US Militarizing Space, Exiting Treaties in ‘Historical Miscalculation’ to Stay Hegemon
Sputnik – May 21, 2020
The US withdrawing from arms control treaties is, along with its recently admitted push for offensive space capabilities, part and parcel of its quest for war to defend its world position as “king of the hill,” two experts told Thursday.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced the US was leaving the Open Skies Treaty with Russia, and reports emerged hinting the US may back out of the New START Treaty as well. Just days prior, Trump showed his hand in comments hailing space as a future site for offensive military action.
Karl Grossman, a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury and the host of a nationally aired television program focused on environmental, energy and space issues; and Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear Thursday to discuss the developments.
‘A Three-Letter Word’
“Tragic, absolutely tragic,” is how Grossman described the news that the US could leave New START, a 2010 treaty between the US and Russia limiting nuclear weapons stockpiles that’s set to expire next year.
“Treaty after treaty is being broken, and the Trump administration is withdrawing the United States from vital, critical, important treaties that have worked. It’s just tragic, and the big question is: where is this going to lead? I think the answer to that is obvious,” Grossman said. “It’s a three-letter word: ‘war.’”
Gagnon noted that “this particular treaty is a major arms control treaty that restricts nuclear weapons on either side. It’s very clear that the United States, during the Obama administration, President [Barack] Obama came forward with a plan to spend a trillion dollars over the next 20 years on a new generation of nuclear weapons. So, the US really doesn’t want to be restricted by any treaties.”
Indeed, the same thing happened when the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August 2019: just days later, it tested weapons already in development that would have violated the treaty’s limitations on ground-based missile ranges.
“This is not just a Trump thing; this is a bipartisan effort,” Gagnon told host John Kiriakou, recalling that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, similarly withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001.“This is all about dominance. Treaties, essentially, create a certain stability between the various competing sides so that not one side would have an advantage over the other. But when you’re going for dominance, both on the Earth and in space, then treaties become problematic, and that’s why the US is moving away from all these treaties: it wants to dominate, and it’s willing to, essentially, take us back to the brink of World War III, a nuclear war, in order to gain that dominance,” Gagnon said.
‘Space Weaponization Cat Out of the Bag’
On May 15, US President Donald Trump told Pentagon leaders at the White House, “Space is going to be … the future, both in terms of defense and offense in so many other things.”
The messaging clashes sharply with the way the Trump administration has postured as having created the US Space Force (USSF) as a reaction to the supposed moves by China and Russia to militarize space.
“It was not our choice to make space a warfighting domain,” USSF Vice Commander Lt. Gen. David Thompson told the Mitchell Institute Space Power Forum earlier this month. “Our adversaries have made it very clear that they intend to limit or remove our use of space in crisis and conflict, and just as in every other domain, we will not allow that to happen, we can’t allow that to happen in space.”
Grossman noted similar rhetoric underpinned the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a prospective satellite-based missile interception system the US attempted to build during the 1980s.
By contrast, he said, both China and Russia are deterred from attempting to militarize space, if by nothing else, simply because of “the great expense.”
This, Grossman said, was Trump “letting the space weaponization cat out of the bag and acknowledging that what the US is up to is offensive in nature,” recalling that Trump in the past referred to the Space Force as “taking the high ground.”
“You put it all together, and the US is talking about an offensive, hugely expensive military program in space – and let me just add, Russia and China are not going to allow this. They’re not going to allow the United States to somehow control space and, from the ‘high ground’ of space, control the Earth below,” Gagnon said.
“No, they’re going to meet the US in kind, and that’s why the future, particularly with arms control treaty after treaty being broken by the United States – I hate to say it, it sounds apocalyptic, but I think it’s real, that what we’re heading for would be war and in particular, space war.”
“I think that the aerospace industry really had this whole thing lined up,” Gagnon said. “When Trump came into power, they were very eager to make it happen, and they would have been doing the same if Hillary Clinton had won the election, actually. They would be moving in the same direction.”
‘A Historical Miscalculation’
“For me it all comes back [to] this narrowing, closing window,” Gagnon told Sputnik. “The US has, since World War II, been the ‘big boy on the hill,’ but those days are over as China, Russia, India, Iran, Brazil – you know, other countries are emerging around the world, creating what’s called a ‘multi-polar world,’ meaning more than one power is involved in making decisions, rather than the US at the top of the mound. And so the United States, very sadly, very wrongly, is trying to maintain that control, trying to stay as ‘king of the hill,’ and so they view space, they view the Space Force as a way to do it.”
“So it’s the corporate forces that are really driving this. They’re the ones that see themselves as controllers of the world, corporate money, corporate capitalism, and they’re pushing all of these moves in order to try to essentially take down or make Russia and China and other countries get on their knees again,” Gagnon said.
However, he cautioned, this was a “real miscalculation, a real historical miscalculation on the part of the United States. The sad thing about this is, they’re going to take damn near every dollar that we have in this country to pay for this supposed control-and-domination system of space and the Earth below.”
The irony, Grossman pointed out, is that it was former President Dwight D. Eisenhower who both created the US space industry and warned of the need to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” in his 1961 farewell address.
Failures in Syria and Libya fuel coup speculations against Erdogan
By Paul Antonopoulos | May 20, 2020
Turkish media has been full of speculation of a potential coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, including from state-run Anadolu Agency, and other major outlets like Sabah and Haberturk. Erdoğan already survived a 2016 coup attempt against him that he blames on his ex-ally, Fethullah Gülen, who leads the FETÖ Islamic movement. It is likely that Erdoğan will conduct another purge of the Turkish military.
Although the 2016 coup was orchestrated mostly by the Air Force, it appears that one of the first victims could have been Rear Admiral Cihat Yaycı. On May 15, Yaycı was demoted from the Chief of Staff’s to the General Staff, prompting him to resign from the military completely on Monday. Although some speculated it could have been because of the coup rumors circulating, Yaycı proved to be one of the most loyal Chief of Staff’s to Erdoğan and played a significant role in purging so-called FETÖ elements from the Turkish military.
It is likely that Yaycı was actually demoted because of Turkey’s complete failure to project its power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yaycı is known as the architect of Turkey’s “Blue Homeland” theory that aims to annex Greece’s Eastern Aegean islands and maritime space. To achieve the “Blue Homeland,” Ankara in November 2019, with recommendation from Yaycı, sealed the “Marine Jurisdictions” maritime boundary delimitation deal with Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords (GNA) to split Greek maritime space between Turkey and Libya.
However, since the signing of the deal with the Tripoli-based GNA, Ankara’s power projections in the Eastern Mediterranean have only weakened Turkish influence. Turkey had not expected for Greece to expel the GNA ambassador from Athens, one of the first NATO and EU countries to do so. In reaction, Greece recognised the GNA’s rival, the Tobruk-based Libyan House of Representatives who appointed Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar to command the Libyan National Army against Turkish-backed jihadists who fight for the GNA.
Greece’s shift in recognition shows another flashpoint in rivalry with so-called NATO ally Turkey and rapidly changed dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. Haftar currently controls about 90% of territory and 60% of the population, prompting Turkey to send 5,000 Syrian jihadists to support the GNA, who have regained some lost territory in recent weeks.
But this is going to change as it appears massive simultaneous operations against the GNA and Turkish-backed jihadists in Syria’s Idlib province are set to begin in the coming weeks. Turkey as the sole backers of jihadist forces in Libya and Idlib will find this extremely difficult to deal with as it faces an economic crisis.
A detailed report by New Economy found that “Turkey’s probability of bankruptcy is extremely high,” along with its three big banks of Garanti, Akbank and the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk-founded İşbank. “The country’s commercial banks, its last stronghold, have dried up from foreign exchange currency,” meaning that Turkey has nearly no money for its import and export companies.
Another report found that failed wars against Libya and Syria have been a major problem for its economy, making Turkey’s bankruptcy probability over 30% in the forthcoming period, putting them behind only Venezuela and Argentina, but “without having the US embargo that Venezuela has, nor the vast debt that Argentina brings.”
Most startling however for Turkey is that it has to find $80 billion by August, according to New Economy, or else it faces bankruptcy.
“There is also the additional 0.5-1 billion dollar cost per month for the wars in Syria and Libya, which seems to exacerbate the existing situation, leading to a huge state budget hole and escalating the probabilities of bankruptcy,” the report said.
With major economic problems in Turkey, Ankara paid Syrian jihadists in Libya only one month’s worth of wages and then ended all payments. This has prompted the jihadists to make videos urging other Syrians not to go to Libya and fight. Meanwhile, Turkey’s aggression has prompted Greece to renew diplomatic relations with Syria, become actively involved in Libya, and strengthen relations with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who oppose Turkish influence in the Arab world.
Yaycı’s ambitious “Blue Homeland” project forced Greece to become involved in Libya and Syria that it previously had no interest in, and it is now actively a part of an alliance that is opposing Turkish influence in the region. With Greece actively opposing Turkish influence in Libya, France has also taken a stronger interest and openly opposes the GNA now. What began as a plan to carve up Greece’s maritime space has now turned into a debacle that sees French involvement against the GNA and EU recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood government waning.
Egypt is now threatening to directly use its military to defeat the GNA rather than just supply Haftar’s forces. The UAE has promised to continue airstrikes against the GNA and funding mercenaries for Haftar. Saudi Arabia is also funding mercenaries. Greece and France are involved in the EU’s Operation Irini to stop maritime deliveries of arms to Libya. In March, Haftar’s political representatives signed with Syria a Memorandum of Understanding to start diplomatic relations. Syria and the Libyan National Army are also preparing likely simultaneous operations against jihadists in their respective countries.
This is all happening while Turkey faces a very serious threat of bankruptcy and rumors of a coup attempt. Therefore, it is likely that Yaycı was demoted by Erdoğan for masterminding and pushing for the “Blue Homeland” that has ended in catastrophic failure for Turkey.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
How Israel Instructed Its Worst Nightmare in the Art of War
A woman mocks an Israeli tank left behind when withdrawing from south of Lebanon in the year 2000, using it as a hanger to dry cloths. Credit: Younes Zaatari
By Elijah J. Magnier | American Herlad Tribune | May 17, 2020
“We were Hezbollah trainers. It is an organization that learns quickly. The Hezbollah we met at the beginning (1982) is different from the one we left behind in 2000”. This is what the former Chief of Staff and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabi Ashkenazi, said twenty years after the Israeli unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon.
“For the first time we met a non-conventional army, but also an ideological organization with deep faith: and this faith triumphed over us. We were more powerful, more technologically advanced and better armed but not possessing the fighting spirit …They were stronger than us”. This is what Brigadier General Effi Eitam, Commander of the 91st Division in counter-guerrilla operation in south Lebanon said.
Alon Ben-David, senior defense correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13, specialized in defense and military issues, said: “Hezbollah stood up and defeated the powerful Israeli Army”.
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the architect of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, said: “The withdrawal didn’t go as planned. The deterrence of Hezbollah and its capability increased greatly. We withdrew from a nightmare”. Barak meant he had planned to leave behind him a buffer zone under the control of his Israeli proxies led by the “South Lebanon Army” (SLA) commander Antoine Lahad. However, his plans were dismantled and the resistance forced Lahad’s men to run towards the borders, freeing the occupied buffer zone. As they left Lebanon, the Israeli soldiers said: “Thank God we are leaving: no one in Israel wants to return”.
In 1982, Israel believed the time had come to invade Lebanon and force it to sign a peace agreement after eliminating the various Palestinian organizations. These groups had deviated from the Palestinian compass and had become embroiled in sectarian conflict with the Lebanese Phalange, believing that “the road to Jerusalem passed through Jounieh” (the Maronite stronghold on Mt. Lebanon, northwest of Beirut, a slogan used by Abu Iyad). Israel intended Lebanon to become the domicile of its Palestinian conflict. It failed to realize that in so doing it was letting the Shiite genie out of the bottle. Signs of this genie began to appear after the arrival of Sayyed Musa al-Sadr in Lebanon and the return of students of Sayyed Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr from Najaf to their home country and residency in the Lebanese Bekaa. Also, the victory of Imam Khomeini and the “Islamic revolution” in Iran in 1979 was not taken into consideration by Israel, and the potential consequences for the Lebanese Shia were overlooked.
The 1982 Israeli invasion triggered the emergence of the “Islamic resistance in Lebanon”, which later became known as “Hezbollah”, and it forced Israel to leave Lebanon unconditionally in 2000. This made Lebanon the first country to humiliate the Israeli army. Following their victory over the Arabs in 1949, 1956, 1967 and 1973, Israeli officials had come to believe they could occupy any Arab country “with a brass band”.
Israeli soldiers exited through the “Fatima Gate” (on the Lebanese border, also known as Good Fence, HaGader HaTova) under the watchful eyes of Suzanne Goldenberg on the other side of the border. She wrote:
After two decades and the loss of more than 1000 men, the chaotic Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon leaves its northern flank dangerously exposed, with Hezbollah guerrillas sitting directly on its border. The scale of the Israeli fiasco was beginning to unfold… After the Israelis pulled out of Bint Jubayl in the middle of the night, their SLA allies, already in a state of collapse in the center of the strip, simply gave up. Branded collaborators, they and their families headed for exile. Behind them, they left tanks and other heavy equipment donated by their patrons. Shlomo Hayun, an Israeli farmer who lives on Shaar Yeshuv farm, said of the withdrawal, “This was the first time I have been ashamed to be Israeli. It was chaotic and disorganized.”
What did Israel and its allies in the Middle East achieve?
In 1978, Israel occupied a part of southern Lebanon and in 1982, for the first time, it occupied an Arab capital, Beirut. During its presence as an occupation force, Israel was responsible for several massacres amounting to war crimes. In 1992, Israel thought that it could strike a death blow to Hezbollah by assassinating its leader, Sayyed Abbas Al-Mousawi. He was replaced by his student, the charismatic leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah has proved to be more truthful than the Israeli leaders, and thus capable of affecting the Israeli public through his speeches, as Israeli colonel Ronen, chief Intelligence officer for the Central Command of Israel Defence Forces, has said.
The new Hezbollah leader showed his potential for standing up to and confronting Israel through TV appearances. He mastered the psychological aspects of warfare, just as he mastered the art of guerrilla war. He leads a non-conventional but organized army of militants “stronger than several armies in the Middle East,” according to Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israeli Chief of Staff.
The Israeli doctrine relies on the principle of pre-emptively striking what is considered as a potential threat, in order to extinguish it in its cradle. Israel first annexed Jerusalem by declaring it in 1980 an integral part of the so-called “capital of the state of Israel”. In June 1981, it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor that France had helped build. In 2007, Israel struck a building in Deir Ezzor, Syria, before it was completed, claiming that the government had been building a nuclear reactor.
6 years after its withdrawal, Israel declared war on Lebanon in 2006, with the aim of eradicating Hezbollah from the south and destroying its military capacity. Avi Kober, a member of the department of political studies at Bar Ilan University and researcher at the Israeli BESA center said:
“The war was conducted under unprecedented and favorable conditions the like which Israel has never enjoyed – internal consensus, broad international support (including tacit support on the part of moderate Arab States), and a sense of having almost unlimited time to achieve the war objectives. The IDF’s performance during this war was unsatisfactory, reflecting flawed military conceptions and poor professionalism and generalship. Not only the IDF fail in achieving battlefield decisions against Hezbollah, that is, denying the enemy’s ability to carry on the fight, despite some tactical achievements, throughout the war, it played into Hizballah’s hands.”
Israel withdrew from the battle without achieving its goals: it was surprised by Hezbollah’s military equipment and fighting capabilities. Hezbollah had managed to hide its advanced weapons from the eyes of Israeli intelligence and its allies, who are present in every country including Lebanon. The result was 121 Israeli soldiers killed, 2,000 wounded, and the pride of the Israeli army and industry destroyed in the Merkava Cemetery in southern Lebanon where the Israeli advance into Wadi al-Hujeir was thwarted.
Hezbollah hit the most advanced class Israeli destroyer, the INS Spear saar-5, opposite the Lebanese coast. In the last 72 hours of the war, Israel fired 2.7 million bomblets, or cluster bombs, to cause long-term pain for Lebanon’s population, either through impeding their return or disrupting cultivation and harvest once they did return. “An unjustified degree of vindictiveness and an effort to punish the population as a whole”, said the report of the UN commission of inquiry conducted in November 2006 (Arkin M. W. (2007), Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Air University Press, Alabama, pp 67-71).
The battle ended, Israel withdrew again, closed the doors behind its army, raised a fence on the Lebanese borders, and installed electronic devices and cameras to prevent any possible Hezbollah crossing into Palestine.
When Israel’s chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said “Israel instructed Hezbollah in the art of war”, he was right. Hezbollah has learned from the wars that Israel has waged over the years. In every war, Hezbollah saw the necessity of developing its weapons and training to match and overcome the Israeli army (which is outnumbered) and which enjoys the tacit support of Middle Eastern regimes and the most powerful western countries. Hezbollah developed its special forces’ training and armed itself with precision missiles to impose new rules of engagement, posing a real threat to the continuity of the permanent Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Today, Hezbollah has sophisticated weapons, including the armed drones that it used in Syria in its war against the Takfirists, and precision missiles that can reach every region, city and airport in Israel. It has anti-ship missiles to neutralize the Israeli navy in any future attack or war on Lebanon and to hit any harbor or oil platform. It is also equipped with missiles that prevent helicopters from being involved in any future battle. The balance of deterrence has been achieved. Hezbollah can take Israel back to the Stone Age just as easily as Israel envisages returning Lebanon to the Stone Age.
Hezbollah is Israel’s worst nightmare, and it was largely created by the Israeli attempt to overthrow the regime in Lebanon, occupy Lebanon, and impose an agreement that Israel could then mold to its own liking. But the tables were turned: a very small force emerged in Lebanon to become a regional power whose powerful support was then extended to the neighboring countries of Syria and Iraq. The harvest journey has begun.
US nukes in Poland would not be a deterrent, but a MASSIVE provocation for Russia
By Scott Ritter | RT | May 19, 2020
The US has promoted the deployment of US nuclear weapons on Polish soil as part of NATO’s ‘nuclear sharing’ arrangement. Such a move would only increase the chances of the very war such a deployment seeks to deter.
For the second time in little more than a year, the US ambassadors to Germany and Poland have commented on matters of NATO security in a manner which undermines the unity of the alliance while threatening European security by seeking to alter the balance of power in a way that is unduly provocative to Russia.
Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany and the acting director of national intelligence, put matters into motion by writing an OpEd for the German newspaper Die Welt, criticizing politicians from within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition who were openly calling for the US to withdraw its nuclear weapons from German soil.
Adding fuel to the fire, the US ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, tweeted out two days later that “If Germany wants to diminish nuclear capability and weaken NATO, perhaps Poland – which pays its fair share, understands the risks, and is on NATO’s eastern flank – could house the capabilities here.”
The action that provoked the Grenell-Mosbacher media blitz were comments made by Rolf Mützenich, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party in Germany’s parliament, calling for Germany to withdraw from its decades-old nuclear-sharing arrangement with NATO, noting that the deal had outlived its utility.
The US currently maintains a force of some 20 B-61 nuclear bombs on German soil, where they are earmarked for delivery by German aircraft during war. Since 1979, Germany has maintained a force of Tornado fighter-bombers dedicated to the nuclear-sharing mission. The decision by Germany to buy 30 US-manufactured F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft to replace the Tornado in its nuclear delivery mission prompted Mützenich’s outburst.
Grenell and Mosbacher last teamed up to shake the foundations of NATO-based European security in September 2019, when Grenell’s comments made during the course of an interview with a German newspaper sparked controversy among German politicians sensitive to US criticism of German defense spending levels. “It is actually offensive to assume that the US taxpayer must continue to pay to have 50,000-plus Americans in Germany,” Grenell said, “but the Germans get to spend their surplus on domestic programs.”
Grenell’s comments were in the context of President Donald Trump’s ongoing insistence that America’s NATO allies pay their fair share of the cost of NATO by increasing their respective defense spending to levels matching two percent of their GDP. Germany’s defense budget in 2019 was approximately €43 billion, representing 1.2 percent of GDP. German lawmakers were quick to criticize Grenell’s comments, noting that while Germany’s defense expenditures were far short of what had been promised, it would not allow itself to be “blackmailed” by the US over matters relating to its national security.
Mosbacher then jumped into the controversy, tweeting“Poland meets its 2% of GDP spending obligation towards NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops in Germany to come to Poland.”
Some left-wing German politicians proposed that Germany take Grenell up on his offer and begin to negotiate the withdrawal of US troops from German soil (there are some 52,000 Americans – 35,000 soldiers and 17,000 civilians – stationed in Germany today).
But these same politicians made a comment that has proved prescient. “If the Americans pull out their troops,” they noted, “then they should take their nuclear weapons with them. Take them home, of course, and not to Poland, which would be a dramatic escalation in relations to Russia.”
This, of course, is precisely what the Grenell-Mosbacher tag team has proposed today.
“NATO’s nuclear sharing,” the current NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, wrote in an OpEd published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “is a multilateral arrangement that ensures the benefits, responsibilities and risks of nuclear deterrence are shared among allies.”
“Politically,” Stoltenberg said, “this is significant. It means that participating allies, like Germany, make joint decisions on nuclear policy and planning, and maintain appropriate equipment.”
For its part, Russia has declared the US-NATO nuclear-sharing arrangement as operating in violation of relevant provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which prohibits the transfer by a nuclear weapons state of nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear weapons state. While the US challenges this Russian interpretation, the point is that the issue of NATO’s nuclear arsenal is an extremely sensitive one to Russia, made even more so when viewed in the context of the expansion of NATO that brought Poland and other eastern European countries into its fold.
Poland, along with the Czech Republic and Hungary, joined NATO in March of 1999, making a mockery of every assurance that had been given to the former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would never expand eastwards if Germany were allowed to unify.
Russian President Vladimir Putin pointedly referred to these guarantees during his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February of 2007, in the context of NATO’s continued expansion. “[W]e have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Russia remembers. For example, on February 6, 1990, when the former West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, met with then-British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, Genscher told Hurd that “The Russians must have some assurance that if, for example, the Polish Government left the Warsaw Pact one day, they would not join NATO the next.”
These assurances were made by the former US secretary of state, James Baker, to the former Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, in February 1990, when Baker noted that before Germany could reunify, “There would, of course, have to be iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.”
These assurances were given, only to be violated during the administration of President Bill Clinton. Today, over 4,500 US troops are stationed on Polish soil, including a reinforced battalion-sized ‘battlegroup’ stationed along the so-called Suwalki Gap separating Poland from the Baltic nations.
“If Russian forces ever established control over the Suwalki region, or even threatened the free movement of NATO personnel and equipment through it, they would effectively cut the Baltic States off from the rest of the Alliance,” a NATO report written in 2018 noted. “Deterring any potential action – or even the threat of action – against Suwalki is therefore essential for NATO’s credibility and Western cohesion.”
For its part, Russia has repeatedly declared that it has no desire to enter a conflict with NATO. However, NATO’s expansion in Poland and other eastern European countries has increasingly placed Russian security interests at risk. The deployment of Aegis Ashore launchers onto Polish soil in an ostensible anti-missile role, while declared by NATO to be exclusively oriented toward protecting Europe from Iranian missiles, is viewed by Russia as a threat to its own strategic missile capability. In response, Russia has deployed nuclear-capable short-range missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave between Poland and Lithuania.
If NATO were to deploy nuclear weapons on Polish soil as part of any upgraded nuclear-sharing agreement, the threat to Russia would be intolerable – every launch of a Polish fighter-bomber would be seen as a potential existential threat, forcing Russia to increase its alert status along its western frontier, as well as its capability to rapidly neutralize such a threat should an actual war break out.
This does not mean that Russia would choose a preemptive nuclear attack – far from it. Instead, Russia would rely on the abilities of the front-line formations of its 1st Guards Tank Army and 20th Combined Arms Army to conduct deep penetration offensive operations designed to capture and/or destroy any forward-deployed nuclear weapons before they could be used. Far from deterring a war with Russia, any deployment of nuclear weapons by the US on Polish soil only increases the likelihood of the very conflict NATO purports to seek to avoid.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
US donates war equipment to Kiev
By Lucas Leiroz | May 19, 2020
Apparently, Washington is helping to increase the violence in the Donbass. In the midst of a pandemic and the civil war at a softer stage, Kiev is promoting a gradual increase in the actions of pro-Maidan paramilitary groups in the region and receiving international support for this.
The United States has delivered more than $ 25 million worth of night vision devices, thermal cameras, portable communicators and medical equipment to Ukraine for use in the combat zone in Donbas, the US Embassy in Kiev reported.
In its account on a social network, the American Embassy to Kiev published the following note in English and Ukrainian: “Despite COVID-19, our security assistance to Ukraine continues! This week, the Office of Defense Cooperation received more than $ 25 million in night vision devices, thermals, radios, and medical equipment for Ukraine to use in the JFO zone. The United States stands strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression”.
The US, according to the note, supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. As we know, since April 2014, Ukraine has carried out an operation against militias in the east of the country – Donbas region – where the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were proclaimed in response to the violent change of government that took place in Kiev in February of the same year. However, the Minsk agreements, signed in September 2014 and February 2015, laid the foundation for a political solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, so far they have not led to a definitive cessation of violence, the outcome of which the UN estimates at around 13,000 deaths.
Despite not putting a real end to the confrontation, the Minsk agreements managed to establish some bases for a peaceful future, so that, since then, the war has reduced the intensity of the fighting and presented a drop in the number of victims. But, since then, Kiev has been constantly denounced for tightening its policies in the region again and promoting an escalation of violence, not only through direct confrontation with separatists, but also through terrorist attacks, secret missions and intelligence operations. In a sense, the Accords have changed the face of war, from being a direct confrontation conflict to becoming a scene of constant tensions and intermittent fighting.
A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian government announced that it will build a naval base in the Sea of Azov. Shortly before, a series of murders had been reported in the regions of the autonomous republics, including the systematic killing of several civil people not involved in the conflicts. Now, everything indicates that the situation will worsen and there will be, possibly, a return to direct war.
The timing of the announcement of the acquisition of new US equipment by Ukrainian forces is extremely strategic; after all, in the midst of a global pandemic that increasingly erodes the foundations of the capitalist system, who will care about an apparently “regional and peripheral” conflict like the Civil War in Donbass? However, we must divide our focus and pay more and more attention to the increase in violence and insecurity anywhere in the world.
In fact, the acquisition of this equipment by Ukraine indicates that Kiev plans to resume direct combat and, most likely, policies of political and ethnic persecution against Russian minorities and political groups opposing the regime established during the Euromaidan in 2014. Without drawing the attention of international society, the Ukrainian government, in international cooperation with the USA, plans a total war. Most likely, the United Nations will not comment on the case until something more serious happens – when, certainly, it will be too late.
It is worth remembering that, in February, the United States delivered tents worth US $ 1.5 million to Ukraine. In the meantime, attacks through explosions, shootings and systematic killings in the vicinity of Lugansk and Donetsk have become increasingly frequent and brutal. With the recent donation of equipment, American investments in the war have increased by tens of millions of dollars; so what’s next now? An even greater aggravation of the conflict with even more frequent attacks and murders of greater magnitude?
Ukraine expects a stance on the part of the rebels, which certainly will not happen. The greater Kiev’s aggression, the greater the rebellious response, with an increasingly strong resistance front. However, the rebel militias do not have much international support and world powers financing their actions and providing ultra-advanced war equipment, which means that, however much the rebel resistance strengthens, it is possible that there will be a major massacre in the Donbass. The faster the international society’s express condemnation to this escalation of violence, the lower the risk of genocide in eastern Ukraine. Coronavirus cannot be used as a smokescreen for international attacks.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The US’ Covid-19 death toll is soaring, but it keeps wasting billions on overseas military ops
Amphibious Assault Ship USS Kearsarge – U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Scott Pittman/Released
By Darius Shahtahmasebi | RT | May 13, 2020
As the bodies rack up and the economy goes into freefall, the US continues to spend a fortune on its military. It’s time the public asked whether the money could be used more wisely.
Even in the face of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, the US military appears to be operating across the globe unabated, undeterred and almost completely unchecked. If the reports are anything to go by, there are at least 150 US military bases and four aircraft carriers which have already been hit with the virus. After arriving in Guam, the carrier Theodore Roosevelt had 940 cases alone – around 20 percent of its personnel.
Never one to back down in the face of adversity (or pragmatism), the US military apparently will keep on doing what it does best. On Tuesday, the US special envoy for Syria justified an ongoing illegal troop presence in the country by framing it as an opportunity to force Russia into a quagmire (something the US already has extensive experience in).
To anyone paying attention over the past few decades, admissions of this type are hardly surprising. Even as the US watches thousands of its own people die at the hands of an invisible enemy, it is still ramping up operations which result in the deaths of innocent civilians in overseas theatres. Take, for example, the ongoing air war in Somalia, which has increased over the first few months of 2020, killing civilians with close to zero media scrutiny.
Or how about the Pentagon’s intention to arm its marines with versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile carried on US warships as a mechanism to counter China in the western Pacific?
Combined with its decision to continue conducting its so-called “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea – including two US navy ships which sailed into the region to counter Beijing just a few days ago – it seems apparent that aggravating a conflict with China remains one of the highest priorities for the US government. Coronavirus, on the other hand, falls ever lower on the list of things the US president should take responsibility for.
Sending two B-1B supersonic heavy bombers over the skies of northeast Taiwan this month, as well as a number of bombers across Europe and the Pacific, only further confirms Washington’s prime concerns during the pandemic. If you want a fuller list of what your American taxpayer dollars are continuing to fund during this unprecedented turmoil, check the Department of Defense’s website.
Mythical foreign bogeymen
What will the reaction be when the American public looks at the number of its population killed by the Covid-19 pandemic – the death toll currently stands at over 80,000 – and realizes the country has wasted billions of dollars defending the homeland from potentially make-believe, foreign bogeymen, but isn’t even remotely prepared to defend its people from the wrath of the coronavirus? What happens when Americans wake up and start to question whether or not funds and resources could be better allocated?
As War on the Rocks bluntly explained, the “security afforded by America’s far-flung military forces has been entirely irrelevant” when dealing with the global pandemic. The polls may one day tell the full story, but this is notable considering that in June 2019, Gallup recorded a whopping 73 percent of respondents expressing a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the US military.
The coronavirus pandemic is exacting a death toll on the American public which most genuine enemies would fail to do on their own. But ultimately, what may separate the Covid-19 crisis from any other in the eyes of the American public is its sheer cost. Will the public continue to trust the US president to spend billions of dollars on its military adventures overseas as the bodies rack up and the economy fractures?
Massive unemployment
Irrespective of what the people say or think, the US appears to be pumping as much energy, money and resources into the military as it possibly can, while the pandemic continues to ravage what is left of the global economy.
The rate of unemployment in the US is currently at its greatest since the Great Depression, with some predictions indicating it could be as much as 20 per cent. Unless the US military is intending to hire a fifth of the American population, its perception as the saviour of the US mainland may start to fade over the course of the year.
“When written in Chinese,” John F Kennedy reportedly once said, “the word crisis is composed of two characters – one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.”
Will the US public make the most of this opportunity to return their verdict on an administration that is wasting billions? Or will widespread apathy allow the Pentagon to continue on its warpath to counter adversaries such as Russia and China in priority theatres across the globe?
Darius Shahtahmasebi is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst who focuses on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Asia and Pacific region. He is fully qualified as a lawyer in two international jurisdictions.
In a world gone mad, China must build MORE NUKES to make disarmament possible
By Scott Ritter | RT | May 12, 2020
As the US threatens to withdraw from the New START treaty over Chinese non-participation, domestic pressure from inside China builds for a larger strategic nuclear arsenal. Could this be a good thing?
In an op-ed published in Chinese newspaper Global Times, its editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, argued that China should seek to upgrade its strategic nuclear arsenal from its current level of about 200 antiquated weapons to a modernized force comprising more than 1,000 nuclear weapons, including more than 100 modern mobile DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), each armed with 10-12 nuclear warheads, capable of striking the US mainland.
The deployment of DF-41 missiles, when combined with China’s new JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed H-20 strategic bombers, would give China a capable nuclear TRIAD that rivaled those of the US and Russia.
While Hu Xijin’s op-ed received considerable support on Chinese social media, there was some pushback. Zhao Tong, a senior fellow in nuclear policy at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, based in Beijing, has argued that even in a climate of deteriorating Sino-American relations, any effort on the part of China to build a viable strategic nuclear arsenal on par with that of the US was counterproductive and dangerous.
This point of view has a logic of de-escalation that is inherently attractive, but when viewed in the larger context of global nuclear posture where the US and Russian nuclear disarmament is held hostage by the current non-participation of China in meaningful disarmament talks, any call for China to maintain the nuclear status quo is in itself destabilizing.
The only way to bring China to the table for any meaningful arms control agreement is for it to build up its nuclear arsenal to a level where reciprocal cuts make sense for all involved parties. In short, nuclear symmetry perversely requires that China in effect adopts an “escalate to de-escalate” approach to arms control if disarmament is to have any political viability.
There is a historical precedent for this kind of madness. When the Soviet Union deployed the SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missile in the late 1970s, it unhinged the strategic nuclear balance in Europe. Both NATO and the US were alarmed and pushed for arms control agreements that eliminated so-called Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) from the arsenals of both the US and the Soviet Union. In 1979 the US threatened to deploy advanced Pershing II missiles and Ground-launched Cruise Missiles (GLCMs) into Europe to offset the threat posed by the SS-20 missiles. The problem, however, was that while the SS-20 missile was a reality, the Pershing II/GLCM weapons were still in development stage and had yet to be deployed. From a purely political perspective, there was no incentive for the Soviets to get rid of the SS-20.
Instead, in November 1983, the US and NATO were compelled to go through with the deployment of Pershing II and GLCM missiles to Europe, triggering social and political unrest in the form of massive protests, and placed the US-NATO alliance under considerable stress. Besides, by deploying these new weapons into Europe, the US changed the very calculus of war — the Pershing II, once launched, was less than 10 minutes flight time from Moscow, reducing the time the Soviet command would have to react in a time of crisis regarding the initiation of a general nuclear war.
In the end, the US and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty, eliminating the SS-20, Pershing II, GLCM and other nuclear delivery systems, and in doing so heralded a new age of relations between the two sides that helped bring about the end of the Cold War. But the world had to be led to the edge of a nuclear abyss before reason could prevail.
Today the US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals are capped at 1,550 nuclear delivery systems each by the limits set forth in the New START Treaty. While both sides recognize the desirability of additional reductions, the insistence on the part of the Trump administration that any future arms control agreement on strategic nuclear weapons must include China has thrown a monkey wrench in an arms control process which for decades has been governed on the basis of US-Soviet/Russian bilateral agreements. Even something as simple as extending the existing New START treaty for five years in order to buy time for the complexities of transitioning bilateral arms control structures into a new trilateral reality is unacceptable to Washington.
As insane as it might appear, the Trump approach might provide the only viable path forward regarding the possibility of meaningful trilateral arms control between the US, Russia, and China. As things currently stand, the failure to extend New START will eliminate constraints on the part of both the US and Russia when it comes to fielding new strategic nuclear weapons. This alone is a destabilizing and dangerous reality which, left to its own devices, could lead to a new nuclear arms race which would make those of the Cold War pale in comparison in terms of capability and lethality. The wild card in this equation is China. As things currently stand, the small size and relative lack of sophistication of China’s existing strategic nuclear arsenal make it a virtual non-player when it comes to discussions of symmetrical disarmament based upon historical TRIAD constructs (where strategic nuclear capability is spread among manned bombers, land-based ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.)
China’s current nuclear force structure is heavily weighted toward intermediate-range missiles. However, any nuclear modernization program that saw China develop a viable TRIAD-based nuclear deterrence capability would not only compel both Russia and the US to take into account a Chinese strategic nuclear threat when building their respective post-New START nuclear force structure, but also create real political incentive on the part of all three nations to take the off-ramp from a path of nuclear posture escalation and instead embrace the de-escalation of trilateral arms control.
This, of course, is not the ideal situation. Trillions of dollars will be expended by all three parties pursuing weapons whose only utility is to create the conditions for their eventual elimination. But nuclear policy historically has not been the purview of sane and rational thinking — one only needs to refer to the deterrence model of “mutually assured destruction (MAD)” to make that point.
In the early 1980s both the US and the Soviet Union knew that to escalate tensions by deploying new INF weapons into Europe was an inherently dangerous gambit. Indeed, on at least one occasion it nearly triggered a general nuclear war. But in the end, it was the only politically viable path toward eventual disarmament and the normalization of relations between the US and the Soviet Union.
In the dangerous waters of a post-New START world, perhaps the only way to navigate clear of the rocks and shoals of nuclear conflict is for China to escalate its development of a viable strategic nuclear force in order to enable the kind of meaningful trilateral strategic nuclear arms control the world needs to survive.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Nations Spent $73bn on Nuclear Arms Amid COVID-19, UK in 3rd as US Tops at Half of Global Costs
By Demond Cureton – Sputnik – 13.05.2020
Despite being the global epicentre of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the world’s leading nuclear power accounted for roughly half of total global spending on nuclear arms, a shock report from a major Swiss nonprofit coalition found.
Nuclear armed states spent a record $73bn on nuclear weapons amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a report from the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) revealed.
The report, entitled Enough Is Enough: 2019 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending, found an increase of nuclear weapons spending in 2019, up $7.1bn from 2018.
The findings, which assessed the world’s leading nuclear powers – The United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea – revealed that top nuclear powers spent $138,699 on over 13,000 nuclear weapons every minute of 2019.
The amount of money the US spent in 2019 alone could pay for 300,000 intensive care unit beds, 150,000 nurses, 75,000 doctors and 35,000 ventilators, the report found.
But the United Kingdom was the third highest spender at $8.9bn after the US and China at $35bn and $10.4bn, respectively, according to the report.
“It is absurd to be spending $138,700 every single minute on weapons that cause catastrophic human harm rather than spending it to protect the health of their citizens. They are abdicating their duty to protect their people,” ICAN executive director, Beatrice Fihn, said in a statement.
Nuclear arms were banned by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which the UN will enforce after all participating 50 nations ratify or accede the document, effectively criminalising such expenditures under international law.
But the figures only included direct spending on nuclear warheads and delivery systems costs for operation and deployment, with real numbers skyrocketing after factoring in costs due to environmental damage and victim compensation, with ICAN calling on governments to remain transparent in disclosing expenses, the statement read.
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, author of the report, said: “The figures do not include the massive humanitarian costs and the environmental toll from a legacy of nuclear testing and production. Even in the unlikely chance these weapons are never used, governments are paying massive sums to poison their environments and put their people at grave risk.”
The news comes as British MPs slammed the Ministry of Defence for wasting £1.3bn ($1.6bn) on upgrading the country’s nuclear Trident programme, which is currently six years behind schedule. Costs were estimated at £2.5bn for the three upgrade programmes, which have spiked an additional £1.35bn, according to reports.
US anti-ISIS chief says his goal in Syria is to create a ‘quagmire’ for Russia, not battle terrorism
RT | May 13, 2020
James Jeffrey, the US special envoy for Syria and defeating the Islamic State, has made quite a frank confession of how he sees his job and that of US troops there: to create a new Vietnam or Afghanistan for Moscow.
“Our military presence, while small, is important for overall calculations. So we urge the Congress, the American people, the president to keep these forces on, but again this isn’t Afghanistan, this isn’t Vietnam, this isn’t a quagmire,” Jeffrey said on Tuesday, during a video event hosted by the Hudson Institute. “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”
The arrival of the Russian expeditionary force in late 2015, following an invitation from Damascus, turned the tide of war in Syria. With their assistance, government forces rolled back both Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists and other militants, including Al-Qaeda affiliates, on multiple fronts – and scuttled US plans for regime change in Damascus.
Jeffrey grudgingly admitted the Russian military has been successful in Syria, but argued “they don’t have a political way out of their problems” with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the US aims to offer “a way forward” through the UN – presumably referring to Resolution 2254 that Washington has long interpreted as “Assad must go.”
The envoy’s admission on Tuesday is a step beyond his remarks in early March, when he told reporters on a conference call that the US aims to “make it very difficult” for Russia to help the Syrian government achieve a military victory.
While US President Donald Trump repeatedly rejected nation-building interventions in the Middle East and sought to withdraw US troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, he has repeatedly faced resistance from the State Department and the Pentagon, still set on the previous administration’s strategy of regime change.
Jeffrey’s mention of a “quagmire” like Afghanistan is particularly ominous, given that’s precisely what the Carter administration did in 1978, covertly supporting Islamic militants in that country in order to provoke a Soviet intervention. According to Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, this was done to lure the USSR into their own costly, never-ending war such as the US experienced in Vietnam
Brzezinski boasted of his own role in those efforts, dismissing the fallout of Islamist terrorism that the conflict generated as irrelevant compared to US victory in the Cold War – shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks triggered a US invasion of Afghanistan that the Trump administration is still struggling to extricate troops from.
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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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