. So for the American government and the rest of the West to wax on about peace is nothing but empty gestures. They wanted war. They wanted to “spread democracy.” They wanted a desperate situation so they could sweep in and look like the good guy liberators.

But that narrative is dead. Despite the embarrassments and atrocities of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the neoliberals and neoconservatives of America haven’t learned their lessons. Unlike the founding fathers and philosophers like Plato, they have absolutely no idea of what a functioning republic looks like. They just tout an empty “democracy” that is nothing but a slogan. We are witnessing instead the end of modern democracy in the West as the lies and propaganda of its leaders unravel.