Darrell Castle talks about the U.S. decision to give another $800 million in weapons to Ukraine and whether this continued escalation is necessary. He also asks the question "Whose hands end up using them and, how do we know where the weapons go."

Transcription / Notes

ANOTHER WEEK ANOTHER $800 MILLION

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 29th day of April in the year of our Lord 2022 and I will be talking about the U.S. decision to give another $800 million in weapons to Ukraine which now seems to be a weekly thing. Is this continued escalation necessary and where do these weapons go? Whose hands end up using them and, how do we know?

Last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin were in Ukraine for talks with President Zelensky. This was an unusual visit for the U.S. since no official delegation has visited that country since the Russian invasion began. It was not unusual, however, for the U.S. to promise $800 million more in weapons since that seems to be an almost weekly thing now. This new package was termed foreign military assistance and was part of a new $713 million which came after two successive weeks of $800 million each. This week President Biden asked congress for $33 billion of taxpayer debt to pour into the Ukrainian black hole of war and despair.

The new weapons also reflect a continuing trend of escalation in lethality including heavy artillery, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters, and tanks. The heavy artillery included 18 towed 175mm howitzers and 40,000 rounds for them. In an interesting twist of fate, the U.S. and other NATO members are also delivering ammunition and weapons from the Soviet Union remaining in European stockpiles. Poland will send several T-72 Soviet era tanks and Germany will provide self-propelled anti-air armored tanks. Those are essentially a flak gun mounted on a tank chassis. These old Soviet weapons systems will then be replaced by U.S. state of the art systems so sweet deal.

I give you this partial list of weapons to demonstrate the escalation of the war in terms of lethality and danger. Poland and Germany both previously expressed reservations about continuing to escalate the struggle but have sense reversed course. That reversal came after a meeting between several NATO members and Secretaries Blinken and Austin after their Ukraine visit. The meeting was held at Ramstein, the U.S. air base in Germany. The German Chancellor Herr Scholz, in an interview just two days before with a German magazine said:

“We need to do everything to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a heavily armed superpower such as Russia, a nuclear power. I will do everything to avoid an escalation that could lead to World War lll—there can be no nuclear war.”

Apparently, everything does not include U.S. pressure, threats, and/or promises to pay for it all. Just two days after that statement was published Germany promised to offer artillery systems and training to Ukrainian troops on German soil. The German defense minister hailed the decision as “progress.” Scholtz once again emphasized that “avoiding escalation towards NATO is a top priority for me and that’s why I don’t focus on polls or let myself be irritated by shrill calls. The consequences of an error would be dramatic.”

Well, chancellor, those are fine words, but once again talk is cheap, and in the end you did exactly what you said you would not do. The risks you previously said you wanted to avoid are just as real now as they were then. In fact, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the next day, “the risk of nuclear war remains a serious real danger and we must not underestimate it.” Russia currently has a stockpile of battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons estimated at 2000 while the U.S. maintains about 250. Those weapons are not designed to be city annihilators,