Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

“Putin Has Misread the West (And) if He Doesn’t Wake Up Soon, Armageddon Is Upon Us”, Mike Whitney interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on December 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

According to Paul Craig Roberts, Putin does not comprehend that the West never acts in good faith towards Russia. From Mike Whitney and Roberts at unz.com:

 

 

Question 1—You think that Putin should have acted more forcefully from the beginning in order to end the war quickly. Is that an accurate assessment of your view on the war? And—if it is—then what do you think is the downside of allowing the conflict to drag on with no end in sight?

Paul Craig Roberts—Yes, you have correctly stated my position. But as my position can seem “unAmerican” to the indoctrinated and brainwashed many, those who watch CNN, listen to NPR, and read the New York Times, I am going to provide some of my background before going on with my answer.

I was involved in the 20th century Cold War in many ways: As a Wall Street Journal editor; as an appointee to an endowed chair in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, part of Georgetown University at the time of my appointment, where my colleagues were Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, and James Schlesinger, a Secretary of Defense and CIA director who was one of my professors in graduate school at the University of Virginia; as a member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger; and as a member of a secret presidential committee with power to investigate the CIA’s opposition to President Reagan’s plan to end the Cold War.

With a history such as mine, I was surprised when I took an objective position on Russian President Putin’s disavowal of US hegemony, and found myself labeled a “Russian dupe/agent” on a website, “PropOrNot,” which may have been financed by the US Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, or the CIA itself, still harboring old resentments against me for helping President Reagan end the Cold War, which had the potential of reducing the CIA’s budget and power. I still wonder what the CIA might do to me, despite the agency inviting me to address the agency, which I did, and explain why they went wrong in their reasoning.

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Putin’s Conundrum, by Mike Whitney

Posted on December 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin is dealing with people in the U.S. power structure who are just crazy enough to use nuclear weapons. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

The primary purpose of the Nuclear Posture Review(NPR) is to deceptively “rebrand” the offensive use of nuclear weapons as a justifiable act of defense. The new criteria for using these lethal WMD has been deliberately maligned with the clear intention of providing Washington with a green light for their use and proliferation. Accordingly, US foreign policy warhawks have established the institutional and ideological framework needed launch a nuclear war without fear of legal reprisal. These arduous preparations were carried out with one objective in mind, to preserve America’s steadily-eroding position in the global order through the application of extreme violence.

Vladimir Putin is worried. Very worried.

In a recent press conference, the Russian President expressed his concern that the United States might be planning a nuclear strike on Russia. Naturally, Putin did not state the matter in such crude terms, but his comments left little doubt that that’s what he was talking about. Here’s part of what he said:

The United States has a theory of a ‘preventive strike’…Now they are developing a system for a ‘disarming strike’. What does that mean? It means striking at control centres with modern high-tech weapons to destroy the opponent’s ability to counterattack.”

Why would Putin waste time on the various theories circulating among foreign policy wonks in the United States if he wasn’t concerned that these ideas were actionable?

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A Hair Trigger on Endgame, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on December 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Putin has threatened to adopt a doctrine that the U.S. has already adopted—the preemptive nuclear strike doctrine—and U.S. policymakers are calling foul. They are nothing if not hypocritical. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Dear Readers:  The insouciance of Washington and its European puppets toward the dangerous situation they are provoking with Russia is frightening.  The Western world is now led by people who have made it clear that they will risk nuclear war in their pursuit of American hegemony.  Evil has clearly triumphed in the Western world.

We are now on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.  One false warning of nuclear attack, believed to be true, could cause Russia to launch a full-scale nuclear attack against the US and Europe.
 
False warning signals indicating incoming nuclear weapons have happened before, but were discounted because a sufficient level of mutual trust had been achieved. Now, with two decades of reckless provocations of Russia, with missile bases being constructed on Russia’s borders in Poland and Romania, with US/NATO fully committed to defeat Russia in Ukraine, and with massive anti-Russian propaganda in place of diplomatic negotiation, trust has been destroyed.  Notice the provocative idiocy of US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who mischaracterizes Putin’s warning about the extremely dangerous situation as “Russian saber-rattling.”  With utter fools like Austin making decisions, there is a zero chance of avoiding Armageddon.  Lloyd’s position is that it is Putin who must avoid provocative behavior, not Washington.

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Putin Makes REAL Nuclear Threat; US Yawns, by Ray McGovern

Posted on December 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

Read the excerpt from the press conference carefully. Putin doesn’t like the U.S.’s preventative strike doctrine, but he appears to be hinting that Russia may have to adopt it. That would raise significantly the chances of nuclear war. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Friday that Russia is considering changing its nuclear doctrine to allow for preventive – not just retaliatory – use of nuclear weapons. Such a change would align Russia’s nuclear posture with Washington’s own strategic doctrine and, at one stroke, make the world far more dangerous.

Putin’s highly unusual remarks leave no doubt that Russia views the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine as the kind of existential threat that President John Kennedy perceived, when Moscow installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Those missiles were capable of hitting, within minutes, Washington and the Strategic Air Command in Omaha.

For readers who have missed this, US missile capsules already emplaced in Romania and Poland – ostensibly for “ABMs” – can accommodate overnight what Russia calls “offensive strike missiles” – with even shorter launch-to-target time – than those Kennedy strong-armed Khrushchev to remove from Cuba, under threat of nuclear war.

Did Biden Renege on a Promise?

Another largely unreported factoid: When Presidents Biden and Putin held a conversation on Dec. 30, 2021, the Kremlin readout stated: “Joseph Biden emphasized … that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.” At once, Senior Putin adviser, Yuri Ushakov, pointed out approvingly that this had been one of Moscow’s chief goals in proposing security guarantees for the U.S. and NATO to consider. Six weeks later, after a “follow-up” Putin-Biden call (on Feb. 12, 2022), Ushakov lamented that Biden did not address … nondeployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory. Ushakov: “We received no meaningful response.”

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Putin Doesn’t Bluff, by James Rickards

Posted on December 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

If Putin does what he says he’s going to do in Ukraine, he will dominate that country unless the U.S. does something about it. In so doing, the U.S. risks escalating the conflict to nuclear war. From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

Putin Doesn’t Bluff

The war in Ukraine has been in a partial hiatus for the past two months. But that hiatus is coming to an end as Russia prepares its next move. Today, we’re looking ahead to what’s coming next.

And here’s a hint: We could be entering a very dangerous period.

First off, the situation on the ground in Ukraine is best understood as a competition between the narrative and reality.

The narrative consists of what you hear from mainstream media, the White House, the Pentagon, and official sources in the U.K., France, Germany and both EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The narrative says that the Armed Forces of Ukraine, AFU, have beaten back Russian forces and reoccupied Kherson, which lies strategically on the Dnipro River, Kyiv’s main access to the Black Sea.

Based on these advances, the narrative says that Russia is in retreat, Russian troops are demoralized, Putin is in jeopardy of being replaced and complete victory for Ukraine is just a matter of time.

The narrative is then used as a basis for increased financial aid from the United States (over $60 billion and growing) and increased weapons shipments from NATO members.

Narrative vs. Reality

But as I’ve explained recently, the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is almost completely at odds with the Western narrative.

It’s true that Ukraine made recent advances in the east, but they were against lightly defended Russian positions on or near open terrain.

Much has been made of Ukraine’s retaking of Kherson, but Russia regarded it as a city of little strategic value. Rather than waste resources fighting for it, they withdrew.

The Russians also let the Ukrainians have the open land, which will later become a killing field for Russian artillery. That’s the reality you’re not being told.

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How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote, by Ted Snider

Posted on December 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Either through inadvertence or ideological bias, the media is missing major shifts in global leaders’ attitudes towards the U.S. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

On December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington for the first state visit of the Biden administration. After the pageantry, presents, hand holding and flattering words of fraternity and solidarity, Macron faced the gathered press.

“We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” “That,” said Helene Cooper of The New York Times, “is the money quote.”

But it wasn’t the money quote by several euros. The money quote came days later when Macron was not standing shoulder to shoulder with Biden in front of an American audience, but standing on his own addressing a French audience. Macron told the French television network TF1, in an interview filmed during his visit to Washington but aired as he left, that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Then Macron made his full meaning clear: “One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”

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For First Time, Biden “Prepared To Speak With Mr Putin” About Ending Ukraine War, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

If Biden had been prepared to speak with Mr. Putin this time last year, there may have been no Ukraine War to end. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

President Joe Biden has just issued his biggest overture to Moscow since the war’s start, now more than nine months in, saying he’s “prepared to speak with” Vladimir Putin about the conflict if Russia is ready to wind it down. “I am prepared to speak with Mr Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he is looking for a way to end the war,” Biden said late in the day Thursday, stressing he would need to consult with NATO allies.

“He hasn’t done that yet. If that’s the case, in consultation with my French and Nato friends, I’ll be happy to sit down with Putin to see what he has in mind,” Biden continued. Biden stressed at the joint press conference with Macron, “There’s one way for this war to end, the rational way: Putin could pull out of Ukraine, No. 1. It appears he’s not going to do that.”

But as FT underscores, “the comments, made at a press conference in Washington, DC, during a bilateral summit with French president Emmanuel Macron, mark the furthest Biden has gone in expressing openness to discuss the war with Putin.”

Via AP

The surprising remarks, which came after months of the US administration repeatedly emphasized its staunch position that only Ukraine and Ukraine alone can decide the timing of any potential ceasefire talks, included the qualifier that Biden has “no immediate plans” to contact the Russian leader.

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The Crux of the Putin-Xi Revolution for a New World Order – Arresting the Slide to Nihilism, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on November 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Xi and Putin believe that in the emerging multipolar world order a variety of firmly held beliefs is better than a uniform nihilism. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

It becomes questionable whether the West can compete as a civilisational state and maintain a presence.

The world ‘Map’ is accelerating its shift away from the paralysed Washington ‘hub’ – but to what? The myth that China, Russia, or the non-western world can be fully assimilated to a Western model of political society (any more than Afghanistan was) is over. So to where are we headed?

The myth of the pull of acculturation into western post-modernity lingers on however, in the continuing western fantasy of pulling China away from Russia, and into an embrace with U.S. Big Business.

The bigger point here is that former wounded civilisations are reasserting themselves: China and Russia – as states organised around indigenous culture – is not a new idea. Rather, it is a very old one: “Always remember that China is a civilization – and not nation-state”, Chinese officials repeat regularly.

Nonetheless, the shift to civilisational statehood emphasised by those Chinese officials arguably is no rhetorical device but reflects something deeper and more radical. Moreover, the culture transition is gaining wide emulation across the globe. Its inherent radicalism however, is largely lost to western audiences.

Chinese thinkers, such as Zhang Weiwei, accuse Western political ideas of being a sham; of masking their deeply partisan ideological character beneath a veneer of supposedly neutral principles. They are saying that the mounting of a universal framework of values – applicable to all societies – is finished.

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Vladimir Putin’s Vision of a Multipolar World, by Philip Girlaldi

Posted on November 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

Putin may believe that for all of us citizens of the world, diversity is our strength. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

An end to US hegemony?

In history books as well as in politics every story is shaped by where one chooses to begin the tale. The current fighting in Ukraine, which many observers believe to already be what might be considered the opening phase of World War 3, is just such a development. Did the seeds of conflict arise subsequent to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s consent to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 after having received a commitment from the United States and its allies not to advance the West’s military alliance NATO into Eastern Europe? That was a pledge that was quickly ignored by President Bill Clinton, who intervened militarily in the former Yugoslavia before adding new NATO members from amidst the ruins of the Warsaw Pact.

Since that time NATO has continued its expansion at the expense of Russian national security interests. Ukraine, as one of the largest of the former Soviet republics, soon became the focal point for potential conflict. The US interfered openly in Ukrainian politics, featuring frequent visits by relentlessly hawkish Senator John McCain and State Department monster Victoria Nuland as well as the investment of a reported $5 billion to destabilize the situation, bringing about regime change to remove the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich and replace it with a regime friendly to America and its European allies. When this occurred it inevitably led to a proposed invitation to Ukraine to join NATO, a move which Moscow repeatedly warned would constitute an existential threat to Russia itself.

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Why Do Americans Hate Putin? By Mike Whitney

Posted on November 23, 2022 | 1 comment

Putin-hatred is directed by big-time globalists because Putin is opposed to the globalist agenda. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

Why do Americans hate Putin?

Tucker Carlson thinks he knows. Here’s what he said:

“… Democrats in Washington have told you it’s your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason.

Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you’re one of them. Hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy. It’s the main thing that we talk about. Entire cable channels are now devoted to it. Very soon, that hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in Eastern Europe.

Before that happens, it might be worth asking yourself: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl?” (Tucker Carlson,”Americans have been trained to hate Putin, and will suffer because of it“, Fox News)

Is Carlson right, do Americans hate Putin because the media and the political class in Washington have told them to do so?

Yes and no. Yes, the media and the politicians have played a big role in the demonization of Putin. But, no, they’re not the main drivers of this smear campaign. That designation belongs to the plutocrats behind-the-scenes who use the media to attack Putin in order to promote their own globalist agenda. That’s what’s really going on; the news is being shaped to advance the interests of elites.

After all, what do the American people really know about Putin? Have they ever listened his speeches or read his statements following meetings with other world leaders? Have they ever tuned-in to his marathon 4-hour “ask-anything” Q&A sessions? Have they ever read transcripts of his interviews where he speaks candidly on critical policy issues, culture or religion?

No, of course, not. Everything Americans know about Putin they read in the media. And that’s the problem, because media despises Putin. And they despise him for the same reason they despise Trump, because the media’s wealthy owners see him as a threat to their political agenda. That’s the whole deal in a nutshell. Putin is not hated because he is a “KGB thug” or a “new Hitler”; that’s just public relations gibberish. He’s hated because he is an obstacle to the globalists achieving their geopolitical objectives. That’s the motive that drives this smear campaign. Putin has blocked them in Chechnya, South Ossetia, Syria and now Ukraine. He has derailed their grand plan to “pivot to Asia” and to encircle China with US military bases. He has been a thorn in their side for the better part of two decades and he has thrown a wrench in their loony plan to crush emerging centers of power and rule the world for the next century. That’s why they hate him, and that’s why they use their media to make you hate him, too. Check out this chart from a recent report at Pew Research:

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