Tag: perpetual war

Ukraine’s best hope for peace looks a lot like Donald Trump

Last week, people who fear a third world war got more reasons to worry. Ukraine, with permission from the White House, struck Russian territory with long-range missiles supplied by the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long warned that such an attack would mean that NATO and Russia “are at war,” and he has raised the specter of nuclear retaliation. Granted, these threats could be bluffs, but last week Putin gave them some credibility by (a) loosening the conditions for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, (b) firing a multiple-warhead, nuclear-capable missile at Ukraine for the first time in the war, and (c) declaring, in a speech after the strike, that Russia would be entitled to attack any nations that aid Ukraine’s strikes into Russian territory.

While Putin’s caution during previous crises suggests he’s not about to reach for the nuclear button just yet, his dramatic response has complicated any path to a peace deal. Meanwhile, some liberal voices have predicted that Trump’s looming presidency, far from hastening an end to the conflict as Trump has promised to do, will prolong it. If Trump were to cut off arms to Ukraine, he’d remove an important incentive for Putin to call it quits, according to Ben Rhodes, a former White House official under Barack Obama. Among conservatives who advocate foreign policy restraint, there is worry that Trump’s hawkish cabinet nominees portend a departure from the peace agenda he campaigned on. As for hawkish critics of Trump on both left and right, many believe that he may end the war by just giving away the farm to Putin.

These concerns are valid. But Trump has good reasons to try proving the doubters wrong. He understands that foreign policy debacles can crater a president’s approval ratings, and he has staked his reputation on being able to end a conflict that started and continues to escalate on President Joe Biden’s watch. “I’m the only one who can get the war stopped,” he told Newsweek this September. Brokering a respectable peace would be a boon to his legacy and an embarrassment for his political opponents—and Trump loves splattering egg on the faces of his detractors. So there is room for optimism alongside the worry. Trump may well manage not only to stop the war but also to get Ukraine the best deal it could realistically hope for.

Some say Trump’s Ukraine promises are hollow since he hasn’t outlined a viable peace deal. But Trump maintains, plausibly enough, that he can’t reveal details of a plan without boxing himself in. It would be better, he says, to hammer out a deal with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky behind closed doors, which means keeping mum on specifics for now. Despite Trump’s reticence, there are signs of the kind of deal he’d push for—and signs that both Putin and Zelensky would go for it.

This fall, J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate and now vice president-elect, laid out a likely settlement: The current battle lines become a “heavily fortified” demilitarized zone to prevent future Russian aggression; Kyiv retains its sovereign independence; and Russia gets assurances that Ukraine won’t join NATO. Moscow would presumably also get to keep the lands in eastern and southern Ukraine that it now holds.

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Visualizing Ukraine’s Collapsing Front Lines Amid The Steady Russian Onslaught 

As we detailed earlier, the White House is currently overseeing a ‘massive surge’ in arms to Ukraine with just 50 days left before President-elect Trump enters office. The US is also this week announcing $725 million in more aid, which is the latest defense package for Ukraine drawn directly from US inventories.

It will include a second shipment of antipersonnel mines, and comes the same day that Germany also unveiled another $680 million in Ukraine aid. The Western allies have asserted that they want to see Zelensky and Ukraine forces in as favorable a position as possible before negotiations to end the war inevitably proceed (something which Trump has repeatedly promised from day one of his second administration). But the prime question remains: what good will the rapid infusion of more weapons do when the real problem is Ukraine’s collapsing manpower? To illustrate the reality of Russia’s rapid advance of the past several months…

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Russian state media says Oreshnik missiles can hit American bases within minutes

Russia’s Oreshnik missiles have been in the spotlight since last week, when one of them hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and spurred three hours of explosions that damaged the city’s infrastructure. The strike was so strong that Ukrainian officials likened it to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Hours later, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly bragged about the new weapon, which he characterized as a “conventional intermediate-range” missile that was given the code name Oreshnik and traveled at a speed of Mach 10, which is 10 times the speed of sound and around 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second.

He issued a warning to Russia’s enemies that “there are currently no ways of counteracting this weapon.”

Ukrainian military intelligence has said they believe the missile is a newer ICBM. They report that it traveled at Mach 11 and took 15 minutes to make its way there across a 620-mile journey. It was reportedly equipped with six warheads that boasted six sub-munitions each. They believe Russia has stockpiled up to ten of these missiles.

Either way, these missiles are incredibly fast, reaching their target in just minutes and giving defending militaries very little time to prepare or react. Moreover, because they gain kinetic energy as they follow their arc back down from the atmosphere to their destination, they become more difficult for surface-to-air missile systems to intercept.

Even more alarmingly, the Oreshnik missile is capable of delivering nuclear warheads, which is not a comforting thought at a time when Russia has been increasing its threats of nuclear war amid the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

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Will the West’s Gamble in Syria and Georgia Succeed?

If you are looking at the war in Ukraine, the attempted Maidan coup in Georgia and the Salafist jihadi offensive in Syria as separate, unconnected events, you are mistaken. The United States, with the collaboration of several NATO countries — the UK in particular — has embarked on a desperate campaign to try to salvage victory from looming defeat.

During the Cold War, the American public was sold a flaming-bag of dog excrement that portrayed the Soviet Union as an implacable foe intent on sowing communist revolutions around the world. Most Americans accepted that narrative and justified wars in Vietnam, Angola and Central America as existential threats that required ever increasing defense budgets.

But then, the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, and the Berlin Wall — an iconic symbol of the Cold War — was dismantled and the raison d’etre of fighting communism vanished. What to do? Follow Abraham Lincoln’s plan for reconciling with the South in the aftermath of the Civil War? Hell no. Russia still had to be treated as an enemy.

The fascism that is at the heart of the American establishment — i.e., a cozy, corrupt relationship were corporations grow wealthy from supplying over-priced military technology by bribing the Congress to pony up billions of dollars — continued to look for enemies abroad and launched meaningless, but profitable, wars of expedition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Syria. None of those ventures succeeded in bringing peace and stability to those nations.

Why fight these wars? To what purpose? The answer is simple: gain control of the vast resources controlled by Russia, China and Iran. During the first quarter of the 21st Century, the US milked the Global War on Terror to justify expanding a security state that resembles the heinous conduct of the Soviet Union in its darkest moments. Yet, while ostensibly focused on fighting Islamic extremism, we have seen the United States knowingly and wittingly arm and train some of the very Islamic radicals we claimed we were fighting.

Which brings us to the re-ignition of the war in Syria. Turkey is a useful and willing pawn in this lethal game. The goal? Create conditions to justify a war with Iran and weaken both Russia and China. Unfortunately, most Americans are still willing to accept the propaganda and will support these efforts until there is an economic or military crisis that inflicts pain and suffering on the US.

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Boris Johnson admits Ukraine conflict is “proxy war” against Russia

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted that the West organized a proxy war against Russia, an effort that has not only caused untold deaths and apocalyptic carnage in Ukraine but has raised fears of a nuclear conflict, especially after Moscow announced its intentions to review its nuclear policy following Kiev regime missile attacks on Russian territory.

It is recalled that as prime minister (July 2019-September 2022), Johnson encouraged the Europeans to send more weapons to Ukraine after he urged the Kiev regime to abandon negotiations with the Kremlin and continue a futile war effort. In effect, the former prime minister saw an opportunity to use Kiev as a proxy to continue London’s centuries-old foreign policy tradition of hostility with Moscow.

“We’re waging a proxy war, but we’re not giving our proxies the ability to do the job. For years now, we’ve been allowing them to fight with one hand tied behind their backs and it has been cruel,” Johnson told The Telegraph.

The former British prime minister also said that a multinational group of European peacekeeping forces should be responsible for protecting any possible future ceasefire line in Ukraine.

“I don’t think we should be sending in combat troops to take on the Russians. But I think as part of the solution, as part of the end state, you’re going to want to have multinational European peace-keeping forces monitoring the border [and] helping the Ukrainians,” he said. “I cannot see that such a European operation could possibly happen without the British.”

However, while Johnson said that British troops should not be deployed to fight the Russians, he did stress that London was “morally responsible” for Ukraine and supported the use of British Storm Shadow missile against Russia.

“[Britain took] far too long [to] break the taboo” on providing Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine and the accompanying policy permission to fire the weapons into Russia, he said, adding: “We could have forced the pace.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on November 28 at a press conference in Kazakhstan that major “decision-making centres” in Kiev would be devastated by the powerful Oreshnik missile in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russia and warned that all weapons could be used if the Kiev regime were to acquire nuclear arms.

“We do not rule out the use of Oreshnik against the military, military-industrial facilities or decision-making centres, including in Kiev,” Putin said, adding that although the weapon was “comparable in strength to a nuclear strike” if used several times on one location, they were not currently fitted with nuclear warheads.

“The kinetic impact is powerful, like a meteorite falling,” the Russian president explained. “We know in history what meteorites have fallen where and what the consequences were.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hypocritically accused Putin of a “despicable escalation” even though it was Kiev that had long been requesting permission from the US, Britain and France to fire long-range missiles provided by them against military targets inside Russia. Following the granting of permission, the Kiev regime launched British Storm Shadow missiles and American ATACMS to strike targets inside Russia for the first time, prompting anger from the Kremlin.

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Biden’s Parting Shot at America

The interim between a US presidential election and the swearing in of a new Administration has for most of our history been a non-eventful period where the outgoing Administration winds down operations and the incoming Administration ramps up new personnel before the inauguration.

The 20th Amendment to our Constitution was enacted in 1933 to reduce the “lame duck” period between election and inauguration to January 20th instead of March 4th. Increasing ease in travel and communications made such a long interim unnecessary. However long the transition period, it has been understood that with the new election came a new mandate from the American people and the “lame duck” outgoing administration was meant to quietly quack out its last few days in office without incident.

Then came Biden. In the period since the American people rejected Biden’s neocon interventionists in favor of Donald Trump’s promises to end the wars, the “lame duck” has run roughshod over the will of the American people. Whoever is running Biden – and the answer is unclear – has decided to “Trump proof” foreign policy to bring us to the literal brink of WWIII with Russia. And to top it off, Biden’s people this past week have again unleashed al-Qaeda linked rebels to wreak havoc in Syria!

After solidly opposing the neocon demand that Ukraine be given permission to fire US weapons deep into Russia, President Biden in the waning days of his presidency suddenly reversed course and granted permission. From back in 2022, when Russia first went into Ukraine, Biden had argued against sending offensive weaponry and US troops to fight on Ukraine’s behalf. “Make no mistake,” he said in March of that year, “that’s called World War III.”

Something about losing the popular and electoral vote has led Biden’s people to disregard the threat of WWIII and give the green light for attacks with US missiles deep into Russian territory. Why is this so different than providing tanks or bullets? These missile systems are highly complex and classified and can only be operated by US or NATO personnel. That means that American military officers are shooting American missiles into Russia – something unimaginable even in the depths of the Cold War!

Then, just days ago, we saw the sudden re-emergence of the US former proxies in Syria – extremists whose ties go back to al-Qaeda – sweep halfway through the country in what appears to be a return of Obama’s disastrous “Assad must go” policy. For five years the conflict in Syria had been more or less “frozen,” but Biden’s people have turned it up to a boil.

Why has the Biden Administration suddenly given a green light to these terrorists and how deeply is the CIA involved in stirring up new trouble in Syria? Make no mistake: these US-backed “rebels” would never have made their move without the approval of the Biden Administration.

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FLASHBACK: Joe And Hunter Biden Met With Russian Energy Execs Within Weeks Of Crimean Annexation…The Question Is…Why?

A well-placed source has informed CDMedia that Joe and Hunter Biden met with state-controlled corporate Russian energy executives in April of 2014. The meeting took place in the United States. Energy deals were discussed.

So what? you may ask. However, dig deeper, the timing is critical.

Only a few weeks earlier, the Maidan Revolution occurred in Ukraine. The Obama administration was behind the overthrow of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanykovych. Over one hundred protesters were shot and killed by snipers loyal to the Yanykovych regime.

Only a few weeks later, before the Biden meeting, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and stoked the war between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region of East Ukraine. The conflict continues today. People are still dying.

The Obama administration forced Ukraine to not respond militarily to the Crimean aggression. This is well documented. Sanctions however were implemented against the Russian Federation for their actions and continue to this day as well.

What occurred in Ukraine in early 2014 and the following weeks between the Obama administration, Kyiv and the Kremlin has never been sufficiently investigated. The corrupt media just doesn’t care.

But if Russia was then, and still is, our enemy number one according to Obama and HIllary at the time, then why were Joe and Hunter meeting with Russian energy executives only weeks later?

Could it be Joe and Hunter had something to sell? Could that something have been keeping Ukraine from responding militarily to the Russian military action? What would Joe and Hunter want in return? And why was Hunter in the meeting at all? He had no official government function.

There is a pattern here. Joe took Hunter to China on business, and Hunter returned with a $1.5 billion check for an investment firm he controlled. What did Joe sell then? Enquiring minds want to know.

And, we all know about the Burisma scandal, where Hunter Biden [and Joe] received millions of dollars from Ukrainian organized crime in a quid pro quo for Joe’s influence to stop investigations into Burisma organized crime.

We also know the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign secretly later paid Russian intelligence to develop the infamous ‘Steele Dossier’ which was later used to try and removed duly-elected President Donald Trump from office.

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Scandinavians, the World’s Happiest People, Love Killing for the USA

“If Russia invades—that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine—then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” President Joe Biden said standing next to the new Social Democrat chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, at a White House news conference, February 7, 2022.

When pressed for details on how he would keep that promise given that the pipeline is not under U.S. control, Biden stated: “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”

Scholz hedged, saying only that Germany was “acting together” with its allies and promising “very, very harsh” steps against Russia if it invades Ukraine.

Three weeks earlier, Undersecretary Victoria Nuland delivered the same message at a State Department briefing. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Nuland was Obama and Biden’s point woman for organizing the 2014 fascistic coup in Ukraine. She was caught on tape telling Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, who should run the coup government, as if she were in charge of Ukraine.

The coup took place three weeks later, February 24, 2014, and led to neo-fascist military battalions’ war against ethnic Russians in the Donbas area, and the Crimean secession.

On February 19, Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky made it clear his country would join NATO and he implied that he wished to have nuclear weapons. That, at least, is how Russia’s government interpreted what he sought when he spoke at the Munich Security Council.

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US Could Deal Death Blow to International Law

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) stunning issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity is a major game changer. After years of impunity, the chickens unleashed by Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza have finally come home to roost.

These charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are momentous. This is the first time the ICC has issued arrest warrants against an Israeli official for crimes against the Palestinian people. It is only the second time in its 22 years of existence that the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for someone who is not from the African continent.

Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights called the ICC’s decision “a historic and pivotal moment in the battle against Israel’s impunity, in which the Palestinian people have been denied justice, and subjugated for decades under a genocidal, settler-colonial apartheid regime.”

[On Monday the ICC president blasted both the U.S. and Russia for interfering with the court in “appalling” attacks.

“The court is being threatened with draconian economic sanctions by another permanent member of the Security Council [the U.S.] as if it was a terrorist organization,” Judge Tomoko Akane said.]

US History of Undermining the ICC

The United States had a fraught relationship with the ICC even before it opened for business in 2002. As President Bill Clinton was leaving office, he signed the court’s Rome Statute, stating,

“I believe that a properly constituted and structured International Criminal Court would make a profound contribution in deterring egregious human rights abuses worldwide, and that signature increases the chances for productive discussions with other governments to advance these goals in the months and years ahead.”

But Clinton urged incoming President George W. Bush to refrain from sending it to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification. Bush went even further and, in an unprecedented move, unsigned the treaty on behalf of the United States. Since then, the U.S. has consistently tried to undermine the ICC.

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The Insanity of Neocons

Stephen Bryen, who’s now retired from a stellar career at the very highest levels both in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex and in the Executive and also the Legislative branches of the U.S. Government, and whose predictions about the war in Ukraine war thus far have consistently turned out to be true, is, for whatever reason, nonetheless a neocon (advocate for increasing yet further the U.S. empire) in the case of China; and, so, while he’s realistic about the need for the U.S. Government to withdraw from Ukraine, he is nonetheless a normal neocon in regards to China.

On November 29th, he headlined “China Alarmed As US Marine Prepare HIMARS and ATACMS for Yonaguni”, and argued that it’s a good move by Biden now, that he’ll be placing in Japan U.S. missiles that can hit Taiwan for the purpose of “stopping a Taiwan invasion,” by which stupid phrase he intends to mean that we’ll be stopping “an invasion of Taiwan,” by — you guess whom, which is, of course, according to the neocons’ plan, to be done by — China, as soon as Taiwan will announce that it is NOT a part of China, and for which purpose the U.S. Government has been arming Taiwan so that Taiwan can then (with American weapons and maybe direct Military involvement) resist the invasion by China that will be China’s inevitable response to this U.S.-planned breakaway from China by Taiwan. And THAT will then give the U.S. Government the ‘right’ to invade and conquer China — which is the real objective of all of this scheming and war-planning by Breyen and ogther neocons.

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