The Darkness Ahead: Where The Ukraine War Is Headed
BY JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER | JUNE 23, 2023
This paper examines the likely trajectory of the Ukraine war moving forward.
I will address two main questions.
First, is a meaningful peace agreement possible? My answer is no. We are now in a war where both sides – Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other – see each other as an existential threat that must be defeated. Given maximalist objectives all around, it is almost impossible to reach a workable peace treaty. Moreover, the two sides have irreconcilable differences regarding territory and Ukraine’s relationship with the West. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict that could easily turn back into a hot war. The worst possible outcome is a nuclear war, which is unlikely but cannot be ruled out.
Second, which side is likely to win the war? Russia will ultimately win the war, although it will not decisively defeat Ukraine. In other words, it is not going to conquer all of Ukraine, which is necessary to achieve three of Moscow’s goals: overthrowing the regime, demilitarizing the country, and severing Kyiv’s security ties with the West. But it will end up annexing a large swath of Ukrainian territory, while turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. In other words, Russia will win an ugly victory.
Before I directly address these issues, three preliminary points are in order. For starters, I am attempting to predict the future, which is not easy to do, given that we live in an uncertain world. Thus, I am not arguing that I have the truth; in fact, some of my claims may be proved wrong. Furthermore, I am not saying what I would like to see happen. I am not rooting for one side or the other. I am simply telling you what I think will happen as the war moves forward. Finally, I am not justifying Russian behavior or the actions of any of the states involved in the conflict. I am just explaining their actions.
Now, let me turn to substance.
To understand where the Ukraine war is headed, it is necessary to first assess the present situation. It is important to know how the three main actors – Russia, Ukraine, and the West – think about their threat environment and conceive their goals. When we talk about the West, however, we are talking mainly about the United States, since its European allies take their marching orders from Washington when it comes to Ukraine. It is also essential to understand the present situation on the battlefield. Let me start with Russia’s threat environment and its goals.
It has been clear since April 2008 that Russian leaders across the board view the West’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO and make it a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders as an existential threat. Indeed, President Putin and his lieutenants repeatedly made this point in the months before the Russian invasion, when it was becoming clear to them that Ukraine was almost a de facto member of NATO.
Since the war began on 24 February 2022, the West has added another layer to that existential threat by adopting a new set of goals that Russian leaders cannot help but view as extremely threatening. I will say more about Western goals below but suffice it to say here that the West is determined to defeat Russia and knock it out of the ranks of the great powers, if not cause regime change or even trigger Russia to break apart like the Soviet Union did in 1991.
In a major address Putin delivered this past February (2023), he stressed that the West is a mortal threat to Russia. “During the years that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union,” he said, “the West never stopped trying to set the post-Soviet states on fire and, most importantly, finish off Russia as the largest surviving portion of the historical reaches of our state. They encouraged international terrorists to assault us, provoked regional conflicts along the perimeter of our borders, ignored our interests and tried to contain and suppress our economy.” He further emphasized that, “The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, ‘Russia’s strategic defeat.’ What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all.” Putin went on to say: “this represents an existential threat to our country.”
Russian leaders also see the regime in Kyiv as a threat to Russia, not just because it is closely allied with the West, but also because they see it as the offspring of the fascist Ukrainian forces that fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.
Russia must win this war, given that it believes that it is facing a threat to its survival. But what does victory look like? The ideal outcome before the war began in February 2022 was to turn Ukraine into a neutral state and settle the civil war in the Donbass that pitted the Ukrainian government against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers who wanted greater autonomy if not independence for their region. It appears that those goals were still realistic during the first month of the war and were in fact the basis of the negotiations in Istanbul between Kyiv and Moscow in March 2022.
If the Russians had achieved those goals back then, the present war would either have been prevented or ended quickly.
But a deal that satisfies Russia’s goals is no longer in the cards. Ukraine and NATO are joined at the hip for the foreseeable future, and neither is willing to accept Ukrainian neutrality. Furthermore, the regime in Kyiv is anathema to Russian leaders, who want it gone. They not only talk about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, but also “demilitarizing” it, two goals that would presumably call for conquering all of Ukraine, compelling its military forces to surrender, and installing a friendly regime in Kyiv.
A decisive victory of that sort is not likely to happen for a variety of reasons. The Russian army is not large enough for such a task, which would probably require at least two million men.
Indeed, the existing Russian army is having difficulty conquering all the Donbass. Moreover, the West would go to enormous lengths to prevent Russia from overrunning all of Ukraine. Finally, the Russians would end up occupying huge amounts of territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Ukrainians who loathe the Russians and would fiercely resist the occupation. Trying to conquer all of Ukraine and bend it to Moscow’s will, would surely end in disaster.
Rhetoric about de-Nazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine aside, Russia’s concrete goals involve conquering and annexing a large portion of Ukrainian territory, while simultaneously turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. As such, Ukraine’s ability to wage war against Russia would be greatly reduced and it would be unlikely to qualify for membership in either the EU or NATO. Moreover, a broken Ukraine, would be especially vulnerable to Russian interference in its domestic politics. In short, Ukraine would not be a Western bastion on Russia’s border.
What would that dysfunctional rump state look like? Moscow has officially annexed Crimea and four other Ukrainian oblasts – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe – which together represent about 23 percent of Ukraine’s total territory before the crisis broke out in February 2014. Russian leaders have emphasized that they have no intention of surrendering that territory, some of which Russia does not yet control. In fact, there is reason to think Russia will annex additional Ukrainian territory if it has the military capability to do so at a reasonable cost. It is difficult, however, to say how much additional Ukrainian territory Moscow will seek to annex, as Putin himself makes clear.
Russian thinking is likely to be influenced by three calculations. Moscow has a powerful incentive to conquer and permanently annex Ukrainian territory that is heavily populated with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. It will want to protect them from the Ukrainian government – which has become hostile to all things Russian – and make sure there is no civil war anywhere in Ukraine like the one that took place in the Donbass between February 2014 and February 2022. At the same time, Russia will want to avoid controlling territory largely populated by hostile ethnic Ukrainians, which places significant limits on further Russian expansion. Finally, turning Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state will require Moscow to take substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory so it is well-positioned to do significant damage to its economy. Controlling all of Ukraine’s coastline along the Black Sea, for example, would give Moscow significant economic leverage over Kyiv.
Those three calculations suggest that Russia is likely to attempt to annex the four oblasts – Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Odessa – that are immediately to the west of the four oblasts it has already annexed – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe. If that were to happen, Russia would control approximately 43 percent of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory.
Dmitri Trenin, a leading Russian strategist estimates that Russian leaders would seek to take even more Ukrainian territory – pushing westward in northern Ukraine to the Dnieper River and taking the part of Kyiv that sits on the east bank of that river. He writes that “A logical next step” after taking all of Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa “would be to expand Russian control to all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, including the part of Kyiv that lies on the that river’s eastern bank. If that were to happen, the Ukrainian state would shrink to include only the central and western regions of the country.”
It might seem hard to believe now, but before the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, Western leaders did not view Russia as a security threat. NATO leaders, for example, were talking with Russia’s president about “a new stage of cooperation towards a true strategic partnership” at the alliance’s 2010 Summit in Lisbon.
Unsurprisingly, NATO expansion before 2014 was not justified in terms of containing a dangerous Russia. In fact, it was Russian weakness that allowed the West to shove the first two tranches of NATO expansion in 1999 and 2004 down Moscow’s throat and then allowed the George W. Bush administration to think in 2008 that Russia could be forced to accept Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance. But that assumption proved wrong and when the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2014, the West suddenly began portraying Russia as a dangerous foe that had to be contained if not weakened.
Since the war started in February 2022, the West’s perception of Russia has steadily escalated to the point where Moscow now appears to be seen as an existential threat. The United States and its NATO allies are deeply involved in Ukraine’s war against Russia. Indeed, they are doing everything but pulling the triggers and pushing the buttons.
Moreover, they have made clear their unequivocal commitment to winning the war and maintaining Ukraine’s sovereignty. Thus, losing the war would have hugely negative consequences for Washington and for NATO. America’s reputation for competence and reliability would be badly damaged, which would affect how its allies as well as its adversaries – especially China – deal with the United States. Furthermore, virtually every European country in NATO believes that the alliance is an irreplaceable security umbrella. Thus, the possibility that NATO might be badly damaged – maybe even wrecked – if Russia wins in Ukraine is cause for profound concern among its members.
In addition, Western leaders frequently portray the Ukraine war as an integral part of a larger global struggle between autocracy and democracy that is Manichean at its core. On top of that, the future of the sacrosanct rules-based international order is said to depend on prevailing against Russia. As King Charles said this past March (2023), “The security of Europe as well as our democratic values are under threat.”
Similarly, a resolution introduced in the U.S. Congress in April declares: “United States interests, European security, and the cause of international peace depend on … Ukrainian victory.”
A recent article in The Washington Post, captures how the West treats Russia as an existential threat: “Leaders of the more than 50 other countries backing Ukraine have couched their support as part of an apocalyptic battle for the future of democracy and the international rule of law against autocracy and aggression that the West cannot afford to lose.”
As should be clear, the West is staunchly committed to defeating Russia. President Biden has repeatedly said that the United States is in this war to win. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.” It must end in “strategic failure.” Washington, he emphasizes, will stay in the fight “for as long as it takes.”
Specifically, the aim is to defeat Russia’s army in Ukraine – erasing its territorial gains – and cripple its economy with lethal sanctions. If successful, Russia would be knocked out of the ranks of the great powers, weakening it to the point where it could not threaten to invade Ukraine again.
Western leaders have additional goals, which include regime change in Moscow, putting Putin on trial as a war criminal, and possibly breaking up Russia into smaller states.
At the same time, the West remains committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO, although there is disagreement within the alliance about when and how that will happen.
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary general told a news conference in Kyiv in April (2023) that “NATO’s position remains unchanged and that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” At the same time, he emphasized that “The first step toward any membership of Ukraine to NATO is to ensure that Ukraine prevails, and that is why the U.S. and its partners have provided unprecedented support for Ukraine.”
Given these goals, it is clear why Russia views the West as an existential threat.
There is no doubt that Ukraine faces an existential threat, given that Russia is bent on dismembering it and making sure that the surviving rump state is not only economically weak, but is neither a de facto nor a de jure member of NATO. There is also no question that Kyiv shares the West’s goal of defeating and seriously weakening Russia, so that it can regain its lost territory and keep it under Ukrainian control forever. As President Zelensky recently told President Xi Jinping, “There can be no peace that is based on territorial compromises.”
Ukrainian leaders naturally remain steadfastly committed to joining the EU and NATO and making Ukraine an integral part of the West.
In sum, the three key actors in the Ukraine war all believe they face an existential threat, which means each of them thinks it must win the war or else suffer terrible consequences.
Turning to events on the battlefield, the war has evolved into a war of attrition where each side is principally concerned with bleeding the other side white, causing it to surrender. Of course, both sides are also concerned with capturing territory, but that goal is of secondary importance to wearing down the other side.
The Ukrainian military had the upper hand in the latter half of 2022, which allowed it to take back territory from Russia in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. But Russia responded to those defeats by mobilizing 300,000 additional troops, reorganizing its army, shortening its front lines, and learning from its mistakes.
The locus of the fighting in 2023 has been in eastern Ukraine, mainly in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The Russians have had the upper hand this year, mainly because they have a substantial advantage in artillery, which is the most important weapon in attrition warfare.
Moscow’s advantage was evident in the battle for Bakhmut, which ended when the Russians captured that city in late May (2023). Although it took Russian forces ten months to take control of Bakhmut they inflicted huge casualties on Ukrainian forces with their artillery.
Shortly thereafter on 4 June, Ukraine launched its long-awaited counter-offensive at different locations in the Donetsk and Zaporozhe regions. The aim is to penetrate Russia’s front lines of defense, deliver a staggering blow to Russian forces, and take back a substantial amount of Ukrainian territory that is now under Russian control. In essence, the aim is to duplicate Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022.
Ukraine’s army has made little progress so far in achieving those goals and instead is bogged down in deadly attrition battles with Russian forces. In 2022, Ukraine was successful in the Kharkiv and Kherson campaigns because its army was fighting against outnumbered and overextended Russian forces. That is not the case today: Ukraine is attacking into the face of well-prepared lines of Russian defense. But even if Ukrainian forces break through those defensive lines, Russian troops will quickly stabilize the front and the attrition battles will continue.
The Ukrainians are at a disadvantage in these encounters because the Russians have a significant firepower advantage.
Let me switch gears and move away from the present and talk about the future, starting with how events on the battlefield are likely to play out moving forward. As noted, I believe Russia will win the war, which means it will end up conquering and annexing substantial Ukrainian territory, leaving Ukraine as a dysfunctional rump state. If I am correct, this will be a grievous defeat for Ukraine and the West.
There is a silver lining in this outcome, however: a Russian victory markedly reduces the threat of nuclear war, as nuclear escalation is most likely to occur if Ukrainian forces are winning victories on the battlefield and threatening to take back all or most of the territories Kyiv has lost to Moscow. Russian leaders would surely think seriously about using nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. Of course, if I am wrong about where the war is headed and the Ukrainian military gains the upper hand and begins pushing Russian forces eastward, the likelihood of nuclear use would increase significantly, which is not to say it would be a certainty.
What is the basis of my claim that the Russians are likely to win the war?
The Ukraine war, as emphasized, is a war of attrition in which capturing and holding territory is of secondary importance. The aim in attrition warfare is to wear down the other side’s forces to the point where it either quits the fight or is so weakened that it can no longer defend contested territory.
Who wins an attrition war is largely a function of three factors: the balance of resolve between the two sides; the population balance between them; and the casualty-exchange ratio. The Russians have a decisive advantage in population size and a marked advantage in the casualty-exchange ratio; the two sides are evenly matched in terms of resolve.
Consider the balance of resolve. As noted, both Russia and Ukraine believe they are facing an existential threat, and naturally, both sides are fully committed to winning the war. Thus, it is hard to see any meaningful difference in their resolve. Regarding population size, Russia had approximately a 3.5:1 advantage before the war began in February 2022. Since then, the ratio has shifted noticeably in Russia’s favor. About eight million Ukrainians have fled the country, subtracting from Ukraine’s population. Roughly three million of those emigrants have gone to Russia, adding to its population. In addition, there are probably about four million other Ukrainian citizens living in the territories that Russia now controls, further shifting the population imbalance in Russia’s favor. Putting those numbers together gives Russia approximately a 5:1 advantage in population size.
Finally, there is the casualty-exchange ratio, which has been a controversial issue since the war started in February 2022. The conventional wisdom in Ukraine and the West is that the casualty levels on both sides are either roughly equal or that the Russians have suffered greater casualties than the Ukrainians. The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, goes so far as to argue that the Russian lost 7.5 soldiers for every one Ukrainian soldier in the battle for Bakhmut.
These claims are wrong. Ukrainian forces have surely suffered much greater casualties than their Russian opponents for one reason: Russia has much more artillery than Ukraine.
In attrition warfare, artillery is the most important weapon on the battlefield. In the U.S. Army, artillery is widely known as the “king of battle,” because it is principally responsible for killing and wounding the soldiers doing the fighting.
Thus, the balance of artillery matters enormously in a war of attrition. By almost every account, the Russians have somewhere between a 5:1 and a 10:1 advantage in artillery, which puts the Ukrainian army at a significant disadvantage on the battlefield.
Ceteris paribus, one would expect the casualty-exchange ratio to approximate the balance of artillery. Ergo, a casualty-exchange ratio on the order of 2:1 in Russia’s favor is a conservative estimate.
One possible challenge to my analysis is to argue that Russia is the aggressor in this war, and the offender invariably suffers much higher casualty levels than the defender, especially if the attacking forces are engaged in broad frontal assaults, which is often said to be the Russian military’s modus operandi.
After all, the offender is out in the open and on the move, while the defender is mainly fighting from fixed positions that provide substantial cover. This logic underpins the famous 3:1 rule of thumb, which says that an attacking force needs at least three times as many soldiers as the defender to win a battle.
But there are problems with this line of argument when it is applied to the Ukraine war.
First, it is not just the Russians who have initiated offensive campaigns over the course of the war.
Indeed, the Ukrainians launched two major offensives last year that led to widely heralded victories: the Kharkiv offensive in September 2022 and the Kherson offensive between August and November 2022. Although the Ukrainians made substantial territorial gains in both campaigns, Russian artillery inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking forces. The Ukrainians just began another major offensive on 4 June against Russian forces that are more numerous and far better prepared than those the Ukrainians fought against in Kharkiv and Kherson.
Second, the distinction between offenders and defenders in a major battle is usually not black and white. When one army attacks another army, the defender invariably launches counterattacks. In other words, the defender transitions to the offense and the offender transitions to the defense. Over the course of a protracted battle, each side is likely to end up doing much attacking and counterattacking as well as defending fixed positions. This back and forth explains why the casualty-exchange ratios in US Civil War battles and WWI battles are often roughly equal, not favorable to the army that started out on the defensive. In fact, the army that strikes the first blow occasionally suffers less casualties than the target army.
In short, defense usually involves a lot of offense.
It is clear from Ukrainian and Western news accounts that Ukrainian forces frequently launch counterattacks against Russian forces. Consider this account in The Washington Post of the fighting earlier this year in Bakhmut: “‘There is this fluid motion going on.’ said a Ukrainian first lieutenant … Russian attacks along the front allow their forces to advance a few hundred meters before being pushed back hours later. ‘It’s hard to distinguish exactly where the front line is because it moves like Jell-O,’ he said.”
Given Russia’s massive artillery advantage, it seems reasonable to assume that the casualty-exchange ratio in these Ukrainian counterattacks favors the Russians – probably in a lopsided way.
Third, the Russians are not employing – at least not often – large-scale frontal assaults that aim to rapidly move forward and capture territory, but which would expose the attacking forces to withering fire from Ukrainian defenders. As General Sergey Surovikin explained in October 2022, when he was commanding the Russian forces in Ukraine, “We have a different strategy… We spare each soldier and are persistently grinding down the advancing enemy.”
In effect, Russian troops have adopted clever tactics that reduce their casualty levels.
Their favored tactic is to launch probing attacks against fixed Ukrainian positions with small infantry units, which causes Ukrainian forces to attack them with mortars and artillery.
That response allows the Russians to determine where the Ukrainian defenders and their artillery are located. The Russians then use their great advantage in artillery to pound their adversaries. Afterwards, packets of Russian infantry move forward again; and when they meet serious Ukrainian resistance, they repeat the process. These tactics help explain why Russia is making slow progress in capturing Ukrainian held territory.
One might think the West can go a long way toward evening out the casualty-exchange ratio by supplying Ukraine with many more artillery tubes and shells, thus eliminating Russia’s significant advantage with this critically important weapon. That is not going to happen anytime soon, however, simply because neither the United States nor its allies have the industrial capacity necessary to mass produce artillery tubes and shells for Ukraine. Nor can they rapidly build that capacity.
The best the West can do – at least for the next year or so – is maintain the existing imbalance of artillery between Russia and Ukraine, but even that will be a difficult task.
Ukraine can do little to help remedy the problem, because its ability to manufacture weapons is limited. It is almost completely dependent on the West, not only for artillery, but for every type of major weapons system. Russia, on the other hand, had a formidable capability to manufacture weaponry going into the war, which has been ramped up since the fighting started. Putin recently said: “Our defense industry is gaining momentum every day. We have increased military production by 2.7 times during the last year. Our production of the most critical weapons has gone up ten times and keeps increasing. Plants are working in two or three shifts, and some are busy around the clock.”
In short, given the sad state of Ukraine’s industrial base, it is in no position to wage a war of attrition by itself. It can only do so with Western backing. But even then, it is doomed to lose.
There has been a recent development that further increases Russia’s firepower advantage over Ukraine. For the first year of the war, Russian airpower had little influence on what happened in the ground war, mainly because Ukraine’s air defenses were effective enough to keep Russian aircraft far away from most battlefields. But the Russians have seriously weakened Ukraine’s air defenses, which now allows the Russian air force to strike Ukrainian ground forces on or directly behind the front lines.
In addition, Russia has developed the capability to equip its huge arsenal of 500 kg iron bombs with guidance kits that make them especially lethal.
In sum, the casualty-exchange ratio will continue to favor the Russians for the foreseeable future, which matters enormously in a war of attrition. In addition, Russia is much better positioned to wage attrition warfare because its population is far larger than Ukraine’s. Kyiv’s only hope for winning the war is for Moscow’s resolve to collapse, but that is unlikely given that Russian leaders view the West as an existential danger.
There is a growing chorus of voices around the world calling for all sides in the Ukrainian war to embrace diplomacy and negotiate a lasting peace agreement. This is not going to happen, however. There are too many formidable obstacles to ending the war anytime soon, much less fashioning a deal that produces a durable peace. The best possible outcome is a frozen conflict, where both sides continue looking for opportunities to weaken the other side and where there is an ever-present danger of renewed fighting.
At the most general level, peace is not possible because each side views the other as a mortal threat that must be defeated on the battlefield. There is hardly any room for compromise with the other side in these circumstances. There are also two specific points of dispute between the warring parties that are unsolvable. One involves territory while the other concerns Ukrainian neutrality.
Almost all Ukrainians are deeply committed to getting back all their lost territory – including Crimea.
Who can blame them? But Russia has officially annexed Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporozhe, and is firmly committed to keeping that territory. In fact, there is reason to think Moscow will annex more Ukrainian territory if it can.
The other Gordian knot concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine wants a security guarantee once the war ends, which only the West can provide. That means either de facto or de jure membership in NATO, since no other countries can protect Ukraine. Virtually all Russian leaders, however, demand a neutral Ukraine, which means no military ties with the West and thus no security umbrella for Kyiv. There is no way to square this circle.
There are two other obstacles to peace: nationalism, which has now morphed into hypernationalism, and the complete lack of trust on the Russian side.
Nationalism has been a powerful force in Ukraine for well over a century, and antagonism toward Russia has long been one of its core elements. The outbreak of the present conflict on 22 February 2014 fueled that hostility, prompting the Ukrainian parliament to pass a bill the following day that restricted the use of Russian and other minority languages, a move that helped precipitate the civil war in the Donbass.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea shortly thereafter made a bad situation worse. Contrary to the conventional wisdom in the West, Putin understood that Ukraine was a separate nation from Russia and that the conflict between the ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers living in the Donbass and the Ukrainian government was all about “the national question.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which directly pits the two countries against each other in a protracted and bloody war has turned that nationalism into hypernationalism on both sides. Contempt and hatred of “the other” suffuses Russian and Ukrainian society, which creates powerful incentives to eliminate that threat – with violence if necessary. Examples abound. A prominent Kyiv weekly maintains that famous Russian authors like Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Boris Pasternak are “killers, looters, ignoramuses.”
Russian culture, says a prominent Ukrainian writer, represents “barbarism, murder, and destruction …. Such is the fate of the culture of the enemy.”
Predictably, the Ukrainian government is engaged in “de-Russification” or “decolonization,” which involves purging libraries of books by Russian authors, renaming streets that have names with links to Russia, pulling down statues of figures like Catherine the Great, banning Russian music produced after 1991, breaking ties between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, and minimizing use of the Russian language. Perhaps Ukraine’s attitude toward Russia is best summed up by Zelensky’s terse comment: “We will not forgive. We will not forget.”
Turning to the Russian side of the hill, Anatol Lieven reports that “every day on Russian TV you can see hate-filled ethnic insults directed at Ukrainians.”
Unsurprisingly, the Russians are working to Russify and erase Ukrainian culture in the areas that Moscow has annexed. These measures include issuing Russian passports, changing the curricula in schools, replacing the Ukrainian hryvnia with the Russian ruble, targeting libraries and museums, and renaming towns and cities.
Bakhmut, for example, is now Artemovsk and the Ukrainian language is no longer taught in schools in the Donetsk region.
Apparently, the Russians too will neither forgive nor forget.
The rise of hypernationalism is predictable in wartime, not only because governments rely heavily on nationalism to motivate their people to back their country to the hilt, but also because the death and destruction that come with war – especially protracted wars – pushes each side to dehumanize and hate the other. In the Ukraine case, the bitter conflict over national identity adds fuel to the fire.
Hypernationalism naturally makes it harder for each side to cooperate with the other and gives Russia reason to seize territory that is filled with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. Presumably, many of them would prefer living under Russian control, given the animosity of the Ukrainian government toward all things Russian. In the process of annexing these lands, the Russians are likely to expel large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians, mainly because of fear that they will rebel against Russian rule if they remain. These developments will further fuel hatred between Russians and Ukrainians, making compromise over territory practically impossible.
There is a final reason why a lasting peace agreement is not doable. Russian leaders do not trust either Ukraine or the West to negotiate in good faith, which is not to imply that Ukrainian and Western leaders trust their Russian counterparts. Lack of trust is evident on all sides, but it is especially acute on Moscow’s part because of a recent set of revelations.
The source of the problem is what happened in the negotiations over the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, which was a framework for shutting down the conflict in the Donbass. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel played the central role is designing that framework, although they consulted extensively with both Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Those four individuals were also the key players in the subsequent negotiations. There is little doubt that Putin was committed to making Minsk work. But Hollande, Merkel, and Poroshenko – as well as Zelensky – have all made it clear that they were not interested in implementing Minsk, but instead saw it as an opportunity to buy time for Ukraine to build up its military so that it could deal with the insurrection in the Donbass. As Merkel told Die Zeit, it was “an attempt to give Ukraine time … to become stronger.”
Similarly, Poroshenko said, “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war — to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”
Shortly after Merkel’s Die Zeit interview in December 2022, Putin told a press conference: “I thought the other participants of this agreement were at least honest, but no, it turns out they were also lying to us and only wanted to pump Ukraine with weapons and get it prepared for a military conflict.” He went on to say that getting bamboozled by the West had caused him to pass up an opportunity to solve the Ukraine problem in more favorable circumstances for Russia: “Apparently, we got our bearings too late, to be honest. Maybe we should have started all this [the military operation] earlier, but we just hoped that we would be able to solve it within the framework of the Minsk agreements.” He then made it clear that the West’s duplicity would complicate future negotiations: “Trust is already almost at zero, but after such statements, how can we possibly negotiate? About what? Can we make any agreements with anybody and where are the guarantees?”
In sum, there is hardly any chance the Ukraine war will end with a meaningful peace settlement. The war is instead likely to drag on for at least another year and eventually turn into a frozen conflict that might turn back into a shooting war.
The absence of a viable peace agreement will have a variety of terrible consequences. Relations between Russia and the West, for example, are likely to remain profoundly hostile and dangerous for the foreseeable future. Each side will continue demonizing the other while working hard to maximize the amount of pain and trouble it causes its rival. This situation will certainly prevail if the fighting continues; but even if the war turns into a frozen conflict, the level of hostility between the two sides is unlikely to change much.
Moscow will seek to exploit existing fissures between European countries, while also working to weaken the trans-Atlantic relationship as well as key European institutions like the EU and NATO. Given the damage the war has done to Europe’s economy and continues to do, given the growing disenchantment in Europe with the prospect of a never-ending war in Ukraine, and given the differences between Europe and the United States regarding trade with China, Russian leaders should find fertile ground for causing trouble in the West.
This meddling will naturally reinforce Russophobia in Europe and the United States, making a bad situation worse.
The West, for its part, will maintain sanctions on Moscow and keep economic intercourse between the two sides to a minimum, all for the purpose of harming Russia’s economy. Moreover, it will surely work with Ukraine to help generate insurgencies in the territories Russia took from Ukraine. At the same time, the United States and its allies will continue pursuing a hard-nosed containment policy toward Russia, which many believe will be enhanced by Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the deployment of significant NATO forces in eastern Europe.
Of course, the West will remain committed to bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, even if that is unlikely to happen. Finally, U.S. and European elites are sure to retain their enthusiasm for fostering regime change in Moscow and putting Putin on trial for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Not only will relations between Russia and the West remain poisonous moving forward, but they will also be dangerous, as there will be the ever-present possibility of nuclear escalation or a great-power war between Russia and the United States.
Ukraine was in severe economic and demographic trouble before the war began last year.
The devastation inflicted on Ukraine since the Russian invasion is horrific. Surveying events during the war’s first year, the World Bank declares that the invasion “has dealt an unimaginable toll on the people of Ukraine and the country’s economy, with activity contracting by a staggering 29.2 percent in 2022.” Unsurprisingly, Kyiv needs massive injections of foreign aid just to keep the government running, not to mention fighting the war. Furthermore, the World Bank estimates that damages exceed $135 billion and that roughly $411 billion will be needed to rebuild Ukraine. Poverty, it reports, “increased from 5.5 percent in 2021 to 24.1 percent in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty and retracting 15 years of progress.”
Cities have been destroyed, roughly 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and about 7 million are internally displaced. The United Nations has confirmed 8,490 civilian deaths, although it believes that the actual number is “considerably higher.”
And surely Ukraine has suffered well over 100,000 battlefield casualties.
Ukraine’s future looks bleak in the extreme. The war shows no signs of ending anytime soon, which means more destruction of infrastructure and housing, more destruction of towns and cities, more civilian and military deaths, and more damage to the economy. And not only is Ukraine likely to lose even more territory to Russia, but according to the European Commission, “the war has set Ukraine on a path of irreversible demographic decline.”
To make matters worse, the Russians will work overtime to keep rump Ukraine economically weak and politically unstable. The ongoing conflict is also likely to fuel corruption, which has long been an acute problem, and further strengthen extremist groups in Ukraine. It is hard to imagine Kyiv ever meeting the criteria necessary for joining either the EU or NATO.
The Ukraine war is hindering the U.S. effort to contain China, which is of paramount importance for American security since China is a peer competitor while Russia is not.
Indeed, balance-of-power logic says that the United States should be allied with Russia against China and pivoting full force to East Asia. Instead, the war in Ukraine has pushed Beijing and Moscow close together, while providing China with a powerful incentive to make sure that Russia is not defeated and the United States remains tied down in Europe, impeding its efforts to pivot to East Asia.
It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation.
The conventional wisdom about the war’s origins is that Putin launched an unprovoked attack on 24 February 2022, which was motivated by his grand plan to create a greater Russia. Ukraine, it is said, was the first country he intended to conquer and annex, but not the last. As I have said on numerous occasions, there is no evidence to support this line of argument, and indeed there is considerable evidence that directly contradicts it.
While there is no question Russia invaded Ukraine, the ultimate cause of the war was the West’s decision – and here we are talking mainly about the United States – to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The key element in that strategy was bringing Ukraine into NATO, a move that not only Putin, but the entire Russian foreign policy establishment, saw as an existential threat that had to be eliminated.
It is often forgotten that numerous American and European policymakers and strategists opposed NATO expansion from the start because they understood that the Russians would see it as a threat, and that the policy would eventually lead to disaster. The list of opponents includes George Kennan, both President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Perry, and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, Paul Nitze, Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, Richard Pipes, and Jack Matlock, just to name a few.
At the NATO summit in Bucharest In April 2008, both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed President George W. Bush’s plan to bring Ukraine into the alliance. Merkel later said that her opposition was based on her belief that Putin would interpret it as a “declaration of war.”
Of course, the opponents of NATO expansion were correct, but they lost the fight and NATO marched eastward, which eventually provoked the Russians to launch a preventive war. Had the United States and its allies not moved to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008, or had they been willing to accommodate Moscow’s security concerns after the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014, there probably would be no war in Ukraine today and its borders would look like they did when it gained its independence in 1991. The West made a colossal blunder, which it and many others are not done paying for.
CDC Panel Recommends Pfizer Pneumococcal Vaccines for Infants, RSV Vaccines for Adults
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 26, 2023
Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week recommended newly approved vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — despite concerns about the efficacy and safety of the new vaccines, potentially harmful interactions with the flu and COVID-19 vaccines and the unspecified cost for the vaccines.
In a three-day meeting that ended Friday, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) also:
- Recommended a new pneumococcal conjugate vaccine as an “option” for children.
- Discussed COVID-19 bivalent vaccines and vaccines for meningitis, polio, dengue, monkeypox and chikungunya vaccines.
- Discussed proposals regarding the vaccine schedule.
- Suggested the removal of egg allergies as a contraindication to vaccines made in eggs.
For Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, biological warfare epidemiologist and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory committee, last week’s proceedings lacked the due diligence needed to fully ascertain the safety of the vaccines and treatments being reviewed.
Writing on her blog, Nass stated:
“The mission of CDC and the ACIP members is to sign off on all possible vaccines as safe and effective, and to never turn over any stones that could reveal anything different. Then to roll all vaccines out to as broad a group of humans as humanly possible.”
ACIP says seniors ‘may’ get RSV vaccine, but overlooks other safety concerns
According to MedPage Today, ACIP recommended the new RSV vaccines for older adults on Wednesday “but opted not to give their strongest endorsement,” instead recommending “a talk with [a] medical provider first.”
STAT reported that ACIP recommended “anyone 60 and over should be able to get one of the new [RSV] vaccines … if they and their physicians think it would be worthwhile.”
According to STAT, ACIP was initially slated to vote on a broader recommendation that would have “urged all people 65 and older to get vaccinated” for RSV.
However, “that recommendation was watered down” after “several members of the committee expressed serious concerns about the decisions they were being asked to make based on the data the companies had provided.”
Reuters reported that while some committee members wanted to stick with the broader recommendation, “others had concerns that there was not enough data about how effective the vaccines are in people over the age of 75 and other high-risk groups.”
Two votes followed. In one, ACIP was asked whether “adults 65 years of age and older are recommended to receive a single dose of RSV vaccine.” The committee voted 9-5 to recommend that those age 65 and over “may” get an RSV vaccine after consultation with a doctor or pharmacist.
The other vote asked ACIP’s members whether “individual adults ages 60-64 may receive a single dose of RSV vaccine, using shared clinical decision-making” — that is, consultation with a doctor or pharmacist. Here, the result was 13-0 in favor, with one abstention.
ACIP’s recommendations are headed to the desk of outgoing CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who is expected to sign off on them early this week. Her last day as head of the CDC is June 30. However, ACIP recommendations are not considered final until they are published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The FDA recently approved the two vaccines — Pfizer’s Abrysvo and GSK’s Arexvy.
According to STAT, “It is expected both companies will provide vaccines to the market in time for the next RSV season.” However, the mild recommendations from ACIP “will likely lead to a lower uptake of the new vaccines than the manufacturers might have expected.”
Nass noted that data presented to ACIP indicated that out of 40,000 participants in the RSV vaccine clinical trials, six developed Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves or a GBS-type illness. This was compared to no GBS cases in the control group.
According to CNN, some ACIP members expressed concern that few adults over 75 and older were enrolled in the Pfizer and GSK clinical trials, even though they represent the group most at risk from RSV.
The immunocompromised and those living in “settings such as nursing homes are also at elevated risk but were not enrolled in the studies,” STAT reported.
In addition, according to MedPage Today, approvals of the two RSV vaccines “were based on efficacy data spanning a single RSV season.” At the ACIP meeting, Pfizer and GSK representatives “presented data showing that vaccine efficacy largely held up through the first part of the second RSV season, but did drop slightly.”
Some concerns were also raised regarding the concurrent administration of RSV vaccines alongside flu and COVID-19 shots.
According to STAT, “these vaccines will likely be given at the same time of the year … and it’s not yet clear if giving the vaccines at the same time undermines the immune responses they generate” because studies of concomitant administration of COVID and RSV vaccines are still underway.
GSK claimed that when its RSV vaccine was administered along with a flu vaccine, “It was safe and well-tolerated,” CNN reported.
The cost of the vaccine also drew criticism. According to MedPage Today, Pfizer and GSK proposed a range of prices spanning between $180 and $295, but according to STAT, “Both companies resisted strong pressure from the committee to commit to a firm price.”
According to Reuters, “Pfizer and GSK have said they expect RSV vaccines to eventually become multibillion-dollar sellers.” However, Fierce Pharma reported that ACIP’s “tepid endorsement for the vaccines could hinder sales.”
For 2023, GSK “expects the U.S. market to be in the range of 10 million to 15 million people, a fraction of the size of the expected flu or COVID-19 market,” Reuters stated.
Pneumococcal vaccine approved as ‘option’ for infants as young as 2 months old
ACIP voted unanimously in favor of adding Pfizer’s new 20-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prevnar, or PCV20) — currently administered only to adults — as an “option” for children, MedPage Today reported.
According to the AAP, “Pfizer’s PCV20 adds serotypes 8, 10A, 11A, 12F, 15B, which are not covered in PCV15,” a previously existing vaccine.
ACIP voted in favor of:
- Routine use of either PCV20 or PCV15 in children aged 2-23 months.
- Administration of either PCV15 or PCV20 in children aged 24-59 months with incomplete PCV vaccination status, and in children aged 24-71 months with certain underlying conditions and incomplete PCV vaccination status.
- Vaccination of children between 2 and 18 years of age with PCV20, or with pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23) if they previously had only received PCV13 or PCV15.
- A single dose of PCV15 or PCV20 to children between 6 and 18 years of age with any risk condition who have not received any dose of PCV13, PCV15 or PCV20. If PCV15 is administered, the committee said it should be followed by a dose of PPSV23 at least eight weeks after the initial vaccination.
According to Nass, PPSV23 is “very inflammatory” and it is “unclear how well/if it works.”
Moreover, according to MedPage Today, ACIP expanded its definition of high-risk children to include conditions such as moderate persistent and severe persistent asthma, chronic kidney disease (excluding dialysis patients), chronic liver disease and those with renal failure on maintenance dialysis.
Some committee members “expressed concern over the lack of clinical data for the new vaccines,” MedPage Today reported, including “no effectiveness and no efficacy data on either PCV15 or PCV20.”
Nass noted that “the CDC presented no good data on these new vaccines,” instead presenting “economic models” in lieu of this data, adding, though, that “reliable data to plug into the models” is lacking.
Despite this missing data, an ACIP member quoted by Nass said, “Our CDC colleagues are masters at epidemiology surveillance that will give us the answer in [the] future” — “In other words,” Nass said, “‘we won’t know if it works unless we give it to millions of children, so what are we waiting for?’”
Third monkeypox vaccine dose not recommended — for now
ACIP considered, but rejected, recommending a third dose of the Jynneos vaccine for monkeypox.
However, the committee did encourage “2-dose vaccinations among persons who do not have immunity and optimizing immune function … ideally before mpox exposure.”
ACIP also recommended “persons eligible for vaccination, particularly those with advanced HIV and other immunocompromising conditions, should receive two doses of Jynneos vaccine,” adding that “Additional research on the durability of Jynneos vaccine-induced immunity is needed.”
In response, Nass remarked, “Let me remind you that monkeypox is essentially like shingles … It is a mild disease and there is no need for a vaccine for 99.9% of people; and if you get it, you will probably have real immunity afterwards.”
“CDC is willing to give it along with COVID vaccines, even though that probably magnifies the risk of myocarditis,” Nass added.
The committee also discussed, but did not act on, proposals to expand the use of Jynneos to children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Other vaccines also on ACIP’s agenda, but no decisions made
According to APP, “ACIP members reviewed data on Friday regarding the safety of aluminum in vaccines,” reviewing the results of a study finding a possible link between aluminum and childhood asthma.
However, it was determined that the study had “important limitations” and that its findings “do not prove causation,” although “a follow-up study with a larger group of children and longer follow-up time” will subsequently be performed. Ultimately, ACIP “did not recommend changing the vaccine schedule.”
Nass noted that links between aluminum, and diabetes and eczema, were also discussed, with a “small positive association” found in the case of eczema and asthma.
ACIP members also examined the possibility of “simplifying COVID vaccine recommendations for children ages 2-4 years,” according to the APP, looking “at the possibility of requiring only one dose for this group instead of two to three.”
ACIP’s COVID-19 vaccine work group said “it would support a single, potentially annual, dose for children ages 2 years and older, while maintaining multiple doses for those under 2.” However, no vote was taken.
Some committee members argued that “Simplifying the recommendations also may lead to more children getting vaccinated,” citing low uptake in children under age 2.
A new pentavalent meningococcal vaccine, combining two existing vaccines into one, was also discussed — a vaccine which, according to Nass, “is not needed.” No discussion of the safety of the existing meningitis vaccines took place at the meeting, Nass said.
Also on ACIP’s agenda was a recommendation under consideration for a single polio shot for all individuals who are unsure whether they were fully vaccinated as children or who expect to visit high-risk environments. Again, no decisions were made.
Vaccines for dengue and chikungunya — two mosquito-borne diseases which are rare in the U.S. — were also discussed by ACIP, with no outcome arising from the meeting.
Reactogenicity got magically turned into safety, and safety got thrown away’
ACIP also voted 14-0 that it is no longer necessary for individuals with egg allergies to receive their flu vaccine in a medical setting, noting that “immunization best practice guidelines already call for all vaccine providers to be equipped to handle anaphylaxis,” as reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
“Any flu vaccine appropriate for the person’s age and health status can be used regardless of whether it is egg-based,” AAP stated. This decision awaits CDC approval.
“CDC has been trying to get rid of vaccine contraindications for the past five years, despite lack of supportive evidence,” Nass said. Following ACIP’s vote, “egg allergies as a contraindication or precaution for flu shots is about to disappear.”
Nass told The Defender that while “there used to be three things a vaccine had to be tested for — purity, potency and safety,” safety has now “morphed into sterility” — meaning it doesn’t contain “outside germs,” according to a new definition from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“There used to be a word — reactogenicity — for acute reactions to a vaccine,” Nass said, referring to the physical manifestation of the body’s inflammatory response to vaccination. She also noted that “safety” was “primarily concerned with longer-term or non-resolving side effects,” including “serious side effects.”
“But reactogenicity got magically turned into safety, and safety got thrown away.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Suicidal attacks, horrendous losses and insubordination plague Kiev regime forces
By Drago Bosnic | June 28, 2023
Back in mid-January, retired United States Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who previously led the US Army Europe Command and still holds several high-ranking positions within NATO, gave an interview to the CIA front Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where he claimed that Western heavy armor would supposedly give the Kiev regime “an edge” against the Russian military. When asked “how much of a disadvantage has Ukraine had without [Western/NATO armor] and what can Kiev now achieve with it”, Hodges stated the following:
“Well, of course, I wish these decisions to provide ‘Bradley’ and ‘Marder’ and AMX-10RC and other systems would have been made sooner. But the good news is they’ve been made. What I heard last week was the foundation for an armor brigade. Basically, you’ve got self-propelled artillery from the Czech Republic, a battalion; AMX-10RC from France, which is an excellent wheeled vehicle, a lot of mobility with a big gun on it; and then a battalion of ‘Marder’, which is a very good system; and then a battalion of ‘Bradley’, which is the best infantry fighting vehicle in the world. If you get those and then if you put maybe a Ukrainian tank battalion in the middle of it with engineers, you’ve got a lethal combined arms formation that could be the iron fist that would help penetrate these endless lines of Russian trenches…”
It’s hardly breaking news that these “excellent wheeled vehicles” and “very good systems”, including “the best infantry fighting vehicle in the world”, have been anything but as the much-touted counteroffensive of the Kiev regime forces has proven to be a spectacular failure. After weeks of attempts to break through Russian lines, apart from a few small tactical successes that cannot possibly be justified considering the horrendous losses, the “iron fist” of the Neo-Nazi junta troops demonstrated its impotence as it has been unable to achieve any of the stated strategic goals.
By June 21, losses of the Kiev regime forces have been staggering, standing at approximately 13,000 servicemen, 246 tanks (13 of which were NATO heavy armor), 595 armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), 279 artillery guns and mortars (48 sent by NATO), 42 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), two SAM (surface-to-air) missile systems, 14 aircraft (including helicopters), 264 drones and 424 vehicles. Since then, the losses seem to have escalated dramatically, although precise numbers are yet to be released. As the German daily Handelsblatt described it: “This isn’t a counteroffensive. It is a bloody crash test.”
Despite this, the Neo-Nazi junta keeps sending the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians to certain death (or horrendous injuries, at best). On June 24, offensive operations were launched in both Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions (oblasts), but failed, although the Kiev regime claimed there was “progress in all directions“. Video evidence suggests that virtually all assault units engaged in offensive operations were either destroyed or damaged beyond repair, while Russian kamikaze drones neutralized their artillery support composed primarily of US-made M777 howitzers.
The following day, the Neo-Nazi junta forces lost well over 700 soldiers and dozens of pieces of heavy armor and lighter support vehicles. During a failed attack, the 47th brigade of the Kiev regime forces got bogged down in a minefield, resulting in catastrophic losses, including life-altering injuries. War footage suggests there are dozens of critically injured soldiers, with virtually no way to either provide immediate medical assistance or evacuate the wounded. There are numerous instances where soldiers are simply left behind to die.
Expectedly, this has resulted in insubordination from many Ukrainian servicemen, some of whom are openly refusing to follow orders of their superiors, further reinforcing previous claims about a looming mutiny within the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Battlefield reports now even suggest that their commanding officers are often taking extreme measures to ensure obedience. One of the latest videos shows an officer throwing at least two hand grenades at several Ukrainian servicemen standing in a bunker for failing to hold their positions. Presumably, the Ukrainian soldiers (at least three of them) either failed or refused to follow the order of their commanding officer to hold the position they were assigned to.
It’s safe to assume that they were most likely forced to retreat from their post in order not to get overrun, as there were only three of them. Obviously agitated by this, the officer decided that the immediate punishment for insubordination was to throw hand grenades at them. The available footage shows the commanding officer taking at least two grenades from another soldier and throwing them into the bunker where the fleeing soldiers were standing, after which an explosion can be heard. The fate of the unfortunate servicemen is unknown, but given the confined space they were in, it can only be assumed that the best-case scenario is they suffered serious shrapnel wounds.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Lethal Drones at the U.S.-Mexico Border?
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | June 27, 2023
Fentanyl has caused many overdose deaths in recent years, and much of it has entered the United States through Mexico. A number of politicians have thrown their support behind a proposal to officially label narcotics traffickers based in Mexico as “terrorists.” Not all of the Republican lawmakers who support this idea have openly embraced the use of lethal drones to eliminate such persons, but that would be the inevitable policy implication of such labeling, given the wording of anti-terrorist legislation. At least one presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has said the quiet part out loud: lethal drones should be deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border. There can be little doubt that the many other politicians declaring “war” on the cartels are well aware that lethal force will be used once the fentanyl producers have been designated terrorists, and the current tool of choice among self-styled smart warriors is the unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) or lethal drone.
The superficially plausible assumption behind this proposal is that if the flow of fentanyl is stanched, then the overdose deaths will subside. But the prospect of deploying lethal drones at the U.S.-Mexico border is a simplistic plan for addressing a very complicated problem. There are dozens of reasons for opposing this approach, on moral, legal, cultural, and geopolitical grounds. Most of those arguments, however, will fall on deaf ears and certainly not deter politicians from plundering ahead, expanding the domain of the killing machine once again, having been, in at least some cases, sincerely persuaded that they are acting not to enrich death industry profiteers but to defend the people of the United States from foreign enemies. The only way to prevent the deployment of lethal drones at the border from happening will be persuasively to demonstrate that the plan could never succeed, on purely tactical grounds. Two fatal flaws virtually guarantee that, if implemented, the plan would not have the desired effect, as can be seen through a consideration of the origins of the opioid crisis and the cross-border use of lethal drones in the Middle East.
The tragic drug overdoses of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States in recent years have had many causal factors, but the prime mover, which initiated the whole ugly mess, was the promiscuous overprescription of narcotics by doctors. Led by Purdue Pharma, drug industry giants aggressively marketed their opioid products as safe to use by anyone for anything, all blessed by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), which permitted a package insert to be included in boxes of Oxycontin indicating that the time-release format made the product safe to use without concerns about addiction or abuse. This was a classic case of the commandeering by profiteers of a government agency established in order to protect citizens but used instead to promote the interests of those who come to enrich themselves through decisively shaping government policies. (An even more obvious case has been the capture of the Department of Defense by individuals beholden to companies in military industry, such as former Raytheon board member and current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin.) Because most members of the populace believe that the FDA is their protector (again, just as they believe in the basic goodness of the Pentagon), many of them were taken in by this pharmaceutical industry scheme.
Doctors, too, were remarkably persuaded to believe that they could and should prescribe narcotics liberally, and patients consequently came to believe that they could and should empty their large amber vials. Preposterous though it may seem in retrospect, the pharmaceutical industry undertook aggressive public media campaigns to persuade politicians and their constituents that the nation was in the throes of a “pain epidemic,” for which narcotics were the solution. When clinicians expressed concern that their patients might be turning into addicts, they were tutored by “experts” tethered to the industry that the observed condition was in fact “pseudo-addiction,” the remedy for which would be even higher doses of narcotic drugs.
Prescription narcotics were oversupplied to perfectly ordinary patients suffering from even minor bouts of acute pain, who eventually discovered that they had become dependent on and were unable to function without the drugs. The opiates to which they found themselves hopelessly addicted were prescribed legally to them by physicians whom they had trusted as having their best interests in mind. In this way, people from all walks of life, including injured high school athletes who had never even been recreational drug users, were transformed into junkies.
Some of the working people who were prescribed narcotics for their various, often minor, ailments lost their jobs and, with them, their health insurance. During the early years of what would become the opioid overdose epidemic, addicts and others supported themselves by selling pills they acquired through “doctor shopping”. As a direct consequence of the pharmaceutical industry-created demand for more and more narcotics, mercenary but board-certified doctors teamed up with unscrupulous business persons to open “pain clinics,” which swiftly became places where addicts convened and collected drugs to be diverted for illegal sales. Massive quantities of narcotics were distributed by the now notorious pain clinics. Many of those drugs were sold on the streets for recreational use, thereby creating even more addicts. (For a concise and compelling summary of the government’s indisputable role in this tragic story, see director Alex Gibney’s two-part HBO series, The Crime of the Century [2021].)
Once the pain clinics were shut down, more and more addicts turned to the streets for supplies of their needed fix of whatever was available: diverted prescription pills, heroin, morphine, and most notoriously of all, fentanyl. Because it is so potent (about fifty times more than comparable drugs) and also cheap to produce, fentanyl was mixed or even used to replace other narcotics by unscrupulous dealers. The increased demand by addicts for opioids and the use by dealers of fentanyl to cut or replace heroin and other less dangerous surrogates has resulted in the deaths of many drug users who simply did not know what they were ingesting. At least some of the fentanyl deaths reported have been of non-addicts whose supplies of other drugs, too, were tainted with the highly concentrated and toxic substance.
Can eliminating supplies of fentanyl coming over the border to the United States from Mexico solve this problem? Will summarily executing suspected producers and distributors of fentanyl help to stem the tide of overdose deaths? Even setting aside concerns about procedural justice, the proposal to assassinate suspected drug dealers fails to take into account the etiology of the opioid crisis and, most importantly of all, the nature of drug dependency and the desperation of junkies to acquire the substances to which they are not only psychologically but physically addicted.
The opioid addiction crisis was not caused but seized upon opportunistically by Mexican drug cartels. The very fact that the fentanyl business has become so lucrative for illicit drug purveyors itself illustrates that there is a strong market demand for narcotics, whether natural or synthetic. If addicts cannot acquire cheap black tar heroin and/or fentanyl from Mexican producers and their network of distributors throughout the United States, then they will seek out and locate other sources of the drugs which their bodies crave. No one denies that the opioid addiction crisis is grave. But whacking drug dealers at the U.S.-Mexico border will simply produce more drug dealers, in different places.
We’ve seen a version of this story before, mutatis mutandis. What, after all, happened when war resisters transformed into jihadists on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan were targeted by missiles? First, there was the hydra problem: targeting suspected militants often resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, thus fueling the very anger requisite to the recruitment by Al Qaeda and other groups of new converts to violent retaliation. Other factors, beyond the illegal invasions themselves, contributed to the increased number of radical Islamist fighters as well, including the use of torture by the occupiers, along with a variety of other incompetent policies, which led to a general degradation in the quality of life for the inhabitants of occupied territories.
Second, and directly relevant to the proposed plan to execute suspects at the U.S.-Mexico border, as the ranks of the factional fighters increased, some of them fled to other parts of the Middle East to regroup and avoid being killed by occupying forces. The comportment of the dissidents who fled war zones was entirely rational. They believed that they were right, and they naturally wanted to succeed in their missions to eject the invaders from their lands, so they relocated and strategized about how to defeat what they had come to believe was “the evil enemy.” The lethal drones then followed the factional fighters to Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Mali, Yemen, and beyond. As a result of this lethal creep, civilians in several different countries are now under constant threat of death by missiles launched by drones.
The Mexican drug cartels are not at this point engaged in a war with the U.S. military, but recalling how and why the “Global War on Terror” spread throughout the Middle East, we must soberly consider what is likely to ensue, should lethal drones be unleashed at the border as a way of curtailing the flow of fentanyl. It is quite plausible, given what happened in the Global War on Terror, that the more missiles which are fired on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fewer people there will be who choose to continue to live there. This should be a matter of common sense even to people ignorant of the details of the disastrous Global War on Terror, and yet the politicians pushing for a new “War on Drugs” somehow have not thought through the likely consequences of their plan, preferring instead to follow their usual “act tough” approach to garner political support for superficially appealing policies. No matter that Plan Colombia, intended to reduce the flow of cocaine to the United States, had the opposite effect and led to the militarization of drug traffickers throughout region, not the renunciation of their business activities. Just as the Global War on Terror has been all but forgotten by politicians keen to “move on” rather than acknowledge their role in creating humanitarian catastrophe throughout the Middle East, Plan Colombia has been memory-holed for the very same reason. Both were abject policy failures. Mistakes were made. Stuff happens. Nothing to see here; time to move on—to Ukraine!
Following the same logic used by both the radical jihadists in Afghanistan, and the cocaine cartels in Colombia, targeted groups at the U.S.-Mexico border who wish to continue to ply their trade, producing and distributing fentanyl and other drugs to the people of the United States, may well set up shop somewhere else, in places where they will be safe from the specter of lethal drones hovering above their heads. If fentanyl is easy to produce in Mexico, it is no less easy to produce wherever the same raw materials can be found. We can expect, then, that if lethal drones are used at the border, fentanyl production and distribution will migrate as a result. Some of the producers will move south, some may relocate to Canada, but it seems far more likely that many of them will opt to use the distribution apparatus they already have in place in the United States to begin or increase synthetic drug production in the very country where fentanyl is being sold.
The illicit drug purveyors may well reason that they will be safer moving their businesses to the United States, rather than further south in Mexico or other parts of Latin America, or up north to Canada. They may find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would deploy lethal drones in the homeland, thereby directly endangering U.S. citizens. That assumption, however, is false. We already have precedents for such deployments abroad, and even the use of robotic means of homicide within the homeland against U.S. citizens.
The case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was summarily executed by the U.S. government in Yemen without ever having been indicted for a crime, on the basis of evidence never made public to his fellow citizens that he was a “terrorist,” illustrates that the drone killers are ready and willing to inflict capital punishment upon citizens at the executive’s decree. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the sixteen-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, was also destroyed, along with a group of his teenage friends, by a missile launched from a drone in Yemen, about two weeks after his father was eliminated, and shortly after the boy had turned sixteen, making him a “military-age male”. To this day, we do not know whether the son was killed because military analysts worried that he would be radicalized by his father’s assassination, for the U.S. government has never explained what happened on October 14, 2011.
It is possible, albeit implausible (given the government’s silence on the matter), that the drone strike which ended Abdulrahman’s life was a mistake, an incredible coincidence that the younger al-Awlaki happened to find himself at the receiving end of a missile intended for somebody else. But the case of U.S. citizen Warren Weinstein, who had been taken prisoner (along with an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto) by a group of suspected Al Qaeda members, and was also destroyed by a lethal drone, illustrates that, in pursuing their targets, the technokillers are ready and willing to risk harming U.S. citizens not even suspected of criminal activity.
Lest anyone suppose that the U.S. government would draw the line with citizen suspects located abroad, it is important to recognize that the presumption against the use of intentional homicide against citizens has been significantly weakened in the homeland as well, arguably as a result of the U.S. military’s “shoot first, suppress questions later” conduct abroad everywhere on display throughout the Global War on Terror. That homicide should be used to resolve conflict has been normalized in the minds of not only military and political elites but also every random mass shooter who emerges out of nowhere to annihilate a group of people as a way of expressing his discontent. When Micah Xavier Johnson, the Dallas cop killer, was blown up on July 8, 2016, using a robotic device at the behest of David O’Neal Brown, the chief of the Dallas police, nearly no one questioned the wisdom of the decision, though it would have been a simple matter to load the robot with incapacitating sedatives instead. Both of these African American men had been indoctrinated to believe that the way to resolve conflict is to obliterate human beings. Johnson, a military veteran apparently suffering from PTSD, claimed that he felt the need to kill Dallas cops as a way of protesting their killing of innocent black men.
Given these precedents, it seems likely that once lethal drones are deployed in the latest doomed-to-fail War on Drugs, the “War on Fentanyl,” they will be used not only in Mexico, but also in the United States as fentanyl production migrates to the homeland along with those fleeing the missiles being fired near the border. In the face of the overdose epidemic, politicians, goaded by both angry and mourning constituents, feel the need to act, and they will likely be supported by many in the populace in their quest to send out lethal drones—until, that is, innocent family members and neighbors begin to be incinerated in the homeland. At that point, perhaps the nation will finally have its long overdue debate about the policy of summarily executing suspects and the labeling as “collateral damage” of any innocent person unlucky enough to be located within the radius of a missile’s effects. But revisiting the immorality and illegality of killing thousands of unarmed brown-skinned young men in the prime of their lives abroad, on the basis of sketchy evidence which would never hold up in a court of law, while perhaps salubrious for future foreign policy, will have no effect whatsoever on the overdose epidemic.
The only truly effective solution to the opioid crisis, given the manifest failure of both the War on Drugs and the Prohibition, will be to legalize all drugs, making it possible for addicts and recreational drug users alike to buy what they need or want, and to know what they are actually getting. Anyone who wishes to liberate himself from the chains of addiction and return to a semblance of normal life should be assisted in that endeavor. Every addict has a story, and rather than criminalizing all of them, we would do well to take seriously the genesis of the opioid crisis in the United States. Many well-meaning patients, leading perfectly ordinary, noncriminal lives, ended up as junkies because they trusted their doctors who, in turn, trusted the pharma-coopted FDA. To those who worry that legalizing drugs will create even more junkies, there is a ready-made, highly visible anti-narcotics abuse campaign currently underway in every major city in the United States. No rational person would freely choose to wind up in the sorry state of the zombies currently haunting our streets. Rather than pinning up posters of fried eggs captioned “Your brain on drugs,” parents need only to take their children to such scenes to dissuade them from making the mistakes which led to the creation of what appear now to be mere vestiges of human beings.
Unfortunately, instead of viewing the opioid crisis as the humanitarian disaster that it is, some of the very politicians who culpably condoned industry malfeasance for years by refusing to acknowledge its root cause—pharmaceutical industry greed and our captured federal agencies—have decided that the suppliers of fentanyl from Mexico are the latest “bad guys” who must be eradicated from the face of the earth. Stigmatizing drug purveyors as “terrorists” not only will not effectively address the overdose epidemic, but it will further undermine our already crumbling republic. If the use of lethal force against suspected drug dealers is undertaken at the border, it will only be a matter of time before the presumption of innocence in the homeland is inverted into a presumption of guilt, just as occurred in the thousands of drone strikes targeting suspects on the basis of hearsay and circumstantial evidence throughout the Global War on Terror abroad.
Laurie Calhoun is the Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters. Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times will be published by the Libertarian Institute in 2023.
Fact Check: Have British Storm Shadows Proved Effective on Ukraine Battlefield?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 27.06.2023
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace asserted to British lawmakers that Storm Shadow missiles given to Kiev have had “a significant impact” on the battlefield in Ukraine. Is Wallace’s optimism justified?
“I think that the British minister of defense is somewhat embellishing the situation,” Dmitry Kornev, military expert, founder of the Military Russia portal, told Sputnik, suggesting that Wallace’s announcement resembled a PR stunt.
“Within the framework of a special military operation, missiles and the capabilities of Storm Shadow, which are used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, so far have not played any role at all (…) Yes, they strike at some point objects. Yes, sometimes they hit them; sometimes these missiles are shot down,” he said.
What Are Storm Shadows Capable of?
In May, the British government announced that it had delivered multiple Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine ahead of the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive.
The Storm Shadow is a weapon typically launched from the air, boasting a striking range in excess of 250 kilometers (155 miles). The missile’s weight is about 1,300 kilograms which includes a conventional warhead of 450 kilograms. Its diameter amounts to 48 centimeters; the rocket’s wingspan is three meters. The wonder weapon price tag is approximately $3.19 million per unit.
The weapon was used in the 2003 War in Iraq, where the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron extensively tested them on the battlefield. These missiles were also used during NATO’s invasion of Libya in 2011. All in all, the UK government has a stockpile of an estimated 700-1,000 Storm Shadows.
How Are Storm Shadows Carried
It was earlier reported that the British missiles would be carried by the Ukrainian Air Force Su-24 Fencer. Pictures released by the Ukrainian media showed a Su-24 with a Storm Shadow placed under the fixed-wing “glove” pylon.
In the past, The Drive suggested that Storm Shadows would be carried by Ukraine’s Su-24 with the Su-27 Flanker jet also being a likely candidate as Storm Shadow shooter. At the same time, the media outlet wondered as to how many Su-24s have been left in Ukraine. It quoted intelligence indicating that Ukraine has lost at least 17 Su-24s. It was later reported that Ukraine’s Su-24 combat version and Su-24MR reconnaissance plane have been modified to fire the British stealthy long-range missile.
Defensive or Offensive?
In May, Wallace announced that the weapon would become Ukraine’s “best chance to defend themselves.”
However, earlier this month Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pointed out that Kiev would not use these missiles for “defensive” purposes:
“According to our information, the leadership of the armed forces of Ukraine plans to strike at the territory of Russia, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles,” the minister said at a meeting of the collegium of the Ministry of Defense.”
Shoigu warned that the use of Storm Shadow and HIMARS outside the zone of the special military operation would mean the full involvement of the United States and the United Kingdom in the conflict.
On June 22, the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out a strike on bridges on the administrative border between the Kherson region and Crimea. As the result of the missile attack the roadway on the Chongar Bridge was damaged, but no casualties were reported by local authorities. Judging from markings on the wreckage of the missile, the strike was presumably carried out British-donated Storm Shadows.
“Apparently, several missiles were used there, and some of them probably hit [the bridge],” said Kornev. “That is, yes, a very successful illustration of the capabilities of these missiles. But how much could this hurt logistics in general? Probably, it is this case that the British Minister of Defense uses (…) But firstly, this is only one of several arteries that connect Crimea with the continental part. Secondly, the damage that was done there, but they didn’t destroy the bridge. Thirdly, besides this logistical artery, there are still many routes along the continental part, where, to be honest, Storm Shadow did not play any role at all.”
Is Storm Shadow a Game Changer for Counteroffensive?
The Russian military expert has drawn attention to the fact that Storm Shadows are now shot down “quite regularly.” Furthermore, following the Ukrainian military strike on the bridge, the Russian armed forces destroyed a depot with Storm Shadow cruise missiles in Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region, as per the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Still, the most vivid indicator that Storm Shadow cruise missiles have not become a game change is that they failed to facilitate Ukraine’s much-discussed counteroffensive, according to Kornev.
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine announced the start of a counteroffensive,” said the military analyst. “As part of this counteroffensive, there was some preliminary bombardment, including with Storm Shadow missiles. And there are no results. Accordingly, we can say that either the missiles are not as effective as expected, or the organization of their use is not sufficiently developed, or in general, everything related to the counteroffensive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is still stalling and does not give any serious results.”
Audio of Classified War Plans Show Trump Refused Decades-Long Push to Attack Iran
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 27.06.2023
A veteran of the US state apparatus told Sputnik that the most significant part of the story about former US President Donald Trump holding onto still-classified plans for war with Iran after he left office is that Trump refused to give in to pressure to launch such a conflict, which Washington has sought for decades.
US media has obtained the audio of an alleged conversation between Trump and his aides in which prosecutors said he described showing them files he knew were still classified.
The conversation, which allegedly occurred in the summer of 2021, was previously reported based on a partial transcript cited in a criminal complaint against Trump that was filed in a federal court earlier this month.
In the two-minute-long audio clip, Trump can seemingly be heard referencing top secret plans regarding an attack against Iran that he says were prepared by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has become a sharp critic of Trump after the former president’s term ended.
“These are the papers,” Trump is heard saying. “This was done by the military and given to me.”
“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump continues as others in the room laugh, adding: “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
Trump faces 37 charges related to the classified files, which the FBI seized in a raid last August at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Many of the charges each carry a potential 20-year prison sentence, if Trump were to be convicted.
Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer and US State Department official, told Sputnik that Trump’s administration was by no means the first to consider a war against Iran, and that the focus on the war plans conceals a greater truth: that Trump didn’t want to launch such an attack.
“The war plans against Iran have existed since 1980, since the mullahs took power. And those plans exist and have been revised and updated over time. So I wouldn’t read too much into his discussing one plan.”
“I think the key point is that Trump did not act on these plans,” Johnson asserted. “He resisted the pressure from advisors who wanted to start a war with Iran, but he refused. He refused to go along with them. And that’s I think that’s really part of the anger directed at him as well.”
However, Johnson said there was actually a greater chance of war with Iran under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
“During the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States was more actively engaged in supporting intelligence operations that were leading to the assassination of Iranian scientists. They were backing this terrorist group, the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq. So, Trump is really sort of a problem for the defense establishment in Washington, DC, who were eager for that conflict. Trump tried to avoid conflict. He was always looking to cut a deal as opposed to go to war.”
Johnson predicted that if Trump manages to dodge the charges against him and win the 2024 US election, for which he has already declared his candidacy, that Trump would “cut a deal” with Tehran.
“He would find a way to de-escalate the tensions. But unfortunately, you’ve got a war party. There’s not just one political party. It’s bipartisan. We’ve got Republicans and Democrats alike who are promoting conflict, insisting on conflict. [US President Joe] Biden is not keen upon actually getting a real agreement with these guys. Trump was. I think Trump genuinely believed in and tried to promote those kinds of agreements,” the former CIA officer said.
UN expert: US treatment of Guantanamo prison inmates inhuman and degrading, Washington must apologize
Press TV – June 26, 2023
A United Nations expert has slammed the treatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison by the United States government as inhuman and degrading, calling on Washington to apologize and provide reparations.
UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain made the remarks in a report released on Monday after her visit to the US military prison, which is situated on Cuban soil.
“I observed that after two decades of custody, the suffering of those detained is profound, and it’s ongoing,” Ni Aolain said, adding that mistreatment of inmates at Guantanamo prison amounted to violation of detainees’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
According to Ni Aolain, the detainees, who have been there for close to two decades after being seized as suspects following September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, have endured a litany of abuse, including forced cell extractions as well as poor medical and mental health care.
Ni Aolain, who is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, added that the detainees have also had inadequate access to family either by in-person visits or calls.
“The totality of all of these practices and omissions … amounts in my assessment to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law,” she said.
The UN special rapporteur added that Washington has so far done nothing to address the rights violations related to the detainees, including their secret seizure and transfer or rendition to Guantanamo in the early 2000s and the extensive torture methods used by US operatives in the first years following the September 11 attacks.
“The systematic rendition and torture at multiple (including black) sites and thereafter at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba … comprise the single most significant barrier to fulfilling victims’ rights to justice and accountability,” the UN special rapporteur said, adding that accountability includes apologies, full remedy and reparations for “all victims.”
Stressing that closure of the prison “remains a priority,” the UN expert said, “The US government must ensure accountability for all violations of international law, both for victims of its counterterrorism practices, present and former detainees, and victims of terrorism.”
The UN expert said, “Every single detainee I met with lives with the unrelenting harms that follow from systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention,” citing “the undue use of restraints and near constant surveillance as current shortcomings.”
The Guantanamo Bay prison was set up in 2002 by then US President George W. Bush and held about 800 inmates at its peak before the number started to shrink. Some 30 prisoners are still languishing there.
President Joe Biden had promised to close the facility but has yet to present a plan to do so. Human rights advocates are increasingly frustrated with Biden for failing to deliver on his pledge to close the prison, leaving inmates languishing in the notorious offshore detention center with no end in sight.
Washington Loves War Criminals
Madeleine Albright to be honored with a post office in her name
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 27, 2023
It is generally accepted in government circles as well as in the media that covers Washington politics that both major political parties now embrace foreign and national security policies that are both aggressive and brutally conducted, essentially products of the so-called neoconservatives, or neocons for short. Ron Unz has recently written a lengthy 6500 word article describing how the neocons rose to power, beginning with their relatively humble origins as a gathering of frequently radicalized Jewish students at the City College of New York in the 1930s. Their disenchantment with Stalin turned them away from the Soviet communist model and they frequently self-described as Trotskyites or other fringe elements on the political left. Some of the founders of the movement later elaborated how they were in many cases “Liberals who had been mugged by reality” as they drifted in a conservative direction to gain political power. Ironically, or perhaps as a calculated strategy, Unz notes how many of the young Jewish neocons retained their “leftist” social attitudes even as they drifted to the right over national security, a posture that gave them a foot in the door of both major political parties.
Unz describes the neocons’ utter ruthlessness in their climb to power, starting in the Reagan Administration, where they obtained key positions in the Pentagon and in the national security structure. I personally witnessed some of their presence and ambitions in the 1980s when I was in the CIA base in Istanbul. They would show up at the Consulate General in small groups drawn from the Pentagon or under the aegis of the American Jewish Committee and other similar organizations to enter into discussions with the diplomatic personnel as well as Turkish officials. They were frequently agitating for military action against Iran, Iraq and Syria and were always apologists for Israel. When Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was arrested in 1985 and then convicted in 1987 Jewish organizations were thick on the ground arguing that he was mentally unbalanced and could not possibly be a spy for good friend and close ally Israel. One of our Consuls General bought into the argument to such an extent that he tried to sell it to the Turks, who were not buying it. I had a heated exchange with him regarding what he was ignorantly peddling, to no avail.
It is not as if the neocon reckless definition of “national security” is consequence free, as we are currently seeing in the war going on largely driven by its imperatives in Ukraine. Ron Unz had preceded his dissection of the neocon “rise to power” with an article entitled “Dislodging the Neocons, Difficult but Necessary.” Unz describes how the neocons at one level have been completely successful. “After having controlled American foreign policy for more than three decades, promoting their allies and protégés and purging their opponents,” the adherents of the view that the United States must absolutely dominate the world militarily and set the rules of behavior for everyone now is agreed upon by nearly the entire political establishment, including both political parties as well as the leading thinktanks, lobbying groups and media. By now, there are hardly any prominent figures in either party who adhere to a significantly different line, which has made “antiwar” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard so attractive to some of us. More to the point, over the last two decades, the “national security focused neoconservatives have largely joined forces with the economically-focused neoliberals, forming a unified ideological block that represents the political worldview of the elites running both American parties.”
Unz has recognized how the neocons have infiltrated both political parties and their foreign policy vision has been adopted by all, with some like Victoria Nuland posing as Democrats while others continue to pretend to be Republicans. To put it another way, progressives in the Democratic Party do not feel particularly threatened by the neoconservatives as most neocons are conventional Jewish liberals on social issues, which are what is most important to Democrats. This all means that legislators and government officials can all agree on the necessity to maintain a brutal foreign policy based on military force since it has nothing to do with abortions, race or gender issues.
I recently witnessed a manifestation of this seriously skewed and dangerous world view in my own congressional district in Virginia. Our Democratic Party congresswoman Jennifer Wexton is functionally as woke as can be. When she was first elected back in 2018 and moved into her office in the following January, one of her first gestures was to hang a transgender pride flag outside her door. Since that time, she has been an active supporter of the usual Democratic Party endorsed woke catalog of grievances. She is certainly a good fit in a county in which a biological boy who chose to identify and dress like a girl exploited high school gender neutral policies to rape one genuine girl in a unisex school toilet before being sent to another high school rather than expelled and prosecuted where he raped a second girl. One of the girl’s fathers was silenced when he sought to protest against the policies at a School Board meeting.
Wexton has now introduced into Congress a bill which will change the name of our local post office, which is currently named after the town it is located in, to honor Madeleine Albright, the recently deceased former UN Ambassador and Secretary of State under Bill Clinton. My immediate reaction to news of the bill, which will likely pass easily through Congress as it is unimportant to most legislators, is that I would not want to enter into a building that honors an unindicted war criminal. Indeed, I will not do so. I drafted up a short dissent from the move supported by an account of just how Albright was a war criminal, including her comment that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to her and Clinton’s sanctions were “worth it,” and posted it on Facebook, where the administrators immediately removed it.
Wexton, of course, praises Albright as if she were the greatest US Secretary of State since George Marshall. She enthuses in support of her bill that “Secretary Madeleine Albright was a fearless trailblazer for women and a devoted public servant who touched the lives of so many whom she taught, mentored, and worked with… Her relentless defense of democracy and advocacy for human rights, inspired by her own lived experience fleeing Nazi persecution, made her an icon here at home and around the globe.” Citing “Fleeing Nazis?” What could be a better conventional endorsement? And it is a lie. Albright and her family survived the Second World War comfortably and left Czechoslovakia on their own volition in 1948, when she was eleven, long after the conflict had ended.
And that faux glorification is precisely where the hypocrisy of most of the sanctimonious congressional parasites comes in. Here we have an ultra-liberal congresswoman promoting purely on partisan political grounds someone whose malignant and even criminal career is readily discernible, to include also her role in enabling US intervention in the Balkans, sometimes referred to as “Madeleine’s war.” And then there were Bill Clinton’s diversionary missile attacks on the Sudan and Afghanistan and the expansion of NATO contrary to agreements made with Russia. Albright also ignored direct, emotional requests by the US Ambassador to Kenya that the embassy was vulnerable to attack by terrorists and needed an urgent security upgrade. The embassy in Nairobi and in neighboring Tanzania were subsequently bombed in 1998, killing 12 American diplomats and 200 Africans.
I would point out that going beyond the dead Iraqi children, Albright was borderline deranged about the neocon-ish belief in the righteousness of the applicability of US power as a solution for every problem. When demanding the US military intervention in Bosnia she reportedly turned to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, who was reluctant to get involved, and asked “What’s the point of you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can’t use it?” And then there is her famous quote justifying America’s lead role in the world, saying “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” Excuse me, but what sanctimonious and ultimately malicious bullshit that is!
In any event, rather than spend taxpayer money to rename a perfectly functional public building after an unindictable war criminal, Congresswoman Wexton might consider reaching into her own pocket to purchase a small commemorative plaque that can be placed in an inconspicuous location, possibly in front of her own home since she is so interested in cultivating the legend of one of America’s “finest” public servants. It would look real nice there, I am sure, and I wouldn’t have to see it when I go to pick up my mail.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Who Is National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Why He Should Debate RFK Jr.
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | June 27, 2023
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is one of the key people driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions. This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.
Background
Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976. He describes his formative years like this:
“I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.”
Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.
Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.
Mentored by Hillary
Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, travelling with her to 112 countries.
The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly over-ruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”
Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.” When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found to be false.
When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.
Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks – who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state. Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.” Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by Wikileaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”
Biden’s adviser during the 2014 Ukraine Coup
After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).
In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.
Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.
In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.
Sullivan helped create Russiagate
Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which promoted Russiagate. The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of Putin. Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.
Sullivan played a major role in the deception as shown by his “Statement from Jake Sullivan on New Report Exposing Trump’s Secret Line of Communication to Russia.”
Sullivan’s misinformation
Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya… He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission… Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.” Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”
Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline destruction
The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Seymour Hersh reported details of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted
“I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”
Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.
Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,
“How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?”
Economic Plans devoid of reality
Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.” Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.
US exceptionalism 2.0
In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney. He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump. Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21st Century.”
Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.” He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”
Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests. The trend toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him. Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.
Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.
Conclusion
Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very influential.
Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc. Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil,Russia, India, China, South Africa).
Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.
On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.
The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today: Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.
The Democratic Party constantly emphasizes “democracy” yet there is no debate or discussion over US foreign policy. What kind of “democracy” is this where crucial matters of life and death are not discussed?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is now running in the Democratic Party primary. He has a well informed and critical perspective on US foreign policy including the never ending wars, the intelligence agencies and the conflict in Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan is a skilled debater. Why doesn’t he debate Democratic Party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr over US foreign policy and national security?
*
Rick Sterling can be contacted at RSterling1@gmail.com.
UN Documents Rampant Torture of Civilians by Ukrainian Security Forces
Sputnik – 27.06.2023
The United Nations has recorded a significant increase in law violations by Ukrainian security forces since the start of Russia’s special military operation, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said in a report on Tuesday.
“Since 24 February 2022, OHCHR has documented a significant increase in violations of the right to liberty and security of person by Ukrainian security forces. Out of the overall number of such cases, OHCHR documented 75 cases 92 of arbitrary detention of civilians (17 women, 57 men and 1 boy), some of which also amounted to enforced disappearances, mostly perpetrated by law enforcement authorities or the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” the report read.
“Of further concern, OHCHR has documented the arrests of several civilians involved in distribution of humanitarian aid in territory ‘occupied’ by the Russian Federation,” the report read.
On May 30, a Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has opened torture chambers to get testimony from people who had cooperated with the Russian authorities while the city was under Russia’s control between March and November 2022.
The source said the torture rooms were created at two district police departments, Dneprovsky and Komsomolsky. While mostly Ukrainians work at the Dneprovsky department, locals are not allowed into the second one, as only foreign mercenaries speaking English, Polish and Georgian work there, the source said.
Vladimir Malina, a former business assistant who decided to stay in Kherson after the withdrawal of the Russian troops, died in the torture chamber of the Dneprovsky police department.
“[He] was kept in the torture chamber of the Dneprovsky district department, [he was] brutally beaten, the next day, he died in the cell. In order to hide his death, for three days, two [former] employees of the Russian humanitarian center [in Kherson], Roman Gavrilyuk and Igor Gurov, who were detained with him, were tortured and forced to write an explanation that Vladimir Malina was released together with them,” the source said.
Several people were tortured to death in these chambers, including a nurse and an investigator, the source said, adding that all of them are recognized as missing.
Besides, the SBU uses a network of agents to identify and arrest people who had previously cooperated with Russia.
Russia established control over Kherson soon after the launch of the military operation in Ukraine. In October, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the Russian-controlled parts of the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye were incorporated into Russia following referendums.
In November, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the complete withdrawal of Russian troops and hardware from the right bank of the Dnepr River in the Kherson Region, citing the need to build up defenses on the left bank. Soon after that, the Ukrainian forces entered Kherson.
Ukrainian victory is ‘impossible’ – Orban
RT | June 27, 2023
The idea that Western military aid would enable Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield is wrong, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
“I stand on the grounds of reality. The reality is that the nature of cooperation between Ukraine and the West is a failure,” Orban said in an interview with German tabloid Bild on Tuesday.
Suggesting that the weapons, funding and intelligence being provided to Kiev by the US and its EU allies would allow Ukraine to win “is a misunderstanding of the situation. That’s impossible,” he argued.
“The problem is that the Ukrainians will run out of soldiers earlier than the Russians, and this will be the deciding factor eventually,” the prime minister said.
He rejected the interviewer’s contention that all of Ukraine would have been captured by Russia without NATO aid, describing this as “a hypothesis to which there’s no evidence.”
According to Orban, a ceasefire must be reached in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as soon as possible or Ukraine will “lose a huge amount of wealth and many lives, and unimaginable destruction will happen. That’s why peace is the only solution at this moment.”
However, he said fighting would not stop until Kiev’s main backer, Washington, decides that there should be peace.
“What really matters is what Americans want to do. Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country. They don’t have any money. They have no weapons. They can only fight because we in the West support them,” the Hungarian leader explained.
He criticized EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over the conflict, saying they failed in both “bringing Russia to its knees” and in achieving peace in Ukraine. “Sanctions have not worked. I am surprised that we turned out to be incapable of formulating them appropriately,” he said.
Budapest has been one of the few EU capitals to maintain business relations with Moscow because it was “good for the Hungarian people,” Orban said. “I’m fighting for Hungary. I don’t care about [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin. I don’t care about Russia. I take care of Hungary.”
He also commented on the failed revolt by the Wagner private military company, which occurred in Russia last week. “I don’t see much significance in this event” because it has no effect on “the most important thing,” which is the prospect of achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine, he stated.
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Precedents for Pizzagate
Marc Dutroux, Belgian pedophile, sadist, and serial killer with friends in high places
By Aedon Cassiel | Counter – Currents | December 23, 2016
To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series (part 1, part 2) has not been to defend “Pizzagate” as such. My goal has been to defend the people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all—for a specific reason, which I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.
Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the dividing line is between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of “fake news” and level-headed people who follow trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has been to show that—whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself—this framing of the issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. … continue
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