Israeli forces stop UN convoy, detain and strip-search paramedics
Press TV – February 27, 2024
Israeli regime forces in the Gaza Strip have stopped a UN ambulance convoy that was evacuating critically-ill patients from a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younes before detaining and strip-searching the paramedics in the convoy.
In a statement on Tuesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israeli regime forces had stalled the UN convoy on Sunday detaining a paramedic and forcing others to remove their clothes.
The incident occurred during the evacuation of 24 critical patients from the city’s al-Amal Hospital, which has been under the continuous siege of Israeli regime forces, it said, adding that one pregnant woman and one mother and a newborn were among the patients.
“Despite prior coordination for all staff members and vehicles with the Israeli side, the Israeli forces blocked the WHO-led [World Health Organization] convoy for many hours the moment it left the hospital,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for OCHA, told reporters in Geneva.
“The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and stripped all paramedics of their clothes,” Laerke added.
He added that Israeli forces had subsequently detained three Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics, “although their personal details had been shared with the Israeli forces in advance,” while the rest of the convoy stayed in place for “over seven hours.”
One paramedic was released, said the OCHA spokesman as he appealed for the immediate release of the other two, and all other detained health workers in Gaza.
OCHA’s statement said that the UN relief agencies operating in war-torn Gaza face “unacceptable security conditions” for humanitarian aid delivery.
“This is not an isolated incident. Aid convoys have come under fire and are systematically denied access to people in need,” it said.
“Humanitarian workers have been harassed, intimidated or detained by Israeli forces, and humanitarian infrastructure has been hit.”
That comes as the US-Israeli genocidal war against the defenseless Palestinians in Gaza continues unabated.
Nearly 30,000 people, including 14,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its aggression on Gaza in early October.
Here’s How Russia Could Hit Back If West Seizes Assets
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.02.2024
Some $300 billion in Russian assets were trapped abroad in 2022 after the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis into a full-on NATO-Russia proxy war. Western officials have threatened to seize these funds and transfer them to Ukraine for “reconstruction.” A pair of leading Russian economists tell Sputnik why that’s a very bad idea.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called on nations of the Western “coalition” against Moscow to “find a way to unlock the value of [Russia’s] immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction.”
“I believe there is a strong international law, economic and moral case for moving forward. This would be a decisive response to Russia’s unprecedented threat to global stability,” Yellen said at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday.
Tackling the question of the potential threats to the dollar’s status as the de facto world reserve currency that such an unprecedented move would entail, Yellen said that it it’s “extremely unlikely” that the greenback would be negatively affected. “Realistically there are not alternatives to the dollar, euro and yen,” she assured.
Yellen is the latest senior Western official to propose moving forward with the seizure of Russian assets as Western countries’ own desire to continue fueling the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia falters. Earlier this month, the European Union adopted a law allowing Brussels to bank windfall profits from Russian assets trapped in European banks and use them in Ukraine, a move characterized by Moscow as blatant “theft” which will be met with legal action.
Russian officials and independent economic observers alike have warned of the possible consequences stemming from what Yellen is proposing, with Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov saying Moscow has the means to issue a “symmetrical” response to this form of Western financial aggression.
“We have no fewer frozen [assets than Western countries],” Siluanov said in an interview with Sputnik on Monday. “Any actions taken against our assets would receive a symmetrical response.”
Mechanism for Tit-For-Tat Response Already Exists
“Russia has already taken conservatorship of assets of a number of foreign companies which refused to operate in Russia,” Dr. Andrei Kolganov, a professor of economics at Moscow State University and chief researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics, told Sputnik, commenting on the folly of the West’s asset seizure plans.
This instrument was already used against foreign investors with an ownership stake in the Baltika Beer Company, as well as the assets of Finnish energy concern Fortum, the professor noted.
“So in principle, the mechanism for the confiscation of foreign assets has already been worked out. Moving from conservatorship to confiscation is, in principle, a fairly simple technical procedure. The amount of assets that are ‘frozen’ on the territory of the Russian Federation, or which may be frozen, is now estimated at approximately $288 billion,” Kolganov explained.
In other words, the professor said, Russia has control over a big chunk of Western assets which, if the US and its allies proceed with confiscation, “will not escape to the West, but will work here in Russia, because we are talking about investment, first and foremost, in the manufacturing sector.”
From there, these assets could become the property of the Russian state, or be transferred to Russian private owners and continue to work as before.
Confiscation of assets of Western companies in Russia would seriously impact their respective bottom lines, meaning they could try to put pressure on governments, both in their home countries and in Russia, to try to avoid having their capital seized.
“We have a lot of foreign companies working in Russia, including those from so-called unfriendly countries. We have more than 50 decently-sized American firms alone working here, and plenty of European companies,” Dr. Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Center for Market Research at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.
Sorry Yellen, Seizing Assets Won’t Crash Russian Economy
Kolganov says that as unpleasant as a seizure of Russia’s assets abroad might be it would not serve to tank the country’s economy, with Moscow able to continue its international payments using its sizable and healthy foreign exchange earnings after reorienting its trade toward developing countries. The money frozen in Western banks constitutes reserves, which “were not actively used for international trade and international payments” anyway, the professor explained.
“For private businesses, the confiscation of assets would create a pretty big hole in their earnings and budgets. Therefore, it would be a rather sensitive measure if Russia had to resort to it in response to the confiscation of its assets,” the economist added.
Dr. Ostapkovich emphasizes that Moscow will have to be strategic and precise in the foreign assets it may choose to seize, to avoid the risk of friendly countries and companies doing business in Russia feeling threatened.
“Every operation” on Russia’s part “must take place with the help of legal services, that is, through the courts,” the veteran economist said. “We are a state based on the rule of law, and cannot just go ahead and close them, because they will naturally go to court. Moreover, they will file in the London court, which judges according to Anglo-Saxon law. This is case law. They will look for a precedent.”
In other words, Ostapkovich stressed, Moscow should expect a tug of war on the international stage regarding the seizure of assets by the West and Russia’s tit-for-tat response.
Pandora’s Box of Damage to the Dollar
In his interview with Sputnik, Russia’s finance minister mentioned the promising transition away from Western currencies in favor of new currencies among the world’s rising economies, especially China.
“The Chinese are reducing their holdings of American securities. This is a consequence of what’s happening [to Russia, ed.] The reliability of the dollar and the euro has been undermined,” Siluanov said.
And while it may be too early to speak about the collapse of the dollar or euro as a result of a decision to seize the assets of a sizable economy like Russia, Kolganov confirmed that it has the potential to seriously undermine Western reserve currencies’ reputation in a big way.
“The yuan’s share in international transactions has doubled over the past two years, but doubled to only about 4.6 percent of the total. This is not a huge amount, but still, an upward trend exists. The share of rubles in international payments has also increased, mainly in the form of payments with our country… Nevertheless, a gradual move away from the dollar will of course take place. Because here we’re talking not only about the confiscation of assets, which will undermine confidence in payments made in reserve currencies. Because any country and any central bank may feel threatened that if the geopolitical situation changes, they could be treated in a similar way.”
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the United States and Europe are facing a loss of economic confidence at home, with the former facing debt levels that are off the charts, which in the future could cause serious shocks to the entire global dollar system, Kolganov noted.
Recipe for Action
Russia can already move forward with tit-for-tat measures against the Europeans over Brussels’ law allowing the seizure and use of the interest earned on Russian assets frozen in Western banks, Ostapkovich says, noting if the EU moves forward with the seizures, Moscow could similarly start shaving dividends and interest on European companies operating in Russia.
EU’s Russia sanctions ‘massively circumvented’ – study
RT | February 27, 2024
The EU’s sanctions on Russia are being “massively circumvented” via third countries, Euractiv reported on Monday, citing a study by the IESEG School of Management. The bloc has introduced 13 rounds of restrictive measures against Moscow over the Ukraine conflict.
The research found statistical evidence that the sanctions have been hugely dodged for so-called “high priority items,” which are subject to EU export restrictions and include manufacturing equipment and electrical components with potential military applications.
According to the report, EU exports of such items to Türkiye, the UAE, Kazakhstan, and other “Kremlin-friendly” countries skyrocketed by €2.9 billion ($3.2 billion), or over 80%, in the period from October 2022 through September 2023 compared to the previous twelve-month span. The data shows that at the same time EU exports of such goods to Russia decreased by $3.5 billion, or more than 95%.
The decline in EU sales of advanced technology and dual-use items to Moscow was seen as almost entirely compensated for by a sharp increase in exports of the same goods to countries in West and Central Asia, according to Euractiv.
“The surge of these purchases by third countries is too huge to be entirely caused by an increase in local demand, so that it can be suspected that a big part was thereafter exported to Russia,” the IESEG report claimed.
A senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Janis Kluge, told Euractiv that “Russia’s economy is resilient because it is, for the most part, still a market economy.”
The country adjusted to the sanctions through a “decentralized effort” by “thousands of [businesses] managers” to find their ways around the restrictions and “keep things working” – thus proving to be one of the key factors behind Russia’s relative “resilience” to Western sanctions, according to Kluge.
“There were new traders popping up who specialized in importing these goods through third countries. There’s a whole industry that has appeared, which is dedicated to the circumvention of sanctions – because it’s a billion-dollar business,” he stated.
The EU adopted its 13th package of sanctions against Russia last week ahead of the second anniversary of the start of the Ukraine conflict. The measures target 106 individuals and 88 entities and also further restrict trade in technologies and components that could be used by Russia’s defense industry. Components for the development and production of unmanned aerial vehicles have also been added to the blacklist. Some of the sanctioned entities are located in third countries, such as India, China, and Türkiye.
Time magazine begrudgingly admits “Ukraine Can’t Win the War”
By Ahmed Adel | February 27, 2024
The Ukrainian counteroffensive failed, and Russia’s liberation of Avdeyevka signalled a new reality that Volodymyr Zelensky was forced to recognise, the American magazine Time wrote on February 24. Yet, despite the acknowledgement of the impossibility of Ukraine’s victory growing day by day, the Kiev regime insists on begging for more weapons from Western countries.
“The long-awaited counteroffensive last year failed,” Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in an editorial, adding that Washington’s rhetoric had changed accordingly.
“The Biden Administration’s strategy is now to sustain Ukrainian defence until after the US presidential elections, in the hope of wearing down Russian forces in a long war of attrition,” Lieven continued.
According to the author, the hope now is that Kiev’s forces will achieve the long-awaited breakthrough in 2025 or perhaps the following year, but “Russia will never agree at the negotiating table to surrender land that it has managed to hold on the battlefield.”
“Many Ukrainians in private were prepared to accept the loss of some territories as the price of peace if Ukraine failed to win them back on the battlefield and if the alternative was years of bloody war with little prospect of success. The Biden Administration needs to get America on board too,” he added.
However, Lieven explains that those who believe in Ukraine’s final victory “have engaged in hopes that range from the overly optimistic to the magical,” with an example being the delusional retired US Army General, Ben Hodges, who pushes the false idea “that Russia can be defeated, and even driven from Crimea, by long-range missile bombardment.”
It is obviously ludicrous to believe that a long-range missile bombardment will drive out Russian forces from liberated territories, including Crimea. This does not stop the likes of Hodges from selling this delusion, which also plays into the hands of the Kiev regime, which continues their humiliating begging for more weapons from the West.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba declared on the same day as the publication of the Time article that Kiev is “pressuring” its allies to obtain more weapons.
When asked on local television about Plan B if Ukraine stops receiving military aid from Washington, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, who is also a top regime propagandist, stressed that he is focusing on implementing Plan A.
“When a Plan B is created in times of war, you need to be sure that Plan B will not occur because, in a war, you have to always be focused on Plan A,” he stated, detailing that this plan consists of “maximum consideration of their interests.”
“We are not in a position to make concessions on military supplies,” Kuleba added.
In this context, the minister stated that if they do not receive projectiles from the US, “we will go around the world and bring projectiles from other parts of the world.”
It is recalled that Zelensky warned on February 23 that his country could only “defeat Russia” with military help from the US and that it would certainly fail without this financial help.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov urged Western countries to hand over to the country’s Armed Forces all the weapons and military equipment they have because, in his opinion, in the future, “the bet will be on something else, the war will be completely different.”
“[This weaponry] will be scrap that they won’t need because there will be a completely different war,” he said.
The Kiev regime refuses to acknowledge that its professional armed forces no longer exist and that no amount of Western weaponry, if it even does arrive, can reverse the tide of Russia’s victory. Effectively, the regime continues to send thousands of Ukrainians to be slaughtered all because it holds onto the faux belief that the lost oblasts and Crimea can be recovered.
But as Lieven writes, “there is no realistic chance of total Ukrainian victory next year, or the year after that,” even if US military aid continues.
He concludes his article by stating: “The lost Ukrainian territories are lost, and NATO membership is pointless if the alliance is not prepared to send its own troops to fight for Ukraine against Russia. Above all, however painful a peace agreement would be today, it will be infinitely more so if the war continues and Ukraine is defeated.”
Lieven is not the sole voice, and there is a crescendo growing in the West affirming the reality that Ukraine cannot win the war, no matter how much support it receives short of direct intervention. It is unsurprising that this corresponds with Donald Trump’s growing popularity over Joe Biden, who claims he can quickly resolve the war in Ukraine in the run-in to the US elections in November. As the months pass and we approach the US elections, it can be expected that scepticism about Ukraine’s victory will increase, especially as Russia is expected to liberate more territories once the winter snow and early spring mud dissipate.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Nuland accidentally reveals the true aim of the West in Ukraine
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 27, 2024
US State Department fixture and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, aka “Regime Change Karen,” apparently woke up one day recently, took the safety off her nuclear-grade mouth, and inadvertently blew up the West’s Ukraine narrative.
Until now, Americans have been told that all the US taxpayer cash being earmarked for Ukrainian aid is to help actual Ukrainians. Anyone notice that the $75 billion American contribution isn’t getting the job done on the battlefield? Victory in military conflict isn’t supposed to look like defeat. Winning also isn’t defined as, “Well, on a long enough time axis, like infinity, our chance of defeat will eventually approach zero.” And the $178 billion in total from all allies combined doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, either. Short of starting a global war with weapons capable of extending the conflict beyond a regional one, it’s not like they’ve been holding back. The West is breaking the bank. All for some vague, future Ukrainian “victory” that they don’t seem to want to clearly define. We keep hearing that the support will last “as long as it takes.” For what exactly? By not clearly defining it, they can keep moving the goal posts.
But now here comes Regime Change Karen, dropping some truth bombs on CNN about Ukrainian aid. She started off with the usual talking point of doing “what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world.” Conveniently, in places where they have controlling interests and want to keep them – or knock them out of a global competitor’s roster and into their own. “And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US to make those weapons,” Nuland said, pleading in favor of the latest Ukraine aid package that’s been getting the side eye from Republicans in Congress.
So there you have it, folks. Ukrainians are a convenient pretext to keep the tax cash flowing in the direction of the US military industrial complex. This gives a whole new perspective on “as long as it takes.” It’s just the usual endless war and profits repackaged as benevolence. But we’ve seen this before. It explains why war in Afghanistan was little more than a gateway to Iraq. And why the Global War on Terrorism never seems to end, and only ever mutates. Arguably the best one they’ve come up with so far is the need for military-grade panopticon-style surveillance, so the state can shadow-box permanently with ghosts while bamboozling the general public with murky cyber concepts that it can’t understand or conceptualize. When one conflict or threat dials down, another ramps up, boosted by fearmongering rhetoric couched in white-knighting. There’s never any endgame or exit ramp to any of these conflicts. And there clearly isn’t one for Ukraine, either.
Still, there’s a sense that the realities on the ground in Ukraine, which favor Russia, now likely mean that the conflict is closer to its end than to its beginning. Acknowledgements abound in the Western press. And that means there isn’t much time left for Europe to get aboard the tax cash laundering bandwagon and stuff its own military industrial complexes’ coffers like Washington has been doing from the get-go. Which would explain why a bunch of countries now seem to be rushing to give Ukraine years-long bilateral security “guarantees,” requiring more weapons for everyone. France, Germany, Canada, and Italy have all made the pledge. Plus Denmark, which also flat-out said that it would send all its artillery to Ukraine. If security for Europe is the goal, that sounds kind of like the opposite. Particularly when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told the EU that “Russia has gotten closer to your home” in the wake of the most recent defeat in Avdeevka. He sounds like one of those guys in TV ads trying to peddle burglar alarms. Seems like Russia only exists in the minds of the West these days to justify sending weapons to Ukraine to get blown up, while also justifying to taxpayers why they should continue funding this whole charade.
Meanwhile, the West’s drive towards peace seems to be taking the scenic route. “As we move forward, we continue our support to Ukraine in further developing President Zelensky’s Peace Formula,” G7 leaders said after a recent meeting with Zelensky in Kiev. Nice to see that he’s devoting all his time to this magic peace formula instead of running around extorting his friends for cash by threatening them with Putin.
It was already a pretty big hint of what’s really been going on when the EU decided to use the taxpayer-funded European Peace Facility to reimburse EU countries for the unloading of their mothballed, second-hand weapons into Ukraine, where Russia can then dispose of them before anyone could be accused of overcharging for clunkers. Now, with the clunker supply running dry, they just have to make more weapons. Maybe funneling cash into weapons for themselves will be the Hail Mary pass that saves their economies that they’ve tanked “for Ukraine”?
Thanks to Nuland’s nuking of any plausible deniability on Ukrainian “aid” not going to Washington, it’s now clear that Ukrainians continue to die so poor weapons makers don’t end up shaking tin cans on street corners. She has also removed any doubt about the ultimate US goal being Russian regime change, calling Putin’s leadership “not the Russia we wanted,” and sounding like someone who chronically sends back a meal to kitchens of a dining establishment. “We wanted a partner that was going to be Westernizing, that was going to be European. But that’s not what Putin has done,” she told CNN. That’s exactly what Putin has done, actually. It’s the West that’s moved away from itself and is becoming increasingly unrecognizable by its own citizens. Pretty sure that it goes beyond just wanting a country to be “European,” too. Because Germany’s European, and an ally, and Nuland wouldn’t shut up about how much she hated its Nord Stream gas supply — until it mysteriously went kaboom.
Regime Change Karen saying the quiet part out loud has decimated the Western establishment’s narrative so badly that it’s a miracle no one has yet accused her thermonuclear mouth of being an asset of Russia’s weapons program.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
Biden regime wants to put the US on permanent war footing
The new ‘defense industrial strategy’ is a boon for the arms makers, not so much for regular Americans
BY JULIA GLEDHILL | RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT | FEBRUARY 23, 2024
The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.
The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.
When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.
In the decades since, contractors have leveraged their growing economic power to pave inroads on Capitol Hill. They have solidified their economic influence to stave off the political potential for future national security cuts, regardless of their performance or the geopolitical environment.
Growing the military industrial base over the course of a generation would only further empower arms makers in our economy, deepening the ditch the United States has dug itself into for decades by continually increasing national security spending — and by doling about half of it out to contractors. The U.S. spends more on national security than the next 10 countries combined, outpacing China alone by over 30%.
Ironically, the administration acknowledges in the strategy that “America’s economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing,” stating that “the nation’s military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength.” The strategy further states that optimizing the nation’s defense needs typically requires tradeoffs between “cost, speed, and scale.” It doesn’t mention quality of industrial output — arguably the biggest tradeoff the U.S. government has made in military procurement.
Consider, for instance, the B-2 bomber, the F-35 fighter jet, the Littoral Combat Ship, the V-22 Osprey, and many other examples of acquisition failures that have spanned decades. More recently, the Government Accountability Office has reported that while the number of major defense acquisition programs has fallen, both costs and average delivery time have risen.
So what is the military really getting from more and more national security spending? Less for more: Fewer weapons than it asked for, usually late and over budget, and, much of the time, dysfunctional. Acquisition failures are a major reason the Congressional Budget Office projects that operations and maintenance spending will significantly exceed the rate of inflation for the next decade — a considerable budgeting issue for a military that seemingly has no plans to reduce either its force structure or its industrial capacity. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Biden’s new National Defense Industrial Strategy specifically states there is a need for the U.S. to “move aggressively toward innovative, next-generation capabilities while continuing to upgrade and produce, in significant volumes, conventional weapons systems already in the force.” Ironically, the military has spent over two decades developing the F-35, next-generation technology that the Pentagon still hasn’t greenlit for full-rate production.
Throwing more money at an industrial base comprised of businesses too big to fail won’t increase the quantity or quality of its output. But that’s exactly what the strategy urges. One of the priorities is to “institutionalize supply chain resilience.” It’s an important goal, but one the administration proposes the Pentagon tackle, in part by investing in “spare production capacity,” what the strategy defines as “excess capacity a company or organization maintains beyond its current production needs.”
But building factories to sit empty is not supply chain resilience. It’s wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure, creating a profit motive for arms makers to make more weapons. And for an industry constantly sounding the alarm about the need for consistent “demand signals” from Congress, the Pentagon’s plans to invest a generation of U.S. taxpayer money in “spare production capacity” sounds a lot like throwing the demand-supply principle out the window. In that case, the U.S. might as well consider nationalizing the defense industry, which already lacks competition and relies almost entirely on the government. Why not eliminate the profit motive? It’s not like making money drives contractors to produce quality products on time or within budget.
Besides supply chain resilience, another priority laid out in this strategy is “flexible acquisition.” The stated goal is to reduce costs and development times while increasing scalability. In pursuit of that goal, the administration proposes “a flexible requirements process” for multiyear contracts, and the expansion of multiyear contracting writ large. It reasons that as priorities shift in an “evolving threat environment,” so too should contractors’ deliverables. But pairing flexible requirements with an increasing number of multiyear contracts is a recipe for disaster.
Before Russia attacked Ukraine, multiyear contracts were relatively rare — limited to major aircraft and ships. The Congressional Research Service notes that estimated savings on these programs have historically fallen within the range of 5% — 10%. But those are estimates, and they may not apply to other munitions now produced under multiyear contracts. The report also confirms that actual savings are “difficult to observe,” in part because the Pentagon does not track the cost performance of multiyear contracts.
Just because multiyear contracting is more common doesn’t mean it’s cheaper. And while the Pentagon argues that multiyear contracts give contractors the so-called demand signal they need to ramp up production, contractors don’t usually spend their extra money on identifying efficiencies or making capital investments to increase output at a lower cost — and the Pentagon isn’t checking.
The strategy also proposes “aggressive expansion of production capacity.” It notes that during peacetime, weapons acquisition tends to focus on “greater efficiency, cost effectiveness, transparency, and accountability.” Taking caution not to assert that the United States is in wartime, the strategy contrasts peacetime acquisition policy with “today’s threat environment,” calling for “crisis period acquisition policy” that revitalizes the industrial base and shifts focus from efficiency and effectiveness to ensuring that military contractors are “better resourced.” But contractors don’t have a resource problem, and “crisis acquisition policy” puts the United States on a “permanent war footing.”
Lawmakers must challenge the administration’s maximalist national security strategy by interrogating its push to expand military industrial capacity so drastically. It’s critical that they do, not only because the U.S. is limited in what it can produce and provide to other countries but also because arms industry greed is boundless — and without off-ramps or constraints, the U.S. government may find in 20 or 30 years that it’s in a ditch it can’t get out of.
Julia Gledhill is an analyst in the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Before joining POGO, she was a foreign policy associate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
US Army calls Russia ‘the enemy’
RT | February 27, 2024
The US Army has branded Moscow the “enemy” while promoting a newly-published manual on the Russian military on social media.
The Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate’s (CADD) new 280-page manual gives a detailed overview of Russian military strategy and tactics, and tries to predict how the country would conduct itself in future conflicts. The CADD promoted the manual in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, asking, “Do you know your enemy?”
The primary focus is on Moscow’s ground forces, which would be pitted against the US Army in a hypothetical direct war.
The document, known as ATP 7-100.1 and released last week, is part of a series that the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has been developing for years. Previous publications provided similar studies of the militaries of other potential near-peer and peer opponents: North Korea, China, and Iran. The materials are not classified and intended for professional US and allied military officers.
With Russia currently involved in the Ukraine conflict, US military researchers stressed that they are still examining data gathered there and would revise their instructions accordingly. They said it was “too early to assess the structure and equipping of any Russian unit for the next 5 to 10 years” with hostilities still ongoing.
Discussing Russia’s relations with the US and its NATO allies, the manual says they are defined “by a perpetual state of competition and self interest.” The country seeks recognition as a world power and it is “highly likely” that future Russian leaders will pursue policies similar to that of the current government “for the foreseeable future,” it said; Russia will “challenge the relative position of US influence in the global order while avoiding direct confrontation with the US military.”
The Russian leadership views NATO as an instrument of American geopolitical hegemony and has called its expansion in Europe a threat to national security. The Ukraine conflict, according to Moscow, is part of a wider US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian troops are sacrificed in the name of containment.
”The core of the problem is not in Ukraine but in those who are trying to destroy Russia with Ukrainian hands,” President Vladimir Putin said last month while visiting a military hospital. “Even though they have been pursuing this goal of tackling Russia for ages, we will sooner tackle them.”
Kremlin reacts to Macron’s remarks on NATO troops in Ukraine
RT | February 27, 2024
A direct conflict between Russia and NATO will likely become inevitable if member states of the US-led military bloc send troops to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility.
Macron, whose government hosted a high-profile meeting of Ukraine backers on Monday, said EU members “will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning” – including deploying forces on the ground to support Kiev. Several governments have since ruled out sending troops to the front line.
Opponents of the proposal “have a sober assessment of the potential risks” of having NATO forces in Ukraine, Peskov told the media on Tuesday. That would be “absolutely against the interests of those nations” and their people, he warned.
Asked about the probability of a direct conflict with NATO if Western troops are sent to Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesman said, “in this case, we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken out against the idea. Participants of the meeting in Paris came to an agreement against it, he told a news conference on Tuesday.
At a joint press conference in Prague on Tuesday, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, ruled out sending their citizens to fight in Ukraine. Senior officials in Hungary and Slovakia issued similar statements.
Macron said Western leaders could end up changing their minds in the future, similarly to how they did with military assistance – which in some cases initially involved items such as helmets to eventually donating lethal weaponry including tanks and fighter jets.
While there was no consensus over the proposal, the participants agreed to create a coalition to supply medium and long-range missiles to Kiev, the French president said.
Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-orchestrated proxy war against Russia, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.
By making war threats against China, Ukraine proves to be US vassal state
By Lucas Leiroz | February 27, 2024
The statement was made by deputy Aleksey Goncharenko during an interview with CNN on February 23. On the occasion, Goncharenko emphasized calls for the US to continue sending military aid, criticizing American politicians who are focused only on domestic issues and ignoring Ukraine. According to him, the US needs to “fulfill the promises” made to Kiev about permanent military support.
The legislator’s words, however, were not just about demands from the US. He also made it clear that his country is willing to cooperate militarily with the US in a broad and unrestricted manner – even willing to go to war with other states if Washington deems it necessary. In the interview, he stated that Kiev could fight directly against countries such as China, Iran and North Korea, with no fear regarding the consequences of a conflict of such scale. For him, Ukraine must be prepared to face any US adversary, showing “true friendship” between both countries.
“[If there’s a war, the US] will need people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with them (…) Ukrainians are ready… We are ready to stand with the United States shoulder-to-shoulder, either in trenches near Tehran, or in North Korea, or near Beijing. [There is] no difference (…) Because we appreciate your support,” he said during the interview.
Goncharenko also praised Ukraine’s combat potential, stating that Kiev has “the second strongest army in the free world” – after the US only. This alleged Ukrainian power is the reason why he considers Kiev a “valuable ally” of the US. Obviously, he did not show any data to prove this claim about his country’s military capacity. Kiev is currently severely weakened by the consequences of the conflict with Russia, definitely not being among the most powerful armies in the world.
As bold and controversial as Goncharenko’s statements are, they do not sound surprising considering the parliamentarian’s personal history. He is known for his unrealistic and bellicose positions. For example, he had previously made a declaration saying that Kiev should receive nuclear weapons in order to guarantee its “national security”. According to him, NATO should give Ukraine weapons of mass destruction to prevent a new conflict with Russia from happening in the future. In other words, instead of providing security guarantees to Moscow to prevent war, Goncharenko simply prefers to escalate tensions and create a scenario of possible nuclear confrontation.
“Once again I will say directly and openly: I support the return of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. And I believe that this is our only option for survival,” he said at the time.
In fact, extremist and bellicose statements have become commonplace in Ukraine. However, it is notorious how the regime’s officials no longer even disguise Kiev’s subservience to American interests. By stating that Ukraine is ready for war with China, Iran and North Korea, Goncharenko is not only threatening these countries, but also making it clear that Ukraine is willing to do whatever the US tells it to do, regardless of the national interests and well-being of the Ukrainian people.
Goncharenko is showing that his country is a vassal state, without sovereignty or decision-making power, being completely submissive to the American political will. In practice, this means that the Ukrainian people will never be safe under the Kiev regime, since at any time Ukrainian citizens could be sent to battlefields around the world to defend American interests. Indeed, Goncharenko is proving that the Kiev Junta sees the Ukrainians as mere NATO cannon fodder.
The deputy’s threats are especially controversial at a time when the US is in fact close to engaging in a real conflict situation with the multipolar powers. The crisis in the Middle East could lead to a war between the US and Iran, just as growing tensions in the Pacific could culminate in a military confrontation between Washington and Beijing – or Pyongyang. The possibility of such wars actually occurring makes Goncharenko’s threats a real problem, with the countries he mentioned in the interview having sufficient reasons to be cautious and take measures such as military preparation.
In addition to threatening other nations and demoralizing his own country, Goncharenko is also making Ukraine diplomatically isolated by proving the bellicosity of the neo-Nazi regime.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
NATO Countries Did Not Make Decision to Send Their Military to Ukraine – Polish President
Sputnik – 26.02.2024
WARSAW – NATO countries disagree on sending their military to Ukraine and have not made a decision to do so, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that several EU and NATO countries are considering the possibility of sending their military to Ukraine on the basis of bilateral agreements.
“If we are talking about providing specific assistance, then individual countries decide what kind of assistance they specifically provide to Ukraine. There was a heated discussion about sending soldiers to Ukraine, and there was no absolute mutual understanding on this issue. There are different opinions. But I want to emphasize that there are absolutely no such decisions,” Duda told reporters after the end of a conference on supporting Ukraine, held in Paris.
French President Emmanuel Macron added that “nothing can be ruled out,” commenting on the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine.
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