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US is Trying to Drive Erdogan into a Corner – but Without Success

By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 23.07.2022

Joe Biden’s administration is currently losing on all its foreign policy fronts, but he is still hoping for success, if nowhere else, in his confrontation with the Turkish leader Recep Erdoğan, so that he can demonstrate to the world and the US public, that there is still some “gunpowder left in the barrel.” This consideration took on a special importance for Joe Biden and his team in the days leading up to the US President’s Middle East trip, which promised little chance of victory for the White House. Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia did, in fact, turn out to be a total failure – it did nothing to improve his image and yielded no positive results either in terms of oil deals or in terms of reining in Russia’s influence in the region. In view of this failure, Washington needed to find a scapegoat, and picked on Recep Erdoğan.

The White House has realized that getting rid of the Turkish president, as it had hoped, is not going to be an easy matter, and has therefore stepped up its machinations in a bid to entrap him. One of its tactics was to inflame tensions between Turkey and Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean. Relations between the two countries are not easy at the moment, given Turkey’s demands for Athens to demilitarize certain Aegean islands near the Turkish border and its challenges to Greece’s sovereignty over these islands. At the end of June Recep Erdoğan took the rather undiplomatic approach of publishing threatening tweets in Greek, demanding that Greece give up its territorial claims in the Aegean Sea, and referring to the 1919-1922 war between the two countries: “We warn Greece once more to avoid dreams, statements and actions that will lead to regret, as it did a century ago… .” He also warned Turkey will “not hesitate to enact rights recognized by international agreements on the demilitarization of the islands.” In a later tweet he accused Greece of “oppressing” the Turkish minorities in Western Thrace, Rhodes, and Kos, and supporting international terrorism, a reference to Athens’ relations with the Kurds. Greece, in turn, accuses Turkey of violating Greek airspace, and of carrying out illegal hydrocarbon exploration activities off the coast of Cyprus – a region that, Greece claims, falls within its exclusive economic area.

Over the last 200 years there have been numerous wars between Greece and Turkey – the Greek War of Independence in 1821-1829, and subsequent conflicts in 1897, 1912–1913, 1919–1922, and, in Cyprus, 1974. But Greece was only able to win with support from powerful allies, including Russia. Currently, however, as one of the key supporters of the West’s sanctions against Russia, Greece cannot rely on support from Moscow. Athens is unlikely to get much support from the US either, as recent years have seen a marked shift in Washington’s attitude to its vassal states and even to its obligations under international agreements. Washington’s recent decision to support Greece rather than Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean region is a striking example of such a change.

As for the relative strengths of the Greek and Turkish militaries, here Athens clearly lags behind Istanbul – the Greek army may be large, but due to lack of funding its weaponry is very out of date and its troops are poorly trained. Turkey, on the other hand, has the second most powerful military in NATO, after the US.

The standoff between Greece and Turkey, both members of NATO, has been going on for a long time, but it has intensified in recent years as relations between Washington and Turkey have deteriorated and Greece has replaced Turkey as the main US ally in the region. The new military alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean was recently formalized by an agreement between the two countries on long-term military support, under which Greece will host additional four US military bases.

Washington was perhaps hoping that the heightened tensions with Greece will encourage domestic opposition to Recep Erdoğan’s policies, but the effect has in fact been quite the opposite – the Turkish public have rallied round their president. On June 20 the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet published an article by Mehmet Ali Guler, calling on Turkey to “sever ties with NATO” and looking at how its departure from the alliance might affect the balance of powers in the region. And, according to the Greek newspaper Vima, citing an interview with the commentator Erdoğan Karakuş for the Turkish television channel Haber Global, there have even been belligerent calls within Turkey for the country to “attack the US” if the latter were to provide assistance to Greece.

Well aware of Turkey’s need to update its Air Force, Washington is making use of the situation to put pressure on Ankara. Thus, even though following the meeting between Joe Biden and Recep Erdoğan in Madrid earlier this year Congress approved the supply of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, Washington has recently made the supply conditional on Turkey demonstrating its willingness to toe the White House policy line. First, a group of US Congressmen signed a statement objecting to the sale of the jets to Turkey. And then Washington required Ankara to break off its relations with Russia as a precondition for the supply of the jets. It appears that the US is only ready to sell its military hardware to countries that share its values. According to a report from the Greek press agency AMNA, that was the stance taken by Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

The US House of Representatives has also obstructed the sale, by approving an amendment to the defense budget preventing the US from transferring the jets to Turkey unless the Turkish government guarantees that they will not be used in order to violate Greek airspace.

In response to these moves, Turkey reiterated its support for Recep Erdoğan’s policies, making no secret of the fact that anti-American sentiments are growing in the country. For example, according to the Turkish newspaper Aydınlık, Doğu Perinçek, President of the Vatan Partisi, or Patriotic Party, called on the Turkish government to cancel its order for the F-16s on national security grounds.

Given the above background, it is interesting to speculate about the content of the private meeting between Recep Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 19. Especially since Russian military aircraft have demonstrated their clear superiority of US jets both in Syria and in Ukraine. Moreover, Turkey and Russia have in recent months been stepping up their cooperation on defense industry projects, and, in an interview published in Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper last December, Ismail Demir, President of Turkey’s Defense Industries, stated that the two countries may work together on the development of Turkish TF-X jets. Unlike the US, Russia will not impose any conditions on Turkey that go against its interests, nor will it push the Turkish Air Force into a corner by refusing to service its aircraft when Turkey most needs them, as the US is quite capable of doing should its strategic interests so require.

July 23, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The war ‘diplomat’: How the West lost the ‘global battle of narratives’

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 20, 2022

In a blog entry, reflecting on the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on 7-8 July, the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, seems to have accepted the painful truth that the West is losing what he termed “the global battle of narratives”.

“The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning,” Borrell admitted. The solution: “As the EU, we have to engage further to refute Russian lies and war propaganda,” the EU’s top diplomat added.

Borrell’s piece is a testimony to the very erroneous logic that led to the so-called ‘battle of narratives’ to be lost in the first place.

Borrell starts by reassuring his readers that, despite the fact that many countries in the Global South refuse to join the West’s sanctions on Russia, “everybody agrees”, though in “abstract terms”, on the “need for multilateralism and defending principles such as territorial sovereignty”.

The immediate impression that such a statement gives is that the West is the global vanguard of multilateralism and territorial sovereignty. The opposite is true. The US-western military interventions in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and many other regions around the world have largely taken place without international consent and without any regard for the sovereignty of nations. In the case of the NATO war on Libya, a massively destructive military campaign was initiated based on the intentional misinterpretation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1973, which called for the use of “all means necessary to protect civilians”.

Borrell, like other western diplomats, conveniently omits the West’s repeated – and ongoing – interventions in the affairs of other nations, while painting the Russian-Ukraine war as the starkest example of “blatant violations of international law, contravening the basic tenets of the UN Charter and endangering the global economic recovery”.

Would Borrell employ such strong language to depict the numerous ongoing war crimes in parts of the world involving European countries or their allies? For example, France’s despicable war record in Mali? Or, even more obvious, the 75-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestine?

When addressing “food and energy security”, Borrell lamented that many in the G20 have bought into the “propaganda and lies coming from the Kremlin” regarding the actual cause of the food crisis. He concluded that it is not the EU but “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine that is dramatically aggravating the food crisis.”

Again, Borrell was selective with his logic. While naturally, a war between two countries that contribute a large share of the world’s basic food supplies will detrimentally impact food security, Borrell made no mention that the thousands of sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow have disrupted the supply chain of many critical products, raw material and basic food items.

When the West imposed those sanctions, it only thought of its national interests, erroneously centered around defeating Russia. Neither the people of Sri Lanka, Somalia, Lebanon, nor, frankly, Ukraine were relevant factors in the West’s decision.

Borrell, whose job as a diplomat suggests that he should be investing in diplomacy to resolve conflicts, has repeatedly called for widening the scope of the war on Russia, insisting that the war can only be “won on the battlefield”. Such statements were made with western interests in mind, despite the obvious devastating consequences that Borrell’s battlefield would have on the rest of the world.

Still, Borrell had the audacity to chastise G20 members for behaving in ways that seemed, to him, focused solely on their national interests. “The hard truth is that national interests often outweigh general commitments to bigger ideals,” he wrote. If defeating Russia is central to Borrell’s and the EU’s “bigger ideals”, why should the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, embrace the West’s self-serving priorities?

Borrell also needs to be reminded that the West’s “global battle of narratives” had been lost well before 24 February. Much of the Global South rightly sees the West’s interests at odds with its own. This seemingly cynical view is an outcome of decades – in fact, hundreds of years – of real experiences, starting with colonialism and ending, presently, with the routine military and political interventions.

Borrell speaks of ‘bigger ideals’, as if the West is the only morally mature entity that is capable of thinking about rights and wrongs in a selfless, detached manner. In addition to there being no evidence to support Borrell’s claim, such condescending language, itself an expression of cultural arrogance, makes it impossible for non-western countries to accept, or even engage, with the West regarding the morality of its politics.

Borrell, for example, accuses Russia of a “deliberate attempt to use food as a weapon against the most vulnerable countries in the world, especially in Africa”. Even if we accept this problematic premise as a morally driven position, how can Borrell justify the West’s sanctions that have effectively starved many people in “vulnerable countries” around the world?

Perhaps, Afghans are the most vulnerable people in the world today, thanks to 20 years of a devastating US/NATO war which has killed and maimed tens of thousands. Though the US and its western allies were forced out of Afghanistan last August, billions of dollars of Afghan money are illegally frozen in Western bank accounts, pushing the whole country to the brink of starvation. Why can Borrell not apply his ‘bigger ideals’ in this particular scenario, demanding immediate unfreezing of Afghan money?

In truth, Borrell, the EU, NATO and the West are not only losing the global battle of narratives, they never won it in the first place. Winning or losing that battle never mattered to Western leaders in the past, because the Global South was hardly considered when the West made its unilateral decisions regarding war, military invasions or economic sanctions.

The Global South matters now, simply because the West is no longer determining all political outcomes, as was often the case. Russia, China, India and others are now relevant, because they can collectively balance out the skewed global order that has been dominated by Borrell and his likes for far too long.

July 20, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO would have attacked Crimea if not stopped – Iran

Samizdat | July 19, 2022

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared on Tuesday that had Russian President Vladimir Putin not “taken the initiative” in Ukraine, the NATO alliance would have launched a war with Russia over Crimea, which Kiev claims as its own land.

Speaking alongside Putin in Tehran, Khamenei stated that “as regards Ukraine, if you did not take the initiative, the other side would have initiated the war.”

Describing the West as “completely opposed to a strong and independent Russia” and NATO as “a dangerous entity that sees no boundaries in its expansionist policy,” the Iranian leader added that “had they not been stopped in Ukraine, they would have launched the same war sometime later under the pretext of the Crimea issue.”

Considered Russian land since imperial times, Crimea was an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union until it was ceded to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev in 1954. The region fell under Ukrainian control after the breakup of the USSR, and voted to join Russia in 2014.

NATO considers Crimea to be “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory. While the alliance has not threatened Russia with open war, it has demanded that Moscow return the region to Ukrainian control and a number of decisions made by its leaders and the government in Kiev suggest a possible path to war over Crimea.

NATO first established a partnership with Ukraine in 1997, and in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration stated that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO” at an unspecified future date. The Declaration remains alliance policy, and were Ukraine to join NATO, its 30 other members would instantly become parties to a territorial dispute with Russia.

For its part, Ukraine has signaled that it both intends to join NATO and intends to act on this dispute. Under President Pyotr Poroshenko, the country wrote its goal of becoming a NATO member into its constitution in 2019, despite Moscow’s warnings that having the alliance’s forces and weapons on its border would constitute an unacceptable security threat. Two years later, President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree ordering his government to “prepare and implement measures to ensure the de-occupation and reintegration” of Crimea.

Ukraine’s ambitions of joining NATO appear to have fallen by the wayside, with Igor Zhovkva, an adviser to Zelensky, telling Financial Times last month that Kiev won’t pursue accession any further. Its ambitions of seizing Crimea, however, persist. Zelensky announced last month that he intends to “liberate” Crimea, and a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Vadim Skibitskiy, declared on Saturday that his forces may use American missiles to strike the peninsula.

July 19, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s ‘Great Game’ surfaces in Transcaucasia

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 19, 2022 

If the metaphor of the “Great Game” can be applied to the Ukrainian crisis, with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at its core, it has begun causing reverberations across the entire Eurasian space. The great game lurking in the shade in the Caucasus and Central Asian regions in recent years is visibly accelerating. 

The edge of the game is above everything else the targeting of Russia and China by the United States. This unfolding game cannot be underestimated, as its outcome may impact the shaping of a new model of the world order. 

Starting with the Caspian Summit in Ashgabat on June 29, the inter-connected templates of the great game in the Caucasus began surfacing. The fact that the summit was scheduled at all despite the raging conflict in Ukraine — and that Russian President Vladimir Putin took time out to attend it — testified to the high importance of the event. 

Basically, the presidents of the 5 littoral states — Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Russia — synchronised their watches, based on the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea — the Constitution of the Caspian Sea — that was signed at their last summit in 2018. While doing so, they considered the current international situation and geopolitical processes worldwide. 

Thus, one of the key points of the Final Communiqué of the Ashgabat Summit was the reiteration of a fundamental principle regarding the total exclusion of the armed forces of all extra-regional powers from  the Caspian Sea (which primarily meets the geopolitical interests of Russia and Iran.) The fact that the heads of the Caspian countries confirmed this in writing can be regarded as the main result of the Summit. Secondly, the leaders focused on the Caspian transport communications and agreed that the region could become a hub for the East-West and North-South corridors. 

The Caspian Summit was held just 5 weeks after Russian forces gained control of Mariupol port city (May 21), which established its total supremacy over the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait in eastern Crimea. Kerch Strait has a strategic role in Russian policies, being the narrow maritime gateway (5 kms in length and 4.5 km. wide at the narrowest point) which links the Black Sea via the Sea of Azov to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga. 

In effect, it is yet to sink in that in the geopolitics of the entire Eurasian landmass, the liberation of Mariupol by Russian forces  was a pivotal event in the great game, since the Kerch Strait ensures maritime transit from the Black Sea all the way to Moscow and St Petersburg, not to mention the strategic maritime route between the Caspian Sea (via the Volga-Don Canal) to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

United Deep Waterway System of European Russia linking Sea of Azov and  Caspian Sea to Baltic Sea and the Northern Sea Route

Now, to get the “big picture” here, factor in that the Volga River also links the Caspian Sea to the Baltic Sea as well as the Northern Sea Route (via the Volga–Baltic Waterway). Suffice to say, Russia has gained control of an integrated system of waterways, which connects the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Baltic and the Northern Sea Route (which is a 4800 km long shipping lane that connects the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean, passing along the Russian coasts of Siberia and the Far East.) 

No doubt, it is a stupendous consolidation of the so-called “heartland” — per Sir Halford Mackinder’s theory (1904) that whoever controls Eastern Europe controls the Heartland and controls the “world island.” 

Looking back, therefore, there is no question that the reunion of Crimea with the Russian Federation in 2014 was a major setback for the US and NATO. Putin caught Washington and its allies by total surprise. It complicated their objective to integrate Ukraine into the NATO. 

The US was caught unawares for the second time when in the early days of the current special military operation, when all western eyes were trained on the Kiev region, Russian troops captured the highly strategic southern city of Kherson as early as on March 2. The significance of it was understood only by those who could perceive the great game unfolding in Ukraine as something much more than a mere military conflict. (Most Americans still don’t get it.) 

The capture of Kherson in early March practically spelt doom for NATO’s design to extend its military presence in the Black Sea basin. Today, the game is practically over for the US and NATO, once Russia took control of the entire basin of the Sea of Azov. Russia now de facto controls the access of Dniepr to and from the Black Sea. And Dniepr happens to be the main river way for Ukraine’s transportation links to the world market. 

To the immediate east of the Kerch Strait is Russia’s Krasnodar region, which extends southwards to Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, Novorossiysk at the cross-roads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In sum, control of the Kerch Strait gives Russia a big say with regard to the transportation routes linking Western and Eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea basin, Kazakhstan and China. Put differently, this part of the Russian special military operation becomes an integral part of Moscow’s Eurasian project linking up with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.   

Washington has belatedly understood that Russia has outwitted the western alliance and gained the upper hand in the great game in the eastern Black Sea region. So, the Western strategy towards the Caucasus and Central Asia is being reworked. The NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg scheduled a meeting in Brussels today with the foreign minister of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov. 

Importantly, Bayramov also attended a meeting of the EU-Azerbaijan Cooperation Council today in Brussels. The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell later said at a joint news conference with Bayramov that “Azerbaijan is an important partner for the European Union and our cooperation is intensifying.” Meanwhile, yesterday, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Baku to sign a memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan on energy cooperation.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, spearheading efforts to mediate between arch rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia. As part of the EU’s diplomatic efforts, Michel hosted in April a meeting in Brussels between Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan where the two sides expressed willingness to secure a peace agreement. Last week, CIA Director William Burns paid an unpublicised visit to Yerevan in this connection. Evidently, Washington and Brussels are jointly strategising a game plan to replace Russia and Turkey, which have hitherto taken the lead roles in Transcaucasia. 

There should be no doubt that Moscow is watching closely the synchronised US-EU-NATO moves in the Caucasus targeting Azerbaijan with a view to undermine Russia’s consolidation in the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea regions, which poses a formidable hurdle to the advancement of the NATO strategies toward Central Asia and Xinjiang. This is a high-stakes game. 

It will be recalled that on February 22, just two days prior to the launch of the special military operation in Ukraine, Putin hosted the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in the Kremlin. They signed “a wide-ranging agreement,” the details of which were not divulged. The document is titled the Declaration on Allied Interaction. 

Clearly, oil-rich Azerbaijan, which is not only a littoral state of the Caspian Sea but a gateway to both Central Asia and Russia’s Volga region, is destined to play a key role in the great game in the period ahead.

July 19, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

UK testing drone swarms in Ukraine might lead to escalation

By Drago Bosnic | July 18, 2022

Air superiority is how the political West wages war. US and UK air power has been instrumental in all wars waged by the two leading Western imperialist thalassocracies since the Second World War to this day, although it existed doctrinally since at least the 1920s. This is so ingrained in their concept of warfare that it’s considered nearly impossible for them to lead a successful military campaign without it. This stands in stark contrast to most other comparable military doctrines, particularly the Russian one.

The Nazi onslaught destroying much of their air force before it got the chance to take off forever changed the way Russians see air power. Realizing (over)reliance on it can have a detrimental effect, coupled with the devastating consequences of American and British firebombing of German cities, which in some cases had an effect no less destructive than nuclear weapons (minus the radiation), Russia’s post-WWII military doctrine adopted a distinct and (up until recently) unique focus on advanced air defenses. Since then, Russia has been developing top-notch SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, some of which are so advanced they effectively nullify the entire Western air dominance concept. And although Western state-run mass media love to downplay this, the very fact US legislation directly and very specifically targets these systems with sanctions speaks volumes.

The proliferation of these systems is a strategic nightmare for aggressive Western planners, who can’t simply bypass them without incurring “unacceptable losses”. In order to counter Russian SAMs, Western Military-Industrial Complexes have been working on a plethora of new systems. Some prominent examples include advanced drones, particularly miniature ones, which are also planned to operate in swarms, saturating hostile air defenses and paving the way for the more traditional aviation to bomb its way through enemy ground forces.

RAF (Royal Air Force) experiments with drone swarms show “they can overwhelm enemy defenses” and the concept would be ready for action in a war, according to the UK military service’s Chief of Staff. Air Chief Marshall Sir Mike Wigston told the Global Air and Space Chiefs’ Conference 2022 in London last week that the RAF’s 216 Test and Evaluation Squadron and the Rapid Capabilities Office trialed five drone types in 13 experiments with various payloads and equipment over three years. According to Wigston, this yielded enough insights for the service to declare an “operationally useful and relevant capability,” using its current fleet of drones.

“We are exploring new models of capability delivery and accelerated production ‘when we need them’ rather than ‘in case we need them,’ from the twin jet 3D-printed Pizookie, to commercially available large drones fitted with novel payloads, to large quadcopters,” Wigston stated.

“The problem of overcoming air defenses is a key obstacle to employing [air] power. Planning for air operations increasingly entails ensuring that planes can fly safely in the first place, putting at risk untold amounts of money that militaries have pumped into beefing up their fleets to fourth- and fifth-generation technology. That conundrum is on display in Ukraine, where Ukrainian and Russian air-defense capabilities are effectively canceling out the other side’s air power arsenal,” according to Justin Bronk, a defense analyst with the London-based Royal United Services Institute.

“The fact air power has been mutually denied, relatively speaking, in Ukraine by both sides has far more serious implications for us than for either [Russians or Ukrainians]. That’s because both militaries are ultimately dependent on massive land manpower and artillery, whereas joint forces of the UK and other Western powers are critically dependent on having air access and air superiority,” Bonk said at the London conference on July 13.

“Swarming, which means throwing enough expendable drones at a defensive radar and interceptor position so as to overwhelm them, can be effective, but only to a point. The idea of small and cheap drones attacking air defenses by way of swarming may not be feasible because those drones lack the requisite range and speed. If you want things to go fast and far, they’re going to be jet-propelled and they’re going to cost a fair bit. Getting drone swarms close enough to sophisticated air defenses with a range of hundreds of kilometers requires risky and potentially pricy insertion tactics that negate the widely cited cost benefit of cheap, small drones,” he added.

Western strategists are closely following their latest proxy war against Russia, trying to devise new strategies to fight the Eurasian giant. The deployment of never-before-seen ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets around Russia’s borders is a testament to that. In addition, increasing reliance on unmanned systems isn’t just the result of Western militaries trying to adopt new technologies. With NATO having severe manpower problems, drones might be the only way for members to have functional militaries in the near future. The UK itself is faced with this issue, having a very limited ground force with barely a few combat-ready brigades, to say nothing of other micro-satellites carved up after the dismantling of post-socialist federal states.

What’s truly dangerous at this point is the possible deployment of these systems to Ukraine. Most NATO weapons deliveries happened weeks or months before they were officially announced. Thus, it’s highly likely the same is true in this case. How Russia might react is up for debate, but it most certainly won’t take it kindly, which opens up new possibilities for escalation, particularly in the context of the latest controversial statements coming from the UK.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 18, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia-Iran relations take a quantum leap

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 17, 2022

When US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan first spoke about a potential Iran-Russian drone deal, Moscow kept quiet and Tehran issued a pro forma rebuttal, which suggested that it is still a work in progress. Sullivan’s disclosure appeared at the end of a White Course briefing for President Biden’s West Asia tour to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and seemed to have an element of grandstanding aimed at fuelling the latent anti-Iran sentiments in the Gulf region that could in turn impart momentum to POTUS’ project to put together an Israeli-Arab military front in the region. 

In the event, the ploy didn’t work. After Biden’s visit ended, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told CNN, amongst other things, that talks are going on between Iran and the GCC states for improvement of relations and the focus should be on changing Iran’s behaviour. 

But Sullivan has repeated his charge and has since added that an official Russian delegation “recently received a showcase of Iranian attack-capable UAVs,” the last time being as recently as on July 5. CNN has cited White House officials as saying that Iran is expected to supply Russia with hundreds of drones for use in the war in Ukraine, “with Iran preparing to begin training Russian forces on how to operate them as early as late July.” 

Iran is known to have a varied drone ecosystem and is reportedly showcasing to Russia the Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 “killer” drones. According to published information, Shahed-129 has a wingspan of 50 feet with a cruising speed of about 160 km per hour, an endurance of 24 hours with a range of 1,700 km and a ceiling of 24,000 feet. The 129 can carry 8  Sadid-345 miniaturized precision-guided bombs capable of hitting moving targets. The bomb’s small size with a range of 6 km, reduces collateral damage and would allow the Shahed to achieve more kills or attack strikes per mission. 

The Shahed 191 carries two Sadid-1 missiles internally, has a cruising speed of 300 km/h, an endurance of 4.5 hours, a range of 450 km, and a payload of 50kg. The ceiling is 25,000 ft. Iran’s Fars News Agency says the Shahed 191 has been used in combat in Syria. 

Both are stealth drones, harder for air defences to detect. Russia is, reportedly, short of such armed drones, which have the capability to undertake long-range missions to find and destroy, for example, the US-supplied HIMARS mobile rocket launchers which are currently deployed in Ukraine as well as knocking out Ukrainian air defences. Besides, drones are relatively cheap and expendable, unlike crewed aircraft.

If the drone deal indeed goes through, as seems likely, it will mark a quantum leap in Russia-Iran relations. For, Iran will be doing something that only China is capable of doing but won’t out of fear of US reprisal. That makes Iran a very special partner country indeed. Ironically, Russia is yet to upgrade its relationship with Iran as “strategic.” 

On its part, Iran is literally sticking out its neck in an act of defiance of the West’s “rules-based order”, as Russia will be deploying its weapon systems on a European battlefield against the air defence systems supplied to Ukraine by the US and NATO countries. There cannot be many parallels of an emerging middle power rendering such critical help to a superpower in high-tech warfare in real conditions on the frontline. Of course, it enhances Iran’s standing regionally and internationally. 

In geopolitical terms, however, the most important salience lies in the certainty that the door is closing on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the US via European mediators. Tehran would have drawn the conclusion already that President Joe Biden is virtually co-opting his predecessor’s [Israel Lobby dictated] Iran policy and the US has reverted to its decades-old strategy of promoting an Israeli-Arab front against Tehran. Put differently, Tehran is moving on to a trajectory that is predicated on unremitting American hostility. 

This will mean that Tehran will double down on its efforts to improve relations with its Aran neighbours and explore all possible avenues in that direction, seizing the window of opportunity in the new Saudi thinking to reduce its dependence on the US and explore its strategic autonomy. It is possible to say that Tehran is a beneficiary if the Saudi-Russian and Saudi-Chinese relationships strengthen. Arguably, Saudi Arabia’s quest for BRICS membership brings the Kingdom tantalisingly close to Iran’s world view which places primacy on a democratised, multipolar world order where every country is free to choose its developmental path. 

To be sure, against this backdrop, President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran on Tuesday is invested with great importance. Iran is becoming one of the most consequential relationships for Russia. What began as a limited alliance in Syria is taking on a global character. 

July 17, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘NATO Weapons Double Civilian Casualties in DPR’

Samizdat – 17.07.2022

DONETSK – The number of civilian casualties in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) more than doubled after Ukraine was equipped with NATO’s long-range rocket systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems, a military expert told Sputnik on Sunday.

“Since the start of the special operation, the DPR’s territory has been shelled over 30 times with Tochka-U missiles, there were more than 400 cases of shelling with 155mm NATO munitions, and the enemy used HIMARS MLRS more than five times. We should note that once the [Ukrainian forces] started using NATO weapons, there has been a 2.5-fold increase in civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure,” a military expert to the Joint Center on Control and Coordination of the ceasefire regime (JCCC) Sergey Pereverzev said.

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces. Moscow and Kiev have made several attempts to negotiate a ceasefire, with a couple of meetings taking place in Turkey, and both exchanged several dozens of war prisoners. However, no agreement has been reached so far and the talks have been paused on Kiev’s initiative.

July 17, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Biden is Right… Inflation Crisis Is Not Inevitable, So End the Reckless U.S.-Led Warmongering

Strategic Culture Foundation | July 8, 2022

It’s rare for Strategic Culture Foundation to find itself in agreement with pronouncements made by American President Joe Biden. This week, Biden asserted once again that economic inflation and recession hitting the American economy are “not inevitable”. He is correct – at least in part. Although not for reasons that he would ever admit.

Of course, Biden is trying to obscure the grim reality of economic crisis that is afflicting not just the American economy but also the European Union. Inflation of living costs for ordinary citizens in the U.S. and EU are at record highs not seen in decades. There is a sense of calamity in social conditions from mass poverty amid grotesque super-rich inequality. A major input to the general inflation is the soaring price of energy.

The global impact is causing food prices to escalate putting millions of people at risk of hunger, especially in Africa and other low-income nations.

The impending crisis is on an unprecedented scale. Yet, it is not inevitable. But what is making it unavoidable is the warmongering policy of the U.S. and its European NATO allies towards Russia and China. This week saw outlandish American and British efforts to label China along with Russia as an existential threat to “global peace”. The bitter irony of these two rogue Western states casting aspersions on any other nation is too much for words.

The world is being thrown into chaos, insecurity and uncertainty by reckless stoking of war in Ukraine by the Western powers who are funneling tens of billions of dollars-worth of military weapons to that country. This week saw US-supplied HIMARS artillery hitting cities in the Donbass breakaway republics. Where are the Western efforts to mediate a diplomatic end to that war? There are none. Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated this week that Moscow would like to find a long-term peaceful settlement. The harsh and despicable truth is that the U.S. and its Western allies are incapable of seeking a political solution. They are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.

Blaming Russia for that conflict is a fallacy. The war has been deliberately stoked by the United States and its NATO accomplices as part of their geopolitical objective of subjugating Russia and China to their hegemonic agenda.

Western sanctions against Russia have created a global energy crisis that is boomeranging on the economies of the United States and Europe as well as the wider world. Biden is trying to scapegoat Moscow for imposing price hikes and taxes on his nation. The reality is it is his administration and its European lackeys who are imposing hardships on their own citizens from a madcap policy of warmongering.

There is a straightforward way out of the abysmal situation. The U.S. and its NATO allies should halt all weapons supplies to the Nazi regime in Kiev. They should also reverse the draconian economic sanctions on Russia. They should pursue diplomatic relations to end the conflict in Ukraine that they have instigated. They should normalize relations with Russia and China instead of relentlessly pushing Cold War-style confrontation.

But that is unlikely to happen under prevailing circumstances. Because the United States and its NATO minions have locked themselves into a deceptive paradigm of hostility. This, in turn, is because of futile ambitions for hegemonic dominance and intrinsic opposition to the emergence of a multipolar world.

Demonizing and antagonizing Russia and China is the real agenda for U.S.-led global imperialism. That criminal policy is covered up with cynical and absurd claims about defending “rules-based order” and democracy in Ukraine, Taiwan and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, the Empire of Lies is running out of credibility and false pretexts. What is becoming more and more evident is the awful reality. The U.S.-led collective West is one predicated on warmongering to preserve its waning global power and privileges.

Russia and China have repeatedly appealed for the existence of a multilateral global order that is consistent with the vision of the United Nations that was set up in the aftermath of World War Two. The United States and its imperial surrogates have continually attacked and undermined that vision with unilateral violations of international law and the sovereignty of countless nations. The U.S. avowed “rules-based order” is synonymous with war, war, war. Decades of relentless U.S.-driven wars – albeit under specious guises and pretenses – prove that.

Today we are witnessing the historic endgame playing out. The current war in Ukraine is but one malignant manifestation.

When asked how long Americans (and presumably Europeans) will have to endure economic pain, Biden retorted, “As long as it takes”. As long as it takes for what? To defeat Russia, China and whomever other nation the U.S.-led imperial axis deems necessary to be subjugated? That’s not going to happen. Those days are over.

Russia and China are too strong militarily and economically for the U.S.-led axis to vanquish. The world is being driven to war, potentially a catastrophic one, by American death throes in the face of reality. In the meantime, American, European and other peoples are being assailed with economic misery as a result of this criminal warmongering for the sake of empire. That is, the crumbling, bankrupt empire of U.S.-dominated Western capitalism and its imperial roguery.

The appalling state of world affairs is not inevitable. But due to the depraved and implacable pursuit of hostility towards Russia and China by the U.S. and its servile European elite, the world is – for now at least – held hostage by these psychopathic Western politicians and their corporate paymasters. That, however, is changing as people realize more and more the real nature and perpetrators of their captive condition.

The giant Western charade is no longer sustainable. From European colonialism to American imperialism, the charade has indeed had a long run. Now, though, it is in tatters from its own inherent corruption and lies. The ignominious downfall this week of Boris Johnson, Britain’s clown prime minister, is just a bit-part of the collapsing Western axis of evil. That collapse is inevitable.

July 9, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU economies are down on their knees

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 5, 2022

On July 1 at the White House, US President Joe Biden made a startling disclosure that “the idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term.” 

American gas exporters have positioned themselves accordingly to fill the gap as Europe turns away from Russian imports. FT reported recently that “US liquefied natural gas producers have announced a string of deals to boost exports as the industry capitalises on shortages that have left Europe with a mounting energy crisis.” 

The deals are so lucrative that Cheniere, America’s leading gas exporter, has taken an investment decision to push ahead with a project that will boost its capacity more than 20 per cent by late 2025, anticipating long-term supply deals and locked in purchases of US gas over the coming decades. The US producers of gas are reportedly running plants flat-out to increase supplies to the EU. 

The US has overtaken Russia for the first time as Europe’s top gas supplier. Although LNG from the US is sold to Europe at much higher costs than pipeline gas from Russia, EU countries have no choice. 

With Russian supply via Nord Stream at just 40% of capacity, and deliveries to be halted completely for annual maintenance on July 11-21, the outlook for near-term Russian gas supply to Europe appears bleak. 

Germany has warned of the risk that Nord Stream gas may not return at all following the maintenance. At any rate, Russian supply to Europe is at record lows and is “set to remain constrained through the third quarter,” per S&P Global.

Germany is heading for a major economic crisis. The head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has been quoted as saying in the weekend, “Entire industries are in danger of collapsing forever because of the gas bottlenecks — especially, chemicals, glass-making, and aluminium industries, which are major suppliers to key automotive sector.” Massive unemployment is likely. When Germany sneezes, of course, Europe catches cold — not only the Eurozone but even post-Brexit Britain. 

Welcome to the European Union’s “sanctions from hell.” The US literally hustled the Europeans into the Ukraine crisis. How many times did Secretary of State Antony Blinken travel to Europe in those critical months in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ensure that the door to any meaningful talks with the Kremlin remained shut! And American energy companies are today making windfall profits selling gas to Europeans. Won’t Europeans have the common intelligence to realise they have been had? 

Now, Biden has washed his hands of the gas crisis. He brusquely stated at a press conference in Madrid on June 30 that such premium on oil prices will continue “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine. This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are. Why do we have NATO?” 

Biden’s counterfactual narrative is that the sanctions against Russia are going to work eventually and a long war in Ukraine would be Russia’s undoing. The US narrative is that if you look under the hood of the Russian economy, it may not be flexible and resourceful enough to develop an entrepreneurial bunker spirit and adopt new business models to neutralise the sanctions. Biden is convinced that the Russian economy is in the grip of industrial mafias that are not very innovative and, therefore, there aren’t many options for Russia under the western sanctions. 

Biden said in Madrid: “Look at the impact that the war on Ukraine has had on Russia… They’ve (Russians) lost 15 years of the gains they made in terms of their economy…  They can’t even — you know, they’re having — they’re going to have trouble maintaining oil production because they don’t have the technology to do it. They need American technology. And they’re also in a simi- — similar situation in terms of their weapons systems and some of their military systems. So they’re paying a very, very heavy price for this.” 

But even if that’s the case, how does all that help the Europeans? On the other hand, President Putin’s strategic calculations with respect to the war remain very much on track. Russian forces made indisputable progress in establishing full control over Luhansk. On Monday, Putin gave the green signal to a proposal from the army commanders to launch “offensive operations.” Five months into the war, Ukrainians are staring at defeat and Russian army generals know it.

Russia didn’t wander into Ukraine unprepared, either. Evidently, it took precautionary steps both before and since the war to shield its economy. And this enables the Russian economy to settle down to a “new normal”. Washington’s options are quite limited under the circumstances. Fundamentally, western sanctions do not address the causes of the Russian behaviour, and therefore, they are doomed to fail to solve the problem at hand. 

To be sure, Putin has some nasty surprises in store for Biden closer to the November mid-term elections. Biden blithely assumes that he controls all the variables in the situation. Schadenfreude is never a rational basis for statecraft. 

Yesterday, the strategically important Kherson region bordering Crimea formed a new government with the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia’s Kaliningrad region heading the cabinet and Russian nationals among his deputies. Now that HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, contrary to Biden’s promise, is blasting Russian cities, expect some major Russian retaliation. 

The pathway of Russia’s offensive operations is being relaid to include Kharkov and Odessa as well, apart from Donbass. The influential Kremlin politician and chairman of Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday. 

“Some people are asking what our goal is and when all this will end. It will end when our peaceful cities and towns no longer come under shelling attacks. What they are doing is forcing our troops not to stop on the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (Donbass) because strikes (on Russian regions) are coming from the Kharkov regions and other regions of Ukraine.”

How long does Biden think the Europeans will want to be involved in a protracted proxy war with Russia? Bild reported on Sunday that 75% of German respondents see recent price hikes as a heavy burden, while 50% said they feel their economic conditions are worsening; every second German fears a lack of heating this coming winter due to reduced Russian gas supplies and rising inflation in the European Union. 

Yet, Biden says war will go on “for as long as it takes” and fuel shortage will continue “for as long as it takes.” The European economy is expected to start contracting over the course of the second half of 2022 and the recession may continue until the summer of 2023 at least. 

Analysts at JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, said last week that Russia could also cause “stratospheric” oil price increases if it used output cuts to retaliate. It said, “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.” Analysts wrote that prices could more than triple to $380 a barrel if Russia cut production by 5m barrels a day.

Putin’s decree last week is ominous — the Kremlin taking full control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East. State-owned Gazprom held a 50% plus one share stake in the project and its foreign partners included Shell (27.5%), Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi (10%). The decree stipulates that Gazprom will keep its majority stake, but foreign investors must ask the Russian government for a stake in the newly created firm within one month or be dispossessed. The government will decide whether to approve any request. 

This will unsettle energy markets further and put more strain on the LNG market, and can be seen as a move to put more pressure on the West by concurrently restricting gas supplies to Europe and creating more demand for LNG in Asia that will draw off supplies currently going to Europe. Sakhalin-2 supplies circa 4% of the global LNG market! 

The only part of the US agenda that is going well seems to be the unspoken part of it: the very same Anglo-American objectives that Lord Ismay once predicted as the rationale behind the NATO’s existence —”to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”  

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

NATO boss lets the cat out of the bag: US-led bloc has ‘been preparing since 2014’ for proxy conflict with Russia

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg listens to questions during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 15, 2022. ©  AP Photo/Olivier Matthys
By Robert Bridge | Samizdat | July 3, 2022

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may have said the quiet part out loud on Wednesday when he revealed to reporters that NATO’s push into Eastern Europe since 2014 was done specifically with Russia in mind.

“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he said. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”

The NATO chief went on to insist that Russia has been “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014.”

What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2013 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through “civil society” groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibile for that mess.

Even Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland (then-US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) admitted as much in April 2014 when she said Washington had invested $5 billion dollars into “spreading democracy” in Ukraine – apparently because such efforts worked so well before.

Russia’s greatest ‘crime’ at the time was to provide an alternative route to national development for Kiev. The US Diplomatic Forces flew into swift action on November 21, 2013 when the government of then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych made the sudden decision not to sign the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA), which the West had been insisting upon, opting for closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Here is where all the talk about “building democracy” was exposed as the lie it was.

“It would be a huge shame to see five years of work and preparation go to waste if the AA is not signed in the near future,” Nuland said at the December 13, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation conference. “So it is time to finish the job.”

That sounds more like an implicit threat than any sort of call to democratic principles. As Ukraine would soon discover, Washington considers as ‘democratic’ only those countries that obey its will.

While Nuland was taking multiple trips to Kiev in the midst of the Maidan melee, passing out snacks alongside John McCain and the US Ambassador, very strange things were happening that have never been adequately explained.

To this day no definite result has come from investigations into the infamous ‘Maidan snipers’ that killed dozens of both protesters and police officers. Conflicting reports and claims by various sides name them as working for the embattled government, the protesters, Russia – all in the name of stoking tensions further. According to some of the snipers themselves, they received direct orders from a US officer. Would that be something that NATO (or someone linked to NATO) could have sanctioned? It’s impossible to say with any certainty, but the killings went far towards enraging the masses, which ultimately drove Yanukovych out of the country.

Meanwhile, Reuters, then not yet so sure of Kiev’s innocence, asked (back in 2014) why no one was charged with killing policemen, especially when it is considered that the prosecutors and the minister in charge of the investigation all played a part in fueling the uprising. By way of evidence, the General Prosecutor of Ukraine Vitaly Yarema was videotaped striking a traffic cop in the face during the protests. To what degree was Yarema and numerous other Kiev officials were corrupted and compromised by Western money will never be known, but it’s a question still worthy of asking.

Another thing to question is why the Western media barely reported Kiev’s shelling of the Donbass, home to millions of Russian speakers and passport holders, over the course of the last eight years? At the same time, numerous reports – many of them from Ukrainian citizens caught up in the fighting – describe atrocities and war crimes being committed by Ukrainian forces, many of them outright neo-Nazis, such the Azov Battalion. These forces have been indiscriminately bombing schools, hospitals and residential areas, and, to emphasize, these eyewitness accounts are coming from the Ukrainian people themselves.

Back to NATO and Ukraine. The brutal reality, as summed up by Jens Stoltenberg’s remark, is that Ukraine is already a de facto proxy member of NATO, and has been since at least 2014.

As the scholar John Mearsheimer explained, “The alliance began training the Ukrainian military in 2014, averaging 10,000 trained troops annually over the next eight years.”

The arming of Ukraine happened regardless of who was in the White House. In December 2017, the Trump administration, together with other NATO states, began sending ‘defensive’ weapons to Ukraine, while Kiev took a major role in military exercises held on the Russian border.

The US and Ukraine have been co-hosting Exercise Sea Breeze, yearly naval drills in the Black Sea. The July 2021 iteration was the largest to date, including navies from 32 countries. In September the same year, the Ukrainian army led ‘Rapid Trident 2021’, which the US Army describes as “A US Army Europe and Africa-assisted annual exercise designed to enhance the interoperability among allied and partner nations.”

The key word here is “interoperability,” which would give ‘non-NATO partner’ Ukraine much of what was already being given to regular paying client states. Yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just keeps asking for more, and NATO is happy to oblige.

Some may argue that Ukraine was absolutely right to join forces with NATO, considering that Russia had ‘annexed’ the Crimean Republic and absorbed it into its ‘empire’. That’s the view being sowed across NATO and its partner states. In reality, the Crimean population held a democratic referendum that asked whether they wanted to rejoin Russia as a federal subject, or if they wanted to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution and peninsula’s status as a part of Ukraine.

The result should have silenced the critics, but instead it just infuriated them more: a 97% vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83% voter turnout. Consequently, President Putin signed a decree, after its formal ratification in the State Duma, recognizing Crimea as a sovereign state –without so much as a drop of blood being shed.

It would take a dyed-in-the-wool Russophobe to take in all of the above and not, at the very least, understand why Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine.

July 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Turkey, NATO joined at hips but think differently

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 3, 2022 

Turkey has had an uneasy history as a NATO member country. The push and pull of strategic autonomy constantly grated against a security guarantee the alliance offered and also a way of reinforcing its Western identity. The West wanted Turkey because of the Cold War. 

The enigma still continues: Was Turkey’s shift from neutrality to alignment a real necessity in 1951? Did Stalin indeed cast an evil eye on Turkish lands? Would any other Kemalist leader than Ismet Inounu, an unvarnished Euro-Atlanticist whose conception of modernisation implied cooperation with the West, have succumbed to the Anglo-American entreaties?  

The relations between Turkey and the Soviet Union remained relatively calm during the period of Turkey’s admission to NATO. In November 1951, Moscow actually directed a note to the Turkish Government protesting the latter’s decision to participate in NATO, which asserted that “it is quite obvious that the initiation to Turkey, a country which has no connections whatever with the Atlantic, to join the Atlantic Bloc, can signify nothing but an aspiration on the part of imperialist states to utilise Turkish territory for the establishment of military bases for aggressive purposes on the frontiers of the USSR.” 

The ideological aspirations in becoming an integral  part — at least within the framework of a military alliance — of the Western world played a decisive role in Turkey’s decision in 1951, whereas, in reality, there was no imminent or explicit Soviet threat to Turkey. On the other hand, Turkey’s geographical importance to both the West and to the Soviet Union gave her a particular value in an East-West context, which, to her credit, Ankara would successfully leverage to its advantage through subsequent decades. 

Curiously, this complex inter-locking in some ways bears an uncanny resemblance to the current accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin must have alluded to it obliquely when he told the media Thursday on the sidelines of the Caspian Summit in Ashgabat: 

“NATO is a relic of the Cold War and is only being used as an instrument of US foreign policy designed to keep its client states in rein. This is its only mission. We have given them that opportunity, I understand that. They are using these arguments energetically and quite effectively to rally their so-called allies. 

“On the other hand, regarding Sweden and Finland, we do not have such problems with Sweden and Finland as we have, regrettably, with Ukraine. We do not have territorial issues or disputes with them. There is nothing that could inspire our concern regarding Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO. If they want it, they can do it,… let them do it. You know, there are rude jokes about stepping into  unsavoury things. That is their business. Let them step into what they wish.” 

While returning from NATO’s Madrid Summit, Turkish President Recep Erdogan underscored that by lifting Ankara’s reservations about Sweden’s and Finland’s membership, he advanced Turkish interests and he added the caveat that their accession is far from a done deal yet, and future developments would depend on their fulfilment of commitments under the memorandum of understanding they signed in Madrid with Turkey. 

Indeed, both Sweden and Finland have bent over backward to give Turkey extensive anti-terrorism assurances that require changes in domestic legislation in return for Ankara withdrawing its veto against accession talks. Erdogan insists that what matters are not their pledges but the delivery of those pledges. 

It is a tough sell domestically for both Sweden and Finland, since one of the pledges is the extradition of 76 Kurds, deemed as terrorists by Turkey. This is easier said than done, as the courts in Stockholm and Helsinki may have their own definition of a “terrorist”. 

The Turkish National Assembly’s ratification is a must for the Nordic countries’ admission to be formalised at NATO level. There is some speculation that US President Joe Biden incentivised Erdogan to compromise, but, make no mistake, the latter’s warning about compliance by Sweden and Finland — as also the audible rumblings already on the left in Sweden — are reminders that the issue is still wide open. 

After all, North Macedonia had been a NATO partner country since 1995 but could become a NATO member only in March 2020. And Greece’s reservation was that the newly independent former Yugoslav republic wanted to be known as Macedonia whereas Athens saw the name as a threat to its own region of Macedonia — and ultimately, Greece won. In comparison, Turkey’s concerns are tangible and directly impinge on its national security. 

Turkey was never a “natural ally” of NATO. How far Turkey subscribes to NATO’s latest strategic concept of Russia being a “most significant and direct threat” is debatable. Arguably, Turkey would feel more at home with the alliance’s 2010 doctrine that called Russia a “strategic partner.” This would need some explanation.

Professor Tariq Oguzlu, a leading exponent of the changing dynamics of Turkish foreign policies in recent years from a structural realist point of view, wrote an analysis last week titled Madrid Agreement and the balance policy in Turkish foreign policy, which was interestingly featured by Anadolu, Turkey’s state news agency. Oguzlu explained the rationale behind Turkey’s decision not to veto the two Nordic countries’ accession: 

“Turkiye began to change its perspective on NATO a long time ago due to its strategic autonomy and multilateral foreign policy understanding… Considering the realist turnaround in Turkish foreign policy in the last three years, it is quite meaningful that Türkiye did not veto NATO enlargement.

“On the one hand, the second Cold War between the West and Russia narrows the room for maneuver in Turkish foreign policy, while on the other hand, it increases Türkiye’s strategic importance. The most important challenge for Turkish foreign policy in the coming years will be the successful continuation of Türkiye’s strategic autonomy-oriented multi-faceted foreign policy practices in an environment of deepening international polarisation. 

“The balance policy pursued between the West and Russia is one of the most important strategic legacies left to the Republic of Türkiye from the Ottoman Empire. It is a strategic necessity for Türkiye, which has a medium-sized power capacity, to follow a policy of balance in order to achieve national interests. The policies adopted by Türkiye since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine until now and the stance displayed at the last NATO summit in Madrid show that this historical heritage is embraced and successfully executed.”  

To put matters in historical context, in 1920, Mustafa Kemal formally approached Vladimir Lenin with a proposal for mutual recognition and a request for military assistance. The Bolsheviks not only responded positively but by throwing in their lot with the growing movement of Turkish nationalists, they helped shore up the new Turkish state’s southern borders. In the period from 1920 to 1922, Soviet Russia’s military help to Ataturk was almost 80 million lire — twice Turkey’s defence budget! 

In 1921 in Moscow, the two sides concluded the “Treaty of Friendship and Brotherhood”, which resolved the territorial disputes between the Kemalists and the Bolsheviks. The north-eastern border of Turkey established then remains unchanged to this day.

However, both Moscow and Ankara understood that cooperation between Turkish nationalists and Russian communists would be short-lived. Soon afterward, Turkey deserted Moscow’s camp, banned the communist party, and, during the Nazi invasion, looked for an opportunity to invade the Soviet Caucasus if the Red Army collapsed. Nevertheless, Ataturk never forgot the help that Soviet Russia provided in his hour of need. 

A historical perspective is needed to understand the US’ manipulation of Turkey — and of Sweden and Finland in the present-day context. Biden is following President Harry Truman’s footfalls. Washington has used the very same Cold-War tactic to draw Sweden and Finland into the NATO fold as it employed 70 years ago with regard to Turkey.  

July 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Ridiculous’: Russia dismisses claims of NATO being ‘defensive alliance’

Press TV – July 1, 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the claim of NATO being an exclusively defensive alliance is “ridiculous and disgraceful.”

He made the remarks on Friday while addressing students and teachers at the Belarusian State University, in response to recent statements by a number of NATO members’ officials.

“Recently, a representative of the White House once again reiterated that Russia should not be afraid of NATO and that no one should be afraid of it at all, because NATO is a defensive alliance. But it is already ridiculous to hear adults say such obvious nonsense. I would say, it is simply disgraceful,” Russia’s TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

Pointing to the history of NATO’s establishment and its confrontation with the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union, he said both the Warsaw Treaty and the Soviet Union are gone but “NATO has moved eastward five times.”

“Who are they defending themselves from then?” he asked rhetorically, adding, “When someone pushes forward, establishes control of territories, and deploys armed forces and military infrastructure there, it is not exactly what is called defense. It’s just the opposite.”

The remarks come as the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid wrapped up on Thursday with the bloc’s decision to strengthen its forces along the eastern flank while also officially inviting Sweden and Finland, which share borders with Russia, to join the alliance.

“NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to any country,” reads part of the declaration of the Summit.

The declaration also named Russia as a “direct threat” to NATO members’ security, noting that the military alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat” to Russia.

At the same time, it went on to threaten to respond in a “united and responsible way” to any threat from Moscow.

‘Joke of the century’

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also rejected the notion of NATO being only a defensive alliance.

“NATO is a ‘defensive’ alliance? Joke of the century,” he tweeted on Friday while also sharing a combination of images portraying NATO’s military intervention in several countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

In a separate tweet, the Chinese official also pointed to the role of the US and its allies in the continuation of the war in Syria and its devastating effects on people’s lives.

“[The] US and its allies continue to fuel the war in Syria. More than 300,000 civilians have died in the conflicts according to UN statistics, 1.5% of Syria’s population,” he wrote on Friday, also sharing a photo of war damages in Syria with a note which read “who is the threat to peace?”

NATO members had also alleged that China poses a “challenge” to the bloc’s “interests, security, and values.”

Speaking in a daily briefing on Thursday, Zhao stressed the futileness of hyping up the so-called “China threat.”

“NATO has extended its reach to the Asia-Pacific region in an attempt to export the Cold War mentality,” he said, urging the bloc to stop making baseless accusations and provocation against China, abandon the outdated Cold War mentality, and stop dangerous acts that disrupt Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

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