Tag: perpetual war

Negotiate with Moscow to end the Ukraine war and prevent nuclear devastation

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Biden administration is considering allowing Ukraine to use NATO-provided long-range precision weapons against targets deep inside Russia. Such a decision would put the world at greater risk of nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

At a time when American leaders should be focused on finding a diplomatic off-ramp to a war that should never have been allowed to take place, the Biden-Harris administration is instead pursuing a policy that Russia says it will interpret as an act of war. In the words of Vladimir Putin, long-range strikes in Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

Some American analysts believe Putin is bluffing, and favor calling his bluff. As the Times reported, “‘Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate,’17 former ambassadors and generals wrote in a letter to the administration this week. ‘We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own — including Crimea and Kursk — with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.’”

These analysts are mistaking restraint for weakness. In essence, they are advocating a strategy of brinksmanship. Each escalation — from HIMARS to cluster munitions to Abrams tanks to F-16s to ATACMS — draws the world closer to the brink of Armageddon. Their logic seems to be that if you goad a bear five times and it doesn’t respond, it is safe to goad him even harder a sixth time.

Such a strategy might be reasonable if the bear had no teeth. The hawks in the Biden administration seem to have forgotten that Russia is a nuclear power. They have forgotten the wisdom of John F. Kennedy, who said in 1963, “Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.”

We should take this advice seriously. Putin has signaled numerous times that Russia would use nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances. In September 2022, Putin said, “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people — this is not a bluff.” In March 2023, he struck a deal with Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons there. Earlier this month, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that Russia would be amending its nuclear doctrine in response to Western involvement in the Ukraine war.

Imagine if Russia were providing another country with missiles, training and targeting information to strike deep into American territory. The U.S. would never tolerate it. We shouldn’t expect Russia to tolerate it either.

This game of nuclear “chicken” has gone far enough. There is no remaining step between firing U.S. missiles deep into Russian territory and a nuclear exchange. We cannot get any closer to the brink than this.

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Mossad Planted Bombs in 5,000 Hezbollah Pagers Months Before Deadly Detonations: Report

Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has been accused of planting explosives in 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah, setting the stage for devastating detonations across Lebanon, according to Reuters, citing a senior Lebanese security source.

The carefully orchestrated attack targeted Hezbollah terrorists, killing at least 11 people, and more than 4,000 have been injured, including the Iranian envoy to Beirut, marking the “biggest security breach” the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror network has faced since its ongoing war with Israel began.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, has suffered severe injuries and has lost one eye. The question now is how an ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran has a Hezbollah pager.

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Zelensky’s Quarrel With Polish FM Sikorski Sinks Bilateral Relations – MSM Keeps Silent on the Crisis

While Poland has been one of Ukraine’s biggest backers both in terms of military and financial aid, and also in terms of receiving a massive wave of refugees when the war started.

But it hasn’t been without friction. The Previous conservative government came to a point about a year ago where it stopped all military aid and blocked Ukrainian grain, coming to the point of harshly criticizing its president in public, as you can read in Polish PM Morawiecki Warns Zelensky ‘Never to Insult Poles Again’, as Grain Ban Feud Intensifies After Warsaw Decision Not to Send Any More Weapons.

With the liberal and Euro-fanatic government of Donald Tusk coming into power, one could imagine that relations would improve markedly, but that does not seem to be the case, as Polish media reports that Zelensky had a row with Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski as he visited Kiev on Friday (14),

The Polish portal Onet report is behind a paywall, and the MSM refuses to cover this, so here’s what can be found on Telegram and on the Ukrainian media.

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Trump Vows To End Ukraine War BEFORE Taking Office If elected

During an X Spaces discussion, Donald Trump again promised to end the war in Ukraine, noting that he intends to do it as president elect, before taking office.

Trump appeared on Spaces with cryptocurrency enthusiast Farokh Sarmad, marking his first interview since the second attempt on his life.

He stated, “I want to get Russia to settle up with Ukraine and stop this — millions of people being killed, far greater than the number you read about.”

Trump added, “But I want to get that done before I even take office, I want to get that done as president-elect, because it has to be solved — too many people dying, too many cities are just in rubble right now, you look at the cultures just being destroyed. We’ve got to get that done, and I’ll get it done.”

He further claimed that had Joe Biden not been voted into office, “There wouldn’t have been an October 7th, there wouldn’t have been Russia attacking Ukraine, there wouldn’t be inflation, all this inflation which has hurt people so badly.”

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Israel’s conduct in the war will consume us all

Hamas terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 1,139 Israelis – mostly civilians – on October 7, 2023. The Israeli government was fully within its rights to bring the terrorists to justice.

But nearing the one-year mark of Israel’s resultant war against Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may now be an impediment to peace rather than providing a path to it.

No one can question Israel’s right to seek justice for Hamas’s bloody massacre on 10/7 and few challenge Washington for providing military support to Israel as it seeks to punish Hamas. Yet it is entirely reasonable to question how Israel is conducting its operations, especially if it becomes apparent the Israeli government pursues a course of action that is ineffective — or worse — is making Israel less secure.

I have argued, as far back as November of last year on CNN that Netanyahu has been using military power to pursue a political objective that cannot succeed: the total elimination of Hamas. The reason is simple: one cannot kill an idea with bombs and bullets.

Israel unequivocally has the single most powerful military in the Middle East. In the aftermath of suffering a terrorist attack that caused large scale civilian casualties, it is an understandable and seductive temptation to use that military power to crush one’s enemy. But using a hammer to do a job more suited to a surgeon’s knife was always going to produce results that were anywhere from ineffective to outright self-defeating.

The task facing the Israeli government following 10/7 was monumental: how to bring justice to the political and military force of Hamas (numbering somewhere around 30,000 fighters) who were interwoven within a civilian population of approximately 2.3 million? Taking no action was never an option, so the only question was how best to conduct lethal military operations to justly degrade Hamas.

Doing the job right would have been costly to the Israeli Defense Forces in terms of both time and troops lost. Generally, the IDF could have cut the Gaza strip into sections, isolating one from the rest. They could have screened and then temporarily relocated all the civilians into other secured areas, and then methodically moved through the cordoned area to either capture or kill all the fighters. Once an area was cleared, the civilian residents could have returned, and the IDF would move to the next cordoned area.

Collateral damage would have resulted everywhere Hamas fighters chose to stand and fight, but it would have been limited. Once an area had been cleansed of terrorists, the area would be secured by other troops to limit other Hamas fighters from returning. Meanwhile the civilian population would then be allowed to return and have a safe place to live.

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Russia Is Not Bluffing: To Avoid WWIII, The US Must Find A Diplomatic Offramp

Last week, the United States was considering Ukraine’s request for long-range missiles that could strike more deeply into Russian territory. The Russian government made it clear that this would be viewed as a declaration of war and that it would respond with attacks on NATO countries, including the United States. Clearing the FOG speaks with Scott Ritter about the current state of the Ukraine proxy war against Russia. Ritter explained that had the United States not backed down, World War III could have started. Ritter also discusses the escalating attack on free speech and his new campaign, Operation Dawn, which will launch on September 28 in Kingston, New York.

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Hezbollah’s Exploding Pagers Could Be As Monumental A Cyber-Espionage Operation As Stuxnet

In an extraordinary development in the Middle East conflict, thousands of Hezbollah members have been injured and at least three people were killed after pagers that the militants used exploded simultaneously today. While exactly how this occurred remains unclear, it could very well be a monumental cyber attack that could have widespread implications far beyond the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Regardless, it should be a wake-up call.

While no one has so far taken responsibility, Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attack. A source from the group said that they expect the attack may have been launched in response to an alleged assassination attempt by the Lebanese militant group on a former senior Israeli security official. The existence of that plot was only revealed today by Israel’s Shin Bet security agency.

At this stage, the total number of individuals killed or injured by the pager blasts is unclear. Hezbollah has confirmed the deaths of at least three people, including two of its fighters. 

At the time of writing, at least nine people have died and approximately 2,800 have been wounded, according to Lebanon’s Minister of Health Firas Abiad. Of the injured, 170 at least are also said to be in critical condition.

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War Powers: The True History of James Madison, the Constitution and the War of 1812

In the early years of the United States under the Constitution, James Madison made one of the most compelling constitutional arguments against unilateral presidential war powers. Through their actions, the first three presidential administrations of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson notably upheld this position. And once in office himself, Madison unsurprisingly followed the same approach.

Their statements and, more importantly, their actions further undercut the modern assertion that while the Constitution delegates to Congress the power to “declare war,” the president also has expansive authority to make unilateral decisions about war and peace.

CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE

The Constitution expressly delegates the power to “declare war” to Congress and not the executive branch.

In the fourth of his Letters of Helvidius, Madison called this the wisest part of the Constitution.

“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man”

Madison astutely pointed out that war is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

He drove this point home in his Political Observations, writing, “The separation of the power of declaring war, from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived, to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.”

In Helvidius I, Madison emphasized that from a constitutional standpoint, all legislative authority is vested in Congress, and this logically included the power to change the state of things from peace to war.

“In the general distribution of powers, we find that of declaring war expressly vested in the congress, where every other legislative power is declared to be vested.”

It follows that “the constitutional idea of this power would seem then clearly to be, that it is of a legislative and not an executive nature.”

Madison argued that there is no presidential authority to declare war because it is fundamentally a legislative function. The president’s role is to “execute” laws, and as he explained, “A declaration that there shall be war, is not an execution of laws: it does not suppose pre-existing laws to be executed: it is not, in any respect, an act merely executive.”

Madison further noted that a declaration of war “has the effect of repealing all the laws operating in a state of peace, so far as they are inconsistent with a state of war.”

Madison summed it up in Helvidius II by writing, “The declaring of war is expressly made a legislative function.” [Emphasis added.]

“Whenever, then, a question occurs, whether war shall be declared, or whether public stipulations require it, the question necessarily belongs to the department to which those functions belong–and no other department can be in the execution of its proper functions, if it should undertake to decide such a question.”

In other words, when the president decides any question of war and peace, except for authorizing purely defensive actions, he acts outside his constitutional authority. The president only has the power to act after Congress provides explicit instructions in the form of a formal declaration of war, or authorization to take some kind of offensive military action. Once Congress acts, the president is limited to its instructions, whether it grants an open-ended authorization to wage war, or a more limited offensive response.

In Helvidius III, Madison called this principle “one of the most express and explicit parts of the Constitution,” and he insisted, “To endeavor to abridge or affect it by strained inferences, and by hypothetical or singular occurrences, naturally warns the reader of some lurking fallacy.”

He emphatically declared in Helvidius IV, “Every just view that can be taken of this subject, admonishes the public of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the received, and the fundamental doctrine of the Constitution.” [Emphasis added]

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U.S. presidential debate delusion: two candidates for one party… the War Party

Two events dominated international news this week: the TV debate between U.S. presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump; and reports that Washington and its NATO allies are gearing up to permit the Ukrainian regime to use their long-range missiles to hit deep into the territory of the Russian Federation. The latter move would be viewed in Moscow as a major escalation from a proxy war to a direct conflict between nuclear powers.

The aforementioned events are tightly connected. The U.S. presidential election is less than two months away with Democrat Harris and Republican Trump vying in a hotly contested and divisive race for the White House. Harris, the incumbent vice president, performed best in the live TV debate, according to polls. Trump, however, with characteristic brashness, claimed that he had won the debate. His subsequent refusal to engage in a follow-up second debate might infer that the Trump campaign fears that Harris was able to get the upper hand over her older opponent, who sounded hackneyed and incoherent. We are talking here about superficial style and not substance, which neither candidate has much of.

Discernibly, the U.S. establishment favors Harris to win. Most of the American media are supportive of what would be the first woman to become president of the United States, and a woman of color too. That credential alone burnishes the image of the American republic as a supposed bastion of democracy and liberal values.

More importantly for the American deep state – or ruling class – is that Harris is more aligned with its imperialist foreign policy. As with her current boss, President Joe Biden, Harris spoke belligerently about confronting Russia and unwavering support for the conflict in Ukraine.

The Washington establishment wants Harris to win on November 5 to ensure the continuation of the proxy war against Russia. The all-dominant military-industrial complex at the heart of U.S. capitalism wants the war racket to keep churning out mega profits. But also in the bigger geopolitical picture, the conflict with Russia is just one element in a wider policy of confrontation with other foreign powers, primarily China, or any other nation that challenges U.S. presumptions of hegemony. As we argued in our editorial last week, the United States is endeavoring to offset its failing global power by pursuing an intensified policy of aggression and bellicosity even if such a policy puts the entire planet at risk of catastrophic world war.

The highly choreographed move this week by the United States and Britain to give the Ukrainian regime permission to use long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia is tightly correlated with the high-stakes presidential election.

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38,000 Russian Troops Committed To Kursk Counteroffensive: Report

Russia is stepping up its pressure on Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, after launching its counteroffensive there last week. It’s now reported that as many as 38,000 Russian troops have been committed to the operation, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to defend the incursion — which began in August — against mounting criticism.

A report in The Financial Times cites a senior Ukrainian military intelligence official who assessed the number of Russian soldiers now involved in the counteroffensive, with some of these having been redeployed from southern Ukraine. Despite this, the same source says that the counterattack is “still not large-scale,” and Russia will need to introduce more of its combat-proven assault brigades before making more significant gains. In the past, Zelensky has mentioned 100,000 Russian troops being required to fully repulse the incursion.

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