Cold War – Old and New

Andi Olluri April 12, 2023 A recent Pentagon conference on psychological warfare noted that the forces of indoctrination “cannot wait until a crisis begins”. A high-ranking chief at the Department of Defence suggested a model for propaganda, in no way new: “Look at marketing … What makes people drink Coke, what makes people drink Pepsi?” In short, public “marketing”. “I think”, the chief lauded, that “the private sector has used the information domain through marketing to the Nth degree … And I think we, as a department and in the national security enterprise, need to be able to pull some of those lessons”. (1) In fact, the “lessons” of effective indoctrination and public persuasion have been perfected in the domain of US government propaganda in conjunction with a servile ‘free’ press. A natural prediction of this is that in discussions of war, peace, diplomacy, violence and so on, essentially any...

Nicolai Petro April 10, 2023 (original 2019) HARD LESSONS TO LEARN FROM THE CLASSICS “Tragedy rests not in the individual destiny…but in the general condition, of a people reducing or destroyingitself because it is not conscious of its true condition” – Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy Abstract As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year,  the country remains mired in debt, corruption, and strife. The country seems to be caught up, again, in a vicious cycle that has been repeating itself for decades, if not centuries. Classical Greek tragedy gives us a deeper look at the reasons behind Ukraine’s persistent failure to achieve social stability, and suggests remedies. The tragic cycle can be broken through a compromise in which individual, social and divine aspirations for justice are reconciled. As long as Ukrainian leaders seek to achieve justice without compromise, the nation’s self-destructive cycle is likely to persist. Originally published in...

Ted Snider April 5, 2023 In 2008, William Burns, who is now Biden’s director of the CIA but was then ambassador to Russia, warned that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” He warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Short even of expansion into Ukraine, Burns called NATO expansion into Eastern Europe “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” If it came to Ukraine, Burns warned, “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.” But Burns was not the first Russia expert to flash that warning sign to the White House. In 1990, as the Soviet Union broke apart like a jigsaw puzzle into separate countries, the US and NATO were at a crucial...

Erni & Ola Friholt TFF Associates March 23, 2023 In 1904, in the run-up to World War I, with the Triple Alliance on one side and the Entente on the other, the Principal of the London School of Economics, Halford Mackinder, gave a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society. The title was ‘The Geographical Axis of History’. Mackinder explained that world power could not, as in the past, be won by controlling the seas, which had been the main route for Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and Britain to their colonial empires, which had lasted some 400 years. Now, he argues, it is about controlling the interior of the Euro-Asian landmass, to which he also counted Africa. This huge land mass he called an island, the World Island. Its heartland lies in the plains and forests of Asia and is so vast that it could only be ruled from its peripheral...

© Sputnik / Maksim Blinov Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual address to the Federal Assembly, including lawmakers of the State Duma, members of the Federation Council, regional governors and other officials, in Moscow, Russia, on February 21, 2023. Dmitry Trenin March 8, 2023 The West’s failed Ukraine strategy has empowered the Global Majority to reject US domination In his recent landmark address to Russia’s parliament, President Vladimir Putin cited the war in Ukraine and US/NATO involvement in the conflict as the main reason for his decision to “suspend” Moscow’s participation in the 2010 New START Treaty on strategic nuclear weapons. Putin also suggested that Russia should be ready to resume nuclear testing. Effectively, this announcement, promptly turned into law by the Russian parliament, means a formal end to the long-ailing institutions of strategic arms control that began over 50 years ago. If New START is followed by the...

Map Shows Countries That Support Western Govt Sanctions Against Russia vs Those Who Do Not By Krishen Mehta February 22, 2023 In October 2022, about eight months after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the University of Cambridge in the UK harmonized surveys that asked the inhabitants of 137 countries about their views of the West, Russia, and China. The findings in the combined study are robust enough to demand our serious attention. These findings have caused some surprise and even anger in the West. It’s difficult for Western thought leaders to comprehend that two-thirds of the world’s population is just not lining up with the West in this conflict. However, I believe there are five reasons why the Global South is not taking the West’s side. I discuss these reasons in the short essay below.  Originally published at US-Russia Accord on February 22, 2023 1. The Global South does not...

The US has started raising concerns about possible Chinese military support to Russia. On Feb. 20, China, Russia and South Africa begin joint naval exercises off the coast of the latter. The BRICS countries will soon meet to decide on the admission of new members. This commentary attempts to link these three news items into one bigger picture. Concerns Both U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and Vice President Harris have recently expressed concern about possible covert Chinese military support to Russia. Harris added that this would thwart the U.S. goal to weaken Russia. These statements are in line with the US trade war against China and, therefore, not really surprising. However, both politicians should be smart enough to realize that it is pointless to attack China more and more economically, and on the other hand, expect China to support the US in its fight against Russia. So, why are we...

Sam Kolitch February 14, 2022 Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-1994, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992 during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1986-1989 during the Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola and the US mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires in the American embassies at Bangkok from 1984-1986 and Beijing from 1981-1984, and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US Department of State from 1979-1981. In 1972, he was the primary American interpreter for President Nixon’s trailblazing visit to China. Ambassador Freeman is the author of America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East, Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, The Diplomat’s Dictionary, Arts of Power: Statecraft...

Photo by Master Sgt. Sean M. Worrell, U.S. Air Force via ABACAPRESS.COM Branko Marcetic February 22, 2023 The Biden team has quietly blown past red lines of involvement. The question now, is how far is it willing to go. When the United States involves itself militarily in a conflict, it often finds it hard to get itself out, let alone avoid deep entanglements that blow well past lines it had drawn at the start of the intervention.  It happened in Vietnam, when U.S. military advisers helping the South Vietnamese fight Viet Cong eventually became U.S. soldiers fighting an American war. It happened in Afghanistan, when an initial invasion to capture al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban morphed into a nearly two-decade-long nation-building project. And it could be happening right now in Ukraine.  Originally published at Responsible Statecraft Little by little, NATO and the United States are creeping closer to the catastrophic scenario President...

Gordon M Hahn February 14, 2023 We are entering the most dangerous phase of the NATO-Russian Ukraine war up till now. The West is undertaking a major escalation in the war by increasing the lethality of weapons it is supplying Ukraine to include tanks and the largest tranche of military equipment supplied to Kiev so far. Meanwhile, Russia is on the verge of an offensive on the background of slow but steady gains in the east, taking Soledar, moving into Vugledar (Ugledar) and the outskirts of Bakhmut (Atemevsk), threatening Ukrainian forces with operational encirclements in several areas. Russia now has available in and around Ukraine 5-600,000 regular troops, almost none of which have been used so far, with Moscow having been relying on the DPR and LNR forces, the Wagner troops, Chechens, and massive attacks from the air by artillery, rockets, drones and such in previous phases of the war....

President Bush and Russian President Yeltsin announce the end of the cold war during a press conference at Camp David, February 1, 1992. Source: Bush Library on Twitter @Bush41Library. Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton February 7, 2023 Russian President Proposed Far-Reaching Nuclear Reductions, Bush Not So Sure U.S. ambassador on Yeltsin: Russians “want a tsar with a common touch” Russian leaders sensitive to Ukrainian concerns but saw Ukraine as the “main destabilizing factor” Washington D.C., January 30, 2023 – The George H.W. Bush administration was reluctant to embrace the “relations of deep mutual trust and alliance” proposed by the newly independent Russian Federation and its leader, Boris Yeltsin, in early 1992, according to declassified U.S. documents published today by the National Security Archive. The Bush administration’s cautious management of U.S.-Soviet relations at the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 had focused primarily on command and control of the remaining Soviet...

May others avoid that fate… The first Cold War played out between the East and the Western Occident and the East lost with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Both built – more or less faithfully – on Western mechanical thinking, one on Marx and other socialist/communist philosophers, the other on twisting moral philosopher Adam Smith into a God’s hand individualist utility market prophet and pair him with various types of liberal, parliamentary democracy thinking. The Soviet and East European system had come to the end of its history, but what about the twin Occidental brother, the US-EU system? The latter had not only survived or ”won;” it had also forced the Soviet Union to spend an unsustainable proportion of its resources on the military. And now the Second West is destined to follow suit. The point I shall make is that the West – US-EU-based...