OMNI
RUSSIA
NEWSLETTER #12,
March 5, 2022
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/russia-ukraine-newsletteranthology-12.html
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Omnicenter.org/donate/
No one has asked why equal time is not given
to official US history and positions, perhaps because the explanation is obvious.
The US possesses, as part of its
military power (greater than the next six countries combined), probably the
most powerful propaganda system in all history.
A single citizen who reports contrary opinions might be guilty of
whistling in the dark but is not guilty of violating the protocols of news
reporting under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Several news reports I have seen show Putin
sitting alone, conversing with one to three people at the far end of a long
table. The commentators remark about how
isolated he is as autocratic ruler of Russia.
Biden always has several people with him. But is Biden greatly less isolated than
Putin? Does he hear from the many
opponents of NATO expansion, for example?
I have seldom heard any of his staff or any commentators on the news
networks represent Putin’s perspectives.
We stand, then, with
About Face:
“We
are in solidarity with all people who find themselves in harm's way for a war
that was preventable. May all those seeking shelter and safety from all
horrible violence be greeted with open arms.”
About Face: Veterans Against the War
CONTENTS (most entries received March 1-4, too many
to include all): RUSSIA
INVADES UKRAINE FEBRUARY 23, 2022
Most of these essays discuss causes of the Ukraine-Russia
War of 2022.
Introductory
Abel, Experts Warning about NATO Expansion
Mearsheimer, 2015 and 2022 Critical of the West
Mary Elise Sarotte, 2010 and 2021, BushI, Baker, Kohl, NATO, Not One Inch
Failed Minsk Agreements 2014 and 2015
Feb. 28, 2022, Putin puts Russia on nuclear alert.
UAF Faculty Panel on Ukraine and Russia
Abel from audience
challenges the mostly Cold Warrior speakers and warns of WWIII danger from NATO
expansion.
Jeremy Kuzmarov: From Brzezinsky to
Biden inducing invason to bankrupt Russia
TomDispatch: JFK (Andrew Bacevich) offers advice to Biden
About Face Veterans against the War: “DemilitarizeU” Ukraine
and Russia
Peace Action, Ceasefire, humanitarian aid, diplomacy
Naomi Klein, The
Intercept (March 1). A wide-ranging
essay by one of our best.
Kuttab, “Ukraine, Palestine, International Law, and BDS”
Art: Russia out of Ukraine, NATO out of Existence
David Adams, “The Fall of Putin,” US and Russia will crash
because of overmilitarization
Greg Coleridge (via Ellen Barfield, VFP), “War Is (Still) a Racket” this one a
war over resources
Adam Schiff (via Abel), a US proxy war v. Russia.
CENTRALITY OF NATO EXPANSION IN #11
Joe
Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue
Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for NATO Expansion
Art Hobson, Neutrality
Scott Ritter, Neutrality
Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality
TEXTS
A FEW ISSUES
FROM THE PAST
What some
experts have said.
John
Mearsheimer 2015 and 2022
Mary Elise
Sarotte via Noam Chomsky 2010, and her new book 2021 Not One Inch
Minsk
Agreements 2014 AND 2015
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1:21
PM (48 minutes ago) |
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Dear friends,
At the link below is a Master List of top Geopolitical Experts
Predicting and Warning about hostile anti-Russia NATO Expansion, most
especially in Ukraine. This war was entirely Predictable, Preventable &
Provoked by the nation that started over 80% of the wars since WW2, USA.
In my informed opinion, it’s an American effort to destroy the
Russian gov’t. via proxy war quagmire, just like they did in Afghanistan
against the Soviets when the US armed & trained the Mujahadeen & Bin
Laden.
The gaping, insane hole in their plan is that Russia has
enough nukes to blow the world up, as do we, and even if they are able to
destroy the Russian gov’t., what comes next? A balkanized array of nuclear
armed territories, warlord fiefdoms, mass civil war and terrorism, as we see
everywhere else USA "spreads democracy"?
Master List of experts, full references:
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592?t=sgD_hvSSM74T6cFJPO5c_g&s=19
John
Mearsheimer’s 2015 and 2022 Analysis
Minsk
Agreements
Video: Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? (Distinguished Professor John Mearsheimer
Predicts Ukraine Crisis in 2015). Sept. 25, 2015.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
John J. Mearsheimer, the R.
Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and
Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University
of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, its
consequences, and the best way to end it.
A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for
ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding
the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the
West bears primary responsibility.
Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for
the Crisis in Ukraine
For years, the political scientist has claimed
that Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have
recent events changed his mind? By Isaac Chotiner.
The New Yorker (March 1, 2022). https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
GORBACHAEV, BUSH I, BAKER, KOHL NATO
UNDERSTANDING
Based
considerably on analysis by MARY ELISE SAROTTE, in Hopes and Prospects (2010) Noam Chomsky
summarized the promises broken by the US regarding NATO (278-80). NATO was created to defend against the
“Russian hordes” of the Warsaw Pact
When the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved it was
generally assumed NATO would also be dissolved, but not only had “Bush I and
his secretary of state James Baker promised not to expand NATO to
the East” but “ Bush-Baker promised that NATO would not even fully extend to
East Germany.”
Gorbachaev believed Baker’s assurances that “NATO’s jurisdiction would
not shift eastward one inch from its present position” (279). –Dick 3-4-22
A
Broken Promise? | Foreign Affairs
https://www.foreignaffairs.com ›
articles › russia-fsu
MARY ELISE SAROTTE is
Dean's Professor of History at the University of Southern California, a
Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and the author of The ..
Opinion | Enlarging NATO, Expanding Confusion - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com › opinion › 30sarotteNov 29,
2009 — Mary Elise Sarotte,
Russia's belief in Nato 'betrayal' – and why it matters today
https://www.theguardian.com ›
world › jan › russias-be...
Jan 12, 2022 — A new
book, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and
the Making of the Cold War Stalemate, by the prize-winning
historian Mary Elise Sarotte, ...
MINSK AGREEMENTS
Two failed agreements in 2014 and 2015 to end the bloody
conflict over the status of Donetsk and Luhansk, 2 eastern Ukrainian
provinces.
https://en.wikipedia.org ›
wiki › Minsk_agreements
The Minsk
agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to
end the 2014 war in the 2014 Donbas region of Ukraine. The
first, known as the Minsk ...
Signed: 5
September 2014
Expiry: 21
February 2022
Minsk Protocol · Minsk II · Text of the agreement · Reactions
Minsk agreement: Could it be a way out of the
Ukraine-Russia ...
https://www.cnn.com ›
2022/02/09 › europe › minsk-agr...
Feb 10, 2022 — Moscow
points to language in the Minsk Agreement that
refers to "the special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk
regions" and ...
The Minsk-2 agreement | Chatham House
https://www.chathamhouse.org ›
2020/05 › minsk-2-ag...May 22, 2020 — The Minsk
agreements rest on two irreconcilable interpretations of Ukraine's sovereignty:
is Ukraine sovereign, as Ukrainians insist, ...
Ukraine and Russia's Minsk Agreement Is a
Problematic ...
https://foreignpolicy.com ›
2022/02/17 › minsk-agreeme...
Feb 17, 2022 — The Minsk II agreement, so called
because it replaced a prior failed attempt at a peace plan, was hashed out by
negotiators from Ukraine, Russia ...
Why the Minsk Accords Failed to Bring Ukraine
Peace
https://www.bloomberg.com ›
news › articles › why-mi...
Feb 18, 2022 — The accords sought
to halt the armed conflict that broke out in eastern Ukraine in
2014. The country's pro-Russia leader Viktor Yanukovych had ...
What is wrong with the Minsk Agreements? |
openDemocracy
https://www.opendemocracy.net ›
odr › russia-ukraine-...
Feb 4, 2022 — The Minsk 2
peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine,
intended to stop the fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine, were
signed in .
This rest
of this Newsletter/Anthology is arranged in chronological order by publication
date of each entry.
|
Putin
puts Russia on nuclear alert (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), Feb 28, 2022
Putin puts Russia on nuclear alert. Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, Feb 28, 2022. Moscow
delegation set to meet Ukraine leader |
|||||||||
Dick’s Reply:
Russia and the US have always been on nuclear alert, the danger of which
is a chief reason why the nuclear weapons abolition movement exists.
Honors College to Host Discussion on Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday. Feb. 28, 2022
Twitter
Protesters
hold the Ukrainian flag aloft in this Twitter photo.
Russia
has boots on the ground in Ukraine. The world is watching and wondering: Why is
Putin doing this? Will severe sanctions from the U.S., G-7 and EU countries
work? Is peace in Europe coming to an end? The Honors College will present a
panel of faculty experts who will discuss these questions and more from 5-6:30
p.m. next Tuesday, March 1, in the Honors Student Lounge. Pizza and drinks will
be served.
Faculty
members who will provide context and lead a question-and-answer session
include:
· Nadja Berkovich, teaching
assistant professor of Russian/Russian Literature and Yiddish, Department of
World Languages, Literatures and Cultures
· Kelly Hammond, associate
professor and historian of China and World War II, Department of History
· Ted Holland, assistant professor
and political geographer, Ukraine and Russia/USSR, Department of Geosciences
· Trish Starks, professor
and historian of the Soviet Union and Russia, Department of History
"As
a historian I'm deeply disturbed by the developments in Ukraine," said
Honors College Dean Lynda Coon. "The community and campus need to come
together to discuss and debate the current crisis, and we've got faculty
experts who can tackle this issue from many different angles."
This
event is part of the Honors College Pulse discussion series, which began in
2016 following the presidential election, and was named in remembrance of
victims of the Pulse nightclub shootings. Since then, it has featured
conversations around the Dakota Access Pipeline Project, the legal
ramifications and decisions related to hate crimes and ways to fight local
hunger and poverty.
Antiwar
Activist Abel Tomlinson’s Response to the UA Ukraine Forum
The image above (Art left, Abel
right) is from the Ukraine Russia forum
at UA last night, March 1, 2022. I tried to do a livestream video, but my
internet connection failed. Overall, 3 of the 4 panelists gave mostly Cold
Warrior talks (excessively anti-Russia, anti-China, with virtually no criticism
of the West's role in the crisis). I called them out some, and gave a shorter
version of the following speech at the end during Q & A:
Stop All Wars from Ukraine to the Middle East
& Stop WWIII
It is self evident that we must call
for a stop to Russia’s invasion, and all the ongoing Western invasions across
the Middle East as well. The Russian invasion is a war crime, just as the U.S.
invasion of Iraq was a war crime, as were the dozens of US invasions
and bombings of millions of mostly non-white people over the last several
decades.
As you know, mainstream media is bombarding
the public with endless stories about Russian invasion, and but have never done
the same for endless & ongoing Western invasions of the Middle East. The
same week as the Russian invasion, the U.S. carried out bombings in Somalia, the U.S.-backed Saudi
dictatorship launched dozens of airstrikes in Yemen, and the U.S.-backed
Israeli government bombed Syria.
The U.S. has dropped 337,000 bombs, an average of 46 bombs per
day, on the Middle East for the last 20 years, but
mainstream media barely covered the horror of it. As
the Monthly Review reported, “In the
(last week of February), Fox News, The New York Times,
The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC ran almost
1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion,
two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the
Saudi-led war on Yemen.”
Mainstream Western media never
encourages mass public sympathy for victims of Western wars, and never
encourages people to wave flags for Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya,
Somalia or Palestine. Despite what our media tells us, we must condemn
all this illegal invasion of sovereignty as well, in addition to Russia’s.
You might ask yourself why the
discrepancy in media coverage? We have the answer. In numerous
recent instances, mainstream Western media has explained their racist
justification. A great example is when a CBS news reporter said about the
Russian invasion, “This isn’t a place…like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen
conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively
European city where you wouldn’t expect that…to happen.”
An NBC News reporter said “these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees
from Ukraine…They’re Christian, they’re white,
they’re very similar.” Speaking of refugees, we must
also recognize how Western nations are appropriately welcoming in Ukrainian war
refugees, but in many cases are building walls or other severe barriers to
the 37 million refugees that Western nations have created via their
endless invasions of the Middle East. This racist double
standard is not lost on the millions of suffering non-white people.
The media is also stoking excessive
hatred toward Russians, reminiscent of the pro-war propaganda run up to the Iraq War. They are using initial sympathy for
Ukrainians, and twisting it into anti-Russia war fervor. Scores of
individuals and organizations are sounding increasingly bellicose, strongly
supporting various forms of warfare against Russia. Due to this, Russian artists and athletes are being unfairly punished for
things their government did, being banned from participation in film festivals,
sporting events, and so forth.
But most importantly, we must
recognize the strong possibility of this war escalating into a nuclear World
War 3. Indeed, the Russian invasion has vastly increased the probability of
world war, and the Western response has compounded that probability.
Instead of vigorously seeking serious peace talks
and an understanding of Russian grievances, the West is waging wholesale economic warfare, trying to
collapse most of the Russian economy, which will harm poor civilians most. The
West is also continuing to send massive arms shipments to Ukraine, and has
been working on sending warplanes to the
Ukrainian government. Many top governmental officials are calling for a No Fly Zone and to kill Putin. All this is a massive
escalation toward nuclear world war and is stark raving insanity of the highest
order!
As we speak, and I say this without
hyperbole, we are at the most dangerous moment in human history. Even during
the height of the previous Cold War, all the leaders and public understood the
extreme danger of nuclear war. Today, it seems like far too many suffer from
total ignorance or amnesia, and act as if going to war against Russia is
acceptable. Nobody wins nuclear war!
We must recognize that there is an
easy way to Stop the War, which starts by understanding what really provoked
the war. If we’re honest, we must accept that this conflict started when
the US broke its promise not to expand NATO forces “one inch”
Eastward beyond West Germany, after the fall of USSR. Many of
our nation’s foremost Russia and foreign policy experts, George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, John
Mearsheimer, and many others warned us precisely about NATO
expansion leading to this very conflict. Russia also
explicitly warned the West for many years that there
would be a severe problem if they continued pushing NATO to their doorstep,
especially in Ukraine. How did the USA feel when
Soviets put missiles in Cuba?
If we are serious about peace, we also must tell the truth about the violent U.S.-backed Ukraine coup
in 2014, when Senator John McCain and others went to coup protests in Ukraine and proclaimed U.S. support
for overthrowing Ukrainian democracy. And following that coup, the U.S. armed and supported a proxy war in
that nation, including working with neo-Nazis as they
waged war on ethnic minority Russians in the East, killing around 14,000 people.
Interestingly, the very credible independent media watchdog journal Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) gave a great summary of what mainstream media is not telling the
public. This war did not start last week.
If we’re serious about peace and avoiding nuclear war, we must acknowledge the
Western role in provoking the conflict, and call for peace negotiations
for Ukraine to remain neutral in terms of NATO,
and for U.S. and Russian forces and weapons to be withdrawn from Ukraine. Peace is simpler than
pro-war profiteer media would like us to comprehend.
--
Abel Tomlinson
OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair
Arkansas Nonviolence Alliance, Founder
(479)283-5762
By Jeremy Kuzmarov on March 01, 2022 11:46 am
But Will the Strategy Succeed This Time?
Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously bragged about having induced a Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 by supporting Islamic fundamentalists
with the goal of “giving the Soviets their Vietnam.”
The collateral damage of the war—the
destruction of Afghanistan and growth of al-Qaeda—was inconsequential to the
“grand chess-master,”[1] who told a reporter: “what is more important to the
history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some
agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold
war?”
Brzezinski died in May 2017, but his spirit lives on in the Biden
administration which appears to have followed his blueprint, substituting
Afghanistan with Ukraine.
Its strategy appears to have been to induce a
Russian invasion of Ukraine with the goal of bogging Russia down into a
quagmire while crippling its economy through sanctions that hold the prospect
of bringing Vladimir Putin down. […]
The post Repeating ’70s Strategy of Grand
Chess-Master Zbigniew Brzezinski: Biden Administration Appears to Have Induced
Russian Invasion of Ukraine to Bankrupt Russia’s Economy and Advance Regime
Change appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/01/repeating-70s-strategy-of-grand-chess-master-zbigniew-brzezinski-biden-administration-appears-to-have-induced-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-to-bankrupt-russias-economy-and-advance-regime-cha/
Andrew Bacevich. “ Jack and Joe, The Perils of Getting
Tough.” tom/Dispatch, MARCH 1, 2022.
[Bacevich imagines JFK
giving Joe Biden advice, drawing from JFK’s store of good and bad judgments and
actions. B’s criticism of fear mongers
is especially valuable today. –D]
…But let TomDispatch regular Andrew
Bacevich, author most recently of After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed,
take you into the netherworld on what, increasingly, seems to be a netherplanet. Tom
“Reflections from the
Netherworld: Advice from JFK to President Biden.” BY ANDREW
BACEVICH
Dear Mr. President:
I send greetings from the other side —
and no, I don’t mean the other side of the aisle. I refer to the place where
old politicians go to make amends for their sins.
Apart from our shared Catholicism and
affinity for sunglasses, I suspect you and I don’t have a lot in common.
Actually, that may not quite be true. After all, your family and mine have both
experienced more than our share of tragedy and you and I both did make it to
the top rung of American politics.
Forgive me for being blunt, Joe — may I
call you Joe? — but after more than a year in office your administration
clearly needs help. Having had ample time to reflect on my own abbreviated stay
in the White House, I thought I might share some things I learned, especially
regarding foreign policy. Sadly, you seem intent on repeating some of my own
worst mistakes. A course change is still possible, but there’s no time to
waste. So please listen up.
I’m guessing that you may be familiar
with this timeless text: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never
fear to negotiate.”
I no longer have any idea what prompted
my aide and speechwriter Ted
Sorensen to pen those immortal words or how exactly they found their way into
my inaugural address.
No matter, though. People then thought it expressed some profound truth — a
Zen-like aphorism with an Ivy League pedigree.
Its implicit subtext, though, totally
escaped attention: If negotiations don’t yield the desired results, it’s time
to get tough. And that turned out to be problematic.
Fearing Fear Itself?
Candor obliges me to admit that,
politically speaking, my administration made good use of fear itself. If my run
for the White House had an overarching theme, it was to scare the bejesus out
of the American people. And once in office, fearmongering formed an essential
part of my presidency. The famous Jack Kennedy wit and charisma was no more
than a side dish meant to make the panic-inducing main course more palatable.
Here’s me at the National Press Club
early in the 1960 campaign, sounding the alarm about
“increasingly dangerous, unsolved, long postponed problems” that would
“inevitably explode” during the next president’s watch. KABOOM! Chief among
those problems, I warned, was “the growing missile gap, the rise of Communist
China, the despair of the underdeveloped nations, the explosive situations in
Berlin and in the Formosa [i.e., Taiwan] Strait, [and] the deterioration of
NATO.”
Note the sequencing. Item number
one is that nuclear “missile gap,” with its implications of an Armageddon
lurking just around the corner. It was my own invention and, if I do say so
myself, a stroke of pure political genius. Of course, like the “bomber gap”
that preceded it by a few years, no such missile gap actually existed. When it
came to nukes and the means to deliver them, we were actually way ahead of the
Soviets.
President Eisenhower knew that the
missile gap was a load of malarky. So did his vice president, Dick Nixon,
the poor sap. But they couldn’t say so out loud without compromising classified
intelligence.
Even today, people still treat my
inaugural address — “The torch has been passed,” etc. — as if it were sacred
scripture. But when it came to putting the nation on notice, the
Kennedy-Sorensen fright machine really hit its stride barely a week later during my appearance before
a joint session of Congress.
“No man entering upon this office,” I
said with a carefully calibrated mixture of grace and gravitas, “could fail to
be staggered upon learning — even in this brief 10-day period — the harsh
enormity of the trials through which we must pass in the next four years.” Then
came a generous dose of Sorensen’s speechwriting magic:
“Each day the crises multiply. Each day
their solution grows more difficult. Each day we draw nearer the hour of
maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger. I feel I
must inform the Congress that our analyses over the last ten days make it clear
that — in each of the principal areas of crisis — the tide of events has been
running out and time has not been our friend.”
For eight years, Ike had been asleep at
the switch. Now, in a mere 10 days as chief executive, I had grasped the
harrowing magnitude of the dangers facing the nation. Time running out! The
enemy growing stronger! The hour of maximum danger approaching like a runaway
freight train!
But not to worry. With a former PT-boat skipper at
the helm, assisted by the likes of Mac Bundy, Bob McNamara, Max Taylor, brother
Bobby, and a whole crew of Harvard graduates, the Republic was in good hands.
That was my message, anyway.
Okay, Joe, now let me come clean. In the
months after that, we hit a few bumps in the road. Having promised action, we
did act with vigor, but in ways that may not have been particularly judicious.
(Had I lived long enough to finish my term and win a second one — that
was the plan, after all — things might have been put right.)
So, yes, the CIA’s Bay of Pigs Cuban
debacle of April 1961 was an epic snafu, although as much Ike’s fault as my
own. Viewed in hindsight, my escalation of
our military involvement in Vietnam, that distant “frontier” of the Cold War —
thousands of U.S. troops test-driving the latest counterinsurgency theories —
wasn’t exactly the Best and Brightest’s best idea. And the less said about my
administration’s complicity in
the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem the better. That was not
our best day either.
You didn’t know Bobby, but when my
brother got a bit in his mouth, he was unstoppable. So I will admit that he got
more than slightly carried away with Operation Mongoose,
the failed CIA program aimed at assassinating Fidel Castro and sabotaging the
Cuban Revolution.
If given the chance to do it over again,
I also might think twice about ordering the deployment of 1,000
Minuteman land-based ICBMs, a classic illustration of Cold War “overkill,”
driven more by domestic politics than any strategic calculus. Mind you, the Air
Force’s Strategic Air Command was lobbying for 10,000 ICBMs so
it could have been worse! (In the things-never-change category, I hear that
your administration is quietly pursuing a $1.7-trillion upgrade of
the U.S. nuclear strike force. Does that form part of your intended legacy?)
The Limits of Fear
Learn from our mistakes, Joe, but pay
special attention to what we got right. Yes, fear led us to do some mighty
stupid things. On occasion, though, fear became a spur to prudence and even
wisdom. In fact, on two occasions overcoming fear enabled me to avert World War
III. And that’s not bragging, that’s fact.
The first occurred in August 1961 when
the East German government, with the approval of the Kremlin, began erecting
the barrier that would become known as the Berlin Wall. The second took place
in October 1962 during the famous Cuban Missile Crisis.
On the first occasion, I did nothing,
which was exactly the right thing to do. Doing nothing kept
the peace.
As long as East Berliners (and by
extension all East Germans) could enter West Berlin and so flee to the West,
that city would remain, in Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s words, “a bone in the throat”
of the Communist bloc. Dividing Berlin dislodged that bone. Problem solved.
Khrushchev got what he wanted and so did I. As a result, the likelihood that
Berlin-induced tensions could trigger a great power conflagration eased
markedly. True, the outcome might not have pleased East Berliners, but they
weren’t my chief concern.
On the second occasion, I employed
skills I learned from my father Joe. Whatever his reputation as an appeasement-inclined
isolationist before World War II, my dad knew how to cut a deal. So while Mac,
Bob, Max and the rest of the so-called ExComm were
debating whether to just bomb Cuba or bomb and then invade the island, I called
an end-around.
Using Bobby to open a
back-channel to Khrushchev, I negotiated a secret compromise. I promised to pull
U.S. nuclear missiles out of Turkey and Italy and pledged that the United
States would not invade Cuba. In return, Khrushchev committed to removing
Soviet offensive weapons from that island. As a result, both sides (along with
the rest of humanity) got a rain check on a possible nuclear holocaust.
Let me emphasize, Joe, that the theme
common to both episodes wasn’t toughness. Both times, I set aside the question
of fault — the U.S. not exactly being an innocent party in either instance — in
favor of identifying the terms of a resolution. That meant conceding their side
had legitimate concerns we could ill-afford to ignore.
This crucially important fact got lost
in the grandstanding that followed. I’ll bet you remember this comment,
reputedly from my secretary of state Dean Rusk, about the negotiations with the
Soviets over Cuba: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just
blinked.” That invented quote supposedly captured the essence of the showdown
over Cuba. The truth, however, was that Khrushchev and I both stared into the
abyss and jointly decided to back away.
As for Berlin, Ted Sorensen wrote me
a great speech to
give there (“Ich bin ein Berliner,” etc.). In it, I pretended to be
unhappy with the Wall, when in truth that structure allowed me to sleep well at
night. And, of course, my memorable star-turn in Berlin created a precedent for
several of my successors to stage their own photo-ops with the Brandenburg Gate
as a backdrop. (Don’t count on Kyiv offering a similar opportunity, Joe.)
You’ll never get me to acknowledge this
on the record, but in both Berlin and Cuba I opted for “appeasement” — a
derogatory term for avoiding war — over confrontation. Not for a second have I
ever regretted doing so.
Just Say No
You may be wondering by now what any of
this has to do with you and the fix you find yourself in today. Quite a lot, I
think. Hear me out.
I inherited a Cold War in full swing.
You seem to be on the verge of embarking on a new cold war, with China and
Russia filling in for, well, the Soviet Union and China.
I urge you to think carefully before
making the leap into such an unmourned past. Whatever your political
advisers may imagine, displays of presidential toughness aren’t what our nation
needs right now. You’ve extricated us from the longest war in U.S. history — a
courageous and necessary decision, even if abysmally implemented. The last
thing the United States needs is a new war, whether centered on Ukraine, the
island of Taiwan, or anyplace in between. Military confrontation will drive a
stake through the heart of your “Build Back Better” bill and kill any hopes for
meaningful domestic reform. And it may also boost your predecessor’s prospects
for making a comeback, a depressing thought if ever there was one.
You probably caught this recent headline in
the Washington Post: “With or without war, Ukraine gives Biden
a new lease on leadership.” The implication: perceived toughness on your part
will pay political dividends.
Don’t believe it for a second, Joe. An
armed conflict stemming from the Ukraine crisis is likely to destroy your
presidency and much else besides. The same can be said about a prospective war
with China. Let me be blunt: the leadership we need today is akin to what the
nation needed when I steered a course away from war in Berlin and Cuba.
And please don’t fall for the latest propaganda about
growing “gaps” between our own military capabilities and those of potential
enemies. Take it from me, when it comes to endangering our security both China
and Russia trail well behind our military-industrial-congressional complex.
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But
let us never fear to negotiate.” A nice turn of phrase that. Damned if it
doesn’t turn out to be a sentiment to govern by as well.
Joe, if I can be of any further help in
these tough times, don’t hesitate to call. You know where to find me.
Sincerely,
Jack
Copyright 2022 Andrew Bacevich
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular,
is president of the Quincy
Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His most recent
book is After the Apocalypse: America’s
Role in a World Transformed.
Watch
Now: Ukraine - what's hype, and what's helpful
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Nuclear
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Hi
friends -
From
today’s NWADG, page 5. It’s surprising that this was relegated to page 5,
seeing as how we’re talking about the possible end of civilization. The
world is now in the most danger of immediate destruction it’s been in since the
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Somehow, this war fervor needs to be tamed.
Peace
- Art
Naomi Klein. The
Intercept (March 1 2022), 6:00 a.m.
A “Make America Great Again” baseball cap
rests on the knee of a person at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” event in
Phoenix, on July 24, 2021.
Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
NOSTALGIA FOR EMPIRE is
what seems to drive Vladimir Putin — that and a desire to
overcome the shame of punishing economic shock therapy imposed on Russia at the
end of the Cold War. Nostalgia for American “greatness” is part of what drives
the movement Donald Trump still leads — that and a desire to overcome the shame
of having to face the villainy of white supremacy that shaped the founding of
the United States and mutilates it still. Nostalgia is also what animates the
Canadian truckers who occupied Ottawa for the better part of a month, wielding
their red-and-white flags like a conquering army, evoking a simpler time when
their consciences were undisturbed by thoughts of the bodies of Indigenous
children, whose remains are still being discovered on the grounds of
those genocidal institutions that once dared to call themselves “schools.”
This is not the warm and cozy nostalgia of
fuzzily remembered childhood pleasures; it’s an enraged and annihilating
nostalgia that clings to false memories of past glories against all mitigating
evidence.
All these nostalgia-based movements and
figures share a longing for something else, something which may seem unrelated
but is not. A nostalgia for a time when fossil fuels could be extracted from
the earth without uneasy thoughts of mass extinction, or children demanding
their right to a future, or Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change reports, like the one just released yesterday,
that reads, in the words of
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, like an “atlas of human
suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Putin, of
course, leads a petrostate, one that has defiantly refused to diversify its
economic dependence on oil and gas, despite the devastating effect of the
commodity roller coaster on its people and despite the reality of climate
change. Trump is obsessed with the easy money
that fossil fuels offer and as
president made climate denial a signature policy.
The Canadian truckers, for their part, not
only chose idling 18-wheelers and smuggled jerry cans as their protest
symbols, but the leadership of the movement is also deeply rooted in the
extra-dirty oil of the Alberta tar sands. Before it was the “freedom convoy,”
many of these same players staged the dress rehearsal known as United
We Roll, a 2019 convoy that combined a zealous
defense of oil pipelines, opposition to carbon pricing, anti-immigrant
xenophobia, and explicit nostalgia for a white, Christian Canada.
Oil
is a stand-in for a broader worldview.
Though petrodollars underwrite these players
and forces, it’s critical to understand that oil is a stand-in for a broader
worldview, a cosmology deeply entwined with Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine
of Discovery, which ranked human as well as nonhuman life inside a rigid
hierarchy, with white Christian men at the top. Oil, in this context, is the
symbol of the extractivist mindset: not only a perceived God-given right
to keep extracting fossil fuels, but also the right to keep taking whatever
they want, leave poison behind, and never look back.
This is why the fast-moving climate crisis
represents not just an economic threat to people invested in the extractive
sectors but also a cosmological threat to the people invested in this
worldview. Because climate change is the Earth telling us that nothing is free;
that the age of (white, male) human “dominion” has ended; that there is no such
thing as a one-way relationship comprised only of taking; that all actions have
reactions. These centuries of digging and spewing are now unleashing forces
that make even the sturdiest structures created by industrial societies —
coastal cities, highways, oil rigs — look vulnerable and frail. And within the
extractivist mindset, that is impossible to accept.
Given their common cosmologies, it should
come as no surprise that Putin, Trump, and the “freedom convoys” are reaching
toward one another across disparate geographies and wildly different
circumstances. So Trump praises Canada’s “peaceful
movement of patriotic truckers, workers, and families protesting for their most
basic rights and liberties”; Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon cheer on Putin
while the truckers sport their MAGA hats; Randy Hillier, a member of the
Ontario Legislature who is one of the convoy’s loudest supporters, declares on
Twitter that “Far more people have & will die from this shot [the Covid
vaccines], than in the Russia/Ukraine war.” And how about the Ontario
restaurant that last week put on its daily specials board the
announcement that Putin “is not occupying Ukraine” but standing up to the Great Reset, the Satanists, and
“fighting against the enslavement of humanity.”
These alliances seem deeply weird and
unlikely at first. But look a little closer, and it’s clear that they are bound
together by an attitude toward time, one that clings to an idealized version of
the past and steadfastly refuses to face difficult truths about the future.
They also share a delight in the exercise of raw power: the 18-wheeler
vs. the pedestrian, the shouted manufactured reality vs. the cautious
scientific report, the nuclear arsenal vs. the machine gun. This is the
energy currently surging in many different spheres, starting wars, attacking
seats of government, and defiantly destabilizing our planet’s life support
systems. This is the ethos at the root of so many democratic crises,
geopolitical crises, and the climate crisis: a violent clinging to a toxic past
and a refusal to face a more entangled and interrelational future, one bounded
by the limits of what people and planet can take. It is a pure expression of
what the late bell hooks often described, with a playful wink, as “imperialist
white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” — because sometimes all the big guns
are needed to describe our world accurately.
A rocket hits a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, on
Feb. 26, 2022. Photo:
Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The most urgent political task at hand is to
put enough pressure on Putin that he sees his criminal invasion of Ukraine as
too great a risk to sustain. But that is only the barest of beginnings. “There
is a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future on the
planet,” said Hans-Otto Portner, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working
group that organized the landmark report released this week. If there is a
uniting political task of our time, it is to provide a comprehensive response
to this conflagration of toxic nostalgia. And within a modern world birthed in
genocide and dispossession, that requires laying out a vision for a future where
we have never been before. MORE THANKS TO SHELLEY B https://theintercept.com/2022/03/01/war-climate-crisis-putin-trump-oil-gas/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
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I like the slogan below: “RUSSIA OUT OF UKRAINE.
NATO OUT OF EXISTENCE.” It’s too much for a single sign I think but might
work as two neighboring protest signs. Unfortunately, NATO is
probably going to have more, not less, support after Russia’s attack.
Peace – Art
“Ukraine,
Palestine, International Law, & BDS” By
Jonathan Kuttab
[Kuttab
appeals for an agreement that employs nonviolent BDS to stop the killing, leads
to Russian withdrawal, leaves Ukraine as an independent yet neutral country,
and strengthens international law “may be the closest thing to a just solution
we can hope and pray for.”]
I
must admit that when the Ukraine crisis began developing, I was ambivalent. It
seemed that one tyrant, Putin, was eager to reassert the status of Russia as a
major power with a “sphere of influence'' over its neighbors. Meanwhile, NATO
and the US were unnecessarily provoking him by extending their military reach
to his very doorstep. Once the Warsaw pact had been dissolved, I saw no further
use for NATO, much less the efforts to extend its military power to Russia’s
very doorstep. I had no interest in that type of power struggle, aside from
wishing for peace and avoiding bloodshed over such imperial machinations.
Once
Putin invaded his neighbors, however, I quickly changed my mind. His blatant
violation of the sovereignty of his neighbor, after having previously annexed
the Crimean Peninsula, his reliance on brute military force, and his total disregard
for international law and its provisions is truly dangerous and required a
prompt and quick response. Not a military one, I thought, but a determined
assertion of the international order and, through widespread international
solidarity, a means of making him pay the price for these blatant violations.
In other words, Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as nonviolent
responses to Putin's aggression.
It
did not help, of course, that the US has in recent years been steadily
weakening international organizations and mechanisms, itself violating
international law and norms with impunity. The issue for me, however, is not
just rank hypocrisy and double standards. It goes much deeper than that. To
live in a peaceful world requires an international order that prohibits and
sanctions those who would resort to aggression and war, the invasion of
neighboring countries, or the attempt to annex and acquire lands by force.
Indeed, the premise of the international order following WWII was that humanity
could no longer afford to live in such a world. The overwhelming death and
destruction caused by our modern war machines is intolerable, and the plethora
of potential disputes between the 194 countries of the world is devastating. If
we allow historical claims and grievances, security interests, national pride,
and the populist opportunism of unscrupulous politicians free reign, then many
countries can and will find excuses to invade their neighbors—resorting to “the
rules of the jungle” whereby the powerful attack and swallow up the weak with
impunity.
The
speedy and effective international response to Russia’s invasion this time is
heartening. Perhaps we can again generate the type of enthusiasm for
international law and worldwide solidarity that has prevented many major wars
in the last few decades.
To
be sure, we still live in an imperfect world, and there are still a number of
wars and localized conflagrations, but since WWII most countries have accepted
international law, and there have been only three notable attempts to annex
land by force of arms:
1. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,
2. Russia’s annexation of the
Crimea (and now possibly Ukraine), and
3. Israel’s annexation of
East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, as well as its threats to annex
additional portions of the West Bank.
All
three attempts are blatant violations of international law, no matter what
excuses and justification have been offered.
It
is shameful that the United States, since winning the Cold War, has been
leading a retreat from such international principles, except when they have
suited its own interests. It has also abused its massive military power to
either circumvent the United Nations or to veto the condemnation of Israel at
the United Nations Security Council, blunting and preventing international
solidarity from impacting the tragic situation.
It
is my hope that the current crisis and its resultant bloodshed will end soon,
with a strengthening of international law and a reassertion of the principles
of self-determination and democracy. I hope for a renewed commitment to finding
peaceful means of resolving international disputes, as based on the principles
of justice and law rather than brute military force and chauvinistic national
interests. An agreement that leads to
Russian withdrawal but leaves Ukraine as an independent, yet neutral country
may be the closest thing to a just solution we can hope and pray for.
THE FALL
OF PUTIN – A DEJA VU
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Dear Friends,
I have just posted a second culture of peace
blog for March, entitled :
THE FALL OF PUTIN – A DEJA VU. You will find it at https://decade-culture-of-peace.org/blog/?p=1407
Here’s the conclusion (D): Putin’s days are numbered with a crashing economy, an
unwinnable war and the loss of confidence of the Russian people.
I continue to believe that the American empire
will crash soon because of its over-militarization of the economy and the
entire American culture. But it seems that Putin’s rule in Russia will crash
even sooner.
The day of reckoning of the culture of war is arriving.
In case you have not already received it, this
month's CPNN bulletin is
entitled, PEACE ACTIVISTS AGAINST WAR IN UKRAINE
. You may find at
https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=26395
Thank you for your interest in the culture of
peace.
David Adams
[VFP-all]
Fw: War is (still) a Racket |
Mar
3, 2022, 1:02 PM (19 hours ago) |
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Good article about HOW war industry controls US politics.
Peace, Ellen Barfield
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Move
to Amend <info@movetoamend.org>
To: Ellen
E Barfield <ellene4pj@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday,
March 3, 2022, 10:04:53 AM EST
Subject: War
is (still) a Racket
|
From
Abel ][about year 2000?]
In this video from two years ago Congressman Adam Schiff
openly admits that the massive arming of Ukraine that has been going on since
the 2014 US backed coup was "to fight Russia over there and not
here". The US has been using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against
Russia.
Video:
https://twitter.com/AbelNTomlinson/status/1499826232246079502?t=W--J5Dwa4EhY53zjjNOhhQ&s=19 [I couldn’t open this link –D]
CENTRALITY OF NATO EXPANSION IN #11
Joe
Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue
Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for NATO Expansion
Art Hobson, Neutrality
Scott Ritter, Neutrality
Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality
CONTENTS
RUSSIA (AND UKRAINE) NEWSLETTER
#11, 2-21-22
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-russia-newsletter-11-february-24.html
Perspectives Leading to
Diplomacy
Putin’s/Russia’s Thinking
Joe Lauria, Putin’s 3,350-word Speech: NATO Is the Issue
Chris Hedges on the Economic Motives for
NATO Expansion
Minsk Agreements
Rahman, Ukraine at Fault
Ray McGovern, Russia and China
German-Russian Pipeline Agreement
Whitney, Germany and Russia, Nordstream 2
Pipeline
George Paulson
Art Hobson
John Foster (author of Oil and World Politics), Nordstream,
NATO, and Equal Security
M. K.
Bhadrakumar, From Recognition of Donbass Provinces to Invasion Donbass Refugees
US’/Biden’s
Thinking
Tomlinson, War on Russia
Hess and Davis, Sanctions as War
“Hidden Costs of
Sanctions”
Kuzmarov, Yalta: US and Soviet Russia
Bromwich, Mainstream Media for War
Peace
Thinking
Jack Matlock, Analysis of US and Russian
Arguments
What Could Ukraine—and US and
Russia--Think?
Art Hobson, Neutrality
Scott Ritter, Neutrality
Shea and Pavlova, Austria’s Neutrality
J. William Fulbright, Empathy, Democratic
Humanism, Diplomacy
Anthology
#10, 1-8-22
END RUSSIA-UKRAINE NEWSLETTER/ANTHOLOGY #12
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