Those of us in the West rely primarily on news reports. Virtually all news that we see in the media was created by one of three agencies – Associated Press, Reuters, and, to a lesser degree, AFP.

All three companies are owned by the same parent companies, who, in turn, own most of the Western corporatist structure, and, not surprisingly, the reports that they distribute to the media are boilerplate.

As such, the TV news tends to be uniform, and whenever a new catch-phrase pops up, such as "extreme right activists" or "January sixth insurrection," it tends to appear in all major media on the very same day and is then used ubiquitously. We, therefore, receive only one "truth," and we're left to either accept it or comb the internet for alternate possibilities.

In no case is this truer than the present proxy war between the US and Russia in Ukraine. The news we receive is consistent and yet quite false.

And so, the average person can be forgiven if he's struggling to figure out how this will all play out. Who would actually win such a war?

For the past few years, the viewer has been assured that Mister Putin is incompetent and is hated by his people, that the Russian military is disorganized and about to quit, and, on any given day, Ukraine is making progress in beating back Russia and will soon win.

If this is all true, victory would seem to be a slam-dunk. All that's necessary is yet another tranche of, say, twenty billion dollars.

Yet, if we do our homework, we find that Russia is not only not failing, it's expanding its might rapidly. Its troops are better armed, better equipped, better trained, better supplied, better commanded, and their munitions are more advanced than their Western counterparts.

But how is this possible? How can so little have been achieved when American money is being thrown at the problem at a level that exceeds that of a World War?

Well, the answer to that question may also be the answer to the question of the war's outcome. But first, let's step back and run through a brief history of the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

After World War II, the MIC complained to the US government that it was dramatically downsizing production (and therefore revenue) due to a troubling lack of warfare.

It argued that as the world's new military leader, the US must maintain warfare in order to maintain its new hegemony. The administration agreed, especially as MIC lobbyists were quite prepared to kick back a generous portion of profits to both political parties if they played ball.