Lavrov slams US claims of ‘Russian threat’
Press TV – July 9, 2015
Russia has blasted remarks by US Air Force Secretary Deborah James who described Moscow as “the biggest threat to US security,” voicing concern over Washington’s attempts to create an “artificial atmosphere of hostility.”
“As far as the statements from Washington are concerned, we have already got used to the fact that the [US] Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Air Force secretary regularly make statements that usually come from politicians,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday.
The top Russian diplomat further expressed serious concern over US attempts to create “an artificial atmosphere of hostility,” adding that such claims have in fact nothing to do with Moscow’s conduct in reality.
On Wednesday, James was cited in press reports as saying that Russia is “the biggest threat to US Security,” calling on Washington’s NATO allies to spend two percent of their gross domestic products (GDP) on military buildup in a bid to counter Russian actions.
The comments came amid continued high tensions between Russia and the US-led Western military alliance of NATO over the crisis in Ukraine. The West accuses Moscow of having a role in the chaos in Ukraine’s east, but Moscow denies the allegation.
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov criticized as “confrontational” the anti-Russian provisions of the so-called National Military Strategy of the United States released on July 1.
The Russian official vowed that the Kremlin would adopt countermeasures in the country’s respective military doctrine.
Last month, Russian Army General Yury Yakubov, a coordinator from the general inspectors directorate at the Russian Defense Ministry, said potential US military buildup near Russia’s borders may force the Russian military to respond in kind by reinforcing its frontier presence.
Yakubov made the comments after the New York Times reported on June 14 that the Pentagon was ready to store heavy military equipment in East Europe to face a possible “Russian aggression” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
Why is the United States Still Terrorizing Laos?
By Brett S. Morris | CounterPunch | July 9, 2015
Last month, the United States announced a new aid package of $15 million for the unexploded ordnance (UXO) sector in Laos. The aid package—the highest annual amount the US has ever given for UXO cleanup in Laos—brings to total about $85 million the US has given to Laos for UXO cleanup since 1993.
This is a shocking and embarrassingly low figure. The UXO is the result of one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in human history, when the United States dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos from 1964 to 1973. One third of the bombs did not explode on impact, and have killed or injured twenty thousand people since 1973.
The United States has a moral responsibility to do everything it can to clean up the UXO and help the victims. The $85 million the US has allocated to date are mere pennies compared to the $18 million (inflation-adjusted) the US spent bombing Laos per day from 1964 to 1973. The best estimated amount to clean up all the UXO is $16 billion, according to UXO expert Mike Boddington (as quoted in the excellent book by journalists Karen J. Coates and Jerry Redfern, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos).
The United States could easily provide the $16 billion needed to clean up the UXO. For comparison, the US spent $610 billion on the military in 2014 (more than the next seven highest spenders combined), according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. $16 billion is just 2.6 percent of $610 billion.
Why does the US government refuse to provide the necessary funds? Clearly, the US could provide the money—if it wanted. And there’s the key. The United States simply doesn’t care. Some poor, suffering people in a developing country that most Americans wouldn’t be able to find on a map just don’t matter. The US has more important things to spend its money on, like a trillion dollars on nuclear arms over the next three decades, a trillion and a half dollars on a new type of plane, almost 5,000 military bases and sites worldwide (587 of them outside the US and its territories), and arming human rights abusers like Israel.
This is an unacceptable state of affairs. Laos is a beautiful country with warm, friendly people that never did anything to the United States and never threatened the United States. Their only crimes were seeking independence through the communist, nationalist group the Pathet Lao (who had fought the French in the First Indochina War and the US-backed royalist government in Laos in the 1960s and 70s) and to have had the misfortune to share a border with Vietnam, another country the United States sought to decimate.
When I visited Laos last year, the effects of the so-called “Secret War” (secret to Americans, but definitely not to Laotians) were ever present. In Phonsavan, the capital of one of the most bombed regions in Laos, Xieng Khouang, bomb casings abound. The tourist information center has a substantial amount of them displayed outside its doors.
Bomb casings are even used for practical or decorative purposes. Laotian homes in rural areas use them as stilts as part of the structure for their houses. Restaurants display them outside to attract tourists. For example, a restaurant called “Craters” has these outside its entrance in Phonsavan:
Anyone who goes to Phonsavan should be sure to pay a visit to the UXO Survivor Information Centre. Inside one will find details of how one Laotian NGO, the Quality of Life Association, is helping the victims of UXO and their families. One way they do this is to gather family members of UXO victims into social groups that knit and create products such as scarves and laptop bags. The exercise serves the dual purpose of providing a social outlet for victims’ families as well as raising money to help themselves. This is an excellent idea, but the fact that the United States won’t provide the necessary funds to help the victims and their families is a moral abomination.
Probably the most heartbreaking component of the UXO Survivor Information Centre is the list of recent UXO victims. They include farmers, scrap metal collectors, and children.
Children are especially vulnerable because they find cluster bombs and try to play with them, mistakenly believing the small, round bombs are toys. Cluster bombs are notably deadly weapons because dozens of them are dispersed over a wide area from a single canister. Of the 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos, up to 80 million did not detonate, and forty percent of UXO victims are children. (To this day, the United States refuses to give up its use and exportation of cluster bombs: it refuses to join the Convention on Cluster Munitions; has used cluster bombs in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen; and exports them to dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.)
Outside Phonsavan, one will find the mysterious Plain of Jars, a landscape of ancient stone structures probably used by a prehistoric community for burial purposes thousands of years ago.
There are numerous bomb craters throughout the plain:
Readers may be familiar with the term “Plain of Jars” from the late Fred Branfman’s book, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War, which documented the atrocities US bombers were inflicting on Laotian villagers. An excerpt, as written by a Laotian villager:
The people’s houses burned and were completely destroyed. The people were hit by bombs and killed, and more than thirty were wounded. Because these airplanes dropped bombs on the village without stopping, the people had no place to go to escape. They had never before experienced anything like this. It caused parents to be taken in death from their children and children to be taken in death from their parents in great numbers, causing the people’s tears to flow. Because the airplanes had dropped bombs on the ricefields and rice paddies the people saw that they could not withstand these hardships. So they fled into the forest and the jungle or different streams and caves.
The United States terrorized Laos badly enough in the war, and they are still terrorizing Laos by not providing sufficient funds to clean up the UXO. This grotesque lack of concern for one’s own actions must end!
Brett S. Morris is a freelance writer, journalist, photographer, and author. He has traveled the world, documenting current events and the legacy of US foreign policy. His latest book is 21 Lies They Tell You About American Foreign Policy. He can be reached on his website, Twitter, and Facebook
Lessons from Libya’s Destruction
Tortilla Con Sal | July 9, 2015
Later this month the outcome is expected of the completely unjust and incompetent show trials held in Libya over the last year or so of around 200 former officials of the Libyan Jamahiriya. If that outcome is reported at all in North American and European media, its real meaning will be completely hidden in self-serving apologetics for NATO’s destruction of Libya in 2011.
The same psy-warfare framework that justified NATO’s campaign of terrorist aggression will falsely present the show trials’ outcome as rough justice dealt out to individuals who deserve no better.
That outcome should put on high alert anyone defending the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas against very similar psychological warfare and terrorist subversion supported by NATO governments of the US and its allies. Not for nothing did Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega speak out in defense of Muammar al Gaddhafi and Libya against NATO’s terrorist war. They had already learned long ago the very same lessons to have emerged more recently from the utterly depressing human, moral and political catastrophe of Libya’s destruction.
In 2013, a study by a distinguished Harvard University academic acknowledged that the failure in Libya of the US government’s ostensible avowed policy in Libya and in North and West Africa was based on serial falsehoods. That fact-based, acerbic policy criticism from a source generally supportive of US government foreign policy should give much pause for thought. Along with support for Libya from outstanding revolutionary leaders like Ortega, Chavez and Nelson Mandela it amounts to a categorical indictment of received Western opinion about Libya which, across virtually the entire Western political spectrum, sided either openly or indirectly with NATO’s 2011 war.
No one genuinely concerned to defend progress towards an equitable, peaceful multi-polar world based on mutual respect between sovereign, autonomous nations and peoples should underestimate or forget the horror of what NATO did to Libya. Tens of thousands were killed and wounded in attacks by the bombers and helicopters of many NATO countries. Millions were displaced or forced into exile. Cities like Sirte and Bani Walid were devastated. Schools, universities, hospitals, factories producing food products and other essential civilian infrastructure were targeted and severely damaged or destroyed.
The destruction of Libya marked the categorical abandonment of whatever vestigial moral authority may still have remained to the European Union and its member governments.
It demonstrated in the most humiliating way the impotence and irrelevance of the African Union.
It put hard questions about the anti-imperialism of the Iranian and Syrian governments as well as highlighting the race supremacism of the governments of the Arab League and the already damaged integrity of the Palestinian authorities.
Almost all of them quickly recognized the overtly racist renegade Libyan CNT junta. For their part, the then governments of Russia and China weakly accepted NATO country assurances about the defensive nature of the air exclusion zone.
The only governments to emerge with any real credit from the destruction of Libya were the governments of the ALBA countries and a few African governments like Zimbabwe.
Countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador have all been victims of comprehensive disinformation campaigns of demonization and caricature, although perhaps not so extreme as the final campaign against Libya’s Jamahiriya and Muammar al Gaddhafi.
It is worth considering the basic component of that disinformation war against Libya. What is sometimes called 4th generation warfare is as old as warfare itself. Like Athens versus Sparta, or Rome versus Carthage the fundamental objective of NATO governments and their allies is to make their chosen target seem Other, creating a despised, outcast doppelganger anti-image of the West’s own phony self-image.
So Libya’s Jamahiriya was tagged as undemocratic by hypocritical Western governments, most of whom came to power with around just 20% to 25% of the vote of their electorates, thanks overwhelmingly to elite corporate funding. Libya’s democratic process was one that recognized its society’s contradictions and attempted continual self-renewal.
By contrast, the Western corporate oligarchies offer virtually meaningless periodic elections obfuscated by public relations and organized on a yes-or-yes basis to favor politicians groomed and bankrolled by their countries’ anti-democratic elites. Muammar al Ghaddafi was labeled a dictator even though his policy initiatives were not infrequently rejected within Libya’s system of popular congresses.
In 2009, during a policy conflict between Muammar al Gaddhafi and pro-Western so-called reformers, these could not get their way in Libya’s popular assemblies so they chose staging a violent putsch to achieve the regime change their Western government backers wanted. Venezuela’s experience has been almost identical, although, to date, the country has avoided the kind of coup d’état and subsequent NATO driven war that destroyed Libya Libya was portrayed as a systematic human rights violator.
But Libya’s response to the constant terrorist attacks and subversion it suffered from the very start of its Revolution in 1969 was no different to that of any Western government faced with a similar threat. The British government tortured and murdered alleged subversives all through the Irish war, colluding with sectarian paramilitary death squads. The same pattern of torture and extrajudicial murder also consistently marked the Spanish authorities’ campaign against Basque separatists. Guantanamo’s torture camp symbolizes the brutality and illegality of the US government’s response to terrorist threats.
Libya’s Jamahiriya probably conformed as closely to international human rights norms in relation to fighting terrorism as the three Western governments that led NATO’s war of destruction. Human rights protection in Libya was certainly superior to Western allies like Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the other quasi-feudal Gulf State tyrannies.
All the pretexts for the Western assault on Libya’s legitimate government were completely bogus. In any case, as Gerald Perreira points out, the fundamental objective achieved by the destruction of Libya was to shut down the decisive impetus towards African integration led by Muammar al Gaddhafi.
CNT leaders like Mustafa Abdul Jalil were Arab supremacists who fiercely resisted the Pan-African policies advocated by Muammar al Gaddhafi. Arab supremacism, phony neoliberal reformism and the treachery of repressive human rights abusers like Mahmoud Jibril made a lethal reactionary cocktail perfectly suited to ruthless NATO government manipulation. On cue, Western corporate and alternative media presented the corrupt political project of these viciously reactionary elements as a “revolution”, part of the absurdly hyped “Arab Spring”. As if NATO country governments, dedicated to the service of their countries’ corporate elites, have ever promoted genuine democracy or comprehensive human rights around the world.
From Ukraine and Greece, to Yemen and Syria, to Haiti and Honduras, what the Western powers and their allies want is access to natural resources, control of strategically important territories and decisive advantages for their trade and finance. Destroying Libya effectively removed a real threat to Western control and domination in Africa.
Currently, the NATO country elites’ political sales staff, for the moment President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel, are battering Greece into submission. But those leaders and their allies are using economic and psychological warfare to attack many other targets, not just Greece. They do so against Venezuela and other stubbornly independent countries around the world.
That is why the leaders of Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela very publicly welcomed the No vote in the Greek referendum. Unlike Libya, in their different regions Syria and Venezuela are part of regional alliances backed at long last by firm leaders in Russia and China, strong enough to face down any likely economic or military threat from the United States and its allies.
But it would be a mistake to forget Libya. Defending the people of Libya represents an important self-defense measure against Western predators in their global psychological warfare assault on the free, anti-imperialist world.
As a leading force in that free world, ALBA country governments should urgently consider challenging the governments of North America and Europe to protect the thousands of political prisoners in Libya who have been tortured and denied due process.
The ALBA country governments and their allies have infinitely more moral and political authority than Western leaders to speak out in defense of fundamental human rights. They should make outspoken use of that authority now to expose the sadism and hypocrisy of Western governments in Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
In Libya, they may perhaps yet help to save the lives of as many as 200 former officials of the Libyan Jamahiriya at risk from quasi-judicial murder by the West’s corrupt terrorist proxies in a country they have devastated with merciless cynicism.
NSA leaked Turkish officials false flag war talk: Report
Press TV – July 8, 2015
A 2014 Turkish Foreign Ministry session, which featured high-level Turkish officials discussing how Turkey could start a war with Syria, was reportedly recorded and leaked by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
German weekly magazine Focus attributed the leakage to the NSA, reporting on the security meeting among former Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) head Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, banned the video-sharing website YouTube after the leakage, which caught Fidan saying he would send four men from Syria to attack Turkey to “make up a cause of war.” Güler is heard saying in response, “What you’re going to do is a direct cause of war.”
Currently serving as Turkish prime minister, Davutoğlu said on July 3 that his country would not hesitate to launch a military intervention in Syria in case of what he referred to as a potential threat to Turkey’s “security.”
The Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily also reported last Sunday that the Turkish military had called on all troop commanders stationed along its border with Syria to be present at a meeting aimed at discussing a possible intervention in the crisis-hit country.
Erdogan has accused Syrian Kurds of trying to establish a state in Syria’s north, saying Ankara will leave no stone unturned to prevent such an establishment near its borders.
Ankara has long been engaged in a conflict with the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
Turkey has also been one of the main supporters of the militancy against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with reports showing that Ankara actively trains and arms militants operating in Syria.
Obama’s Failure to Make the Strategic Case for an Iran Nuclear Deal: The Leveretts on CNN and CNBC
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Going To Tehran | July 8, 2015
The Iran nuclear talks may be getting close to some sort of conclusion in Vienna, but American political and policy elites remain, to an appallingly large extent, clueless as to what is really at stake in the negotiations. (This was a significant theme yesterday in Hillary’s appearance on CNN, see here, and in Flynt’s appearance on CNBC, see here, to discuss the Vienna talks.) And, while the headline from a recent NBC News poll notes that Americans favor an Iran nuclear deal by a “2 to 1” margin, in fact, the polls shows that a plurality of Americans say they don’t know what to think about a possible Iran nuclear deal.
These observations underscore a point that we have been making for some time: President Obama has yet to make the case to his fellow Americans for why an Iran nuclear deal—and, beyond that, a potential realignment of U.S. relations with the Islamic Republic—is not just profoundly in American interests, but is strategically imperative for the United States.
–This failure will almost certainly make it more difficult for Obama (and his successor) to implement a deal.
–Furthermore, this failure will severely circumscribe the strategic benefits that the United States can accrue from a deal.
At the moment, many American elites convey particular distress over the Obama administration’s inability simply to dictate the terms of a prospective United Nations Security Council resolution that would endorse a final nuclear agreement and, to help implement such an agreement, remove international sanctions previously authorized by the Council against the Islamic Republic.
–In its approach to drafting a new Security Council resolution, the Obama administration has been demanding that previously authorized limits on exports of conventional weapons and missile-related technology remain in place. Iran, for its part, resists any text that would imply its “acceptance” of continuing international sanctions. Moreover, Russia and China are not going along.
–Likewise, Moscow and Beijing have rejected the Obama administration’s demand that UN sanctions be lifted only for six months at a time, subject to renewal—renewal which the United States, on its own, could veto, thus realizing U.S. ambitions to be able to “snap” sanctions back into place without being blocked by Russia and China.
That the Obama administration has been pushing these positions reveals much of what is so fundamentally wrong with the U.S. approach to diplomacy with Iran. As Flynt pointed out on CNBC, “This was an approach that not only were the Iranians going to object to it, but I don’t think the administration ever had a serious chance of getting consensus within the P5+1, among the permanent members of the Security Council…It was foolish, really, for the administration to take those positions on those issues.” Yet these are the positions the administration took, and now it must either find a way to walk back from them or (foolishly) embrace diplomatic impasse.
Of course, this reflects weakness on Obama’s part—but not the sort of weakness for which neoconservatives and others constantly lambaste him. As Hillary noted on CNN,
“We have tried [the interventionists’] version of strength—invading Iraq; invading Libya; occupying Afghanistan for more than a decade; arming, training, and funding various jihadis in Syria and all across the Middle East. And all it has brought us is damage to ourselves.
The real strength would be, just like Nixon and Kissinger went to China and accepted the People’s Republic of China, we need to go to Tehran, as we wrote in our book, and make our peace with Iran. It will help us. It will resurrect our position in the Middle East and around the world. And if we don’t, we will see ourselves continue to flail across the Middle East and around the world…
The Islamic Republic of Iran is here to stay, like the People’s Republic of China. What we need to recognize is that rising Iran, just like rising China, is a strong, independent power. And we need to work with them, not constantly try to bring them down and align with other countries like Saudi Arabia that get us into strategic disaster after strategic disaster.”
But that is precisely what Obama has been unwilling to do. Could the United States still “walk away” from the process? As Hillary said on CNN, “A decision by the United States to ‘walk away,’ to cut off talks with Iran would be just as strategically damaging, if not more so, to the United States than the decision to invade Iraq. It would have enormously devastating consequences for the United States in the Middle East, keep us on a trajectory to get into one never-ending, unwinnable war after another. And it would have repercussions for us globally, in economic terms and military terms.”
Stay tuned.
US Air Force drops (expensive) mock nuclear bomb in Nevada
RT | July 8, 2015
The United States Air Force is taking steps to update the Cold War-era B61 nuclear bomb to Mod 12 ‒ or twelfth iteration ‒ completing tests with a mock up version of the weapon in Nevada’s Great Basin Desert.
The B61 has been a top weapon in the US nuclear arsenal since its development at the height of the Cold War in 1963. The intermediate-yield thermonuclear weapon can be delivered by a supersonic aircraft. It is designed to cause a two-stage radiation implosion, but it is a “gravity bomb” – which just means that it’s unguided.
The once USSR-facing technology might seem to be an anachronism in this day and age, but President Barack Obama has taken initiative in keeping this weapon alive and well, despite a hefty price tag. The total cost of the program is estimated to be as high as $11 billion, according to the New York Times – and that’s just to update it to its current version.
This seems to be at odds with Obama’s promise of not fielding any new nuclear warheads, which he made during a speech in Prague in 2009. In that same speech, he explained his vision of a United States with less reliance on nuclear arms, and ultimately a world where nuclear weapons are a thing of the past.
The truth looks rather different. A testimony, ominously titled ‘China, India and Pakistan – growing nuclear capabilities with no end in sight,’ was given to Congress by Dr. Ashley J. Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The nuclear weapon programs in these three countries are worthy of attention because they are active, expanding, and diversifying,” the testimony warns.
India and Pakistan are not members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970.
Read more: US blocks nuclear disarmament document over Israel, Moscow fumes
‘Agile Spirit’: NATO military exercises kick off in Georgia
RT | July 8, 2015
A multinational NATO military training “Agile Spirit 2015” has officially started in Georgia, uniting military personnel from six countries. It comes amid Russia’s mounting concerns over NATO’s military buildup in the region.
The US, Bulgarian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Latvian military will accompany Georgia’s Battalion 42 in the two-week-long military exercises that officially started on Wednesday, RIA-Novosti reported.
The annual joint training, that first started in 2011, this year involves 220 US Marine Corps servicemen. It is to take place at the Vaziani military base, located some 25 kilometers away from Tbilisi. Vaziani is a former Soviet and Russian air force base until Russian forces withdrew in 2001 under a European conventional arms reduction agreement.
The exercise follows the line of the Wales summit in September 2014, where the alliance agreed upon founding a NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center within the framework of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, introduced back then by allied leaders.
In an opening speech on Wednesday, major-General Kapanadze said that “Georgian soldiers took part in many international operations and are continuing to contribute to global peace alongside our partners,” Agenda website reported.
“Our cooperation is more than just a partnership – it is brotherhood of arms,” Kapanadze added.
“These military exercises in Georgia – a country that launched an unprovoked attack on South Ossetia in 2008,which led to the death of 12 Russian peacekeepers and a brief military conflict between Georgia and Russia – are the latest in a series of alarming moves by NATO that underscore the organization’s threatening stance towards Russia,” journalist Robert Bridge told RT.
The Russian Foreign ministry has long been criticizing the military buildup in the neighboring states, which goes “under the false pretext of alleged ‘aggressive behavior’ by our country” and is accompanied by “unfriendly and malicious” rhetoric.
“We are not threatening anyone and we seek to resolve all conflict situations through political means, with respect towards the international law and other nations’ interests,” President Putin said in June, underlying though that Russia needs strong, modern and adequately armed military force to face the challenges “that we cannot ignore”.
Georgia, an active contributor to alliance’s operations, has long planned to join NATO. In 1994, the former Soviet republic joined the Partnership for Peace program. After the “Rose Revolution” in 2003, the bilateral cooperation only “deepened”, according to a NATO statement.
“I don’t think there is any realistic chance of Georgia joining NATO in the coming years. In fact, it is more likely that Georgia will increasingly thaw relations with Moscow, for economic reasons, as the penny drops in Tbilisi that the West was good at false promises, but not delivering actual help,” journalist Bryan MacDonald told RT.
In August 2008, a brief military conflict between Russia and Georgia broke out, after Tbilisi launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia prompting Moscow’s peace enforcement operation. It ended up in Russian official recognition of the two former Georgian autonomous republics as independent states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Why does the Obama administration neglect American national interests?
Sputnik – 07.07.2015
Paradoxically, US President Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has finally found himself lured into an open-ended war in the Middle East, tense confrontation with China, and a new Cold War with Russia.
Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation Sherle R. Schwenninger pointed out that although Barack Obama vowed to end the “wars of occupation” in Iraq and Afghanistan and to reset Russo-American relations, he has finally found himself fighting on multiple fronts.
“Now, after being “pulled back in” by liberal interventionists and neoconservative hawks both inside and outside his administration, he finds himself pursuing a new open-ended war against the so-called Islamic State, prosecuting an expanded counterterrorism campaign from Central Asia to North Africa, overseeing a new Cold War with Russia, and pivoting toward what could become one with China in East Asia,” the scholar elaborated.
The expert noted that “many of the people,” which contributed to the shift in US foreign policy, “are the same ones who cheered us into the war in Iraq.”
Mr. Schwenninger underscored that while the US President’s critics are accusing Barack Obama of hesitancy, “the failure of Obama’s foreign policy” is that “it has embraced many of the very positions that Obama’s interventionist opponents have advocated.”
“In so doing, it has failed to protect America’s most important national interests,” the expert stressed.
According to Mr. Schwenninger, it was not in the US’ interest to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or to change Ukraine’s nonaligned status, or to alienate Russia and China. It was also not in America’s interest to help to escalate the civil war in Ukraine “by unconditionally supporting Kiev’s various military offensives this past year, when such offensives would only further bankrupt Ukraine and cause even more unnecessary bloodshed.”
Blaming the White House for its Middle Eastern policy, US experts point to Washington’s role in the Yemeni crisis.
“Yemenis have good reason to hold the US responsible for the war that has devastated their country. The US is particularly responsible for the campaign’s attacks on civilian areas because it is actively aiding the Saudis in their operations. US officials are understandably embarrassed to talk about this,” US conservative publicist Daniel Larison noted.
However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. While pursuing its ambitious global goals, Washington has undermined its own strategic foreign policy goals.
While Washington was beefing up its military presence in Eastern Europe, citing Russia’s imaginary “threat,” Moscow and Beijing have jumped at the opportunity to reshape the Eurasian economy, bringing under their umbrella a vast number of Central/South Asian and former Soviet states.
Furthermore, when the United States was speculating about its “Asian pivot” and teasing the Chinese Dragon, Beijing kicked off its ambitious New Silk Road project, aimed at cementing Eurasia’s heartland and gradually expelling Washington from the region.
As a result the United States risks losing its dominant positions in both Eurasia and the Asia Pacific.
And that is not all. Preoccupied with its foreign policy, the Obama administration neglected the country’s most important domestic tasks: namely, to reduce inequality and rebuild the American middle class.
“We should be working with our international counterparts to strengthen the world economy and create jobs. In this way, we might be able to break our downward drift toward endless war in the Middle East and new Cold Wars in Europe and Asia,” Mr. Schwenninger noted.
In order to realign Washington’s foreign policy to support its domestic agenda, Obama would have better considered curtailing military commitments and promoting programs to expand investments and jobs inside the country.
Or as American conservative political commentator Patrick Joseph “Pat” Buchanan put it: “Our agenda in that decade was — stay out of wars that are not our business, economic patriotism, secure borders, and America first.”
Three Scenarios for the Donbass
By Andrey Ivanov* | Fort Russ | July 5, 2015
The specialists from the Russian International Affairs Council headed by the former foreign minister Igor Ivanov described three scenarios for the Donbass: confrontation, freeze, or continuing the peace process. How likely are they?
Life itself forces one to make forecasts. It’s clear that the unrecognized republics with a population of five million won’t be able to exist for long in the current suspended state. On the one hand there is a ceasefire, but the shelling of cities continues. Kiev continues to view Donbass as its territory, but doesn’t transfer money and fences it off with barbed wire. Poroshenko claims to adhere to the Minsk Agreements, but is against the constitutional reforms they require…
The first scenario is confrontation. The Council experts are of the opinion that full-scale combat operations can’t be ruled out. Kiev might decide to launch a new offensive with US support. Then the Donbass would suffer the fate of Serb Krajina which Croatia reconquered by force in 1995. It’s also possible that we’ll see the repetition of the events of August 2008 in South Ossetia. Russia was then forced to intervene militarily and then recognize the territory’s independence.
The second scenario is a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Analysts believe this is the least likely scenario. It would require the removal of anti-Russian sanctions and West’s recognition of Crimea’s unification with Russia.
The most likely is the third scenario–freezing the conflict. Ukraine doesn’t have the necessary resources to score a military victory, while Russia is not ready to acknowledge their independence. World powers will continue to exchange military warnings but there will be no heavy loss of life…
–Donbass’ return to Ukraine is hardly possible. Especially considering how Kiev views its inhabitants. Kiev wants to “integrate” Donbass using artillery–says the Moscow State University Center for Ukrainian and Belorussian Studies Director Bogdan Bezpalko–Donbass integration with Ukraine would only be possible in the event of its military defeat which might occur should the conflict escalate.
In actuality, the fate of Donbass depends mainly on major world players: US, EU, Russia. They can influence Ukraine’s elite and its relationship with Donbass.
The situation may develop in several ways. The majority of them are unfavorable. Both for Donbass, Ukraine, Russia, and even the West. Modeling the situation depends on the nature of relations between Russia and the West. Therefore the scenarios may change from quarter to quarter. Or even more frequently.
Svobodnaya Pressa (SP): Are DPR and LPR viable?
–Yes, but only as long as Russia helps them. They are of limited viability as independent states. Incidentally, they never aspired to an independent geopolitical role. DPR and LPR are states which depend on Russia’s support. Just as South Ossetia and Abkhazia did earlier, whose official recognition by Moscow was of considerable help.
SP: Can the republics share the fate of Serb Krajina?
–It all depends on Russia’s position. If Russia helps LPR/DPR, including through military assistance, that scenario is out of the question. One has to keep in mind Ukraine would have to expend considerable resources to break Donbass resistance. Moreover, Krajina did not enjoy the support by either Serbia or by Republika Srpska, which was the Serb state in Bosnia. Abandoned to its fate, the Krajina became easy prey for the Croat army which was well trained by the US. But if DPR and LPR have Russia’s support, retain control over the border with Russia, it won’t share Krajina’s fate. Moreover, Donbass republics have their own record of success against the UAF. The Ilovaysk and Debaltsevo “cauldrons” showed how effective LPR and DPR armies are.
SP: How justified are the hopes that the Ukrainian state will soon collapse?
–Ukraine is descending into a state of socio-economic collapse. This is what makes it different from Croatia, a country with a small population which received powerful financial support from the West. Ukraine has a population of 40 million which is rapidly aging. Industry is degrading. Ukraine is a country on the brink of an abyss. It simply won’t have the resources for military operations. I’d like to remind that the Croatian operation Storm against Krajina took only a few days, but after a lengthy preparation. Therefore even though the operation was costly, its effects were perceptible. Ukraine, on the other hand, is conducting its ATO, it’s spending a lot of money, it’s in the midst of the sixth wave of mobilization. Donbass, which has nothing left to lose, may soon turn out the winner. If it establishes cooperation with Russia, restores control over the port of Mariupol, it will be able to restore its economy and social well-being. DPR and LPR would turn out to be more successful as states than Ukraine.
I want to note that Ukraine’s problems are not due to a bad starting position in economy, culture, human resources. Ukraine in 1991 had colossal resources which were squandered in the most incompetent fashion, which were stolen after independence. This shows how Ukraine’s leaders view its sovereignty. Ordinary people haven’t gained anything out of independence other than impoverishment, depopulation, and aggressive nationalism.
–The current peace plan, based on Minsk Agreements, is unviable–says Geopolitical Problems Academy Vice President Konstantin Sokolov–The agreements pertain only to the separate parts of LPR and DPR and only regulate the relationship along the frontline. What is more, Kiev is actively torpedoing the agreements. Therefore the conflict can only be resolved through an armed clash. What form will it take? Kiev planned an offensive for May, but it was thwarted. Ukraine today is the center of attention of US, EU, and Russian foreign policy. It’s clear that the offensive would encounter political resistance by BRICS and Shanghai Organization countries.
Right now Ukraine is in a state of unstable balance. There are large groups of foreign mercenaries in the country. But will Kiev decide on a major attack? I think that will become clear by the end of summer.
In my view, the West is coming around to the idea of blaming all the crimes on Poroshenko’s team. It could be replaced by other people.
The state of balance will continue for some time. But ultimately the situation will resolve itself through a social explosion in Ukraine. The country is almost bankrupt and the inconveniences of the war are growing more acute. A group of senior military officers recently defected to the republics. It means that the Kiev regime is losing control even over its means of violence.
SP: But Ukraine is continuing to exist, in spite of the dire forecasts.
–Up to 2004, up to the first “orange revolution”, Ukraine compared well to other post-Soviet republics. Now its living conditions are falling to a level which for some might be below the threshold of survival. If earlier one could have patience, today it’s impossible.
The default could be used by the West to change the country’s leadership.
SP: How will the situation unfold?
–The most likely outcome is Ukraine’s break-up into parts. There are forces in the West interested in seeing it happen. In general, the West’s strategy revolves around breaking up countries. We’ve seen it in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria. But I wouldn’t draw analogies between Donbass and Krajina or South Ossetia. Donbass is a big region, therefore it’s of greater significance. One also mustn’t forget Russia cannot stand aside in this conflict. I believe that ultimately the West’s strategy will suffer a defeat. National forces in Russia and Ukraine always rise up when the situation is on the brink. Ukraine is the trigger that will change the global strategic situation.
–In order to make forecasts, one first need to examine the present–says Novorossia State-Building Committee Chairman Vladimir Rogov–Poroshenko introduced legislation proposing not decentralization, but legalizing the unfolding lawlessness. The president would get the authority to fire elected officials, which he currently doesn’t have.
On the other hand, we see growing conflicts within the ruling Ukrainian elite. The US are preparing Lvov mayor Sadovyy and former SBU head Nalivaichenko as Poroshenko’s replacements. If Sadovyy comes to power, Ukraine will get a “soft”, Baltic, version of nationalism. If Nalivaichenko, Ukraine will become a “euro-ISIS.”
The new head of the SBU is Vasiliy Gritsak who’s devoted to Poroshenko but utterly incompetent. It’s enough to recall his contribution to the Ilovaysk disaster! Poroshenko is trying to place loyal individuals in key positions. And those who have nowhere to run.
Nevertheless, the “main rat” of Ukraine’s politics Yuriy Lutsenko submitted his resignation from the Poroshenko Block chairman in the Rada. We remember that Lutsenko changed his party affiliation more than once. He always left this or that part on the event of its loss of influence.
SP: Can the Donbass wait long enough to see Ukraine collapse?
–We must wait until the Kiev elite falls apart. There is no doubt that Odessa, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Lvov, will see the founding of their own people’s republics. Donbass simply needs to get stronger, restore its economy, and push the front line far enough so that the UAF can’t shell its big cities. Soon the people in Kiev and Lvov will be able to free their lands from the current authorities.
SP: What influence do world powers have on the situation in the Donbass?
–We are entering the phase of direct interaction between the major international players: Russia and US. But the most important thing is that DPR and LPR model is more attractive than Ukraine. People’s republics have far lower utility rates. People in Ukraine will gradually realize that the Donbass has a more just state than they do.
*Translated from Russian by J.Hawk
Constitutional maneuvering in Ukraine to deny recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk republics and sabotage Minsk-2
New Cold War | July 6, 2015
The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have announced they will hold local elections on October 18 and November 1, respectively. The two dates surround announced local elections to take place in Ukraine on October 25.
Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic Aleksandr Zakharchenko made his announcement on July 2. According to UNIAN News, heads of cities and districts will be elected. No decision on the election of members of local councils has been made yet.
Lugansk People’s Republic Prime Minister Igor Plotnitsky announced on July 6 that similar local elections will take place there on November 1.
Interfax reports Zakharchenko as explaining, “In today’s situation, which emerged through Kyiv’s fault, the Donetsk People’s Republic has to independently start to implement the Minsk agreements in order to rescue them.
“We will begin acting immediately, without waiting for Kyiv to come to its senses and return to real, not fake, talks, because any further procrastination and delays will benefit only the Ukrainian party of war.”
Plotnitsky’s statement said, “Recently, we concluded that Ukraine doesn’t intend to abide by its commitments. Kiev either breaks or pretends to execute the provisions of the Minsk Agreement. The Verkhovna Rada issues bills not consistent with our draft documents on matters affecting the Donbass. To date, they’ve refused to define the special status of the LPR, nor have they even begun to write the laws embodying that special status. Besides that, with each passing day, Kiev intensifies its blockade of the LPR.”
“From such a perspective, we decided to begin a unilateral implementation of the Minsk Agreement regarding local elections in the LPR.”
The two prime ministers are referring to the failure of the Kyiv government to respect clauses of the Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement of Feb. 12, 2015 requiring dialogue with the rebel regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as well as a decentralization of powers to them.
The announcements by the two people’s republics administrations are in response to an elaborate scheme by the government of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to dodge the key provisions of Minsk-2 requiring talks and constitutional change.
Back in May, at the eighth Kiev Security Forum, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s prime minister made it clear they will not engage in talks. “We will hold a dialogue with Donbass, but with the other Donbass, a Ukrainian one,” Poroshenko said. He went on, “We must ensure fair elections.”
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said his government would never talk to the current representatives in Donbas. “We will communicate only with the legitimate representatives of this region, we want to hold legitimate elections there.”
Yatsenyuk provocatively said his government would talk to leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics “only when they are behind bars”. He added, “By the way, we have got enough empty prison cells.”
Instead of talks, the Ukraine government convened a Constitutional Commission in April. That body is set to deliver its draft report to the Verkhovna Rada this week. It will propose some cosmetic decentralization changes, but crucially, the changes will deny any present or future recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. The constitutional changes will be sold to international public opinion as proof of compliance with Minsk-2.
Poroshenko earlier announced local elections for October 25 as part of the scheme. Donetsk and Lugansk republics will, of course, refuse to allow a government in Kyiv waging war on them to conduct elections on their territories. This will be sold as proof of their intransigence and impossibility of dialogue with them.
TASS reports Zakharchenko saying in his July 2 announcement that Kiev’s unilateral actions on adopting amendments to Ukraine’s constitution serve as evidence that “the Kiev regime has de facto exited the Minsk peace process”.
“Under the circumstances,” he said, “the Donetsk People’s Republic has to start implementing the Minsk agreements itself in order to save them.”
The following day, the DPR head responded to an orchestrated statement by U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden criticizing the Oct. 18 election decision. Zakharchenko said, reports TASS, “The U.S. Vice President has most likely not studied the issue thoroughly. I doubt that he has even read the Minsk package of measures. And Poroshenko is distorting facts as usual.”
He continued, “If Biden is really concerned about the future of the Minsk accords, than he should make Poroshenko and Groysman [Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada] implement them.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a statement on July 3 saying his government is deeply disappointed with what it calls the failure of the Ukrainian government to respect provisions of Minsk-2. He said, “Russia is deeply concerned about Kiev’s inability and unwillingness to fulfill its commitments to coordinate with Donetsk and Lugansk modalities of conducting local elections and its inability to attract representatives of the self-proclaimed republics to drawing up a new constitution.”
Lavrov said that Poroshenko’s and Yatsenyuk’s government has written a new, draft constitution without participation of Donetsk and Lugansk representatives. This “does not fulfill any of the requirements of the Minsk agreements with regard to this document.”
The draft “does not reflect the tasks of ensuring a special status for these territories on a permanent basis and does not reflect the tasks of decentralization of power,” as envisaged in the peace deal reached in the Belorussian capital in February.
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The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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