OMNI
Ukraine War
Anthology #28
February 18, 2023
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
https://omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS
US/NATO’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
Current Actions Against the War
World Beyond War, February 19 RALLY
United for Peace and Justice, “Peaceful Alternatives to War,” February
24,
2023.
History
John Mearsheimer, "The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis."
George Beebe.
"Ignoring the Ghosts of the 'Great War' - at Our Own
Peril"
Jeffrey D. Sachs. "Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster."
Space
Alert interview
with John Walsh. “War against Russia and
China.”
Sustaining the Ukraine War
Space
Alert. “Kiev’s Nazi Forces Attack
Donbass.”
Seymour
Hersh, “Nord Stream Sabotage Is the Dumbest.”
Caitlin Johnstone. CBS Silenced by
Ukraine Gov.
NYT Report on Civilians Killed.
Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists. Phoenix Ghost Drones to Ukraine.
Dave
DeCamp. Lend-Lease for Weapons.
Benjamin
Norton. Spanish Lawmaker on NATO’s Subservience to US Interests.
Anatole Lieven on Russian Intellectuals.
Fabrizio
Casari. Europe a Sinking Ship.
NATO
on Russia’s Western Border
Scott Ritter. “Lithuania’s Brinkmanship.”
Destabilizing Russia’s Southern Border.
Gavin O’Reilly on Uzbekistan.
MAKING PEACE, STOP THE WAR, DIPLOMACY NOT SLAUGHTER
"Ending the War in Ukraine: Three Possible
Futures" By Rajan Menon.
US Public Support for the War
Decreasing.
"Anatol Lieven on NATO Expansion & What a Ukraine Peace
Settlement Could Look Like."
Interview by Amy Goodman.
TEXTS
PEACEFUL ALTERNATIVES TO THE WAR (HERE AND AT END)
February 19 RALLY in Washington D.C.,
rageagainstwar.com/rallies
On February 19 in Washington D.C., a major rally and march will bring forth the
following demands. Sister events listed on the rageagainstwar.com website at rageagainstwar.com/rallies are being planned in
Montpelier, Sacramento, Fresno, Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, Tacoma, Santa Cruz, and
San Francisco. You can plan and add your own where you are, or head to the
closest one.
This is a rally being planned by an uncomfortably large coalition, including people and
groups that have very strong and important disagreements with each other on
topics other than the urgent need to reduce the risk of nuclear war and bring a
halt to the killing in Ukraine. It's unfortunate that many people who have
opposed past wars do not oppose this one, and that many who oppose this one are
willing to support other ones. World BEYOND War's mission is to educate people
in the direction of opposing all war and preparations for war, and this is one
place we can do that.
If you attend, please get to know some new people, and please respectfully and
constructively make the case to them for war abolition. You can use these flyers, these sign-up sheets, and wear this gear. Let's turn out in as large a crowd as
possible!
Join us at the Lincoln Memorial at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday,
February 19th. After the rally, we'll march to the White House. Schedule here.
I'll be one of the speakers and see you there! Forward this to your friends!
Peace, David
Swanson, World BEYOND War World BEYOND War is a global
network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for
the abolition of the institution of war.
Donate to support our
people-powered movement for peace.
One Week
from Today (Feb. 24)
|
) |
|
||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
In
case you hadn’t read Mearsheimer’s essay
"The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis"
By John J. Mearsheimer, National
Interest, posted June 23, 2022.
A lengthy, detailed argument that US
policy was principally responsible for the war's outbreak and that current US
policy, in its focus on weakening Russia, is downgrading the prospects for a
negotiated settlement and for an end to suffering in Ukraine. The author
teaches political science and international relations at the University of
Chicago.
Editor’s note: This speech was
given at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence on
Thursday, June 16.The war in Ukraine is a multi-dimensional
disaster, which is likely to get much worse in the foreseeable future. When a
war is successful, little attention is paid to its causes, but when the outcome
is disastrous, understanding how it happened becomes paramount. People want to
know: how did we get into this terrible situation?
I have witnessed this phenomenon twice in my
lifetime—first with the Vietnam war and second with the Iraq war. In both
cases, Americans wanted to know how their country could have miscalculated so
badly. Given that the United States and its NATO allies played a crucial role
in the events that led to the Ukraine war—and are now playing a central role in
the conduct of that war—it is appropriate to evaluate the West’s responsibility
for this calamity.
I will make two main arguments
today.
First, the United States is principally
responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis. This is not to deny that Putin
started the war and that he is responsible for Russia’s conduct of the war. Nor
is it to deny that America’s allies bear some responsibility, but they largely
follow Washington’s lead on Ukraine. My central claim is that the United States
has pushed forward policies toward Ukraine that Putin and other Russian leaders
see as an existential threat, a point they have made repeatedly for many years.
Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into
NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The Biden
administration was unwilling to eliminate that threat through diplomacy and
indeed in 2021 recommitted the United States to bringing Ukraine into NATO.
Putin responded by invading Ukraine on February 24th of this
year.
Second, the Biden administration has
reacted to the outbreak of war by doubling down against Russia. Washington
and its Western allies are committed to decisively defeating Russia in Ukraine
and employing comprehensive sanctions to greatly weaken Russian power. The
United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to
the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months if not years. In
the process, Ukraine, which has already suffered grievously, is going to
experience even greater harm. In essence, the United States is helping lead Ukraine
down the primrose path. Furthermore, there is a danger that the war will
escalate, as NATO might get dragged into the fighting and nuclear weapons might
be used. We are living in perilous times.
Let me now lay out my argument in greater detail, starting with a description
of the conventional wisdom about the causes of the Ukraine conflict. MORE click on title
What We Can Learn from WWI
George Beebe. "Ignoring the Ghosts of the
'Great War' - at Our Own Peril." Responsible
Statecraft, posted
July 1.
Via H-Pad -
Historians for Peace and Democracy
Argues that lessons from both the beginning and the end
of World War One have been ignored in NATO's
strategic planning in regard to the Ukraine war. The author is a former Russia
analyst for the CIA and is currently Grand Strategy director of the Quincy
Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
from Global Network: Kiev Nazi
Forces Attack Donbass Since 2014.
|
Since 2014 the US-UK-NATO armed, trained and directed military
forces of Ukraine have been sent to the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine
(along the Russian border) to kill their fellow citizens whose only crime is
they speak Russian. Since the US orchestrated coup d'etat in Kiev in 2014 more than
14,000 people have been killed in the Donbass and more than 34,000
wounded. |
The New York Times reported on June 25 that the CIA (with allied intelligence
agency support) has been directing the war in Ukraine. MORE google the title
BIDEN’S FAMILIAR WARMAKERS
Jeffrey D. Sachs. "Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster."
Common Dreams, posted June 28
"The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons
who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq
(2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia's
invasion of Ukraine." The author is a University Professor and director of
the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
Anti-Communism/Socialism (from 1918 to) 2022
US FOREIGN POLICY: WAR AGAINST RUSSIA AND CHINA
7-19-22 John Walsh (interview). |
7:39
AM (1 hour ago) |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
Russophobia:Doubling Down v. Russia
“Nord Stream Sabotage Is The Dumbest U.S. Act In Years,
Says Seymour Hersh.” in World by Countercurrents
Collective. 17/02/2023. Seymour Hersh, the famous investigative journalist, has slammed
U.S.’s alleged involvement in bombing the Nord Stream gas lines as one of
the “dumbest” decisions taken in years, warning that the move will have
“horrific” consequences for Europeans and further undercut the already
“supremely useless” NATO alliance.
Speaking to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for
an interview on Wednesday, Hersh outlined his recent
report on the destruction of the pipelines last year, which found that the
U.S. played a key role in planting and detonating explosives on sections of the
Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.
MORE https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/nord-stream-sabotage-is-the-dumbest-u-s-act-in-years-says-seymour-hersh/?swcfpc=1
Consequences:
Corruption: Mainstream Media for War
MEDIA
FAILURE TO REPORT
Alan MacLeod “Media ignore Seymour Hersh bombshell report
of U.S. destroying Nord Stream II.” MintPress
News, February 15, 2023. Posted Feb 16, 2023. Originally published: (more by MintPress News)
Imperialism, State Repression, Strategy,
WarAmericas, Europe,
Germany,
Russia,
United StatesNewswireBiden administration,
Nord Stream II
gas pipeline, North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO)
It has now been one week
since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew
up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even
knowledge—an operation which began planning long before the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
Based on
interviews with national security insiders, Hersh—the journalist who broke the
stories of the My Lai Massacre, the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal—claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic
Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. By September, President
Biden himself ordered its destruction. According to Hersh, all understood the
stakes and the gravity of what they were doing, acknowledging that, if caught,
it would be seen as a flagrant “act of war” against their allies.
Despite
this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporter’s bombshell. A MintPress News study analyzed the 20
most influential publications in the United States, according to analytics
company Similar Web, and found only four mentions of the report between them.
The
entirety of the corporate media’s attention given to the story consisted of:
A 166-word mini report in Bloomberg;
One five-minute segment on “Tucker Carlson
Tonight” (Fox News);
One 600-word round up in The New York Post;
A shrill Business Insider attack article, whose headline labels Hersh a “discredited journalist” that has given a “gift to
Putin”.
The 20
outlets studied are, in alphabetical order:
ABC News; Bloomberg News; Business Insider; BuzzFeed; CBS News;
CNBC; CNN; Forbes; Fox News; The Huffington Post; MSNBC; NBC News; The New York
Post; The New York Times; NPR; People Magazine; Politico; USA Today, The Wall
Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Searches
for “Seymour Hersh” and “Nord Stream” were carried out on the websites of each
outlet, and were then checked against precise Google searches and results from
the Dow Jones Factiva news database.
This lack
of interest cannot be explained due to the report’s irrelevance. If the Biden
administration really did work closely with the Norwegian government to blow up
Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars worth of immediate damage and
plunging an entire region of the world into a freezing winter without
sufficient energy, it ranks as one of
the worst terrorist attacks in history; a flagrant act of aggression
against a supposed ally.
Therefore,
if Biden did indeed order this attack, it is barely possible to think of a more
consequential piece of news. Indeed, according to Hersh, all those
involved—from Biden, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria
Nuland, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to National Security Advisor Jake
Sullivan—understood that what they were doing was “an act of war.”
The Nord Stream attack was
also one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, constituting the largest
single leak of methane in history—a gas 80 times worse for the planet than
carbon dioxide at accelerating climate change.
“The media system has, predictably, tried to marginalize the
report,” Bryce Greene, a writer and media
critic who has closely followed the press’ lack of interest in scrutinizing the Nord
Stream story, told MintPress, adding,
They
don’t want to deal with the repercussions. It also reflects poorly on the
profession…Even Jeffery Sachs in his Bloomberg interview said that journalists he
knew personally understood that evidence, but also understood that the media
system they worked in wouldn’t respond kindly to any suggestion of U.S.
complicity, so they kept quiet.
Greene
explained that bothersome facts about the war have consistently been swept
under the rug, noting that,
This is
indicative of the entire Ukraine War coverage. From hiding the history of NATO
expansion, to calling Ukrainian Nazis Russian propaganda, to CBS even
retracting a story about Ukrainian corruption. The fact that U.S. media figures
want to be seen as ‘on the good team’ or ‘on the right side of history’ means
that they’re unwilling to confront reality as it exists. . . . https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-ignore-seymour-hersh-bombshell-report-of-us-destroying-nord-stream-ii/283677/
“CBS wanted to do critical reporting on Ukraine’s government but Ukraine’s
government said no.”
Originally published: Caitlin A Johnstone Blog on August 10, 2022 (more by Caitlin A
Johnstone Blog) | (Posted Aug 13, 2022)
WarEurope, UkraineNewswire
Following objections from the Ukrainian government, CBS
News has removed a short documentary which had reported concerns from
numerous sources that a large amount of the supplies being sent to Ukraine
aren’t making it to the front lines.
Reportng the War continued: KILLING CIVILIANS
NYT Reports 'Strikes On Civilians'
That Happen To Hit Military Targets By Moon
of Alabama. Popular Resistance.org (7-17-2). Just last week the New York Times reported of a Russian strike 'on civilians' in
Chasiv Yar even as its own reporter at the location acknowledged in a detailed
separate report that the apartment complex that was hit was mostly housing
military forces. Yesterday a Russian missile strike hit the town of Vinnytsia
in western Ukraine. The New York
Times is again lamenting about a damage to civilian buildings even as
the main target was obviously a military one. Strikes on Civilians Deep in
Ukraine Show Russia’s Lethal Reach VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — A volley of missiles
hit a shopping center, a dance studio and a wedding... -more-
$54 billion and counting So far the US Congress has
appropriated $54 billion for the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
When it came to a vote in the US House and Senate - all Democrats
in Congress voted in favor of sending these funds to Kiev. Only Republicans
(primarily in the House) voted NO.
The funding bills passed overwhelmingly at the very time our own
economy in the US is suffering dramatically. The same can be said about NATO
member nations who also have sent major funding to Kiev for the war. The
unintended 'blow-back' from sanctions on Russia have been devastating.
The Rand Corporation study of 2019 calls for the 'Overextending
and Unbalancing Russia'.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
P.O. Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 globalnet@mindspring.com
SUSTAINING and
Prolonging the War
THE WAR Continued
WEAPONS TO UKRAINE
“Phoenix Ghosts are part drones, part missiles. How does that change
combat?” BAS (6-2-22).
The US is
sending over 120 Phoenix Ghost drones to Ukraine. They could transform
ground combat by combining the maneuverability, usability, and flight time of a
drone with the lethal effects of a missile, says researcher Dan
Gettinger. Read more.
US Lend-Lease to Ukraine
“Biden Signs Bill Reviving World War II-Era Lend-Lease Program To Ukraine.”By Dave
DeCamp, Antiwar.com. Popular Uprising.org (5-12-22). President Biden on Monday signed a bill
into law reviving the World War II-era lend-lease program for Ukraine, paving
the way for an escalation in US military aid to Kyiv. The Ukraine Democracy
Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 allows Biden to send weapons to Ukraine free of
charge while technically requiring payment at a later date. Under the
lend-lease act during World War II, the US sent billions of dollars in weapons
to the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and other allies. The legislation received
massive bipartisan support in Congress, passing by voice vote in the Senate and
by a vote of... -more-
Purpose of War to Build Up US War Industry and US
Power Over Europe
Spanish Lawmaker: NATO Subordinates
Europe To US
"Why Russian Intellectuals
Are Hardening Support for War in Ukraine" By Anatol Lieven, Portside, posted
June 18
Says that many Russian intellectuals
who loathe Putin and opposed the invasion are now joining in support for the
war effort out of "an increasingly strong feeling
that the United States is trying to use the war in Ukraine to cripple or even
destroy the Russian state."
Fabrizio
Casari. “Europe Dances on the Titanic.” Internationalist
360° on July 13, 2022 (more
by Internationalist
360°)
(Posted Jul 16, 2022). State Repression, Strategy, WarAmericas, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia-Ukraine War.
140 days after the start of Russia’s military operations in
Ukraine, the Western reaction, which according to Biden would have erased
Russia from the international scene, turns out to be a political and economic
failure.
NATO ON RUSSIA’S WESTERN BORDER: Continuing and Possibly
Expanding the War
Scott Ritter. “Lithuania’s Brinkmanship.” Consortium News.
June 30, 2022.
(Posted Jul 09,
2022).
Imperialism,
State
Repression, Strategy,
WarAmericas, Europe, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Suwalki
Gap
On June 18 the government
of Lithuania acted on a decision by the European Commission that goods and
cargo subject to European Union sanctions could be prohibited from transiting
between one part of Russia to another, so long as they passed through E.U. territory.
Almost immediately Lithuania moved to block Russia from shipping
certain categories of goods and materials by rail to the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad, encompassing the former East Prussian Baltic port city of
Konigsberg and its surrounding environs. They were absorbed into Russia proper
as a form of war reparations at the end of the Second World War.
Lithuania
cited its legal obligation as an E.U. member to enforce E.U. sanctions
targeting Russia. Russia, citing a 2002 treaty with Lithuania which ostensibly
prohibits such an action, has called the Lithuanian move a blockade and has
threatened a military response.
[Photo deleted]A formation of NATO fighter jets flying over
Lithuania in 2015. (NATO)
Lithuania,
as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, is afforded the
collective security guarantees spelled out in Article 5 of the NATO Charter,
which stipulate that an attack against one member is an attack against all.
Through its actions, Lithuania risked bringing Russia and NATO to the brink of
armed conflict, the consequences of which could be dire for the entire world
given the respective nuclear arsenals of the two sides.
From the
moment Russia initiated its so-called “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine,
the nations that comprise NATO have been engaged in a delicate dance around the
issue of how to support Ukraine and punish Russia without crossing the line of
committing an overt act of war that could prompt Russia to respond militarily,
thereby triggering a series of cause-effect actions that could lead to a
general European conflict, and perhaps World War III.
In
retrospect, the early debates in the European halls of power about whether to
provide Ukraine with heavy weaponry seem almost innocent when compared to the
massive infusion of weaponry that is taking place today.
Even
Russia has softened its hardline stance going in, where it had threatened
unimaginable consequences for any nation that interfered with its military operation
in Ukraine.
Today the
situation has evolved to the point where NATO is engaged in a de facto proxy
conflict with Russia on Ukrainian soil which is designed, frankly speaking, to
kill as many Russian soldiers as possible.
Russian Objectives MORE click on title
RUSSIA’S
SOUTHERN BORDER
Gavin O'Reilly. “Lukashenko’s prediction comes true–regime change comes to Uzbekistan.” Al Jazeera on July 8, 2022 (more by Al Jazeera). (Posted Jul 11, 2022).
Lukashenko had predicted the highly
coincidental timing that suggests that the current strife in Uzbekistan has
been orchestrated as a means to eventually lead to further destabilization
along Russia’s southern border.
Inequality,
State Repression,
Strategy, WarEurope, Russia, UkraineNewswireBelarusian
President Alexander Lukashenko, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), Kazakhstan, RAND Corporation, the former
Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, Uzbek President
Shavkat Mirziyoyev
On Saturday, a month-long
state of emergency was declared in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, in
response to violent protests in response to government plans to revoke the
autonomy of the north-eastern republic of Karakalpakstan, a decision which
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev would later drop following a
visit to the region.
Despite the current
disturbances only starting several days ago, their sudden escalation to extreme violence,
as well as the coordinated coverage of the situation by corporate media
outlets, including the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe,
already bears all the hallmarks of a CIA regime change operation.
Indeed, such a situation
was predicted by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
in January of this year, when a similar regime-change attempt was taking place
in Uzbekistan’s larger northern
neighbour Kazakhstan.
This attempt, carried out
in line with a May 2020 document published
by neoconservative think tank the RAND Corporation, sought to destabilize the
central Asian Republic in order for the after-effects to spill over into
neighbouring Russia, with the 7,000km land border shared between both nations
being the second largest in the world after Canada and the U.S.
Following
the deployment of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO)
to Kazakhstan however, at the request of Nur-Sultan, the Western-backed colour revolution attempt was quelled in the space
of two weeks, with the military alliance withdrawing from the central Asian
country soon after.
Belarus itself
had experienced a colour revolution attempt
in August 2020, when following Lukashenko’s Presidential electoral
victory over opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a Euromaidan-style
colour revolution was launched against Minsk, the former Soviet Republic being
a long-time target for the regime change lobby owing to it being Moscow’s sole
European ally, having highly-nationalised state
industries, and the instalment of a pro-Western government resulting
in Russia’s entire Western border being composed solely of NATO-members and
allies.
Indeed, the encirclement of Russia was a
motivating factor in the aforementioned Euromaidan colour revolution launched in
response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision
to suspend an EU trade deal in order to pursue closer ties with Moscow. MORE click on title
ENDING THE WAR
"Ending the War in Ukraine: Three Possible
Futures"
By Rajan Menon, TomDispatch.com, posted June 26
Teases-out the dimensions of three
possible ways in which the war might end, arguing that, in any case, "in
2022, with so much headed in the wrong direction, a major war is the last thing
this planet needs." The author teaches international relations at the
Powell School, City College of New York and is the author of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford U. Press, 2016).
Ending the War in Ukraine: Three Possible Futures https://www.juancole.com ›
2022/06 › ukraine-possible... Jun
27, 2022 —
How the Ukraine War Ends
| Robert Wright & Rajan Menon
https://www.youtube.com › watch
2:11 Rajan walks
through three ways the war could end12:57
Assessing Ukraine's and Russia's military aims25:45 The causes
and consequences ...YouTube · Nonzero · Jul 26, 2022
With a
12% decrease, less Americans support aid for Ukraine: Poll. Al Mayadeen.
February 15, 2023 (more by Al Mayadeen). (Posted Feb
16, 2023.)
Financialization, Imperialism, Strategy,
WarAmericas, Europe,
Russia,
Ukraine,
United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia-Ukraine War
A new poll showed that
many Americans are growing impatient with the U.S. government‘s support of Ukraine.
According to–recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for
Public Affairs Research, support among the American public for giving Ukraine
weapons and direct economic assistance has waned as the war approaches its
one-year mark.
48%
support the United States giving arms to Ukraine, 29% oppose it, and 22% are
neither in favor nor opposed, as per the poll. In May 2022, less than three
months into the war, 60% of U.S. adults supported sending weapons to Ukraine,
it further showed.
The poll
revealed that Americans are roughly evenly divided on whether or not to
transfer federal funding directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favor, 38% opposed,
and 23% saying neither.
The
signals of waning support for Ukraine come as President Joe Biden prepares to
visit Poland next week to commemorate the first anniversary of the war in
Ukraine.
It is
worth noting that Biden has vowed repeatedly that the U.S. will assist Ukraine
“for as long as it takes.” Privately, administration officials have told
Ukrainian leaders that there is–limit to the patience of–splintered
Congress–and the American people–for the expenditures of–war with no clear end
in sight. In 2022, Congress allocated around $113 billion in economic,
humanitarian, and military spending.
19% of
Americans have–high level of confidence in Biden’s ability to handle the
situation in Ukraine, while 37% have some confidence and 43% have none, as per
the poll.
Biden’s handling
of the war has mostly divided opinion along partisan lines. Among
Democrats, 40% have high confidence in Biden to handle the crisis, 50% have
some confidence, and 9% have none. A huge majority of Republicans (76%) believe
they have little confidence. These figures have remained basically constant
since last May.
The U.S. President has
agreed on sending light multiple rocket launchers known as HIMARS Patriot missile
systems, Bradley fighting vehicles, Abrams tanks, among others. However, Biden
continues to reject Ukraine’s request for fighter jets.
And 59% believe that
avoiding economic damage to the United States is more important than properly
penalizing Russia, even if it means sanctions are less effective. Almost–year
ago, in March 2022, the situation was reversed: 55% believed it was–higher
priority to successfully restrict Russia, even if it meant harming the U.S.
economy. . . .
"Anatol Lieven on NATO
Expansion & What a Ukraine Peace Settlement Could Look Like." Interview by Amy Goodman and
Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!, posted June 30.
Anatol Lieven is a policy analyst and
author of several books on Russia and its neighbors. He is a senior fellow of
the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Patrick Lawrence. “The Imaginary War.” Consortium News. Popular
Resistance.org (7-16-22). What were the
policy cliques, “the intelligence community” and the press that serves both
going to do when the kind of war in Ukraine they talked incessantly about
turned out to be imaginary, a Marvel Comics of a conflict with little grounding
in reality? I have wondered about this since the Russian intervention began on
Feb. 24. I knew the answer would be interesting when finally we had one. Now we
have one. Taking the government-supervised New York Times as a guide, the result is a variant of what we
saw as the Russiagate fiasco came unglued: Those who manufacture orthodoxies as
well as... -more-
READ THIS AND WRITE A SUM
TMS
Weekly Digest 20 Jun - 26 Jun 2022
|
7:52
AM (6 hours ago) |
|
||
|
||||
Returning to Realism: The Other Face of the Ukraine Crisis
Mohamed Mahad D. Darar | E-International Relations – TRANSCEND
Media Service, 12 Jun 2022.The debate
over the driving force behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has divided the West
into two major camps: one renders Russia’s offensive as Putin’s grand scheme to
resuscitate the Soviet Empire, while the other portrays Russia’s aggression as
Putin’s response to the expansion of NATO to Russia’s neighbors. While both
arguments merit serious attention, both ignore a crucial connection. MORE click on title.
Western
media
'Western' Media Spread Copium To
Prolong The War In Ukraine By Moon of Alabama. Popular
Resistance.org (7-6-22). FIND AN EXCERPT THAT RELATES TO TITLE
What did Russia just do? It had made an ambitious attempt to encircle a large
are in Donbas and succeeded with the effort in just a few days. The Ukrainian
army threw everything it had available into the cauldron and lost thousands of
men while the Russian army avoided direct men against men fighting to minimize
its own casualties. So while the Ukrainians will also benefit from the now
shorter frontline they have lost many soldiers and abandoned lots of equipment
during the last weeks and will have difficulties to create any reserves. There
is absolutely no reason to believe that the Russian forces are not able to
repeat... -more-
THE WAR COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED,
First
Aim of Peace Movement: PREVENTING WARS, Not Allowing Them to Start, Not
PREPARING for WAR BUT FOR PEACE
[The
following article published by CAM in
Nov. 2021 explained why a US/NATO war over Ukraine should not happen and how to
prevent it. It is even more important
today.]
“The High Stakes of the U.S.-Russia
Confrontation Over Ukraine” by MEDEA BENJAMIN, NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES.
Americans should beware of
romanticizing the "old" Cold War as a time of peace, simply because
we somehow managed to dodge a world-ending nuclear holocaust.
November 22, 2021
A report in Covert Action
Magazine
from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine describes grave fears of a new
offensive by Ukrainian government forces, after increased shelling, a drone
strike by a Turkish-built drone and an attack on Staromaryevka, a village
inside the buffer zone established by the 2014-15 Minsk Accords.
The People’s Republics of
Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), which declared independence in response to the
U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, have once again become flashpoints in the
intensifying Cold War between the United States and Russia. The U.S. and NATO
appear to be fully supporting a new government offensive against these
Russian-backed enclaves, which could quickly escalate into a full-blown
international military conflict.
What we are watching in Ukraine, Syria, Taiwan and the South China Sea
are the opening salvos of an age of more ideological wars that may well be just
as futile, deadly and self-defeating as the “war on terror,” and much more
dangerous to the United States.
The last
time this area became an international tinderbox was in April, when the
anti-Russian government of Ukraine threatened an offensive against Donetsk and
Luhansk, and Russia assembled thousands of
troops along Ukraine’s eastern border.
On that
occasion, Ukraine and NATO blinked and called off the offensive. This time around, Russia has
again assembled an estimated 90,000 troops near its border with
Ukraine. Will Russia once more deter an escalation of the war, or are Ukraine,
the United States and NATO seriously preparing to press ahead at the risk of
war with Russia?
Since
April, the U.S. and its allies have been stepping up their military support for
Ukraine. After a March announcement of $125 million in military aid, including
armed coastal patrol boats and radar equipment, the U.S. then gave Ukraine another $150 million
package in June. This included radar, communications, and electronic warfare
equipment for the Ukrainian Air Force, bringing total military aid to Ukraine
since the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 to $2.5 billion. This latest package appears
to include deploying U.S. training personnel to Ukrainian air bases.
Turkey is
supplying Ukraine with the same drones it provided to Azerbaijan for its war
with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. That war
killed at least 6,000 people and has recently flared up again, one year after a
Russian-brokered ceasefire. Turkish drones wreaked havoc on Armenian troops and
civilians alike in Nagorno-Karabakh, and their use in Ukraine would be a
horrific escalation of violence against the people of Donetsk and
Luhansk.
The
ratcheting up of U.S. and NATO support for government forces in Ukraine’s civil war is having
ever-worsening diplomatic consequences. At the beginning of October, NATO
expelled eight Russian liaison officers from NATO Headquarters in Brussels,
accusing them of spying. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the manager
of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, was dispatched to Moscow in October,
ostensibly to calm tensions. Nuland failed so spectacularly that, only a week
later, Russia ended 30 years of engagement with NATO, and ordered
NATO’s office in Moscow closed.
Nuland reportedly
tried to reassure Moscow that the United States and NATO were still committed
to the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Accords on Ukraine, which include a
ban on offensive military operations and a promise of greater autonomy for
Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. But her assurances were belied by Defense
Secretary Austin when he met with Ukraine’s President Zelensky in Kiev on
October 18, reiterating U.S. support for Ukraine’s future
membership in NATO, promising further military support and blaming Russia for
“perpetuating the war in Eastern Ukraine.”
More extraordinary,
but hopefully more successful, was CIA Director William Burns’s visit to Moscow on November 2nd and 3rd,
during which he met with senior Russian military and intelligence officials and
spoke by phone with President Putin.
A mission
like this is not usually part of the CIA Director’s duties. But after Biden
promised a new era of American diplomacy, his foreign policy team is now widely
acknowledged to have instead brought U.S. relations with Russia and China to
all-time lows.
Judging
from the March meeting of Secretary of State Blinken and
National Security Advisor Sullivan with Chinese officials in Alaska, Biden’s meeting with Putin in Vienna in
June, and Under Secretary Nuland’s recent visit to Moscow, U.S. officials have
reduced their encounters with Russian and Chinese officials to mutual
recriminations designed for domestic consumption instead of seriously trying to
resolve policy differences. In Nuland’s case, she also misled the Russians
about the U.S. commitment, or lack of it, to the Minsk Accords. So who could
Biden send to Moscow for a serious diplomatic dialogue with the Russians about
Ukraine?
In 2002,
as Under Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, William Burns wrote a
prescient but unheeded 10-page memo to Secretary of State
Powell, warning him of the many ways that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could
“unravel” and create a “perfect storm” for American interests. Burns is a
career diplomat and a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and may be the only
member of this administration with the diplomatic skills and experience to
actually listen to the Russians and engage seriously with them.
The
Russians presumably told Burns what they have said in public: that U.S. policy
is in danger of crossing “red lines” that would trigger decisive
and irrevocable Russian responses. Russia has long warned that one red line would be
NATO membership for Ukraine and/or Georgia.
But there
are clearly other red lines in the creeping U.S. and NATO military presence in
and around Ukraine and in the increasing U.S. military support for the
Ukrainian government forces assaulting Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin has warned against the build-up of NATO’s military
infrastructure in Ukraine and has accused both Ukraine and NATO of
destabilizing actions, including in the Black Sea.
With
Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border for a second time this year, a new
Ukrainian offensive that threatens the existence of the DPR and LPR would
surely cross another red line, while increasing U.S. and NATO military support
for Ukraine may be dangerously close to crossing yet another one.
So did
Burns come back from Moscow with a clearer picture of exactly what Russia’s red
lines are? We had better hope so. Even U.S. military websites acknowledge that U.S.
policy in Ukraine is “backfiring.”
Russia expert Andrew Weiss, who worked
under William Burns at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
acknowledged to Michael Crowley of The New York Times that Russia has
“escalation dominance” in Ukraine and that, if push comes to shove, Ukraine is
simply more important to Russia than to the United States. It therefore makes
no sense for the United States to risk triggering World War III over Ukraine,
unless it actually wants to trigger World War III.
During
the Cold War, both sides developed clear understandings of each other’s “red
lines.” Along with a large helping of dumb luck, we can thank those
understandings for our continued existence. What makes today’s world even more
dangerous than the world of the 1950s or the 1980s is that recent U.S. leaders
have cavalierly jettisoned the bilateral nuclear treaties and vital diplomatic
relationships that their grandparents forged to stop the Cold War from turning
into a hot one.
Presidents
Eisenhower and Kennedy, with the help of Under Secretary of State Averell
Harriman and others, conducted negotiations that spanned two administrations,
between 1958 and 1963, to achieve a partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that
was the first of a series of bilateral arms control treaties. By contrast, the
only continuity between Trump, Biden and Under Secretary Victoria Nuland seems
to be a startling lack of imagination that blinds them to any possible future
beyond a zero-sum, non-negotiable, and yet still unattainable “U.S. Uber Alles”
global hegemony.
But
Americans should beware of romanticizing the “old” Cold War as a time of peace,
simply because we somehow managed to dodge a world-ending nuclear holocaust.
U.S. Korean and Vietnam War veterans know better, as do the people in countries
across the global South that became bloody
battlefields in the ideological struggle between the
United States and the U.S.S.R.
Three
decades after declaring victory in the Cold War, and after the self-inflicted
chaos of the U.S. “Global War on Terror,” U.S. military planners have settled
on a new Cold War as the most persuasive
pretext to perpetuate their trillion dollar war machine and their unattainable
ambition to dominate the entire planet. Instead of asking the U.S. military to
adapt to more new challenges it is clearly not up for, U.S. leaders decided to
revert to their old conflict with Russia and China to justify the existence and
ridiculous expense of their ineffective but profitable war
machine.
But the
very nature of a Cold War is that it involves the threat and use of force,
overt and covert, to contest the political allegiances and economic structures
of countries across the world. In our relief at the U.S. withdrawal from
Afghanistan, which both Trump and Biden have used to symbolize the “end of
endless war,” we should have no illusions that either of them is offering us a
new age of peace.
Quite the
contrary. What we are watching in Ukraine, Syria, Taiwan and the South China
Sea are the opening salvos of an age of more ideological wars that may well be
just as futile, deadly and self-defeating as the “war on terror,” and much more
dangerous to the United States.
A war
with Russia or China would risk escalating into World War III. As Andrew Weiss
told the Times on Ukraine, Russia and China would have conventional “escalation
dominance,” as well as simply more at stake in wars on their own borders than
the United States does.
So what
would the United States do if it were losing a major war with Russia or China?
U.S. nuclear weapons policy has always kept a “first strike” option
open in case of precisely this scenario.
The
current U.S. $1.7 trillion plan for a whole range of new
nuclear weapons therefore seems to be a response to the reality that the United
States cannot expect to defeat Russia and China in conventional wars on their
own borders.
But the
paradox of nuclear weapons is that the most powerful weapons ever created have
no practical value as actual weapons of war, since there can be no winner in a
war that kills everybody. Any use of nuclear weapons would quickly trigger a
massive use of them by one side or the other, and the war would soon be over
for all of us. The only winners would be a few species of radiation-resistant
insects and other very small creatures.
Neither
Obama, Trump nor Biden has dared to present their reasons for risking World War
III over Ukraine or Taiwan to the American public, because there is no good
reason. Risking a nuclear holocaust to appease the military-industrial complex
is as insane as destroying the climate and the natural world to appease the
fossil fuel industry.
So we had
better hope that CIA DIrector Burns not only came back from Moscow with a clear
picture of Russia’s “red lines,” but that President Biden and his colleagues
understand what Burns told them and what is at stake in Ukraine. They must step
back from the brink of a U.S.-Russia war, and then from the larger Cold War
with China and Russia that they have so blindly and foolishly stumbled into.
MEDEA BENJAMIN Medea Benjamin,
co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the
author of the 2018 book, "Inside Iran: The
Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Her
previous books include: "Kingdom of the
Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection"
(2016); "Drone Warfare:
Killing by Remote Control" (2013); "Don’t Be Afraid
Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart"
(1989), and (with Jodie Evans) "Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide)"
(2005).
Nicolas J. S.
Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK
and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American
Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
END UKRAINE WAR ANTHOLOGY #28
END OMNI US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR ANTHOLOGY #28
No comments:
Post a Comment