Imagining a Different Europe: Brexit and the Future of NATO
By Gary Leupp | CounterPunch | July 7, 2016
Everyone’s talking about the future of the European Union after the Brexit. Should we not also be wondering about the future of NATO?
The two organizations substantially overlap. Twenty-two countries are members of both; that is, the twenty-two nations are both military allies of the U.S. (which pays two-thirds of the alliance’s cost and controls its politics) and members of an economic union, which—while it of course does not include the U.S., which is 5000 miles away—is of much interest to the world’s only surviving superpower.
Of course the EU and NATO have very different purposes. As we all know, the EU represents an effort to create a common market throughout the continent, allow for free travel and employment between member-states, the formation of common standards, policies etc. We know there have been major downsides for some member countries, involving reduced sovereignty, uncontrolled immigration, indebtedness and austerity programs, etc. But the stated goal, to spread general affluence, and therefore prevent war, has been stated since the EU’s forerunner, the European Coal and Steel Community, was formed in 1951.
Thus, while it’s arguably none of the U.S.’s business, U.S. leaders express opinions on EU composition. (You might think that, as leaders of a competing trading bloc, with the same relationship to the EU that Boeing has to Airbus, they would maintain a politic silence. But both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have urged the EU to admit NATO ally Turkey’s admission. And Obama recently raised a ruckus in the United Kingdom when he urged its electorate to reject Brexit.)
The purpose of NATO is less clear than that of the EU. Formed in 1949 in line with the “Truman Doctrine” pledging that the U.S. would fight communism wherever it threatened the “Free World,” it was supposed to be a defensive alliance between the U.S. and its European client states versus some future (imagined) Soviet aggression against those states.
That aggression needless to say never happened. In retrospect the Cold War appears a long period of stability, with the exception of the horrific wars the U.S. inflicted on Korea and Vietnam while the Soviets stood aside, and the war the Soviets waged in Afghanistan to suppress the rebels opposed to the secular Soviet-backed government (who were then backed by the CIA, because they were so anti-communist, that being the main thing), who went on to became the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Europe itself was actually remarkably stable during that Cold War, from 1945 to 1989. Since then there’s been horrific violence, especially in southeastern Europe, much of it exacerbated by the U.S. and NATO.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (formed in 1955 in belated response to NATO, after NATO decided to include West Germany) in 1991, you might have thought that NATO would dissolve too. But no; it redefined its mission as maintaining “security” in a newly insecure situation. Its purpose is in fact stated in the vaguest terms. Its real function is to preserve U.S. hegemony over post-Soviet Europe, expand to surround Russia and ultimately create the conditions for a Yugoslavia-type fracturing of the Russian state—which for some reason U.S. military leaders keep referring to as the “number one threat” or even “existential threat” to the U.S.!
How the U.S. Uses the EU
The U.S. attempts to use the EU for its own geopolitical ends, particularly for this confrontation with Russia.
For example: from late 2013 to February 2014 the U.S. State Department spent $5 billion in Ukraine in order to (in the words of Under Secretary of State for Eurasia Victoria Nuland, a former Dick Cheney aide, neocon married to neocon Robert Kagan and key Hillary crony) “support the Ukrainian people’s European aspirations”—meaning the hopes of many Ukrainians for their country to join the EU.
But what Nuland, the Pentagon and NATO leaders in Europe really wanted to do was to pull Ukraine into NATO, completing the creeping encirclement of Russia that had begun with NATO’s expansion to include Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1999.
NATO now already includes 11 countries formerly part of the Soviet bloc (Warsaw Pact) or Yugoslavia, most added during Bush’s administration but two (Albania and Croatia) admitted since. In all cases, by the way, these states first received admission into NATO, then into the EU.
Bulgaria: joined NATO 2004, EU 2007
Croatia: NATO 2009, EU 2013
Czechoslovakia: NATO 1999, EU 2004
Estonia: NATO April 2, 2004, EU May 1, 2004
Hungary: NATO 1999, EU 2004
Latvia: NATO April 2, 2004, EU May 1, 2004
Lithuania: NATO April 2, 2004, EU May 1, 2004
Poland: NATO 1999, EU 2004
Romania: NATO 2004, EU 2007
Slovakia: NATO, March 29, 2004, EU May 1, 2004
Slovenia: NATO, March 29, 2004, EU May 1, 2004
Notice a pattern? First a country commits itself to an anti-Russian alliance with the U.S., committing 2% of its GDP to military expenses and pledging to go to war against Russia when called upon to do so. Then it gets access to the benefits of EU membership.
Back to Ukraine. Ukraine in early 2014 included the Crimean Peninsula, home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the 1780s, a vital naval port for the Russian state that has only a few warm-water ports. (Crimea had been turned over from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by half-Ukrainian Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. After the break-up of the USSR in 1991, Russia retained its traditional military presence on the peninsula by a treaty with the Ukrainian leaders.)
But the U.S. would like to expel the Russians and make Sevastopol a NATO port. (This is not only Vladimir Putin’s nightmare; it would be a nightmare for any Russian leader. Look at a map.)
In 2013 the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, democratically elected in an internationally monitored election in 2010, negotiated with the EU for his country’s eventual entry into the union. A substantial portion of the population, especially in the western part of the country, favored this. But when Yanukovych realized that steps towards admission would involve accepting an austerity regime comparable to that inflicted on Greece, he opted out, instead accepting a generous Russian aid offer.
Nuland & Co. depicted this as a pro-Russian leader’s capitulation to Russian pressure; again, their talking point was “Ukrainian people’s European aspirations.” (In fact, Ukrainians were divided on the issue, with fewer than 50% in favor of EU membership.)
Ukraine is ethnically divided between ethnic Ukrainians (who speak a language related to Russian, although the two languages are not mutually intelligible) and ethnic Russians who have always spoken Russian. (Russian has always been a recognized official language in the country.) There has been much intermarriage between the two, but among the ethnic Ukrainians there are many Russophobes including neo-fascists who glorify Stepan Bandera, an anti-Russian Ukrainian leader who worked with the Nazis to round up Jews and fight the Soviets in 1941. (He was declared a “national hero” by Yanukovych’s predecessor Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-U.S. advocate of NATO admission. Yanukovych withdrew this award, but it has been reinstated by the current regime.)
Taking advantage of this Russophobia, the U.S. depicted Yanukovych’s change of mind as a betrayal of “European” dreams. Working with the neo-fascist Svoboda Party, among others, it assisted in the brutal putsch of February 22, 2014, that caused the president to flee for fear of his life. A new, pro-NATO government was immediately installed, with Arseniy Yatsenyev as prime minister.
“Fuck the EU!” …and then Use It!
This is where the story gets interesting, because it reveals what the EU means to the U.S., and what it doesn’t. In an intercepted phone conversation between Nuland and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine a month before the coup, they discuss who will succeed Yanukovych once he’s toppled. She favors NATO proponent “Yats.” The ambassador mentions the the EU favors a different candidate, whom she thinks is inappropriate. They discuss how Yatsenyev will be legitimated by a UN official sent by Ban Ki-moon.
“So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it,” she concludes, “and, you know, Fuck the EU.” (In other words, this is not about any European’s aspirations. It’s about ours.)
So the coup comes off as planned. The obviously prominent role of neo-fascists in the new regime, and the immediate revocation of the existing law protecting language rights frightened and angered the primarily Russian inhabitants of the Donbass region (where Yanukovych had his base of support). They refused to accept its legitimacy. (Their resistance is invariably represented by the U.S. press in the service of the State Department as a Moscow-inspired rebellion or even Russian “invasion.”)
Russia refused to recognize the new government and quickly moved to re-annex its historical territory of Crimea. The Russian-majority population of Crimea overwhelmingly voted in a credible referendum to reunite with Russia. The U.S. media often refers to this as another “invasion” although it was nothing of the sort; there were tens of thousands of Russian troops in place by longstanding agreement, who simply secured government buildings and the borders.
Hillary Clinton, among others, likened this move to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. That is to say: something that must not meet with appeasement. And so (people are taught to believe), the practical Russian response to U.S. efforts to complete the expansion of NATO is the problem, not NATO’s relentless advance against Russia itself. Russia under Putin is the worrisome aggressor, not the U.S. leaders who invade a new country like clockwork every few years, boasting that they need to do it because theirs is the “exceptional” nation.
Some in the Obama administration favored a military response to the separatists in the east; they wanted to further arm the new regime and encourage it to assert control over the Donbass if not Crimea. It is clear this was the view of U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove, the “Supreme Allied Commander” of “NATO Allied Command Operations” in Europe. We know from intercepted emails exchanged between him and Nuland (whom he refers to affectionately as “Toria”) that he was frustrated by the failure of Obama to order the Ukrainian puppets to more forcefully invade the east. (Initial efforts to do this had resulted in mass desertions, or soldiers retreated in the face of unarmed citizens including old women shaming them into abandoning their mission. It was a tremendous embarrassment to the Kiev regime.)
Obama decided not to heed Breedlove. In place of hot warfare he chose economic warfare. Here is where the EU comes in. In July 2014 the union (that Nuland wanted to fuck) dutifully voted to impose economic sanctions on Russia. (Again, 22 of the 28 EU members are also NATO members; the only ones that aren’t are Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta.)
The U.S. is of course not an EU member but it had a reliable surrogate within the union: the United Kingdom, which has strongly argued for sanctions, their expansion and extension to the present. (Frank Holmes, managing editor of US Global Investors, calls Britain “the bloc’s strongest supporter of restrictions.” The conservative Washington D.C. website The Daily Caller calls it the U.S.’s “strongest E.U. ally against Russia”).
The UK, which had far less to lose from the sanctions than many other EU nations, was urging its partners to shoot themselves in the foot. It was asking them to punish Russia (and damage themselves). The continental Europeans went along, some grudgingly.
Regrets (and Maybe Rebellion?)
Many have come to regret it. The Czech and Hungarian leaders have long been questioning the sanctions and expressing displeasure. Of course they want, as new members of the EU and NATO, to be team players. But their people are suffering from lost trade and pressuring them to protest. Thus Czech President Milos Zeman has called the sanctions “not merely inefficient; on the contrary, they are counterproductive.” (Only 35% of Czechs according to a 2015 Gallop poll support the sanctions.)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban calls the sanctions a “risk in the EU… very deep, of a strategic nature.” (European Council president Donald Tusk, a Pole, calls Orban a “Trojan Horse” for Russia while Orban says Tusk is “on the other side” for opposing an easing of sanctions.)
In May, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that his government “definitely cannot accept that a decision [by the EU, on extending sanctions] was made behind the scenes, that is, we are against using an automatic procedure.” (In Hungary, only 29% of those polled favor the sanctions.)
The Polish regime has been among the most supportive of the U.S. position; anti-Russian sentiment is deep in that country for various historical reasons, and 70% of those polled support sanctions. But the Polish farmers are suffering from them. One-third of the apples harvested in Poland two years ago went to Russia; now the trade is forbidden.
Meanwhile in Spain farmers burn EU flags over piles of rotting peaches to protest the collapse of their relations with the Russian marketplace. The European Commission keeps having to pay out millions of euros to partly compensate farmers and merchants for their losses due to sanctions.
French MPs in April this year voted for a resolution to lift EU sanctions on Russia. Minister of Economy Emmanuel Macros has vowed to work towards lifting them. Italian cabinet ministers and the lawmakers in Italy’s Upper House of Parliament also want to rethink them. Maybe they’re all Trojan Horses, but if so, that’s good.
The role of Germany in the EU, as the most populous and wealthiest country in Europe, is more important than ever following the Brexit. While it has been, along with France, a strong supporter of the sanctions and their continuation, public support is waning. In May a German pollster found that 36% of Germans want the sanctions scaled down, while 35% want them scrapped entirely.
The sanctions have had disastrous impact on the German economy. Since they were imposed exports have declined by about 20 billion euros. Alstom has lost a huge contract for the construction of the Beijing-Moscow railway line. The business community generally wants the sanctions dropped.
There appears to be a general feeling that the U.S. (which is feeling few effects from the sanctions it itself imposed on Russia) pressed the EU (especially through Britain) to take measures that are not in Europe’s interest. And some surely realize that what this is all really about is the U.S.’s desire to punish Russia for thwarting its effort to bring Ukraine into NATO—through that cynical device of Victoria (“Fuck the EU”) Nuland of supporting Ukraine’s “European aspirations.
As it happens, 67% of Germans oppose bringing Ukraine into NATO, and 45% oppose bringing it into the EU. Most importantly, German support for NATO has been plummeting; it was 73% in 2009 but was 55% last year. And when asked whether Germany, in the event of a Russian attack on an east European border state that is a NATO member, should fight on the side of that state, only 38% say yes according to a Spring 2015 Pew poll.
According to the same poll, that figure is 40% in Italy, 47% in France, and 48% in both Poland and Spain. In other words, over half the people of these countries oppose the very nature of NATO as “mutual defense” alliance.
This raises the real possibility of countries leaving NATO, as well as the EU. Czech president Milos Zeman has called for referendums on his country’s membership in both. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has criticized the recent joint maneuvers in Poland, in which 14,000 U.S. troops, 12,000 Polish troops, and 800 from Britain participated as “saber-rattling.”
“Whoever believes,” he warns, “that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken. We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.” In other words, the U.S. is steering NATO towards war with Russia, which the Germans know is not a good idea.
Who would have imagined a few years ago that the UK would ever leave the EU? Imagine the Czech Republic leaving this confrontational NATO alliance, joining its prosperous neighbor Austria by opting for neutrality. Imagine the Germans (who have many reasons to be angry towards the U.S., including the fact that the NSA spies on all of them) becoming fed up enough to hold their own referendum and quitting the bloc.
There is something of a precedent. France shocked the U.S. when it pulled out of the NATO Integrated Military Command Structures in 1966, in order to, as President Charles DeGaulle put it “preserve French independence in world affairs.” (It remained committed in theory to the defense of alliance members but only rejoined with conditions in 2009.)
France, which has military bases all over the world and deploys troops routinely in Africa and elsewhere (it cooperated with the U.S. in overthrowing Aristide in Haiti in 2004, as if to apologize for having opposed the U.S. war in Iraq), is very different from Germany with its stiff constitutional limits on the use of its military and generally pacifistic population. Within the EU, it is likely to replace the UK as its most important hawkish member, while Germany is likely to urge reconciliation with Russia.
There are contradictions within both the EU and NATO. They are interwoven, and some look irresolvable. That again is a good thing.
An unholy alliance of leftists supporting a pro-NATO course against Russia
By Susann Witt-Stahl and Denis Koval | Junge Welt* | June 25, 2016
The Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation and the ‘new left’ in Ukraine have forged a pro-NATO course directed against Russia.
The Die Linke (Left Party)-affiliated Rosa Luxemburg Foundation wants to play it safe. It relies not on historical pro-Soviet or Marxist left traditions but instead promotes a “new left”. The foundation is named after a world-renowned icon of anti-capitalist movements whose identity is bound with communist and anti-imperialist ideas. But the members of the Foundation’s leadership recommend to the left a convergence with the ‘liberal imperialism’ of the global hegemon, the USA.
Understandably, this requires some political flexibility. Progressive forces should not plant themselves on one side or the other of competing imperialist powers, says the Facebook page Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Ukraine. It demands that the “independent left” distance itself from the NATO-EU bloc, on the one hand, and from Russia on the other hand.
This agenda is followed by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLF) with its Ukrainian partners. But it never explicitly speaks out against the accelerated expansion of the Western powers to the very borders of the Russian Federation. Instead, it consistently warns about “Great Russian chauvinism” and denounces the former Soviet Union and the anti-imperialist left.
In Ukraine, the Foundation cooperates principally with the small ‘Left Opposition’ group (not to be confused with the political front of the same name in which the Ukrainian Communist Party participates). In April 2014, the Left Opposition (LO) along with the “independent” trade Union ‘Zachist Prazi’ (Labor Defence) of Oleg Vernik merged into the ‘Social Movement’. The aim was to create an alliance (so far without any success) to be a Ukrainian version of Syriza.
One of the founders of the ‘LO’ is Zakhar Popovich, who in 2003 together with Oleh Vernik was expelled from the Trotskyist Committee for a Workers’ International (reported in Junge Welt) because of a lengthy fraud they perpetuated. They had collected donations for non-existent left-wing organizations in Ukraine.
According to its self description, LO stands for a politics of peace, beyond the “nationalist polarisation” of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces. But it doesn’t dare to criticize Ukrainian ultranationalists. LO has openly supported the assaults by Euromaidan. Zakhar Popovich and his comrade Vitaly Dudin, the lawyer of the Kiev Center for Social and Labor Research, are also RLF partners. They marched in Maidan Square with a red EU flag side-by-side with the ultra-right.
The LO also welcomed the political section of the EU Association agreement, which includes clauses providing for military cooperation of Ukraine with the West.
Accordingly, LO has nothing to do with the “opposition” anymore. In March of 2014, Zakhar Popovich characterised the Yatsenyuk coup government as “legitimate” and appealed “to all governments in the world and Russia to recognize it”. He announced that his support was only “practical”, not political, because of the numerous, Goebbels-type followers from the Svoboda Party who were in the government.
LO’s demand to end the civil war in eastern Ukraine is expressed by the fact that in 2014, Fedor Ustinov, a member of its organizing committee, voluntarily joined the Ukrainian extremist ’ battalion ‘Shachtarsk’ in order to participate in the “punitive expedition” against the insurgents in the unrecognized people’s republics of Donbass. The “American anti-imperialist response” to the “imperialist aggression of Russia” needed to be strenghthened. In this way did Ustinov understand the “balancing to be done against the two rival “imperialist” camps.
The LO is not only in the pro-NATO camp with both feet, it is also in the rightwing quagmire. The ‘Social Movement’–that is, LO and Zachist Prazi–view the organisation ‘Autonomous Resistance’ as not only “comrades. In Odessa, they have gone so far as to hold a joint rally with fascists who organize memorial marches for Stepan Bandera’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which committed massacres during WWII (especially of the Polish civilian population) and collaborated with Nazi Germany.
The LO member and co-organizer Andriy Ishchenko was until 2004 the chairman of the Odessa cell of the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defence (UNA-UNSO), a fascist party and the core organization of the Right Sector. The UNA-UNSO’s paramilitary force contributed to the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’ of the famous Atlanticist Viktor Yushchenko, who became Ukraine’s president in 2005.
Perhaps Andriy Ishchenko is now an ‘ex’ neo-Nazi? Hardly. Until today, he still welcomes his former comrades as “friends”. “I am not ashamed of my membership in this organization. We were in the forefront of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their rights and the the social struggles of the’ 90s,” said Ishchenko in 2014, speaking about his unfinished past.
The fact that Andriy Ishchenko wants to help the Right Sector to become “left wing” is enough for RLF, apparently, to present him in its pages as a “left activist”. Moreover, to whitewash the pro-Maidan ‘Autonomous Resistance’, Nelia Vakhovska, the project co-ordinator of the RLF in Ukraine, and Ivo Georgiev, from the centre for International Dialogue and Cooperation of the RLF, call Autonomous Resistance a “citizens ‘ movement” in a published post titled The life of left activists in Ukraine is dangerous. The RLF Facebook page provides weblinks to these neo-Nazi Banderites.
Although LO has a maximum of two dozen activist members, conferences and other events with speakers from the LO are promoted by RLF and LO’s positions are uncritically disseminated. This also applies to other structures from the spectrum of the ‘new left’ in Ukraine, for example, the magazine Prostory of the ‘Autonomous Workers’ Union’. The members of AWU regularly mobilize against “pro-Putin fascists” (their term for opponents of Maidan) and believe that there is “no alternative” to the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” taking place in Donbass.
Ukraine’s ‘decommunization’ law and other repressive measures against the Ukrainian Communists have opened space for what some critics call a “fake left” in Ukraine. The fact that this left holds a long-time monopoly on the funds of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation is being hushed up.
The ‘new left’ is used to whitewashing the alliance of the Western powers with the fascists in Ukraine. They approve the cooperation of the NATO-oriented, Ukrainian economic elite with the Western neocons that took place on the Maidan and approve a new escalation against Russia.
* Translation to English by New Cold War.org
Background: “Peace is War”
The Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation was involved in the creation of the pro-Maidan ‘left‘. In April 2014, for example, it promoted a conference ‘The Left and Maidan‘ organized by its Ukrainian partners.
The conference also served as a founding Congress of the ‘Social Movement‘ − initiated predominantly by the Left Opposition. The results of a survey were presented at the conference, according to which 93 per cent of Maidan-activists were presented as “apolitical” and only seven per cent (including the socialists) were organized politically. Accordingly, the proportion of fascists and other radical Right involved inMmaidan was said to be very low.
In December 2015, the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation supported the event ‘Aspects of the media coverage of the military conflict‘ organized by the Centre for Labour and Social Research, including experts “reporting from the ATO-zone” (‘Anti-Terrorist Operation‘ is the Kyiv government’s official name for the military offensive of the Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine). As stated in the event announcement, the participants included Yana Salakhova from George Soros’ ‘Renaissance Foundation‘ and Igor Burdyga, a journalist, member of the LO and militant of the ‘AutoMaidan who believes the arsonists of Odessa on May 2, 2014 were “patriots” while the protests of the victims’s relatives were “ukrainophobic”.
The RLF also supports projects of the Visual Culture Research Center in Kiev. For example, in 2014, it staged a series of benefits named ‘Peace Is War‘ which featured pro-Maidan propaganda films that encourage the viewer to understand that the militarisation of Ukrainian society is a “consequence of Russian aggression beginning in March 2014″.
The Foundation similarly promotes moderate nationalists from the artist scene. Sergiy Zhadan, according to the RLF, is a “leftist writer”, but he will participate in the ‘Banderstad Festival‘, a large gathering of Ukrainian fascists taking place in August 2016.
Activists storm US military base in Yorkshire
Press TV – July 4, 2016
British activists have stormed an American military base in Yorkshire, continuing decades-long calls for its closure.
Just like the past three decades, peace activists from all over Britain gathered outside the Menwith Hill intelligence-gathering center on the outskirts of Harrogate over the weekend, the British daily Morning Star reported Monday.
“US military bases in Britain are jeopardizing the safety and security of the British public as they are threatening Russia and helping to cause carnage in the Middle East,” said Marcus Papadopoulos, an activist with the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB), which organized the event.
With its many satellite dishes, the more than 1,000-staff base collects intelligence and transmits it to the US.
Every year, protesters stage a demonstration at the base on the Saturday closest to July 4 – the day Americans celebrate their independence from England in 1776.
Ironically, this year’s rally was called “Independence from America Day,” and was attended by former Labour member of the European Parliament Michael McGowan.
McGowan gave a speech in defense of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn whose leadership is under attack following the UK’s recent decision to leave the European Union (EU).
About 52 percent of British voters partaking in the June 23 referendum opted to leave the EU.
Labour MPs have criticized Corbyn for his “inadequate” contribution to the ‘Remain’ campaign and say they doubt he could lead the party to victory in 2020 general elections.
The party further plunged into crisis after eleven MPs rounded on Corbyn’s leadership, joining the 12 shadow cabinet ministers who resigned earlier this month.
The wave of resignation came after shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn was sacked after he told the Labour leader that he had lost confidence in his leadership.
McGowan, however, told rally goers that Corbyn’s election last year provided “a historic opportunity for world peace, which should be a matter of universal celebration and an opportunity not be wasted but to be taken forward in the interest of all who share our planet.”
US Mayors Blast Obama, NATO: War Games on Russia’s Border Endanger Humanity
Sputnik – 02.07.2016
The leaders of America’s towns and cities issued a resolution warning the Obama administration and NATO that continued anti-Russian provocations place humanity at greater risk of nuclear annihilation.
The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), the official non-partisan organization for city leaders administering populations greater than 30,000, moved to condemn NATO’s Anaconda War Games on Russia’s border as increasing the threat of nuclear conflict.
“The largest NATO war games in decades, involving 14,000 US troops, and activation of US missile defenses in Eastern Europe are fueling growing tensions between nuclear-armed giants,” said the USCM warning in the lead up to the military alliance’s summit on July 8-9 in Warsaw, Poland.
The resolution adopted at the USCM’s 84th Annual Conference from June 24-27 in Indianapolis stated: “More than 15,000 nuclear weapons, most orders of magnitude more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, 94% held by the United States and Russia, continue to pose an intolerable threat to cities and humanity.”
The US Conference of Mayors went on to criticize President Obama for capitulating to the defense establishment and “laying the groundwork for the United States to spend one trillion dollars over the next three decades” on the so-called nuclear modernization effort that will result in a net increase in America’s atomic stockpile in contravention to the spirit of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“The Obama administration has not only reduced the US nuclear stockpile less than any post-Cold War presidency, but also decided to spend on trillion dollars to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads, production facilities, delivery systems, and command and control,” read the resolution.
America’s mayors called into the question the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons with yields in excess of 1 megaton, or 75 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb that killed nearly 150,000 people, at a time when “federal funds are desperately needed in our communities to build affordable housing, create jobs with livable wages, improve public transit, and develop sustainable energy sources.”
To underscore the resolution, the USCM acknowledged and apologized for America’s genocidal acts against Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of World War II stating that the “US atomic bombings indiscriminately incinerated tens of thousands of ordinary people, and by the end of 1945 more than 210,000 people – mainly civilians, were dead, and the surviving hibakusha, their children and grandchildren continue to suffer from physical, psychological and sociological effects.”
The country’s mayors continue to be a voice of peace and reason in the face of mounting influence by the foreign policy establishment and defense lobbyists having rendered similar resolutions calling for the United States to pursue a less threatening foreign policy for 11 consecutive years.
Canada to send 1,000 soldiers to Latvia for NATO brigade
Canadian troops during a NATO drill in Ukraine.
Press TV – July 1, 2016
Canada will send 1,000 troops to Latvia to join one of NATO’s battalions that are being assembled in Eastern Europe in a show of force against Russia.
The Canadian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the country will “establish and lead” a high-readiness brigade that will “contribute to NATO’s enhanced forward presence in Eastern and Central Europe.”
The statement also said that further details regarding the deployment will be provided at the upcoming NATO summit in Poland.
The Canadian soldiers will be part of a 4,000-strong NATO force that will be deployed to the Baltic States and Poland in order to deter what is claimed to be Russian threats.
The US, Germany and Britain will also send soldiers to join NATO’s four battalions in Eastern Europe.
“As a responsible partner in the world, Canada stands side by side with its NATO allies working to deter aggression and assure peace and stability in Europe,” said Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan.
Canada’s decision reportedly came after US President Barack Obama urged Canada to contribute more to NATO in a speech in the Canadian Parliament on Wednesday.
NATO plans to expand its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the conflict in Ukraine and has held numerous war games recently.
Some 2,000 NATO forces began a large-scale military exercise in western Ukraine earlier this week which will last until July 8.
Last month, NATO held another 10-day military drill, involving some 31,000 troops from Poland, the US and 17 other nations in Poland.
Russia, wary of the increased presence of NATO troops close to its borders, threatened to take unspecified measures to respond to the increased activities by the Western military bloc.
NATO has stepped up its military build-up near Russia’s borders since it suspended all ties with Moscow in April 2014 after the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula re-integrated into the Russian Federation following a referendum.
Moscow has repeatedly repudiated NATO’s expansion near its borders, saying such a move poses a threat to both regional and international peace.
US Deployment of Patriot Batteries in Turkey Threatens New Crisis
Sputnik — 01.07.2016
The US decision to send Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptor batteries to Turkey has no military justification and may be a preparation for a manufactured incident to provoke a new crisis in the region, historian and retired US Army Maj. Todd Pierce told Sputnik.
“Do you pick up the preparation for yet another ‘Gulf of Tonkin Moment’ here?” Pierce said on Thursday.
Pierce was referring to the alleged clash between a US warship, the destroyer Maddox and two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 that was used to win congressional endorsement for what became the US involvement in the Vietnam War.
NATO is deploying missile defense systems in Turkey under the pretext of a non-existent threat of missile attacks from Syria, Russian Ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko told Sputnik earlier on Thursday.
Pierce said the Obama administration remained committed to finding whatever justification it needed to expand its military forces in the region with the goal of toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“That is what the Syrian war and proposed takedown of Assad is really about: rolling up any potential Russian allies,” he explained.
Pierce pointed out that deploying the Patriot systems was an unnecessary move as Turkey faced no direct threats of missile attacks.
“Does deploying these Patriots systems in Turkey make any sense at all for Turkey’s national security? Absolutely not: Who is going to attack them? Bulgaria?” he asked.
The Patriots deployment appeared to be part of NATO’s policies to encircle Russia with increased military deployments, Pierce stated.
“It is definitely not about protecting the Turkish people… It is directed at Russia in some way because there is no other potential opponent in the area,” he continued.
Pierce said the Patriot systems’ deployment was part of a US strategy, also employing NATO that had been operating for at least 18 years since the NATO bombing of Serbia to force it to leave its Kosovo province in 1999.
“Since the Kosovo War with the takedown Milosevic, we have been working to subvert or overthrow any ally or potential ally of Russia with a tactical aim of weakening them, and with Russia as the ultimate target. The Wolfowitz doctrine stated that. Now we are getting closer,” he noted.
Pierce noted that long-term US strategy toward Russia was similar to the policy that the United States feared it was experiencing from the Soviet Union through the decades of the Cold War.
“Remember when the Soviet Union seemed to be encircling us with Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Grenada? And how that angered us? We saw it there as their military aggressiveness… We took it as a threat which needed to be countered,” he said.
Current US policies of deploying increasingly large military forces and weapons systems around the periphery of Russia from the Baltics to Turkey was bound to generate those kinds of fears in Moscow, Pierce warned.
Only 9% of Germans back NATO buildup in Eastern Europe – poll
RT | June 30, 2016
Only nine percent of Germans support NATO’s buildup in Eastern Europe, a new YouGov poll found. Two-thirds also agreed with Germany’s Foreign Minister, who recently said the military alliance should abandon its “sabre-rattling” at Russia’s doorstep.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier drew much flak from local media for saying earlier in June that NATO’s “war-mongering” near Russia’s borders only adds fuel to an “old confrontation.” However, a recent survey shows that the majority of Germans largely agree with him.
Some 64 percent of respondents share Steinmeier’s views, according to a poll conducted by YouGov at the request of DPA news agency, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Only 16 percent rejected the Foreign Minister’s statement, and just 9 approved of the German government’s plan to send hundreds of troops to the Baltics in order to help deter what NATO calls “Russian assertiveness.”
On June 18, Foreign Minister Steinmeier slammed NATO’s plan, in which Germany is expected to play a lead role, to deploy both troops and military equipment to the Baltics.
Speaking to Bild am Sonntag newspaper, he said, “Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.” NATO’s “saber-rattling and warmongering” only aggravate already extant tensions in the region and will not help restore trust and dialogue with Moscow, he added.
It would be “fatal to now narrow the focus to the military, and seek a remedy solely through a policy of deterrence,” the German FM said, before stressing, “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.”
The statement sparked a barrage of accusations in the German media, with some newspapers calling the FM’s comments “a gift to Putin” and “an unprecedented act of disloyalty.”
However, several days later Gernot Erler, the German government’s coordinator for Russia, echoed Steinmeier’s remarks, telling Passauer Neue Presse, “Decisions to station troops and military operations swing wildly from one side to another. It is dangerous.”
“This is exactly the kind of developments which lead to uncontrolled situations, even war,” Erler said.
Earlier in June, NATO green-lighted the deployment of a 4,000-strong force in the Baltic countries and Poland, in addition to the more than 1,000 troops already stationed there on a rotational basis.
On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that NATO and the US have deployed “about 1,200 pieces of military equipment, including 30 combat jets” in the region.
Moscow has repeatedly criticized NATO’s build-up in Eastern Europe, calling it a needless provocation and promising an adequate response.
Read more:
Rapid Trident: Largest US Army-led multinational exercise kicks off in Ukraine
Europeans Contest US Anti-Russian Hype
By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | June 27, 2016
A significant crack has been unexpectedly opened in the wall of Europe’s disciplined obedience to the United States. I’m not only referring to the possible long-term consequences for U.S.-European relations in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, but the unlikely blow against Washington’s information war on Moscow delivered by Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who a week ago shockingly accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of “war-mongering” against Russia.
German FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Since the Bush administration’s twisting of events in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, which the E.U. blamed on Georgia, Western populations have been subjected to the steady message that Russia is a “threat” to the West and is guilty of “aggression.” This reached a peak with the false narrative of events in Ukraine, in which blatant evidence of the West’s complicity in a violent coups d’état was omitted from corporate media accounts, while Russia’s assistance to eastern Ukrainians resisting the coup has been framed as a Russian “invasion.”
The disinformation campaign has reached the depths of popular culture, including the EuroVision song contest and sports doping scandals, to ensure widespread popular support for U.S. hostile intentions against Russia.
The Russian “aggression” narrative, based largely on lies of omission, has prepared the way for the U.S. to install a missile-shield in Romania with offensive capabilities and to stage significant NATO war games with 31,000 troops on Russia’s borders. For the first time in 75 years, German troops retraced the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
U.S. Designs on Russia
The U.S. is eyeing a post-Putin Russia in which a Wall Street-friendly leader like Boris Yeltsin can be restored to reopen the country to Western exploitation. But Vladimir Putin is no Yeltsin and has proven a tough nut for the U.S. to crack. Washington’s modus operandi is to continually provoke and blame an opponent until it stands up for itself, as Putin’s Russia has done, then accuse it of “aggression” and attack in “self-defense.”
In this way, Washington builds popular support for its own version of events and resistance to the other side of the story. Unfortunately it is not a new trick in the U.S. playbook.
“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception,” wrote Mark Twain.
So suddenly, after many years of an air-tight, anti-Russia campaign believed unquestioningly by hundreds of millions of Westerners, comes Steinmeier last week blurting out the most significant truth about Russia uttered by a Western official perhaps in decades.
“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Steinmeier stunningly told Bild am Sontag newspaper. “Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”
Instead Steinmeier called for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he said, saying it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.”
In keeping with the U.S. propaganda strategy, the U.S. corporate media virtually ignored the remarks, which should have been front-page news. The New York Times did not report Steinmeier’s statement, but two days later ran a Reuter’s story only online leading with the U.S. military’s rejection of his remarks.
NATO General: Russia is No Threat
Just a day after Steinmeier was quoted in Bild, General Petr Pavel, chairman of NATO’s military committee, dropped another bombshell. Pavel told a Brussels press conference flat out that Russia was not at a threat to the West.
“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing,” he said.
What? What happened to Russian “aggression” and the Russian “threat?” What is the meaning then of the fear of Russia pounded every day into the heads of Western citizens? Is it all a lie? Two extraordinary on-the-record admissions by two men, Steinmeier, the foreign minister of Europe’s most powerful nation, and an active NATO general in charge of the military committee, both revealing that what Western officials repeat every day is indeed a lie, a lie that may be acknowledged in private but would never before be mentioned in public.
Two years ago I was in a background briefing with a senior European ambassador at his country’s U.N. mission in New York and could hardly believe my ears when he said talk about Russia’s threat to Eastern Europe was “all hype” designed to give NATO “a reason to exist.” Yet this same ambassador in public Security Council meetings would viciously attack Russia.
But the hype is about more than just saving NATO. The fear campaign feeds the American and European military industries and most importantly puts pressure on the Russian government, which the U.S. wants overthrown.
Were these remarks made out of the exasperation of knowing all along that the Russian threat is hype? Were they made out of genuine concern that things could get out of hand under reckless and delusional leaders in Washington leading to a hot war with Russia?
Neither man has been disciplined for speaking out. Does this signal a change in official German thinking? Will German businessmen who deal with Russia and have opposed sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine, which were forced on Germany by the U.S., be listened to?
Were Steinmeier’s remarks a one-off act of rebellion, or is Germany indeed considering defying Washington on sanctions and regime change in Moscow? Is the German government finally going to act in Germany’s own interests? Such a move would spark a European defiance of the United States not seen since the days when Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO in 1966 to preserve French independence.
The last time European governments broke with Washington on a major issue was the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Then France and Germany joined Russia on the U.N. Security Council in blocking the war’s authorization (although Britain supported it). But France and Germany then voted for a resolution several months later that essentially condoned the invasion.
It’s Up to the European Public
One has to ask whether a conditioned German public is ready to see through the lies about Russia. Last November, I flew from St. Petersburg to Berlin and discussed this very question with a number of well-educated Germans.
I had visited Russia for the first time since 1995, 20 years before to the month. Those were the days of the Yeltsin-Jeffery Sachs Russia, of the unbridled neoliberal capitalism of the Wall Street-oligarch alliance that plundered the country leaving millions of Russians destitute. Outside train stations I saw homeless encampments replete with campfires. Policemen were stopping motorists for bribes. I ran from two men intent on robbing me until I lost them in a Metro station. That’s the Russia the neocons in Washington and the knaves and buccaneers on Wall Street want to see again.
The Russia I saw in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 20 years later, was orderly and prosperous, as modern as any European city. It is a testament to Russia’s resistance to American attempts to restore its political and financial control. Russia is a capitalist country. But on its own terms. It is fully aware of American machinations to undermine it.
In Berlin I met several Germans, educated, liberal and completely aware, unlike most Americans, of how the United Sates has abused its post-World War II power. And yet when I asked them all why there are still U.S. military bases in Germany 70 years after the war and 25 years after the Cold War ended, and who the Americans were protecting them from, the universal answer was: Russia.
History shows European fears of Russia to be completely overblown. Germany and other Western powers have invaded Russia three times in the last two centuries: France in 1812, U.S., Britain and France in the 1918 Russian Civil War, and Germany again in 1941. Except for Imperial Russia’s incursion into East Prussia after war was declared on it in 1914, the reverse has never been true.
In his memoirs Harry Truman admitted that false fear of Russia was the “tragedy and shame of our time” during the Cold War that he had much to do with in part to revive the U.S. post-war economy with military spending. George Kennan, the State Department official who advised a non-military containment of the Soviet Union, conceded as early as 1947 that Soviet moves in Eastern Europe were defensive and constituted no threat. In the 1990s, Kennan also decried NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s borders.
With its vast natural resources, Russia has been the big prize for the West for centuries, and is still today in neocon-driven Washington. But Germany, especially, has benefited from trade with Russia and has no need to join the U.S. imperial project.
The British voters’ decision, days after Steinmeier’s extraordinary remark, could herald significant change in Europe, which may be approaching an historical junction in its relationship with the United States. Growing anti-E.U. sentiment has spread across the continent, including calls for similar referenda in several countries.
British voters evidently saw through the hype about the Russian “threat,” as a majority did not buy British Prime Minister David Cameron’s scare tactic ahead of the vote that Brexit would make it harder to “combat Russian aggression.”
Britain has been called Washington’s Trojan horse in the E.U. The thinking is that without Britain, the E.U. would be freer to chart its own course. But as Alexander Mercouris explained here, Obama bypasses London to call Merkel directly with his demands. Still, removing Britain’s voice from the E.U., though more crucially not from NATO, opens space for more independent voices in Europe to emerge.
“I worry that we will have less clout on our own,” former British Ambassador to the United States Peter Westmacott told The New York Times. “In the future, we won’t have as much influence on Europe’s response to Putin’s transgressions, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or the E.U.’s foreign and security policy. … And we will be less able to ensure it is U.S.-friendly.”
But that could be a good thing. If German leaders conclude the United States is pushing Europe into a disastrous war with Russia, could we see a Charles de Gaulle moment in Berlin? Merkel doesn’t seem to have it in her. Three days after Steinmeier’s remarks, she told a news conference she favored increased German spending for NATO to counter Russian “threats.”
Instead it will require a revolt by an awakened citizenry against the E.U. and elected European governments that refuse to stand up to Washington, mostly because it benefits their own class interests, to the detriment of the majority.
The Future of the EU
European social democracy had been probably the best social and political system ever devised on earth, maybe the best that is humanly possible. Europe could have been a model for the world as a neutral power committed to social justice. As late as 1988, Jacques Delors, then president of the European Commission, promised the British Trades Union Congress that the E.U. would be a “social market.”
Instead the E.U. allowed itself to be sold out to unelected and unaccountable neoliberal technocrats now in charge in Brussels. European voters, perhaps not fully understanding the consequences, elected neoliberal national governments slavishly taking Washington’s foreign policy orders. But Brexit shows those voters are getting educated. Unity is a great ideal but E.U. leaders have refused to accept that it has to benefit all Europeans.
The E.U.’s Lisbon Treaty is the only constitution in the world that has neoliberal policies written into it. If it won’t reform — and the arrogance of the E.U.’s leaders tells us it won’t — it will be up to the people of Europe to diminish or dismantle the E.U. through additional referenda. That would give liberated European nations the chance to elect anti-neoliberal national governments, accountable to the voters, which can also chart foreign policies independent of Washington.
The danger is that the right-wing sentiment that has driven a large part of the anti-Establishment movements in Europe (and the U.S.) may elect governments that grow even closer to Washington and impose even harsher neoliberal policies.
That is a risk that may need to be taken in the hope that the anti-Establishment left and right can coalesce around shared interests to put an end to the elitist European project.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached atjoelauria@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.
US to deploy Israeli missile system on Russian borders: General
Press TV – June 28, 2016
The US military has tested an Israeli short-range missile for possible use in its European network of missile systems to deter Russia, says a US Army general.
Major General Glenn Bramhall of the US Army’s Air and Missile Defense Command made the comments on Monday, as he visited the occupied Palestinian territories.
Bramhall said his units needed a reliable system to counter less powerful missile threats as a third tier beside the Army’s array of midrange Patriot and THAAD missile systems.
“Patriot and THAAD are great systems that do what they were designed to do. But I don’t think we would want to waste a Patriot or a THAAD missile on something that can be affected by something that’s lower cost and is actually designed for that job itself,” the general told Reuters.
For that purpose, he said the US military has test-launched a variant of the Israeli “Tamir” rocket which is incorporated to the Tel Aviv regime’s so-called Iron Dome missile system.
Jointly manufactured by American and Israeli firms, each Tamir battery, consisting of a radar unit, missile control unit, and several launchers, is worth $50 million, with each missile costing about $100,000.
“I think we are looking at something that is similar to Iron Dome. We have looked at the Tamir as a possible missile,” Bramhall said. He was due to inspect an Iron Dome unit on Tuesday.
Russian deterrence
Elsewhere in his remarks, the American general noted that the Israeli missile system is being considered mainly as a deterrent against what he called Russia’s military buildup in Europe.
“With all that is happening in Europe, especially the fact that Russia has really awakened itself and has really decided to rebuild its military and is really posing a threat, we are looking at how we can do the multi-tiered defense,” Bramhall said.
Military tensions between Russia and the US further heightened in May, when American and NATO officials activated a land-based missile system in Romania, despite Russia’s warning against US-led arms deployments near its borders.
The missiles’ activation marked the penultimate step in the completion of a missile shield, which Washington proposed nearly a decade ago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly criticized the system’s deployment, vowing to neutralize any threats against his country’s security.
After Decades of Russian Goodwill, Norway Builds Up Military Against Moscow
Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg and Russian President Medvedev at the 2010 meeting cementing the new delimitation of the Barents Sea maritime border in Norway’s favor.
Sputnik – June 26, 2016
Earlier this month, Norway’s government announced a new defense plan, amounting to the largest military modernization since the Cold War, directed against Russia. Commenting on the initiative, journalist Sviatoslav Knyazev suggested that the country’s government has chosen to forget decades of good-neighborly relations between Oslo and Moscow.
Last weekend, Norwegian media reported on the country’s most ambitious plans to modernize the country’s armed forces since the end of the Cold War.
The government plans include the purchase of at least 52 Lockheed Martin F-35 fifth-generation multirole fighter jets, four submarines (presumably Swedish-built diesel subs), and six coastal patrol aircraft. Plans also include the construction of five new frigates and six corvettes.Overall, the defense budget of the country of five million is expected to increase by 165 billion kroner (about $19.4 billion US) over the next 20 years.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg did not mince words as to who exactly the buildup is directed against, stating that “we have an increasingly unpredictable neighbor to the east which is strengthening its military capacity, and showing willingness to use military force as a political tool.”
Solberg’s comments followed on promises by Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide in February 2015 that her country would be reorganizing its armed forces to counter the so-called ‘Russian threat’. At that time, the official candidly admitted that Russian forces had “not breached our territory,” but added that Oslo was worried over the increase in the range and number of Russian military aircrafts’ flights near the country.
On the border between Norway and Russia, Oslo is deploying a new army unit, consisting of 200 rangers, to be deployed in the Sor-Varanger municipality in Finnmark county, strengthening a several-hundred strong contingent of border guards. These units, equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, will be based in the direct vicinity of the Russian town of Pechenga.Commenting on the buildup in a piece for the online news and analysis portal PolitRussia, independent journalist Sviatoslav Knyazev recalled that “even before the modernization, the Norwegian Armed Forces were relatively powerful.”
“The per capita defense costs of the Kingdom are the highest in Europe. The armed forces are small enough (about 30,000 on active duty and some 45,000 in the reserve) but well prepared and equipped. Taking account of mandatory military service and its high prestige, a large portion of the population has military training. In the event of a hypothetical conflict, Norway can put several hundred thousand people under arms.”
Listing off the inventory of the country’s armed forces, Knyazev recalled that its ground forces have 52 Leopard 2A4 tanks, along with 20 older Leopard 1A5s, along with 315 M113 armored personnel carriers, 104 Swedish-made CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, and 80 SISU XA-185 and XA-203 armored personnel carriers. The army also has about 200 multi-purpose armored vehicles, and a number of self-propelled guns and multiple launch rocket systems.
The Air Force, for its part, has 57 F-16 multirole fighters, while the Navy has five frigates, six corvettes and six submarines.With these figures and the government’s latest plans in mind, the journalist pointed out that Norway is “effectively planning to double the strength of its Navy and Air Force (or completely modernize it). We are talking about billions of dollars of spending, a lot even for a wealthy country like Norway.”
Unfortunately, Knyazev emphasized, “all of this is directed solely against us [Russia].” At the same time, “Norway’s desire to ‘play with toy soldiers’ and to create conditions which could destabilize our northern border seems doubly strange in the context of Moscow’s long record of friendly relations toward Oslo.”
For a start, the journalist pointed out, the Russian Empire was one of the first to recognize Norway’s independence, soon after the country broke off from Sweden in 1905. Later, after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the emergence of the Soviet Union, diplomatic relations were established in short order, with relations established in 1924.
“In 1944,” Knyazev recalled, “its was the Red Army which fought to liberate [northern] Norway from the Nazi invaders. Thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers paid with their lives for the country’s freedom. After that, the Soviet Union, itself ravaged by war, helped to restore its northern neighbor. The USSR provided food rations, and Red Army engineering units helped rebuild ruined buildings. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not even try to create a zone of influence in Norway or to reshape its borders. In September 1945, having assisted its neighbors with aid, Soviet troops voluntarily left the country.”
Later, in the 1970s, a territorial dispute broke out between Moscow and Oslo over the maritime border in the Barents Sea, rich in offshore hydrocarbon reserves and fishing resources. “However, in 2010, Russia voluntarily ceded half of the disputed territory and signed a treaty ‘On Maritime Delimitation and Cooperation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean.'”
In 1949, the journalist bitterly recalled, the Norwegian government “thanked” the USSR for its contribution to the country’s liberation by joining the NATO alliance. “Now, it seems, we are being ‘thanked’ for the [2010] territorial gift, the shelf and the hydrocarbons worth tens of billions of dollars…”
“First, Norway introduced sanctions against us over a war unleashed by Washington in Ukraine [in 2014], then caused a scandal because of our Deputy Prime Minister’s visit to Svalbard [in 2015], and now they are up in arms and creating new military units directed against us.”Meanwhile, Knyazev lamented, “Jens Stoltenberg, the same former Norwegian Prime Minister who earned political capital through the 2010 demarcation agreement, is now directing the NATO bloc’s aggressive anti-Russian activities. Today, he is calling for strengthening NATO’s presence in the Baltic and Black seas, suggesting that the anti-Russian missile defense system in Eastern Europe is nothing out of the ordinary, and calling for ‘deterrence’ against Russia, which in actuality is not planning to attack anyone.”
Ultimately, the journalist suggested, “Norway, unfortunately, is a new example of the fact that befriending Western countries and doing them good is quite a thankless occupation…”
See also:
Norway Follows in US Footsteps, Ready to Deploy Aid to Syrian Rebels
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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