Friday 29th of March 2024

a philosophy of disastering conquests…..

The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles.

 

 

By JEFFREY SACHS

 

The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).

The main message of the neocons is that the US must predominate in military power in every region of the world, and must confront rising regional powers that could someday challenge US global or regional dominance, most importantly Russia and China. For this purpose, US military force should be pre-positioned in hundreds of military bases around the world and the US should be prepared to lead wars of choice as necessary. The United Nations is to be used by the US only when useful for US purposes.

This approach was spelled out first by Paul Wolfowitz in his draft Defence Policy Guidance (DPG) written for the Department of Defence in 2002. The draft called for extending the US-led security network to the Central and Eastern Europe despite the explicit promise by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1990 that German unification would not be followed by NATO’s eastward enlargement. Wolfowitz also made the case for American wars of choice, defending America’s right to act independently, even alone, in response to crises of concern to the US. According to General Wesley Clark, Wolfowitz already made clear to Clark in May 1991 that the US would lead regime-change operations in Iraq, Syria, and other former Soviet allies.

The neocons championed NATO enlargement to Ukraine even before that became official US policy under George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008. They viewed Ukraine’s NATO membership as key to US regional and global dominance. Robert Kagan spelled out the neocon case for NATO enlargement in April 2006:

The Russians and Chinese see nothing natural in [the “colour revolutions” of the former Soviet Union], only Western-backed coups designed to advance Western influence in strategically vital parts of the world. Are they so wrong? Might not the successful liberalisation of Ukraine, urged and supported by the Western democracies, be but the prelude to the incorporation of that nation into NATO and the European Union — in short, the expansion of Western liberal hegemony? ”

Kagan acknowledged the dire implication of NATO enlargement. He quotes one expert as saying, “the Kremlin is getting ready for the ‘battle for Ukraine’ in all seriousness.” After the fall of the Soviet Union, both the US and Russia should have sought a neutral Ukraine, as a prudent buffer and safety valve. Instead, the neocons wanted US “hegemony” while the Russians took up the battle partly in defence and partly out of their own imperial pretensions as well. Shades of the Crimean War (1853-6), when Britain and France sought to weaken Russia in the Black Sea following Russian pressures on the Ottoman empire.

Kagan penned the article as a private citizen while his wife Victoria Nuland was the US Ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, Jr. Nuland has been the neocon operative par excellence. In addition to serving as Bush’s Ambassador to NATO, Nuland was Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during 2013-17, where she participated in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, and now serves as Biden’s Undersecretary of State guiding US policy vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine.

The neocon outlook is based on an overriding false premise: that the US military, financial, technological, and economic superiority enables it to dictate terms in all regions of the world. It is a position of both remarkable hubris and remarkable disdain of evidence. Since the 1950s, the US has been stymied or defeated in nearly every regional conflict in which it has participated. Yet in the “battle for Ukraine,” the neocons were ready to provoke a military confrontation with Russia by expanding NATO over Russia’s vehement objections because they fervently believe that Russia will be defeated by US financial sanctions and NATO weaponry.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a neocon think-tank led by Kimberley Allen Kagan (and backed by a who’s who of defence contractors such as General Dynamics and Raytheon), continues to promise a Ukrainian victory. Regarding Russia’s advances, the ISW offered a typical comment: Regardless of which side holds the city [of Sievierodonetsk], the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will probably have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.”

The facts on the ground, however, suggest otherwise. The West’s economic sanctions have had little adverse impact on Russia, while their “boomerang” effect on the rest of the world has been large. Moreover, the US capacity to resupply Ukraine with ammunition and weaponry is seriously hamstrung by America’s limited production capacity and broken supply chains. Russia’s industrial capacity of course dwarfs that of Ukraine’s. Russia’s GDP was roughly 10X that of Ukraine before war, and Ukraine has now lost much of its industrial capacity in the war.

The most likely outcome of the current fighting is that Russia will conquer a large swath of Ukraine, perhaps leaving Ukraine landlocked or nearly so. Frustration will rise in Europe and the US with the military losses and the stagflationary consequences of war and sanctions. The knock-on effects could be devastating, if a right-wing demagogue in the US rises to power (or in the case of Trump, returns to power) promising to restore America’s faded military glory through dangerous escalation.

Instead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/ukraine-is-the-latest-neocon-disaster/

 

PLEASE NOTE THAT A COUNTRY'S "TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY" IS a relative NOTION. in some conditions people matter first. THE PEOPLE OF THE DONBASS AND OF CRIMEA HAVE DECIDED TO SECEDED FROM THE FASCIST/NAZI KIEV GOVERNMENT — Nazi, even under Zelenskyy-y the liar. His Kiev government has decreed FASCIST laws to completely destroy the Russian culture which has been one of the core of Ukrainian existence... Scotland will hold a referendum to rejoin the EU community in October 2023. Yugoslavia was blown up by NATO into a variety of little countries and the USSR territorially disintegrated. In Africa, many countries were split back along tribal lines. the fighting still continues. Turkey is trying to steal Syrian lands, while Israel has stolen the Golan Heights... etc....

 

UKRAINE HAS LOST ITS RIGHTS TO THE FORMER TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY AS GRANTED BY THE USSR. THE DONBASS REGION WAS ALWAYS AN IN-BETWEENER.... and Crimea was RUSSIAN until gifted without the DOUMA approval, to Ukraine, for being a good "communist" country....

 

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the israel connection…...

 

BY Gordon Duff

 

After years of indiscriminate bombing of Syrian infrastructure by Israel, it was reported, in mid-May 2022 that Russia fired a “warning shot” S-300 missile “near” Israeli planes. These planes were attacking a military facility near Latakia and, as is generally the case, collateral damage, meaning dead civilians, are the norm.

In fact, I just received an intelligence report out of Amman, Jordan stating that the US has unleashed a massive program of recruitment and training of militants around the world to unleash on Syria, Iraq and Iran in coordination with Israel.

We also have confirmations that the war in Ukraine was orchestrated by Israel as well and that this move in the Middle East is part of the broader war plan that NATO is only a part of.

Intelligence sources only talk of the criminal network of “bankster oligarchs” that run NATO and hide their far more sinister goals behind “globalism” and fake security concerns.

But before getting into a touchy subject, such as Israel’s long history training and arming Nazi units in Ukraine against Crimea and Donbass/Lugansk, something else must be examined also.

Some years ago, I talked with my good friend Dmitri, who was with the Soviet 12th Directorate, an organization that investigates nuclear proliferation.

Dmitri told me the Mossad tried to recruit him to aid them in using specially built tactical nuclear weapons in terror attacks which were later confirmed, in highly classified documents, as “nuclear terrorism” by the IAEA.

Let me explain. Today, almost everything is “classified” and anything that walks and crawls has some kind of security clearance. Disinformation is often purposefully “classified” to make it seem real and to encourage leaks. This is a common practice.

Worse still, in recent years anything that comes out of the US State Department, Pentagon or Department of Justice is penned by political hacks generally working for the Israeli interest section that oversees the US government.

If you are unaware of this, you have been living under a rock since 9/11.

Two areas of real classified information impact today’s news. One is the use by the US, NATO and Israel of “retired” military officers to organize groups like Gladio or even ISIS and al Qaeda (terrorist organizations, both banned in Russia), even Boko Haram (also banned in Russia) and those Somali pirates we used to hear about.

The US loves curing the world’s problems, such as COVID 19 or perhaps even AIDS, even if it has to cause them itself.

As for the “officers,” we have seen claims made about Mariupol and an American admiral, a Canadian general and a selection of others, French, Poles and an Israel “commando” or two.

When we look into the immediate past for something confirmations, we find ourselves back in Syria, 2014 when the Delta Force supposedly “captured” the ISIS “oil minister.” It was really a retired American general, a commentator on Fox News, who was organizing the defense of Mosul for ISIS (banned in Russia) on behalf of the CIA. Delta got him out before Syrian Intelligence caught him.

Similarly, Iraqi militias captured an Israeli Brigadier. When I questioned their version of events, they sent me a copy of his ID card. Israel never denied and, in fact, paid $7 million secretly to get him back.

Similarly, back in January 2020, when a well-known “CIA Chief” was said to have been shot down over Afghanistan, there were denials but the famous “Michael ‘D’” was never seen again. The Taliban has passed along messages saying they have him. What is true? Certainly not the denials.

Then we have something more serious, the use of nuclear weapons, in most cases tied to Israel. This is other than the highly secret and well substantiated reports that Israel smuggled nuclear weapons into New York through the Teterboro Airport and used them on 9/11 to bring down the 3 towers. We have strong confirmations that the silly cover story that relatively cool burning kerosene/jet fuel “vaporizing” the WTC was written entirely “tongue in cheek” as comedy, laughing at how easy it is to pass off insane lies using America’s corrupt press.

Then we have the bombing of Beirut, blamed on stored fertilizer that managed, somehow, to mix itself into ANFO and burrow into the bedrock creating a crater identical to those made by nuclear bunker busters.

Back in 2013, a massive explosion outside Damascus caused ball lightning, something that only occurs during nuclear tests. From Pakistan Defense, a site not easily censored. This is a look into information not filtered for public consumption:

 

Did Syria Sink an Israeli Submarine? Was the Nuke Attack of May 4/5 Retaliation?
A story out of Syria claiming it sunk a German built nuclear armed submarine operated by the government of Israel has not only been partially confirmed, but that a fully confirmed nuclear attack on Syria is now believed to have been Israeli retaliation for that sinking.

It is reported that the Israeli Dolphin submarine, a German built diesel/electric craft, was attacked and sunk by a Syrian Navy torpedo boat at 2:30 AM, May 2, 2013 while at a depth of 150 meters. Prior to the sinking, a ship operated by Germany’s intelligence services had been in the area.

After the reported, or should we say “unreported” sinking of the Israeli submarine and the equally “unreported” nuclear attack on Syria, a large contingent of Russian naval vessels moved into area.

Evidence is piling up, backing this scenario as one where Russia was forced to use its military capabilities to stabilize the region and defuse a wider conflict.

The video analysis of the nuclear attack, two days after the reported sinking, is conclusive.

Video Removed/Censored

What had been in question was the “why?” There was no evidence that Syria had a target that would justify the risk of Israel using a nuclear weapon. Initial assumptions were that Syria may have had an underground nuclear facility but that proved to be groundless.

What drove Israel then?

Now we may well have the answer. The report came from Syria news. This is the publication that reported the use of chemical weapons by rebel forces on March 19 near Aleppo. They have legitimate sources, certainly more than any mainstream media, and report in a serious and credible manner.

There are also broad confirmations that Israel has lost an F-16 during the conflict.

This would be the second submarine Israel has lost. The former HMS Token, renamed the Dakar by Israel when it was given to them by Britain in 1967 “disappeared” with all hands. There has been broad speculation that the US Navy sunk the Dakar in retaliation for the Israeli attack that killed and wounded over 200 American sailors on the USS Liberty a year before. Israel now openly admits to attacking the Liberty, claiming that the United States was spying for Egypt during the 1967 Six Day War.

 

We also have IAEA confirmations that Israel and Saudi Arabia staged two nuclear attacks on Yemen as well. There are other reports of tactical nuclear weapons used at events such as the Khobar Towers and others, reports generated by the IAEA for extremely limited readership.

Conclusion

Where does this leave us?

We can safely assume that top NATO and Israeli officers not only trained Ukraine’s Nazi forces but trained and supplied ISIS and al Qaeda (both banned in Russia) as well. Not that both terror organization only attack enemies of Israel and the US.

Similarly, we have broad confirmations that chemical, and even biological weapons attacks have been staged, in Syria and elsewhere, by NATO and Israel. We can easily confirm that this process began in Angola and Namibia so long ago.

What can we safely believe?

That answer is simple. One can safely assume that the side that gains from the effort staged the effort.

One can begin by looking at how ISIS and al Qaeda are supposedly sworn enemies of Israel but have never attacked Israel nor has Israel ever attacked them.

In fact, year after year, Israel has used its missiles and air force to provide combat support for both ISIS and al Qaeda and any denial would be silly.

Why then is it never reported?

 

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/06/28/russia-and-israeli-exceptionalism/

 

 

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a failure….

Russia’s military assault on Ukraine is wreaking havoc on energy markets, dragging U.S. and European leaders into an economic quagmire that is upending plans to address climate change.

Just one example: Leaders of the wealthiest industrial democracies released a statement today that watered down earlier commitments to divest from fossil fuels, reports Sara Schonhardt.

They also called for new long-term investments in producing and shipping liquefied natural gas around the world, a move that speaks to how costly it would be to cut off the Russian spigot.

In one of their most attention-grabbing steps, the Group of Seven leaders who met in the Bavarian Alps agreed to seek a plan to cap the price of Russian oil.

But analysts are skeptical that it’s more than a rhetorical effort to wrest control of the world economy from major oil producers, with some saying it would only exacerbate the underlying problem.

“It’s like having too many beers at the ballpark and thinking you can drive home,” said Ed Hirs, energy fellow at the University of Houston. “Somebody call them an Uber.”

The pitch
The novel price cap, backed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is a way to avoid a full embargo of Russian oil after major oil-consuming countries fumbled their early efforts to strip Moscow of its petroleum lever. 

Rather than hamstringing Vladimir Putin’s regime, the embargo effort caused fuel prices to soar in the U.S. and Europe.

In theory, finding ways to enforce such a price cap plan would keep Russian oil flowing, but leave the Kremlin with a lot less cash.

One catch is that oil’s a huge, open market. Buyers have less leverage than sellers: Saudi-led OPEC still holds enough cards to keep prices high.

Here’s another catch: China and India.

“China’s an insatiable buyer,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for Oil Price Information Service. “They may decide they’re going to buy even more Russian oil.”

And low prices have a way of attracting customers, especially oil-dependent, price-sensitive buyers like India.

“The global oil market is very fluid. It's very dynamic. It's extremely complicated,” said Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But if you're offering deeply discounted crude, someone's gonna buy it.”

Energy transition, anyone?
For Europe, the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underscored the need to transition away from fossil fuels.

Some European countries say they’re willing to pay higher prices. They’re pushing to cut natural gas demand and promote new technologies like heat pumps.

But in the U.S., the response has been mixed. President Joe Biden has backed an increase in domestic fossil fuel production to lower the price.

“The signals have not been received in the same way on both sides of the Atlantic,” Cahill said.

Other summit reading — Our colleagues at POLITICO Europe offer this wrap-up: "A self-defeating G7 fails on all fronts."

 

READ MORE:

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2022/06/28/doubts-reign-on-russian-oil-price-cap-00042758

 

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