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Musk Comes Under Fire for Preventing Ukraine Attack on Russia

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2023

Kyiv claims Elon Musk prevented a successful Ukrainian attack on Russia. However, the decision is consistent with SpaceX’s policy

CNN also noted that Musk laments having his technology involved in the war. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes,” Musk reportedly said to Isaacson.

We must attack anyone that doesn’t want war.

antiwar.com

by Kyle Anzalone

CNN reports that Elon Musk personally instructed SpaceX employees to disable Starlink to prevent a Ukrainian attack on the Russian naval fleet in Crimea last year. SpaceX has spent millions of dollars of the company’s own money to help Kyiv’s military stay connected on the battlefield since the Russian invasion last year. However, the company draws a red line in participating in attacks with its technology.

CNN got the story from an advanced copy of Walter Isaacson’s forthcoming biography of Musk. In Isaacson’s interpretation of the incident, Kyiv made an “emergency request” to SpaceX for Starlink to expand the reach of communications to Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. The clear implication was that Ukraine intended to launch an attack on the Russian naval fleet.

Isaacson says after Starlink denied Kyiv’s request, an explosive submarine “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.” Isaacson notes that Musk was contacted by top officials in Washington after the incident, but CNN did not report the nature of those discussions.

On Thursday, Musk gave his account of the potential Ukrainian attack. “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” he wrote on X. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

According to SpaceX’s terms of service, the decision not to authorize Ukraine’s emergency request is company policy and US law.

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Everything’s Getting Way More Dangerous And Way More Stupid

Posted by M. C. on June 1, 2023

 We’re on a bus that’s being driven straight toward a cliff, and it’s being driven by infants.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/124081677

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Moon of Alabama has an article out on how an uncomfortable number of relatively restraint-oriented foreign policy officials have been exiting the Biden administration, while a China hawk has just been appointed the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Antiwar has an article out about how New York congressman Jerry Nadler told an Epoch Times reporter that he “wouldn’t care” if Ukraine used US-made F-16s to strike Russian territory, and doesn’t find the possibility that they might do so concerning.

This comes days after we learned that the Biden administration has signed off on Ukraine getting F-16s while also greenlighting an offensive on Crimea using US-made weapons, a nightmare scenario which greatly escalates the risks of nuclear war.

There are no adults behind the wheel of the vehicle that’s driving us toward World War Three. We’re on a bus that’s being driven straight toward a cliff, and it’s being driven by infants. If we survive this it will not be because of the experienced leadership of western governments, but completely in spite of it.

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Let’s Nuke The World Over Who Governs Crimea: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Posted by M. C. on January 23, 2023

Literally the only reason mainstream westerners are fine with the US empire’s nuclear brinkmanship with Russia is because most don’t understand it, and those who do understand it don’t think very hard about it. They avoid contemplating what nuclear war is and what it would mean.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/lets-nuke-the-world-over-who-governs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Critics of the US empire have spent months compiling mountains of evidence showing that the empire knowingly provoked the war in Ukraine. Supporters of the US empire have spent months posting dog memes and accusing strangers of being paid by Putin. It’s clear who’s in the right.

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So does everyone else in the world get a vote on whether their lives should be risked in an offensive to control who governs Crimea? Or will the Biden administration just be making that call on behalf of all living creatures?

It’s so crazy how the fate of everyone alive and everyone who could potentially be born in the future is riding on the way two governments choose to navigate a conflict in Ukraine, just because those two governments have most of the world’s nuclear weapons. It’s like two people in a bar getting into a brawl that kills everyone in their city. Nobody else in the world gets a vote on the decisions being made that could kill everyone alive and end humanity forever; just a few people within those two governments and their militaries.

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The US empire is telling Moscow “I’m the craziest motherfucker around, I’ll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes,” while telling the rest of the world “I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership.”

One of the empire’s faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone’s cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying.

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US May Help Ukraine Launch An Offensive On Crimea

Posted by M. C. on January 20, 2023

def: Help, Your money and Your children’s lives

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/us-may-help-ukraine-launch-an-offensive?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

In a new article titled “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea,” the New York Times reports that the Biden administration now believes Kyiv may need to launch an offensive on the territory that Moscow has considered a part of the Russian Federation since 2014, “even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”

Citing unnamed US officials, The New York Times says “the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily,” but that “Russia needs to believe that Crimea is at risk, in part to strengthen Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations.”

It’s hard to imagine a full-scale assault on geostrategically crucial territory long considered a part of the Russian homeland not causing a major escalation. And as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, smaller attacks on Crimea have indeed seen significant escalations from Moscow, contrary to claims laid out in the NYT article:

The New York Times report quoted Dara Massicot, a researcher from the RAND Corporation, who claimed that “Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin.” But Massicot’s claim is false as Russia began launching missile strikes on vital Ukrainian infrastructure in response to the October truck bombing of the Crimean Bridge.

Before the bridge bombing, Russia didn’t launch large-scale attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine, but now such bombardments have become routine, and millions of Ukrainians are struggling to power and heat their homes.

Antiwar.com @Antiwarcom

NYT: US Considering Helping Ukraine Strike Crimea The Biden administration is considering supporting such attacks even if it risks major escalation by Dave DeCamp @DecampDave #Crimea #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #UkraineRussianWar #RussiaUkraineWar #UkraineNews news.antiwar.com/2023/01/18/nyt…

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1:12 AM ∙ Jan 19, 2023

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It’s been widely accepted among foreign policy analysts that Crimea is among the reddest of all of Russia’s red lines in this standoff. Back in October, Responsible Statecraft’s Anatol Lieven discussed the difference in Russia’s perspective between Crimea and every other territory that Ukraine lays claim to in an assessment of the possibility of this conflict leading to nuclear war:

If Ukraine wins more victories and recovers the territories that Russia has occupied since February, Putin will in my view probably be forced to resign, but Russia would likely not use nuclear weapons. If however Ukraine goes on to try to reconquer Crimea, which the overwhelming majority of Russians regard as simply Russian territory, the chances of an escalation to nuclear war become extremely high.

Decamp writes that “The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point.” But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you’ve been jumping on just because the bear hasn’t woken up yet.

The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias.

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US Implies Ukraine Can Use HIMARS Against Russian Targets in Crimea

Posted by M. C. on July 19, 2022

The State Department told Antiwar.com ‘Crimea is Ukraine’ when asked if the ban on using HIMARS on Russian territory applies to Crimea

But since Russia considers Crimea its territory, any attack on the peninsula would be a major escalation and would risk provoking a response from Moscow.

by Dave DeCamp

The State Department on Sunday implied that Ukrainian forces are allowed to use US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) against Russian targets in Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014.

When the US first announced it was sending HIMARS to Ukraine, Biden administration officials said they received “assurances” from Ukrainian officials that the rockets won’t be used to target Russian territory.

When asked if the ban on Ukraine using the HIMARS to target Russian territory applies to Crimea, a State Department spokesperson told Antiwar.com, “Crimea is Ukraine.”

“The United States does not and will never recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea. We will continue to stand up against Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against the people of Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.

On Saturday, a Ukrainian intelligence official said that Ukrainian forces should start attacking Russian facilities in Crimea and suggested US-provided HIMARS could be used for such strikes.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, warned Sunday that if Ukraine launched attacks on Crimea, it would mean “doomsday” for Ukrainian leadership.

“Should anything of the kind happen, they will be faced with a doomsday, very quick and tough, immediately. There will be no avoiding it. But they keep on provoking the general situation by such statements,” Medvedev said, according to Russia’s Tass news agency.

Medvedev also said that the fact that Ukraine and Western nations don’t recognize Crimea as Russian territory poses a “systemic threat” to Russia. “If any state, either Ukraine or a NATO country, thinks that Crimea is not part of Russia, it is a systemic threat to us,” he said.

The HIMARS the US has sent to Ukraine are equipped with munitions that can reach targets up to 50 miles away. The rocket systems could be outfitted with longer-range rockets, but the US chose the 50-mile range and sought assurances that they won’t be used to target Russian territory over fears that such attacks risk escalating the conflict.

But since Russia considers Crimea its territory, any attack on the peninsula would be a major escalation and would risk provoking a response from Moscow.

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Gazing into the Fog of War Surrounding Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022

It is my view that the risk of America getting dragged into this war is low but not negligible. There are those who openly call for the US to attack Russia, like NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engle, who tweeted that the West should attack the main Russian column advancing on Kyiv, while others use barely concealed euphemisms such as “no-fly zone,” which is code for “shoot down Russian planes and attack Russian air defenses within Russia.” Either of these risks a nuclear escalation.

https://mises.org/wire/gazing-fog-war-surrounding-ukraine

Zachary Yost

The Russian regime’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked and horrified the world, in no small part because it is the first war of this scale in Europe since the end of the Second World War and also because it is the first large-scale war to be fought with contemporary and high-tech armaments. The situation is changing rapidly, but the amount of devastation, death, and suffering this war has inflicted is already immense and will only grow larger as the war continues.

It goes without saying that the people who make up the Russian regime are agents with free will who bear moral responsibility for instigating this unjust and evil war. However, we live in a fallen world, where people do many evil things. Morality requires that our actions comport not with how we wish the world were but with how it actually is. For years, realist thinkers such as John Mearsheimer have been sounding the alarm that Western efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the borders of Russia will cause an immense amount of trouble.

Background to the War

In brief, in 2008, NATO announced that it welcomed Ukraine and Georgia eventually joining NATO. Vladimir Putin hit the roof and declared that Russia (in this article meaning the Russian regime) would find such a move unacceptable. However, the West did not really pay attention. As a result of this action, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 to secure two breakaway provinces (because NATO will not accept any members with territorial disputes). Later, in 2014, as a result of a pro-Western coup in Ukraine, Putin swiftly moved to take over Crimea (to secure the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet based at Sevastopol and prevent NATO naval vessels from securing a port so close to Russia) and supported two breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine, thus ensuring that Ukraine would also be mired in territorial disputes and be unable to join NATO.

The Western reaction to these events has largely been driven by moral condemnation and proclamations that as a sovereign state, Ukraine has the right to decide its future for itself. Unfortunately, when it comes to international relations, might makes right. In the words of Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue, “The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.” To acknowledge this fact about reality is not to condone it, but recognizing it to be true allows one to better prepare to reduce the amount of conflict and suffering that takes place. The failure to acknowledge this has contributed a great deal to the current crisis.

To understand more of the background to this conflict, it would be wise to consult John Mearsheimer’s 2014 essay “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault” and his related 2015 speech on the same subject. The key takeaway is that Russia considers the alignment of Ukraine to be an issue of extreme importance. In contrast, the Western states have very little to no national interest in Ukraine. Thus, Russia is willing to go to much more effort and pain to secure these goals than the West is. That is why no Western states have declared war on Russia and come to the military assistance of Ukraine. Russia has nuclear weapons, and the costs of war would far outweigh any potential benefits.

I must admit that until recently, I was not expecting Russia to undertake this drastic of a move; however, once the troop buildup began and diplomatic efforts seemed to make clear that Western states did not seem to even comprehend Russia’s security demands, let alone be willing to compromise to find a solution, I began to fear that war was more likely.

What Does This Invasion Mean?

It is still too early to know what Russia’s specific end goal is. It may be to annex large amounts of Ukrainian territory and turn the rest into a rump buffer state. It may be something less extreme than that. And circumstances on the ground will, of course, affect the outcome as well.

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A war with Russia would be unlike anything the US and NATO have ever experienced — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2022

This is what a war with Russia would look like. It would not be limited to Ukraine, but extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. It would involve Russian strikes against NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/548322-war-russia-us-nato/

Scott Ritter

is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

In a recent press conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“Their [NATO’s] main task is to contain the development of Russia,” Putin said. “Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the United States today,” he noted. “Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw us into an armed conflict.”

Putin continued, “Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not.”

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox “screaming from the top of the hen house that he’s scared of the chickens,” adding that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine “should not be reported as a statement of fact.”

Psaki’s comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the “de-occupation” of Crimea. While this goal has, in the past, been couched in terms of diplomacy – “[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russia to negotiate the return of our peninsula,” Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining control over Crimea – the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military one, in which Russia has been identified as a “military adversary”, and the accomplishment of which can only be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive military action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine’s membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO’s Article 5 – which relates to collective defense – when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought under the ‘umbrella’ of NATO protection, with ‘battlegroups’ like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil as a ‘trip-wire’ force, and modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to “kill Russians.”

The idea that Russia would sit idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than likely use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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Abolish NATO – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2022

The final straw was to be Ukraine. After U.S. officials helped to orchestrate the regime-change operation that ousted a pro-Russia regime and installed a pro-U.S. regime in Ukraine, the next step was to invite Ukraine to join NATO. That would mean U.S. bases, missiles, and troops on Russia’s border. It would would mean the eviction of Russia from its longtime military base in Crimea and its replacement by a U.S. military base. 

Predictably, all this makes Russia the “aggressor” against the peace-loving officials within NATO and within the U.S. government (which controls NATO).

https://www.fff.org/2022/01/10/abolish-nato/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

The New York Times published an article yesterday that denied that U.S. officials promised Russia at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand membership to Warsaw Pact countries. 

Unfortunately, the article misses the point. The point is that NATO should have been abolished when the Cold War ended, which would, needless to say, have meant that it would not have absorbed those former Warsaw Pact countries and would not have moved U.S. bases, missiles, and troops inexorably closer to Russia’s borders. 

The ostensible purpose of NATO was to protect Western Europe from an invasion by the Soviet Union, which, ironically, had been America’s partner and ally in World War II. At the end of the Cold War, the threat of such an invasion was non-existent. Therefore, NATO’s ostensible mission was over. NATO should have been disbanded immediately.

But like so many other Cold War programs and bureaucratic agencies, NATO bureaucrats were not about to let their bureaucratic agency go quietly into the night. Too many officials had become accustomed to and dependent on the taxpayer-funded largess that came with NATO. 

Moreover, the NATO bureaucrats and the Cold War officials within the U.S. national-security establishment were not ready to let go of their Cold War racket, which they had milked for some 45 years. They had to figure out a way to keep their racket going.

That’s why NATO began absorbing Warsaw Pact countries instead of simply going out of business. They knew that as they brought U.S. bases, missiles, and troops closer to Russia’s borders, Russia would have to finally respond. And when that would happen, U.S. and NATO officials and their Operation Mockingbird acolytes in the mainstream press could exclaim, “The Russians have committed aggression! They are the aggressors!” 

The final straw was to be Ukraine. After U.S. officials helped to orchestrate the regime-change operation that ousted a pro-Russia regime and installed a pro-U.S. regime in Ukraine, the next step was to invite Ukraine to join NATO. That would mean U.S. bases, missiles, and troops on Russia’s border. It would would mean the eviction of Russia from its longtime military base in Crimea and its replacement by a U.S. military base. 

The result was predictable. Russia invaded Crimea and took it over. Russia has also made it clear that it fiercely opposed NATO’s absorption of Ukraine and the U.S. military bases, missiles, and troops on Russia’s border that would come with it.

Predictably, all this makes Russia the “aggressor” against the peace-loving officials within NATO and within the U.S. government (which controls NATO). It’s all Russia’s fault for opposing U.S. peace-loving plans to establish and install military bases, missiles, and troops along Russia’s borders. 

When will the American people wake up and come to the realization of what the conversion of their federal government to a national-security state has done to our nation? The sooner that day comes, the better off everyone will be. We will be able both to abolish NATO and restore a limited-government republic to our land. That would not only finally put a stop to the old Cold War racket but also set America on the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world. 

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‘HMS Defender Versus The Russian Military: The Danger of Believing Your Own Propaganda’ – Ron Paul’s 28 June Column

Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2021

Having had their bluff called, the UK government did what all governments do best: it lied. The Russians did not shoot at a UK warship, they claimed. It was a previously-scheduled Russian military exercise in the area.

Unfortunately for the UK government, in its haste to create good propaganda about standing up to Russia, they had a BBC reporter on-board the Defender who spilled the beans: Yes, the Russian military did issue several warnings, yes it did buzz the HMS Defender multiple times, and yes there were shots fired in the Defender’s direction.

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/propaganda?e=4e0de347c8

June 28 – Less than two weeks after NATO members reaffirmed allegiance to Article 5 – that an attack on one member was an attack on all members – the UK nearly put that pledge to the test. In a shockingly provocative move, the UK’s HMS Defender purposely sailed into Crimean territorial waters on its way to Georgia.

Press reports suggest that there was a dispute between the UK defense and foreign ministries over whether to violate Russia’s claimed territorial waters with a heavily armed warship. According to reports, Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself jumped in to over-rule the more cautious Foreign Office in favor of confrontation.

As Johnson later claimed, because the UK (and the US) does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the UK was actually sailing through Ukrainian waters. It was an in-your-face move toward Russia just weeks after the US and NATO were forced to back down from a major clash with Russia in eastern Ukraine

This time, as was the case in eastern Ukraine, the Russians took a different view of the situation. Russian coast guard vessels ordered the HMS Defender to exit Russian territorial waters – an order they punctuated with rare live fire of cannon and dropping of bombs.

Having had their bluff called, the UK government did what all governments do best: it lied. The Russians did not shoot at a UK warship, they claimed. It was a previously-scheduled Russian military exercise in the area.

Unfortunately for the UK government, in its haste to create good propaganda about standing up to Russia, they had a BBC reporter on-board the Defender who spilled the beans: Yes, the Russian military did issue several warnings, yes it did buzz the HMS Defender multiple times, and yes there were shots fired in the Defender’s direction.

Similarly, in the spring, Russia rapidly deployed 75,000 troops on the border with Ukraine in response to a US-backed Ukrainian military build-up. The message was clear: Russia would no longer sit by as the US government and its allies intervened next door.

Russia now has demonstrated that it will protect Crimea, which voted in a 2014 referendum to re-join Russia. The Crimean vote was triggered by the US-backed coup in Ukraine. That is called “unintended consequences” of foreign interventionism.

The problem with the UK, the US, and their NATO allies is that they believe their own propaganda and they act accordingly. A famous 2004 quote attributed to George W. Bush advisor Karl Rove, clearly spelled out this line of thinking. Said Rove, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

These two recent near-clashes with Russia demonstrate that the “reality” created by an almost religious belief in American or NATO exceptionalism can often crash hard against the reality of 75,000 troops or the Black Sea Fleet

The anti-Russia propaganda endlessly repeated by both political parties in Washington and amplified by the anti-Trump media for more than four years has completely saturated the Beltway and beyond. Even as the Russiagate conspiracy was proven to be a lie, the propaganda it spawned lives on.

Blustering Boris Johnson almost provoked a major war over an infantile desire to continue poking and prodding Russia in its own backyard. This time the war was averted, but what about next time? Will the adults ever be in charge?

—

Read more great articles on the Ron Paul Institute website.
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One Man Stands in the Way of NATO’s Run Onward to Moscow | New Eastern Outlook

Posted by M. C. on April 19, 2021

This came into being the instant Joe Biden took the oath of office as president, and it’s only part of an overall strategy to engage Russia in a winner take all confrontation that many experts say, is long overdue. And the has taken unilateral aggressive steps toward the Donbass region and any pocket of the pro-Russia sentiment inside Ukraine.

EU’s Three Seas Initiative (3SI), which is an asymmetrical warfare economic platform to cut Russia off from the EU, and install the U.S. and central European powers in her place in East Europe.

For what it is worth the link below is FB blocked.

https://journal-neo.org/2021/04/16/one-man-stands-in-the-way-of-nato-s-run-onward-to-moscow/

Author: Phil Butler

PTN3411

A foreign military bloc of nations is inching closer to Moscow, Vladimir Putin reacts in kind, and somehow Russia is the aggressor. And learned Ph.D.’s scribble on, defying pure logic from Washington’s Think Tank Row. Here’s the latest sensational proof that the world will never, ever be at peace.

Dr. Mamuka Tsereteli and James Carafano have a new plan for defeating Russia for good. Now get this, in America, we have institutions like The Heritage Foundation that fund supposed research to perpetuate wars. No, really. The latest report of the foundation “Putin Threatens Ukraine—Here’s the Danger and What US, Allies Should Do About It” is a blueprint for continuing friction between west and east. Let’s examine the three takeaways Heritage Foundation puts forward.

According to Tsereteli and Carafano, Putin is about to attack Ukraine. These well-paid foreign policy geniuses say a military buildup inside Russian territory, which was in response to threats from Kyiv, proves beyond a doubt the dastardly Putin is about to overrun Russia’s neighbor. To quote the report, “Putin plans to use Russian forces in a full-blown military engagement with that country [Ukraine].” Well, let’s find out why Russia’s president alerted his military.

Didn’t I just read how Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced that his country’s National Security and Defense Council had approved a strategy aimed at retaking Crimea and reintegrating the strategically important peninsula? Yes, I am sure of it. Another Washington think tank has already outlined something called the Crimean Platform Initiative, another genius plan hatched in the bowels of CIA headquarters, to make Crimea an expensive proposition for Russia.

This came into being the instant Joe Biden took the oath of office as president, and it’s only part of an overall strategy to engage Russia in a winner take all confrontation that many experts say, is long overdue. And the has taken unilateral aggressive steps toward the Donbass region and any pocket of the pro-Russia sentiment inside Ukraine. A statement by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova on this issue bears repeating here:

“All efforts by Kyiv to reclaim Crimea are illegitimate and cannot be interpreted in any other way but a threat of aggression against two Russian [federal] subjects. We reiterate that we will consider the participation of any states or organizations in such activities, including the Crimean Platform initiative, as a hostile act against Russia and direct encroachment on its territorial integrity.”

Now that we’ve established who the aggressor is, let’s take a look at Tsereteli’s and Carafano’s next brilliant takeaway point. The dynamic duo of war strategies says cosmetic measures against Russia will not do! The “west” (meaning NATO), they say, needs a more clear strategy. Which certainly means a massive arms buildup west of the Siverskyi Donets River. The Zelensky government is being pushed from Washington to take even more drastic measures to force Russia into a war stance. The editorial board of the Washington Post recently advised Zelensky:

“Mr. Zelensky now has the opportunity to forge a partnership with Mr. Biden that could decisively advance Ukraine’s attempt to break free from Russia and join the democratic West. He should seize on it.”

So, now that we’ve shown who is doing the pushing here, let’s turn to the final takeaway from Heritage Foundation master strategists. Tsereteli and Carafano come right out and say “countries left outside of NATO will remain targets of Russian aggression and manipulations.” So, the purpose of all this supposed spread of militaristic-based democracy is to expand NATO to? I mean, seriously. Washington is not reaching out with the Peace Corps to shore up a budding Eastern European democracy. The United States is kidnapping another former Soviet republic on the way to the big score. My country has military bases in almost every country in the world, has had more wars than the Mongols, and spends more on weapons than everybody else combined – but Russia is being aggressive! Who believes this bullshit?

Let’s be real here. First, please understand who is doing the “thinking” there in Washington. Take James Carafano, the former Lt. Colonel who wrote speeches for the head of the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. Carafano teaches at West Point, what the hell else can he advise, of war with Russia does not come about? The man’s life is about justifying war. Then there’s Mamuka Tsereteli, who’s also the Founding Executive Director at the America-Georgia Business Council. America-Georgia business, hmm? I wonder if there is an America-Ukraine business council in the works soon? But, you can see where this new strategy from Heritage Foundation is headed, can’t you? Taking advice on foreign policy from these so-called experts is putting the foxes in charge of the hen house. Only they’re not as smart as foxes. They don’t need to be. The public is just that numbed and misinformed these days.

Is heavily involved in helping promote the EU’s Three Seas Initiative (3SI), which is an asymmetrical warfare economic platform to cut Russia off from the EU, and install the U.S. and central European powers in her place in East Europe. This report from Mamuka Tsereteli at Emerging Europe lays out the plan. To learn more about Tsereteli’s role, readers should research the so-called Frontier Europe Initiative, currently propagandizing for greater Georgia-Ukraine strategies against Russia. Make no mistake, the narrative and strategies these people are discussing are the precursors to including not only Ukraine in NATO but Georgia as well. Retired Air Force General Phillip Breedlove and former CENTCOM Commander General Joseph Votel are two of the “experts” helping to draft these strategies. And The Heritage Foundation stands center stage of the move for NATO to force Putin and Russia into an inescapable corner.

And there, is your true geopolitical Eurasia picture. The “west” will run on to Moscow, start World War III, and then blame Putin for the holocaust.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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