Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the last surviving standard-bearer of his family's political dynasty, endorsed Donald Trump in a sweeping speech on August 23 and blamed the American foreign policy establishment for inciting and perpetuating the Ukraine war.
In particular, he blamed American neoconservatives for the Ukraine conflict and declared that Trump's promises to resume negotiations with Russia and end the war immediately after taking office were reason enough to support the former president's election campaign.
According to the latest NBC poll, Kennedy Jr., the son of former attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, would have received 10% of the vote in the presidential election. In a close election, Kennedy Jr.'s support could be the deciding factor in Trump's victory over rival Kamala Harris.
Kennedy Jr.'s speech was an indictment of the US foreign policy elite for deliberately drawing Russia into the Ukraine war for the purpose of regime change.
No politician has ever taken on the establishment so comprehensively. In a podcast last June, Mr Trump said NATO's plans to expand had caused the war. Mr Kennedy Jr's attack was sweeping, comprehensive and unrelenting.
“The military-industrial complex, as it does with every war, has provided us with the familiar cartoonish justification: the war is a noble effort to stop a supervillain named Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and halting a Hitler-like march across Europe. In reality, tiny Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle launched by US neocon ambitions for US world hegemony,” Kennedy Jr. said.
The mainstream media will ignore or distort Kennedy Jr.'s detailed indictments of the foreign policy elite. Below is my transcript of highlights from his speech.
“This war is Russia's predictable response to the neoconservative plan to expand NATO and encircle Russia. We unilaterally withdrew from two medium-term nuclear treaties with Russia and then installed nuclear weapons systems in Romania and Poland, a hostile act. And the Biden administration has repeatedly rejected Russian offers to resolve this war peacefully,” Kennedy Jr. said.
“The Ukraine war began in 2014 when US agents overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government, installed a hand-picked pro-Western government and started a deadly civil war against Ukraine's ethnic Russian minority. In 2019, the US withdrew from the Minsk Agreement, a peace treaty negotiated between Ukraine, Russia and European countries. In April 2022, we wanted war. President Biden sent (then-British Prime Minister) Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy to abandon the peace agreement he and Russia had already signed and from which Russia had already withdrawn its troops.”
“This peace agreement would have brought peace to the region and allowed Donbas to remain part of Ukraine,” Kennedy added.
Biden's “objective of the war is regime change in Russia,” Kennedy said. “The Secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin) has explained that the objective of the war is to wear down the Russian military and degrade its ability to fight in other parts of the world.”
“These objectives have nothing to do with what we were telling the Americans about defending Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine is a victim of this war and a victim of the West. We have wasted the flowers of Ukrainian youth – 600,000 Ukrainian children and more than 100,000 Russian children. We should mourn them all. Ukraine's infrastructure has been destroyed. The war has been a disaster for our country. We have already squandered nearly $200 billion that was sorely needed in our communities.”
Referring to the widely reported fact that US intelligence agencies were responsible for the disruption of a key natural gas route from Russia to Germany, Kennedy said, “The disruption of the Nord Stream pipeline and the sanctions have destroyed Europe's industrial base, which was a bulwark of American national security. A strong Germany with strong industries is a much stronger deterrent to Russia than a post-industrial Germany that is little more than an extension of US military bases.”
“We have forced Russia into a destructive alliance with China and Iran,” Kennedy continued, “and we are closer to the brink of nuclear war than we have been since 1962, but the neoconservatives in the White House don't seem to care at all. Our moral authority and economy have collapsed, and war has led to the rise of the BRICS, which now stands to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.”
“President Trump says he will restart negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight. That alone is reason to support his campaign.”
Kennedy Jr.'s intervention could determine the outcome of the presidential election, and if so, its impact on American politics would transcend the personalities and ambitions of any candidate.
He has shone a spotlight on a dark side of American politics and shown American voters an unforgettable truth: the corporate media will ask voters to believe what they are told rather than see for themselves. This time, the ploy may not work.
Follow David P Goldman at @davidpgoldman