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EU nations to give Ukraine more tanks

RT | September 6, 2024

Germany, along with Denmark and the Netherlands, will supply 77 more Cold-War-era Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has announced. In addition, Berlin intends to provide an additional twelve PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzers, he said.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz approved the delivery of German-made tanks to Ukraine back in January 2023. Kiev has since lost an unknown number of these tanks. The Russian military has released numerous videos showing the destruction of such hardware.

Speaking during a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group at US Ramstein military base in Germany on Friday, Pistorius met with Vladimir Zelensky, who attended personally in a bid to drum up more defense aid. The German minister assured the Ukrainian leader that Berlin “remains in a continuous delivery process for Ukraine.”

Pistorius estimated that Germany, together with Denmark, had already delivered 58 Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine, with 77 more pieces of this hardware to be supplied in the near future.

“We will deliver twelve modern PzH 2000 howitzers to Ukraine, with six expected to arrive in the country by the end of this year,” Pistorius added.

He went on to say that air defense remains a crucial area for Kiev and that more hardware is needed to better fend off Russian missile strikes. According to the minister, Germany is funding the procurement of twelve IRIS-T air defense systems to be shipped to Ukraine. Moreover, Berlin has pledged more medium- and close-range systems, including more than 60 self-propelled Gepard anti-aircraft guns.

Pistorius also stressed that since November 2022, more than 16,000 Ukrainian service members have been trained on German soil.

In mid-July, the Bavarian daily Munchner Merkur, citing government data, claimed that Germany had secretly delivered a “huge” defense aid package to Ukraine between late June and early July. The package reportedly included ten Leopard 1A5 tanks, among other hardware.

The media outlet also alleged at the time that Berlin planned to send by an unspecified date 85 more tanks of this type to Ukraine as part of a joint project with Denmark.

Moscow has consistently warned that deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine only serve to prolong the bloodshed, without changing the course of the conflict.

September 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

UK announces new missiles package for Ukraine

RT | September 6, 2024

London will supply Kiev with £162 million ($213 million) worth of Martlet multirole missiles, with the first shipment set to arrive by the end of the year, the UK Defense Ministry said in a press release on Friday.

This comes after two weeks of Russian strikes on the Ukrainian military industrial and energy sector, as Russia advances in Donbass.

The announcement also comes after a bilateral meeting between UK Defense Secretary John Healey and his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, earlier this week, the press statement said. The UK will begin to deliver £300 million worth of artillery ammunition, as well as 650 Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) systems, with the first shipments expected by the end of 2024, according to the press release.

The UK, which is among Ukraine’s biggest war sponsors, has provided Kiev with more than €8.92 billion in military aid since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, according to Germany’s Kiel institute.

Last month, however, Zelensky criticized the UK for its “slowed down” pace in providing weaponry. “We will insist on the need for bold steps, bold decisions,” he said in an address.

The delivery of LMM missiles is meant to boost Kiev’s air defenses against attacks like this week’s Russian strike on Poltava, Healey said.

Moscow struck “the 179th Joint Training Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” with two Iskander ballistic missiles in the deadliest attack this year, the Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday. Foreign instructors were preparing Ukrainian communications and electronic warfare specialists, as well as drone operators at the facility, the ministry added. According to Ukrainian officials, the strike killed at least 55 and wounded 328 more.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, stressed that the Russian Army only strikes military targets, while Ukraine uses cluster munitions against civilians. Russia is getting better at hitting foreign military instructors and mercenaries in Ukraine, he said, adding that “the direct involvement of foreign states in the conflict is evident.”

Moscow has warned that deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine, as well as the training of Ukrainian troops by foreign military instructors, makes Kiev’s sponsors direct participants in the conflict. The supplies of weapons, however, will not alter the course of the conflict, but only result in more deaths, Russia has said.

September 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Militarisation of Scandinavia & the Coming Wars

How a Region of Peace Became an American Frontline

By Glenn Diesen | September 6, 2024

The militarisation of Scandinavia will drastically undermine the security of the region and invite new conflicts as Russia will be compelled to respond to what could become an existential threat. Norway has decided to host at least 12 US military bases on its soil, while Finland and Sweden follow suit by transferring sovereign control over parts of their territory after they recently became NATO members. Infrastructure will be built to bring US troops faster to Russian borders, while the Baltic Sea and the Arctic will be converted into NATO seas.

Scandinavia as a Key Region for Russian Security

Ever since Kievan Rus disintegrated in the 13th century and the Russians lost their presence on the Dnieper River, a key security challenge for Russia has been its lack of reliable access to the world seas. Furthermore, economic development is also dependent on reliable access to the seas as they are the arteries of international trade. Similarly, hegemonic powers have always been required to dominate the seas, while Russia can be contained, weakened and defeated by restricting its access.

Sweden was initially such a great power. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Sweden sought to restrict the access of Russia in the Baltic Sea, while also attempting to encroach upon its Arctic port in Arkhangelsk. During the “The Time of Trouble” that involved the Swedish occupation of Russia, approximately 1/3 of Russia’s entire population died. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Stolbova in 1617, which involved territorial concessions that cut off Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea. This lasted until the time of Peter the Great, who eventually defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War in 1721. The war ended Sweden’s era as a great power, while Russia became a great power due to its access to the Baltic Sea.

The dominant maritime powers, Britain and then the US, pursued similar attempts to limit Russia’s access to the world’s oceans for the next three centuries. During the Crimean War (1853-56), European diplomats had been explicit that the objective had been to push Russia back into Asia and exclude it from European affairs.[1] This explains Russia’s fierce response to the Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 as Russia responded by seizing Crimea in fear of losing its strategic Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol to NATO. The US sabotage of the Minsk agreement (2015-2022) and the Istanbul peace agreement (2022) was similarly motivated by the goal of arming Ukraine to take back Crimea and make Sevastopol a NATO naval base.

The militarisation and vassalisation of Scandinavia are important to challenge Russia’s access to the two other seas on Russia’s Western borders – the Baltic Sea and the Arctic. Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen optimistically announced that NATO expansion in Scandinavia would enable NATO to block Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea in a conflict: “After the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the Baltic Sea will now be a NATO sea… if we wish, we can block all entry and exit to Russia through St. Petersburg”.[2] Poland and the Baltic States have also begun to casually refer to the Baltic Sea as a “NATO sea”. The Financial Times argues that “Denmark could block Russian oil tankers from reaching markets” as part of sanctions.[3] A NATO Colonel also argued that the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad would come under much greater pressure and become a “problem” for Russia: “The ascension of Finland and the upcoming ascension of Sweden will totally change the setup in the Baltic Sea region. Russia will experience Kaliningrad being surrounded”.[4]

Sweden’s NATO membership now threatens to reverse the outcome of the Great Northern War in 1721, which by implication would diminish the basic foundations of Russian security. The Battle of Poltova is recognised to have been the largest and most decisive battle of the Great Northern War that resulted in Sweden’s defeat. The videos emerging of Swedish casualties in the recent Russian missile strike on Poltova is very symbolic of the militarisation of Scandinavia.

America’s attack on Nord Stream demonstrated how control over the Baltic Sea is important to cut Russian-German economic connectivity. The US has attempted to blame the Ukrainians for the attack, suggesting that “the CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation”.[5] The admission of knowing about the attack before it happened is nonetheless interesting as the US and NATO blamed Russia for the attack and used it as a reason to intensify the naval control over the Baltic Sea and escalate the Ukraine War. This is an admission that the US lied to their own public and the world, and used the lie to escalate their wider war on Russia. The attack also demonstrates that the Americans will treat the Europeans as proxies just like they used the Ukrainians, while the Europeans would not stand up for their interests but silently accept an ally destroying their own vital energy infrastructure. The revelation also demonstrated that the people we generously refer to as journalists will not ask any critical questions or discuss objective reality if it challenges the war narrative.

Finland was perhaps the greatest success story of neutrality, yet it was converted into NATO’s longest frontline against Russia. There was no threat to Finland, yet expansion was framed as being a blow to Putin as an objective on its own. Foreign military deployments will predictably soon emerge in the north of Finland to threaten Russia’s Northern Fleet in Arkhangelsk. The pretext will most likely be the concern that Russia will want to seize part of Lapland in the north of Finland. It will make no sense whatsoever, but obedient media will drum up the required fear.

The militarisation of Norway has followed a gradual incrementalism. Initially, US troops were stationed in Norway on a rotating basis, which enabled the government to claim they were not permanently deployed. In 2021, Norway and the US agreed on a few military bases but called them “dedicated areas” as Norway officially does not allow foreign bases on its soil. The US has full control and jurisdiction over these territories and the US media refers to them as military bases that will enable the US to confront Russia in the Arctic, but the Norwegian political-media elites must still refer to them as “dedicated areas” and dismiss that they have any offensive purposes. The frog is slowly boiling, believing it has identical interests to its masters in Washington.

Ignoring the Security Competition when Interpreting the Ukraine War

As Scandinavia is converted from a region of peace to a US frontline, one would expect more debate about this historical shift. Yet, the political-media elites have already reached the consensus that expanding NATO enhances our security due to greater military force and deterrence. More weapons rarely result in more peace, although this is the logic of hegemonic peace that this generation of politicians has committed themselves to.

The point of departure in security politics is the security competition. If increasing the security of country A decreases the security of country B, then country B will likely be compelled to enhance its security in a manner that reduces security for country A. The security competition can be mitigated by deterring the adversary without provoking a response, which is ideally organised through an inclusive security architecture.

Scandinavia’s ability to be a region of peace relied on mastering the deterrence/reassurance balance. Finland and Sweden were neutral states and were an important part of the belt of neutral states from the north to the south of Europe during the Cold War, which contributed to reducing tensions. Norway was a NATO member but imposed restrictions on itself by not hosting foreign military bases on its soil and limiting the military activities of allies in the Arctic region. It was common sense that security derived from deterring the Soviets without provoking them, this common sense is now long gone.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is cited as the main reason why Finland and Sweden had to abandon their neutrality and join NATO. This logic makes sense when ignoring security competition as Russia’s actions then occur in a vacuum. Acceptable discussions about the Ukraine War are limited by the premise that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked”, and any efforts to widen the debate by addressing NATO’s role can be shut down with accusations of “legitimising” Russia’s invasion.

NATO expansion caused the Ukraine War, and the response to this war was NATO expansion to Finland and Sweden. This twisted logic prevails as the narrative of an “unprovoked” invasion has become immune to facts. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, explained that she had opposed offering Ukraine the Membership Action Plan to join NATO in 2008 as it would have been interpreted by Moscow as “a declaration of war”.[6] Wikileaks also revealed that Germans believed that pushing NATO expansionism could “break up the country”.[7] William Burns, the US Ambassador to Moscow and now the current Director of the CIA, warned that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite”.[8] Burns warned of the consequences:

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests… Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[9]

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s Secretary General in 2008, recognised that NATO should have respected Russia’s red lines and should therefore not have pledged membership to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008.[10] Former US Secretary of Defence and CIA Director Robert Gates also acknowledged the mistake as “Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching”.[11] Even the support for bringing Ukraine into NATO had dubious intensions. In late March 2008, one week before the NATO Summit in Bucharest where Ukraine was promised future membership, Tony Blair told American political leaders how they should manage Russia. Blair argued the strategy “should be to make Russia a ‘little desperate’ with our activities in areas bordering on what Russia considers its sphere of interest and along its actual borders. Russia had to be shown firmness and sown with seeds of confusion”.[12]

In September 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gleefully argued that Russia’s actions to prevent NATO expansion would now result in more NATO expansion.

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And [it] was a pre-condition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO… We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member”.[13]

Stoltenberg did not specify why he thought more NATO expansion would increase security if NATO expansion was the cause of the war. However, NATO also insists that Ukraine must become part of NATO as Russia would not dare to attack a NATO country, while NATO also argues that Russia must be stopped in Ukraine as Russia will thereafter attack NATO countries. Much like the recognition of security competition, the logic is also absent.

Blinded by Ideological Fundamentalism

Scandinavia’s recognition of security competition has suffered from what is referred to in the literature as “ideological fundamentalism”. Actors are seen as either good or bad based on political identities that have been assigned by ideology. Ideological fundamentalism reduces the ability to recognise that one’s own policies and actions may constitute a threat to others, because one’s own political identity is held to be indisputably positive and dissociated from any threatening behaviour. There is a lack of understanding for why Russia would feel threatened by NATO expansion even after Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the proxy war in Ukraine. NATO is merely a “defensive alliance”, even as it bombs countries that never threatened it. Ideological fundamentalism can best be explained by President Reagan’s reaction to how Able Archer, a NATO military exercise in 1983 that almost triggered a nuclear war. Convinced that the US was a force for good that was fighting an evil empire, he was bewildered that the Soviets did not see it the same way:

“Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans… I’d always felt that from our deeds it must be clear to anyone that Americans were a moral people who starting at the birth of our nation had always used our power only as a force of good in the world”.[14]

Trapped in the tribal mindset of “us” versus “them”, the Scandinavians exaggerate what “we” have in common, and dismiss any commonality with “them”. It is assumed that the US shares the interests of Scandinavia, and is primarily building a military presence there to provide security. The US has a security strategy based on hegemony, which is dependent on weakening all emerging rivals. The US Security Strategy of 2002 explicitly linked national security to global dominance as the objective to “dissuade future military competition” should be achieved by advancing “the unparalleled strength of the United States armed forces, and their forward presence”.[15] While Scandinavia has an interest in maintaining peaceful borders with Russia, the US has defined its interests in destabilising Russian borders.[16] Peacetime alliances are reliant on perpetuating conflicts rather than solving them as conflict ensures loyalty from the protectorate and the containment of the adversary. In his famous work on how to advance and perpetuate US global hegemony, Brzezinski wrote the US must “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”.[17]

A Lack of Political Imagination to Move Beyond Bloc Politics

The Scandinavians recognise that their security has been reliant on the US since the end of the Second World War, and they simply do not have the political imagination for other security arrangements. If it worked then, why should it not work now? As security competition is no longer a consideration, the Scandinavians conveniently neglect that NATO was a status quo actor during the Cold War, while after the Cold War it became a revisionist actor by expanding and attacking other countries in what NATO refers to as “out-of-area” operations.

The lack of alternatives to NATO enables the US to simply demand “alliance solidarity” as a code word for bloc discipline. Case in point, in the 2000s Norway was criticising the US missile defence system that threatened the nuclear balance as it could enable a US first strike. Wikileaks revealed that the US Ambassador reported that the US was pressuring the Norwegian government, political figures, journalists, and think tank researchers to overcome Norway’s firm opposition to missile defence, or at least “to a minimum counter Russian misstatements and distinguish Norway’s position from Russia’s to avoid damaging alliance solidarity”.[18] It was argued that “thanks to our high-level visitors”, Norway had begun to “quietly continue work in NATO on missile defence and to publicly criticise Russia for provocative statements” (Wikileaks, 2007b).[19] In the words of US Ambassador Whitney, Norway had to “adjust to current realities” since it would have a “hard time defending its position if the issue shifts to one of alliance solidarity”.[20] Following the Norwegian U-turn on missile defence, it was declared in the Norwegian Parliament that “it is important for the political cohesion of the alliance not to let the opposition, perhaps especially from Russia, hinder progress and feasible solutions”.[21]

The world is yet again undergoing dramatic change as it changes from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. The US will increasingly shift its focus and resources to Asia, which will change the trans-Atlantic relationship. The US will be able to offer less to the Europeans, but it will demand more loyalty in terms of economics and security. The Europeans will have to sever their economic ties to American rivals which will result in less prosperity and more dependence. The US will also expect the Europeans to militarise the economic competition with China, and NATO has already become the most obvious vehicle for this purpose. Instead of adjusting to multipolarity by diversifying their ties and pursuing opportunities from the rise of Asia, the Europeans are doing the opposite by subordinating themselves further to the US in the hope that it will increase the value of NATO.

Scandinavia was a region of peace as it attempted to mitigate the security competition. As Scandinavia surrenders its sovereignty to the US for protection against an imaginary threat, the region will be converted into a frontline that will unavoidably trigger new conflicts. The only certainty is that when Russia reacts to these provocations, we will all chant “unprovoked” in unison and make some obscure reference to democracy.

[1] J.W. Kipp and W.B. Lincoln, ‘Autocracy and Reform Bureaucratic Absolutism and Political Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Russia’, Russian History, vol.6, no.1, 1979, p.4.

[2] Lrt, ‘Putin’s plan includes Baltics, says former NATO chief’, Lrt, 19 July 2022.

[3] H. Foy, R. Milne and D. Sheppard, Denmark could block Russian oil tankers from reaching markets, Financial Times, 15 November 2023.

[4] E. Zubriūtė, Kaliningrad is no longer our problem, but Russia’s’ – interview with NATO colonel, LRT, 13 November 2023.

[5] B. Pancevski, A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage, The Wall Street Jounral, 14 August 2024.

[6] A. Walsh, ‘Angela Merkel opens up on Ukraine, Putin and her legacy’, Deutsche Welle, 7 June 2022.

[7] Wikileaks, ‘Germany/Russia: Chancellery views on MAP for Ukraine and Georgia’, Wikileaks, 6 June 2008.

[8] W.J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, New York, Random House, 2019, p.233.

[9] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.

[10] G.J. Dennekamp, De Hoop Scheffer: Poetin werd radicaler door NAVO’ [De Hoop Scheffer: Putin became more radical because of NATO], NOS, 7 January 2018.

[11] R.M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, New York, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014.

[12] Telegraph, ‘Tony Blair and John McCain talk about Israel/Palestine and Russia handling’, The Telegraph, 27 March 2008.

[13] J. Stoltenberg, ‘Opening remarks’, NATO, 7 September 2023.

[14] Reagan, R., 1990. An American Life: The Autobiography. Simon and Schuster, New York, p.74.

[15] NSS, ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, The White House, June 2002.

[16] RAND, ‘Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground’, RAND Corporation, 24 April 2019.

[17] Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geopolitical Imperatives, New York, Basic Books, 1997, p.40.

[18] Wikileaks, 2007. Norway: Missile defense public diplomacy and outreach, OSLO 000248, US Embassy, Oslo, 13 March

[19] Wikileaks, 2007. Positive movements in the missile defence debate in Norway but no breakthrough, OSLO 000614, US Embassy, Oslo, 8 June

[20] Wikileaks, 2008. Norway standing alone against missile defense, OSLO 000072, US Embassy, Oslo, 12 February.

[21] Stortinget, 2012. Norwegian Parliamentary meeting, Sak 2, 15 May 2012.

September 6, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Increase in Ukrainian Casualties

The Reason Why Military Losses Intensify for the Losing Side at the End of Wars

By Glenn Diesen | September 4, 2024

Ukrainian casualties and loss of military hardware are intensifying, which is shifting the attrition rates even further to Russia’s advantage. The rapid increase in losses with the losing side is a very common phenomenon toward the end of a war, with a common example being the spike in German casualties at the final stages of the Second World War.

In a war of attrition, the losses will naturally increase when the war machine has reached its breaking point. Soldiers have weaker strategic positions, there is a lack of resources, supply chains are not sufficiently defended, communications often break down, and there is a collapse in morale. Once the collapse begins, it often has a cascading effect. An early indicator of a cascading effect was when Ukraine began to struggle with air defence systems, which resulted in Russia being able to bring in its air force equipped with powerful glide bombs. Subsequently, holding strategic positions and avoiding high casualty rates became increasingly challenging and new problems began to emerge.

The Collapse has Begun

It appears that we have entered the final stages of the war due to the cascading effect. Ukraine is seeing its logistics break down, and there is a lack of weapons and ammunition that prevents soldiers from performing optimally.

The greatest challenge appears to be the lack of manpower, in which there are no good solutions. More aggressive mobilisation deprives society of important labour, it creates social upheaval as the public observes their family and fellow citizens being dragged off the streets and thrown into vans. Furthermore, the recruits receive less training and are much less motivated than the soldiers who volunteered at the beginning of the war. Simply put, a new army cannot be built in a rush. As a result, Ukraine began using and losing its best soldiers.

The Ukrainian frontline sees a growing lack of military resources, reinforcements do not turn up, and communication with military command becomes less reliable. The increasingly difficult position on the front causes a spike in soldiers who defect and surrender, while even entire military companies have withdrawn from their positions without permission. Predictably, this unpredictability creates less cohesion along the frontline as unreliable soldiers can be a tremendous liability as the front lines do not hold.

With the Ukrainian frontlines breaking, troops find themselves encircled and their option is either to surrender or to pursue a disorganised withdrawal in which the retreating forces are exposed and can be knocked out by the Russian military. Incrementally, the Ukrainians find themselves with fewer strategic positions, supply lines are severed, there is an even greater shortage of military equipment and manpower, and morale continues to collapse. As the situation deteriorates, communication and coordination unavoidably suffer, as for example, Ukraine seemingly shot down its own F-16 with a patriot missile.

The war has been lost, and with the writing on the wall, the Ukrainian army becomes more vulnerable to its officers striking a deal with Russia. Some are likely angered by a sense of betrayal as the US and NATO provoked the war and sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreements with the promise that Ukraine would receive all the weapons and assistance it needed to defeat Russia. While there is no evidence of Ukrainian officers defecting, it seems as if Russia’s intelligence and spy network has improved over the past weeks.

The Last-Ditch Gamble

Another common feature in a losing war is the desperation that encourages great risks in a last-ditch effort to turn everything around. The invasion of the Russian region of Kursk is a great example as most Ukrainian, Russian and Western observers initially seemed to agree that this was a great risk with a low chance of succeeding. However, the propaganda machine was thereafter turned on as journalists began reporting on successes, measured mostly in terms of humiliating Putin or boosting morale among Ukrainian soldiers. Yet, the temporary victory in the information war eventually gives way to losses in the real world. Ukrainian troops and equipment were diverted away from well-prepared defensive lines in Donbas in favour of being exposed in the open on foreign territory.

In Donbas, the front lines are collapsing, and in Kursk there are massive casualties. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of reliable supply lines for weapons and fuel, while engineering equipment could not be sent in to dig in at the new positions within Russian territory. The few remaining air defence systems and HIMARS had to be brought much closer to the border, which could then be detected by Russian surveillance and destroyed by Russian missiles and drones. Huge amounts of military resources were squandered on territory with hardly any strategic value, which Ukraine is not able to hold. The inability to pull out of Kursk compels Ukraine to double down on failure and the situation goes from bad to worse.

As the collapse intensifies, the winning side in a war typically increases its pressure. Russia has increased its deep missile strikes, and its military is pushing through what used to be well-defended front lines. Russia’s more powerful bombing campaign is also motivated by retaliation for the invasion of Kursk and to restore its deterrence by warning NATO against further escalations. Furthermore, Russia has retaliated by further destroying Ukraine’s energy network which reduces the mobility of the military, and reduces the industrial production and the ability to get through the next winter. Millions of Ukrainian civilians who are suffering greatly under these deteriorating conditions will likely leave the country when winter approaches, which will bring further problems to both Ukraine and Europe.

A Proxy War: How Will NATO Respond to Defeat?

What makes the Ukraine War different from many other wars, is that this is a proxy war in which NATO uses Ukrainians to fight Russia. The uncertain and unpredictable variable is therefore how NATO will react as it loses the proxy war in Ukraine. NATO is already providing weapons, ammunition, training, intelligence, target selection, war planning, managing complex weapon systems, and sending Western mercenaries. NATO’s support for strikes inside Russian territory and the invasion of Russian territory has already taken us to the brink of a direct war. The Americans appear to get ready to cut their losses and instead shift focus on confronting China, but the Europeans have bet everything on defeating Russia militarily. In terms of capabilities, it is the US that matters.

There are simply no good solutions anymore. The only two options are to either negotiate or get increasingly involved in direct fighting. NATO has largely rejected diplomacy and placed itself in a rhetorical trap in which victory is the only acceptable outcome, and the EU even punishes member states such as Hungary that attempt to restore diplomacy and negotiations with Russia. However, more direct NATO involvement will likely trigger a direct war with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power, and it is unclear what a “victory” would look like that would not first trigger a nuclear exchange.

This is the time to restore diplomacy and return to negotiations, although it will take some time to reverse the propaganda of the past decade and prepare the public for a new narrative. Much like in Afghanistan, the political-media elites will assure us that we are winning until we flee with people falling off planes.

I spoke briefly about the rising Ukrainian casualties on WION

Odysee

September 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Russia warns NATO about response to ‘terrorism’

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova © Ekaterina Chesnokova; RIA Novosti
RT | September 4, 2024

Russia will give an immediate and painful response to further acts of terrorism committed by Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Wednesday, directing her comments to EU and NATO leaders.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, Zakharova stressed that Western leaders are “losing touch with reality” and are “absolutely not thinking about the risks of further dangerous escalation of the conflict, even in the context of their own interests.”

“We would like to warn such irresponsible politicians in the EU, NATO and across the ocean, that if the Kiev regime takes corresponding aggressive steps, Russia’s response will follow immediately,” Zakharova said, adding that this response will be “extremely painful” and that “much of this” has already been visible in recent days, apparently referring to Russia’s recent long-range strikes on targets across Ukraine.

Over the past several days the Russian Defense Ministry has reported carrying out a number of massive strikes on Ukrainian energy and defense-industry facilities, and claimed to have destroyed a number of buildings being used for the production and repair of aircraft, missiles, and UAVs, as well as storage sites, and deployment points for “nationalist formations and foreign mercenaries.” It also reported destroying a training facility housing foreign instructors.

During her address, Zakharova also suggested that Western officials have been ignorant of the potential consequences of their continued support of Kiev.

”I think the Europeans don’t fully understand what they are being dragged into,” the spokeswoman said. “They are being dragged in by the US, the Anglo-Saxons. It seems to me they haven’t yet understood what a plague they have created with their own hands in the form of the terrorist Kiev regime.”

Zakharova warned that the battalions that will be created from Ukrainian citizens recruited from Europe will eventually also strike back at Western European countries themselves. “They have fattened up there, sat it out, and recovered. They will strike in the same way as all international terrorist cells previously created by the West did,” she said.

“For the first time in history, Europe itself has given birth to an international terrorist cell,” the spokeswoman said, warning that “this terrorist monster will operate all over the world” and will strike Western Europe because “they always return to those who created them.”

September 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia and China: From “Marriage of Convenience” to Strategic Partnership

Odysee
Prof Glenn Diesen at the China Academy | August 19, 2024

I was interviewed by the China Academy regarding the strategic partnership between Russia and China. The strategic partnership was formed by two profound historical changes in the international system that occurred around the same time: Russia’s decoupling from the West and the rise of China as the soon-to-be world’s leading economy.

The first historical shift is the end of Russia looking to the West for modernisation and development. Russia has pursued a Western-centric foreign policy for the past 300-years, and after the Cold War pursued the overarching objective of creating an inclusive European security architecture based on the vision of Gorbachev’s Common European Home. The project of Greater Europe died in February 2014 with the Western-backed coup in Ukraine, which ended all hopes of a gradual integration with the West. Over the past 300 years, there have been several attempts in the West to push Russia back into Asia – although this time the East is no longer an economic backwater. Russia subsequently replaced “Greater Europe” with the “Greater Eurasia Initiative” as it began reorganising its economy toward a more accommodating and economically vibrant East.

The second historical shift is the rise of China, which has outgrown the US-administered international economic system. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9 was a wake-up call as the US demonstrated it would not restore fiscal discipline, which implied that the stability of the system would continue to erode. China demonstrated both the intention and ability to challenge US geoeconomic leadership by pursuing ambitious industrial policies to assert technological and industrial leadership, investing trillions of dollars into physical connectivity with the Belt and Road Initiative, and new financial architecture with development banks, payment systems and de-dollarisation.

The West assumed the partnership of China and Russia was a “marriage of convenience” as the common interests of opposing US hegemony was superficial and they would likely clash over the dominance of Central Asia. This prediction failed to recognise that both China and Russia need each other to develop a new international economic architecture, and as neither side pursues hegemony they have the ability to accommodate each other’s strategic interests. The efforts by the US to break both Russia and the China at the same time has pushed these two giants together in what can only be described as Kissinger’s worst nightmare. The strategic partnership has also laid the foundation for a new international economic architecture that pulls in other centres of power.

September 3, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Carrier Blues: Even the Mainstream is Waking Up

By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | September 3, 2024

The ice is breaking on the stonewalling of the defense community and external observers to have an honest conversation on the aircraft carrier; they may be getting the message on how indefensible and anachronistic this extraordinarily expensive weapons system is.

The Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition has already removed me from their Christmas card list.

More and more of the Coprophile Media is reluctantly waking up to the apparently intuitively obvious conclusion. The defense journalism industry, like the cultural critics in Hollywood, tend to be sycophantic and are very careful with criticism because then they lose the public relations contacts and open doors to the trillion dollar defense industry.

Thank goodness for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and General Accountability Office (GAO) documentation and data palaces that show the keen observer what is really going on (even though I think the ground truth tends to be far worse than we even imagine).

I do wish a foundation with deep pockets or even Elon Musk would create a clearinghouse/analytical cell that goes through these mountains of data and evidence to show just how bad the American (and by extension, the Western) military establishment is. The US is not prepared to conduct a peer or near-peer war much less more than one conflict at the same time. And the trillions of dollars unaccounted for is another issue altogether.

Hence, America’s obsession with expensive and cumbersome aircraft carriers. The United States has not only committed to this weapons platform, but it has become a cultural symbol. That is why the cult of flat tops has taken hold to such a degree that to even point out that great state rivals, such as China and Russia, as well as the proxies for these nations, such as Iran or North Korea, have developed highly effective countermeasures is considered unpatriotic or worse, heretical. But this fixation on the carrier as more than just a weapons platform, as a cultural icon, is precisely what makes it such a terrible weapon to rely upon.

And then they say something in the major media that you dear readers know already.

Thus, Washington’s current war plans play right into China’s and Russia’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies. If actual war erupts between the United States or any of its major rivals, these forces will do what they must to win the war—and that means going-for-broke and trying to sink US carriers before they can become a serious threat to their forces and interests.

One way or another, thanks to the advent of hypersonic weapons and anti-ship missiles, such as China’s DF-21 series, American aircraft carriers will not be as effective against targets defended by these A2/AD systems.

In the history of human warfare, large exquisite platforms always attract plenty of attention from the Roman destruction of Gallic fortresses before the birth of Christ to the use of longbows to defeat very expensive heavy horse at Agincourt to the Maginot Line and battleship dead-ends in the twentieth century.

And everything in between throughout history. The carrier is the crossbow and chariot of the 21st century.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/aircraft-carrier-age-could-end-disaster-us-navy-209915

The U.S. Navy’s other Pacific-based carriers are in port or in their maintenance availability period. Out of six carriers in the Pacific, the USS Carl Vinson recently participated in RIMPAC 2024, the USS Nimitz recently completed a six month planned incremental availability period for maintenance, the USS Ronald Reagan recently completed a homeport shift to Naval Base Kitsap, and the USS George Washington will remain in San Diego until the crew and equipment swap from USS Ronald Reagan is complete.

No U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers Deployed in the Pacific

At least the carriers in port will be sunk in shallow water.

September 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 03.09.2024

The US openly declares that it seeks to maintain a monopoly over shaping the “international order” following the Cold War and America’s emergence from it as the sole superpower.

This policy is not new.

The New York Times in a 1992 article titled, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,” would note that the Pentagon sought to create a world, “dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.” 

This policy set the stage for decades of US wars of aggression, political interference, regime change, US-sponsored terrorism, economic sanctions, and a growing confrontation directly between the US and a reemerging Russia as well as a rising China, all of which continue playing out to this day.

Emerging from the Cold War as the sole “superpower,” the US carefully cultivated public perception through likewise carefully chosen conflicts showcasing its military supremacy. While the US still to this day cites its wars with Iraq in 1990 and 2003 along with the toppling of the Libyan government in 2011 as proof of its uncontested military power, in truth, both targeted nations were not nearly as powerful or as dangerous as the Western media claimed at the time.

This facade has crumbled since. “American primacy” is now not only facing serious challenges, the premise it is based on – the notion that a single nation representing a fraction of the global population can or even should hold primacy over the rest of the planet – has been revealed as wholly unsustainable, if not self-destructive.

Not only is US military and economic power visibly waning, the military and economic power of China, Russia, and a growing number of other nations is rapidly growing.

The special interests within the US pursuing global primacy, do so in perpetual pursuit of wealth and power, often at the expense of many of the purposes a modern, functional nation-state exists to fulfill. Often this process includes the deliberate plundering of the key pillars of a modern nation-state’s power –  industry, education, culture, and social harmony. This, in turn, only accelerates the collapse of US economic and military power.

Ukraine Lays Bare American Weakness 

Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has laid bare for the world to see this fundamental weakness. US weapons have proven less-than-capable against a peer adversary, Russia.

America’s expensive precision-guided artillery shells, rockets, and missiles were built in smaller numbers than their conventional counterparts, supposedly because they could achieve with just one round what several conventional rounds could. A single US-made 155 mm GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shell, for example, is claimed by Raytheon to achieve what would otherwise require 10 conventional artillery shells.

This myth of quality over quantity has unraveled on and over the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia is not only capable of producing vastly more conventional weapons than the US and its European proxies, it is able to produce vastly more high-tech precision-guided weapons as well, including its own precision-guided artillery shells (the laser-guided Krasnopol), precision-guided multiple launch artillery systems (the Tornado-S), as well as larger quantities of ballistic and cruise missiles (Iskander, Kalibr, and Kh-101).

In other areas, Russia possesses capabilities the US does not have. Russia fields two types of hypersonic missiles, the Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile and the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Russia also possesses air and missile defense as well as electronic warfare capabilities the US cannot match – not in quality, not in quantity.

If the US is unable to match or exceed the military industrial output of Russia at the expense of losing its proxy war in Eastern Europe, how will US design to encircle and contain China along China’s own coasts unfold?

Growing Disparity and the Super Weapons Sought to Overcome it

The US military fears that any conflict with China would leave the US unprepared and vulnerable. A recent article in Defense One titled, “The Air Force wants to build lots of bases around the Pacific. But it still needs to determine how to protect them,” admits that US air and missile defense systems are too expensive and too few in number to defend the growing number of US military bases being established ahead of potential war with China.

It should be remembered, however, that shortages of US air and missile defense systems, particularly the Patriot missile system, began before the US began sending the systems to Ukraine. US military industrial output was unable to keep up with the demands of just Saudi Arabia amid its conflict with Ansar Allah in Yemen.

Similar concerns exist regarding the number of US military aircraft, naval vessels, and the missiles each will depend on in any potential conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific.

Understanding the large and growing disparity between US ambitions toward global primacy and its actual military means to achieve it, Washington and US-based arms manufacturers are seeking a new design and production philosophy to produce a new generation of cheaper and more numerous munitions.

At the forefront of this effort are “start-up” arms manufacturers, including Ares and Anduril. Both companies believe the US is capable of out-innovating China, based on the notion that the US is somehow inherently more innovative than China. However, their attempts to address this growing disparity reveal how disconnected US foreign policy is from the actual world it seeks to dominate.

Ares: Cheaper but More Numerous Missiles… 

The War Zone in an article titled, “New ‘Cheap’ Cruise Missile Concept Flight Tested By Silicon Valley-Backed Start-Up,” explains how Ares seeks to augment America’s existing arsenal of expensive but scarce long-range precision guided missiles with smaller, cheaper, and more numerous missiles.

The smaller, cheaper missiles will be less capable than their more expensive counterparts, including Raytheon’s Tomahawk cruise missile and Lockheed Martin’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), but are meant to be produced in larger quantities. The cheaper Ares-built missiles will be used for lower-priority targets, while their more capable but less numerous counterparts are used for critical targets.

The article claims:

Ares does not yet appear to have released any hard specifications, current or planned, but says that it is targeting a $300,000 unit cost for its missiles.

In addition to how far off from reality Ares’ missiles actually are from seeing the battlefield, even the stated goal of building these missiles for $300,000 each seems to fall far short of the sort of revolutionary innovation required to meet or exceed even Russia’s military industrial production, let alone China’s.

This is because according to even Ukrainian-based media, Russia itself is already producing far more capable missiles for as cheap as $300,000 per unit. Defence Express in a 2022 article titled, “What is the Real Price of russian Missiles: About the Cost of ‘Kalibr’, Kh-101 and ‘Iskander’ Missiles,” would place the cost of a Kalibr cruise missile somewhere between $300,000 and $1 million – vastly cheaper than comparable missiles produced in the West.

While the 2022 article was easy to dismiss at the time amid Western headlines claiming Russian missile stockpiles were exhausted, since then it has been admitted by the same Western media that Russia is firing over 4,000 missiles at targets across Ukraine each year. This suggests Russian missile production is as economical as it is vast.

Thus, even before Ares produces its first missile, the very premise of what it is trying to achieve falls far short of what Russia’s military industrial base is already doing on a vast scale, saying nothing of what China’s military industrial base is capable of.

There is also the reality that in addition to higher-end munitions costing as little as Ares’ proposed lower-end missiles, both Russia and China are perfectly capable of augmenting their existing arsenals with cheaper, less-sophisticated munitions as well.

Russia’s deployment of its UMPK-fitted FAB series glide bomb is a perfect example of this. The guided glide bombs went from concept to mass production over the course of the Special Military Operation, with improvements made based on their performance in combat, providing a cheaper, more numerous, yet still effective alternative to more expensive long-range precision-guided munitions.

In many ways, what Ares is attempting to do is a poor imitation of what Russia and China have already done and will continue doing.

Anduril: Out-Innovating China and Russia…  

Like Ares, US-based arms manufacturer Anduril imagines cheaper and more numerous systems can help even the odds as Russia out-produces the West amid the conflict in Ukraine and as China’s production of warplanes, ships, and missiles surpasses the US and its European proxies.

Anduril proposes achieving this through “software-defined manufacturing,” a process it claims allowed electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla to build better and more numerous vehicles than legacy car manufacturers by building its vehicles around its own in-house software and electronics.

The advantage is clear. Legacy car manufacturers build the physical cars themselves, but many of the subsystems are outsourced to other companies, including the operating systems used by modern cars, as well as sensors and other electronic components and systems. Often this collection of software, sensors, and other components is outsourced to a large number of different companies. Any change in the car’s design requires working with this large number of companies, making modifications and improvements cumbersome.

By including all subsystems within a single in-house developed software and building the hardware around it, changes can be done faster and larger quantities of higher-quality cars can be made more rapidly as a result.

Anduril imagines using this same process to build vast numbers of drones, missiles, and other weapons and munitions, matching or even outpacing China. The problem for Anduril is that software-defined manufacturing is already extensively used by China’s vast and advanced industrial base. With this “advantage” rendered moot, the US finds itself again at a severe disadvantage. Not only is China capable of producing conventional military arms, ammunition, and equipment in vastly greater quantities than the US, it is also able to build advanced, rapidly improved, software-defined systems like drones and missiles.

This means anything the US attempts to do, China is capable of doing better and on a vastly greater scale.

Flawed Premise, Doomed Outcome 

The premise Ares and Anduril operate from is fundamentally flawed. Both companies, like the circles of special interests they serve on Wall Street and in Washington, believe the US is inherently superior to adversaries like Russia and China. In their collective minds, any disadvantage the US finds itself with is incidental and overcoming it merely a matter of summoning sufficient political will. Russia and China having larger and more capable industrial bases is seen as a temporary lapse in America’s own political focus and willpower, and by taking steps to expand America’s own industrial base, the US will inevitably find itself on top again.

In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.

Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.

The premise that the US, representing less than 5% of the global population, should maintain primacy over the other 95% is fundamentally flawed.

Unless Americans were truly, inherently superior to the rest of the world, which they are not, achieving primacy over the world can only be done by dividing and destroying the other 95% of the world’s population. In many ways, this is what has defined generations of Western hegemony over the planet and is what Washington has set out to do today.

Despite this, the rest of the world has caught up in terms of economic and military power, precisely because the US is not inherently superior. Western hegemony was a historical anomaly, not proof of the West’s superiority. With the rest of the world having caught up in terms of economic and military power, and with numbers on their side, the next century will be determined by a multipolar world.

For this emerging multipolar world, the factors that have given it rise – a geopolitical balance of power built on cooperation over conflict, industry and infrastructure driven by purpose over profit, and progress built by practical education and hard work over the blind pursuit of power-must be firmly cemented as the fundamental principles of this new world.

Should the multipolar world weather US attempts to divide and destroy it and continue investing in the principles that gave rise to it in the first place, no type of US-made super-weapon can overcome it.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

September 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Germany faces political upheaval after historic AfD win

By Dénes Albert | Remix News | September 3, 2024

While the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the big winner in Sunday’s German state elections, but it is unlikely to change the course of Germany on the national level over the short-term, even if the AfD’s policies could gain ground locally. Still, there are reasons to believe we could see long-term changes on the horizon.

While the AfD is still contained behind the firewall, the results in Thuringia and Saxony effectively “toppled” the governing coalition, and alongside the AfD, a new party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has also become visible on the political scene.

Bence Bauer, director of the Hungarian-German Institute, explained this by saying that both the AfD and BSW agreed on most of the three major issues. These are the migration issue, Germany’s misguided Ukraine and arms transfer policy, and the economic policy vis-à-vis the German government.

With the German government in a very bad position, the AfD and BSW parties were able to ride the social discontent very well, to formulate an alternative.

“This is especially a great success for Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party is eight months old,” Bence Bauer stressed.

Based on initial statements, she would be willing to cooperate with the CDU, but Sahra Wagenknecht is demanding a very high price.

“It’s essentially about changing the CDU’s war policy,” said Samuel Ágoston Mráz, head of the Nézőpont Institute. However, he added, it could be a ploy on her part, as she has no intention for the CDU to actually accept her proposal. In short, it may not be an acceptable demand from the CDU just to form a state government.

Wagenknecht knows that the CDU is looking to 2025, and the east is not their top priority. After all, a Thuringia of only 2 million in a Germany of 80 million cannot be so important that it jeopardizes its showing next year in federal elections.

Another reason to not ultimately strike a deal with BSW is the fact that if BSW gets into government at the state level, this party could take root in the German system. Sahra Wagenknecht is now in two state parliaments, and if she gets into government, that will give her great potential for growth.

“I expect a protracted government formation,” added Mraz Ágoston Samuel. In this context, he recalled the claims that “the German economy will be ruined if the AFD comes close to power.” That is why Samuel believes the “firewall” will remain in place against the AfD.

“There will certainly be protracted coalition talks, I agree that the firewall will remain,” said Zoltán Kiszelly, director of political analysis at the Századvég Centre for Public Policy Studies. As he told our paper, the recent state elections in Germany seemed to be dominated by national issues, showing how dissatisfied voters are with the government. Of the mainstream parties, the CDU has held up best, but it remains to be seen what kind of alliances they will find.

September 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Anti-Establishment Parties Have Triumphed in Germany’s Regional Elections

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.09.2024

The Eurosceptic party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won a regional ballot for the first time, surpassing Scholz’s ruling coalition.

AfD secured 32.8% in Thuringia, leading the race, followed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 23.6%, according to exit polls.

In Saxony, the Eurosceptic party garnered 30.6%, losing to the CDU by a narrow margin.

The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) claimed third place in both races, with 15.8% in Thuringia and 11.8% in Saxony.

Scholz’s “traffic-light” coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) performed poorly. The FDP failed to reach the 5% threshold required to enter either regional legislature, and the Greens did not make it into the parliament in Thuringia.

SPD received 6.1% and 7.3% in Thuringia and Saxony, respectively.

“We are ready to take on government responsibility,” AfD leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Hocke, declared, celebrating what he called a “historic victory.”

Omid Nouripour, co-leader of the Greens, lamented the outcome and described it as “a profound turning point” in German history.

The AfD’s victory sparked a heated debate, with mainstream Western media warning that Germany’s political center is “crumbling” ahead of the next federal election in September 2025. Some outlets noted that Scholz have been “humbled” by the German right-wing party.

Others highlighted the rise of anti-establishment parties in Germany, acknowledging that both AfD and BSW, which advocate halting arms supplies to Ukraine, and imposing immigration controls, have performed notably well.

September 2, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Point of No Return in Middle East & Ukraine

Odysee
John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen | August 30, 2024

I had a discussion with Professor John Mearsheimer and Alexander Mercouris about the political West being on the brink of two major wars. Both Israel and Ukraine are fighting wars they cannot win, both are doubling down through reckless escalation, and neither is pursuing a diplomatic path to a peaceful resolution.

Consequently, both Israel and Ukraine are desperately seeking to drag the US into a wider war as the only solution. With incremental escalation, no diplomacy and the absence of serious discussions about the deep trouble we are now in – both Israel and Ukraine are successfully getting the US increasingly involved.

August 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Mali Alarmed That Weapons Supplied to Ukraine Fuel Terrorism in Sahel Region – Envoy to UN

Sputnik – 30.08.2024

UNITED NATIONS – Mali is alarmed that the weapons supplied to Ukraine by the collective West are ultimately fueling terrorism in the Sahel region, Malian Ambassador to the United Nations Oumar Daou said in Friday.

“The government of Mali would like to express its alarm with regard to the supply of weapons to Ukraine, because it’s been clearly established that a good part of the weapons … end up fueling terrorism and crime in the Sahel,” Daou said during a meeting of the UN Security Council.

The Malian ambassador also said that the weapons deliveries carry the risk of further destabilizing countries in Africa and exacerbate the suffering of the Malian people, who have already been “sorely tested by several years of conflict with dramatic consequences.”

French media, citing a Malian military source, reported in early August that terrorists from the Malian armed separatist groups traveled to Ukraine to receive training there.

August 31, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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