Norway has abandoned its traditional policy of “no foreign forces on our national soil.” On Aug. 15, the Norwegian defense ministry reported that the US will more than double (from 330 to more than 700) the number of Marines stationed in that country, in line with plans first outlined in June. The deployments to Norway are expected to last at least five years, compared with the former posting that ran for six months after the initial contingent arrived in 2017 and was then extended last June. A new military base at Setermoen will accommodate the US personnel this fall. The United States has expressed interest in building infrastructure to host up to four US fighter jets at a base 65 kilometers south of Oslo, as part of the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI).
The reinforcement comes ahead of a large-scale exercise dubbed Trident Juncture 18 — the biggest NATO maneuver in decades, involving 40,000 soldiers, 130 aircraft, and 70 vessels from more than 30 nations. That training event will be held from October to November in central and eastern Norway, the North Atlantic, and the Baltic Sea. Iceland, Sweden, and Finland will also take part.
According to the Norwegian government, the sole purpose of the American military presence is for training, there is no escalation involved in this whatsoever, and Russia has nothing to worry about. Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide previously told reporters that this decision did not constitute the establishment of a permanent US base in Norway and was not targeted at Russia.
Moscow issued a warning about the consequences such a move will entail. Are Russia’s concerns justified? After all, 700 soldiers are not a big deal for such a large country. They’ll finish their training, pick up some skiing skills, and leave. Is there really anything to worry about? Perhaps a more in-depth examination can provide an answer to this question.
The US Marines Corps is a service designed mainly for offensive operations. They are training to fight Russia under certain weather conditions. Once it has begun, such training becomes a routine part of the operational cycle. Whether you call it rotational or permanent, they’ll be there for years, ready to attack. It’s not just a few hundred servicemen, it’s an expeditionary force. They are in Norway to make sure that everything is in place to ensure a rapid reinforcement in order to launch offensive operations that include air support right upon arrival.
The cooperation between the US and Norway includes the exchange of intelligence, the purchase of weapons — including 52 F-35 aircraft and five Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) — the use of Norwegian air bases, and the storage of military equipment in line with the Marine Corps Prepositioning Program-Norway (MCPP-N), which has been in effect since 2005. Actually, that project is a revival of a Cold War program that was launched in 1981 to preposition military equipment. Norway pays half of the program costs. Since 2014, it has been adjusted to meet the needs of the US Marine Corps. Their stockpiles have enough gear, vehicles, and ammunition to equip a force of more than 4,600 troops. According to the plans, there should be enough equipment and ammunition stored up to sustain a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) during combat. A MAB can consist of 8,000 to 16,000 Marines, or even more.
And it’s not just Norway. In May, US Marines from the 4th Tank Battalion withdrew tanks and weapons from storage caves in Norway to bring them to Finland during the Arrow 18 training exercise. That equipment was used in their maneuvers alongside the Finnish army. The US Marines in Norway could also be transported to Sweden. Such a scenario played out during the Swedish Aurora 17 exercise. As one can see, the Marines’ deployment in Norway is essential for providing US forces access from northern Scandinavia to the Baltic theater of operations.
Norway is part of an intelligence and missile-defense effort. The high-powered radar Globus 3 in Vardo is an example. The radar in Svalbard (above the Arctic Circle) is installed in violation of a 1925 treaty, which states that Svalbard has a demilitarized status. It can be used for missile-defense purposes. The US Poseidon MPA from Andøya monitor Russian submarine movements. In June, the US, UK, and Norway agreed to create a trilateral coalition on the basis of those planes that will conduct joint operations in the North Atlantic near Russia’s Northern Fleet naval bases.
The F-35 Lightnings purchased from the US are to be based in Ørland in southern Norway. They are nuclear-capable planes. The training provided by the American military to the Norwegian pilots is a violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) , which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons from nuclear-weapon states to other states. According to the treaty, non-nuclear-weapon states are not to receive nuclear weapons. Russia will never be sure the Norwegian F-35s aren’t carrying nuclear weapons.
The setting is important. The transformation of Norway into the tip of the knife for an attack on Russia is taking place amidst the speedy militarization of other Scandinavian countries, the Baltic states, and Poland. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, NATO has tripled its military presence on Russia’s western borders over the past five years, forcing Moscow to take retaliatory steps. The Norwegian government’s decision to extend and expand the Marines’ presence is part of NATO’s vigorous war preparations, making Norway a state on the front lines and the prime target for the Russian military.
August 17, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Finland, NATO, Norway, Russia, United States |
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The catastrophic bridge collapse in Italy this week has prompted a public outcry over the country’s crumbling infrastructure and how it is putting lives at risk. But the question the public in Italy and across Europe should be asking is: why are their governments spending extra tens of billions of dollars on NATO militarism, while neglecting vital civilian infrastructure?
When the iconic Morandi motorway viaduct came crashing down this week over the city of Genoa – with a death toll so far of 39 people – the consensus among Italian news media and members of the public is that the bridge was a disaster waiting to happen.
Nearly 200 meters of the motorway flyover section spanning a river, houses and an industrial area collapsed while dozens of cars and trucks were passing. Shocked witnesses described the scene as “apocalyptic” as vehicles plunged 40 meters along with concrete and iron girding to the ground below.
Lack of due maintenance has been blamed for why the bridge collapsed. Weather conditions at the time were reportedly torrential rain storms and lightning. But those conditions can hardly explain why a whole motorway viaduct wobbled and crashed.
The Morandi Bridge was built 51 years ago in 1967. Two years ago, an engineering professor from Genoa University warned that the viaduct needed to be totally replaced as its structure had seriously deteriorated. There seems little doubt that the disaster could have been avoided if proper action had been taken by the authorities rather than carrying out piecemeal repair jobs over the years.
Italian media reports say the latest is the fifth bridge collapse in the country over the past five years, as cited by the BBC.
Now the Italian government is calling for a nationwide survey of roads, tunnels, bridges and viaducts to assess public safety amid fears that other infrastructure facilities are prone to deadly failure.
What should be a matter of urgent public demand is why Italy is increasing its national spending on military upgrades and procurements instead of civilian amenities. As with all European members of the NATO alliance, Italy is being pressured by the United States to ramp up its military expenditure. US President Donald Trump has made the NATO budget a priority, haranguing European states to increase their military spending to a level of 2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Trump has even since doubled that figure to 4 per cent.
Washington’s demand on European allies predates Trump. At a NATO summit in 2015, when Barack Obama was president, all members of the military alliance then acceded to US pressure for greater allocation of budgets to hit the 2 per cent target. The alleged threat of Russian aggression has been cited over and over as the main reason for boosting NATO.
Figures show that Italy, as with other European countries, has sharply increased its annual military spending every year since the 2015 summit. The upward trend reverses a decade-long decline. Currently, Italy spends about $28 billion annually on military. That equates to only about 1.15 per cent of GDP, way below the US-demanded target of 2 per cent of GDP.
But the disturbing thing is that Italy’s defense minister Elisabetta Trenta reportedly gave assurances to Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton that her government was committed to hitting its NATO target in the coming years. On current figures that translates roughly into a doubling of Italy’s annual military budget.
Meanwhile, the Italian public have had to endure years of economic austerity from cutbacks in social spending and civilian infrastructure.
Rome’s new coalition government comprising the League and Five Star Movement has called for a reversal in austerity policies and has vowed to increase public investment. Its leaders, like deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, have also at times expressed a lukewarm view of NATO.
After this week’s bridge disaster, the populist coalition government has renewed its calls for more investment in public services.
Nevertheless, why then is Italy’s defense minister giving assurances that the country will adhere to Washington’s demands for increasing its NATO budget? Minister Trenta, who belongs to the Five Star Movement, says her government remains committed to buying up to 90 units of the US new-generation F35 fighter jet.
Aggregate figures show that Italy spent nearly $300 billion over the past decade on military. The previous decade’s outlay was even higher in constant dollar terms, before the financial crash in 2008. And yet the Italian government – despite its populist appeal – is planning to allocate even more resources to military over the coming years in order to meet Washington’s ultimatum for the NATO 2 per cent of GDP target. A target figure that seems wholly arbitrary and abhorrent in the light of so many urgent social needs and neglected public infrastructure.
If Italian motorway bridges are collapsing now, the future for public safety looks even bleaker when more of the country’s economy is diverted to satisfy US-led NATO demands.
Moreover, this dilemma is not confined to Italy. All European members of NATO are being railroaded by Washington to significantly expand their military budgets. President Trump has lambasted European states as “free loaders” cadging off “American protection”. Trump has singled out Germany for harassment to boost its military budget. After all the hectoring, the Europeans seem to be responding too. At the annual NATO summit held last month in Brussels, the Norwegian secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg boasted that non-US members had increased their national military budgets by an aggregate $40 billion in one year alone.
A cruel irony is that last year NATO planners complained that Europe’s infrastructure of roads, tunnels and bridges needed significant upgrades to facilitate mass-transport of military forces in case of a war with Russia. The implication was that European governments would have to increase their national spending on civilian transport networks specifically to facilitate NATO military requirements.
That is tantamount to a parasite craving for more blood from its host. Already European infrastructure is in disrepair largely because of economic austerity enforced by disproportionate spending on NATO militarism. At a time when public need for social investment is acute, European governments are obeying orders from Washington to plough more financial resources into subsidizing the American military-industrial complex. All this madcap, irrational expenditure is supposedly to keep European citizens safe from Russian threats.
All too evidently, however, the biggest threat to European citizens is the way Washington and its NATO racket is bleeding Europe of financial resources – resources which instead should be spent on building safe roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
August 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | Italy, NATO, United States |
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The sense of indignation among Turks should not be underestimated, which makes this an exceptional rupture
The Turkish lira fell 22% on Friday before recovering to 17% on the backdrop of the Trump administration’s announcement to double the tariffs on imports of Turkish steel and aluminum.
The tariffs affect Turkish exports worth more than $1 billion in trade with the United States.
The US was the top destination for Turkish steel exports in 2017. Turkey came in sixth place among the countries the US imported steel from last year, while the share of Turkish steel was 7% of total US steel imports.
More to the point, President Trump brazenly hinted that this was a political decision and he tauntingly noted that he also kept an eye on the Turkish lira’s exchange rate.
Trump tweeted: “I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”
Trump’s tweet has been the proximate cause of the market mayhem hitting the Turkish lira. This comes on top of foreign investors pulling back money in recent months from the Turkish market even as the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates and cut back on asset holdings from quantitative easing. Unsurprisingly, the dollar has sharply increased in value and the lira has lost value and Turkish bond yields have risen.
Turkey traditionally resorted to external borrowing in foreign currency to bridge current account deficits. External funds were lured to the Turkish economy due to the higher yields, fueling growth in the Turkish economy, especially in the construction sector.
With the pullback of money from the Turkish market in recent months, Turkish companies and banks, which took out loans in dollars or euros, are staring at a potential crisis in repaying their debts. In sum, the currency exchange rate volatility is turning into a debt and liquidity crisis.
The financial crisis means that many Turkish companies may have to file for bankruptcy, which will hit the banks. Meanwhile, a cycle is forming as investor confidence dips despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s economic policy of low interest rates.
At such moments, psychological factors inevitably play a big part. Indeed, the Trump administration increasingly prefers to wage economic wars than deploying military force to exert “maximum pressure” in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, etc are glaring examples. Turkey now joins the rogues’ gallery.
Erdogan too has become a marked man due to his independent foreign policies that are undermining American regional strategies. Trump’s tweet virtually brags about his pressure tactic. Trump’s agenda is unmistakably to bring Erdogan down on his knees.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party traditionally drew support from the “bazaar” and the so-called “Anatolian Tigers,” who form Erdogan’s core constituency and are the worst affected in this crisis.
The intervention by credit agencies Merrill Lynch and Standard & Poor’s at critical junctures to rubbish Turkey’s credit rating was an early warning of an impending economic conflict.
Erdogan’s dilemma is two-fold. He could approach the International Monetary Fund for a bail-out, which is what Wall Street and Trump expect him to do. But if he does that, Turkish policies will be subject to tight US scrutiny. And Erdogan will not capitulate.
The alternative is that Erdogan takes help from elsewhere. In an op-ed in the New York Times last week, Erdogan sternly warned Trump: “Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives. Failure to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies.”
However, Trump has now snubbed him by promptly doubling the tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum. Erdogan is furious. He said on Sunday: “I declare that we have seen your plot and we are challenging it. There is no economic reason for the present [currency plunge] situation. This a plot to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and its people kneel down.”
The sense of indignation among Turks should not be underestimated, which makes this an exceptional rupture in what has been all along a problematic relationship through the past seven decades. Erdogan on Tuesday said he would enforce an embargo on all American electronic products – including the iPhone famously used to FaceTime CNN Turk the fateful night of the failed coup attempt two years ago.
Alienating Turkey to this extent will be a risky foreign-policy venture on Trump’s part. The US cannot have an effective Middle East policy while antagonizing both Turkey and Iran.
The wider regional geopolitical ramifications are yet to sink in. Turkey is a “swing” state and its policies cast shadows on several regions – from the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia to the Middle East and North Africa and the Mediterranean.
Iran has vastly gained in strategic depth. Tehran has expressed strong solidarity with Erdogan. A special envoy from Tehran visited Ankara and met with Erdogan on the weekend. Erdogan expressed a desire for an early meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Statements from Berlin and Rome already convey a growing sense of exasperation over Trump’s unwarranted sanctions against Turkey. In tackling the migrant or refugee crisis, Erdogan is a crucial partner for the EU. Turkey also has a Customs Union agreement with the EU.
The astonishing part is that all this is unfolding at a time when the US and NATO are raring to redraw the strategic map of the Black Sea to challenge Russia and when the US military presence in Iraq and Syria is facing growing local opposition.
Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey is considering other markets and political alternatives to its “strategic partnership” with Washington. No doubt, China will be the big winner. China prioritizes Turkey as a key partner in its Belt and Road Initiative.
Trump is seriously underestimating the potency of Turkish nationalism, which is rising to a crescendo. In his Art of the Deal, nationalism has no place – business goes to the highest bidder. The Turkish opinion is hardening that the US was behind the 2016 July failed coup attempt in a concerted strategy to take control of Turkish policies, and the “economic war” is its latest manifestation.
August 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics | NATO, Turkey, United States |
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High-ranking members of the Russian parliament have stated that Washington’s refusal to cooperate with Moscow on the Open Skies Treaty is based on unfounded charges as Russia has always stuck to its obligations.
“The United States’ accusations in our address are completely unfounded. Russia is acting strictly in accordance with the existing agreements and their terms – the same applies to the treaty on destruction of chemical weapons,” Senator Yevgeniy Serebrennikov said in comments to RIA Novosti.
The senator reacted to the recent news that the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019, signed by President Donald Trump on Monday, contained a ban on using any funds appropriated by it “to modify any United States aircraft for purposes of implementing the Open Skies Treaty” in response to alleged previous violations of this treaty by Russia.
The head of the Russian Upper House Committee for International Relations, Senator Konstantin Kosachev, said that the US move to freeze its participation in the Open Skies Treaty must be scrutinized by the treaty’s consultative commission. He added that the treaty allowed any of its signatories to deny other participants a particular inspection and also to exit it completely, but had no provisions for a freeze of cooperation between any two of its members.
“Therefore, in my opinion, the US decision contradicts its obligations fixed in the treaty and this must be considered by the Consultative Commission,” Kosachev was quoted as saying by TASS.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Washington’s move to freeze cooperation with Russia on the Open Skies Treaty was an example of unilateral actions that were unacceptable for civilized dialogue between nations.
“Apart from the extremely high military budget, de-facto the record high $719 billion, the new act contains a number of provisions that boil down to an attempt to impose on other nations the decisions of some well-known problems in the sphere of arms control. They should be regulated by talks and a common search for an acceptable solution at the negotiations table,” the diplomat was quoted as saying by Interfax on Tuesday.
“We are constantly urging the US side to act like this, but unfortunately instead of some constructive replies we only witness new manifestations of the course aimed at dismantling the global security architecture and the existing system of agreements in the field of arms control,” he added.
The Open Skies Treaty was signed in 1992 and became one of the measures to build confidence in post-Cold War Europe. The parties to the treaty regularly conduct reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory to openly collect information on each other’s military forces and activities.
Previously, the United States has accused Russia of violating the terms of the Open Skies Treaty by placing restrictions on overflights of its westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad. Russia’s Foreign Ministry argued that Moscow had complied with all its obligations under all international agreements including the Open Skies Treaty.
August 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Open Skies Treaty, Russia, United States |
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The two-decade-long dispute on the statute of the Caspian Sea, the world largest water reserve, came to an end last Sunday when five littoral states (Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan) agreed to give it a special legal status – it is now neither a sea, nor a lake. Before the final agreement became public, the BBC wrote that all littoral states will have the freedom of access beyond their territorial waters, but natural resources will be divided up. Russia, for its part, has guaranteed a military presence in the entire basin and won’t accept any NATO forces in the Caspian.
Russian energy companies can explore the Caspian’s 50 billion barrels of oil and its 8.4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan can finally start considering linking its gas to the Turkish-Azeri joint project TANAP through a trans-Caspian pipeline, while Iran has gained increased energy supplies for its largest cities in the north of the country (Tehran, Tabriz, and Mashhad) – however, Iran has also put itself under the shadow of Russian ships. This controversy makes one wonder to what degree U.S. sanctions made Iran vulnerable enough to accept what it has always avoided – and how much these U.S. sanctions actually served NATO’s interests.
If the seabed, rich in oil and gas, is divided this means more wealth and energy for the region. From 1970 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991, the Caspian Sea was divided into subsectors for Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – all constituent republics of the USSR. The division was implemented on the basis of the internationally-accepted median line.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new order required new regulations. The question was over whether the Caspian was a sea or a lake? If it was treated as a sea, then it would have to be covered by international maritime law, namely the United Nations Law of the Sea. But if it is defined as a lake, then it could be divided equally between all five countries. The so-called “lake or sea” dispute revolved over the sovereignty of states, but also touched on some key global issues – exploiting oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Basin, freedom of access, the right to build beyond territorial waters, access to fishing and (last but not least) managing maritime pollution.
The IEA concluded in World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2017 that offshore energy has a promising future. More than a quarter of today’s oil and gas supply is produced offshore, and integrated offshore thinking will extend this beyond traditional sources onwards to renewables and more. Caspian offshore hydrocarbon reserves are around 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent (equivalent to one third of Iraq’s total oil reserves) and 8.4 trillion cubic meters of gas (almost equivalent to the U.S.’ entire proven gas reserves). As if these quantities were not themselves enough to rebalance Eurasian energy demand equations, the agreement will also allow Turkmenistan to build the Trans-Caspian pipeline, connecting Turkmenistan’s resources to the Azeri-Turkish joint project TANAP, and onwards to Europe – this could easily become a counter-balance factor to the growing LNG business in Europe.
Even though we still don’t have firm and total details on the agreement, Iran seems to have gained much less than its neighbors, as it has shortest border on the Caspian. From an energy perspective, Iran would be a natural market for the Caspian basin’s oil and gas, as Iran’s major cities (Tehran, Tabriz, and Mashhad) are closer to the Caspian than they are to Iran’s major oil and gas fields. Purchasing energy from the Caspian would also allow Iran to export more of its own oil and gas, making the country a transit route from the Caspian basin to world markets. For instance, for Turkmenistan (who would like to sell gas to Pakistan) Iran provides a convenient geography. Iran could earn fees for swap arrangements or for providing a transit route and justify its trade with Turkey and Turkmenistan as the swap deal is allowed under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA, or the D’Amato Act).
If the surface water will be in common usage, all littoral states will have access beyond their territorial waters. In practical terms, this represents an increasingly engaged Russian presence in the Basin. It also reduces any room for a NATO presence, as it seems to be understood that only the five littoral states will have a right to military presence in the Caspian. Considering the fact that Russia has already used its warships in the Caspian to launch missile attacks on targets within Syria, this increased Russian presence could potentially turn into a security threat for Iran.
Many questions can now be asked on what Tehran might have received in the swap but one piece of evidence for what might have pushed Iran into agreement in its vulnerable position in the face of increased U.S. sanctions. Given that the result of those sanctions seems to be Iran agreeing to a Caspian deal that allows Russia to place warships on its borders, remove NATO from the Caspian basin equation, and increase non-Western based energy supplies (themselves either directly or indirectly within Russia’s sphere of geopolitical influence) it makes one wonder whose interests those sanctions actually served?
August 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, NATO, Russia, Turkmenistan |
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This is not at all comforting: during a week that’s witnessed Alex Jones’ social media accounts taken down by Facebook, Apple, Spotify and Google, and what appears to be a growing crackdown against alternative media figures including several prominent Libertarians, notably the Ron Paul Institute director, and the Scott Horton Show, who found their Twitter accounts suspended — we learn that the Atlantic Council is directly advising Facebook on identifying and removing “foreign interference” on the popular platform.
While the initiative was initially revealed last May through an official Facebook media release, more details of the controversial think tank’s role have been revealed.
Supposedly the whole partnership is aimed at bringing more objectivity and neutrality to the process of rooting out fake accounts that pose the threat of being operated by nefarious foreign states.
And yet as a new Reuters report confirms, Facebook is now itself a top donor to the Atlantic Council, alongside Western governments, Gulf autocratic regimes, NATO, various branches of the US military, and a number of major defense contractors and corporations.
What’s more is that the team of four total individuals running the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFR Lab) is headed by a former National Security Council advisor for the last four years of the Obama administration, Graham Brookie, who is also its founder.
Apparently the group’s work has already been instrumental in Facebook taking action against over two dozen “suspicious pages” flagged potential foreign actors such as Russia. According to Reuters:
Facebook is using the group to enhance its investigations of foreign interference. Last week, the company said it took down 32 suspicious pages and accounts that purported to be run by leftists and minority activists. While some U.S. officials said they were likely the work of Russian agents, Facebook said it did not know for sure.
This is indeed the shocking key phrase included in the report:“Facebook said it did not know for sure.” And yet the accounts were removed anyway.
The Facebook-Atlantic Council alliance reportedly springs from the social media giant’s finding itself desperate for outside “neutral” help after a swell of public criticism, mostly issuing from congressional leaders and prominent media pundits, for supposedly allowing Russian propaganda accounts to operate ahead of the 2016 elections.
And in perhaps the most chilling line of the entire report, Reuters says, “But the lab and Atlantic Council bring geopolitical expertise and allow Facebook to distance itself from sensitive pronouncements.” This is ostensibly to defuse any potential conflict of interest arising as Facebook seems a bigger presence in emerging foreign markets.
Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos recently told reporters, “Companies like ours don’t have the necessary information to evaluate the relationship between political motivations that we infer about an adversary and the political goals of a nation-state.” He explained further that Facebook would collect suspicious digital evidence and submit it to “researchers and authorities”.
Since at least May when the relationship was first announced, the DFR Lab has been key to this process of verifying what constitutes foreign interference or nefarious state propaganda.
But here’s the kicker. Reuters writes of the DFR Lab’s funding in the following:
Facebook donated an undisclosed amount to the lab in May that was enough, said Graham Brookie, who runs the lab, to vault the company to the top of the Atlantic Council’s donor list, alongside the British government.
Facebook employees said privately over the past several months that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to outsource many of the most sensitive political decisions, leaving fact-checking to media groups and geopolitics to think tanks.
Facebook has defended the process as part of ensuring that it remains politically neutral, yet clearly the Atlantic Council itself is hardly neutral, as a quick perusal of its top donors indicates.
Among the DFR Labs partners include UK-based Bellingcat, which has in the past claimed “proof” that Assad gassed civilians based on analyzing YouTube videos and Google Earth. And top donors include various branches of the US military, Gulf sates like the UAE, and notably, NATO.
The Atlantic Council has frequently called for things like increased military engagement in Syria, militarily confronting the “Russian threat” in Eastern Europe, and now is advocating for Ukraine and Georgia to be allowed entry into NATO while calling for general territorial expansion of the Western military alliance.
Further it has advocated on behalf of one of its previous funders, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and gave a “Distinguished International Leadership” award to George W. Bush, to name but a few actions of the think tank that has been given authorization to flag citizens’ Facebook pages for possible foreign influence and propaganda.
Quite disturbingly, this is Mark Zuckerberg’s outside “geopolitical expertise” he’s been seeking.
August 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Atlantic Council, Facebook, Human rights, NATO, United States |
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Armenia’s new Prime Minister has targeted Moscow’s confidantes in a corruption crackdown and angered the Kremlin by making overtures to NATO
No two “color revolutions” have been the same, although the anatomy may bear similarity. This explains why Russia continues to face a problem in calibrating its response to emerging revolutionary tides in its backyard.
Russia fumbled in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004 and 2014), but digested the ‘color revolutions’ in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010. Of course, circumstances were different: Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country.
The Moscow elite’s eternal dilemma has been that, when the defining moment came, the West invariably injected geopolitics into color revolutions in the post-Soviet space in a concerted strategy to encircle Russia with an arc of hostile states.
In this complex backdrop of historical uncertainty, Russia is unsure whether it made an error of judgment apropos the “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia, which shot a 42-year-old former journalist and previously uninspiring opposition politician, Nikol Pashinyan, to power. After a meteoric three-week rise he became prime minister in May.
The Velvet Revolution bore traits of a color revolution – although traces of outside interference were indistinguishable. Even as Pashinyan rode the revolutionary wave, Moscow chose not to cast aspersions on his stated agenda, that cleaning up the Augean stables in his country was his sole objective and his mission had no foreign-policy overtones.
Moscow’s approach probably ended up helping him climb the ladders of power, with the entrenched ruling party in Armenia meekly stepping aside to make way for him as the new prime minister.
Pashinyan pledges loyalty
Moscow appeared to accept at face value Pashinyan’s pledges of fealty. President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to congratulate Pashinyan on May 8 when the ruling party elected him as the new head of government in a parliamentary vote.
Putin said: “I hope that your performance as the head of government will contribute to efforts to further strengthen friendly, allied relations between our countries, partnership within the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.”
Pashinyan nicely played along. Indeed, his first face-to-face with Putin in Sochi, only six days later on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), had an effusive tone.
Pashinyan thanked Putin for what he called Moscow’s “balanced position” during the color revolution and reassured the Kremlin of the immutability of the Armenian-Russian “strategic alliance”.
In the presence of reporters, he told Putin that “the strategic alliance relations between Armenia and Russia” required “no discussion” and “there is a consensus on this issue in Armenia. I think that nobody in our country has or will cast doubt on the strategic importance of Armenian-Russian relations.”
Russia maintains a military base in Armenia.
Putin wished him success and said he hoped that bilateral ties “will develop just as steadily as they have up to now.” Putin added that Russia “views Armenia as our closest partner and ally in the region” on both economic and security issues.”
Moscow confidantes targeted
One week into the Velvet Revolution, it all seemed as if the Russian-Armenian alliance couldn’t be in better shape. But then, the sky began getting overcast and a stillness began descending in the air.
On May 10, Pashinyan began what appeared as a shake-up of the administration. It quickly snowballed into a veritable purge aimed at systemic change. He also launched a crackdown on public corruption, which has since made him a cult figure.
In a matter of three months his administration caught up with the two ex-presidents, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, and the influential mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan, who were all Moscow’s confidantes in Yerevan.
Then, on July 27, Pashinyan struck hard by implicating the incumbent Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Yuri Khachaturov on charges dating back to his past assignment as Chief of the General Staff of Armenia under Sargsyan. The general is presently based in Moscow as the head of the Russia-led alliance.
That was when Moscow sat up.
On July 31, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was “concerned” that Armenia’s new leadership was making politically motivated moves against former leaders. Lavrov said: “The events of the last few days… contradict the recent declarations of the new Armenian leadership that it was not planning to pursue its predecessors on political grounds.”
Lavrov added: “Moscow, as an ally of Yerevan, has always had an interest in the stability of the Armenian state, and therefore what is happening there must be of concern to us.”
He disclosed that Moscow had repeatedly raised its concerns with Yerevan and expected a “constructive” response. These remarks amount to a rebuke.
NATO outreach spurs Russian warning
Meanwhile, what probably rung alarm bells in Moscow was that Pashinyan also began making overtures to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On the sidelines of the alliance’s summit on July 12 in Brussels, to which he was invited, Pashinyan said: “It would be very useful if NATO will send a strong message to Azerbaijan that any attempt to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict using force will meet a strong reaction from the international community.”
In effect, he invited the Western alliance to get involved in the Southern Caucasus, which Russia traditionally regards as its sphere of influence.
While in Brussels, Pashinyan met the leaders of Germany, France, Canada among others, apart from a having a brief conversation with US President Donald Trump. Importantly, he began stressing the centrality of NATO as a forum for Armenia’s interactions with Georgia.
On August 2, the influential Moscow daily Kommersant wrote that Pashinyan’s moves had “driven a wedge into Moscow’s relations with Yerevan and may set the two countries at loggerheads even more”. The daily noted, citing Russian security officials, that the charges laid against CSTO Secretary General Khachaturov caused “outrage” in Moscow, because it “deals a blow to the image of the Russian-led military and political bloc”. It hinted at Western interference.
Equally, Moscow has taken exception to Armenia’s participation in the NATO exercises currently underway in Georgia. (Armenia is a member of the CSTO.)
In a hard-hitting statement on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the NATO exercise in Georgia aimed to “project power pressure, chiefly over South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Russia” and can only result in an “escalation of tensions.” Zakharova regretted that “Georgia’s neighboring countries are involved in these drills on various pretexts.”
On Monday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Georgia’s accession to NATO may trigger “a terrible conflict” and lead to catastrophic consequences. He closely echoed Putin’s stern warning last month: “We will respond proportionally to aggressive moves that pose a direct threat to Russia. Our [NATO] counterparts who bet on rising tensions, are trying to bring, say, Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance’s military orbit but they should think about the possible consequences of such an irresponsible policy.”
Clearly, Moscow’s preference would have been that Pashinyan pragmatically keeps Armenia in Russia’s orbit – and NATO out of the Caucasus. But the Velvet Revolution has mutated and Moscow’s dismal experience is that in such defining moments, environmental pressures cause changes to the genetic structure of color revolutions, resulting in variant DNA forms.
August 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Armenia, NATO, Nikol Pashinyan, Russia |
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Spanish fighter jets taking part in a NATO Air policing mission over Estonia have been temporarily suspended from completing their duties, after one of the pilots erroneously fired an armed missile during a training flight.
A group of two Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon 2000 jets and two French Mirage 2000 jets were taking part in a training exercise over southwestern Estonia on Tuesday when one of the Spanish planes accidentally launched an air-to-air missile, the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that the projectile “did not hit any aircraft.”
All the jets then safely returned to their Saiuliai air base in Lithuania, the ministry said, adding that it has opened an investigation into the incident. Meanwhile, the Estonian authorities decided to ban the Spanish aircraft from taking part in the air policing missions over its territory for a while.
“I have ordered a suspension of all military sorties [by the Spanish jets] until the situation is resolved,” the Estonian Defense Minister Juri Luik said, as cited by the national ERR broadcaster. He added that “the NATO air mission will continue, though.” ERR reports that the Portuguese Air Force will take Spain’s place as part of the mission for the time being.
“The most important thing is to ensure safety and find out what happened, together with our allies,” Luik said, commenting on his decision. The missile fired by the jet should have self-destructed but apparently failed to do so.
The projectile in question is an AMRAAM-type air-to-air missile with a firing range of 100 kilometers that carries a warhead fitted with explosives of up to 10 kilograms. It was last located some 40 kilometers north of Estonia’s city of Tartu, where it might have landed on the ground, according to Estonian media.
The Estonian Air Force launched a search operation on Tuesday evening. The authorities also asked the locals to be wary and notify the military or the emergency services in case they find the missile or its parts.
The Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas called the incident “horrible” and “regrettable.” However, he nevertheless praised the NATO mission as a “very important and necessary part of ensuring Estonia’s security.”
August 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO |
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A fortnight after the Helsinki summit on July 16, US-Russia relations are set to take a turn for the worse. In an unprecedented move, White House fielded a joint media briefing by America’s top national security team on Thursday to highlight that Russia is continuing to make pervasive attempts to interfere in the upcoming mid-term elections in the US in November.
One of the top security czars who gave the briefing, National Intelligence Agency director Dan Coats said starkly, “We acknowledge the threat, it is real, it is continuing, and we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election. It is pervasive, it is ongoing, with the intent to … drive a wedge and undermine our democratic values.” Importantly, Coats alleged that the Kremlin was involved in the meddling effort which reached into the Kremlin itself.
He said, “Russia has used numerous ways in which they want to influence, through media, social media, through bots, through actors that they hire, through proxies – all of the above, and potentially more. We also know the Russians tried to hack into and steal information from candidates and government officials alike.” (Transcript)
The briefing served three purposes: one, to reject the denials of meddling that Russian President Vladimir Putin maade to President Trump at Helsinki; two, to neutralize the public criticism in the US that Trump has not been unequivocal on the issue; and, three, to give warning to Moscow.
The briefing coincided with a ‘bipartisan’ legislation that was introduced into the US Congress on Thursday to impose stiff new sanctions on Russia and combat cyber crime. The bill includes restrictions on new Russian sovereign debt transactions, energy and oil projects and Russian uranium imports, and new sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs. Interestingly, the proposed legislation underscores strong support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressly forbids the Administration from taking the US out of the alliance without two-thirds of the US Senate voting in favor of any such effort.
The senators who tabled the legislation said in a statement that the proposed new sanctions would target “political figures, oligarchs, and family members and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Vladimir Putin.” According to some reports, the bill would also require a report to be assembled on the personal net worth and assets of Putin. Quite obviously, Putin himself is in the crosshairs.
Putin’s spirited defence of Trump at their joint press conference in Helsinki on the Russia collusion inquiry has provoked this furious backlash from America’s political class. In such a backdrop, another summit between Trump and Putin in a near future seems highly improbable. A visit by Putin to the White House in the autumn is simply out of the question. The US-Russia ties will remain very tense, too.
On the other hand, in a deceptive show of flexibility that will be keenly noted in New Delhi, US Congress has approved a legislation empowering the president to waive penalties against countries that buy weapons from Russia – provided, of course, Washington is convinced that such countries are seeking closer ties with the US. The US Defence Secretary James Mattis had pleaded with the US Congress for such Russia-sanction-waiver authority that would help countries such as India, which had traditional defence relations with Russia but are now trying to “pull away from the Russian orbit,” (as he put it.)
Evidently, the legislation on waivers is a self-serving move, enabling US arms manufacturers to continue to expand business opportunities in the Indian market. Under the new legislation, the president must nonetheless certify that India is both reducing arms imports from Russia and is expanding defense cooperation with the US, thereby making itself eligible for the waiver from sanctions. In effect, it becomes a tool for Washington to insert itself into the India-Russia defence cooperation as an interested party and to incrementally leverage Indian decisions with a view to atrophy the longstanding cooperation.
Clearly, the US interference in the India-Russia relationship is poised to intensify in the period ahead. If the proposed new sanctions “bill from hell” (tabled on Thursday) gets passed by the US Congress, which is to be expected, energy cooperation between India and Russia will also come under the American scanner. There is a strong business dimension to these US moves insofar as arms exports and energy cooperation also happen to be two thrust areas of export to India. Simply put, Washington hopes to roll back India’s defence and energy cooperation with Russia and seize the resultant business opportunities to boost its own exports to the Indian market.
In strategic terms, the US intention is to undermine the so-called “special privileged strategic partnership” between Russia and India, which would in turn erode the latter’s strategic autonomy and incrementally draw India into the American orbit as an ally.
August 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | India, NATO, Russia, United States |
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The frequency with which US President Donald Trump holds out threats to other countries is such that he is no longer being taken seriously. The list of countries threatened by Trump so far includes North Korea, Germany, Canada, China, Venezuela, Pakistan, Syria, Iran and Turkey.
In all fairness, Trump makes no distinction between enemies, adversaries, friends or allies. Turkey, a NATO ally, holds a record of sorts as the country most threatened by the Trump administration. In separate tweets on Thursday, Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence gave an ultimatum to Turkey that unless Andrew Brunson, an American evangelical pastor of a small Protestant church in western Turkey, is released from detention immediately, Ankara should be “prepared to face the consequences” in the form of “significant sanctions.”
For the benefit of the uninitiated, Brunson who has been living in Turkey for 23 years was arrested in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan, charged with spying and involvement in the failed coup. The Turkish government had probably hoped for a tradeoff – Brunson in exchange for the Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen who is living in Pennsylvania whom Ankara regards as having masterminded the 2016 coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Ankara has been pressing Gulen’s extradition and Washington has been stonewalling. It’s a complicated case history, since Gulen has had links in the past with the CIA.
Turkey has shrugged off the latest threat from Trump and Pence. However, for Trump, Christian groups form a core constituency politically, and taking a tough stance on the high-profile Brunson case has endeared him to those groups. Dr. Ronnie Floyd, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently made the following remark in praise of the White House effort: “I thank God we have an administration that cherishes the freedom of religion as our founders hoped we would.”
Trump’s latest threat puts Erdogan in a fix because releasing Brunson without a reciprocal move on Gulen’s extradition means a loss of face. Erdogan is acutely conscious of his strongman-image. He must be wondering whether Trump is serious about the ultimatum on Brunson’s release. Brinkmanship comes naturally to Trump. Indeed, with Trump one really doesn’t know what happens next.
But Erdogan can be more than a match for Trump in the ‘art of the deal’. At a meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa, Erdogan added disdainfully that Trump’s real grouse in giving such an ultimatum yesterday could be that Turkey has drawn close to Russia in the recent times. That is a spin, of course. But then, Erdogan is also hoping to extract a big concession from Putin – deferment of the planned military operation to liberate the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib on the Turkish border from Ankara’s proxy groups. Turkey is keen to retain Idlib as its zone of influence.
Does Putin feel impressed that US-Turkish ties are deteriorating? There are no easy answers here. Nonetheless, Erdogan sees no harm in playing Trump against Putin. After all, who knows, Putin may hold back on the assault to liberate Idlib…
Yet, the chances are that this time around, Trump probably intends to carry out his ultimatum to impose sanctions on Turkey. The point is, US patience with Turkey seems to be wearing thin. Turkey is no longer a ‘swing’ state in the US’ Middle East strategies, given the poor state of Turkish-Israeli relations, Erdogan’s ‘pivot to Russia’ and the overall trust deficit in Turkish-American relationship. Erdogan snubbed the US threat of sanctions and upheld his decision to purchase S-400 missile defence system from Russia. Last week, Erdogan bluntly rejected the demarche by Washington that Turkey should cut back its oil imports from Iran.
July 29, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | Andrew Brunson, CIA, Fetullah Gulen, Idlib, NATO, Sanctions against Iran, Turkey, United States |
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Claims that US President Donald Trump is undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by criticizing some of its members and having a cordial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin have sent establishment media into a frenzy to sanctify NATO as a force for peace and democracy.
A Guardian editorial (7/10/18) asserted:
The NATO alliance has helped mold the modern world and ushered in a democratic, liberal world order characterized by open trade and open societies, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union needed only to be lightly defended. This in turn contributed greatly to American peace and prosperity.
Note that “American peace” is a phrase used to describe a state that is currently bombing one country or another every 12 minutes, while US “prosperity” takes the form of spending $716 billion on the war machine annually while 40 million Americans live in poverty, giving the country a child poverty rate of 21 percent as well as the worst child mortality rate among rich nations.
A New York Times editorial (7/8/18) said that since World War II, the alliance has been “the anchor of an American-led and American-financed peace that fostered Western prosperity and prevented new world wars.” According to the paper, NATO has
linked America and Europe not just in a mutual defense pledge but in advancing democratic governance, the rule of law, civil and human rights, and an increasingly open international economy.
The Times argued that, while the alliance’s original purpose was allegedly to respond to a hypothetical Soviet attack, NATO “found a new purpose” after the fall of the USSR, “defending Muslims in the Balkans, and after 9/11, helping the United States fight terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa and elsewhere.”
What the Times called “defending Muslims in the Balkans” was actually NATO’s invasion of Yugoslavia, an important tool in the dismantling of that country, which only under the most curious of definitions could be described as an act of “peace” or an exemplar of “the rule of law,” since the attack was illegal. Likewise, in “fight[ing] terrorists in Afghanistan,” NATO has hardly shown itself to be an agent of “peace” in a war that’s gone on for almost 17 years, during which NATO members have demonstrated their regard for “civil and human rights” by killing thousands of Afghan civilians and supporting torturers.While NATO’s occupation has yet to usher in an “open societ[y]” or democracy in Afghanistan, the alliance’s presence has coincided with the birth of ISIS in the country. Rather than embodying “peace” or “human rights,” the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which NATO took part in by way of a “training mission,” entailed torture, the killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, the use of chemical weapons, and rates of infant mortality, cancer and leukemia higher than those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then in the Iraqi theatre of the war ostensibly aimed at ISIS, NATO demonstrated these values and helped “fight terrorists” as part of a coalition that killed thousands of civilians.
The Times’ vague reference to “fight[ing] terrorists in… Africa” notwithstanding, none of the articles discussed above or below mentioned Libya, the site of NATO’s most recent full-scale war. Yet it’s fair to say that the seemingly endless war and social collapse in Libya that have followed NATO’s attack, as well as the “hell” of beheadings, rape, and slave markets that resulted from it, aren’t features of “open societies” characterized by “peace,” “democratic” politics and “the rule of law, civil and human rights.” One struggles, in fact, to come up with a single example where such things were the goal of a NATO intervention, let alone its outcome.
Advocating Aggression
Canonizing NATO involves not only erasing its innumerable crimes but also advocating the bolstering of the organization, which would both increase the threat of war and divert resources from socially necessary goods like healthcare, housing, education, ameliorating poverty and inequality…
A Washington Post editorial (7/7/18) said:
There is considerable good news to celebrate: [NATO] has substantially beefed up defenses of its eastern flank, facing Russia; it is recommitting to vital missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; and every one of its members is increasing defense spending—the biggest buildup by US allies in 25 years. The summit is due to adopt an ambitious new plan that would allow NATO to deploy 30 battalions, 30 squadrons of planes and 30 ships within 30 days—a resource that could considerably bolster the ability of the United States to respond to crises.
The Times editorial claimed that, “faced with” an unspecified “Russian threat”—the existence of which the editorial offers no evidence for, but refers to twice—“a firm and convincing commitment to a strong NATO” is important. Thus the paper implicitly endorsed NATO’s
establishing two new military commands, expanding cyberwarfare and counterterrorism efforts, and approving a new plan to speed the reinforcement of troops and equipment to Poland and the Baltic States to deter Russian aggression.
None of this coverage addressed NATO’s threats to Russia and how these shape Russian actions. Though NATO leaders promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” toward Russia, the alliance has since grown quite a few inches eastward by adding to its ranks Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Montenegro.
As Benjamin Schwarz pointed out in The Nation (7/11/18), the US has “interfered in the pre- and post-coup political machinations in Ukraine,” and “NATO has signaled that its expansion into Ukraine is a question of when, not if.” He went on to note:
And now that NATO has created an enemy [in Russia], it justifies its [own] intensifying provocative actions—the massive annual military exercises since 2010 in Poland, Lithuania, and, on Russia’s very doorstep, in Latvia and Estonia; the creation of a permanent US Army headquarters in Poland; a new Pentagon-devised plan for a prolonged war with Russia; the US ambassador to NATO’s explicit identification of “Russia and the malign activities of Russia” as NATO’s “major” target—by declaring that they are nothing more than a necessary reaction to Russian hostility and the need, as the New York Times editorial board declared this week, to “contain” the Russian “threat.” And what, according to the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, makes the Russians a threat? Nothing less than that their aim—which is as unproven as it would be understandable—is “to shatter” NATO, the military pact arrayed against them.
Since 2016, NATO has had 4,000 troops in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Thus, when the Post said NATO’s military buildup “could considerably bolster the ability of the United States to respond to crises,” it should have added that NATO is a driving force in creating these crises in the first place. These media accounts suggest, however, that NATO has an unlimited right to build up its forces near Russian territory, while any Russian response to that is entirely illegitimate.
Therein lies the meta level of the absurdity of this panic about Trump being anti-NATO. By insisting that US allies in the organization pay in more heavily, he’s actually calling for NATO to be built up. In February, the Trump administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, which authorized developing and deploying so-called “low-yield” nuclear weapons to “deter” Russia in case it’s not already deterred by America’s massive nuclear arsenal.
The problem isn’t, as the media suggests, that Trump is weakening NATO; the problem is that he’s strengthening it.
Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.
July 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | NATO, United States |
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Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) are working on a draft law that would impose sanctions on Russian sovereign debt and demand Senate approval for US quitting NATO, among other things.
The two senators announced on Tuesday they will be introducing the new sanctions law “to ensure the maximum impact on the Kremlin’s campaign against our democracy and the rules-based international order.”
The US must make it clear it will “not waver in our rejection of [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] effort to erode western democracy as a strategic imperative for Russia’s future,” Graham and Menendez said.
Although the bill is still being drafted, Graham and Menendez said it would include increased sanctions on Russian energy and financial sectors, “oligarchs and parastatal entities” and on sovereign debt as well as sanctions against “cyber actors in Russia.”
It will also establish a National Center to Respond to Russian Threats and a sanctions coordinator office at the State Department, demand reports on implementing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and authorize financial aid to “bolster democratic institutions across Europe to defend against Russian interference.”
Last, but not least, the bill would impose a Senate approval requirement for US withdrawal from NATO.
Graham is an outspoken foreign policy hawk and long-time wingman of the Russia-obsessed Senator John McCain (R-Arizona). Last week, he called for the World Cup soccer ball, presented as a gift to President Donald Trump by his Russian counterpart at the summit in Helsinki, Finland to be examined for surveillance devices.
As the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez is a powerful voice among the Democrats, who continue blaming Russia for the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
It is unclear how much support the Graham-Menendez bill will get in the Senate. However, CAATSA was approved 98-2 last year.
Just last week, the Senate voted 98-0 on a nonbinding resolution expressing the sense that the “United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government or Vladimir Putin,” in response to false reports that former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul would be “handed over” to Moscow.
July 24, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | Bob Menendez, CAATSA, Lindsey Graham, NATO, Russia, United States |
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