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NATO troops active in Ukraine – El Pais

RT | March 19, 2024

Active and former military personnel from NATO states have long been operating in Ukraine, overseeing Kiev’s use of Western-supplied weapons, El Pais reported on Monday.

The US-led military bloc has been involved “in virtually every possible aspect” of the hostilities aside from active combat operations, the Spanish newspaper claimed. That includes supplying weapons, providing targeting information, and training Ukrainian soldiers inside the country, El Pais reported, citing interviews conducted throughout the conflict.

Retired foreign military service members who have joined the Ukrainian armed forces as “volunteers” are also serving as de facto agents for their home nations, El Pais said. They provide “knowledge about the situation on the front, to identify the effectiveness of the weapons supplied and possible problems in their use, as well as to detect possible cases of corruption concerning the aid provided,” the outlet claimed.

The presence of current and former NATO troops has been tacitly admitted by officials, the Spanish newspaper reported. It described recent suggestions by French President Emmanuel Macron that Western nations could send soldiers to Ukraine as “taboo-breaking,” in the sense of proposing active combat roles for Western military personnel.

While a handful of Western leaders have backed Macron’s position that deployments to aid Kiev in the conflict with Russia cannot be ruled out, numerous officials – including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – have dismissed the idea.

Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for Western interests. It considers foreigners fighting for Kiev as “mercenaries” who are doing the bidding of Western governments.

“We hear both French and English speech there [in the Ukraine conflict]. There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they die there and in large numbers,” President Vladimir Putin said last week, commenting on Macron’s remarks on potential Western troop deployments.

Senior Russian officials have suggested that more complex weapon systems provided to Kiev are highly likely operated by NATO staff, as there was not sufficient time to train Ukrainians on how to handle them.

Last month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed the involvement of British and French forces in preparing Ukrainian missile launches, as he explained why Berlin would not supply similar weapons to Kiev.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Russia Considers US Proposals to Start Arms Control Talks ‘Hypocrisy’

Sputnik – 18.03.2024

Moscow considers Washington’s proposals to hold arms control talks “hypocrisy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.

“American officials are declaring their alleged desire to enter into arms control discussions with Russia without preconditions but they clearly did not bother to read the February 29 address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, which has our fundamental assessments of this kind of hypocrisy and demagogy amid Washington’s desire to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia,” the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the United States stands ready to engage in bilateral arms control talks with China and Russia without any preconditions.

“The United States is willing to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and China right now, without preconditions. All they have to do is say ‘yes’ and come to the table in good faith,” Thomas-Greenfield said during a UN Security Council meeting.

Russia’s policy has not changed, and the country is ready to discuss arms control altogether with focus on issues that directly involve Moscow’s security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.

“In the meantime, we are invited to conduct dialogue exclusively on US terms and only on those issues that are of interest to Washington,” the ministry said.

Deputy Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy in turn said that the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States on arms control is only possible if the US and NATO revise their anti-Russian course.

“Any interaction will only be possible if the United States and NATO review their anti-Russian course and when they show that they are ready to participate in comprehensive dialogue taking into account all of our strategic stability factors and removing all of the concerns that we have,” Polyanskiy said at the UN Security Council meeting.

He stressed that the strategic dialogue between the US and the Russian Federation cannot be separated from the general and military context.

At the same time Russia stands ready to negotiate on the issue of nuclear disarmament with interested countries during the new Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) Review conference, Polyanskiy added.

“We expect that our Western colleagues will abandon their very dangerous and destructive course. We are open within the new NPT Review conference to a constructive dialogue with all countries interested in reaching a consensus understanding on how we can create preconditions for further nuclear disarmament,” he said.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Genocide Exposes Fraud of U.S.-led NATO’s Humanitarian Wars

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 17, 2024

Twenty-five years ago, the United States and the NATO military alliance launched an illegal war on former Yugoslavia.

It was a watershed event that led to a series of US-led NATO wars around the world over the next quarter century until today – all on the basis of some lofty principle about “defending” human rights or democracy.

In the former Yugoslavia, the 10-week aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, 1999, caused hundreds of civilian deaths and destroyed the infrastructure of what was then a well-developed socialist country.

The rationale for the military intervention was declared to be a “humanitarian” one – allegedly to protect civilians in a civil war.

International lawyer and author Dan Kovalik says that the “humanitarian” pretext for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was a sham.

The real objective, he says, was for the United States and its Western imperialist partners to create a precedent for systematically violating international law.

Kovalik is the author of the book ‘No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using Humanitarian Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests’.

The NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia did not have legal authorization from the United Nations Security Council. It was a unilateral action more accurately defined as an illegal aggression – a war crime.

Kovalik notes that the historical period was a crucial one. During the 1990s, the United States was reconfiguring its imperial power in the post-Cold War era (1945-90). With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington was proclaimed to be the sole superpower. He says that the United States wanted to establish its prerogative in the post-Cold War world of using its military power and that of its NATO partners wherever and whenever it needed for the purpose of advancing its strategic interests.

The US-led aggression against Yugoslavia was thus an opening to a new world order for American and NATO military power to be used at will in total disregard of international law and the United Nations Charter that had been drawn up in 1945 to prevent the kind of aggression that Nazi Germany had waged.

In short, it was a reinvention of imperialism dressed in a cloak of virtue.

Following Yugoslavia, which was balkanized as a result of the NATO aggression, the United States and its military partners embarked on a 25-year orgy of illegal wars and covert interventions. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and other places in the Middle East and Africa. Endless wars costing the Western public trillions of dollars and fomenting a litany of socio-economic problems from mass migration to mass poverty – all of these wars have been engaged in by successive US presidents, including Democrat incumbent Joe Biden and his Republican rival Donald Trump.

The current war in Ukraine – the biggest since World War Two – can be attributed to NATO’s relentless expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past 25 years. Washington and its Western partners claim to be defending democracy, human rights and international law in Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression. This Western narrative ignores the reality that the US and its NATO partners have militarized a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine for at least eight years before the current conflict erupted on February 24, 2022.

Daniel Kovalik concludes with a devastating argument: if the United States and its NATO allies are so concerned by humanitarian principles and democracy then why are they not intervening to stop the genocide in Gaza against Palestinians? Over 30,000 people – mainly women and children – have been killed by Israeli military offensive. Far from intervening to protect civilians from Israeli slaughter and starvation, the United States and its NATO partners are fully complicit in supporting Israeli war crimes – militarily, politically and diplomatically.

Western “humanitarian intervention” so readily embarked on elsewhere is exposed as a grotesque fraud to cover for US imperialist crimes.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Why is the West Suddenly Revealing Its Troop Presence in Ukraine?

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | March 18, 2024

It has long been an open secret that the West has been providing Ukraine with funding, weapons, training, maintenance, targeting intelligence, and intelligence on the position of Russian forces and vulnerabilities, and even war-gaming. They have provided Ukraine with everything but the bodies. President Joe Biden has long insisted that American troops “are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine.” The West has long denied that it is directly involved in the war or that they have troops in Ukraine.

And that is mostly true. It is Ukrainian soldiers that are being injured and killed in the hundreds of thousands. But it is not entirely true.

After two years of steadfast denial, there has been, over just a couple of weeks in February and March, a flurry of admissions and revelations that there are NATO troops in Ukraine. The question is, why? What is the motivation behind this sudden trove of revelations?

The flurry was kicked off by the release of a transcript of an intercepted February 19 conversation between senior German air force officials that revealed that the United Kingdom has people on the ground in Ukraine. Discussing how German Taurus long-range missiles could be operated in Ukraine, one official says that the Germans “know how the English do it…They have several people on-site.” The conversation between the German officials also appears to implicate the United States. One official says, “It’s known that there are numerous people there in civilian attire who speak with an American accent.”

On February 26, a New York Times report revealed who those civilians may be. More than 200 current and former officials leaked to the Times that “scores” of CIA officers are in Ukraine where they “help the Ukrainians” by providing “intelligence for targeted missile strikes” and “intelligence support for lethal operations against Russian forces on Ukrainian soil.”

On February 26, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz broadened the list to include France. Scholz defended his decision not to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine by saying that it would require the presence of Germans in Ukraine to match their British and French counterparts. He explained, “What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can’t be done in Germany.”

And on March 8, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski stunningly confirmed that “NATO military personnel are already present in Ukraine.” Critical of Scholz, he differentiated himself by not revealing which NATO countries are already in Ukraine. “NATO soldiers are already present in Ukraine. And I would like to thank the ambassadors of those countries who have taken that risk. These countries know who they are, but I can’t disclose them. Contrary to other politicians, I will not list those countries.”

France and Britain reportedly responded with outrage at the intercepted air force conversation. And they were just as furious with Scholz for his revelation. Former UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace said that “Scholz’s behaviour has showed that as far as the security of Europe goes he is the wrong man, in the wrong job at the wrong time.” Alicia Kearns, chair of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, called Scholz’s comment “wrong, irresponsible and a slap in the face to allies.” One Berlin-based diplomat reportedly says that “Macron and Scholz aren’t even talking to each other.”

But despite the anger at being called out, neither the British nor the French denied Scholz’s revelation. Despite Kearns’ comment that Scholz is “wrong,” the British Prime Minister’s office confirmed that they do have boots on the ground: “Beyond the small number of personnel we do have in the country supporting the armed forces of Ukraine, we haven’t got any plans for large-scale deployment.”

The French responded by saying that if they don’t have troops in Ukraine, perhaps they should; not exactly an angry rebuke of Scholz. French President Emmanuel Macron said, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.” Though Scholz immediately replied that the consensus was “that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there by European states or NATO states,” Macron pointed out, “Many of the people who say ‘never, never’ today were the same people who said never, never tanks; never, never planes; never, never long-range missiles…I remind you that two years ago, many around this table said: ‘We will offer sleeping bags and helmets.’”

In just a couple of weeks, American and German leaks placed U.S. troops in Ukraine, Germany placed France and Britain in Ukraine, the British confirmed they were in Ukraine, Poland confirmed that NATO troops were in Ukraine, and France suggested that, if they’re not, perhaps they should be. What is the motivation behind this sudden chorus of confessions?

There are at least four—and probably a lot more—possibilities. All of them are just speculation.

The least scary is that, recognizing that the West has lost the war in Ukraine and that, after encouraging Ukraine to reject a diplomatic solution in favor of pressing the fight with the promise of Western weapons and support for as long as it takes, the leading supporters of Ukraine are trying to establish the case that they did everything they could: even putting troops on the ground in Ukraine.

The second least scary is that the leaks and revelations are meant to pressure the United States and some European countries to send more financial aid and weapons packages to Ukraine. The belief might be that the they would find that option more palatable than crossing their own red line and sending troops into Ukraine.

The third least scary is that the West is trying to create a perception in Russia of strategic ambiguity. The French newspaper Le Monde reports, “Macron’s office explained that the aim is to restore the West’s ‘strategic ambiguity.’ After the failure of the Ukrainian 2023 counter-offensive, the French president believes that promising tens of billions of euros in aid and delivering—delayed—military equipment to Kyiv is no longer enough. Especially if Putin is convinced that the West has permanently ruled out mobilizing its forces.”

The scariest possibility that was suggested to me is that the West is serious both about NATO troops already being in Ukraine and about the possibility of sending more NATO troops not being ruled out. The leaks and revelations are intended to lay the groundwork for sending more troops. The idea is to sell the idea of sending more troops by desensitizing reluctant Western partners to the risk by pointing out that the risk has already been taken. They might even add that Russia knows it and hasn’t escalated and drawn the West into a NATO-Russia war.

If true, that is a dangerous and difficult to calculate risk. How many troops could be sent before triggering a Russian response? Hopefully, the United States, Germany and others, including Spain, Greece, and Slovakia are sincere in their insistence that no (more?) NATO troops will be sent to Ukraine. One German source told Le Monde that Macron “said that there was no consensus on the subject, but that’s not true: The truth is that France was isolated because most participants expressed their clear refusal.”

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Latvia urging UK to ‘prepare for war’ with Russia

By Lucas Leiroz | March 18, 2024

The Baltic countries continue their “preparation for war with Russia.” Now, as if it were not enough to engage in a suicidal militarization campaign, Latvia is also demanding that the main NATO countries, such as the UK, also begin adopting radical measures to prepare for the “inevitable” confrontation with Moscow. The main Latvian criticism of the British concerns the military service, with the Baltic country asking the UK to immediately resume conscription policies to increase the size of its forces.

Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins, stated that all NATO countries should follow the Latvian example when it comes to military preparation. According to him, it is necessary to implement special militarization measures and improve defense capacity in the face of the supposed “Russian threat”, which is why Western countries should unite in a common military policy. Karins believes that not all NATO states are efficiently engaged in this military preparation process. In this regard, he criticizes even the stance of key countries in the bloc, such as the UK.

Karins was asked by a journalist from The Telegraph about whether London should adopt mandatory military service for its citizens. He resolutely responded that Latvia “strongly recommends” such an attitude. According to Karins, Latvia is developing a system called “total defense”, in which all the country’s efforts are directed towards expanding military capacity. Efforts include all sectors of civil society, thus requiring a system of total mobilization within which mandatory military service is vital.

“We would strongly recommend this. We are developing and fleshing out a system of what we call a total defense involving all parts of civil society,” he said.

Recently, advancing its militarization policies, Latvia reintroduced military conscription. The measure was justified by the supposed need to expand the “active and ready reserve”, given the apparent “imminence” of an armed conflict. Under current Latvian law, all male citizens between 18 and 27 must complete at least one year of military service – including Latvians living abroad. Karins praises this model and calls on the entire West to adopt it, jointly engaging in “total defense”.

Furthermore, Karins also stated that a growth in defense spending is “inevitable”, thus asking London to reach the minimum target of 3% of GDP with military affairs. The top Latvian diplomat also praised the Finnish recruitment system. According to him, Finland has a small active army, but an extremely strong and “well-trained” reserve, making it possible to immediately enlist citizens for war, if necessary. Karins states that Latvia was inspired by the Finnish model and that all countries should do the same.

In fact, discussions about increasing militarization in the UK are already growing rapidly. Recently, British defense minister Grant Shapps called on the country to prepare for a situation of conflict on multiple fronts in the next five years. According to Shapps, tensions will worsen in the near future, and the UK needs to be prepared to face countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

“In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theaters [of conflict] including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea (..) Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow, so 2024 must mark an inflection point,” he said at the time.

In the same vein, the UK’s Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, has constantly made controversial statements praising anti-Russian warmongering mentality and encouraging his country towards militarization. According to him, the conflict in Ukraine creates an “imperative” for the reconstruction of the British army. Sanders believes that London needs to be able to fight a protracted war on European soil.

“There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle (…) We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again,” Sanders said. He also recently called on the UK to adopt a system of broad militarization, training “citizen soldiers“. The aim would be to create a strong reserve army among the common people of the country. Indeed, what Sanders calls a “citizen army” is in practice just a disguised model of total mobilization.

As we can see, Latvia’s bellicose ideas may receive broad domestic support in the UK. Currently, the British army has only 75,983 soldiers. Jointly, the army, navy and air force have 184,865 active-duty personnel. The numbers are the lowest in the country since the Napoleonic Wars, which has “worried” pro-war militants. In practice, Western officials and decision-makers have been constantly deceived by their own propaganda, which is why many people actually believe in the “necessity” of fighting Russia.

The main problem is that these measures confront the reality of Western countries. In the UK, there is currently a serious economic crisis, with the country falling into recession and criticism of the government increasing sharply. Engaging in a process of militarization would be, in addition to dangerous and unnecessary, a truly “suicidal” measure for the national economy. It remains to be seen whether this reality will be admitted by the local government or whether irrational pro-war tendencies will prevail in the country.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The big lie behind the Western narrative on Russia is leading us to World War III

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | March 15, 2024

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”)

The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least.

Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry.

And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback.

In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened.

It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

Regarding EU-Europe in particular, on one thing French President Emmanuel Macron is half right. Russia’s victory “would reduce Europe’s credibility to zero.” Except, of course, a mind of greater Cartesian precision would have detected that Moscow’s victory will merely be the last stage in a longer process.

The deeper causes of EU/NATO-Europe’s loss of global standing are threefold. First, its own wanton decision to seek confrontation instead of a clearly feasible compromise and cooperation with Russia (why exactly is a neutral Ukraine impossible to live with again?) Second, the American strategy of systematically diminishing EU/NATO-Europe with a short-sighted policy of late-imperial client cannibalization which takes the shape of aggressive deindustrialization and a “Europeanization” of the war in Ukraine. And third, the European clients’ grotesque acquiescence to the above.

That is the background to a recent wave of mystifying signals coming out of Western, especially EU/NATO elites: First, we have had a wave of scare propaganda to accompany the biggest NATO maneuvers since the end of the Cold War. Next Macron publicly declared and has kept reiterating that the open – not in covert-but-obvious mode, as now – deployment of Western ground troops in Ukraine is an option. He added a cheap demagogic note by calling on Europeans not to be “cowards,” by which he means that they should be ready to follow, in effect, his orders and fight Russia, clearly including inside and on behalf of Ukraine. Never mind that the latter is a not an official member of either NATO or the EU as well as a highly corrupt and anything but democratic state.

In response, a divergence has surfaced inside EU/NATO Europe: The German government has been most outspoken in contradicting Macron. Not only Chancellor Scholz rushed to distance himself. A clearly outraged Boris Pistorius – Berlin’s hapless minister of defense, recently tripped up by his own generals’ stupendously careless indiscretion over the Taurus missiles – has grumbled that there is no need for “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.” Perhaps more surprisingly, Poland, the Czech Republic as well as NATO figurehead Jens Stoltenberg (i.e., the US) have been quick to state that they are, in effect, not ready to support Macron’s initiative. The French public, by the way, is not showing any enthusiasm for a Napoleonic escalation either. A Le Figaro poll shows 68 percent against openly sending ground troops to Ukraine.

On the other side, Macron has found some support. He is not entirely isolated, which helps explain why he has dug in his heels: Zelensky does not count in this respect. His bias is obvious, and his usual delusions notwithstanding he is not calling the shots on the matter. The Baltic states, however, while military micro-dwarfs, are, unfortunately, in a position to exert some influence inside the EU and NATO. And true to form, they have sided with the French president, with Estonia and Lithuania taking the lead.

It remains impossible to be certain what we are looking at. To get the most far-fetched hypothesis out of the way first: is this a coordinated bluff with a twist? A complicated Western attempt at playing good-cop bad-cop against Russia, with Macron launching the threats and others signaling that Moscow could find them less extreme, at a diplomatic price, of course? Hardly. For one thing, that scheme would be so hare-brained, even the current West is unlikely to try. No, the crack opening up in Western unity is real.

Regarding Macron himself, too-clever-by-half, counter-productive cunning is his style. We cannot know what exactly he is trying to do; and he may not know himself. In essence, there are two possibilities. Either the French president now is a hard-core escalationist determined to widen the war into an open clash between Russia and NATO, or he is a high-risk gambler who is engaged in a bluff to achieve three purposes. Frighten Moscow into abstaining from pushing its military advantage in Ukraine (a hopeless idea); score nationalist “grandeur” points domestically in France (which is failing already); and increase his weight inside EU/NATO-Europe by “merely” posturing as, once again, a new “Churchill” – whom Macron himself has made sure to allude to, in all his modesty. (And some of his fans, including Zelensky, a grizzled veteran of Churchill live action role play, have already made that de rigueur if stale comparison.)

While we cannot entirely unriddle the moody sphinx of the Elysée or, for that matter, the murky dealings of EU/NATO-European elites, we can say two things. First, whatever Macron thinks he is doing, it is extremely dangerous. Russia would treat EU/NATO-state troops in Ukraine as targets – and it won’t matter one wit if they turn up labeled “NATO” or under national flags “only.” Russia has also reiterated that it considers its vital interests affected in Ukraine and that if its leadership perceives a vital threat to Russia, nuclear weapons are an option. The warning could not be clearer.

Second, here is the core Western problem that is now – due to Russia undeniably winning the war – becoming acute: Western elites are split between “pragmatists” and “extremists.” The pragmatists are as Russophobic and strategically misguided as the extremists, but they do shy away from World War Three. Yet these pragmatists, who seek to resist hard-core escalationists and rein in at least high-risk gamblers, are brought up short against a crippling contradiction in their own position and messaging: As of now, they still share the same delusional narrative with the extremists. Both groupings keep reiterating that Russia plans to attack all of EU/NATO-Europe once it defeats Ukraine and that, therefore, stopping Russia in Ukraine is, literally, vital (or in Macron’s somewhat Sartrean terms “existential”) to the West.

That narrative is absurd. Reality works exactly the other way around: The most certain way to get into a war with Russia is to send troops to Ukraine openly. And what is existential for EU/NATO-Europe is to finally liberate itself from American “leadership.” During the Cold War, a case could be made that (then Western) Europe needed the US. After the Cold War, though, that was no longer the case. In response, Washington has implemented a consistent, multi-administration, bipartisan, if often crude, strategy of avoiding what should have been inevitable: the emancipation of Europe from American dominance.

Both the eastward expansion of NATO, programmed – and predicted – to cause a massive conflict with Russia and the current proxy war in Ukraine, obstinately provoked by Washington over decades, are part of that strategy to – to paraphrase a famous saying about NATO – “keep Europe down.” And the European elites have played along as if there’s no tomorrow, which, for them, there really may not be.

We are at a potential breaking-point, a crisis of that long-term trajectory. If the pragmatists in EU/NATO-Europe really want to contain the extremists, who play with triggering an open war between Russia and NATO that would devastate at least Europe, then they must now come clean and, finally, abandon the common, ideological, and entirely unrealistic narrative about an existential threat from Moscow.

As long as the pragmatists dare not challenge the escalationists on how to principally understand the causes of the current catastrophe, the extremists will always have the advantage of consistency: Their policies are foolish, wastefully unnecessary, and extremely risky. And yet, they follow from what the West has made itself believe. It is high time to break that spell of self-hypnosis, and face facts.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US issues veiled threat to Hungary

RT | March 15, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is isolating his country from the Western “community of democracies,” US Ambassador David Pressman claimed on Thursday in wide-reaching rebuke.

Ties between the two nations should not depend on “temporary” leaders, the diplomat argued, as he delivered a list of grievances against Budapest.

“While the Orban government may want to wait out the United States government, the United States will certainly not wait out the Orban administration. While Hungry waits, we will act,” Pressman warned.

The ambassador was referring to Orban’s expressed hope that Donald Trump will defeat President Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election.

Pressman’s speech was delivered at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, for an event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to NATO. The private institution, founded in the early 1990s by George Soros, has faced a crackdown in Budapest, since Orban accused the Hungarian-born US billionaire of using NGOs to apply political pressure.

The fact that the CEU has relocated its main campus to Vienna, and “moved further to the west as Hungary opened eastward” is significant and “epitomizes the sacrifice of something great in exchange for… talking points,” the American diplomat claimed.

Budapest’s relatively cordial relations with Moscow and its refusal to follow the US lead on the Ukraine conflict were identified by Pressman as major points of contention. Hungary is ignoring the “legitimate security concerns” of the other 31 members of NATO and is “standing with Russia” by advocating a negotiated peace, he claimed, describing the latter as a call for Ukraine’s “surrender and subjugation.”

“This is not the approach of the Transatlantic alliance,” he insisted.

Pressman also blasted Hungarian politicians who use nationalist sentiment in domestic campaigning, and depict the US as a meddling foreign power. He called such remarks “wild rhetoric” and “dangerously unhinged anti-American messaging”, by Orban and his allies.

“We’re not really asking for much: transparency, dialogue, nonpartisanship, and a commitment to democracy would suffice,” the ambassador described what course correction was expected from the host nation. Washington requires NATO members to follow its lead on “big things” and is not objecting, even if they disagree on “most” other issues, he said.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germany plans to open at least four arms factories in Ukraine

Press TV – March 14, 2024

Germany’s largest weapons, ammunition, lethal systems, and military equipment manufacturer, Rheinmetall, has devised plans to set up arms factories in Ukraine.

Rheinmetall announced on Thursday that it plans to open at least four factories in Ukraine, as it targets a record 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) in sales this year.

The factories in Ukraine will be modeled on an ammunition factory that Rheinmetall is building in Germany.

The Ukrainian forces war against Russia has boosted Germany’s weapons sales.

Rheinmetall announced that the factories in Ukraine would be for producing shells, military vehicles, gunpowder and anti-aircraft weapons.

“Ukraine is now an important partner for us, where we see a potential of between two and three billion euros (in sales) per year,” Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said at the presentation of the company’s 2023 results.

Rheinmetall, which makes key components for the Leopard tanks, reported record sales of 7.2 billion euros last year, and is aiming to top 10 billion in 2024.

Shares of the Duesseldorf-based company went up five percent in Frankfurt stock exchange after the results were announced.

Rheinmetall, which already operates a joint venture in Ukraine for repairing military vehicles, is also going to build a factory in Lithuania, where Germany plans to deploy a brigade-sized military unit on a permanent basis to help secure NATO’s eastern flank.

Germany’s largest manufacturer of military equipment, which had already announced an agreement with a Ukrainian company in February to build artillery shells in Ukraine, said it was planning to ramp up its production of artillery shells to provide Kiev with more ammunition.

However, German lawmakers in the lower house of parliament rejected calls to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

Lawmakers in the Bundestag on Thursday voted against the delivery of the Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine which had been proposed by the opposition MPs.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told lawmakers that prudence is a virtue and rejected the call to send Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Ultimately, lawmakers in the Bundestag voted against the motion by 495 votes to 190, with five abstentions.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces were running out of ammunition, complaining that NATO member states were not providing enough arms and munitions.

“Unprecedented aid from NATO allies has helped Ukraine survive as an independent nation. But Ukraine needs even more support and they need it now,” Stoltenberg said talking to reporters at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

“The Ukrainians are not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition,” Stoltenberg said. “NATO allies are not providing Ukraine with enough ammunition and that has consequences on the battlefield every day.”

“It is an urgent need for allies to make the decisions necessary to step and provide more ammunition to Ukraine. That’s my message to all capitals,” Stoltenberg said.

Last week, European Union (EU) member states agreed to allocate an additional 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine at a meeting in Brussels.

The EU agreement came after months of debates among member states, with France and Germany playing a key role in shaping the discussions.

They finally agreed to give priority to the European defense sector, while “exceptionally allowing” for flexibility in cases where it cannot provide within a timeframe compatible with Ukraine’s needs.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), at least 30 countries have provided weapons and ammunition to Ukraine since Russia’s military operation was launched in February 2022.

The US recently approved a new weapons package worth $300 million for Ukraine. However, an additional $60 billion in funding for Kiev has been blocked by lawmakers as Republicans in Congress have put it on hold, arguing that President Joe Biden is only prolonging the war against Russia, with no plans to end the conflict.

March 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US Intel Debunks Biden, Admits Russia ‘Doesn’t Want Direct Military Conflict’ With NATO

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.03.2024

US and NATO officials have spent months claiming that Russia has plans to attack bloc countries and calling on the West to prepare for a costly, decades-long confrontation with Moscow. President Putin squashed these allegations in December, calling them “complete nonsense.”

Russia “almost certainly” doesn’t want to go to war with the US or NATO. That’s the view of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community report.

“Russia almost certainly does not want a direct military conflict with US and NATO forces and will continue asymmetric activity below what it calculates to be the threshold of military conflict globally. President Vladimir Putin probably believes that Russia has blunted Ukrainian efforts to retake significant territory, that his approach to winning the war is paying off, and that Western and US support to Ukraine is finite, particularly in light of the Israel-HAMAS war,” the assessment, presented to US officials in early February but released publicly only on Monday, indicated.

The ODNI listed off all its usual claims about the tools the US expects Russia to use to advance its global interests, ranging “from using energy to try to coerce cooperation and weaken Western unity on Ukraine” (it’s worth recalling here that it was the US, not Russia, which blew up the Nord Stream pipeline network) “to military and security intimidation, malign influence, cyber operations, espionage, and subterfuge,” tools Washington itself has used repeatedly throughout its unipolar moment since 1991.

The report admitted that despite “enormous damage at home and abroad” resulting from the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, Russia “remains a resilient and capable adversary across a wide range of domains and seeks to project and defend its interests globally and to undermine the United States and the West.”

Kissinger’s Nightmare

The report highlighted deep US concerns about the prospects of enhanced Russian-Chinese cooperation – an eventuality which gurus of US foreign policy like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski spent their careers warning about and seeking to avoid by dividing the Eurasian mega powers.

“Moscow’s deep economic engagement with Beijing provides Russia with a major market for its energy and commodities, greater protection from future sanctions, and a stronger partner in opposing the United States. China is by far Russia’s most important trading partner with bilateral trade reaching more than $220 billion in 2023, already surpassing their total 2022 volume by 15 percent,” the document indicated.

On the economic front, the ODNI expects Russia’s GDP to record “modest growth” this year (the IMF expects a 2.6 percent bump in Russia’s GDP – up from 1.5 percent projected last fall), and says the country’s economic ties with non-Western countries will continue to strengthen.

“Moscow has successfully diverted most of its seaborne oil exports and probably is selling significant volumes above the G7-led crude oil and refined product price caps, which came into effect in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively – in part because Russia is increasing its use of non-Western options to facilitate diversion of most of its seaborne oil exports and because global oil prices increased last year,” the report said.

On top of that, US intelligence expects Moscow to maintain “significant energy leverage,” even in Europe, where it remained the second-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas through the first half of 2023 despite Brussels’ self-defeating restrictions.

Assuring that the NATO proxy war in Ukraine has “incurred major, lasting costs for Russia,” the ODNI nonetheless admitted that the defensive strategy Moscow took in the face of Kiev’s summer counteroffensive “plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.” Russia’s defense sector is engaged in “significantly ramping up production of a panoply of long-range strike weapons, artillery munitions, and other capabilities that will allow it to sustain a long high-intensity war if necessary. Meanwhile, Moscow has made continual incremental battlefield gains since late 2023, and is benefitting from uncertainties about the future of Western military assistance,” the report said.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are listed as the four major state actors “engaging in competitive behavior that directly threatens US national security,” with China specifically listed as a power which “vies to surpass the United States in comprehensive national power and secure deference to its preferences from its neighbors and from countries around the world, while Russia directly threatens the United States in an attempt to assert leverage regionally and globally.”

Iran is listed as a threat to “US interests, allies, and influence in the Middle East” and a nation which “intends to entrench its emergent status as a regional power while minimizing threats… and the risk of direct military conflict.” As for the DPRK, the ODNI expects North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to “continue to pursue nuclear and conventional military capabilities that threaten the United States and its allies,” with strengthening economic, diplomatic and defense ties with China and Russia expected to help Pyongyang achieve “international acceptance” of the DPRK’s status as a nuclear power.

The ODNI report’s section on Russia, and specifically the passage admitting Moscow’s lack of desire to wage a shooting war against US and NATO runs contrary to months of claims by officials ranging from President Biden to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg to a host of US and European media that if Russia is “allowed to win in Ukraine,” its next target will be bloc countries.

“We can’t let Putin win,” Biden warned in December 2023, while urging Congress to approve his $61 billion in proposed new aid for Ukraine. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there… He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO ally – well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden claimed.

“It’s complete nonsense – and I think that President Biden understands that,” Putin retorted. “Russia has no reason, no interest – no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military – to fight with NATO countries,” he said.

But even after the ODNI assessment was published for internal use in February, US and NATO officials continued with the “aggressive Russia” narrative.

Last month, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged the West to “prepare ourselves for a confrontation that could last decades,” and claimed that “if Putin wins in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that Russian aggression will not spread to other countries.”

In his interview with Tucker Carlson last month, Putin said it was “absolutely out of the question” for Russia to attack NATO members unless they began aggression first. “We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest,” Putin said.

The ODNI report finally admits what Russia has been saying all along. The question is: why now?

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

How Washington Killed the Nuclear Arms Control System

By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | March 12, 2024

During the Cold War, world populations faced the ongoing nightmare of a nuclear attack coming out of the blue. All it would have taken was one miscalculation by either side. Such a trigger could even have taken the form of a false alert. We know that at least one such incident nearly led to catastrophe.

In 1983, the Soviet Union’s alert system indicated that there were incoming missiles on their way. Fortunately, the alert commander ordered a double check to be sure the indications of a missile launch from NATO were genuine. That check confirmed that the alert was erroneous. Given the dire state of East/West tensions, World War III would have at the time been almost certain if the commander had not been extra cautious.

The end of the Cold War ended the prospect of such a nightmare scenario. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton’s administration “found new causes to promote using American power, a fixation that would lead to serial campaigns of intervention and social engineering.” U.S. leaders, especially Secretary of State Madeline Albright, went out of their way to demonstrate Russia’s impotence publicly. In particular, they humiliated Russia’s Serbian clients both in Bosnia and in Serbia itself. Washington’s treatment of the Serbs caused renewed East/West tensions and began to generate a second Cold War.

Even more directly, the United States and its principal European allies provoked Russia with multiple rounds of NATO expansion. In April 1998, NATO admitted Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary over Russia’s vehement objections. Expansion continued under both George W. Bush and Barrack Obama. The result was a steady increase in military tensions. In addition to provoking Russia by mistreating its Serbian clients, Washington expanded NATO eastward, creating a threat within Russia’s core security zone.

There were multiple rounds of eastward expansion involving Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barrack Obama. The mythology has also developed that Donald Trump was soft on policy toward Russia, if not an outright traitor. The reality was the opposite. U.S. policy towards Russia hardened significantly under Trump. That point was most obvious with regard to Trump’s attitude towards crucial arms control agreements.

Under Trump, the United States had adopted several measures that again raised the extent of tension. An especially unhelpful action took place during Trump’s administration when hawkish U.S. officials decided that the United States should withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019. Such intermediate range missiles had always been Russia’s Achilles’ heel and Russian leaders were hypersensitive about their country being at a disadvantage with respect to such weapons. Threatening to withdraw from that agreement was extremely unhelpful. The situation worsened when Washington followed up by deciding to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty in November 2020.

As Western-Russian relations deteriorated further, Russian President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on higher alert in February 2022 following the advance of Russian forces deeper into Ukraine. Later in the year, relations became even more confrontational. The “architecture of disarmament and nonproliferation is now gradually being dismantled. On [November, 2023] President Vladimir V. Putin signed a law revoking Russia’s ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear testing. In pushing through the de-ratification, Putin said that he wanted to “mirror” the American position. Although the United States signed the treaty in 1996, it has never been ratified.  Since the United States has never ratified the treaty, Russia’s move was more symbolic than practical. But it leaves only one significant nuclear weapons pact between Russia and the United States in place: the New START treaty.” If Russia further weakens its commitment to the test ban, that will create yet another arena for instability.

It is sobering to consider the state of global nuclear arms control today to what it was at the end of the Cold War. It is alarming that Moscow and Washington have returned to the state of nuclear rivalry and confrontation in less than a quarter century. An unparalleled opportunity for peace has been wasted.    

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

NATO should oblige all members to spend 3% of GDP on defense, says Polish President Duda

WPOLITYCE.PL | March 12, 2024

President Andrzej Duda has revealed he will propose that NATO allies increase their defense spending to 3 percent of GDP to bolster the alliance’s strength in response to the war in Ukraine.

Duda was speaking ahead of a trip to Washington D.C. on Tuesday alongside Prime Minister Donald Tusk, where they are expected to hold talks with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House.

Duda views the alliance with the United States as the cornerstone of Polish security, noting that the U.S. invited both him and the Polish prime minister to come to Washington on the 25th anniversary of Poland joining NATO.

Duda will also have meetings with both Democratic Party and Republican Party politicians in the U.S. Congress, as well as the U.S. military. He will be present at a demonstration of the most modern M1 Abrams tank and the AH-64 Apache helicopter, both of which have been ordered by the Polish military.

On his way back from Washington, Duda will visit NATO’s HQ in Brussels, where he will discuss his proposal for NATO states to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense and the security situation on the eastern flank of the alliance.

“I want to propose in the near future, and I will be discussing this with all our allies, including with the NATO secretary general at NATO headquarters, that member countries jointly decide to spend not 2 percent, but 3 percent of their GDP on defense,” Duda said during a meeting of Poland’s National Security Council on Monday.

He emphasized the need for a strategic push for enhanced military capabilities within NATO, reflecting a broader response to geopolitical tensions, claiming “a robust NATO is less likely to be challenged.”

“No one will dare to attack a strong NATO, no one will dare to attack strong countries, no one will dare to attack countries that know how to defend themselves efficiently, countries that will be ready to stand up to defend their borders and land,” Duda added.

Reflecting on Poland’s commitment to defense and security, Duda credited the previous conservative (PiS) government for its efforts to strengthen the nation’s deterrence capabilities.

“There must be a clear and bold response to Russian aggression. That response will be to increase the military potential of the North Atlantic alliance,” he said.

The Polish president also stressed the strategic importance of NATO’s latest round of enlargement to include Finland and Sweden, saying it was a testament to the alliance’s growing strength and a message to Russia.

“In the near future, NATO should be able to make the bold decision to admit Ukraine,” Duda added.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Moldova about to escalate tensions with Russia

By Lucas Leiroz | March 11, 2024

Tensions in the post-Soviet space are escalating. Moldova recently signed an important military cooperation agreement with France, which tends to generate serious consequences for the stability of regional security, considering Paris’ interest in fomenting war against Moscow. In this context, many analysts fear that new violence could emerge in the pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria, as Russia would be forced to intervene in such a conflict.

On March 7, Moldovan President Maia Sandu signed a military pact with France during a visit to Paris. On the occasion, French President Emmanuel Macron promised “unwavering support” on security and defense issues. Both sides agree that increased defense cooperation is a necessary step to confront what they call the “Russian advance.” According to them, if Moscow is not contained in Ukraine, the Russian government will launch new military actions in neighboring countries to gain more territories and zones of influence. In this sense, increasing French military cooperation would be a way of ensuring that the war “does not spread” towards Moldova.

The agreement establishes military cooperation in several sectors, mainly in arms supply contracts. Furthermore, French troops are expected to train the Moldovan armed forces. Moldovan officials have said recently that the country needs immediate help to reform its military structure to be ready for a possible conflict. Alone, Moldova is unable to overcome its current military weakness, which is why it is seeking Western help.

In parallel to this, Macron’s France has been marked by the constant attempt to further militarize the post-Soviet space and foment destabilization in the Russian strategic environment. Paris has been the main agent of disruption in Russian-Western relations recently, mobilizing “war preparation” efforts against Moscow in Europe. This is part of President Macron’s personal project to designate himself internationally as a “leader of all of Europe”, but it is also a reflection of the strategic irrationality that has today become a central aspect of Western foreign policy.

Previously, France had already started a similar project to fuel conflict in the post-Soviet space through Armenia. Paris has been endorsing the Pashinyan regime and stimulating anti-Russian sentiments in the Caucasus. The French government is playing a fundamental role in NATO’s plan to control both sides of the Armenia-Azerbaijan crisis, creating both an alliance between the US, EU and Yerevan and an alliance between Turkey and Baku. The aim of all this is simply to increase NATO’s presence in the Caucasus and generate military pressure on the Russian strategic environment.

Now, by encouraging Moldova to militarize, France is taking a step further in its anti-Russian destabilization project. Moldova has an extremely fragile domestic security architecture, as since 1992 the country has faced a separatist problem in the Transnistria region. Civil conflict has been frozen for decades – largely due to the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region, dissuading the Moldovan government from launching a military offensive. However, like any other frozen conflict, hostilities could resume at any time if relations between the sides continue to deteriorate.

Moscow never recognized Transnistria as an independent country. For the Russians, it belongs to Moldovan territory, but both sides are required to reach a common agreement. As a region with a strong presence of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, where the Russian language is considered native by citizens, the region deserves a special status in Moldovan politics, as well as autonomy rights must be created for the local people. Moscow has already stated that if such peace conditions are established, Russian troops will leave the region. More than that, Russia has also made it clear that it is even willing to destroy the Soviet-era weapons depots that remain in Transnistria, advancing regional demilitarization.

However, instead of seeking demilitarization, pro-Western sectors in Moldova prefer to increase ties with NATO and create even more problems with Russia. For Moldovan elites, Russia is an enemy country that must be approached with hostility. For this reason, since 2022, the West has tacitly encouraged Moldova to seek a military solution in Transnistria. The calculation is simple: the hope is to force Moscow to send troops to protect the Transnistrian people, creating a new proxy conflict and opening yet another flank for Russia.

There has been an internal balance in Moldova. Some political sectors continue to object to considering Russia and Transnistria as “threats”, but the rapprochement with France indicates that pro-war groups are gaining momentum in national politics. It is important for Moldovans to remember that they are not part of NATO, and are therefore not protected by the American military umbrella – which means that, if there really is a conflict, they will be abandoned by the West and used as mere cannon fodder, precisely as happened with Ukraine.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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