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The MADness of the Resurgent U.S. Cold War with Russia

By Nicolas J. S. Davies | Global Research | March 28, 2022

The war in Ukraine has placed U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the United States and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race. The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to U.S. imperial power.

The United States and NATO have used similar forms of force and coercion against many countries. In every case they have been catastrophic for the people directly impacted, whether they achieved their political aims or not.

Wars and violent regime changes in Kosovo, Iraq, Haiti and Libya have left them mired in endless corruption, poverty and chaos. Failed proxy wars in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have spawned endless war and humanitarian disasters. U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have impoverished their people but failed to change their governments.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed coups in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras have sooner or later been reversed by grassroots movements to restore democratic, socialist government. The Taliban are governing Afghanistan again after a 20-year war to expel a U.S. and NATO army of occupation, for which the sore losers are now starving millions of Afghans.

But the risks and consequences of the U.S. Cold War on Russia are of a different order. The purpose of any war is to defeat your enemy. But how can you defeat an enemy that is explicitly committed to respond to the prospect of existential defeat by destroying the whole world?

This is in fact part of the military doctrine of the United States and Russia, who together possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. If either of them faces existential defeat, they are prepared to destroy human civilization in a nuclear holocaust that will kill Americans, Russians and neutrals alike.

In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating,

“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

U.S. nuclear weapons policy is no more reassuring. A decades-long campaign for a U.S. “no first use” nuclear weapons policy still falls on deaf ears in Washington.

The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) promised that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. But in a war with another nuclear-armed country, it said, “The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”

The 2018 NPR broadened the definition of “extreme circumstances” to cover “significant non-nuclear attacks,” which it said would “include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allies or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment.” The critical phrase, “but are not limited to,” removes any restriction at all on a U.S. nuclear first strike.

So, as the U.S. Cold War against Russia and China heats up, the only signal that the deliberately foggy threshold for the U.S. use of nuclear weapons has been crossed could be the first mushroom clouds exploding over Russia or China.

For our part in the West, Russia has explicitly warned us that it will use nuclear weapons if it believes the United States or NATO are threatening the existence of the Russian state. That is a threshold that the United States and NATO are already flirting with as they look for ways to increase their pressure on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

To make matters worse, the twelve-to-one imbalance between U.S. and Russian military spending has the effect, whether either side intends it or not, of increasing Russia’s reliance on the role of its nuclear arsenal when the chips are down in a crisis like this.

NATO countries, led by the United States and United Kingdom, are already supplying Ukraine with up to 17 plane-loads of weapons per day, training Ukrainian forces to use them and providing valuable and deadly satellite intelligence to Ukrainian military commanders. Hawkish voices in NATO countries are pushing hard for a no-fly zone or some other way to escalate the war and take advantage of Russia’s perceived weaknesses.

The danger that hawks in the State Department and Congress may convince President Biden to escalate the U.S. role in the war prompted the Pentagon to leak details of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) assessments of Russia’s conduct of the war to Newsweek’s William Arkin.

Senior DIA officers told Arkin that Russia has dropped fewer bombs and missiles on Ukraine in a month than U.S. forces dropped on Iraq in the first day of bombing in 2003, and that they see no evidence of Russia directly targeting civilians. Like U.S. “precision” weapons, Russian weapons are probably only about 80% accurate, so hundreds of stray bombs and missiles are killing and wounding civilians and hitting civilian infrastructure, as they do just as horrifically in every U.S. war.

The DIA analysts believe Russia is holding back from a more devastating war because what it really wants is not to destroy Ukrainian cities but to negotiate a diplomatic agreement to ensure a neutral, non-aligned Ukraine.

But the Pentagon appears to be so worried by the impact of highly effective Western and Ukrainian war propaganda that it has released secret intelligence to Newsweek to try to restore a measure of reality to the media’s portrayal of the war, before political pressure for NATO escalation leads to a nuclear war.

Since the United States and the U.S.S.R. blundered into their nuclear suicide pact in the 1950s, it has come to be known as Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. As the Cold War evolved, they cooperated to reduce the risk of mutual assured destruction through arms control treaties, a hotline between Moscow and Washington, and regular contacts between U.S. and Soviet officials.

But the United States has now withdrawn from many of those arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms. The risk of nuclear war is as great today as it has ever been, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns year after year in its annual Doomsday Clock statement. The Bulletin has also published detailed analyses of how specific technological advances in U.S. nuclear weapons design and strategy are increasing the risk of nuclear war.

The world understandably breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Cold War appeared to end in the early 1990s. But within a decade, the peace dividend the world hoped for was trumped by a power dividend. U.S. officials did not use their unipolar moment to build a more peaceful world, but to capitalize on the lack of a military peer competitor to launch an era of U.S. and NATO military expansion and serial aggression against militarily weaker countries and their people.

As Michael Mandelbaum, the director of East-West Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, crowed in 1990, “For the first time in 40 years, we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III.” Thirty years later, people in that part of the world may be forgiven for thinking that the United States and its allies have in fact unleashed World War III, against them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Gaza, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across West Africa.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin complained bitterly to President Clinton over plans for NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, but Russia was powerless to prevent it. Russia had already been invaded by an army of neoliberal Western economic advisers, whose “shock therapy” shrank its GDP by 65%, reduced male life expectancy from 65 to 58, and empowered a new class of oligarchs to loot its national resources and state-owned enterprises.

President Putin restored the power of the Russian state and improved the Russian people’s living standards, but he did not at first push back against U.S. and NATO military expansion and war-making. However, when NATO and its Arab monarchist allies overthrew the Gaddafi government in Libya and then launched an even bloodier proxy war against Russia’s ally Syria, Russia intervened militarily to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government.

Russia worked with the United States to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped to open negotiations with Iran that eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But the U.S. role in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s subsequent reintegration of Crimea and its support for anti-coup separatists in Donbass put paid to further cooperation between Obama and Putin, plunging U.S.-Russian relations into a downward spiral that has now led us to the brink of nuclear war.

It is the epitome of official insanity that U.S., NATO and Russian leaders have resurrected this Cold War, which the whole world celebrated the end of, allowing plans for mass suicide and human extinction to once again masquerade as responsible defense policy.

While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine and for all the death and destruction of this war, this crisis did not come out of nowhere. The United States and its allies must reexamine their own roles in resurrecting the Cold War that spawned this crisis, if we are ever to return to a safer world for people everywhere.

Tragically, instead of expiring on its sell-by date in the 1990s along with the Warsaw Pact, NATO has transformed itself into an aggressive global military alliance, a fig-leaf for U.S. imperialism, and a forum for dangerous, self-fulfilling threat analysis, to justify its continued existence, endless expansion and crimes of aggression on three continents, in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

If this insanity indeed drives us to mass extinction, it will be no consolation to the scattered and dying survivors that their leaders succeeded in destroying their enemies’ country too. They will simply curse leaders on all sides for their blindness and stupidity. The propaganda by which each side demonized the other will be only a cruel irony once its end result is seen to be the destruction of everything leaders on all sides claimed to be defending.

This reality is common to all sides in this resurgent Cold War. But, like the voices of peace activists in Russia today, our voices are more powerful when we hold our own leaders accountable and work to change our own country’s behavior.

If Americans just echo U.S. propaganda, deny our own country’s role in provoking this crisis and turn all our ire towards President Putin and Russia, it will only serve to fuel the escalating tensions and bring on the next phase of this conflict, whatever dangerous new form that may take.

But if we campaign to change our country’s policies, de-escalate conflicts and find common ground with our neighbors in Ukraine, Russia, China and the rest of the world, we can cooperate and solve our serious common challenges together.

A top priority must be to dismantle the nuclear Doomsday machine we have inadvertently collaborated to build and maintain for 70 years, along with the obsolete and dangerous NATO military alliance. We cannot let the “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power” of the Military-Industrial Complex keep leading us into ever more dangerous military crises until one of them spins out of control and destroys us all.

March 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia states position on West’s mediation in Ukraine talks

Samizdat | March 28, 2022

Moscow is eager for a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine, but it won’t be needing any Western mediation during its talks with Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“We’re ready to give diplomacy a chance. That’s why we agreed to the talks, which are resuming in Istanbul,” Lavrov said during a video conference on Monday with the Serbian media. The discussions are scheduled to continue on Tuesday.

The Turkish government, which has good ties with both Russia and Ukraine, has been putting a great deal of effort into getting the two sides around the negotiating table. But there’s no need to include the EU or the US – which support Kiev in the conflict – in the peace process, according to the minister.

“There are many examples of times when the achievements of diplomacy were shattered by Western colleagues. They can’t be trusted anymore,” Lavrov opined.

“I wouldn’t want to see any shuttle diplomacy from our Western partners, because they’ve already done their ‘shuttling’ – in February 2014 in Ukraine and in February 2015 in Minsk,” he added.

In February 2014, the EU became the guarantor of the agreements between Ukraine’s then-president Viktor Yanukovych and the Maidan protesters in Kiev, Lavrov reminded viewers. “It was a pinnacle of diplomacy. But, the next morning, the opposition spat on that diplomacy, and the EU had to swallow it.”

Yanukovich ended up being deposed after violent clashes and fleeing the country, and the new Ukrainian authorities soon sent its military to the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where most of the population refused to recognize the coup in the capital.

In September of the same year, the Minsk I agreement between the breakaway republics and the government in Kiev was achieved in the Belarusian capital of that name, having been negotiated by Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France in the so-called Normandy Format. The deal called on the two sides to stop fighting, organize prisoner exchanges, allow deliveries of humanitarian aid, and withdraw heavy weaponry.

“The diplomacy then reached new heights in February 2015, when the agreements that were signed in Minsk ended the war in eastern Ukraine and opened the way to restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity by granting a special status to the Donbass,” the minister continued.

The second agreement, Minsk II, introduced another ceasefire and paved the way for administrative and political reform in Ukraine as well as for autonomy and local elections in the Donbass republics. However, Kiev’s Western backers were subsequently unable to persuade the Ukrainian government to fulfil its promises.

“The European Union has proven its incompetence as an organization that is capable of fulfilling the agreements being reached,” Lavrov said.

Russia sent its troops into Ukraine over a month ago, following a seven-year standoff over Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Moscow has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it had been planning to retake the two republics by force.

March 28, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

RAND Report Prescribed US Provocations Against Russia and Predicted Russia Might Retaliate in Ukraine

By Rick Sterling | Global Research | March 28, 2022

According to a 2019 Rand report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war. Rather than “trying to stay ahead” or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia. Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.

The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas: economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military. They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits and “likelihood of success”.

Screenshot from RAND

The report notes that Russia has “deep seated” anxieties about western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be a vulnerability to exploit. There is no mention of the cause of the Russian anxieties: they have have been invaded multiple times and had 27 million deaths in WW2.

Significance of Ukraine

Ukraine is important to Russia. The two countries share much common heritage and a long common border. One of the most important leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, was Ukrainian. During WW2, Ukraine was one of Hitler’s invasion routes and there was a small but active number of Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany. The distance from the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, to Moscow is less than 500 miles.

For these same reasons of geography and history, Ukraine is a major component of a US/NATO effort to undermine Russia.  Current Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, said that over 20 years the US invested $5 billion in the project to turn Ukraine. The culmination was a violent coup in February 2014.  Since 2015, the US has been training ultra nationalist and Neo-Nazi  militias. This has been documented in articles such as “U.S. House admits Nazi role in Ukraine” (Robert Parry, 2015),  “The US is arming and assisting neo-nazis in Ukraine while the House debates prohibition”(Max Blumenthal, 2018),  “Neo Nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine” (Lev Golinken in 2019) and “The CIA may be breeding Nazi terror in Ukraine” (Branko Marcetic Jan. 2022).

Rand suggested provocations

Prior to 2018, the US only provided “defensive” military weaponry to Ukraine. The Rand report assesses that providing lethal (offensive) military aid to Ukraine will have a high risk but also a high benefit.  Accordingly, US lethal weaponry skyrocketed from near zero to $250M in 2019,  to  $303M in 2020,  to $350M in 2021. Total military aid is much higher.  A few weeks ago, The Hill reported, “The U.S. has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year”.

The Rand report lists many techniques and “measures” to provoke and threaten Russia. Some of the steps include:

  • Repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets
  • Deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia
  • Increasing US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea)
  • Holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders
  • Withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty

These and many other provocations suggested by Rand have, in fact, been implemented. For example, NATO conducted massive war exercises dubbed “Defender 2021” right up to Russia’s border. NATO has started “patrolling” the Black Sea and engaging in provocative intrusions into Crimean waters. The US has withdrawn from the INF Treaty.

Since 2008, when NATO “welcomed” the membership aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has said this would cross a red line and threaten its security. In recent years NATO has provided advisers, training and ever increasing amounts of military hardware. While Ukraine is not a formal member of NATO, it has increasingly been treated like one. The full Rand report says “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”

The alternative, which could have prevented or at least forestalled the current Russian intervention in Ukraine, would have been to declare Ukraine ineligible for NATO. But this would have been contrary to the US intention of deliberately stressing, provoking and threatening Russia.

Ukraine as US client

In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. This agreement confirmed Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO and rejection of the Crimean peoples decision to re-unify with Russia following the 2014 Kiev coup. The agreement signaled a consolidation of Washington’s economic, political and military influence. 

December 2021 Russia red lines followed by military action

In December 2021, Russia proposed a treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a written agreement that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance.

When the proposed treaty was rebuffed by Washington, it seems the die was cast. On February 21, Putin delivered a speech detailing their grievances. On February 24, Putin delivered another speech announcing the justification and objectives of the military intervention to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.

As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later said, “This is not about Ukraine. This is the end result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990’s.”

Afghanistan again?

As earlier indicated, the Rand report assesses the costs and benefits of various US actions. It is considered a “benefit” if increased US assistance to Ukraine results in the loss of Russian blood and resources. Speculating on the possibility of Russian troop presence in Ukraine, the report suggests that it could become “quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.” (p 99 of full report)

That historical reference is significant. Beginning in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and trained sectarian foreign fighters to invade and destabilize the progressive Afghan government. The goals were to overthrow the socialist inclined government and lure the Soviet Union into supporting the destabilized government. It achieved these Machiavellian goals at the cost of millions of Afghan citizens whose country has never been the same.

It appears that Ukrainian citizens are similarly being manipulated to serve US  goals.

A “disadvantageous peace settlement”

The Rand report says, “Increasing U.S. military aid would certainly drive up the Russian costs, but doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory or result in a disadvantageous peace settlement.”

But who would a peace settlement be “disadvantageous” for? Ukrainian lives and territory are currently being lost. Over fourteen thousand Ukrainian lives have been lost in the eastern Donbass region since the 2014 coup.

A peace settlement that guaranteed basic rights for all Ukrainians and state neutrality in the rivalry of big powers, would be advantageous to most Ukrainians. It is only the US foreign policy establishment including the US military media industrial complex and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who would be “disadvantaged”.

Since Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state, it would seem best to accept that reality and find a compromise national solution which facilitates all Ukrainians. Being a client of a distant foreign power is not in Ukraine’s national best interest.

The Rand report shows how US policy focuses on actions to hurt Russia and manipulates third party countries (Ukraine) toward that task.

*

Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at rsterling1@protonmail.com. 

March 28, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

UAE: There is no substitute for Russian oil

Samizdat | March 28, 2022

The world’s energy markets need Russian oil and no producer can replace it, United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of Energy Suhail al-Mazrouei said on Monday.

Russia produces some 10 million barrels of oil a day, which makes it a critical member of the OPEC+ energy alliance, al-Mazrouei explained during an energy forum in Dubai.

“Leaving the politics aside, that volume is needed today,” he insisted, adding that “unless someone is willing to come and deliver that amount, we don’t see that someone can substitute Russia.”

Russia is the world’s second biggest crude exporter after Saudi Arabia. Following Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, some nations, led by the US, have pledged to stop buying Russian oil and gas. The United States, Europe, and others have been calling on Gulf Arab oil producers to ramp up production and help bring down crude prices, which at one point shot above $120 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency announced earlier this month that it had decided to release 60 million barrels of oil from its emergency reserves, saying that global oil markets were already tight with highly volatile prices and commercial inventories at their lowest level since 2014.

Many have expressed doubts, however, about whether it was possible to ditch Russia’s energy resources.

Last week, the EU stepped back from imposing an embargo on Russian crude and petroleum products, despite pressure from the US. An immediate embargo on Russia’s fossil fuels “from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week. Europe gets nearly 30% of its crude and roughly 50% of its petroleum products from Russia.

Reducing dependence on natural gas – something that the EU hopes to achieve over the next few years – may prove difficult as well. Qatar – which holds the third-largest natural gas reserves in the world – said last week that it was practically impossible to replace Russian gas on the European market, as between 30 and 40% of the total volume of gas supplied to the world market comes from Russia.

March 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

G7 rejects Russian demand to pay for gas in rubles

Samizdat | March 28, 2022

The Group of Seven major economies have collectively agreed to reject Moscow’s demand to pay for energy imports from Russia in rubles, according to German Energy Minister Robert Habeck.

“All G7 ministers agreed completely that this [would be] a one-sided and clear breach of the existing contracts,” Habeck told journalists on Monday.

The minister added that “payment in rubles is not acceptable” and that the nations will urge the companies affected “not to follow” the demand issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

On Monday, Putin ordered the government, the central bank, and Gazprombank to develop the necessary tools to switch all payments for Russian natural gas from “unfriendly states” to rubles from March 31.

This includes countries that have targeted Russia’s financial system and seized its foreign reserves in response to the crisis in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia will stop shipping natural gas to countries that reject the demand.

March 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Reckless Words Underscore the Dangers of the U.S.’s Use of Ukraine As a Proxy War

By Glenn Greenwald | March 27, 2022

As grave of a threat as deliberate war is, unintended escalation from miscommunication and misperception can be as bad. Biden is the perfect vessel for such risks.

The central question for Americans from the start of the war in Ukraine was what role, if any, should the U.S. government play in that war? A necessarily related question: if the U.S. is going to involve itself in this war, what objectives should drive that involvement?

Prior to the U.S.’s jumping directly into this war, those questions were never meaningfully considered. Instead, the emotions deliberately stoked by the relentless media attention to the horrors of this war — horrors which, contrary to the West’s media propaganda, are common to all wars, including its own — left little to no space for public discussion of those questions. The only acceptable modes of expression in U.S. discourse were to pronounce that the Russian invasion was unjustified, and, using parlance which the 2011 version of Chris Hayes correctly dismissed as adolescent, that Putin is a “bad guy.” Those denunciation rituals, no matter how cathartic and applause-inducing, supplied no useful information about what actions the U.S. should or should not take when it came to this increasingly dangerous conflict.

That was the purpose of so severely restricting discourse to those simple moral claims: to allow policymakers in Washington free rein to do whatever they wanted in the name of stopping Putin without being questioned. Indeed, as so often happens when war breaks out, anyone questioning U.S. political leaders instantly had their patriotism and loyalty impugned (unless one was complaining that the U.S. should become more involved in the conflict than it already was, a form of pro-war “dissent” that is always permissible in American discourse).

With these discourse rules firmly implanted, those who attempted to invoke former President Obama’s own arguments about a conflict between Russia and Ukraine — namely, that “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one” and therefore the U.S. should not risk confrontation with Moscow over it — were widely maligned as Kremlin assets if not agents. Others who urged the U.S. to try to avert war through diplomacy — by, for instance, formally vowing that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine and that Kyiv would remain neutral in the new Cold War pursued by the West with Moscow — faced the same set of accusations about their loyalty and patriotism.

Most taboo of all was any discussion of the heavy involvement of the U.S. in Ukraine beginning in 2014 up to the invasion: from micro-managing Ukrainian politics, to arming its military, to placing military advisers and intelligence officers on the ground to train its soldiers how to fight (something Biden announced he was considering last November) — all of which amounted to a form of de facto NATO expansion without the formal membership. And that leaves to the side the still-unanswered yet supremely repressed question of what Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland referred to as the Ukrainians’ “biological research facilities” so dangerous and beyond current Russian bio-research capabilities that she gravely feared they would “fall into Russian hands.”

As a result of the media’s embracing of moral righteousness in lieu of debating these crucial geopolitical questions, the U.S. government has consistently and aggressively escalated its participation in this war with barely any questioning let alone opposition. U.S. officials are boastfully leading the effort to collapse the Russian economy. Along with its NATO allies, the U.S. has flooded Ukraine with billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, with at least some of those arms ending up in the hands of actual neo-Nazi battalions integrated into the Ukrainian government and military. It is providing surveillance technology in the form of drones and its own intelligence to enable Ukrainian targeting of Russian forces. President Biden threatened Russia with a response “in kind” if Russia were to use chemical weapons. Meanwhile, reports The New York Times, “C.I.A. officers are helping to ensure that crates of weapons are delivered into the hands of vetted Ukrainian military units.”

The U.S. is, by definition, waging a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians as their instrument, with the goal of not ending the war but prolonging it. So obvious is this fact about U.S. objectives that even The New York Times last Sunday explicitly reported that the the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire” (albeit with care not to escalate into a nuclear exchange). Indeed, even “some American officials assert that as a matter of international law, the provision of weaponry and intelligence to the Ukrainian Army has made the United States a cobelligerent,” though this is “an argument that some legal experts dispute.” Surveying all this evidence as well as discussions with his own U.S. and British sources, Niall Ferguson, writing in Bloomberg, proclaimed: “I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going.” UK officials similarly told him that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.”

In sum, the Biden administration is doing exactly that which former President Obama warned in 2016 should never be done: risking war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers over Ukraine. Yet if any pathology defines the last five years of U.S. mainstream discourse, it is that any claim that undercuts the interests of U.S. liberal elites — no matter how true — is dismissed as “Russian disinformation.”

As we witnessed most vividly in the run-up to the 2020 election — when that label was unquestioningly yet falsely applied by the union of the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to the laptop archive revealing Joe Biden’s political and financial activities in Ukraine and China — any facts which establishment power centers want to demonize or suppress are reflexively labelled “Russian disinformation.” Hence, the DNC propaganda arm Media Matters now lists as “pro-Russian propaganda” the indisputable fact that the U.S. is not defending Ukraine but rather exploiting and sacrificing it to fight a proxy war with Moscow. The more true a claim is, the more likely it is to receive this designation in U.S. establishment discourse.

That there are few if any risks graver or more reckless than a direct U.S./Russia military confrontation should be too obvious to require explanation. Yet that seems to have been completely forgotten in the zeal, arousal, purpose and excitement which war always triggers. It takes little to no effort to recognize the current emergence of the dynamic about which Adam Smith so fervently warned 244 years ago in Wealth of Nations:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war.

The grave dangers of the world’s two largest nuclear-armed powers acting on opposite sides of a hot war extend far beyond any intention by the U.S. to deliberately engage Russia directly. Such a war, even with the U.S. waging it “only” through its proxies, severely escalates tensions, distrust, hostilities, and a climate of paranoia. That is particularly true given that — ever since Democrats decided to blame Putin for Hillary’s 2016 loss — at least half of Americans have been feeding on a non-stop, toxic diet of anti-Russian hatred under the guise of “Russiagate.” As recently as 2018, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russia hacked into voting machines and altered the 2016 vote count to help Trump win. This cultivation of extreme anti-Russian animus in Washington has been made even more dangerous by the virtual prohibition on dialogue with Russian officials, which during Russiagate was deemed inherently suspect if not criminal.

And all of those preexisting dangers are, in turn, severely exacerbated by an American president who so often is too age-addled to speak clearly or predictably. That condition is inherently dangerous, made all the more so by the fact that it leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by the Democratic Party’s national security advisers who will never forget 2016 and seem more intent than ever on finally attaining vengeance against Putin, no matter the risks. Speaking to U.S. troops in Poland on Friday, a visibly exhausted and rambling President Biden — after extensive travel, time-zone hopping, protracted meetings and speeches — appeared to tell U.S. troops that they were on their way to see first-hand the resistance of Ukrainians, meaning they were headed into Ukraine:

It seems clear that this was not some planned decision to have the U.S. president casually announce his intention to send U.S. troops to fight Russians in Ukraine. This was, instead, an old man, more tired, unpredictable and incoherent than usual due to intense overseas travel, accidentally mumbling out various phrases that could be and almost certainly were highly alarming to Moscow and other countries.

But accidental or unintentional escalation — from misperception or miscommunication — is always at least as serious a danger for war as the deliberate intention to directly engage militarily. In January of this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that its so-called “doomsday clock” was set to 100 seconds before midnight, the metaphorical time they used to signify an extinction-level event for humanity. They warned that the prospect of a cataclysmic nuclear exchange among the U.S., Russia and/or China was dangerously possible, and specifically warned: “Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.”

In 2018, when the clock was “only” at two minutes before midnight, they emphasized tensions between Russia and the U.S. as one of the primary causes: “The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.” They urged recognition of this specific danger: “Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions.”

That Biden’s “gaffe” about U.S. troops headed into Ukraine could generate exactly this sort of “misperception” seems self-evident. So do the grave dangers from Biden’s sudden yet emphatic declaration on Saturday that Putin “cannot remain in power” — the classic language of declared U.S. policy of regime change:

That clear declaration of regime change as the U.S. goal for Putin was quickly walked back by Biden’s aides, who absurdly claimed he only meant that Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, not that he can no longer govern Russia. But this episode marked at least the third time in the past couple weeks that White House officials had to walk back Biden’s comments, following his clear decree that U.S. troops would soon be back in Ukraine and his prior warning that the U.S. would use chemical weapons against Russia if they used them first.

That Biden seems to be stumbling and bumbling rather than following scripted recklessness seems likely in some of these cases but not all. The White House’s vehement denial, in the wake of Biden’s speech, that regime change in Russia is its goal was contradicted by Ferguson’s reporting in Bloomberg last week:

Reading this carefully, I conclude that the U.S. intends to keep this war going… I have evidence from other sources to corroborate this. “The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime”… I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire.  It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Whether deliberate or unintentional, these escalatory statements — particularly when combined with the U.S.’s escalatory actions — are dangerous beyond what can be described. As an Australian news outlet reported on Sunday, “Russia has launched a missile strike near Poland in what appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.” The accompanying video shows at least three long-range cruise missiles, launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, precisely striking targets in western Ukraine, near to where Biden was in Poland. That missile launch, the outlet reasonably concluded, “appears to be a deadly warning to the United States.”

Whatever else is true, the U.S. and Russia are now in waters uncharted since the Cuban missile crisis. Even the savage US/USSR proxy wars of the 1980s in Latin America and Afghanistan did not entail these sorts of rapidly escalating threats. A Russian president who, validly or not, feels threatened by NATO expansion in the region and driven by questions of his legacy, on the other side of a U.S. president with a long record of hawkishness and war fever which is now hobbled by the carelessness and infirmities of old age, is a remarkably volatile combination. As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday: “A U.S. President who, during an atrocious war, does not mean what he says on matters of War and Peace, and must be corrected by his hyperventilating staff, is a clear and present danger to all.”

Hovering above all of these grave dangers is the question of why? What interests does the U.S. have in Ukraine that are sufficiently vital or substantial to justify trifling with risks of this magnitude? Why did the U.S. not do more to try to diplomatically avert this horrific war, instead seemingly opting for the opposite: namely, discouraging Ukrainian President Zelensky from pursuing such talks on the alleged grounds of futility and rewarding Russian aggression, and not even exploring whether a vow of non-NATO-membership for Ukraine would suffice? How does growing U.S. involvement in this war benefit the people of the United States, particularly as they were already — before this war — weighed down by the dual burdens of pandemic-based economic depravations and rapidly escalating inflation?

These are precisely the questions that a healthy nation discusses and examines before jumping head-first into a major war. But these were precisely the questions declared to be unpatriotic, proof of one’s status as a traitor or pro-Russia propagandist, as the hallmark of being pro-Putin. These are the standard tactics used to squash dissent or questioning when war breaks out. That neocons, who perfected these smear tactics, are back in the saddle as discourse and policy leaders — due to their six-year project of ingratiating themselves back into American liberalism with performative anti-Trump agitprop — makes it inevitable that such sleazy attacks will prevail.

As a result, the U.S. now finds itself more deeply enmeshed than ever in the most dangerous war it has fought in years if not decades. It may be too late for those questions to be meaningfully examined. But given the stakes, this is as clear a case of better late than never as one will ever encounter.

March 27, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Dissecting the Ukraine imbroglio

By Former Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar | The Tribune | March 21, 2022

A successful war is invariably a popular one. The paradox is, to be a success, the war has to be popular, but not necessarily vice versa. This is where American policymakers, especially in the state department, and a big chunk of political elite, find themselves carousing in some fantasyland pinning hopes on a colour revolution in Russia due to the leadership’s decision to go to war in Ukraine. It must have come as a surprise and huge disappointment to them that according to even independent (rather, unfriendly) polls conducted in Poland, President Vladimir Putin’s rating has only soared to over 70 per cent during these past three weeks.

The unusual form of Russian action is because of its focus on restoring security of Donbass region and its boundaries.

For Putin himself, it is nonetheless a double challenge, as the statesman in him is defending Russia’s national security from the predatory mindset of the US and NATO while the politician in him is not only sensing and responding to the expectations of the people regarding the war but getting them to adjust to a painful (but historic) economic transition in the country due to its decoupling from the western economies. That involves switching attention from one planet to another on a sustainable 24X7 basis.

These nuances also explain the anatomy of Russia’s war in Ukraine — its ponderous progress, interspersed with lulls like a slowcoach of a provincial passenger train from time immemorial. In reality, though, in about half the time that the Pentagon took to seize control of Iraq during the 2003 invasion (with all the advantages that it was fighting an emaciated enemy degraded through a decade), Russia’s special operation appears to have more or less achieved its core military objective, which is to secure the Donbass region that has a big Russian population with extensive family kinships within Russia — an emotive issue, no doubt, given the genocide that followed the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014.

New kids on the block wouldn’t know that unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated by extreme nationalist and fascist groups against the Russian population through the past 8-year period. Over 14,000 civilians were killed, albeit in the American eyes, that didn’t qualify as “war crimes” because those fascist, neo-Nazi groups were largely mentored by them. Most of the 3.6 million people living in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who survived the genocide speak Russian and one-fifth of them are Russian citizens. Arguably, the security of Donbass region and the restoration of its original administrative boundaries (as of 2014 before Ukrainian forces attacked pro-Russian separatists) is a salience of the Russian operation. That explains why the operation took an unusual form with the Russian forces avoiding fighting as far as possible and instead surrounding the Ukrainian forces and encouraging them to surrender. An estimated 60,000 Ukrainian troops are under siege and the effort is to make them surrender rather than take the easy route to vanquish them.

This has been the pattern of the Russian operation elsewhere too, which confused most Western analysts who expected sound and fury like General MacArthur’s in Japan — amphibious landings, frontal assaults on towns and cities and outright occupation. If we look at the map from northern Belarus border, clockwise, major cities — Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv — have been surrounded. While Russian columns from Chernihiv and Sumy advanced toward the outskirts of Kyiv, those from east of Kharkiv moved south to link up with the forces in Luhansk and are currently engaged in taking control of the strategic Izium-Severodonetsk axis, which would establish Russian control of entire eastern region and virtually secure the Donbass region — that is, except for Mariupol port city on the Sea of Azov (which was originally part of Donetsk).

Mariupol will give the two independent Donbass republics a major port head that would provide them access to the world market, which is hugely significant for future development of that entire resource-rich region, straddling Ukraine’s rust belt. Mariupol is not only a centre for grain trade, metallurgy and heavy engineering but also higher education and business. Sensing Mariupol’s centrality to Russian strategy, the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade has been deployed to the port city. That explains the residual resistance.

The other focal point of the Russian operation currently is Kyiv, which is now surrounded on the west, north and east. On the face of it, Russian forces are not planning to launch a frontal assault on the capital city but that option remains. Again, Odessa, jewel in the crown of Black Sea and the legacy of Catherine the Great to Mother Russia, could be in Russian sights.

Clearly, the operation is limited to the eastern side of Dnieper river. The tactic is to target convoys of western arms with missile strikes. Lviv in western Ukraine witnessed an attack on Friday. Two days earlier, a large base 20 km from the Polish border and a major depot for weapons and training ground for mercenaries were also targeted. But the operations are not targeting Ukrainian cities and Moscow has no intentions of occupying the country, but is concentrating on limited surgical strikes to incapacitate Ukrainian military infrastructure.

Moscow seeks a peace agreement. But the catch is, the incumbent leadership of Volodymyr Zelenskyy is highly unstable and the ex-comedian himself is manipulated by folks in Washington who are wedded to the notion that the longer the conflict lasts, the more Russia ‘bleeds’. The global information field, which is traditionally dominated by American and British media — and the Anglo-Saxon countries in general — is creating self-serving narratives. Even in America, only Fox News presents some alternative point of view. To borrow from the Prussian General and strategist Clausewitz, the Ukraine war is veritably ‘a continuation of policy with other means’.

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s reality check in Europe

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 26, 2022 

The takeaway from the US President Joe Biden’s European tour on March 25-26 is measly. Dissenting voices are rising in Europe as western sanctions against Russia start backfiring with price hikes and shortages of fuel and electricity. And this is only the beginning, as Moscow is yet to announce any retaliatory measures as such. 

The unkindest cut of it all is that the Russian Defence Ministry chose Biden’s trip as the perfect backdrop to frame the true proportions of success of its special operation in Ukraine. The US and NATO’s credibility is perilously close to being irreparably damaged, as the Russian juggernaut rolls across Ukraine with the twin objectives of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ in its sights. 

The Russian General Staff disclosed on Friday that the hyped up Ukrainian Armed Forces, trained by NATO and the US, have sustained crippling losses: Ukrainian air force and air defence is almost completely destroyed, while the country’s Navy no longer exists and about 11.5% of the entire military personnel have been put out of action. (Ukraine doesn’t have organised reserves.) 

According to the Russian General Staff’s deputy head Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, Ukraine has lost much of its combat vehicles (tanks, armoured vehicles, etc.), one-third of its multiple launch rocket systems, and well over three-fourths of its missile air defence systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems. 

Sixteen main military airfields in Ukraine have been put out of action, 39 storage bases and arsenals destroyed (which contained up to 70% of all stocks of military equipment, materiel and fuel, and more than 1,054,000 tons of ammunition.)

Interestingly, following the intense high-precision strikes on the bases and training camps, foreign mercenaries are leaving Ukraine. During the past week, 285 mercenaries escaped into Poland, Hungary and Romania. Russian forces are systematically destroying the Western shipment of weapons. 

Most important, the mission to liberate Donbass is about to be accomplished. Simply put, the main objectives of the first phase of the operation have been achieved.

Apart from Kiev, Russian troops have blocked the northern and eastern cities of Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Nikolaev, while in the south, Kherson and most of Zaporozhye region are under full control — the intention being to not only to shackle Ukrainian forces but to prevent their grouping in Donbass region. (See my article Dissecting Ukraine imbroglio, Tribune, March 21, 2022)  

“We did not plan to storm these cities from the start, in order to prevent destruction and minimise losses among personnel and civilians,” Rudskoy said. But, he added, such an option is not ruled out either in the period ahead.

It stands to reason that Washington and European capitals are well aware that the Russian operation is proceeding as scheduled and there is no stopping it. Thus, NATO’s extraordinary summit on March 24 confirmed that the alliance is unwilling to get into a military confrontation with the Russian Army. 

Instead, the summit decided to strengthen the defence of its own territories! Four additional multinational NATO combat groups of 40,000 troops will be deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on a permanent basis. Poland’s proposal to deploy NATO military units in Ukraine was outright rejected.

However, Poland has certain other plans, namely, to deploy contingents to the western regions of Ukraine to support the ‘fraternal Ukrainian people” with the unspoken agenda of reclaiming control over the historically disputed territories in the those regions. What Faustian deal has been struck in Warsaw on March 25 between Biden and his Polish counterpart Duda remains unclear. Clearly, vultures are circling Ukraine’s skies. (See my blog Biden wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine, March 24, 2022) 

Indeed, if Poland makes a bid for Ukrainian territory (with Biden’s tacit support), would Belarus be far behind to take control of the regions of Polesie and Volyn in Ukraine? Possibly not. Suffice to say, in the period since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 when the US moved into the driving seat, Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is now perilously close to vanishing altogether from Europe’s map! 

Washington — Biden personally, having been the Obama administration’s point person in Kiev in 2014 — should carry this heavy cross in history books. 

As for European leaders, they find themselves in a surreal world, out of touch with the stunning realities of a new world order. Eighty-year old Biden with limited grasp of the torrential flow of events, made an astounding proposal in his press conference in Brussels on Thursday that Ukraine should replace Russia in the G20! 

But Biden has a soulmate in the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen whose latest threat is that Russian oil and gas companies “will not be allowed to demand payment for fuel in rubles.” She is blissfully unaware that the EU has no more effective means to pressure Russian companies! 

Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the western leaders huddled in Brussels by surprise with his announcement that Russia will promptly start charging “unfriendly” countries in rubles for gas supplies. There are over 45 unfriendly countries on the list — the US and EU members plus the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Montenegro and Switzerland. (See the RT’s explainer What buying gas in rubles means for Russia and the West.)

Effectively, Moscow is on the one hand strengthening the weakened ruble, while on the other hand, messaging that it is pioneering a new wave internationally to bypass the dollar as  commodity currency. 

Yet, Moscow is also continuing to routinely supply Russian gas for transit to Europe through Ukraine to meet the requests of European consumers (109.5 mln cubic meters as of March 26!) The point is, despite rhetoric and grandstanding, Europe recently increased its gas purchases from Russia significantly against the backdrop of astronomically high spot prices! 

The European Council meet at Brussels on March 25 with Biden in attendance failed to adopt any concrete measures to address the energy price growth, and could not come up with a unified approach to Russia’s decision to receive payments for its gas only in rubles. 

Apropos the European Commission’s proposal to establish a new system of common purchase of gas to prevent outbidding, the final statement of the European Council merely says that the leaders agreed to “work together on voluntary common purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen,” meaning that common purchases may be carried out only by those EU countries who are willing to unite. [Emphasis added.] 

It is a long haul for Europe to dispense with Russian gas. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday:  “There are gas shortages, and that is why we need to talk to Russians. Europe will move towards reducing its dependence on the Russian gas, but can this happen in the coming years? This is very difficult.”

“Europe consumes 500 billion cubic meters of gas, while America and Qatar can offer 15 billion, up to the last molecule… That is why German and Austrian politicians told me: “We cannot just destroy ourselves. If we impose sanctions on Russia in the oil and gas domain, we will destroy ourselves. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot before rushing into a fight. This is how certain rational people in the West see it today.” 

With the doomsday predictions of Russian military failure in Ukraine coming unstuck and the blowback from Russia sanctions beginning to bite, Europeans are caught in a bind. They will be resentful as time passes. 

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia wants US to comment on Hunter Biden’s alleged link with Ukrainian biolabs

Samizdat | March 25, 2022

Russia wants to hear comments from the US regime on the alleged involvement of Hunter Biden into financing a network of biolabs in Ukraine, which Moscow suspects of conducting bioweapons research, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The embattled presidential son was financially linked to the Ukrainian labs by the Russian military this week.

“We will certainly demand explanations. And not us alone. You know that China has asked for explanations, demanded transparency over this program and this situation,” Peskov said.

He was commenting on a connection, which the Russian military claimed to have discovered between the embattled son of President Joe Biden and biolabs in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden used to head the now-defunct DC-based Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, a branch of the Rosemont Seneca investment fund. The Russian military claimed that the fund had close ties to the Pentagon and helped finance bioresearch in Ukraine.

The labs drew public attention after US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said under oath this month that Washington didn’t want research materials from the facilities to fall into the hands of Russia.

Washington denied that facilities in Ukraine – and other parts of the world – which the Pentagon funds through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency, had anything to do with germ research. Russia and China complained that the operation was shrouded in secrecy and called on the US to open the labs to international inspections.

Peskov dismissed statements coming from the White House, which alleged that Russia was talking about the biolabs to pave the ground for a false flag attack in Ukraine with weapons of mass destruction.

“The Americans are trying to switch attention … from the unfolding scandal,” the Russian official assessed.

March 25, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

China refutes NATO secretary general’s misinformation accusation

By Du Qiongfang | Global Times | March 24, 2022

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday that time will prove China stands on the right side of history and groundless accusations will collapse, refuting an allegation from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that “China has provided Russia with political support by spreading lies and misinformation.”

When asked about Stoltenberg’s allegation at Thursday’s press briefing, Wang said the accusation against China itself is spreading disinformation.

With an objective and fair attitude, China has made active efforts to realize an immediate ceasefire, to avoid a humanitarian crisis and to restore peace and stability, Wang said, adding that Ukraine should be a bridge between the East and the West, not an outpost in major power rivalry.

“We need calm and rationality to defuse a crisis rather than ignite the fire and add more fuel to the fire; we need dialogue and communications to resume peace instead of using pressure and coercion; to achieve lasting peace and stability, we need to accommodate the legitimate security concerns of all parties, rather than promote collective confrontation and seek absolute security,” Wang said.

He added that China’s stance is in line with the wishes of most countries and it stands on the right side of history as time will tell. Any groundless accusations and suspicions against China are indefensible and will simply collapse.

The West thinks the war is about defending democracy and freedom but in reality it’s about security in the European geopolitical landscape, so the Ukraine crisis is not about differences in social systems or ideology, Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Wang said that European countries should uphold the principle of strategic autonomy and work with Russia and Ukraine and other relevant countries to build a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture through dialogue and negotiations. The US and NATO should also engage in dialogue with Russia to address the root cause of the Ukraine crisis.

Wang also said that there are many loopholes in the US’ responses to the international community, including China’s questions surrounding the US biological laboratories in Ukraine which Russian experts claimed to have revealed new facts pointing to the direct involvement of the US Department of Defense in the development of biological weapons components in Ukraine.

The best way for the US to prove its innocence is to open its doors and accept the test of the international community, Wang said.

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

The spectre that haunts Biden as he wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine

The Russian special operation may after all be inching toward successful conclusion

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 24, 2022

By a queer coincidence, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright passed away while President Joe Biden was travelling in Air Force 1 en route to Europe on what is probably the most crucial diplomatic mission of his presidency. 

The general expectation is that 80-year old Biden is personally undertaking a mission to persuade the US’ European allies that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) should intervene in the Ukraine crisis in some way. And, ironically, Albright was the choreographer of the idea that in the post-cold war era, the NATO should reinvent itself and transform as a global security organisation. 

Albright, like most American diplomats of East European descent, was passionately devoted to the NATO. She supported the alliance’s brutal military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and would have supported an intervention in Ukraine. 

The White House spin is that Biden will discuss additional sanctions against Russia. But the possibility of new restrictions has waned following the EU foreign and defence ministers’ meeting on Monday where a decision was taken to put off further sanctions. 

The EU meeting instead assessed that the ongoing Ukraine-Russian talks should proceed further and even if upbeat predictions may not be entirely correct, since the talks are challenging, the good part is that neither party has complained of any deadlock in the negotiations so far. 

Conceivably, Biden is travelling to Europe not to discuss tougher sanctions  (something which he could as well have handled in a videoconference) but to explore NATO’s potential engagement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for which his participation becomes absolutely essential. 

As things stand, there is every possibility of a prolonged conflict in Ukraine and Russia eventually prevailing. Such a scenario is extremely damaging for Biden politically in the US. Biden is facing domestic criticism both for his failure to prevent the conflict as well as for being ineffectual in blocking the Russian advance.

While the US rhetoric pillories Russia for “war crimes” and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, et al, the world capitals view this as a geopolitical confrontation between America and Russia. Outside of the western camp, the world community refuses to impose sanctions against Russia or even to demonise that country. 

The world community steers clear of taking sides between the US and Russia. The Islamabad Declaration issued on Wednesday after the 45th meeting of the foreign ministers of the fifty-seven member Organisation of Islamic Conference refused to endorse sanctions against Russia and instead counselled cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, avoidance of loss of lives, enhancement of humanitarian assistance and a “surge in diplomacy” — almost ditto China and India’s stance.

Not a single country in the African continent and West Asian, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asian region has imposed sanctions against Russia. Following a visit to Hanoi, Malaysian PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob said, “We discussed the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and agreed that Malaysia and Vietnam will remain neutral on this issue. As for sanctions against Russia, we do not support them. The sides do not support unilateral sanctions; we recognise only restrictions that could be imposed by the UN Security Council.” This is the consensus within ASEAN too. 

Interestingly, Chinese Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the chief guest at the OIC meeting in Islamabad. In his remarks, Wang Yi said, “China supports Russia and Ukraine in continuing their peace talks, and hopes that the talks will lead to ceasefire, end the fighting, and bring about peace. Humanitarian disasters should be avoided, and spillover of the Ukrainian crisis should be prevented so as not to affect and harm the legitimate rights and interests of other regions and countries.” 

The Chinese foreign ministry press release on Wang Yi’s meeting with the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said, “As to the Ukraine issue, the two sides agreed that all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected and their reasonable security concerns should be taken seriously. It is imperative to prevent any humanitarian crisis, maintain the peace talk process and resolve conflicts through dialogue and negotiation. Both sides emphasised that all countries have the right to make independent judgements, withstand external pressure, and disagree with the simple logic of “black or white” and “friend or foe”.

Again, the Chinese press release on Wang Yi’s meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry said, inter alia, “The two sides exchanged views on the Ukraine issue, and agreed to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and stay committed to a comprehensive solution to the current crisis. Shoukry said, Egypt opposes some countries exerting pressure on China and stands for strengthening cooperation rather than escalating confrontation.” 

Curiously, four foreign ministers from West Asia travelled to Moscow last week to discuss the bilateral cooperation — from Qatar, Iran, Turkey and the UAE. 

Nonetheless, the outcome of Biden’s visit to Europe will have significant bearing on the conflict in Ukraine. If Biden succeeds in getting European backing for his proposal for a NATO intervention in Ukraine, the conflict may escalate dramatically into a world war involving nuclear weapons.   

 Will Biden push the envelope? It seems he’s unwilling to risk. Biden seems to have a Plan B as well. He has scheduled a separate visit to Warsaw. Poland indeed has its fair share of Russophbes and has been straining at the leash for some form of involvement in Ukraine. 

The heart of the matter is that Poland also has an axe to grind. Parts of Poland comprise today’s ethnically mixed western borderlands of Ukraine — oblasts of Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Lviv. If Ukraine fragments or collapses in defeat, Poland will most certainly seize the opportunity to reclaim its lost territories. Poland’s hyper-activism over Ukraine is self-evident. 

Incidentally, in recent days, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk have both accused Budapest of trying to lay its hands on Ukraine’s largely Hungarian-populated Transcarpathian region. On Tuesday, Sikorski alleged in a tweet that Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and President Vladimir Putin reached a secret agreement on the partition of Ukraine! 

On the same day, Iryna Vereshchuk complained in a Facebook post: “The way the Hungarian leadership has been treating Ukraine lately is even worse than some of the Russian satellite states of the former Soviet Union. Hungary does not support the sanctions. They don’t provide weapons. They don’t allow transit of weapon supplies from other countries. They say ‘no’ to virtually everything.”   

Biden cannot but be exploring with the Polish leadership possibilities that fall short of an outright NATO intervention in Ukraine. The spectre that haunts the Biden administration, despite the swagger of its media bluster, is that the Russian special operation may after all be inching toward successful conclusion, creating a large buffer of regions on the eastern side of the Dnieper river, and gaining control of Black Sea coastline that denies access to NATO ships. 

Poland becomes a key stakeholder in such an outcome and Washington surely regards Warsaw as its number one interlocutor in the developing situation, as the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance. 

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

US escalates sanction threats over China’s balanced position on Ukraine-Russia crisis

By Paul Antonopoulos | March 24, 2022

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on March 21 the imposition of visa restrictions on a group of Chinese officials accused of being involved in or responsible for human rights violations against religious and ethnic minorities. The US official said he would use diplomatic and economic means to “promote accountability” for human rights abuses, such as alleged efforts by Chinese officials to “harass, intimidate, surveil and abduct” members of minority groups, including some individuals who had sought shelter in the US.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said a day later that Beijing will reciprocate a response if the sanctions against Chinese officials are not lifted. The spokesperson expressed strong opposition to sanctions that seriously violate China’s sovereignty and stressed that Washington needs to “stop slandering China for no reason,” pointing to “political prejudices and lies” in many of Washington’s statements against China.

The US is essentially outraged at China for its clear and consistent stance on the Ukraine crisis, which has not changed despite sustained pressure. In fact, it shows more desperation on the part of Washington, especially as traditional allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have snubbed both Blinken and US President Joe Biden whilst maintaining close ties with Moscow.

Biden wants China to abandon its balanced policy towards Kiev and Moscow, even though Washington makes no such demand on Turkey, a NATO member that has not closed its airspace or sanctioned Russia as it too opts to balance its relations. What is more absurd is the belief that Washington thinks Beijing would abandon Moscow despite maintaining pressure on the country through the AUKUS and QUAD military formations.

Essentially, due to Biden’s failure to even control traditional allies like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey, he wants to somehow save face by trying to show his country that he will punish the Chinese for their defiance of not turning against Moscow. In this way, the visa restrictions are essentially meaningless for Chinese officials who never planned to travel to the US to begin with, and therefore they just look all the more ridiculous.

Even if there was no political pretext to accuse Beijing of human rights violations, then another pretext would have been elevated as the current sanctions are motivated by nothing more than making Biden appear that he is punishing China. Beijing will undoubtedly commensurate countermeasures, but the question is whether they will be reciprocated in equal measure or escalate the situation further.

What is certain though is that China will continue to act consistently on the Ukraine issue despite US attempts to push China against Russia whilst simultaneously pressuring the Asian country through the two multilateral military blocs.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on March 21 that a “verbal condemnation” of Russia by China is “vital.”

“Our view is that verbal condemnation of the actions of President Putin and the actions of [the] Russian military is important and vital, and it’s about what side of history you want to stand on at in this point in time,” Psaki said, adding: “where [do] you want to be as the history books are written.”

However, as former US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez wrote in his MEMRI column, “Rather than an appeal to history, or even to morality, American policymakers would have been better served by an appeal to Chinese national interests (the same applies, in different circumstances, to understanding Saudi or Indian national interests).” As he highlights, Chinese history does not write about the Americans favorably to begin with, which is why such an appeal to history is naïve.

In fact, a bigger concern for China than appealing to the US’ writing of history are the allegations of chemical weapon laboratories in Ukraine, especially after the White House accused Beijing of repeating “these conspiracy theories.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it obtained evidence that the US spent more than $200 million on biological laboratories in Ukraine. It can be assumed that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov presented their evidence to the Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui during their meeting on March 21. China has repeatedly demanded that the US be fully transparent about the operation of biological laboratories abroad, yet the Americans continue to deny the charges.

None-the-less, the very fact that the US believes it can turn China against Russia whilst maintaining pressure via AUKUS and QUAD demonstrates a White House far removed from political realism. Despite snubbing’s from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, NATO member Turkey defying sanctions against Russia, and India open to ruble-rupee payments for oil, Washington is increasingly frustrated that it cannot completely isolate Moscow. In this way, a young country like the US appealing to the multi-millennia Chinese civilization to consider history is nothing more then a desperate, if not pathetic attempt to woo Beijing away from Moscow.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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