Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

McCain warns Trump over ‘resetting’ ties with Russia

e6f084a1-7755-4b94-bfb9-1f2ad167a663

Press TV – November 16, 2016

Senior US Senator John McCain has advised President-elect Donald Trump against putting “faith” in Moscow’s desire to improve relations with Washington, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of “tyranny” and “murder.”

Speaking after the first phone conversation between Trump and Putin, McCain said Tuesday that the Russian head of state was not to be trusted.

“With the US presidential transition underway, Vladimir Putin has said in recent days that he wants to improve relations with the United States,” the Republican senator of Arizona said in a statement.

“We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies, and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”

The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said “resetting” ties with Moscow would be too costly for Washington.

McCain’s comments were aimed at preventing Trump from following one of his most important campaign pledges, which included cooperation with Russia to solve mutual differences between the two sides.

At least that was what the Republican president-elect discussed with Putin during their phone call on Monday, according to Moscow.

cbf3ea6f-e87b-498a-aeb7-d88f87f6cb2c

According to a statement released by the Kremlin, America’s 45th president discussed with his Russian counterpart the importance of “normalizing” ties between Moscow and Washington.

Both Putin and Trump had acknowledged “the extremely unsatisfactory state of Russian-US relations at present” and “declared the need for active joint work to normalize them.”

During the conversation, the Russian president also voiced his preparedness to “create a dialogue of partnership with the new administration on the basis of equality, mutual respect and non-intervention in each other’s domestic affairs.”

McCain did not look favorably to the contents of the discussion, warning in his statement that outgoing President Barack Obama’s plans to reduce tensions with Russia did not work either.

“The Obama Administration’s last attempt at resetting relations with Russia culminated in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and military intervention in the Middle East,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee alleged.

Long before Trump’s election on November 8, Putin had made it clear that his government was willing to work with the next US president regardless of the vote’s outcome.

November 16, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia withdraws signature from ICC

The BRICS Post | November 16, 2016

The Russian foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it was withdrawing its signature from the founding document that established the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Saying that it was acting on orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ministry accused the court of failing to “live up to the hopes associated with it” and that it “did not become truly independent”.

The foreign ministry said that Russia cooperated with the ICC in the hopes that it would “become an important factor in consolidating the rule of law and stability in international relations,” but that this failed to happen.

Russia had in 2000 signed the Rome Statute which created the ICC, but never ratified the treaty, which entered into force in 2002.

Russia said it was dissatisfied with the way the ICC approached the conflict with Georgia in 2008 and accused the court of being one-sided and negligent about aggression committed by other parties, including the killing of Russian peacekeepers which was left to local courts under Georgian jurisdiction to investigate.

But Russia may also be voicing displeasure with an ICC report earlier this week which did not recognize the referendum voted by Crimea to join Russia and instead classified it as a military conflict.

Russia’s move comes a week after several African nations including South Africa withdrew from the ICC having accused it of being subjective and unfairly targeting their continent.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has rejected as unwarranted and inappropriate findings of the ICC chief prosecutor that US troops may have committed war crimes in their treatment of prisoners during the occupation of Afghanistan.

“Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014,” the report said.

November 16, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Trump and Putin begin work on US-Russia reset

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 15, 2016

The Russian President Vladimir Putin made the long-expected phone call to the US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday.

It stands to reason that the presidential spokesman in the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, one of Putin’s closest aides, travelled to New York last week ostensibly to attend a world chess event, but principally to prepare the ground for the phone conversation on Monday.

The agenda of such Russian-American conversations is usually agreed upon beforehand. The Kremlin readout (and the brief statement by Trump’s transition team in New York) gave a positive account of the phone conversation.

From available details, it was a substantive conversation, which focused on reviving the Russian-American relationship, and, most important, also took up the Syrian conflict in some detail, including “issues related to solving the crisis”.

So, what emerges is that Putin and Trump have begun discussing Syria in their very first conversation as statesmen, hardly 6 days after the latter got elected, even before his key cabinet posts have been filled, and with 8 weeks still to go to before the new presidency commences.

Clearly, Syria is right on top of Trump’s mind – and the need to engage with Russia. Again, Trump had touched on Syria during his weekend interview with Wall Street Journal (when he made it clear that the US should dump Syrian rebels.)

Quite obviously, Monday’s phone conversation underscored that Trump was not at all fanciful or a maverick when he repeatedly stuck out his neck on the campaign trail and took much flak, including wild allegations of him being a Russian poodle, when he kept insisting on the imperative need of constructively dealing with Putin, as a collaborator rather than as adversary.

As could have been expected, Putin said to Trump that Moscow is ready “to develop a dialogue of partnership” with the US based on the “principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs” – in short, a principled relationship that could be the core of a US-Russia reset .

From the Kremlin point of view, what Putin articulated is a minimalist agenda. Putin has not spoken of any balancing of interests or the desirability of the two countries showing sensitivity to each other’s interests – although they discussed the fight against the “common enemy” – international terrorism and extremism.

Trump’s transition headquarters quoted the president-elect as saying to Putin that “he is very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia.”

With Monday’s conversation, one controversial part of Trump’s foreign-policy plank is gaining transparency.  Both Trump and Putin “expressed support for active joint efforts to normalise relations and pursue constructive cooperation on the broadest possible range of issues.

They emphasised the importance of establishing a reliable foundation for bilateral ties by developing the trade and economic component,” which in turn “would help “stimulate a return to pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation.”

The twitter from New York said Trump and Putin discussed “strategic economic issues.” Energy issues? Western sanctions against Russia? We should know in a near future. Something seems to be brewing here.

At any rate, it is a terrific forward- looking signal. For, how can the “trade and economic component” be developed so long as the sanctions continue, or when New Cold War clouds are hanging so low?

Yet, the Kremlin readout omitted any reference to Ukraine. However, both Putin and Trump noted that at the leadership level, they “should encourage a return to pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation in the interests of both countries, as well as global stability and security.”

By the way, on Monday, Trump also spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Xinhua news agency reported that Trump paid fulsome compliments to China as “a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects”.  Trump added that Sino-American relations “will witness even greater development” during his presidency. Trump and Xi agreed to meet “at an early date”.

Interestingly, Putin and Trump also agreed to not only keep in touch by telephone but also begin planning for an in-person meeting. Would such a meeting take place before or after Trump’s inauguration in January?

Conceivably, these could be the first signs of a new type of big-power relationship. Trump may seek a US-Russia-China entente cordiale to carry forward the US’ global leadership while America attends to the repair and reconstruction of its economy and society. Such an approach dovetails with Trump’s agenda of ‘America First’.

No doubt, Trump has started running no sooner than he hit the ground. This seems to confirm the general impression of him as a man in a hurry. And Putin seemed to expect it.

The Kremlin aide Peskov’s prognosis has been that Putin and Trump are two men “very much alike… in their basic approach towards international relations”, and there’s good reason “to believe that they will manage to establish good relations.”

However, this sort of extraordinary ‘pro-active’ diplomacy by the president-elect, as he has shown on Monday, may not go down well with the American foreign policy and security establishment.

Some of the irritation may even have welled up to the surface when the Obama administration chose Monday itself  to announce even more sanctions against Russia – against six Russian parliamentarians representing Crimea and Sevastopol in the Duma.

At any rate, Moscow too bid farewell on Monday to the Obama administration. Reacting to the reported advice by US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter to Trump not to cooperate with Russia over Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in Moscow on Monday that Moscow is no more interested than the United States (read Obama administration) in such cooperation and will proceed on that basis.

Ryabkov said derisively that in any case, Moscow does not intend to “persuade the Pentagon leadership to change something in this regard.” To be sure, things have touched a nadir in Russian-American relations, and from this point things can only get better.

Having said that, a genuine Russian-American reset depends on the balancing of mutual interests on a number of fronts where progress will be slow and needs to be hard-won. It is the Eurasian theatre that poses formidable challenges.

Issues such a NATO expansion, Crimea, US missile defence, forward deployments of NATO along Russia’s borders, ‘colour revolutions’ — these are difficult topics. Maybe, the experience in working together on Syria — and an easing of western sanctions against Russia, which is entirely conceivable sometime through 2017 — would have a positive effect on the overall climate of trust and mutual confidence.

What Monday’s phone conversation testifies is that Russia definitely sees a window of opportunity in the incoming Trump presidency; a reset in the troubled relationship is possible; and, that Putin and Trump could strike personal chemistry of a kind that was never found possible for the Russian leader with Obama.

November 15, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Euro-Atlanticist course fails in Bulgaria

Katehon | 14.11.2016

In Bulgaria, the country’s first direct elections in the second round of presidential elections were won by the candidate who has been called pro-Russian. General Rumen Radev won the overwhelming majority of votes.

A former chief of the Bulgarian Air Force and the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, General Rumen Radev emphasizes his independence from both Russia and the United States. Before the second round of the elections, he said: “Until recently, I was flying a Soviet-made fighter. I am a graduate of a US military academy, but I am a citizen of Bulgaria, and Bulgaria is my main priority.”

Despite the fact that he is called the pro-Russian candidate due to his policy of lifting the anti-Russian sanctions, reality is different. Moreover, Radev supports his country gaining NATO membership and continuing close ties with the West. However, he is certainly a more advantageous president for Moscow than Tsetska Tsacheva, who represented the ruling liberals.

In Bulgaria, the president does not play a serious role. However, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov announced his resignation and the dissolution of the government over the defeat of their candidate. He stressed that he would be going into the opposition and that “there will no longer be any compromises.” The current president, Rosen Plevneliev, began to make quite sharp anti-Russian statements several days before the election.

It is premature to expect any major changes before the new government is formed. But many agree that relations with Moscow will actually significantly improve even if the new president does not initiate the lifting of the EU sanctions against Russia.

In addition, the socialist Radev’s victory comes alongside the victory of the socialist Dodon in Moldova and, of course, against the backdrop of the high-profile election results in the US. Taken together, all of these new elections and their results allow one to speak of impending global changes across the whole world.

November 14, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Trump effect’ divides European opinion

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | November 14, 2016

The results of the two presidential elections held on Sunday in Bulgaria and Moldova underscore the winds of change blowing over the western edges of Eurasia. To an extent they can be called the early signs of the ‘Trump effect’. In both elections, ‘pro-Russian’ candidates won convincingly. (here and here)

In both cases, the contestation essentially boiled down to whether Bulgaria and Moldova would be better off casting their lot with the European Union or whether they need to realign with Russia. The answer is clear.

The open-ended quest for EU membership no longer holds attraction for Moldova, whereas, Bulgaria appears to be disheartened with its EU membership. On the other hand, Russia is real and it is next-door. The election results yesterday constitute a blow to the EU’s prestige. Indeed, Moscow’s influence is spreading in Eastern Europe.

This is also a swing to the Left in political terms. There is much discontent with ‘reforms’, rampant corruption, etc. in both countries. The Russophile sentiment is very substantial, and there is eagerness to boost trade with Russia to overcome economic difficulties. Also, the local partisans of the West and EU stand discredited in both countries.

In Moldova, only around 30% of population find EU attractive, while 44% would support their country joining the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. Curiously, 66% of Moldovans trust Vladimir Putin; in comparison, only 22% place trust in Barack Obama’s words.

Against the backdrop of the election victory of Donald Trump in the US, how these trends are going to play out will be interesting to watch. Bulgaria’s president-elect Rumen Radev has called for an end to the EU sanctions against Russia. He argues that Sofia should be pragmatic in its approach to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. (This is notwithstanding Bulgaria’s long history of divided loyalties between Russia and Europe.)

The Obama administration in its lame duck phase will endeavour to pressure the EU to extend the sanctions against Russia for yet another 6-month period beyond December. But will Trump follow Obama’s footfalls when the issue crops up again toward the middle of next year? He is unlikely to show Obama’s messianic zeal to ‘contain’ Russia. That is how the EU consensus on sanctions against Russia can break down because many countries in Europe resent the American pressure and prefer to restore trade and economic ties with Russia.

Interestingly, Trump may get resonance in Old Europe as well. The Labour leader in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn made a stunning call in the weekend for Western leaders to ‘demilitarize’ the border between Eastern Europe and Russia or risk a New Cold War. He said the West didn’t have to pile up forces on Russia’s border. Corbyn told the BBC:

I have many, many criticisms of Putin, of the human rights abuses in Russia, of the militarisation of society. But I do think there has to be a process that we try –demilitarise the border between what are now the NATO states and Russia, so that we drive apart those forces and keep them further apart in order to bring about some kind of accommodation. We can’t descend into a new Cold War.

Corbyn also made a thoughtful suggestion that that the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which includes Russia, could replace NATO as a forum for solving issues in the region.

Indeed, some churning has already begun regarding European security even before Trump takes over in the Oval Office. By the way, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Sunday that American statements about possible deployment of a U.S. global missile shield’s radar in the Czech Republic are pure fiction.

He said, “A radar in the Czech territory would mean further escalation in relations with Russia. We need to use the window opening after Donald Trump’s election to have the United States and Russia sit down at one table.” Sobotka pointed out that Eastern Europe’s main security problem today is about putting an end to the war in Syria.

“The United States has considerable influence on the situation in Syria, Russia has considerable influence. So, it is necessary to use this,” he said, adding that Donald Trump can establish more efficient cooperation with Russia on Syria.

However, the fact of the matter is that neither has Trump taken his position yet on NATO nor is it going to be easy for him to seek a separation for America from the western alliance. Simply put, Europe is not ready for a post-NATO future. There is palpable fear in many quarters (both in the US and in Europe) that if the US were to withdraw from Europe, Russia would advance and exercise more assertive behaviour in Eastern Europe.

In an article in the weekend, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg made an impassioned appeal to Trump that now is not the time for the US to abandon NATO. He pointedly invoked the threat perceptions from “a more assertive” Russia. Read the opinion piece here.

The bottom line is that European opinion stands divided. Britain, France and Hungary refused to attend a contentious EU ministerial meeting last night in Brussels, backed by Germany, to align the bloc’s approach to Trump’s election. The rift within the EU on the US vote stands exposed. The irrepressible British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has publicly chided EU politicians to end their ‘whinge-o-rama’ over Trump. (Daily Mail )

Interestingly, the first politician from abroad whom Trump met after the election has been Nigel Farage, the populist Brexit campaigner.

November 14, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Trump’s International Policies Could Look Like

By Brian CLOUGHLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 13.11.2016

In June 2011, before the 9/11 catastrophe shook the world and before President George W Bush committed his country to endless and unwinnable wars, he met with President Putin and described their conversation as «straightforward and effective». He found Mr Putin «to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue… He’s a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship».

Times changed, however, and the hawks in Washington — the military-industrial-Congressional complex — were (and continue to be) intent on challenging Russia and China in every sphere. Among other manoeuvres, they intensified the US military presence in the South China Sea (part of the ‘Pivot to Asia’) and encouraged the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in further military expansion round Russia’s borders. In 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia became part of the military grouping, and after Obama came to power they were joined by Albania and Croatia.

There was no possibility that the Obama administration, whose secretary of state was Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013, would engage in dialogue with Russia. The State Department’s blatant encouragement of the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine («Yats is the guy») confirmed Moscow’s conviction that confrontation was Washington’s inflexible policy.

As one observer wrote at the time of the Kiev coup, «the reality is that, after two decades of eastward NATO expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration». The fact that the current Kiev administration is one of the most corrupt in the world is hardly surprising, but its unconditional support by the US-NATO military alliance is a sad comment on international affairs.

Might things be looking up, with a Donald Trump presidency in the offing? Clinton was totally opposed to dialogue with Russia and made it clear that if she were president she would carry on confronting because «I’ve stood up to Russia, I’ve taken on Putin and others, and I would do that as President». Trump, on the other hand, has been positive in calmly stating that «We are going to have a great relationship with China. We are going to have a great relationship with Putin and Russia». You can’t get more definite than that, and in consequence his election was warmly greeted by those who prefer dialogue to war.

President Putin was guarded in his reaction to Trump’s election, and said only that «We heard the campaign slogans when he was still a candidate which were aimed at restoring relations between Russia and the United States. We understand that it will not be an easy path given the current state of degradation in the relations. And as I have repeatedly said, it’s not our fault that Russian-American relations are in such a poor state. But Russia wants and is ready to restore full-fledged relations with the United States… we are ready to play our part, and do everything to return Russian-American relations to stable and sustainable development track». In other words — It’s a good result ; but let’s wait and see what happens when the man is sitting in the Oval Office.

Will a Trump presidency result in cessation of flights of US electronic warfare aircraft up to the borders of China and Russia, which they do regularly in order to «light up» defensive radars and other systems? Will President Trump forbid the provocative coat-trailing ‘freedom of navigation’ incursions by nuclear-armed US warships in the South China Sea? And, above all things, might it mean an end to the US-NATO military build up to war?

The Secretary General of the Pentagon’s branch office in Brussels, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, highlighted his important global status by joining heads of state and national political leaders in noting the election result, saying that «I congratulate Donald Trump on his election as the next President of the United States and I look forward to working with President-elect Trump,» which no doubt brought a smile to the face of Mr Trump who rightly considers NATO to be ‘obsolete’ and involved with countries that his supporters have ‘never even heard of.’ He is so right, because average Americans couldn’t care less about countries that are so unimportant to their lives.

Trump knows very well that Russia has no intention of invading the Baltic states or, indeed, anywhere else, and objects greatly to the ‘freeloading’ of European NATO nations, because the US spends more on its military than anyone else. You can prove almost anything with figures, but the incontrovertible fact is that the US spends 3.6 per cent of its GDP on running its military forces while other NATO countries such as Germany, France, Canada, Turkey and Italy spend less than 2 per cent. Understandably, Trump objects to this inequality.

Yet even given his reservations about NATO, it is not clear how Mr Trump equates his desire to cool things with Russia and China with his statements that the US needs a 350 ship navy, another 90,000 soldiers, an increase in missile capability, and 100 more fighter aircraft. That doesn’t sound like a peace-producing policy, because if he intends to talk with China and Russia, and reduce the speed and thrust of the present march to war, it might seem that a vast increase in military spending would send a contradictory message. There are no other countries in the world with whom the US is likely to go to war on the scale that a conflict against either Russia and China would entail. So why does he want so much more military hardware? The threat from the Islamic State is extremely dangerous, but it doesn’t require the US army to have another 90,000 soldiers.

This is but one reason for President Putin’s ‘wait and see’ attitude. He wants rapprochement — we would all welcome rapprochement, except for the Washington military-industrial mafia — but it doesn’t look as if it’s guaranteed.

Sometimes you wonder who exactly is in charge in America, because on November 5 the commander of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, declared that «No matter who is president, no matter who controls Congress, the United States is always going to be interested and need security and stability in Europe,» which was an intriguing foreign policy statement to be made by a general. He went even further in his commitment to US military involvement overseas by saying that «my expectation is the US Army will be given the mission to continue supporting Ukraine for as far as I can see», which sentiment is directly opposed to that of his future commander-in-chief, who said in a media interview that «the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were». Of President Putin he said that «He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right?»

President Putin will be pleased to talk with Mr Trump, and obviously has hopes that, as in his 2001 discussions with George W Bush, there might be «the beginning of a very constructive relationship». There are some indications that this could be achieved, just as there are some indications that US foreign policy under Trump will not be as confrontational as that of recent years. Yet it would be unwise to ignore the sheer power of Washington’s military-industrial mafia and such as the loudmouthed General Hodges who have been given a boost by the Trump declaration that he intends to greatly expand the country’s military capabilities.

Trump will soon pronounce on his intended foreign policy, once he has taken advice from those more knowledgeable than he is about international affairs. He seems to realise that peaceful coexistence beats belligerent confrontation, and we must hope that he will stick to his guns rather than buy a lot more of them.

November 13, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

First effect of Trump win: Al-Qaeda morale in Aleppo collapses, Western campaign against Russian bombing ends

By Alexander Mercuris | The Duran | November 12, 2016

One place where Donald Trump’s election victory has had an immediate effect is in the battlefield around Aleppo.

Reports from the area of the battlefield speak of a total collapse of morale amongst the Al-Qaeda led Jihadi forces which have been attacking the city from the south west, as whatever lingering hopes there were of a Western military intervention following a victory by Hillary Clinton in the US Presidential election have turned to dust.

The result is that the Jihadi forces have been rapidly losing ground in the south western suburbs of Aleppo over the last three days, a fact which has apparently obliged Al-Qaeda to draw on its last reserves in order to rush reinforcements to the front to prevent a total collapse there.

As always the situation is confused, but it seems the Syrian army has now entirely liberated the strategically located 1070 housing complex and the Minyan and Al-Assad districts, and that it is starting to develop an offensive towards the strategically important town of Khan Tuman, which is the base from which the Al-Qaeda led Jihadis launch their attacks on south west Aleppo.

Importantly these Syrian army advances are taking place despite the continued absence of Russian bombing in the area of Aleppo.

In the meantime there are reports that the Russian fleet which includes the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the nuclear powered missile battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky has moved closer to the Syrian coast.

There have even been scattered reports that some of the Kuznetsov’s aircraft have been spotted flying over Syria on what appear to be reconnaissance missions.

There are also reports that the Russian fleet is preparing to launch heavy cruise missile strikes against the Jihadis forces concentrated in south west Aleppo, and that these will happen within the next few hours.

Reports that such attacks were imminent have in fact been circulating for around a week.

It appears the Russian fleet has taken longer to deploy to the Syrian coast than was expected despite being present in the eastern Mediterranean for several days.

Even allowing for a possible political decision by the Russian leadership to delay the attack until after the US Presidential election, it is still not clear why there has been a further delay given that the election took place several days ago.

Possibly there have been technical problems, though there are no reports of any problems with Kuznetsov’s engines.   Alternatively, the Russians might have felt the need to take additional security precautions after the strange incident several days ago involving the Dutch submarine.

It does however seem that an attack on the Jihadis attacking Aleppo from the Russian fleet in the eastern Mediterranean is indeed now about to happen, and that this attack may now be only hours away.

Regardless of when the attack happens, the key point is that following Trump’s election any idea of the West intervening directly in the fighting in Aleppo is now finally and conclusively dead.

Already the West’s media campaign against the Russian bombing of the Jihadi districts of eastern Aleppo, which was dominating the news just a few weeks ago, seems like an age away, whilst the demands for Russia to be further sanctioned or prosecuted for war crimes because of its actions in Syria have been quietly dropped.

November 13, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Establishment Strikes Back

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | November 13, 2016

The immediate impact of Donald Trump’s victory among those of us who favored his candidacy over Hillary Clinton’s was triumphalism on the day after. This euphoric mood was very well captured on a special edition of the Russia Today’s “Cross Talk” show, which registered an audience of more than 110,000 on-line viewers, a number which is rare if not unprecedented.

But much of the potential for positive change which came with Trump’s victory will be dissipated if all of us do not do what Barack Obama and Donald Trump did a couple of days ago: reach out to shake hands with political opponents, who will remain opponents, and nonetheless move forward together in a constructive manner.

If left to its own devices, the U.S. foreign policy establishment will continue doing what it has done since Nov. 8: wishing away the whole Trump victory. At present, these think tank scholars and major media columnists are in denial, as we see from op-eds published by The New York Times and other anti-Trump mainstream media. They question his mandate for change and his ability to execute change. They offer to hold his hand, bring him to his senses and ensure that his election (at least regarding its message about trying to cooperate with Russia on shared goals such as fighting terrorism) was in vain.

These spokesmen for the Establishment choose to ignore that Trump’s first moves after winning were to reward those in his party who had first come out in support of him and who stood by him in the worst days of the campaign, of which there were many. I note the rising stars of Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, among others. This makes it most improbable that he will also reward those who did everything possible to stymie his candidacy, first, and foremost the neoconservative and liberal interventionist foreign policy loudmouths.

Perhaps to comfort themselves, perhaps to confuse us, these foreign policy elitists say Trump is interested mainly in domestic affairs, in particular rebuilding American infrastructure, canceling or modifying Obamacare. They call him an isolationist and then fill in the content of his supposed isolationism to suit their purposes. They propose to give him a speed course on why continued global hegemony serves America’s interests and the interests of his electorate.

Yet, the record shows that Trump formulated his plans for U.S. military and foreign policy explicitly during the campaign. He said he would build up the U.S. military potential. He spoke specifically of targets for raising the number of men and women under arms, raising the construction of naval vessels, modernizing the nuclear arsenal. These plans are cited by the Establishment writers today as contradicting Trump’s thinking about getting along with all nations, another major motif of his campaign rhetoric. They propose to help him iron out the contradictions.

Explaining Trump’s Contradictions

But the answer to the apparent contradictions could well be that Trump was saying what he had to say to get elected. Consistency has not been at the center of Trump’s style. I maintain that the apparent contradictions were intentionally planted by Trump to secure the support of unsophisticated patriots while a very well integrated program for the way forward has been there in his pocket all the time.

Expanding U.S. military might will cost a lot, at the same time Trump has said he will not raise taxes nor raise debt. This means, in fact, reallocation of existing budgets. The most obvious place to start will be to cut back on the number of U.S. military bases abroad, which now number more than 600 and which consume $600 billion annually in maintenance costs.

The Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky recently described this spending rather colorfully when reassuring his compatriots that the U.S. is not as powerful as it appears. Said Zhirinovsky, a lot of the Pentagon’s allocations go to buying toilet paper and sausages, not military muscle as such. Moreover, the bases abroad tend to create local, regional and global grievances against the United States that, in turn, increase the need for still more bases and military expenditures.

If Trump begins by cutting back on the bases now surrounding and infuriating the Russian Federation, he would take a big step towards relaxation of international tensions, while saving money for his other security and domestic priorities.

Trump also has said he will require U.S. allies to pay more for their defense. This particularly concerns Europe, which is prosperous, but not carrying its weight in NATO despite years of exhortations and cajoling by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The U.S. pays two-thirds of the NATO’s bills. Trump has declared that this is unacceptable.

The Pentagon budget represents a bit over 4 percent of GDP, whereas in Europe only several countries have approached or crossed the 2% of GDP minimum that the U.S. and NATO officials have called for. As a practical matter, given the ongoing stagnation of the European economies, widespread heavy indebtedness and the ongoing national budgets operating at deficits that exceed the guidelines of the European Central Bank, it is improbable (read impossible) for Europe to step up to bat and meet U.S. demands.

This will then justify the U.S. withdrawal from NATO that figures at the sidelines of the wish list of Trump supporters, not isolationism per se. Trump supporter and military analyst Andrew Bacevich wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. may well pull out of NATO completely in the early 2020s.

As a fallback, the Establishment spokesmen speculate on how the President-elect will be taken in hand by members of his own party and by their own peers so that his wings are clipped and his directional changes in U.S. foreign and defense policy are frustrated before they are even rolled out during the 100 days of the new administration.

Very likely, that same foreign policy establishment will resume its howling in the wind if they are proven wrong after Trump’s Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, and he proceeds precisely down the path of policies that he clearly enunciated during the campaign.

Why do I think that Trump as President will follow through on the foreign policy promises of Trump, the candidate? There is a simple explanation. His announced policies regarding accommodation with Russia, renunciation of “regime change” as a U.S. government priority abroad and the like were all set out by Trump during the campaign in the full knowledge they would bring him lots of well-organized criticism and gain him few votes, given the electorate’s focus on domestic policy issues.

He also knew that his positions, including condemning President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, would cost him support within his own party leaders, which is what happened. He even weathered Hillary Clinton calling him a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the third presidential debate and other McCarthyistic innuendo portraying him as some kind of Manchurian Candidate.

A Clash over Wars

Thus, we may assume that once he is in the saddle, he will not shy away from implementing these clearly stated policies. The impending clash between a foreign policy establishment with its supercilious attitude toward the new incumbent in the Oval Office and a determined President pulling in the other direction will surely create political tension and prompt many angry op-eds in Washington.

Accordingly, I have some constructive recommendations both to my fellow Trump supporters and to Trump’s opponents in the foreign policy establishment and mass media. I earnestly ask the editors of Foreign Affairs magazine and their peer publications serving the international-relations expert community to finally open their pages and give equal time for high quality contributions by followers of the “realist” school, who have been systematically excluded over the past several years as the New Cold War set in.

I address the same message to the mainstream electronic and print media, which has engaged in a New McCarthyism by blacklisting commentators whose views run counter to the Washington consensus and also publicly denigrating them as “tools of Putin.”

To put it in terms that anyone in the Russian affairs field and even members of the general public will understand, we need a six-to-nine month period of Glasnost, of open, free and very public debate of all those key international security issues which have not been discussed due to the monopoly power of one side in the argument.

I am calling for genuinely open debate, which allows for opinions that clash with the bipartisan “group thinks” that have dominated the Democratic and Republican elites. This concerns firstly the question of how to manage relations with Russia and China. Without any serious consideration of where the West’s escalating hostilities have been leading, we have been plunging forward blindly, stumbling towards a potential nuclear war — precisely because alternative policy views were kept out.

For those of us who have been part of the silenced opposition to the Washington consensus of the Bush and Obama years, we must engage with our intellectual opponents. Only in this way can we strengthen our reasoning powers and the quality of our policy recommendations so that we are fully prepared to deal with the fateful questions under review.

Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

November 13, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama trying to provoke confrontation with Russia to preempt Trump: Petras

obama-angry

Press TV – November 12, 2016

US President Barack Obama is trying to provoke a confrontation with Russia before President-elect Donald Trump takes charge of the White House, says Professor James Petras, an American writer and political analyst.

Professor Petras, who has written several books on international political issues, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Saturday, after the US military dispatched 620 shipping containers packed with ammunition to Europe, the largest single shipment in last two decades.

According to reports, the heavily loaded containers arrived at the northern German port of Nordenham by the end of October. The containers will be transported to a depot for storage and distribution to other locations across Europe, according to a US Army statement.

Last week, the Pentagon announced to deploy at least 6,000 American soldiers and heavy armor to Eastern Europe next year to counter an “assertive” Russia.

Professor Petras said America’s “policy of rearming Europe especially focusing on Germany is an attempt by Obama to preempt any moves by newly elected President Trump, who’s committed to negotiating with Russia, ending sanctions, and lessening the military tensions.”

He stated that “this is an aggressive move by Obama, a provocative move, a kind of re-initiation of the Cold War, and I think that it will be reversed or limited once Obama is out of office.”

“I think this is a tension-creating move by Obama, part of his history of demonizing Russia and provoking a possible confrontation, which has nuclear consequences,” the analyst added.

“I think the suddenness of this buildup has a direct response to Trump’s closer working relationships with President Putin,” Petras said.

“I think this is a desperate move by Obama and is certainly in line with what Hillary Clinton would have done, but certainly not in line with Trump’s policy of reconciliation with Russia, and pressuring Europe to pay for its own arms and its own program,” the scholar concluded.

Relations between Washington and Moscow were already at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War in 1991, largely due to the Ukraine crisis. The US and its allies accuse Moscow of sending troops into eastern Ukraine in support of the pro-Russian forces. Moscow has long denied involvement in Ukraine’s crisis.

Ties between the US and Russia further deteriorated when Moscow last year launched an air offensive against Daesh terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the CIA to fight against the Syrian government.

Last month, Russia moved a battery of nuclear-capable missile launchers within range of three Baltic states, in what US officials said was a gesture to express displeasure with the Western military alliance of NATO.

In late October, Russia unveiled images of a new intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed the Satan 2, which, it says, can carry up to 15 separate warheads powerful enough to destroy an area the size of Texas.

The US, in September, flew three long-range nuclear bombers over Eastern Europe to participate in NATO military exercises. These developments, some observers say, can cause a nuclear confrontation between the two countries.

November 12, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Trump warns that by attacking Assad, US will ‘end up fighting Russia’

RT | November 12, 2016

US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that he will most likely abandon the Obama administration policy on Syria to seek a possible rapprochement with Russia on the issue of Assad.

“I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” the 70-year-old Republican told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the election.

From the start of the Syrian war, Barack Obama’s foreign policy has been focused on the support and training of the so-called “moderate” rebel groups who were supposed to defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists, and survive to eventually overthrow Assad. That approach became deadlocked this year when Washington failed to honor its obligations under an agreement with Moscow to separate their moderate rebel forces from internationally-recognized terrorists.

Trump, on the other hand, said on Friday that the US should be focused on fighting Islamic State, instead of pursuing regime change in Syria.

“My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria… Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.”

It has been widely documented and reported that American weapons supplied to the moderate rebels are often obtained by extremists in Syria. Those weapons, in turn, are being used by the jihadists to strike civilian positions and deploy them against Syrian forces.

The president-elect warned that if the US attacks Assad, “we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.”

The US coalition bombing of Syrian Army positions near the city of Deir el-Zour on September 17 led to the collapse of the US-Russian peace initiative.

Rapprochement in US-Russia ties could, however, be on the horizon after Trump admitted receiving a “beautiful” letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said a phone call between them is scheduled shortly.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are “very much alike… in their basic approaches toward international affairs,” Dmitry Peskov told the Associated Press earlier.

“[Trump] has been a very firm supporter of the idea of a good relationship between our countries, because we do carry a joint responsibility for strategic stability in the world, strategic security,” the spokesman said.

Immediately after Trump’s victory, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow looks forward to restoring bilateral relations with the United States.

The US military establishment, however, already seems to be working against Trump’s policies. In an interview with CBS This Morning, Defense Secretary Ash Carter leveled a barrage of accusations at Russia.

He said the Russian campaign in Syria “fuels the fires” of ongoing violence in the country, claiming “they’re not doing what we need to do and think needs to be done [in Syria].”

“What the Russians said, if you’ll remember, was that they were going to come in and fight terrorism and help remove Assad,” Carter said. “They haven’t done either of those things. They haven’t done any of that.”

While Moscow has been undertaking efforts to eliminate Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front terrorists in Syria, it never said it would take part in the forcible removal of President Bashar Assad.

When the anchor Norah O’Donnell said “They’re helping Assad?” Carter continued, “Exactly. Which in turn simply fuels the fires of the Syrians civil war. So the Russians have been completely backwards there, in what they’ve been doing.

“So we have not been able to, and I have not been in favor, and am not recommending to the president that we associate ourselves with or work with the Russians until they start doing the right thing,” Carter concluded.

November 12, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Who Said “Assad Must Go” And Where Are They Now?

Oh the irony of it all.

Who is still President of his country…

 

Who is next on the neo-liberal warmonger regime change list…

 

Time for forces to unite to beat a common enemy…

 

November 11, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Election: ‘We May Have Just Dodged the Bullet on WWIII’

Sputnik | November 10, 2016

monteiro-2On Tuesday, voters in the US went to the polls to choose their next president, electing Republican Donald Trump. Speaking to Sputnik, Professor Tony Monteiro, peace activist and scholar at the department of African American Studies at Temple University, suggested that Trump’s election may have just saved the world from World War Three.

Calling Tuesday’s vote a “political insurrection,” Monteiro said that he was frankly surprised by “the depth and magnitude” of the popular revolt.

“I felt it was possible, [but] didn’t believe it was probable, given that the Clinton campaign had all of the resources…”

“It’s a situation where the pundits and the political experts had predicted based upon an old paradigm of viewing elections. And what we had is a new paradigm – a paradigm grounded in rage, anger and class resentment against an elite which never repaired the profound damage done to the American working people and the middle classes as a consequence of the Great Recession of 2007 and 2009.”

The academic explained that he frankly “just had no idea at how deep this was. And we saw it – it was a sweep. In fact, Donald Trump did to Hillary Clinton what the experts were saying she would do to him. It’s quite unbelievable – it’s a historic outcome. I think finally, that temporarily, the world has dodged the bullet of World War.”

“If Clinton had won, we would be on a fast track to war with Russia, either in the Baltics, Ukraine or in Syria. She made that perfectly clear.”

Trump, meanwhile, “had over the course of this election cycle said the very opposite. Many people thought that by coming out against war with Russia, he had disqualified himself. In fact he went so far as to attack the generals and those who are running foreign policy.”

Ultimately, the expert stressed that more than anything, this election was “a serious rebuke to the corporate media, who were all against Trump and for Hillary Clinton. Now in saying all of this… I don’t think Trump is a pure vessel… However, what is significant, and what we have to pay close attention to, is not Trump the individual, but that movement that made it possible for him to win the election.”

Monteiro suggested that consciously or not, this movement was animated by their class interest – based on popular anger over stagnant wages, and at the same time, trillions of dollars in offshore banks held by oligarchs, the transnational corporations and hedge funds.

“You’ve got all of these young people who are graduating from university, with tremendous debt, with no jobs that pay them enough to pay off their debt. And then of course Trump made a kind of heavy-handed and awkward appeal to the Black community – but there was some truth to it! When he said that the political forces that the Black community has aligned with has done very, very little for them. And he said to Black people ‘you have nothing to lose’. I think that in the Rust Belt, the former industrial mid-west, more Black people voted for Trump than we are aware of at this time.”

Taking office, Trump faces political, class and racial divisions of an almost unprecedented scale. “The nation is divided; it has not been this divided since the civil war in the 1860s.”

The difference this time, according to the analyst, “is that the divisions are not so much sectional, but are more economic and social class-[based].”

“Can he unite the country around a program of rebuilding the nation economically, and a policy of peace abroad? I’m not yet certain,” Monteiro stressed. But he was encouraged by Trump’s acceptance speech, where “he said that he was for cooperation with nations and finding common ground. I felt that the paramount issue in this election was the question of war and peace, even though it was not the major issue discussed in the corporate media. It was the paramount issue, because I am of the opinion that had Hillary Clinton won, she was going to fast-track belligerency and even war with Russia, and that could have spun out of control into a thermonuclear war.”

November 10, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »