Russia to kick out German state media after Berlin bans RT DE
RT | February 3, 2022
The Russian office of the German state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), is to be closed as part of the “first round” of a response to Berlin’s “unfriendly actions” against RT DE, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The German outlet will also be barred from broadcasting in Russia via a satellite or through other means, the statement added. All staff members at DW’s Russian office are to be stripped of their press credentials, according to the foreign ministry.
Moscow has also launched a procedure which will recognize DW as a “foreign media outlet acting as a foreign agent” under Russian law.
Moscow also said it was compiling a list of German state and public entities believe t be linked to blocking RT DE in Germany and exerting pressure on the Moscow-based broadcaster. Representatives included on the list will be barred from entering Russia, the foreign ministry said, adding that it would release information about subsequent rounds of reciprocal measures “in due course”.
DW said it would challenge the decision of the Russian authorities in court and would also continue operating from the Moscow office until it receives a formal closure order. DW’s director, Peter Limbourg, denounced Moscow’s move as “absurd” and an “overreaction.” He also vowed to “significantly increase the coverage” of Russia.
The move comes a day after Germany’s top media regulator sided with a regional authority and upheld a ban on RT DE’s broadcast in Germany, citing the absence of a locally-issued license. The channel previously obtained a valid pan-European permit in Serbia but the German regulators declared that void.
RT DE now has four weeks to appeal the decision in court, which it is planning to do.
America’s Putin Psychosis
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News | February 2, 2022
The war of words between Russia and the United States over Ukraine escalated further on Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin responded for the first time to the U.S. written reply to Russia’s demands for security guarantees that were expressed in the form of a pair of draft treaties submitted by Moscow to the U.S. and NATO in December.
“It is already clear…that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored. We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements,” Putin said at a press conference that followed his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.
Putin said the U.S. had failed to give “adequate consideration of our three key demands regarding NATO expansion, the renunciation of the deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and the return of the [NATO] bloc’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state of 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”
He detailed what he alleged was NATO’s long history of deception, re-emphasizing the 1990 verbal commitment by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand “an inch” eastward. “They said one thing, they did another,” Putin said. “As people say, they screwed us over, well they simply deceived us.”
With some 130,000 Russian troops deployed in the western and southern military districts bordering Ukraine, and another 30,000 assembling in neighboring Belarus, U.S. policy makers are scrambling to figure out what Russia’s next move might be, a choice most U.S. policy makers believe boils down to diplomacy or war.
Rather than examine the situation from the perspective of Russian national security interests, however, these officials have placed the fate of European peace and security in the hands of a single individual: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Interests of an Entire Nation
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols opines that “no one really knows why Putin is doing this—or whether he really intends to do it at all. It is unlikely that his own inner circle even has a good read on its boss.”
Even the president of the United States, Joe Biden, professed a sense of frustration at not knowing what Putin’s objectives are vis-à-vis Ukraine. “I’ll be completely honest with you,” Biden said last month, “it is a little bit like reading tea leaves” when it came to predicting Putin’s next move.
The fact that the U.S. president is at a loss when assessing Russia’s next move regarding Ukraine should send a shiver up the spines of all concerned Americans. One of the main reasons for this confusion lies in the emphasis Biden placed on the importance of only what Putin was thinking, as opposed what the legitimate national security interests of Russia were.
This problem is not unique to the present circumstance, but rather is part and parcel of a national obsession with Putin the man that obviates the reality that Russia is a country whose interests are greater than any single individual, no matter how long serving or powerful.
The problem with focusing on an individual as the embodiment of a nation is that one is trying to solve the wrong problem. Russia’s ongoing issues with Ukraine are larger than Vladimir Putin, and as such, far more complex in defining national goals and policy boundaries. You can’t solve a problem unless you first accurately define the problem; by tying the problem of Ukraine to one man, American policy makers are, in effect, dealing with the wrong problem.
This disconnect from reality is further exacerbated when, as is the case with the majority of so-called “Russian experts” prevalent in America today, one seeks to play amateur psychiatrist by getting into the mind of the Russian leader.
Take, for example, Michael McFaul, the architect of Barack Obama’s infamous policy “reset” with Russia (a little-disguised effort designed to squeeze Putin out of power and replace him with the ostensibly more compliant Dmitry Medvedev). The title of his policy memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia says it all. If you think you have the ability to define the character of an entire nation through the persona of a single named individual, you should be able to provide some insight into the thinking of that person.
But as McFaul himself admitted recently on MSNBC, “I want to state categorically that I don’t know what Putin wants. I don’t know what he’s decided. President Biden doesn’t know. The director of the CIA [William Burns] doesn’t know. I don’t think Sergei Lavrov knows, the foreign minister.”
A moment of honest humility? No; McFaul continues: “And from my experience dealing with Putin in negotiations, I don’t think he has made his own decision yet. I think that he likes this uncertainty. He likes that we’re all talking about, you know, negotiating with ourselves, making counter proposals. He likes to watch that.”
McFaul, by his own admission, doesn’t know what Putin wants, but he freely opines about what Putin thinks and likes. I would respectfully suggest that if you know a person well enough to publicly pontificate on their thoughts and desires, then you probably know what they want.
Perception Over Reality
McFaul honestly stated that he doesn’t know what Putin wants; the rest is simply speculative drivel motivated not by any genuine intellectually-based curiosity about Russia and the man who serves as its president, but rather the need to feed the American mainstream media’s appetite for a narrative that doesn’t challenge that of a White House that sets the tone and content of what passes for news based upon domestic political imperatives as opposed to global geopolitical reality.
Perception is everything; facts mean nothing. This is the Biden administration’s mantra. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, telephone conversation with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden told the beleaguered Afghan leader. “And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
The fact that U.S. presidential administrations, as a matter of course, manufacture a fact-free narrative designed to mislead a domestic American audience should not come as a shock to anyone who has studied the sickening intersection of public and foreign policy in the United States since the end of the Second World War.
In this vein, one of the central themes that is being woven into the Ukraine narrative is the frenetic nature of decision making by Vladimir Putin.
McFaul described Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 as an impulsive move by Putin, not something long planned, but put into effect only after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev. This line of thinking was endemic in the Obama White House where McFaul served. Journalist Susan Glasser, a long-time critic of Putin, quotes an unnamed “top Obama official” in her 2014 article for Politico, “Putin on the Couch.’
“I hear people say we were naïve about Putin and that the president didn’t understand Putin,” the official said. “No. We had a very sober, very steely-eyed realist assessment of Putin.”
But then the “top official” proved they did not. “It comes down to a debate going on in his own head,” the official noted. “He does impulsive, or dare I say irrational, things. I don’t think he’s the realist grand strategist that some people admiringly ascribe to him.”
Glasser ran with the theme, quoting David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lenin’s Tomb, who, speaking about Putin and Crimea, declared, “I think he has improvised, acted rashly and foolishly, even on his own terms.”
Stephen Sestanovich, the U.S. ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001, continued this line of analysis, noting Putin’s “bad judgment, emotional decision-making, petty score-settling with little care for long-term consequences,” before concluding “But it’s vintage Putin.”
Even when fellow travelers like Fiona Hill, who doubled as the top Kremlinologist for both George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former C.I.A. analyst who served as a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama, come together for a pragmatic assessment of Russia, they are colored by their collective Putin-centric approach to all things Russia.
Hill, the author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, recently observed that, “With Putin it’s always important to expect the unexpected. He makes sure that he has a range of options for action and different ways of leveraging a situation to exploit weakness. If all our attention is on Ukraine, then his next move might be somewhere else to throw us off balance and see how we react.”
Kendall-Taylor, whose assessments on Putin and Russia were regularly briefed to President Obama, testified before Congress in 2019 that, “Although Putin’s actions in Crimea and Syria were designed to advance a number of key Russian goals, it is also likely that Putin’s lack of domestic constraints increased the level of risk he was willing to accept in pursuit of those goals.”
These two seasoned Russian hands, both highly influential in terms of advising senior American policy makers, from the president on down, both continue the narrative of Putin as an impulsive, risk-taking gambler, who makes spur of the moment decisions based upon personal intuition.
They, like all the other so-called Russian experts, are wrong.
How Policy Is Made in Russia
The fact is, any Russian expert worth their salt knows what Russia’s goals and objectives vis-à-vis Ukraine are because the Russians told us back in 2008. One of the few genuine Russian experts in a position to influence policy, C.I.A. Director William Burns, put it all down in writing in a February 2008 cable entitled, simply enough, “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines.” He wrote it while serving as the U.S. ambassador to Russia during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Burns, reporting on the Russian reaction to the 2008 NATO summit where the idea of membership for Ukraine was floated, noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry had declared that “a radical new expansion of NATO may bring about a serious political-military shift that will inevitably affect the security interests of Russia.”
The Russians highlighted that when it came to Ukraine, Russia was bound by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership in which both parties undertook to “refrain from participation in or support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of the other side.” Ukraine’s ‘likely integration into NATO,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared, “would seriously complicate the many-sided Russian-Ukrainian relations,” and that Russia would “have to take appropriate measures.”
Burns gave the Bush administration the Russian playbook of consequences should NATO seek to move forward on membership for Ukraine. This information was known to McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and all the other so-called “Russian experts,” yet they failed to address it (further reinforcing Putin’s claims that “fundamental Russian concerns were ignored”).
The concept that Putin would act “impulsively” in 2014 to a problem outlined concisely and accurately in 2008 by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs likewise shows an absolute disregard for, or ignorance of, how policy is made in Russia today.
There is no doubt that Putin is a very powerful president wielding strong executive powers. But he is not a dictator, nor is Russia set up to be ruled by a dictator.
Russian policy is made by professional bureaucrat-specialists resident in the extremely dense permanent Russian bureaucracy. These bureaucrats, part of the Russian civil servant class, are responsible for turning policy guidance into detailed implementation plans from which the resources needed for implementation are assigned, along with a timeline for completion of the task.
These implementation plans cut across ministries and are designed to consider all foreseeable variables. In short, Russian policy is the by-product of a process which represents the coordinated effort of a vast bureaucracy—the exact opposite of the individual “impulsivity” ascribed by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others to Putin.
The plan implemented by Russia regarding Crimea in 2014 was born of the Russian concerns expressed in 2008, and were not the knee-jerk reactions of an impulsive, risk-taking Russian President. The same can be said for the situation unfolding in Ukraine today. The fact that Biden and his national security advisors are locked on to Putin as the personification of all things Russia is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of how Russia works or — worse — a deliberate campaign of perception management intended to deceive the American public about the complexities and realities of U.S. policy objectives.
Getting it wrong when it comes to defining policy-making reality in Russia today goes well beyond simply formulating bad policy, which is then incompetently implemented. The United States is ceding the initiative to Russia and its president. At the end of the day, one would be hard pressed to make a case where the executive decision-making powers of Vladimir Putin far exceed those of his American counterpart.
The Russians, however, have a two-fold advantage over the United States in terms of policy implementation. First and foremost, they are dealing with an executive who has been at the helm of the Russian ship for two decades; Putin is unmatched when it comes to knowledge of his system of government, and how to make it work. Even someone like Biden, with his four-plus decades of government experience, operates like a rookie during his first few years in office, if for no other reason than he is, in fact, a rookie.
A U.S. presidential administration in its first term is, literally, starting from scratch. True, there is a standing American civil service (some call it part of the “deep state”) which provides a modicum of operational consistency from administration to administration, but the critical leadership for every administration is provided by the political appointees. As opposed to Russia’s twin decades of consistent policy formulation and implementation, the United States has witnessed during the same time frame four changes of administrations, each one with a radically different approach toward governance than its predecessor.
A Manufactured Narrative
The only consistency between administrations is the need to manufacture narratives used to placate a domestic constituency about policies linked to national defense and, by extension, the defense industry. Here, the demonization of Russia has played a large role in defining U.S. defense needs and, by extension, the acquisition of weapons.
No administration has trusted the American public to engage in a fact-based national dialogue about the “threat” posed by Russia and, by extension, the continued need for NATO. The main reason for this is, if the facts were presented clearly, no American could possibly support the continuation of NATO and, therefore, would not support the elevation of Russia as a threat worthy of hundreds of billions of our taxpayer dollars.
In this way, the United States can produce a class of partisan “experts” on Russia whose only claim to real expertise is the ability to conform to a narrative designed to further a lie, as opposed to seeking the truth. Gone are the days when masters of Russian studies, such as the former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, held sway.
Even when the U.S. produced a qualified Russian expert in academia, such as the late Steven Cohen, the mainstream media negated his true expertise by either drowning out his message in a sea of Russophobic propaganda spewed by his opposite numbers, or just simply ignoring him. Instead, we get the Michael McFaul’s, Fiona Hill’s, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor’s—academics whose sole claim to relevance is their collective embrace of Putin as the personification of all that ails Russia in the world today.
America’s dependence on this inferior class of ersatz Russian expertise has created a congenital defect in American national security decision making that is best expressed as a variation of John Boyd’s OODA Loop. Boyd, a renowned fighter pilot, claimed he could shoot down any opposing fighter within forty seconds from a position of disadvantage employing a decision-making cycle he called the “OODA Loop” (for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).
In short, by executing one’s decision-making cycle faster than an opponent, one “got inside” the decision-making cycle of the enemy, forcing them to react to you, and thereby guaranteeing their demise.
The OODA Loop has been adapted by various non-pilot organizations and entities, from the U.S. Marines to business, as a model to improve operational efficiency. While neither the Russian Foreign Ministry nor the U.S. State Department have embraced the theory, it can be used as a vehicle of comparative analysis when assessing the effectiveness of the respective policy formulation and implementation cycles.
Three Phases
From the standpoint of observing, the fundamental tennet is to collect data using all possible resources. From the Russian perspective, when it comes to Ukraine and NATO, Russia has been focused on NATO policy, both expressed and implemented, when it comes to its eastward expansion, and the applicability of such expansion to Ukraine. The data collected by Russia is fact-based, and singularly focused on the problem at hand, which is the potential threat posed to Russia by Ukrainian membership in NATO.
The U.S., however, with its Putin-centric approach, focuses on the person of the Russian president, without any attempt to match observed actions with anything resembling actual policy. The data collected is of the tabloid variety, focusing on posturing, mannerisms, and photo opportunities.
While Putin does provide a plethora of data in the form of speeches and extended press question and answer sessions, the analysis conducted from these opportunities rarely goes deeper than turning the Russian president’s presentation into a cartoon-like depiction of evil.
The next phase, orientation, is guided by the data collected during the observation phase. Here, the Russians can zoom in on the U.S./NATO centers of gravity, so to speak — that which makes the trans-Atlantic alliance work, and that which could cause problems.
Here, Russia has predicted possible policy options that could be pursued by NATO in response to a wide variety of policy stimuli from Russia and gamed out each to find a range of actions and reaction possibilities that best suit Russian policy objectives.
The U.S., however, continues to focus on Putin, producing material in book, article, and television formats which attack the character of the Russian president while denigrating Russia as a nation (“Russia is nothing more than a gas station masquerading as a country” seems to be a popular jibe.)
By creating a false narrative built around the absolute nature of Putin’s quasi-dictatorial state, the Americans have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency premised on the notion of Putin’s impulsivity which, by its very nature, cannot be predicted, and as such cannot be deterred through preventive measures.
The third phase, decision, is paramount. Here, the Russians, having gathered data, assessed its value, and formulated policy options derived from the same, pick the option that best suits their policy objectives. They are in control of the timetable, and as such, can allocate resources sufficient to the task.
The Americans, by comparison, remain engaged in the business of demeaning the Russians and their president in products designed for domestic consumption and, as such, virtually useless in the realm of reality.
The final phase, action, is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Here the Russians have initiated a process which not only has them operating at a time and place of their choosing, but also to have positioned themselves to immediately begin the next OODA Loop cycle by having the appropriate sensors in place to collect data regarding any potential American reaction so that new decision options can be rapidly prepared and acted on.
The Americans, meanwhile, are alerted to a potential crisis only through the actions of the Russians. The Americans initiate their own observation process, but their collection mechanism, so firmly rooted in the persona of Putin, is oblivious to the complexity and layering of the Russian action.
Russia, armed with the luxury of time and initiative, can isolate American actions as they take place, beginning a process of action-reaction which Russia controls.
In short, if the current diplomatic engagement taking place between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine were a dog fight, the Americans would be shot down by the Russians inside of forty seconds, guaranteed.
Russia isn’t simply operating inside the American decision-making cycle—they control it.
Propagandized Conformity
While the ultimate responsibility for bad policy rests with the senior policy maker — the U.S. president — there is no doubt that successive presidential administrations have been poorly served by the current crop of American Kremlinologists, personified by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others, who made Putin bashing the standard for what passed for Russian studies.
In short, so long as your world view of Russia conformed with the Putin bashers, you were welcomed into the club; if, however, one opted to take a more nuanced, fact-based approach to Russian studies that went beyond the persona of the Russian president, and explored the complexity of post-Cold War Russia, the powers that be in government, academia and media would relegate you to the trash bin of relevancy.
Every American citizen should realize that they have been poorly served by these slavish servants of propagandized conformity, and the potential consequence of their collective failure — war — stares us all in the face.
If we can emerge from these difficult times intact, it will only be because the Russians—not Biden—picked a policy path that possessed a viable diplomatic offramp.
And if we are so fortunate, then the practitioners of this Putin psychosis —the McFaul’s, Hill’s, Kendall-Taylor’s, and others of their ilk — should be singled out for their respective role in bringing America to such a place policy-wise and treated accordingly — no more sinecures, no more access, no more credibility.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Iran envoy: No IAEA access to new nuclear site in Isfahan before conclusion of JCPOA revival talks
Press TV – January 31, 2022
Iran’s ambassador to international organizations based in Vienna says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will have no access to the country’s new nuclear site in the central city of Isfahan before the ongoing talks on the removal of US sanctions and revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal reach a definitive result.
Mohammad Reza Ghaebi made the remarks while speaking to reporters on Monday after the IAEA announced earlier the same day that Iran has informed the world body that it would move the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows from TESA Karaj Complex to Isfahan.
He said the process “has not started yet,” adding, “The IAEA will be able to adjust its surveillance rules accordingly, although the information gathered through that surveillance process will remain in Iran and the IAEA will not have access to it until Tehran resumes its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA,” referring to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The Iranian diplomat added that the IAEA report was a routine update of the agency that provides the “latest technical information on Iran’s nuclear activities to its members.”
In its Monday statement, the UN nuclear agency said its inspectors had installed surveillance cameras in a new workshop in Isfahan on January 24 to ensure the machines intended for the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows were under monitoring but the production of the parts there had not started then.
The UN nuclear agency noted that the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at TESA Karaj Complex has ceased.
Back in December, Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said that the country had allowed the IAEA to reinstall its surveillance cameras at TESA Karaj Complex only after the UN nuclear watchdog met Tehran’s preconditions.
Kamalvandi explained that Iran’s preconditions included technical and security examination of the new IAEA cameras, judicial and security investigations into the dimensions of the June attack against the facility, which damaged the previous cameras, and also the IAEA’s condemnation of such acts of sabotage.
Back in September, Iran refused to allow the United Nations’ nuclear agency access to a number of cameras that had been damaged during a terrorist operation targeting the TESA Karaj Complex, a centrifuge component manufacturing workshop in north-central Iran. The Islamic Republic’s refusal was based on the fact that the country needed to complete some legal-security investigations into the incident.
Russia unveils military plans in Latin America
Putin has agreed on a new collaboration with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua
RT | January 26, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to develop partnerships in a range of areas, including stepping up military collaboration, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced.
Speaking on Wednesday in an appearance in front of the Duma – Russia’s parliament – Lavrov reported that Putin had talked recently with the leaders of the three Central American countries, and that they had agreed to work together to strengthen their strategic cooperation.
“President Putin held recent telephone conversations with his colleagues from these three governments, with whom we are very close and friendly, and they agreed to look at further ways to deepen our strategic partnership in all areas, with no exceptions,” Lavrov stated. He noted that Russia already has close relations with these countries in many spheres, “including military and military-technical.”
Asked about the prospects of increased military cooperation with the three countries, Lavrov answered, “for the immediate future, we are counting on regular meetings of the corresponding committees.”
Earlier this month, Moscow’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was asked about the possibility of sending troops to Latin America, and he refused to rule out the possibility. “It’s the American style to have several options for its foreign and military policy,” he said. “That’s the cornerstone of that country’s powerful influence in the world.”
“The president of Russia has spoken multiple times on the subject of what the measures could be, for example involving the Russian Navy, if things are set on the course of provoking Russia, and further increasing the military pressure on us by the US,” he went on. “We don’t want that. The diplomats must come to an agreement.”
United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan responded, noting that Russian military activity in Latin America had not been a point of discussion at recent security talks, but said that the US would act “decisively” if it did happen
Leaders from Russia and the US have been holding negotiations recently to attempt to de-escalate the situation around Ukraine, which Washington has accused Moscow of planning to invade. The Kremlin has denied that it has any aggressive intentions and has asked for written guarantees that NATO, the US-led military bloc, will not expand to Ukraine or Georgia, two countries that share borders with Russia.
Lavrov Accuses the United States of Pushing Ukraine to Provocations against Russia
Al-Manar | January 26, 2022
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow did not want talks over Ukraine and its own security concerns to be made longer by including the European Union [EU] or the Organization of Security and Cooperation [OSCE] in Europe in them.
He made the comments to the State Duma or lower house of parliament.
Lavrov also reiterated Moscow’s stance that it would take unspecified “appropriate measures” if it did not receive a constructive answer from the United States and NATO on security guarantees it is demanding.
“Moscow will take appropriate measures to respond to the West’s negligence of Russian demands regarding security guarantees,” Lavrov said
Russia is expecting Washington to respond in writing this week to its proposals for guarantees.
Lavorv stated, “Moscow will not allow an infinite delay in discussions about security guarantees’ proposal”.
The Russian FM further said that “Washington is pushing Kiev to direct provocations against Russia,” asserting that the US “is trying to punish Russia and China, and the US apparatuses are provoking the two countries”.
He concluded by saying, “Washington and its European allies are doubling their efforts to contain Russia”.
Russian, Syrian pilots conduct joint air patrol mission along Golan Heights
TASS | January 24, 2022
MOSCOW – Russian and Syrian military pilots have conducted a joint air patrol mission along the Golan Heights and the Euphrates River, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“The mission’s route ran along the Golan Heights, the southern border, the Euphrates River and over northern Syria,” the statement reads. “Russian pilots took off from the Hmeymim Air Base, while Syrians took off from the Seikal and Dumayr airfields outside Damascus,” the ministry added.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the mission involved Russia’s Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft and the A-50 early warning and control aircraft, as well as Syria’s MiG-23 and MiG-29 planes. “During the patrol mission, Syrian pilots controlled airspace and provided fighter cover, while Russian crews practiced attacks on ground targets,” the statement specified. The ministry said that pilots had practiced strikes on air targets and ground targets at a training range in central Syria.
“The two countries’ pilots developed skills for cooperation in various situations. This kind of joint missions will now take place on a regular basis,” the Russian Defense Ministry stressed.
Russia will intervene in Ukraine
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JANUARY 23, 2022
The US-Russia talks in Geneva in the last two successive weeks could not produce a breakthrough. Fundamentally, there is a contradiction that cannot be resolved easily. Russia sees in existential terms the NATO’s advance into its immediate western neighbourhood. But for Washington, it’s geopolitics, stupid!
Russia cannot tolerate any longer such NATO presence on its western border. Ukraine’s induction into the Western alliance system would mean that the US missiles could hit Moscow in 5 minutes, rendering Russian air defence systems ineffectual and obsolete.
NATO deployments in the Baltic and the Black regions further deprive Russia of buffer in the west. Considering that all major decisions and most minor decisions in the NATO are taken in Washington, Moscow perceives all this as an American strategy to encircle it, erode its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policies.
The US, on the contrary, refuses to countenance any NATO rollback. It insists that Russia has no say in the alliance’s decisions. At best, Washington would discuss certain confidence-building measures, while NATO enlargement since 1997 — contrary to assurances given to Mikhail Gorbachev by western leaders in 1990 during the reunification of Germany — is a fait accompli that Russia should live with.
Basically, the US has gained the high ground through sustained efforts through the past three decades since the Bill Clinton administration put into effect a concerted strategy in anticipation of a resurgent Russia in a matter of time. Now that the US has gained the upper hand, it is loathe to give it up.
From Washington’s viewpoint, this is a key template of the geopolitical struggle unfolding over the new world order after China’s rise and the shift in power dynamic from the West to the East. Cutting down Russia to size and to be able to intimidate it is a pre-requisite of the situation before the US tackles China comprehensively. Suffice to say, Ukraine has become a battleground where a titanic test of will is playing out.
Ukraine is in all practical sense a US surrogate and its transformation as an anti-Russian state that began following the regime change in Kiev in 2014 is already at an advanced stage. Although Ukraine is not yet a NATO member, the alliance has established a significant presence in the country militarily and politically.
In the information war, the US portrays Russia as aggressor against a weak neighbour. In reality, though, it is a situation of ‘Heads I win tails you lose’. If Russia doesn’t do anything, it might as well resign to the inevitability of Ukraine being inducted into NATO and Russia having to live with the enemy at the gates. Of course, that would shift the global strategic balance for the first time in history in favour of the US.
On the other hand, if Russia acts militarily to prevent the NATO’s march in Ukraine, Washington will play rough. Washington is all set to pillory President Vladimir Putin personally and to impose “sanctions from hell” on Russia, with a vicious game plan to wound that country’s economy lethally and stifle its capacity to be a global player.
In the US estimation, Putin personally will have to bear a heavy political cost if living conditions deteriorate within Russia between now and 2024 when the next Russian presidential election is due, and he may be compelled to relinquish power. From the American perspective, there’s nothing like it if a Boris Yeltsin II were to succeed Putin.
Make no mistake, part of what is going on today is a demonisation Putin’s political personality to erode his towering popularity (65%), which forecloses the rise of a pro-western politician in Russia for a foreseeable future. All attempts by the US intelligence to create a “liberal” platform in Russian politics have failed so far. The fact of the mater is that the majority of Russian people dread the return of the “liberal” order of the 1990s.
The Washington Post, which is linked to the US security establishment, featured a scurrilous report last Wednesday under the byline of a noted knave titled House Republicans aim sanctions at Putin, his family and his mistress. It says, “The Biden administration’s carefully crafted mix of diplomacy and threats of additional sanctions doesn’t seem to be deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and starting a war. Now, a large group of House Republicans is pushing President Biden to ramp up the pressure on Putin directly by going after him and his entourage for their long and well-established corruption.” Evidently, Washington will go to any extent to create dissensions among Russia’s elite and undermine the country’s political stability.
What lies ahead?
Without doubt, Russia is acutely conscious of its limitations. Moscow too made some serious miscalculations. It was betting that Ukraine was not going to join the NATO and in due course, better sense would prevail in Kiev under a realistic and pragmatic leader who would give up on the “Ukrainisation” agenda, repair ties with Russia (especially in the economic field) and importantly, accommodate the aspirations of the ethnic Russian eastern regions. But as it turned out, “Ukrainisation” is only being galvanised with tacit American support. Moscow has sensed that time is no longer on its side.
Moscow expects something concrete from the American side, as its vital security interests are in jeopardy. The Kremlin leadership, including Putin, has starkly outlined Russia’s “red lines.” Washington, on the other hand, is simply kicking the can down the road. It estimates that time is on its side anyway. From the Russian viewpoint, this is not acceptable, since a point of no return is arriving as regards Ukraine’s Nato membership.
Arguably, President Biden doesn’t want to move in the direction of accommodating Russia’s legitimate interests, given the pulls and pushes from the domestic scene in America and the divergent opinions among European allies, but primarily because the encirclement of Russia with pro-Western states has been a strategic objective of Washington’s policies toward Russia under successive administrations since Bill Clinton, and today it happens be expedient too, being a “cause” that enjoys rare bipartisan support in the Beltway at a juncture when American opinion is deeply divided.
In the present situation, wittingly or unwittingly, Washington has also tied its hands by committing that it won’t negotiate over Ukraine’s head. All factors taken into consideration, therefore, the probability is very high that Russia will intervene in eastern Ukraine with a view to create new facts on the ground to secure its national security interests while aiming at a political settlement for the medium and long term.
What does it entail?
Clearly, Russia is not seeking annexation of Ukrainian territory. Its preference will be to restrict its intervention in eastern Ukraine largely to the Russian populated regions and to create a buffer zone. Some American analysts have estimated that, broadly, any Russian intervention will be restricted to the territory upto the Dnepr river flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. This seems plausible.
Of course, there are variables in any emergent military situation. Russia will firmly react to any form of Western intervention in Ukraine — although Washington has ruled it out. (In any case, the US’ capability to fight a massive continental war at such short notice is questionable.) The Russian military operations will be decisive with huge firepower and advanced weaponry on multiple fronts, with the intention to realise the political objective in the shortest time possible.
The US journalists have written about “resistance” but that is a load of rubbish. The Russian operation will be short and decisive. The Ukrainian moral fibre today is such that the demoralised forces and the disillusioned people will simply cave in. In all this, what needs to be remembered is that despite the heavy dollops of US indoctrination, Ukrainian people have profound civilisational affinities with Russians that lie submerged just below the surface.
Most important, the pervasive corruption in that country gives ample scope to buy off loyalties — in fact, there may not be much actual fighting at all in many sectors. It also needs to be factored in that the political situation in Kiev is highly unstable, as the latest sedition charges against former president Petro Poroshenko testify.
Zelensky won his mandate as president in 2019 on the basis of his promise to work for rapprochement with Russia. Today, he is a thoroughly discredited figure. People feel betrayed. A crushing military defeat will mean the end of the road for Zelensky.
The ensuing political turmoil within Ukraine is the “X” factor in the Russian intervention. American analysts deliberately sidestep this. Simply put, Russians have a deep understanding of the eddies of Ukrainian politics and the country’s power brokers due to the shared history, culture, politics and societal links.
The ultimate Russian objective will be a federated Ukraine through constitutional reform with the country’s sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity intact while the regions enjoy autonomy. Europe may welcome this as the best way to stabilise the situation and remove the potential for future conflict.
Indeed, Russia’s expectation will be that such a Ukraine can never become a part of NATO once constitutional underpinnings are put in place to ensure that all major policies pursued in Kiev would be based on national consensus.
The bottom line is that as Russia sees it, the only way out of this crisis is that Ukraine regains its national sovereignty and stops looking to Washington for navigating its destiny. That requires that the American operatives in Kiev who take the decisions for Ukraine go home and Ukrainians are once again the masters of their house, which ceased to be the case once the US intelligence usurped power in February 2014 disregarding the pledge given by then (elected) president Viktor Yanukovich to hold fresh elections before deciding on Ukraine’s EU membership.
Clearly, all this is not going to be as easy as it sounds and the outcome may turn out to be no better than an attempt to unscramble the omelette. But the good part is that there are signs already that Europe is sceptical about blindly tagging along with the US any further on Ukraine.
The probability of discord in the transatlantic relationship is rising. NATO itself has never really been the robust united alliance that was made out to be. Polish President Andrzej Duda’s decision to attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing is a harbinger of things to come. (Incidentally, Putin will also be in Beijing at that time.) Germany opposes not only the removal of Russia from Swift but also the supply of weapons by NATO countries to Ukraine as well as Lithuania’s move (under US advice) to switch ties to Taiwan!
US made a strategic blunder to have encouraged a deeper NATO imprint in Ukraine. Making half-promises thereby to a non-NATO country is going to damage the US’ credibility in the downstream of a Russian intervention. But it is impossible for Washington to backtrack now, as the loss of credibility will be even more.
What remains to be seen, equally, is how the European Union survives this moment. The ardent Atlanticists in the European Commission in Brussels led by Ursula von der Leyen and the Russia-hater Josep Borrell are unilaterally setting the EU agenda currently, ignoring the glaring divergences of opinion among the member states. With Angela Merkel’s departure, a vacuum has appeared which these Eurocrats hope to fill in.
But this is clearly unsustainable. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Europe to invest in its own collective security framework and called for a “frank” EU dialogue with Russia. By the way, neither the EU nor France was involved in the direct talks between the US and Russia in Geneva.
Much is being made out of the threat of sanctions against Russia. But such threats won’t deter Moscow. For a start, even draconian sanctions have proved to be a weak coercive tool. Indeed, US sanctions had a poor coercive track record in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc.
Russia is a big power. It has huge reserves, which currently stand at a record $638.2 billion — the fourth largest in the world. Russia’s credit position is good and it owns much of its debts. It has no critical need of US investors. Russia is in no desperate need to sell its currency.
Having gone through four traumatic shocks previously in its 30-year post-cold war history, Russia knows how to absorb shocks. Therefore, while Russia may take a big hit and there could be currency volatility causing outflow of capital initially following the sanctions, its reserves give it a big cushion.
At any rate, how far the Europeans will want to go on the sanctions path remains to be seen. Germany has voiced reservations about Washington’s famous “nuclear option”, namely, the expulsion of Russia from the Swift payment system. To be sure, any disruption in Russian energy supplies will hurt the European economies.
A little known fact is, Russia sells gas at very low prices to Europe, whereas, any LNG supplies from the US to make up for Russian supplies will mean exorbitant prices jacking up the cost of industrial production. Central European countries depend on Russia for 100 percent of their energy needs. Germany has a 40% dependency.
According to reports, a highlight of Putin’s forthcoming visit to Beijing will be the signing of the agreement of the mammoth Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline project to construct an additional route to send gas to China gas from Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula, where Russia’s biggest gas reserves are, via Mongolia. The capacity of the pipeline is expected to be 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually (which exceeds the capacity of Nord Stream 2.)
Significantly, trade turnover between China and Russia has reached a record $146.88 billion in 2021, up 35.8% from the previous year. Most certainly, the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine, which could bring new sanctions against Moscow, is likely to tighten the Kremlin’s bond with Beijing even more. The two countries have vowed to raise their trade turnover to $200 billion by 2024. Recent economic trends alone suggest the countries are likely to reach that goal.
The rising geopolitical tensions would add momentum to this effort by making stronger trade ties with China a necessity for the Kremlin. Moscow will need to increase sourcing capabilities elsewhere because of US sanctions, and China will be one major avenue. The big picture is that on its part, China too cannot afford to see Russia going down under US pressure.
Evidently, the US hasn’t thought through the escalatory ladder. The Kremlin has threatened Washington with a complete break in relations if push comes to shove. Trust Moscow to hit back. Russia conducted an anti-satellite test in May by taking out a satellite. Possibly, it was a signal that Russia has the capability to interfere with the GSP constellation in non-military fields, which can affect key sectors of the US economy.
Above all, any “sanctions from hell” will inevitably turn into a morality play on the world stage. There’ll be increasing blowback in the world economy as countries get concerned about Washington’s weaponisation of the dollar. Some may even feel prompted to harden their economy. This can impact the international financial market. Washington backtracked previously when such situations arose. (Washington chose not to impose sanctions against India under CAATSA for its purchase of the S-400 missile system from Russia.)
Paradoxically, thanks to wave after wave of Western sanctions since 2014, Russia has become much more autarchic. Today, it needs no inputs from the West for its defence industry to develop new weapon systems. Pentagon officials have admitted that Russia has taken the lead in cutting edge technology such as hypersonic missiles, and catching up may take three to five years — that is, assuming that the Russian defence industry is resting its oars.
UKRAINE CRISIS: US ‘Toolboxes’ Are Empty
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News | January 22, 2022
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled, 90-minute summit in Geneva yesterday, after which both sides lauded the meeting as worthwhile because it kept the door open for a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What “keeping the door open” entails, however, represents two completely different realities.
For Blinken, the important thing appears to be process, continuing a dialogue which, by its very essence, creates the impression of progress, with progress being measured in increments of time, as opposed to results.
A results-oriented outcome was not in the books for Blinken and his entourage; the U.S. was supposed to submit a written response to Russia’s demands for security guarantees as spelled out in a pair of draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO in December. Instead, Blinken told Lavrov the written submission would be provided next week.
In the meantime, Blinken primed the pump of expected outcomes by highlighting the possibility of future negotiations that addressed Russian concerns (on a reciprocal basis) regarding intermediate-range missiles and NATO military exercises.
But under no circumstances, Blinken said, would the U.S. be responding to Russian demands against NATO expanding to Ukraine and Georgia, and for the redeployment of NATO forces inside the territory of NATO as it existed in 1997.
Blinken also spent a considerable amount of time harping on the danger of an imminent military invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces said to be massing along the Ukraine-Russian border. He pointed out that any military incursion by Russia, no matter what size, that violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, would be viewed as a continuation of the Russian “aggression” of 2014 and, as such, trigger “massive consequences” which would be damaging to Russia.
Blinken’s restatement of a position he has pontificated on incessantly for more than a month now was not done for the benefit of Lavrov and the Russian government, but rather for an American and European audience which had been left scratching their collective heads over comments made the day before by President Joe Biden which suggested that the U.S. had a range of options it would consider depending on the size of a Russian incursion.
“My guess is he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will move in, he has to do something,” Biden said during a press briefing on Wednesday. While presenting a Russian invasion as inevitable, Biden went on to note that Putin “will be held accountable” and “never have[sic] seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed” if Russia were, in fact, to move against Ukraine. Biden spoke of deploying additional U.S. military forces to eastern Europe, as well as unspecified economic sanctions.
Biden then, however, hedged his remarks, noting that the scope and scale of any U.S. response would depend on what Russia did. “It’s one thing,” Biden said, “if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”
Almost immediately the Washington establishment went into overdrive to correct what everyone said was a “misstatement” by Biden, with Biden himself making a new statement the next day, declaring that he had been “absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding, any, any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” and that there should be “no doubt at all that if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”
And just in case the President was not clear enough, Blinken reiterated that point following his Friday meeting with Lavrov.
Immutable
The U.S. narrative about Russia and Ukraine was immutable; Russia was hell bent on invading, and there would be massive consequences if Russia acted out on its intent. This was no idle threat, Blinken said, but rather represented the unified position of the United States and its allies and partners.
Or was it? In a telling admission, CNN’s White House correspondent, John Harwood, stated that the “minor incursions” statement by Biden was harmless, because (Harwood said) Putin already knew through sources that this was, in fact, the U.S. position. As for Europe and Ukraine, their collective confusion and outrage was merely an act, a posture they had to take for public consumption, since the optics of Biden’s statement “sounds bad.”
In short, the lack of an agreed-upon strategy on how to deal with a Russian incursion/invasion of Ukraine was an open secret for everyone except the U.S. and European publics, who being fed a line of horse manure to assuage domestic political concerns over being seen as surrendering to Russian demands.
Biden and his administration are old hands at lying to the American public when it comes to matters of national security. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for a clear precedent into this inability to speak openly and honestly about reality on the ground. “I need not tell you,” Biden told Ghani, “the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need,” Biden added, “whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the posture taken by the Biden administration on Ukraine. Blinken has indicated that the U.S. has a toolbox filled with options that will deliver “massive consequences” to Russia should Russia invade Ukraine. These “tools” include military options, such as the reinforcement of NATO’s eastern flank with additional U.S. troops, and economic options, such as shutting down the NordStream 2 pipeline and cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking system. All these options, Blinken notes, have the undivided support of U.S. European allies and partners.
The toolbox is everywhere, it seems—Biden has referred to it, as has White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Blinken has alluded to it on numerous occasions.
There’s only one problem—the toolbox, it turns out, is empty.
While the Pentagon is reportedly working on a series of military options to reinforce the existing U.S. military presence in eastern Europe, the actual implementation of these options would neither be timely nor even possible. One option is to move forces already in Europe; the U.S. Army maintains one heavy armored brigade in Europe on a rotational basis and has a light armored vehicle brigade and an artillery brigade stationed in Germany. Along with some helicopter and logistics support, that’s it.
Flooding these units into Poland would be for display purposes only—they represent an unsustainable combat force that would be destroyed within days, if not hours, in any large-scale ground combat against a Russian threat.
The U.S. can deploy a second heavy armored brigade to Poland which would fall in on prepositioned equipment already warehoused on Polish soil. This brigade would suffer a similar fate if matched up against the Russian army. The U.S. can also deploy an airborne brigade. They, too, would die.
There are no other options available to deploy additional U.S. heavy forces to Europe on a scale and in a timeframe that would be meaningful. The problem isn’t just the deployment of forces from their bases in the U.S. (something that would takes months to prepare for), but the sustainability of these forces once they arrived on the ground in Europe. Food, ammunition, water, fuel—the logistics of war is complicated, and not resolved overnight.
In short, there is no viable military option, and Biden knows this.
Empty Sanctions Too
The U.S. has no sanctions plan that can survive initial contact with the enemy, which in this case is the collective weakness of the post-pandemic economies of both Europe and the U.S.; the over-reliance of Europe on Russian-sourced energy, and the vulnerability of democratically elected leaders to the whim of a consumer-based constituency. Russia can survive the impact of any sanctions regime the U.S. is able to scrape together—even those targeting the Russian banking system—far longer than Europe can survive without access to Russian energy.
This is a reality that Europe lives with, and while U.S. policy makers might think hard-hitting sanctions look good on paper, the reality is that whatever passes for U.S.-European unity today would collapse in rapid order when the Russian pipelines were shut down. The pain would not just be limited to Europe, either—the U.S. economy would suffer as well, with sky-high fuel prices and a stock market collapse that would put the U.S. into an economic recession, if not outright depression.
The political cost that would be incurred by Biden and, by extension, the Democrats, would be fatal to any hope that might remain for holding onto either house of Congress in 2022, or the White House in 2024. It would be one thing if Biden and his national security team were honest and forthright about the real consequences of declaring the equivalent of economic war on Russia. It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.
Americans should never forget that Russia has been laboring under severe U.S. sanctions since 2014, with zero effect. Russia knows what could be coming and has prepared. The American people wallow in their ignorance, believing at face value what they are told by the Biden administration, and echoed by a compliant mainstream media.
Propaganda About ‘Propaganda’
One of the great ironies of the current crisis is that, on the eve of the Blinken-Lavrov meeting in Geneva, the U.S. State Department published a report on Russian propaganda, decrying the role played by state-funded outlets such as RT and Sputnik in shaping public opinion in the United States and the West (in the interest of full disclosure, RT is one of the outlets that I write for.)
The fact that the State Department would publish such a report on the eve of a meeting which is all about propagating the big lie—that the U.S. has a plan for deterring “irresponsible Russian aggression”—while ignoring the hard truth: this is a crisis derived solely from the irresponsible policies of the U.S. and NATO over the past 30 years.
While a compliant mainstream American media unthinkingly repeated every warning and threat issued by Biden and Blinken to Russia over the course of the past few days, the Russian position has been largely ignored. Here’s a reminder of where Russia stands on its demands for security guarantees: “We are talking about the withdrawal of foreign forces, equipment, and weapons, as well as taking other steps to return to the set-up we had in 1997 in non-NATO countries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared in a bulletin published after the Lavrov-Blinken meeting. “This includes Bulgaria and Romania.”
Blinken has already said the U.S. will reject this.
The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people.
The consequences of a U.S. rejection of Russia’s demands will more than likely be war.
If you think the American people are ready to bear the burden of a war with Russia, think again.
Is The TAPI Pipeline Finally Ready To Go?
Zero Hedge | January 19, 2022
Submitted by James Durso, Managing Director of Corsair LLC, a supply chain consultancy.
The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline has been long aborning, but its prospects recently got a shot in the arm.
The 1100-mile, $10 billion project has seen numerous delays since the pipeline consortium was announced in late 2014, though the project was first mooted in 1991. Construction started in early 2018 with a projected in-service date of 2021, but halted later that year after workers clearing the route were killed by unknown assailants. Also, the project’s $10 billion cost estimate is a decade old, and an update may cause further delay to the Asian Development Bank-funded effort that is now slated to resume work in September 2022. Turkmenistan will loan Afghanistan the funds for its share of the project, to be repaid from gas transit revenues.
Representatives of the government of Tajikistan recently met officials in Afghanistan, and the Taliban announcement that it will dedicate 30,000 troops to pipeline security may motivate the parties to start construction.
The completed pipeline will allow Turkmenistan to reduce its reliance on its biggest gas customer, China, which has recently taken most of Turkmenistan’s gas exports, though in 2021 the country doubled its gas exports to Russia, which used to be the biggest importer of Turkmen gas until it was displaced by China in 2010. The pipeline will generate additional income that Ashgabat can use to improve services to citizens, a priority after the recent unrest in neighboring Kazakhstan.
But there may be competing opportunities. For example, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan recently signed a trilateral gas swap deal for up to 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year. It’s not a large amount – Turkmenistan exports about 40bcm to China every year – but it’s another income stream that should be managed with an eye to future growth. Then there’s the possibility of a connection to the proposed Trans-Caspian Pipeline (TCP) to supply Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). Connecting to the SGC would require a 200-mile subsea pipe between Baku and Türkmenba?y, but may face opposition from Iran and Russia on (probably spurious) environmental grounds. Once the politics are resolved, the project would likely be cheaper and carry less of a security burden than the overland TAPI route, and build on the January 2021 agreement between Baku and Ashgabat to jointly develop the Dostluq (“friendship”) oil and natural gas field in the Caspian Sea.
For Afghanistan, the project would provide transit fees of about $500 million per year, along with an annual share of 500 million cubic meters of gas for the first ten years, ultimately increasing to 1.5 bcm per year.
For the Taliban government, a successful project would: demonstrate it can be a reliable partner in a major infrastructure project, employ demobilized Taliban troops so they don’t defect to the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda, earn revenue to pay for electricity imports (the country relies on imports for 78% of its power), demonstrate to China it is safe to invest in Afghanistan, and be an opportunity for cooperation with Pakistan despite the dispute over their shared border.
Of course, Kabul will have to figure out what to do with that natural gas, in addition to its one trillion cubic feet of reserves. The U.S.-driven development plan for the country emphasized renewables, like solar and wind, and the U.S.-funded $335 million Tarakhil Power Plant near Kabul, which relied on expensive, imported diesel fuel, is now used as a back-up facility when hydropower and imported power aren’t available. An International Finance Corporation-sponsored 59-megawatt gas-to-power plant in Mazar-i-Sharif would have boosted the country’s current total domestic generation by up to 30 percent, but can it be revived under the Taliban?
And time is of the essence as Uzbekistan recently reduced its power exports by 60%, possibly due to increased domestic demand as winter sets in, possibly to nudge Kabul (or the UN) to start paying the $90 million owed to power suppliers in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran.
For Pakistan, the pipeline would help solve the country’s persistent energy shortfalls, such as the deficit between current gas production of 4 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCFD) against demand of 6 BCFD. By 2025, gas production is expected to fall to less 1 BCFD due to depletion of gas reserves while demand increases to 8 BCFD.
And Pakistan won’t have to wait to 2025 for an economic impact: Between 2008 and 2012, 40 percent of Pakistan’s textile sector moved to Bangladesh, one reason being the uneven supply of gas and electricity.
Then there’s Pakistan’s view of its regional interests and its endless search for “strategic depth.” The pipeline would be an independent source of revenue for Afghanistan, just when Pakistan feels the Taliban government should be beholden to it. And India would be able to increase the share of gas in its energy mix from 6.5% to 15%, possibly encouraging more trade between Kabul and New Delhi. To Islamabad, it will add to an already bad outcome: the ungrateful Taliban still aren’t helping Pakistan isolate the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, while India is expected to be the world’s fastest growing economy in 2022, according to the World Bank.
They say “all politics is local” and that may be the case here. One Pakistani observer, Hina Mahar Nadeem, noted the country’s gas shortfalls have a silver lining – for the interests that control the import of expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG). Accordingly, TAPI and the much-delayed (mostly by U.S. sanctions on Iran) Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline are a threat to their economic and political power.
In late 2020, Pakistan and Russia signed a deal to complete the 700-mile Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline, to move LNG from Port Qasim (Karachi) to Kasur, in the Punjab. Pakistan may be treating with Russia to balance against China, or maybe the deal was decided on strictly dollars-and-cents terms. Regardless, this project may crowd out attention and funding for Pakistan’s phase of TAPI.
A richer energy mix and pipeline transit revenues would strengthen Pakistan as it negotiates new efforts with China under the umbrella of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. Pakistan’s leaders will need to strengthen their position vis-à-vis China while demonstrating to Beijing they are a reliable partner that will develop energy resources that can accommodate China’s projects. But first, those leaders must take on entrenched business and national security interests to successfully support TAPI, despite the economic benefits to its neighbors. But this assumes the country’s leaders aren’t captive (willing or otherwise) to their business confederates and the securicrats.
For India, TAPI would add to the country’s energy mix, propelling its impressive economic growth. India is the world’s third-largest energy consuming country, and has doubled energy use since 2000, with 80% of demand still being met by coal, oil and solid biomass. TAPI gas would allow India to use less coal, helping it meet its COP26 carbon emission goal, and satisfy increased energy demand by 2030 of 25% to 35% according to the International Energy Agency.
India has built a connection for TAPI at Fazilka at the Indo-Pakistan border in the Punjab region, a location on the border with Pakistan that may be subject to cross-border attacks by Pakistan-affiliated groups. Will Pakistan or its proxies be able to resist attacking such a key piece of infrastructure if India-Pakistan relations fail to improve?
For India, the best approach may be “wait and see” if the U.S. threatens sanctions against TAPI partners, whether the Taliban can prove they know how to govern and secure the country against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, and how serious is the announced Russia-Pakistan pipeline deal.
Where does this leave Turkmenistan?
It, too, should take it slow. It is no longer 2014, and it now has opportunities for increased swaps with Iran and Azerbaijan, and further opportunities with Iran may blossom if Tehran and Washington can secure a nuclear deal. The opportunity to connect to Europe via the TCP/SGC may present more revenue with fewer security concerns, or iffy partners like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Also, Washington needs to clear the way regarding sanctioned officials in Kabul, though the acting minister of defense, Mullah Muhammad Yaqub, who declared “I am directly responsible for and overseeing the security of the TAPI project” hasn’t been sanctioned by Washington… yet.
Washington might get behind TAPI in the wake of the recent deployment of Collective Security Treaty Organization peacekeeping troops to Kazakhstan, which has increased Russia’s clout in Central Asia. Increased revenue for Ashgabat that can be directed to services for its citizens may prevent the public unrest that gave Moscow an opening to intervene, and Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow may not need much convincing in this regard.
But it may serve Ashgabat well to ask Washington for a blanket sanctions exemption for all project principals and suppliers, and any government officials in the mix, to make it clear who bears responsibility if the project again fails to launch. If this happens, it will be a shabby way to treat ally India, and in Pakistan it will be interpreted as U.S. revenge against the country for supporting the Taliban.
The “push” of increased regional influence for Moscow and the “pull” of clean energy for ally India will hopefully make Washington green-light (or get out of the way of) the long-delayed project.
What War With Russia Would Look Like
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News | January 10, 2022
If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.
The two sides can’t even agree on an agenda.
From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear: “The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated—including at a high level—that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press after a pre-meeting dinner on Sunday hosted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who is leading the U.S. delegation.
Ryabkov was referring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to U.S. President Joe Biden in early December regarding Russian security guarantees, which were then laid out by Moscow in detail in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-U.S. security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO.
The latter would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and rule out any eastward expansion by the trans-Atlantic military alliance. At the time, Ryabkov tersely noted that the U.S. should immediately begin to address the proposed drafts with an eye to finalizing something when the two sides meet. Now, with the meeting beginning on Monday, it doesn’t appear as if the U.S. has done any such thing.
“[T]he talks are going to be difficult,” Ryabkov told reporters after the dinner meeting. “They cannot be easy. They will be business-like. I think we won’t waste our time tomorrow.” When asked if Russia was ready to compromise, Ryabkov tersely responded, “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”
All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called “serious consequences” should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks.
Yet on the eve of the Ryabkov-Sherman meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken simply reiterated these threats, declaring that Russia would face “massive consequences” if it invaded Ukraine.
“It’s clear that we’ve offered him two paths forward,” Blinken said, speaking of Putin. “One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we’re about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week.”
It is as if both Biden and Blinken are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to reading Russia.
Ryabkov has alluded to a fact already made clear by the Russians—there will be no compromise when it comes to Russia’s legitimate national security interests. And if the U.S. cannot understand how the accumulation of military power encompassed in a military alliance which views Russia as a singular, existential threat to its members’ security is seen by Russia as threatening, then there is no comprehension of how the events of June 22, 1941 have shaped the present -day Russian psyche, why Russia will never again allow such a situation to occur, and why the talks are doomed before they even begin.
As for the American threats, Russia has given its response—any effort to sanction Russia would result, as Putin told Biden last month, in a “complete rupture of relations” between Russia and those countries attempting sanctions. One need not be a student of history to comprehend that the next logical step following a “complete rupture of relations” between two parties that are at loggerheads over matters pertaining to existential threats to the national security of one or both is not the peaceful resumption of relations, but war.
There is no mealy-mouthed posturing by Foggy Bottom peacocks taking place in Moscow, but rather a cold, hard, statement of fact—ignore Russia’s demands at you own peril. The U.S., it seems, believes that the worst-case scenario is one where Russia invades Ukraine, only to wilt under the sustained pressure of economic sanctions and military threats.
Russia’s worse-case scenario is one where it engages in armed conflict with NATO.
Generally speaking, the side that is most prepared for the reality of armed conflict will prevail.
Russia has been preparing for this possibility for more than a year. It has repeatedly shown a capability to rapidly mobilize 100,000-plus combat-ready forces in short order. NATO has shown an ability to mobilize 30,000 after six-to-nine-months of extensive preparations.
What would a conflict between Russia and NATO look like? In short, not like anything NATO has prepared for. Time is the friend of NATO in any such conflict—time to let sanctions weaken the Russian economy, and time to allow NATO to build up sufficient military power to be able to match Russia’s conventional military strength.
Russia knows this, and as such, any Russian move will be designed to be both swift and decisive.
First and foremost, if it comes to it, when Russia decides to move on Ukraine, it will do so with a plan of action that has been well-thought out and which sufficient resources have been allocated for its successful completion. Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign—Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I—and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.
One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations’ capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemy’s army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action.
Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991.
On the ground, the destruction of Ukraine’s Army is all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Ukrainian military is neither equipped nor trained to engage in large-scale ground combat. It would be destroyed piecemeal, and the Russians would more than likely spend more time processing Ukrainian prisoners of war than killing Ukrainian defenders.
For any Russian military campaign against Ukraine to be effective in a larger conflict with NATO, however, two things must occur—Ukraine must cease to exist as a modern nation state, and the defeat of the Ukrainian military must be massively one-sided and quick. If Russia is able to accomplish these two objectives, then it is well positioned to move on to the next phase of its overall strategic posturing vis-à-vis NATO—intimidation.
While the U.S., NATO, the EU, and the G7 have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” sanctions only matter if the other side cares. Russia, by rupturing relations with the West, no longer would care about sanctions. Moreover, it is a simple acknowledgement of reality that Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy. Any rupturing of relations between Russia and the West will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.
There is no European Plan B. Europe will suffer, and because Europe is composed of erstwhile democracies, politicians will pay the price. All those politicians who followed the U.S. blindly into a confrontation with Russia will now have to answer to their respective constituents why they committed economic suicide on behalf of a Nazi-worshipping, thoroughly corrupt nation (Ukraine) which has nothing in common with the rest of Europe. It will be a short conversation.
If the U.S. tries to build up NATO forces on Russia’s western frontiers in the aftermath of any Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia will then present Europe with a fait accompli in the form of what would now be known as the “Ukrainian model.” In short, Russia will guarantee that the Ukrainian treatment will be applied to the Baltics, Poland, and even Finland, should it be foolish enough to pursue NATO membership.
Russia won’t wait until the U.S. has had time to accumulate sufficient military power, either. Russia will simply destroy the offending party through the combination of an air campaign designed to degrade the economic function of the targeted nation, and a ground campaign designed to annihilate the ability to wage war. Russia does not need to occupy the territory of NATO for any lengthy period—just enough to destroy whatever military power has been accumulated by NATO near its borders.
And—here’s the kicker—short of employing nuclear weapons, there’s nothing NATO can do to prevent this outcome. Militarily, NATO is but a shadow of its former self. The once great armies of Europe have had to cannibalize their combat formations to assemble battalion-sized “combat groups” in the Baltics and Poland. Russia, on the other hand, has reconstituted two army-size formations—the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 20th Combined Arms Army—from the Cold War-era which specialize in deep offensive military action.
Even Vegas wouldn’t offer odds on this one.
Sherman will face off against Ryabkov in Geneva, with the fate of Europe in her hands. The sad thing is, she doesn’t see it that way. Thanks to Biden, Blinken and the host of Russophobes who populate the U.S. national security state today, Sherman thinks she is there to simply communicate the consequences of diplomatic failure to Russia. To threaten. With mere words.
What Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have yet to comprehend is that Russia has already weighed the consequences and is apparently willing to accept them. And respond. With action.
One wonders if Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have thought this through. Odds are, they have not, and the consequences for Europe will be dire.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Neocolonialism haunts Horn of Africa
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JANUARY 5, 2022
Chinese foreign ministers have traditionally marked the new year by visiting the African continent. Wang Yi’s 2022 African tour begins with Eritrea against the backdrop of the US strategy in the Horn of Africa to gain control of the strategically vital Red Sea that connects Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal.
Eritrea and China are close friends. China was a supporter of the Eritrean liberation movement since the 1970s. Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki, the veteran revolutionary who led the independence movement, had received military training in China. More recently, Eritrea was one of the 54 countries backing China’s Hong Kong policy (against 39 voicing concern in a rival Western bloc) at the UN General Assembly in October 2020.
Last November, Eritrea signed an MoU with China to join the Belt And Road Initiative. Neighbouring Djibouti is already a major participant in the BRI. So is Sudan along the Red Sea coastline.
Central to regional cohesion in the Horn of Africa is the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has been a conflict-ridden troubled relationship but China, which also has close ties with Ethiopia, is well-placed to meditate reconciliation.
One common view is that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pulled off a stunning victory in the conflict with US-backed Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) with the help of armed drones supplied by the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran. But civil wars are won on the ground. And the politico-military axis between Ethiopia and Eritrea to take on the TPLF proved to be the decisive factor. China encouraged the rapprochement between Addis Ababa and Asmara.
Effectively, the two leaderships understood that they have a congruence of interests in thwarting the TPLF which is an American proxy to destabilise their countries and trigger regime changes. (Read the analysis in CounterPunch titled Ethiopia Conflict by US Design.)
Washington is mighty displeased that China’s influence in Djibouti is on the rise and resents that the Marxist regime of Isaias Afewerki keeps the US at arm’s length.
The Horn of Africa is of great strategic importance, and Ethiopia sits at its heart. Destabilise Ethiopia and impact the whole region; install a dictatorial expansionist ethnocentric regime (TPLF); sow division and poison the atmosphere of mutual understanding and cooperation that is being built within the region — this is the neocolonial agenda.
President Uhuru of Kenya, speaking at Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s inauguration had said, “Ethiopia is the Mother of African independence… for all of us on the continent, Ethiopia is our Mother… As we know, if the Mother is not at peace, the family cannot be at peace.”
The US is going for the jugular veins of the Mother of post-colonial Africa. An analogy would be destabilising India to gain control of the South Asian region, the difference being that Ethiopia is the only African country never to have been colonised.
The widespread revulsion among Afghans all over the continent is palpable over the US using its TPLF proxy to destabilise Ethiopia. Their collective cry is “No more” — no more colonialism, no more sanctions, no more disinformation, no more lies by the CNN, BBC, etc. The cry resonates widely amongst the Ethiopians, Eritreans, Sudanese, Somali, Kenyan, and friends of Ethiopia.
The paradox is, Ethiopia today has a democratically elected government after decades of thuggery under the TPLF that ruled with an iron fist for over 30 years with US backing. The Tigray people actually add up to only 5% of Ethiopia’s population but such details were irrelevant to Washington so long as the government in Addis Ababa obeyed its diktat.
There is also a religious sub-text. The Tigray people are Christians whereas the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia is the Oromo, native to the region of Ethiopia and Kenya. They are a Cushitic people who have inhabited the East and Northeast Africa since at least the early 1st millennium. The Oromo people have a glorious history of forced resistance to religious conversion, primarily by European explorers, Catholic Christians missionaries.
Broadly, the resistance ideology is embedded in the Oromo collective memory. Abiy Ahmed is the first ethnic Oromo to become prime minister. Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed is an extraordinary politician, far-sighted and deeply committed to his country’s plural identity national sovereignty.
In geopolitical terms, Washington would see many advantages in the destabilisation of Ethiopia as it would trigger a multi-vector regional conflagration, as happens when multi-ethnic nations unravel — such as the former Yugoslavia or today’s India or Russia. And neighbouring countries would be inevitably sucked into ethnic wars such as Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya — and even Egypt and Persian Gulf states.
The fact that the UAE, Turkey and Iran — improbable allies — are supporting Abiy’s desperate effort to preserve Ethiopia’s sovereignty and national cohesion and helped boost his military campaign to ward off another attempt by the US-backed TPLF to capture power speaks volumes.
In this matrix, while the US aims to dominate the hugely strategic Horn of Africa, “Plan B” will be to be the spoiler by throwing the region into turmoil so that China is also a loser. The point is, the Western world has no answer to China’s BRI.
China and Ethiopia have a strong political affinity and deep economic bonds, and Ethiopia is one of China’s top five investment destinations on the African continent. Beyond investment, relations extend to trade, infrastructure finance and other areas. Economic engagement with China has provided Ethiopia with many opportunities.
Curiously, even prior to the advent of the BRI, China was already a major financier of Ethiopia’s infrastructure. Chinese investment in the manufacturing sector — incidentally, one of the Abiy government’s focus areas currently — has contributed to the country’s economic transformation and diversification and to job creation.
A recent report by the well-known London-based global think-tank ODI titled The Belt and Road and Chinese Enterprises in Ethiopia estimates that China’s BRI “has the potential to open up new development pathways through infrastructure development, stimulating investment and job creation and promoting economic transformation… BRI can be an engine for growth and development. However, this is not a given…”
The ODI report, dated August 2021, concludes, “Chinese investors are concerned regarding economic and political uncertainty in Ethiopia. Political uncertainty has to do with domestic conflict and political instability, which may affect not only investors’ profitability, but also their personal safety and the safety of their assets. The economic challenges relate to high production and transport costs and the difficulties of accessing foreign exchange, which is a problem for virtually all Chinese businesses in the country. The challenges identified by Chinese investors could pose a threat to the sustained development of China–Ethiopia economic cooperation.”
Simply put, if there is mayhem in Ethiopia, the locomotive of China’s BRI in the vast regions of the Horn of Africa and East Africa can be potentially slowed down if not derailed. That is the least the US can do faced with the grim prospect that it has no alternative offer to make to the African nations to counter the BRI.
If the BRI locomotive chugs along unimpeded, the entire Western neocolonial project in Africa in the 21st century is threatened with extinction. The existential angst shows in the Biden Administration’s announcement on New Year’s Eve terminating Ethiopia’s access to the US duty-free trade program under the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA “amid the widening conflict in northern Ethiopia.”
President Biden had threatened in November already that Ethiopia would be cut off from the AGOA because of alleged human rights violations in the Tigray region. Biden spoke up in sheer despair in anticipation of Wang Yi’s working visit to Ethiopia on December1!
Evidence that Omicron causes mild disease, and evidence that hype about pediatric hospitalizations is hogwash
By Meryl Nass, MD | December 28, 2021
This graph is from the Telegraph 2 days ago, and it shows that hospitalizations and deaths have not paralleled the rise in cases for Omicron, as they did for earlier waves.
The second graph shows hospitalizations [with Covid] over time by age from today’s NY Times. The yellow line is pediatric ages. While I have not posted a “cases” graph, cases have shot up, while hospitalizations and deaths have not shot up proportionately, as happened in the US with prior waves.
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From the Archives
Examples of hate speech by Israel against Palestine
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
… Continue
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- Former US officials who resigned over Gaza urge 2028 presidential candidates to reject architects of Biden-era policy
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- Here are the Bills Pushing Forward Authoritarian Control in Canada
- The accession of Ukraine could signal the collapse of the EU
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- Russia Helping Build a New Middle East /Trita Parsi
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
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- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
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- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
