https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap9qK4J6zRU

Ukraine's Army in RUINS After Russia's DEVASTATING Blow | Scott Ritter

 

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. His new book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union, is his ninth.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

‘PROPAGANDA MATERIAL WILL NEED TO BE DISSEMINATED’

Whitehall officials and ministers connive with the BBC and the press during wars, to promote ‘propaganda’ to domestic and foreign audiences, declassified files show.

MARK CURTIS

 

Britain’s media is failing to report the true extent of UK support to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza. 

This is not the exception in Britain’s wars, but the rule. When Declassified revealed three years ago that the UK military had a secret team operating in Yemen, no British media outlet picked up the story.

Neither are the UK press or broadcasters showing how the government has been avoiding peace prospects in Ukraine. 

One reason the UK media fail to report independently is that they are regularly willing participants in Whitehall’s ‘media operations’, especially in wars. 

A major episode that sheds light on this is the 1991 Gulf war, on which some government files have now been declassified.

‘Themes need urgent amplification’

Iraq’s brutal tyrant Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, claiming it as a province under Baghdad’s control and brutally repressing its small population. 

The US and UK began a massive military build-up, deploying their forces to Saudi Arabia to prepare to oust Iraq from Kuwait. 

Alongside this military planning went extensive media operations. 

Soon after the invasion, prime minister Margaret Thatcher told her ministers to begin a “counter-propaganda” campaign against Iraq. 

“The main targets for a propaganda effort should be the Iraqi people, other Arabs sympathetic to Iraq and the wider Muslim world”, wrote Simon Gass, adviser to foreign secretary Douglas Hurd. 

Key themes would be that the crisis “is wholly Saddam Hussein’s fault because of the illegal and unjustified annexation of Kuwait” and “Saddam Hussein’s brutality”. 

“All these themes need urgent amplification. Propaganda material will need to be disseminated”, Gass wrote.

The following month, Stephen Wall, Hurd’s private secretary, noted the campaign should promote three key arguments. 

These were: to maintain sanctions against Iraq; to avoid “Arab/compromise solutions” on a negotiated settlement to the crisis; and “justifying presence [sic] of Western forces in the Gulf”. 

Propaganda success

The allied bombardment of Iraq that took place from January 1991 – known as Operation Desert Storm – was ferocious. Intense bombing struck electricity, water, health care and industrial facilities, killing tens of thousands of people. 

Yet the UK media covered the war in ways that would surely have delighted Whitehall planners. An academic study noted “a very successful campaign of mass persuasion by politicians, the media and others in favour of military action”. 

In particular, Saddam Hussein was portrayed as similar to Adolf Hitler and the war as against him personally rather than against the people of Iraq. 

The media pushed for war and were largely against negotiations, and then proceeded to support the devastating mass bombing campaign as it unfolded.

Des Freedman, professor of media at Goldsmiths, told us: “News coverage of the 1991 Gulf War was heavily stage-managed with a cast of military spin doctors, PR consultants and compliant journalists. 

“UK media largely lapped up the narrative that this was a just war against an evil dictator, precisely as Whitehall had hoped. Headlines reproduced military boasts of precision bombing and cruise missiles that could turn left at traffic lights and minimised the terrible impact for civilians.” 

He added: “Coverage was sanitised not simply because of pressure from the military but also because of editorial decisions taken to ‘protect’ readers and viewers from the catastrophic impact of the Allied attacks.”

New world order

When Douglas Hurd placed an article in the Mail in January 1991, he was allowed to write: “No one wants war” and to claim that “ a new world order of peace, trust and security” might begin if the UK took further military action. 

It was obvious nonsense. In private, officials knew what was coming. Charles Powell noted on 22 October that “we envisage massive destruction of military and strategic targets in Iraq by air action”. 

US defence secretary Richard Cheney told Thatcher in a meeting on 15 October that plans for military bombardment “did not exclude attacking targets which could effect [sic] the civilian population like dams and power stations”.

The interests of the Iraqi people appear little in the available files, as far as I could see, and were rarely the concern of mainstream media coverage either, in 1991 as now in 2024. 

‘Positive information campaign’

To promote their ‘positive information campaign’, as it was called, officials undertook activities such as “the supply of material to the press”, distributing videos to television broadcasters, and producing radio material to place with foreign broadcasters.

Also important was “placing in the press in target areas articles signed by ministers and articles commissioned through the COI” – the Central Office of Information (a government communications agency that was closed in 2011). Another aspect was “placing on TV stations in target areas specially prepared TV material”. 

“We continue to place material about the government’s policy with radio stations in the Gulf area”, Wall noted in October. “The local media in the UAE and Egypt, among others, have made wide use of our output”, the Foreign Office observed. 

By October 1990, as the military build-up increased, government information officers produced three television programmes about the occupation of Kuwait. “The whole series is being shown on the main evening news in Egypt and has been widely used elsewhere”, a Foreign Office report noted. 

British targets

In his August 1990 letter on the UK’s “propaganda effort”, Gass wrote that “the British press can best be targeted through briefings to reliable Middle East experts. A list is being drawn up”. 

This was in a section referring to “overt” activities. The next paragraph is then censored, and is likely entitled “covert”. 

The UK files are heavily weeded and do not cover the actions of the UK intelligence services, which remain censored. It is impossible to know what covert media operations were undertaken and what if any false information UK planners put into the public domain. 

Ahead of the bombing campaign, Douglas Hurd agreed to “brief senior journalists on the Gulf”, and identified six, each to be given a half hour session. These included the editors of the Times, Daily Telegraph and Economist. 

By this time, the Foreign Office’s Information Department was noting it had produced two videos about the “array of weapons being assembled in the Gulf region” and Iraq’s destruction of Kuwait. 

It hoped these would be “useful for briefing contacts in the British media” and that overseas distribution had been done to over 60 countries.

A particular domestic target is noted in the files. “British Muslims remain very susceptible to arguments for a compromise solution [to the conflict]; they are concerned that hostilities will divide their loyalties to Britain and the wider Muslim community”, a Foreign Office report in October 1990 had noted. 

Three months later, government information officers were fixing meetings with “Middle East and other Moslem correspondents in London and editors of newspapers serving the Moslem communities in the UK [sic]”. 

‘Arab audiences can be reached through the BBC’

In Whitehall’s campaign, the BBC would play a crucial role. “Wider Arab audiences can be reached through the BBC, the Arabic press and the British press”, Gass wrote. He added that “we are already in close touch with the BBC and have set up weekly briefing sessions with them”. 

“The Arabic service are helpfully finding Arab and Islamic voices to put the case against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. We can help them do this.” 

Ministers were adamant the BBC should tow the government’s line. Soon after Iraq’s invasion, the BBC World Service reported two expatriates saying their impressions were that UK and US diplomats had left Kuwait after Iraq’s invasion or were on leave. 

Thatcher was “incensed” by the BBC’s report and instructed foreign minister William Waldegrave to “take it up at the highest level with the BBC and insist upon a public apology”. 

Thus the foreign minister “spoke in strong terms” to senior BBC executives David Witherow and John Tusa saying these claims were “utterly fallacious and that before publicising them the BBC should have checked with the Foreign Office”. 

The note of this conversation, by Waldegrave’s private secretary, Dominic Asquith, observed that “Mr Tusa agreed that a refutation would appear in the 4pm World Service news report today. This has indeed happened”. 

By September 1990, one aspect of the UK’s “overseas propaganda operations” noted by officials was “additional BBC World Service output”. The Arabic Service had been extended by one and a half hours a day and the World Service was carrying regular reports on British citizens in Kuwait.    

 

Mark Curtis is the director of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

 

https://www.declassifieduk.org/propaganda-material-will-need-to-be-disseminated/

 

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

What’s Wrong with Boris Johnson’s Plan to “Save” Ukraine?

Brian Berletic

 

A September 21, 2024 article published in The Spectator written by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson titled, “It’s time to let Ukraine join NATO,” attempts to formulate a theory of victory for Ukraine as war with Russia continues to grind on.

 

Johnson provides a “three-fold plan for Ukrainian victory.” 

Johnson demands that the collective West “end the delays” and that the West “get it done and get it won.” By this, he means lifting all restrictions on the use of Western long-range weapons on pre-2014 Russian territory.

Next, he demands the US and Europe provide a “package of loans on the scale of Lend-Lease: half a trillion dollars,” or “even a trillion.” Johnson claims such support will send a message to the Kremlin that, “we are going to out-gun you financially and back Ukraine on a scale you cannot hope to match.” 

Western personnel have already been operating in Ukraine since 2014 and have continued to do so throughout Russia’s Special Military Operation

Finally, he demands Ukraine be allowed membership into NATO immediately, even as the conflict rages on. In respect to NATO’s Article 5 regarding “collective defense,” Johnson proposes that:

…we could extend the Article 5 security guarantee to all the Ukrainian territory currently controlled by Ukraine (or at the end of this fighting season), while reaffirming the absolute right of the Ukrainians to the whole of their 1991 nation. We could protect most of Ukraine, while simultaneously supporting the Ukrainian right to recapture the rest.

While Johnson points out the political implications of this policy, meaning all of NATO would, “have to commit to the defence of that Ukrainian territory,” he falls far short of considering the practical implications.

NATO Intervention in Ukraine: Political vs.  Practical Considerations 

Far from a lack of political will or financial resources, the collective West has fallen short supplying Ukraine with the military equipment, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition required to match or exceed Russian military capabilities because its collective military industrial base itself is incapable of physically producing the quantities required, regardless of the money allotted to do so.

Military industrial production requires several fundamental factors in order to be expanded – financial resources being only one of many.  Expanding production also requires the physical enlargement of existing facilities, the building of new facilities, the expansion of trained workforces which includes reforming and expanding primary, secondary, and specialized education, as well as the expansion of downstream suppliers and the acquisition of additional raw materials required for production across the entire industrial base.

Any one of these measures could take years to implement. Implementing them all would take longer still.

Then there is the very structure of the collective West’s military industrial base. Consisting of corporations prioritizing the maximization of profits, not performance, the collective West’s military industrial base has for years focused on low quantities of highly-sophisticated (and very expensive) weapons systems and munitions.

For the duration of the so-called “Global War on Terror” these weapon systems were adequate, if inefficient. They enabled US-led forces to roll over the antiquated, poorly-trained, poorly-equipped Iraqi army in 1991 and again in 2003, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. Such weapon systems also proved effective in the destruction of Libya in 2011.

But as the global balance of military and economic power has shifted throughout the 21st century, limits to this military industrial approach became apparent. In 2006, Israel’s vast Western-backed military machine categorically failed in its invasion of southern Lebanon, confounded by Hezbollah leveraging modern anti-tank weapons.

The US intervention in Syria from 2011 to present day also revealed the growing limitations of expensive Western military hardware, with 100s of cruise missiles fired at targets across Syria with limited success due to vastly better air and missile defenses than previous US adversaries possessed.

The Western media now admits waning US military support for Ukraine stems from dwindling stockpiles and an inability to quickly expand production.

CNN in its September 17, 2024 article titled, “US military aid packages to Ukraine shrink amid concerns over Pentagon stockpiles,” would admit:

US military aid packages for Ukraine have been smaller in recent months, as the stockpiles of weapons and equipment that the Pentagon is willing to send Kyiv from its own inventory have dwindled. The shift comes amid concerns about US military readiness being impacted as US arms manufacturers play catchup to the huge demand created by the war against Russia.

Nothing took place between September 17, 2024 when CNN published this report and September 21, 2024 when The Speculator published Boris Johnson’s article to change this reality. Johnson simply chose to ignore it.

NATO committing to the defense of Ukrainian-held territory would require sufficient quantities of artillery, armor, air and missile defense systems, and trained manpower – all of which the collective West, not just Ukraine, has in short supply.

In many ways, the collective West is already waging war against Russian forces. Western personnel have already been operating in Ukraine since 2014 and have continued to do so throughout Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) from 2022 onward. Russia has not hesitated to target and destroy Western equipment or the Western personnel operating it, though Russia has managed escalation very carefully in the process.

Were NATO to more openly intervene in what is already a NATO proxy war against Russia, Russian forces would likely continue targeting all of Ukraine’s territory while continuing to manage escalation carefully. NATO itself could escalate, using its long-range missiles and air power against Russian forces both within Ukraine and within pre-2014 Russian borders, but this would present two major problems.

First, if the West is already out of long-range weapons to transfer to Ukraine, its stockpiles having dwindled to critical levels, and having failed to expand production to reconstitute to them should any contingency of any kind fully deplete them, a more direct role in Ukraine would consume what arms and ammunition the West has left with no means of replacing them in the near-term.

Second, whatever impact the collective West imagines using the remnants of its arms and ammunition on Russia directly will have, it will leave the West far short of any material capabilities to conduct large scale war anywhere else in the world, including in the Middle East against Iran and its allies and across the Asia-Pacific region against China – two areas of concern Johnson himself mentions in his article.

Boris Johnson claims:

If you are truly worried about ‘escalation’, then imagine what happens if Ukraine loses this war – because that is when things really would begin to escalate. Ukraine won’t lose but if it did, we would have the risk of escalation across the whole periphery of the former Soviet empire, including the border with Poland, wherever Putin thought that aggression would pay off. 

We would probably see escalation in the South China seas and in the Middle East. We would see a general escalation of global tension and violence because a Ukrainian defeat, and a victory for Putin, would be not only a tragedy for a young, brave and beautiful country; it would mean the global collapse of western credibility.

What Johnson means by “western credibility,” is Western primacy. By “escalation in the South China seas and in the Middle East,” Johnson means regional players displacing unwarranted US-led occupation and interference. Johnson’s plan to commit the West’s waning military power to Ukraine means forfeiting the means to cling to primacy elsewhere around the globe.

Johnson’s plan to incorporate Ukraine into NATO would not be a master stroke up-ending Russia’s escalation dominance, it would be the forfeiture of NATO’s own escalatory leverage regarding Article 5. Success for NATO would depend entirely on Russia failing to call the West’s bluff and avoiding the targeting of Ukrainian territory once NATO intervenes directly.

A very similar strategy was used in Syria by the United States as a means to reverse the flagging fortunes of its proxies there. The US, instead, at most managed to create a stalemate. Over the past nearly 10 years the US has occupied eastern Syria, its position in Syria as well as in the rest of the region has waned.

Part of this stems from the US’ inability to field a large enough military force, armed with sufficient numbers of arms and munitions. US air and missile defense systems in particular are in short supply and have opened up US forces in Syria and Iraq to regular drone, rocket, and missile strikes, compromising US military supremacy in the region.

By stretching US and European military power out even thinner by committing large numbers of troops and equipment to a direct intervention in Ukraine only means accelerating the decline of US-led Western primacy around the globe even faster.

Johnson’s plan to “save” Ukraine is borne of desperation, predicated on either a poor understanding of the fundamental factors required for its success, or deliberately ignoring these factors.

It is also a plan born of a lack of imagination. For Boris Johnson and the Western special interests he represents, the only possible future for humanity is one dominated by the West, just as it has done for the past several centuries.

The ultimate irony, however, is Johnson’s mention of a “Soviet empire” he claims Russian President Vladimir Putin is intent on rebuilding. At one point, Johnson claims:

The message is: that’s it. It’s over. You don’t have an empire anymore. You don’t have a ‘near abroad’ or a ‘sphere of influence’. You don’t have the right to tell the Ukrainians what to do, any more than we British have the right to tell our former colonies what to do. It is time for Putin to understand that Russia can have a happy and glorious future, but that like Rome and like Britain, the Russians have decisively joined the ranks of the post-imperial powers, and a good thing, too.

Yet, the conflict in Ukraine stems directly from NATO expansion toward Russia’s borders. It was never a matter of Russia telling Ukraine what to do – it was always a matter of the US politically capturing Ukraine in 2014 and transforming it into a national security threat to Russia from 2014 onward.

Russia is responding to the expansion of a modern-day empire – not in any sort of effort to create its own empire. The empire Russia opposes in Ukraine is the same empire Johnson fears will be challenged in the Middle East and the South China Sea should its proxy war fail in Ukraine. While Johnson accuses Russia of being out of touch with reality regarding imagined imperial ambitions in Moscow, his plan reflects very real delusions associated with a desperate desire to perpetuate the US-led “international order” the UK itself is so deeply invested in.

Boris Johnson’s attempt to build policy regarding the West’s proxy war in Ukraine without a sufficient foundation is a recipe for disaster – the same sort of disaster this proxy war in Ukraine has precipitated that Johnson’s desperate plans are meant to address in the first place.

 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”

 

https://journal-neo.su/2024/09/29/whats-wrong-with-boris-johnsons-plan-to-save-ukraine/

 

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.