Russia: Other Points of View

The Dangers of a Declining Global Power

Friends, at last credible voices are speaking out about the primary cause behind Washington's incessant drive to take Russia down––or out.

Sadly,  our great America is in decline -- slowly but surely.  Russia (and China) definitely are on the incline.  Just having come from four different regions in Russia, it is clear that the latter  is a country whose momentum is upward and they are moving at a fast clip.  China, is even more so, I'm told.  So why is it that Russia is Washington's  #1 target? 

Perhaps it is that for some 130 years American administrations have been trying to out-compete Russia, including the 50 years of US-USSR confrontation during which we were in a duel to death with 50,000 nuclear missiles (on launch pads and ready to fire) between us.  We didn't have that personal history with China.  But with Russia and her ill-gotten Republics, it was a very personal vendetta.  And now in the 2000s to see Russia coming up in the world and ourselves in decline –– this must be a deafening blow to those elder white males whose power still runs America today. It becomes clear why the demonization of Russia and Putin have been so intense, so intractable––perhaps thinking that taking them out or down would solve our decline problems?

George Kennan, one of his last utterances re Russia

Friends, read this and weep. The greatest voice on the US, USSR and the new Russia comes to us with fresh relevance.  Note, this was written in May 1998.  Wish that Washington would have listened.

Sharon 

Foreign Affairs; Now a Word From X

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 2, 1998

His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate's ratification of NATO expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th century was ready with an answer.

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.’'

Senators Undermining Minsk II

Friends,   

Three European Ministers of the OSCE, France's President Hollande and Germany's top diplomats are pressuring Poroshenko of Ukraine to settle the Ukraine Crisis through peaceful means without delay, saying the only acceptable line of conduct is full implementation of the Minsk II accord–––and yet it appears that hardliners in Washington are pushing for the US to send lethal weapons to the West Ukraine regime, despite what their international colleagues are urging. 

It is said that President Obama must be under extreme pressure to go along with Ian Brzezinski, the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain and even Senator Jack Reed (D) went along with this diabolical strategy. Only two senators expressed disagreement with this madness.  When will our duly elected Congress wake up and realize they are urging confrontation with an equally armed nuclear power!

PLEASE call President Obama and urge him to resist these Senators.  His Public Comment Line is:  202-456-1111. 

Please READ and COPY this message to all of your e lists. Call every day from now on!

Thanks for standing up against this outrageous mentality!   Sharon

How the Senate Armed Services Committee Is Undermining Minsk II

A peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine may be at risk.

James Carden , The Nation

On April 28 three European foreign ministers—Serbia’s Ivica Dačić, Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Switzerland’s Didier Burkhalter—met in their capacities as members of the OSCE’s Ministerial Troika to discuss the latest developments in eastern Ukraine. According to the OSCE, the foreign ministers “reiterated that [the Ukraine] crisis can be resolved only through peaceful means and that the political process in that regard should be advanced without delay” and “called on all sides to fully and unconditionally respect the cease-fire.”

Meanwhile, on April 26, Financial Times reported that Kiev is coming under increased pressure from Western European capitals to do its part to implement the Minsk cease-fire agreement. According to FT, German diplomats expressed frustration that Kiev is “dragging its feet” in implementing the agreement. For his part, French President Françl;ois Holland has warned Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that “the only line of conduct is the full implementation of the Minsk accord.”

Yet it seems these calls for a peaceful solution to the crisis are not only falling on deaf ears, but are also purposefully being undermined, in Washington.

To wit: the same day the aforementioned troika met in Belgrade, the 28th, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on “United States Security Policy in Europe,” though perhaps, given the tenor of the hearing, it should have been held under the rubric “The Russians are Coming!”

Armed Services Committee Chairman, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), got right to the point, running down a list of Russia’s sins—real and imagined. He derided the Obama administration’s “so-called reset” policy and warned of Mr. Putin’s “neo-imperial objectives.” McCain accused Russia of violating the Minsk II cease-fire agreement and hectored NATO allies to follow the example of Poland and Estonia and increase its defense expenditures. Unbelievably, McCain closed his remarks by telling the gallery, which included a visiting delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians, that “none of us wants to return to the Cold War.”

Depressingly, there seemed to be little daylight between McCain and the committee’s ranking member, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI). Both he and McCain have called on President Obama to “provide defense lethal assistance” to Ukraine. Only Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) expressed any skepticism towards the idea of sending lethal aid to Ukraine. The situation that pertains in the Washington of 2015, is in stark contrast to the previous Cold War. Today, it would seem, Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a contest of who can ‘out-hawk’ the other on Russia.

McCain and Reed set the tone of Tuesday’s hearing by striking a martial note at the outset, and the witnesses, representing the Council of Foreign Relations, the Fletcher School of Diplomacy and the Atlantic Council, were all too happy to pick up where the Senators left off.

The most hawkish of the three, the Atlantic Council’s Ian Brzezinski (perhaps channeling his father Zbigniew), opined that the United States should impose tougher sanctions on Russia in order to “aggressively shock the Russian economy by shutting off its energy and financial sectors from the global economy.” Further, Washington should “provide military equipment to Ukraine, including air defense and anti-tank weapons as well as key enablers, such as drones…”

Most alarmingly, however, was Brzezinski’s recommendation to grant the NATO supreme allied commander the “authorities necessary to deploy in real time against provocative Russian military operations,” thereby taking the decision to go to war with a nuclear armed power out of the hands of the commander in chief and transferring it to the NATO commander in Brussels.

Two days later, as it happened, it was that very NATO commander’s turn before the Armed Services Committee. US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who, according to a recent article in Der Spiegel is viewed by many European diplomats as a serial exaggerator, told the committee that NATO’s principle concern is a “revanchist Russia” which in his view is a “global, not regional” threat.

Since, in his view, the current lull in the fighting in eastern Ukraine is only allowing Russia to “prepare for another offensive” it would “not make sense to take any of our own options off the table.” Indeed, later on in the hearing, in response to a question from Senator McCain, the general said, “I support the use, um, [quickly correcting himself] the consideration, of offensive military aid …” His referencing of “offensive” weapons raised an eyebrow from Senator Reed who quickly interjected to ask if the general had misspoken. Breedlove confirmed that he had not.

Breedlove’s testimony also inadvertently helped confirm the basis of one of Russia’s principal objections to American policy: that it is being hedged in on all sides by the American military. Breedlove testified about what he called a Russia Strategic Initiative which seeks to coordinate the various combatant commands which border Russia: CENTCOM (US Central Command); EUCOM (US European Command); USNORTHCOM (US Northern Command); USPACOM (US Pacific Command), the better to respond to a future Russian offensive.

Breedlove also praised the US European Command’s Ukraine Joint Initiative which has carried out a series of 25 visits to Ukraine with the goal of helping Kiev identify and address its most urgent military needs. Breedlove also noted that NATO is “war gaming and table topping scenarios” in the event the US decides to arm Ukraine. Should we fail to send military assistance to Ukraine, the General warned, somewhat paradoxically, that “inaction is also an action and the Russians will react to that as well.”

And so, it is hard, given the tenor of the policy discussion on Capitol Hill over the past week, to escape the conclusion that President Obama is under intense pressure—not only from both political parties, but also, disturbingly, from the NATO supreme allied commander—to wade ever deeper into the Ukrainian morass.

Ukraine's Poison Pill to ruin Minsk 2 Ceasefire

Friends, again one of America's two most trusted investigative journalists explains below why the Minsk-2 ceasefire in Ukraine will break down.  It is not Russia's fault, but Russia will be blamed for it. Read and see what to expect next.  

This is disturbing,

Sharon

Ukraine's Poison Pill for Peace Talks

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/19/ukraines-poison-pill-for-peace-talks/

Exclusive: The Ukraine government’s latest maneuver – undermining the Minsk-2 agreement with a requirement for a rebel surrender – is likely to drive the country back into a full-scale civil war and push the U.S. and Russia closer to a nuclear showdown, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

By adding a poison pill to legislation implementing the latest Minsk agreement, the Ukrainian government has effectively guaranteed a resumption of the civil war, which U.S. hardliners and the mainstream U.S. media will no doubt blame on ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. media has focused on the so-called Minsk-2 agreement’s cease-fire component, first claiming it was being sabotaged by the rebels and Russia but now acknowledging that it is shaky but relatively successful. But the larger point of Minsk-2 was that it would provide for a political settlement of the civil war by arranging talks between Kiev and authorities in the east that would lead to giving those areas extensive self-rule by the end of 2015.

But the implementing law that emerged this week from the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev inserted a clause requiring the rebels to first surrender to the Ukrainian government and then letting Kiev organize elections before a federalized structure is determined.

The Minsk-2 agreement had called for dialogue with the representatives of these territories en route to elections and establishment of broad autonomy for the region, but Kiev’s curveball was to refuse any talks with rebel leaders and insist on establishing control over these territories before the process can move forward, in effect requiring a rebel capitulation.

NATO General Breedlove's Comments considered "Dangerous Propaganda"

Dear Friends,

Germany's largest and respected newspaper, Der Spiegel, has spoken out about the misinformation being given by NATO's Commander General Philip Breedlove.  Please read carefully this highly unusual article written by the Spiegel staff.

We must do something to reign in the war makers in our own country.

More to follow,  Sharon 

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." 

Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine

By SPIEGEL Staff

March 06, 2015 – 07:47 PM

Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either. 

It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn't holding perfectly, but it was holding.

On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day."

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

Demonization and America

Friends, when ever in America have we seen this sort of demonization? Russian friends, are you seeing similar media in Russia about the US?

This seems utterly sick to me.  When children get into rants and rages about others, we talk them down.

Is there no one to interfere with this sort of insane crafting of photos and purulent misinformation?

Even UK and European newspapers are commenting on it.

Have we as a nation ever vilified others in this manner––and what does this mean for our country?

Some of our strongest allies and leaders have far worse records than Russia or Putin.

Why are our current policy makers taking this course?

Why are they so invested in Ukraine, a country in which we have never been involved at all.

Please resend this email to your friends, colleagues and family members.

Ask them what they make of this. 

This is not in keeping with who we are as a nation, or as a sophisticated population.

This is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they created our democracy.

Somehow, we must create a groundswell of good American citizens who reject these behaviors.

Otherwise the consequences for us, our children and our grandchildren -- and the whole nation will be dire.

Nothing good can come from this continuous vicious diatribe which can only lead to war.

Do we need another war?

Can we start the discussion with friends and colleagues? 

Are people already so loaded with this type of vitriolic rant that they aren't open to other points of view?

Can we create town hall meetings to discuss these issues?

Can we speak at our churches and synagogues?

The article below comes from the UK. They among others in the world are questioning our mentality. 

Your thoughts please,     Sharon

 

The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war

March 5, 2015 

By Seumas Milne, The Guardian, March 4, 2015

Politicians and the media are using Vladimir Putin and Ukraine to justify military expansionism. It’s dangerous folly.

A quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, the “Russian threat” is unmistakably back. Vladimir Putin, Britain’s defence secretary Michael Fallon declares, is as great a danger to Europe as “Islamic State”. There may be no ideological confrontation, and Russia may be a shadow of its Soviet predecessor, but the anti-Russian drumbeat has now reached fever pitch.

And much more than in Soviet times, the campaign is personal. It’s all about Putin. The Russian president is an expansionist dictator who has launched a “shameless aggression”. He is the epitome of “political depravity”, “carving up” his neighbours as he crushes dissent at home, and routinely is compared to Hitler. Putin has now become a cartoon villain and Russia the target of almost uniformly belligerent propaganda across the western media. Anyone who questions the dominant narrative on Ukraine – from last year’s overthrow of the elected president and the role of Ukrainian far right to war crimes carried out by Kiev’s forces – is dismissed as a Kremlin dupe.

That has been ratcheted up still further with the murder of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The Russian president has, of course, been blamed for the killing, though that makes little sense. Nemtsov was a marginal figure whose role in the “catastroika” of the 1990s scarcely endeared him to ordinary Russians. Responsibility for an outrage that exposed the lack of security in the heart of Moscow and was certain to damage the president hardly seems likely to lie with Putin or his supporters.

But it’s certainly grist to the mill of those pushing military confrontation with Russia. Hundreds of US troops are arriving in Ukraine this week to bolster the Kiev regime’s war with Russian-backed rebels in the east. Not to be outdone, Britain is sending 75 military advisers of its own. As 20th-century history shows, the dispatch of military advisers is often how disastrous escalations start. They are also a direct violation of last month’s Minsk agreement, negotiated with France and Germany, that has at least achieved a temporary ceasefire and some pull-back of heavy weapons. Article 10 requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Ukraine.

But NATO’s hawks have got the bit between their teeth. Thousands of NATO troops have been sent to the Baltic states – the Atlantic alliance’s new frontline – untroubled by theirindulgence of neo-Nazi parades and denial of minority ethnic rights. A string of American political leaders and generals are calling for the US to arm Kiev, from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, to the new defence secretary, Ashton Carter. For the western military complex, the Ukraine conflict has the added attraction of creating new reasons to increase arms spending, as the US army’s General Raymond Odierno made clear when he complained this week about British defence cuts in the face of the “Russian threat”.

Putin’s authoritarian conservatism may offer little for Russia’s future, but this anti-Russian incitement is dangerous folly. There certainly has been military expansionism. But it has overwhelmingly come from NATO, not Moscow. For 20 years, despite the commitments at the end of the Cold War, NATO has marched relentlessly eastwards, taking in first former east European Warsaw Pact states, then republics of the former Soviet Union itself. As the academic Richard Sakwa puts it in his book Frontline Ukraine, NATO now “exists to manage the risks created by its existence”.

Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands

Friends, mainstream media continues to give us a one-sided view of the dangerous situation in Ukraine. Few experts have written books on the topic, probably because they could be outdated before printed (fortunately, blogs and investigative news services are providing new facts daily).  At last, a legitimate Russian expert and author, has published a book in the midst this kaleidoscopic war––it gives legitimate accounts of both sides.  Read Steele's analysis of the book. Of itself it gives much of what we need to know and remember about the Ukraine situation today.

Sharon

 

The Guardian

February 19, 2015 

A new book, "Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands" by Richard Sakwa is reviewed  below - At last, a balanced assessment of the Ukrainian conflict - the problems go far beyond Vladimir Putin

By Jonathan Steele

Jonathan Steele is a former Guardian Moscow correspondent, and author of Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev and the Mirage of Democracy. 

[Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Frontline-Ukraine-Borderlands-Richard-Sakwa/dp/1784530646/ref=sr_1_3?s=tradein-aps&srs=9187220011&ie=UTF8&qid=1424617689&sr=8-3&keywords=sakwa]

When Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister, told a German TV station recently that the Soviet Union invaded Germany, was this just blind ignorance? Or a kind of perverted wishful thinking? If the USSR really was the aggressor in 1941, it would suit Yatsenyuk's narrative of current geopolitics in which Russia is once again the only side that merits blame. 

When Grzegorz Schetyna, Poland's deputy foreign minister, said Ukrainians liberated Auschwitz, did he not know that the Red Army was a multinational force in which Ukrainians certainly played a role but the bulk of the troops were Russian? Or was he looking for a new way to provoke the Kremlin?

Faced with these irresponsible distortions, and they are replicated in a hundred other prejudiced comments about Russian behaviour from western politicians as well as their eastern European colleagues, it is a relief to find a book on the Ukrainian conflict that is cool, balanced, and well sourced. Richard Sakwa makes repeated criticisms of Russian tactics and strategy, but he avoids lazy Putin-bashing and locates the origins of the Ukrainian conflict in a quarter-century of mistakes since the cold war ended.  

Ambassador Jack Matlock's presentation to the National Press Club

This transcript appears in the Febuary 20, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Former Ambassador to USSR Matlock
 Lambasts U.S. Policy on Russia

[PDF version of this transcript]

Jack Matlock, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-91, was the featured speaker at an event sponsored by the Committee for the Republic, at the National Press Club in Washington Feb. 11. Here is a transcript of his opening remarks. A video is available on YouTube.


The last quite a few years, we have been basically living outside the Washington Beltway. It's always nice to come back and see friends, though I must confess that I'm sometimes puzzled, sitting out in the boondocks, at what goes on here. Because there seems to be group-think about many things in foreign policy—it affects both the media and those in the government—that to me, I find more and more difficult to comprehend.

I didn't understand that they wanted me to talk for 20 minutes—I prepared something that I hoped I could say in 40. So, what I'm going to give you is a barebones summary of how I view the situation, and what I think we should be seeing about it, and expect you to ask me questions so that I can actually expand a bit on the details.

I think we're in a very dangerous situation right now, in regard to Russia, over Ukraine. Six months ago, a year ago, when people were talking about Cold War II, I said, this is silly; this is not Cold War II. The Cold War was about a worldwide confrontation over ideology; it was about communism, and the conflict with communism. And it occurred all over—Latin America, Africa, Asia.

Reflections on Hill's and Gaddy's "The American Education of Vladimir Putin" (The Atlantic, 16 February 2015)

http://gordonhahn.com

February 17, 2015

Reflections on Hill's and Gaddy's "The American Education of Vladimir Putin" (The Atlantic, 16 February 2015)

Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy have provided a superb analysis of Russian President Vladimir Putin's alienation from America and its foreign policy. In most accounts nowadays Russia's actions are interpreted shorn of context. "Russia invaded Georgia." "Russia invaded Ukraine." "Putin criticized America." "Russians see the U.S. as an Enemy." Routinely, almost unanimously, Russia is portrayed as acting spontaneously in a vacuum with reference to the world around it. Its policies and actions are not responses to Western policies and actions. They are carefully thought out plans designed to defeat the West, regardless of what the West may or may not do. 

For example, in the 2008 Ossetian war, Russia is said to have begun the war. What preceded Russia's invasion - Georgia's massive bombing of South Ossetia's capitol of Tskhinval(i) with inaccurate GRAD missiles, the killing of one hundred civilians and 19 Russia peacekeepers in the GRAD bombings, and Georgian troops' invasion of South Ossetia and crazed rampage through Tskhinval(i) - is left out of the picture. Similarly now, accounts of "Russia's war in Ukraine" and "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" leave out prior events: . Moreover, the nature of Russia's intervention in the Donbass is overstated and 'evidence' is often shoddy and even falsified by Kiev and taken as gospel truth without question by US government and media.

U.S. ROLE IN THE UKRAINE CRISIS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

One can perhaps understand that the US wants to support Kiev against Russia. I do not agree with this policy, and believe the US helped cause the crisis and should show leadership in resolving it rather than sitting by silently and letting it deepen or worse contributing to its escalation. But can anyone supporting our support for Kiev explain to me why we have not demanded that Kiev rein in its forces so they observe some minimal care for civilian lives and arrest Right Sector and other terrorists deliberately killing civilians and refusing to submit to state no less civilian control? Shameful. George Washington is rolling over in his grave or better President and General Eisenhower, who led the Western fight against German fascism. As the son of a West Pointer, after decades of loving my country, I can say with sadness that I am ashamed at the failure to seek a resolution. What vital American interest does Ukraine being in NATO and the EU serve, in particular, when a the jihadi threat grows and Russia can play an important role in fighting it. Rather than bickering and killing Ukraine, we should be preparing joint, full-scale military operations with Russia, Ukraine, and other willing states against IS and AQ in the Levant. When NATO member Turkey is overrun we will rue the day we allowed Cold War inertia, the NATO bureaucracy, and State Department/USAID democracy-promotion zealots to turn our heads away from the real threat.