UKRAINE: A Christian Response in a Wag the Dog World
UKRAINE: A Christian Response in a Wag the Dog World
Cropped satellite photos, altered headlines, CIA paramilitaries, oh my
“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” -Jesus
We live in a Wag the Dog world. If you’ve ever seen the 1997 film with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, you know what it takes to put on a wartime production.
In the film, De Niro plays a character who operates in exceedingly gray areas, whose job it is to divert attention from a career-ending sex scandal involving the President of the United States and a “Firefly” girl – a fictional version of a girl scout. With eleven days until the election, De Niro has to radically change the narrative, and he figures the best way to do it is to fabricate a war in Albania.
Why Albania? Why not Albania. He even recruits a Hollywood producer, Dustin Hoffman’s character, to get the job done.
The methods and means of Wag the Dog are largely the story of Ukraine at this very moment, even if the goals differ between fiction and reality.
Wag the Dog Moment 1: Fact checkers from Reuters and the Associated Press recently made a big deal about how social media was spreading a fake CNN headline that claimed Putin was waiting to invade until he could steal U.S. weapons being sent to Ukraine. Fact checkers pounced on the fake headline as part of a social media campaign to combat misinformation.
The altered headline was obviously untrue, and wouldn’t you know it, something similar plays out in Wag the Dog where De Niro’s character deliberately plants information about a B3 bomber — only, B3 bombers don’t exist. Another tactic is to deny rumors that no one is actually spreading. The fake stories allow the administration to deny them (because they are absurd) while enjoying the real success that the media is no longer talking about a sex scandal but about a perceived conflict in a foreign land.
The fact checks ultimately allow them to continue plugging the idea that Putin is ready to strike at any moment. Still don’t think the fake headline was planted? Turns out the original headline was about Putin meddling in the 2016 election. Perfect fact-check fodder for a press looking for the ultimate villain.
Wag the Dog Moment 2: For over a month, media have been parroting the troop buildup through commercial satellite images shared to them by Maxar Technologies, who, out of the goodness of their private enterprising hearts have been monitoring the situation and want the world to know what’s going on.
But Maxar isn’t so independent. The company’s Earth Intelligence segment receives 65% of its revenue from the “U.S. federal government and agencies.” That number was 77.5% just a year ago. For over a decade, Maxar has been the sole supplier of high-res satellite imagery for the National Reconnaissance Office, a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and a DoD agency. Maxar receives a cool $300 million a year for their services on that single government contract alone.
In Wag the Dog, De Niro has to convince the CIA to play along with his made-up war and wonders aloud what all those spy satellites are up there for if they don’t show us anything. The message to the CIA is, come up with some juicy satellite photos that I can use to sell a fake war.
That’s exactly what the U.S. is doing to show heightened tensions at the border of Ukraine and Russia. They’re spinning a story about a troop buildup, even if what little buildup there is may be happening over a hundred miles from the border and even if some of the satellite imagery is cropped to hide the fact that some are permanent installations that have been operating for years.
Wag the Dog Moment 3: If propaganda doesn’t do the trick, you can always rely on your CIA-trained paramilitaries that can trigger or disrupt foreign operations at the drop of a hat.
In Wag the Dog, they use someone from special forces to pose as an American servicemember captured by an Albanian terrorist group to pull at America’s heart strings. I won’t spoil the hilarious turn of events that follow.
CIA’s active presence in Ukraine is particularly noteworthy if you’re familiar with the Oliver Stone documentary Ukraine on Fire, which is a riff on the award-winning Netflix documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom that followed the pro-nationalist Ukrainian protest-turned-conflict of 2013.
Infuriating at least one prolific anti-Russia writer who called it “pro-Putin propaganda,” Stone’s Ukraine on Fire documentary begins by detailing the history of Western intelligence support for Nazi sympathizers and murderers from Western Ukraine, such as Stepan Bandera, following World War II.
Bandera’s gangs killed tens of thousands of Jews and Poles and included Ukrainian SS in their ranks. These were genocidaires who sometimes complemented the Nazis and sometimes got crossways with them (Bandera himself was held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for a while, though in cushier quarters). Following the war, MI6 backed Bandera, and CIA backed his associate Mykola Lebed, helping him get a place in New York City and U.S. citizenship, despite having murdered Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews.
CIA collaborated with Lebed beginning in the late 1940s and began training Ukrainian guerilla groups through operation AERODYNAMIC. In the 1950s, CIA created the non-profit Prolog Research and Publishing Corporation to produce loads of Ukrainian nationalist propaganda through seemingly private donations without leaving a taxable trail.
In 1957 alone, with CIA support, Prolog broadcast 1,200 radio programs totaling 70 hours per month and distributed 200,000 newspapers and 5,000 pamphlets. In the years following, Prolog distributed books by nationalist Ukrainian writers and poets. One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and … there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.”
Hitler’s Shadow, pg 88-89
The present narrative coming from the United States concerning Ukraine is, thus, not a recent phenomenon but a nearly century-long project to use Ukraine as a pawn in games of geopolitical control.
But what’s all this about today? It’s become clear that Germany is, surprisingly, the key to the whole charade. The United States wants Germany to capitulate on its plans for the gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 and continue to bend the knee to the U.S.
A mythical invasion of Ukraine is the leverage that the U.S. is using to keep Germany on its side. How could you, says the U.S. to Germany, in good conscience do business with the evil Russian empire if they were to invade poor, helpless Ukraine? The invasion narrative is the tool the U.S. is using to keep the pipeline from going through. Senator Mitch McConnell essentially spilled the beans a few days ago. And now, Germany has confirmed it will sanction Russia if Putin invades Ukraine — a strategic win for the U.S.
Germany’s commitment to the U.S. that it will sanction Russia upon invasion may or may not trigger some kind of conflict at the border, but you can be sure the underlying provocation – regardless of who the U.S. or anyone else blames it on – will have been instigated by the West.
This is a complex story, and the wholesale fabrications are endless. How does a Christian respond in this Wag the Dog world?
We can start by recognizing that our hope is not in the kingdoms of the age, but in the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world (John 18:36). Rather, we demonstrate what that Kingdom looks like by how we live in a Wag the Dog world.
In my own life, I see that as being committed to truth and the wellbeing of my neighbors, just as I look after my own wellbeing. Endless fabrications are not compatible with Kingdom ideals, such as peace and reconciliation. This is the reason I want to be a purveyor truth, but to do so with kindness and understanding since the situation is complex and many cannot be faulted for knowing little more than what is fed to them.
We want what is good for this earthly kingdom, but we must be vigilant not to trade the integrity of our witness to the heavenly for what is expedient for the earthly. Our supreme treasure — the truth of Jesus the Messiah — is held in jars of clay, not in pipelines, coffers, or statecraft.