Cold war

Russia says half its gold assets were frozen – is this for real or a slick play by Moscow? Photo Credit: The Cradle Pepe Escobar March 29, 2022 The Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union and China just agreed to design the mechanism for an independent financial and monetary system that would bypass dollar transactions. Originally posted on The Cradle on March 15, 2022 here It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed. After a recent video conference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For all practical purposes, the idea comes from Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s...

Jan Oberg March 22, 2022 A Danish version of this on Oberg’s blog Self-righteous spinal hatred, the inner Russophobic swine dog as well as lawlessness in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will harm the Western world itself and hasten its decline and fall The term “inner swine dog” means, according to the English dictionary, “Malicious, hateful drive, which hides behind a person’s apparently friendly and tolerant exterior”. This dog, which can belong to both elites and the masses, has been let loose in recent weeks among both high and low along the political spectrum. There no longer seems to be any limit to what can be said about Russians and Russia – even without a comparative perspective – and what can be done to isolate the country and its people economically, culturally, socially, financially and in the media. All with reference to Russia’s – foolishly over-reacting – invasion of...

Image Credit: Creative Commons. Dave Majumdar March 18, 2022 The ultimate what-if? As strange as it seems, in 1954 when the United States and the Soviet Union were settling into a pattern of Cold War hostilities, the Kremlin actually proposed to join the NATO alliance on March 31 of that year.  The Soviets made the pitch for NATO membership after the Kremlin’s proposal for a pan-European collective security treaty at the Berlin Conference of Foreign Ministers in February 1954 was shot down by Western powers. While the Soviets expected to be rejected – and they were – Moscow considered it to be a win-win proposition. Originally published at The National Interest “Most likely, the organizers of the North Atlantic bloc will react negatively to this step of the Soviet government and will advance many different objections. In that event the governments of the three powers will have exposed themselves, once...

Aaron Maté March 18, 2022 After backing a far-right coup in 2014, the US has fueled a proxy war in Eastern Ukraine that has left 14,000 dead. Russia’s invasion is an illegal and catastrophic response. “The United States aids Ukraine and her people,” Adam Schiff declared in January 2020, “so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” Schiff made this statement during the opening of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, where the Democratic Party’s bid to ensure unimpeded US weapons sales to Ukraine was presented, and widely accepted, as a valiant defense of US democracy and national security. Originally published at mate.substack.com Two years later, the US use of Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” has reached its logical end-game: illegally, murderously, and catastrophically, Russia has invaded Ukraine to end the fight. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the UN Charter. Without UN authorization, states...

Wikimedia map of NATO expansion since 1949 created by Patrickneil.  Bryce Greene March 18, 2022 Originally posted on FAIR.org on March 4, 2022 Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.” It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.” The “unprovoked” descriptor obscures a long history of provocative behavior from the United States in regards to Ukraine. This history is important to understanding how we got here, and what...

Gordon M Hahn March 9, 2022 One of the ideational-cultural causes of the NATO-Russian crisis is what one author has called American hubris. This is a neo-imperial attitude engendered in the U.S. as a result of America’s post-Cold War status, now waning, as the lone superpower. Originally posted on Gordon Hahn’s homepage on March 3rd, 2022 A classic example of such hubris is the American view that Russia has no ‘right’ to a sphere of influence. The deception attached to this is that there is no threat to Russia from NATO expansion, a policy that will deprive Russia of a sphere of influence along its western borders. Of course, possession of a sphere of influence – which the U.S. actually claims globally – is not a right that one is given by God or fate, but it is won by the exercise of power and effective diplomacy. Ambition to a...

Anatol Lieven March 7, 2022 For those who understand Moscow’s establishment and view of their country’s vital interests, none of this should be a surprise. The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the West and many ordinary Russians. But for those who understand the Russian establishment and its view of Russia’s vital interests, it should not have come as a complete surprise. Since NATO expansion first began in the mid-1990s, Russian officials and other establishment figures have been warning that if the West tried to turn Ukraine into an ally against Russia, this would lead to confrontation and quite possibly war. As the great international relations scholar Hans Morgenthau taught, to craft a viable U.S. policy towards other major states, it is essential to understand from within how they see the world and their country’s place in it. Today, we need to do this if we are to craft a policy...

Jan Oberg March 3, 2022 I am happy to inform you about my latest column in China’s leading Global Times – with the title above. Read it here and when you are anyhow there, look around: Many different subjects from the Western media and many different angles from a country we all need to know more about. Not the least now when the pluralism and scope have been reduced ad absurdum in the Western mainstream media (MSM). The illustration is, in my view, spot-on – and thus matches my spot-on points 😜

Members of the neo-Nazi Azov Regiment take part in a march to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Kyiv in 2020. (STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Branko Marcetic February 25 2022 The CIA has been secretly training anti-Russian groups in Ukraine since 2015. Everything we know points to the likelihood that includes neo-Nazis inspiring far-right terrorists across the world. Originally posted on JACOBIN’s official website on January 15, 2022 here The US government has a well-documented history of backing extremist groups as part of a panoply of foreign policy misadventures, which inevitably end up blowing up in the American public’s face. In the 1960s, the CIA worked with Cuban anti–Fidel Castro radicals who turned Miami into a hub of terrorist violence. In the 1980s, the agency supported and encouraged Islamic radicals converging in Afghanistan, who would go on to orchestrate the September 11 attack. And, in the 2010s, Washington backed Syria’s not-so-“moderate”...

March 1, 2022 This is a recorded lecture from 2015 by Professor John Mearsheimer. In the perspective of what has just happened with and in Ukraine, this is simply prophetic. Here is a rather complex set of intertwined arguments that makes an incredibly clear-headed analysis – and warning. No decision-makers listened and thus, we are where we are today. Mearsheimer is in many ways a classical Realist thinker. It’s indeed deplorable that that approach – combined with tremendous knowledge and great skills at conveying it all in a delightfully pedagogical manner – has become so rare and that those who operate US/NATO/EU politics these very days would hardly be able to understand what he is saying – and much less, take in his analysis. Because, as he also hints somewhere – “we” know better and “we” never did anything wrong! And, so: Why listen to knowledge-based critics? Now sit down....

Cartoon printed by The Japan Times Alex Lo February 18, 2022 Endless negative news stories and opinion pieces about how bad China is in almost every way are bound to shape public perception. Almost nine in 10 Americans (89 per cent) consider China a competitor or enemy, rather than a partner, according to the authoritative Pew Research. Commenting, Winston Lord, a US ambassador to China in the 1980s, said Beijing only had itself to blame. “The shift is caused by China’s actions under Xi [Jinping], the repression at home, the more aggressive approach abroad and intrusions in societies, including our own,” Lord said. “It has turned off not only Americans, but also Europeans and Australians.” Originally posted on “Pearls & Irritations – John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal” on February 9, 2022 Lord was once one of Henry Kissinger’s bright young proteges. There is no dispute that he understands China-US relations...

Alfred De Zayas February 11, 2022 The current tensions between the United States and Russia with regard to Ukraine goes back to a series of NATO actions and omissions following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989/91.  On the Russian side, there is a widespread perception of having been misled by the US and NATO, a pervasive malaise about a breach of trust, a violation of a “gentleman’s agreement” on fundamental issues of national security. While the US protests that it never gave assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards, declassified documents prove otherwise.  But even in the absence of declassified documents and contemporary statements by political leaders in 1989/91 including Secretary of State James Baker and German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (which can be consulted in YouTube), it is all-too-obvious that there is a festering wound caused by NATO’s eastward expansion over the past 30 years,...