by Oui
Wed Jan 8th, 2025 at 12:43:53 PM EST
How well is NATO expansion into Georgia and the Ukraine coming along ... how many more need to die for Big Capitalism? The altar of sacrifice ... lives as chips on the roulette table.
The buck stops at the desk in the Oval Office.
Thus Orbán, Le Pen, Fico, Wagenknecht (partial), have a new hero in the White House on January 20th.
Oh wait ... Austrian is coming too ...
Austria's far-right leader Herbert Kickl tasked with forming government | DW News |
FM Schallenberg to be Austria's interim chancellor as far right waits in the wings | Politico |
Anti-immigrant Freedom Party chief Herbert Kickl is currently in pole position to get the job permanently.
Interview Robert Kagan on Ukraine Intervention
The godfather of the Neocon wars across the Middle East and West Asia.
Andrew Neil talks to the hawkish US foreign policy thinker about Russia's war in Ukraine, his belief in liberal interventionism and why he thinks there's a constitutional crisis in the United States
Andrew Neil, narrating: Hello, I'm Andrew Neil and this is The Backstory. A series of in-depth interviews with people who have the power to shape events, and to influence our understanding of them.
In this episode I'm joined by a veteran of the US foreign policy establishment. Someone who believes it is America's duty to protect and promote liberal democracy around the world. Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He's also the author of "The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperilled World".
We discuss Russia's war in Ukraine, whether the United States still has the appetite for the liberal interventionism he promotes, and why he thinks America is facing the greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War. This is The Backstory from Tortoise.
Andrew Neil: Robert Kagan, you wrote in February about the dire consequences for Nato and Europe, if Mr Putin should success in conquering Ukraine; what are the consequences if he fails or is held to a stalemate?
Robert Kagan: Let's just talk about the first part of that, which is his failure to conquer Ukraine and I think it will obviously be an enormous set-back for him but it is also a kind of, it's a statement about the health of the liberal world order which I have to admit even I'm surprised at how well the liberal world order, which is to say the United States and its democratic allies, have really snapped into place in response to this act of aggression. I would probably have been a little bit more pessimistic about the kind of unity that we've seen, the kind of reversal or apparent reversal, of course, that we see in countries like Germany and in general, the American's ability to step in and play a role that America had been accustomed to playing for many decades after World War II but which looked in the last couple of decades as if Americans were not interested in continuing. So the fact that American public opinion has supported this policy as well is also both, I would say it is pleasantly surprising to me and to perhaps to others.
Andrew Neil: Why did you think Russia would be so swiftly victorious in Ukraine?
Robert Kagan: I'm sorry, did you believe they were going to be bogged down like this and essentially lose to the Ukrainians?
Andrew Neil: I wasn't the one who wrote in the Washington Post that it would be so swiftly victorious! Why did you think that?
Robert Kagan: Well, I just assumed, as I think everyone did and I think Vladimir Putin did, that after spending ten years of pouring significant quantities of money into upgrading the Russian military, he set out in the 2000s to build a more mobile, more rapid response, more capable military than he had shown in Georgia in 2008 and even to some extent in Crimea in 2014, that I think most of us assumed that he had that capability. One of the great questions that I think people are going to go back and look at is what exactly happened to that military that he'd been building? Why was it so apparently incompetent at every level?
[...]
Yeltsin cut 80-90% of the defense budget ... gutted Russia's military power which already was far below rhe wildest estimates of U.S. intelligence establishment ... in 2022 Russia was still not ready for any sort of hot war with NATO ... choices made by the Western allies are fully ignorant of dire consequences ... worst case scenario. 🤬
Putin had reached out to NATO ... Washington DC decided Russia as adversary would bring better options in global domination. A path towards doomsday.
Which President is insane about expansion? Stop the false narratives of the Neocon wars ... think tanks and NGOs are basically warmongers ...the academic study of peacemaking has just about been defunded, similar to cuts in third world development and counter human rights abuse ... a hellish world and society we live in.
Russia feels threatened by NATO. There's history behind that | Los Angeles Times - 19 Dec 2021 |
Putin has raged against NATO's steady expansion toward Russia's borders for more than a decade. He appears to have decided that the alliance's deepening relationship with Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, is the last straw.
He's not wrong about how the alliance's growth has affected Russia's perception of its security. Thirty years ago, Russia had a buffer zone of satellite states to its west. Now it has only the unimpressive presence of Belarus.
Russia's western border is NATO's eastern flank. American and British military advisors serve in Ukraine; U.S. missile defense systems sit in Poland and Romania; and NATO troops conduct [massive] exercises in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania earlier in May, once part of the Soviet Union.
Western officials, including the leaders of those "new NATO" countries, view all those measures as purely defensive.
Russia: Putin addresses Ukraine, NATO tensions | DW News - 23 Dec 2021 |
In his annual press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he does not want conflict with Ukraine and claimed he has seen a "positive" response from the US to his security proposals.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during an annual press conference in Moscow that he does not want conflict with Ukraine.
"This is our (preferred) choice, we do not want this," Putin said. "We have to think about ensuring our security prospects not just for today and next week but for the near future."
Putin optimistic about upcoming NATO talks
The Russian leader said he has seen a "positive" response to recent security proposals that Moscow handed to the US and NATO allies. Russia has called on NATO to halt further eastward expansion among other demands.
"We have so far seen a positive reaction. US partners told us that they are ready to begin this discussion, these talks, at the very start of next year," Putin said.
Later in the speech, Putin claimed NATO had "cheated" Russia with its previous expansions eastward and said Russia needs "immediate" security guarantees.
Moscow is, however, seeking guarantees over the expansion of NATO, which might include Ukraine, while the West is becoming increasingly concerned over the buildup of Russian military near its southern border.
Last week, Moscow submitted draft security documents demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet countries.
In the files, Russia also called for the withdrawal of NATO's military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe, namely the alliance's operating battalions in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia to refrain from military action during the holiday season.
When Putin Loved NATO | FP - 19 Jan 2022 | [cached]
Former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, who had a cordial relationship with the Russian leader, recalls an era when Moscow wanted closer ties with the West.
The world has survived another week without a major war erupting in Europe. Indeed, considering Russian President Vladimir Putin is upset with the West and his government has warned of catastrophic consequences following last week's negotiations with NATO, more weeks like this are not to be taken for granted.
There is one man who knows Putin's thoughts on Russian and European security well and managed to successfully cooperate with him even on extremely thorny issues. Today, he is watching Europe's predicament worsen--and is stunned at his former interlocutor's radical change of mind. But his insights can also help guide Western decision-makers as they try to steer clear of war with Russia. The man is former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.
On a snowy night in February 2000, Robertson arrived in Moscow for his first-ever meeting with Putin. Russia's new acting president was an unknown to Robertson, having only recently been appointed by outgoing Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
[...]
Getting to the Russian capital was a victory for Robertson, who had been appointed secretary-general the year before after serving as British defense minister: After a thaw in the early and mid-1990s, NATO's relations with Russia had turned frosty. In 1999, NATO launched a bombing campaign against Serbian units in the former Yugoslavia that were carrying out ethnic cleansing against other ethnic groups, especially in Kosovo.
Bill Clinton suggested that rebuilding relations with Russia ought to be one of Robertson's priorities, a conclusion the NATO secretary-general had also reached.
The campaign caused enormous friction with Moscow, a long-standing ally of Serbia. When Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, the conflict was nearing its end, but Russian ill will against NATO remained. "The Russians were very bruised by Kosovo," Robertson recalled in an interview with Foreign Policy last week. "They felt they had been surprised, double-crossed even."
Soon after taking over NATO's helm, Robertson made it a point to travel to Washington to see then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, who had helped negotiate the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which NATO and Russia passed in 1997 and in which they agree to cooperate and consult, not threaten the use of force, and in which NATO promises not to station nuclear weapons on new member states' territory. The U.S. president suggested that rebuilding relations with Russia ought to be one of Robertson's priorities, a conclusion the secretary-general had also reached.
That was easier said than done. Russia's ambassador to NATO, Sergey Kislyak (subsequently deputy foreign minister and now a member of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament), was a hard-liner and seemed to dislike Robertson, who had supported the Kosovo intervention.
America and NATO went outside International Law and the UN Charter in their bombing campaign of Serbia in 1999. Based on the I'll-conceived "R2P principle" and disinformation, Bill Clinton initiated a war crime that later was copied by the Obama administration to intervene in Libya and Syria.
War crimes court upholds the conviction of a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander | AP News - 14 Dec 2023 |
Appeals judges at a special Kosovo court upheld the convictions of a former commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army for arbitrarily detaining and torturing prisoners and murdering one of them during Kosovo's war for independence, but reduced his sentence by four years to 22 years imprisonment.
Since Mustafa's conviction, the court also has opened the trial of former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci and three co-defendants on charges including murder and torture.
Most of the 13,000 people who died in the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians. A 78-day campaign of NATO air strikes against Serbian forces ended the fighting. About 1 million ethnic Albanian Kosovars were driven from their homes.
The court in The Hague and a linked prosecutor's office were created after a 2011 report by the Council of Europe, a human rights body, that included allegations that KLA fighters trafficked human organs taken from prisoners and killed Serbs and fellow ethnic Albanians. The organ harvesting allegations have not been included in indictments issued by the court.
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Belgrade and its key allies Russia and China refuse to recognize.
EuroTrib archive key words | Hashim Thaci | Salih Mustafa | Kosovo Liberation Army | Kosovo Independence |
Stand-Off Pristina airfield a World War III moment in history ...
British Brigadier Recalls 'World War Three' Moment in Kosovo | Balkan Insight - 13 June 2024 |
"There had clearly been some horrific ethnic cleansing and people were traumatised," he told BIRN, and said there were parallels with Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
"There is no doubt. We were underpinning a humanitarian operation after atrocities," Freer said. "It is clearly akin to what is happening now in Ukraine where the civilian population is very much in the front line and suffering".
Asked whether he favoured more direct intervention by the West in the war in Ukraine, Freer said it would be "foolhardy" of him to try to second guess NATO's future direction with regards the conflict.
"However," he said, "there is absolutely no doubt [that] without NATO's fulsome support, particularly its training of Ukrainian soldiers and the provision of armaments and materiel, Ukraine would be unable to sustain its current operations."
"NATO will, I am sure, be monitoring the situation continuously in order to be in a position to appraise member governments what needs to be done to achieve a successful outcome in a number of given scenarios."
Stand-Off Pristina airfield a World War III moment in history British general Sir Mike Jackson vs US Commander General Wesley Clark
Before Dying, Wesley Got His War
