Tag: perpetual war

NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion

During a speech at the EU Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly and repeatedly acknowledged that Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine because of fears of NATO expansionism.

His comments, initially flagged by journalist Thomas Fazi, read as follows:

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

Stoltenberg made these remarks as part of a general gloat about the fact that Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion and yet the invasion has resulted in Sweden and Finland applying to join the alliance, saying it “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.”

Stoltenberg’s remarks would probably have been classified as Russian propaganda by plutocrat-funded “disinformation experts” and imperial “fact checkers” if it had been said online by someone like you or me, but because it came from the head of NATO as part of a screed against the Russian president it’s been allowed to pass through without objection.

In reality Stoltenberg is just stating a well-established fact: contrary to the official western narrative, Putin invaded Ukraine not because he is evil and hates freedom but because no great power ever allows foreign military threats to amass on its borders  —  including the United States. That’s why so many western analysts and officials spent years warning that NATO’s actions were going to provoke a war, and yet when war broke out we were slammed with a tsunami of mass media propaganda repeating over and over and over again that this was an “unprovoked invasion”.

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Real threat to world is the nation encircling the planet with its military bases

In the eyes of some Westerners, China is accused of posing a “systematic challenge” to the “world order.” However, failing to specifically articulate this challenge or threat, many across the West resort to citing a list of fabricated claims regarding China’s internal political affairs including the status of the island of Taiwan as well as pointing toward territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

While the West often depicts these territorial disputes as exclusively between China and the rest of the region, omitted is the fact that all other claimants in the region also have disputes with each other. Despite the sometimes heated nature of these disputes, these nations still maintain close ties with one another and with China, revealing this as an excuse rather than a genuine reason to label China as the biggest threat to global security and prosperity.

While Western leaders struggle to justify labeling China as a challenge or threat, the collective West led by the US has participated in the worst acts of aggression of the 21st century. The US, for example, led an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This was followed by a bloody occupation that spanned two decades ending only as recently as 2021. 

In 2003, the US yet again led the West into an act of unprovoked military aggression, this time against Iraq. The war resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. US troops remain in a deeply divided and destabilized Iraq to this day. 

In 2011, a US-led attack against the Libyan government destroyed, destabilized and divided Libya. One of the enduring outcomes of the war is modern-day slavery including slave auctions flourishing in the failed state, as US-based Time Magazine reported in 2019. 

In just the 21st century alone, the US and its allies have cut a swath of death and destruction from North Africa to Central Asia, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing or otherwise disrupting the lives of tens of millions. The instability the US has sown globally has created a climate of insecurity as weapons the US surges into proxy wars, including now in Ukraine, are finding their way to battlefields elsewhere around the globe. 

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How 9/11 Bred a ‘War on Terror’ From Hell

On September 11th, 22 years later, what are we to make of it all? Who even remembers that, as the Pentagon burned, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld picked up a scrap of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 from the smoking ruins of that building. Soon after, he would tell his aides (as one of them scribbled down): “Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up, things related and not.” That “and not” meant, among other matters, Saddam Hussein, the autocratic ruler of Iraq who had been a Rumsfeld target before 9/11 ever happened.

Of course, the invasion of Afghanistan came first, but that “or not” arrived in the spring of 2003 and the rest is the worst and saddest sort of history imaginable. In a sense, so much should have been so obvious so fast. After all, within days of those suicide attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney was already swearing that al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden would face the “full wrath” of American military might and Rumsfeld was making it clear that such wrath could involve “a large multi-headed effort that probably spans 60 countries.”

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PENTAGON MISLED CONGRESS ABOUT U.S. BASES IN AFRICA

SINCE A CADRE of U.S.-trained officers joined a junta that overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president in late July, more than 1,000 U.S. troops have been largely confined to their Nigerien outposts, including America’s largest drone base in the region, Air Base 201 in Agadez.

The base, which has cost the U.S. a total of $250 million since construction began in 2016, is the key U.S. surveillance hub in West Africa. But in testimony before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in March, the chief of U.S. Africa Command described Air Base 201 as “minimal” and “low cost.”

Gen. Michael Langley, the AFRICOM chief, told Congress about just two “enduring” U.S. forward operating sites in Africa: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and a longtime logistics hub on Ascension Island in the south Atlantic Ocean. “The Command also operates out of 12 other posture locations throughout Africa,” he said in his prepared testimony. “These locations have minimal permanent U.S. presence and have low-cost facilities and limited supplies for these dedicated Americans to perform critical missions and quickly respond to emergencies.”

Experts say that Langley misled Congress, downplaying the size and scope of the U.S. footprint in Africa. AFRICOM’s “posture” on the continent actually consists of no fewer than 18 outposts, in addition to Camp Lemonnier and Ascension Island, according to information from AFRICOM’s secret 2022 theater posture plan, which was seen by The Intercept. A U.S. official with knowledge of AFRICOM’s current footprint on the continent confirmed that the same 20 bases are still in operation. Another two locations in Somalia and Ghana were also, according to the 2022 document, “under evaluation.”

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US Intel Official: Media Misleading Americans About Ukraine’s Battlefield Success

In an interview with renowned reporter Seymour Hersh, a US intelligence official scolded the media for misleading the American public about Ukraine’s battlefield failures during the Spring counteroffensive. The unnamed official additionally told Hersh he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the assassination of PMC Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to deescalate tensions with NATO.

Responding to reports in recent weeks that Ukrainian forces were gaining momentum and recapturing territory, the official remarked, “Where are the reporters getting this stuff?” he asked. “There are stories talking about drunk Russian commanders while the Ukrainians are penetrating the three lines of Russian defense and will be able to work back to Mariupol.”

He continued, “The goal of Russia’s first line of defense was not to stop the Ukrainian offense, but to slow it down so if there was a Ukrainian advance, Russian commanders could bring in reserves to fortify the line.” The official added, “There is no evidence that Ukrainian forces have gotten past the first line. The American press is doing anything but honest reporting on the failure thus far of the offense.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a similarly optimistic message during his trip to Kyiv on Wednesday. “In the ongoing counteroffensive, progress has accelerated in the past few weeks. This new assistance will help sustain it and build further momentum,” he said at a press conference.

The official says that message is being delivered from military intelligence to the White House, while the CIA has drawn other conclusions. “This kind of reporting from the military intelligence community is going to the White House. There are other views,” he said, referring to the CIA. The official explained those views do not reach President Joe Biden.

For over three months, Kyiv has ordered its forces to advance on entrench Russian defensive lines in southern Ukraine. Russian minefields caused Ukraine to lose a significant portion of its Western-trained soldiers and equipment in the opening weeks of the offensive. The massive push by Ukraine resulted in nearly no territorial gains.

Still, Washington has pushed Kyiv to continue the counteroffensive. The White House acknowledges that for Ukraine to have a possibility of success, Kyiv will have to be willing to sustain high casualties.

The official told Hersh no matter how committed Kyiv is to the war effort, President Zelensky’s goals are unattainable.  “Zelensky will never get his land back,” he said.

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Musk ordered shutdown of Starlink in Crimea 

Elon Musk personally intervened to stop a Ukrainian attack on Crimea last year due to fears of a nuclear war, CNN reported on Thursday, quoting an excerpt from the upcoming biography of the SpaceX and Tesla founder.

As Ukrainian drones approached the Crimean coast, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” according to the book by Walter Isaacson, scheduled to be published next week. 

Musk had secretly ordered SpaceX engineers to shut off the Starlink signal near Crimea, according to this account, concerned that Russia might use nuclear weapons in reaction to what he described as a “mini-Pearl Harbor.”

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22 Years of Drone Warfare and No End in Sight

In a June 2012 piece headlined “Praying at the Church of St. Drone,” I wrote, “Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” At that time, President Barack Obama was overseeing what came to be known as “terror Tuesday” weekly meetings in the White House Situation Room with more than 100 national security types, some by “secure video teleconference,” gathering to discuss global assassination targets in America’s never-ending war on terror.

Unlike once upon a time, however, the “assassins” to be dispatched were no longer human, but “unmanned aerial aircraft,” or drones. And they struck across significant parts of the planet, sometimes killing al-Qaeda figures, but all too often, civilians and even children. Drone operators were, in fact, allowed to kill based on nothing more than what was called “patterns of suspicious behavior” and their planes were “roughly thirty times more likely to result in a civilian fatality than an airstrike by a manned aircraft.”

As I wrote then:

“In the [New York] Times telling, the organization of robotic killing had become the administration’s idée fixe, a kind of cult of death within the Oval Office, with those involved in it being so many religious devotees. Of course, thought about another way, that ‘terror Tuesday’ scene might not be from a monastery or a church synod, but from a Mafia council directly out of a Mario Puzo novel, with the president as the Godfather, designating ‘hits’ in a rough-and-tumble world.

“How far we’ve come in just two presidencies!  Assassination as a way of life has been institutionalized in the Oval Office, thoroughly normalized, and is now being offered to the rest of us as a reasonable solution to American global problems and an issue on which to run a presidential campaign.”

Yes, foreign assassination attempts were hardly unknown in previous American history, but they were usually left to the CIA and there was nothing machine-like about them. In this century, it’s been different indeed, whether the targets were unknown figures considered suspicious (from an automated distance) or, as in the case of Donald Trump, whose administration upped such strikes, all too well known, as with the drone assassination of Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, on his arrival at Baghdad International Airport on a visit to Iraq.

As Maha Hilal, author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, reports today, President Biden has, after a fashion, reined in the Trumpian version of drone assassination, but he, like the three presidents before him, still remains America’s assassin-in-chief.  With that in mind, consider what such a world looks like to those potentially on the other side of a drone’s missiles.

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US OKs First-Ever Foreign Military Financing Arms Package for Taiwan

The Biden administration has approved the first-ever military aid package for Taiwan using Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US arms.

The Associated Press noted that FMF is typically reserved for sovereign, independent states, and the US does not recognize Taiwan as a country. US officials told AP that the only other time FMF has been used for a non-nation-state was assistance to the African Union, a bloc of 55 African states.

The FMF package is worth $80 million, but the administration did not disclose its contents in a notification to Congress. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act included $2 billion in FMF funds for Taiwan. This marks the first time the funds have been used.

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Sen. Blumenthal: US Getting Its ‘Money’s Worth’ in Ukraine Because Americans Aren’t Dying

Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.

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Biden Looks to Prevent Future President From Ending Ukraine War

The Biden administration is working to reach a deal with Ukraine for long-term military support to keep backing the war with Russia that would be difficult for a future president to exit, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The effort is part of a commitment made by G7 nations at the recent NATO summit in Vilnius to negotiate their own bilateral security deals with Ukraine. Besides the G7 nations, 18 other countries have agreed to provide long-term military support for Kyiv.

The idea of the long-term commitment is to show Russia that it can’t wait out the Biden administration. The Journal report reads: “Western officials are looking for ways to lock in pledges of support and limit future governments’ abilities to backtrack, amid fears in European capitals that Donald Trump, if he recaptures the White House, would seek to scale back aid.”

Trump, who escalated US involvement in Ukraine during his term by taking the step to provide Javelin missiles, has said he would end the Ukraine war within “24 hours” if elected in 2024. The former president is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

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