OMNI
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #5,
DECEMBER 9, 2024
COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A
CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
HTTPS://omnicenter.org/donate/
What’s at Stake: The
search for the truth. I watch detective
mysteries on PBS especially for their appreciation of the human intellect and scrupulous
ethics. All present the search, not for an alternative reality, as the W. Bush
administration claimed proudly for itself, but for the truth to be
discovered. The latest Hercule Poirot
drama, “Sad Cypress,” recounted the story of a young woman accused of
premediated murder. Under British law, she
was innocent until proven guilty, and had been permited to hire a skilled
lawyer to advocate her innocence. But the
crime was so perfectly performed that even the accused and her lawyer were
baffled. A jury
of her peers studied the testimony and voted unanimously for hanging. The truth had been discovered; justice was to
be served. Civilization at its best
had sought reality, the truth, found it, the jury and judge thought, and all
could feel satisfied that everything was done that could have been done.
The convicted
criminal was not, however, guilty, and legendary detective Hercule Poirot
agreed to probe into the case despite the odds.
He is by reasoning, training, and
experience skeptical of appearances, even of shut and closed situations. Simple appearances sometimes obscured complicated
subsructures. Official conclusions sometimes omitted crucial considerations. Layers
of lying sometimes corrupted even our highest, noblest procedures for finding
the truth.
The convicted
murderer had an adept, honest, dedicated lawyer. He performed his job superlatively. Yet he had not yet reached the truth.
Poirot would
dig deeper into the events, uncover hidden facts still hidden, reveal
overlooked contradictions, assemble additional evidence, and pierce deceit. He would not be discovering another truth
about the case, as some politicians claim for themselves, but Poirot would
employ reason and persistence and evidence to find the narrative which was the truth.
This model, surely
an apex of our civilization, I try to apply to much more complicated historical
events, as in my online Anthologies on the US enmity against Russia as
exemplified by US support of Ukraine.
The US and its NATO allies have acted as prosecutor, have accused Russia
and its President Putin for grave crimes against other nations and against
humanity, even the crime of genocide, and have concluded with unqualified
guilty verdicts on all counts. First-degree
murder. A jury of their human peers studied the evidence,
the testimonies, and voted unanimously for hanging. The truth had been discovered; justice was to
be served. The testimony, the evidence,
the numerous witnesses brought to the bar of public opinion have received
widespread, open discussion throughout the West. And their verdict was: guilty, monstrously
guilty. Monster Putin must hang.
The potential
consequences of such a verdict are horrendous to contemplate, most of all by
the threat of nuclear conflagration by two nuclear powers on hair-trigger alert.
But there is
one flaw in this structure of what should be Justice. The alleged crime, pleads the accused, was
provoked.
The West offered only a Prosecutor (composed
of thousands of prosecutors). And that massive
Prosecution, the combined legal and propaganda apparatus of the West, hardened
by the century-old, accumulated bigotry against the Soviet Union/Russia, and lavishly
financed, is massively biased against the Defendant, who is not in the Courtroom.
The White House nor any other Western
government includes a spokesperson for Russia. The Defense—the defendant and
his lawyer-- is not in the courtroom where the standards of a fair trial might exist
to counter the onslaught of accusations streaming from the executives of all
Western nations and from the mainstream media of the West.
Nor is an
unbiased independent investigator given access to the prosecution teams of the
US and NATO. No Poirot is allowed to
participate. Until the predictable
verdict is produced and repeated by Western nation after nation: Putin is a
heinous criminal who invaded the Ukraine without provocation, and continues his
war crimes against that innocent nation.
But because
the “trial” was so egregiously onesided, and with Hercule Poirot and all of the
great detectives figuratively as their guide, hundreds of scholars and
reporters world-wide have volunteered to investigate the truth. Not merely as an alternative to the Russia
bad, US/NATO good narrative, but as the truth, because the official Western
narrative causes so much harm--horrendous violence, destruction of habitats, cities,
homes, deaths of tens of thousands without a just trial of the alleged demonic malefactor.
That’s the additional
dimension. Truth about what? What’s at Stake through truth? The
answer is known but not present. World peace instead of nuclear holocaust. (My
four Soviet/Russophobia anthologies provide forty-eight essays and reviews. More in preparation. A search of UAF’s Mullins Library catalog for
Russophobia turned up 205 items. There’s
no excuse for not being informed about our fiendish enemy that has given our
nation a purpose for so many decades, provided so many jobs, and enriched so
many millionaires and billionaires.)
CONTENTS
New
Cold War 2024
BIGOTRY V. SOVIET UNION/RUSSIA
Victor
Grossman. "Achtung! Die Russen
kommen!"
Walter Hixson. “The Myth of U.S.
Exceptionalism.”
Sharon
Rudahl. …A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson.
Reuters. Germany’s two-year silence.
Diana Johnstone. Russia not invited to D-Day Remembrance.
William Drew. New Cold War Russophobic propaganda.
Katrina vanden Heuvel. Biden’s old Cold warmaking
foreign policies.
George Paulson. New McCarthyism. (Art Hobson, American Midnight by Adam Hochschild.)
George Paulson. Anti-Russia Victoria Nuland Resigning.
Dave
DeCamp. “Victoria Nuland, Notorious
Russia Hawk, Resigning. . . .
Joe Lauria. “Russian Imperialism?”
TEXTS ANTHOLOGY #5
Fear Mongering in Germany
1914 to Present
Victor Grossman. “Nursery
Rhymes and Politics.” Berlin Bulletin
No. 229, November 16, 2024.” Mronline.org
(11-18-24).
Billions were spent both on
aid to the Zelensky government…as an urgent defense necessity to counter
"the Russian threat." This threat has appeared and reappeared in
Germany in 1914, the 1930s, after 1945 and now again, louder than ever, with similar
barked Prussian commands: "Achtung! Die Russen kommen!" as
dangerously false as ever, and often followed by eastward expansion, invasion
and, far too often, catastrophe, with atomic annihilation an added danger this
time around.
[Most of the essays in this
Anthology were published in 2024. The
following from 1988 and 2023 are included for background.]
US Good v. Soviet Bad
Walter Hixson. “The Myth Of U.S. Exceptionalism.” February
25, 1988. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-02-25/news/8804020378_1_native-americans-exceptionalismforeign-policy
In 1988 Walter L. Hixson was a visiting assistant professor
of history at Northwestern University, where he taught courses on U.S. foreign
policy and Soviet-American relations. He also is the author of a study of the
career of Soviet expert George F. Kennan. The
following focuses on US misbehavior toward the Soviet Union.
Most people would agree that the two most
vital issues in American foreign policy today are the Central American crisis
and arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. In assessing American
policy on these two issues, most politicians and opinion leaders-and thus most
of the public-focus on our communist adversaries. Can we trust the Soviets?
Will the Sandinistas live up to their pledges? That these questions, though
clearly pertinent, should dominate our thinking reflects a disturbing tendency
among many Americans to assume that the United States pursues noble and worthy
objectives while its adversaries-particularly the ``communists``-embody all
that is evil and are not to be trusted. Underlying these assumptions, as
historians have long recognized, is a widespread faith in American
``exceptionalism``-the belief that the United States is a ``chosen`` nation
whose values and democratic institutions represent the best hopes for
humankind. Unfortunately, the great national myth of American exceptionalism is
rooted in a widespread ignorance of history, and this ignorance breeds
intolerance and hypocrisy in our approach to Central America, arms control and
foreign affairs in general. The first ingredient of a more effective foreign
policy might be a willingness to look more critically at ourselves. Despite the
recent bicentennial of the Constitution, too few Americans are willing to
recognize that the United States has been an imperfect democracy. It was
initially governed by a privileged elite of white propertied males; women were
nonvoting and (as they remain today) nonpersons under the Constitution; a cruel
enslavement of blacks was sanctioned; and Native Americans were to be all but
exterminated. The point is not that the United States is more or less evil than
other peoples of the world but that we are not as exceptional as some,
including Ronald Reagan and most of the 1988 presidential candidates, would
have us believe. Greater recognition of our own failures and limitations would
make us, not a weaker power, but a stronger and wiser one. For example, if more
Americans were aware of our own early national struggle and halting approach to
democracy, they would be less likely to demand that Nicaragua-a country wracked
by war and deprivation and having little or no democratic political tradition
promptly assume all the trappings of a pluralistic democracy or once again face
the wrath of our refinanced covert armies. After first adopting greater
patience and humility, we could then apply some lessons from the history of
postwar international relations to our approach to the problems of Central
America. The 1948 Soviet-Yugoslav rift, the Sino-Soviet split of the early
1960s and contemporary disputes within the communist world, for example, all
suggest that nationalism and local cultural tradition tend to override loose
alliances based on ideology. Yet too many Americans glibly assume that a
Sandinista regime will serve as a Soviet``beachhead`` in Central America. Those
who point to Cuba as an example of Soviet intentions invariably oversimplify
the complex course of Cuban-American (and Cuban-Soviet) relations and ignore
the extent to which our own hostile response to Fidel Castro encouraged Cuba`s
close ties with the Soviet Union. Faith in American exceptionalism and
historical blinders also undermine our efforts to mold a more constructive
relationship with the Soviet Union. Like our forebears who reassured themselves
of their own virtues by depicting the Old World as a den of corruption and
iniquity, Americans persist in seeing the darkest motives behind virtually all
Soviet behavior. The most obvious example is our unrealistic 40-year obsession
with the prospect of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe; there is no reason to
believe the Kremlin has ever considered launching an invasion. Another is arms
control; some Americans still oppose arms accords, or favor ``killer
amendments,`` on grounds that the Kremlin leaders enter into such negotiations
disingenuously and that they ``cheat.`` This argument not only falsely implies
that the Soviets have no real stake in arms control but also constitutes a
double standard insofar as it ignores our own violations of agreements, such as
the unilateral repudiation of SALT II and the current call for a broad
interpretation of the 1972 ABM agreement. The broad interpretation, as Sen. Sam
Nunn of Georgia and others have pointed out, actually constitutes a repudiation
of the ABM accord in order to pave the way for ``Star Wars,`` which,
incidentally, finds America once again in the familiar position of escalating
the arms race while couching its actions under the benign rubric of ``deterring
aggression.`` Again, the point is not that the Soviets are actually ``good``
while we persist in seeing them as ``bad.`` It would be naive to suggest that
the Soviet Union does not pose problems for American diplomacy. . . .
Notable Victim
of Anti-Communism
Post-WWII, Anti-Communist Cold War and Paul
Robeson.
Sharon Rudahl. Ballad of an American: A
Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson, edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware (Rutgers U, 2020),
142 pages. Review by Michael
D. Yates. : “‘Ballad of an American’: The Illustrious
Life of Paul Robeson, Newly Illustrated.” (Nov 01, 2023). topics: Culture Inequality Media Movements Race Places: Americas United States
Publisher’s description: “The
book, Ballad of An American, is a beautifully rendered
graphic biography that takes readers, especially those not familiar with
Robeson, on an exciting journey through his remarkable life. He rose like a
shooting star, from humble beginnings to the height of worldwide acclaim—and he
fell nearly as rapidly as he shot to stardom, destroyed by the U.S.
government and powerful right-wing elements after the Second World War. He was
deemed a danger to the white and imperialist ruling class, and with good
reason. As we shall see, what Robeson stood for and acted upon threatened to
incite an uprising by the working class, especially the Black superexploited
part of it.”
FROM FIRST COLD WAR (THAT NEVER
PAUSED) TO NEW COLD WAR
The final several pages of the review place Robeson in the persecutive, bigoted
(racist and anti-socialist) period of post-WWII USA.
Right wing and fascist forces “remained alive and active” following
WWII, and “a new, Cold War, began” with the Soviet Union as “public enemy
number one.” The new CIA “began to undermine radical
movements all over the world.” In the US the anti-labor Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor
Relations Act were enacted by the Republican Congress. That is, immediately following WWII,
anti-democratic legislation, attacks on the Bill of Rights, increased. One Taft-Hartley amendment required that
union officers sign an oath stating that they were not communists, and the two
main labor federations expelled ten unions for their communist members. It just happened that those unions were the
most progressive, having the best collective bargaining agreements, the most
racial and gender equality, the most opposition to US imperialism. It’s a familiar history, but freshly
enlightening when seen from Robeson’s experience and the New Cold War and its
several hot wars. For “the U.S.
government was quick to neutralize Robeson.” --Dick
Michael D. Yates is editorial director of Monthly
Review Press. For many years, he taught working people in labor education
programs throughout the United States, seeking to teach, speak, and write for
and with the working class, and not just about it. He has helped organize labor
unions and written extensively about them.
Caitlin Johnstone: Biden Promotes Hardliners. Consortium News (7-29-23) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/07/28/caitlin-johnstone-biden-promotes-hardliners/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=011679b3-48b0-4181-8c75-4319f21f909d
Virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q. Brown
are being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.
The Biden
administration looks set to become even more warlike if you can imagine that,
with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q.
Brown now being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.
Nuland, the wife of alpha
neocon Robert Kagan, has been named acting
deputy secretary of state by President Joe Biden, at least until a new deputy
secretary has been named. This places her at second-in-command within the State
Department, right behind Tony Blinken.
In an article about Nuland’s unique
role in souring relations between the U.S. and Russia during her previous
tenure in the State Department under President Barack Obama, Responsible Statecraft’s Connor
Echols writes the
following of the latest news:
“Nuland’s appointment will be a boon
for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those
who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the
notoriously ‘undiplomatic
diplomat’ will be a bitter pill.
A few quick reminders are in order.
When Nuland was serving in the Obama administration, she had a
now-infamous leaked call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. As the Maidan
Uprising roiled the country, the pair of American diplomats discussed
conversations with opposition leaders, and Nuland expressed support for putting
Arseniy Yatseniuk into power. (Yatseniuk would become prime minister later that
month, after Russia-friendly former President Viktor Yanukovych fled the
country.) At one memorable point in the call, Nuland said “Fu–k the EU” in
response to Europe’s softer stance on the protests.
The controversy surrounding the call —
and larger implications of U.S. involvement in the ouster of Yanukovych —
kicked up tensions with Russia and contributed to Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s decision to seize Crimea and support an insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Her handing
out food to demonstrators on the ground in Kyiv probably
didn’t help either.
Nuland, along with State Department
sanctions czar Daniel Fried, then led the effort to punish Putin through
sanctions. Another official at State reportedly asked Fried if
‘the Russians realize that the two hardest-line people in the entire U.S.
government are now in a position to go after them?’ ”
In a 2015 Consortium News article
headlined “The Mess
That Nuland Made,” the late Robert Parry singled out Nuland as the
primary architect of the 2014 regime change operation in Ukraine, which, as
Aaron Maté explained
last year, paved the way to the war we’re seeing there today. Hopefully her
position winds up being temporary.
In other news, the Senate Arms
Services Committee has voted to
confirm Biden’s selection of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the next
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Mark Milley. A full senate
vote will now take place on whether to confirm Brown — currently the Air Force
Chief of Staff — for the nation’s highest military office.
Brown is
unambiguous about his belief that the U.S. must hasten to militarize
against China in the so-called Indo-Pacific to prepare for confrontation
between the two powers, calling for more
U.S. bases in the region and increased efforts to arm Taiwan during his hearing
before the Senate Arms Services Committee earlier this month.
Back in May, Moon of Alabama flagged
Brown’s nomination in an article which also noted that several
advocates of military restraint had been resigning from their positions within
the administration, including Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state
replaced by Nuland.
It’s too soon to draw any firm
conclusions, but to see voices of restraint stepping down and proponents of
escalation stepping up could be a bad portent of things to come.
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ON D-Day 2024
Diana
Johnstone. Consortium News - TRANSCEND
Media Service, 14 Jun 2024 – “Ceremonies were held
last week commemorating the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the
Anglo-American landing on the beaches of Normandy that took place on June 6,
1944, known as D-Day. For the very first time, the Russians were
ostentatiously not invited to take part in the ceremonies. “
[This US/UK,
unjustified, arrogant, hostile behavior
is just another gratuitous insult to the Russians. D-Day would have been F-Day had the Nazis not
been preoccupied with invading Russia where its 22 divisions in Operation
Barbarossa had been engaged against
the Russians. In the Battle of Stalingrad
alone, during the winter of 1942-43, the
German army lost some 200,000 to half-a-million
troops, plus 90,000 captured. Operation Overlord would have been Operation
Underlord had those troops been on the French coast on June 6, 1944. (The Russians suffered
1,100,000 casualties in WWII. --Dick)
Katrina
vanden Heuvel. “ Biden’s Foreign
Policy is…Old.” ACURA American Committee for US-Russia
Accord. Jun 14, 2024.
Biden’s foreign policy ideas are tired. . . . Read in browser »
POLITICS / JUNE 13, 2024
What’s
Old About Biden? (It Isn’t His Age.) His
foreign policy ideas are tired.
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
President Biden’s week in
France featured a graceful waltz to classic tunes. The president used the D-Day
anniversary in Normandy to remind the public about his commitment
to defending democracy at home and abroad, and his efforts to expand and
reinvigorate the NATO alliance. . . .
Biden came to office
proclaiming a commitment to a new “foreign policy for the middle class.”
Domestically, he broke with the neoliberal gospel of the conservative era,
launching a bold progressive economic thrust—the
beginnings of a green industrial policy, investment in rebuilding the country,
aggressive trade and anti-trust policies, a push for progressive taxation, and
more. Abroad, however, his policies have been defined by an emphasis on
antiquated Cold War rhetoric and divisions, painting a global struggle between democracy and
authoritarianism, defining the response largely in military terms anchored in
NATO and other military alliances, expanding already bloated military budgets
and presence. While China was designated the new “peer competitor,” the battle
with Russia over Ukraine became, for Biden, the signature struggle of the time.
Even in the conflict in Gaza, Biden seemed wedded to a myopic support for a
reactionary Israeli government that needed to be restrained, not provisioned.
Lost in this focus on old
Cold War tropes and divisions are the new security threats that
people face in their daily lives. In the United States, a million people died from the Covid
pandemic, which is but the first of what surely will be new epidemics
that will sweep an increasingly integrated world. Yet Covid has left the public health system here and globally in
disarray, discredited, and defensive at a time when basic security requires far
greater capacity.
Under relentless assault
from the right and from entrenched interests, addressing climate change has
lost momentum, even as the world has heated up far faster than
predicted. Each of the last 12 months were the hottest in history. Extreme weather wreaks
havoc, takes lives, and displaces people here and abroad in ever greater
numbers. Yet the Biden administration will spend more on aid to Ukraine in one
year than it will expend on its renewable energy investments at home. Abroad,
our effort (in Biden’s words) to “defend freedom all
around the world” militarily dwarfs urgently needed efforts to help peoples
adapt to climate change and rebuild from extreme weather. That reality, in
turn, feeds mass migration, increasingly fostering fear and divisions here and
abroad.To see the truth of this one need only consider the ascendancy of
European far-right parties in the EU elections last weekend.
On its own terms, Biden’s
efforts to rally the world to a new cold-war division have failed. Our allies
in Europe have paid a greater price from the sanctions on Russia than the
Russians have in large part because China, India, and much of the world have
rushed in to to buy Russian
oil and replace Western suppliers. Russia’s economy continues to
grow, with the World Bank recently announcing that it is now the world’s fourth-largest economy, surpassing Germany. This
week, Russia plays host to the annual foreign ministers’ meeting of the BRICS
countries. Five new countries—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the
UAE—have joined Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in the group.
They represent over one-third of the earth’s land mass, 45 percent of its population, over 40 percent of its
oil production, and about one-fourth of its exports. Their combined gross
domestic product (in purchasing power parity terms) equals about one-third of world GDP, exceeding that of the
G-7, which convenes next week. While BRICS+ is far from a coherent economic
block, it does represent the growing efforts to break old patterns and create
new economic and political arrangements. Biden’s celebration of NATO and the
military defense of democracy is speaking to a world that is no longer
listening.
Foreign policies seldom
decide presidential elections. Trump’s global posturing—impulsive, ignorant,
nativist, isolationist, opportunistic—is a dangerous embarrassment. But Biden’s
effort to contrast his steady leadership and embrace of NATO and the old
certitudes of the Cold War era isn’t likely to gain traction. The president is
focused on a war in Ukraine that isn’t going well and a humanitarian horror in
Gaza that is indefensible. The administration has trampled the “rules-based
order” that it preaches about. Worse, the president seems wedded to a worldview
that is long past its expiration date. Lyndon Johnson, the last Democratic
president who offered promise of domestic renewal, lost his war on poverty in
the rice paddies of Vietnam. Let us hope that Biden, whose domestic initiatives
offer great promise, does not suffer a similar fate.
McCarthyist
Paranoia Redevivus
George
Paulson. “McCarthyite Smearing Regarding
Russia.”
Hi Dick,
In one of our previous communications, I pointed out that smearing American
citizens who are against the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as “Russian
assets,” Russian propagandists,” “pro-Putin,” “Putin propagandists,” etc., is
now routine among Democrats across the Blue spectrum, from progressives
to liberals to moderates to conservatives. The smearing has now expanded to
include those opposed to what’s happening in Gaza.
You asked for examples and I frankly didn’t know how to respond.
Where to start? There are far too many examples to cite, from the top
leadership of the Democratic Party, to your average garden variety #Resistance
keyboard warrior.
Some of my favorites from the latter from social media that I personally
witnessed were:
“How’s the weather in Moscow?”
“Are you paid in roubles?”
“What part of Moscow do you live in?”
Some of my favorites emanating from the former include:
Hillary Clinton’s smearing former Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard as being “groomed” by the Russians. Remember that
one?
Chuck Schumer’s recent referring to the “Putin wing” of the Republican
Party. Republicans who are opposed to sending more billions of US
taxpayer dollars into the black hold of Kiev in a lost cause that may well get
us into a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Nancy Pelosi’s Statement that “all roads lead to Putin” referring to Trump and
the party-approved nonsense that the Russians put Trump into the White House
and that they controlled him through blackmail.
Nancy Pelosi’s characterisation of American citizens protesting the genocide in
Gaza are being paid by the Kremlin and her suggestion that. The FBI look into
their—that is, the American citizens exercising their First Amendment right to
protest—their finances.
Nancy Pelosi yet again asking the rhetorical question (for her,
rhetorical) Who benefits from Americans protesting the Gaza
genocide? Answer: Donald Trump! And who benefits from Donald
Trump? Putin!
There are a million more where those came from.
I’ll close by saying that McCarthyism was foundational to forming my political
consciousness. In my view, McCarthyism was disgusting, anti-democratic,
and profoundly un-American, and
resorting to Neo-McCarthyite smears (such as those provided above) is equally
disgusting, anti-democratic, and profoundly un-American.
George Paulson, 4-12-24
George – Thanks for including me in this response. I am
reading a good book about the origins of much of this paranoid talk during 1914
to the mid-2020s: US entry into WW1 under Pres Wilson, revolution in
Russia, anti-Communist fervor, pro-war fervor, anti-German fervor, founding of
the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, unions, union-busting. The book is American Midnight by Adam
Hochschild. It reads like a novel, and is
fascinating history. Art Hobson, 4-12-24 [Adam Hochschild is one of the best
non-fiction writers writing today, with books on ending slavery in the British
empire, WWI, colonialism in Africa, Spanish Civil War, etc. Google
his books and bask in human intelligence and historical writing skill at their
best. –Dick]
Victoria Nuland’s Anti-Russia Career from 2003 to 2024
George
Paulson. “Bye bye Victoria.”
Here is a brief but very good summary of the
bloody trail of destruction and carnage that has been Victoria Nuland’s long
career.
Victoria Nuland
resigns, Glenn Greenwald eviscerates leading neocon: Interview thehill.com
On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 8:31 PM George Paulson
<gppaulson2@gmail.com> wrote:
Some great breaking news …. Victoria Nuland,
aka “Regime Change Karen,” Queen of the Neocons, chief architect of our
catastrophic failure of a Ukraine Project, a fixture of the DC establishment,
the ugly face of “the Blob,” has resigned from the Biden administration!
Methinks that maybe, just maybe, the Biden administration—or whoever has our
demented commander in chief’s ear before Jill tucks him in for the night—maybe
the Biden administration has finally come to terms with the undeniable fact
that Russia is not going to be defeated in our Ukraine proxy war, that Project
Ukraine is a lost cause, and that barring massive US escalation, the Kiev
regime—a regime that Nuland literally midwifed—is living on borrowed
time. Maybe, just maybe, the Biden administration has decided upon a
change of course, no further escalation, maybe they’ve decided that they are
not wiling to risk an all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia. Here’s
hoping. Maybe that’s why she has decided to call it quits. Good
riddance. Peace, George
And George offers “an old article that provides a little context on Nuland and
the neocons: All in the Neocon Family alternet.org ‘
Dave DeCamp. “Victoria Nuland, Notorious Russia Hawk,
Resigning from State Department.”
Nuland is most known for her role in the 2014 coup in
Ukraine by Dave DeCamp March 5, 2024 at 1:32 pm ET CategoriesNewsTagsRussia, Ukraine
Victoria Nuland,
Notorious Russia Hawk, Resigning from State Department - News From Antiwar.com news.antiwar.com
Victoria Nuland, a notorious Russia hawk most known for her role
in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, will be retiring from the State Department
in the coming weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on
Tuesday. Nuland has worked as the
under-secretary of state for political affairs since 2021 and served as the
acting deputy secretary of state for a few months until the position was
filled by Kurt Campbell, a notorious China hawk. Nuland is the wife of Robert Kagan, one of
the most influential American neoconservatives, and has worked for multiple
administrations. In the George W. Bush administration, she served as deputy
foreign policy advisor to then-Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2005 and
later as the US representative to NATO.In the Obama administration, Nuland
worked as a State Department spokeswoman and then as the assistant secretary of
state for European and Eurasian affairs, from where she supported the Maidan
protests in Ukraine that led to the overthrow of former President Victor
Yanukovych.A leaked phone call between Nuland and then-US Ambassador to Ukraine
Geoffrey Pyatt that was published in February
2014, not long before Yanukovych fled Ukraine, revealed the two US
officials were discussing who should be in the next Ukrainian government.
The 2014 coup sparked the civil war in the
Donbas, led to Russia absorbing Crimea, and NATO providing training and other
kinds of support for Ukraine. These factors and others ultimately led to the
February 2022 Russian invasion.In her current role, Nuland championed
the proxy war in Ukraine and has been responsible for some of the most hawkish and reckless
rhetoric coming from the Biden administration. In a recent interview with CNN, Nuland vowed the US would continue to
“tighten the noose” on Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of her pitch
for new Ukraine aid despite the reality that Ukraine is losing badly on the
battlefield.. . .
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on
Twitter @decampdave. View all posts by Dave
DeCamp
Joe Lauria. “Russian
Imperialism?” Consortium News
(2-13-24). [Outstanding historical survey of Russia’s alleged imperialism. It is long, but you will find its sweep
essential reading. –D]
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin
points to the fundamental difference between imperialism and revanchism as
Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two.
Amongst the condemnations that were hurled at Tucker Carlson and
Vladimir Putin even before their interview was aired, was this gem from an
unnamed European foreign affairs spokesman to The Guardian: “A spokesperson for the European
Commission said it anticipated that the interview would provide a platform
for Putin’s ‘twisted desire to reinstate’ the Russian empire.
‘We
can all assume what Putin might say. I mean he is a chronic liar,’ said the
EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. …
‘[Putin] is trying to kill as many Ukrainians as he can for no reason. There is only one reason for
his twisted desire to reinstate the now imperialistic Russian empire where he controls
everything in his neighbourhood and imposes his will. But this is not something
we are able to tolerate or are willing to tolerate in Europe or the world in
the 21st century.'” [Emphasis added.] . . . .
The Russians Are Coming … Again
After the interview, the Western media predictably dismissed it
for a variety of reasons, including that it promoted Russian
“imperialism.” The Economist wrote that Putin’s “obsession — Russia’s historical claim to
Ukraine — is backed by a nuclear arsenal. … He denied any interest in invading
Poland or Latvia (though he previously said the same about
Ukraine).”
Western rhetoric about a resurgent “Russian imperialism” dates
back to 2014, when Russia assisted Donbass in resisting the U.S.-backed
unconstitutional change of government in Kiev. Western officials sought to
characterize Russia’s action as an “invasion” that was part of a grand scheme
by Putin to reconstitute the Soviet Empire and even threaten Western Europe. .
. .
The Atlantic Council has been in the forefront of keeping this idea afloat.
Reconstituting the Soviet Empire would involve bringing the
Central Asian Republics, Azerbaijan and Armenia, let alone the Baltics and the
former Warsaw States, now part of NATO, under Moscow’s control.
A slew of articles since Russia’s 2022 invasion have harped on
this theme, for example, in The Hill: “The US Has a Chance to Defeat
Russian Imperialism for Good;” Foreign Policy: “The Inevitable Fall of
Putin’s New Russian Empire;” and Salon: “How Russian Colonialism Took
the Western Anti-Imperialist Left for a Ride.”
The absurdity of the notion of a threat to the West by Russian
“imperialism” is underscored every time many of these same Western leaders and
media ridicule how disastrously Russia has performed on the Ukrainian
battlefield and how, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission
president, Russia must resort to washing machine parts to keep its
military going.
How can Russia be so weak and incompetent and yet be such an
imminent and menacing threat at the same time?
The late Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen
dismissed these fears as a dangerous demonization of Russia and Putin. Cohen repeatedly explained
that Russia had neither the capacity nor the desire to start a war against NATO
and was acting defensively against the alliance.
“How can Russia be so weak and
incompetent and yet be such an imminent and menacing threat at the same
time?”
This is clear from the decades-long Russian objection to NATO
expansion (which Putin raised with Carlson), coming in the 1990s when Wall
Street and the U.S. dominated Russia, asset-stripping the formerly state-owned
industries and impoverishing the Russian people, while enriching themselves.
It is clear from Russia backing the Minsk Accords, which
would have left Donbass as an autonomous part of Ukraine, and not rejoined to
Russia.
And it is clear from the treaty proposals to NATO and the United
States offered by Russia in December 2021 intended to avert Russian military
intervention. The West rebuffed Russia on all three diplomatic
initiatives.
While realists in Washington and Europe increasingly admit Ukraine
is losing the war, neocon fantasists, desperate to keep it going, have revived
the theme of the Russian threat to the West to counter congressional
reluctance to throw away more money and more lives.
Trumped-up fear of Russia has served U.S. ruling circles
well for more than 70 years. The first three National Intelligence Estimates of
the C.I.A., from 1947 t0 1949, reported no evidence of a Soviet threat, no
infrastructure to support a sustained threat, and no evidence of a desire for
confrontation with the United States.
“Trumped-up fear of Russia has
served U.S. ruling circles well for more than 70 years.”
Despite this, in 1948 a war scare was drummed up to save
the U.S. aircraft industry, which had nearly collapsed with the end of the
Second World War.
Then came the 1954 bomber gap and 1957 missile gap with the Soviet Union, now accepted as deliberate
fictions. In 1976 then C.IA. Director George H.W. Bush approved a Team B, whose purpose was again to inflate Soviet military
strength.
George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and America’s
foremost expert on the Soviet Union tried to counter such exaggerations,
including late in life when he opposed NATO expansion in the 1990s.
Now we are being asked again to believe another fictional story of
a Russian threat to the West in order to save U.S. and European face — and Joe
Biden’s presidency.
It is instead a projection to cover up its own authentic
imperialism and the West’s perceived threat to Russia, a big part of
what Putin was trying to get across in the Carlson interview.
Revanchism & Imperialism
The issue
at hand is the fundamental difference between imperialism and
revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly confuse the two to
serve their interests. Succinctly, the
difference is this: imperialists take control of a country that does not
want them there and resists. A revanchist wants to absorb former imperial
lands where the population is largely the same ethnicity and welcomes the revanchist
power to protect them from an outside threat.
Yes, Hitler was being revanchist in his defense of the
German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. But it was a first step in an
imperial design to conquer countries that ultimately resisted him.
Clinton’s effort to roll back her comments to say Putin is not as irrational as
Hitler was her attempt to tamp down a suggestion that Putin wanted to conquer
Europe as Hitler did.
“The issue at hand is the fundamental difference between
imperialism and revanchism. Western critics purposely or ignorantly
confuse the two to serve their interests.”
To call Putin’s move on Ukraine “imperialist” is to say Russia had
never conquered those lands before and that he might indeed keep going to
conquer lands Russia has never controlled: i.e., Western Europe.
Russian imperialism in Ukraine took place nearly 250 years ago
under the reign of Catherine the Great. That was when the Russians defeated the
Turks and occupied what came to be known as Novorossiya. Putin went back
further than that to make Russian claims (Lenin in 1922 gave Donbass, and
Khruschev in 1954 gave Crimea to Soviet Ukraine,
not independent Ukraine) and he has been open about his feeling that those
lands and Russia are one. He spoke at length about it in his
interviews with Oliver Stone in 2017.
Despite these revanchist or irredentist positions on Ukraine,
Putin did not act on them until 2022. Carlson asked Putin twice why he didn’t
move on Ukraine earlier if he held these views and twice Putin evaded the
question. The Western media is saying that Putin is lying about acting to
defend the Russian speakers of the Donbass; that he was motivated by
territorial expansion.
Putin was acting both to defend Donbass’ Russian speakers (who
were under imminent renewed attack in February 2022) and also saw the
opportunity to reunite the old imperial lands with Russia. That opportunity was
seen in the Kremlin as a necessity because of the West’s rejection of Moscow’s
diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict.
Given the results of the four regional referendums in 2022, plus
the one in Crimea in 2014, it is clear the people of those regions wanted to
rejoin Russia after the coup and the revival of Ukrainian
extremism.
One can condemn or criticize revanchism, but one cannot call it
imperialism.
Andrew
Napolitano. “Biden’s Lust for War.” Consortium News (11-21-24).
The U.S. is waging war on Russia without a congressional
declaration and in violation of treaty that requires the consent of the United
Nations. Read here...
The war in
Ukraine is an American war for which the United States government should be
ashamed and blamed. It was initiated by
President Joe Biden and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, both of whom
advised Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if he rejected
a peace treaty that his own government had freely negotiated and agreed to
in 2022 with Russian negotiators, Ukraine could join NATO. The treaty was more
than 100 pages in length, each page of which had been initialed by both sides,
and its essence accepted by the Kremlin and by Kyiv — until Biden and Johnson
advised against it. [See: The Failed Ukrainian
Peace Deal] . . .
. MORE
CONTENTS sOVIET/rUSSOPHOBIA #4
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/12/omni-sovietrussophobia-anthology-4.html
Scott Ritter. “Red Scare 2.0: Russophobia in America
Today.”
Paul Robinson. “Canada’s ‘New Red
Scare’….”
Video. “Durham Report a ‘Whitewash.’”
CBS News. Drone Strike on Kremlin.
Jeremy Kuzmarov. Russia excluded from
Human Rights Council, De
Zaya’s
The Human Rights Industry.
Elizabeth Vos. Pelosi and
Palestinian Protesters.
Joe Lauria. Psyopcracy USA.
Stephen Cohen. US fear and loathing of
China too.
Helen Caldicott. Missile Envy and
US ”clinical paranoia.”
ACURA: American Committee for US-Russia Accord.
