The stewardship of Joe Biden has been defined by daily gaffes, social alienation, political division, outright delusion, rampant inflation and geopolitical failure masquerading as a return to normalcy.

In the foreground, Joe struggles to string together a cogent thought, mugs with ice cream cones and forgets his campaign promise to stop making awkward passes at young girls. Fortunately for him it all serves to distract from his administration’s many ruinous policies that have prolonged the pains of the pandemic and opened the door to global societal collapse.

But don’t make a fuss about the cost of living or the price of gas, after all inflation is higher in Europe. Speaking of Europe, apparently the best thing for Americans is for their government to drain the treasury and our fuel reserves as though there was no tomorrow.

Pundits across the political spectrum have made a lot of hay out of the histrionics found in Putin’s revanchism into Ukraine, invoking the rise of fascism in Europe. That particular framing helps make the case for the urgent historical necessity of our “commitment to Ukraine,” juxtaposing our modern situation with the last unquestionably virtuous conflict our nation committed itself to.

However, it glosses over some stark differences at play between 1932 and 2022, namely our own government’s role in the escalation in Ukraine, a country which has long been treated as a proxy for our intelligence and economic conflicts with post-Soviet Russia.

Look no further than the role of the CIA and other non-governmental organizations played behind the “Euromaiden” revolution in Ukraine in 2014, pushing Ukraine not only toward the European Union, but also potentially on the path of NATO membership. Such a shift in Ukraine had long been seen as a red line for Putin, as they open the door to American nuclear armaments to be placed quite literally on the doorstep of Russia.

Since then, we’ve seen Putin’s Russia absorb Crimea, coming to a head with his “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine earlier this spring. The moment those tanks started massing on the border between the two countries, the resident war hawks in the sea of talking heads began salivating at the prospect of realizing their long-awaited dream of regime change in Russia. What are a few dead Ukrainians and Russians along the way? If nothing else, it would serve as an excellent showcase of the capabilities of the FGM-148 Javelin missile system.

The White House listened obviously. Hunter Biden is heavily invested in the region after all, and Congress was quick to secure the endless stream of U.S. tax dollars such a proxy war requires. It has come out in reports that not only had there been a small window for diplomacy to stave off further bloodshed in early days of the conflict, the Biden White House instead used then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a back channel to push the beleaguered nation toward doom instead.

In keeping with that, Biden and his minders all publicly put the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline in their crosshairs. They were not quiet about their intentions either, literally saying that one way or another the pipeline would be stopped should Putin follow through on his push into Ukraine.

When pressed, the president and his secretary of state never got too specific, as one does not simply say the loud part loudly to a despot in control of the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet. A bloody summer came and went, but at the end of September, multiple explosions were detected off the coast of Poland. It was discovered that these explosions had damaged both Nord Stream pipelines, cutting Germany and other European countries off from Russian natural gas right before winter.

Further reports from the New York Times did reveal that the CIA vaguely warned many European governments in June that an attack on the pipeline was likely, though it still remains a mystery who in fact was responsible for it. No matter the perpetrator, Germany now finds itself with little choice but to mulch forests for heat and scrambling to reactivate their dormant domestic coal power industry.

While the question of our own nation’s culpability in the Nord Stream 2 attack has been obfuscated as “Kremlin propaganda,” the preferred culprit for many remains Russia themselves. A possibility sure, but not one that passes any honest and logical scrutiny given Russia’s massive investment in the partnership and the diplomatic currency the pipelines afforded Putin to undermine sanctions. The only reason to sabotage Nord Stream is to heighten the state of the conflict far beyond its present temperature.

That particular narrative also flies in the face of our own government’s longstanding opposition to the pipeline since the Obama era, as the priority has always been to decouple Europe and by extension Ukraine from dependence on Russia as much as possible. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was quoted after the fallout from the bombing calling it, “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy” that offers “strategic opportunity for years to come.”

Whoever bombed the pipeline has only succeeded in cranking up the pressure on every nation embroiled in the eternal Mexican standoff all nuclear powers find themselves in. For those nuclear powers, these wages of fear are essential for manufacturing consent out of the public’s terror. This fear breeds compliance. Compliance affords control. Control secures power, which itself cannot be controlled once it has been handed over to the few.

There is very little virtue to be found in life on a cinder, but hey, at least Putin won’t be in charge of Russia anymore if we drop a few tactical warheads, right?

Forgive me for not feeling waves of patriotic inspiration when other pundits bang the drums for World War III, especially when a man with the faculties of Joe Biden is the one with his finger on the trigger. We might as well learn to love the bomb; it might be our only escape.