Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Time of Troubles in Transcaucasia – Part 2

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | October 3, 2020

Part-1 of the three-part essay is here.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin on October 2 that the European Union seeks a “constructive dialogue and a positive agenda” with Turkey. She had just returned to the German capital after a 2-day summit meeting of the EU countries in Brussels. Germany played a key role at the summit in steering the EU-Turkey relationship away from a confrontationist path to which it was drifting lately. (See my blog EU marks distance from Indo-Pacific strategy.)

Merkel said, “We had a very long, detailed discussion about our relations with Turkey. We came to the conclusion that we would like to enter into a constructive dialogue with Turkey, we want to have a positive agenda,” adding that the Brussels summit had opened a “window of opportunity” for closer cooperation with Ankara.

Merkel disclosed that talks for closer cooperation between the EU and Turkey in the coming months would focus on migration issues, trade, modernising the Customs Union, and liberalised visa regime. In effect, Merkel has made a huge case for Turkish President Recep Erdogan at a particularly sensitive juncture for the latter when there is growing criticism in Europe regarding his regional policies.

In particular, there has been a nasty incident recently involving the Turkish and French navies in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was a rare, if not unprecedented, incident involving two NATO powers in the 7-decade old history of the western alliance.

Again, the US recently strengthened its military bases in Greece and has repeatedly called for restraint on the part of Turkey over its maritime disputes with Greece and vowed to intervene both politically and militarily in the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey and France support opposite sides in the Libyan civil war, while the US is aligned with militant Kurdish groups in Syria whom Turkey regards as terrorists. And as conflict erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey witnesses the US, France and Russia swiftly drawing close in a phalanx to push back at Erdogan’s robust backing for Azerbaijan, including pledges of military help.

To be sure, Merkel spoke with great deliberation. Before leaving for Brussels, Merkel had addressed the German Parliament where she referred to complaints against Turkey’s human rights records, but went on to praise Turkey’s “amazing and remarkable” performance in hosting refugees, highlighting that Turkey is hosting four million refugees.

Interestingly, Merkel compared Greece to Turkey in a poor light. “We have to weigh very carefully how to resolve the tensions and how to strengthen our co-operation on refugees and on the humane treatment of refugees,” she said and proceeded to condemn the manner in which Turkey’s archetypal enemy Greece is handling the migrant camp in Lesvos (Greece).

With biting sarcasm, Merkel noted, “in recent days we have seen horrible images regarding the treatment of refugees. And not from Turkey, I would like to emphasise, but from Lesvos (Greece), from an EU member state.”

Without doubt, Germany has stood up to be counted as Turkey’s friend at a time when the latter faces growing isolation within the NATO and from the EU.

Seminal events

The well-known American professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Walt once penned an essay titled Great Powers Are Defined by Their Wars where he pointed out that explaining a great power’s foreign policy is a perennial question for scholars of international politics. He argued that major wars have powerful and long-lasting effects on a nation’s subsequent foreign or military policy.

Prof. Walt explained that wars are seminal events from which a great power’s subsequent behaviour follows, independent of its relative power, regime type or its leadership. In his words, “Those who fight in these wars are often scarred by the experience, and the lessons drawn from victory or defeat will be etched deeply into the nation’s collective memory. The experience of past wars is central to most national identities… If you want to understand the foreign policy of a great power, therefore (and probably lesser powers as well), a good place to start is to look at the great wars it has fought.”

Isn’t it a poignant historical memory for Berlin that the Ottomans were Germany’s allies in two world wars when it was hopelessly isolated by the the western powers?

On the other hand, take Russia and Turkey. Russia fought a series of twelve wars with the Ottoman Empire between the 17th and 20th centuries — one of the longest series of military conflicts in European history — which ultimately ended disastrously for the latter and led to its decline and eventual disintegration.

Russia had often fought the Ottomans at different times, often in alliance with the other European powers. Importantly, these wars helped to showcase the ascendancy of Russia as a European power after the modernisation efforts of Peter the Great in the early 18th century. In the Turkish Muslim psyche, however, Russia has figured as a protagonist which had played an historical role in the weakening of the Ottoman Empire in Central Europe, the Balkans and Transcaucasia.

The Russian conquest of the Caucasus mainly occurred between 1800 and 1864. In that era the Russian Empire expanded to control the region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, the territory that is present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (and parts of today’s Iran and Turkey) as well as the North Caucasus region of modern Russia. Multiple wars were fought against the local rulers of the regions as well as the Ottoman Empire until the last regions were brought under Russian control by 1864 with the expulsion to Turkey of several hundred thousand Circassians.

Then followed the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) when Russia seized the the province of Kars and the port of Batumi on the Black Sea. In World War I, aligned with Germany, the Ottomans pushed against Russia as far east as Baku (capital of Azerbaijan) but then withdrew, lacking the strength to advance further, and subsequently in the post-war confusion, somehow contrived to regain Kars.

Suffice to say, in 1991 following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, when Transcaucasia became independent as the states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, a lot of blood-soaked history involving Russia and Turkey provided the backdrop. Incidentally, Erdogan’s family originally hailed from Rize Province in the eastern part of Turkey’s Black Sea region (where he grew up as a child), which was a site of battles between the Ottoman and Russian armies during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I and was occupied by Russian forces in 1916-1918, to be finally returned to the Ottomans under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. The Soviet Union returned Rize to Turkey in 1921.   

‘Past is never dead’

Amidst all this, an interesting feature of the flow of history has been that from the days of the Roman Empire, Transcaucasia was usually a borderland between Constantinople (Istanbul) and Persia. Areas would shift from one empire to the other, their rulers would have varying degrees of independence and were often vassals of one empire or the other, depending on the size and proximity of the suzerain’s army. By around 1750 the area was divided between the Turkish and Persian vassals. The western two thirds were inhabited by Georgians, an ancient Christian people, and the eastern third mostly by Azeris, Turkic Muslims. And Russia of course was pushing close to the Black Sea and the Caspian against the Ottoman and Persian empires.

Professor Walt in his essay cited a famous quote from the American novelist William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Indeed, for Russia, Turkey or Iran, the current developments in Transcaucasia form part of a vast collective event that shapes their perceptions of danger and definitions of heroism, sacrifice, and even their identity.

In fact, the current line-up in the developing situation around Turkey speaks for itself: Germany voices sympathy for Turkey and offers an enhanced partnership; France lambasts Turkey and seeks EU sanctions against Turkey; France alleges Ankara’s dispatch of Syrian fighters to Nagorno-Karabakh; Germany appreciates Turkey’s big hand in addressing the refugee crisis gripping Europe; France coordinates with Russia at the highest level of leadership to pressure Turkey over Nagorno-Karabakh; the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the US join Russia and France’s call for cessation of fighting in Transcaucasia; Iran maintains neutrality and suggests a joint effort with Turkey and Russia to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, Moscow has shed its initial ambivalence and is stepping into the arena on the side of Armenia, expressing “serious concern in connection with incoming information about the involvement in hostilities of gunmen from illegal armed units from the Middle East” — plainly put, censuring Turkey’s backing for Azerbaijan. And President Vladimir Putin underscores that he is voicing a common stance along with “the presidents of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group” (Russia, France and the United States). Simply put, Russia’s “competitive rivalry” with Turkey is surging.

Interestingly, Turkish President Recep Erdogan has openly drawn attention to the broader regional and geopolitical context in which the various unnamed powers are jockeying and covertly coordinating to encircle Turkey. Erdogan said on October 2, “If we connect the crises in the Caucasus, in Syria and in the Mediterranean, you will see that this is an attempt to surround Turkey.”

It doesn’t require much ingenuity to figure out the identity of the foreign powers he would have had in mind who are attempting to “surround” Turkey — France, the US and Greece (all NATO powers) and Russia, the scourge of the Ottoman Empire.

October 3, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin offers US exchange of ‘guarantees’ that both countries won’t meddle in each other’s elections or wider domestic affairs

RT | September 25, 2020

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Friday that Russia and the US prepare a formal agreement that they won’t interfere in each other’s domestic agendas and sign a pact on preventing “incidents in the information space.”

In a statement ahead of the forthcoming US American presidential election, Putin has offered Washington the chance to start an extensive dialogue on issues affecting both countries.

He suggested that Washington and Moscow exchange “guarantees of non-intervention into the internal affairs of each other, including into electoral processes” by using telecoms technology and other “high-tech methods.”

Numerous US officials have long accused Russia of using hackers, and waging online “propaganda” campaigns, in an effort to sway public opinion around American elections. Moscow has vehemently denied these allegations, arguing that they are baseless, or exaggerated.

Putin also said that Moscow and Washington must avoid confrontation in the digital field, by signing a bilateral treaty on preventing “incidents in the information space,” similar to the 1972 US-Soviet pact which laid out steps to reduce incidents at sea.

These measures are aimed at “building up trust between our states,” Putin noted, adding that the resumption of “high-level” dialogue on information security would mutually benefit both nations.

Washington has stepped up its attacks against Moscow as the US presidential race nears election day on November 3. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the US House Homeland Security Committee earlier this month that Russia was trying to “sow divisiveness and discord,” primarily hoping to “denigrate” Donald Trump’s rival Joe Biden.

The Russian Foreign Ministry rebuffed these accusations as “absolutely evidence-free,” arguing that the US maligns Russia for political purposes. “We have repeatedly stated that we had not interfered in American domestic political processes and are not going to do so,” the ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

September 25, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The False Flag Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

By Max Parry • Unz Review • September 24, 2020

On August 20th, Russian opposition figure and self-styled “anti-corruption” activist Alexei Navalny fell seriously ill while in mid-flight from Tomsk, Siberia to the Russian capital. The Moscow-bound plane was abruptly re-routed to make an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk where the anti-Kremlin politician was subsequently hospitalized for suspected poisoning and placed in a medically-induced coma. Two days later, Navalny was airlifted to Germany in an evacuation arranged by a Berlin-based “human rights” NGO at the request of Pussy Riot spokesman Pyotr Verzilov. His transport on a medically-equipped plane with German specialists was permitted by the Russian authorities who now stand accused of culpability in the alleged attack, all in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

While the Russian doctors in Omsk (who saved Navalny’s life) maintain they did not find any evidence of chemical weapons substances in his system, upon examination the German government quickly announced that its military lab had discovered “unequivocal evidence” Navalny was poisoned by a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent and demanded an explanation from the Kremlin — without providing any of said evidence to Moscow or the public, of course. Despite being the supposed victim of an extremely deadly military-grade nerve agent, three weeks later Navalny came out his comatose state and off ventilation, defiantly vowing a return to Russia. Was he ever tested for COVID-19? At this point it seems more likely than this propaganda stunt we are expected to believe.

It is unconvincing precisely because it follows a pattern of improbable events questionably attributed to the Kremlin. As many have noted, the incident strikingly resembles the alleged March 2018 poisoning in Salisbury, England of disgraced former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting from Moscow which caused a similar diplomatic row. Skripal, who had been a double agent for MI6 and served ten years imprisonment for high treason, was exiled to the UK after his sentence in a spy-swap between Russia and Britain in 2010. While residing in southern England, Skripal was reportedly in close contact with a security consultant who worked for the author of the salacious but fabricated dossier on U.S. President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele — and may have even been the source of its unverified contents.

Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious on a park bench, but were said to have been initially contaminated hours earlier by the extremely fast-acting substance applied to the door handle of his residence. Similarly, Alexei Navalny is said to have been contaminated by a water bottle in his hotel room, not in the tea he drank at the Tomsk Bogashevo airport cafe before boarding his flight as originally believed. How is the elapsed time in both of these cases possible? The toxin in Navalny’s case was also not discovered until examination in Germany, meaning a bottle laced with a chemical warfare agent was transported all the way to Berlin? None of those who came to Navalny’s aid or treated him suffered any noxious effects, unlike the Skripals where multiple police officers at least showed minor symptoms. Still, both Navalny and the Skripals fully recovered from their supposed exposure to an extremely lethal toxin considered even more deadly than sarin or VX gas. After their release from the hospital, the Skripals immediately went into hiding which has left the enormous questions surrounding the incident still unresolved two years later. However, the damage was already done as the UK government immediately blamed Moscow and more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled by Britain and its Western allies.

Months later in June 2018, two British nationals were the victims of an accidental poisoning (one fatally) after they discovered a discarded but unopened perfume bottle containing the same poisonous agent. Then that September, Scotland Yard released CCTV footage of two Russian men alleged to be GRU military intelligence agents in Salisbury at the time of the attack. However, no verifiable evidence was ever provided by the British government showing that the two were responsible, though it was conveniently claimed that the would-be culprits clumsily left vestiges of the fatal chemical agent in their hotel room. So, not only is Russian intelligence incapable of carrying out successful assassinations, but carelessly unable to cover their tracks? The premise was already absurd enough but made even more fanciful by Britain’s refusal to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention in providing Moscow with requested samples of the toxin which purportedly poisoned the treasonous ex-spook and his daughter. Thus far in the Navalny case, Germany is following the same script.

What a coincidence that the attack comes just as Nord Stream 2, the second line of the massive natural gas pipeline under construction from Russia to Germany opposed by the U.S. and several NATO allies, is near completion. Suddenly, the diplomatic fall-out has put the controversial project in limbo, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government under pressure from Washington to withdraw from the project which would increase Russian influence on Europe’s energy infrastructure and rival the U.S.’s costlier exports. As pointed out by Die Linke’s Dietmar Bartsch, where were the calls to halt the purchase of Saudi oil imports after the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? It is clear that the Anglo-Americans are simply desperate to halt the resurgence of Moscow on the international stage, threatening their German counterparts with sanctions as the final sections of the pipeline conveying Russian gas across the Baltic Sea is being constructed. The attack on Navalny could not occur at a more auspicious time for the Atlanticists and a worse time for Moscow.

The notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin would try to assassinate an opposition figure who holds a minuscule 2% support amongst the population, far behind other opponents nonexistent to Western media but the one who just so happens to be favored by Washington, is contrary to any reason or common sense. Not to mention, at the exact moment it would jeopardize a project essential to Russia’s economic growth and frugality, as the pipeline would link Moscow with Western Europe bypassing neighboring transit countries such as the Ukraine (also opposed to Nord Stream 2) which have costly transit fees. Is it really the Russian government who stands to massively benefit from this fiasco? The answer to “cui bono?” could not be more clear: U.S., Saudi and Emirati oil and gas interests, not the Kremlin. Russia was also recently the first nation to develop a COVID-19 vaccine candidate with its Sputnik V registered in August, an international competition that has been heavily politicized by Washington which is eager to cast aspersions on Moscow’s accomplishment. Meanwhile, Germany is also the one Western European country where Washington’s anti-Russian propaganda is falling flat, as recent polls consistently show that the vast majority of Germans don’t see Russia as a threat, likely a result of their high rate of media literacy.

Despite Navalny’s recovery, there are already calls to legislate a ‘Navalny Act’ as a follow-up to the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan bill previously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 under the Obama Administration which sanctioned Russian officials accused of being responsible for the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, an unscrupulous Russian tax lawyer who helped dodgy international financiers like the US-born British tycoon William Browder commit massive tax evasion in Russia. Magnitsky died under mysterious circumstances while in custody awaiting trial for facilitating Browder’s skullduggery and suffering from poor health, with the Russian prison officials first accused of depriving him of medical treatment and then allegedly beating and torturing him to death. The fascinating 2016 documentary The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes explores the case from the perspective of Westernized Putin critic and filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, who through the course of his investigation unexpectedly discovers that the mainstream media narrative of Magnitsky’s death was a fiction concocted by Browder. Suddenly, Nekrasov’s entire perspective on Russia comes into question and the film takes on a metanarrative of the nature of propaganda itself.

What we are being told about Navalny is likely another fairy tale like the implausible story forged by Mr. Browder about the death of the auditor he hired to enrich himself exploiting Russia’s tax loopholes. Incredibly, the American-born investor is the grandson of Earl Browder, the leader of the Communist Party USA during its heyday until his expulsion at the end of World War II. When the wartime US-Soviet alliance fell apart and the Cold War began, the elder Browder proved more loyal to American imperialism than the communist movement and presided over the liquidation of the CPUSA until it was reestablished with his dismissal as General Secretary. Having grown up in a Russian-speaking family, decades later his grandson decided to cash in on the collapse of the former Soviet Union through various investment ventures as manager of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management. When Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin and numerous oligarchs went into exile or landed themselves in prison, Bill Browder was forced to flee the country after defrauding the Russian government of millions with the help of the late Mr. Magnitsky.

One of those banished oligarchs, billionaire media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also died under dubious circumstances in the UK when he was found hanging in his apartment bathroom in Berkshire, England in 2013. Like Magnitsky, Putin and the Russian government were suspected of involvement in Berezovsky’s death by the media without a shred of evidence, even though his suspicious purported “suicide” actually came shortly after expressing a written willingness to return to Russia and reconcile with Putin — which almost certainly would have been a stroke of good luck for Russian counter-intelligence and a threat to the West, not the Kremlin. Berezovsky had been close with a former agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s successor), Alexander Litvinenko, a defector renowned for claiming he had been ordered by Putin to assassinate Berezovsky and subsequently lived in the UK as a consultant for British intelligence until his own polonium poisoning in 2006, the first of a series of episodes framing Moscow. Consistently, however, in every one of these cases it is never the Kremlin which stands to gain.

There is a reason Putin consistently polls over 70% in favorability with the Russian people and that is his directing the country away from Western domination under the ruinous neoliberal economic policies of his corrupt and inebriated predecessor Boris Yeltsin which auctioned off the former state-owned assets to foreign investors such as Browder and oligarchs like Berezovsky. Meanwhile, Navalny has a level of support well under 5%, with recent polls placing him behind the Communist Party’s Pavel Grudinin and the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. While Navalny’s own rhetoric has shifted over the years, he has controversially maintained his own cozy relationship with ethnic nationalists who make up a significant amount of his right-wing populist base, even co-organizing annual marches dominated by racist skinheads.

Navalny infamously coined the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus!” advocated by xenophobic nationalists calling for the defunding and secession of the Muslim-majority North Caucasus from Russia, while making frequent Islamophobic statements and stoking anti-immigrant sentiments against Central Asians. You would never know this reading Western media who have completely sanitized Navalny’s politics (if they ever address them at all), while they remain obsessed with the perceived ingratiation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin even though the former’s politics have far more in common with Navalny than the Russian President. Given the U.S. support for far right nationalists in the 2014 anti-Russian coup d’etat in Ukraine, Washington has no qualms about backing fascists to undermine Moscow.

In 1831, Russia’s most famous and revered poet, Alexander Pushkin, composed “To the Slanderers of Russia”, a patriotic ode in response to members of the French parliament who were advocating for a military intervention to assist the Polish uprising against the Russian Empire. Pushkin asserted that the Polish uprising was an inter-slavic “ancient, domestic dispute”, while the Poles considered it an issue of national independence which their European allies were eager to exploit against Moscow. For the great Russian writer, the Polish alliance with the tyrant and invader Napoleon was unforgivable. He also reportedly communicated to General Alexander von Benckendorff, the chief of the Tsarist secret police assigned to censor and surveil him, that the Europeans were still bitter over the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812 and had not yet attacked with weapons but were doing so with “daily mad slander.”

Fast forward nearly 200 years later and little has changed in Russia-West relations. The only thing that has arguably transformed is Russia’s standing on the world stage following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the Soviet Union almost 75 years later, the latter of which was masterminded by a Polish-born National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose Russophobic worldview was a product of the deep-seated “ancient, domestic dispute” Pushkin wrote of a century earlier. Contrary to the Western portrayal of the resurgence of Moscow in the new millennia under Vladimir Putin as neo-tsarist expansionism, post-Soviet Russia is actually a relatively weak capitalist state that has found itself a target of regime change by the West which seeks the colonization and balkanization of Eastern Europe.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused a spike in oil prices that generated huge profits for Chevron and ExxonMobil, but also had the unintended consequence of benefiting Russia’s state-run oil industry just as Putin was re-nationalizing its energy assets and banishing financial criminals like Browder and Berezovsky. While its strength and influence has certainly been restored, its foreign investments remain low even in the Ukraine where Moscow has been accused of territorial expansion with the so-called “annexation” of Crimea, where the mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian population actually voted to join its neighbor in a referendum. Russia may no longer be an empire (or communist), but yet it remains in the crosshairs of Western imperialism, whose political leaders and subservient corporate media are still conducting the “mad slander” that Pushkin opined.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com

September 24, 2020 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

In refusing to extend New START, the US puts the world on the path of collective suicide

By Scott Ritter | RT | September 21, 2020

Statements by the US chief arms control envoy make it clear the US is committed to a nuclear arms race free of the encumbrance of the New START treaty. However, it’s a race the US cannot win, and the world will not survive.

In a fable attributed to the Ancient Greek fabulist and storyteller Aesop, a scorpion and a frog meet at the bank of a river. The scorpion asks the frog to take him to the other side. The frog turns down the scorpion’s request, noting that the scorpion will sting him halfway across and kill him. The scorpion replies that to do so would mean both would die, and, as such, that would be illogical. The frog agrees to take the scorpion across. As he feared, the scorpion stings him, sending them both to their death. Before he goes under, the frog asks the scorpion why he did so, to which the scorpion replies, “It’s in my nature.”

I use this fable in the introduction of my book ‘Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump’. It was published this past spring, when there was still hope the current administration might embrace reason and agree to a five-year extension of the last remaining arms control treaty in force, New START, that constrained the nuclear ambitions of the United States and Russia.

Recent statements made by Marshall Billingslea, the US special presidential envoy for arms control in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant have made it clear that the Trump administration has no intention of seeking an extension to New START, which is set to expire in February 2021.

First off, Billingslea stated that the US isn’t looking for the automatic five-year extension provided for under the treaty, but rather a “memorandum of intent” of less than five years duration that presents the Russians with a “take it or leave it” proposition: accept a deal that has no constraints on NATO nuclear weapons, or the US will go forward with a nuclear modernization program unconstrained by arms control agreements. Moreover, Russia has until the US presidential election in November to accept the deal or, as Billingslea threatened, “after Trump is re-elected, the ‘entrance fee,’ as we say in the United States, will increase.”

Not surprisingly, the US ultimatum was rejected outright by Russia, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Rybakov declaring “We [Russia] cannot talk in this manner,” and noting that the US position constituted little more than an ultimatum which ultimately lowered any chance of the two nations reaching any agreement on extending New START.

In addition to setting unacceptable conditions regarding NATO’s nuclear arsenal, the US insistence on trilateral negotiations was likewise seen as a non-starter by both Russia and China. The effort to turn the bilateral New START treaty into a trilateral agreement has all but killed the prospects of a New START extension, opening the door to the prospect of a renewed arms race at a time when both the US and Russia are pursuing advanced strategic nuclear weapons. This reality did not appear to faze Billingslea, who noted that “Russia has largely completed its modernization of its nuclear arsenal.”

“We’re just starting ours. And we will be extremely happy to continue it without the START restrictions,” he added.

There is near-unanimous consent among most arms control experts that an extension of the New START treaty is an essential step toward engendering a modicum of stability when it comes to the strategic nuclear postures of both the US and Russia, especially at a time when relations between those two nations have worsened across the board. The decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in August 2019 further complicated the US-Russian strategic balance. By eliminating intermediate-range weapons from Europe that could strike Moscow within minutes of being launched, the INF treaty helped lower the threshold for a full-scale nuclear conflict between the US and Russia.

The New START treaty is the last remaining constraint on US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons, both in terms of numbers and capability. If it were to expire, both the US and Russia would move forward with the deployment of advanced new systems, inclusive of new hypersonic nuclear delivery vehicles, that would only further exacerbate nuclear postures on the part of both nations that are already operating at near hair-trigger alert status.

History may very well show that the tipping point regarding the viability of the American democratic experiment came when it attempted to bankroll an unnecessary nuclear arms race at a time when the US economy and society, weakened by years of neglect, and further fractured by the stresses imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, was already teetering on the verge of collapse. Already, the Trump administration has been compelled to pare back defense spending for 2021, due to the demands placed on the overall budget by the pandemic. Billingslea’s cavalier attitude toward funding the coming arms race – “we can afford it” – isn’t reflective of reality.

The US economy is undergoing a fundamental realignment, both in terms of how it operates internally and how it interfaces with the rest of the world. The social demands created by an economy that can only function through massive infusions of government stimulus, and a healthcare system that, for many Americans, exists in name only, cannot be funded by endless borrowing, especially when one of the largest consumers of American debt, China, is engaged in a trade war in which dumping US debt is very much on the table.

In the very near future, US politicians will be confronted with the kind of existential crisis that all empires in decline eventually face, where, regardless of the decision taken, there is nothing that can be done to recover from the mess they themselves have made. The idea that the US Congress will continue to fund a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons under these conditions is absurd. This doesn’t mean, however, that the crisis has been averted – far from it.

As I write in the conclusion of ‘Scorpion King’:

The world labors on the misguided belief that the United States is a rational actor, and therefore not prone to the kind of irrational actions which would lead to a world-ending general nuclear exchange. But the available facts do not support such a conclusion. The casual manner in which the United States has shed itself of the encumbrance of binding nuclear arms control treaties and agreements while simultaneously engaging in a nuclear arms race where the weapons being procured are seen as a viable component of American military power projection suggests that the United States was custom cast as Aesop’s scorpion.

Having embraced the notion that American security is predicated on a new generation of nuclear weaponry unconstrained by the limitations imposed by arms control agreements, having the ability to procure these weapons due to social and financial collapse only exacerbates the threat these weapons were supposed to deter. It doesn’t matter that no such threat exists; perception makes its own reality, and the perception of those, like Marshal Billingsley, who advocate for new nuclear weapons is that such a threat exists.

Like Aesop’s frog, the rest of the world will more than likely seek to help the United States navigate the troubled times ahead. And like Aesop’s scorpion, the United States will very likely reward this kindness by embarking on irresponsible military-based policies designed to offset its own social and economic failings, and trigger a nuclear conflict that destroys it and the rest of the world.

Because it is our nature.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

September 23, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The US’ Nuclear START Ultimatum To Russia Risks Provoking The Unthinkable

By Andrew Korybko | OneWorld | September 22, 2020

What Could Be Worse Than The Cuban Missile Crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis is universally considered to have been the most dangerous moment in the history of mankind after it prompted the US and Russia to engage in nuclear brinkmanship with one another. The end of the Old Cold War was thought by many to have made the return to such a dark scenario an utter impossibility, but the previously thinkable might be about to repeat itself very soon following the US’ START ultimatum to Russia earlier this week. That acronym refers to the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which limited the number of nuclear warheads on each side and restricted some of their delivery systems. It was agreed to by Presidents Obama and Medvedev but expires early next year. Failing to renew the agreement would unquestionably spark an uncontrollable nuclear and other arms race between these Great Powers and therefore greatly destabilize the world. Unfortunately, this might be inevitable.

The American Ultimatum To Russia

US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea told the Russian daily Kommersant on Sunday that the New START might be extended for less than five years through a memorandum of intent but only on the condition that China joins the deal and NATO doesn’t scale back any of its nuclear weapons from Europe during this period like Moscow requested. Russia obviously can’t compel China to do anything so the US is clearly trying to drive a wedge between the two by pressuring Moscow to lean on Beijing in this manner, which would further complicate their relations if it was even attempted. Secondly, the NATO buildup in Europe is alarming to Russia since it poses a direct threat to its national security interests. Agreeing to formalize the recent status quo which violates the Russia-NATO Founding Act and is greatly shaped by the US’ recent withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty would set a disturbing precedent too.

Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles To The Rescue

For all intents and purposes, the US isn’t negotiating in good faith but decided to present Russia with an ultimatum that it knew it would refuse, and not only that, but is powerless to comply with even if it wanted to considering its inability to force China to join the New START. It’s for this reason that Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told Sputnik on Monday that his country “will find efficient ways to protect ourselves” if the New START isn’t extended. He was likely referring to Russia’s hypersonic missile achievements of the past few years that President Putin compared to the scale of the USSR’s nuclear project just last week according to TASS. The outlet also reported him as saying that “We had to create these weapons in response to the US deploying strategic missile defense system, which in the future would be able to actually neutralize, nullify our entire nuclear potential.”

Who Stole Whose Hypersonic Missile Secrets?

Around the same time as the Russian leader’s statement, Trump accused his country of stealing hypersonic missile technology from the US during the Obama era, though one of the scientists involved in this project refuted him by pointing out that such experiments “began in the Soviet times, when Obama was still a teenager.” It should also be pointed out that a Russian scientist was arrested in summer 2018 on suspicion of passing off related secrets to what many believe was the American intelligence services. Seeing as how President Putin publicly unveiled this technology earlier that spring, the sequence of events suggests that the US truly is behind Russia in this respect and is struggling to catch up, ergo the spy games. Had Russian really stolen this technology like Trump claimed, then the US wouldn’t need to steal it back from Russia in order to win the hypersonic missile race since it would have presumably still been in possession of these same secrets.

The Poor Sport Wants To Spoil Strategic Stability Because It Lost

The US simply cannot accept that Russia –which the American government and its surrogates routinely allege is backwards, dysfunctional, and on the brink of bankruptcy — beat it in developing hypersonic missiles, which it did in order to protect its nuclear potential after Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and set the trajectory for the contemporary era of nuclear competition between Great Powers. Russia had to ensure that its second-strike capability wasn’t neutralized by the US’ global missile defense plans, hence its interest in accelerating development of hypersonic missiles for piercing through those systems. In other words, Russia foiled the US’ multi-billion-dollar plans to impose its nuclear hegemony upon the world, which explains the furious response of the American government to President Putin’s spring 2018 announcement. Instead of accepting the return of strategic parity, however, the US wants to provoke a nuclear arms race with Russia.

Concluding Thoughts

There is nothing more dangerous for global stability than an all-out nuclear arms race between the US and Russia, which will in turn naturally push all the other nuclear-armed states to increase their own arsenals due to the “security dilemma” that this provokes. The US is behaving very irresponsibly in imposing an ultimatum on Russia in exchange for agreeing to the limited extension of the New START. Whether he realizes it or not, Trump is putting the world back on the path of repeating the Cuban Missile Crisis in the worst-case scenario since it might only be a matter of time before the nuclear competition between the US and Russia spirals out of control once again. The whole reason why the New START and its predecessor pacts were inked was to make that an impossibility, but it’s now once again on the forefront of decision makers’ minds. Unless Trump or perhaps even Biden has a change of heart (neither of which is likely), then the world will be in for very rough times.

September 22, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow Slams US’ Statement on Restoration of Iran Sanctions as ‘Theatrical Performance’

Sputnik – 20.09.2020

MOSCOW – The United States’ claim that the UN sanctions on Iran were restored is misleading as the UN Security Council (UNSC) took no steps leading to the restoration of restrictions, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

“The US continues to mislead the international community by speculating that the UN Security Council conducted some sort of procedures to restore the effect of UNSC resolutions on Iran sanctions, which were cancelled after the signing of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)”, the official statement from Russia read.

“The facts are that the UN Security Council did not take any action that would lead to the restoration of old sanctions against Iran. All that Washington does is nothing more than a theatrical performance staged in order to subordinate the Security Council to its policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran and turn this authoritative body into its handy tool,” the statement continued.

Moscow further urged Washington to “have enough courage to face the truth and stop speaking on behalf of the UN Security Council”.

Earlier in the day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed “the return of virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran” under the snapback mechanism of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

As stressed in the statement, Resolution 2231 has remained intact and all of its provisions, therefore, must be implemented “in the initially agreed mode and volume on the basis of reciprocity among all states”.

September 20, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

We have lost a real giant (Stephen F. Cohen has died)!

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
(Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:9)

The Saker – September 19, 2020

Dear friends,

It is with immense sadness that I have to report that Stephen F. Cohen passed away yesterday in his home in Manhattan at the age of 81.

There are a few media outlets who have already reported this. Most of them discuss Stephen F. Cohen’s political ideas and his books, which is normal since he was a historian of the Soviet Union. But I won’t do that here.

What I want to say about Cohen is something very different.

First, he was a man of immense kindness and humility. Second, he was a man of total intellectual honesty.  I can’t say that Cohen and I had the same ideas or the same reading of history, though in many cases we did, but here is what I found so beautiful in this man: unlike most of his contemporaries, Cohen was not an ideologue, he did not expect everybody to agree with him, and he himself did not vet people for ideological purity before offering them his friendship.

Even though it is impossible to squeeze a man of such immense intellect and honesty into any one single ideological category, I would say that Stephen Cohen was a REAL liberal, in the original, and noble, meaning of this word.

I also have to mention Stephen Cohen’s immense courage. Yes, I know, Cohen was not deported to GITMO for his ideas, he was not tortured in a CIA secret prison, and he was not rendered to some Third Word country to be tortured there on behalf of the USA.  Stephen Cohen had a different kind of courage: the courage to remain true to himself and his ideals even when the world literally covered him in slanderous accusations, the courage to NOT follow his fellow liberals when they turned PSEUDO-liberals and betrayed everything true liberalism stands for. Professor Cohen also completely rejected any forms of tribalism or nationalism, which often made him the target of vicious hatred and slander, especially from his fellow US Jews (he was accused of being, what else, a Putin agent).

Cohen had the courage to take on the entire ruling elites of this country and their messianic supremacist ideology by himself, almost completely alone.

Last, but most certainly not least, Stephen Cohen was a true peacemaker, in the sense of the words of the Holy Gospel I quoted above. He opposed the warmongering nutcases during the Cold War, and he opposed them again when they replaced their rabid hatred of the Soviet Union with an even more rabid hatred of everything Russian.

I won’t claim here that I always agreed with Cohen’s ideas or his reading of history, and I am quite sure that he would not agree with much of what I wrote. But one thing Cohen and I definitely did agree on: the absolute, number one, priority of not allowing a war to happen between the USA and Russia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Stephen Cohen dedicated his entire life towards this goal.

If the Nobel Peace Prize meant anything, and if it was at least halfway credible, I would say that Stephen Cohen deserved such a Nobel more than anybody else on this planet.  Instead, he will get his reward in the Heavens.

In Russian we have an Old Testament inspired saying: “город стоит, пока в нем есть хоть один праведник” roughly meaning “a city will stand as long as there remains even one righteous person inside“. I can’t help it but feel that the “city” of the United States has just lost such a righteous person. Yes, there are still a few righteous people left in this “city”, but we all sure lost one of our best contemporaries.

To my immense regret, I never met Professor Cohen personally. And yet, when I heard the news of this death this morning, I felt truly heartbroken. My main consolation is that Cohen died before November and what will inevitably follow. I believe that God took him away from us to spare him the pain of seeing his country collapse under the repeated attacks of pseudo-liberal neocons. Somewhere, I also believe that we, as a society, simply don’t deserve to have such a righteous man amongst us. Cohen is now in much better company.

Thank you, dear Steve, for your kindness and courage.  I shall miss you very, very much!

September 19, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US deploys armored vehicles to Syria & steps up air patrols after dust-up with Russian forces

RT | September 18, 2020

The Pentagon has sent a number of armored vehicles, radar systems and additional troops to Syria in a show of force, bolstering the US military presence in the country following a run-in with Russian forces last month.

The deployments, accompanied by increased air patrols over eastern Syria, were announced by US Central Command on Friday.

“The United States has deployed Sentinel radar, increased the frequency of US fighter patrols over US forces, and deployed Bradley Fighting Vehicles to augment US forces in the Eastern Syria Security Area (ESSA),” CENTCOM spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement, adding that the move was meant to “ensure the safety and security of coalition forces.”

“These actions are a clear demonstration of U.S. resolve to defend Coalition forces in the ESSA, and to ensure that they are able to continue their Defeat-ISIS mission without interference.”

The new deployment will reportedly include a half-dozen Bradleys and fewer than 100 soldiers, though it remains unclear exactly where they will operate in Syria. Much of the country’s northeast is controlled by US-backed Kurdish militias and Washington has blocked its reintegration under the rule of the government in Damascus.

Though Urban made no mention of Moscow in his announcement, another US official who refused to be named told CNN the deployments are meant as a “clear signal to Russia to adhere to mutual deconfliction processes” and “avoid unprofessional, unsafe and provocative actions in northeast Syria.”

The move comes less than a month after a tense encounter between US and Russian forces in Syria as both sides carried out patrols, seeing a vehicle collision which the Pentagon said injured at least four American soldiers.

While Washington faulted Moscow for “provocative” behavior during the skirmish, Russia’s own account of the altercation differs significantly, arguing that the relevant US commanders had been informed of the Russian patrol route, and that the American vehicles attempted to block its path. Video footage of the incident appears to show Russian armored trucks being pursued by US vehicles, as well as a Russian helicopter flying low over the area amid the standoff.

Hours before the fresh deployment, US President Donald Trump insisted American forces had all but left the country, telling reporters on Friday that “we are out of Syria,” with the exception of “troops guarding the oil” – referring to US soldiers embedded with local Kurdish militants occupying a number of oil fields in eastern Syria.

Russian forces have been present in Syria since 2015 after an official request from the Syrian government asking to help in the country’s fight against terrorist groups. The American presence in Syria continues against the express wishes of Damascus and without approval from the UN, with the mission continually shifting long after the coalition’s stated objective to defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) was declared complete.

Under the Barack Obama administration, Washington shipped hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and other gear to Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad. However, President Trump has largely abandoned the train-and-equip effort while still carrying out airstrikes in Syrian territory.

September 18, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russian Clouds Over Turkish-Backed Jihadi Paradise In Idlib

South Front | September 17, 2020

On September 16, hundreds of protesters gathered near those Turkish military positions in Greater Idlib, which are surrounded by the Syrian Army, demanding the full withdrawal of the Turkish Army from Syria.

The largest protests took place near Turkish observation posts at Murak and Alsurman. Both these posts were surrounded by Syrian troops during the military operation against Turkish-backed al-Qaeda terrorists in southern Idlib. A majority of the protesters who took part in the event were from the nearby towns and villages, including Murak, Alsurman and Tell Touqan.

In the best traditions of Turkish ‘democracy’, Turkish soldiers from the Murak observation post responded to the protesters with tear gas.

Later on the same day, the Turkish government claimed that the observation posts had become the target of provocations and even individual attacks fomented by the ‘Assad regime’. According to the Turkish side, Turkish forces successfully repelled the provocation.

Meanwhile, Russian-Turkish military consultations on the conflicts in Syria and Libya have been ongoing in Ankara. According to Russian state media, Moscow proposed that the Turkish military reduce the number of observation posts in Greater Idlib, but the proposal was rejected. Nonetheless, Russian state media reported, citing their own sources, that Turkey had agreed to reduce the number of troops deployed in Idlib.

Currently, Ankara has almost 10,000 troops and thousands of pieces of military equipment, including battle tanks and artillery, in northwestern Syria. If the media reports are true, the formal and widely-promoted withdrawal of a dozen Turkish military trucks with several dozen troops will not change the situation strategically. Ankara has repeatedly demonstrated that it is not interested in a real fight against terrorism in Syria and that it in fact uses Idlib terrorist groups to promote its own agenda. This posture could be changed only under the increasing pressure of circumstances and regular friendly reminders from Turkey’s ‘strategic partners’.

As one such reminder over the past few days, the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted more than a hundred airstrikes on infrastructure and positions of the Turkish-backed terrorists. These strikes started last weekend and as of the morning of September 17, it does not seem that they will be fully halted anytime soon. Clouds have once again gathered over the jihadi paradise, which is being created by the Erdogan government in northwestern Syria.

September 17, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Russia blasts US’ Indo-Pacific strategy

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | September 12, 2020

The meeting between the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow on September 11 took place at a particularly delicate juncture in regional politics. Russia is carefully ploughing a neutral line in the India-China standoff while also drawing closer to China to push back at US pressure.

The US policies are prompting Russia and China to further enhance their “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.” Summing up his meeting with Wang, Lavrov said the talks were held in “an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust and were very substantial.” He added, “We discussed the key international problems and reaffirmed the closeness of our views on effective solutions to them…We agreed to carry on our close collaboration.”

Significantly, the most striking part of Lavrov’s remarks pertained to the Asia-Pacific region. Lavrov frontally attacked the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy: “We (Russia and China) noted the destructive character of Washington’s actions that undermine global strategic stability. They are fuelling tensions in various parts of the world, including along the Russian and Chinese borders. Of course, we are worried about this and object to these attempts to escalate artificial tensions. In this context, we stated that the so-called “Indo-Pacific strategy” as it was planned by the initiators, only leads to the separation of the region’s states, and is therefore fraught with serious consequences for peace, security and stability in the Asia-Pacific Region.

“We spoke in favour of the ASEAN-centric regional security architecture with a view to promoting the unifying agenda, and the preservation of the consensus style of work and consensus-based decision-making in these mechanisms, as it has always been done in the framework of ASEAN and the associated entities. We are seeing attempts to split the ranks of ASEAN members with the same aims: to abandon consensus-based methods of work and fuel confrontation in this region that is common for all of us.”

The Chinese state media highlighted Lavrov’s remarks. Wang said in response that China-Russia relations have become “key forces of stability in a turbulent world.” He stressed that the China-Russia alliance has shown “strong resilience” against the backdrop of the “profound changes unseen in a century” in world politics.

The Lavrov-Wang meeting took place in the backdrop of the turmoil in Belarus, for which Russia has blamed the US. On the eve of the meeting in Moscow, a senior Russian lawmaker openly alleged that the US has a master plan to create political tensions within Russia, where regional elections are due to take place on Sept 13. Social media and the Internet, once again, are playing a major role in orchestrating the protests in Belarus.

Interestingly, during the meeting with Lavrov, Wang also called for “further Russia-China cooperation in the area of international information security, against the backdrop that some countries are politicising information technology and cyber security and containing other countries under the pretext of safeguarding its own national security.”

Lavrov’s remarks on Indo-Pacific strategy coincided with the 53rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and related meetings (including the 10th East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting) in Hanoi on Sept 8-11. The ASEAN faces growing pressure from the US to join hands with it against China, but has refused to take sides. The joint communique adopted at the meeting in Hanoi reflects this stance.

Last week, Reuters quoted Indonesia’s foreign minister Retno Marsudi as saying that ASEAN must remain steadfastly neutral and united. “ASEAN, Indonesia, wants to show to all that we are ready to be a partner,” said Retno. “We don’t want to get trapped by this rivalry.” Indonesia’s stance becomes important at a time when the US is attempting to split the ASEAN consensus on neutrality by playing on the interests of individual member countries.

The US is pinning hopes that some ASEAN countries may be in a quandary about how to balance ties to get the best out of both of the big players, while some others may feel tempted to use the US-China rivalry as an opportunity to extract leverage for economic or military advantage. Retno alluded to it when she told Reuters, “(ASEAN has) a good culture, but we have to nurture it. We can’t take it for granted that these values will live forever.”

Significantly, Vietnam and Indonesia, two influential ASEAN countries, are also Russia’s major partners. Lavrov’s remarks, therefore, can be seen as signifying a new level of commitment in Russia’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific, while also reinforcing the partnership with China, and going beyond a mere reflexive response to events (principally, the current crisis in Russia’s relations with the West.)

It is interesting that Moscow is unequivocal in subscribing to the description “Asia-Pacific region” and has no truck with the concept of “Indo-Pacific”, which Lavrov derisively regarded as a politically loaded term. Arguably, Indo-Pacific would be somewhat misleading also in the context of Russian policy. Russia is far more interested in the Asia-Pacific than it is in the Indian Ocean or the Indian subcontinent — considering its engagement with not only China but also with Japan, the two Koreas, the US (as a Pacific power) and with the security of the Far East.

Of course, India figures in the larger geopolitical context, but in the Russian perception, India remains a supernumerary member of the Asia-Pacific community. Where Russia has a difference of opinion with India is in its perception of the American security presence in Asia-Pacific as of an extra-regional power who is intrusive and increasingly destabilising.

Fundamentally, Russia approaches the Asia-Pacific from a global perspective whereas India’s vision narrows down to concerns over rising China. From the Russian perspective, Asia-Pacific is a theatre central to the world order in the 21st century where intense geopolitical struggles are erupting, where a battle of ideas, norms and institutions is already under way. Being a resurgent global power, Russia is obliged to position itself at the centre stage in the region.

Indeed, Beijing is well aware of the shift in the ASEAN regional attitudes towards Russia in the recent years. Unlike in the Soviet era, no ASEAN country (Philippines included) tends to identify Russia as a threat or a malign actor anymore. On the other hand, Russia’s relations with nearly all ASEAN states are comfortable. Thus, a more active Russian involvement in Asia-Pacific affairs works well for China.

Simply put, it suits Moscow and Beijing to make common cause in the Asia-Pacific when their respective relations with the US are so difficult, and when both have come under heavy US pressure. It won’t come as a surprise to see a surge in Russian diplomatic efforts in the period ahead to expand relations across the ASEAN region.

September 12, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Merkel Saves Nord Stream 2 With a Cunning Trick

By Gevorg Mirzayan | Stalker Zone | September 10, 2020

The German Chancellor said that the fate of the most important Russian gas pipeline “Nord Stream 2” will be decided not by Germany, but by the European Union as a whole. This is how she sees the response to the situation with Aleksey Navalny. It may seem that this is a terrible omen for the gas pipeline, which has already seen billions of euros invested into it for construction. But what did Angela Merkel really mean?

The fate of Nord Stream 2 was again in question. No sooner had the project’s supporters celebrated the removal of the Danish obstacle (Copenhagen, after much delay, gave permission for the pipe to be laid through its territorial waters) than Germany, which until recently was an advocate for construction and one of the main beneficiaries of construction, began to seemingly make obstacles.

Berlin, dissatisfied with the position of Moscow in the case of Aleksey Navalny, intends to put the question of a possible curtailment of the project to a pan-European discussion. Why does Angela Merkel want to close “Nord Stream 2” – and does she in general want to?

Legacy

Germany has long called for putting an end to “Nord Stream 2”, which in the understanding of a number of western activists “increases Europe’s dependence on Russian energy carriers”. They did not even require Angela Merkel to deliver a funeral speech over it. “The easiest option for Germany would be to simply withdraw its support for Nord Stream 2, allowing American and European critics to kill it,” the BBC writes. And now, against the background of the Navalny case, the aggressiveness of the project’s opponents has increased by an order of magnitude.

Until recently, it seemed that they were banging their heads against the wall of German pragmatism. Germany’s position on Nord Stream 2 was really reinforced concrete: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was dissatisfied with the lack of cooperation with Moscow in the case of the “poisoning of Aleksey Navalny”, but was not going to abandon Nord Stream 2 because of this. After all, as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas correctly notes, “those who call for the cancellation of the project should understand the consequences of such a step”.

Firstly, Berlin needs Nord Stream 2 from an economic point of view. “Germany has a very weak position in terms of energy. They are closing a lot of power plants – nuclear, coal,” says Donald Trump. Germany and the EU do not have reliable suppliers of cheap gas that are an alternative to Russia. In addition to getting cheap blue fuel (much needed for the export-oriented economy of Germany), Germany will earn good money on the transit of Russian gas, becoming a hub country.

“If the project is stopped, the German consumer will pay for it,” said Klaus Ernst, a member of the Bundestag from the Die Linke party. In addition, Berlin is also thinking about the security of Europe under its patronage – the internal political situation in Ukraine is deteriorating, and no one can guarantee that the militants not controlled by Kiev will not decide to stop the gas export of the “aggressor country” to Europe. Well, or threaten to stop if the EU does not issue another loan to Kiev.

Finally, the issue of reputation is also important. Angela Merkel was not just a supporter of Nord Stream 2, but also a lawyer. She defended the project against those who advocated abandoning infrastructure projects with “Putin’s Russia” – human rights activists, urban lunatics, agents of influence of the US. If now, because of the Navalny case, Merkel changes her position on the “stream”, then she will be criticised for political short-sightedness.

Moreover, by both opponents of Nord Stream 2 (for catching on too late) and supporters of the project, who are dissatisfied with the fact that Angela Merkel has called into question Germany’s energy security because of some political matter. Not to mention the fact that it caused serious damage to German business (Uniper and Wintershall invested almost a billion euros each in Nord Stream 2). And since Frau Chancellor leaves her post at the end of 2021, it is important for her who she will remain in history.

“It all depends on the Russians”

However, Angela Merkel’s pragmatism seemed to be beginning to bend under the pressure of numerous critics and human rights activists calling for “punishing Putin for another poisoning of an opponent”. In their opinion, Germany is the leader of the European Union and (against the background of Donald Trump’s actual refusal to “protect freedom around the world”) a potential leader of the entire liberal community, so it has no right to stay away from the Navalny case. Therefore, Angela Merkel announced the possibility of imposing sanctions against Nord Stream 2 ,and, according to media reports, intends to initiate a pan-European response to the case of Aleksey Navalny. And gather all the EU countries together to decide how to respond to Russia’s behaviour – and part of this reaction may be the suspension of Nord Stream 2.

This suspension will be a serious blow to Moscow. After all, this is not just about an important infrastructure project – there are much bigger things at stake. “The curtailment of Nord Stream 2 will send a clear signal with long-term consequences: German business will leave the Russian market even faster, and Vladimir Putin’s attempts to modernise Russia with the economic assistance of EU countries will finally turn to dust,” writes Deutsche Welle correspondent Miodrag Soric. At the same time, as they make it clear in Berlin, the blow can be avoided. “Our further actions depend on the behaviour of the Russians,” explains German Health Minister Jens Spahn.

“I hope the Russians won’t force us to change our position on Nord Stream 2,” says Heiko Maas, alluding to the fact that the Kremlin is expected to fulfil European demands concerning the Navalny case, and that they are waiting for prompt implementation, and “not by the end of the year or even within a few months”. These demands are very simple and not burdensome – not taking the blame, but just admitting the fact of poisoning, as well as starting an investigation.

Why shouldn’t they be implemented?

One of the reasons is as old as the Russian-west conflict. Moscow does not want to create a dangerous precedent for itself. The Kremlin, in fact, is being forced to admit a politically motivated accusation – after all, the Bundeswehr, whose laboratory declared “the indisputable fact of Navalny’s poisoning”, refused to provide the Russian authorities with any material evidence, citing “the secrecy of the methods and procedures used”.

If Russia now accepts this position on faith under the threat of sanctions, then the inspired western partners will threaten the same sanctions and issue other ultimatums: non-interference in the affairs of Belarus, withdrawal from Syria, etc. And this is not to mention the organisation and information support of other provocations that should be expected before the difficult political transit in Russia in 2024. If the blackmailer issues an ultimatum, the only way to escape from it is to refuse to fulfil any, even the most insignificant demands.

Divergence?

In addition, it makes no sense for Russia to make concessions to Berlin, because the position of Angela Merkel has never changed. Germany, as before, is not going to close Nord Stream 2 – it just behaves more elegantly and cunningly. Yes, it is partly bluffing for the sake of forcing Moscow to make concessions – but at the same time it may be an elegant attempt by Frau Chancellor to pass between the European trickles. By putting the issue up for European discussion, Angela Merkel is calling out those who support punishing Russia, confirming her political leadership – and at the same time putting a tricky block on accepting any tough sanctions.

The fact is that decisions at such meetings should be made by consensus. And if Angela Merkel had raised the question of approving the construction of Nord Stream 2, she would not have received a green light – after all, a number of EU countries (Poland, the Baltic states) are categorically opposed to the implementation of this infrastructure project. However, Frau Merkel (apparently) will ask about something else – should Russia’s punishment for the Navalny case be extended to Nord Stream 2? And here one should not expect any consensus on the completion of the project – the positions of the European countries are too different.

Recall that the pan-European decision concerning the Skripal case was only the collective expulsion of a certain number of Russian diplomats.

And this is despite the fact that back then the grounds for sanctions were much more serious than now. Firstly, there were at least some grounds for blaming Russia for what happened – there was a recording of “Petrov and Boshirov” arriving in Salisbury, as well as information provided to the media that these people work for the Russian special services. Secondly, it was about the use of weapons of mass destruction on the territory of the European Union, which can be interpreted as an attack by the Russian Federation on European citizens. Whilst here we are talking at best about poisoning – without any evidence of Russian guilt. And Moscow can only be accused of unwillingness to take Europe’s word for it. The most important infrastructure projects are not stopped for this by respected countries.

Angela Merkel’s proposal has another advantage for Russia – it protects (at least for a while) Nord Stream 2 from threats from other EU states. There is a risk that some less conscious countries (for example, Denmark) may take their own sanctions against the project. For example, revoke permission to lay a pipe through their waters. Bringing the issue to a pan-European discussion puts unilateral sanctions on pause.

And since Navalny is not dead, but is on the mend, time will cool the hot European heads, and the idea of blocking Nord Stream 2 will go off the agenda. At least for a while.

September 11, 2020 Posted by | Economics, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran, China, Russia to partake in Caucus 2020 military drills

Press TV – September 10, 2020

Military forces from Iran, China, and Russia are scheduled to take part in joint military exercises with a number of other countries in southern Russia later this month.

China’s Defense Ministry made the announcement in a news release on Thursday and said troops from Armenia, Belarus, Myanmar, and Pakistan would also participate in the drills, code-named “Caucus 2020.”

The ministry added that the exercises, to be held from September 21 to 26, would focus on defensive tactics, encirclement, and battlefield control and command.

The drills have special significance “at this important moment when the entire world is fighting the pandemic,” the ministry said.

The United States administration has insinuated that the coronavirus was artificially developed in a Chinese lab. China has rejected that insinuation.

Iran, China, and Russia have over the past years increased their military and diplomatic cooperation to counter the United States’ hostile policies and extra-territorial presence in their regions.

Late last year, the three countries held four days of naval exercises code-named the “Marine Security Belt” to promote regional security and peace and safeguard international trade in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean.

September 10, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »