Nato

Gordon Hahn on Guadalajara Geopolitics Institute August 10, 2021  Professor Gordon Hahn is interviewed by Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire Gordon Hahn discusses what he calls the New East-West Cold War or Russia-West Tinderbox, which can potentially escalate into a WWIII scenario. He examines the key drivers between the Russia-West divide which is primarily EU/NATO expansion (e.g. Belarus, Ukraine, Donbass), a situation that will continue to fester and could explode at any moment unless it is resolved. He comments on China’s rise as a global hegemon and believes Russia and China will make Afghan inroads as the U.S. withdraws and the Taliban likely come to power. Finally, he looks at the “authoritarian-ization” or “Putin-ization” of America, where neo-liberals, leftists, and big tech have melded with the military-industrial-complex and oligarchic globalists who are pushing the U.S. toward a one-party state. Beyond that, these forces are pushing for some form of...

Biljana Vankovska, TFF Associate June 22, 2021 There is a comprehensive, independent-minded “alternative” analysis of NATO’s crisis in general and the membership of North Macedonia in it. Dr Vankovska writes in the intro to her analysis that: “North Macedonia (hereafter in the text, Macedonia) was officially admitted to NATO on 27 March 2020 as its 30th member state. It was supposed to look like a dream come true for generations of Macedonian citizens and the political elites across the ethnic divides. However, the act was hardly met with any euphoria… Although Macedonia has joined NATO the political narrative and public (media and intellectual) rhetoric have not changed a bit. The military alliance is still seen through rose-coloured eyeglasses with not much relation to the objective state of affairs. It shows that the submissive and even naïve position in the mind and behaviour of the political elites is unlikely to change...

Photograph Source: Pete Souza, White House Official Photograph – CC BY 2.0 Eric Draitser September 15, 2020 The scorching desert sun streams through narrow slats in the tiny window. A mouse scurries across the cracked concrete floor, the scuttling of its tiny feet drowned out by the sound of distant voices speaking in Arabic. Their chatter is in a western Libyan dialect distinctive from the eastern dialect favored in Benghazi. Somewhere off in the distance, beyond the shimmering desert horizon, is Tripoli, the jewel of Africa now reduced to perpetual war. But here, in this cell in a dank old warehouse in Bani Walid, there are no smugglers, no rapists, no thieves or murderers. There are simply Africans captured by traffickers as they made their way from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, or other disparate parts of the continent seeking a life free of war and poverty, the rotten fruit of Anglo-American...

The greatest American foreign affairs columnist since Walter Lippmann was William Pfaff of The International Herald Tribune. He wrote in his path-breaking book, “Barbarian Sentiments” that the US political atmosphere was full of “exhausted ideas, like a dead star”. Nevertheless, “these ideas remain central to the way certain subjects are discussed and to the formulation of national policy. These are ideas that people want or need to be true”. I was told by the editorial page editor, Serge Schmemann, that when the New York Times bought the Herald Tribune the paper decided to cut back on printing Pfaff after 20 years of using him because he was considered anti-American – which, ironically, was one indication that he was right in his diagnosis. Freud reminded us in his “Civilization and its Discontents”, that we should “familiarize ourselves with the idea that there are difficulties attaching to the nature of civilization which...

By Jan Oberg March 17, 2020 Defender Europe 20 is a huge, basically US military exercise, on European soil between February and May this year. It has already started. In the midst of a closed-down coronavirus Europe. And it is war-preparing, not peace- or confidence-building. The diagram above from the British Army offers you details of this perverse, surreal idea – take note of Italy being one of the planned participants! Most likely, you have not heard about Defender Europe 20. When it comes to US foreign and war policies, all Western mainstream media practise self-censorship. The media would hardly be able to write about this exercise of militarist madness in a way that would not cause an uproar and moral condemnation in these times of deep, widespread concerns about war risks, climate change and the coronavirus. So better not write at all and cause diplomatic troubles with the unpredictable,...

in May and June. This is “the largest deployment of U.S. troops to Europe in more than 25 years,” NATO’s Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg tells us. I assume, proudly. But wait … What on Earth is NATO and its Secretary-General saying and doing? Do they live in the same world as the rest of us? How low should the intellectual level sink before it becomes a security risk for the world? And just how do they get away with deceiving the world with their militarised mantra about stability, security and peace – no matter it is always about more weapons and offensive military strength – virtually without any important (if they are) mainstream media reporting it, not to mention ask questions about it? The last one is simple to answer: 1) Censorship; 2) Self-censorship; 3) Framing and 4) The Military-Industrial-MEDIA-Academic Complex (MIMAC) – that is, the very close relations between media,...

By Richard Falk, TFF Associate Januar 22, 2020 Prefatory Note: The post below is a somewhat amplified version of an interview with C. J. Polychroniou, journalist and professor of political economy at West Chester University, which was published on January 7, 2020, in the online journal, Global Policy. As the interview was conducted in December 2019, it fails to address the various disruptive consequences of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, including the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Baghdad being the site of the drone attack, as well as the risks of war arising from an escalating tit-for-tat cycle of actions and reactions. Given growing tensions between the interconnectedness of the world and the state-centric character of international law, including contradictions between totalizing and disregarding territorial sovereignty, state-centric world order is being increasingly marginalized by geopolitical behaviour that both generates and suppresses transnational political violence. A normative crisis with structural implications exists,...

Photo – Eastern Aleppo, December 2016 – © Jan Oberg By Gordon M. Hahn January 17, 2020 If Western leaders are able to put aside the now worn-out cliches such as Russian Vladimir Putin ‘punching above his weight,’ ‘Trump handing Putin a victory on a silver plate’, not to mention ‘Trump as Putin agent’, there are serious lessons that they might still be able to draw from Putin’s looming victory in Syria.  Originally posted on Gordon M. Hahn’s personal blog on December 2, 2019 here First, the era in which the United States and/or the West (NATO) can dictate outcomes anywhere across the globe unilaterally has ended. Events in Syria are but the latest confirmation of this fact, but many in Washington and Brussels still do not see it. NATO expansion drove Russia into China’s arms, and the rest is history and the future.  Second, Washington and Brussels (NATO and...

. On December 12, 2012, on the day, 4 years earlier, Western countries and allies – perversely calling themselves ‘Friends of Syria’ – carried through a regime change by statement and set up a Syrian National Council of people never elected by anyone in Syria and told the world that it was, from now on, the only ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people!’ During the 4 years, Western, Saudi, Turkish and the Gulf States supported innumerable illegal, destructive and mainly foreign terrorist groups with the goal to undermine the legitimate Syrian government and destabilise the country – as had been recommended by US ambassador William Roebuck (1) in Damascus as far back as in 2006 (WikiLeaks documentation here). December 12, 2016, marked a fundamental turning point. Aleppo did not “fall to the dictator/butcher/mass murderer” aka President Bashar al-Assad – no, it was liberated and the occupation by terrorist groups such...

The Europeans have not done well in countering President Donald Trump’s onslaught on Iran. When Trump unilaterally decided that the US should withdraw from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, which committed Iran to winding down its nuclear research in return for the West, Russia and China (the latter two were also part of the deal) lifting sanctions which were crippling the Iranian economy, the Europeans huffed and puffed and then did little. The UN membership considered the 2015 deal to be very fair. The Security Council gave it unanimous support. Indeed, the US is now in breech of international law by opting out. But if the Europeans had had the guts when President Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal they would have pushed for debate on this issue at the Security Council and got the US condemned, even punished. Unfortunately, Trump had the Europeans’ guts for braces. After shouting loudly...

This is the digitalized version of a TFF Statement published by TFF’s Board almost 31 years ago. Could that be of any interest today? First, it reflects the situation and the issues discussed at the time as well as the hopes for a better future – now sadly lost. Secondly, it is one example of how peace researchers were thinking and made constructive political recommendations, available for anyone to take inspiration from – which virtually no one in power did. So, it’s a piece of international political as well as intellectual history. Third, it is an indicator of what the West could – and should – have done to have been in a much better situation than it is today. Admittedly, this is a contra-factual argument, but it can be defended on intellectual grounds although not empirically proven. Fourth, the authors pointed out a series of longterm priorities which match...

“Uanset om man tror, at Assad står bag angrebet eller ej, er det journalisternes opgave at være kritiske over for egne magthaveres beslutningsgrundlag.” Det skrev jeg i Ræson den 20. april 2018 i forbindelse med at Assad og den syriske regering blev beskyldt for at udføre et giftangreb mod sin egen befolkning i byen Douma. Danmark, med tidligere udenrigsminister Anders Samuelsen i spidsen, støttede op om et amerikansk missilangreb mod Syrien på den baggrund, inden vi nåede at tag en offentlig debat om det i det danske demokrati. Hvordan vidste den danske regering, at Syriens regering stod bag? Hvorfor venter Danmark ikke med at støtte op om et missilangreb og fordømme den syriske regering, før der har været en undersøgelse? Er missilangreb en konstruktiv måde at “svare igen” på? Hvordan er Danmarks erfaring med at løse problemer i Mellemøsten ved at affyre missiler? Takket være de – dovne – danske...