OMNI

NATO ANTHOLOGY #1

May 20, 2022

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/omni-nato-anthology-1-may-20-2022.html

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

Omnicenter.org/donate/

Contents of NATO ANTHOLOGY #1

Maps of NATO Expansion (add Sweden and Finland)

Harry Targ.  History of NATO

Ratcheting up Cold War Two
Rick Rozoff.  “NATO’s War against Yugoslavia” 1999.
Rozoff.  NATO “Bombing of Chinese Embassy” 1999.

Kerstin Tuomala.  NATO-US War Game in Finland 2017.

Ukraine Maidan Coup 2014.

Patrick Lawrence.  “The New Iron Curtain.”
Moving Along Russia’s Southern Border.  Jeremy Kuzmarov.  
   Kazakhstan.

Geraldina Colotti.  “NATO Tentacles from Europe to Latin America.”

NATO Military Drills in Estonia Near Russian Border,
   Russia Warns Response 2022.
US “40 Billion More for Ukraine War” 2022.

Ending NATO
Bruce Gagnon.  “NATO ‘Master Plan’ Aimed at Russia.”

Dennis Kucinich.  “NATO Talks a Sham” 2012.

War Resisters League in Chicago, May 2012.

Peter Kornbluh.  US and Russia.

MAPS OF NATO EXPANSION

TEXTS

SUMMARY HISTORY OF NATO
Editor. Mronline.org (4-29-22). 

[Source: greatgameindia.com]

“Peace Movement needs to demand dismantling of NATO.”  Posted Apr 29, 2022 by Harry Targ
Originally published: CovertAction Magazine  on April 28, 2022 (more by CovertAction Magazine) 
Globalization, Imperialism, Movements, StrategyAmericas, Europe, Global, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Peace Movement

NATO went from fighting socialism to enforcing global empire

It looks a lot like a return to the past. Founded in 1949 to defend against the “Soviet threat,” the NATO alliance is facing a return to mechanized warfare, a huge increase in defense spending, and potentially a new Iron Curtain falling across Europe. After struggling to find a new post-Cold War role, countering terrorism following the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, NATO is back encroaching on its original nemesis.¹

U.S. Plans for the Establishment of Global Hegemony: 1945-47

During World War II an “unnatural alliance” was created between the United States, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union. What brought the three countries together—the emerging imperial giant (the United States), the declining capitalist power (Great Britain), and the first socialist state (the Soviet Union)—was the shared need to defeat fascism in Europe. Rhetorically, the high point of collaboration was reflected in the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, in February 1945, three months before the German armies were defeated.

At Yalta, the great powers made decisions to facilitate democratization of former Nazi regimes in Eastern Europe, a “temporary” division of Germany for occupation purposes, and a schedule of future Soviet participation in the ongoing war against Japan. Leaders of the three states returned to their respective countries celebrating the “spirit of Yalta,” what would be a post-war world order in which they would work through the new United Nations system to modulate conflict in the world.

Big Three leaders pose for photo outside historic Yalta conference. [Photo: history.com]

Within two years, after conflicts over Iran with the Soviet Union, the Greek Civil War, the replacement of wartime President Franklin Roosevelt with Harry Truman, and growing challenges to corporate rule in the United States by militant labor, Truman declared in March 1947 that the United States and its allies were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “International Communism.” The post-war vision of cooperation was reframed as a struggle of the “free world” against “tyranny.” It was really a struggle between two kinds of political/economic orders: one socialist, another capitalist.

The Economic Foundations of a New World Order

In addition to Truman’s ideological crusade, his administration launched an economic program to rebuild parts of Europe, particularly what would become West Germany, as capitalist bastions against the ongoing popularity of Communist parties throughout the region. Along with the significant program of reconstructing capitalism in Europe and linking it by trade, investment, finance and debt to the United States, the U.S. with its new allies constructed a military alliance that would be ready to fight the Cold War against International Communism.

[Source: apprend.io]

For Joyce and Gabriel Kolko (The Limits of Power, 1972) and other revisionists, the expansion of socialism constituted a global threat to capital accumulation. With the end of the Second World War, there were widespread fears that the decline in wartime demand for U.S. products would bring economic stagnation and a return to the depression of the 1930s.

The Marshall Plan, lauded as a humanitarian program for the rebuilding of war-torn Europe, was at its base a program to increase demand and secure markets for U.S. products. With the specter of an international communist threat, military spending, another source of demand, would likewise help retain customers, including the U.S. government itself. The idea of empire, which William Appleman Williams so stressed (The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 1959), was underscored by the materiality of capitalist dynamics.

The Marshall Plan inspired European integration of states that were major recipients of Marshall Plan funds. The first significant economic organization, The European Coal and Steel Community, became operational in 1952. Its membership included France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It encouraged the production and trade of core resources such as coal, steel and iron. In 1957, the purview of the ECSC was expanded with the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom).

Other, overlapping European institutions were created during the 1950s and beyond involving the original six and additional countries. In May 1960 seven European nations, not in the EEC, formed the European Free Trade Association to foster trade and economic integration. (In 1973, three countries including Great Britain joined the EEC).

Finally in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union (EU) which, by 2019, had 27 member countries (nine from the former Soviet bloc) with a GDP of 16.4 trillion euros (the EU currency), constituting 15% of world trade. In addition, European nations are embedded in a network of regional and international organizations that deal with trade, finance, indebtedness, security and human rights. (See the diagram below.)

The reigning scholarly study of these efforts in the 1960s and beyond, integration theory, postulated that the greater the cross-national interactions of European countries the lesser the likelihood of war among them. Studies were carried out designed to discover how and why integration seemed to be working in Europe but less so in troubled locations, such as on the African continent.

But from another vantage point “regional integration” inspired by and connected to the United States political economy can be seen as a near complete fruition of the vision of U.S. and capitalist hegemony initiated in those crucial early years after World War ll. The 21^st century policy program of the United States and most of Europe has been to establish on a global basis a capitalist economic model.

[Source: thecoldwarexperience.weebly.com]

Ideologically, the presupposition is that this model is historically exceptional and therefore must resist threats to its survival and growth. The so-called communist threat of the 1940s is the “authoritarian” threat of the current century. And to the extent that capitalist hegemony is not achievable by consent, it might need to be instituted by force.

While world history is more complicated than this narrative suggests, there is enough plausibility to it to justify fears, particularly when the military instrument—NATO—expanded eastward. From this point of view, NATO itself may not be the only threat to countries in Europe and Asia. But the use of it as a part of global expansion of economic and political institutions, coupled with the ideological expression of American exceptionalism, could create fear and aggression.

NATO As the Military Arm of a Drive for a Hegemonic Global Political Economy

Representatives of Western European countries met in Brussels in 1948 to establish a program of common defense and one year later with the addition of the United States and Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. The new NATO charter, inspired largely by a prior Western Hemisphere alliance, the Rio Pact (1947), proclaimed that “an armed attack against one or more of them…shall be considered an attack against them all” which would lead to an appropriate response.

[Source: twitter.com]

The Charter called for cooperation and military preparedness among the 12 signatories. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb and the Korean War started, NATO pushed ahead with the development of a common military command structure with General Eisenhower as the first “Supreme Allied Commander.”

After the founding of NATO and its establishment as a military arm of the West, the Truman administration adopted the policy recommendations in National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) in 1950 which declared that military spending for the indefinite future would be the number one priority of every presidential administration.

As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and, fueling the flames of the Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe.)

Image from first NATO summit. [Source: nato.int]

During the Cold War, NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. Thus, NATO provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of a first-strike attack.

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989 and, finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the outspoken purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be.

In the next 20 years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance doubled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined. NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

[Source: youtube.com]

In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S.-led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

An official history of NATO described the changes in its mission: “In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture.” The post-Cold War mission of NATO combines “military might, diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.”

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s, it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” The 21^st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism.

NATO and Ukraine Today

Conference in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, March 2019, exposes NATO’s bombing of Yugoslav children. [Photo: workers.org]

Reviewing this brief history of NATO, observers can reasonably draw different conclusions about NATO’s role in the world than from those who celebrate its world role. First, NATO’s mission to defend Europe from aggression against “International Communism” was completed with the “fall of Communism.” Second, the alliance was regional, that is pertaining to Europe and North America, and now it is global. Third, NATO was about security and defense. Now it is about global transformation.

Fourth, with the U.S. as NATO’s biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21^st century military instrumentality of global imperialism. And, finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

In the context of this complex history, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, following eight years of war in Eastern Ukraine. After four weeks thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and more than four million have fled their cities and towns. The President of Ukraine, spokespersons from some NATO countries, and some U.S. politicians have called for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine which would escalate the war to a near-nuclear war situation. In addition, NATO countries, and particularly the United States, have dramatically increased military expenditures. Impactful economic sanctions have been leveled against Russia, and economic instabilities are beginning to affect Europe and the United States. In addition, vital work around combating climate change has been stalled and important pieces of legislation to fulfil social needs have been eliminated from legislative consideration.

What Needs to Be Done?

To quote a tired but true slogan, “war is not the answer.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the lives and property of Ukrainians, the lives of Russian soldiers and protesters, raises fears of an escalation of war throughout Europe, and raises the danger of nuclear war.

[Photo: blogger.googleusercontent.com]

“We” need to support “back-channel negotiations” in process as occurred during the Cuban missile crisis, demands that Russia stop the violence and withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, diplomacy at the United Nations, and summit meetings of diplomats from Russia, Ukraine and Europe. And conversations on the agenda should include forbidding Ukraine from joining NATO, establishing regional autonomy for Ukraine citizens who want it, pulling back NATO bases from Eastern European states, and/or abolishing NATO itself because the reason for its creation in the first place, defending against the Soviet Union, no longer exists.

The “we” at this moment could be a resurgent international peace movement, taking inspiration from peace activists in Russia and around the world. As horrible as this moment is, it is potentially a “teachable moment,” a moment when peace becomes part of the global progressive agenda again and people all around the world can begin to examine existing international institutions such as NATO.

And while we react with shock and condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whatever the complicated and understandable motivations, we need to be familiar with the historic context of the very dangerous warfare that we are living through now.

As James Goldgeier wrote more than 20 years ago on a Brookings Institution web page:

The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.’ Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.”²

Notes:

1.    ↩Sabine Siebold and Robin Emmott, “Russia may not stop with Ukraine—NATO looks to its weakest link,” Reuters, March 21, 2022

2.    ↩James Goldgeier, Brookings Institution, “The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO: How, When, Why, and What Next?“ June 1, 1999.

RATCHETING UP THE NEW COLD WAR

LOOKING BACK TO BOMBINGS OF SERBIA 1999-2000

“NATO’s war against Yugoslavia: the ghost that still haunts Europe.”    Originally published: Anti-bellum by Rick Rozoff (May 18, 2021 ) – Posted May 22, 2021.  
WarEurope, Global, YugoslaviaNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
https://mronline.org/2021/05/22/natos-war-against-yugoslavia-the-ghost-that-still-haunts-europe/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=natos-war-against-yugoslavia-the-ghost-that-still-haunts-europe&utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=6fe06a82b2-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MRONLINE_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-6fe06a82b2-295821469&mc_cid=6fe06a82b2&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e  

Twenty-two years ago today the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was subjected to the 55th straight day of bombardment from the then 19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with 23 days more to go. Many families in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš daily fled to bomb shelters during the aerial onslaught. The permanent trauma inflicted on millions of civilians, especially children, is perhaps impossible to calculate. And it has been denied or ignored by Europe and the world. As forgotten as the cluster bomb fragments and depleted uranium left behind by NATO’s “humanitarian intervention.”

The air war was justified by U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana as a noble crusade to stop, to employ an expression not uncommon at the time, the “worst genocide since Hitler” in the Serbian province of Kosovo. The operation, Operation Allied Force for NATO, Operation Noble Anvil for the U.S., began with a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships and submarines in the Adriatic Sea. In all over 1,000 NATO military aircraft flew 30,000 combat sorties over a nation of slightly more than 10 million people, two million of those in Kosovo; a military bloc whose combined population at the time was some 850 million and which included three of the world’s nuclear powers.

During the war, arguably the most lopsided since the U.S.’s invasion of Grenada in 1983, American and other Western officials maintained a steady drumbeat of increasingly hyperbolic, and criminally unconscionable, claims of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo killed by Yugoslav forces. On May 16 Defense Secretary William Cohen appeared on Face the Nation and said: “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing….They may have been murdered.” Almost immediately afterward another American official raised that number to 200,000.

The scare tactics worked, as NATO’s top military commander, General Wesley Clark, was able to continue daily bombing missions over the small nation months after all targets of military value had been hit and hit repeatedly. A passenger train, a religious procession, a refugee column, Radio Television of Serbia headquarters. a vacuum cleaner factory, bridges, marketplaces, apartment courtyards, the Swiss embassy in Belgrade and the Chinese embassy as well, with three journalists killed and 27 other Chinese injured. Cluster bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium ordnance were used widely. No one, not a single individual, has been held accountable for those war crimes. Nor for what should be a war crime and one of the most grave at that: intentionally fabricating and exaggerating atrocity stories to agitate for and escalate a war. Few Western politicians and journalists would have escaped that charge over their roles in 1999.

When the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic was compelled to accede to NATO diktat on June 10, over 200,000 ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities left Kosovo with Yugoslav troops, and NATO and its so-called Kosovo Liberation Army cutthroats–for whom and with whom it waged the war–marched into Kosovo. After the latter arrived even more, perhaps a hundred thousand or more, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Jews, Egyptians, Ashkali and members of other ethnic minority communities, along with no few Albanians, fled the province. Numerous Serbs, Roma and Albanian “collaborators” were murdered in what the Western press invariably described as revenge killings. (During the air war Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported 100,000 ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo to other parts of Serbia.)

The permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the expulsion of over a quarter of a million Serbs from Croatia in the early 1990s are the two largest cases of irreversible ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Decades later no one has been held accountable for those crimes either.  MORE
https://mronline.org/2021/05/22/natos-war-against-yugoslavia-the-ghost-that-still-haunts-europe/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=natos-war-against-yugoslavia-the-ghost-that-still-haunts-europe&utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=6fe06a82b2-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MRONLINE_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-6fe06a82b2-295821469&mc_cid=6fe06a82b2&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e

“China, Serbia mark anniversary of NATO’s deadly bombing of Chinese embassy.”  Rick Rozoff.  Mronline.org (5-11-22).

Diplomats from the Chinese Embassy in Serbia and Serbian government officials held a commemorative event in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, on Saturday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the former Yugoslavia in 1999.

LOOKING BACK FROM Finland’s and Sweden’s 2022 intention to  apply for membership in NATO

PROTESTING NATO EXPANSION INTO FINLAND

 “Protesting Against NATO in Lapland”

by Kerstin Tuomala.  Space Alert! (August 2017).

http://www.space4peace.org/newsletter/Space%20Alert%2035.pdf

About 30 persons showed up at the demonstration on May 22 at the airport in Tovaniemi, Finland on the first day of the ACE 2017 U.S.-NATO war game. The main bases for the military exercises were Rovaniemi, Finland, Luleå, Sweden and Bodö, Norway. They are NATO exercises, our countries are only hosts, which in reality means servants. Because the time they fly is in the spring when the reindeers calve, it is extremely bad since the herd can get panic from the noise and many calves are at risk for this reason. The peace group from Joensuu came by bus and they had with them 16 persons with good spirit and slogans, a good microphone, and impressive banners and we from the north had banners too. The person from most far away, besides Dave Webb (GN board chair) from England and Agneta Norberg (GN board member) and My Leffler from Sweden, came from Helsinki and the most northern about 170 kms from Rovaniemi a place by the northwestern border, named Kolari, over which the ACE was flying. People talked against our governments spending money on military instead of welfare and security in everyday life, and we sang peace songs and some danced accompanied/disturbed by the noise of the lifting fighter planes. I was interviewed for the Swedish radio and was so distracted by the noise that I said what I thought (instead of thinking what I said.) The weather was windy and cold and we moved to the city center of Rovaniemi to get some coffee and tea and to have another planned demonstration there. More local people showed up and they talked very well about the same concerns of how our welfare is cut down in favor of militarism. They also thanked us for arranging this opportunity to demonstrate. In fact we had planned to be there only for half an hour, but we were longer so that everyone who wanted could speak. We demonstrated on a square where people pass on their ways, we got good publicity, the banners were impressive… 

MORE http://www.space4peace.org/newsletter/Space%20Alert%2035.pdf

UKRAINE

MAIDAN COUP 2014

The Editors.  Monthly Review.  May 2022 (Volume 74, Number 1).     (May 7, 2022).   buy this issue

To get a firm grasp on the current situation in Ukraine, we must understand the central role that the United States and NATO have played in the conflict from the start, beginning in 2014 with the U.S.-engineered Maidan coup. | more…

“The New Iron Curtain”

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. Popular Resistance.org (5-18-22).   We have read a great deal about a new Cold War since the U.S. cultivated the coup of February 2014 in Ukraine and the nation was tragically divided against itself.  Some of us have ruminated in print, in this publication and elsewhere, on this emergent reality. With the back-to-back announcements that Finland and Sweden intend to apply for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Cold War II” is no longer merely a handy locution for columnists and those who pontificate on barstools. The accession of these Nordic nations to Washington’s principal instrument of power projection is… -more-
THE NEW IRON CURTAIN By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. May 17, 2022

The Ukraine Crisis Proves To Be Europe’s Crucible.

And Europe proves a profound disappointment.

We have read a great deal about a new Cold War since the U.S. cultivated the coup of February 2014 in Ukraine and the nation was tragically divided against itself.  Some of us have ruminated in print, in this publication and elsewhere, on this emergent reality.

With the back-to-back announcements that Finland and Sweden intend to apply for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Cold War II” is no longer merely a handy locution for columnists and those who pontificate on barstools.

The accession of these Nordic nations to Washington’s principal instrument of power projection is assured and will be complete in very short order. This will solidify the wall Washington and its European clients insist on erecting to divide the world yet more perversely and destructively than it was for the four decades and some of Cold War I.

It would be hard to overstate the significance of this turn of events — for Finns, Swedes and Russians, certainly, — but also for all Europeans and, at the horizon, for everyone on this planet, alive or yet to be born.

Remember the famous lines from Kipling?

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat…

Kipling published The Ballad of East and West in 1889, the British Empire’s high noon, and in it mourned the great divide between the imperial powers and their subjects. His deepest regret was for all the lost humanity obscured by the enduring but artificial line humans etched into the Earth long ago to distinguish the West from the rest.

Judgment Day appearing other than imminent, we will be in for many seasons of regret as Washington constructs the infrastructure that will define Cold War II. The Finns’ and Swedes’ accessions to NATO suggest an edifice more permanent than either the Iron Curtain or, on the other side of the world post–1949, its bamboo variant. There will be few doors and windows in this wall — this by Washington’s design. It will be hard to see either in or out.

Cold War II

And here’s the thing about this profoundly misguided project. The populations of the Western post-democracies will pay a far higher price for letting their leaders build the thick stone wall of Cold War II than those it is supposed to consign to the wilderness. Westerners will pay this price in blindness, in ignorance, and in isolation from the global majority.

If your proposition is to isolate others — and the great majority of humanity wants no part of isolated others and a world of walls — you’ve probably got it backwards: He who would ostracize others will find himself ostracized.

It has turned out to be a hop-skip, I have to say, from “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” to erecting another as quickly as the stones can be set in place. Now we know what President Joe Biden means by “Build Back Better.”

Ever since the Russian intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, we have watched as many perfectly innocent people — musical conductors, athletes, professors, artists, writers — have lost their jobs or been otherwise censured for refusing to denounce the Russian incursion publicly, or in some cases simply for being Russian. It reminds me of a passage in the New Testament, Matthew 15:11: Roughly paraphrased, he who would defile another defiles only himself.

Sanctions

The sanctions Washington and its “allies and partners” have imposed on Russia and Russians now number more than 6,000. The results so far strongly suggest they are not working — a conclusion the policy cliques seem to be gradually acknowledging.

Last week Britain announced it was sanctioning Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife; a former gymnast reputed to be the Russian president’s girlfriend and three of his cousins. Western authorities are now down to chasing the yachts of wealthy Russians around the Mediterranean.

Can you beat this stuff for sheer indignity?

What we’ve seen so far, appalling as it has been, will evaporate when the time comes.  Western concert halls will again permit renderings of Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich, War and Peace will be restored to university curricula.

The Finnish and Swedish decisions to join NATO are of another order. They have come but will not go. We now witness an historically significant, here-to-stay restructuring of the global order, such as it is, in real time.

A good map illustrates well enough the magnitude of what is about to happen. Washington has sought to bring NATO up to Russia’s borders since the Soviet Union’s demise, but heretofore it has recruited only the three Baltic statelets among frontline nations — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

It failed to turn Georgia in 2008, it failed to push through yet another of its color revolutions in Belarus last year, and, as things stand, Ukrainian membership appears a lost cause.

The map will also tell you much about why Russia determined to intervene in Ukraine three months ago (and why your columnist still considers this a regrettable but necessary undertaking). As the map indicates, finally, Finnish membership will consolidate NATO’s presence on Russia’s northwestern flank. With Sweden’s accession, the Baltic Sea will become something like a NATO lake.

That’s the strategic picture, but the strategic picture is merely the framework of the world we are fated to live in for — as the best guesses now have it — decades to come, generations. Anyone who lived through Cold War I will share with me a profound disquietude, a sadness bordering on depression.

Among the very worst of Cold War I’s consequences was the narrowing of the American consciousness such that most citizens of our republic were rendered incapable of managing any kind of complexity. Everything was binary, Manichean, “the good guys and the bad guys,” as many a commentator — not just Tom Friedman — still thinks is fine to put on any given matter.

Americans haven’t managed to grow beyond the state of ignorance that Cold War I required before they are once again pushed back into it. Ukraine: the good guys. Russia: the bad guys. Making this case worse, the Europeans are now signing onto this simplistic view of the world, at the very moment they could have tempered America’s cornpone simplifications with needed nuance and sophistication.

A certain kind of nation is dying as we speak, and to me this is among the greatest of the losses we now witness. Finland has been neutral until now not only by treaty. It has been one of those few nations that straddle East and West by dint of geography, culture, social traditions and the like. You can see this, for instance, in its architecture and the value it places on community — touches of the Asiatic.

Helsinki stood for the efficacy of diplomacy. The twain could meet there, as they did for the Helsinki Accords in 1975 and as they did when Ronald Reagan and Michail Gorbachev had their momentous encounter 15 years later.

Ukraine stood to be another such nation, divided as it is between the Galician west, tilted toward Europe, and the Russophone east, highly conscious of its “Russianness” by way of language, history, culture, familial ties and so on. This is why the essentially federal system outlined in the two Minsk accords, September 2014 and February 2015, was wise and humane — a plan that could have elevated Ukraine to something more than a failed state, an absolute mess, which is what we must count it now.

We cannot count Sweden neutral, even if The New York Times insists on repeating this error daily. But it was NATO–agnostic, let’s say, and this counted. Stockholm told the world, We are of the West, but we do not partake of Washington’s imperial adventures, and we decline to subjugate ourselves to its militarization of trans–Atlantic relations.

It is all gone now. The Finns have surprised me. I thought they understood their singular place between East and West better than they apparently do. The Swedes have been drifting rightward from their social-democratic principles for years, but NATO membership will still signal abandonment of a worthy position.

As to the rest of Europe, the Ukraine crisis has made this a case of dashed hopes. We can forget about the Continent as an independent pole of power, an expectation I and others nursed over many years. The present generation of leadership has no experience acting other than within the shelter of the American security umbrella.

Here I have to eat a healthy serving of crow. I listened when Emmanuel Macron told the Group of 7 summit at Biarritz three years ago that Europe’s destiny was bound up with Russia’s, when the French president later dismissed NATO as “brain dead,” when he made the case repeatedly for the need to integrate the Russian Federation into a sort of Greater Europe at the western end of the Eurasian landmass.

I have Macron down now as the AOC of Europe: Lots of posturing, garish professions of principled positions, in Macron’s case his insistence over and over that Europe must cultivate its “strategic autonomy,” but no seriousness. What a shyster, what an opportunist poseur. And how foolish was I.

Europe’s Crucible

The Ukraine crisis proves to be Europe’s crucible and Europe proves a profound disappointment. We all would have gained, not Europeans alone, had the Continent’s leaders found the gumption to stand and act on their own and for their citizens’ interests.

Policy cliques in Washington and the other Western capitals appear to have settled on our moment to circle the wagons. This is the broader context within which we ought to view the Finnish and Swedish moves toward NATO. There is no more space for outliers, no more time for fancy-pants straddling between East and West.

In my read, this is at bottom a response to the single most compelling reality of our century, the emergence of parity between the West and non–West. We hear daily of how urgent it is to shovel weapons into Ukraine as quickly as possible. And it is urgent: This is a lunge in pursuit of the West’s longstanding superiority — a desperate defense of something that cannot be defended.

One great difference between Cold War I and II is that the non–West is stronger now than it was. The nations that comprise it are technologically capable, they have their own markets, their own investment capital; a dense web of interdependent ties elaborates as we speak.

These nations, as is already plain from the very short list of subscribers to the Washington-directed sanctions regime, will not be drawn into Cold War II as a long list of developing nations was during Cold War I — Cuba, Iran and Guatemala above all, and from there onto Vietnam, Angola, the other Central Americans, the American satellites in East Asia — Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia.

With parity comes autonomy, to put this point another way.

The West wants to divide the world once again, and it is building high, thick walls to get this done. If we can’t continue to subjugate them, the policy cliques appear to reason, let’s at least isolate them. It will be interesting — bitterly amusing, even — to see who turns out to be isolated as the West insists once again the twain must not meet.

National Endowment for Democracy Provided $1.2 Million to Kazakhstan to Help Spark Color Revolution Against Pro-Russian and Pro-China Regime By  Jeremy Kuzmarov.

 January 12, 2022 

Media Has Covered Crisis in Kazakhstan in Biased Way

On January 2^nd, protests erupted in the city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan that have since spread across the country. Over 160 people have been killed, including at least 18 police officers, with hundreds more wounded.

The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets depicted the violence as a result of the doubling of fuel prices and unhappiness with political authoritarianism and corruption.

Protesters take part in a rally over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on January 5, 2022. [Source: abcnews.go.com]

Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has been widely condemned for carrying out large-scale human rights abuses, with Russian backing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to Russia as an occupying power.

Russia has indeed sent troops into Kazakhstan in support of Tokayev. On January 5^th, Tokayev invoked article four of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led alliance of former Soviet states that includes Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan, which agreed to provide Kazakhstan with military assistance and defense.

[Source: silkroadbriefing.com]

In most media coverage, including even in alternative media, Tokyaev is depicted as the bad guy, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Tokayev’s statement about criminals and murderers leading the protests is actually true.

[Source: wikipedia.org]

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that two police officers in Almaty were found beheaded and that government buildings were stormed and set ablaze.

RT News reported that protesters were driving away military vehicles, disarming soldiers, burning cars and had set on fire the mayor’s office in Almaty, the country’s largest city.

Lest one think RT News is biased since it is pro-Russian, The New York Times also featured a photograph of a burning police car on January 7.^[1]

Pepe Escobar wrote in Strategic Culture about the protesters provoking “total anarchy, robbery, looting, hundreds of vehicles destroyed, attacks with assault rifles, ATMs and even the Duty Free at Almaty airport [being] completely plundered.” This assessment dovetailed with that of Galym Ageleulov, a human rights activist in Almaty who participated in the protests. He described the crowd as “an unruly mob of…thugs…clearly organized by crime group marauders.”

Photo of burning police car in Almaty published by The New York imes. [Source: nytimes.com]

Regime Change

The media almost universally failed to report that political organizations in Kazakhstan in 2020 received $3.8 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which promotes regime change against pro-Russian leaders in Eastern Europe and Central Asia under the guise of advancing democracy and human rights, and more than $1.2 million from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (data for 2021 is not yet publicly available)

[Source: ned.org]

The NED was founded in the 1980s by the Reagan administration to carry out functions previously adopted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).^[2] It has been involved in supporting “color revolutions,” or regime-change operations, throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia directed against pro-Russian leaders like Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia in the 2003 “Rose Revolution” and Viktor Yanukovych who was ousted in Ukraine in February 2014.

·       Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003. [Source: wikipedia.org]

·       Color Revolution in Ukraine. [Source: atlanticcouncil.org]

In 2018-2019, the NED spent almost three million dollars in Belarus, which was targeted in a color revolution directed against Socialist Alexander Lukashenko, a close Russian ally who sustained considerable popular support because of the strength of his country’s social programs.

Protests in Minsk in August 2020 with the aim of bringing down Alexander Lukashenko’s socialist government. The protesters fly Belarus’s pre-revolutionary flag. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com]

Much of the NED funding was directed toward training youth activists in political organizing, strengthening NGOs and financing independent anti-Lukashenko media, which played a pivotal role in trying to stir up opposition and protests against him. The NED has also set out to publicize human rights abuses as a means of undermining Lukashenko’s legitimacy.

The same approach has been deployed in Kazakhstan. In 2020, the NED budgeted $61,450 for defending human rights, $69,920 for what it calls promoting and defending civil society, and $300,550 for independent news and commentary.

All of these initiatives sound positive, but their primary intention is to stir anti-regime opposition and propaganda.

When violent protests begin to escalate, the opposition media kick into high gear, depicting the president as a tyrant committing human rights crimes, and international media—including the alternative media—follow suit.

Regime change usually follows, though in the case of Kazakhstan, Russian and CSTO support, combined with the lack of organization and vision of the protest movement, makes those prospects here unlikely.^[3]

Corrupt Foreign-Backed Leader

The leader of the Kazakh protest movement, Mukhtar Ablyazov, is a former energy minister and wealthy banker, who fled from Kazakhstan to Britain in 2009 after being charged with corruption and embezzling as much as $6 billion when he was head of Kazakhstan’s largest bank.

A Great Freedom Fighter! Mukhtar Ablyazov raising fist in France, having received asylum there in 2020 after being forced to leave Britain under the threat of imprisonment for tax evasion. [Source: en.odfoundation.eu]

Owning a network of over 800 fake companies, many of them off-shore^[4], Ablyazov was accused of murdering his business rival, Yerzhan Tatishev, on a hunting trip. A colleague told a court in Almaty that Ablyazov, who heads the right-wing Democratic Choice party of Kazakhstan, “proposed…the physical elimination of Yerzhan. This would happen during a hunting trip and look like an accidental death. And so it happened.”^[5]

Tarzan Tatishev [Source: asiantimes.com]

Dubbed by the British press as the “world’s richest fraudster,” Ablyazov lived sumptuously in a nine-bedroom mansion in London’s “Billionaire’s Row” and a 100-acre estate in Windsor Great Park, while renting a 15,000 square foot mansion on Bishop’s Avenue in London. He owned three private planes and more than one thousand apartments, and 106 cars.

Ablyazov’s mansion on London’s billionaire’s row. [Source: independent.co.uk]

In 2012, a British judge ordered him imprisoned for lying in court about his financial assets, which prompted him to seek asylum in France.^[6] Lord Justice Maurice Kay observed that: “It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov.”

Ablyazov arrives at court hearing in France in 2014. [Source: occrp.org]

Ablyazov has set up headquarters for the new color revolution in Kyiv, home of a U.S.-backed government infiltrated by neo-fascists that is priming for war with Russia, and has called for Western military intervention.

His lawyer, Stephan Roh, was the attorney for Joseph Mifsud, the notorious Maltese-British agent who tried to entrap Trump campaign worker George Papadopoulos in 2016, with help from Italian Democratic Party networks and the Italian government under Matteo Renzi.

Geopolitical Stakes

Besides failing to discuss Ablyazov’s background, almost all media coverage of Kazakhstan has failed to probe the important geopolitical stakes underlying the protests.

Russia is depicted as the bad guy because it is supposedly helping a ghastly regime. But as bad as Tokayev may be, the alternative appears to be worse.

The media further ignores the fact that Putin and Russia are obligated to act under the CSTO to defend Kazakhstan and that the U.S. has been supporting the “color revolution in Kazakhstan as part of a renewed Cold War offensive. Its goal is to pry a key Russian strategic ally into the U.S. and Western political orbit, where it could be admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Russia has strong interest in Kazakhstan, including a launch site for space missions that it rents, a major missile testing site where a next generation missile defense system is being developed, and a reliance on Kazakh gas as a backstop for insufficient Russian production.

A Russian Soyuz-FG rocket with five satellites launches from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on July 22, 2012. [Space.com]

Kazakhstan is also one of the world’s leading uranium producers and an important oil supplier to China, which has emerged as a key strategic ally of Moscow.

The color revolution as of this writing appears to have failed. The reason is because Kazakhstan has benefited greatly from the Eurasian Economic Union which has integrated its economy with Russia and Belarus.^[7]

Session of the Eurasian Economic Council. [Source: wikipedia.org]

As a huge potential hub for accessing Central Asia, Kazakhstan under Tokayev’s leadership is also poised to receive considerable support under China’s One Belt-One Road initiative, which will likely result in a huge buildup of Kazakhstan’s railway and infrastructure, and tremendous economic benefit.^[8]

[Source: carnegieendowment.org]

The U.S., it appears, would prefer to go back to the days of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan from 1990 until 2019. His mafia-style tactics were apparent when the decapitated carcass of a dog was left outside the office of a newspaper that reported he had stashed more than a billion dollars in state oil money in Swiss bank accounts, with a warning that “there won’t be a next time.”^[9]

Nursultan Nazarbayev [Source: nbcnews.com]

The money had come from the sale of a 20% stake in the Tengiz oil fields to Chevron, and from $78 million in bribes given by an American oil industry consultant, James H. Giffen, the de facto U.S. ambassador who also worked for Nazarbayev and helped secure Chevron’s concession.^[10]

·       Tengiz oil field. [Source: upstreamonline.com]

·       James H. Giffen [Source: nytimes.com]

In 2005, former U.S. President Bill Clinton famously enjoyed a decadent midnight feast with Nazarbayev while helping to secure a uranium mining concession in Kazakhstan for Clinton Foundation donor James Giustra.^[11]

Bill Clinton, center, with Frank Giustra on his left and Sir Tom Hunter on his right. [Source: nytimes.com]

Today, the Great Game continues, but the world is changing, and China and Russia are becoming more powerful.

1.   Newsweek reported that the protesters had broken into the presidential residence, while the World Socialist Web Site reported that they were smashing bank windows.

2.   Former Archivist of the United States and NED founder Allen Weinstein stated openly: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” ↑

3.   Though the initial protests were led by workers, the left wing parties have been decimated by years of repression. The country’s main political opposition party, the right-wing “Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan,” as such has begun to play a role in the demonstrations. A high level intelligence source told journalist Pepe Escobar that the protests were being “sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/U.S.-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels…to prevent any kind of agreement.” Another intelligence source told him that it was a diversionary tactic to bog Russia down while war is triggered in Ukraine. ↑

4.   Some of these companies were listed as being owned by dead alcoholics as part of a pattern of tax evasion and financial fraud. Ablyazov is reputed to have ties to organized crime. See Charles van der Leeuw, Fugitive Long-fingered Gentry from the Plains (Capisan, 2009).

↑

5.   The consequence of Tatishev’s death was that Mukhtar Ablyazov forced Tatishev’s widow to transfer him the shares that Tatishev held in BTA Bank. The transfer made Ablyazov the owner of BTA and one of the most powerful men in Kazakhstan. The man convicted of accidentally killing him, Muratkhan Tokhmadiyev, said he had in fact been hired to do so by Mukhtar Ablyazov. ↑

6.   Ablyazov was facing three concurrent twenty-two month sentences for judgments against him that totaled $4.9 billion. Within a year of his tenure as head of the state-owned Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC), revenues were down by 12 percent and expenditure up by 53 percent, a pattern repeated in 1999 when he was named CEO of Air Kazakhstan, swiftly asset-stripping the company into bankruptcy. The Royal Bank of Scotland was among numerous British institutions to suffer at the hands of Ablyazov—it had to be bailed out by British taxpayers after suffering losses of more than $1.8 billion. ↑

7.   President Tokayev also has made major concession to the protesters that will help to dissipate them. He has promised state regulation of gas, gasoline, and socially important goods; a moratorium on raising utility bills; subsidized rents for housing for the poor; and the creation of a public fund to support health care and children. ↑Tokyaev also satisfied protesters by removing ex-President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whom he served as a foreign minister under, from a key security post.

8.   The One-Belt-One Road was initially launched in Kazakhstan by Xi Jinping at Nazarbayev University in September 2013. ↑

9.   Peter Baker, “As Kazakh scandal unfolds, Soviet-style reprisals begin,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 2002, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-06-11-0206110214-story.html. The dog’s severed head was later put on the editor’s doorstep. Nazarbayev still wields influence in Kazakhstan, though has just been removed from a key security post. Some of the protesters had demanded his return, while others chanted that “the old man should go away.”↑

10. Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Penguin, 2002), 496, 497; Michael Dobbs, David Ottaway and Sharon LaFraniere, “American at Center of Kazakh Oil Probe,” The Washington Post, September 25, 2000; Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil (London: Verso, 2014), 21, 22. Giffen also gave Nazarbayev and his wife gifts, including his-her snowmobiles, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry. Giffen never denied paying the bribes but said his actions were fully known by the U.S. government. He had made millions in concessions on Kazakhstan oil deals, enabling him to buy an 11-acre estate adjacent to the celebrated Winged Foot Golf Course in New York’s Westchester County. In late 2010, the Justice Department dropped bribery charges in exchange for a misdemeanor tax plea, and the Judge, William Pauley, imposed no jail time, saying Giffen was a Cold War hero and “one of the only Americans with sustained access to high levels of government in the region. These relationships built up over a lifetime were lost the day of his arrest.” Oil fixer Friedhelm Eronat stated that “oil fields are a battleground. If Jim (Giffen] had not been involved, other [non-American] firms would have gotten the contracts, and the loser would have been the U.S. government.” ↑

11. Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton,” The New York Times, January 31, 2008.

“NATO’s tentacles from Europe to Latin America.”

Originally published: Internationalist 360  on January 21, 2022 by Geraldina Colotti (more by Internationalist 360) (Posted Jan 24, 2022)

Globalization, Imperialism, Strategy, WarEurope, Latin America, United StatesNewswireNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

International analysts are often, and understandably, asked whether there will be a change in U.S. foreign policy depending on whether a Republican or Democratic president rules the White House. Since, for a Marxist, it is always a good idea to flee from Manichaeism and look at the concrete situation in its historically determined class relations, to point out that, at the international level, the essence of U.S. foreign policy presents no discontinuities, it is not an ideological position-taking.

“Everything changes so that nothing changes” is a scheme that fits well with U.S. strategy in the world. Whether wrapped in open-field Trumpist rhetoric or a more persuasive Biden-style “multilateralism,” the foundational idea of armed supremacy remains the basis of the American political model in foreign policy. A paradigm that feeds and feeds the interests of the military industrial complex, sustained, relaunched and updated by its ideological engines, schools of thought and media.

On this basis, the U.S. believes itself to be the gendarme of the world, legitimized in an arms race to protect itself from eternal danger, both within and in its own areas of influence, which are therefore replete with military bases with stars and stripes. An apparatus that needs, from time to time, to be put to the test, to demonstrate to allies-subjects that it is worth paying to guarantee peace through the vicarious prestige of that armed supremacy.

On this basis, when the Soviet Union disappeared and thus the comparison with an economic model and a model of thought which placed peace with social justice at the center and which could thus also inspire the pacifist demonstrations against the aggression in Vietnam, the American war adventures, moved by internal political motives, have consolidated the consensus of the elites around the concept of American “democracy” as the vaccine of the world: Leveraging on the double key of military and economic supremacy, but if necessary also on a supposed moral and cultural superiority capable of coagulating consonant interests globally.

This is a concept increasingly questioned by the growth of a multicentric and multipolar world, crossed by a globalization that intertwines interests between divergent poles, as can be seen in Latin America where China has strong trade relations even with extreme right-wing governments such as Brazil. On the other hand, it can be recalled how the technical-scientific cooperation pact with Argentina, which resulted in the establishment of a radar station in Patagonia, signed in 2014 by then President Cristina Kirchner and then ratified by businessman Mauricio Macri, Trump’s successor in the presidency and friend, dates back to 1980, when the anti-communist military dictatorship ruled.

In any case, if a year after the assault on the Capitol, the structural failures of American bourgeois democracy have revealed the crisis of American hegemony also in terms of its attractiveness, the United States remains the first world power, well supported by an alliance, that of NATO, with new plans for expansion.

We are seeing this with the new conflict in Ukraine and with the failure of the meetings that took place in Brussels between Russia and NATO. The Atlantic Alliance, which is preparing the June summit in Madrid, Spain, has rejected all Moscow’s proposals to contain the eastward expansion of American supremacy, which would be dangerously enlarged by the accession of Ukraine, the last nation to request it. In thirty years, NATO’s membership has grown from 16 to 30 countries, many of which belonged to the former Warsaw Pact.

The allies of these 30 countries are now deployed along the Russian borders, but Putin is once again accused by the thundering Western propaganda. The media, however, are careful to disseminate the contents of the dialogue platform and the draft treaty, proposed in December by Moscow and rejected by Washington. All the points advanced by Russian diplomacy focused on the peaceful settlement of disputes, on the commitment of the two sides not to undertake actions harmful to security, on ensuring compliance with the principles of the UN Charter of all military organizations and alliances to which Russia and the United States adhere, and not to use the territories of other states to organize or launch an armed attack against either side.

Russia also called on the United States not to establish military bases on the territory of other states of the former Soviet Union that are not yet NATO members and to prevent further accession of former Soviet states to NATO. That being the case, Russian diplomacy said, “if there is not at least some room for flexibility on serious issues,” Moscow “sees no reason” for further meetings with the United States and its allies.

The Atlantic Alliance said it remains available for further meetings because “the risk of an armed conflict in Europe is very real and must be prevented,” and in the meantime has moved all European pawns to support the thesis that Putin would like to invade Ukraine and would use gas, through the state-owned Gazprom, as a political weapon in ongoing disputes with Western countries.

“The risk of a war in the Osce area is greater than in the last thirty years,” said the current chairman of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, at the opening of the OSCE Council, which the made up of 57 countries, including the United States, Ukraine and Russia. “There will be no negotiations on Ukraine under military pressure from Russia,” EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell said, referring to Russian troops present in Crimea.

Meanwhile, a group of 25 Democratic senators, led by Bob Menendez, have introduced a bill on “Defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty” in case of attack by Russia. The bill includes sanctions against Putin, the prime minister, military officers and banking executives. Sanctions against a head of state–the Kremlin spokesman commented–are a measure equivalent to a severance of relations, “they would exceed a limit”.

U.S. Senator Menendez, who chairs the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is known for leading campaigns against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In 2019 he pushed for then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to apply sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua for their relations with Russia. In December 2021, he had Biden sign the Renacer Act, to toughen sanctions on Nicaragua, “guilty” of organizing the November 7, 2021 presidential elections, again won by the Daniel Ortega-Rosario Murillo presidential ticket.

The senator also worked for the unilateral coercive measures to be adopted by the European partners of the United States and Canada and to be accompanied by other sanctions of an economic nature, aimed at reviewing the loans granted to the Nicaraguan government by international organizations and reconsidering Nicaragua’s participation in the free trade agreement that links several Central American countries to the United States, the first world power and first market for Nicaraguan exports.

The elections in Nicaragua and the participation of Latin American countries in the inauguration of President Ortega were also the subject of friction within Celac, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that includes 33 American countries (32 since the withdrawal of Bolsonaro’s Brazil), except for the United States and Canada. On January 7, the summit of the organization focused on the resumption of continental integration, despite the differences of criteria that move the right-wing governments subordinated to the U.S., was held in Buenos Aires and assigned the pro tempore presidency to Argentina.

Nicaragua’s initial opposition to the Argentine candidacy has disappeared thanks to the mediation of Cuba and Venezuela. The Sandinista government had protested because, on November 8, the Argentine had issued a communiqué calling for a boycott of the “fraudulent elections” in Managua and, on November 13, had then approved a draft resolution in the Organization of American States (OAS), sought by the United States and 8 other countries. Then, however, the government of Alberto Fernandez decided to send back to Managua its ambassador, who was also present at Ortega’s inauguration, and the conflict ended.

The Celac summit, which again raised its voice against illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed by imperialism, also denounced how some of the countries present, Colombia in the first place, were there on behalf of third parties, that is, on behalf of the United States. Colombia, which abounds in U.S. military bases, joined NATO in 2018 as a “global partner”, effectively breaking the declaration issued in Havana in 2014 by the continental body, with which Celac declared itself a “zone of peace”. A purpose also reiterated at the Buenos Aires summit.

By joining the Atlantic Alliance, the Colombian government (before with Manuel Santos and now with Iván Duque) has paved the way for any NATO maneuver both from its coasts in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as from the borders with Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama. At the Buenos Aires summit, Colombia’s representative defended the role of the OAS and criticized the “dictatorships” of Ortega and Maduro. “We believe that multilateralism offers the best options,” she said, referring to U.S. policies. Then, in shameful silence on the massacres perpetuated in the shadow of the Colombian narco-government, she reiterated the importance of respecting human rights in the region and maintaining good relations with the United States and Canada.

Venezuela, through Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia, reiterated the proposal to create a general secretariat of Celac “to give even more impetus to the exchange between all the countries of the region”, and supported Argentina’s claim against the International Monetary Fund to get rid of the debt contracted by the previous Macri government. The summit proposed 15 points to work on in the coming months. These include the post-pandemic economy, space cooperation, educational integration, institutional strengthening and the fight against corruption.

“Let’s wipe the slate clean and open a new file, and let’s move forward dear Nicaraguan brothers, building peace to fight poverty, building peace so that there are roads,” Daniel Ortega told Managua upon assuming his fifth term as president, after being elected with 75% of the vote. One more step towards strengthening the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (Alba-Tcp) and Petrocaribe, within the framework of the alliances that make up a multicentric and multipolar world.

Translation by Resumen Latinoamericano

NATO begins military drills near Russian border.

Originally published: Al Mayadeen  on May 17, 2022 by Agencies (more by Al Mayadeen)  (Posted May 18, 2022)

Strategy, WarAmericas, Europe, Finland, Sweden, Ukraine, United StatesNewswire‘Hedgehog 2022’, Estonia, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

On Monday, large-scale NATO military training began in Estonia. According to the military alliance, the ‘Hedgehog 2022’ exercise is one of the largest in the Baltic nation’s history. The drills will involve 15,000 troops from 14 countries, including members of the military blocs as well as their partners.

Soldiers from Finland, Sweden, Georgia, and Ukraine will take part in the exercise, according to the Finnish public radio Yle. According to the broadcaster, the drills will encompass all branches of the armed forces and will entail air, sea, and land exercises, as well as cyber warfare training.

According to a NATO statement, the drills would also include the participation of the U.S. Navy Wasp-class landing ship ‘Kearsarge.’ Both the military bloc and the deputy commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, have denied that the maneuvers near the Russian border had anything to do with Moscow’s continuing military operation in Ukraine.

The drills began barely a day after Finland and Sweden officially announced their intentions to join NATO, and were planned long before the war in Ukraine erupted, according to Western sources.

However, the drills in Estonia are only one component of NATO’s large-scale military activities near the Russian border. Lithuania, another Baltic state, is hosting the ‘Iron Wolf’ exercise, which includes 3,000 NATO troops and 1,000 pieces of military equipment, including German Leopard 2 tanks.

NATO exercises in Poland

According to a NATO statement issued on Friday, two of NATO’s largest exercises–’Defender Europe’ and ‘Swift Response’–are taking place in Poland and eight other countries, involving 18,000 troops from 20 nations.

“Exercises like these show that NATO stands strong and ready to protect our nations and defend against any threat,” the military bloc’s spokesperson, Oana Lungescu, said, adding that the drills “help to remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding about our resolve to protect and defend every inch of allied territory.”

The NATO Response Force is now participating in the ‘Wettiner Heide’ drills in Germany with a force of 7,500 people. The ‘Neptune series’ naval drills featuring the USS ‘Harry S. Truman’ carrier strike group, which will be placed under NATO command, are scheduled to take place in the Mediterranean Sea.

However, according to NATO, this will be only the second time since the Cold War’s conclusion that a U.S. carrier group has been brought under the military bloc’s direction.

In June, the Baltic States and Poland will host what NATO describes as “Europe’s largest integrated air and missile defense exercise,” which would involve 23 nations.

NATO naval drills

Finland held NATO naval drills in late April. It is now also hosting a joint land exercise in which forces from the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Latvia are taking part.

Massive military drills are taking place amid rising tensions between Russia, NATO, and some of the military alliance’s allies. Finland, which shares a lengthy border with Russia, and Sweden agreed to reexamine their long-standing policy of non-alignment in the aftermath of the war on Ukraine.

The announcement provoked a surge of condemnation from Moscow, which warned that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, it would have to respond. Moscow also thinks that NATO expansion is a direct danger to national security.

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

 ‘Hedgehog 2022’EstoniaNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

US Appropriates $40 Million More
House Passes $40 Billion More in Ukraine Aid, With Few …

https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics

May 10, 2022 — The House on Tuesday night passed a $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine in an overwhelming 368 to 57 vote, …

The Senate Approves $40 Billion in New Aid to Ukraine

https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics 

1 day ago — WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly approved on Thursday a $40 billion emergency military and humanitarian aid package for Ukraine, …

ENDING NATO

NATO ‘Master Plan’ aimed at Russia

LOOKING BACK: 2012

Dennis Kucinich.  “ NATO Talks a Sham.”

Reader Supported News, May 22, 2012.

Intro: “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not a benevolent organization. NATO is not about the North Atlantic and it’s not about our collective defense. NATO is a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action.”

READ MORE   http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/268-35/11554-nato-talks-a-sham

WRL RESISTANCE TO NATO IN CHICAGO MAY 2012

FROM WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE

“…and when your only tool is a hammer you tend to see every problem as a nail. The U.S. veterans and Afghan civilians have been hammered and we say, ‘enough.'” These words were spoken at a press conference this morning by Michael McConnell of Network for a NATO-free Future, a network of national global justice and antiwar groups, including WRL, that have come together to organize a counter-summit for the two days before the NATO summit begins in Chicago.

At this summit, the U.S. plans to hammer home a long-term commitment for both NATO and non-NATO countries to the funding of the corrupt Afghan Army ($4 billion per year) and the maintainance of an international troop presence there until the drawdown begins in 2014. According to the “strategic partnership agreement” signed between the U.S. and Afghan governments early this month, a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan will continue indefinitely after 2014. The U.S. will also continue to fund the illegitimate Karzai government until 2024.

On May 18-19, join members of WRL and War Resisters International at the Counter-summit for Peace and Economic Justice. In Chicago, there have been protests throughout this week against foreclosures, evictions, and the closure of local mental health clinics and other social necessities. At the counter-summit, our speakers and presenters will ask: Why the global austerity agenda (think the G8 meeting starting tomorrow at Camp David) when we have so much money for war? How can Chicago continue putting people out on the streets when they are spending millions to play host to NATO?

Plenary speakers include: Sarita Gupta- Jobs with Justice, Suraia Sahar- founding member of Afghans for Peace, Tom Hayden- Peace and Justice Resource Center, Tania Unzueta– Immigrant Youth Justice League, John Nichols– The Nation, Kathy Kelly– Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Vijay Prashad– author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, Tobias Pflüger- former member of the European Parliament

28 Workshops:

A New Economy Is Possible: Jobs & Economic Justice vs. Militarism

Afghanistan: How Do Wars End?

US/NATO Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Removal Long Overdue

Wisconsin: Rebellion and Recall

Getting it Right on Iran: Anti-Intervention and the Potential for Global Solidarity

Resisting Militarization of Youth

Know your rights (in Chicago) and nonviolent direct action training

PLUS 21 more workshops to choose from!

Register now online. 

On May 20 march with Afghanistan veteran members of IVAW to the NATO Summit to return their medals to the NATO Generals.

WRL News

Members of Ofog (see photo above: “War Starts Here”), a Sweden-based section of War Resisters International, are in the U.S. to join the protests against NATO and to share their insights about resistance to NATO happening in Europe. Ofog, which translates to “mischief,” is an antimilitarist network in Sweden working with nonviolent direct action against the weapons industry, nuclear weapons, and NATO. Their current focus is on the military exercise area NEAT in Northern Sweden, where NATO, the U.S., and others exercise weapons tests and other drills. They will be speaking in Chicago on Monday, May 21st–invite your friends who live in the area!

COMPARING RUSSIA AND UKRAINE TO THE USA AND CUBA

“Cuba: 60 Years of a Brutal, Vindictive, and Pointless
Embargo.”    Where Obama was willing to try “engagement,” Biden administration policy remains mired in Cold War clichés. The Nation has always believed there is a better way.  By Peter KornbluhTwitter.  JANUARY 26, 2022. 
In mid-December, some 114 members of Congress sent a forceful letter to President Joe Biden calling for “immediate humanitarian actions” to lift the economic sanctions “that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.” With Cuba struggling to emerge from a dire, Covid-generated economic crisis, the congressional representatives are pushing the White House to end the restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on remittances and travel and restore the Obama-era policy of engagement with the island nation. “Engagement,” the members concluded, “is more likely to enable the political, economic, and social openings that Cubans may desire, and to ease the hardships that Cubans face today.”

Full engagement with Cuba, of course, would require lifting the US embargo—a demand the congressional letter conspicuously fails to make. As the embargo approaches its 60th anniversary, terminating it would require not only White House action but a vote in Congress that the Democratic leadership has neither the political capacity nor the moral courage to prioritize. Indeed, the humanitarian measures that these members of Congress are asking of President Biden are intended to soften an economic crisis that, for decades, the embargo has explicitly attempted to create.

Imposed by the proclamation of John F. Kennedy on February 3, 1962, and codified into law during the Clinton administration, the “embargo on all trade with Cuba” has evolved through many manifestations of punitive economic sanctions and commercial restrictions over the past 60 years. “The embargo is outdated and should be lifted,” Barack Obama declared during his dramatic but short-lived effort to normalize US-Cuba relations. Instead, this “mold-encrusted relic” of the Cold War, as The Nation once described it, remains in place—the framework of a protracted, and failed, US endeavor to promote regime change, as well as an enduring symbol of the perpetual hostility of US policy toward the Cuban revolution.

During the past six decades, The Nation has consistently opposed the US embargo against Cuba. The magazine has published editorial after editorial, story after story, with titles like “Endless Embargo,” “Tightening the Chokehold on Cuba,” “An Embargo That Serves No Purpose,” and “The Stupid Embargo.” The arguments for ending el bloqueo, as the Cubans refer to it, and adopting a sane, humanitarian, and normal US posture toward Cuba remain as relevant today as when they were published.
MORE FROM PETER KORNBLUH 

THE SECRETS OF THE SO-CALLED “HAVANA SYNDROME”  November 17, 2021

CUBA MOVES INTO THE POST-CASTRO ERAApril 16, 2021

BIDEN MUST REVERSE POMPEO’S ‘TERRORIST’ MOVE AGAINST CUBA January 22, 2021

Author page

Take down this wall: Chang-Emelia Fernandez, a Cuban American, holds a Cuban flag as she protests against the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. (Rhona Wise / AFP via Getty Images)

FIRST FOUR US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA ANTHOLOGIES

Contents Russia (and Ukraine)  Newsletter #1, 2014  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/03/russia-ukraine-newsletter-1.html

Four Questioning Mainstream Media Pro-War Media

Dick, US Empire and Corporate Media:  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Patrick Smith, US/New York Times Spin

Stephen Cohen, Anti-Russia Is Old Anti-Soviet

Parry, Group Think

Alternative Analysis

(Plenty of protest against the pro-war Obama administration and media, but all together reflecting a comparatively small readership.  If you agree with the analyses of these alternative views that try to view Russia outside the US imperial box, then forward this newsletter and notify your contacts.)

The Nation Editorial

Alterman, Cold War Hysteria Revived

How Russia/Ukraine Look in Beijing

Charles Pierce, Dick Cheney’s View

Luke Harding, US Refuses Crimea Poll

Ray McGovern, Putin Says No to Regime Change on Its Border

Bruce Gagnon, Danger of War Following US-led Coup for Gas and Oil

Pilger, Other Coups, Same Superpower

Robert Freeman, Ukraine and WWI over Energy

Mark Swaney

More Reading

Via Historians Against War (HAW)

Via Common Dreams

Via FAIR TV

Contact Arkansas Representatives  

Contents Russia/Ukraine #2 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/04/russiaukraine-newsletter-2.html

Alternative Perspectives

Who Is Threatening Whom?

Dick, Google Search:   US Bases Surrounding Russia

Steve Weissman:  US Participated in Coup That Toppled Yanukovytch

Stephen Cohen, Cold War Again?

Two Essays from Bruce Gagnon

Bruce Gagnon, Boxing in the Bear (with Francis Boyle and Chandra Muzaffar)

Gagnon, Preparing for War with Russia

Franklin Spinney, What Is the Real Price of Starting a New Cold War?

US Corporate Old Cold War Media

Ira Chernus:  Showdown with Russia Sells Newspapers

Contents Russia/Ukraine Newsletter #3

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/05/russiaukraine-newsletter-3.html

Contents

Davies, Historical Background of US Coups

William Blum, New Cold War, Same Old US Aggression

Bellant, Far Right Forces in Russia

Amy Goodman, Ukraine Between Old Cold War

Peter Hart, Distorting Putin

Dick, Fulbright’s Exchange Program for Official Enemies

Veterans for Peace Opposes US Troops to Ukraine

Michael Gordon, US Ratcheting  Up the Threats, Deploying Troops in E. Europe

Cockburn, Crisis into Catastrophe?

Hooper, Solution Appalling?

McMullen, Russian Greed?

Mayer, Decline of US Empire?

Moss, Whose Advice to Trust?

Wittner, US Should Use Its Military?

Lieven, The Way Out?

Forum of 3 Essays on US and Ukraine in Z Magazine April 2014

      Norman Solomon: Obama, International Law, US Double-Standards, and

           Blaming Putin

      Chandra Muzaffar, US Behind Ouster of Democratically Elected President

      Ajamu Baraka, USUkraine Policy Marred by Contradictions and Double

         Standards

Parry, Obama Only One Able to Prevent War

NATO

Kucinich on NATO

McGovern on NATO

MEDIA

Two Essays by Robert Parry on Anti-Russian US Corporate Media

      Obama Admin. and US Mainstream Media Sing the Old Imperial

              Song

       Neocon and Media Support of US Propaganda Campaign

 Two Essays by Peter Hart in EXTRA! also on US Corporate Media

       With Official Enemies, Too Much Is Not Enough

       Drill for More Oil and Gas Here, and Sell to Russia’s Customers

Gordon, NYT

Parry, Bias of NYT

RUSSIA NEWSLETTER #4 (AND UKRAINE). 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/07/russiaukraine-newsletter-4.html

Contents Russia/Ukraine Newsletter #4  HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS

Polner, Manipulated Crisis

Moss, Another Cold War?

Watkins, Comparing Annexations

Johnstone, Understanding Putin

Blum, US Media War Against Putin and Russia

    US or Russian Exceptionalism?

NATO’S Eastward Expansion

THE CRISIS 2013-

Pilger, the Larger Coup in Washington, D.C.

Gagnon, US and NATO Intervention

Parry, Kerry’s State Department’s Fiasco

Dahlburg, Poroshnko\Ukraine Signs Up with EU

Moeri, Be Critical of Imperialisms

Zunes, Non-violence

Four Articles Via HAW

Fuerst, Germany

US MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Parry, Ukraine’s Presidential Election

Contact Arkansas Senators

Contents of Nos. 1-3

END NATO NEWSLETTER #1, 5-20-22–
OMNI Peace Newsletter |  OMNI Facebook |  OMNI WebsiteDick Bennett
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