Tuesday 19th of March 2024

prelude to world war 3…..?

Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously described Ukraine as a “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, central to both US and Russian power. Since Russia views its vital security interests to be at stake in the current conflict, the war in Ukraine is rapidly escalating to a nuclear showdown. It’s urgent for both the US and Russia to exercise restraint before disaster hits.

 

By Jeffrey Sachs

 

Since the middle of the 19th Century, the West has competed with Russia over Crimea and more specifically, naval power in the Black Sea. In the Crimean War (1853-6), Britain and France captured Sevastopol and temporarily banished Russia’s navy from the Black Sea. The current conflict is, in essence, the Second Crimean War. This time, a US-led military alliance seeks to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, so that five NATO members would encircle the Black Sea.

The US has long regarded any encroachment by great powers in the Western Hemisphere as a direct threat to US security, dating back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which states: “We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those [European] powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

In 1961, the US invaded Cuba when Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro looked to the Soviet Union for support. The US was not much interested in Cuba’s “right” to align with whichever country it wanted – the claim the US asserts regarding Ukraine’s supposed right to join NATO. The failed US invasion in 1961 led to the Soviet Union’s decision to place offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, which in turn led to the Cuban Missile Crisis exactly 60 years ago this month. That crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Yet America’s regard for its own security interests in the Americas has not stopped it from encroaching on Russia’s core security interests in Russia’s neighbourhood. As the Soviet Union weakened, US policy leaders came to believe that the US military could operate as it pleases. In 1991, Undersecretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz explained to General Wesley Clark that the US can deploy its military force in the Middle East “and the Soviet Union won’t stop us.” America’s national security officials decided to overthrow Middle East regimes allied to the Soviet Union, and to encroach on Russia’s security interests.

In 1990, Germany and the US gave assurances to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union could disband its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, without fear that NATO would enlarge eastward to replace the Soviet Union. It won Gorbachev’s assent to German reunification in 1990 on this basis. Yet with the Soviet Union’s demise, President Bill Clinton reneged by supporting the eastward expansion of NATO.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin protested vociferously but could do nothing to stop it. America’s dean of statecraft with Russia, George Kennan, declared that NATO expansion “is the beginning of a new cold war.”

Under Clinton’s watch, NATO expanded to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. Five years later, under President George W. Bush, Jr. NATO expanded to seven more countries: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania), the Balkans (Slovenia), and Slovakia. Under President Barack Obama, NATO expanded to Albania and Croatia in 2009, and under President Donald Trump, to Montenegro in 2019.

Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement intensified sharply in 1999 when NATO countries disregarded the UN and attacked Russia’s ally Serbia, and stiffened further in the 2000’s with the US wars of choice in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. At the Munich Security conference in 2007, President Putin declared that NATO enlargement represents a “serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”

Putin continued: “And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances [of no NATO enlargement] our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

Also in 2007, with the NATO admission of two Black Sea countries, Bulgaria and Romania, the US established the Black Sea Area Task Group (originally the Task Force East). Then in 2008, the US raised the US-Russia tensions still further by declaring that NATO would expand to the very heart of the Black Sea, by incorporating Ukraine and Georgia, threatening Russia’s naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Middle East. With Ukraine’s and Georgia’s entry, Russia would be surrounded by five NATO countries in the Black Sea: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Russia was initially protected from NATO enlargement to Ukraine by Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who led the Ukrainian parliament to declare Ukraine’s neutrality in 2010. Yet in 2014, the US helped to overthrow Yanukovych and bring to power a staunchly anti-Russian government. The Ukraine War broke out at that point, with Russia quickly reclaiming Crimea and supporting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas, the region of Eastern Ukraine with a relatively high proportion of Russian population. Ukraine’s parliament formally abandoned neutrality later in 2014.

Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas have been fighting a brutal war for 8 years. Attempts to end the war in the Donbas through the Minsk Agreements failed when Ukraine’s leaders decided not to honour the agreements, which called for autonomy for the Donbas. After 2014, the US poured in massive armaments to Ukraine and helped to restructure Ukraine’s military to be interoperable with NATO, as evidenced in this year’s fighting.

The Russian invasion in 2022 would likely have been averted had Biden agreed with Putin’s demand at the end of 2021 to end NATO’s eastward enlargement. The war would likely have been ended in March 2022, when the governments of Ukraine and Russia exchanged a draft peace agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality. Behind the scenes, the US and UK pushed Zelensky to reject any agreement with Putin and to fight on. At that point, Ukraine walked away from the negotiations.

Russia will escalate as necessary, possibly to nuclear weapons, to avoid military defeat and NATO’s further eastward enlargement. The nuclear threat is not empty, but a measure of the Russian leadership’s perception of its security interests at stake. Terrifyingly, the US was also prepared to use nuclear weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a senior Ukrainian official recently urged the US to launch nuclear strikes “as soon as Russia even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes,” surely a recipe for World War III. We are again on the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

President John F. Kennedy learned about nuclear confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis. He defused that crisis not by force of will or US military might, but by diplomacy and compromise, removing US nuclear missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Soviet Union removing its nuclear missiles in Cuba. The following year, he pursued peace with the Soviet Union, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

In June 1963, Kennedy uttered the essential truth that can keep us alive today: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

It is urgent to return to the draft peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine of late March, based on the non-enlargement of NATO. Today’s fraught situation can easily spin out of control, as the world has done on so many past occasions – yet this time with the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-great-game-in-ukraine-is-spinning-out-of-control/

 

GUSNOTE: THIS ARTICLE UNFORTUNATELY USES A SILLY STOCK IMAGE, WHICH DISTORTS THE DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT. GUS HAS MODIFIED IT TO REPRESENT THE GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION MORE ACCURATELY. 

 

THE WEST HAS BEEN UNWILLING TO RECOGNISE THE HISTORY OF THE DONBASS — A BLIND VIEW WHICH IS PART OF THE GREAT GAME PLAN. SEE ALSO: the heartland explained...

SEE ALSO: https://sputniknews.com/20220930/rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me-referenda-the-west-recognized-when-it-suited-them-1101393969.html

 

AT THIS STAGE, RUSSIA HAS ACHIEVED ONE OF ITS THREE GOALS: LIBERATING THE "RUSSIAN" PROVINCES OF UKRAINE. THE NAZI KIEV REGIME SUPPORTED BY THE US/UK/EU/NATO WILL WIN A FEW BATTLES — MOSTLY DUE FOR THE RUSSIAN TRYING HARD TO AVOID KILLING CIVILIANS, THUS DOING "TACTICAL LIMITED WITHDRAWALS". 

RUSSIA HAS ACCELERATED THE INCORPORATION OF THE LIBERATED PROVINCES INTO RUSSIA IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A GREATER ASSISTANCE INTO DEFENDING ITS NEW BORDER. WHEN THIS NEW BORDER BECOMES "STABILISED" (THE SOONER THE BETTER), THE REST OF UKRAINE COULD GO TO HELL AS FAR AS RUSSIA IS CONCERNED, BUT NOT JOIN NATO. THE WEST HAS TO PUSH LITTLE ZELENSKY TO GIVE UP HIS DREAM OF REUNITING THE DONBASS REGIONS TO HIS NAZI REGIME (NOTE THAT HE NOW APPEARS WITH MASSIVE MILITARY BOOFHEADS THE NAZI INSIGNIAS OF WHOM HAVE BEEN REMOVED OR SANITISED).

 

 "The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.?????" HERE THE BLAME IS SHOWN TO BE SHARED EQUALLY WHILE ANY INTELLIGENT PERSON KNOWS THE BLAME FALLS SQUARELY ON THE US/NATO/KIEV REGIME. NATO AND THE US HAVE LIED, LIKE THEY USUALLY DO EVERYWHERE ON THE PLANET... THE RUSSIAN DONBASS REGIONS, ALLOCATED TO UKRAINE IN 1922 BY THE USSR COMMUNIST REGIME (AND CRIMEA ALLOCATED BY PRESIDENT K IN 1954), ARE NOW TAKEN BACK INTO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND WON'T GO BACK TO UKRAINE. END OF STORY. NOT NEGOTIABLE. 

I HOPE THE REST OF THE WORLD UNDERSTANDS THIS CLEARLY AND STOPS PROVIDING ZELENSKY WITH MORE WEAPONS. MEANWHILE THE US SEE GASSY OPPORTUNITY, AFTER ALLEGEDLY SABOTAGED THE NORD SEA PIPELINES. THIS IS A HYPOCRITICAL POSITION IN REGARD TO SAVING THE PLANET FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGES... ONE WOULD EXPECT THE USA TO REALISE THAT THE ONCE IN 500 YEARS HURRICANE IAN ISN'T A FLUKE OF NATURAL OCCURRENCE

 

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time for an agreement…..

 

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

 

Wars should be avoided at all costs. Nuclear conflict should never be contemplated.

These two truisms are often spoken, but rarely adhered to. Wars occur all too frequently, and so long as nations possess nuclear weapons, their use  is contemplated on a continuous basis.

The ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict has put the world’s two largest nuclear powers on opposing sides, with the U.S. supporting a Ukrainian military that has become a de facto proxy of NATO, and Russia viewing its struggle with Ukraine as including the “collective West.”

Since the initiation of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, both the U.S. and Russia have played their respective nuclear cards. 

Russia has made it clear that any intervention by NATO would be considered an existential threat to the Russian nation, thereby invoking one of the two clauses in the Russian nuclear posture in which nuclear weapons could be used. (The other would be in response to a nuclear attack against Russia.) 

The U.S. has made it clear that any attack by Russia against a NATO member would invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter (the “collective defense” clause), resulting in the totality of the alliance’s military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, being made available in response.

 

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/30/scott-ritter-the-onus-is-on-biden-putin/

 

 

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REAPEAT:

THE WEST HAS BEEN UNWILLING TO RECOGNISE THE HISTORY OF THE DONBASS — A BLIND VIEW WHICH IS PART OF THE GREAT GAME PLAN. SEE ALSO: the heartland explained...

SEE ALSO: https://sputniknews.com/20220930/rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me-referenda-the-west-recognized-when-it-suited-them-1101393969.html

 

AT THIS STAGE, RUSSIA HAS ACHIEVED ONE OF ITS THREE GOALS: LIBERATING THE "RUSSIAN" PROVINCES OF UKRAINE. THE NAZI KIEV REGIME SUPPORTED BY THE US/UK/EU/NATO WILL WIN A FEW BATTLES — MOSTLY DUE FOR THE RUSSIAN TRYING HARD TO AVOID KILLING CIVILIANS, THUS DOING "TACTICAL LIMITED WITHDRAWALS". 

RUSSIA HAS ACCELERATED THE INCORPORATION OF THE LIBERATED PROVINCES INTO RUSSIA IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A GREATER ASSISTANCE INTO DEFENDING ITS NEW BORDER. WHEN THIS NEW BORDER BECOMES "STABILISED" (THE SOONER THE BETTER), THE REST OF UKRAINE COULD GO TO HELL AS FAR AS RUSSIA IS CONCERNED, BUT NOT JOIN NATO. THE WEST HAS TO PUSH LITTLE ZELENSKY TO GIVE UP HIS DREAM OF REUNITING THE DONBASS REGIONS TO HIS NAZI REGIME (NOTE THAT HE NOW APPEARS WITH MASSIVE MILITARY BOOFHEADS THE NAZI INSIGNIAS OF WHOM HAVE BEEN REMOVED OR SANITISED).

 

 "The world’s very survival depends on prudence, diplomacy, and compromise by all sides.?????" HERE THE BLAME IS SHOWN TO BE SHARED EQUALLY WHILE ANY INTELLIGENT PERSON KNOWS THE BLAME FALLS SQUARELY ON THE US/NATO/KIEV REGIME. NATO AND THE US HAVE LIED, LIKE THEY USUALLY DO EVERYWHERE ON THE PLANET... THE RUSSIAN DONBASS REGIONS, ALLOCATED TO UKRAINE IN 1922 BY THE USSR COMMUNIST REGIME (AND CRIMEA ALLOCATED BY PRESIDENT K IN 1954), ARE NOW TAKEN BACK INTO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND WON'T GO BACK TO UKRAINE. END OF STORY. NOT NEGOTIABLE. 

I HOPE THE REST OF THE WORLD UNDERSTANDS THIS CLEARLY AND STOPS PROVIDING ZELENSKY WITH MORE WEAPONS. MEANWHILE THE US SEE GASSY OPPORTUNITY, AFTER ALLEGEDLY SABOTAGED THE NORD SEA PIPELINES. THIS IS A HYPOCRITICAL POSITION IN REGARD TO SAVING THE PLANET FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGES... ONE WOULD EXPECT THE USA TO REALISE THAT THE ONCE IN 500 YEARS HURRICANE IAN ISN'T A FLUKE OF NATURAL OCCURRENCE

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..........................

SABOTAGE USA?

 

The Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed last September by the US in a covert operation, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. The legendary reporter made the bombshell revelation in an article posted to his newly launched blog on Substack on Wednesday.

The explosives were planted at the pipelines back in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise, Hersh reported, citing a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

The journalist noted that he had reached out to the White House and CIA for comment, with both firmly rejecting the claim that the US “took out” the pipelines as “utterly false.”

The bombs were detonated three months later on September 26 with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy. The buoy was dropped near the Nord Stream pipelines by a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane, according to the report.

The operation came to fruition following months of back-and-forth between the White House, CIA, and military, with officials focusing on how to leave no trace of US involvement in the attack. The planning process began back in December 2021, when a special task force was created with the direct participation of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. 

“The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes,” the report read.

 

The source told Hersh that everybody involved understood the operation was not some “kiddie stuff” but was actually an “an act of war.” Throughout “all of this scheming” certain officials urged the White House to drop the idea entirely. “Some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out,’” according to the source.

Originally, the explosives were to have a 48-hour timer and were set to be planted by the end of BALTOPS22, Hersh reported, citing the same source. The two-day window, however, was ultimately deemed to be too close to the end of the exercise by the White House, which ordered the task force to come up with an on-demand method of detonating them. This ultimately turned out to be the sonar buoy.

The administration of President Joe Biden has been “focused” on jeopardizing the Nord Stream pipelines – initially through sanctions, and, ultimately, by direct sabotage – seeing it as key to swaying Europe to its cause amid the then-looming conflict in Ukraine, Hersh noted. 

“As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia,” he wrote. 

Moscow provided a similar take on the incident shortly after the blasts, branding them a “terrorist attack” and stating that the US was the nation that benefited most from it, by accelerating Europe’s attempts to wean itself off of Russian gas.

Throughout his career, Hersh has reported on numerous explosive stories, including war crimes by the US military and high-profile political scandals. Exposing the My Lai massacre by US troops in Vietnam scored the journalist the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. Other notable stories Hersh reported on include the Watergate scandal, the CIA illegal domestic spying, as well as the American military's torture and abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

 

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/571173-hersh-us-nord-stream/

 

 

 

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