Tag: perpetual war

Trump Should Cut Off Europe’s Defense Welfare Queens

The new administration isn’t even a month old, but already hysteria has swept Europe. After visits by Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, top European officials threw “a temper tantrum” in the words of one observer, which featured wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments on a Biblical scale. On Monday French President Emmanuel Macron hosted an emergency summit of selected continental leaders, which generated abundant kvetching but little more.

Ukraine and its European advocates warn of a new Dark Age if the U.S. makes peace with Russia, as President Donald Trump is trying to do. Even worse, NATO members fear the loss of their heretofore presumed birthright to defense by America. Governments which have repeatedly claimed that Kiev’s defeat would invite a reformed Red Army to march to the Atlantic are preparing new excuses for failing to spend more on defense. The spectacle resembles a theatrical farce.

Americans have subsidized the continent’s defense for eight decades. Despite complaints from Washington, Europeans have consistently minimized military expenditures, convinced that the U.S. would continue to do whatever was necessary to protect them. There were occasional American outbursts, such as by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates more than a decade ago. However, this political theater changed nothing—Gates retired three weeks after his famous speech—and the Pentagon continued to provide defense welfare for prosperous and populous nations across the pond and beyond.

Indeed, top U.S. officials, including Joe Biden as both vice president and president, repeatedly told the Europeans “never mind,” visiting the continent to assure listeners that no matter how little they did, they could count on America to bail them out. The Europeans understandably left the heavy lifting to Washington while concentrating on funding generous welfare states at U.S. expense. (The same Europeans often pilloried Americans for their “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism.)

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Europe Sending Peacekeeper Troops to Ukraine ‘Unacceptable’, Says Kremlin

Britain is set to pitch a plan for thousands of European NATO members’ soldiers to be deployed to Ukraine as peacekeepers in the coming week, a notion Russia says may constitute a “direct threat”.

Moscow has attempted to pre-empt a European initiative to buttress security in the east of the continent by deterring further fighting after a putative future ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia specifically cited a report in the UK’s Daily Telegraph this week professing to reveal the plan for a European deployment to Ukraine after a ceasefire to keep the peace that would allegedly run to 30,000 troops.

Responding on Thursday morning from the Kremlin, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned “the deployment of NATO countries’ troops to Ukraine cannot be acceptable for Russia”.

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Delighted Kremlin says it ‘absolutely agrees’ with Donald Trump as panic grips Europe over President’s attack on Zelensky and ‘plans to abandon NATO’

The Kremlin has said it ‘absolutely’ agrees with Donald Trump after the US president warned Volodymyr Zelensky to ‘move fast’ to end the conflict in Ukraine – as Europe has been left panicked at the prospect of Washington abandoning Kyiv.

‘[The Trump administration] talk about the need to establish peace as soon as possible and do it through negotiations,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. 

‘We have also already mentioned that this position is more favourable to us than the previous administration, and that here we absolutely agree with the American administration.’

Peskov went on to hit out at the Biden administration, claiming that the previous team in Washington ‘did not declare any goals to initiate a peace process’ and spoke ‘only about war.’

He also declared that any plan to send European troops to Ukraine as part of a potential peacekeeping mission would be unacceptable for Russia and that it was monitoring such proposals with concern. 

Moscow is likely feeling emboldened following Trump’s scathing attacks on Zelensky yesterday, in which he called the Ukrainian President a ‘terrible’ leader, ‘a modestly successful comedian’ and ‘a dictator without elections’.

In what appeared to be a thinly-veiled threat, and a shocking departure from US policy on Ukraine, the President went on to say that ‘Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.’

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With just ONE HOUR to decide, Zelensky REJECTS U.S. proposal for rare earth minerals in exchange for military aid

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected a U.S. proposal to grant Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth mineral reserves in exchange for military aid, upping the stakes in an already complex geopolitical tug-of-war. According to reports from The Economist, The Washington Post, and Reuters, the proposal was first presented to Zelensky during a visit by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week. Zelensky, however, has repeatedly deferred or outright rejected the deal, signaling a reluctance to cede control over Ukraine’s natural resources to foreign powers.

The proposed deal, which reportedly grants the U.S. rights to 50% of Ukraine’s mineral reserves, emerged during tense negotiations amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump has openly stated that he wants Ukraine to “pay back” the estimated 300 billion in aid provided since 2022 by offering the equivalent of 500 billion worth of rare earth minerals. These minerals, which include lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium, are essential for technologies ranging from batteries and nuclear power to advanced weaponry.

Misaligned expectations and strategy

Zelensky’s refusal to sign the deal during the Munich Security Conference last weekend underscores a fundamental disconnect between Kyiv and Washington. While U.S. officials view the proposal as a means of recouping investments and securing long-term strategic interests, Zelensky is advocating for a more equitable partnership.

In October 2024, Zelensky unveiled his so-called “victory plan,” which included a proposal for joint use of Ukraine’s critical resources with the U.S., contingent on continued military assistance and strategic deterrence. However, at Munich, he emphasized that Ukraine was not yet ready to commit to such a deal, seeking better terms that align with the country’s sovereignty and economic interests.

“This is not about who gets what,” Zelensky reportedly told reporters at the conference. “It’s about creating a partnership that respects Ukraine’s independence and ensures a sustainable future for our people.”

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Poland Revives ‘Fort Trump’ Idea In Effort To Keep US Troop Presence

Poland is reviving the idea of creating a large military base called “Fort Trump” as European allies walk a diplomatic tightrope with the Trump administration as he pushes for Ukraine peace without their representation.

The country’s President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday revealed that assurances have been communicated from the Trump White House over the future of America’s troop presence in Poland. There are no plans for a US troop reduction along NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ – he was told.

Trump and his top national security officials have been pushing hard for Europe to do more to bolster its own security, instead of relying on Washington dollars and deployments.

Duda addressed this in Tuesday comments as follows: “There are no concerns that the U.S. would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the U.S. would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”

“On the contrary, I hope that thanks to the efforts that President Trump is currently making, the war in Ukraine will end,” he continued, immediately following a meeting in Warsaw with Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

“I will say that in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way,” Duda said, praising the longtime friend of his. The two appeared to be close during Trump’s first administration.

Washington initially deployed and bolstered Pentagon forces in Poland following Crimea being annexed by Russia in 2014, which was the result of a popular referendum among the population.

International reports commonly estimate there are some 10,000 American troops in Poland. The Associated Press quoted Duda as expressing hope for an increase in troops, especially if Poland follows through on the prior Fort Trump idea:

Duda said Hegseth told him “that we can rather expect a strengthening of the American presence here. We even talked about the fact that I hope that Fort Trump, which we talked about during the first term of President Donald Trump, will really be established.”

Duda had first spoken publicly on this when he visited the White House in 2018, though the military outpost was never established.

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US-Backed Kurdish SDF Agrees To Integrate Into Jolani’s Syrian Army

A major agreement has reportedly been reached between the Kurdish SDF and the post-Assad Syrian government, which will reportedly include the full integration of SDF fighters into the national army. The deal also is said to have included the civil leadership in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

Details are still emerging about a lot of exact specifics beyond the SDF integration into the military, which has been sought since the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over Syria and ousted the former Assad government. The deal is expected to increase the integration of AANES territory into national government institutions at least to some extent.

It is an open question, however, how much autonomy the Kurds in that territory might retain. Some of the HTS leaders have ruled out the idea of giving any autonomy to the Kurds, and suggested that any role in the national government requires them to first totally disarm and submit.

Integration into the Syrian Army seems well short of that position, and raises the question of how Turkey will respond to the announcement. Turkey has insisted they would invade if the SDF weren’t eliminated, and integration might be short enough of that goal that Turkey close partnership with the HTS could be impacted.

SDF leader Mazloum Abdi has made comments about the potential for a deal just a day prior to these announcements. Abdi said that he was hopeful for the new HTS-led government in Syria, and promised SDF support for national stability and unity.

Turkey isn’t the only potential objector here. The Kurdistan Syria Front (KSF) issued a statement very critical of SDF and the AANES deal, even though its exact terms still aren’t public.

They warned that the deal undermines the legitimate rights of Kurds in Syria, and complained of a “path of compromise” the SDF and their associates have been on since October.

The KSF was particularly critical of the lack of consensus with other Kurdish groups before making the deal, saying that they were undermining the appearance of a unified Kurdish stance in regional and international negotiations.

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Trump Blames Ukraine: What The New York Times Gets Right and What The New York Times Gets Wrong

On February 18, for the first time since the war in Ukraine began, high ranking U.S. and Russian officials met to begin talks on ending the war. The U.S. delegation included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East and a favorite negotiator Steve Witkoff and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The Russian delegation included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yury Ushakov.

Following the meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump stunned reporters at a press conference by blaming Ukraine, and not Russia, for the war in what The New York Times called “Trump’s Pivot Toward Putin’s Russia.” In its cross examination of Trump’s case, The Times gets some things very right. But they got some things very wrong.

As he walked out of the talks, Sergey Lavrov said, “We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other. I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions.”

The position that the American side seems to have better understood is the Russian narrative that the war did not start on February 24, 2022 and that Russia did not start it. Russia has long insisted that the war began with the U.S. supported coup of 2014 and the failure to protect the linguistic, religious and cultural rights of the ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens who felt abandoned and threatened by that coup.

Lavrov has consistently argued that Russia is not demanding preconditions but that they are demanding that the West fulfil its previous agreement not to expand NATO eastward to Russia’s border and its previous commitment to settle the crisis in Ukraine based on the UN Charter that stipulates the principle of equal rights and self-determination. The first was broken with the promise that Ukraine was on an irreversible path to NATO; the second was broken with Kiev’s “extermination of everything Russian, including language, mass media, culture, and even the use of the Russian language in everyday life.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to this narrative that the Americans now “better understand,” was intended to prevent the first and protect the second.

So, The New York Times complains that “[a]s far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it.” Following the meeting of the American and Russian delegations, The Times complains that “American officials did not dwell on Russia’s violation of international law in attacking Ukraine.”

About this, The Times is right. Trump is wrong more for what he did not say than for what he did. “By contrast,” The Times says, “Mr. Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia.” Putin is to blame for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and the discussions on ending the war must put this on the record and address it, at least in security guarantees for Ukraine.

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Why It’s Crucial To Expose US Provocations in Ukraine

If you believe that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, you will likely compare Putin to Hitler and will likely oppose President Trump’s peace negotiations with Russia. After all, if Putin’s invasion was unprovoked, a settlement would reward naked aggression and would be akin to Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement with Hitler in Munich.

This is why it’s so crucial that people who know the truth about U.S. provocations in Ukraine and about America’s extreme hypocrisy to be fearlessly outspoken in proclaiming: the U.S. intentionally provoked the war, to weaken Russia, to wean Europe from Russian energy, and to make Europe more dependent on the U.S.

Unless the truth about U.S. provocations is exposed, there will be continued opposition to a peace deal for Ukraine, in both the U.S. and the EU. There is a chance that hawks in D.C. will force Trump to back down from negotiating a peace deal and that the U.S. will send U.S. troops, as Vice President Vance has threatened. And there is a chance that EU countries will try to extend the war without help from the U.S.

So far, EU nations have been willing to sacrifice their economies and social democratic safety nets for the sake of conflict with Russia. Likewise, EU governments have been cowardly about challenging U.S. support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza and of the West Bank. Moreover, there is pressure now from Trump for EU nations to increase their military budgets, to up to 5% of nations’ GDP. If people in Europe knew the cynical truth about U.S. provocations, they’d likely change their hawkish policies, which enrich U.S. military contractors.

Another, perhaps more important, reason to expose U.S. provocations in Ukraine is to undermine public support in the U.S. for the MICIMATT in general, and for the planned war with China, in particular. Many of the Trump administration advisors who want to stop the war in Ukraine are eager to prepare for war with China. Avoidable disastrous wars need to be stopped. The bloated Pentagon budget needs to be cut. The empire of overseas bases need to be unraveled. Regime change operations need to be curtailed. The culture of secrecy needs to be ended.

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Ukrainian Whistleblower: ‘How the SBU Robbed and Killed a U.S. Citizen’

One of Ukraine’s most important whistleblowers, former Parliamentarian and People’s Deputy, Oleksandr Dubinsky, currently imprisoned by President Zelensky, has released a stunning video testimony this week – which exposes an egregious crime committed by his country’s Secret Service (SBU) against a U.S. citizen who was residing in Ukraine.

Presently, Dubinsky is being held in a secure facility where his is currently awaiting trial, after the state after a criminal case had been initiated against him for the crime of high treason. 

In his video below, Dubinsky reveals more crucial details about the death of Gonzalo Lira, a popular American video blogger and independent journalist, who reportedly died under unusual circumstanced while held in custody for criticizing the Zelensky government’s performance in the war, as well as criticism of Kiev regime’s repression of religious freedom in Ukraine.

The following is an English translation of Dubinsky’s recent video, interspersed with statements made by Vasily Nebenzya, the current Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations:

Dubinsky: Friends, hello, everyone. I am glad to see and hear you all. Another important statement that came from the representative of the aggressor State, the representative of the Russian Federation in the UN Security Council, Nebenzya. This is a statement that a US citizen, Gonzalo Lira, died in the SBU concentration camps, in the so-called ‘torture and secret prisons.’

Nebenzya: And listen to what the escaped deputy of the Rada (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine) Artem Dmytruk told. How he was tortured by SBU officers in 2022, trying to extract testimony and confession of treason. The main claim against him was that he spoke in defense of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). Here are excerpts from his gruesome account published on the internet. I quote: “I was thrown on the cold and wet floor, somewhere nearby I heard the screams and groans of my friends. A little further away were the screams and groans of other people and the horrible sounds of torture. They were beating me terribly, trying to gouge out my eyes. I lost consciousness several times and fell from the chair, came to my senses and was tortured again.” End quote. He was threatened to be shot or disabled. After that he was transported to the gym of the Odessa SBU office, where he was forced to say loudly and clearly on camera that he would never again criticize Vladimir Zelensky and the head of his office, Andrei Yermak. In addition, he was forced to be an SBU agent to fight the opposition to Zelensky. Dmytruk is not the only politician who stated about the existence of SBU concentration camps in Kiev. Another Rada deputy, Oleksandr Dubynskyy, in particular, previously reported about the existence of such camps in Kiev. He claims that more than 300 people were tortured through it in order to extract testimony against now-elected US President Donald Trump for use in the electoral struggle in the United States. Interesting confessions, aren’t they? From them you can get an impression of what the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, arrested in August 2023, tortured to death and died in the SBU walls on January 12, 2024, had to go through. And what 70-year-old human rights activist Olena Berezhnaya, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison a month ago after months of torture in SBU custody, who was never broken by the Zelensky clique, had to face because she went to the United Nations and spoke out about human rights violations by the Kiev regime.

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Report: Hegseth Orders Pentagon To Make Sweeping Budget Cuts

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered Pentagon leaders to develop plans to make sweeping cuts to the Defense Department’s budget, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

According to a memo obtained by the Post, Hegseth’s order calls for an 8% cut to the Pentagon budget each year for five years. The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, and an 8% cut for five years would bring it down to roughly $560 billion, a reduction of $290 billion.

Hegseth wants the proposed cuts to be drawn up by February 24, and the memo included a list of 17 categories that would be exempt from the spending cuts.

The Post report said the exemptions include operations at the southern border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones, and other munitions.

The Pentagon has also been targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon to hand over a list of its probationary employees with the expectation that many may be fired, which came as DOGE workers arrived at the Pentagon.

The news of the plan to cut the Pentagon budget comes after President Trump suggested he wanted a major reduction in US military spending, saying he wanted to cut it in half as part of a deal with Russia and China.

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