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US agrees to pay South Carolina $600 million, dispose of plutonium by 2037

Press TV – August 31, 2020

The US Energy Department said on Monday it has reached a settlement with South Carolina on removing weapons-grade plutonium by 2037 from a Cold War-era site and shipping most of it to a disposal facility in New Mexico.

South Carolina, which had sued the energy department, will receive an upfront payment of $600 million. The state will waive its right to bring any more lawsuits over the plutonium until 2037.

“Today’s announcement is a guarantee to the people of South Carolina that plutonium will be removed safely from this state,” said US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.

The US government had planned to build a mixed oxide (MOX) plant to convert the material into fuel for nuclear power. But a MOX plant had never been built in the United States, and the Trump administration axed the program in 2018 saying it would cost about $48 billion more than $7.6 billion already spent on it.

That decision was a blow to South Carolina politicians, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had touted the jobs it would provide.

The department said 9.5 metric tons of plutonium will be removed from the Savannah River site. Much of the material will be sent to New Mexico, where it will be diluted and disposed of in a nuclear waste site near Carlsbad.

A notice in the Federal Register on Friday indicated that the department and its arm the National Nuclear Security Administration will dispose 7.1 metric tons at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The energy department was required by law to either build the MOX plant or remove the plutonium but it had done neither.

The US government had secretly shipped plutonium from South Carolina to Nevada sometime before November 2018, the Trump administration revealed last year. Democratic officials in Nevada were angered when they learned the news.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the deal was the largest single settlement ever in the state’s history. The deal will prevent the state from becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste and the money will help its economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

September 1, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power | | Leave a comment

US foreign policy elite wants Biden & detests Trump because President failed to launch new NATO missions

By George Szamuely | RT | August 31, 2020

One reason for the extraordinary hostility of the foreign policy insiders’ brigade toward President Trump is that he has not wasted his time conjuring up new missions to justify NATO’s continued existence.

Instead, he has promised to withdraw 12,000 US troops from Germany and, to add insult to injury, he has demanded that NATO member states increase their financial contributions toward the upkeep of the military alliance ostensibly there to “protect” them.

This is sacrilege to a foreign policy elite that have spent the last 70 years worshipping at the altar of NATO.

“US troops aren’t stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers—they’re restraining the expansionary aims of the world’s worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., fumed.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice expressed alarm about the “continued erosion of confidence in our leadership within NATO, and more efforts that call into question our commitment, and more signals to the authoritarians within NATO and Russia itself that this whole institution is vulnerable.”

Trump, according to Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to NATO and current adviser to Joe Biden, has cast America’s military allies primarily as a drain on the US Treasury, and he has aggressively criticized Washington’s true friends in Europe—democratic leaders such as France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel—even as he treats Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and other ‘authoritarians’ around the world with unusual tact.

Seventy former Republican national security officials recently issued a statement accusing Trump of having “disgraced America’s global reputation and undermined our nation’s moral and diplomatic influence.” And—horror of horrors!—Trump “has called NATO ‘obsolete.’ ”

Not only has Trump failed to spell out a new mission for NATO, the one mission of sorts he has come up with—extraction of more funds from NATO member-states—is calculated to cause mutual recriminations within the alliance. Trump regularly boasts that he has cajoled NATO to cough up an additional $130 billion a year “and it’s going to be $400 billion,” he recently warned.

To the denizens of Washington’s foreign policy think-tanks, pressuring NATO member states to come up with more money is a dangerous business. It could have the undesirable effect of forcing them to wonder whether devoting scarce resources to NATO—particularly now following the Covid economic downturn—is a sound investment.

NATO desperate to find reasons to justify its existence 

It is no secret that ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has been desperately searching for a reason to justify its existence. The alliance has expanded its membership from 16 to 30 in 20 years, while failing to put forward a convincing reason, other than inertia, for staying in business.

To be sure, there were and are threats—cybersecurity, mass migration, human trafficking, narcotics, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism—but it was never clear how a narrowly-focused military alliance would be able to address them unilaterally. NATO has thus been forced to engage in some vigorous head-scratching.

During the 1990s, we had the “humanitarian intervention” craze. This led to the NATO bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and 1995 and, more horrifically, to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Neither operation achieved anything that could not have been achieved years earlier—and without the use of force.

In 2001, NATO got in on the Global War on Terror. After 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, declaring that the terrorist attack on the US was an attack against every NATO member.

When the United States retaliated by invading Afghanistan in October 2001, NATO was on hand to assist. In December, it established something called the International Security Assistance Force, the nebulous mission of which was to “assist the Afghan Government in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance.”

Next came Iraq. Despite the vocal opposition of France and Germany to the 2003 invasion, NATO, in no time got involved. In 2004, it established NATO Training Mission-Iraq, the aim of which was supposedly to “assist in the development of Iraqi security forces training structures and institutions so that Iraq can build an effective and sustainable capability that addresses the needs of the nation.” One of its tasks was to train the Iraqi police. However, as WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs disclosure revealed, Iraq’s finely-trained police conducted horrific torture on detainees. Neither NATO’s Afghanistan nor its Iraqi mission covered itself in glory.

With the Democrats returning to power in Washington in 2009, NATO was back in the “humanitarian intervention” business. Its bombing of Libya in 2011 destroyed government, law and public order, institutions that before the intervention had ensured that the people of Libya were able to go about their daily lives free from the fear of death, not to mention the spectacle of slave markets.

The “humanitarian intervention” in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi) in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of “containment.”

Following the February 21, 2014, coup in Kiev and the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, NATO’s new mission was very much like its old. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen promised that: “We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water, and more readiness on the land. For example, air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere.”

Six years on, it’s clear that there simply aren’t enough armed conflicts in the world to justify the continued existence, not to mention huge expense, of such a gargantuan military organization. NATO has therefore resorted to seizing on the latest fashionable social and cultural issues to prove how up-to-date it is.

More NATO as solution to Climate change?

For example, NATO has added “climate change” to its repertoire. NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept declared that “Key environmental and resource constraints, including health risks, climate change, water scarcity and increasing energy needs will further shape the future security environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the potential to significantly affect NATO planning and operations.”

One would have thought that the most effective way NATO could contribute to minimizing global warming would be to cut back on armaments, military exercises and naval and air patrols. But no, apparently the solution to “climate change” is more NATO, not less.

Then came the issue gender equality. “Achieving gender equality is our collective task. And NATO is doing its part,” said Mari Skåre, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, in 2013. In March 2016, on International Women’s Day, NATO held a so-called “Barbershop Conference” on gender equality. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg took the opportunity to declare that gender equality was a frightfully important issue for the alliance because “NATO is a values-based organization and none of its fundamental values—individual liberties, democracy, human rights and the rule of law—work without equality….We learned in Afghanistan and in the Balkans that by integrating gender within our operations, we make a tangible difference to the lives of women and children”.

Definitely a “tangible difference to the lives of women and children”: As a result of NATO’s bombing campaigns in Yugoslavia and Libya, thousands of women and children lost their lives. In Libya, for example, NATO helped deliver perhaps thousands of women into the hands of ISIS.

This is how Human Rights Watch in 2017 described the record of ISIS rule in Libya:

“In the first half of 2016, fighters loyal to ISIS controlled the central coastal town of Sirte and subjected residents to a rigid interpretation of Sharia law that included public floggings, amputation of limbs, and public lynchings, often leaving the victims’ corpses on display.”

Trump’s failure to articulate a new mission for NATO, combined with his desire to extract more and more funds from the 29 member nations, puts the military alliance in a very vulnerable position. With no new mission and no obvious threats to Europe on the horizon—or at least none that NATO seems capable of addressing—its member states, sooner or later, are bound to question the value of belonging to an organization, with such high membership fees and so few benefits. No wonder the foreign-policy cognoscenti are fulminating and praying for a Biden presidency.

One of the reasons the foreign policy crowd detests Trump is that he hasn’t wasted his time trying to invent some “new mission” for NATO. Where Trump differs from his predecessors is that he hasn’t bothered trying to invent some new reason for NATO’s continued existence: Clinton had Yugoslavia, Bush Afghanistan & Iraq, Obama Libya. Trump hasn’t identified any “new mission” for NATO. Maybe because there isn’t one.

George Szamuely is a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London) and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeSzamuely

August 31, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Semi-Grand Strategies

Observer R for the Saker Blog | August 31, 2020

Foreign Affairs published an article by Daniel Drezner, Ronald Krebs, and Randall Schweller (“The End of Grand Strategy,” (May/June 2020) that brought forth a rejoinder in opposition by Francis J. Gavin and James B. Steinberg (“Foreign Policy Needs a Road Map,” (July/August 2020) and a reply by Drezner, Krebs, and Schweller in the same issue. After reading both sides of the controversy, one could make a case that the authors of the articles on both sides of the grand strategy debate are correct — or at least partially correct. The first article is on firm ground when pointing out that a grand strategy is probably impossible for the US to arrive at due to the change in the world situation and the fractious nature of American politics. However, the second article is also correct, that leaving strategy up to field officials would hardly ensure any coordinated actions at all and they could end up working at cross purposes.

It might be helpful to step back and leave grand strategy for a moment and talk about “semi-grand” strategy instead. For example, the US has a de facto strategy of containment in dealing with Russia—basically a re-invention of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. This has been going on in some fashion ever since the end of the Soviet Union. Currently it involves Belarus, Ukraine, NATO expansion, Nordstream 2, Georgia, sanctions, and Syria, among other skirmishes. One might say that the Cold War never ended, based on the refusal by the US to dissolve NATO at the same time that the Warsaw Pact came to an end. This is “semi-grand” because the US is now ginning up a de facto containment strategy against China. This one involves the Pivot to Asia, support for Taiwan, the “umbrella” effort in Hong Kong, opposition to the New Silk roads, contesting the South China Sea, sanctions, and the Indo-Pacific effort, which all amount to at least a “semi-grand” also. The reason they are both “semi-grand” is that a grand strategy would have planned how to keep Russia and China from joining forces in response to the dual containment policies of the US. The fractious politics in the US, where one party was more hawkish on Russia (witness RussiaGate) and the other party was more hawkish on China (witness the Trade War), meant that no real discussion or analysis was completed before decisions were made which resulted in trying dual containment of two major powers at the same time. The US is belatedly trying to round up partners to stop China, but having very little success. Even Australia, one of the supposed Quad members of the Indo-Pacific push, just stated its lack of enthusiasm to sign up with the US plan. Looking back almost ten years, there was an interesting attempt to craft a positive and peaceful strategy for relations between the US and China, but it did not get very far (“China US Grand Strategy Proposal,” Thomas P.M. Barnett, John Milligan-Whyte & Dai Min, Foreign Affairs, 2011).

So the two semi-grand strategies have resulted in China and Russia joining forces to oppose the US actions. A grand strategy would have gone for a divide-and-conquer effort or at least taken them on one at a time. As it is, the two countries are working to overcome containment and have a combined advantage in real estate, population, energy, factories, weapons, economy and 5G. An alternative grand strategy would be to harmonize the semi-grands into a plausible overarching concept that might work. So far, the most effort along this line has been in articles hoping to show that both China and Russia have inherent internal defects that will eventually result in their demise. Skeptics could point out that the US also has a slew of internal defects, and that it is a race to see who reaches bottom first. However, a recent statement by some retired US officials indicates a belief that ostracizing Russia was maybe not the best foreign policy maneuver and that a re-thinking is in process (“It’s Time to Rethink Our Russia Policy,” Rose Gottemoeller, et al – signed by 103 former officials, Politico, August 5, 2020). On the other hand, this statement elicited a vigorous rejoinder which opposed any re-thinking (“No, Now Is Not the Time for Another Russia Reset,” David J. Kramer–signed by 33 former officials, Politico, August 11, 2020). These articles illustrate a wide gap in foreign policy thinking within the US expert community.

The pursuit of the Monroe Doctrine could be considered a very early grand strategy, but its recent re-emphasis has had both success and failure. Other previous grand strategies could be considered to be the Opening to China (Nixon & Kissinger) and the Grand Chessboard (Brzezinski). However, the US strategy toward China since the Pivot to Asia has negated the Opening, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Iran nuclear agreement will negate the Chessboard. Other strategies included “Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look” (Ralph Peters, Armed Forces Journal, 2006), which proposed a plan to redraw the borders throughout the region to better align with the ethnic and religious distribution; “Imagining a Remapped Middle East” (Robin Wright, New York Times, 2013), which showed how 5 countries could be divided to become 14 countries; “Why the Pentagon Changes Its Maps” (Thomas P.M. Barnett, Esquire, September 10, 2016/originally published March 2003); and the Arab Spring (Obama administration). All these proposals and actions involved vast disruptions, regime changes, and attempts to refashion boundaries in North Africa and the Middle East. There has been little official change in borders so far, however, several countries have divided war zones and attempts at separation. These other strategies could be considered semi-grand and have shown the difficulties in implementing even a limited form of overall strategy. It is obvious that the US has little benefit to show for all the blood and treasure spent in the Middle East and Africa, unless the creation of “failed states” qualifies as a plus.

Additional semi-grand strategies can be observed in other parts of the world. The US has somewhere around 800 military bases spread about on all the continents. This is a very expensive proposition and has several different rationales to support it: being the world policeman, preventing nuclear proliferation, solving the problems of the Middle East, stopping terrorism, bringing democracy and human rights to distant lands, increasing weapons spending, creating chaos, and so forth. Another actual semi-grand strategy might be the promotion of regime change by color revolution, legal or military coups, electioneering tactics, and proxy fighters. Pretty much the same rationales apply here as for the military web of bases, as they can be used together in difficult cases. Viewed from a higher theoretical level, however, they are part of the broad range of implements in the hegemony toolbox.

From this higher angle then, the extensive military bases and the regime change semi-grands can be added together to form one sort of a grand strategy called the “pursuit of hegemony.” There have certainly been enough articles in Foreign Affairs over the years to indicate the importance of hegemony for US foreign policy. In fact, the magazine published an issue (January/February 2019) with “Who Will Run the World” on the cover and four articles inside on the featured theme. One article argued that the liberal international order could possibly be saved, while the other articles were dubious and generally claimed that the order could not be restarted or revived. This pessimistic outlook was followed by another set of articles in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2020) with “Come Home, America?” on the cover and six articles inside on the featured theme. Once again, the first article was in favor of continuing current world-wide policies, while the next two articles were arguments for retrenchment. The last three articles were dubious about much success from continuing current policies. Careful reading of the first article, however, shows that it begins to waffle toward the end and is only half-hearted in support of continuing the current global role due to the many factors working against it. On a scorecard, the result of these debates in Foreign Affairs would be a lopsided defeat for the hegemonic pursuit grand strategy side.

There is possibly a significant faction within the Council on Foreign Relations that is skeptical about the future prospects for the US “running the world.” Otherwise, the Foreign Affairs articles would likely not have been published. Likewise, many of the articles were written by academics and similarly show a difference of opinion among the professors. However, little of this newly published skepticism has made its way into general public discourse. The few politicians expressing a skeptical view have been marginalized or excluded in the debates and subjected to very adverse publicity in the mass media. One reason for this could be the relative lack of published grand strategies for US foreign policy in a post-hegemonic world. The “retrenchment” proposals are essentially semi-grand in that they are mostly negative in tone and do not give a compelling description of life after the imperial sunset. It is common for textbooks to note that when the British Empire went into decline, the baton was passed to the Americans, albeit with continual British influence and participation. It is also a common comment that the Americans have no one to pass the baton to.

So, are the skeptics right or wrong? The US current foreign and military policy is certainly going forward on all fronts in an attempt to continue running the world and to prevent any obstruction to its exceptional and unipolar situation. Attempts at retrenchment are furiously beaten down, and there seem to be little slackening of regime change efforts. This makes sense if the US role is sustainable at its current level and the skeptics are generally wrong. On the other hand, perhaps the current effort is a last ditch “Hail Mary” pass before the clock runs out. In any event, just in case the skeptics are right, it might well be useful to draw up some comprehensive scenarios for life in a post-hegemonic world, as well as how to decline gracefully and make the best of the new situation.

In summary, the grand strategies of the past have either been discarded (Opening to China) or are in serious trouble with a doubtful future (Grand Chessboard). More recent strategic attempts to deal with Russia did not get anywhere (Reset) and those dealing with China failed to get much traction either (Pivot, TPP). It is certainly questionable whether the War on Terror achieved any significant reduction in terrorism around the world. The semi-grand strategies appear to have resulted in the US getting bogged down in various quagmires. The current grand strategy of the US government appears to be an effort to use any means possible to keep “running the world.” If articles published in Foreign Affairs are any indication, however, it would seem that the scholarly community and many former officials possess a very pessimistic view of the US pursuing hegemony. By extension, this pessimism could also apply to some members of the Council on Foreign Relations. To date, however, the experts appear to be hard pressed to create a positive-sounding and marketable alternative. As a result, politicians, mainstream media, and the public are seemingly unaware of the potential for a major crisis. A hard landing for the Yankee Empire is not a welcome prospect.

August 31, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Trump Must Back Iraq Withdrawal Promise With Action

By Ron Paul | August 31, 2020

Earlier this month, while meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister, President Trump reaffirmed his intent to remove all US troops from Iraq. “We were there and now we’re getting out. We’ll be leaving shortly,” the president told reporters at the time.

Although President Obama should never have sent US troops back into Iraq in 2016, it is definitely well past time to remove them as quickly as possible.

Over the weekend, the Administration announced it would be drawing down troops currently in Iraq from 5,200 to 3,500. That’s a good start.

One big roadblock to finally leaving Iraq alone is President Trump’s de facto Secretary of War, Mike Pompeo. Although he’s supposed to be the top US diplomat, Pompeo is a bull in a china shop. He seems determined to start a war with Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, and probably a few more countries.

Unfortunately there is a pattern in this Administration where President Trump announces the withdrawal of troops from one of the seemingly endless conflicts we are involved in and an Administration official – often Pompeo – “clarifies” the president’s statement to mean the opposite of what the president has just said.

When the president was questioned over the weekend about a timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq, he turned to Pompeo for an answer. Pompeo’s response did not inspire much hope. “As soon as we can complete the mission,” said Pompeo. What is the mission? Does anyone know? Aside from “regime change” for Iran, that is.

At his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for re-election last week, Trump declared, “unlike previous administrations, I have kept America OUT of new wars — and our troops are coming home.” That sounds good, but how can he achieve that goal if the people he hires to carry out that policy not only disagree with him but seem to be working against him?

The US invasion of Iraq 17 years ago was correctly described at the time by the late NSA Director Bill Odom as “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” After a relentless barrage of lies about former US ally Saddam Hussein having “weapons of mass destruction,” the US attack and destruction of Iraq did not bring the peace and prosperity promised by the neocon war promoters.

Instead, the US “liberation” of Iraq killed a million Iraqis, most of whom were civilians. It destroyed Iraq’s relatively prosperous economy. It did not result in a more peaceful or stable Middle East. The US had no idea how to remake Iraqi society and in picking and choosing who could participate in post-invasion Iraq the US helped facilitate the rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS. A secular Iraq had been turned into a sectarian incubator for terrorists and extremists. And the biggest winner in the war was Iran, who the US has demonized as an enemy for over four decades.

Yes, General Odom was right. It was a strategic disaster. Turning the US into a global military empire is also a strategic disaster. Trump’s promise to bring troops home from overseas wars sounds very good. But it’s time to see some real action. That might mean some people who disagree with the president need to be fired.

August 31, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Empire’s Fake War on Terror

Tales of the American Empire | January 2, 2020

The end of the Cold War in 1990 presented a serious problem for the American empire. The threat of communism could no longer justify massive wartime military budgets and a worldwide system of military bases. It could no longer justify American military intervention to protect corporate interests whenever a nation’s political establishment threatened change. The easy profits from military contracts decreased as peace spread throughout the world. The solution was an extensive propaganda campaign to replace the threat of communism with the threat of terrorism.

________________________________

The accused mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, was arrested in 2012 and is still awaiting trial; https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/31/trial-…

The Dark Side of the 1991 Gulf War; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2KpG…

“General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned – Seven Countries in Five Years; Democracy Now; March 2007; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1M…

“Return of al-Qaida”; Unz; Eric Maroglis; Jan. 11, 2014; http://www.unz.com/emargolis/return-o…

August 29, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Iran calls for international pressure to force Israel to sign NPT

Press TV – August 28, 2020

Iran has urged the international community to pressure the Israeli regime into joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Deputy Representative of the Islamic Republic to the United Nations Es’haq Al-e Habib says the international community must force Tel Aviv to join the NPT and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to access its nuclear facilities considering the Israeli regime’s destructive role in the region.

Addressing a virtual meeting on the anniversary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Thursday, Al-e Habib stressed that the destructive role of the United States and Israel has prevented the realization of a Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Free Zone in the Middle East.

He slammed the US’ negative role in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and said with 1,054 nuclear tests, Washington has had the highest number of such tests in comparison to other countries.

He referred to the US as the possessor of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and said Washington not only has no intention to end testing nuclear weapons and join the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) but also continues to modernize and strengthen its nuclear arsenal.

Nuclear disarmament must remain at the top of the international community’s agenda, he said, adding that the nuclear tests must be stopped since they are against the soul of CTBT and commitment to nuclear disarmament as per the Article VI of the NPT.

Israel, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to have 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.

The regime has refused to allow inspections of its military nuclear facilities or sign the NPT.

Under Article VI of the NPT, all parties to the treaty undertake to pursue good-faith negotiations on effective measures related to nuclear disarmament and the cessation of nuclear arms race.

August 28, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US Forced to Flee Afghanistan, Iraq and Now Syria

By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 28.08.2020

Multiple missile strikes carried out in recent weeks on American military facilities and overseas bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria indicate that a growing number of people living in countries that have endured American military invasions have had enough of America’s intervention and are fed up with Washington’s policy.

The level of dissatisfaction among the Afghan people with the US military presence in Afghanistan has already received extensive coverage in the media, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has even been forced to declare that the US will pull all of its troops out of Afghanistan by May 2021.

Outside Afghanistan, anti-American sentiment has long prevailed among people living in Syria and Iraq, which has not only been voiced through peaceful means, such as holding anti-American protests or appealing to the UN to demand the American troops be withdrawn.

Powerful explosions sparked a raging fire in the late hours of July 28 at the Majid al Tamimi Airbase in Iraq, where both Iraqi and American soldiers are stationed. This was the second strike to be carried out within the space of the same day. In an attack earlier that day, three rockets were launched on the territory of the US Camp Taji base located north of Baghdad.

On August 10, an explosion near the Iraqi border with Kuwait hit convoys supplying US-led coalition forces with military equipment. On the same day, another rocket attack struck near the US Embassy in Baghdad. The actual territory of the American Embassy was hit by missiles on July 5, and after another attack on the embassy on June 11, Washington was forced to negotiate reducing the US military presence in Iraq with Baghdad.

The Iraqi media notes that attacks on American military facilities are carried out on almost a weekly basis in Iraq, and although there are no casualties or people left injured in many of these attacks according to official data, the infrastructure of the military facilities has suffered material damage. At the same time, the threat of far more serious attacks being carried out in the near future has not been dismissed by the US.

According to the al-Hadath TV channel based in Dubai, Iraq and the United States came to an agreement on August 22 in response to the significant increase in the number of protests being held in Iraq against the US military presence in the country, agreeing to relocate American troops and equipment from Camp Taji north of Baghdad to Erbil — the capital of the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Almost all the troops are now known to have been moved to the military base in Erbil, in what was the largest withdrawal of US troops from an American military base in the Middle East.

There are also more and more reports coming from Syria about missile attacks on US military bases, especially in the northeast of the country in the al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor governorates. The Syrian Al-Watan newspaper reported that one of these attacks targeted a US military base in the town of al-Shaddadah, the administrative center of the al-Hasakah governorate in northeastern Syria, which was hit by rockets in early August. In May, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that another armed attack was carried out on the US military using machine guns and grenades, in which at least eight people were injured.

In some articles, observers claim that the American facilities targeted in these attacks are being used as infrastructure to protect oil fields and for the illegal production of Syrian oil. For instance, one of these attacks carried out in mid-August targeted an American military base near the Conoco gas field (north of the Deir ez-Zor governorate), which is controlled by the US and Kurdish armed groups. As anti-American sentiment gains momentum, and with periodic attacks being carried out on American targets in Syria, the United States has already begun drafting a special combat unit in Syria to protect oil fields east of the Euphrates. According to local sources, this special unit includes ethnic Arabs drafted from the ranks of the militia fighters in the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is militarily led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a mainly Kurdish militia which forms the backbone of the SDF. However, local tribes are increasingly taking a stand against the presence of American armed forces and their SDF henchmen in Syria. According to Al-Masdar News, one of these clashes took place on August 17, when fighters from the Al-Baggara tribe reportedly drove SDF forces out of the village of Jadid Baggara in a rural part of Deir ez-Zor governorate in eastern Syria. It is indeed the eastern regions of Syria where numerous protests are being held against military occupation and new US sanctions, which are trying to put the Syrian government in a difficult position to prevent Damascus and its allies from working together to rebuild their vision of Syria.

Given these circumstances, US President Donald Trump has been repeating his intention to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria more and more frequently. Donald Trump made another remark about withdrawing US troops from Iraq at a press briefing on August 19 that was streamed on the White House Twitter account. In Trump’s opinion, the US army should never have gone into the Middle East, and he recalled that the United States is continuing to reduce the number of American troops stationed in Afghanistan.

It should not be forgotten that during a speech Donald Trump gave on June 13, addressed to graduates of the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York, he said: “We are restoring the fundamental principles that the job of the American soldier is not to rebuild foreign nations […].” In Trump’s own words, there is now “a renewed, clear-eyed focus on defending America’s vital interests.”

However, on June 9, Donald Trump informed members of Congress from both the Senate and the House of Representatives that Washington will continue operations against DAESH, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other related groups listed as terrorist organizations and based in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Niger.

Yet considering how people living in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have railed against the presence of US troops and military bases in their countries, one could expect to see similar acts of protest in the very near future in other countries around the world where more than 600 US military bases are hosted.

August 28, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Cuba Advocates Denuclearization in United Nations Meeting

Ambassador Ana Rodriguez at the UN Headquarers, New York, U.S., June 1, 2020.

teleSUR | August 26, 2020

The Deputy Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations Ana Rodriguez Wednesday reaffirmed her country’s commitment to denuclearization and advocated for a world free of nuclear weapons.

She stressed that it is disconcerting how some countries persist in their drive to modernize atomic arsenals and develop new types of nuclear weapons amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rodriguez also pointed out that it is impossible to think about a world free of nuclear weapons when the United States violates both the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Cuban ambassador recalled that the U.S. has withdrawn from several international agreements on disarmament and arms limitation such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

She also mentioned that Cuba supports an effective and total ban on all kinds of nuclear tests. Her government also advocates the closure and dismantling of all facilities used for such purposes.

Rodriguez pointed out that the spending great amounts of money to develop nuclear weapons is unacceptable as international cooperation to face global health problems is needed.

Currently, there are approximately 13,400 nuclear weapons in the world, 3,720 of which are deployed and 1,800 are on high operational alert.

August 27, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Let’s Talk U.S. Foreign Policy: It Is the Root Cause of Many Evils

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 27, 2020

As the United States sinks deeper into a multi-faceted global crisis that no politician seems able or even willing to address, one hears more and more often demands for radical change in who runs the country and to what end. Of course, Donald J. Trump offered such a dramatic shift in priorities four years ago, but he has been unable to deliver due to his own inability to execute and the ill-conceived machinations of those whom he has chosen as advisers. The Democrats for their part are offering little beyond a repeat of their 2016 pander to grievance groups in an effort to cobble together an unassailable majority based on buying off the party’s various constituencies.

But there is one area where change could come dramatically if either party were actually motivated to do something that would truly benefit the American people, and that is in the area of foreign and national security policy where the president has considerable power to set priorities and redirect both the State and Defense Departments. Unfortunately, foreign and national security policy is almost never discussed during the presidential campaigns and this time would already appear to be no exception. That means that the one thing that is a constant amidst all the smoke and mirrors is the continued bellicosity of both parties on the world stage.

The Republicans are apparently eager to “democratize” Latin America while the Democrats in particular are wedded to the “foreign interference” angle to explain their loss in 2016, with Hillary Clinton predictably advising in her Democratic National Convention speech that the public should “Vote to make sure we — not a foreign adversary — choose our president.” Indeed, the tendency to create and then demonize “foreign conspiracies” is generally supported by the establishment and its parasitical media, since it enables the billionaire oligarchs who really run the country to grow fatter while also avoiding any blame for the declining fortunes of most of the American people.

The Democrats are currently taking pains to recall the so-called “Russian interference” in 2016, and are expecting or possibly even hoping for more of the same this year. Tying Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin is obviously perceived as a game winner, even though the just-completed investigations into the events of 2016 are at best ambiguous. Early prognostications by journalist-pundits in the foreign interference sweepstakes indicate that both China and Iran will be supporting Joe Biden while Russia wants to continue with Trump. No one bothers to explain how those countries will express their preferences or what kind of impact they could possibly have.

One thing that is certain is that both parties will continue their deference to Israel which in turn means hostility towards Iran and its few friends worldwide. The U.S. media has not reported the almost daily bombings of Syria and Gaza by Israel and even largely failed to cover how two weeks ago the United States Navy seized four Greek flagged oil tankers transporting more than a million gallons of fuel to economic basket case Venezuela, a country which is in its sad condition due to sanctions and other “maximum pressure” at the hands of Washington. The fuel was seized based on unilaterally imposed U.S. sanctions on Iranian sale or export of its own petroleum products, a move intended to strangle the Iranian economy and bring about an uprising of the Iranian people. Such a move used to be called piracy.

To be sure, the Democrats have indicated that they will rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump withdrew from under orders from top donor Sheldon Adelson in 2017, one of his first acts in office. The JCPOA is intended to monitor and restrain any possible efforts by Iran to enrich uranium to develop a nuclear weapon, which one might assume is in the U.S. interest, but one should make no mistake in thinking that re-entering the agreement signifies any softening towards Iran. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are owned lock, stock and barrel by the Israel Lobby, which is pretty much true of most politicians from both major parties in Washington. Iran is Israel’s target and even lacking any threat to the U.S. so it will remain the American enemy of choice.

America’s efforts to demonize and punish Iran, ineptly stage managed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, frequently lead into the Twilight Zone. On August 17th, the United States suffered what has to be described as a humiliating defeat in the United Nations Security Council. As the Washington Post reported it, “The United States asked the council to approve an extension of the 13-year-old embargo on arms trade with Iran — something that matters greatly to Israel and U.S. Arab allies, and which most of the democratic world favors. Yet only one member of the 15-member council, the Dominican Republic, sided with Washington. Russia and China opposed the motion, while 11 countries — including Britain, France and Germany — abstained. The vote could open the way for Iran to obtain Chinese and Russian arms — for example, missiles it could employ against Israel, the UAE or U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.”

Note particularly the reliably Zionist Post’s “newspeak” version in describing both the issue and the vote. It states that “most of the democratic world favors” an embargo on selling arms to Iran but then describes how “11 countries – including Britain, France and Germany – abstained.” And, of course, the potential threat to Israel is front and center as the reason for the embargo, an apartheid state that has nuclear weapons developed in secret after stealing both the uranium and triggers from the United States. One might also note that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel is not, and its nuclear related research facilities are fully open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

After the rebuff, Trump subsequently moved on to phase two in its attack on Iran by invoking a so-called “snap-back” provision of the JCPOA that empowers any of the signatories to the agreement to unilaterally call for renewal of the international sanctions that isolated Iran prior to 2015, when the plan of action was signed by the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, along with the European Union. The U.S. claimed that Iran has been cheating on its enrichment program and also that the accord’s authority is rooted in an accompanying Security Council resolution, which means that Washington can at will address the issue before that body.

Bear in mind that the U.S., though an original signatory, withdrew from the agreement, and any attempt to restore U.N. sanctions through an admittedly sleazy maneuver would be resisted by nearly all the other members of the Security Council, which is precisely what did take place last Thursday, with the Europeans producing a joint letter emphasizing that Washington has no standing on the issue as it is no longer party to the arrangement. Pompeo responded by saying that the Europeans “chose to side with the ayatollahs.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, presumably supported by the president, has been angered by the Security Council’s failure to support him on either extending the arms embargo or re-imposing general sanctions, though he is probably eternally grateful for the fortitude demonstrated by the plucky little Dominican Republic. On both meetings with the Security Council Pompeo complained, using his standard line, saying that “We can’t allow the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism to buy and sell weapons. I mean, that’s just nuts.”

The next step by the White House was a unilateral proposal submitted in writing by the U.S. to reimpose a full range of economic sanctions on Iran in thirty days. That can only be blocked by a Security Council resolution which Washington can veto, meaning that America will again be going it alone in its not-so-secret war against Iran, further isolating the U.S. in world fora and again demonstrating that the Trump Administration has few friends anywhere in this fight but Israel and its newfound Arab associates in the Gulf. It also means that the re-imposed sanctions are unlikely to be actively enforced by anyone that matters, further suggesting that the U.S. might resort to secondary sanctions, as it has done in the past, on those who do not comply, a formula for chaos.

Well, it should seem obvious that we Americans can’t afford a foreign and national security policy that pits the United States against the rest of the world in situations where the U.S. is not actually directly threatened and does not even have a vital interest. Over the next two months, perhaps we will see some serious discussion of America’s place in the world or perhaps not. If 2016 is anything to go by, we are more likely to see a number of bromides tossed out without any real meaning behind them. We are still waiting for troops reductions and the ending of useless wars promised by Trump. We are still waiting for Hillary to concede that Russia didn’t defeat her. She did it all by herself.

August 27, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

UAE snubs three-way meeting with US, Israel over F-35 spat

Press TV – August 25, 2020

The Emirati envoy to the UN has reportedly snubbed a meeting with his Israeli and American counterparts after Tel Aviv spoke out against Abu Dhabi’s potential acquisition of American F-35 warplanes despite a normalization deal between the two sides.

The meeting had been scheduled for Friday at the UN headquarters in New York among Lana Nusseibeh, Gilad Ardan, and Kelly Kraft as a means of celebrating the August 13 deal that enabled “full normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the occupying regime.

Israel’s Walla news site, however, reported on Monday that the Emirati official had opted out of the meeting a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had opposed the sale of F-35s and other advanced weapons to any country in the Middle East, including Arab countries that have peace agreements with Israel.

Netanyahu also rejected earlier reports that he had given the green light to such sales to the UAE as part of the normalization deal.

Walla further said Emirati officials would refrain from holding any such high-level meetings with Israeli officials until Netanyahu “clarifies” his position on potential sales of the F-35s to Abu Dhabi.

Tel Aviv claims to have a “military edge” in the region and invariably pressures Washington into helping it retain the self-proclaimed primacy.

The UAE says the peace agreement with Israel should remove “any hurdle” for Abu Dhabi to purchase the advanced jets.

“We have legitimate requests that are there. We ought to get them,” said Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargashin an interview with the Atlantic Council on Thursday. “The whole idea of a state of belligerency or war with Israel no longer exists” following normalization.

Observers say the complications that have followed the UAE-Israel normalization agreement point to the flimsy nature of their relations, which have been received with uniform opposition from all Palestinian factions and many other countries.

Speaking alongside Netanyahu during a trip to the occupied city of Jerusalem al-Quds, US Secretary of State, reiterated America’s commitment to protecting Israel, while suggesting that Washington could rethink selling the warplanes to the UAE.

“The United States has a legal requirement with respect to [Israel’s alleged] qualitative military edge, and we will continue to honor that,” Pompeo said, adding the US “will now continue to review” its military ties with the UAE.

As per America’s Israel policy, Washington has to take protecting Israel’s security into consideration before selling any weapons to countries in the Middle East region.

With that in mind, the US has so far sold 16 of the warplanes to the occupying regime and plans to add dozens more to the fleet.

August 25, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

USA’s Militarization of Latin America

By Yanis Iqbal | Dissident Voice | August 24, 2020

Maj. Gen. Andrew Croft, the commander of 12th Air Force, wrote on 22 August: “I have seen an increasingly contested strategic space where Beijing and Moscow are aggressively investing time and resources in Latin America to support their authoritarian models of governance. The Air Force must reinforce the strength of our longstanding commitment to the Western Hemisphere. We lose ground when we are unable to commit to spending the time and resources to fly our aircraft south and train alongside our partners.”

Croft’s statement reflects the growing American hysteria against the presence of any extra-regional actors in the Latin American continent. For US policy-makers, Latin America is not an aggregation of sovereign nations but a large lump of subordinated states constituting “America’s backyard”. Consequently, this conceptualization of Latin America as a natural extension of the American empire has led to viewing the engagement of any South American country with China, Russia and Iran as a “threat” to peace and security.

On February 7, 2019, Admiral Craig S. Faller – the commander of the United States Southern Command – told the Congress that the Western Hemisphere is facing “a troubling array of challenges and threats”. These threats included alarmist assertions about the growing dominance of China, Russia and Iran and a general demonization of the socialist governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua:

“China has accelerated expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative at a pace that may one day overshadow its expansion in Southeast Asia and Africa. Russia supports multiple information outlets spreading its false narrative of world events and U.S. intentions. Iran has deepened its anti-U.S. Spanish language media coverage and has exported its state support for terrorism into our hemisphere. Russia and China also support the autocratic regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which are counter to democracy and U.S. interests. We are monitoring the latest events in Venezuela and look forward to welcoming that country back into the hemisphere’s community of democracies.”

In response to the perceived threats posed by the China-Russia-Iran nexus, the Secretary of Defense has decided to conduct an assessment of the sufficiency of resources available to the U.S. Southern Command, the U.S. Northern Command, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to carry out their respective missions in the Western Hemisphere. This assessment is required to include “a list of investments, programs, or partnerships in the Western Hemisphere by China, Iran, Russia, or other adversarial groups or countries that threaten the national security of the United States.”

In addition to warlike preparations, USA has also pursued a policy of increased militarization wherein it has tried to ensure “technological superiority” with regard to “anti-US actors”. In March, 2020, USA decided to send additional ships, aircraft and forces to South America and Central America in order to combat the influence of Russia and China. According to Navy Adm. Craig Faller, commander of Southern Command, “This really was born out of a recognition of the threats in the region,”. Along with the mobilization of the Southern Command, USA has substantially enlarged its security aid to Latin America: From $527,706,000 in 2019, US security aid to Latin America has increased by 10% to $581,270,000.

Chinese Footprint

The present-day US militarization of Latin America is rhetorically driven by an imperialist discourse framing the continent as a possession of the American empire which China, Russia and Iran are trying to appropriate. To take an example, R. Evan Ellis, a Latin America Research Professor at the US Army War College, stated before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that China’s engagement with Latin America “threatens the position of the United States, our security and prosperity, and the democratic values, rights, institutions and laws on which we depend.” To substantiate his statements, Ellis enunciated various strategies through which China is undermining USA’s dominance:

  • “Trade with, loans to, investment in, and other forms of economic and other support to anti-US regimes, indirectly enabling their criminal activities and contributions to regional instability”.
  • “Through providing an alternative to commerce, loans and investment from the West, making governments of the region less inclined to support the US on political, commercial, or security issues, or to stand up for rule of law, democracy or human rights, particularly where it might offend the PRC;”

In both these points, one can observe the imperialistic high-handedness with which Ellis is declaiming his pro-US rhetoric. While Beijing’s efforts to engage with sovereign nations and construct an alternative to the global American empire are regarded as enabling “regional instability”, no questions are asked about USA’s expansionist quest to imperialize the entire world through militaristic tactics.

In order to vilify China and smear its non-aggressive foreign policy, hawkish security experts have framed the country’s diplomatic involvement with various Latin American nations as a type of authoritarian tactic. Using this line of reasoning, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) writes: “Beijing has now officially established its own version of soft power… which emanates from its undemocratic system and rests on its ability to shape the viewpoints of others through co-optation and persuasion.” Not having any empirical evidence to prove its unconvincing statements, NED talks vaguely about the “hypnotic effects” exercised by “Chinese-style warm welcome”: “The Chinese-style warm welcome, the carefully selected tours that include visits to sites with symbolic historical and cultural significance, and ad hoc friendly discourse delivered by the Chinese hosts can have hypnotic effects on their foreign guests.” This is an indication of the extent to which America hysteria against China can reach.

In the same way as NED, the Brookings Institution has also tried to slander China’s diplomatic initiatives in Latin America to preserve the coercive dominance of USA in the continent. As per the think tank, “it would be fair to assume that China’s growing economic power and ambitions of global leadership, coupled with its inherently closed and repressive model of political control, will hurt the region’s prospects for strengthening its liberal democratic systems and respect for human rights.” While saying this, the Brooking Institution conveniently forgets that it the US, with its Western-styled liberal democracy, that has hurt the region most in the form of coups, violence and overt brutality against social movements. Most recently, a US-backed coup in Bolivia has resulted in two massacres and massive repression of social movements.

The Iranian Connection

Like China, Iran, too, experiences American hostility towards its engagement with Latin American countries. Lieutenant Andrew Kramer of the U.S. Navy terms Iranian support for the “economically backward governments” of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as efforts “to maintain pockets of instability and hostility close to U.S. borders.” Echoing this perspective, William Preston McLaughlin, a Colonel (Ret.) of U.S. Marine Corps and Magdalena Defort, an Intern Analyst at the Foundation of Defense of Democracies, argue that “Iran’s presence in Latin America is an imminent threat to peace and political stability in the Western Hemisphere because its forces interact with Latin America’s deeply rooted revolutionary ideology and various well-intentioned but flawed “liberation theology” social movements.” Here, both of the analysts are merely parroting the imperialist “Monroe Doctrine” that subverted the sovereignty of Latin American nations and tethered the people of the continent to the whims of the American empire. Through the Monroe Doctrine, USA relegated the entire Latin American continent to the status of the empire’s handmaiden and constantly used its military muscles to overpower any regional initiatives challenging the dynamics of subjugation. Now, when Iran is lending support to the anti-imperialist administrations of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, it has come under the radar of USA for ostensibly destroying peace and political stability in the Western Hemisphere. In August 2020, for instance, USA confiscated four Iranian fuel shipments that had been bound for Venezuela, making it clear that it would not tolerate anti-imperialist opposition in Latin America.

In addition to portraying Iran as a threat to global peace, both the analysts also used a shrill, scaremongering rhetoric to over-exaggerate the strength of the country. According to the analysts, “Iran has used every agency within its borders to help extend Iranian tentacles into the political, cultural, economic, and military life of Latin America.” This bears striking resemblance to the traditional war-mongering US narrative that frames Hezbollah as a menace to justify the militarizary raising funds, seeking recruits, probing for our weaknesses and challenging our defenses,”. Through these discourses, USA seeks to unleash a new war against the anti-imperialist axis of Latin America which is standing up to militaristic predatoriness of the global hegemon.

Russian Presence

Besides Iran and China, Russia is another nation perceived as a “threat” to US security. General John Kelly, commander of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) noted in his Congressional testimony, “it has been over three decades since we last saw this type of high-profile Russian presence” in Latin America. In his command’s 2015 Posture Statement, Kelly added:

“Periodically since 2008, Russia has pursued an increased presence in Latin America through propaganda, military arms and equipment sales, counterdrug agreements, and trade. Under President Putin, however, we have seen a clear return to Cold War tactics. As part of its global strategy, Russia is using power projection in an attempt to erode U.S. leadership and challenge U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere.”

John Kelly’s representation of Russia as a military threat has been repeated by the Commander of US Southern Command, Admiral Kurt W. Tidd who said in his February 2018 Posture Statement to the US Senate Armed Services Committee that:

“Russia’s increased role in our hemisphere is particularly concerning, given its intelligence and cyber capabilities, intent to upend international stability and order, and discredit democratic institutions… Left unchecked, Russian access and placement could eventually transition from a regional spoiler to a critical threat to the U.S. homeland.”

With the help this narrative, USA has aggressively pushed forward the agenda of greater militarism in Latin America as it strives to maintain “technological superiority” in relation to Russia and expand its already large military expenditure.

On top of depicting Russia as a military threat, US analysts have additionally portrayed the country’s support of socialist governments in Latin America as a danger to the economically empty liberal democracies of the West. According to IBI Consultants, a National Security consulting company specializing in Latin America, Russia’s growing presence in Latin America “is now an integral part of an alliance of state and nonstate actors that have shown their hostility toward the United States in their ideology, criminalized behavior, and anti-democratic nature.” Reiterating this point, on July 9, 2019, Admiral Faller declared before the Congress that “Russia seeks to sow disunity and distrust, propping up autocratic regimes in Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which are counter to democracy and U.S. interests.” For Faller, those nations which don’t doggedly toe America’s imperialist line automatically become “threats” to democracy and if Russia shows solidarity with these anti-imperialist nations, it, too, classifies as a threat to US interests.

As the USA continues to militarize Latin America, it is increasingly becoming clear that it wants to protect its old, imperial structures from being challenged by anyone. It has been explicitly acknowledged even by pro-US analysts such as Ellis that US military assistance in Latin America “potentially serves U.S. strategic interests by helping to inoculate receiving states against radical or anti-democratic [read “socialist”] solutions which find receptivity when populations lose faith in the ability of a democratic political system and a free market economy to effectively address the corruption, inequality, injustice, and other dysfunctionalities plaguing their country [Emphasis mine].” US military assistance, therefore, is not apolitical and is ideologically tarnished with the objectives of stabilizing free market economies-bourgeoisie democracies and subverting socialist countries.

The United States Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to US national security had stated in 2019 that “anti-US autocrats [in the Western Hemisphere]will present continuing challenges to US interests, as US adversaries and strategic competitors seek greater influence in the region.” Here, “anti-US autocrats” refers to the socialist administrations of three Latin American countries: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. These three countries have been facing strong US belligerence for their anti-imperialist stance. US sanctions against Cuba have tightened during the pandemic; USA’s hybrid war against Venezuela has intensified as Trump has decided to use frozen funds to topple Nicolas Maduro and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has strengthened its regime change operations against the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Due to the support lent by China, Russia and Iran to the socialist governments of Latin America, USA has decided to eradicate these extra-regional actors from its “own” backyard and re-proclaim a complete American dominance in the region. In times like these, the international community needs to oppose the militarism of USA against new regional alliances in Latin America.

Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India.

August 24, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Let them eat yellowcake: As Powell backs Dems, warmongers seek to regain full control of US policy, regardless of what voters want

By Tony Cox | RT | August 20, 2020

The neoconservatives have a new party. It’s called Democratic, and it’s every bit as warmongering and interventionist as the Republicans were during the Reagan era or that of the Bushes.

We keep hearing how radical leftists have taken over the Democratic Party, but guess who stole the limelight at Tuesday’s Democratic National Convention: the disgraced former Secretary of State Colin Powell who endorsed their presidential candidate, Joe Biden.

In fact, Powell, who helped George W. Bush’s administration lie America into the ruinous Iraq War, was given a full extra minute to speak when compared to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the face of the woke left.

He didn’t disappoint. Although Powell, 83, might be a bit rustier than when he laid out the false US case on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN in 2003, he deftly leaned on old stand-bys of patriotic values and love for the troops. “Joe Biden will be a president we will all be proud to salute,” Powell said. “With Joe Biden in the White House, you will never doubt that he will stand with our friends and stand up to our adversaries.”

In other words, Biden will pledge undying fealty to NATO and make sure Russia knows who’s boss. Powell put a finer point on the theme: “I support Joe Biden because on Day One, he will restore America’s leadership and our moral authority. He’ll be a president who knows America is strongest when, as he has said, ‘We lead both by the power of our example and the example of our power.’ He will restore America’s leadership in the world and restore the alliances we need to address the dangers that threaten our nation, from climate change to nuclear proliferation.”

It was such a rousing pep talk that we might have expected the Democrats to bring out surprise guest George W. Bush to talk about Iraq obtaining yellowcake uranium from Niger and remind us that, “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Although Bush might have been a bridge too far, other Republicans joined Powell in speaking at this week’s Democrat convention, including former Congresswoman Susan Molinari, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and former Ohio Governor John Kasich. The latter said in 2016, while running against President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, that he would deploy large numbers of US ground troops in Syria, Iraq and Libya. “It’s got to be shock and awe in the military-speak,” Kasich said, borrowing a Donald Rumsfeld line.

If that weren’t enough, Senator John McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, narrated a video paying homage to Biden’s great friendship with her late husband. That the two senators would get along so well shouldn’t come as a surprise. McCain never met a war or secret foreign intervention he didn’t like. Biden supported the Iraq War and the Obama-Biden administration’s bombings of Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, as well as continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He praised the regime change in Libya that led to the disastrous migrant crisis and opened up a weapons pipeline for Al-CIAeda forces in Syria.

Of course, the Dems have a leading neocon of their own, Hillary Clinton, as a headline convention speaker. It doesn’t matter which party is in power or what the American people want. As former President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address in 1961, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

That ship has sailed. It doesn’t matter that only 27 percent of Americans in a 2019 Chicago Council poll agreed that military interventions in other countries make the US safer. It doesn’t matter that Americans elected Trump not in spite of, but at least partly because he campaigned against senseless wars and called for improving relations with Russia.

The permanent bureaucracy in Washington and the interests it serves couldn’t tolerate that last point. For candidate Trump to say things like “wouldn’t it be a great thing if we could get along with Russia” was heresy to the War State. When Trump won, upsetting establishment candidate Clinton, the Russia hoax was used to contain him.

Trump caved into the pressure against being seen as too friendly with President Vladimir Putin and took a belligerent stance against Moscow, undermining his foreign policy agenda. Just about the only time he received substantial praise from the mainstream media was when he bombed Syria in 2017 on false pretenses. NBC anchor Brian Williams even called the missiles raining down on Syria “beautiful.”

Democracy again took a back seat in the final US Senate report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, released Tuesday. Among the supposedly damning findings was that while Trump was preparing to take office after his 2016 election victory, Russia exploited his transition team’s inexperience and opposition to President Barack Obama’s policies to “pursue unofficial channels.”

It was kind of the same theory as when the FBI entrapped former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for the non-crime of talking to the Russians during the transition. Flynn urged Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak not to overreact to Obama’s sanctions against Russia and suggested that Trump’s policies would be different. He also dared to call Putin “smart.”

Would it be more in the interest of Americans for Russia to overreact? Would it be better that the world’s top two nuclear powers not be talking with each other, through officials and unofficial channels? As long as we’re worried about mushroom clouds, who gains from the US and Russia being on bad terms?

Flynn was simply doing his job as incoming national security adviser. And he was laying the groundwork for the foreign policy agenda on which Trump had campaigned. This wasn’t Obama whispering to Dmitry Medvedev to tell Putin, “This is my last election… After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Trump told voters he wanted to be at peace with Russia and work together on common interests, and voters said, yes. The Colin Powells of the world want to make sure they never have that kind of real choice again.

Tony Cox is a a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

August 20, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

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