Finally, the European Union’s threats, blackmail, and arm-twisting have paid off to push through a giant €50 billion aid package to the hopelessly corrupt Kiev regime. This is while European farmers revolt against the EU leadership over higher energy costs and cheap imports from Ukraine that are putting them out of business and wiping out their livelihoods.
The EU leaders are committing the entire bloc of 500 million people to political suicide. The reckless cavalier attitude is something to behold. Bring on the pitchforks, Merci!
The 27 leaders of the European Union met in an emergency summit this week not to deal with the bloc’s mounting internal political, economic, and social problems but rather to lavish mountains of more aid on non-member Ukraine.
When the leaders held their last summit in December, it was a spectacle of back-biting and sordid wrangling. At that gathering, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed the allocation of more funds to the Ukrainian regime amid bitter recrimination and bickering. This time around, however, Hungary caved in to the intense pressure to agree on the package.
Days before the summit in Brussels this week, it was reported by the Financial Times that the European Council had drawn up plans to sabotage the Hungarian economy if Budapest persisted in not signing up for the massive aid plan. That speaks volumes about the perverse mindset at the apex of the EU bureaucracy. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the bloc despite pretentious claims to the contrary.
Brussels had already frozen up to €10 billion in central funding for Hungary and there were reported threats to remove Budapest’s voting rights in the bloc’s decision-making which would have been a blatant violation of the EU’s declared principle of unanimity.
The allocation of €50 billion to a non-member state is astounding. Even more bewildering is that the latest largesse is only a fraction of the total aid that the EU leadership has pumped into Ukraine since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. Over the past two years, the European Union has given the Kiev regime an estimated €100 billion.
The United States and other Western allies have also plied Ukraine with another €100 billion. About half of this goes on weapons, while the other half pays for state financing.
As we have noted here previously, the cumulative funding by the West to Ukraine has far exceeded the historic Marshall Fund that the U.S. allocated to all of Europe for reconstruction following World War Two (about €170 billion in today’s money).
There is simply no precedent or justifiable rationale for this mobilization of financial support for Ukraine. This has all been done as a fait accompli by an elite class with no democratic mandate. No referenda have been conducted to consult the public about the inordinate expenditure. Indeed, polls indicate that the European public – like the American public – is opposed to their governments supporting Ukraine.
The Biden administration is vying with growing resistance in Congress to send Ukraine an additional $60 billion.
To boot, the Kiev regime under the puppet president Vladimir Zelensky is a byword for rampant corruption and repression. It is admitted by Pentagon sources that something like $400 million of military spending has been siphoned off by the Kiev junta. The real figure is plausibly even greater.
The grotesque allocation of financial resources to Ukraine has nothing to do with supporting democracy or defending the country from alleged Russian aggression.
EU leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen keep repeating a mantra about defending Ukraine because, they say, if it is defeated then all of Europe is in danger of Russian invasion. This is the most preposterous scaremongering by politicians who are ideologically blinded by Russophobia and slaves to propagating Western hegemony.
The latest €50 billion injection to a war-addicted Ukrainian regime is openly said to be for sustaining its government and paying for salaries and services. In other words, Ukraine is a failed state, and yet European citizens, workers, and farmers – who themselves are subsisting in hard economic times – are expected to bankroll a corrupt cabal.
Furthermore, the hardship that tens of millions of European citizens are enduring is a direct result of their political leaders and the Brussels bureaucratic elite pandering to the United States’ agenda of hostility towards Russia.
That U.S.-led aggression, which can be traced back to the CIA-instigated coup in Kiev in 2014 to bring a NeoNazi regime to power, has sabotaged Europe’s economy. European leaders have treasonously served Washington’s geopolitical interests and not those of ordinary Europeans. The insane imposition of sanctions on Russia has led to huge hikes in energy prices which has decimated European businesses and the living standards of consumers, workers, and farmers.
The higher costs of production are a major factor in the surging protests across Europe by farmers. Another factor is the EU’s undemocratic import of cheaper agricultural produce from Ukraine as a sop to the Kiev regime. Those imports have undermined farmers all across Europe, in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and the Baltic countries.
The scandalous abuse of European funds to prop up a corrupt fascist regime that violently suppresses political opponents, media, and the Orthodox Church, and glorifies Nazi collaborators, has one fundamental purpose – to prolong a proxy war against Russia. That war’s objective is for eventual strategic subjugation.
The Western regimes are so bankrupt and impotent in the face of their broken capitalist economies that they are seeking to exploit Russia’s vast natural wealth. This is the continuation of the Lebensraum policy of Nazi Germany by Western imperialists.
Ukraine has lost the proxy war against Russia. It is a shameful, criminal debacle. Up to 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the past two years by superior Russian forces. The vile Kiev regime, of course, wants to keep the war racket going for its insatiable grifting. Washington and its European vassals in high office want to keep the war going out of elitist imperial ambition, an ambition that is ultimately futile in the new emerging multipolar global order.
While European leaders were ensconced in the European Council in Brussels, the parliament was blockaded by angry farmers from all over Europe. Protesters were calling out politicians by name. The contempt is palpable. Paris and other capitals across Europe are being besieged by motorway chokepoints. National economies are on the brink as a result.
One might even perceive that European farmers in France, Germany, Belgium, and elsewhere, are implementing tactics similar to the Yemenis in the Red Sea. Squeeze the chokepoints and watch the empire writhe.
You couldn’t make this farce up. European elitist regimes are waging war in Europe against nuclear-powered Russia by wasting the public’s money to lavish a Neo-Nazi mafia in Kiev and by doing so making the lives of European citizens even harder. The upshot is political and economic suicide for the European Union.
The EU is holding parliamentary elections in June amid the dramatic rise of anti-EU or Eurosceptic parties. Two years of senseless war in Ukraine is fomenting popular disgust with the elite class. The anger out there may not even be contained by voting in elections. The fury seems to be beyond making little Xs in a box. A collapse is coming and heads are going to roll.
February 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | European Union, Ukraine |
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The US Department of Defense has signed a contract worth $68.4 million with the Raytheon defense-industrial company for the production and delivery of 50 air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
“Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a $68,420,396 modification (P00001) to a firm-fixed-price order (N0001924F2560) … This modification exercising an option for the production and delivery of 50 Joint Standoff Weapon Air-To-Ground Missiles (AGM-154 Block III C) for the government of Taiwan,” Pentagon said in a statement.
The work under the contract is expected to be completed in March 2028, the statement read.
Taiwan has been governed independently of mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan — a territory with its own elected government — maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence.
Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable. In response to visits of high-ranking US delegations to Taiwan in 2022 and 2023, the Chinese military launched large-scale drills near the island, in what it called a warning to Taiwanese separatists and foreign powers.
February 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | China, United States |
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The countries of the collective West, led by the United States, have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022 in the amount of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Canada may transfer CRV7 air-to-surface missiles to Ukraine that were developed in the 1980s and taken out of service in the early 2000s, according to Canadian broadcaster CBC, citing a representative of the country’s Defense Ministry.
“The federal Conservatives are demanding that the Liberal government donate to Ukraine tens of thousands of surplus air-to-ground missiles that were scheduled to be scrapped,” the material said.
At the moment, Canada has about 83,300 missiles in its arsenal, part of them already without warheads, according to CBC.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, also demands that these munitions be sent to Kiev. According to him, it is better to give these weapons to Ukraine than to make Canadians pay millions of dollars to decommission them.
Earlier, on January 1, Volodymyr Zelensky held talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, thanking him in particular for the delivery of additional NASAMS air defense systems and shells. However, later, on January 9, CTV News reported that Kiev had not received the NASAMS air defense missile system that Canada had promised to purchase from the US for the needs of the Ukrainian military.
The CRV7 air-to-surface missile, an outdated weapon from the past, is no longer in use due to advances in technology and the development of more sophisticated missiles. Designed for use during the Cold War, these missiles have been replaced by more accurate, faster, and more versatile ones with greater range, payload capacity, and precision guidance systems.
February 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Canada, Ukraine |
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Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.
That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.
In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.
But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.
He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.
“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”
Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran
The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”
“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.
“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”
Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.
“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”
In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.
They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.
US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.
“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.
“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.
“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”
“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.
February 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops.
Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed.
It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.
Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.
By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.
Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead.
The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28.
Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?
Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.
Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.
There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.
By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths.
The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons.
Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.
When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.
At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime.
On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”
He added: “These could have been either American Patriot or German-made Iris-T missiles. If confirmed, this will make the Western suppliers of this ammo complicit in this crime. Just as they are complicit in shelling of peaceful neighborhoods of Russian cities that Ukrainian armed forces carry out with Western weapons.”
Russian crash investigators have now confirmed that Western weapons were the cause of the deadly crash.
The United States or one of its NATO allies supplied those weapons. That makes the U.S. or NATO complicit in an act of deadly aggression against Russia.
And by using the same logic as Joe Biden that culpability makes the U.S. or its allies accountable to Russia… “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.”
Biden has made the case for Russia to directly hit American or NATO assets.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Middle East, Ukraine, United States |
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Washington plans to ship its first batch of ground-launched long-range bombs to Kiev this week. The arms were designed for the Ukrainian military and will give Kiev another option for deep strikes.
The new weapon was developed by Boeing and Saab. It combines a 250-pound guided bomb intended to be launched by an aircraft and straps it to a rocket motor. Washington believes it has a range of 90 miles.
Boeing and Saab pitched combining the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor in November 2022. President Joe Biden approved the transfer of the long-range bomb to Ukraine in February 2023. However, the delivery of the munitions was delayed because it needed to be developed and tested.
Politico spoke with four officials who confirmed the first batch would arrive in Ukraine this week. The officials touted the weapons as giving Ukraine “a significant capability.” “It gives them a deeper strike capability they haven’t had, it complements their long-range fire arsenal,” the US official said. “It’s just an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more.”
The officials did not say how many bombs will be sent to Ukraine. At times, Washington has sent an extremely limited number of some types of arms to Kiev. Ukrainian forces recently conducted strikes deep in Russian-held territory on civilian targets. Earlier this month, at least 27 people were killed in a Ukrainian attack on a market on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled portion of the Donetsk Oblast.
While the bombs may give Ukraine another option for deep strikes, it does not fill massive gaps in Kiev’s war needs. Ukraine is running short on manpower. Additionally, front-line troops lack artillery shells to fight back advancing Russian forces, and Kiev is short on air defense interceptors to protect its key infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Western backers are facing multiple hurdles to providing Kiev with more weapons. In Washington, the White House is gridlocked with Republicans in Congress on the supplemental defense spending bill that includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. However, even if the legislation is passed, Western reserves of 155 mm artillery shells and air defense interceptors are nearly depleted.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Ukraine, United States |
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The full text of what is claimed to be a discussion by senior German military officers on how to attack the Crimean Bridge in Russia was published by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan on Friday. She reported that Russian security officials had leaked the recording hours earlier and has pledged to release the original audio shortly.
Simonyan identified the officers as General Ingo Gerhartz, the German Air Force commander, and senior leaders responsible for mission planning. The alleged conversation took place on February 19, according to the source of the leak.
The transcript reveals the officials discussed the efficiency of the Franco-British cruise missile called Storm Shadow by the UK and SCALP by France. Both nations donated some of their stockpile to Ukraine.
Kiev has called on Germany to provide some of its Taurus missiles. The officers in the leaked recording debate whether the weapon system was adequate for hitting the Crimean Bridge in Russia, which connects eastern Crimea to Krasnodar Region across the Kerch Strait.
According to the transcript, the officers discussed how a successful attack on a key piece of Russian infrastructure would require additional satellite data, possible deployment of missiles from French Dassault Rafale fighter jets, and at least a month of preparation.
One participant observed that due to the size of the bridge, which is the longest in Europe, even 20 missiles may not be enough to cause significant damage. It is comparable to a runway in that regard, he noted.
“They want to destroy the bridge… because it has not only military strategic importance, but also political significance,” Gerhartz is quoted as saying, apparently referring to officials in Kiev. “It would be concerning if we have direct connection with the Ukrainian armed forces.”
The officers went on to discuss how close the German military should be working on the proposed operation so as not to cross the ‘red line’ of being involved directly. Secretly training Ukrainians in the use of German weapons and helping them plan the operation were deemed acceptable. Concerns about the press learning about such cooperation were also raised, the transcript reveals.
Senior officials in Berlin have repeatedly made public statements explaining their reservations about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this week that the Germany’s military cannot do for Ukraine what “was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target-control and target-control assistance.” The remark was rebuked by London and Paris, for allegedly distracting public attention from German unwillingness to donate arms to Kiev.
According to the released text, a large segment of the conversation was about practical aspects of preparing Kiev’s forces for deploying Taurus missiles, from training its military personnel, to adapting hardpoints of Ukrainian military jets for Berlin’s weapons, to providing technical support remotely via a safe link. The officers were concerned that speeding up the proposed handover may result in civilians being killed “again” in a weapons mishap.
When assessing the intelligence necessary for targeting the missiles, Gerhartz allegedly mused that, to provide such information, there are plenty of “people in civilian clothes with American accents” in Kiev that would cover up for the Germans.
Full Transcript of German Top Military Officials’ Leaked Plot to Attack Crimean Bridge
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Germany |
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The war in Ukraine is a complicated tangle of three wars in one. It is a civil war between Ukraine’s European leaning west and its Russian leaning east. It is a war between Ukraine and Russia. And it is a war between Russia and NATO.
Ben Abelow’s book, How the West Brought War to Ukraine, is a clear and valuable introduction to the decisions and events that led up to the war between Ukraine and Russia. Nicolai Petro’s The Tragedy of Ukraine is a comprehensive and masterful account of the history of the ethnic tension between the monist and pluralist visions of Ukraine that led to civil war and made Ukraine vulnerable to being caught up in the larger war between Russia and NATO.
Richard Sakwa’s new book, The Lost Peace, valuably fills the gap by addressing the larger war between Russia and NATO. It is a tour de force analysis of the wasted opportunity for peace at the end of the Cold War.
When Mikhail Gorbachev declared the end of the Cold War on December 7, 1988, a brief window for peace opened. But by the negligent failure to construct a new security structure in Europe that overcame the flaws of the previous one, the window Gorbachev opened was quickly closed. When Gorbachev received his peace prize in 1990, the Nobel Prize committee declared that “the two mighty power blocs, have managed to abandon their life-threatening confrontation” and confidently expressed the “hope that we are now celebrating the end of the Cold War.” But “The Cold War,” as U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has funereally said, “is back.”
How was that window of opportunity wasted? Why was the road from the Nobel Committee’s hope to the United Nations’ eulogy such a short one?
If the second cold war that we now find ourselves in is to end more hopefully, that failure will have to be deconstructed in order to find the clues for constructing a lasting and inclusive security structure upon which real peace can be built. Richard Sakwa, who has been called the preeminent Russia scholar of our day, provides timely help with his deconstruction of that failure.
There are two strengths that set The Lost Peace apart. The first is the wealth and depth of Sakwa’s knowledge. The second is that the book doesn’t just start with the shattering of the peace in Ukraine in 2014 that broke the dam for the new Cold War. In The Lost Peace, Sakwa analyzes the post Cold War world and identifies the conflicts and decisions that wasted the peace and led, once again, to war.
Sakwa argues that with the end of the first Cold War, there was a genuine chance for a very different world than the actual one being painfully played out in Ukraine; there was a genuine chance for a real peace.
But an arrogant America misunderstood Gorbachev’s offering of an international order that now transcended blocs and declared the victory of the American-led bloc and the dawn of a unipolar world. “By the grace of God, America won the cold war,” President George H.W. Bush arrogantly and misleadingly boasted in 1992. The young American hegemon, newly bloated with hubris, led the political West, hand in hand with NATO, on a global expansion that would soon close the cold peace and open the door to a new Cold War.
The U.S. rejected the opportunity it had been offered to build a new security structure. Instead, the U.S. declared not only the victory of the political West’s worldview, but its universality, and set out on a mission of enlargement that expanded to fill the whole world.
That is, the whole world but Russia, who alone was left out of the new security arrangement and ostracized as the new dividing lines in Europe moved ever closer to its borders and red lines until the whole strategy exploded in Ukraine, ending the possibility of peace and cementing the new Cold War.
Sakwa deconstructs the necessary security apparatus that was never constructed and demonstrates how, without that framework, the structure of the possible new peace so quickly collapsed. He identifies three crucial contradictions: sovereign internationalism versus liberal internationalism, international law versus the rules-based order, and freedom to choose versus indivisibility of security.
Russia was committed to sovereign internationalism, which emphasizes state sovereignty and the acceptance that different states develop different cultures and are at different stages of development of different forms of government. All are acceptable until they violate international law or human rights. The United States, however, took the perceived victory of the political West to mean the victory of the cultural West and set out on a mission to spread those values across the globe. They favored liberal hegemony over sovereign internationalism, asserting the universality of their beliefs. Russia, China, and the Global South resented that “great substitution” of the values of sovereign internationalism with liberal hegemony and the colonial missionary spread of the universal values of the West.
When the American policy of spreading Western values lacked the necessary approval of the Security Council, the U.S. enlarged the great substitution, usurping the authority of the Security Council and acting unilaterally without its approval. International resentment grew at this replacement of international law anchored in the UN with the rules-based order. The essence of international law is that written laws are applied universally. The rules-based order promoted by the West is composed of unwritten laws whose source, consent and legitimacy are unknown. To Russia and other countries not in the political West, they have the appearance of being invoked when they benefit the U.S. and its partners and not being invoked when they don’t. To those not in the political West, it appeared, disturbingly, that the U.S. and NATO had supplanted the U.N. as the arbiter of international law.
This belief was reinforced in Iraq and, especially, in Kosovo and Libya where the United States acted without Security Council approval in precisely the way they insisted that the rest of the world do not. Russia bristled at the double standard.
As long as liberal internationalism confined itself to the UN based international system, there was much about it that was attractive. But when the U.S. and NATO began their missionary project of spreading those universal values in ways that dismissed sovereign internationalism and international law, other nations felt their sovereignty and security being threatened.
And that led to the third contradiction. The U.S. insists on the free and sovereign right of states to choose their own partners and security alignments; Russia insists on the indivisibility of security, which insists that the security of one state cannot be purchased at the cost of the security of another. Both principles are enshrined in international law and in international agreements, and, with imagination and understanding, they could have been made compatible. But the United States, Russia argues, exclusively pursued the first in disregard of the second.
That conflict came to a head in Ukraine. American and NATO insistence, in violation of verbal promises made at the close of the Cold War, on NATO’s open-door policy and, especially, on Ukraine’s right to join NATO and NATO’s right to expand right up to Russia’s border was perceived by Russia as a security threat that crossed its reddest of lines.
The U.S. and NATO restated their promise of eventual NATO membership for Ukraine and increased military support. Russia felt that its security concerns were being ignored and that Ukraine was being built into a platform for threatening its existence. The U.S. overreached, Russia overreacted, and the second Cold War was a certainty.
If there is a weakness to Sakwa’s book, it is not in its argument nor in its evidence. It is in its reach to an audience. The Lost Peace is not an easy book. It is a book by a scholar steeped in the story that assumes at least a little of that knowledge by its audience. The Lost Peace is not a book for beginners. But for those with an interest in international relations, the book is an invaluable addition.
The Lost Peace despairs of the wasted opportunity to build a security structure that would have provided the architecture for a possible peace at the end of the Cold War. But it also ends with the hope that, having analyzed the contradictions, conflicts and failures to recognize the interests of others, we are able to find “new ways of thinking about old problems” and do better in the face of a new Cold War. Sakwa’s book is an invaluable contribution to that hope.
February 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Militarism | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United Nations, United States |
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US Air Force personnel in Iraq have been ordered to remain on standby in case of “on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war,” The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing a Pentagon memo.
Circulated earlier this month, the memo instructs an unknown number of troops to be placed “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war,” the news site reported. The standby order applies to troops stationed in Iraq since last year, according to a separate Pentagon document seen by The Intercept.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House has stated on several occasions since October that its support for the Jewish state would not involve American soldiers fighting alongside their Israeli counterparts.
The US responded to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel by immediately dispatching two aircraft carriers to the region and preparing 2,000 additional troops for deployment to the Middle East, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on October 10 that “there is no intention to put US boots on the ground” in Israel or Gaza.
However, US special forces have been active in Israel since October, with senior official Christopher Maier telling reporters at the time that American commandos were “actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things.” The Pentagon has also admitted to flying spy drones over Gaza “in support of hostage recovery efforts.”
Since the conflict began, US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan have come under fire more than 150 times, with Iran-aligned Shi’ite militias subjecting their bases to regular drone and rocket barrages. One such attack on an outpost in Jordan on Sunday killed three US soldiers and injured several dozen others.
American ships and warplanes have also launched several strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, in a bid to break the Houthi blockade on “Israel-linked” merchant shipping passing through the Red Sea. The Houthis have responded by targeting US commercial and military vessels in the area. On Wednesday, the militants announced that they had fired multiple missiles at the destroyer USS Gravely.
US Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said that the Graveley shot down one incoming missile, and suffered no damage or casualties.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Palestine, United States |
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By John Helmer | Dances with Bears | January 31, 2024
When the General Staff have been discussing with President Vladimir Putin the timing of the Russian offensive to force the Kiev regime into capitulation, it has been agreed, understood, and repeated that the strategic reserves of the Ukrainian forces should be destroyed first, together with the supply lines for the weapons and ammunition crossing the border from the US and the NATO allies.
This process, they also agreed, should take as long as required with least casualties on the Russian side, as determined by military intelligence. Also agreed and pre-conditional, there should be no repeat of the political intelligence failures of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) which precipitated the failed special forces operation known as the Battle of Antonov (Hostomel) Airport from February 24 to April 2, 2022.
Taking account of the mistakes made then by the SVR director, Sergei Naryshkin, and the subsequent mistakes of military officers around Yevgeny Prigozhin, the General Staff has also accepted that their tactical operations must run least risk of Russian casualties through March 17, the final day of the presidential election.
Reinforcing these preconditions for the timing of the Russian offensive, General Winter and General Patience have joined the Stavka meetings.
This week military sources believe there has been a turning point – on the Ukrainian battlefield, and on the Russian clock.
The daily Defense Ministry briefing and bulletin from Moscow reported last Thursday, before the Friday weekly summary, that the Ukrainian KIA (killed in action) for the previous twenty-four hours totaled 795, with the ratio of offensive tactics to defence, 3 to 3. On Monday, the KIA total was 680, the ratio 4 to 3. On Tuesday, KIA came to 885, the ratio 5 to 1. The casualty rate is unusually high; the shift to offence is recognizably new, if not announced.
The “Stavka Project”, a military briefing which is broadcast by Vladimir Soloviev, confirms the positional breakthroughs this week on several of the fronts or “directions”, as the Defense Ministry calls them, along the Donbass line; click to watch (in Russian).
In Boris Rozhin’s summary of the Defense Ministry briefing materials, published before dawn on Wednesday morning, the leading Russian military blogger (Colonel Cassad ) identifies “small advances”, “slight movements”, some positional “successes”, other positional “counter-fighting”, and “no significant progress yet”. The adverb is military talk for timing.
According to a military source outside Russia, “the Russian breakthrough is beginning to happen now. It’s being coordinated with strikes and raids along the northern border. The commitment of the ‘crack’ Ukrainian brigades at the expense of other sectors shows how desperate [General Valery] Zaluzhny is to plug the holes. He knows that the target is the isolation of Kharkov, the establishment of a demilitarized ‘buffer zone’, as well as the development of a situation whereby all Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are threatened with being cut off… and he’s quickly running out of ammunition, not to mention cannon fodder.”
“By the end of the winter,” the source has added overnight, “the Ukrainians will barely be able to move along the roads they use to feed the front due to the Russian drone, missile, conventional air, and artillery strikes. Once they can no longer plug the gaps with mechanized units acting as fire-fighting brigades, it’s just a matter of time before the big breakthroughs and encirclements begin. At the current burn rate of Ukrainian forces, I imagine we’ll start seeing Russian tanks with fuel tanks fitted for extended range appearing and Russian airborne troops making air assaults in the Ukrainian rear within weeks.”
In yesterday’s edition of the Moscow security analysis platform Vzglyad, Yevgeny Krutikov, a leading Russian military analyst with GRU service himself and GRU sources for his reporting since, published a report entitled “What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?” “Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region,” Krutikov concluded, “threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.” A verbatim English translation of this piece follows.
January 29, 2024 – 19:10.
What does the offensive of Russian troops in the Kharkov region mean?
By Yevgeny Krutikov
“The settlement of Tabayevka in the Kharkov region has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry says. We are not just facing the capture of a village: Russian troops are now hacking into the contact lines, which have not budged for a year. Russia is creating a new strategic situation in the Kharkov region, threatening to dismember the Ukrainian defence up to the Donetsk agglomeration.
First, Krakhmalnoye, then Tabayevka – Russian troops have advanced in the Svatovo direction (Kharkov region), pushing the enemy to a new line of defence (to the village of Peschanoye). Slightly to the north, already close to Kupyansk, the enemy’s positions are also gradually moving to the west and southwest.
Along the way, forests are being cleared, which the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] is turning into fortified areas, even giving them names (“Alligator” and “Woodpecker”). The enemy is losing the old lines of trenches, the first line of contact has been destroyed. Something similar is happening directly near Kupyansk, but there the advanced fortified lines in Sinkovka are being held still by the VSU, though the positions on the flanks have gradually begun to sink.
At first glance, we are looking at isolated episodes of positional warfare, since the big, iconic and recognizable geographical names do not appear in the information releases. But this is not quite true.
Firstly, even in this scenario as published so far, strategic threats arise for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for example, in the possible drive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to the Oskol River which has far-reaching prospects. Notwithstanding, it is still impossible to predict when this will become possible in practice.
Secondly, the enemy has been demonstrating a systemic defence crisis in the Kupyansk direction during the past week. The defence of Kupyansk has been under construction by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the spring of last year, when the decision was made in Kiev on a ‘counteroffensive’ in the southern direction. New brigades with western armoured vehicles were sent to the southern section of the contact line, and Kupyansk and the area around it were designated for defence with the rest of their forces.
In Kiev, they were convinced that Russian troops were forming an offensive group in the Kupyansk direction, and so the VSU began to wait there for a frontal assault. However, as a result, the Russian Army did not undertake anything of the kind in this area. Instead, the Ukrainian units were gradually ground down by the Russian army in positional battles, while the Kupyansk group of the VSU had to be replenished with whatever troops were left.
Now Ukrainian sources are complaining that as a consequence, a combination of lines has formed in the sinkhole areas (that’s the same Krakhmalnoye and Tabayevka). Into these lines the VSU has herded separate battalions from different units, with the result that unified management and command have been lost, and the performance quality of the troops has left much to be desired.
As a result, the VSU is considering the possibility of transferring the remnants of those forces which participated in the failed ‘counteroffensive”’ to Kupyansk from the southern direction. Before that, they had been sent in great haste sent to Avdeyevka.
But this is already a systemic problem for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since there is trouble in the southern sector. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have gradually regained some of the positions which were left during the so-called counteroffensive, and these forces continue to move forward. We are even talking about possible threats to Orekhov, a rearguard city for the VSU, from which all the communications and command of the ‘counteroffensive’ had been carried out.
Behind the defensive fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an open field for tens of kilometres opens up on a whole group of sites. Kiev’s military reserves are gradually being squandered, and there is practically no human materiel left to plug the holes. Related to these problems there are the panic campaigns in Kiev about total mobilization.
There is another problem: the attrition of officers. Western military personnel cannot replace this crucial resource — they can only be used to service technically complicated weapons systems such as air defence or long-range artillery. Along the line of contact, foreign officers are more likely to interfere due to their ignorance of the language and misunderstanding of the mentality of the [Ukrainian] subordinates.
There are other factors weakening the Ukrainian defence, but they are not directly related to military operations. For example, the Western sponsors are really concerned about the corruption of the Ukrainian leadership. The inspections and audits which are taking place in Kiev on this issue right now are preventing Ukraine from building new defensive lines swiftly enough.
Another non-military factor: political discord among the various factions of the Ukrainian authorities. The premonition of defeat is triggering a drop in morale, not only in the troops, but also in the elites.
All this in general creates a strategic opportunity for Russia to seriously change the situation on the line of contact.
Partial tactical successes must at some point turn into a major breakthrough in the enemy’s defence. Moreover, we are talking about such a breakthrough that will not stop in just two or three days at the next defensive line, but will lead inevitably, precisely, to the collapse of the front. This is exactly what the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces are now aimed at, probing for the weaknesses in Ukrainian defensive positions.
The liberation of Tabayevka is an example of just such an approach. Sooner or later, the VSU will not have time to create a new defensive line behind a particular settlement. And then we will see how the special operation will break the current positional deadlock.
January 31, 2024
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Militarism | Russia, Ukraine |
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The Pentagon plans to “field test” a new, ground-launched variant of its deadly Small Diameter Bomb design in real world battlefield conditions in Ukraine. What are these weapons? What dangers will they pose to Russian forces and civilians in frontline areas? How can Russia defeat them? Sputnik explores.
Sources told Politico on Tuesday that Ukraine is preparing to receive a delivery of the US’ new Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDBs) as soon as this week.
The deliveries will give Kiev “a deeper strike capability they haven’t had” and “complement” the Ukrainian military’s “long-range fire arsenal,” a US official familiar with the transfer boasted. The weapons, which even the US military doesn’t have in its arsenal yet, will serve as “an extra arrow in the quiver that’s gonna allow them to do more,” the official said, without elaborating.
What is the Small Diameter Bomb?
Developed in the mid-2000s by US aerospace and defense giant Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division, the original GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was envisioned as an air-dropped glide bomb designed to target an array of stationary ground targets, ranging from bunkers and electronic warfare jamming equipment to airfields, fuel depots, barracks, and troop concentration.
The GBU-39 is equipped with a 285-pound (130 kg) bomb and has a 206-pound (93 kg) penetrating blast fragmentation warhead – enough to punch through up to three feet of steel-reinforced concrete, and can be guided by a combination of active radar homing, laser guidance, GPS, and inertial navigation, depending on configuration and model. The system boasts a circular error probable of about one meter, and has a range of between 75 and 110 km.
The GBU-39 is a glide weapon, which, as the name suggests, means the bomb glides to its target along a pre-designated flight path at low speeds, without the assistance of rocket engines. The system’s comparatively low cost (as little as $40,000 apiece compared to $3.2 million for the Storm Shadows Kiev has been receiving from Britain and using to terror bomb Donbass, for example, combined with its small radar signature and comparatively short flight time makes it difficult to detect and intercept using traditional air defenses.
What is the Ground-Launched Variant of the Small Diameter Bomb?
With Ukraine’s Air Force hard pressed to get its aircraft into the skies due to the constant threat of Russian air defenses and interceptor warplanes, the US and its allies have committed significant resources to converting ordinarily air-launched weapons for launch from ground-based systems (for more information check out the US military-industrial complex’s “FrankenSAM” program for Ukraine).
Besides air defenses, another component of efforts to convert ordinarily air-launched weapons from the ground revolves around rocket artillery. That’s where the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb comes in. Unlike its air-launched cousin, the modified GBU-39 is fitted with an engine from the M26 rocket motor used by the M270 and HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to propel it toward its target.
Developed by Boeing and Swedish defense giant Saab in the mid-2010s, the GLSDB is said to have a range of up to 145 km, and has a reported price tag of about $100,000 apiece.
With the US and its allies having already sent dozens of MLRS artillery platforms to Ukraine over the past two years, the delivery of new ground-launched Small Diameter Bombs is expected to provide Kiev with an instantaneous new long-range strike capability.
How Many GLSDBs Will Ukraine Get?
With US funding for Ukraine running out in December and the Pentagon forced to dip into its own dwindling stockpiles to assist Kiev, it’s not clear how many of the newfangled ground-launched GLSDBs Ukraine will receive. When plans to deliver the weapons were first announced a year ago as part of a $2.17 billion arms package, US media mentioned a figure of two launchers and 24 weapons total.
That would be enough for Kiev to attempt strikes deep behind Russian lines, or to launch terror attacks against cities in Donbass or other Russian border settlements, but not enough to have any serious strategic impact – where quantity of available munitions has proven key.
Where Have Small Diameter Bombs Been Used?
Ukraine’s military will be the GLSDB’s first operator, with the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan expected to follow at a later date.
The original SDB was used by the US and its allies in conflicts across the Middle East and Asia, from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Syria and Gaza (where it has been used by Washington’s Israeli ally), and Yemen (deployed by members of the Gulf-led coalition against the Houthis). In each instance, GBU-39s successfully targeted forces fighting US or allied militaries, but in no case has their deployment resulted in or even contributed to a strategic victory for an aggressor power.
How Can Russia Defend Against Ground-Launched GBU-39s?
As mentioned above, glide bombs’ design characteristics and principle of operation makes them difficult to intercept and destroy, but that doesn’t mean the task is impossible. Russia’s response to GLSDB deployment by Ukraine will likely include:
- continuing operations to target HIMARS and M270 fire positions, ammunition, supply, and repair depots using artillery and precision missile strikes.
- deploying radio-electronic jamming equipment to degrade the weapons’ accuracy (although this will not affect onboard inertial guidance systems, without GPS the glide bombs are less precise).
- shooting the glide bombs down using the dense array of conventional air defenses along frontline areas, from the Tor and Buk missile system to close-in anti-aircraft guns.
January 31, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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MOSCOW – The West is beginning to understand that the “Ukraine project” is failing but can not stop assisting Kiev because of its economic benefit and fear of losing “prestige,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“The figures that are hidden in Ukraine, they speak a lot about how important it is for the West to prevent the ‘failure’ of their ‘Ukraine project’. Moreover, they already understand that the failure has already begun. But nevertheless they cannot stop. And not only for reasons of prestige … And also from the point of view of economic benefits,” Lavrov said during a meeting with foreign diplomats in Moscow.
Addressing the UN Security Council meeting on January 22, 2023, Lavrov emphasized that there are no interests – and there never were – in the conflict with Russia in favor of the Ukrainian people. There are only “the interests of the Anglo-Saxons, their henchmen and the criminal, rotten Kiev elite, which is tied to the West by mutual responsibility and which is afraid of being swept away the day after the end of the war.”
The Russian top diplomat pointed out that Moscow has never given up on a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict.
“We never gave up on the peaceful resolution, we are always ready to negotiate — negotiate not about how to keep the leadership of the Kiev regime in place but about overcoming the inheritance of a decade-long destructive looting of the country and violence against the people, removing the reasons for the tragic Ukrainian situation,” Lavrov said. However, the key factor hindering a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine is the continued support of the West, he added.
January 30, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism | European Union, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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