Tag Archives: NATO

Twice in a Century: Russia Faces a War of Annihilation, by Mike Whitney

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia had ample justification for its invasion of Ukraine. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

A war of annihilation is a war in which the goal is the complete obliteration of the state and the extermination of its people. It is defined as a radicalized form of warfare in which “all psycho-physical limits” are abolished and the strategic goals are pursued by any means necessary. It is war without rules, restrictions or moral constraints. The United States is in the early phases of a war of annihilation against Russia the aim of which is the total destruction of the economy, the culture, the population and the nation.

“We have seen 5 waves of NATO expansion. Now NATO is in Romania and Poland and they are deploying their missile-attack systems there. That’s what we are talking about. You need to understand, we are not threatening anyone. Russia did not come to the US borders or the UK borders. No. You came to our borders and now you are saying, ‘Ukraine will join NATO and will deploy their systems there. They will deploy their military bases and their attack-systems.’ We are concerned about our security. Do you understand what that means?” Vladimir Putin, press conference, You Tube

Question– Is there a justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Answer– Yes, there is. Russia was being threatened by developments in Ukraine, so it told Ukraine to either stop what it was doing or suffer the consequences. Ukraine chose to ignore those warnings, so Russia invaded. That is basically what happened.

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What People Don’t Get About the ‘NATO Argument’, by Noah Carl

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

You can’t come up with a set of rules of which Russia is in breach of which the U.S. is not also in breach. From Noah Carl at dailyskeptic.org:

During a panel discussion in June of 2014 – four months after the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine – Professor John Mearsheimer was asked whether Ukrainians have a right to choose to join the West. His emphatic answer, which provoked laughter from his fellow panellists, was: “No, they don’t.”

This gets to the very heart of the current crisis. Those who deny the West bears any responsibility insist that we must uphold the principle that every state is sovereign and can enter whichever alliances it chooses. Now, this sounds very appealing. But there’s one major problem with it.

The problem is that the US – by far the most important Western country – has blatantly and repeatedly violated this principle over the last five decades. Hence if the West wants to make any kind of normative argument against Russia’s aggression, it has to explain why it doesn’t hold itself to the same standards.

This point was made eloquently by Robert Wright in a recent essay titled ‘In Defense of Whataboutism’. As he notes:

Exercises in whataboutism force people to mount what Singer calls “a disinterested defense of one’s conduct.” They have to articulate a general rule—or a general exception to a general rule—that applies to everyone in comparable circumstances.

Since there’s no “general rule” under which America’s foreign policy would be justified but Russia’s foreign policy would not be, the West cannot mount a “disinterested defence” of its conduct. (I suppose certain countries like Iceland might be able to, but the US – the only one that really matters – certainly can’t.)

So the West doesn’t actually uphold the principle that every state is sovereign and can enter whichever alliances it chooses. Once this is established, the question arises, ‘Is Ukraine one of those states that can’t enter whichever alliances it chooses?’

The Russians believe it is, and have made clear that Ukraine joining the West is an absolute red line for them. How should the West have dealt with this ultimatum?

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On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine, by Joe Lauria

Posted on March 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Notwithstanding U.S. and European intimations to the contrary, they are almost certainly not going to come to directly aid Ukraine against Russia, although they may try to foment a lengthy insurgency. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

The choice is stark for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky:  accept that his defeat is inevitable and accept Russian terms for surrender or continue to seek a way for NATO to become perilously involved in his fight against Moscow.

Russia is making three demands of Kiev to end the war on its terms: recognize Crimea as part of Russia; grant independence to Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbass and enshrine Ukraine as a neutral state in its constitution, meaning it will never join NATO. A 90-minute meeting in Turkey on Thursday between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers resulted in no progress at all towards a solution, as this phase of the war enters its third week.

Zelensky veers from one position to another from day to day and sometimes within the same media interview. In his appearance on ABC News in the U.S. last Sunday he showed both defiance and potential conciliation.

Zelensky has lambasted NATO as “weak” because it has not yet intervened on his behalf. He is still asking for Polish Mig jets to be sent to Ukraine to fight Russia. He is still calling for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine. In this he has powerful allies at the U.S. State Department in Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and in Congress, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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Cold War Thinking Isn’t Working, by José Niño

Posted on February 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

U.S. policy makers have thought they can impose their rules on much of the rest of the world. It hasn’t worked. From José Niño at mises.org:

With Russia launching a military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the corporate press has grown shrill in its calls for punishing Russia with draconian sanctions, supplying Ukraine with increased military aid, and diplomatically isolating the Eurasian power as much as possible. The Two Minutes Hate against Russia has been cranked up to eleven, making any nuanced analysis of why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has reached such a point almost impossible.

The failure of policy wonks to understand why Russia took decisive action against Ukraine is emblematic of a flawed grand strategy that has dominated DC foreign policy circles since the end of the Cold War. Once the dust from the Soviet Union’s collapse settled, international relations specialists were convinced that the US had entered an “end of history” moment where liberal democracy would become the governing standard worldwide. Former Soviet Union states would be the preliminary trial ground for this new liberal democratic project.

Through expanding the reach of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into former Soviet states and carrying out color revolutions in the region, Washington believed that it could reshape this part of the world in its image. From dealing with violent insurgencies in the Caucasus to confronting precipitous declines in life expectancy and other social ills, such as rising criminal activity, the Soviet Union’s successor, the Russian Federation, was in no shape to resist American influence, let alone project power in its own backyard during the 1990s.

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What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine? By Ray McGovern

Posted on February 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

Putin is tired of U.S. and European blather and he’s got China in his corner. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well choreographed decision yesterday to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk points to two key realities: (1) Putin despairs of persuading U.S. allies, Germany and France, to press Ukraine to honor its commitments under the Minsk accords that provide for regional autonomy as well as a ceasefire; and (2) Putin feels assured of very strong backing from China (as long as he is not stupid enough to invade Ukraine).

What about this China factor? Why do Western pundits/savants pay so little heed to this game-changer? It should not require my half-century of studying/reporting on Russia-China relations to notice that China and Russia have never been so strategically close as now. Putin and Xi have done their part to demonstrate that. Why cannot most Western pundits and savants see it and recognize the implications?

There are, happily, notable exceptions – for example, Edward Wong’s Bond Between China and Russia Alarms US and Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis.

Wong writes of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech on Feb. 21 in Munich: “It was the latest instance of what Western officials say is China taking a bold new swing at the United States and its allies by wading into European security issues to explicitly back Russia.” Wong includes quotes from a PR person, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, and a true expert on China, former prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd.

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Ukraine Implementing Minsk Accords & Ending Conflict ‘Very Last’ Thing US, UK Want, Ex-MEP Says, by Nick Griffin

Posted on February 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. doesn’t want Russia and Europe, particularly Germany, to draw closer. From Nick Griffin at unz.com:

With the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorating each day, the West keeps on promoting its “Russian threat” rhetoric and pledges “never-before-seen” sanctions on Russia should it invade Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kiev keeps violating the Minsk accord and continues to shell Donbass, forcing thousands of people to flee to Russia.

Nick Griffin, political analyst and former Member of the European Parliament, reflects on the geopolitical, economical and historical reasons for the West trying to force Russia into war with Ukraine, why the collective West turns a blind eye on systemic violations of the Minsk agreement by Kiev, and why no one in the West cares about the humanitarian disaster in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in Donbass.

Sputnik: Why is the West not only ignoring but also encouraging Kiev’s provocations in Donbass?

Nick Griffin: The Washington and Westminster cabal are desperate to force Vladimir Putin to abandon his policy of self-restraint and negotiation. They intend to leave him no option but to use military force in defence of the Russian population of Donbass. So the NATO leaders are now engaged in the most blatant and irresponsible destabilisation and hybrid war operation since they used Islamic terrorists to destroy Libya and attempted to use them to break up Syria.

Their operation against Russia is in fact even more desperate than the campaign of lies and aggression against Syria, because the stakes are even higher. The West promoted conflict in the Middle East in the hope of gaining a geopolitical advantage. The attempt to force Russia into war in Ukraine, by contrast, is not really about promoting the geopolitical interest of the Dollar Empire – it is about its very survival.

The US is no longer the self-confident colossus that bestrode the world a few decades ago. America in 2022 is a financial, political, economic, military and social basket case, and its UK ally is in the same very leaky boat. The liberal Anglo world is further disturbed by the situation in Canada, which is now in the critical phase of a historic struggle between the Trudeau regime and a large and well-organised section of the working population.

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“Operation Cyclone: Ukraine Edition” – is this the real plan? By Gavin O’Reilly

Posted on February 20, 2022 | 1 comment

Is the plan to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan for Russia? From Gavin O’Reilly at off-guardian.org:

For almost three months, the Western mainstream media, in a move not dissimilar to its previous assertions that Saddam Hussein had the capability to launch WMDs within 45 minutes, or that Iran was building a nuclear bomb, has repeatedly claimed that Russia is planning an ‘imminent’ invasion of its Western neighbour Ukraine.

Ukraine has been under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan, a CIA and MI6-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with the Russian Federation.

With the ongoing collapse of the global COVID-19 media narrative following the highly coincidental timing of last month’s World Economic Forum Davos Agenda virtual event, a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine has now taken centre stage amongst corporate media outlets with a track record of promoting war and regime change in countries refusing to kowtow to the demands of the US-NATO hegemony.

A media narrative which has seen thousands of US and British troops being deployed to Eastern Europe as a result – a highly provocative action and one, that should even a minor miscalculation occur amidst the current tensions, could easily escalate into a full-blown military conflict between East and West.

Recent comments by current Ukrainian President Zelensky however, in which he poured cold water over the idea of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the recent supply of over 90 tonnes of weaponry to Kiev by the United States amidst the current tensions, and US President Joe Biden stating himself that Washington would not engage militarily with Russia, would suggest that although the possibility of the current crisis inadvertently spiralling into a global conflict between Russia and NATO remains, that that is not the current intention of the West.

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Germany’s Spiegel Asks “Is Vladimir Putin Right?” Over NATO Expansion, by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 20, 2022 | 1 comment

When you’re dealing with American politicians and bureaucrats you’d better get it in writing, and even then they may try to cheat you. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

With all eyes on the situation unfolding at the Ukraine border – as separatists in Donbas reporting intensified shelling amid a “general mobilization” of military-age males – Germany’s left-leaning Spiegel asks a question fundamental to the entire conflict…

“Vladimir Putin insists that the West cheated Russia by expanding NATO eastward following the end of the Cold War. Is there anything to his claims? The short answer: It’s complicated.“

The essence of the argument is this; In September 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin penned a long letter to US President Bill Clinton, which railed against the eastward expansion of NATO at a time when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were interested in joining the organization. Yeltsin argued that the Russian public saw this “as a sort of neo-isolation” of Russia, and that the “Two Plus Four Treaty” linked to Germany’s 1990 reunification “precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East.”

As Spiegel writes, “There is essentially no other historical issue that has poisoned relations between Moscow and the West as much in the last three decades as the disagreement over what, precisely, was agreed to in 1990.”

Since the 1990 letter, NATO has accepted 14 countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which the Kremlin has complained of haaving been duped every step of the way.”

According to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, “You cheated us shamelessly.”

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Ukraine Crisis Should Have Been Avoided, by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

Posted on February 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

There would be no Ukraine crisis if the U.S. government had simply kept its word. From Jack F. Matlock, Jr. at consortiumnews.com:

An avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense, writes Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R.

We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine.

His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that in particular, Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members. President Joe Biden has refused to give such assurance but made clear his willingness to continue discussing questions of strategic stability in Europe.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has made clear it has no intention of implementing the agreement reached in 2015 for reuniting the Donbas provinces into Ukraine with a large degree of local autonomy—an agreement with Russia, France and Germany which the United States endorsed.

Maybe I am wrong—tragically wrong—but I cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade, grossly magnified by prominent elements of the American media, to serve a domestic political end. Facing rising inflation, the ravages of Omicron, blame (for the most part unfair) for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, plus the failure to get the full support of his own party for the Build Back Better legislation, the Biden administration is staggering under sagging approval ratings just as it gears up for this year’s congressional elections.

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The Ultimate End of NATO, by Scott Ritter

Posted on February 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

NATO cannot defeat Russia, but Russia may end up defeating NATO. From Scott Ritter at consortiumnews.com:

Russia’s goal is not to destroy Ukraine—this could be accomplished at any time. Rather, the goal of Russia is to destroy NATO by exposing its impotence, writes Scott Ritter.

High-water monument at Gettysburg National Military Park. (Veggies /Wikimedia Commons)

n the quiet fields outside the sleepy college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, sits a bronze monument, in the form of an open book. Known as the “High-Water Mark of the Rebellion” monument, it contains the identities of the various military formations that, in the afternoon of July 3, 1863, fought a life and death struggle on and around the soil where the monument is set.

Here, some 12,500 men under the command of Confederate Lieutenant General James Longstreet, formed into three divisions, and launched a frontal assault on some 10,000 entrenched Union troops commanded by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock.

While around 1,500 confederates managed to pierce the Union line, they were quickly surrounded and compelled to either surrender or die. It is at this point on the battlefield that the “High-Water” monument is located, commemorating what has become to be known as “Pickett’s Charge,” named after one of the division commanders who participated in the battle.

The Confederate Army was able to withdraw from the Gettysburg battlefield in good order to continue to fight for nearly two more years, before surrendering. But it never recovered from the disaster that was Pickett’s Charge. It was truly the High-Water Mark of the Rebellion.

A Messy History

Students of history might be experiencing what Yogi Berra once famously called “Déjà vu all over again” when examining the frenetic activities undertaken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) today, as it responds to what it alleges is a provocative Russian military buildup along the Russian-Ukrainian border.

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