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NATO Declaration Is Stark Neoconservative Recommitment to US Hegemony – Sachs

Sputnik – 11.07.2024

WASHINGTON – NATO’s latest joint declaration serves as a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony, Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, told Sputnik.

“The NATO Declaration is a stark neoconservative recommitment to US hegemony. It calls for NATO to back the ‘rules-based order,’ which is actually the US-based order that is often directly contrary to the UN Charter,” Sachs said.

On Wednesday, NATO released a joint Washington Summit Declaration, which outlines the alliance’s efforts to further isolate Russia, bolster the alliance’s security on its eastern flank, increase security assistance for Ukraine, and claim Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” into NATO, among other initiatives.

“It describes NATO as a defensive force despite the fact that NATO is repeatedly engaged in offensive regime-change operations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Ukraine, and others,” Sachs said.

Sachs explains that NATO’s declaration also restates Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, which claims that Russia has no input if NATO expands to surround Russia.

Moreover, Sachs said NATO’s joint statement describes its commitment to advanced biotechnologies, which raises concerns of biowarfare.

Sachs also pointed out that the declaration shows NATO’s intention to continue to deploy anti-ballistic missiles throughout Europe as it’s previously done in Poland, Romania, and Turkiye, which has directly destabilized the nuclear arms control architecture ever since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.

The White House announced earlier that the United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said US plans to deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles to Germany pose a direct threat to international security and increase the risks of a missile arms race.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US plan to deploy missiles in Germany a ‘direct threat’ – Moscow

RT | July 11, 2024

US plans to deploy long-range missiles in Europe are a threat to global security and could pave the way for an escalation of already tense relations between Moscow and NATO, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov has said.

On Wednesday, the US and Germany issued a joint statement that America “will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

Washington also said that the systems will include SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles with ranges of up to 460km and 2,400km, respectively, as well as developmental hypersonic weapons. Those assets have a “significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” the statement added.

In a post on Telegram on Thursday, Antonov denounced the move as “a serious mistake by Washington.” “Such extremely destabilizing steps are a direct threat to international security and strategic stability,” he said.

The envoy stressed that the planned deployment “increases the risks of a missile arms race,” adding that it could unleash “uncontrolled escalation amid dangerously soaring Russia-NATO tensions.”

Antonov also said that Russia has always sought to reduce the risks posed by disagreements over missile capabilities. “Instead of the desire for peace that Russia has demonstrated many times, the Americans have embarked on the dangerous path of militarism,” according to the ambassador.

He emphasized that Russia’s tolerance for encroachments on its security is “not unlimited.” “Doesn’t Germany understand that the emergence of American missile assets on German soil will lead to these facilities ending up in Russian crosshairs? This is not saber-rattling, it is the simple logic of a normal person,” Antonov explained.

He went on to blast the US for not thinking about how to minimize the fallout from the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Signed in 1987 at the end of the Cold War, it barred Moscow and Washington from possessing many types of nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km.

The US unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2019, citing alleged Russian non-compliance, a charge denied in Moscow. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov suggested earlier this week that the US pulled out of the agreement to create formerly banned missile systems to put pressure on China.

At the same time, Russia has said that it intends to keep abiding by the INF’s terms, but warned that it could reverse that policy if Washington starts deploying missiles covered by the treaty in any region of the world.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US to deploy long-range weapons in Germany

RT | July 10, 2024

The US will station long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 onwards, the governments of both countries have announced. These weapons, including the SM-6 and Tomahawk systems, were banned on the continent until Washington tore up a landmark Cold War-era treaty in 2019.

According to a joint statement published by the White House, the US will “begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

The statement was released following talks between American and German officials at NATO’s annual summit in Washington on Wednesday.

The weapons systems deployed to Germany will include the SM-6 anti-air missile, which has a range of up to 460km (290 miles), and the Tomahawk cruise missile, which can reportedly strike targets more than 2,500km away.

The White House said that “developmental hypersonic weapons” will also be stationed in Germany, and will have a “significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

The US has yet to successfully field a hypersonic weapon, and has canceled every hypersonic project since its first successful test in 2017.

Land-launched missiles with a range between 500km and 5,500km were banned on European soil under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Along with the START-I and START-II agreements, the INF treaty helped defuse nuclear tensions in Europe after the West and the USSR came perilously close to nuclear war during NATO’s Able Archer military exercise in 1983.

The US pulled out of the INF treaty in 2019, with the State Department claiming that some of Russia’s cruise missiles had breached the agreement. Moscow denied this, and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned then-US President Donald Trump that the demise of the treaty would “have the gravest consequences.”

Russia continued to abide by the treaty and imposed a moratorium on the development of missiles that it prohibited. However, Putin announced earlier this month that the Russian defense industry would resume development of such armaments, citing the “hostile actions” of the US.

“We now know that the US is not only producing these missile systems, but has also brought them to Europe, Denmark, to use in exercises. Not long ago, it was reported that they were in the Philippines,” Putin explained at the time.

US and Danish forces trained with SM-6 missiles last September, while the Pentagon deployed its Typhon Weapon System – which can fire both SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles – to the Philippines in April.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The UK election results hide a truth Labour won’t want you to hear

By Graham Hryce | RT | July 10, 2024

Many political commentators in the UK have failed to grasp the true import of the Labour Party’s electoral victory last week.

Some pundits see the party’s record majority as confirmation that politics in Britain has shifted back to the center – in contrast to the shift to the radical right that has characterized politics in most European countries in recent years.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Labour’s primary vote – 9.7 million but still a lowish 33.8% – increased only marginally, despite the complete collapse of the Conservative vote.

The most important aspect of last week’s election was the transfer of thousands of votes from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s populist Reform Party – particularly in those “red wall” constituencies that Boris Johnson had single handedly captured from Labour at the 2019 election.

Reform received some 4 million votes – 14% of the total votes cast. The UK electoral system meant, however, that Reform only won five seats – including, most importantly, Farage himself.

This significant voting shift did, however, unseat more than 200 Tory MPs, including a former prime minister and a number of cabinet members, and ensured the election of Labour candidates in droves. This does not, however, constitute a “shift to the center.”

What actually occurred last week was predicted, prior to the election, by some conservative commentators who had become completely disenchanted with the Conservative Party, and had cast their lot in with Reform.

Matt Goodwin, for example, urged voters to engage in an act of “creative destruction” by voting for Reform, knowing full well that this would result in a landslide Labour victory.

Goodwin, in effect, urged voters to destroy a Conservative Party that, in his view, had long ago ceased to stand for genuine Conservative values – so as to clear the political landscape for a Reform victory at the 2029 election.

From this perspective, Starmer’s victory is simply a necessary political prelude to the creation of a viable British populist party that will be capable of governing in its own right in the next few years.

Whatever the prospects of this happening may be, such a perspective correctly predicted the imminent demise of the Rishi Sunak-led Conservative Party, and reflected what has actually been happening in UK politics for the past decade.

Other commentators – including Starmer propagandists and, curiously enough, some from the conservative right like Peter Hitchens – see Starmer’s win as a victory for “the most radical left-wing party in UK history.” Such a view could not be more mistaken.

There is nothing at all “left-wing” – in the traditional sense of the term – about Keir Starmer or the Labour Party that he has refashioned in his own image since its disastrous election loss in 2019.

Starmer has spent the past five years ruthlessly purging the Labour Party of the last remnants of left-wing Bennite radicalism – whose most recent proponent was the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. It is not for nothing that Starmer has ditched almost every element of the Labour manifesto that he so eagerly embraced not so long ago.

It is perfectly clear that Starmer’s Labour Party will govern for the global elites – not the traditional British working class or those other social strata that have been displaced and left behind by globalization.

Starmer may refer endlessly to his “tool setter” father in interviews, and Angela Rayner may go on ad infinitum about her poverty-stricken background – but this is all posturing and propaganda of the crudest kind. And it did not fool working-class voters in the “red wall” seats last week – they voted for Farage, not Starmer and Rayner.

Starmer’s first post-election speech is a surer guide to the elite policies that his Labour government will pursue.

Starmer immediately shut down the hopelessly ineffective Rwanda scheme – thereby foreshadowing in reality, whatever he may say publicly, his commitment to increased levels of immigration, a key global elite policy. Sunak was also committed to increased levels of immigration, notwithstanding his stated policy position to the contrary.

Also revealing was his comment that “we have too many prisoners” and his appointment of James Timpson as the minister of state for prisons. Timpson is on record as having said that two-thirds of those in British prisons should not be there, and he is famous for employing ex-prisoners in his shoe-repair chain.

Could there be a more elitist and woke policy than freeing prisoners in large numbers? The residents of London and other large cities in the UK must be looking forward the increased crime rates in which such a policy will inevitably result.

Starmer also reaffirmed his commitment to supporting the Zelensky regime in Ukraine in the strongest possible terms.

There can be no doubt that a Starmer Labour government will pursue elite policies such as these, and it will resort to radical constitutional reform in order to do so. Peter Hitchens has correctly drawn attention to Starmer’s radical plans to reform the House of Lords and further empower an already ideologically committed judiciary.

All of this is about governing in the interests of the global elites – it has nothing whatsoever to do with genuine left-wing politics.

What then can we expect to happen in British politics under a Starmer government over the next five years?

First, it is inevitable that the Conservative Party will disappear as a major political force.

The Tories have been deeply divided and led by fourth-rate politicians for decades, and Brexit exacerbated these problems to such an extent that the party tore itself apart once Brexit was finally implemented, after a debilitating internal battle, by Boris Johnson.

Johnson – although a flawed politician in some respects – was the only effective leader that the Conservative Party has had in the past decade.

Like Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd George, Johnson was something of a Tory outsider, a charismatic leader who understood that the electoral appeal of the Conservative Party could be significantly broadened by adopting policies that appealed to British patriotism and the traditional working class.

Johnson’s “get Brexit done” and “leveling up” policies allowed the Conservatives to appeal to disaffected traditional Labour voters and, at the same time, effectively neutralize the appeal of Nigel Farage’s UKIP Party.

These policies, together with Johnson’s charismatic leadership and campaigning skills, enabled him to win an extraordinary 80-seat majority at the 2019 election.

Notwithstanding this unprecedented electoral victory, within three years the Remainers and others within the Conservative Party (Johnson never had the support of a large majority of MPs) had joined forces with with the global elites, the mainstream woke UK media, the Supreme Court, and a raft of fourth-rate politicians of all political persuasions to ruthlessly destroy Johnson’s political career.

He was finally finished off by a narcissistic and vengeful populace who were, wrongly and foolishly, outraged at the Partygate affair.

Once Johnson had been deposed, the fate of a deeply divided Conservative Party under utterly incompetent leaders like Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak was sealed. In fact, last week’s collapse of the Tory vote was richly deserved, and Truss in particular deserved to lose her seat.

And one only has to observe the unseemly squabbling taking place this week between the half-a-dozen or so candidates for the Tory leadership – they include such luminaries as Robert Jennick and James Cleverly – to see that the Conservative Party does not have a viable future no matter who is eventually chosen to lead it.

What is the likely fate of the Starmer Labour government?

Like all mainstream governments in Western countries that represent the interests of the global elites, Starmer’s government will be unable to remedy any of the fundamental problems confronting the UK – because it is unwilling to introduce the genuinely radical economic and social reforms that would be necessary to bring that about.

Stramer’s government will be unable to resuscitate the ailing British economy. It will do nothing to solve the cost-of-living crisis or reduce energy prices. It will not be able to reverse the decline of the NHS or improve the delivery of government services. It will continue to support America’s proxy wars with all the adverse domestic consequences that follow from such a misguided foreign policy. And its firm commitment to woke policies will only intensify the culture wars that have so deeply divided British society for the past few decades.

It follows that, within a relatively short period of time, the British electorate will become disenchanted with Starmer and his government. Its fate will mirror the fate of the Biden, Macron and Sholz administrations.

The Reform Party will probably become the major beneficiary of this disillusionment – but whether it will be able to capitalize on it is very much an open question.

Populist parties do not have a good record of delivering on their promises, and the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system makes it almost impossible for minor parties to win large numbers of seats.

Farage himself was in two minds about coming back to lead the Reform Party and contest the election – and five years is a long time to spend in opposition as the leader of a party with only five MPs.

The French electoral system is much more favourable towards radical right-wing parties than the British, and in America Donald Trump had to take over the Republican Party in order for it to become an effective political force. Trump realized in the 1990s that he could not win the presidency as a third-party candidate.

If Farage is to become a significant political leader he may have to take over what is left of the Conservative Party after last week’s election.

Rather than bring about a “shift to the center” or usher in a “radical left-wing government,” Keir Starmer’s election victory is, therefore, much more likely to ensure that UK politics staggers along in much the same chaotic and dysfunctional fashion that it has for the past decade.

That appears to be the most that voters in Western democracies can hope for these days.

Graham Hryce is an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | | Leave a comment

High-tech Western weapons ‘useless’ in Ukraine conflict – WSJ

RT | July 10, 2024

Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities have rendered precision-guided Western munitions “useless” in the Ukraine conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. With their guidance systems scrambled, some of these weapons have reportedly been retired within weeks of hitting the battlefield.

When the US announced the delivery of GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells to Ukraine in 2022, pro-Kiev outlets predicted that the $100,000-per-shot projectiles would make “Ukrainian artillery a whole lot more accurate” and “cause Russia a world of pain.”

However, the Russian military adapted within weeks, Ukrainian commanders told the Wall Street Journal. Russian signal-jamming equipment was used to feed false coordinates to the shells and interfere with their fuses, causing them to veer off course or fall to the ground as duds.

“By the middle of last year, the M982 Excalibur munitions, developed by RTX and BAE Systems, became essentially useless and are no longer employed,” the newspaper stated, paraphrasing the Ukrainian commanders.

The Soviet Union invested heavily in electronic warfare (EW) during the 1980s, viewing jamming technology as a crucial bulwark against the guided missiles and shells that the US was beginning to develop at the time. While weapons such as the 1990s-era Excalibur shells were used by the US to devastating effect in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials and analysts in Washington have since concluded that they are far less effective against a peer-level opponent like Russia.

“The Russians have gotten really, really good” at interfering with guided munitions, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told the WSJ.

Retired US General Ben Hodges, who once predicted that Western weapons would help Ukraine seize Crimea by last winter, told the newspaper that “we probably made some bad assumptions because over the last 20 years we were launching precision weapons against people that could not do anything about it… and Russia and China do have these capabilities.”

Some of NATO’s most advanced weapons systems have met a similar fate in Ukraine. The newly-developed Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a joint project of Boeing in the US and Saab in Sweden, was given to Ukraine earlier this year, with Kiev’s troops firing these GPS-guided munitions before their American counterparts. However, it has since been pulled from the battlefield after it proved completely ineffective against Russian EW.

Likewise, Russian EW has significantly blunted the accuracy of Ukraine’s Western-provided GMLRS missiles, which are fired from the HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system, Ukrainian soldiers told the WSJ. As with the Excalibur shells, GMLRS missiles were once described by pro-Kiev pundits and analysts as a “game changer” that would swing the conflict in Ukraine’s favor.

Russia has long insisted that no amount of Western weapons systems will prevent it from achieving victory. Supplying these weapons is a “futile project” that will only encourage Kiev to “commit new crimes,” Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned last week.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

NATO preparing for ‘protracted wars’ – Pentagon

RT | July 10, 2024

The US and its allies are planning to continue ramping up defense spending, which will ensure long-term demand for weapons, US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told a gathering of arms manufacturers during a NATO event on Tuesday.

Speaking at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, the official praised NATO members for boosting their military budgets since the initial flare-up of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, and particularly after the open hostilities between Ukraine and Russia erupted in 2022. Over the past decade, the average annual increase in spending was 72%, adjusted for inflation, she said.

That reversed a period when “defense industries across the Atlantic were affected by decades of inconsistent funding and blinkered demand signals,” she said. She said the current thinking is: “Production matters. Production is deterrence.”

Western arms manufacturers have the ability “not just to compete, but to out-compete and prevail” over Russia and other nations that the US considers its rivals, including China, North Korea and Iran.

“That includes ensuring we are prepared for the possibility of protracted war, which every ally must be prepared for – and not just in Europe, either,” Hicks warned.

Developing the manufacturing base on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that combines “information-age ingenuity and industrial-era capacity” will benefit US allies in the Pacific, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the official said.

She claimed that Western political systems are inherently beneficial for building “arsenals of democracy,” since they foster innovation and transnational cooperation. On the other hand, “autocracies,” according to her reasoning, can’t move beyond “just landing at each other’s airfields, or sailing ships alongside each other for a few days at a time.”

The Pentagon is looking for ways “to be a better customer,” Hicks said, by streamlining its internal processes, delivering targeted investments in the defense sector, and providing security services to weapons businesses.

Russian officials have described NATO as a tool of US geopolitical ambition and a way to secure a permanent market for American weapons in Europe. Moscow has cited Washington’s pledge that Ukraine will eventually join the bloc together with NATO’s increased presence in Ukraine since 2014 as among the key triggers of the ongoing conflict.

Beijing has accused the US of being stuck in a “Cold War mentality” and playing “zero-sum games” with non-Western nations, including China.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Why France’s Snap Election Proves EU’s Warmongering Agenda Flopped

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 10.07.2024

Despite surviving the runoff vote, Emmanuel Macron sustained a crushing and unexpected defeat during the snap election, Fabien Chalandon, French political commentator and writer, told Sputnik. What’s more, the parliament’s new composition may put the brakes on Macron’s bellicosity.

The outcome of the snap election in the French National Assembly has left no party with a majority, leading to uncertainty regarding the formation of a coalition. This raises the question of whether the left-wing and centrist parties will be able to collaborate effectively in order to establish a functional parliament.

“This is the key question,” Fabien Chalandon, chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur, investor, and writer, told Sputnik. “No party has any majority, and any government can be deposed at any time by a combination of the two other groups. The parliament is therefore in a gridlock and ungovernable. In addition, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) is a coalition of small parties all deeply opposed on any subject, including Ukraine, and which have only one common ground: their hate of the National Rally (RN), which cannot provide a common set of practical objectives for an effective governing alliance.”

The NFP, a broad left-wing coalition which brought together Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hardline leftist France Unbowed Party (La France Insoumise), was hastily founded on June 10 with the sole aim of defeating the right-wing RN in the snap legislative election.

According to the commentator, the likelihood of the NFP coalition passing the test of time is “remote as it may explode on the issue of loss of real income, when finally politicians admit that the bulk of the current impoverishment of French middle and poor class has been stoked by inflation directly derived from the Ukrainian conflict.”

Macron’s Bellicosity Backfired During Elections

Meanwhile, it appears that the new composition of the parliament could disrupt French President Emmanuel Macron’s “tour de force” for European leadership.

Over the past several months, Macron has made a series of controversial statements, ranging from putting NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine to doubling the EU budget and promoting the idea of a “major European loan” to finance the bloc’s rearmament effort.

Macron’s sudden transformation into a “Ukraine hawk” – given that France has been ranked 15th in terms of military aid to Kiev – raised questions in the European mainstream press. According to the Spectator, one of the causes of Macron’s bellicosity was his desire to “embarrass” the National Rally in the European elections, “not to mention their predicted victory in the 2027 presidential race.”

The French president’s scheme appeared to have boomeranged. His Renaissance party secured just 15.2 percent of the vote during the EU parliamentary elections last month, while the National Rally got a whopping 31.5 percent.

In the snap election, announced by Macron after the humiliating defeat, the centrist-liberal Ensemble (Together) party survived by pure luck and due to its unholy formal alliance with Les Republicains (LR) and the NFP to obstruct “at all costs” the National Rally in the second round, according to Chalandon.

“Compared to the 2022 elections, the Macron presidential party ‘Together’ lost 100 seats to 168,” the political commentator noted.

“This [snap] election is therefore a second crushing defeat for M. Macron,” the pundit said. “Macron did not expect such a damning result after the first round. In fact, this snap election is overwhelmingly portrayed in the French press and social media as a ‘childish’ decision following the RN tsunami during the previous European elections.”

The election outcome would continue to undermine Macron’s warmongering posture, including his push for rearmament and increased military support to Ukraine, according to the commentator.

“On Ukraine, the NFP is clearly against the EU and EU support of Ukraine. But so is the Unbowed France Party… Any proposal for additional funding to Ukraine may not be approved if these two coalesce to block it, even if they do not coordinate,” Chalandon said.

While the EU’s bureaucracy could circumvent the legislative gridlock in its member states by stealthily boosting its funding to Ukraine within its general budget, the crux of the matter is that Europeans and especially young people across the continent have increasingly started to realize the collective West’s hypocrisy with regard to Ukraine, according to the pundit.

Chalandon notes that Europeans are steadily recognizing the West’s 20-year provocations against Russia, as well as the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement in April 2022 led by the US and UK.

“Moreover, the cause of the recent sharp decline of Europe’s purchasing power is starting to be attributed to the Ukrainian conflict, so far, a taboo subject among politicians. Ukraine’s war and open-ended funding will not continue unabated and may progressively appear for what it is: the main cause of Europe’s recent economic downfall,” the commentator emphasized.

How Could US Political Debacle Affect Europe’s Ukraine Policy

Nonetheless, the EU elites are unwilling to change their stance on the Ukraine conflict, especially given their political dependency on their peers in Washington.

However, US neocons have recently found themselves on the horns of a dilemma given that their major “pro-war” presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to be “unsellable” to American voters, as Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel noted in an earlier interview with Sputnik.

“The key factor which could affect French and Europe’s attitude in the Ukrainian conflict is if M. Trump wins the US election and decides to force Ukraine to negotiate by interrupting its military aid,” Chalandon said, referring to the Republican frontrunner’s plan to stop the fighting and look into peace negotiations.

The political commentator noted, however, that despite Trump’s high-powered numbers across US nationwide polls, his victory is not a done deal given the lawsuits brought forward by his political opponents.

Likewise, the Biden camp is also teetering in the balance as the Democratic Party is waging a behind the scenes battle over a possible replacement for the aging Biden. This potential change could allegedly shift Washington’s attitude on the Ukraine conflict.

“Since European efforts towards Ukraine cannot survive a withdrawal by the US, Europe and France will be left with no other option than to cave in,” the French political commentator remarked.

Chalandon concluded that if a new US context were to arise, Europe’s determination to carry on with the ongoing military “solution” to the Ukrainian conflict would amount to nothing more than empty posturing.

In parallel to his investment banking career, Chalandon co-founded and ran a French political think tank, Fondation Concorde, and was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur in 2000 and wrote for leading French newspapers on political issues. His father, Albin Chalandon, served as minister of various governments under President Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou and then minister of justice between 1986 and 1988 in a Jacques Chirac-led government under then President Francois Mitterrand.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

A tale of two cities: have we seen a ‘surge to the Left’ in British and French elections?

By Gilbert Doctorow | July 9, 2024

In the past five days, parliamentary elections were carried out in Britain and in France. The results were dramatic, attracting a great deal of media attention.

In this brief essay, we will look behind the bald facts of vote counts and strive to make sense of where the UK and France are headed. What does the latest news tell us about the ‘managed democracies’ in Europe? I will direct particular attention to the different electoral and governance systems operating in Britain and France, given that these respective systems were so influential in delivering the results we are seeing?

*****

The sitting governments in both France and the United Kingdom were overturned in the past week. Looking at the winners, one might conclude a new or updated Left has won in both elections. If so, this runs directly counter to the media bugbear of resurgent populism that supposedly endangers democracy. Should the winners break out the champagne?

In Britain, Labour won a landslide victory, taking absolute control of Parliament and ending 14 years of Tory chaos and misrule. In the American vernacular, British voters were given the opportunity to ‘throw the bums out’ and they availed themselves of it. Tory leader and incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer achieved this success by having expelled from the party the genuinely Leftist former leader Jeremy Corbyn and taken up the winning ‘New Labour’ centrist position first defined by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Some of the more odious former or present Tory ministers, such as the holder of the record for shortest time serving in 10 Downing Street, Liz Truss, lost their seats in Parliament.

In France, Macron’s party, or ‘movement,’ yesterday lost its tenuous hold on parliament, coming in second to the New Popular Front, as the united Left parties call themselves, in a three-way race. Macron and his supporters could savor a victory of sorts by having risen from the ashes of the European Parliament voting on 6 June and of the first round of balloting for their national parliament a week ago, when they appeared to enjoy no more than 15 – 20% of voter support. Now they hold nearly a third of parliamentary seats and can hope to forge a coalition with the united Left parties to keep their sworn enemies, the so-called ‘Extreme Right’ National Rally of Marine Le Pen, away from the levers of power. The outcome is what political commentators call a ‘hung parliament’ in which two of the three rival blocs of deputies will try to form a ruling coalition while the President tries to stand above the bickering and back-stabbing while exercising near-dictatorial powers of legislating by decree.

That there will be a lot of bickering is beyond doubt: the single most prominent voice in the New Popular Front is that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Unbowed party. He is the embodiment of anti-capitalist spirits within the country, and though he claims that the Left is ready to govern, and though he or one of his allies may well be tapped by Macron to form a cabinet, it is hard to see how parliament and president can cooperate on anything whatsoever in the days and months ahead. It is nearly certain that France will continue its descent from relevance within the EU and within the world at large that the dimwitted and cowardly François Hollande oversaw from his CIA-stage managed electoral victory back in 2012 onwards. In his years in office, Macron has tried repeatedly to rescue the country from its descent by one failed initiative after another.

*****

The opposing principles of the electoral and governance systems in Britain and France are ‘first past the post’ in the former, where victory is handed in each district to the candidate with the greatest number of votes, and inclusive, proportional representation in government of the latter wherein seats are reserved for representatives of minorities in the voting public. I say this in the full knowledge that the coalition governments which are the almost inevitable consequence of power sharing schemes and are widely practiced across the Continent, are the rare exception, not the rule in France. In France, it has been customary for one party to hold an absolute majority in parliament and to form a cabinet of ministers that shares the same policy priorities and is chosen from among those prepared to assume power at any time in what the British call a ‘shadow cabinet.’

The strength of the British system is that it makes possible sharp changes in direction of government policy when the public is persuaded that the powers that be are not functioning in their interests. The weak point is that given the often low levels of voter turn-out and the share of votes cast held by the winning party relative to all votes, the incoming government may actually be said to represent a very small percentage of all eligible voters. Margaret Thatcher, for example, dramatically changed the direction of the British government while having enjoyed no more than 25% of the popular vote.

In the given case of the British elections on 4 July, something similar occurred. It has been widely commented by political analysts, and stated most succinctly and pointedly by the leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, that the vote for Labour was not so much attributable to support for Labour as it was a rejection of the Tories. By Farage’s estimate, perhaps half of the Labour vote falls into this category, so that the actual support level of Labour and its policies may have been no more than 18% of the electorate. Of course, this detail is swept under the carpet in the headlines and opening paragraphs of the reports we read in the press and see on mainstream television.

The strength of the Continent-wide system of power sharing and coalitions is its ‘progressive’ appearance, its very inclusiveness. Inclusiveness, let us remember, is the new divide between Conservatives and Liberals, whether it goes by the name ‘identity politics’ or not. It long ago replaced policies for how you divide up the economic pie among contending strata of the population. On the Continent, many different parties get to share in the responsibilities and spoils of power.

I put the accent on ‘spoils,’ because I maintain that coalitions are a formula for institutionalized corruption. Governments are formed by back-room deals among the various parties in the agreed coalition. Ministerial portfolios are allocated with scant attention to the competence of the appointees for the given post, looking instead to the need to reward top party personalities for their adherence to the coalition.  And the policies set out may well be in sharp contradiction with one another, meaning implementation can well be inconsistent and ineffective. There can be no better illustration of the pitiful results of coalition building than the current federal government of Germany, where ill-educated and wholly incompetent ministers such as Annalena Baerbock at Foreign Affair and Economy Minister Robert Habeck are a disgrace to the good name of European statesmen and women from generations past.

Let me emphasize here that a hung parliament was precisely the wish of Macron and his immediate entourage when they understood that there was no chance of their own list of candidates holding onto power alone and there was every risk of Le Pen getting an absolute majority. The pro-Macron forces of French politics are strongly pro-market, as one would expect from a leader who entered politics after making his career in the counting rooms of the Rothschild bankers and brokers. Yet, out of purely opportunistic calculations, in the week between the first and second rounds of balloting, they reached agreement with the New Popular Front on which of the two would withdraw their candidate from the race in given electoral districts so as to better ensure victory over Le Pen’s party there.  It worked, but will the resulting parliament work?  That seems not to interest M. Macron at this moment.

*****

In his victory speech, following official release of the vote results, Keir Starmer twice made the remark that in power he will place ‘country above party.’  Emmanuel Macron and his allies have pursued the opposite, party above country, and France will be the worse for it.

But then again, we in the pro-Sovereignty, anti-globalist, anti-supranational bureaucracy Opposition can only say ‘the worse, the better.’

One thing is certain in France: the country will be rent with internal discord at the highest levels of government. The Fifth Republic has survived periods of ‘cohabitation’ between a President of one party and set of policy priorities and a parliamentary majority held by another party with different policy priorities. It has not experienced the cohabitation with a hung parliament that we see now.

As regards foreign policy, our newspapers today speak of the blow to Israeli interests that the approach to power by Mélenchon with his pro-Palestinian bias signifies. We hear less about what the electoral outcome in France signifies for the war in and about Ukraine.  A victory by Le Pen would certainly have put a check on any further French military commitments to Kiev, and possibly would have led to French withdrawal from NATO.  For the moment, that very possibility has been eliminated. Nonetheless, a weak and divided France, such as we shall see in the months ahead, is good news for those of us who wish to see an end to the spineless conformism at the top of European Institutions leading us all towards Armageddon.

Regrettably, in Britain there will be no change from the pandering to Washington’s worst instincts and unlimited support for the dictator in Kiev. The only voice in British politics who stands for reason on relations with Russia is Nigel Farage. It is some small consolation that Farage has won a seat in Parliament, even though the 15% of the popular vote that his party achieved has not been rewarded by more than a handful of seats.

Postscript: One reader has brought to my attention the fact that France in fact has a first past the post as opposed to the proportional representation system so common elsewhere on the Continent. Accordingly I shift my emphasis elsewhere in the French situation and say that the outcome is uniquely due to Macron’s opportunism and tactical thinking at the expense of strategic thinking and patriotism; he has engineered a three way split in the lower chamber to keep Le Pen from power while knowingly making Franch ungovernable and returning the country to the instability it suffered during the Fourth Republic.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US approves new nuclear warhead program despite cost increase

RT | July 9, 2024

The US Department of Defense will continue developing its new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) despite an 81% increase in costs as Washington seeks to update its ‘nuclear triad’.

The Sentinel ICBM program, which is intended to replace aging Minuteman III nuclear missiles, is now expected to cost $140.9 billion – almost double the original estimate of $77.7 billion, the Pentagon said in a statement on Monday.

The ballooning cost of the nuclear warhead program has triggered what is known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which occurs if the cost of developing a new program increases by 25%, and requires a Department of Defense review to justify its continuation. Following this review, the Pentagon has found that there are no viable alternatives to the Sentinel.

William LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, said his office was “fully aware of the costs.”

“But we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront,” he added in the statement.

Much of the cost increase has been attributed not only to building the new missile but also to the large-scale modernization of ground-based facilities, including launch control centers, nuclear missile bases, and testing facilities.

The approval of the Sentinel ICBM attracted considerable criticism, prompting more than 700 US scientists representing institutions across the country to send a letter to US President Joe Biden and Congress on Monday. The scientists urged the Pentagon to drop the “expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary” nuclear warhead program.

They argued that “there is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons.”

“These weapons – stored in silos across the Plains states – place a target on communities and increase the risk of nuclear war while offering no meaningful security benefits,” said Tara Drozdenko, director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The size of the US nuclear arsenal is currently limited by New START, a treaty negotiated with Russia in 2010. It is set to expire in 2026, with no indications that it might be renewed.

Last year, Russia formally suspended its participation in New START, citing US sanctions over the Ukraine conflict and encouragement of Kiev’s attacks on Russian strategic air bases. However, Moscow has continued to observe the treaty’s provisions, capping its number of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US Provides $2 Billion Military Aid Package to Warsaw

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 8, 2024

Washington is providing its NATO ally Poland with a second $2 billion foreign military financing (FMF) package in less than a year, Breaking Defense reports. In recent weeks, Warsaw has given Kiev a green light to use Polish-provided weapons to strike the Russian mainland as well as signed a bilateral military pact with Ukraine, agreeing to shoot down some Russian missiles.

A State Department official boasted to the outlet of how the two FMF loans are benefiting the US arms industry as well as strengthening the Washington-led bloc embroiled in its Ukraine proxy war with Moscow. “It’s impressive that it hasn’t even been a year and they [Poland] are moving out pretty quickly… We’re happy with the process. We see it as a success. We’re happy that they’ve been able to move out quickly — not only does it help NATO, it helps the US defense industry as well, the US economy. So, we’re definitely happy with the process.”

As with typical FMF loans, the funds furnished by the State Department to a foreign government must be spent on American-made weaponry and equipment. What makes this loan unique, however, is instead of a grant to purchase arms, this loan includes interest which Warsaw must repay. The US is putting up $60 million to guarantee the loan and cover initial fees. The official said details regarding how the funds will be spent, on what kinds of weapons, will not be shared during this week’s NATO summit. Instead, he insisted the Poles “[have] a list of things they want to achieve” and said to expect future announcements.

The official noted the previous FMF loan, issued last September, has either been totally spent or is earmarked for purchases including four aerostat-based early warning systems which accounts for approximately half the first loan. The unusual loan-based structure allows “the interagency to get FMF funding to foreign allies without needing to wait on the appropriations process,” the outlet notes, adding Congress extended the authority to issue these loans through the end of the 2025 fiscal year.

Asked if other countries will receive such loans, the official answered “We are looking at it, and there are other countries that remain competitive… The reason you’re seeing Poland is, of course, the situation with the ongoing war in Ukraine. They’re ready to move out.” The official emphasized that talks with multiple countries are ongoing, while repeatedly praising Warsaw’s high military spending and deeming Poland “the tip of the spear on this for us right now.”

The State Department stated “Poland is a leader in NATO, currently spending four percent of GDP on defense, the highest in the Alliance. Poland hosts thousands of U.S. and Allied forces, including U.S. V Corps Headquarters (Forward) in Poznan.” The US has roughly 10,000 troops stationed in Poland. Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Warsaw has announced plans to buy a myriad of American arms including Abrams tanks, Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers. Poland is seeking more Patriot air defense batteries as well.

This latest financial and military infusion comes after Ukraine and Poland signed a bilateral military pact this week which includes a mechanism for Warsaw to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. This provision entails the potential to provoke a NATO-Russia war, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long sought.

During a joint presser with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday, Zelensky declared “We are especially grateful for the special arrangements, and this is reflected in the security agreement. It provides for the development of a mechanism to shoot down [by Poland] Russian missiles and drones fired in the airspace of Ukraine in the direction of Poland.”

In November 2022, after a Ukrainian air defense missile killed two people in Poland, Zelensky and his top advisors said it was a Russian strike and demanded NATO take action. “Hitting NATO territory with missiles. … This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” Zelensky railed in a video address.

This assessment was completely at odds with those made by the US, Poland, and NATO which determined the Polish casualties were not the result of a Russian missile strike. At the time, a diplomat from a NATO member state told Financial Times “The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

New ‘Volunteer’ Legion in Poland: Blatant Scam to Force Ukrainians to Front Lines

Sputnik – 09.07.2024

A security pact inked by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday outlines the creation and training of a so-called Ukrainian Legion. This new formation will recruit Ukrainian “volunteers” living in Poland and other EU countries.

“Among the citizens of Ukraine who fled to EU countries, there are no volunteers seeking to participate in the hostilities,” Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, told Sputnik. “Everyone who theoretically had the motivation to participate in the conflict would have returned to Ukraine a long time ago and, accordingly, would have joined combat units on the contact line.”

“Therefore, I think that this is an artificial simulacrum. They will forcefully recruit Ukrainian draft dodgers into this legion, one way or another, under pressure from local intelligence services and police forces,” the pundit continued.

In April, Poland and Lithuania signaled that they would assist the Kiev regime by sending potential draft dodgers home, despite demonstrating reluctance to extradite conscript-aged Ukrainians last year.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz asserted on April 24 that “Ukrainian citizens have obligations towards the state,” while his Lithuanian counterpart Laurynas Kasciunas insisted that evading conscription was “not fair to those citizens who are fighting for their country.”

For months, EU member states had rejected Kiev’s request for repatriating Ukrainian men eligible for mobilization, citing European conventions that do not permit extradition in cases of desertion or draft evasion.

Speaking to reporters in April, Kosiniak-Kamysz and Kasciunas asserted that there were multiple ways the authorities could repatriate Ukrainians without resorting to deportation. These included implementing bans on social benefits, work permits, and necessary documentation, in addition to enacting specific legislation aimed at Ukrainian refugees.

Apparently, the Ukrainian Legion is yet another “legal” loophole to send Ukrainian refugees to the battlefield, according to Korotchenko.

“We are not talking about forced extradition, we are talking about forced enlistment in this foreign legion,” he stressed. “Human rights activists will obviously not be interested in whether [Ukrainians] enlist voluntarily. These procedures would de facto mean forced extradition after they join the legion. The mechanism that is taking shape is absolutely illegal, but has a veneer of legitimacy,” he explained.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Rules Out All Nuclear Talks With US Until Washington Adopts a ‘Sane’ Approach

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | July 8, 2024

A top Russian diplomat stressed that the Kremlin is unwilling to engage with the White House on arms control issues due to the Biden administration’s Russophobic stance. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov argued that President Donald Trump left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) to provoke China.

In an interview with The International Affairs published on Monday, Ryabkov explained Moscow’s position on arms control talks with Washington. “We do not have the foundation right now and we are not even close to shaping one in order to launch a tentative dialogue, not talks even, in this field. This is a result of Washington’s destructive policy course,” he stated.

“Until [the US] clearly show some change for the better in their policy, at the very least, demonstrate that this boundless and unabashed Russophobia has been set aside and is replaced with a slightly more sane approach,” he said, adding, “until this happens, there simply can be no dialogue on strategic stability.”

Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has abandoned a series of agreements that limited the US and Russia’s conventional as well as nuclear arsenals. Additionally, the Kremlin left the New Start Treaty in response to the White House’s support for Kiev.

The deterioration of the global arms control agreement has coincided with a rise in spending on nuclear weapons and arms overall. Both Beijing and Moscow view the launchers as highly provocative. Ryabkov argued Trump left the INF Treaty to build intermediate-range missiles to intimidate China.

“Americans needed to withdraw from the treaty in order to create such systems to intimidate the People’s Republic of China,” Ryabkov said. “And it is no coincidence that we have recently had a sharply intensified discussion about when and where the Americans might begin to deploy their medium-range weapons in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Recently, Washington and Moscow have taken steps to use arms limited by the INF Treaty. The agreement barred land-based missiles, and launchers, with a range of 300-3,400 miles. The US has deployed a covert launcher for intermediate-range missiles to Denmark and the Philippines for war games.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would begin producing weapons that the INF Treaty outlawed. “We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” he stated.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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