CIA Warned Blinken Ukraine ‘Counteroffensive’ Bound to Fail: Seymour Hersh
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.08.2023
The veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who broke the story earlier this year on Washington’s role in last September’s terror attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipeline network, has now pointed to evidence of disillusionment within the Biden administration as the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine grinds to a halt.
The CIA notified US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Ukraine counteroffensive would be unlikely to inflict a defeat on Moscow, US veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday, citing a US intelligence official.
“The word was getting to him [Blinken] through the Agency [CIA] that the Ukrainian offens[ive] was not going to work. It was a show by Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bull****,” the anonymous official was quoted as saying.
Blinken, the official claimed, has come to the realization that Washington and its Ukrainian proxies “will not win the war” against Russia, but did not “want to go down as the court jester” of the administration in relation to the Ukraine crisis.
“Blinken wanted to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine as [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger did in Paris to end the Vietnam War,” according to the official. Instead, the secretary realized that “it was going to be a big lose,” and “found himself way over the skis.”
Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive in early June against heavily entrenched Russian positions in Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. The counteroffensive failed to make any substantive gains, and cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, and hundreds of NATO-provided armored vehicles, with Ukraine’s forces unable to reach even the first major Russian defensive lines in two-and-a-half months’ time.
‘Jake Sullivan’s Baby’
The intelligence official cited by Hersh also offered new details on the Biden administration’s motivations for holding the Jeddah Peace Summit earlier this month – with the gathering flopping after Russia was curiously left off the list of invitees, but apparently planned well in advance as a victory summit.
“Jeddah was [Biden National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan’s baby,” the official said, with Sullivan planning it to be “Biden’s equivalent” of Woodrow Wilson’s Versailles Treaty moment at the end of World War I.
“The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg-type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more f***-up, but who is counting? Forty nations showed up, all but six looking for free food after the Odessa shutdown,” the official said.
Jockeying for Position
Hersh’s source also indicated that CIA Director William Burns had apparently recently “made his move to join the sinking ship” of stoking the crisis in relations with Moscow over Ukraine after signing on to the administration’s position on continued NATO expansion – which along with Kiev’s eight-year-long war against Donbass was one of the causes of the present conflict.
“Burns does not lack self-confidence and ambition,” the anonymous intelligence official said, indicating that running the CIA under Biden has effectively been a demotion compared to his previous job as deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama.
Notwithstanding growing internal concerns about the continued viability of the proxy war in Ukraine, Hersh believes that the administration will continue to promote a wishful thinking approach to the crisis to the American people, even as “the end” nears and “the assessments supplied by Biden to the public are out of a comic strip.”
Russia’s asymmetric response
Russia’s asymmetric response to latest announced plans of U.S. and NATO for sending more devastating military hardware to Ukraine
By Gilbert Doctorow | August 15, 2023
Each time over the past 18 months that it appeared the Ukraine war was approaching a finale amounting to Kiev’s defeat and capitulation we have been surprised by yet another U.S. initiated escalation that changes the nature of the conflict and promises a new and drawn-out stage of fighting.
Did the Ukrainian counter-offensive which began on 4 June fail? An increasing number of Western mainstream media including CNN have published reports acknowledging it is a failure. In Washington, the finger pointing game over who ‘lost Ukraine’ has begun among the country’s most determined backers.
Europe is a backwater in more than one dimension. Not everyone here has gotten the word about Ukraine’s losses in two months of desperate attacks on Russian defensive positions across the entire 1,000 km front. Last night I watched a round-table discussion of the war on French television in which not a single panelist had been told that the game is up in Ukraine. These smirky amateurs, mostly garden variety journalists, were discussing the fighting around one or another Ukrainian town on the front line whose name they could barely pronounce, all convinced that the Ukrainian forces had the upper hand and were on their way to breaching the Russian defenses, about to reach the less awesome second line of defense, and were surely to make it through to the Sea of Azov, thereby achieving the basic objective of the entire operation – cutting the Russian supply lines and breaking the back of Russian resistance. The whole time these commentators smiled broadly as if the war were just a video game.
But to hell with the French propagandists. In the German media, mainstream journalists have been seeding the discussion of the war with news about Ukraine’s setbacks and the improbability of their accomplishing anything other than self-destruction as the fighting continues. Simultaneously with the announcement that Germany is about to supply long range reconnaissance drones to Kiev, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for “continuation” of peace negotiations. It is curious that no one told him there are no peace negotiations going on today. But the main point is that victory on the battlefield seems to have vanished from the Berlin discourse.
Nonetheless, the United States and Britain announce day after day new appropriations for delivery of military hardware of the most devastating sort to Ukraine. Abrams tanks are on the way. Longer range strike missiles with a range up to 500 km may soon be shipped. Biden in the past week inserted authorization for another 14 billion dollars in military supplies into a bill for provision of aid to victims of natural disasters, meaning the present disaster in Hawaii and elsewhere in the States. The tactic was meant to overcome rising Republican opposition to giving Ukraine one more cent of aid should the aid have been in a separate bill dedicated to the war effort. The drumbeats for provision of F16s to Ukraine continue and there is talk of preparing new Ukrainian troops for a renewed counter-offensive in 2024.
So what are the Russians doing about the new arms on the way to Ukraine?
An article posted in Russian social media and carried by the number one news portal, Dzen, formerly a subsidiary of Yandex, gives us a good insight into Russian countermeasures that otherwise are buried in general daily Western reporting on the war. We hear about air raid alerts across Ukraine which took place a day ago but there is no explanation. We hear about a Russian missile strike that killed a young Ukrainian family but are told it is just part of the Russian attacks on civilians.
The article posted on “Интересная жизнь с Vera Star” makes sense of it all.
First, those air raid sirens across the whole of Ukraine were related to the systematic Russian bombardment of all still functional Ukrainian airports from which their air force’s SU-24 and SU-27 can operate. These are the aircraft that are capable of carrying and firing the Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that have been supplied by Britain and France, and which may carry German missiles, if Berlin decides to proceed with its previous offer of such materiel.
Second, we are told that the Russians have just used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy the railway tunnels passing under the Carpathians which have been the main supply route of Western military hardware arriving from Poland and Romania. For a long time, there was discussion in the Russian senior military command over whether it was permissible to attack this ostensibly civilian infrastructure. However, the decision was taken to do so in light of the latest U.S. and NATO plans to raise the bar in what attack equipment they are providing to Ukraine. As the Russians argue, civilian infrastructure that is being used to serve military objectives automatically becomes a legal target for them.
By Russian calculations, they have now nullified the latest Western plans to prolong the war.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Western military dominance ‘has ended’ – Moscow
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu © Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation; RIA Novosti
RT | August 15, 2023
Asian, African and Latin American states have seen their role in the global arena increase as Western military dominance has started to wane, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said.
Speaking at the 21st International Security Conference in Moscow on Tuesday, the minister argued that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has “put an end to the dominance of the collective West in the military sphere.”
“Just as the defeat of fascism by the Red Army in Europe in the last century gave a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements throughout the world, so will the defeat of the Ukrainian neo-fascists supported by the West serve as a factor in counteracting modern neo-colonialism,” Shoigu said.
The minister noted that Russia is currently fighting “not just the armed forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West,” which, he added, has recently been joined by several states from the Asia-Pacific region.
In its confrontations with Kiev’s forces, which have been provided with foreign weaponry worth billions of dollars, Russia has dispelled many myths about the superiority of Western military standards, Shoigu said. It has become clear that the use of Western weapons and supposedly advanced NATO tactics and training “cannot ensure superiority on the battlefield,” he added.
The minister also claimed that Kiev’s foreign advisers are essentially using the Ukraine conflict as a testing ground for various military strategies involving Western weapons, while President Vladimir Zelensky supplies the manpower for these experiments. Shoigu said the losses among Ukrainian military personnel are being disregarded by Ukraine’s Western backers.
The Russian minister also claimed that Ukraine’s military resources are almost completely exhausted, according to preliminary estimates. Russia’s Defense Ministry had previously reported that since launching their counteroffensive operation in early June, Ukraine’s forces had lost some 43,000 soldiers as well as nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment, including dozens of Western tanks and combat vehicles.
Shoigu suggested that the US is using the Ukraine conflict to line the pockets of its defense industry by forcing its partners in Europe to procure new products to replace those they have sent to Kiev.
The Summer of Fraying Threads
By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 14, 2023
On April 23, 2021, I wrote the following:
“Ukraine has two options: accept its role as a buffer state, or be dismembered. If the US goads them into an attempt to subjugate the Donbass, Russia will slice away eastern Ukraine and assimilate it — and there is *nothing* the US can do to prevent it.”
Of course, we all know what has happened since then. And now, as the summer of 2023 slips away here on our increasingly vexed planet, I note the following salient developments:
Matters have reached the point where the imperial masters will be forced to choose between a humiliating disengagement and abandonment of Ukraine to its fate — or otherwise blunder into a calamitous direct military intervention.
In recent months, many of the most influential voices in Russia have reiterated the demands made of the NATO bloc in December 2021: it must withdraw its military forces to their pre-1997 posture.
NATO presence in and military support for Ukraine must cease forthwith; Ukraine must be entirely demilitarized, and a neutral regime must be installed in whatever Ukrainian rump state the Russians choose to leave unrestored to mother Russia.
Additionally — and this demand has been explicitly stated — American missiles must immediately be removed from Poland and Romania, and NATO military presence in all the Russia-adjacent nations must be withdrawn.
Many geopolitical analysts have commented to a limited degree on Putin’s address to the world delivered even as Russian forces had commenced their “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, but few, if any, have focused their attention on the equally portentous address Putin delivered three days earlier.
In his February 21, 2022 speech, Putin meticulously recounted the relevant history of the region dating back multiple centuries, and focused specifically on the events that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In addition to Putin’s history lesson, he makes particular reference to a detailed proposal Russia delivered to the United States and its NATO allies in mid-December 2021 — a proposal that effectively amounted to a “final warning”; a last-ditch effort to avoid war in Ukraine.
Consider his words carefully, and especially in light of how Russia has unswervingly adhered to the three primary war objectives Putin articulated in his February 24th speech.
Last December, we handed over to our Western partners a draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees, as well as a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and NATO member states.
The United States and NATO responded with general statements. There were kernels of rationality in them as well, but they concerned matters of secondary importance and it all looked like an attempt to drag the issue out and to lead the discussion astray.
We responded to this accordingly and pointed out that we were ready to follow the path of negotiations, provided, however, that all issues are considered as a package that includes Russia’s core proposals which contain three key points. First, to prevent further NATO expansion. Second, to have the Alliance refrain from deploying assault weapon systems on Russian borders. And finally, rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.
Vladimir Putin, Address by the President of the Russian Federation, February 21, 2022 (emphasis added)
Clearly, the Russians are emboldened by both their burgeoning military strength as well as NATO’s manifest military debility.
This war has achieved precisely the opposite effect envisioned by its imperious authors: it has served to strengthen Russia, and also forged an unbeatable alliance between Russia, China, and Iran.
That said, I cannot shake the haunting worry that the Empire At All Costs cult may yet succeed in persuading the powers-that-be in the Pentagon to test the myth of American military supremacy against what was so long imagined to be Russian military ineptitude.
I believe we will see the answer to that question between now and the vernal equinox in March 2024.
They will no longer tolerate US meddling in Taiwan, nor permit the US to dictate the geopolitical relationships of the nations in east Asia and the western Pacific.
The days of a patient and grudgingly submissive China have come to an end.
To punctuate this reality, we have recently seen the unprecedented development of joint Russia/China naval patrols in the Pacific — including off the coast of Alaska.
In other words, we have well and truly arrived at a hinge point in time.
The first global empire in human history has long-since receded from its high-water mark and is now in rapid and increasingly chaotic decline.
“I have touched the highest point of all my greatness; And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting …”
Great dangers and momentous changes lie ahead — some in the relatively near future; some not far over the horizon.
Prepare accordingly …
What Is Happening In Syria?
Washington’s interventionism and its disregard for its own highly promoted “rules based international order” is outrageous
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 15, 2023
Which are the governments generally regarded as “rogue” by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations? If you answered either Russia or China you would be wrong, even though many countries have condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine on grounds that no government has an intrinsic right to invade another unless there is an imminent serious threat that would excuse such an intervention. I would however expect that most readers of this review would have made the right choice, which is that the United States is probably number one based on its ability to destabilize whole regions with a military reach that spans the globe. And indeed, it is important to note that the Russian “special military operation” directed against Ukraine would not have happened at all if the Joe Biden Administration had simply indicated clearly and non-ambiguously to the Russian government that there was no intention of allowing Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. Ironically, the White House knew very well that inviting Kiev to enter into the alliance was a legitimate red-line, existential issue for the Kremlin, but opted to push hard on the issue instead. Instead of opting for a negotiated peaceful settlement, Biden and his clown show foreign and national security policy team opted to kill possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians to somehow “weaken” Russia, an intention that has borne no fruit even after more than a year and a half of fighting.
So yes, by the world’s reckoning the United States of American is both “exceptional” and “number one,” which a series of White House inhabitants have aspired to, though perhaps not in the same way as buffoons like Senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz refer to it. Most non-Americans see the US as the greatest threat to world peace. And then there is America’s “closest ally and best friend in the whole world” Israel in second place, a government which commits crimes against humanity and even war crimes on a nearly daily basis with absolute impunity as it is protected and defended by the very same United States, where the Jewish state runs the foremost and most powerful foreign policy lobby. It is a lobby that has inserted itself in all levels of government and which has corrupted huge majorities of politicians and both major political parties while also controlling the “message” on the Middle East promoted by the media.
Even as I write this, 41 Democratic Party politicians are spending their recess on a Lobby sponsored trip to Israel. Their leaders include the inimitable traitor 80 year old Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who is on his twenty-third trip to the country that he loves and admires beyond all others, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries is on his second trip to Israel this year. He should be ashamed but, of course, isn’t. It is the largest-ever delegation of Democratic lawmakers on a tour of Israel, sponsored in this case by the American Israel Education Foundation, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Not to be outdone House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is leading 31 Republican Congressmen on the same mission though the groups will not mingle and the speaker will be careful to render his own obeisance separately to the Israeli leadership.
The Democrats and Republicans, will as always be unable to enunciate any good reasons for American bondage to Israel beyond bromides like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” which will be repeated over and over before the Solons head back to Washington to send billions more of US taxpayer dollars to the Jewish state. While in Israel they will be fed a special diet of “all Arabs are terrorists” and good old Steny will be nodding his head in time with the song. That is before he and his colleagues engage in crawling on their bellies before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a sign of their total submission to his will.
If one is seeking a single example of the failure of the United States and its ally Israel to abide by the clearly mythical “rules based international order” one might well examine what is going on in Syria, where both the US and the Jewish state have been punishing the country through lethal sanctions and direct military intervention for many years with no sign that the interaction will be ending any time soon. The activity is rarely reported in the US and European media, which somehow has decided that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is some kind of tyrant who deserves whatever he gets, even if it is dished out by “apartheid” Israel and the clueless US, which has been illegally militarily occupying roughly one third of Syria since 2015, including the areas that have producing oil facilities and good agricultural land, both of which are being exploited or stolen. Israel meanwhile has annexed the Syrian Golan Heights, which it occupied in 1967. Donald Trump gave his blessing to the illegal annexation and also gave his consent to whatever the Jewish state decides to do both with the Syrians and the Palestinians while also conniving at the nearly daily air attacks carried out by Israel against targets in both Palestine-Gaza and Syria, killing scores of local soldiers and civilians.
The US military occupation has been supplemented by an increasingly harsh series of sanctions that have effectively cut off food, medicines and other basic commodities to the Syrian people while also denying access to international banking services. Russia, which is assisting Syria at the invitation of the country’s government, has made up for some of the shortages but there is considerable suffering among the ordinary people, not the country’s leaders. The claim by Washington is that Syria has to be protected from its own “totalitarian” government and the US is there to fight terrorists, most particularly ISIS. Ironically perhaps, but Tel Aviv and Washington actually support some of the groups that many would consider to be themselves terrorists, including providing direct US aid to al-Qaeda clone Hayat Tahrir al Sham and Israeli support for ISIS to include treating wounded terrorists in Israel’s hospitals. The US air base at Al-Tanf, near the border with Iraq and Jordan, has, in fact, become a support hub for terrorist groups opposing the al-Assad government.
Sanctions on energy imports were temporarily lifted by the US and EU after the disastrous earthquakes the shook the region in February, but in June, US lawmakers introduced the Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023 which would use secondary sanctions to penalize those countries that might be tempted to help restore services to the areas of Syria affected by both war and the impact of the quakes. Israel reportedly has exploited the opportunity provided by the natural disaster to increase its air attacks on Syrian infrastructure.
Indeed, recent history tells us that both Israel and the United States are particularly fond of occupying someone else’s land and are capable of coming up with excuses for doing so at the drop of a hat. The reasons generally sound like saying “Hey! We are the good guys who support democracy!” Repeat as necessary until the audience either goes to sleep or wanders off. The western media reporting on what is taking place in Syria can be regarded as being in the “wanders off” category.
I certainly am not the only one who has noted that the United States tends to do everything ass-backwards in its conduct of foreign policy since the time of the Clintons. That has certainly been the case in dealing with nations like Syria and Russia, where ambassadors Robert Ford and Michael McFaul were openly hostile to the respective local governments and openly sought to empower declared opponents of the countries’ leaders. Syria presumably was demonized to please Israel, beginning with the seeking to destabilize Syria through the passage of the Syria Accountability Act in 2003, even though Damascus posed no threat whatsoever to American interests. The current sanctions come at a time when Syria is continuing to struggle to rebuild after a still active twelve year civil war that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. US sanctions are making more difficult ongoing reconstruction efforts and are de facto largely punishing the Syrian people, with only minor impact on its government.
And sanctioning to punish Syria is bipartisan, perhaps reflecting a desire to satisfy Israeli demands. Donald Trump, who ran for president pledging to end America’s pointless wars overseas, on June 17th 2020 nevertheless initiated new sanctions against Syria and its government. US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft informed the Security Council that the Trump Administration would implement the measures to “prevent the Assad regime from securing a military victory. Our aim is to deprive the Assad regime of the revenue and the support it has used to commit the large-scale atrocities and human rights violations that prevent a political resolution and severely diminish the prospects for peace.”
Subsequently, the most recent block of sanctions was imposed through the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, signed by President Trump in December 2020 after he was due to leave office, with the objective of stopping “bad actors who continue to aid and finance the Assad regime’s atrocities against the Syrian people while simply enriching themselves.” At that time, the existing US sanctions on Syria had already frozen all government assets and had also targeted companies and even individuals. The new sanctions gave the White House and Treasury the power to apply so-called “secondary sanctions” to freeze the assets of any entity or even individual, regardless of nationality, for doing any business in Syria. The threat of secondary sanctions have in fact had a major negative impact on Damascus’s remaining trading partners, to include Lebanon and Iran. Russia might also be impacted as it is involved in Syrian reconstruction.
The United States and Israel clearly hope that punitive sanctions will eventually force the starving Syrian people to rise up against the government, as some sought to do during the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. That means that a sanctions routine, much favored by both the Trump and Biden Administrations, never succeeds in compelling rogue governments to behave better because the way it works it is always really about regime change no matter how it is packaged. In the case of Syria, and contrary to the claims made by Ambassador Craft at the United Nations, the Bashar al-Assad government has already won the war in spite of US and Turkish intervention on behalf of the largely terrorist group supported insurgency. And the evidence for Syria’s having carried out “large scale atrocities and human rights violations” has mostly been manufactured by enemies of the government, to include the Hollywood and Washington think tank favorite, the White Helmets, a terrorist front group funded at least in part by western intelligence agencies, which was featured in a self-generated documentary that won a Hollywood Motion Pictures Academy Award in 2017. The film was effusively praised by the usual celebrity brain-deads including Hillary Clinton and George Clooney. It is indeed overall a very impressive piece of propaganda. The National Holocaust Museum even gave the coveted 2019 Elie Wiesel Award to the group. The White Helmets are still active in Syria in areas that are still held by the so-called rebels and they featured in a film clip just last week. They are still being funded by western governments and Israel to destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad.
One might well ask what the US objective in continuing to promote the carnage and suffering in a Syria that poses no threat to Americans or to any vital security interests. It is similar to a question that might well be raised regarding Ukraine, which is confronting an unneeded escalation of 3,000 US military reservists to reinforce the 20,000 American soldiers that have arrived in theater since February 2022. And then there is Iran, which responded to its oil tankers being hijacked in international waters under the unilaterally imposed authority granted by US sanctions. Iran has sought to respond in kind and now the US will dispatch Marines to the Persian Gulf to ride shotgun on foreign tankers and other commercial vessels traversing the Straits of Hormuz. If Iranian vessels come too close, they will shoot to kill. It is another escalation that is asking for trouble. Why can’t the United States leave the rest of the world alone? That is perhaps the fundamental question for our times.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
How Team Biden Hurts US Prestige and Credibility By Walking Into Ukraine Trap
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 14.08.2023
US observers have raised the question whether President Joe Biden could shift from his maximalist aims in Ukraine which threaten to turn into a trap for Washington.
Prior to the much-anticipated 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, American politicians and mainstream press had drawn a picture of what the endgame in Ukraine should look like, with Kiev forces seizing as much territory as it could to gain the upper hand in negotiations.
Citing White House officials, the US media suggested that by the end of summer, Ukraine would tip the balance in its favor. However, the reality on the ground does not match expectations.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a DC-based think tank, has raised the question as to whether Team Biden has a Plan B for a face-saving exit after it persuaded everyone in the West that anything short of Kiev’s victory would be a global catastrophe.
In fact, the Biden administration set a trap for itself by employing a “hyperbolic rhetoric” in order to sell the idea of Washington’s Ukraine war to the American public and the world’s community. President Biden raised the stakes as high as possible while claiming in February 2023 during his speech in Poland that “what literally is at stake is not just Ukraine, it’s freedom.”
Another talking point of the US foreign policy establishment, lawmakers and academia was that Russia’s victory would not only “embolden” Moscow for new “invasions” but also encourage Beijing to “take military action” against Taiwan – something that has been repeatedly denied as nonsense by China which has always seen the island as its inalienable territory.
Republican presidential contender Chris Christie has even gone so far as to claim that China’s potential “invasion” of Taiwan would inevitably necessitate putting American boots on the ground.
As a result, the hyped-up narrative deprived Team Biden of room for maneuver: should the US president decide to pull out, he would have to explain to the international community why he is “giving up” on democracy and human values, bowing down to “dictators”, and leaving the world in “danger.”
“Even if officials don’t truly believe US and European security is on the line, it’s clear something else might be: The prestige and credibility of the United States and NATO,” the think tank’s report said. “Worse, any Russian successes — whether real or perceived — could be viewed as politically unacceptable or even humiliating for NATO’s leadership, along with exposing divisions that have until now been largely suppressed.”
According to the think tank, the fear of losing prestige and credibility was one of the factors behind the US protracted involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other wars.
To complicate matters further, Biden will run for re-election in 2024 with Kiev’s expected win in the counteroffensive having been seen as a selling point for the incumbent’s campaign. Now that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost over 43,000 troops, and 20% of the NATO weaponry and got bogged down, the Biden administration has found itself between a rock and a hard place, as per the think tank.
On the one hand, Biden’s calls for another $20 billion for Ukraine came at a time when a majority of Americans, including 71% of Republicans and 55% of independents, oppose further military assistance to Ukraine, according to recent polls. Under these conditions keeping the conflict going is fraught with the risk of a growing negative sentiment and, subsequently, worse election odds.
On the other hand, Biden’s pull-out from Ukraine as the latter is losing would evoke strong memories of the US’ humiliating and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Furthermore, in any event of the Ukraine conflict being ended on terms less favorable to Kiev than earlier promised, a storm of criticism against Team Biden could be expected, as per the think tank.
On top of this, the longer the US administration waits to lay the groundwork to end the conflict diplomatically, “the harder it will be to do, with the steepest costs borne by the Ukrainian people,” the think tank warned.
China makes weapons ‘breakthrough’
RT | August 12, 2023
Chinese military scientists have reported a research breakthrough that could make it possible for Beijing to develop high-energy laser weapons that can shoot for as long as their operators desire, without interruption and without any degradation in performance.
Scientists at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, China, published the results of their research earlier this month in Acta Optica Sinica, a peer-reviewed Chinese journal. They claim to have developed a new cooling system that makes it possible to operate high-energy lasers “indefinitely,” without any effects from overheating.
“This is a huge breakthrough in improving the performance of high-energy laser systems,” the team said in its research paper. “High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second, but also maintained indefinitely.”
The cooling system controls gas flows to remove heat from inside a laser weapon, preventing vibration and disruptions in performance. It can enable longer operation, increased range and greater firepower, the scientists said. They noted that 60 years on from the invention of the first ruby laser, weapons developers haven’t been able to create “death rays that can instantly kill targets.”
Some of the most high-profile US laser weapons projects have been canceled, despite shooting down targets in testing. “The true reason for the cancellation of these projects was that their destructive power did not meet expectations,” the Chinese scientists said. Longer, continuous operation times are needed to extend the range of laser weapons beyond a few kilometers, they said.
Such weapons generate high-energy beams that heat up the gas in their path as they pass through the air, creating turbulence. This effect can distort the beam, diminishing its accuracy and strength. The heated gases can also contaminate the mirrors in a laser weapon, reducing performance and potentially damaging a system.
The Chinese researchers said they developed a system that blows gas through the weapon to remove waste heat and keep the mirrors clear. Their technology is already being used in a number of laser weapons that the Chinese military has under development.
Beijing reportedly intends to use such weapons against drones, missiles and aircraft. They also could be used to target satellites, disrupting enemy communications, navigation and surveillance capabilities.
World sliding toward WW3 as more warhawks grab power in Washington DC
By Drago Bosnic | August 12, 2023
It’s hardly breaking news that there are numerous warhawks among the political elites in Washington DC. These people have been behind every instance of (geo)political instability initiated by the United States, be it illegal coups, civil wars, invasions, etc, all of which resulted in an exponential exacerbation of the supposed “problem” they were seemingly designed to “resolve”. Such warhawks are oftentimes so shamelessly belligerent that they don’t even bother concealing their openly planned war crimes under the guise of the mythical “moral high ground” used by other more subtle Washington DC warmongers.
It’s important to note that their style has always been preying on the weak, as these warmongers mostly focus on bringing the wanton “freedom and democracy” to those unable to retaliate or at least defend themselves. Direct attacks are unmistakably preceded by economic warfare (primarily sanctions) and “isolation” by the so-called “international community”, that is, the political West and its vassals and satellite states. After all, those are the countries “that matter”, the much-touted “garden”, while the rest of the world (or better said, the actual world) is “simply a jungle”, as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (in)famously stated.
And yet, in recent years, the warhawks have become so overconfident that they don’t even consider the possibility of engaging in actual diplomacy (unless arm-twisting is considered “diplomatic”), not even with countries that have the means of bringing all the “freedom and democracy” the US “exports” back to it. This includes not only “pocket superpowers” such as North Korea, but also geopolitical giants wielding unprecedented military and/or economic might, such as Russia and China, the two only near-peer adversaries to the United States. Such dangerous trends in American politics are only getting worse.
Namely, as if there weren’t enough war criminals in Washington DC, the US government is becoming a virtual hive of such power circles. Infamous neoconservatives such as John Bolton, Michael McCaul and Lindsey Graham, whose political influence has become dangerously powerful, are now getting significant backup that includes rabid Russophobes and Sinophobes such as Victoria Nuland and USAF General Charles Brown. Such warhawks are now gaining even more influence, meaning that America’s foreign policy is set to become more belligerent than ever before (if that’s even imaginable to most people).
In early October last year, John Bolton, former US National Security Advisor, infamous for his insistence on invading Venezuela, Iran and North Korea or escalating the ongoing war of aggression against Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc, openly stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the US target list and threatened he might be assassinated. And while his directly visible political influence may seem to be dwindling, Bolton’s close associates are grabbing more power than ever. Namely, he was one of the most prominent members of the infamous Washington DC-based think tank known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
PNAC’s main focus was making the already extremely belligerent US foreign policy even more aggressive. One of the original founders of the now-defunct think tank was Robert Kagan, notorious for being one of the strongest proponents of America’s aggression against the world. There’s not a single war Kagan hasn’t supported. Worse yet, he regularly and deliberately spreads disinformation in order to speed up wars, as evidenced by his unadulterated lies in years before the illegal US invasion of Iraq. Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, who was directly involved in the illegal Maidan coup that resulted in the war in Donbass that killed upwards of 15,000 people by early 2022.
She was recently promoted to acting Deputy Secretary of State by President Biden, placing her in one of the most influential positions in the State Department, second only to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It should be noted that while Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, one of her phone calls with the then US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked. In February 2014, she told Pyatt that Arseniy Yatsenyuk will become the new prime minister of Ukraine, which he did that same month. During the call, she also clearly expressed her stance on the significance of the European Union in decision-making when it comes to the political West’s foreign policy.
Nuland was one of the architects of the Neo-Nazi junta’s seizure of power in Ukraine, making her directly responsible for the ongoing hostilities. She also supported both US terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines and the setting up of military biolabs in Ukraine. Her no less aggressive ally Lindsey Graham also actively took part in pushing Ukraine into a bloodbath, while also calling it the “best money we’ve ever spent” because “Russians are dying”. He is also notorious for actively calling for US aggression in Mexico. The strong influence of such warhawks exponentially raises the possibility of a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation.
Unfortunately, this isn’t only limited to the political establishment. Namely, the Senate Arms Services Committee recently voted to confirm General Charles Brown as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Mark Milley. He is adamant that the US confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific is inevitable and that Washington DC should further militarize the area. Coupled with resurgent Neo-McCarthyism that also includes congressman McCaul’s insistence on direct confrontation for semiconductors, as well as calls for placing Taiwan under the US nuclear umbrella, this is bound to put America on a collision course with China.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Ukraine “cannot decide its destiny” because it depends on US political climate
By Ahmed Adel | August 11, 2023
The Ukrainian Army’s high dependence on Western military support to continue its fight against Russian troops has placed Kiev in a position where it cannot decide its path for itself, said an analyst on CNN. The outlet also indicated that after more than 17 months of active combat, the Ukrainian conflict had entered a decisive stage since Kiev now depends on the decisions taken in Washington more than ever, which will be worrying for Ukraine since there is every chance that the next US president ends up being a Republican.
The current situation in Eastern Europe will depend on “outside factors,” such as “shifting political forces in the US, Moscow and European capitals,” Stephen Collinson points out in his analysis on CNN. “One of Ukraine’s greatest tragedies as it pursues a critical offensive that has, so far, failed to meet its own and Western expectations is that it cannot, by itself, decide its destiny.”
According to him, the results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive — which began in June and has shown no progress — “would have particular ramifications in the United States since it could heighten questions over US support for the war that will be pushed into an acrimonious election year.”
In fact, former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger recently acknowledged widespread pessimism within his party about the billions of dollars delivered to Kiev since February 2022.
The CNN analyst also pointed out that the Americans are preparing for a possible election contest between President Joe Biden —a Democrat and radical supporter of Kiev — and former president Donald Trump, a supposed NATO sceptic who has promised to end tensions between Russia and Ukraine in just one day.
Collinson believes that even if Trump does not win the presidential nomination, it is not certain that voters will support Biden because there is increasing disbelief about the growing involvement of Washington in the conflict. In his text, Collinson recalls recently published information on CNN that US officials are receiving adverse reports about the scant progress of Ukrainian troops against Russian forces.
“Ukraine’s struggles – and heavy combat losses – stem in part from entrenched, layered defensive positions, trenches and minefields that Russia had months to construct and the battlefield reality that an attacking force needs a numerical advantage over well dug-in troops,” wrote the expert.
For Collinson, the conflict could end after the US fully enters the electoral process to define a new president.
“There is so far no clear path even to a ceasefire,” he observed. “Ultimately, the capacity of both Russia and Ukraine to sustain heavy battlefield losses will be critical in deciding the point at which either side might be open to a settlement – when the cost of continuing to fight might be outweighed by the rewards of ending it.”
According to the journalist, the stagnation of the conflict could gain more weight in the political debate within the US.
“While foreign policy is rarely a deciding factor in presidential elections and the war in Ukraine is not a dominant issue in the GOP primary, some party supporters in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire do raise it and question US generosity after months of high inflation, which, even if it’s cooling, has contributed to persistently dour views of the American economy,” said the expert.
“So when US voters decide their own futures in November 2024, there’s a good chance they will be playing a large role in sealing Ukraine’s fate as well,” Collinson concluded.
The possibility that the Democratic Party could be back out of power next year is hurrying Biden to maximise his opportunities to funnel US taxpayer money into the financial blackhole that Ukraine has become. Biden’s endless attempts to seek the US Congress’ approval to transfer billions of dollars in additional support to Ukraine in a bid to prolong the war against Russia is a demonstration of this, especially when considering that Washington has already transferred to Ukraine at least $76.8 billion in assistance since February 2022.
According to an older estimate by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Ukraine, by May 2023, had received more than $100 billion in humanitarian aid and military support from more than 40 countries. Of that amount, Washington has contributed around $51 billion dollars, more than half, in military, security, financial and humanitarian assistance.
At the end of July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kiev does not have sufficient resources. However, the US, NATO members, and other institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, delivered all the money to Ukraine. Rather, if Zelensky is struggling now, he will have an even bigger problem in the coming months because the money from the West will dry up as the level of support cannot be maintained, especially in the context of the failed counter-offensive.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Biden Asks Congress for $13 Billion in New Ukraine Military Aid as Opposition Grows
Sputnik – 10.08.2023
WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden in a letter to Congress has asked for an additional $13 billion in supplemental funding to continue military assistance to Ukraine next year.
“$9.5 billion for equipment for Ukraine and replenishment of [US Department of Defense] stocks; and $3.6 billion for continued military, intelligence, and other defense support,” the document said.
Biden is also asking for $7.3 billion for economic, humanitarian, and security assistance to Ukraine.
The proposal for additional Ukraine aid totals some $24 billion, including some $2.3 billion intended as leverage to gain more aid from other donors via the World Bank.
However, combined with an additional $2.65 billion in funding for border security, $12 billion in disaster relief efforts, and $416 million in combatting the fentanyl crisis, among other domestic matters, the congressional request totals upwards of $40 billion in supplemental aid.
The Thursday filing marks the first such request by the Biden White House since Republicans claimed control of the House of Representatives at the start of the year. While previous requests had been largely met with Congress’ backing, GOP members have grown increasingly hesitant toward continued aid.
In fact, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed in early June that any requests for supplemental Ukraine aid would not be taken up in the lower chamber – regardless of bipartisan efforts taken up in the Senate.
At the time, McCarthy explained that any additional funds would need to be cleared as part of an annual appropriations process, underscoring finances would have to be shifted elsewhere from the Pentagon’s funds.
“I think what we really need to do, we need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon,” the House speaker told US media in June when referring to the Pentagon’s budget. “Think about it, $886 billion. You don’t think there’s waste? … I consider myself a hawk, but I don’t want to waste money. So I think we’ve got to find efficiencies.”
Shortly after the Thursday request was issued, US Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told Sputnik that US President Joe Biden must focus on supporting efforts to improve security within the United States, rather than on spending more funding on a proxy war in Ukraine.
“Rather than spending a single penny more fighting a proxy war in Ukraine and killing more people, a more worthwhile effort would be if Biden would put America first by allocating resources in our country to secure the southern border,” Gosar said, touching on the US’ continued fight to combat illegal immigration.
He added that resources could also be better spent on “funding law enforcement efforts to combat the violent crime and drugs destroying cities across America, or aiding our homeless population, including countless veterans, who are sleeping on sidewalks.”
The hefty request also comes as the US public has grown increasingly cold toward such military aid.
A recent poll determined that 55% of surveyed Americans opposed Congress approving Ukraine aid, with only 45% disagreeing. Earlier Wednesday, the White House attempted to shoot down the sentiment, telling reporters that continued efforts were paramount to the “national security of the American people.”
US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby touched on the polling on Thursday and opted to reiterate the White House’s stance that the American people understand why Biden requested billions more in aid for Ukraine.
“The polls notwithstanding, I think the American people understand what is at stake here,” Kirby said.
To date, the US has provided Ukraine with more than $100 billion in aid since the start of the conflict, with the majority of the funds being designated specifically for military equipment.
White House Steamrolls Over Poll Showing Americans Don’t Want to Fund Ukraine
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.08.2023
The US has sent over $113 billion in military and economic support to Ukraine over the past 18 months, with NATO allies sending tens of billions more. The assistance, which includes nearly $100 billion in military aid, did not endow Kiev with the firepower necessary to mount a successful counteroffensive against Russia.
The White House has dismissed polling showing that a majority of Americans don’t want to send any more money to Ukraine to fund NATO’s proxy war against Russia, ruling out that assistance would stop in spite of public wishes.
“We have seen throughout this war solid support from the American people, solid support from the Congress in a bipartisan and bicameral way for continuing to support Ukraine and we’re going to stay focused on that,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
“It’s not just important to people of Ukraine, but it’s important to our European allies and partners, particularly our NATO allies, given that this fighting is on the doorstep of many of those NATO allies,” and to the “national security of the American people,” Kirby added.
The White House spokesman inserted the traditional ‘Vladimir Putin the bogeyman’ scare tactic, telling the Americans who don’t want to continue funding the proxy war that “if we just sit back and we let Putin win, we let him take Ukraine, where does it stop next?”
The White House is seeking Congressional approval to sneak tens of billions of dollars more in additional “supplemental funding” into next year’s defense budget, with the Pentagon coming up with new creative ways to scrounge additional cash from already approved outlays by using accounting tricks.
While most US media and most of the US political class in Washington continue to support funding Ukraine (apart from a handful of MAGA-leaning Republicans), a bombshell poll published last week revealed that 55 percent of Americans don’t want Congress to authorize any more funds for Ukraine. 51 percent said the US has already done enough to help. Nearly 8 in ten expressed concerns about the conflict dragging on, with 59 percent fearing that the Ukrainian crisis could unleash a wider war in Europe. 56 percent of respondents said they continue to see the Ukrainian conflict as a national security threat – down from 72 percent in February of 2022.
Ordinary Americans’ shifting attitudes toward the Ukrainian crisis have been picked up on by presidential candidates from both major parties, as well as independents, with major candidates calling for an end to the conflict, and pointing to the West’s role in starting it.
Former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate among Republicans by a long shot, has promised to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of winning the 2024 election. Democratic Party hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises to talk to Russia and has emphasized that the West has “no business putting NATO in Ukraine.” Leading independent candidate Cornel West has also called for a negotiated settlement to the crisis.
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From the Archives
Wartime internment camps in Australia
National Archives of Australia
World War I
During World War I, for security reasons the Australian Government pursued a comprehensive internment policy against enemy aliens living in Australia.
Initially only those born in countries at war with Australia were classed as enemy aliens, but later this was expanded to include people of enemy nations who were naturalised British subjects, Australian-born descendants of migrants born in enemy nations and others who were thought to pose a threat to Australia’s security.
Australia interned almost 7,000 people during World War I, of whom about 4,500 were enemy aliens and British nationals of German ancestry already resident in Australia.
Records of World War I internment camps
World War II
During World War II, Australian authorities established internment camps for three reasons – to prevent residents from assisting Australia’s enemies, to appease public opinion and to house overseas internees sent to Australia for the duration of the war.
Unlike World War I, the initial aim of internment during the later conflict was to identify and intern those who posed a particular threat to the safety or defence of the country. As the war progressed, however, this policy changed and Japanese residents were interned en masse. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also interned on the basis of nationality, particularly those living in the north of Australia. In all, just over 20 per cent of all Italians resident in Australia were interned. … continue
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