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Russia, NATO Confrontation Slipping Into Worst-Case Scenario – Ambassador

Sputnik – 11.07.2023

NATO leaders will gather in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on July 11-12, 2023, to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from Sweden’s accession to the alliance to military assistance to Ukraine. It is expected that NATO leaders will also address Ukraine’s membership aspirations.

The situation in the confrontation between Russia and NATO is degrading to the most unfavorable scenario on the eve of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said on Tuesday.

“On the eve of the NATO Summit, the atmosphere in the U.S. information landscape has heated up to the limit. Every possible effort is being made to prepare local public opinion for the acceptation of any anti-Russian decisions that will be taken in Vilnius in the coming days. The situation continues to degrade to the most unfavorable outcome of the confrontation between Russia and the NATO countries,” Antonov told reporters, as quoted by the Russian embassy in the United States.

He added that the measures taken by the Western countries created more and more insurmountable obstacles on the way out of the most acute military and political crisis, “fraught with the most serious consequences for international security.”

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Erdogan still firmly in NATO bloc despite blackmailing EU

By Ahmed Adel | July 11, 2023

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged the European Union on July 9 to open the doors for his country to join the bloc if they want to secure support for Sweden’s accession to NATO. His blackmailing of the EU, which ultimately produced results, comes only days after he controversially broke an agreement with Moscow by releasing neo-Nazi Azov Battalion members under Turkey’s custody to Ukraine.

“Turkey has been waiting at the door of the European Union for over 50 years now, and almost all of the NATO member countries are now members of the European Union. I am making this call to these countries that have kept Turkey waiting at the gates of the European Union for more than 50 years,” Erdogan said. “First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland.”

Turkey has been an EU member candidate since 1999. Since 2016, negotiations on a visa-free regime between Turkey and the EU have been on hold. The country’s bid for EU membership has been stalled due to democratic backsliding and an unrelenting occupation of the northern portion of EU-member Cyprus since 1974.

Ultimately, Erdogan backflipped just mere hours after issuing his blackmail.

“I’m glad to announce … that President Erdogan has agreed to forward the accession protocol for Sweden to the grand national assembly as soon as possible, and work closely with the assembly to ensure ratification,” said NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on the eve of the alliance summit in Vilnius, which will be held on July 11-12.

Finland and Sweden applied to join the bloc in May 2022. Finland gained its membership on April 4, 2023, while the Swedes await approval from Hungary and Turkey. As Turkey will never surrender its occupation of northern Cyprus, its EU membership will be forever stalled, making Erdogan’s ultimatum either a desperate action or a calculated manoeuvre to advance other interests.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told public broadcaster SVT that he expects Turkey will eventually signal that it will let Sweden join the alliance, though he could not say whether that would happen at the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital. Sweden’s top diplomat said he expects Hungary, which also has not ratified Sweden’s accession, to do so before Turkey.

Turkey and Hungary remain the only NATO members still standing in the way of Sweden becoming the 32nd member of the US-led bloc, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban strongly signalling he will follow Erdogan’s lead and approve Sweden’s membership only if Turkey does the same.

Now that Erdogan has reportedly unblocked Sweden’s path, the question is what was offered to appease the Turkish leader. Presumably, Erdogan would have only unblocked the accession process with the promise of receiving F-16 fighter jets, advancing EU membership talks without altering domestic oppression and ethnic cleansing abroad, or securing Western funding as the Turkish economy continues to tank with Gulf money all dried up.

The NATO summit will be dominated by how the alliance will see its future relationship with Kiev amid endless efforts by President Volodymyr Zelensky for Ukraine to become a member and a signatory to the mutual defence pact. Evidently, though, Sweden’s situation will also be discussed since Turkey is the main hindrance to their accession.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for his part, joined a chorus of other European leaders and officials who said Sweden’s NATO membership should not be tied to Ankara’s stalled EU membership bid.

“Sweden meets all the requirements for NATO membership. The other question is one that is not connected with it. And that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue,” the German chancellor said.

Stoltenberg also expressed before announcing Erdogan’s unblocking that the two issues have nothing to do with one another, reminding that while he supports Ankara’s bid for EU membership, it was not one of the conditions in the agreement signed by Turkey, Sweden, and Finland in 2022 at the NATO summit in Madrid.

Despite Erdogan initially adding another condition to Sweden’s accession, it is not a sign that Turkey has gone rogue within NATO, but rather it is the Turkish president blackmailing the alliance and EU to gain advantages for his country – what they are specifically since EU membership is not realistic, remains to be seen.

Erdogan broke a deal he had with Moscow by releasing on July 8, only days before the NATO summit, five Ukrainian Azov Battalion officers, who returned to Ukraine on a presidential plane. The Azov Battalion militants had been prisoners since the battle of Azovstal following the Russian liberation of the port city of Mariupol. Erdogan had no obvious reason for breaking the deal, meaning that he will now want something at the NATO summit for doing this.

Although it may appear that Erdogan has gone rogue by attaching an impossible condition for Sweden to become a NATO member, he is just leveraging to gain some advantage for Turkey. The release of the Azov Battalion members for seemingly no good reason demonstrates that Turkey is still firmly within the NATO bloc.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

NATO is ‘malicious poison’ – former Australian PM

RT | July 10, 2023

NATO has no place in Asia and should stick to its original focus, that is the security of the Transatlantic region, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has argued. The Labour politician, who served in office from 1991 to 1996, also warned against attempts to “circumscribe” China.

In his statement published on Sunday, Keating appeared to refer to a recent report in Politico, which claimed French President Emmanuel Macron had blocked NATO’s plans to establish a liaison office in Japan.

The former premier lauded the French head of state for “doing the world a service” by apparently emphasizing the military bloc’s focus on Europe and the Atlantic.

According to Keating, the alliance’s very existence past the end of the Cold War “has already denied peaceful unity to the broader Europe.”

Exporting such “malicious poison to Asia would be akin to Asia welcoming the plague upon itself,” he insisted. The former prime minister warned that NATO’s presence on the continent would negate most of the region’s recent advances.

Keating went on to describe NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as the “supreme fool” on the international stage who is conducting himself like an “American agent.”

He cited a comment Stoltenberg made back in February when he called for the West not to repeat the “mistake” it had made with regard to Russia, suggesting it should work to contain China.

The former Australian leader noted that the NATO chief conveniently ignored the fact that “China represents twenty per cent of humanity and now possesses the largest economy in the world.” He added that Beijing, unlike Washington, “has no record of attacking other states.”

Over the weekend, Politico cited an anonymous Elysee Palace official who claimed that Paris is against NATO expansion beyond the North Atlantic. “NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” the French presidential staffer reportedly emphasized.

Back in May, the Japanese ambassador to the US, Koji Tomita, revealed that his country was working toward opening a NATO liaison office in Tokyo, which would become the bloc’s first in Asia. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed the plans to Japanese lawmakers, noting that Tokyo did not intend to join the US-led organization.

Commenting on the news, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning advised NATO against “extending its geopolitical reach.” The diplomat pointed out that the “Asia-Pacific does not welcome bloc confrontation or military blocs.”

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Most Finns Oppose Hosting NATO Nuclear Arms

By Igor Kuznetsov – Sputnik – 10.07.2023

Finns have been consistently averse to placing nuclear arms on their soil, a policy confirmed by the government despite reversing the decades-old policy of non-alignment, and would apparently be reluctant, if the newly-baked NATO membership were to entail it.

The majority of Finns don’t support either the transportation or storage of NATO nuclear arms in their country, according to a fresh survey by the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku.

61 percent firmly opposed allowing the transportation of nuclear weapons through Finland, while storing nuclear weapons on Finnish ground appeared to be an even bigger no-no, with some 77 percent against.

Finland filed a bid to join the alliance in the spring of 2022, citing a change in Europe’s security landscape, and joined the alliance in April 2023, upending decades of non-alignment. However, membership in the bloc is not a free ride, as its leadership has been pushing members to boost military expenditure, ensure costly upgrades of gear, and take part in overseas operations — which the population may be even less eager to do.

“Finland is protected by NATO’s nuclear umbrella, but the shared responsibility does not extend to a willingness to transport weapons here. This might be a reflection of a not-in-my-backyard mentality, but above all, it is indicative of Finland’s long history of nuclear disarmament,” Helsinki University Professor Hanna Wass commented in a statement.

Finns have long had a negative attitude towards nuclear weapons, and Finnish law openly prohibits them. So far, the Finnish leadership has largely maintained its historic line on nuclear arms, despite breaching the decades-old tradition of non-alignment. Former Social Democrat Prime Minister Sanna Marin, under whose watch Finland filed a bid for NATO and entered the alliance, called it “very unlikely” that nuclear weapons would be situated on Finnish soil. At the same time, she called it important not to set any kinds of preconditions that would limit Finland’s room for maneuvering.

Earlier this year, NATO’s newly-fledged member Finland announced that while the Defense Ministry had decided not to allow any nuclear arms on its soil, it is nevertheless going to participate in the Western military alliance’s nuclear planning and support operations.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that Finland and Sweden must understand that Russia will certainly take into account “the growing threats associated with the possible deployment of military potentials on their territories in its defense planning.” He also cited the elevated risks of a clash between the forces of Russia and NATO and lamented how the the Baltic region, which used to be “most calm” in the military and political sense, has been turned into a zone of rivalry.

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Cluster Bombs for Ukraine? A Warning From Kosovo

By Phil Miller | Declassified UK | July 6, 2023

Gracanica, Kosovo – “In the village where we lived, there were nine bombs dropped by NATO in the space of two minutes,” Dzafer Buzoli recalls, as we discuss his traumatic childhood in Yugoslavia. A leading member of Kosovo’s Roma, his community went from pillar to post.

Many were dragooned into Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb-dominated Yugoslav army or targeted by Albanian rebels as suspected collaborators, before Bill Clinton and Tony Blair launched their ‘humanitarian intervention’ in 1999.

“When the first bomb fell, we were just confused and wondered what was happening,” he reflects. “But after the second bomb I felt the hot air and fell down from the pressure of the blast.”

“Ever since then I’ve had a heightened sense of hearing. When there’s a loud noise or people yelling I have to really back up, because it’s too much for me.”

Buzoli was lucky to survive the airstrike. Two soldiers and a five year old boy were killed in the attack on his village of Laplje Selo, which was hit with controversial cluster munitions.

These scatter a blizzard of ball-shaped bomblets over target areas, like a minefield falling from the sky. Human Rights Watch said NATO killed between 90 and 150 civilians with this weapon across Serbia and Kosovo.

Thousands of bomblets failed to detonate on impact, posing a hazard to children who mistook their little yellow parachutes for toys. In the decade after the war, these remnants claimed another 178 casualties in Kosovo.

While this war might seem like a distant memory for those beyond the Balkans, it offers a cautionary tale to Western states now assisting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

US officials are said to be seriously considering supplying Kyiv with cluster bombs, possibly as soon as next month.

That’s despite the weapon being banned by more than 120 countries including the UK, following a UN treaty in 2008.

The US refused to sign up to the ban and there are suspicions it uses a loophole to store them at its air bases in Britain.

Both Russia and Ukraine, fellow non-signatories, have already fired cluster bombs in their current conflict and supplies from America could further complicate the situation.

Lessons from Kosovo

Unexploded cluster munitions remain a hazard in Kosovo long after NATO’s 11 week air war ended in 1999.

Goran, a Kosovo Serb, recalls how the weapon almost killed a farmer in a vineyard near Gracacina’s orthodox monastery, a world heritage site.

“He drove his tractor straight over the bomb,” Goran tells me. “He was lucky not to get killed.”

Goran, who likes to hunt wild boars in the forest, says he found a cluster munition – which locals call ‘cassette bombs’ – back in 2013.

His dates tally with a British demining charity – the Halo Trust – which said it was “still finding hundreds of cluster bombs” in Kosovo that same year.

At one site near Junik in western Kosovo they cleared 171 cluster bombs dropped by NATO, which stubbornly refuses to provide aid workers with access to its official database of airstrikes.

Instead the charity relies on old maps from the Yugoslav army (who preferred to plant landmines), which lack details of where NATO fired cluster bombs, what type they used, the direction of the strike, release altitude and fuze settings – all details that could assist clearance operations.

Partly as a result of these difficulties, 44 hazardous sites were yet to be fully demined by the end of 2021.

While the Atlantic alliance justifies its wartime conduct by saying the targets were Serb soldiers, the people now living in the liberated areas are often ethnic Albanians – the very people NATO set out to save.

Responsibility to protect

The UK was a particularly prolific user of cluster bombs in Kosovo, where they accounted for over half the bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force. British pilots fired 531 of the devices, each containing 147 bomblets with over 2,000 pieces of shrapnel.

Up to 12% of the bomblets failed to detonate on impact, according to a report by parliament’s defence committee. The cross-party group of MPs said: “That means the RAF left between 4,000 and 10,000 unexploded bomblets on the ground in Kosovo”.

The type of cluster bomb used by Britain – the BL755 – was designed in the late sixties and entered service in 1972 despite manufacturing challenges. A year later, a Treasury official noted dryly: “This weapon has had a long and chequered history. We note with some relief that it has now successfully completed its trials”.

Over the next decade, the RAF acquired a stockpile of 18,000 cluster bombs. Another 26,000 were sold abroad on the lucrative export market, mostly to Germany but even future enemies like Iran and Yugoslavia.

Margaret Thatcher’s government exported them to Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, where the British High Commission was anxious to prevent “offering the French an opening into the armament market”.

Exports to Saudi Arabia would follow and ultimately the BL755 earned the dubious distinction of being fired in such bloody conflicts as the Iran-Iraq war, Congo and Yemen.

‘Overkill weapon’

Some in the Foreign Office were less impressed and tried to resist exporting the weapon.

One diplomat, Ivor Lucas, commented: “There is no doubt that Cluster Bomb [sic] is generally considered ‘an overkill weapon’ affecting wide areas with consequent danger to civilians and causing particularly unpleasant multiple wounding.”

Its greatest selling point however, was the ability to destroy tanks from the sky. But by 1982, even that was already in question.

In a formerly secret file seen by Declassified, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted: “The penetration capability of current BL755 against the frontal armour of current Soviet tanks (T-64/T-72) is poor and there are relatively few regions where full penetration, and hence kills, could be expected.”

If the RAF attacked a column of ten T-64s, pilots were only expected to destroy one tank per sortie – even with an improved variant of the weapon. Military officials lamented: “Effectiveness has been degraded by introduction of modern Soviet tanks”.

Their performance in the Balkans was woeful. An operational analysis by the MoD reportedly found only 31% of sorties hit their targets, despite pilots flying directly overhead.

‘Regrettable collateral damage’

Since Britain banned the bomb in 2008, Conservative and coalition governments have blocked the disclosure of six files about trials of the weapon in the 1970-80s – perhaps fearful that further embarrassing details of its deficiencies might emerge.

More recent Cabinet papers from Tony Blair’s handling of the Kosovo conflict are publicly available.

These show his deputy prime minister John Prescott told colleagues on 1 April 1999 – a week into the war – that: “Public opinion in the West should be prepared for more extensive collateral damage.”

Labour’s defence secretary George Robertson (who went on to lead NATO), noted at the end of that month: “The air campaign needed to be intensified, despite the unintended and regrettable collateral damage which might be inevitable.”

By mid-May the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, grew frustrated at how “the international media tended to be diverted by rare incidents of NATO errors in conducting the campaign, away from the positive news of its successes.”

Cook, renowned for his ‘ethical foreign policy’, was probably referring to the cluster bombing of Nis, a city in southern Serbia where Dutch-NATO jets killed 15 civilians in a botched airstrike that hit a hospital and crowded market.

The tragedy led the US to pause its own use of cluster bombs, but the RAF pressed on. Years later, a Serbian lawyer from Nis is trying to sue Nato over the killings.

Activists from the city played an important role in passing the international ban on cluster bombs, but Serbia’s president is yet to endorse it.

That impasse allows Belgrade to keep any remaining BL755s that Britain sold to communist-era Yugoslavia.

Clearing the remnants of these weapons from Kosovo is not expected to finish until 2024 – a quarter century after the war ended.

That marathon process, coupled with dubious performance on the battlefield, might give Joe Biden pause for thought about sending cluster bombs to Ukraine.

Phil Miller is Declassified UK’s chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo

July 9, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US Congressman on Decision to Send Cluster Bombs: No One in Biden Admin Seeks Peace in Ukraine

Sputnik – 08.07.2023

WASHINGTON – Paul Gosar noted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had gained little to nothing, as Russia had stopped the US weapon-backed Ukrainian troops.

The United States “has no business” to be involved in the Ukraine conflict, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar told Sputnik on Saturday, commenting on Washington’s decision to send cluster munitions to Kiev.

“I condemn the ongoing war and [US President Joe] Biden’s latest decision to escalate the conflict by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine. I continue to call for peace talks, as I have since March 2022, and I continue to maintain that the United States has no business in this war,” Gosar said.

No one in the Biden administration or in NATO is seeking peace to resolve the Ukraine crisis, so the conflict is still ongoing, Gosar added.

Moreover, he noted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had gained little to nothing, as Russia had stopped the US weapon-backed Ukrainian troops.

On Friday, the United States unveiled a new military assistance package for Ukraine that includes cluster munitions. The weapons are banned by the international convention, which has been ratified by 123 countries, excluding the US and Ukraine.

Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov warned on Friday that the decision by the US to deliver cluster munitions to Ukraine was a “provocation” pushing humankind closer to a new world war.

July 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Admin Lying to Americans ‘About Everything to Do With Ukraine’ – RFK Jr

Sputnik – 08.07.2023

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the present 2024 presidential hopeful and nephew to assassinated former US President John F Kennedy, previously said at a town hall event that the Ukraine crisis had been turned by Washington into “a proxy war between Russia and the United States”.

The federal government under the Joe Biden administration has been blatantly lying to the Americans “about everything to do with Ukraine”, said Robert F Kennedy Jr, in an interview for Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Judging Freedom podcast.

“This was a sell job that they gave us on Ukraine,” insisted the 2024 Democratic candidate for US President.

“The Russians tried to avoid a war… wanted to sign the Minsk Accords – a reasonable document – to keep NATO out of Ukraine, with Ukraine remaining neutral… That [US] remove the Aegis missile systems from Romania, Poland, and that the murder… the wholesale killing of ethnic Russians in the Donbass by the Ukrainian government that America put in power stop. Those are all things that we should have agreed to,” stated the nephew of assassinated former US President John F Kennedy.

He added that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky won in 2019 by promising to sign the Minsk accords. The complex series of measures negotiated by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in 2014-2015 in a bid to put an end to the armed conflict between the Kiev authorities and the breakaway region of Donbas. Moscow repeatedly stated that Kiev was not fulfilling the deal, for example not granting self-government to the Russian-speaking region of Donbass. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted he never intended to implement the Minsk agreements, with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Former French President Franсois Hollande, who participated in the Normandy format, admitting the same.

“It is existential for the Russians… they have a legitimate national security interest,” Robert F Kennedy Jr pointed out, referring to Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.

“[The US] wanted the war, for the reasons that Biden has said… The real reason for the war in Ukraine is regime change in Russia,” Kennedy emphasized in the interview on the Judging Freedom podcast.

Kennedy previously slammed decades of policy conducted by the US and NATO toward Ukraine and Russia for fueling the current conflagration.

“We have neglected many, many opportunities to settle this war peacefully,” Kennedy said in June during a live town hall event with NewsNation. He added that Washington had turned the ongoing conflagration in Ukraine into a proxy war waged by the United States against Russia.

“We were told this was a humanitarian exercise… But when President Biden was asked why we are over there, he said for regime change of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” the 2024 White House hopeful underscored.

Weighing in on remarks by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said last year that Washington wanted “to see Russia weakened,” Kennedy scathingly remarked:
“That is the opposite of a humanitarian mission, that is a mission about a war of attrition.”

July 8, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Keep Ukraine out of NATO, US experts argue

RT | July 7, 2023

Welcoming Ukraine into NATO would force the US to choose between nuclear war with Russia or abandoning its security commitments to Kiev, two American analysts claimed on Friday.

“The security benefits to the United States of Ukrainian accession pale in comparison with the risks of bringing it into the alliance,” Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson of the libertarian Cato Institute wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine.

If Ukraine were to join the alliance amid the ongoing hostilities, Logan and Shifrinson argued, the US and all of NATO’s European members would immediately be pulled into open war with Russia, with the potential for a nuclear exchange. However, even if the conflict were to be resolved, Ukraine and Russia will still have competing territorial claims, and a membership offer would risk reigniting the conflict, this time with NATO as a direct participant, they added.

“Under these circumstances, an American commitment to fight for Ukraine would be open to question,” they continued. If Ukraine were a NATO member and US policymakers chose not to intervene on its behalf, the bloc’s entire collective defense principle would be undermined, resulting in “a true credibility crisis for NATO.”

Furthermore, with the US protected by its nuclear arsenal and the vast Atlantic Ocean, the two analysts argued that America faces no direct threat from Russia, while Ukraine – due to its geography – forms “a bulwark” between Western Europe and Russia “irrespective of NATO membership.”

“American time, attention, and resources are needed elsewhere,” Logan and Shifrinson wrote, concluding that “the United States should accept that it is high time to close NATO’s door to Ukraine.”

Since the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, NATO’s official policy is that Ukraine will become a member of the bloc at an unspecified future date. Kiev, however, is unhappy with this non-commitment, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky reportedly threatening not to attend NATO’s upcoming summit in Lithuania unless the US-led bloc offers “concrete” security guarantees or a roadmap to full membership.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has already ruled out a membership offer at the Vilnius summit. French President Emmanuel Macron, however, has called on the alliance’s leaders to offer Kiev bilateral or multilateral security guarantees, as well as a “path” to full-fledged membership. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace and a number of Eastern European leaders have called for Ukraine to be fast-tracked into the bloc without the usual “membership action plan” that prospective members must complete.

The White House, meanwhile, maintains that Ukraine “would have to make reforms to meet the same standards as any NATO country before they join.”

July 7, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Asian NATO: another failed plan by Washington

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 05.07.2023

There are increasing reports in the world media that the US-led NATO military alliance is planning to expand into the Asia-Pacific region. The idea was originally introduced by US President Joe Biden at the East Asia Summit on October 27, 2021, where he said: “We envision an Indo-Pacific region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, resilient and secure – and we are ready to work together with each of you to achieve this.” The White House later issued a report titled “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States” on February 11, 2022, outlining President Joe Biden’s strategy to reestablish “American leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Among the remarks in the so-called “newsletter” that stood out was the declared necessity for the US to strengthen ties with Asian countries in order to tackle the “urgent” task of “competing with China.” But, according to its authors, NATO, which was formed to defend Europe against a fabricated Soviet threat, is allegedly a peace-loving alliance. In reality, it has evolved into a militarily aggressive bloc with a dominant presence in the North Atlantic region. This “peace-loving” coalition has militarized the continent to the point where war has broken out in Europe for the first time since World War II.

The question arises, do the countries of the Asia-Pacific region want to see their region also heavily militarized under the strict “guardianship” not only of the United States, but also of European “peace-loving” NATO? Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of this “peace-loving” bloc, insists on increasing the military alliance’s activities in Asia, as he stated publicly earlier this year during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The “peacemaker” from Europe said: “What happens in Asia matters for Europe and what happens in Europe matters for Asia, and therefore it is even more important that NATO Allies are strengthening our partnership with our Indo Pacific partners.”

According to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper, NATO will establish a liaison office in Tokyo in 2024 and use it as a center for cooperation with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Geographically, these four countries are close to China and other states in the region. It should be emphasized that they are all strategically placed in the Asia-Pacific region and have common interests with the US and NATO, or serve them faithfully.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their target in this situation is China. Speaking at a May 26 press briefing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson rightly noted that NATO’s attempt to intervene in the Asia-Pacific region eastward would inevitably undermine regional peace and stability. For example, Japan intends to attend the upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania in July, where discussions on the development of the military bloc’s liaison office are expected to continue. Apparently, the Japanese leadership has already forgotten the tragic consequences of their country’s participation in World War II and the terrible consequences it had for the Japanese people.

The United States’ plan to establish a military alliance in the Asia-Pacific area, similar to NATO, will have disastrous effects. That is why this insidious scheme does not have the support of many Asian countries, which see all these maneuvers of the United States and NATO as aimed at limiting their freedom and security. In the past, the US tried to create a replica of NATO in the Persian Gulf, but failed in that endeavor. The countries of the region soon realized the instability that results from such a move and are now instead working together to bring security back to their own region. The desire of many Gulf countries to join the BRICS and build a new world without conflicts and wars at least testifies to this.

This is why the replica of NATO in Asia is also likely to fail, because no matter how much the Joe Biden administration insists on pursuing it, the idea lacks the support of many countries in the region. Asian states strongly oppose actions aimed at creating military blocs in the region and fomenting discord and conflict. “The majority of Asia-Pacific countries don’t welcome NATO’s outreach in Asia and certainly will not allow any Cold War or hot war to happen,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated earlier in May.

The position of most countries in the region is very clear. They oppose the emergence of military blocs in the region, do not welcome NATO expansion in Asia, do not want a repeat of bloc confrontation in Asia, and certainly will not allow a repeat of cold or hot war in Asia. If a NATO-like, US-led alliance were formed in Asia, it would put the region at risk of insecurity and possible conflict, as countries would be divided into alliances and military blocs.

But another stumbling block to the American move to create an Asian NATO is France. President Emmanuel Macron opposed the creation of the first NATO office in Asia, calling the move a “big mistake.” Macron recently made an official trip to China to strengthen bilateral ties and afterwards began to make the same argument as Beijing. Incidentally, US-led NATO activities have a clause in their charter that clearly limits the scope of the bloc to the North Atlantic. Expanding NATO beyond the North Atlantic would require the consent of all members of the alliance, and France could technically veto such a move.

Many, even members of NATO, understand why such a plan could lead to a serious escalation, with devastating economic and security consequences that would be felt negatively around the world, including Europe, a continent that has long been in deep crisis because of the United States.

Asia is famously one of the most economically developing regions in the world. This, in fact, is what the US is deathly afraid of – a new economically developed giant that poses a threat to limit US military and economic expansion. “Thinking” heads in Washington are unable to realize that China, becoming the world’s number one economy and a leading expert in technology and other major sectors, has no intention of competing with or challenging the US on a global scale.

This is where the paranoia of today’s American politicians and their unstable psyche, little adapted to the realities of the modern world, come into play. Washington and its masters are struggling to hold on to what few fragments remain of their once global hegemony, now going like the Titanic to the bottom of world politics. The US ruling elites no longer pursue their own country’s interests, bearing in mind that China is one of America’s largest trading partners, bringing them enormous benefits in various trade and industry. China’s rise as a superpower and its peaceful view of the world have had a dramatically negative impact on Washington, which has watched with apprehension as more and more countries have sought to strengthen ties with Beijing and join the BRICS.

On the security front, the world has witnessed US military adventurism and its disastrous consequences. And this at a time when China has one military mission outside its borders, and it is part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Africa. In essence, China maintains peace in an unstable part of the world, while the US provokes conflicts in crises it itself created, trying, as the proverb says, to fish in troubled waters of misfortunes and troubles of the peoples of the world.

On the technology front, more and more countries are buying from China as it quickly becomes a technological superpower. This has reduced US profits and caused Washington to bully the world against China over issues such as Huawei, Tiktok and semiconductors. In fact, this is all part of a broader US attempt to limit Chinese exports. But the world is different now than it was after World War II. The influence of the US has weakened dramatically, and many states prefer to build a new world on terms that are agreeable to them, put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There is also some danger here as US hegemony wanes and in a desperate attempt to maintain its influence it plays dangerous games around the world. It unleashed the crisis in Ukraine and pitted Ukrainians against Russians, and now it seeks to create similar crises in other countries, such as China and North Korea, instead of following the diplomatic path and coming to realize a multipolar world. But this would be asking too much of the current American leadership, too difficult for their heads and limited thinking, accustomed to think and act only in terms of war.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev attacks Russian airport with possible Western help

By Lucas Leiroz | July 5, 2023

Kiev continues to promote terrorist maneuvers against civilian targets in the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation. On July 4, Moscow was the target of a new Ukrainian incursion with military drones hitting a major local airport. Russian forces were able to neutralize the terrorist threat in time to avoid disaster, however, there is evidence that Kiev received Western support to carry out the operation, which seriously increases the chances of escalation in the conflict.

On July 4, Ukraine launched an attack with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow. Five Ukrainian drones reached the area of the airport but were neutralized without causing damage. Four UAVs were shot down by Russian anti-aircraft defense and one was diverted by techniques of electronic warfare.

The airport’s activities were suspended for a few hours in the morning due to security restrictions, but they were quickly resumed after the destruction of enemy UAVs, having virtually no impact in the flights’ schedule. It was reported by the authorities that the downed drones would have dropped in the regions of Kubinka, Valuyevo and Krivosheevo.

The raid was considered a terrorist action by Russian officials. Spokesmen for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also pointed out that the complex nature of the operation makes clear the existence of Western aid. The US and other NATO members have not only provided Kiev with UAVs, but also extensive training in the use of these equipment, as well as intelligence information about the targets of the attacks and satellite images, which have facilitated the regime’s terrorist plans. For this reason, Russia considered NATO “complicit” in the July 4 attack.

Kiev, however, denied having any role in the incident. Indeed, denying responsibility in terrorist attacks has already become a common practice of the regime. Kiev’s modus operandi is to deny involvement immediately after cases and sometime later to make public statements that suggest responsibility. This was what happened, for example, in the case of the murder of Daria Dugina, in August 2022. At the time, Kiev denied involvement in the death, but months later the Ukrainian military intelligence chief General Kirill Budanov stated that his units would “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world”, suggesting that Kiev was behind cases like the one of Daria.

This strategy of “postponing” and “suggesting without confirming” responsibility for the attacks helps the Kiev regime to maintain its image among Western public opinion. The mainstream media also play an important role in this game, as they work in strong disinformation campaigns, accusing Moscow of launching “false flags” to blame Ukraine. As citizens of western countries do not have access to Russian and pro-Russian media due to censorship, the tendency is for them to believe what is said by the big outlets, which leads them to endorse the support that their countries give to Ukraine.

However, the recent history of Kiev’s terrorist operations makes it very clear that there is Ukrainian responsibility for these assaults. The July 4 drones were just the latest in a huge wave of Ukrainian terrorist incursions into the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation. In recent months, neo-Nazi forces have launched several strikes against demilitarized civilian areas both in border oblasts and in the capital Moscow.

The most serious cases of these incursions in Moscow were the assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in May, and the attack on residential buildings in the city later in the same month. Both incidents made clear the terrorist nature of the maneuvers that Kiev has been promoting in its alleged “counteroffensive”.

In fact, given their absolute inability to reverse the military scenario of the conflict, the Ukrainian forces have been betting on terrorism as a combat tool to keep active their propaganda that a “counteroffensive” is taking place. The regime has not enough strength to promote a large mobilization of troops on the ground and expel Russian soldiers from the liberated zones. Then, attacks are made against demilitarized areas and Russian civilian infrastructure.

Terrorism, from a technical point of view in military sciences, is the most primitive and poorest form of combat, used by armies in severe crisis and organizations without great military potential. Ukraine has become exactly that: an exhausted army, with no real fighting strength, but which is also forced to keep fighting in order to attend the interests of its Western sponsors. With no chance of victory in the regular war, it adopts terrorism as a combat method.

The Moscow airport attack shows how the so-called Ukrainian “counteroffensive” has been just a prolonged wave of terrorist attacks. This tends to lead to an escalation in the conflict, since the Russian State already has enough arguments to consider the Ukrainian State a terrorist organization and all NATO countries as state sponsors of terror.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Russia is jamming HIMARS rockets – Ukraine’s defense chief

RT | July 5, 2023

Russia has found a way to interfere with GPS-guided artillery rounds, including munitions for US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, Defense Minister of Ukraine Aleksey Reznikov has claimed.

When those systems first arrived on Ukrainian battlefields last year they were “highly accurate,” Reznikov recalled, in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday.

However, Russia, which has strong radio-electronic systems, eventually found a way to jam GPS-guided artillery and HIMARS projectiles, he acknowledged.

“It’s like a constant pendulum. This is a war of technology,” the minister said, describing the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

“The Russians come up with a countermeasure, we inform our partners and they make a new countermeasure against this countermeasure,” he explained.

Reznikov reiterated Kiev’s earlier claim that “for the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground” than Ukraine.

Kiev’s Western backers “can actually see if their weapons work, how efficiently they work and if they need to be upgraded”, he said.

Ukraine has been supplied with several dozen High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which have a range of 85 kilometers (53 miles), by its foreign backer since June last year. Western outlets described the system as a game-changer in the conflict.

In May, CNN reported, citing five sources from the US, Britain and Ukraine, that the US-designed multiple rocket launchers had been rendered “increasingly less effective” from the intensive blocking by the Russian forces. The electronic jammers throw off the GPS-guided targeting system of HIMARS rockets to cause them to miss their targets, the channel said.

Throughout the conflict, the Russian Defense Ministry reported destroying dozens of HIMARS systems through the use of kamikaze drones and artillery fire. However, these claims have been disputed by Kiev and Washington.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies could cross its ‘red lines’ and lead to a major escalation of hostilities. According to the Russian side, the supply of arms, intelligence sharing and training to Kiev’s troops already means that Western nations are de facto parties to the conflict.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime forces under increased pressure to step up counteroffensive days ahead of NATO summit

By Drago Bosnic | July 5, 2023

As if the situation for the Kiev regime forces wasn’t bad already, the political West has now increased its already massive pressure on Kiev to “perform better” during the much-touted counteroffensive against the Russian military. Considering the disastrous losses and no actual gains, this will be a virtually impossible task for the already battered Neo-Nazi junta troops. The political “leadership” (aka NATO puppets) in Kiev, including its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, are now publicly showing signs of desperation and pleading with the Kiev regime forces to “show results” mere days ahead of the major NATO summit that is due to start in Lithuania on July 11.

The pressure comes amid stepped-up blackmail by Washington DC which is now threatening that it will slow down or even cut so-called “military aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta in case its forces don’t demonstrate they’re capable of advancing, taking and holding Russian positions. Zelensky held talks with several journalists and mainstream propaganda machine outlets over the weekend in an attempt to “quell rumors about the failure of the counteroffensive”. Indeed, even Western propaganda couldn’t ignore the disastrous way these counteroffensive operations have been conducted, as ample evidence of horrendous losses on alternative platforms (particularly Telegram) simply cannot be ignored.

Still, Zelensky effectively accused the mainstream propaganda machine (the same one that has been lionizing him for about a year and a half now) of spreading “Russian disinformation” about the results of the counteroffensive. Yet, it’s not really clear where the supposed “disinformation” comes from, considering the actual state of the Kiev regime forces, particularly in the past several days. Indeed, numerous headlines in nearly all countries of the political West have relayed the increasingly gloomy prospects of the counteroffensive, with many now “suggesting it might be failing”. This is a major hurdle for the Neo-Nazi junta’s attempts to hide its massive losses.

As the political West’s favorite puppets are trying to keep their unsustainable narrative alive, Zelensky is doing anything he can to help with this increasingly futile effort. He now even claims that “torrential rains had slowed down some processes quite a bit”, but admits that “the reality still is that every kilometer of liberated territory and gains costs lives”. Despite close to $170 billion in so-called “aid”, Zelensky also urged NATO and the political West as a whole to send ever more weapons. He also blamed the losses specifically on the lack of or the late arrival of artillery systems and munitions, claiming that “the lost battles would have been won had there been more of both”.

“We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery. We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe,” Zelensky complained in one of the press briefings. He then emphasized that “[he has] a duty to his troops” and to “not take risks that are unnecessary” (although that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for over a year now). “If they tell me that two months will pass and thousands of people will die, or three months and fewer people will die, of course, I will choose the latter. Between time and people, the most important thing is people,” Zelensky said with a straight face.

In regards to the growing urgency of constant (and, if possible, increased) flow of military supplies from NATO members, particularly the US, Zelensky specifically took aim at the Republican-dominated Congress, which lately had many calls for audits on the massive amount of funds earmarked for the Kiev regime. Worse yet, this comes amid “rumors and concerns over the waning enthusiasm for the war effort in Washington DC” and the political West as a whole that might be demonstrated more openly at the “sensitive moment” of NATO’s annual summit. In other words, the deeply corrupt Neo-Nazi junta henchmen are extremely concerned that the constant flow of billions of dollars will suddenly be cut.

While Kiev regime’s top generals parroted their usual complaints about the sore lack of air support for their counteroffensive operations, specifically mentioning the much-touted F-16 fighter jets that are now being delayed to late 2023 or even the next year, Zelensky didn’t miss the opportunity to criticize the “dangerous messages coming from some Republicans” (probably referring to the aforementioned audits). Still, he praised the sudden June 29th visit by former Trump administration Vice President Mike Pence, stressing that “maintaining bipartisan support is the most important thing for Ukraine, regardless of who wins the 2024 US presidential election”.

“Mike Pence has visited us, and he supports Ukraine. First of all, as an American, and then as a Republican. We have bipartisan support. However, there are different messages in their circles regarding support for Ukraine. There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support,” Zelensky insisted.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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