Tag: perpetual war

The War Behind The War: What World War III Is Really Being Fought Over

World War III, like all 21st century wars, is not being fought over ideologies.

It’s being fought over energy and natural resources.

Because he who controls the world’s resources will be free to impose whatever ideology he wants.

Washington and London, the epicenter of the Western liberal world order that thinks it’s admirable and virtuous to redefine God-created genders and appropriate to unleash deviant transvestites on innocent school children, is seeking to neutralize the massive resources of Russia as it ramps up its “net zero” sustainable development model of economic progress. This economic model is really just a scam designed to pilfer what remains of the middle class and further subjugate them under AI-powered government-corporate control. Hence the need for more massive data centers, which Donald Trump is being used to build across the United States with $8 billion in foreign investment from a billionaire in the United Arab Emirates.

The surveillance state cannot be built out without these data centers scooping up, processing and storing highly personal information on every citizen. But Trump is either too dumb to know this or doesn’t care because he is blinded by a naive belief that without an expanded AI America will lose its global hegemony.

The modern technocratic state is going to be based on energy and carbon credits. Fiat currencies will become a thing of the past if these global predators succeed in their plans for a one-world surveillance state, where freedom of movement becomes a distant memory. Our healthcare and even our diets will also be tightly controlled by the elitist globalist predator class, whose interests are exemplified by the World Economic Forum and other elitist organizations.

With an understanding of the ongoing war over who controls the global food and energy supplies, it becomes easy to see how the NATO-Russia war (with Ukraine as NATO’s proxy) will blow up into World War III.

Moscow accused Ukraine Monday of conducting “energy terrorism” after what the Kremlin described as a failed drone attack against a Black Sea gas-compressor station that forms part of the major TurkStream gas pipeline linking Russia and Turkey.

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Angling Toward Armageddon: The Return of Senator Strangelove

Almost 80 years later, it’s sadly all too easy to forget that two nuclear weapons were once used with devastating effect on this planet. Here’s just a small description by one survivor of the atomic destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that can be found in the book Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors: “Most of the A-Bomb survivors were burned all over their bodies. They were not only naked, but also their skin came off. They were wandering around looking for their parents, husbands, wives, and children in the city of Hiroshima which had been reduced to ashes.”

Only recently, one of the dwindling group of survivors of that American bombing, Shigeko Sasamori, died. She had been a child of 13 when her city was blown to smithereens and, though unlike so many of her compatriots, she lived to tell the tale, one-third of her body was severely burned. Unbelievably enough, she would be one of the 25 “Hiroshima maidens,” all disfigured by the first atomic bombing on this planet, chosen to receive medical help a decade later in New York City. Her death, as the New York Times reported in an obituary, came only “two months after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors, for its efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.”

Unfortunately, as TomDispatch regular William Hartung reminds us today, global nuclear arsenals, including the American one, continue to grow and now hold weapons that make the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem more like BBs. To take just the three leading nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, and China, each could, unaided, turn this planet (and undoubtedly several more like it) into giant graveyards.

While it’s true that, since Nagasaki was destroyed on August 9, 1945, no nuclear weapon has ever again been used in war, there are now believed to be more than 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet. Nine countries possess them and, in a significant nuclear conflict, the Earth could be thrown into a state of “nuclear winter” in which billions of us could die of starvation, and yet, as Hartung makes all too vividly clear today, the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal is still in the process of being expanded (the term, hideously enough, is “modernized”) to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion in the coming decades. Let him explain.

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The United States Always Knew NATO Expansion Would Lead to War

The present severed from the past is easily misunderstood. In discussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, not enough is made of the historical fact that, at the end of the Cold War, the newly independent Ukraine promised not to join NATO, and NATO promised not to expand to Ukraine.

Not enough is made of the fact that Article IX of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs…” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance; that included NATO.

Nor is enough made of the fact that in 1990 and 1991, the George H.W. Bush administration gave assurances to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—assurances that arguably reached the level of a deal—that NATO would not expand east of Germany, including to Ukraine.

But even less is made of what the Bill Clinton administration later promised Russian President Boris Yeltsin, nor what the United States already knew at the time of where plans of NATO expansion to Ukraine would lead.

Recently declassified documents clearly show that, between 1993 and 2000, the U.S. already knew that a cornered Boris Yeltsin was distraught about NATO expansion and about the West’s broken promise, that expansion to Ukraine was a red line, and that if Russia ever enforced that red line, the U.S. would respond forcefully.

Though the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were invited to begin accession talks in 1997 and joined NATO in 1999, a secret October 1994 policy paper, written by National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and entitled “Moving Toward NATO Expansion,” makes it clear that the decision to expand NATO had already been made by that time. The paper explicitly keeps “the membership door open for Ukraine.”

Interestingly, though Russia is always publicly painted as a predatorial nation with imperial ambitions, a confidential 1993 cable states that most Eastern European states seek NATO membership “not [because they] feel militarily threatened by Russia” but because they believe “that NATO membership can help stave off the return of authoritarian forces” in their own countries. Though the cable makes the exception that Ukraine and the Baltic states may feel threatened by Russia.

By September 1994, Clinton had explicitly told Yeltsin that NATO would expand. While visiting Yeltsin in the hospital on December 16, 1994, Vice President Al Gore clarifies that “What Clinton told you in September was that eventually NATO will expand.”

But Gore promised Yeltsin that “the process will be gradual and open and we will consult carefully with you.” He added, “The process will be conducted in parallel with a deepening of the U.S.-Russia partnership and your partnership with NATO.”

Though less than a week later, a secret NSC memorandum clarifies that Russia will not be given “a veto or right of prior consultation over NATO decisions,” this promise of a deepening “institutionalized relationship between NATO and Russia—possibly in the form of a Treaty (“alliance with the Alliance”) or Charter” that will be established in parallel with NATO expansion is repeatedly mentioned. A secret memorandum written by Anthony Lake to Clinton on July 17, 1995 identifies “plans to develop a formalized NATO-Russia relationship in parallel with enlargement.” The spirit of this promise would be broken.

Importantly, it is evident that the Clinton administration was very aware of Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion and of their feeling of betrayal. Knowing that expansion is an impossible sell in Russia, Gore promised Yeltsin that expansion wouldn’t occur before 1996 because “[w]e understand you have parliamentary elections in mid-1995 and it would be hard for you if we moved forward then.”

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Cutting Slovakia’s Gas Supplies May Well Backfire on Zelensky

On 1 January, Ukraine ceased to allow the transit of Russia gas to Europe. This ended almost uninterrupted supply of Russian piped gas to Europe, through sovereign Ukraine, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some in the west have celebrated this as victory over Russia. More likely, it will backfire on Ukraine’s NATO and European aspirations.

I have always considered the sale, purchase and supply of gas or any other commodity as an entirely commercial matter. In that regard, even while posted to the British embassy in Moscow, I dismissed suggestions that Russia was weaponizing its energy supplies.

There was only one occasion, in 2009, when Russian gas supplies to Europe were halted temporarily following a dispute over Ukraine’s non-payment of its accumulated debts. Russia worked hard to position itself as a reliable supplier of gas specifically because it sells gas domestically at heavily subsidized prices; gas exports therefore subsidize domestic consumption.

Having good relationships with European consumers was prioritised, as Alexander Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Gazprom remarked to UK Members of Parliament who visited the British Embassy in early 2017.

Ukraine’s recent decision to end a long-standing gas supply route to Europe seems just another minor twist in the long-running saga of energy disputes between both countries.

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Israel Destroyed Gaza ‘for Generations to Come’ and the World Stayed Silent

The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.

The intention of the report, “The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development,” was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.

Yet, little was done, though the UN continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.

Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes, and displaced tens of thousands of people.

By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the UN, Gaza should have become ‘uninhabitable.’ Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza’s land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli ‘buffer zone’. The prospects for the “world’s largest open-air prison” became even dimmer.

Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other UN and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis—situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars, and daily violence—worsened, reaching, on October 7, 2023, the point of implosion.

One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.

It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.

Not only is Gaza now beyond “uninhabitable”, but, according to Greenpeace, it will be “uninhabitable for generations to come”. This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.

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Israel Bombs, America Yawns and Gatekeepers Con

As gatekeepers of the corporate information bazaar, you have served Israel well.  Echoing the propaganda of Tel Aviv and Washington has become mainstream fare, with omission at the heart of the campaign.  

Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, judiciously wrote in 1789: “Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government.”  Unfortunately, today’s media mind managers have forgotten that.  The public’s right to know the truth about Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, supported by the United States, has been subordinated to currying the favor of special interest groups and monied interests.   

You have been tranquilized by your intimate relationship to the national security state, ever willing to espouse the pro-Israel views of the White House, State Department, the Pentagon, and most, if not all, members of the American political class.

British novelist, George Orwell, in a passage from his prophetic novel, 1984, aptly described the relationship that has evolved between the establishment media and Israel; he wrote:  “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”  

There is a tendency among journalists to believe in their individual autonomy, although most work in large, hierarchical, corporate media organizations.  Many have convinced themselves that they are engaged in watchdog journalism, when they are, in fact, acting as stenographers for the powerful.  

In the case of Israel, journalists quickly learn compliancy, what can and cannot be said to protect careers.  While pro-Israel reporting and editorializing are rewarded, exact narratives and historical perspectives suffer repercussions.   

Censors have become unnecessary because an ideological self-censorship has formed and congealed.  Many of them can recall instances when they were told not to antagonize powerful interests and advertisers, and can name principled  journalists, like the late Helen Thomas and John Pilger, who were banished for saying the “unacceptable.” 

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Pentagon Reluctantly Admits Russian ‘Incremental Gains’ In Eastern Ukraine

With just days to go before the United States gets a new Commander-in-Chief with Trump’s inauguration on Jan.20, the Pentagon has made a rare admission, acknowledging that Russian forces are basically dominating on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The Pentagon during its daily press briefing on Monday acknowledged Russian forces’ “incremental gains” in the Donbass. Below is from the question and answer transcript: 

Q:  And then a completely different topic — can you give us an update on the Ukrainian battlefield? Does Putin indeed have the upper hand right now?

PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY MAJOR GENERAL PAT RYDER:  Well, what we’re seeing on the battlefield is that, especially in the East, Russia has made some incremental gains. Of course, it’s very tough fighting, as well as in the Kursk region as well. But when you talk about the upper hand, of course, tactically, again other than those incremental gains, what you’re seeing strategically is that again Russia has not achieved any of Its strategic objectives that it set for itself almost three years ago.

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You Can’t Make Peace if No One is Talking

During the Cold War, American and Russian officials and diplomats were in constant communication. The Cuban missile crisis was resolved, not by isolating each other, but by communicating with each other. Contrary to American mythology, the Cuban missile crisis was resolved, not when Kennedy coldly stared down Khrushchev and forced him to back down, but when Kennedy’s passing messages to and communicating with Khrushchev led to a negotiated settlement. Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was in constant communication with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, as was President Kennedy with Nikita Khrushchev.

Following the Cuban missile crisis, Richard Sakwa says in his new book The Culture of the Second Cold War, a telephone hotline was maintained between Washington and Moscow. He says that, during the Cold War, these telephone hotlines became part of an elaborate system of diplomatic infrastructure. Back-channel diplomacy was a regular occurrence, and lines of communication were kept always open.

In the Second Cold War, centered around the war in Ukraine, this is no longer the case. Now talking to Russia’s president is considered treasonous because it legitimizes him, and diplomatic communication is considered collusion. Russian and American diplomats don’t talk. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has barely, if ever, officially spoken to Russia foreign minister Sergei Lavrov since the war began, and President Biden has not met with President Putin once. By the summer of 2024, Biden was still maintaining that “I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now,” thus introducing the entirely novel theory that diplomacy is an instrument to be used at times of peace but not at times of war.

And the gag order on talking to the enemy is not just at the level of diplomacy and government. There is a whole industry of choking funds to online and social media sites that publish information outside the official narrative. The CIA has even pressured Twitter (X) to suppress a “long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos guilty of ‘anti-Ukraine narratives.” Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that “NATO must remain prepared for both conventional and hybrid threats: From tanks to tweets.”

But the war against communication goes beyond suppression and censorship. All three parties to the war – Ukraine, Russia and the United States – have actively banned and silenced the media of the enemy.

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Ukrainian Neutrality Is Still the Key to Peace

President-elect Trump said on January 9th that he is planning a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine. He said “Putin wants to meet,” because “we have to get that war over with.” So what are the chances that a new administration in Washington can break the deadlock and finally bring peace to Ukraine?

During both of his election campaigns, Trump said he wanted to end the wars the U.S. was involved in. But in his first term, Trump himself exacerbated all the major crises he is now confronting. He escalated Obama’s military “pivot to Asia” against China, disregarded Obama’s fears that sending “lethal” aid to Ukraine would lead to war with Russia, withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, and encouraged Netanyahu’s ambitions to land-grab and massacre his way to a mythical “Greater Israel.”

However, of all these crises, the one that Trump keeps insisting he really wants to resolve is the war in Ukraine, which Russia launched and the U.S. and NATO then chose to prolong, leading to hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian casualties. The Western powers have until now been determined to fight this war of attrition to the last Ukrainian, in the vain hope that they can somehow eventually defeat and weaken Russia without triggering a nuclear war.

Trump rightly blames Biden for blocking the peace agreement negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in March and April 2022, and for the three more years of war that have resulted from that deadly and irresponsible decision.

While Russia should be condemned for its invasion, Trump and his three predecessors all helped to set the stage for war in Ukraine: Clinton launched NATO’s expansion into eastern Europe, against the advice of leading American diplomats; Bush promised Ukraine it could join NATO, ignoring even more urgent diplomatic warnings; and Obama supported the 2014 coup that plunged Ukraine into civil war.

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A New Monroe Doctrine, or a Federalized ‘Five Eyes’? 

If one has to move beyond the relentless stupidity of social media in the past few weeks, it is easy to perceive that the singular line of thought that has most animated the right is one of annexation and conquest. One might cautiously divide the American political landscape into three competing archetypes: the revolutionary and often ideological puritans, the equilibrium-seeking landed gentries, and the fearless frontiersmen. The coordination between the three raised the greatest power in history; conflicts among them have led to catastrophes, and, in one particular instance, a civil war. 

Every man, whether new or old, native-born or immigrant, somehow finds themselves in one of these archetypes, and his conduct reflects their intellectual proximity. Possibly America’s greatest era followed the Civil War, where a combination of ultra-republican nationalism, small-i imperialism, the prudence of the native-born oligarchy, and a restrained policy of balance of power abroad—including the last instance an official American “proclamation of neutrality” was issued—led to massive expansion of American power and prestige, not to mention American frontiers. Donald Trump is the closest to a Gilded Age patrician in our modern age. His calls to “retake” Panama, buy Greenland, and “unite” Canada would be understood viscerally by anyone in the late 19th and early 20th century. Not surprising, that it has received support and rationalization from even some unusual corners of the cognoscenti. 

So what are the stakes? Trump’s Greenland-lust in particular has been called a return to a “new Monroe Doctrine” by various commentators. It is in line with “the scramble for the Arctic, one of the new ‘Great Games’ of the 21st century,” and “suggests the recalibrating of US priorities toward a more manageable ‘continental’ strategy—a new Monroe Doctrine—aimed at reasserting full hegemony over what it deems to be its natural sphere of influence, the Americas and the northern Atlantic.” A move away from the last quarter-century of crusading for democratic peace, the new “focus will be on shoring up the most important American interests at home and close to home, avoiding needless conflicts and adventurism in far-off places with marginal ties to American interests, and most importantly of all, restoring America’s confidence as a great country with a bright future.” 

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