As if he were holding a gun at our back, President Joe Biden is pushing Americans ever higher on the escalation ladder with Moscow. Recently, former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev warned that Washington and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine risks becoming a “full-fledged nuclear war.”

In a message that should be heard loud and clear by the American people, Medvedev cautioned “the pumping of Ukraine by NATO countries with weapons, the training of its troops to use Western equipment, the dispatch of mercenaries and the conduct of exercises by the countries of the Alliance near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia instead of their ‘war by proxy.’”

Leading up to the war, the State Department blatantly eschewed diplomacy which could have prevented Putin’s invasion. While at the same time, hawks in the Biden administration, the Senate, NATO, the CIA, and the Pentagon could be heard salivating, in public statements and major news outlets, with dreams of killing Russians in a long-coveted, protracted proxy war.

Senior American officials now openly boast about helping Kiev murder Russians.

In The New York Times, there were incendiary claims of a dozen Russian Generals killed by Ukrainian forces largely with the aid of U.S. battlefield intelligence. Before that, there was another story about a Russian military transport plane downed with Washington’s intelligence assistance, hundreds of Russian soldiers were reportedly killed.

As if to remove any lingering confusion, Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer, the Democratic Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, has proclaimed definitively that “we’re at war.” Of course, there was never a constitutional declaration of war, which means Hoyer is admitting to illegally dragging his constituents and the rest of America into a brutal war with Russia, a nation armed with roughly 6,000 nukes.

Though on April 5, The Washington Post infamously reported that “for some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early.”

Their sadistic preferences are luxuries humanity cannot afford.

Having launched this war, Putin has painted himself into a corner, and to end the war he needs an off ramp, a negotiated settlement. His primary terms have been clear; they include Kiev’s recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, autonomy or independence for the breakaway republics in the Donbas region, and Ukrainian neutrality.

During the previous rounds of bilateral talks held in Turkey, the Ukrainians indicated to the Russians that they would be willing to negotiate neutrality in exchange for certain security guarantees. This set off alarm bells in London and Washington. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raced to Kiev for a meeting with Zelensky. His mission was to halt any peace overtures at once.

As Antiwar.com columnist Ted Snider has written,

Whose war is the war in Ukraine? [The U.S. and its NATO partners] have hijacked the war by ordering Ukraine to subordinate its goals to the larger Western goals. “Even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky, “[we] are not. . . . We can sign with you, but not with him.”

…Ukrainian media reports that “as soon as” Ukraine and Russia, “following the outcome of Istanbul, had agreed on the structure of a future possible agreement in general terms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kyiv almost without warning.” Johnson rushed in with the demand that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Don’t negotiate Ukraine’s goals, fight for the West’s goals. Johnson told Zelensky that the war presents a chance to “press” Putin and that the West wanted to use that opportunity, according to one of Zelensky’s “close associates.”

Johnson wasn’t a rogue Western voice. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin even more clearly gave the new directions. Speaking in Kiev after meeting with Zelensky, Austin said the U.S. wants to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”. The State Department discouraged Ukraine from negotiating the key issue of the Russia-Ukraine war, that Ukraine not join NATO, because the Western war “is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.”

Peace talks have now completely stalled and NATO has committed “open-ended military support” for the war in Ukraine.

At this pace, this year’s enormous spending on military aid and other assistance to Ukraine is set to surpass the State Department’s yearly budget. Antony Blinken, putatively America’s top diplomat, is dutifully promoting the long war as well as regime change in Moscow.

Since February 15, Blinken has not spoken to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Blinken is more focused on peddling baseless stories about Tehran’s alleged attempts to assassinate Mike Pompeo. You can also catch him playing guitar on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. It is the ultimate insult that the American people are still forced to pay Blinken’s salary.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Kiev, leading a delegation of Democratic Party representatives, and insisted America will keep the war going “until victory is won.”

Colorado’s Jason Crow made the trip as well and said “the United States of America is in this to win it.” He added that the focus of the delegation’s meeting with Zelensky was “weapons, weapons, weapons.” Practically acting as a lobbyist for a foreign power or alternately an arms salesman, Crow said Zelensky wants “more sophisticated intelligence and surveillance drones as well as attack drones that can be reused multiple times instead of the Kamikaze drones we’ve given them.”

On Fox News, another Democrat, Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton said “at the end of the day, we’ve got to realize we’re at war. And we’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although, it’s somewhat through proxy with Russia and it’s important that we win.”

Biden recently requested another massive aid package for Ukraine originally totaling a shocking $33 billion, with more than $20 billion in weapons. Not a single House Democrat voted against this spending, instead they added still more billions in taxpayer money for the military industrial complex, swelling the package to a whopping $40 billion.

The Senate has since overwhelmingly passed legislation for the aid package, which includes mostly weapons, the opposition included only 11 Republicans and predictably not one Democrat. Biden has now signed the bill.

Not to be out done by the liberals, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led a delegation of Republican Senators to meet with Zelensky and promised to “sustain our support until Ukraine wins this war.”

Neoconservative spokesman and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham puts it more clearly, declaring emphatically “there is no off-ramp,” we must “take out Putin.”

Vilnius makes loud calls for regime change not just of Putin but his entire government. London along with Stockholm, poised to join NATO shortly, says relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin can never be normalized.

Biden told workers at an Alabama Lockheed Martin plant that manufactures Javelin anti-tank missiles, “you’re making it possible for the Ukrainian people to defend themselves without us having to risk getting in a third world war by sending in American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers.”

In addition to London’s SAS troops reportedly on the ground in Kiev training Ukrainian forces on British anti-tank weapons, the U.S. may have already deployed some deniable paramilitary forces. As James Carden, former adviser to the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. State Department, has reported,

While Biden remains steadfast in assuring the public that there will be no “boots on the ground,” in point of fact, current and former officials have suggested that US paramilitaries are indeed on the ground, with military assistance being coordinated by the new appointee to the Biden National Security Council, retired US Army Lieutenant General Terry Wolff.

According to retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff, the administration is planning for a protracted conflict in Ukraine.

Wilkerson says “they are extremely desirous of a protracted conflict because they want to effect regime change in Moscow, destabilize Russia and then take on China. That is their long-term geopolitical strategy.”

The more the hawks ratchet tensions and the longer Putin doesn’t retaliate by using nukes, the same reckless Western policymakers become exponentially more confident that the Russians are bluffing. They will then escalate further, potentially making the unthinkable inevitable.

Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko tweeted the U.S. is developing plans aimed at destroying the Russian Black Sea fleet. This comes amid reports that the U.S. is actively considering how to provide advanced anti-ship missiles to Ukraine.

Moscow warned for years that bringing Ukraine into the alliance was the “brightest of all redlines,” but NATO went ahead and, in all but name, made Kiev a member.

In January, Qin Gang, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, strongly admonished Washington stating “if the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict.”

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet sailed yet another warship, a guided missile cruiser, through the sensitive Taiwan Strait and the State Department removed from its website references to Washington’s One China policy.

As Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com news editor, has detailed,

The State Department removed a line that said the U.S. “does not support Taiwan independence.” It also removed a line that said the U.S. recognizes “the government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China.”

Zhao Lijian, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman described these provocative edits as “an act of political manipulation and an attempt to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, which will backfire and the US itself will get burned.”

Taiwan is armed to the teeth with American F-16s and other military equipment. Taipei now openly hosts U.S. troops training its forces. Implicitly, the training is for an eventual war with the mainland.

These moves take place in the context of the “Asia Pivot,” launched more than a decade ago by Barack Obama, the largest military buildup since World War II, aimed directly at China.

Americans should realize now that, regardless of the incalculable consequences, their blood soaked rulers will likely never hit the brakes on these wars with Russia and China. That is our responsibility and we must act accordingly.