Cold war

My answers were submitted to Xinhua in Stockholm on June 27, 2022 – but the editors changed their minds and chose to do this series of comments instead. 1. What do you see are the potential consequences (geopolitical, military) as NATO incorporates Finland and Sweden in its latest military expansion in the Nordics? Does this make the Baltic Sea region and Europe safer or the opposite? All alliances by definition build on a we-and-them conceptualization, or worldview. The NATO 1949 Treaty is defensive in the sense that it is basically a copy of the UN Charter with Article 5 added, i.e. that all NATO members shall assist in defending another member that has been attacked. Most people are not aware of that text’s real content – and therefore do not see how very far NATO is from its own Charter. Secondly, given the Cold War or adversary structure in Europe,...

Peter PeverelliTFF Associate June 17, 2022 When you have been working with cross-cultural issues, helping develop a model of measurable culture using 7 cultural dimensions, you tend to develop a sensitivity for cues that seem to indicate a cultural aspect in everything that people around me say and do. It sometimes irritates colleagues, friends and other intimi. However, some time ago one of those hunches struck me as so spectacular, that I felt I needed to share it with my larger network. Our politicians and media remind us daily that the current turmoil in Ukraine is the most horrible issue the world has to deal with at this moment. Fortunately, Russia stands alone in its military aggression and the entire (rest of the) world is uniting in sanctions to force Russia on its knees and give up. Other views can only be heard on LinkedIn, which has become one of...

Jan Oberg May 31, 2022 It was the first visit to China by a UN human rights chief in 17 years. For years, governments and human rights organisations have accused China of many kinds of human rights violations – and a series of them calls what has happened in Xinjiang “genocide” in line, one could add, with former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “determination” that that was the correct label to put on it while not publishing one word of documentation to back up that grave accusation against China and its president. After years of meticulous preparations, Mme Michelle Bachelet – a former President of Chile, a physician who has studied military strategy and who has served as both Health Minister and Defense Minister and has a significant personal experience with Pinochet’s reign of terror – sent an advance team, then went to China herself, had a zoom conversation...

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. May 27, 2022 An avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense, writes Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine. His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that in particular, Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members. President Joe Biden has...

Gordon DumoulinTFF Associate May 24, 2022 Introduction Here we go again. On the same day, leading Western mainstream media – such as BBC, Politiken, Dagens Nyheter, Le Monde, etc – 14 media from 11 countries – publish a new accusation against China, ‘Xinjiang Police Files’: Exclusive documents reveal China’s machine of repression against the Uyghurs. They are produced by the extreme right Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States. It appeared the day after President Biden had stated, in Tokyo, that the US would come to the rescue of Taiwan if China should attack it. And it coincided also with the UN Human Rights High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, started her fact-finding mission in Xinjiang. Perhaps it was a coincidence. Perhaps the material was put together and made ready by the foundation so it could be published at the right moment? Clearly, the untold purpose has been to undermine...

Photo by Jiyeon Park on Unsplash Edward Curtin May 19, 2022 Isn’t it always? With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the end of time has become very possible. I am speaking of nuclear annihilation. I look down at my great-uncle’s gold Elgin pocket watch from the 19th century. His name was John Patrick Whalen, an Irish immigrant to the US who fled England’s colonialist created famine in Ireland. It tells me it is 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022, a date, coincidentally, with a history.  Originally published at Off-Guardian No doubt John looked at his watch on this date in 1898 when the United States, after the USS Maine exploded from within in Havana harbour (a possible false flag attack), declared war on Spain in order to confiscate Spanish territories – Cuba, Puerto Rico,...

Ben Norton May 18, 2022 NATO sees Ukrainians as mere cannon fodder in its imperial proxy war on Russia The US-led NATO military alliance has made it clear that it is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to bleed Russia and advance Western geopolitical interests. In a shockingly blunt admission, The Washington Post acknowledged that some NATO member states want “Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying” in order to prevent Russia from making political gains. Originally published at Globalresearch In an April 5 report on peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the major US newspaper disclosed that NATO is afraid that Kyiv may give in to some of Moscow’s demands. The Washington Post wrote explicitly: “For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.” Anonymous...

A 30 mins panel discussion led by Ms Liu Xin, a very important TV personality known to CGTN’s 150 million viewers because of her program “The Point”. CGTN stands for China Global Television Network – more about it here. And here is its YouTube Channel. The participants in this edition of “The Point” are: Yury Tavrovsky, chairman of Experts Commission of Russian-Chinese Committee for Friendship, Peace and Development Ulrich Brückner, professor, Stanford University in Berlin Michael E. O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution Brian Berletic, Geopolitical Analyst, Bangkok And here it is on YouTube. Enjoy the debate! Is this type of reasoning, based on decades of free research and knowledge-building, of merit in a democracy and for the discussion about NATO?If you think so, TFF would be grateful for your support. Thanks!

Jan Oberg May 19, 2022 This short article aims to merely illustrate – not prove – the difference between security political intellectualism and ignorance. It does not focus on peace – theories, ideas, concept or policies – simply because none of the personalities appearing below are in the business of peace. By means of some videos, I aim to illustrate the differences between security political intellectualism and the kind of populist rhetorics that has become so widespread. Weapons have been around for decades but mostly managed by elites who operated within some kind of intellectual framework – agreeing or not agreeing with its characteristics is not the point here. Most people who conducted security politics decades ago were well-educated and experienced compared with most of today’s security political decision-makers. This overall intellectual disarmament coupled to ever-higher levels of military armament and the recent talk about the use of nuclear weapons...

Richard E. Rubenstein May 17, 2022 Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it was fair to call the ensuing conflict “Putin’s war.” True, the U.S. and Europe could probably have avoided the invasion by calling a halt to NATO expansion and negotiating seriously with the Russians about key security issues. True, U.S. arms had been pouring into Ukraine since the overthrow of the pro-Russian government there in 2014, and Ukraine was using them to kill pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region. But Putin was still responsible for crossing the line into organized violence. It does matter who shoots first, and he shot first. Originally published at Transcend.org Even so, that is not the end of the discussion. Far from it. At first one could rightfully have called this Putin’s war, but it has now become Joe Biden’s war as well. Consider what has happened so far. The advance...

Sunday the 15th, 2022, I was asked to comment from a peace research point of view on Finland and Sweden’s moves to become full members of NATO. I gladly do so since it is a long time since I commented on anything on RT. For those who think that it is surprising or even wrong to speak with Russian media, my media policy can be found here. The denial of access by the EU and others to RT is an indisputable violation of human rights – but most people do not know it. I’m talking about the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 19 from 1966. If you want to get around that violation of your rights, download and pay for a proxy server such as PrivateVPN, set it to e.g. Finland and you will be able to access RT. Then you may also read my front...

Jan Oberg 14 maj, 2022 Engelska versionen av denna finns här Detta är vad västvärlden intellektuellt sett – mitt i sin gränslöst självrättfärdiga, militaristiska sinnesstämning – inte förmår att se: Natos expansionspolitik skapade – och är ansvarig för – konflikten. Ryssland skapade – och är ansvarigt för – kriget. Det finns inget våld som inte har sin grund i underliggande konflikter. Konflikt- och fredskunniga människor talar därför om båda. Och om de vill ha fred ökar de inte symptomen – kriget – utan de tar itu med den verkliga orsaken, konflikten, och ber de stridande parterna att berätta vad de fruktar och vad de vill och tar sig sedan steg för steg vidare mot en hållbar lösning. Men varken mainstream media eller politiker har civilkurage nog att ta itu med konflikten. Det handlar bara om kriget och bara om Ryssland/Putin som måste straffas, oavsett vilket pris kommande generationer ska betala....