Tag: perpetual war

“We will prepare millions of Ukrainian migrants for the Armed Forces of Ukraine”: Polish authorities reported on the potential of the local training base

During the NATO summit in Washington, Polish authorities announced plans to replenish the Ukrainian army with millions of Ukrainian immigrants.

I hope that the [training] center in Bydgoszcz will prepare millions of Ukrainians to fight Russia. The West should see the potential of such a center as a place where Ukrainian volunteers who now live in EU countries and want to defend Ukraine in the future can be trained
– said Jacek Sievera, head of the country’s national security bureau, as quoted by the Associated Press.

In Bydgoszcz it is also planned to organize a platform for the exchange of experience between Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who have already fought and NATO soldiers. The alliance training center has been created here since February 2024.

For our part, we note that, apparently, a hidden mobilization of Ukrainian immigrants is gradually unfolding in Europe. Officially, they cannot be forced to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but there are ways of informal influence, for example, replacing criminal prosecution for a crime with service in the Ukrainian army, or using administrative offenses to blackmail the entire family with deportation.

At the same time, it should be expected that as human resources in Ukraine are depleted, the recruitment of immigrants into the army in the EU will take increasingly overt forms.

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Israel to Ukraine to Bulgaria: Which countries receive US military aid?

The United States is poised to restart the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel that were held up earlier this year after a pause on their export following the brutal offensive in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, officials told multiple media organisations on Wednesday.

In early May, Biden had paused a single shipment of bombs after Israel ordered the evacuation of Rafah on May 6 and the Israeli military began “targeted” ground operations one day later. Since then, United Nations agencies estimate that about a million Palestinians – many of whom have already been displaced multiple times from other areas of Gaza – have been forced to flee from Rafah.

Throughout Israel’s military campaign on Gaza, the US has not only allowed weapons sales to Israel. It has also provided large amounts of other military aid – both financially and, it is believed, through supportive military operations.

In April, US Congress approved a major round of military aid to both Israel and Ukraine. A total of $95bn included $60bn (63 percent) for Ukraine, $26.4bn (28 percent) for Israel and $8.1bn (9 percent) for the Asia Pacific region relating to a possible threat from China.

The US is the world’s biggest provider of military aid. So, what exactly is military aid and which countries benefit the most?

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China slams NATO’s ‘provocations, lies, smears’ over its Russia ties

China has warned NATO against “provoking confrontation” over its ties with Russia after the Western military alliance accused Beijing of being a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The warning on Thursday came as NATO leaders meeting in Washington, DC, promised to bolster Ukraine and Europe’s defences against Russia and made clear that China was also becoming a focus of the alliance.

A spokesperson for Beijing’s mission to the European Union said NATO should “stop hyping up the so-called China threat and provoking confrontation and rivalry, and do more to contribute to world peace and stability”.

China, which has deepened strategic ties with Russia, has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It has presented itself as a neutral party in the war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the US and other Western nations.

Beijing, however, has offered a critical lifeline to Russia’s isolated economy, with trade booming since the conflict began.

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NATO’s 75th Anniversary: The Broken Promises That Led to War

If diplomacy can pave the path to peace, then broken diplomatic promises can lead to war. Since the hopeful end of the Cold War, four key promises were made by the West. Each of them was intended to pave the path to the new and stable era of peace, but each of them was broken by the West and served instead to pave the path to war in Ukraine.

The 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO is a good time to reflect not only on its accomplishments but also on the lost opportunities that still haunt us today.

First Broken Promise: “Not One Inch to the East”

The war in Ukraine is being fought in part over Ukraine’s and Russia’s need for security guarantees. But that concern was not created out of nothing in 2022.

On February 9, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker famously offered Gorbachev a choice: either a united but independent Germany outside of NATO or a united Germany connected to NATO “but with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary.” Baker later disavowed these words, saying it was merely a hypothetical question, but declassified documents refute Baker by adding his next statement. After Gorbachev replied, “It goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” Baker responded, “We agree with that.”

Meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze on the same day, Baker even refers to “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” Later that day, Baker famously told Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”

Simultaneously, German officials pointedly told Shevardnadze, “For us it is clear: NATO will not extend itself to the East.” On February 2, standing beside Baker at a press conference, German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher announced that he and Baker “were in full agreement that there is no intention to extend the NATO area of defense and the security toward the East. This holds true not only for GDR… but that holds true for all the other Eastern countries… whatever happens within the Warsaw Pact.” On May 17, 1990, NATO General Secretary Manfred Wörner called this a “firm security guarantee” for the USSR.

But the West soon broke that promise. Despite signing the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations in May 1997, pledging to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security,” the Clinton administration had already decided two years earlier in 1995 to extend NATO eastward. In 1999, NATO expanded eastward to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. In 2004, it added Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In 2009, Croatia and Albania joined, followed by Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.

The West’s insistence that NATO continue its “open door” policy toward Ukraine and Georgia led directly to Russia’s demand on December 17, 2021, that the door be closed and that mutual security guarantees that included Russia be developed instead, or Russia would respond by “military-technical means.”

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Israel Used US-Provided Bomb on School Sheltering Civilians

Israel used a US-provided bomb in a strike on a school in a town east of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis that was sheltering civilians, CNN reported on Wednesday.

The airstrike hit tents on the outside of the school in the town of Abassan on Tuesday. Officials at the nearby Nasser Hospital said 31 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, including eight children.

Footage from Al Jazeera shows children playing soccer in the schoolyard as the strike hits the school’s entrance. Weapons experts told CNN that a video of the aftermath showed remnants of a US-made GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, a 250-pound munition.

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NATO SUMMIT: Alliance’s Endgame Appears to Be Nuclear War

The world is at its most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Back then, however, the fear of total destruction consumed the public; today, few people seem even to be aware of this possibility.

It is easily imaginable that nuclear war could break out between Russia (and perhaps China) and the West, yet politicians continue to escalate tensions, place hundreds of thousands of troops at “high readiness,” and attack military targets inside Russia, even while ordinary citizens blithely go on with their lives.

The situation is without parallel in history.

Consider the following facts. A hostile military alliance, now including even Sweden and Finland, is at the very borders of Russia. How are Russian leaders — whose country was almost destroyed by Western invasion twice in the 20th century — supposed to react to this? How would Washington react if Mexico or Canada belonged to an enormous, expansionist, and highly belligerent anti-U.S. military alliance? 

As if expanding NATO to include Eastern Europe wasn’t provocative enough, Washington began to send billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Ukraine in 2014, to “improve interoperability with NATO,” in the words of the Defense Department.

Why this Western involvement in Ukraine, which, as Barack Obama said while president, is “a core Russian interest but not an American one?”

One reason was given by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in a recent moment of startling televised candor: Ukraine is “sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals… I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China.” 

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Israeli soldiers turn Gaza into ‘free fire zone littered with corpses’

Israeli troops are authorized to “open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians,” and have turned Gaza into a “landscape littered with corpses,” +972 Mag reported on 8 July.

Journalists from the Tel Aviv-based news magazine interviewed six Israeli soldiers who have participated in the Gaza invasion and occupation in recent months.

The sources, including five who wished to remain anonymous, recounted how Israeli soldiers “routinely executed Palestinian civilians” simply because they entered areas designated as “no-go zones.”

“There was total freedom of action,” said B, a soldier who operated in Gaza. “If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain – you just shoot.”

When soldiers see someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” B continued. “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”

B went on to describe an incident in November when soldiers killed 15 to 20 Palestinians, including children, who evacuated the wrong way when a gunfight broke out near a school.

“Everyone who went to the right was killed … There was a pile of bodies,” he told +972.

Another soldier, S., stated that a fellow soldier shot and killed a Palestinian family just for walking around near the soldiers’ protected compound.

“At first, they say ‘four people.’ It turns into two children plus two adults, and by the end, it’s a man, a woman, and two children. You can assemble the picture yourself.”

A., an officer who served in the army’s Operations Directorate, explained that he was supposed to get authorization before shooting at “hospitals, clinics, schools, religious institutions, [and] buildings of international organizations.”

But in practice, “I can count on one hand the cases where we were told not to shoot. Even with sensitive things like schools, [approval] feels like only a formality.”

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New NATO Command Will Assist Ukraine With Training, Equipment Donations

NATO’s leaders are set to approve a separate command at Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate training and equipment donations to Kyiv’s forces, a senior administration official told reporters last week.

The command will have about 700 personnel from NATO countries and partner nations assigned to the center, an alliance news release said. The administration officials, speaking to the press Friday, said the center would increase the interoperability among Ukrainian forces and NATO.

As an example of the drive to make Kyiv’s military more interoperable with NATO’s, the administration official said, “the U.S. for more than a year [have] been training Ukrainians on F-16 platforms,” as have other alliance members.

NATO will also facilitate equipment logistics and provide support through the center to the long-term development of Ukraine’s armed forces, the release added.

Last month, the alliance’s defense ministers approved the motion for consideration at the summit in Washington.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that creating the center does “not make NATO a party to the conflict, but they will enhance our support to Ukraine to uphold its right to self-defense.”

The administration official said, “the alliance stood up to President [Vladimir] Putin.” He added that 23 of the 32 nations in NATO are spending more than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, and some members are calling for a 3 percent threshold. Overall, the alliance has boosted its defense spending by more than $180 billion each year since 2020, he added.

At the defense ministers’ meeting last month, Stoltenberg said, “Over the next five years, NATO Allies across Europe and Canada plan to acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft – mostly 5th generation F-35s – and also a lot of other high-end capabilities.”

The center’s creation also could be seen as a means of “institutionalizing” the long-term commitment of Western and Indo-Pacific nations, such as Japan, Korea and Australia, to Ukraine. The support would continue despite changes in administrations as would occur in the United States if Donald Trump is elected and, and changes in governments, as happened in the United Kingdom with Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

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The Japanese-Philippine Military Logistics Pact Raises The Risk Of War With China

It’s no secret that the US is preparing to “Pivot (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China, but few have paid attention to the form in which this is expected to take in the coming future. Instead of the US doing so on its own or through the previously assembled Quad of itself, Australia, India, and Japan, it’s increasingly relying on the Squad. This framework swaps India out for the Philippines, and its latest relevant development was the clinching of a Japanese-Philippine military logistics pact.

That agreement follows April’s first-ever trilateral US-Japanese-Philippine summit, which tightened the US’ containment noose around China, and came approximately nine months after those three’s National Security Advisors met for the first time ever in June 2023. In practice, Japan will likely ramp up its military exercises with the Philippines and explore more arms deals, with those two possibly also roping Taiwan into their activities to an uncertain extent in the future given that it’s roughly equidistant between them.

This will increase the chances of a conflict by miscalculation since China has already recently shown that it has the political will to respond to violations of the maritime territory that it claims as its own as proven by its latest low-intensify clashes with the Philippines. Even though the US has mutual defense obligations to the Philippines and has recently reminded China of them, it’s been reluctant to meaningfully act on its commitments for de-escalation reasons, but that could easily change.

After all, the US would be pressured to respond if China clashes with both its Japanese and Philippine allies in the event that they jointly violate the maritime territory that Beijing claims as its own, though they might of course abstain from such a provocation for the time being for whatever reason. In any case, it can’t be ruled out that something of the sort might eventually transpire, which could prompt a dangerous brinksmanship crisis that risks spiraling out of control if cooler heads on all sides don’t prevail.

Southeast Asia isn’t the only battleground in the Sino-US dimension of the New Cold War since Northeast Asia is rapidly shaping up to be a complementary one as well. North Korea recently accused the US, South Korea, and Japan of conspiring to create an “Asian NATO” after their latest trilateral drills. South Korea is a prime candidate for joining the Squad, which can also be described as AUKUS+, with Japan playing the senior partner role in that scenario exactly as it now plays with the Philippines.

That likely won’t happen anytime soon though since the South Koreans remain resentful of Japan’s World War II-era occupation that Tokyo hasn’t ever taken full responsibility for in their view. Trilateral drills under America’s aegis are one thing, but entering into a military-logistics pact with their former colonizer is an altogether different matter, especially if it leads to the latter gaining the upper hand. Nevertheless, South Korea is expected to scale up its role in AUKUS+, with Japan as its top Asian partner.

The grand strategic trend is that the US is forming two Asian trilaterals with itself and Japan that are centered on the Philippines in Southeast Asia and South Korea in Northeast Asia.

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Inside China-Focused Congressional Hearings, Panic, Paranoia, and Hypocrisy Reign

On June 26th, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability sat down for a Congressional Hearing titled, “Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare.” This was one of many Congressional hearings aimed at tackling the “China threat.”

As a general premise, I didn’t have a lot of hope for the hearing. Language is crucial, and the title says it all: any action by the US is merely “defense” against acts of political warfare committed by China. And still, I was disappointed. Not only was it filled with racist, paranoid rhetoric, but it was supremely unjust, lacking any level of self-awareness, and almost certainly operated solely as an agenda-pushing cover for whatever act of warfare our government sought to commit next.

Three witnesses took to the stands. The first was Erik Bethel, a finance professional selected to represent the US at the World Bank. He was followed by Mary Kissel, Former Senior Advisor to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Third was James E. Fanell, the Former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the US Pacific Fleet and current Government Fellow.

Big people with big titles. That is the usual order of things: a few “experts” are selected to “teach” members of Congress about complex subjects they may lack background in. The Committee of Oversight and Accountability certainly lacks China expertise. Representative Lisa McClain spent ten years working for American Express before she was elected to represent the state of Michigan. Chairman James Comer was a Kentucky farmer. Representative Paul Gosar was a dentist in Arizona. Marjorie Taylor Green was a part-time CrossFit gym coach. Many of them have never traveled to China, let alone held a productive conversation with a member of China’s government.

Their lack of expertise didn’t stop them from sounding their opinions. I listened carefully, hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt. It was a fruitless endeavor.

Representative McClain spoke about her district: “In Michigan, we have the Gotion plant… We have a Chinese-owned company and the only spot they can figure out that is feasible for them to build is next to a university and next to a military base. Anybody think that’s a coincidence?”

In the audience, the new summer Hillterns listened with rapt attention.

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