Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance?

Hysterics at the Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. – taken to volume 11 – through scrambling a hush-hush Raptor jet (F-22) to ‘pop’ it, and then bally-hooing the ‘pop’ as Raptor’s first ever ‘air-to-air kill’, may be a source for quiet derision around the world, yet paradoxically this seemingly trivial event may cast a long shadow over the U.S. war-timetable for Ukraine.

For it is the U.S. political calendar that may yet determine what happens next in Ukraine – from the western side.

Seemingly nothing important occurred – it was an instant of spy frenzy, leaving Biden’s ‘tough task’ unchanged: He needs to convince the American voter, facing collapsing standards of living, that they misread the ‘runes’; that rather than gloom, the economy – contrary to their lived experience – is ‘working well for them’.

Biden needs to perform this magic against polls that say only 16% of Americans feel better off since the start of his tenure, and 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters wish him to not stand in 2024. Significantly, this message is coming today from the Democratic-leaning media, suggesting thoughts of replacing him are already in circulation.

For now, Biden’s allies in the party establishment (the DNC) continue to clear the way for his candidature – postponing initial primaries (in which Biden could be expected to be trounced) for a later South Carolina primary election, where Black and Latino voters would reflect demographics in which Biden might (possibly) shine. It may work; it may not.

Simply put, against this highly sceptical Party backdrop, Biden will have to change American perceptions of the economy at a moment when many indicators signal further deterioration. It will be a ‘heavy lift’. The economic team, for sure, will be insisting: ‘Keep the focus on economic achievements! We don’t want distractions from any foreign policy débacles; We do not want the TV debates to centre on Balloons, or around Abrams tanks: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’’.

The ‘Chinese balloon’ was popped, yes, but similarly popped was Team Biden’s hope to negotiate a limited understanding with a tetchy President Xi that could stop China tensions becoming a spoiler issue in the primary debates. The balloon incident obliged the U.S. to cancel Blinken’s appointment with Xi (even though such a meeting with the head of state would be a rare event).

The powerful ‘China hawk’ faction in the U.S. was ecstatic. The China balloon ‘kill’ inadvertently, and in an instant, elevated China to ‘Main Threat’. It was the chance for these hawks to ‘pivot’ foreign policy back from Ukraine and Russia – to fully focus on China.

They make the case that Ukraine was ‘eating’ too much of America’s arms inventory. It was leaving America vulnerable; already, it would take years for the U.S. to make up for this equipment loss by reinstating weapons supply-lines. And there is ‘no time to spare’. The military ‘deterrence fence’ around China has to be in place – ASAP.

Naturally, the tight neo-con circle around Biden – some of whom have invested in the ‘Destroy Russia’ project for decades – is not ready to ‘let go’ the Ukraine project, for China.

Yet, the Ukraine narrative ‘bubble’ has been punctured, and has been leaking helium for some time. The Beltway – and even the MSM narrative – has pirouetted from ‘Russia losing’ to an ‘Ukrainian defeat is inevitable’. Indeed, Kiev is defeated, and is hanging by the slenderest of threads.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s senior adviser and former ‘spin doctor’ in the Presidential office, speaking in late January this year, was candid in his assessment:

“If everyone thinks that we are guaranteed to win the war, then it is very unlikely. Since January 14, it has ceased to be like this. What do you think, that the assessment from the President of Poland, Duda, not only did he say this about the decisive months. That it is generally unknown whether Ukraine will survive …

“The war may not end as the Ukrainians expect, and as a result, Ukraine may not return all its territories, and the West is ready to follow such a scenario … What will happen to the society that raised its expectations too high, but will receive a conditional Minsk-3? This recoil of unfulfilled expectations will hit us so hard – morally and everything else – that we will simply be stunned.

“The way out of this war may not be at all what it seemed to us three months ago, after the success of the Kherson operation. And not because the insidious Americans do not give weapons or delay, but because success requires 400 thousand of perfectly trained soldiers with NATO weapons to grind it all up and liberate the territories. Do we have it? No. Will it be next year? Will not be. There will not be enough training facilities…

“We as a society are not ready for such an outcome. I decided to say it as the expectation of the Russian side. But the most unpleasant thing is that in the West they think the same way, and we are totally dependent on them. What should the West do? The scenario of two Koreas. Create South Korea with guarantees”, Arestovich said, adding that with this option, Ukraine can get a lot of bonuses.

Put bluntly, if Biden is to avoid a repeat of the humiliating Afghan débacle, America needs urgently to to move-on before the 2024 Presidential calendar kicks-off this summer – with Ukraine/Russia sucking all the oxygen out from the coming economic debates.

But that is not what is happening. Victoria Nuland – who has been ‘capo’ in Kiev for a decade – is overseeing a purge: Unreliables are ‘out’, and pro-American radical Ukrainian hawks are ‘in’. It is a make-over of the Kiev mafia, which leaves Zelensky without friends – and wholly dependent on Washington. It looks to be preparation for the U.S. to attempt a double-down in Ukraine.

Seymour Hersh’s detailed article on the backdrop to the Nordstream pipeline sabotage by the U.S., on which Hersh worked for many months (though his assertions have been denied by the White House), tells us something highly significant.

All the familiar, anti-Russia neo-cons (Nuland, Sullivan and Blinken) were part of the Nordstream sabotage plot – but the impulse for it came from Biden. He led it. And just to be plain, Biden is just as emotionally invested in Ukraine as his team mates; it is likely that he too cannot ‘let go’ in Ukraine.

BUT, doubling down now, in Ukraine, won’t work for Biden. It would be highly reckless (although the Nordstream plot was nothing, if not reckless).

Doubling-down will not bring his hoped-for ‘win’, because its logic is based on an egregious mis-analysis.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s former ‘spin doctor’ and adviser, has described the circumstance of the Russian SMO first entry into Ukraine: It was conceived as a bloodless mission and should have passed without casualties, he says. “They tried to wage a smart war… Such an elegant, beautiful, lightning-fast special operation, where polite people, without causing any damage to either a kitten or a child, eliminated the few who resisted. They didn’t want to kill anyone: Just sign the renunciation”.

The point here is that what occurred was political miscalculation by Moscow – and not military failure. The initial aim of the SMO didn’t work. No negotiations resulted. Yet from it flowed two major consequences: NATO controllers pounced on this interpretation to trumpet their pre-conceived bias that Russia was militarily weak, backward and stumbling. That misreading underlay how NATO perceived Russia would prosecute the war.

It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.

On the presumption of weakness, however, NATO switched plans from a planned guerrilla insurgency, to conventional war along the ‘Zelensky Defence Lines’ – thus opening the path for Russia’s artillery domination to attrit Ukraine’s forces to the point of entropy. It is an error that cannot be rectified. And to try it might just lead to WW3.

The Abrams M1 tank will not save Biden from débacle in the lead-up to the U.S. election debates: 

“It was designed for the kind of tank-on-tank combat that hasn’t happened since WW2. It’s huge, expensive, full of sorts of electronics. And powered by a repurposed jet engine. It breaks down quickly and needs its own army of mechanics, runs out of gas quickly and at almost 70 tonnes, it is too heavy to cross most bridges and needs specialized bridge crossing equipment. And it sinks in the mud. The Saudis used Abrams tanks in Yemen – and lost 20 to the Houthis, not exactly the most sophisticated military force”.

So, how does this all pan out? Well, the fight is on – in Washington. The China hawks will try to wrench the U.S.’ full attention back to China. The Biden neo-cons may try for some escalatory tactic in Ukraine that makes war with Russia unstoppable.

However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged (albeit, with the compulsion to avoid seeming ‘defeatist’ – that persists in certain quarters). They know too that the NATO (as ‘formidable force’) ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.

The consequences are the risk of severe U.S. reputational damage, the longer the war persists. These circles do not want that. Perhaps they will conclude that Biden is not the man to lead the U.S. out of this blind alley – that he is the part of the problem, and not the solution. If so, he must be gone in good time for the Democrats to work out who they want to lead them into the 2024 Presidential election (no easy prospect).

They may sense too, that the 2024 campaign lines already are coalescing for the Republican Party, which has its own reading of the Ukraine débacle – ‘Let’s exit from Ukraine to confront China’ (with full bi-partisan support). This means firstly, that the thread of U.S. financial support for Ukraine – as Bill Burns (CIA chief) reportedly told Zelensky on his last visit – likely will taper this summer. And secondly, it hints that any bi-partisan support for further arming Kiev may be over by the time the primary season will be in full swing.

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance? Burns, the long-standing U.S. quiet negotiator, is not party to the Nuland programme. The former said at Georgetown Universityin early February that “China remains the biggest geopolitical challenge the U.S. faces in the decades ahead, and the biggest priority for CIA”. His framing, ‘was not a bug, but the substance’ in his address.

Nuland may be planting U.S.-aligned hawks around Zelensky in order to continue the war, but there are other, wider interests within Washington. Financial circles are worried about a market collapse that could lead to the dollar haemorrhaging value. There are worries too, that the Ukraine war is contributing to a serious weakening of America’s standing in the world. And there are concerns that a reckless Team Biden could lose control and take the U.S. into a wider war with Russia.

In any event, time is short. The Election Calendar looms. Is Biden to be the Democratic candidate? Whether or not he will be a candidate in 2024 needs to be resolved before the early primaries to allow any successor to demonstrate his or her paces in good time.

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All the signs were there for American journalists to arrive at the conclusion of Hersh. But they didn’t, fearing this would be an anti-patriotic act.

What does Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan all have in common? These are all countries which either have vast energy reserves – or are believed to have them but are untapped – and whose regimes don’t fall in line with U.S. hegemony and its American leaders’ demands. Or, in other words, they are countries which have been invaded and bombed, or at the very least in the case of Iran sanctioned (which is a form of warfare) due to their resistance to let Uncle Sam have cut price oil and gas, which in some cases in effect is intended to be free.

And all these countries are a stain on U.S. hegemony and its floundering model, as they have all been failed interventions which have cost America dearly.

The theme is always the same for U.S. intervention as energy keeps coming up time and time again as the basis of its policies. And pipelines. This word is really the one keyword which we see emerge repeatedly in this dark area of America’s post-war history.

And so it should come as little surprise that in Seymour Hersh’s excellent investigative piece recently, that the award-winning journalist lifts the lid on the Biden administration and shows the whole world just how much American presidents lie while in office, not only to the world but to those who vote for them. Biden planned the attacks on the two Russia pipelines Nord Stream meticulously for months, probably from his inauguration into office in January 2021 and, in fact, was not even discreet about keeping his intentions from public view.

In fact, Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had even talked openly about their loathing of these pipelines which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in north-eastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.

In many ways, Hersh’s epic investigation shouldn’t have even come about as if U.S. journalists had done their job correctly, they would have joined up all the dots, right from the Biden’s first days in office when Ted Cruz was banging on the drum to do something about these pipelines, to later on when both Biden and his undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland practically admitted to journalists that the pipelines were in the Biden administration’s crosshairs. All the signs were there for American journalists to arrive at the conclusion of Hersh. But they didn’t, fearing this would be an anti-patriotic act and that it would be easier to stay in the comfort zone of accusing Russia of the act and deriving the internet traffic which is spurned. Amazing that not one singular American hack could be heard asking “why would Putin blow up his own pipelines, when he could just turn off the tap?”.

Hersh’s fascinating and detailed piece is a mark of stellar journalism for its detail alone. He has access to a bevy of highly placed officials in the military and intelligence community who give him blow by blow excruciating accounts of the covert operation by U.S. navy divers to place the bombs on the four pipelines off the coast of a Danish island during an annual NATO exercise but leave the explosives and the technology to detonate them in sleep mode to be activated months later at the right moment of Biden’s choosing. The right moment, of course, needed to give Biden maximum plausible deniability and fool the American people that, when ultimately the truth came out that it was the U.S. which did it, there was good cause. And what could be that justification? Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, of course. Biden didn’t have to wait for long.

On February 7, less than three weeks before the invasion, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who typical to his craven character “wobbled” as Hersh put it before getting on board Biden’s plans. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Even Nuland had spoken earlier about the pipeline, but again, no U.S. journalists feared to report the obvious steps which were clearly being taken to go ahead with what many will call a blatant act of war against Russia.

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland said the same at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

It’s as though Biden knew, through years of experience as Obama’s Vice President that covert operations which the U.S. carries out seldom remain secret for too many years and so prepared the ground. The invasion by Putin would satisfy his NATO partners and the U.S. people that it was a correct response aimed at a double whammy of reducing Putin’s oil and gas revenues and breaking Germany’s dependency of cheap gas which was fuelling its formidable economy. Add to that, American LPG producers could clean up with new contracts to supply many European countries while Europe is pushed to its knees and looks to the U.S. as the dominant leaders once again since the end of the second world war.

There are so many questions now which arise from the epic Hersh piece and we should not be surprised by the character assassination by the U.S. establishment which will follow in the coming weeks. But the sheer level of greed and Machiavellian thinking behind the navy operation will not resonate well with Global South countries, in particular Africa, whose leaders will be disgusted by the rank desperation of America to hold on to its superpower status as its hegemony is failing and its elite in Washington struggle to accept a new multipolar world is emerging.

Was the long-term plan by Biden and his chief advisers to push Putin towards the trap of invading Ukraine? Was the invasion itself really all about destroying the pipelines and cleaning up on the profits? Biden’s naked lust to boost the U.S. economy at the expense of Europe’s sacrifice and suffering is clear. But even Biden couldn’t have planned or expected that the EU sanctions against Russia would so sensationally backfire on EU governments. Presently, there is a certain air of desperation by the Europeans who want an end to the war in Ukraine as they have woken up to the idea that the war of attrition plan only works in America’s favour and not Europe’s?

In recent days, there have been reports of the Ukraine government staging false flag attacks on one particular town where western journalists have already been bussed into and hospitals have been evacuated of staff, warned by Kiev. Such false flag attacks might increase the pressure on the west to use longer-range artillery on Russian targets and convince world leaders that they need to increase the support with both tanks and aircraft. There has even been in recent days debate at NATO level of “boots on the ground”, an idea considered unpalatable for so long given that this would amount to a full-out WWIII scenario pushing Putin to consider ballistic and even nuclear options with any western country a legitimate target.

But this frenzied new level of action and dialogue is not born from a feeling that victory is near for the West. Quite the opposite. It’s more a panic that victory is more far than ever before and European countries cannot sustain the longer game, while Uncle Sam just gets fatter and richer as each day passes. The Hersh piece is a must read for anyone who needs convincing that nearly everything we see and read about the Ukraine war from western media is really at best dismally sloppy and partisan reporting or at worst just a baptism of tawdry lies.

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https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/11/biden-blew-up-nord-stream-pipelines-but-did-he-allow-the-ukraine-war-go-ahead-justify-covert-operation/

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By Tom Fowdy

For the past week or so, the United States has been in the grip of rampant paranoia over what it has termed as a "Chinese spy balloon" and the alleged sighting of several other "unidentified flying objects". As a show of force, and in a display of domestic political theater, the Joe Biden administration has been shooting them down.

These objects, portrayed as threats to the national security of the United States, are being used to weaponize mass hysteria with a view to push a sporadic anti-China agenda, as the Biden administration strives to push US defence spending up to unprecedented levels, and rope in allies to militarily and strategically contain Beijing.

Recognizing how the US weaponizes fear, mass hysteria and paranoia in pursuit of its goals is key to understanding US politics as a whole. While in theory, the US is a decentralized federal democracy with many layers of government, the historical trajectory of the last half of the 20th century has conditioned a dramatic centralization of power in lieu of the challenges the country faced while emerging as a hegemonic state, including the Cold War, the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, the "global war on terror", and now the struggle against China.

Simply put, in order to strengthen unity and build a consensus on the US' international goals in a deeply divided country, American statecraft has veered toward weaponizing fear and mass hysteria to sustain its agenda and power amid the rise of mass media. The US, after all, is a populous and diverse country which, throughout its history, has sought to hold together the entire population under one ideology despite the vast socioeconomic and ethnic fractures that were once enough to trigger a full-blown civil war.

These factors have created a structural arrangement through which the US leadership strives to centralize power in a decentralized country, and likewise must secure democratic consent for policies which, by and large, are hegemonic including those promoting endless wars and encouraging political interferences in other countries' internal affairs.

And to do so, US politicians have learned to cultivate paranoia, drama and mass hysteria as a means to drive the political agenda and consensuses in their direction, by creating constant fear of a given "other" which in each scenario, threatens the "exceptional" ideology and values of the US.

In doing so, the US constantly exaggerates and amplifies the perceived threat to its national security, interference in its internal affairs by, or the ill intentions of, its designated opponents in a bid to mandate public consent for its aggressive foreign policies. This includes highly dubious allegations of spying, espionage and subversion.

The US portrays its enemies as all-powerful, all-threatening and omniscient actors far beyond their real capabilities, which it uses to spread panic among Americans, prompting them to believe they "must act now" against it. Such portrayals include manufactured news such as Saddam Hussein possessing "weapons of mass destruction", the Democratic People's Republic of Korea planning to "launch a nuclear strike against the US", "Russia interfering in US elections" and "China purportedly spying on the US" in a whole range of areas.

The spy-balloon and UFO drama is being used by the administration and the Pentagon to manufacture support for increased defence spending and mass militarization. Last year, the Biden administration weaponized the events in Ukraine to reorient its foreign policy to much more aggressively contain China militarily.

The Biden administration places greater emphasis on the encirclement of China by deepening its alliances with other countries, which is more belligerent and provocative than the policy of the Donald Trump administration, which despite its "America First" policy was not so militaristic. This helps the administration to seek domestic support for even higher military spending, and spread the same paranoia and fear into other countries to lock them into the strategic agenda it is setting.

The US has found in the balloon controversy the perfect pitch for such a narrative, reminding us once again that the calibration of orchestrated drama and fear is a critical aspect of the US' hegemonic foreign policy. Using this fear, the US strives to raise the stakes of ideological confrontation and pretend every foreign policy issue is a "do or die" moment for the country.

This has transformed US politics into a hotbed of paranoia, irrationality and instability which poses risks to the security and stability of the world at large.

The author is a British political and international relations analyst. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

If you have a specific expertise, or would like to share your thought about our stories, then send us your writings at [email protected], and [email protected].

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Air defense systems near Kiev allegedly detected and shot down as many as six air balloons believed to have been used by Russia, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military claimed during a televised appearance on Wednesday.

According to Yuri Ignat, the balloons, which were detected flying above the Ukrainian capital, may have been equipped with reconnaissance equipment meant to identify and exhaust Kiev’s air defense systems.

Kiev city officials also announced on their Telegram channel that the balloons, which appear to have been propelled by the wind, may have been carrying corner reflectors and other intelligence equipment. They noted that a final determination of the intended use of these devices would be made after a study of the remains of the downed objects.

While Moscow has yet to comment on the incident, Ignat told a Ukrainian TV channel that the balloons may be a new tactic deployed by Russia to preserve its stocks of reconnaissance drones

"Reconnaissance drones like the Orlan-10 are now being used more sparingly, and so they thought 'Why don't we use these balloons?' So now they are using them," the official said.

Earlier on Wednesday, air raid sirens were triggered throughout the Kiev region after unidentified flying objects were detected above the city. Shortly after the alert, explosions could be heard across the capital. City officials later stated that air defense systems detected several targets in the air and shot them down.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/571543-ukraine-russian-baloons-kiev/

Western officials should stop making accusations regarding the alleged spy balloons recently shot down over North America, and instead first figure out the full story, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters, Peskov was asked to comment on remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who claimed on Monday that the unmanned flying objects downed over the US and Canada could be “part of a pattern where China but also Russia are increasing their intelligence and surveillance activities against NATO allies.” 

“Regarding this balloon issue, which the whole of America is dwelling on, willingly or unwillingly, I doubt that anybody should be blamed,” Peskov said. “It would be better if the Americans figured it out on their own.” 

The presidential press secretary went on to describe NATO as “a hostile organization.” The US-led military bloc “reaffirms its hostility every day, and is doing its best to signal its involvement in the conflict over Ukraine as clearly as possible,” Peskov added.

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