Het is lastig om iets nieuws uit de nieuwe NAVO strategie te halen. Dat wapenbeheersing bijna dood is, is helder. Dit is de goede analyse van: IISS - The new NATO Strategic Concept and the end of arms control [_link]

— rob de wijk (@robdewijk) July 1, 2022

United States exits arms control treaties ...

The US suspension of and withdrawal from the INF-Treaty is an irresponsible move that opens the path for a new-nuclear arms race and highlights the importance of real multilateral, binding solutions like the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. With Russia and the US putting the entire world at risk, it is urgent for all responsible states to stand up and join the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

The U.S. Exit From the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Has Fueled a New Arms Race | Carnegie - Dec. 13, 2021 |

Related reading ...

The EU's Arms Control Challenge: Bridging the Nuclear Divide | ISS EU |

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Merco Press | Foreign Secretary Truss says "women are also capable of terrible and appalling acts", 1 July FIFTH WAVE memoir

It's a void.

omfg. Who knew?

So next time when they talk about "international society", you know what they mean... pic.twitter.com/3sV23dxLCp

— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) June 28, 2022

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How Japan's Emperor (Subtly) Criticized Shinzo Abe

Emperor Akihito expressed "deep remorse" for the war at a memorial service and "a deep and renewed sense of sorrow," he did not openly attack the somewhat ambiguous August 14 (2015) statement of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe  on the same subject - the latter's remarks were filled with rhetorical twists and did not offer a new apology to Japan's wartime victims.

It was the first time that the emperor uttered the phrase "deep remorse" at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo during the annual so-called "National Memorial Service for the War Dead."

...
The subtle gesture of releasing the surrender speech of his father as well as pictures of the rundown bunker in which Hirohito finally admitted utter and complete military defeat can be seen as a clear indication of what Akihito thinks about Japan's devastating wartime experience, as well as Shinzo Abe's historical revisionism.

As my colleague Yuki Tatsumi already pointed out (See: "Why You Should Listen to What Japan's Emperor Says on August 15"),  the emperor has identified "four dates that should not be forgotten" by the Japanese people from the watershed year 1945: June 23 (the Battle of Okinawa), August 6 (the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), August 9 (the atomic bombing of Nagasaki), and August 15 (the end of the war).

"It is most important for us to take this opportunity to study and learn from the history of this war, starting with the Manchurian Incident of 1931, as we consider the future direction of our country," Emperor Akihito already said during his 2015 New Year's address. The Manchurian Incident was a pretext for the Japanese invasion of northeastern China in 1931.

In 1936, Nobusuke Kishi, Shinzo Abe's grandfather, was sent to Manchuria to push for the industrialization of Japan's de-facto colony with the help of Chinese forced labor. After the war he was arrested as an alleged Class-A war criminal and accused of playing an instrumental part in setting up Manchuria's (back then known as Manchuko) wartime economy which was "designed to enable Japan to carry on an aggressive war." Kishi, however, was never indicted and became Japan's head of government in the 1950s. During his premiership, Kishi pushed for constitutional revision and rearmament but failed. Shinzo Abe appears to have taken up the family's baton in both instances and it is his sense of family honor that perhaps has Emperor Akihito worried the most.

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New on MoA:
Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization
[_link] pic.twitter.com/v4fdbAShlQ

— Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) July 12, 2022

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Less than trustworthy ...

"This primitive informational dump clearly demonstrates low intellectual abilities of the propagandists at the American intelligence service," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement cited by the RIA news agency.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden slammed President Trump after the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence concluded that the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops [_link] pic.twitter.com/C4w9YgQGJ1

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 28, 2020

Of the 20 Americans killed in combat in 2019, the Times said, it was not clear which deaths were under suspicion. In period 2015-18 civilian deaths and casualties increased of which 40% were children.

Diplomacy for Dummies: Adding Sanctions

Taliban reject claims Russia aided fighters in attacks on US troops | Dawn News |

The Taliban rejected a newspaper report claiming their fighters had received rewards from Moscow's spies to kill US troops in Afghanistan.

The New York Times reported on Friday that bounties offered by a notorious arm of Russia's military intelligence service gave incentives to Taliban fighters to target US forces, just as US President Donald Trump tries to withdraw troops and end America's longest war.

A decade long of warmongering, lies and Russophobic attacks making Russia the number one enemy state. Stupid foreign policy.

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Sir Winston Churchill rightly found his Waterloo in London politics.

So concerned was the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that in the spring of 1945 he ordered his Chiefs of Staff to prepare a plan to attack the Soviet Empire.

Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's plans to invade the Soviet Union

In the 1990s in America the strategy got a face lift and became part of American think tanks to confront Russia. See amongst others, architects Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Douglas Feith known as a group neo-Conservatives or neocons. The rightwing extreme fascist blue print from the era of Barry Goldwater.

The Blob emerged from World War II, worry incessantly about the "collapse of the American security order"

Some refer to the Blob as the Deep State or for the common man, the security state as foreseen by George Orwell in his book 1984, The Invasion of Privacy leading to a nuclear war.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."  

"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." ― George Orwell

See latest reference to the Blob by Cat.

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More comments in line with Washington DC and the issue of Blob ...

German Green's minister: Energy plan of last coalition a 'disaster' | DW News |

German Food and Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir on Sunday said the energy policy of former Chancellor Angela Merkel's government was a "disaster."

Referring to the country's heavy reliance on oil and gas supplies from Russia which expanded under Merkel's leadership, he said the current administration had "inherited a catastrophic situation."

"I didn't think it was a good idea for us to get 60% of gas from a criminal named Vladimir Putin," Ozdemir said, in reference to the Russian president.

Speaking at a trade fair in the southern city of Munich, the Green Party politician called for a public debate about the mistakes made by the previous government, saying it was vital to "come to terms with what has happened in recent years."

Germany as a nation is not helped by the lunacy of such a man. Just look next to you Cher, they are already on the inside.

• Intelligence Scandal Puts Merkel in Tight Place | Der Spiegel - 2013 |


• Comment des dirigeants européens, dont Angela Merkel, ont été espionnés par la NSA depuis le Danemark | Le Monde - May 2021 |

Under Trump, Germany was put under economic and trade sanctions ... naturally Chancellor Merkel looked after Germany's interest first. A wise lesson for Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock, the leader of the Green Party. Doling through a labyrinth. No vision, no experience on the global stage.  

Realpolitik, the era of rapprochement under Willy Brandt has been frozen by a unipolar dominance of America. Making Russia a pariah or enemy state through media propaganda.

Related reading ...

-Post- Imperium

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Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998


Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?


Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid [cached archive] to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.


Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?


B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

The same scenario was implemented by the Pentagon and Joe Biden in the White House for Putin, Russia and the Ukraine. War thugs.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis: How to Respond? - JFK Library

Kennedy Library - Fidel Castro's Letter

Dear Comrade Khrushchev:

Given the analysis of the situation and the reports which have reached us, [I] consider an attack to be almost imminent--within the next 24 to 72 hours. There are two possible variants: the first and most probable one is an air attack against certain objectives with the limited aim of destroying them; the second, and though less probable, still possible, is a full invasion. This would require a large force and is the most repugnant form of aggression, which might restrain them.

You can be sure that we will resist with determination, whatever the case. The Cuban people's morale is extremely high and the people will confront aggression heroically.

I would like to briefly express my own personal opinion.

If the second variant takes place and the imperialists invade Cuba with the aim of occupying it, the dangers of their aggressive policy are so great that after such an invasion the Soviet Union must never allow circumstances in which the imperialists could carry out a nuclear first strike against it.

I tell you this because I believe that the imperialists' aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous, and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba--a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law--then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other.

This opinion is shaped by observing the development of their aggressive policy. The imperialists, without regard for world opinion and against laws and principles, have blockaded the seas, violated our air-space, and are preparing to invade, while at the same time blocking any possibility of negotiation, even though they understand the gravity of the problem.

You have been, and are, a tireless defender of peace, and I understand that these moments, when the results of your superhuman efforts are so seriously threatened, must be bitter for you. We will maintain our hopes for saving the peace until the last moment, and we are ready to contribute to this in any way we can. But, at the same time, we are serene and ready to confront a situation which we see as very real and imminent.

I convey to you the infinite gratitude and recognition of the Cuban people to the Soviet people, who have been so generous and fraternal, along with our profound gratitude and admiration to you personally. We wish you success with the enormous task and great responsibilities which are in your hands.

Fraternally,

Fidel Castro

The CIA has made dozens of attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, succeeding to murder [execute] his closest ally Che Guevara.

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Chinese military has become more aggressive and dangerous, says US chief of staff [_link]

— The Guardian (@guardian) July 25, 2022

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Poor communication 'raises risk of nuclear war with China or Russia' [_link]

— The Guardian (@guardian) July 27, 2022

In other words breakdown of basic diplomacy.

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From a diary here @ET with slight alterations to adjust to present year 2022 ...

Re: "To Defeat the Beast" | Sept. 2006 |

Multi-Million Dollar Question: What is the best and practical and realistic way to defeat the beast?

Wrong question. America hardly noticed the Russian Federation after the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and Communism was defeated early in the nineties. Capitalist scavengers would dismantle the Soviet industry and especially the oil & gas assets of some value.as part of the spoils of victory on Commernism. And where fear still did exist, it had more to do with overnight billionaires flexing their political muscles than with any serious attempt to attack the West.

Mao Tse Tung or Lenin's Communism barely exists now beyond the minds of Baltic states, Poland and Western Ukraine. The background level threat in real terms in the West is no worse than it has been from other foreign states of the last fifty years or so. Ukraine isn't suffering from Russian terror so much as local tribalism of oligarchs vying for total control of Kyiv politics - which is something very different. US members of Congress should halt feeding the Beast at every occasion. After Jesse Helms, John McCaine, Joe Lieberman, we are now relying on a Ted Crux, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham. Full fledged anti-communists and European anti-socialists included.

Only someone clinically delusional could seriously believe that the Kremlin with Putin are at all likely to start attacking NATO allies advancing to lay siege of Washington DC. Russia is not a national security threat, nor was Iraq, Libya and Syria. But still - the US seems obsessed with this ridiculous confrontational narrative in which the West, and especially effete old Europe, is in imminent danger of being over-run by the Red army from Moscow. An pre-emptive attack is the best defense.

I think this has less to do with real fear of the Russian or Chinese people, and more to do with the fact that the US is charging headlong into economic and cultural decadence and needs a misdirection and a scapegoat to persuade itself that it's still a mighty and colossal military superpower.

Hence these massively assymetrical wars against countries which really shouldn't stand a chance against the US - but against which it still manages to lose, as often as not.

There's some kind of deep masochistic need to be punished and hated twitching around in the soul of the US at the moment. Secretly, Clinton, Bush and the NeoCons may well realise they're bad, bad people. So they seem to be trying to get away with as much as they can before Mother comes along and spanks them.

(Or maybe not. But as explanations go, this makes as much sense as any other that I've seen.)

But anyway. The US has plenty of real challenges to deal with which don't require a fake Warrrr on scary Slavic people. If the leadership wasn't drifting along in a doomed and rudderless asteroid of political irrelevance, it would be tackling real issues - sustainable energy, sustainable and fair economic policy, sustainable health care - instead of fantasising about the threat from invading barbarism hordes.

With a professional Executive, the post-communist security services would have stayed on strength capable of dealing with any invading barbarian hordes. Yet Clinton and Western allies cut on defense spending. It took the 9/11 attacks to bring America back to its senses of adding strength to their military might and 5-Eyes intelligence services. Right to privacy is doomed.

If the barbarians would succeed in the 21st century, it wasn't because of some astonishing new fundamentalist asymmetrical warfare. It was because Trump, Biden completely fucked up in foreign policy fighting losing wars.

The US might want to deal with that reality before it starts trying to eliminate Russian support from the rest of the planet. Who knows - it might even accidentally end up reestablishing a multilateral world tackling the real problems of Planet Earth with energy and economic transition to a sustainable Green Economy where cooperation is more valuable than driving the West into another senseless war of choice.

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Peace is our most precious value. It is the product of hard work and we must never take it for granted.

I'm encouraged by signs that the escalating conflict in the Gulf may be subsiding. The world cannot afford another war.

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) January 8, 2020

One year ahead of the January 6th insurrection to destroy democracy.

A Final Warning Against Fascism | Jan. 10th, 2020 |

EU needs to take a stand against a bully, otherwise Freedom will be compromised. There is no middle ground to adhere to International Law and the Geneva and The Hague conventions. Fascist policy has reared its ugly head in America ever since the 9/11 attacks.

Germany urges EU unity at Middle East crisis meeting | DW |

Western powers with NATO and US leadership have made an ugly mess of the MENAT region. End the sale of weaponry to wealthy authoritarian states in the Gulf region. One reaps what one sows ... blowback.

Foreign ministers from the European Union's 28 member-states gathered in Brussels for a rare emergency meeting following recent days of turmoil in the Middle East and Libya.

The talks came a week after the US killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in Iraq, prompting a retaliatory response from Iran and sparking concerns about an all-out conflict.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said "the immediate danger of war" had been "averted for the time being," and called for a united European strategy to stop any further escalation.

Deeply regret Iran's latest announcement on #JCPOA. As ever we will rely on @iaeaorg verification. Full implementation of #NuclearDeal by all is now more important than ever, for regional stability & global security. I will continue working with all participants on way forward.

— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) January 6, 2020

h/t Cat

Iraq uprising against status quo democracy ...

Scenes from a sit-in of the Iraqi Parliament and Green Zone - a normally high-security area in central Baghdad - by supporters of cleric-cum-politician Muqtada Al-Sadr. They said they want early elections & the ousting of "corrupt politicians.". #Iraq #Baghdad #المنطقة_الخضراء pic.twitter.com/QMZT63D0Qd

— Lizzie Porterلِيزي بورتر (@lcmporter) August 6, 2022

Iraq State of Affairs: Sectarian Violence

#Iran's long shadow from #Vienna to #Baghdad and beyond [_link]

— Iran Pulse (@TheIranPulse) August 6, 2022

Geneva talks to rid Iran of the Trump era imposed sanctions.

To my question is the #safeguard issue resolved in the negotiations bw Iran and EU delegations Behrouz Kamalvandi Iran #AEOI spokes person said: we are negotiating about it. #IranNuclearTalks #JCPOA #ViennaTalks pic.twitter.com/N8XCdFW83V

— Ahmad Samadi (@AhmadSamadi1974) August 6, 2022

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A book review by The Guardian in 2004.

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
By Jonathan Schell

In contrast, the situation was far messier in central Europe, and even messier and more difficult in Africa and the Middle East. But the cost for others was to be enormous: these ethnically homogeneous countries exported their sense of unproblematic racial superiority overseas in global conquest and plunder. Between 1870 and 1900, European nations seized control of some 10 million square miles of territory on which 150 million people lived.

The new war system reached its terrifying apogee in the first and second world wars when, for the last time, total war was fought to the bitter end. In the very death throes of the second world war, there was born the weapon that would profoundly change the nature of warfare. "The [nuclear] bomb revealed that total war was not an everlasting but a historical phenomenon," Schell writes. The invention of atomic weapons rendered the old global war system unworkable. The bitter end would in future mean nothing less than the destruction of humanity.

...
It is the rise of a very different United States, of course, that lies at the root of these fears and forebodings. Schell is excellent at laying bare the emergence of the new America and describing the character of its new imperial policy: the insistence, following 9/11, on describing the fight against terrorism as "war", thereby enabling the full deployment of the supreme military machine of our time; the assault on proliferation with the invocation of the axis of evil, combined with the endorsement of pre-emptive action, giving the United States the right to intervene anywhere at any time; the rejection of multilateral treaties; and the hubristic assumption that the American economic and political system is the only valid one. We have entered a profoundly dangerous era with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Great insight and analysis by Jonathan Schell, yet the world has changed due to a turn towards fascism in the last two decades. Turning points the NATO Bucharest Summit in 2008 promising further expansion into Georgia and Ukraine, the CIA led coup d'état of the so-called Maidan Revolt of Februari 2014, the Revolution and years of turbulence from the Arab Uprisings [color revolts] from 2011 through 2019. The failure to tackle the fossil fuel lobby, increasing global warming and climate change which led to the post-pandemic turmoil on the food and energy market. Letting the Ukraine War happen has sealed the fate of mankind for the next ten years.

The era of multilateralism and globalization led to decades of peace supported by the creation and expansion of the European Union. The latter is beyond its expiration date and is mortally wounded by outside forces.

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From TomDispatch:  In July 2014, almost four months after the death of Jonathan Schell, I posted the following excerpt from his 2004 book The Unconquerable World (which I edited) as a memorial to an old friend I had long admired.

Writing that book in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he was focused on the cliff the U.S. seemed to be going over with its invasion of Afghanistan and its declaration of a Global War on Terror.  Schell suggested that it might prove a long-term equivalent of 1914, the year the First World War began. In reading that excerpt again recently, I noticed these lines that -- with the war in Ukraine in full swing and a growing confrontation between Washington (backed by NATO) and Russia (supported by China) -- seemed all too eerily of this moment: "It is of course impossible to predict how and where history might again go over the precipice... It could even be -- hard as it is to imagine now -- intentional or semi-intentional nuclear war between Russia and the United States in some future crisis that we cannot foresee but cannot rule out, either."

The Path to a New 1914?

How America Chose War After 9/11 -- by Jonathan Schell

Then came the attack of September 11th. Like the starting gun of a race that no one knew he was to run, this explosion set the pack of nations off in a single direction -- toward the trenches. Although the attack was unaccompanied by any claim of authorship or statement of political goals, the evidence almost immediately pointed to al-Qaeda, the radical Islamist, terrorist network, which, though stateless, was headquartered in Afghanistan and enjoyed the protection of its fundamentalist Islamic government. In a tape that was soon shown around the world, the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, was seen at dinner with his confederates in Afghanistan, rejoicing in the slaughter.

Historically, nations have responded to terrorist threats and attacks with a combination of police action and political negotiation, while military action has played only a minor role. Voices were raised in the United States calling for a global cooperative effort of this kind to combat al-Qaeda. President Bush opted instead for a policy that the United States alone among nations could have conceivably undertaken: global military action not only against al-Qaeda but against any regime in the world that supported international terrorism.

The president announced to Congress that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who commit these acts and those who harbor them." By calling the campaign a "war," the administration summoned into action the immense, technically revolutionized, post-Cold War American military machine, which had lacked any clear enemy for over a decade. And by identifying the target as generic "terrorism," rather than as al-Qaeda or any other group or list of groups, the administration licensed military operations anywhere in the world.

In the ensuing months, the Bush administration continued to expand the aims and means of the war. The overthrow of governments -- "regime change" -- was established as a means for advancing the new policies. The president divided regimes into two categories -- those "with us" and those "against us." Vice President Cheney estimated that al-Qaeda was active in 60 countries. The first regime to be targeted was of course al-Qaeda's host, the government of Afghanistan, which was overthrown in a remarkably swift military operation conducted almost entirely from the air and without American casualties.

Next, the administration proclaimed an additional war goal -- preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In his State of the Union speech in January 2002, the president announced that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." He went on to name as an "axis of evil" Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- three regimes seeking to build or already possessing weapons of mass destruction. To stop them, he stated, the Cold War policy of deterrence would not be enough -- "preemptive" military action would be required, and preemption, the administration soon specified, could include the use of nuclear weapons.

Beginning in the summer of 2002, the government intensified its preparations for a war to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and in the fall, the president demanded and received a resolution from the Security Council of the United Nations requiring Iraq to accept the return of U.N. inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction or facilities for building them. Lists of other candidates for "regime change" began to surface in the press.

Leaving Cooperative Action Behind

In this way, the war on terror grew to encompass the most important geopolitical issue facing the world: the disposition of nuclear weapons in the second nuclear age. The Clinton administration had already answered the question regarding American possession of nuclear weapons: even in the absence of the Soviet Union, the United States planned to hold on to its nuclear arsenal indefinitely.

In 2002, the Bush administration gave an answer to the question regarding nonproliferation, which throughout the nuclear age had been dealt with exclusively by diplomacy and negotiation, or, on occasion, economic sanctions. The new answer was force. Nuclear disarmament was to be achieved by war and threats of war, starting with Iraq.

One complementary element of the new policy, embraced long before September 11th, was the decision to build a national missile defense system to protect the United States against nuclear attack by "rogue nations." But the fundamental element was a policy of preemptive war, or "offensive deterrence."

This momentous shift in nuclear policy called, in addition, for programs to build new nuclear weapons and new delivery vehicles; confirmed new missions for nuclear weapons -- retaliation for chemical or biological attacks, attacking hardened bunkers unreachable by other weapons -- in the post-Cold War world; and listed seven countries (Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria) for which contingency plans for nuclear attack should be considered.

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