Has the US an endgame to its "Putin Project"?

There is so much chatter about Vladimir Putin getting close to using tactical nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. But whether or not he gets around to using them does not mean the end game is in his hands. And it should be the fervent wish of everyone on this planet that the end game does not move to his side of the board. With so many things awry in the world, the guy can snap and, what the heck, take all of us with him.

The end game is with the United States. The war in Ukraine is an instigation of the US. To be sure, Putin had grand expansionist designs. But he was for the longest time held back by the specter of NATO, whose operating principle had been that an attack on one is an attack on the others. But just as NATO held back Putin, it was also NATO that pushed him over the edge on Ukraine. And that was the opening gambit of the US.

The US has many sworn enemies that it no longer has the belly to fight frontally, what with so many domestic problems at home. Long used to being the greatest and have everything it wanted the way it wanted, the US is now imploding. Institutions are collapsing, the Left and Liberals are dominating. Illegal immigrants are through the wall and recession is at the door. Racism has crawled back out from under the rug.

Thus sapped and still spooked but not out of wits, the great United States invented a new way, or at least brought an old way of fighting to new and unprecedented heights to confront its enemies: Wage war by proxy. So just as it is with Taiwan in the case of China, and South Korea in the case of North Korea, it is Ukraine in the case of Russia. So effective is the ruse the proxy countries never believe they are being dummies.

Putin, against his better judgment, was played into doing the actual invading. But it was the US that backed him into a corner, using the specter of NATO to force his hand. Once the Russian bear lashed out from the trap, the US swiftly deployed the main component of its proxy war, unleashing crippling economic sanctions that do not put to risk a single American life.

To add moral weight to its subterfuge, the US deployed its never-say-no European allies in a concerted campaign to cripple and demonize the enemy, also with no risk to the lives of any of its fighting boys. The only lives being lost are those of the Russian soldiers (for whom the US and its allies will not weep or mourn) and the Ukrainians, who are only too proud to do so for what they thought was in defense of their country.

But now the world has gone beyond the full-scale war and has seen the worst of its unintended effects. Inflation is now a runaway train ripping up the rails of controlled economic direction and movement. Recession is moving fast from specter to reality. Almost all currencies are taking a beating against the US dollar that one wonders if this, too, is not part of the overall play, the US in the end left alone, like Fortinbras.

However the drama unfolds, the US is too slick and wily it is difficult for anyone, foe or friendly, to just come away thinking of the US innocently. If it initiated the gambit, it must know how it is going to end. The end game is not with Putin and Russia, has never been. It is with the US. What is real scary to contemplate is if the US end game is to actually transfer the responsibility to Putin.

Having successfully played Putin, the US is now aggressively brainwashing the Russian leader that he still has some modicum of control over a war that was never his in the first place. The nuke option drilled daily into his head by the western press is to make him think Kurt Vonnegut, that having come this far on a fool's errand, it is to preserve the honor of fools to go and complete the errand.