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US, UK Did Not Discuss Russian UNSC Statement on Attack on Iranian Consulate – Envoy

Sputnik – 03.04.2024

UNITED NATIONS – The United States and the United Kingdom refused to discuss a draft statement of the UN Security Council proposed by Russia on Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said on Wednesday.

“Following the results of the Security Council meeting on April 2 on the Israeli attack on the consular department of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Russia prepared a draft Security Council Statement for the press with a standard text for such cases. However, the United States and Great Britain did not even want to discuss it, citing the fact that during the meeting there was no unity in assessments of what happened,” Polyansky wrote on his Telegram page.

He recalled that at that time only these two delegations, together with the French, did not condemn this obvious violation of international law, “but engaged in a verbal balancing act, from which it could be concluded that Iran itself is to blame for everything.”

“This is the best illustration of the double standards of the Western “troika” and it’s real, and not declarative, attitude towards law and order in the international context,” the diplomat emphasized.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sy Hersh: US Warning of Terrorist Attack in Russia Had ‘Urgent’ Mark, Didn’t Mention Crocus

Sputnik – 03.04.2024

WASHINGTON – The US warning about an imminent terrorist attack at a concert venue in Russia was marked “urgent,” but contrary to media reports did not identify Crocus City Hall as the target, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his new article, citing a US official familiar with the matter.

The CIA allegedly provided the warning to Russian intelligence before the concert at the Crocus City Hall marking it “urgent,” meaning that the data in it “was credible and near term,” Hersh quoted the official as saying.

“The highly secret report on the attack in Moscow was prepared by the Counterterrorism Center at CIA headquarters and delivered to the terrorism division of the Russian Federal Security Service located in the old KGB building in Moscow. Separate briefings were presented in person by the FBI officer at the embassy. This is an established relationship,” the official said.

The warning, however, did not mention Crocus City Hall near Moscow and only said that an attack was being planned at some “public gathering,” according to the official.

The information provided by the official is contrary to a Washington Post report published on Tuesday claiming that Crocus City Hall was specifically identified in the warning as the target of a terrorist attack.

On March 22, several armed men broke into Crocus City Hall, a major concert venue just outside Moscow, and started shooting at people. They also started a fire in one of the auditoriums, which was full of people ahead of a concert. The attack left 695 casualties, including 144 dead, according to the latest data from the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The four main suspects in the case — all of them citizens of Tajikistan — tried to flee the scene in a car but were detained and charged with terrorism. Russian authorities believe the perpetrators planned to flee to Ukraine, where a safe haven had been arranged for them. An investigation is underway.

Later in March, The New York Times reported, citing European and US security officials, that the US intelligence agencies did not provide the Russian side with all the information they had about the threat of a terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in the Moscow Region out of fear that Russian authorities might learn about their intelligence sources or methods of work.

Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov also said that the information transmitted by the United States on the preparation of a terrorist attack was of a general nature, and the Russian special services responded to it.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

75th Anniversary: NATO Exists to Respond to Conflicts It Caused

NATO military exercise ‘Iron Wolf 2022-II’ at a training range in Pabrade, north of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania.
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 04.04.2024

Over the last 30 years, NATO has lost its veneer of a “defensive” alliance, turning into an overtly expansionist and interventionist military bloc, Sputnik’s interlocutors say.

Exactly 75 years ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded by the US, Canada, and several Western European nations, with the main aim of deterring and confronting the USSR, their former Second World War ally.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse in December 1991, the conditions for a new inclusive security architecture in Europe and beyond emerged, according to Glenn Diesen, professor of international relations at the University of South-Eastern Norway.

“After the Cold War, we developed the format for a new inclusive security system,” Diesen told Sputnik. “The Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the establishment of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1994 were both based on the [1975] Helsinki Accords, and embraced the principles of sovereign equality, indivisible security, and ending the dividing lines in Europe.”

The Helsinki Accords, signed during the Cold War by the US, Soviet Union, and several European countries, led to greater cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe. Even though the agreements weren’t binding, they significantly contributed to the détente between the East and West.

Instead of building on that momentum, the US saw the end of the Cold War as the beginning of its unipolar moment, according to the professor: in 1992, George H.W. Bush proudly declared that the US had “won” the Cold War during his State of the Union address.

“The US also developed a security strategy based on hegemony, which required expanding NATO and thus cancelling the pan-European security architecture,” Diesen said. “NATO therefore transitioned from a status quo power to a revisionist power. NATO required a new purpose, which became ‘out-of-area’ military interventionism and expansionism.”

Overtly Aggressive Military Bloc

The next 30 years saw a string of NATO overseas military campaigns, neither of which has seen a comprehensive resolution, resulting in the creation of hotbeds of instability instead.

“During the 1990s, NATO turned from a conceptually defensive organization into an openly aggressive organization when it entered the Yugoslav wars and waged a massive bombing campaign there,” Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst, told Sputnik.

“More generally, the United States was at this time preparing NATO to move out of its core geography in Europe and to assist US plans for global domination in the Middle East in the succession of regime change operations and open invasions that the United States planned and led.”

Doctorow highlighted that these “out-of-region NATO operations were one disaster after another, ending in the withdrawal from Afghanistan after participation in a 20-year-long war directed by Washington.”

NATO’s Expansionism Led to Ukraine Conflict

Meanwhile, the alliance’s seven waves of post-Cold War eastward expansion accelerated tensions in Europe, according to Diesen.

“Reviving the bloc approach to security and competing over where to draw the new dividing lines has been the primary source of conflicts in Europe for the past three decades and eventually resulted in the Ukraine war,” Diesen said.

The academic pointed out that “by going along with NATO expansionism, the Europeans allowed their continent to be re-divided and remilitarized, which has predictably doomed Europe to greater irrelevance.” He projected that Europe “will undergo systemic economic decline and become painfully subordinated to the US.”

“We could exit this tragedy by reaching out to Russia to negotiate a new inclusive European security architecture devoted to reducing security competition instead of imposing hegemony,” the professor emphasized.

Is NATO Sustainable?

“NATO exists to respond to the conflicts caused by its own existence,” Diesen explained. “The problem now is that NATO is returning to great power conflicts with the same disastrous approach to security, based on hegemony rather than mitigating security competition.”

Despite the Western mainstream media claims that the North Atlantic Alliance is united like never before amid the Ukrainian conflict, it is in fact not true, according to the professor.

“There are great tensions within NATO that simmer below the surface, and I do not think the hatred of Russia is enough to ensure unity after the war is over,” he said.

“NATO victory in Ukraine is imperative as it had the stated objective of permanently weakening Russia and thus knocking it out from the ranks of great powers. This would revive the unipolar moment and collective hegemony of the West. Once NATO’s defeat is evident the cracks will emerge in the military bloc,” Diesen pointed out.

Doctorow believes that despite all its declared, might the North Atlantic Alliance is on thin ice.

“NATO is in treading water, waiting for the tsunami that will send it to the bottom. That tsunami will either take the shape of a [US presidential candidate Donald] Trump victory in November or it will take the shape of an imminent collapse of the Ukrainian army or both phenomena simultaneously,” the international relations analyst concluded.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

World War III Isn’t Preordained (No Matter What They Say)

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | April 4, 2024

A recent survey from YouGov found that 61% of Americans think a world war within the next five to ten years is “very likely” or “somewhat likely,” while only 21% say that such a scenario is “not very likely” or “not likely at all.”

It’s notable that Democrats, who are much more likely to view Russia as the source of the world’s evils, are less likely than Republicans to believe a world war is coming by a strong margin; although it is still only 28% of Democrats in the two “unlikely” categories. At the same time, Republicans who may want rapprochement with Russia mostly see this as a way to free up resources to fight China. The reality is that our ruling class has decided that a global conflict is inevitable and as such are doing nothing to stop it. Further, they are actively hostile to anything which could reduce hostilities with Russia while also proactively antagonizing China.

Our ruling class is far along in creating a simplistic good vs evil narrative which they hope to get into the history books—should anyone survive to write them—but for those of us living through it, it’s obvious the only cause would be the madness of today’s rulers. The most devastating of wars do not commonly arise out of unsolvable problems, but from rulers who refuse to solve them. Further, the drive towards oblivion is usually obvious to many observers, even if the rulers and much of the public are caught in a jingoistic mania. Things are just the same today.

There is a modern perception that World War I took the powers of Europe by surprise and that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a spark which made war inevitable. Perhaps this is believed because of the human need to understand the degree of devastation from a war which more than others lacks a clear meaning. However, author Rebecca West, in her landmark text Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which was written in the 1930s, tells a different story. West explains that all of Europe expected that the Central Powers were preparing for an aggressive war, writing, “It is said that both France and Russia were for some reason convinced that Germany and Austria would not make war until 1916, and certainly that alone would explain the freedom with which Russia announced to various interested parties in the early months of 1914 that she herself was not ready to fight.”1

According to West’s account, Austria then worked quite hard to make the assassination their pretext although the plot had almost no connection to the Kingdom of Serbia. This isn’t a perfect parallel to our moment, but it’s notable that no one was trying to stop the war; they simply wanted time to arm themselves. Similarly, Germany and other countries in Europe have not hidden their current lack of preparedness, but made it clear their interest isn’t avoiding war, but fighting one. In the classic satirical antiwar novel The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Havec, the author repeatedly includes the line “an empire this stupid shouldn’t exist” in regards to the Austro-Hungarian ruling class; because of the war they, launched it soon wouldn’t.

The closest parallel to the dangers arising from the war in Ukraine comes from the first book of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The most immediate cause of the war was civil dissension within a colony leading to conflict with the mother city, and ultimately seeking the protection of that city’s enemy. However, what has gotten more notice recently about this text is one passage that is applied to China, which is now known as the Thucydides Trap. Thucydides wrote, “The real cause however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.” For all that people have commented on this, it is not that incisive to say that one country’s power growing would alarm another country. What is more commonly missed is that no one forced Athens to expand recklessly to the extent that it caused war with Sparta. It was an unforced error which caused them the briefest moment of greatness followed by utter devastation. On the other side, no one forced Sparta to respond with war, and Sparta’s post-war supremacy was also short-lived. Unfortunately the leaders on both sides chose conflict over co-existence, and in many ways Greece never recovered from that war and the ones which followed.

In America it is part of our founding mythology that War of Independence against the United Kingdom was inevitable because of conflicting interests between the Americans and the British. However, if one reads key British authors of the time, it is clear that the wiser men of the era knew that the British government was barreling towards a devastating and pointless war for no good reason. The reality is that the volume of trade in the British American colonies was growing so rapidly that peaceful reconciliation at any cost was in Britain’s self-interest; The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and contains some incredible statistics in this regard. Directly taxing the American public instead of levying taxes from their colonial governments was in no way a point worth proving, especially given the profitability of peace and trade.

Edmund Burke was a leader of the peace faction in the British Parliament and his timeless words about avoiding war should be remembered. Burke wrote, in March 1775, “The proposition is Peace. Not Peace through the medium of War; not Peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negociations; not Peace to arise out of universal discord…not Peace to depend on the Juridical Determination of perplexing questions… it is simply Peace; sought in its natural course… laid in principles purely pacific”2 It is obvious in our current times that peace could be preserved with Russia and China if it was approached with this principle, but that is considered out of the question by our rulers.

The world is currently a tinderbox and every day we watch our rulers pour on more gasoline and throw out extinguishers. I have to wonder what our descendants will think of us and the war which seems to be coming. There is certainly no chance that they can create a clear World War II sort of narrative about this. I often think of the European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying, “Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective,” a statement which should only exist as a parody of the vapid state of Western “values.” They want us to believe Vladimir Putin is obsessed with rolling his tanks across Europe, but that makes no sense and clearly isn’t possible. They certainly can’t admit the lengths they went to in order to provoke Russia into war in Ukraine.

There is absolutely no justification for not doing the work necessary for a lasting and equitable peace with Russia and China. When all is said and done, if there are people left to comment on the causes of the Third World War that so many think we are about to experience, perhaps people will say the same as the famous character Captain Edmund Blackadder said of World War I, “the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war.” The majority of the American public thinks countless millions will die in a new world war, and if that comes to pass, it will be because our rulers found going to war easier than making peace.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Congresswoman Greene Says CIA Running Conflict Against Russia in Ukraine

Sputnik – 03.04.2024

WASHINGTON – The CIA is directing the conflict against Russia on the ground in Ukraine, US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson.

“To fund a war, to pay for it, to continue it, to advise it, to have our CIA on the ground over there running that war in Ukraine against Russia — nuclear-armed Russia… that is a complete departure from anything that is Christian,” Greene said on Wednesday.

It is contrary to Christian principles to fund wars all over the world, Greene added.

Fighting a “proxy war” in Ukraine against Russia does not protect the US or serve its national security interests, Greene said. People in the US want to see a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Greene said.

Officials and media lie every single day by claiming that Russia intends to take over Europe, Greene said. Such a claim contradicts statements made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Greene said.

In February, US media reported that the CIA created a network of spy bases in Ukraine over the past eight years, including a dozen forward operating bases along the Russian border that engaged in operations against Russia. CIA Director William Burns has personally visited Ukraine at least 10 times since February 2022.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The West hates Serbia almost as much as Russia

By Timofey Bordachev | RT | April 3, 2024

Modern international politics, as practiced by Western countries, sometimes take on a completely absurd character. Recently, the Political Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved the membership of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo in the Council of Europe. Let us remember that we are talking about a territory that is not a state recognized by all members of the international community, including many of PACE’s own participants. Additionally, its leaders are rightly suspected of cross-border criminal activity of the worst kind.

But should we be surprised?

It has long been no secret that all the so-called pan-European organizations have effectively become instruments of the United States and the European Union, whose sole purpose is to promote some of their policies towards the rest of the world. It can be security, in which case the OSCE is involved, or human rights, for which the Council of Europe is used. Even environmental policy is in the hands of the West – that, too, is a purely political story.

In other words, absolutely everything is used to create endless pressure on those with whom the US and the EU are currently facing off against. We recall, for example, a case in which one of the European Parliament’s resolutions on the elections in Russia included a reference to the need for Moscow to lift sanitary restrictions on vegetable products from an EU country.

It is not surprising that all institutions and agreements in which the West has a dominant position lose their original meaning over time. No-one in Washington, Brussels, Berlin or Paris really remembers why the OSCE or the Council of Europe were created. This may seem like a joke, and an exaggeration. However, many years of experience in dealing with our American and Western European colleagues have make it abundantly clear that they have such a distorted perception.

This is partly due to the almost total impunity with which the West has operated since the Cold War. It is also due to the fact that all these institutions were created to serve the very specific selfish goals of the US and EU. We in Russia, like many others, once genuinely believed that international politics could develop along the lines of new principles after the Cold War. But it turned out that this was not the case.

Where the West is aware of its irresponsibility, it acts as if we are not even in the 19th century, but in the 17th or 18th century. Moreover, the Balkans are indeed a very special topic for Brussels and Washington. If the West was cynical about its post-Cold War “legacy”, it was doubly so about the former Yugoslavia.

In relations with Russia, and even with the rest of the former Soviet Union, the US and Western Europe still tried, or pretended to try, to maintain a certain ceremonialism, to make a show of the relative equality of their partners. At one stage, Russia was even invited to participate in the G8, the main body for coordinating Western policy towards the outside world. Of course, we are well aware that all these ritualistic actions meant very little in practice. In the mid-1990s, for example, no one in the West hid the fact that the activities of the Council of Europe were nothing more than a nice backdrop for putting pressure on Russia and other “post-Soviet” countries. From the point of view of formalities and ritual declarations, however, everything looked civilized for a long time. Russia was even able to use certain instruments of the Council of Europe – very limitedly, of course, and where it did not interfere with the US, EU or the nationalist regimes in the Baltic republics under their tutelage.

We should hardly be surprised that a gang of organ traffickers has been admitted to the Council of Europe. This is quite natural, after all the support the Baltic regimes have received from Brussels and Washington. Their policies towards minorities and freedom are basically similar to the most radical examples of 100 years ago.

Serbia’s prime minister responded by saying that his country might withdraw from PACE. But there are serious doubts that Belgrade will ultimately decide to do so.

First, if a Serbian politician openly opposes Western dictates, he puts the lives of his citizens directly at risk from the same Kosovar militants and religious fanatics. We have already seen time and time again how even minor manifestations of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo have been met with an immediate armed response. This was followed by the strongest warnings from Brussels and Washington. Secondly, a formal expression of discontent with the EU by Belgrade would likely immediately lead to open or undeclared sanctions against Serbia. We do not know the structure of the country’s foreign trade well enough, but even the obstruction of transport and logistics routes would probably cause irreparable damage to it.

So with the republic surrounded on all sides by NATO countries, the consequences for the Serbian economy and population would be very dramatic. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Serbs believe that Kosovo is part of their sovereign territory, the ruling party would be doomed to lose the next elections. This is for two reasons: first, because of the worsening economic situation, and then because of the new concessions to the West that it would have to make in order to achieve a softening of the pressure from Washington and Brussels. In the same case, if Belgrade decided to do what it wants, everything would end very tragically for it.

After all, past experience tells us that the US and EU are unlikely to mind if another failed state appears in Europe.

For all the mistakes and ambiguities of Prime Minister Alexander Vucic government’s position on Russia, it has so far done relatively well at the only task it can really control – which is prolonging the uncertain state of affairs. Moreover, it has generally been quite neighborly in its dealings with us, especially given Belgrade’s geopolitical position.

The state of Western attitudes towards Serbia and its people is really interesting, because it reflects an irrational hatred that is not easy to explain. Perhaps it is a matter of psychology and perception – Americans and Western Europeans may see the Serbs as “Russians” who are weaker and can be defeated. They are much smaller than Russia, disproportionately weaker, and surrounded by zones of total NATO influence.

In this case, what is happening in the Balkans is a very pertinent, if tragic, example for Russia of what would happen to us if we were forced to surrender. The decades that have passed since NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, not to mention Belgrade’s constant declarations about moving towards “European” integration, cannot cure the complex of triumph over a defeated enemy.

Serbia, of course, is not likely to join the EU or NATO. But it is very possible that it will survive the pressure from these extremely aggressive blocs. That is what we will have to see in the next decade.

Timofey Bordachev is the Program Director of the Valdai Club.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Strike on Iranian Consulate Sign of Status Quo as US, Allies Let Israel ‘Cross All Red Lines’

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.04.2024

On Monday, Iran said that Israeli warplanes struck the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing seven military advisers, including two generals. On Tuesday, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge.

As the US and its allies have continuously allowed Israel to “cross all red lines” in the past, it should be no surprise that it attacked an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday.

“The Israeli regime is only able to carry out these attacks because the United States, the Europeans, the Canadians, the British, the Australians allow them to cross all red lines. When they’re allowed to commit a genocide, when they’re allowed to carry out a Holocaust, in the words of the president of Brazil, then, obviously, attacking an embassy shouldn’t be unexpected.”

However, the United States and Europeans continue to parrot Israel’s lies, Marandi said, noting Israeli forces have attacked Al-Shifa hospital twice now, and the first time they falsely claimed it contained a tunnel network and Hamas command center.

“Now, they still try to repeat their lies even though it’s much more difficult,” Marandi explained. “They’ve wrecked all the hospitals. They’ve wrecked all the infrastructure. They shoot people carrying white flags.”

“There’s so much documentation that there’s no way for the Americans and Europeans to escape the reality that this is a genocidal and criminal regime from top to bottom. Yet still, they behave as if this is a normal country, as if this is a country that’s exercising its right and that it may be making mistakes.”

Marandi and co-hosts Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon acknowledged the unlikelihood of the US not having advance notice about the attack; however, Marandi postulated it would showcase Israel’s lack of respect for the US if they didn’t.

“If the Americans didn’t know, then it just shows that the Israelis have no respect for the United States, that the Israelis don’t care what the implications are for the United States in this region and globally, because there is no doubt that the Iranians are going to respond. This is no ordinary attack.”

Unlike the US and Europeans that allow Israel to “get away with anything,” this attack is a red line “that the Iranians cannot ignore.”

“The Iranians are going to hit back hard. And if the Americans didn’t know, then that means the Israelis are putting the Americans at risk of a very complicated situation, but they don’t care.”

With the protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ongoing, and some US politicians calling for elections in Israel, Marandi stressed the importance of remembering that he is not alone in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. “Let’s not allow the Americans to pin the blame on Netanyahu. Overwhelmingly people in Israel support the genocide, and, apparently, more than half believe it should be even more intense.”

“The problem goes way beyond Netanyahu.”

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Samantha Power and the Power of a Word

BY DIANA JOHNSTONE • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 3, 2024

Twenty-five years ago, NATO was bombing Serbia as the first performance in its new role. The collapse of the Soviet Union had deprived the military alliance of its initial official role of defending its member states from a theoretical communist threat. Under no threat and devoid of UN Security Council approval, NATO assumed the self-ordained role of virtuous defender of allegedly oppressed minorities by bombing what was left of largely dismantled Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 on behalf of Albanian rebels in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

NATO’s air attacks on the Balkan nation were the practical application of a new post-Cold War doctrine. To succeed, this doctrine relied on Western media to report on crisis areas with the appropriate mixture of exaggerations, omissions and outright lies to justify NATO’s virtuous interventions. The military industrial complex could breathe easy and a new generation of journalists began successful careers eagerly spinning their reports to serve the new humanitarian war ideology.

None was more successful than Dublin-born Samantha Power, whose novice reports from Bosnia in the mid-1990s provided the basis for her 2002 book on “genocide” which “quickly became an international sensation, glowingly reviewed almost everywhere, a huge bestseller that won her a Pulitzer Prize and launched her career as a leading figure in human rights doctrine.” She has gone on from one top governmental post to another, a Washington star, urging the United States to intervene on moral grounds.

Samantha Power owes her remarkable success to her talent as a writer, her ambition, her striking presence, but not least to the man at the origins of the whole humanitarian war policy.

That was none other than Morton Isaac Abramowitz, a highly influential member of the foreign policy establishment and the main inventor of what would become the “R2P” (Responsibility to Protect) doctrine. The crucial policy contribution of Abramowitz is explained at the start of my 2002 book, Fools’ Crusade, as follows:[1]

As president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the early 1990s, Abramowitz headed a project to develop a new U.S. foreign policy for the post-Cold War era. Rather than identifying “threats”, especially at a time when few threats could be seen, a successful new policy needed to combine promotion of U.S. interests with proclamation of U.S. “ideals”.

Theory and Practice

At the Carnegie Endowment in 1992, Abramowitz published the theory of the new U.S. “humanitarian intervention” policy as Self-Determination in the New World Order.

“The vision of a ‘new world order’ since 1990 has been a world with one superpower – the United States – in which the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle, disputes are settled peacefully, aggression is firmly met by collective resistance, and all people are justly treated.”

That sounds very nice. But put into practice, “collective resistance” means NATO, and “all people are treated justly” depends on Washington’s preferences. The new rules-based order was not to be confused with traditional international law, based on national sovereignty. Globalization was making national sovereignty outdated (except for the United States). “Ideals” make rules more flexible.

The sovereign nation is being broken down subtly by the pressures of economic globalization. It may also be undermined from within, by domestic insurgencies. In the post-Cold War world, the Carnegie Endowment study noted, “groups within states are staking claims to independence, greater autonomy, or the overthrow of an existing government, all in the name of self-determination”. […] In the future, the authors announced, “humanitarian intervention will become increasingly unavoidable”. The United States will have the final word as to when and how to intervene.

Abramowitz subsequently helped put his theory into practice in crumbling Yugoslavia. He was the eminence grise behind U.S. diplomats, steering the events leading to the “Kosovo war” that split the province of Kosovo off from Serbia. He was advisor to the Kosovo Albanian delegation at the imitation “peace negotiations” staged at Rambouillet to provide an excuse for the bombing of Serbia. The moderate Albanian Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova was replaced by the armed gangster, Hashim Thaci. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright set terms no Serbian leader could accept, demanding the right to station NATO troops over the entire country, with full impunity. The Serb side was then blamed for the failure, and NATO began to bomb on March 24, 1999.

Samantha Steals her Way into Bosnia

Back in 1992, fresh out of Yale, 22-year-old Samantha Power was given a position as intern in the office of Abramowitz at the Carnegie Endowment. As a proofreader, she quickly absorbed the new official doctrine. At that time, her boss was obsessed with the conflicts in Bosnia as implicating the future of NATO. Determined to get to Bosnia where the action was, Samantha stole stationery from the neighboring office of Foreign Policy magazine and forged a letter from the editor to the head of the UN Press Office, asking that the UN provide her, as Foreign Policy’s “Balkan correspondent,” with “all necessary access.”[2]

From that time on, her work functioned precisely to advance the new “humanitarian intervention” policy of her mentor, Morton Abramowitz. She recalls that his influence helped her get increasingly important assignments – most crucially, writing about the Srebrenica massacre for The Washington Post.

With the Srebrenica reports, the term “genocide” emerged as the power word that could give NATO its new mission.

The Western press corps based in Sarajevo tended to become emotionally involved with the Muslim side which was its principal news source. Missing from their dispatches were reports on Muslim massacres of Serbs villages or on the well-armed Islamic fighters who joined the Muslim side from Afghanistan and Arab countries, some of them settling permanently in Bosnia.

When Bosnian Serb forces captured the Muslim base at Srebrenica in July 1995, they evacuated women, children and the aged to safety, while men fled, fearing retaliation. Many were killed in unclear circumstances.

Without reference to such context, Western media focused on reports of a massacre of 8,000 male prisoners as a unique event which branded the Serbs as the guilty party in the three-sided civil war. With the Srebrenica reports, the term “genocide” emerged as the power word that could give NATO its new mission.

Calling Srebrenica “genocide” provided the argument for NATO bombing: if Serbs committed genocide in Bosnia, it implied that Serbs were genocidal and risked committing genocide in Kosovo unless NATO intervened. This theory was supported by wildly inaccurate accusations voiced by leading Western politicians during the bombing campaign.

That was the story that was sold to the public by politicians and the media. From the start, the Serb majority in Yugoslavia had been portrayed as invaders in their own country, with everyone else as victims. Thus was destroyed the last semi-socialist, nonaligned country in Europe.

The Kosovo war indeed combined U.S. “interests and ideals”. The ideals were preventing a genocide that never would have taken place (and also, incidentally, preventing a negotiation that could have settled the whole conflict as well). The interests included the immediate construction by the Americans of a giant U.S. military base on the territory of Kosovo, once Serbian forces were obliged to leave.

Genocide and R2P

Samantha Power’s 2002 book was subtitled “America in the Age of Genocide”. To speak of the present as an “age of genocide” is wildly melodramatic, but the purpose is to place virtuous America in the center of drastic moral demands. America must save the world from its genocidal self. “Genocide” was thereby promoted as the most potent pretext for U.S. military intervention – precisely by deploring its absence, both in Bosnia and more convincingly, in Rwanda. The Clinton administration was certainly not going to intervene in Rwanda, because the bloody chaos was in fact favoring the conquest of Rwanda by Paul Kagame and his army, which had invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990. Kagame was a favored client of the United States. There was no reason for Washington to interfere with Kagame’s victory.

But the “failure to stop genocide” was an appeal to the liberal conscience to intervene later on, whenever the U.S. was in need a powerful argument to get rid of a someone it wanted to get rid of. Moammer Gaddafi had been on the U.S.-UK hit list for decades, but had made concessions to gain reconciliation. But when Gaddafi’s usual fundamentalist Islamic opponents in Tripoli used the 2011 “Arab spring” to raise protests, the “threat of genocide” alarm was raised on their behalf. In Washington, action to stop Gaddafi from “committing genocide” was urged by Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, while Bernard Henri Lévy raised the alarm in Paris. NATO rose to the challenge, destroyed the most economically successful country on the African continent and murdered its leader, creating a flood of refugees to Europe and other disasters. Most of the liberal left cheered.

Today it is widely recognized that the Irak war was based on deceit and ended in disaster. Other U.S. wars are mostly conceded to have been unfortunate mistakes. There are doubts about Libya, due mainly to the refugee flow. But the destruction of Yugoslavia, and in particular the 1999 “Kosovo war”, is still widely accepted in the West as what it was arranged to appear: NATO’s generous humanitarian intervention to prevent “genocide” by racist Serbs against the oppressed Albanian minority.

The distortions of the Bosnia conflict and the Kosovo war were precisely the practical application of the Abramowitz policy: promote minority rebellions to break down national sovereignty and change governments the U.S. doesn’t like, while supplying NATO with a new geographically unlimited mission of “humanitarian intervention”. Yugoslavia was the starting point of the whole aggressive post-Cold War U.S. policy as “single superpower” determining the world order, using the idealistic pretexts set out by Abramowitz. Young Samantha Power, who was very smart, got the point and ambitiously cheated her way into a supporting role as reporter in the Bosnia spectacle, which she eventually transformed into an astonishingly successful career.

I was in Kosovo on my own in months prior to the NATO bombardment and saw quite clearly that in that small province, the Serbs were a frightened minority while Albanians were already tasting their future triumph. There was absolutely no danger of a Serbian “genocide” of Albanians. But Western editors kept sending in ignorant young aspiring journalists, on the lookout for some “Serb atrocity” that could advance their budding career. Editors rejected any report that went in a different direction. It was at that time just plain impossible to publish an unbiased report. I know from experience.

Above all, breaking up Yugoslavia was an exercise in subsequent efforts to undermine the Russian Federation, by inciting the Federation’s ethnic minorities against the Russians. Ukraine was the crucial battering ram. I always used to think of Ukraine when studying the conflicts in the Krajina regions of Croatia and Bosnia, as both words have the same root (border land) and suffered from similar conflicts, notably in World War II. Western powers had revived the Nazi-supported Croatian nationalism against the Serbs to break up Yugoslavia. They would revive much more virulent Nazi-supported Ukrainian nationalism against Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine, in an effort to weaken and eventually even break up the Russian Federation.

And for the United States, the humanitarian “ideals” of supporting minorities would be compensated by the major strategic “interest” of eventually gaining control of Crimea, and with it, Russia’s main naval base in Sebastopol. Putin did what any Russian leader not brain-dead would have done: he headed off this disaster by mobilizing the Russian inhabitants of Crimea to vote to return to Russia, which they had never chosen to leave. This obvious act of self-determination is denounced in the West as an invasion.

The Ideological Backlash

Unfortunately, the blatantly tragic misuse of the “humanitarian intervention” or R2P doctrine in Libya has not managed to achieve its discredit. It is threatened now by the danger that it is changing sides in the very global conflicts it has stimulated.

The referendum in Crimea was a democratic measure of self-determination that fit the Abramowitz standards. The Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine in 2022 was partially motivated by the sort of consideration featured in the Abramowitz doctrine: defense of the population of Donbas, under attack from an ultranationalist regime in Kiev. Of course, Western governments and media have simply totally ignored any Russia appeal to the ideals of human rights and self-determination, which they consider their own private property as self-declared unique “democracies”. Russia is classed as an “autocracy” whose interests must be malevolent and thus don’t count.

A greater threat to the West’s self-proclaimed monopoly on virtue is coming from Israel’s merciless attack on the people of Gaza. Most of the Global South and growing sections of Western populations are horrified by Israel’s destruction of hospitals, mass murder of children and efforts to starve the Palestinians. They see Israel, with full Western backing, committing Genocide – the real thing this time, out in the open, blatant and unrelenting.

The NATO war machine may have to conjure up a new set of moralizing pretexts for its aggressions.

Notes

[1] See Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions, Pluto Press, 2002, pp 9-10; Monthly Review 2003

[2] Here, with William Burns, Samantha Power discusses her new autobiography The Education of an Idealist and recalls her short term working for Abramowitz at the Carnegie Endowment. https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/13/samantha-power-on-education-of-idealist-event-7178

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Understanding Washington’s Dirty Game Of Toying With Gaza Aid And Ceasefire

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | April 3, 2024

The US government can end the war in Gaza if it chooses and with a single phone call allow all the humanitarian aid that will prevent famine from gripping the starving Palestinian population living there. Instead, Washington has opted to play a dirty game of teasing the delivery of aid, leaking stories of tensions and an imminent ceasefire to the press, while only seeking to buy more time for the Zionists to carry out their ongoing genocide.

On November 10, last year, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, issued a statement in which he stressed that “Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many who have suffered these past weeks, and we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them,” as he praised the temporary pause reached between the Palestinian resistance and the Zionist Entity. Following the end of the pause and prisoner swap, Blinken again appeared on the scene inside occupied Palestine. This time, giving the impression that the US government would force an end to the war, by the beginning of the New Year.

Then, on January 9, after failing to stop the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, the US Secretary of State issued another speech, this time from inside the Zionist Entity, declaring again that the Palestinian death toll was “far too high”. Both in November and January, these declarations by Antony Blinken, were widely interpreted to have been critical of the Israelis and indicated some level of frustration, or rhetoric change, when it comes to their Zionist allies.

When we also look at US President, Joe Biden, we have heard for months about the “frustration” of the American leader with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu. Reports have frequently been leaked to US media regarding unconfirmed events, which include Joe Biden hanging up a phone call with the Israeli Prime Minister in mid-January and the allegation that the US President called Netanyahu a “bad f***ing guy” in February. Events like the Israeli war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, traveling to Washington, allegedly without Netanyahu knowing, have also been held up as examples of the US-Israeli “strained relationship”.

Joe Biden said in late February that it looks like there’ll be a ceasefire the next Monday, causing false hope in the Gaza Strip at the time. Then, Axios released an article in which they made the claim that the US government was going to cut off arms supplies to the Zionist regime if they did not reach a temporary ceasefire in Gaza by mid-March. Then at the end of March, after having failed to place any pressure on the Israeli regime to even deliver sufficient food aid into Gaza, the Biden administration decided to quietly approve a multi-billion dollar weapons and fighter jet supply deal.

Another important point to note is the way the US government reacted to the Israeli threat to invade the southernmost city of Gaza, Rafah, claiming to set it as a hypothetical redline. Although the Biden administration would ultimately come forth and affirm that it would support an invasion of Rafah and wouldn’t set any red lines, the idea that Washington was holding the Zionist regime back from the invasion it had threatened – over the period of two months – was heavily pushed throughout Western media.

Then there is the US abstention from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution, that called for a two-week ceasefire. Again, the reaction to this was to interpret it as a “change”, or “shift”, in the US position on the war in Gaza, yet, when pressed on the issue the Biden administration claimed that the Security Council resolution – all of which are considered binding – was in fact the first UNSC resolution ever to be non-binding.

Even when it came to the shift in the rhetoric of American policy makers, to begin calling for a “ceasefire”, they did not “shift” their policy position in any way at all. In fact, they just shifted from using words like “temporary truce” and “pause”, to asking for a “six-week ceasefire”, so, in other words, a temporary truce or pause still. Then, when confronted with growing calls from the United Nations and the World Bank, regarding the issue of looming famine that is set to take hold over roughly half of Gaza’s population, the Biden administration began announcing its intention to build a port to transport aid. The details of such a port’s construction are still unclear and whether it will ever be implemented for the purpose of delivering vital aid or not is an open question.

It is high time that we call the US Biden administration out on its dirty games. Washington is in control of this war and has made the active decision to allow mass starvation in Gaza, clearly an Israeli tactic of war, it is only buying time for this policy of inflicting famine to take place. It is evident that the Zionist entity has no plan to dismantle Hamas in Gaza, in fact, it hasn’t even been able to dismantle any of the smaller groups belonging to the Palestinian resistance front in the besieged territory. So, instead, it inflicted the worst possible humanitarian crisis, a famine, along with the assassination of all security figures, members of popular committees set up locally to guard, collect and distribute aid, while attempting to make it impossible for the former civil administration to continue working in a post-war Gaza. This is also why the US has implemented a ban on funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Why is the US playing this dirty game you may ask? There are two primary reasons: To quell domestic pressure to end the war and to deceive the axis of resistance into thinking that they are on the cusp of reaching a ceasefire. With the language change and by blaming Netanyahu for all the problems at hand, the US government has made the calculation that they can give the impression of an administration that is standing up to the Israeli regime. On the other hand, the US fears a regional war, which could explode in the event that no ceasefire is reached in Gaza, so they give the impression that there is some kind of in-fighting between them and the Zionist leadership. This is all theater and the US must be forced into a position where it is given an ultimatum: either you force an end to this war in Gaza, or there is a major escalation in the region. Nobody wants regional war, but regional war is inevitable if there is no ceasefire reached and the people of Gaza are gripped by one of the worst famines in recorded history.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US vows to block new attempt by Palestine for full UN membership

Press TV – April 3, 2024

The United States has vowed to block a new attempt by the Palestinians for full membership in the United Nations.

Supporters of the Palestinian move asked the UN Security Council on Tuesday to revive an application for admission submitted in 2011.

But Robert Wood, the US deputy ambassador to the UN, was again almost certain to block the request. “Our position has not changed,” Wood told several reporters.

Wood said the issue of a full Palestinian membership is one of the final status issues to be decided in bilateral talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

At least 140 countries have recognized a Palestinian state. They include members of the 22-nation Arab Group at the United Nations, the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the 120-member Nonaligned Movement.

Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, who is the current president of the Security Council, said the Council’s standing committee for new members, which includes all the 15 members, is expected to meet behind closed doors to consider the application.

The monthly Security Council meeting on April 18 will also consider the issue of Palestine’s full membership.

After the initial bid for full UN membership was rejected in 2011, the Palestinians went to the 193-member UN General Assembly, where there are no vetoes. They succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a UN observer to a non-member observer state in November 2012.

That change opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join the UN and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Riyad Mansour, the permanent observer of Palestine to the United Nations, has repeatedly said in recent months that in the face of Israel’s brutal campaign of death and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip, UN membership is a priority for the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long ruled out Palestinian statehood.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

180 days of genocide later, White House denies Israeli law violations

Al Mayadeen | April 3, 2024

Speaking to the press on April 2, a White House spokesperson said that the United States had looked into several actions by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza “in the past” and had not found “any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.”

This response came to a question asked by an Irish-born columnist for The Hill, Niall Stanage, to the White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby about how the US continues to send military aid to the Israeli occupation with no conditions.

Kirby was asked the same question by a journalist earlier, to which he responded by saying that the US has communicated American concerns to the Israeli occupation multiple times.

The journalist then labeled his answer as verbal commitment and not actual action, which he replied to by saying “I know, you want us to hang some sort of condition over their neck.”

Stanage also asked Kirby why the White House did not implement any conditions on “Israel’s” use of weapons.

He cited a presidential memorandum released on February 8, specifying that the administration’s policy was to “prevent arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.”

Kirby claims no evidence of ‘deliberate’ Israeli attack on aid workers

Referring to the Israeli airstrike a day before targeting aid workers on their way to Gaza and killing seven of them, Stanage asked, “Is firing a missile at people delivering food and killing them not a violation of international humanitarian law?”

Kirby, in response, started off by admitting that “Israel” blatantly said that this attack was a “mistake” then moved on to argue that there is no evidence of this being a “deliberate strike”  by saying, “Your question presumes, at this very early hour, that it was a deliberate strike, that they knew exactly what they were hitting, that they were hitting aid workers and did it on purpose, and there there’s no evidence of that.”

Kirby denies Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law

In further attempts to defend “Israel”, Kirby claimed that there is no evidence of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law, despite several international organizations and official sources documenting such instances, saying, “I would remind you, sir, that we continue to look at incidents as they occur. The State Department has a process in place. And to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.”

“They have never violated international humanitarian law, ever, in the past five to six months?” Stanage asked.

“The State Department has looked at incidents in the past and has yet to determine if any of those incidents violate international humanitarian law,” Kirby replied.

Albanese: ‘International Humanitarian Law manipulated’

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in occupied Palestine, Francesca Albanese, announced in a statement to Al Mayadeen on March 27 that what is happening in Gaza is described as an “unprecedented war crime,” while strengthening her statement with the argument she used to present the genocide charges that “today have been integrated.”

Albanese clarified by saying she initially made a connection between “Israeli leaders’ statements and the soldiers’ actions on the ground.”

“I analyzed specific cases, and we found a lot that needed to be addressed and written in a way that did not fit into the ten-thousand-word report we submitted,” she added.

Similarly, Albanese emphasized to Al Mayadeen that she addressed specific cases that substantiate her analysis, highlighting how “international humanitarian law has been distorted and blatantly manipulated to justify genocidal violence,” adding that “The act of genocide is confirmed and was committed against the entire population, adults and minors, and the issue is not limited to the Israeli occupation raiding the Gaza Strip.”

The UN rapporteur also observed that “there are documented instances of violence, captured by Israeli soldiers themselves, perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. These include acts of humiliation, killings, massacres, and disregard for cultural and religious sanctuaries. These incidents unfolded in plain sight, and my role was to elevate their significance, categorizing them as genocide.”

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

China sees big gains in Southeast Asia as ASEAN loses faith in Washington

The Cradle | April 3, 2024

A majority of residents from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) say they would prefer their countries align with China over the US in a significant year-on-year shift in regional sentiment toward the world’s two largest economic powers.

According to the results of an opinion poll conducted by the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in the 10 nations that make up the bloc, 50.5 percent of respondents said they would pick China if their country was “forced to align itself” with one of the two superpowers.

On the other hand, 49.5 percent chose the US, as 11.6 percent of respondents changed their opinions between 2023 and 2024.

The ASEAN bloc includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. According to IMF figures, the bloc’s combined nominal GDP in 2023 was approximately $3.9 trillion.

China’s surge was most prominent among respondents from Malaysia (75.1 percent), Indonesia (73.2 percent), Laos (70.6 percent), Brunei (70.1 percent), and Thailand (52.2 percent).

Although the EU also saw a year-on-year drop in confidence – from 42.9 to 37.2 percent – it remains securely in third place behind the US as a “preferred and trusted strategic partner for ASEAN,” followed by Japan and India.

The poll also highlights a “growing sense of optimism” in future ASEAN–China ties, with respondents “anticipating improvement” jumping from 38.7 percent in 2023 to 51.4 percent in 2024.

A total of 1,994 respondents from all ASEAN member states participated in the survey, with most of them holding a university degree and working in the business and finance sector.

When asked what geopolitical events they consider to be “strategic uncertainties facing the region,” 46.5 of respondents chose the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

“A large proportion of Southeast Asia respondents are concerned that Israel’s attack on Gaza has gone too far. Rise in extremist activities (29.7 percent), diminished trust in international law and rules-based order (27.5 percent), and erosion of domestic social cohesion (17.5 percent) are the most serious impacts of the Israel-Hamas conflict on Southeast Asia,” the poll details.

The ASEAN bloc made headlines last year when member states began the process of de-dollarization, replacing the greenback with local or regional currencies for trade to circumvent the threat posed by unilateral US sanctions.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

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