There is a disturbing aspect to the discourse in Washington DC and European capitals surrounding the war in Ukraine that seeks to quash any dissent from the official narrative surrounding Nato’s military support for Ukraine.

As the world was thrust into Cold War 2.0, the Western commentariat dusted off the wide brush wielded for decades by the cold warriors of old, labelling critics of the policy of massive weapons transfers to Ukraine or unquestioning support for the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian stooges or puppets. This is a dangerous trend that encourages groupthink over a potentially nuclear conflict.

Citizens have every right to question the role of their governments, particularly in times of war. Some of the dynamics around policing criticism of Zelenskyy or the Ukrainian government or the US support for it are reminiscent of the efforts to stifle criticism of Israel through charges of antisemitism.

Not only is this an intellectually bankrupt line of attack, but it also runs contrary to the vital principle of free debate in democratic societies. It also seeks to relegate to a dungeon of insignificance the vast US record of foreign policy, military and intelligence catastrophes as well as its abuses and crimes by pretending that only lackeys for Moscow would dare question our role in a foreign conflict on the other side of the globe.

Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also NATO infrastructure. Therefore, Russia is hardly a victim here. Vladimir Putin seems comfortable abetting a new cold war, and his unjustified attack against Ukraine has offered the US and Nato a golden ticket to ratchet up militarism, European defence spending, and weapons production. At the same time, it is true, as Moscow alleges, that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also Nato infrastructure.

It is also true that prominent sectors of the US security state want this war primarily to bleed Russia, and last year the White House had to walk back President Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff remark about Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The whole enterprise is an incredible boondoggle for the war industry, which now gets no-bid contracts baked in to build the defence “industrial base.”

The idea that Putin could not have foreseen the likelihood of NATO coming to Ukraine’s defence – particularly with Biden, not Donald Trump, in the White House – is ludicrous. For years, through his actions and words, Putin has made clear that he has no respect for Ukraine as a sovereign nation, a sentiment that has only become more entrenched over the past year.

The US and its NATO allies, for their part, poked at Putin in an effort to back him into a corner he ultimately decided he would not accept. Still, he alone chose the path of invading a neighbouring country, and for that, Putin should answer. At the same time, discussing the role of Western powers in bringing the world to this point should not be taboo, nor should it be used as a prompt to smear those raising relevant issues as doing Moscow’s bidding.

Against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, the US has steadily intensified its preparations for a potential war with China. Biden recently declared, “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War” with China, yet the US posture has for years indicated the exact opposite. Japan recently announced that it is looking to purchase from the US as many as 500 of the newest Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The long-range weapons have, to date, only been available to the US and Britain, but Japan, at the urging of Washington, has been deliberately increasing its defence spending and military capacity. Défense Secretary Lloyd Austin praised Tokyo’s move toward the Nato goal of its members spending two per cent of their GDP on military, saying it underscored “Japan’s staunch commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Meanwhile, the extremist right-wing government of Israel is on the warpath against Iran and may well be actively planning for a military attack in the future. It also seems to be simply a matter of time before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches yet another full-scale military onslaught against the Palestinians.

Throughout the world, the US and its allies are engaged in a gaslighting campaign of doublespeak as they engage in the very actions they claim their adversaries are plotting. In the National Security Strategy report released in October, the Biden administration declared that “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.”

It stated bluntly that the US “military’s role is to maintain and gain warfighting advantages while limiting those of our competitors.”

We are in the midst of a perilous moment in world history, one that demands a robust debate about the motives and actions of powerful nation states. There should be more debate, not less. Groupthink does a disservice to a democratic society, particularly when the world is closer to the threat of nuclear war than at any time in recent history.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine passed the one-year mark in late February and came just a month before the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a war based on lies and waged with a gratuitous and sustained brutality. Biden not only supported that war, but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the lead up to “shock and awe,” he also helped facilitate it.

The neocons and cruise-missile liberals who got it wrong on Iraq should employ a bit more humility in being so certain their analysis of global affairs is sounder than that of critics who have consistently gotten it right about American wars when it mattered – before they started.

• The Intercept report