Russia international relations

The Guardian of April 25, 2022, and several other media brought the news top front page about the Russia-Ukraine war: US ‘wants to see Russia weakened’ – the sensational headline statement by US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, after his and Secretary of State, Antony Blinken’s surprise visit to Kyiv. It was stated also in connection with yet another US arms package for Ukraine (US$ 738 million – making total US military assistance to Ukraine pass US$ 3,4 billion) and before the meeting on April 26 in Ramstein, Germany where more than 40 countries gathered to intensify their cooperation about further militarizing the conflict with Russia played out of Ukraine. Please note – there has been no similar meeting about how to de-escalate, mediate or whatever else to stop the war. Here is the Pentagon transcript of what Austin said and Blinken endorsed: “SECRETARY AUSTIN: I’ll just start and I’ll...

Photo: GT Martin Jacques April 16, 2022 The overwhelming assumption in the West is that the world, with a few exceptions, is strongly opposed to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. The West itself, including the great majority of Europe, seems to be of one voice in its condemnation. But worldwide the picture is rather more complicated. In the UN General Assembly on March 3, while 141 countries condemned Russia’s invasion and called for an immediate withdrawal, 35 countries abstained and five voted against. In the recent vote to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, 93 countries voted in favour, 58 abstained and 24 were against.  Originally published at Global Times in China While there are clearly deep misgivings on the part of many countries about Russia’s actions, there is also widespread concern about the stance of the US. The most interesting, and potentially by far the most significant...

Truth will out, as they say, and sometimes it in strange ways. On March 9, 2022, the former Danish Prime Minister and former NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, gave an interview to Danish Television 2. Here a 30 sec excerpt. In my view, it was deeply shocking for three reasons. First, what he actually says: “If we send planes, it’s to protect Ukrainian airspace, and then we have to be ready to shoot down Russian planes. That would undeniably mean war between NATO and Russia.” That doesn’t worry him. He does not say that the West/NATO should therefore refrain from doing so. See below how he thinks it will go. “I think if it’s going to deter Putin, we shouldn’t rule anything out. And I’m among those who say we should keep Putin in maximum uncertainty.” Not ruling out anything in NATO parlance indisputably means that the use of nuclear...

John Pilger April 5, 2022 Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now. Originally published by EurasiaReview on February 19, 2022 But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream. The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave”....

Edward Curtin April 5, 2022 Oliver Stone Documents the Past to Illuminate the Present The timing of the early March 2022 release of this digital streaming documentary could not be more auspicious.  For anyone wanting to understand how we arrived at a new Cold War with the second Irish-Catholic Democratic president in US history, Joseph Biden, spewing belligerent absurdities about Ukraine, Russia, and Vladimir Putin, and leading a charge toward a World War III that could easily turn nuclear, the aggregated factual details in this series of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and its minions is essential history that illuminates current events. Originally published at Off-Guardian While Kennedy was the last US president to genuinely seek peace at the cost of his life, his successors have all been lackeys in love with war and in full awareness that the promotion of war and the military-industrial...

Cold War Against Russia – Without Debate A prophetic conversation from 2006 with professor Stephen F. Cohen (1938-2020) Read also, carefully Cold War Against Russia – Without Debate (2014)By Katrina vanden Heuvel & Stephen F. Cohen The Obama administration’s decision to isolate Russia, in a new version of “containment,” has met with virtually unanimous support from the political and media establishment. And then ask yourself why Western mainstream media and politicians start their history on February 24, 2022, and insist that everything is the fault of Russia and Putin, the latter having gone mad on February 23. My conclusion is based on this and lots of conflicts being reported in these media the last 20+ years: • You are being deceived. • There is a purpose behind that. • It serves Western self-righteousness and to cover up the Himalayan Western mistake to a) break all promises to Russia (Gorbachev at...

Maidan protests in 2014 in Kiev. GENYA SAVILOV / AFP – Getty Images Bryce Greene March 29, 2022 The history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine is rarely analyzed by corporate media. The desire to open Ukraine to finance capital, the 2014 U.S. backed coup, and the drive to expand NATO all played a role in creating the current crisis. As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21 ) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21 ). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered. These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western...

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...

Jan Oberg March 18, 2022 A few quotes first… • “A report that comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress—overextend and unbalance – Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” • “Today’s Russia suffers from many vulnerabilities—oil and gas prices well below peak that have caused a drop in living standards, economic sanctions that have furthered that decline, an aging and soon-to-be-declining population, and increasing authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin’s now-continued rule. Such vulnerabilities are coupled with deep-seated (if exaggerated) anxieties about the possibility of Western-inspired regime change, loss of great power status, and even military attack.” • “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to...

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...

Even during wartime – maybe especially during wartime – you should be allowed to ask uncomfortable questions Robert Wright at Nonzero Newsletter March 7, 2022 Twice over the past two decades I’ve felt outraged by a massive invasion that violated international law. One time was last week, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The other time was in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. This post is originally from Nonzero Newsletter You’re not supposed to talk like that! To bring up America’s past wrongdoing as if it’s comparable to some other country’s wrongdoing is called “whataboutism”—as in “Yeah, they did something bad, but what about the time America did something that was bad in kind of the same way?” Most American foreign policy elites hate whataboutism, and they especially hate it at times like this, when a war is going on and you’re expected to focus all your rhetorical firepower on the enemy. Consider...