“There is no more harmful way of generating energy than with wind turbines,” Rudolf Hammer tells AUF 1 journalist Sabine Petzl.
As Germany and Austria rush to wean themselves off fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to produce electricity and replace them with weather-dependent wind and solar energy, the countries aim to substantially expand their fleet of wind turbines by 2040. Many would have to be installed near homes and in sensitive wildlife areas. e.g.the 1,000 -year-old Reinhard Forest.
In the AUF 1 interview, Hammer comments on the effectiveness and usefulness of wind power plants and offers a completely different view of what the entrenched politicians claim.
Damaging the local environment
Hammer explains that one problem with wind turbines is that hey extract a massive amount of kinetic energy from the wind, which in turn leads to a windspeed reduction downstream from the wind park and air layers getting mixed. The higher layers of wind end up getting mixed with the layers near the surface. “Colder layers are getting mixed with warmer layers and that is having dramatic effects on the temperature, humidity, and on evaporation,” which leads to “drier conditions and even drought.”
When asked about how realistic it would be to quickly go 100% renewable, Hammer characterized the idea as “economic nonsense, saying it would require an additional 19,000 turbines and large swaths of land that just aren’t available in Austria.
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The US-led West is not interested in peace or in any kind of compromise to put an end to the current conflict in Ukraine. According to University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer, “Western leaders have additional goals, which include regime change in Moscow, putting Putin on trial as a war criminal, and possibly breaking up Russia into smaller states.” Journalist Anchal Vohra, writing for Foreign Policy, tells us that “Western analysts and Russian dissidents” have been publicly calling for the “decolonization of Russia itself”
Take, for example, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (an independent US. government agency): already in 2022, Vohra reminds us, it published a report called “Decolonizing Russia”, which declared that such decolonizing should be “a moral and strategic objective.”
This extreme stance is not a “reaction” to the escalation of the ongoing conflict (but rather one of its external causes); in fact, such views are nothing new at all. Take, for instance, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, the influential diplomat and foreign policy expert who served as a national advisor to former US President Jimmy Carter: he openly called for the further fragmentation of Russia (after the collapse of the Soviet state). In his 1997 Foreign Affairspiece, he called for a “loosely confederated Russia – composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic and a Far Eastern Republic.” Brzezinski advocated all this while also speaking about “America’s global primacy” – extending all the way over to the Eurasiatic landmass too, of course. According to him, the US should “perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism on the map of Eurasia”, so as to prevent even “the remote possibility of any one state” seeking to “challenge America’s primacy”. To put it simply, for the American establishment, Russian simply cannot be.
This attitude, distorted as it is, makes some sense, from a certain American perspective, focused on global supremacy and the pursuit and maintenance of unipolarity. This has been shaped by the geopolitical thinking of Sir Halford John Mackinder and his concept of the struggle for the Heartland, and also by US Navy captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (and his 1890 The Atlanticarticle “The United States Looking Outward”). One must also add American exceptionalism to geopolitical thinking – that in turn can be traced back to the Puritan’s biblical metaphor about the “city upon a hill”.
We are talking about a nation that, according to retired Navy captain Jerry Hendrix (formerly an adviser to Pentagon senior officials), engages in land wars, while also seeking naval hegemony. Furthermore, it is actively pursuing a dual containment policy against both Russia and China, simultaneously. When it comes to Great Powers, for the United States, there can only be one.
Under this framework, Washington has consistently refused to acknowledge Moscow’s global role as the Great Power it is. American rhetoric up to early 2022 routinely described Russia as a “paper tiger” and a “declining power”. NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated on December 16, 2021 that “Russia is a power in decline, meaning the economic importance of Russia, the GDP is not keeping track with many other countries in the world”, albeit, at the same time, adding that “even an economy in decline and a power in economic decline can be a threat and a challenge.” This contradictory view could be seen mirrored in US President Joe Biden’s July 2022 dismissing remarks about Moscow “sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else.” This denial attitude goes so far as to deny Russia’s role as a regional power even.
Many post-Soviet states have sought to maintain their ties with Moscow, which is exemplified by their ongoing adhesion over the last years to economic and security alliances such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and, more recently, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). This reflects geoeconomic and geopolitical convergent interests which are a function of both geography and history: Russian civilization has a common history and has for centuries kept economic, political, and religious relations with a number of Slavic and Turkic peoples as well as many other ethnic groups.
In denial of all such basic facts and data, from an American perspective, Moscow is not to have even a “zone of influence” of its own. Moreover, for many influential US policy makers, political scientists, and thinkers (as we’ve seen) Russia should in fact cease to exist altogether as a polity.
Earlier attempts to “cancel” Russia into irrelevance or into virtual “non-existence” should thus be seen as examples of this peculiar mindset. The refusal to realistically and properly assess Moscow’s role and status in the global arena is not merely Western wishful thinking: the American Establishment seems to be unable to think of its own country outside of the context of a unipolar world. The very existence of a Russian state is thus perceived as a threat.
Rather than prolonging a proxy attrition war (which the Europeans themselves are tired of) “to the last Ukrainian”, responsible leaders should engage in good diplomacy and lots of table talks, which are needed more than ever, so as to minimize the risk of a global thermonuclear war (a scenario no one can afford). However, any such dialogue is hampered, among other things, by American exceptionalism.
Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.
Former security state operatives occupy the highest positions at Big Tech internet platforms, and are responsible for censoring political content and limiting public debate, Glenn Greenwald reported on Tuesday.
Americans have been aware of security state efforts to control media narratives since the 1970s, when the Senate’s Church Committee exposed the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, Greenwald told listeners of his podcast, “System Update.”
Under that program, CIA agents covertly infiltrated and influenced the nation’s largest news organizations.
Project Mockingbird’s exposure greatly embarrassed the media and the government, as the CIA is forbidden from targeting the American public, Greenwald said.
Over the past decade, a series of whistleblowers revealed the U.S. security state has again amped up its covert targeting of American citizens, particularly since the start of the post-9/11 War on Terror.
News that intelligence agencies spied on Americans or infiltrated the news media was considered scandalous just over a decade ago.
But today, things have changed, Greenwald said. In fact, it has become common for top news outlets to openly hire former U.S. security state agents to report and comment on the news.
The U.S. government, in part, dictates what content social media platforms ought to allow on their sites, Greenwald said. But, he added:
“There’s another element, another layer to it, which is they’ve infiltrated these Big Tech companies — these ex-CIA agents have — exactly like they’ve infiltrated corporate news outlets. They’re all over these censorship regimes.”
Greenwald said top positions at the tech firms are now held by people coming directly from intelligence agencies.
For example James Baker, who the Twitter Files revealed was involved in most censorship decisions prior to Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, worked as general counsel for the FBI before he became deputy counsel for Twitter.
“So the FBI sent its top lawyer to go work in the part of Twitter that censored political content,” Greenwald said. “Do you understand? That’s the FBI controlling our domestic political discourse and the limits of it.”
MintPress News profiled a number of former CIA agents who now manage and develop misinformation policies for Facebook in a July 2022 article that Greenwald shared.
According to the article, the problem isn’t that these people are incompetent. “The problem is that having so many former CIA employees running the world’s most important information and news platforms is only one small step removed from the agency itself deciding what you see and what you do not see online — and all with essentially no public oversight.”
Greenwald said this allows the intelligence agencies to maintain significant influence over news and information flows, while maintaining “some veneer of plausible deniability.”
The U.S. government doesn’t need to tell the platforms what to do because the people making the decisions rose in the ranks of the National Security State first — “meaning their outlooks match those of Washington’s,” Greenwald said, quoting MintPress News.
Greenwald said this is evidence of a multi-pronged effort, where on the one side, former security state operatives propagandize the American people on corporate media and on the other side, they control what can be said on the largest Big Tech platforms.
As a result, he said, the entire range of dissenting views is “simply banned.”
The ‘censorship-industrial complex’
The Twitter account @NameRedacted247 tracks the movement of security state operatives into social media corporations where they work on misinformation and disinformation.
The account provided a thread, which Greenwald’s team confirmed, reporting that as of December 2022, Google employed at least 165 people in high-ranking positions from the intelligence community.
Across the company there were 27 former CIA agents, 52 former FBI agents, 30 people who came from the National Security Agency (NSA), 50 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and six from the Director of National Intelligence.
Facebook had at least 115 former security state operatives in high-ranking positions — 17 from the CIA, 37 from the FBI, 23 from the NSA and 38 from DHS.
Google’s “trust and safety team,” which manages what content is allowed on the platform, is managed by three former CIA agents who control misinformation and hate speech.
One of them, Nick Rossman, referred to “anti-vaxxers” on Twitter as “Nazis” and “Confederates,” Greenwald said, asking:
“Do you think these people are objective arbiters of misinformation? Or do you think they’re using their censorship power inside Big Tech for this in the same way that people inside corporate media are using it to advance the propaganda games of these agencies against their own citizens?”
Greenwald presented a series of online profiles of people who worked in intelligence for years or decades before recently moving into their new roles in Big Tech.
Since then, a massive “censorship-industrial complex” has grown up, Greenwald said, that includes the U.S. state, philanthropic foundations, “fact-checking” organizations, Big Tech, universities, think tanks, nonprofits and private contractors.
The ‘hallmark of totalitarianism’
But the most amazing part of this story, Greewnald said, is the lack of pushback by liberals, who used to be the primary critics of the security state. “Central to left liberal politics was the view that these agencies are nefarious,” he said. But that all changed with the Trump presidency:
“… in 2015, in 2016, the US Security state aligned itself against Donald Trump and devoted itself to sabotaging first the Trump campaign and then the Trump presidency.
“That’s where Russiagate came from. That’s where all of those scams came from, including the lie in 2020 if the Hunter Biden laptop was misinformation.”
And because there are now very few media outlets reporting critically on these agencies, he said, they are at “the peak of their power, more powerful than ever.”
Because of that, he said they are embedded in the biggest corporations that control information and propaganda in the U.S. — corporate media and Big Tech.
Greenwald concluded:
“This is why they’re so obsessed with destroying the few outposts of independent media, the few places they cannot control, because without those, they really do have a fully closed information system.
“And a fully closed information system is the hallmark of totalitarianism. If you can control how people think and prevent them from hearing dissent, you can control all of their actions because their actions are based in what their thoughts are.
“And if you can control their thoughts, you don’t even need to control their actions. And that is the system that is being created.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
Europe and the USA have already bought into the Global Biosecurity Agenda aka Pandemic Preparedness.
Europe issued its report on its Global Health Agenda in March, and it isn’t about health, it is about making health the driver for the WHO/globalist agenda. No surprise I guess. But to see it in print, with lots of pretty pictures, all spelled out: well, I was surprised. Please take a look at it.
But then I stumbled on this 2021 US document, signed by Eric Lander (then the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology) and Jake Sullivan, still the National Security Advisor.
They equate the US government’s broad pandemic preparedness initiative with the Apollo (mission to the moon) program. Was that an oops? Because didn’t the Apollo mission suck up a ton of money but wind up in a studio being filmed by Stanley Kubrick instead, to fake out us gullible Americans?
Did Lander and Sullivan (or whoever wrote this report) give us a broad hint that the “biological preparedness” they envision will suck up a lot of money but go nowhere?
I don’t know if we went to the moon or not. But watching the astronauts at their press conference on their return to earth, I was convinced they were ashamed of their performance, rather than triumphant. Watch it.
The funding required in this report for pandemic preparedness is just over $65 Billion. To be spent over 7-10 years. But as I showed you 2 days ago, the President’s budget to Congress asks for $20 Billion next fiscal year for biopreparedness. The price has gone up.
By far the largest line item is vaccines: $24.2 billion.
This is a quote:
The development of mRNA vaccine technology and other ‘programmable platforms’3 — thanks to more than a decade of foresighted investment by the public and private sector — have been game- changing.mRNA vaccines shortened the time needed to design and test vaccines to a record-setting 314 days — far less than previous vaccines, which had taken several years. They have also been surprisingly effective against COVID-19.
Another quote from the report to justify “spending billions to save trillions” which is verbatim from the EU report linked above and from certain US documents:
In addition to protecting American lives, the annual investment is strongly justified from an economic standpoint: If major pandemics similar to COVID-19, costing the U.S. roughly $16 trillion, occur at a frequency of every 20 years, the annualized economic impact on the U.S. would be $800 billion per year. Even for somewhat milder pandemics, the annualized cost would likely exceed $500 billion
Then there is this, a vaccine timetable that is identical to the CEPI plan (Gates-Farrar being the main originators of CEPI) to get vaccines to the populace so fast that there is no time to test them in humans. In 130 days they plan to have enough vaccine for every American. Great, huh? No, it is scary.
Now you know what they are planning. We are only in the second stage of a very big battle for our bodily integrity and many other rights and freedoms, not to mention our property. Forewarned is forearmed!
Dr. Michael Huang was a brave physician in California who treated vaccine-injured patients and wrote vaccine exemptions. Please watch this heartbreaking 3 minute video that Dr. Huang just sent to Steve Kirsch. This is the CA medical system at work. No mainstream doctors will speak out in support. — Mirror mirror: https://twitter.com/stkirsch/status/1677099016415477760 —
Even before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, Britain, Sweden, Canada, and the United States were investing in Ukraine and building up their capabilities, the UK defense minister has stated at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Does it mean NATO has long prepared for a proxy war with Russia?
The US neocons and their likeminded NATO allies have long been apparently seeking to knock Russia out of the political arena before trying to crack down on China in a bid to preserve the US dominance, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski believes.
“I think that the US officials and advisors (along with those in NATO) believe that they must be able to exploit Russian resources prior to any direct confrontation with China,” Kwiatkowski, who is also a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. “The neoconservative ideology that over half of Congress embraces, and that the US defense and security complex embraces, envisions and demands a unipolar globe, with the US and its debt-funded governmental system, at the top. For them, this is an existential issue, albeit most Americans don’t see it that way.”
It seems that Ukraine appeared a convenient candidate for the role of a “hammer” against Russia.
For How Long Has Ukraine Received Western Military Assistance?
Ukraine has been a leading recipient of Western military supplies since the early 1990s when the country gained independence, with the US spearheading the initiative. In the first ten years after independence, Ukraine received almost $2.6 billion in assistance from the US. Until 2014, Ukraine had been receiving an estimated $105 million per annum, including foreign military financing.
NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council embraced Ukraine as a “partner country” in 1991 and included it in the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Washington’s NATO ally, the UK, played an important role in the effort, holding joint military exercises with the Ukrainians, as well as providing training and funding to the nation’s armed forces.
Thus, the first joint Ukrainian-British military exercises “Cossack steppe” were held in the second half of the 1990s as part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. The NATO-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997 with the aim of developing the relationship between the nation and the bloc and directing cooperative activities.
As per UK government documents, the Ministry of Defense spent approximately £3.9 million supporting Ukraine through the Defense Assistance Fund and the Conflict Pool between 2009 and 2014.
Many of the activities funded through these mechanisms supported “command, control and communications capabilities (C3).” In particular, the UK held joint exercises with the Ukrainian military, provided military education to the nation’s specialists, and “contributions to NATO coordinated activities.” Both UK civilian and military personnel had been deployed to Ukraine during that period of time while Ukrainian personnel were sent to the UK.
Following the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014, the West stepped up military assistance to the new Ukrainian authorities.
Between 2014 and 2021, the United States provided over $2.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, which included the provision of trainers, selected weaponry systems (such as counter-mortar radars), and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The boost in military assistance was justified by NATO member states by the alleged “Russian invasion” in Donbass. However, it is well documented that Donbass declared independence in response to the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev fomented with the assistance of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and subsequent Russophobic policies of the new government. The Donbass breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Republics started largely forming militias after the interim Kiev government kicked off what it called “anti-terrorist” operations (ATO) against the region.
“Kiev had been on the offensive with the Donbass with Western support, for a number of years, even before 2014, and this is well documented,” explained Kwiatkowski. “Other Eastern and Southern European countries had been ‘encouraged’ by Western powers, as we saw with Yugoslavia, to break up into smaller national and ethno-cultural countries, and the peaceful divide between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was also allowed and supported. This is primarily because the newly smaller countries added potential members to NATO and the EU – all controlled and controllable by the US-EU elites.”
Moscow came up with the idea of the Minsk Agreements to stop hostilities in Eastern Ukraine. Russia, France and Germany played the role of guarantors of the accords.
Nonetheless, as ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande admitted last year, the Minsk agreements were signed by Western powers to buy time in order to bolster the Ukrainian military capacity.
“In the case of the political separation desired by the Donbass, and the Minsk agreements that were designed to allow that autonomy, the Russian-speaking East, if autonomous, would not have chosen to be a part of the NATO borg,” said the former Pentagon analyst. “Hence, that independence would not be allowed. Yes, NATO and the US supported such an offensive, and were preparing for it actively, as comments from many US and European officials and diplomats have confirmed. Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have publicly confirmed this, as have many others.”
Ukraine Extensive Training and Naval Provocations
US allies jumped on the bandwagon, forwarding their military assistance to Ukraine through the NATO-Ukraine Commission, and through initiatives such as the US/Canada/UK/Ukraine Joint Commission for Defense Reform and Security Cooperation which was established in July 2014.
In particular, Britain kicked off and then expanded Operation Orbital, envisaging extensive training of the Ukrainian military including combat actions in urban environments.
These activities included:
· medical, infantry and survival skills training;
· countering improvised explosive devices;
· training for defensive operations in an urban environment;
· operational planning;
· engineering;
· countering attacks from snipers, armored vehicles and mortars.
It meant that those Ukrainian soldiers that had undergone training under the program would pass on their knowledge and techniques to their military peers. Britons also expanded the scope of the training package to embrace all branches of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
In June 2020, Ukraine was offered Enhanced Opportunity Partner status with NATO which provided Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness. The status envisaged increasing interoperability between Ukraine and NATO member states. In September 2020, Ukraine hosted the Exercise Joint Endeavour with British, US and Canadian troops, held within the framework of Ukraine’s new enhanced NATO status.
In June 2021, the UK, Ukraine and industry signed a Memorandum of Implementation to a new Naval Capabilities Enhancement Program (NCEP). The program in particular included:
· Ukraine’s acquisition of two refurbished Royal Navy Sandown-class minehunters;
· the sale and integration of missiles on new and in-service Ukrainian Navy patrol and airborne platforms, including a training and engineering support package;
· The UK’s assistance in building new naval bases in the Black and Azov Seas;
· the development and joint production of eight fast missile warships;
· The participation in the Ukrainian project to deliver a modern frigate capability.
The same month, the UK Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Defender was deployed in the Black Sea “in a show of solidarity with Ukraine” and illegally entered Russian waters off Crimea and proceeded to sail through, prompting Russian warships and aircraft to surround the ship and fire warning shots in its vicinity to force it to leave. Even though the UK initially denied that it resorted to deliberate provocations, leaked British government documents proved otherwise.
Russia’s Draft Security Agreements
Russia has repeatedly raised the red flag over the NATO-Ukraine rapprochement and the transatlantic bloc’s enlargement. In accordance with its Declaration of State Sovereignty (July 16, 1990) Ukraine pledged to permanently remain a neutral country. In addition, in the early 1990s, Western powers asserted to Moscow that NATO wouldn’t expand towards Russia. At the same time, the US and its allies refused to consider Russia’s bid to join NATO while encouraging former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact member states to join.
Russia outlined its longstanding concerns with regard to Ukraine’s military buildup on its doorstep and NATO’s expansion in draft security agreements which were handed over to the US and NATO in December 2021.
The agreement particularly sought guarantees of NATO’s non-enlargement and non-admission of Ukraine to the bloc. The US and NATO rejected the major provisions of the agreement leading to Russia’s special military operation aimed at de-militarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine Conflict is US/NATO Proxy War Against Russia
Even though in March 2022, Ukraine and Russia struck a preliminary deal in Istanbul to stop hostilities, the US and the UK openly opposed the agreement, pledging more weapons to Kiev and declaring the goal of bleeding Russia white.
“The US is waging a proxy war, because that is what the US has been waging against various named enemies, for the past 70 years, and it is how we are organized to fight,” said Kwiatkowski. “It is an open secret that the Pentagon, even with close to a trillion dollar budget, does not and, at this point, cannot defend US territory. The US elites and the US defense establishment self-perpetuation is wholly disconnected from the people here who pay its bills. Poor and non-strategic US leadership placed the US in a lose-lose situation.”
According to the US military expert, three problems have emerged in the result of Washington’s misreading of the Russia and Ukraine conflict:
· First, that intent of weakening and isolating Russia did not play out “as it must have done in Jake Sullivan’s brainstorming sessions.”
· Second, the supplies have illustrated a variety of strategic weaknesses in US and NATO defense industrial production, where we see Joe Biden actually stating the obvious that the “US is out of ammunition.”
· Third, taking the Ukraine-Russia destruction project on at a time when the US is experiencing financial weakness, with very limited reserves of gold, guns and “war spirit” demonstrates that the “war planning” of the White House and Pentagon has been done in a vacuum, and under false assumptions.
As per Kwiatkowski, peace is possible but it may require a difficult re-evaluation of the US role in the world while neocons and war profiteers do not accept this re-evaluation.
“Their ideology is mated to unipolar US power,” the US military veteran said. “I suspect some leaders in the West are beginning to understand that there is a way to peace, and it starts with acceptance of the truth of all sides, and negotiations based on that truth. Imagine a sane US government, a concerned NATO, a true patriot of Ukraine in Kiev, and the Russians all speaking honestly. As Trump stated months ago, this war could be ended in one day.”
The hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon axis is pivotal to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is only partly true. Germany is actually Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier, after the United States. Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a new arms package worth 700 million euros, including additional tanks, munitions and Patriot air defence systems at the NATO summit in Vilnius, putting Berlin, as he said, at the very forefront of military support for Ukraine.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius stressed, “By doing this, we’re making a significant contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s staying power.” However, the pantomime playing out may have multiple motives.
Fundamentally, Germany’s motivation is traceable to the crushing defeat by the Red Army and has little to do with Ukraine as such. The Ukraine crisis has provided the context for accelerating Germany’s militarisation. Meanwhile, revanchist feelings are rearing their head and there is a “bipartisan consensus” between Germany’s leading centrist parties — CDU, SPD and Green Party — in this regard.
In an interview in the weekend, the CDU’s leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, NATO should consider to “cut off Kaliningrad from Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.” Berlin is still smarting under the surrender of the ancient Prussian city of Königsberg in April 1945.
Stalin ordered 1.5 million Soviet troops supported by several thousand tanks and aircraft to attack the crack Nazi Panzer divisions deeply entrenched in Königsberg. The capture of the heavily fortified stronghold ofKönigsberg by the Soviet army was celebrated in Moscow with an artillery salvo by 324 cannons firing 24 shells each.
Evidently, Kiesewetter’s remarks show that nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after 8 decades. Thus, Germany is the Biden Administration’s closest ally in the war against Russia. The German government has stated its understanding for the Biden administration’s controversial decision to supply Ukraine with cluster ammunition. The government spokesman commented in Berlin, “We are certain that our US friends did not make their decision lightly, to deliver this sort of munition.”
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier remarked, “In the current situation, one should not obstruct the USA.” Indeed, the top CDU figure Kiesewetter suggested in an interview with the Green Party-affiliated daily taz that not only should Ukraine be given “guarantees, and if necessary, even provided with nuclear assistance, as an intermediary step to NATO membership.”
Coinciding with the NATO summit in Vilnius (July 11-12), Rheinmetal, the great 135-year old German arms manufacturing company, has disclosed that it is opening an armoured vehicle plant in western Ukraine at an undisclosed location in the next twelve weeks. To begin with, German Fuchs armoured personnel carriers will be built and repaired while there are plans afoot to manufacture ammunition and possibly even air defence systems and tanks.
Rheinmetall’s CEO told CNN on Monday that like other Ukrainian arms factories, the new plant could be protected from Russian air attack. Germany has more than doubled the 2022 allocation of €2 billion for upgrading Ukraine’s armed forces. It now touches around €5.4 billion with further plans to increase to €10.5 billion.
Now, is this all about Russia? Germany cannot be unaware that Ukraine has simply no hope on earth to defeat Russia militarily. Germany is playing the long game. It is creating equity in western Ukraine where it is not Russia but Poland that is its contender. Ever since the Tsarist army advanced into Galicia in 1914, Russia has had a difficult history with Ukrainian nationalists. If the current war in Ukraine spreads to western Ukraine, that cannot be Russia’s choice but out of some necessity forced upon it.
The Soviet victory in Ukraine in October 1944, the Red Army’s occupation of eastern Europe, and Allied diplomacy resulted in a redrawing of Poland’s western frontiers with Germany and Ukraine’s with Poland. Simply put, with compensation of German territories in the west, Poland agreed to the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine; a mutual population exchange created for the first time in centuries a clear ethnic, as well as political, Polish-Ukrainian border.
It is entirely conceivable that the ongoing Ukraine war will radically change the territorial boundaries of Ukraine in the east and south. Possibly, it can re-open the post-WW II settlement with regard to western Ukraine as well. Russia has repeatedly warned that Poland aims to reverse the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine. Such a turn of events will most certainly bring to the fore the issue of the German territories that are part of Poland today.
Perhaps, it was in anticipation of turbulence ahead that last October, eight months after the Russian intervention began inin February, Warsaw demanded WWII reparations from Berlin — an issue which Germany says was settled in 1990 — to the tune of €1.3 trillion.
Under the Potsdam Conference (1945), the “former eastern territories of Germany” comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic with the majority ceded to Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia including the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union.
Make no mistake about the importance of the Eastern border for German culture and politics. Indeed, there is always something volatile about a “handicapped” Great Power when a whole new intensity appears in political, economic and historical circumstances, which prompts those in power to turn ideas into reality, and revanchist and imperialistic discourses that were quietly but steadily streaming below the surface of the carefully considered diplomatic efforts begin to probe pan-nationalist expansion.
In retrospect, Germany’s — in particular, then foreign minister and current president Steinmeier’s — diabolical role to align Germany with the neo-Nazi elements during the regime change in Kiev in 2014 and the subsequent German perfidy in the implementation of the Minsk Agreement (“Steinmeier formula”), as admitted recently in February by former Chancellor Angela Merkel should not be forgotten.
Suffice to say, even as Russia is winning the Ukraine war, the concern of the German foreign policy makers once again faces the need to redefine what was German. Thus, the war in Ukraine is only the means to an end. Recent reports suggest that Berlin may be moving, finally, toward meeting Ukraine’s pending demand for Taurus cruise missiles with a range exceeding 500 kms and unique “multi-effect war head” that can be a game changer in the combat dynamics on the battlefield and create the prerequisites for victory.
Equally, German soldiers already comprise about half of the NATO battlegroup already present in Lithuania. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said two weeks ago while on a visit to Vilnius that Germany is preparing the infrastructure to permanently base 4,000 soldiers (“a robust brigade”) to Lithuania so as to have the capability to maintain military flexibility at the Eastern flank. The decision has support from both Germany’s governing coalition and its main opposition.
The CDU foreign policy expert and member of the Bundestag, Kiesewetter called the idea of establishing a German base in the Baltics a “decision of reason and reliability.” Indeed, there have been past attempts, historically speaking, to create German rule in the Baltics based on revisionist claims towards the new states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where German colonists had settled as far back as in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The Ukrainian crisis marks the first time in history that the United States has exposed itself to serious risks in defining the limits of its military presence in Europe. Any genuine move by Washington to invite Kiev into NATO would imply a willingness to enter into a direct military confrontation with Russia. A less risky option, many believe, would be to promise the Vladimir Zelensky regime some special bilateral guarantees.
The NATO military bloc was created on the basis of the real division of Europe into zones of influence between the US and the USSR after the Second World War. As a result of the greatest armed confrontation in the history of mankind, the bulk of European states lost forever the ability to determine fundamental issues of their national policy. These included, first and foremost, defense and the ability to form alliances with other countries. Europe was divided between the real winners of the conflict – Moscow and Washington. Only Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and a small part of Switzerland were outside their zone of dominance.
Both of the great powers had an informal right to determine the internal order of the territories under its control. This was because the countries concerned had lost their sovereignty as such. Even France, which continued to demonstrate freethinking for several decades, had no doubt on whose side it would fight in the event of a new global conflict.
NATO was created in 1949 to formally deprive American allies of the ability to make their own foreign policy decisions and military doctrines. In this respect, the alliance was no different from the Warsaw Pact that had emerged in the USSR’s sphere of influence.
The relationship between the United States and other NATO countries has never been an alliance in the traditional sense. In the last century, classic alliances ceased to exist altogether – the gap in military capabilities between the nuclear superpowers and every other country in the world became too great.
A military alliance between relative equals is possible, as it was until the middle of the last century, but nuclear weapons have made this impossible. The former sovereign states of Europe became a territorial base from which the great powers could negotiate in peace and act in war. The creation of NATO and the subsequent accession of countries such as Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany to the alliance was a formalization of the boundaries of US dominance that the USSR had already agreed to in bilateral relations.
After the Soviet collapse, extending American rule to Moscow’s former allies in Eastern Europe and even the Baltic republics was also not a policy that posed serious risks for Washington. Incidentally, this is why NATO has an informal rule of not admitting countries with unresolved territorial disputes with third states – the US has never been willing to occupy land whose ownership is disputed. NATO’s post-Cold War expansion was based on deception, with the US promising Moscow that it would not expand NATO to Russia’s borders. But, initially, Russia did not have the physical strength to resist. This meant that the US could occupy “unclaimed” states without the threat of immediate military conflict. The US approach to NATO remained true to the philosophy of the 1945 victors: there are no sovereign states, only controlled territories.
Once the decision was taken in Washington, it was only a matter of strategy to ensure that local governments made the “right” decisions. This was all the more so as the accession of new countries to NATO in the 1990s and 2000s was ‘packaged’ with the enlargement of the European Union. This gave local elites every reason to aspire to join the bloc, from which they expected tangible material benefits. For some – the Baltic states and Poland – membership in the club also provided the possibility of solving internal problems through an aggressive anti-Russian policy by fostering fear of the big neighbor to the east. In the Baltic states, the status of an American outpost was also used by elites to combat any local opposition from radical nationalists.
For the countries that joined the bloc, NATO became a guarantee of internal stability. Since the most important decisions for them were taken outside their national political systems, there was no reason for internal competition and no danger of serious destabilization.
Of course, no country is safe from minor internal political disturbances, such as those caused by a change of government – especially if the one in power is not liked by the US. But radical changes, which generally involve foreign policy issues, have become impossible.
In this sense, Western Europe increasingly resembles Latin America, where the quality of life of the population doesn’t have dramatic consequences for the elites. There, geographical proximity to the US has long been a reason for almost total American control. The only exceptions have been Cuba and, in recent decades, Venezuela. In Western Europe, because of Russia’s proximity, this control is of a formal nature, which should in principle rule out any surprises.
Joining NATO is an exchange of state sovereignty for the indefinite retention of power by the ruling elite. This is the secret of every political regime’s desire to join the bloc: it gives them the possibility of “immortality” in spite of any domestic or economic failures. The regimes in Eastern Europe and the Baltics immediately realized that they would not last long in power without being under Washington’s control – the break with Moscow and the peripheral position of their countries promised them too many problems. And the reason Finland joined NATO is that the local elites no longer have confidence in their ability to hold power on their own.
For the United States itself, as we have seen, the expansion of its presence has never posed any serious threat or risk. At least until now. This is precisely what is being pointed out by those in America who are calling for a careful approach to be taken in response to the demands of the authorities in Kiev for membership. A call which is supported by some members of the bloc.
It is understood that a military clash between Moscow and NATO would mean global nuclear war. Nevertheless, back in the Soviet period, the US believed that any conflict with the USSR could be confined to Europe and would not involve direct attacks on each other’s territory. There is reason to believe that Moscow felt the same way during the Cold War.
NATO’s eastward expansion after the Cold War was a case of acquiring territories for which no one wanted to fight. However, in the situation of Ukraine, for the US is not a question of gaining territory, but rather of taking it from a rival power that wants to keep Washington out. This has never happened in the history of NATO, and one can understand those in Western Europe and the US who are calling for serious consideration of the likely consequences.
Inviting Kiev to join NATO could mean something entirely new for American foreign policy – a willingness to fight a peer adversary like Russia. Throughout their history, Americans have shied away from this, using other players as battering rams willing to sacrifice and suffer for American interests. This was the case in both the First and Second World Wars. The most likely scenario, therefore, is that the US will limit itself to promising to address the issue of Ukraine and NATO after the Kiev regime has resolved its problems with Russia in one way or another. In the meantime, it will only be promised some “special” terms on a bilateral basis.
Timofey Bordachev is the Valdai Club Programme Director.
The remains of thousands of Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II must be found and properly buried, before the two nations can be fully reconciled, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said.
Morawiecki took part in a ceremony in Warsaw on Tuesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. An estimated 100,000 ethnic Poles were murdered by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the militia of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
The slaughter took place between 1943 and 1945 amid the Nazi occupation. The nationalists allied themselves with the invaders, hoping to create a mono-ethnic Ukrainian state with their help. The mass killings, which Warsaw considers an act of genocide, were meant to shift the demographics in favor of the same goal. The killers also targeted other ethnic groups, such as Jews and Russians, as well as people they considered to be standing in their way.
Warsaw considers July 11, 1943 the peak of the atrocities, as the UPA on that day launched a coordinated attack on some 100 predominantly Polish villages and towns.
“This crime wasn’t carried out by a heartless apparatus of the state, but by people, who had turned in their hatred on those with whom they had shared an existence for years, for decades, for centuries,” Morawiecki said.
The Polish prime minister stressed that “there won’t be full Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation” until all the remains of the victims are buried in accordance with the Christian tradition.
Morawiecki went on to suggest that Ukraine, being a nation at war, and constantly losing its civilians to violence, must realize the feelings of the Polish people, while calling the Ukrainians “neighbors and allies”.
Groups supported by the Polish government are continuing their search for wartime dead in Ukraine, but cooperation with Kiev has not been entirely smooth. In 2017, Ukraine banned such activities, after a memorial to UPA fighters was dismantled in Poland. The pause was lifted in 2022, when permission to exhume the graves of victims in the Ukrainian village of Puzhnyky was granted to a Polish NGO.
The current Ukrainian government views the OUN, the UPA and their leaders as national heroes, as they fought for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. Prominent nationalists have streets named after them, while the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the OUN leader, is marked with annual torch marches.
Some Ukrainian officials, such as former ambassador to Germany Andrey Melnik, have denied the crimes of the nationalists.
Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples. … continue
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