US tech giant suspends huge German factory project
RT | September 19, 2024
US tech giant Intel is halting construction of two chip manufacturing plants in Germany as it struggles to counter shrinking sales and mounting losses, the company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger announced on Monday.
According to Gelsinger, the project in the city of Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt is expected to be delayed by around two years.
The company had planned to build two chip factories in Magdeburg worth over $33 billion, creating some 3,000 jobs as part of a larger investment plan for the EU. Intel had also signed an agreement with the German government for about $11 billion in state subsidies for the project, according to the DPA news agency.
The plans, however, have been put on hold as the US tech giant struggles to reduce losses and launched a cost-saving program earlier this year. Intel also said it is postponing a new factory in neighboring Poland.
“We must continue acting with urgency to create a more competitive cost structure and deliver the $10 billion in savings target we announced last month,” Gelsinger said in a letter to employees.
The German manufacturing site was due to become the largest chip-making facility supported under the European Union’s Chips Act which was passed last year. Intel’s decision to delay the project could deal a blow to EU plans of producing one-fifth of the world’s semiconductors by 2030.
“Without Intel in Magdeburg, Europe is lacking its flagship project,” Frank Bosenberg, the managing director of German industry group Silicon Saxony, told Bloomberg on Monday. “Neither a European market share of 20% or the desired technological sovereignty through semiconductor production below 10 nanometers seem realistically achievable by 2030,” he added.
The EU aimed to increase its global chip manufacturing share to 20% by the end of the decade, supported by over $44.5 billion in subsidies to attract semiconductor companies and reduce foreign dependency. Intel’s project in Germany was a key component of the strategy.
Following the announcement, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner called for subsidies earmarked for the Intel project to be repurposed to close a $13.3 billion federal budget gap projected for 2025.
How Could Lebanon Blasts Affect Global Security and Attitude to Western Hi-Tech Producers?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 19.09.2024
A series of blasts reportedly involving Taiwanese, Japanese, American, and European-made devices in Lebanon on September 17 and 18 have prompted grave security concerns worldwide.
“Weaponizing mobile communications devices will fill many people with horror and fear,” Marc Ostwald, chief economist at ADM Investor Services International, told Sputnik. “It may, at the margin, dampen demand.”
The Lebanese government attributed the attack to Israel, accusing Tel Aviv of an outright act of terrorism.
Given almost “unconditional support” provided to Israel by some Western countries, some of them may have colluded with Tel-Aviv, said Hasan Abdullah, analyst and researcher at Global Security and Strategy Institute.
“The US is going to be the country that’s going to generate the greatest trust deficit with their customers, primarily because of its very close collaboration with Israel,” Abdullah told Sputnik.
The US has long been one of the largest suppliers of communication equipment, including for military needs, to the Global South, the pundit noted, adding that the recent blasts could alienate the developing world from Western producers.
Earlier, researcher Mehmet Rakipoglu and military analyst Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik they did not rule out US involvement in the Lebanon attack.
The Intercept reported on Wednesday that the US military had explored the possibility of planting remote-activated bombs in innocuous devices starting from the 1960s.
Middle East and other developing countries could eventually turn to Russian, Chinese or Turkish tech firms out of fear that the US involvement could compromise their security, Abdullah said.
Ostwald and Abdullah believe that several measures could be taken to stop the covert bombings, starting with investigations into manufacturing processes and ending with the deployment of international watchdogs to oversee production and supply.
How Rothschild Banking Clan Uses Its Vast Wealth to Influence World Events and Control Governments
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores.
Media-shy banking firm Rothschild & Co popped up in the news recently when it was revealed that it played a key role in restructuring over $20 bln in Ukrainian debt, including by arranging face-to-face meetings between Kiev officials and vulture funds like Black Rock and Amundi. The Rothschilds are known to have played an active role in carving up Ukraine’s wealth since at least 2014 and the Euromaidan coup.
But in the global scheme of things, despite its rich black soil and immense resource wealth, Ukraine may be just a side project for the banking family, whose role in the creation of the modern international financial order goes back to the 18th century, when German banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his five sons forged a global banking empire with offices in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples.
What is the Rothschild Banking Clan Known For?
Emerging in the heyday of European colonial empires, the Rothschilds cashed in on the vast wealth flowing to the continent to create merchant and private banking, asset management, venture capital, insurance, commodities, sovereign debt, media, transport, real estate, pharmaceuticals, mining, and energy enterprises.
Establishing close ties to the British Crown, Mayer and his sons played an instrumental role in financing and operating colonial megaprojects of the day, from the Suez Canal trade artery to the East India Company – the British imperial megacorporation which ruthlessly ruled over India as a private company through much of the 18th and 19th centuries, sucking out untold wealth.
The family proved highly active in the international politics of the tumultuous 19th and 20th centuries, betting on Britain against France during the Napoleonic Wars by financing Hessian mercenary soldiers and loaning money to the Crown, and using insider knowledge of government deliberations and a sophisticated communication system to make financial decisions that would consolidate its fortunes.
How Rich are the Rothschilds?
A big question mark surrounding the Rothschild family revolves around their net worth, with publicly available valuations varying from a paltry $1 billion to $400 billion and even $1.2 trillion – which would put the family well above the oft-published pop financial media lists of the “world’s richest,” which typically include names like the Waltons, the Arnaults, the Kochs, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The difficulty in establishing a precise figure stems from the family’s incredible secrecy, combined with the murky nature of finance capital. The Rothschilds ‘went dark’, financially speaking, in the early 20th century, when the introduction of national taxation schemes across Europe led family banks to formally split to create ‘independent’ financial institutions.
For instance, while reporting on the family’s public-facing business empire is often focused on the Paris, London and Singapore-based Rothschild & Co, other divisions, like the Geneva-based Edmond de Rothschild Group are less often mentioned, and they are rarely if ever mentioned together.
How Powerful are the Rothschilds?
The world of high finance is an incredibly small place, with the Rothschilds assumed to enjoy a prominent place among banking families like the Rockefellers, Morgans, Barclays, Lazards, Warburgs and others in control over the world’s top private banks, from JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup to HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Societie Generale, and others.
The Rothschilds also have ownership stakes and investments ranging from 5%-50% or more in an array of European, US and Asian mega corporations, from Glencore Mining and TotalEnergies to Siemens, Exxon, Chevron, Repsol, Shell, Mitsubishi, Itochu Corp and the Rio Tinto Mining Corporation.
In his book ‘Big Oil & Their Bankers’, researcher Dean Henderson discovered that the Rothschilds and a clique of seven other banking families enjoy a controlling stake in the New York Federal Reserve Bank – the most powerful Fed bank and the heart of America’s financial system. Other investigators believe the Rothschilds either control the city of London and the Bank of England, or own it outright, although this has been disputed.
Do Rothschilds Control the World’s Politicians?
A handful of political figures, including several of America’s founding fathers, warned about the threat posed by the rise of powerful banking clans in their day. In a letter to John Taylor in 1816, Thomas Jefferson characterized the US banking system as a “blot” in “all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction,” and sweep away “the fortunes and morals of our citizens.”
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by prosperity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale,” Jefferson warned.
200 years on, Rothschild influence over world politicians has become impossible to conceal, with the family’s prominent members rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Petro Poroshenko, Emmanuel Macron, and others, either taking advantage of business connections and sheer economic and market power, or in Macron’s case – hiring him as an investment banker before he began his political career.
Do the Rothschilds Control the World?
To suggest that the Rothschild family is so powerful that they control the planet’s entire economic and political life and world events would be a stretch, not only due to the never-ending, largely silent struggle for resources and power with competitors, but the ever-shifting geopolitical balance of the modern world, which powerful banking elites might try to influence, but never control outright. Nonetheless, overlooking these shadow forces’ actions, or worse, dismissing them as mere “ conspiracy theories,” risks an overly simplistic view on the events and processes taking place in the modern world.
Banks Urged to Stop Financing Livestock Production
By Jesse Allen | American AG Network | September 13, 2024
Over 100 climate groups are pressuring JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and other private banks to stop financing global meat and dairy companies.
Agriculture Dive Dot Com says the institutions’ lending activities undermine their environmental commitments. An open letter from groups led by Friends of the Earth to some of the world’s biggest banks calls for a halt on any new financing that expands industrial livestock production and to add requirements that meat, dairy, and feed clients disclose their climate action plans. The letter calls out the banks by name for supporting the world’s biggest meat, dairy, and animal feed producers like JBS, Tyson Foods, and others.
While food companies are a small part of the banks’ overall lending portfolios, the groups say they have a much bigger impact on the institutions’ environmental footprints. The letter says increased lending has let the world’s biggest emitters grow their operations and emissions.
British Labour’s raw deal for working people
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 12, 2024
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide election in July with the slogan “a new deal for working people”.
Already the electioneering can be seen as a sham. This week, the Labour government won a majority vote in the House of Commons to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners. Around 10 million senior citizens will no longer receive a financial grant to help them pay soaring energy bills and keep their houses warm this winter.
The energy crisis for households in Britain and across Europe is a result of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the cutting off of Russia’s abundant gas and oil supplies to the continent. The Biden administration ordered the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. That was in September 2022. The best way to end the energy crisis for European households would be to stop the war, make peace, and return to normal relations. But the new Labour government is having none of that common sense. It is eagerly fueling the proxy war as much as the Conservatives before it, and what’s more now making the poor of Britain pay for the warmongering.
Prime Minister Starmer told angry unions and workers that he would make no apology for the winter fuel payment cut. His ministers are claiming they have “no choice” but to repair a “£22 billion blackhole” in public finances gutted by the predecessor Conservatives.
Starmer’s Labour is warning that more “tough choices” are coming in the coming weeks, meaning that working people and low-income families are going to face more economic austerity. So much for a democratic change from the hated Tories and the supposed “new deal for workers”.
The warped priorities of this government (as with the previous one) can be seen from the promises to boost spending on Britain’s military. Starmer has vowed to uphold a commitment to increase Britain’s “defense” budget from £54.2 bn (€64 bn, $74.7 bn) a year to £57.1 bn. That represents a 4.5 percent increase.
Under Starmer, Britain will continue to donate billions of public money to the Kiev regime.
This week, while the Labour government was voting to cut winter welfare for pensioners, the British foreign minister David Lammy traveled to Kiev alongside the U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, where they assured the Ukrainian regime that they would deliver more weapons, hinting at ending restrictions on long-range missiles to hit deep inside Russia.
Meanwhile, Britain’s defense minister John Healey will be in Ramstein, Germany, this week to meet with other military chiefs of the so-called Ukraine Contact Group. Healey, who calls himself “Mr Ukraine”, is to unveil another British military aid package of multi-role missiles worth £162 million. Healey is very much a deep-state figure inside the Labour government. This means a continuity in foreign policy despite the name change in Downing Street.
To date, since the eruption of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, Britain has doled out £12.5 bn (€14.7 bn) in military aid to the Kiev regime, including the training of up to 45,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Britain is the third-biggest military aid donor to Ukraine after the United States and Germany.
Starmer’s new Labour government is showing itself every bit as committed to funding the proxy war against Russia as its Conservative predecessor was.
Just three days after the general election on July 4, the new defense minister, John Healey, made his first overseas visit to Ukraine on July 7. Healey vowed to continue Britain’s support.
So while the Labour government claims that it has “no choice” but to slash public spending at home, it unquestioningly keeps spending on militarism at home and abroad.
This is a matter of political choice. If a Labour government were to genuinely prioritize the needs of working people, it could find the finances easily by cutting Britain’s excessive military budget and the largesse it bestows on a NeoNazi regime and the reckless proxy war against Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.
The insulting deception of Labour’s “new deal” means that Starmer’s government will require close shepherding, just in case it wobbles from the inevitable public backlash.
The vote this week to axe winter fuel payments to elderly citizens has sparked fury among the wider population. The anger will grow as more austerity measures against citizens kick in and while the proxy war in Ukraine continues to receive endless support with British public money.
It seems no coincidence that this week Britain’s Starmer is to visit the White House. The visit by Blinken to London and thence to Kiev alongside his British counterpart, as well as the Ramstein meeting for UK defense chief Healey, all suggest that a close eye is being kept on Downing Street to ensure that it does not get any notions about “serving the people”.
To that end too, it seems significant that the former Conservative defense minister Ben Wallace has taken to whipping up public fears of Russia.
Wallace wrote a recent oped in the Daily Telegraph in which he claimed that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “will soon turn his war machine on Britain”.
The article was reported in several other British media outlets. The same fear-mongering has been echoed by the new head of Britain’s armed forces, General Sir Roly Walker, who warned that the United Kingdom could be in an all-out war with Russia in the next three years.
Wallace, who is a cipher for Britain’s deep state, claimed that “Britain is in Putin’s cross-hairs”. He added: “Make no mistake, Putin is coming for us… we must be prepared for the inevitable.”
The hysteria from Britain’s ruling class is of course cringe-making. These claims about Russia’s malign intent and comparing Putin with Hitler are completely bereft of any historical facts, such as NATO expansionism and the weaponizing of a Nazi-adulating regime in Ukraine to provoke Russia.
Russian leaders have repeatedly said they have no intention of attacking any NATO nations. They say their involvement in Ukraine is a special operation to neutralize NATO threats to Russia’s national security.
Sooner or later, the British and Western public are going to demand accountability from their governments on why such huge finances are being ladled into promoting a highly dangerous conflict with Russia.
Britain’s Labour government is vulnerable to a public backlash because of its blatant duplicity.
That would explain the close attention from Washington to London’s policy, ensuring Starmer keeps toeing the line of NATO’s hostility to Moscow. British deep state assets like Ben Wallace also need to keep writing scare stories to frighten the public away from common sense criticism of London’s deranged warmongering and betrayal of working people.
Demoralization is deepening Ukraine’s armed forces as its situation in Donbass deteriorates
By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | September 12, 2024
The economic situation in Ukraine has deteriorated sharply in recent months. According to Bloomberg News on September 4, the Western countries have begun to reduce their financial support to the government in Kiev, while the IMF is ‘recommending’ that the government devalue the currency at a faster rate, cut interest rates, and strengthen tax-raising efforts to fill the country’s budget gap.
This occurred just ahead of a planned visit by Kiev regime head Volodymyr Zelensky to New York to attend the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which opened on September 10. While in New York, Zelensky will meet with U.S. government officials, and he says he wants to visit both camps in the current U.S. presidential election. Diplomatic niceties aside, a key reason for the visit is to press for more funding and more weapons for the regime’s key role as a proxy for the NATO countries’ war against Russia.
Former MP and right-wing nationalist Igor Mosiychuk is sure that the U.S. government will opt for caution over its continued military aid to Kiev because so much of that aid is being lost in battle or being destroyed by Russia’s missile defense before it arrives in the battle theatre. The degree of destruction of U.S. and other Western weaponry makes for a very big public relations problem for those arms manufacturers. It is hardly to the credit of their military technology that even their most modern and advanced weapons—tanks, armored personnel carriers, missile systems—are routinely being destroyed by Russia and otherwise not coming close to tipping the military balance.
Mosiychuk writes, “My sources in this delegation [the one traveling to Washington] say that there will be no large-scale assistance announced for the near future. That is, military supplying will continue as is. That’s because of the failure to defend Pokrovsk and because so much of the equipment that was thrown into the Kursk incursion has been destroyed,” the online Politnavigator reports on September 3.
Pokrovsk is a small city that is a key supply and transport depot for the war being prosecuted by Ukraine and its Western backers in the Donbass region. It lies some 80 km west of Donetsk city.
Of note recently is the inadvertent confirmation in early September that the British government of the day did, indeed, press Kiev to abandon the peace negotiations with Russia that took place in Istanbul in March and April 2022. Then-British prime minister Boris Johnson was caught out in an interview recently by the two, notorious Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, as reported on September 4 in Britain‘s Daily Mirror.
Today, Johnson is saying that Ukraine needs an even-harsher, compulsory military conscription and it needs more young men to fill the trenches and other defensive works along the front lines of the war. There are too many older soldiers and not enough young ones in Ukraine’s armed forces, Johnson says. “They haven’t called up many of their young people yet,” he said, referring to Ukraine’s age of military service being 25 (already lowered from 27 to 25 amidst huge controversy in April 2024).
The exchange by Johnson with the two pranksters was cringeworthy for many reasons, not least for the claim by Johnson that he wishes he could lead a legion of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine but lacks the military training to do so. He came much closer to reality when he cautioned against the entry of NATO-country soldiers into Ukraine. “I normally have a very high and healthy appetite for risk, but I think that would take risk to a new level and we don’t need to do that.” He added his view that while Zelensky might have accepted the loss of Donbass and Crimea at the negotiations in Istanbul in April 2022, that would be politically impossible today.
Zelensky is now actively requesting that the NATO countries supply long-range missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia. A formal request to the G7 countries to that effect was adopted by the Ukrainian legislature (Verkhovna Rada) on September 3.
Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik believes that behind the request for more advanced missile and missile-defense weaponry is a desire to drag NATO directly into the conflict with Russia, as Ukraine cannot prevail by itself. “The path to victory considered possible in Ukraine is to draw as many of our Western allies into this war as possible. By themselves, long-range missiles will not solve anything, but they can help achieve a balance of power for a couple of weeks, maybe for a month,” he said.
He added, importantly, “Given that Ukraine cannot fire these missiles on its own, that it also needs training and assistance with guidance, programming, and reconnaissance, the use of such missiles deep into Russian territory will create an excuse for Russia to strike back not only at Ukrainian territory but also at certain military bases of Western countries, for example in Poland or Romania. This raises the hope that the West will then get directly involved in the war.”
Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Dubynskyy writes that if the U.S. fails to permit the Kiev regime to strike Russia with more advanced missiles when President Biden meets with Zelenskyy in New York, this will be the sunset of Ukraine’s military campaign and the start of peace talks.
Who pays for Ukraine’s costly war?
Lesya Zaburanna, a member of the Verkhovna Rada’s budget committee, said on Aug. 30 that potential creditors are demanding that her committee and the Ukraine legislature as a whole look for more sources of military funding from within their own country. The war is becoming more and more expensive not only for the governing regime in Kiev Ukraine regime but also for its Western masters. “Both the IMF and a number of our partners are urging us to look for more internal resources [to pay for budget deficits],” the legislator said. That ‘internal resource’ is none other than the civilian population, to be robbed even further through higher taxes and service fees.
The price of drones for the Ukrainian military, for example, has gone up since September 1. Drones (UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles) have come to play a significant, nay crucial, role in this NATO proxy war. Significantly fewer of them are available on the open market due to export restrictions introduced last year by China for drones capable of military use. China has recently eased export restrictions for drones serving civilian purposes but further tightened restrictions for drones capable of military tasks.
As reported by Ukraine’s Strana news outlet on August 29, the commander of the tactical aerial reconnaissance group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Robert Brovdi, says military radios and electronic warfare systems are also being further restricted. According to Strana, the entirety of Ukraine’s arsenal of military drones is purchased from manufacturers in China.
Brovdi believes that restrictions on drone supply will push Kiev into negotiations. “I think that these restrictions will be one of the components of sitting us down to the negotiating table, but not at all on parity terms,” he says.
As it turns out, the West is unable to quickly establish mass production of military drones. According to a report in Al Jazeera in January 2024, “Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows China has delivered some 282 combat drones to 17 countries in the past decade, making it the world’s leading exporter of the weaponised aircraft. By comparison, the United States, which has the most advanced UAVs in the world, — has delivered just 12 combat drones in the same period, all of them to France and Britain. The U.S., however, still leads in the export of unarmed surveillance drones.”
Similar, extreme shortages apply also to artillery shells for Ukraine. Recently, South Africa blocked its supply of ammunition to Poland in order to prevent it from reaching Ukraine, as reported in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. Warsaw had ordered 155-mm shells from German defense giant Rheinmetall, to be manufactured by Denel Munition, a subsidiary of the company in the Republic of South Africa.
The Czech Republic buys another portion of shells for Ukraine, in its case from Turkey. But it is significantly increasing its price for resale to Kiev, as was reported by the supplier company Czechoslovak Group at the end of August. According to the company, Turkish manufacturers sell the shells for 2,700 US dollars equivalent, but the company itself takes 500 dollars on top because it “provides a rather complicated service adding significant value”.
Deteriorating war front in Donbass region
It is a rare Ukrainian military officer, politician or expert of late who has not been panicking about the collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbass and the rapid advance of the Russian armed forces in the region. Ukrainian military and Telegram channels note that the Russian armed forces are steadily taking towns and villages in Donbass and there is none of the total destruction that took place in the heavily fortified cities of Bakhmut and Avdeevka, which fell in 2023 and 2024, respectively. (The towns and cities of Ukraine-controlled Donbass were heavily fortified in the years following 2015, when Ukraine was supposed to be implementing the Minsk 2 peace agreement it signed with the pro-autonomy movement in Donbass on February 15, 2015 then proceeded to sabotage. (The ‘Minsk-2’ agreement, text here in Wikipedia, was endorsed by no less than the UN Security Council on February 17, 2015.)
Oleksiy Arestovich, a former advisor to the office of the Ukraine president, calls the pace of Russian advances in and around Pokrovsk an operational crisis for the AFU; it is demoralizing the entire Ukrainian military. “Rumors are growing among the troops (and this is the worst part) that the Donetsk region is simply being surrendered by quiet agreement with the Kremlin. Such rumors are signs of very serious demoralization,” he says.
Roman Ponomarenko, a cadre of the former, neo-Nazi ‘Azov Battalion’ (today fully integrated into the Ukraine armed forces and national guard) talks about the same thing, stressing that forcibly conscripted Ukrainians do not want to fight. “For now, it looks like our front in Donbass has collapsed. The defense by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is disorganized, the troops are tired and weakened, and many units are demoralized. The replenishments do not help, due to their inexperience and limited training. In fact, they only complicate the combat work of the existing units. The Russians are not breaking through deeply because their troops are as exhausted as ours. But they retain a significant, quantitative advantage in numbers and weaponry. They have unlimited supplies of ammunition, and therefore, their offensive continues. We cannot stop it yet.”
Igor Mosiychuk has also spoken about the demoralization of the Ukrainian troops. “My friends who are fighting confirm to me that what is happening now among the troops is just a horror—personnel issues, defensive strategy, the movements and rotations of units—it’s just a horror.”
He also notes that in Pokrovsk, where the Russian army is approaching, many Ukrainian citizens, including those from Kiev, are now hastily registering to obtain Russian passports.
Demoralization in the Ukrainian army is caused not only by the fact that most of the army is made up of recruits conscripted against their will in a dubious ‘fight for democracy’. The fact is that neither officers nor soldiers understand the logic of the Ukrainian command’s actions, for example, its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. To many of them, military decisions seem irrational and have led to unnecessary deaths, and all this plays a role in the army’s decomposition.
Towns and small cities in Donbass where fortifications have been built since 2014 (the year of the far-right coup in Kiev) are suddenly being abandoned and military units are being transferred for an offensive in Kursk, only to be exposed to crushing air strikes there due to the lack of fortifications. In the summer of 2023, Ukrainian troops were sent head-on into a highly publicized ‘counter-offensive’ against carefully prepared Russian defense lines; large numbers were killed or taken prisoner.
Periodically, the Ukrainian command orders groups of commandos to go on raids for public relations purposes, from which many do not return. The purpose of such raids is beyond the comprehension of many military strategists. Soldiers are tasked with staging a ‘breakthrough’ of a small group to a deserted coastline in Crimea, planting a flag and taking a photo, and then leaving, if possible. The cost of a brief video with accompanying photos is human lives.
A captured Ukrainian commando, Oleksandr Lyubas, who survived a failed raid on Crimea, told a court in Russia in early September, “Our training was on scooters, so that disembarkation and advancing could go quickly. There were scooters everywhere. All of us were trained, but the training didn’t last long, maybe three days. We trained in Vilkovo, Odessa region, and were then tasked with entering Crimea, putting up a flag, making a speech and then moving away.”
The timing of such operations, as military leaders have noted in various interviews, is also unclear to the soldiers. The chosen dates are not based upon what can be most effective but, rather, to coincide with some visit somewhere by a Western leader, or when a major international event is to take place.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Rubicon’ warns that if the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not demonstrate significant successes in the near future, skeptical assessments in the Western press of their activities will only gain momentum. It says that in today’s post-modern society, keeping a public’s attention on something for two and a half years is an extremely difficult task and not to be trivialized. This is what the Western governments and media have been trying to do through the ‘serialization’ of information, as in a television series. Loyal media presents to its readers or viewers a series of loosely connected stories, each of which they try to ‘sensationalize’ to maximize public attention. Totally absent are analytical reports, offering a strategic forecast for the future.
In 1914-1917, during World War I, discontent and unrest in the Russian army of the day often arose precisely because offensives and operations were carried out at the wrong time and lacked military logic or visible purpose. They were staged solely at the behest of the allies (Great Britain and France) and treated as a ‘working off’ of the Western loans undertaken by the Tsarist government of the day.
A retired colonel of Ukraine’s SBU (secret police) and military expert, Oleh Starikov believes that in two months’ time, there will be “some kind of capitulation”, and this will lead to big changes in Ukraine’s political landscape. “November will be the end of the war, but what the new beginning will be, I cannot say. It will be the beginning of ‘something’, but no one knows what, exactly. Ukraine will be different; the structure of society and the elites of society will be completely different. Those elites who are now in the Verkhovna Rada will no longer be there. Whether that is for the better or worse is a separate conversation, but for sure Ukraine will be different.”
Thus is Ukraine entering a period of strong political and economic turbulence. This is a direct consequence of its complete dependence—economic and military—on the United States and on the outcome of its presidential election in November.
In the meantime, Western leaders and bankers are advising Ukraine to catch ever-more people with its military conscription and ship them off to the front while raising taxes on everyone and looking for yet more financial resources to repay loans for the whole imbroglio.
There is a joke circulating in Ukraine that for a cow to give more milk while eating less, it needs to be fed less and milked more. This is a rather ironic summary of what Western imperialism is holding out for the future of Ukraine.
Russian ‘Force Majeure’ on Resource Exports Could Clobber Western Economies: Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
President Putin has asked the government to consider restrictions on the export of strategic materials like nickel, titanium and uranium in response to unfriendly countries’ actions. Sputnik asked investment experts specializing in resource markets how these restrictions would impact the world economy. In short: it wouldn’t be pretty for the West.
Investors and market experts are buzzing over the Russian president’s instructions to Prime Minister Mishustin to whip up a report on measures Russia could take to limit the export of certain strategic minerals in response to Western sanctions policy, with uranium stocks enjoying an immediate price surge, and observers warning of shortages and hefty price increases for strategic metals if were to Moscow move forward with restrictions.
Along with nickel, titanium and uranium, Putin hinted that “other” resources may be affected, while emphasizing that restrictions should be considered so long as “this does not harm us.”
A resource superpower, Russia is endowed with substantial reserves of virtually all the primary commodities required to keep a modern economy functioning.
- The country possesses up to 12% of the world’s oil reserves, 32% of its natural gas, 8% of all untapped uranium, and 11% of the planet’s coal.
- Russia accounts for 25% of global iron reserves, 33% of nickel, 15% of zinc and titanium, 11% of tin, 10% of lead and rhodium, 8% of chromium, 7% of copper, 3% of cobalt, 2% of bauxite and about 1% of gallium, plus substantial amounts of beryllium, bismuth, and mercury. Russia also has about 12% of global potash (used in an array of areas, from agriculture and industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals).
- Up to 23% of the world’s gold, 12% of silver, up to a fifth of platinum group metals, and as much as 55% of diamonds are buried under Russia’s soil.
- Russia is also a potential world leader in the production of rare earth minerals (which are used in an array of modern high-tech devices, communications systems and advanced weaponry). While it only accounts for about 2% of rare earths production today, Russia has the second-largest reserves, constituting up to 28.7 million metric tons, and has committed to major investments in production and processing. Known rare earths possessed by Russia include samarium, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum, neodymium, promethium, and cerium.
World’s Dependence on Russian Resources
Russia’s detractors have often played up its resource exports as a sign of the country’s lagging development or low place in the global hierarchy of ‘developed vs. underdeveloped’ nations. However, the partial breakdown in ties with Western countries after 2022 showed that while Russia can definitely survive without Western technological and consumer goods, the same cannot be said of the West when it comes to Russian oil, gas, uranium, fertilizers and other materials.
The US, for instance, continues to rely on Russian uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants, vowing to wean itself off its dependency only by 2028. Europe, having largely cut itself off from Russia’s cheap and dependable pipeline-delivered natural gas, is currently buying record volumes of Russian LNG amid shortages of US and Gulf-sourced supplies. Furthermore, major Western agricultural producers including the US, Germany, France and Poland have carved out special exceptions for themselves to allow the continued purchase of Russia’s world-class nitrogen fertilizers, which are energy-intensive to produce.
“The pain” of a Russian freeze on strategic resource exports “would be felt by both the US and the EU, and all countries listed as ‘unfriendly’ to Russia, as they would have to source the required elements from third country suppliers, and that would entail an appreciable price increase for the commodity, and the extended supply chain costs that entails,” Paul Goncharoff, general director of consulting firm Goncharoff LCC, told Sputnik, commenting on Putin’s proposal.
“In this case, most if not all alternative suppliers would be countries listed as ‘friendly’ to Russia. This is a value-added benefit for those countries,” Goncharoff added.
“In every instance the end user pays this mandatory unlegislated tax bill in the form of even higher inflation,” Goncharoff said, hinting that the higher commodity prices would add to the pain already being experienced by producers and consumers in many Western countries as a consequence of the two-and-a-half-year-old hybrid war against Russia.
The US and Europe should expect a 15-20% bump in the costs of its strategic resource imports if Moscow moves ahead with the restrictions, especially since Russia is in a unique position globally in the production of high-quality nickel, aviation-grade titanium, and enriched uranium, says Maxim Khudalov, chief strategist at Vector X, a Moscow-based investment and brokerage firm.
For instance, while Russia today accounts for ‘only’ about 8% of total global nickel output, it accounts for about 20% of the production of “high-grade nickel used to produce high-quality stainless steel and nickel-containing alloys, which are needed for space, aviation and defense technologies,” Khudalov explained.
The same goes for high quality titanium, Khudalov said, pointing out Russia’s titanium giant VSMPO-AVISMA in Sverdlovsk region is “unique in the world” as far as its ability to produce vast amounts of aviation-grade titanium is concerned.
Finding a replacement supplier would take time, including running a gauntlet of quality and safety testing and recertification which could take years, and in the case of aviation-grade titanium be required to meet strict temperature, bending, pressure load and other requirements, the expert noted.
“In an airplane, you can’t just say ‘well, I don’t like this supplier of an element used for the wing, I’ll take it from somewhere else.’ Nothing of the kind. If you replace the element used in the wing, you change the airplane, and have to retest it, because it’s no longer safe for civilian use,” Khudalov explained. “The conclusion here is that it is very difficult to replace Russian supplies in the aviation industry, requiring significant recertification efforts.”
If Europe loses access to Russian aviation-grade titanium, that would add to Airbus’s production costs, affecting the aviation giant considerably in its high-stakes rivalry with Boeing.
Meanwhile, higher nickel costs would mean higher prices for virtually all of Europe’s high-tech products, from electronics to specialized mechanical engineering products, Khudalov said, emphasizing that “all of this will become more expensive in Europe and again allow their American ‘friends’ to grab the remainder of their markets.”
“In this sense, Europe is more vulnerable than the US, because the US, with all its capabilities, can afford to increase production costs, at least because their energy is cheap. Europe cannot afford any increase in production costs and will objectively lose,” Khudalov said.
In the case of enriched uranium, the situation is even more complex, according to Khudalov, because it is a restricted resource typically exported to a specific customer for a specific use, and planning for the replacement of suppliers is a long and painstaking process, since nuclear power plants can’t simply be turned on and off at will.
“The French are the second player after Russia in uranium enrichment, but Russian enrichment technology is head and shoulders above anyone else in the world, and our enrichment costs are 35-40% cheaper than anywhere in the world. So if a country is forced to switch to French-sourced material, it will have to pay a very hefty premium,” Khudalov emphasized.
In that sense, France could meet increased US demand over time, but not overnight, since it would have to ramp up its own enrichment capacity.
“The US themselves were planning on disconnecting from our uranium starting in 2028. Well, we could ‘help them’, so to speak, to implement their decision by making deliveries more regulated,” Khudalov suggested.
Short-Term Losses, Long-Term Win
Russia, over the short term, could lose a bit of its export revenues if resource exports to the West were suddenly curtailed, Khudalov noted.
“But on the other hand, what do we need export revenues for? Generally speaking, the whole point of international trade for us is to sell raw materials in exchange for technology. Western countries have refused to supply us with technology basically going back to 2014. Then the question is: why do we continue to supply them with strategic raw materials? To get some green pieces of paper which they then seize from us? This is a rather strange position. Therefore, here it is turning out that since they limit our access to technology, we are starting to limit their access to raw materials,” Khudalov said.
“It can’t be said that all these possible restrictions on the Americans and the Europeans are critical and would kill their industry. It won’t. But it will add very serious difficulties, first and foremost of an organizational nature, because they would have to look for a supplier of comparable quality, and of course, pay a price they’re not accustomed to paying. Because when a force majeure occurs on the market, and for them this would constitute a force majeure, any normal businessman will be obliged to take advantage of their status as an alternative supplier. Most of the alternative suppliers are located in China, with whom the Americans are in the process of kicking off a global trade war,” the observer stressed.
“The cherry on the cake is that the president’s proposal sounded like a proposal to limit the supply of strategic metals to unfriendly countries, but probably implies no restrictions for friendly countries. In that case, we would deliver a nice pass to China, whose entire industry is aimed at producing high-tech equipment, and would effectively get a 15-20% advantage on the cost of strategic materials over Western competitors,” benefiting Beijing in its push to put “pressure on Europe and the US in all markets” globally, Khudalov said.
Russia, meanwhile, will be able to reorient its strategic metals exports to other major alternative markets as well, including India, according to the expert.
Fighting the ‘Middle State’
By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | September 10, 2024
From around the middle of the twentieth century, federal agencies tasked with law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and various types of “defense” have accrued overwhelming power in the United States. Democrats, who now worship such agencies, may wail at the term “Deep State” and the idea that they are nefarious. But regardless, the FBI, CIA, and myriad other “three letter agencies” are immensely powerful and reside outside of the political process which the public participates in.
Perhaps the John F. Kennedy assassination was a coup, perhaps it wasn’t. But there is little doubt that in the immortal words of Senator Chuck Schumer, these agencies have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” While President Donald Trump may give lip service to fighting the Deep State, his support of what I called the “Trump-Biden World War III Bill” funding Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan demonstrates that he knows the limits of permitted resistance to their power and that they will ultimately win. While it is probably impossible to fight the Deep State within the legal democratic process, we also have an enemy in “the Middle State,” the administrators who operate in the open, and that can potentially be vanquished from within the system.
It is best to think of this Middle State as playing the role of the clergy under feudalism. In fact, this is a direct parallel since the kind of work they do is called “clerical,” having historically been done by clergy. The lack of formal power of the Catholic Church in the United States means we have never had the clericalism and anti-clericalism of the Latin countries, but perhaps it is time for our anti-clerical moment. You can argue that this is different because the clergy performed a primarily religious function, but this disregards just how much secular liberals worship the government.
Religious or not, the record of gutting the clergy’s power without collapsing into communism is better than that of removing the nobles (who are more akin to the Deep State). Most of northern Europe was able to remove the power of clergy during the reformation, though no example is as striking as Henry VIII of England closing the monasteries. Of course, over time a more powerful secular bureaucracy arose, but it was a long process. In the modern era, President Ronald Reagan was able to fire the federal air traffic controllers for striking, a move no president has survived (be that politically or mortally) making against any intelligence agency. This should give us hope that getting at least some of our country and freedom back is a possibility.
Some months ago The New York Times put out a short video titled, “It Turns Out the ‘Deep State’ is Actually Kind of Awesome,” which was targeted at people whose brains are already mush. The basic premise was to go around talking to people with relatively anodyne government jobs and asking these mundane bureaucrats how it felt to be classified as enemies of the people by Donald Trump. No attention was given to the parts of the government that are secretive or dangerous, and the message was that these are “public servants” and not “unelected bureaucrats.”
While some of these jobs are necessary to run a government, administrative bloat is consuming our society and economy, with our terminally “underfunded” schools, which always have money for new administrators, being just one example. The absurdity of the press telling us to appreciate the selflessness of this class is that salaries, benefits, and pensions are much higher than comparable jobs in the private sector, all with much better job security, so they are not sacrificing anything. As has historically been common in mature states which become ever more corrupt, our clergy’s power has completely outstripped that of the laity in a way which greatly harms the common man. Further, these tax eaters are among the biggest supporters of the growth of government, and are the ones who actually do most of the work of harassing and oppressing us. Reigning this in should be a political priority. The fact that they are generally Democratic partisans is an advantage since it gives the other faction a meaningful self-interest in fighting them; it’s the one time politicians can be incentivized to do something useful.
Though it has been far from perfect, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter provides a compelling demonstration of the broader situation. He fired over half of the Twitter workforce upon taking power and the website continued to function, even if there has been some problems and Musk’s mercurial nature provides its own annoyances. Like the government and the rest of our society, Twitter had a large class of people who didn’t do anything a normal person could identify as useful. Instead, their job was to harass and control the users in a way that made the experience much worse for the majority in favor of their narrow class interests. They were certainly self-important, but not important in the normally understood sense of the word.
As at Twitter, there is every reason to believe much of our government bureaucracy could be gutted and ultimately do better at their core tasks. Hopefully, this would inspire the private sector to follow suit and purge its own clerics. Regulatory requirements do become a problem in any program to reduce employee numbers, and we know that government career bureaucrats will apply them maliciously in this circumstance, but major cuts to regulations would be a key part of any program to go after the bureaucracy.
It is fair to be “black pilled” about fighting the CIA or getting rid of the warfare state. However, the offense taken about Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s “joke” that miserable, childless cat ladies who work for the government are ruining society shows that this class is simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. They may have unions and a sympathetic media and a political party, but the Middle State does not have the power to go around blackmailing, prosecuting, or assassinating everyone of significance who may oppose them. Our entire system is designed to ensure the Deep State maintains power, but it is a different matter for the Middle State. It would require determination and decent political leadership to make it a reality, but the Middle State, major enemies of freedom in their own right, can be defeated within the confines of the current political system, and deserve to be.
Putin: Russia May Restrict Export of Strategic Materials in Response to Unfriendly Powers’ Actions
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.09.2024
Despite slapping Moscow with an unprecedented sanctions regime in 2022, European countries and the United States continue to rely on vast quantities of Russian energy and strategic materials, including gas and uranium, importing them to prevent spiking prices and shortages from wrecking their economies.
Russia is a world leader in the production of an array of strategic minerals, from natural gas, gold and diamonds to uranium, titanium and nickel, and should “think about” whether it’s possible to reduce the export of the latter three resources in response to unfriendly countries’ actions against Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said.
Speaking at a meeting with government ministers on Wednesday, Putin asked Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to look into the idea and report back, stressing that any proposed restrictions should not be “to one’s own detriment.”
“Mikhail Vladimirovich, I have a request for you: please look at some types of goods that we supply in large quantities to the world market – the supply of a number of goods to us is being restricted. Well, perhaps we should also think about certain restrictions – on uranium, titanium, nickel,” Putin said.
“In some countries, strategic reserves are being created, and some other measures are being taken. In general, if this does not harm us, we should think…about certain restrictions on supplies to the foreign market,” he added.
“I am not saying this needs to be done tomorrow, but we could think about certain restrictions on supplies to the foreign market not only of the goods I mentioned, but also of some others,” Putin said.
The ongoing NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine has reduced, but not fully stopped, economic exchange between Russia and Western countries, with the US continuing the purchase of Russian uranium for its vast network of nuclear power plants, and gas continuing to flow via a pipeline in Ukraine to customers in Hungary and Slovakia, and shipped west aboard tankers in the form of LNG. Concurrently, a number of Western companies have refused to leave the Russian market, continuing to sell their wares to Russians despite sanctions and other restrictions put in place by their own governments. Some Russian observers have suggested that it’s long past time for Russia to halt economic cooperation with countries fueling the proxy war in Ukraine, in favor of ramped up trade ties with the BRICS bloc and other friendly countries in the Global South.
Germany’s Neglect of National Interests & a Pending Nationalist Backlash
By Glenn Diesen | September 10, 2024
Security competition is the main source of conflict in the international system, as states pursuing national interests and security for themselves often undermine the security of other states. The ability to transcend nationalism by pursuing a more cosmopolitan world order is thus an attractive proposition. For Germany, with its destructive history of radical ethno-nationalism and fascism, idealist internationalism has an immense appeal.
However, is it possible to transcend power competition when the state is the highest sovereign? Should aggressive power politics be addressed by ignoring national interests or managing competing national interests? Cosmopolitanism and liberal idealism do not transcend power politics and create a global village, rather it results in the neglect of national interests and subordination to foreign powers. Aggressive nationalism will likely be the predictable backlash to ignoring national interests.
In the early 19th century, Germans fell under the lure of international idealism and failed to defend national interests. Cultural nationalism and economic nationalism became instruments for the Germans to balance the French and restore dignity and national interests. Two centuries later, Germany is yet again not capable of pursuing national interests until it decouples from American cosmopolitanism, universalism and hegemony. It seems likely, that history will repeat itself as Germany will return to cultural and economic nationalism or be condemned to vassalage and irrelevance.
German Subordination to France
In the late 18th and early 19th century, France represented a cosmopolitan universal civilisation in which development meant becoming more like France. Napoleon could thus find some people willing to support him in all countries, although internationalist initiatives usually served a French national cause.
When Napoleon invaded in the early 19th century, some German princes surrendered their sovereignty and national interests to the French with great enthusiasm. In what became known as the “shame of the princes”, many German rulers welcomed Napoleon’s annexation of the West bank of the Rhine. A combination of receiving economic compensation and fawning over France resulted in the German princes abandoning national interests and their dignity.
The Germans and other Europeans became increasingly concerned about France and the obedience demanded by allies under the Napoleonic Continental System. Under the guise of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, a system developed that was primarily for the benefit of French manufacturers. The cultural fawning over France resulted in Germans failing to further develop their own culture. While the French had promised peace under its leadership, the Europeans instead had constant war as they became instruments of war to be used against the British.
What was the solution? Germany began to pursue cultural sovereignty and economic sovereignty as conditions to restore dignity, national interests, and political sovereignty. The cosmopolitan philosophy of Voltaire and a common path to cosmopolitanism and universal civilisation were challenged by the philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder, who argued that cultural differences should be preserved to contribute to the richness of humanity.[1] Culture is a specific link between a distinctive people required for social cohesion and societal dignity. Herder cautioned that imitation of foreign cultures made the people shallow, artificial, and weak. In Russia, there were similar concerns that imitating French culture undermined Russia’s unique development and its ability to contribute something new to the world.
Economic sovereignty was also a requirement, as Friedrich List recognised that excessive economic dependence also undermined political sovereignty:
“As long as the division of the human race into independent nations exists, political economy will as often be at variance with cosmopolitan principles… a nation would act unwisely to endeavour to promote the welfare of the whole human race at the expense of its particular strength, welfare and independence”.[2]
German Subordination to the US
Following the Second World War, the pendulum swung in the opposing direction as German national power had to be dressed up in internationalist initiatives. As Chancellor Helmut Schmidt argued in 1978, it was:
“German foreign policy rests on two great pillars: the European Community and the North Atlantic Alliance… It is all the more necessary for us to clothe ourselves in this European mantle. We need this mantle not only to cover our foreign policy nakednesses, like Berlin or Auschwitz, but we need it also to cover these ever-increasing relative strengths, economic, political, military, of the German Federal Republic within the West”.[3]
The pillars of German development were also a prison to ensure its subordination to the US. In the words of Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General, acknowledged that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.[4] The historical role of Britain and the US had always been to prevent Germany and Russia from getting too close as it would form a centre of power capable of challenging the dominance of the maritime hegemon at the periphery. Peacetime alliances that contain and perpetuate the weakness of adversaries also ensure the dependence and obedience of allies. Much like its French predecessor, the US appeals to cosmopolitanism and universalism to manage an international system that upholds a US national cause.
Germany in Decline
Until recently, Germany had become known as the industrial engine that was driving European economies forward, while it had seemingly learned from its history by attempting to elevate liberal democratic principles above power politics.
This era is seemingly over as Germany has transformed itself in a remarkably short period of time. Germany fails to defend its basic national interests, its economy is deindustrialising, society becomes more pessimistic, the political leadership has rediscovered enthusiasm for war, German tanks are yet again burning in Kursk, there are some signs of political violence to come, the freedom of expression is undermined, and the political upheaval opens the door to political alternatives that the government rejects.
The German economic model has been broken as Germany cut itself off from Russia as a source of cheap energy and a huge export market for manufactured goods. Washington is also increasingly pressuring Germany to sever its economic ties with China as well, resulting in a less competitive economy and excessive reliance on the US. Germany’s submissiveness was demonstrated by the deafening silence when its key energy infrastructure was destroyed by allies (the US and Ukraine), while European allies such as the Czech Republic referred to the attack as legitimate and Poland told Germany to stay quiet and apologise for having built the pipeline. As Germany deindustrialises and its economy declines, the US has responded by offering subsidies to German industries that will move across the Atlantic to the US.
At the heart of the problem is that Germany no longer sufficiently defends its national interests. As the public flees to alternative media and new political parties, the government does not know how to respond. Police appear on the doorsteps of journalists, and protesters are beaten by the police for protesting a genocide in Palestine that Germany has supported with arms shipments. German Foreign Minister felt comfortable declaring that Ukraine will continue to receive support “no matter what my German voters think”. The media is dismissive of political violence against Sahra Wagenknecht on the political left, which is to some extent justified by arguing she is actually on the political right. On the actual political right, the AfD is surging to fill the vacuum left behind by an incompetent government without a plan, and the political-media elites have responded to the surge by discussing whether this opposition party should be banned. The rise of the AfD is compared to the rise of Hitler, yet the AfD is pushing for a negotiated peace in Ukraine while the government has backed military solutions.
The EU is also acting deeply irrationally in the Ukraine War. The Europeans used to recognise that the American ambition to pull Ukraine into the orbit of NATO would result in another European war. In 2008 the Europeans attempted to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine for this reason. In the words of Angela Merkel, Moscow would interpret the attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO as “a declaration of war”. Yet, they went ahead with the promise of future membership in 2008 to appease Washington. After destabilising the Ukrainian government, the Europeans were guarantors for a unity government in Kiev in 2014, but then betrayed this agreement for stability as the US pushed for a coup instead. After a war broke out in Donbas as a direct result of the coup, the Germans and French negotiated the Minsk Peace Agreement but then later admitted it was only to buy time to arm Ukraine. When Russia invaded in 2022, the Europeans were yet again silent as the US and Britain sabotaged the Istanbul Peace Agreement and instead pushed for war.
Even as Ukraine is losing the war, the Europeans do not want to discuss restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Instead, the incoming EU foreign policy chief argues there should not be any diplomacy with Russia as Putin is a “war criminal”, and she has defined victory as breaking up Russia into many smaller nations. Hungary has attempted to restore diplomacy and negotiations and Orban travelled to Kiev, Moscow and Beijing. The EU responded by punishing Hungary. Subsequently, the EU has limited itself to the unachievable objective of defeating the world’s largest nuclear power and a vital trading partner, while rejecting any diplomatic solutions.
Resolving the problems of Germany and the EU requires some reflection on the European security architecture that was built over the past 30 years. The decision to redivide Europe and incrementally move these dividing lines to the East was a recipe for collective hegemony – not peace or stability. In the words of President Bill Clinton in January 1994, we cannot afford “to draw a new line between East and West that could create a self-fulfilling prophecy of future confrontation”.[5] Expanding NATO triggered a new Cold War over where the new dividing lines should be drawn in Europe. This has nothing to do with liberal democracy, and everything to do with advancing a unipolar world order that has now come to an end. Continuing down this path ensures that Europe will transition from a subject of security to an object of security. Reversing the path to irrelevance requires admitting the mistakes made over the past 30 years that were celebrated as virtuous politics. Without any correction, the EU will tear itself apart and Germany will continue declining in relevance.
A Nationalist Backlash to Come?
The failure to defend national interests leaves a vacuum for nationalist political forces. Nationalism can be a movement for national liberation, sovereignty, freedom and prosperity in the spirit of Johann Gottfried Herder. However, times of crisis can also produce uglier forms of nationalism. Either way, a political correction (or over-correction) will eventually come.
[1] .G. Herder book in 1784 “Ideas of the Philosophy of the History of Mankind”.
[2] List, F. 1827. Outlines of American Political Economy, in a Series of Letters. Samuel Parker, Philadelphia, p.30.
[3] Bundesbank. ‘EMS: Bundesbank Council meeting with Chancellor Schmidt (assurances on operation of EMS) [declassified 2008],’ Bundesbank Archives, N2/267, 30 November 1978.
[4] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_137930.htm
Featured Video
Iran, China & Russia v. Trump
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Free Book
Tell Me Again, Who Made The Desert Bloom?
Lawrence of Cyberia | March 19, 2010
In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Israeli General: War with Iran does not serve Israel as global standing erodes over Gaza
- The collapse is real – Lebanon ceasefire marks a historic strategic defeat
- Trump keeps Hormuz blockade despite Iran reopening passage
- ‘New order’ in Strait of Hormuz: IRGC Navy mandates authorization for all vessels
- Persian Gulf oil production can take two years to recover from war: IEA chief
- Washington hiding billion-dollar combat losses to Iran’s precision strikes: Report
- Israel Considers Ceasefire a Betrayal
- Iran Opens Strait of Hormuz for Duration of Lebanon Ceasefire
- Russian security chief issues warning to four NATO states
- Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Naval Blockade & Ground Invasion of Iran?
- If Americans Knew
- Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel
- Think the Iran war is a disaster? Blame these DC think tanks first.
- Number of Palestinian Prisoners Rises By 83% Since October 2023
- With multiple “ceasefires” in place, Israel keeps on killing in Gaza and Lebanon – Daily Update
- Mearsheimer: Israel Owns Trump
- Mark Levin and Jonathan Pollard Push for Nuking Iran
- TCN: America Enables Israel’s Crimes
- Israel’s Next Leader Will Be Just Like Bibi – but Without the Corruption
- Born into war, raised across borders: The story of Gaza’s premature babies separated from their parents amid Israel’s genocide
- Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service
- No Tricks Zone
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
Aletho News 