Category Archives: Foreign Policy

The Widening War: How the Nato-Russia Confrontation Is Playing Out in North Africa, by Conor Gallagher

Posted on March 8, 2023 | 1 comment

World War III has already started, and one battlefield is North Africa. From Conor Gallagher at nakedcapitalism.com:

Western officials are now openly admitting the war against Russia (and China) is worldwide and composed of competing blocs.

The colonial mindset comparison is apt as the West seeks to take control over African and Latin American resources. While this is nothing new, as the statements coming from the West make clear, countries that are friendly with Moscow and/or Beijing should expect even more concerted efforts at infiltration, sanctions, and any other means to restrict ties with the Russia-China bloc.

While some smaller states could benefit from being wooed by both sides, many will likely suffer as increased subversion and proxy conflicts are likely to play out in those countries. Take the comments from US officials to Bloomberg on Feb. 24 that the US, in year two of the war, is going to double down its efforts to “tighten the screws” on countries still keeping a foot in both camps.

This will be especially true in states that are resource rich – whether in oil, gas, or “green” commodities. These battles are already underway across Africa and are likely to intensify. North African countries have thus far been unwilling to help “isolate” Russia. The EU energy situation is still dire, which it is trying to remedy with a renewed push into Africa in search of oil and gas, as well as a race to control “green” resources. China does not want to give ground in Africa, and Russia, while seeking to prevent any isolation, can also sooner bring Europe to its knees if it throws a wrench in the EU-Africa energy plans.

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How Could Western Intelligence Have Got It Wrong, Again? They Didn’t. They Had Other Purposes, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

The intelligence agencies no longer provide intelligence, they supply “narrative support.” From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The West now faces the task of de-fusing the landmine of their own electorate’s conviction of a Ukraine ‘win’, and of Russian humiliation.

Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst, writes “I no longer hold clearances and have not had access to the classified intelligence assessments. However, I have heard that the finished intelligence being supplied to U.S. policymakers continues to declare that Russia is on the ropes – and their economy is crumbling. Also, analysts insist that the Ukrainians are beating the Russians”.

Johnson responds that – lacking valid human sources – “western agencies are almost wholly dependent today on ‘liaison reporting’” (i.e., from ‘friendly’ foreign intelligence services), without doing ‘due diligence’ by cross-checking discrepancies with other reporting.

In practice, this largely means western reporting simply replicates Kiev’s PR line. But there does occur a huge problem when marrying Kiev’s output (as Johnson says) to UK reports – for ‘corroboration’.

The reality is UK reporting itself is also based on what Ukraine is saying. This is known as false collateral – i.e., when that which is used for corroboration and validation actually derives from the same single source. It becomes – deliberately – a propaganda multiplier.

In plain words however, all these points are ‘red herrings’. Bluntly, so-called western ‘Intelligence’ is no longer the sincere attempt to understand a complex reality, but rather, it has become the tool to falsify a nuanced reality in order to attempt to manipulate the Russian psyche towards a collective defeatism (in respect not just to the Ukraine, but to the idea that Russia should remain as a sovereign whole).

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Propaganda

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US Foreign Policy Goes “Woke”? By Philip Giraldi

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Not content to wreck the U.S., the wokesters are searching abroad for countries to destroy. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change. One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.

And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe. The early February visitor was Samantha Power, currently head of USAID, and a familiar figure from the Barack Obama Administration, where she served as Ambassador to the United Nations and was a dedicated liberal interventionist involved in the Libya debacle as well as various other wars started by that estimable Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he had received his award. The Obama attack on Syria has been sustained until this day, with several American military bases continuing to function on Syrian territory, stealing the country’s oil and agricultural produce.

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One Year Later in Ukraine: Washington and NATO Got It Very Wrong, by Ryan McMaken

Posted on March 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

The writing was on the wall. Too bad so many people passed by without reading it. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:

It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true.

In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org: the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine. It’s not Munich 1938. Economic sanctions have not crippled the Russian regime. Most of the world remains ambivalent on the conflict. The conflict will likely end with a negotiated settlement—contrary to what the Washington wants.

The fact is that in spite of the United States’ and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) efforts to turn Ukraine into World War III, the war in Ukraine remains a regional conflict. It seems most of the world is uninterested in making sacrifices to carry out US policy in Ukraine and that many see the inherent hypocrisy behind US talk about respecting national sovereignty. 

There’s also an important lesson here about listening to the war maximalists who incessantly promote full-scale war as the “solution” to every international crisis. The US clearly wants to fight the war to the last Ukrainian, in what the US is packaging as a global crusade in the style of World War II. But, it seems now that more pragmatic thinkers—i.e., the French and the Germans—recognize that negotiations are the more humane solution. 

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Posted in Collapse, Crime, Debt, Economics, Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

China’s Turn, by Mike Whitney

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S. may go to war to prevent the Chinese economy’s emergence as the world’s largest. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

Ukraine is the first flashpoint in a great power struggle between the United States and China. After years of shifting its industries to low-wage locations around the world, the US finds itself steadliy losing market-share to a faster-growing and more resourceful China. By most estimates, China’s economy will overtake the United States by 2035 at which point, Beijing will be in a much better position to shape international trade relations in a way that promotes its own interests. With growth, comes power, and that rule will certainly apply to China as well. China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse that sits at the very epicenter of the most populous and fastest growing region in the world. It is for that reason that the United States has initiated a series of provocations on the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The US has abandoned all hope of prevailing over China through conventional free market competition. Instead, the US plans to engage China militarily in a desperate attempt to drain its resources, garner broader support for economic sanctions and isolate isolate China from its regional trading partners. It is a risky and disruptive plan that could backfire spectacularly, but Washington is moving forward regardless. US foreign policy mandarins and their globalist allies will not accept an outcome in which China is the world’s biggest and most powerful economy. This is from an article at China Macro Economy:

Although the pace of China’s economic rise has slowed in recent years, it appears on track to end the United States’ lengthy run as the world’s largest economy by around 2035, according to the latest projection by economists at Goldman Sachs.

The new estimate is 10 years later than the investment bank had predicted in 2011. But economists Kevin Daly and Tadas Gedminas said that potential growth in China still remains significantly higher than in the US.

“China has already closed most of the gap with US GDP,” they said in a report published on Tuesday, adding that China’s gross domestic product has risen from 12 per cent of the US’ in 2000 to a little under 80 per cent.

China’s annual economic growth will be around 4 per cent from 2024 to 2029, compared with 1.9 per cent in the US, according to the report, which projects what the global economy will look like through 2075….

The US dollar’s exceptional strength over the past 10 years is another reason for the 10-year revision in when China’s economy will become No 1, Daly added… But the US dollar’s strength versus the Chinese yuan is likely to diminish over the coming decade, providing more ground for China to overtake the US, according to the report.

The report also projected that the weight of global GDP will shift more towards Asia over the next 30 years, and that the world’s five largest economies in 2050 will be China, the United States, India, Indonesia and Germany.” (“China GDP to surpass US around 2035, years later than previously expected, Goldman Sachs predicts”, China Macro Economy)

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How This US Lie Will Likely Lead to War, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on March 2, 2023 | 1 comment

The Nordstream sabotage may lead the U.S. not only into war with Russia, but also into a war with Germany, an ally of the U.S. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • September 26, 2022, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 — Russian pipelines that deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea — were blown up
  • Months before the sabotage, President Biden publicly announced that “if Russia invades Ukraine, there will be no Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Undersecretary Victoria Nuland also delivered a near-identical message, saying, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”
  • February 8, 2023, legendary investigative journalist Seymore Hersh published a shocking article based on whistleblower testimony claiming the sabotage was carried out by U.S. Navy divers during BALTOPS 22, a NATO exercise that took place in the Baltic Sea in June 2022. Three months later, the planted explosives were remotely detonated, destroying the two pipelines
  • According to the whistleblower, Norway was in on the plan, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz OK’d the operation
  • According to Hersh, the “why” behind Biden’s decision to blow up the pipelines was threefold. First, it would massively impact Russia’s economy. Second, eliminating Germany’s and Western Europe’s ability to buy low-cost gas from Russia would force them to buy U.S. gas. And third, he feared Europe would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with money and weapons if they were reliant on Russian gas

September 26, 2022, massive leaks were detected in two Russian pipelines — Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 — that deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea. Within a couple of days, several countries, including Russia, agreed the leaks were the result of intentional sabotage.

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Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Horseshit, Intelligence, Military, War

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US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

There are probably a few Asians that don’t cotton to the U.S. ambassador’s claim. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

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Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag, by Ray McGovern

Posted on March 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Seymour Hersh’s story was just too big to ignore. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Bombshell No. 1: Seymour Hersh’s Feb. 8 report that President Joe Biden authorized the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines built to carry cheap Russian gas to Europe.

Bombshell No. 2: The Washington Post today ended the Establishment media embargo on Hersh’s damning report, mentioning its findings and even including a link to his article.

The Post’s article by Karen DeYoung, no rogue reporter, bore the headline, “Russia, blaming US sabotage, calls for UN probe of Nord Stream.” DeYoung reported on the UN Security Council meeting yesterday at which Russia called for a special United Nations commission to investigate the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream undersea pipelines. DeYoung also noted that Professor Jeffrey Sachs and I gave short briefings at the beginning of the Security Council session.

Here’s an edited summary account by the UN of our testimony at the Security Council session:

SACHS: As the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to peace, it is the Council’s responsibility to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, help bring the perpetrator to justice, pursue compensation for the damaged parties and prevent such actions from recurring in the future. Countries need full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties.

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The Phone Call, by William Gudal

Posted on March 1, 2023 | 1 comment

It would take about 30 seconds to make the world a lot better place than it is now. From SLL contributor William Gudal:

Somewhere in the Ukraine the phone rings:

“Hello, Volodymyr here”

“Hi Mr. President, Joe Biden speaking”

“So good to hear from you. It’s been days”

“It’s over”

“We have a poor connection”

“Volo, so you do not misunderstand, no more money, nor more armaments. We stand ready to help you with the transition to neutrality.”

“But . . . “

“It will all work out, Bye”

One phone call lasting less than one minute changes the world for the next 25 years. The carnage stops. The world economy abruptly changes. NATO goes home and resumes its customary barracks role, training for phantom aggression that will never come. Russia rightfully retains its warm water port on the Black Sea. The US is forced to deal with an economic competitor on a more level playing field. The danger of nuclear catastrophe lessens. Sino- Russian dialogue adjusts to a diminished likelihood of US invasion. Inexpensive energy returns to Europe. The madness of the US neocon/neo liberal dream of dismantling Russia is deferred to another day. The altar boys of Europe gain some self-respect. Money is reallocated to a frighteningly long list of US domestic needs. Germany avoids being suckered once again into a war not of its making.

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Public vs. Private: Managing Perceptions of the War in Ukraine, by Ted Snider

Posted on March 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

They say something different in private than they do in public. They must be politicians. From Ted Snider at libertarianinstitute.org:

“I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron publicly told the media. But it’s not what he privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He also said that now is not the right time for dialogue with Moscow and that France is ready to sustain “a longer conflict.” That’s not what he told Zelensky either.

“America…will stand with you as long as it takes,” President Biden publicly promised Ukraine in his State of the Union Address. But it’s not what his administration privately told Zelensky.

“The war I know about is not the war you are reading about,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said recently.

Managing public perception about the war to control the narrative and maintain support seems to have required a divorce between what NATO officials are telling Ukraine privately and what they are telling the public they are telling Ukraine.Biden’s public mantra has been “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “will stand with you as long as it takes.” Privately, neither seems to be true.

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