Russia's political elite has been stung by a recently declassified CIA report that suggests the world's largest country could fall apart at the seams in a decade and split into as many as eight different states.
The report, Global Trends 2015, has sparked a lively debate in Russia about the country's territorial integrity and triggered passionate denunciations from some of Russia's leading politician
Russia’s breakup is inevitable.
If Europe and the West fail to prepare, the consequences will resemble those following the USSR’s collapse, such as Russia’s occupation of the former USSR territories or its bloody war in Ukraine, argues Slovak expert Juraj Mesík in his op-ed Prepare for the Inevitable: Why the West Must Discuss the Russian Federation’s Collapse Now.
According to Mesík, the failure of unprepared western politicians to come up with an early response could lead to a long-term balkanization of today’s Russia, the territory and population of which are fifty and six times bigger respectively. Besides, unlike former Yugoslavia, it has nuclear weapons.
In his 2016 essay Will the Russian Federation Make it Past 2031? Russia, China, and the Inevitable Consequences of Climate Change, Mesík postulated that Russia’s collapse will become the main theme of the next decade. However, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine has dramatically changed the events. Mesík now believes that the demise will take place in the next 3-5 years. Even though some factors, including decisions of certain politicians, may speed up (or slow down) the process, the Russian Federation will definitely cease to exist.
Once it has collapsed, territories like Crimea and Donbas will return to Ukraine, Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia – to Georgia, Transnistria – to Moldova. This goes without saying, notes Mesík.
He also believes that the Kuril Islands and Karelia will reunite with Japan and Finland respectively.
Europe will likely have to deal with the occupied and annexed Konigsberg while Beijing is expected to show interest in the Khabarovsk and Amurska oblast, a big part of which was part of China until 1860.
It would also be not farfetched to suggest that Russians living in Saint Petersburg, Ural, Siberia, and the Far East will not want to remain under Moscow’s rule. Especially since people in Ural and Siberia view Moscow as a gluttonous parasite. It is thus well possible that several Russia-speaking states will emerge shortly.
The West must start analyzing Russia’s collapse scenarios because of the risks and opportunities. After all, Europe and the West risk repeating the mistakes they made following the USSR’s demise. Accordingly, there is a great chance that the post-Russian space will be balkanized and endure a long period of poverty and violence.
Read more in Juraj Mesík’s op-ed, in Ukrainian Prepare for the Inevitable: Why the West Must Discuss the Russian Federation’s Collapse Now.
https://tass.com/world/1407517
MOSCOW, February 21. /TASS/. The true goal of the United States is the break-up of Russia, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said on Monday.
"Look, [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov says: they want to arrange a meeting of US President [Joe] Biden and Russian President [Vladimir] Putin. But they do not say what topics they want to discuss. Simply arranging a meeting to talk, simply to say that we, therefore, are in a dialogue and so on. But we, perhaps, do not need this ‘just because,’ and we need to achieve concrete goals. They, however, are hiding their concrete goal, namely, the collapse of the Russian Federation," the security chief said.
As the French presidential press office claimed, Putin and Biden had accepted a proposal by President of France Emmanuel Macron on holding a summit on security and strategic stability in Europe. As Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out, there are no concrete plans about that meeting yet but it can take place, if both leaders deem it expedient. US White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki said that Biden was ready to meet with Putin, if there was no Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine.
A U.S. government body held a Congressional briefing plotting ways to break up Russia as a country, in the name of supposed “decolonization.”
The participants urged the United States to give more support to separatist movements inside Russia and in the diaspora.
They proposed the independence of numerous republics in the Russian Federation, including Chechnya, Tatarstan, and Dagestan, as well as historic areas that existed centuries ago such as Circassia.
This is far from the first time that hawks in Washington have fantasized about carving up foreign countries. During the first cold war, the U.S. sponsored secessionist groups inside the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the U.S.-led NATO military cartel successfully dismantled Yugoslavia. And Washington has long backed separatists in the Chinese regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
After the overthrow of the USSR, neoconservative operative and future Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to slice up Russia into several smaller countries. Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski even published an article in elite Foreign Affairs magazine in 1997 proposing to create a “loosely confederated Russia–composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic.”
Yet this Congressional hearing was one of the most high-profile and provocative calls for balkanization yet, held in broad daylight.
Titled “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative,” the June 23 briefing was organized by the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), known more commonly as the Helsinki Commission.
This commission claims to be “independent,” but it is a U.S. government agency created and overseen by Congress.
The event was introduced by Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee who co-chairs the commission.
Representative Cohen claimed Russians “have in essence colonized their own country,” and argued that Russia is “not a strict nation, in the sense that we’ve known in the past.”
At the virtual hearing, which was livestreamed on YouTube, the congressman was joined by veteran regime-change activists who have worked for an array of U.S. government agencies.
The event was moderated by Bakhti Nishanov, a senior policy advisor to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
He excitedly noted, “We have many, many participants. I think this is pretty much a record for a House commission briefing.”
Nishanov argued that Western condemnation of Moscow’s war in Ukraine should expand to opposition to “Russia’s interior empire.”
He added that the panelists hoped to “come up with ideas that will actually contain Russia.”
The most active speaker in the hearing was Casey Michel, a millennial neoconservative activist who has made a career out of advocating for regime change against the U.S. government’s adversaries.
Michel got his start professionally working for the U.S. Peace Corps on the Russia-Kazakhstan border, and later capitalized on the new cold war hysteria in Washington.
He is an adjunct fellow at the ironically named Kleptocracy Initiative of the Hudson Institute, a right-wing DC think tank that has been handsomely funded by the Koch oligarchs, WalMart’s Walton family, massive corporations like ExxonMobil, and the Pentagon.
In May, Michel published an article in Washington’s establishment magazine The Atlantic, titled “Decolonize Russia,” which appears to have been an inspiration for the Congressional briefing.
“Russia continues to oversee what is in many ways a traditional European empire, only that instead of colonizing nations and peoples overseas, it instead colonized nations and peoples over land,” Michel declared in the hearing.
The neoconservative activist lamented that the United States did not use the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to break up Russia itself. He complained that Western support for secessionist movements in Russia did not go far enough.
“These are colonized nations that we consider to be part of Russia proper, even though, again, these are non-Russian nations themselves that remain colonized by, as we’ve seen yet again, another dictatorship in the Kremlin,” Michel said.
He insisted that the event was not simply about advocating for the “dismemberment and partition” of Russia, but was rather motivated by genuine opposition to colonialism and imperialism.
This was deeply ironic, because Michel has spent years viciously smearing the anti-imperialist left in the United States, while frequently caricaturing the term to demonize the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
When it comes to supporting separatist movements inside Russia, however, Michel curiously fashions himself one of the world’s most vocal advocates of a unique form of “anti-imperialism” that just so happens to advance U.S. foreign policy interests.
Joining Michel at the Congressional briefing was Erica Marat, a professor at the College of International Security Affairs at the Pentagon’s National Defense University.
Marat accused Russia of committing “genocide.” She condemned so-called “imperial collaborators” in Russia, singling out Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. She did not acknowledge the incongruity that she herself works for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Marat also complained that the “Global South continues to consider Russia as an anti-Western, anti-colonial power and denies the dignity of non-Russian people and especially people of color from the former Soviet states.”
Similar comments were made by fellow panelist Botakoz Kassymbekova, a lecturer at Switzerland’s University of Basel.
Kassymbekova lamented that the Soviet Union’s anti-imperialist “narrative was very attractive, especially in the Global South.”
She rejected “the Marxian idea, that was popular all around the world, that capitalism produces colonialism,” and the “very successful anti-Western narrative of the Soviet Union that colonialism is a Western problem.”
Kassymbekova insisted that the USSR was colonialist, although her argument was contradictory because she simultaneously admitted that, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the former Russian czarist empire “partially underwent decolonization.”
Ironically, she also repeatedly mentioned “Stalinism” and the need for thorough “de-Stalinization,” without ever acknowledging that Joseph Stalin was himself Georgian, not Russian.
Kassymbekova used the briefing to call for the U.S. government to provide more resources for secessionist movements by “supporting civic initiatives and civil societies of its neighbors and within Russia.”
Another panelist was Fatima Tlis, a Circassian separatist activist from Russia who was given a fellowship by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a notorious CIA cutout used to finance U.S. regime-change operations around the globe.
Tlis has worked extensively with U.S. government propaganda outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. According to her publicly available LinkedIn profile, Tlis has also worked with the Jamestown Foundation, a neoconservative DC think tank closely linked to the CIA.
Tlis claimed in the hearing that her “homeland” Circassia is “occupied” by Russia. She also spoke of “white slavery.”
In the Q&A session, a guest asked how the panelists could discuss “decolonization” in Russia while they are in the United States and work for the U.S. government, which was founded on genocide of Indigenous peoples. Tlis dismissively shot back, “As for your question, everybody who has ever dealt with the Russian disinformation and propaganda would immediately recognize it for what it is. It’s called–there’s actually a professional term for this disinformation: whataboutism.”
Kassymbekova responded similarly, arguing “this is kind of a very typical way of blaming the West rather than looking inwards.”
The final participant in the briefing was Hanna Hopko, a former of member of Ukraine’s parliament, who previously chaired its Foreign Affairs Committee, and a significant figure in the 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine, marketed as Euromaidan.
Hopko insisted that Washington must think “how to change not just the regime, but how to change the imperialistic nature of Russian statehood.”
But because she was traveling, Hopko’s call signal was very weak, and she was not able to speak much in the briefing.
The panelists concluded the hearing condemning Russia’s military intervention in Syria, while making no mention of the billions of dollars the United States, its European allies, Gulf monarchies, Israel, and NATO member Turkey spent arming and training sectarian Islamist rebels in order to wage a proxy war in the country.
They likewise failed to acknowledge that Russia only entered Syria at the request of the country’s internationally recognized government. Tlis referred to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as an illegitimate Russian “asset,” and depicted Moscow’s defense of Syria’s territorial integrity against Western attempts at state collapse as a form of aggression.
Intersectional imperialism
This “Decolonizing Russia” briefing is one of a growing number of
examples of the U.S. government co-opting left-wing rhetoric in order to
advance its imperial interests.
Numerous Biden administration officials have exploited rhetoric about “intersectionality,” the principle that various forms of oppression like racism and sexism intersect.
The White House claimed to follow an “intersectional approach.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted the State Department supports “diversity and intersectionality.”
The CIA published a recruitment ad featuring a Latina agent who proudly called herself a feminist. The spy agency–which is notorious for organizing right-wing coups d’etat and torturing detainees–has likewise portrayed itself as a supporter of the trans community.
The U.S. government funds a podcast co-created and hosted by a CIA veteran that claims to speak on behalf of the “Uyghur diaspora” and employs intersectional feminist rhetoric to demonize China.
This strategy of intersectional imperialism shows how Washington has modified its propaganda strategy, employing progressive-sounding talking points to appeal to left-leaning youth.
DC’s call to “decolonize” Russia is reminiscent of an award-winning paper by academic Cara Daggett, titled “Drone Disorientations: How ‘Unmanned’ Weapons Queer the Experience of Killing in War.” This article whitewashed the U.S. assassination program by arguing it is subversive and anti-heteronormative, because “Killing with drones produces queer moments of disorientation.”
The former president of Poland and founder of the Solidarity party, Lech Walesa, proposed to “dismember” Russia and reduce its population to 50 million people. This was reported by the newspaper on July 10 Le figaro.
According to Walesa, it is necessary to form a change in the political system in Russia and organize an uprising of the peoples. He believes that security in the world can only be ensured through the “dismemberment” of the country.
“It is necessary either to change the political system of Russia, or to return it to a population of less than 50 million,” he said.
At the moment, 144 million people live in the Russian Federation.
At the same time, the ex-president of Poland acknowledged that Western countries are interested in expanding NATO and the European Union, and stressed that their way of expanding power is democratic and legitimate.
Earlier, on July 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the special operation to protect Donbass contributes to strengthening the sovereignty of the Russian Federation. He stressed that the start of the special operation was not connected with this goal.
At the same time, he said that the collective West, led by the United States, had been behaving exceptionally aggressively towards Russia for decades.
This was originally written for a Chinese audience and adapted and published in Guancha. —Eds.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on 21 February means that tensions in Eastern Ukraine are likely to continue to rise, which is exactly what U.S. foreign policy wants to promote. Three days ago, Foreign Policy published an article on its website titled “Washington Must Prepare for War with Both Russia and China.” According to the article,
The United States remains the world’s leading power with global interests, and it cannot afford to choose between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Instead, Washington and its allies should develop a defense strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia and China at the same time.
Matthew Kroenig, the author of this article, is from the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security-Atlantic Council, which published the Longer Telegram last year and advocated for comprehensive containment of China. As a key U.S. defense think tank, this article by the Scowcroft Center reflects the current mainstream U.S. diplomatic and military view of China and Russia, to which China should pay attention.
According to Kroenig’s article, “A major war in Ukraine may cross international borders and threaten the seven NATO allies bordering Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine…while other vulnerable Eastern European countries, Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states, may be the next target”, despite the fact that both Russia and Ukraine have stated that they have no desire in starting a war. Philip Davidson, a former commander of the U.S. India-Pakistan Command, was quoted in the article as saying that “China may invade Taiwan within the next six years…If China succeeds in gaining control of Taiwan, it will continue to undermine the American-led Asian order”. The U.S. feels threatened by the vacillation of its “global security commitment” with these possibilities.
In the eyes of the U.S., China and Russia are the two most important adversaries: their vast territory, long history, profound national culture, and strategic nuclear weapons are all threats to American global hegemony. According to the U.S., the only way to eliminate the threat is that the two great powers’ submit to U.S.’ global hegemony. As regards Russia, which has yet to recover from its weakness, the U.S. hopes to completely dismantle it and destroy its nuclear weapons, causing it to lose all global influence. As regards China, which has a more united people, a more stable ruling party, and a healthier economy, the U.S. hopes to overthrow its leaders through a “color revolution” and gradually erode the Chinese people’s faith in communism. Maintaining military containment of both countries is, in Kroenig’s view, a non-negotiable premise.
“The U.S. will not be forced to make distressing strategic choices about its national security due to limited resources”, Kroenig asserted. In order to support “defeating Russia and China in overlapping timeframes”, Kroenig proposes that the U.S. increase its defense spending. At market prices, although not in real terms, measured in purchasing power parities (PPPs) the U.S. accounts for 24% of global GDP, while China and Russia together account for only 19%. Against the backdrop of the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Kroenig not only argues against any cuts to military spending, but to double it to 5.6% of U.S. GDP, close to the percentage of the GDP spent on defense during the Cold War, because “this new Cold War is just as dangerous as the last one”.
Another proposal is to include U.S. “key allies in military planning, sharing responsibilities, and streamlining the division of labor for weapons procurement”. With the U.S. and its formal treaty allies accounting for nearly 60% of global GDP, Kroenig suggests that the U.S. supplement existing alliances (e.g., NATO, bilateral alliances in Asia) with new arrangements like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) to “more easily mobilize resources and maintain military superiority over China and Russia”. He suggested that U.S. European allies invest in armor and artillery, while Asian allies purchase mines, harpoon missiles, and submarines, and the U.S. Army prioritizes Europe while the U.S. Navy handles the Indo-Pacific.
Kroenig finally put nuclear weapons on the table. “Relying more on nuclear weapons to offset our adversary’s local conventional advantage [is necessary]”, he states. He goes on to explain that “The U.S. can rely on threatening non-strategic nuclear strikes as a deterrent and as a last resort to thwart China’s amphibious invasion of Taiwan or Russia’s tank invasion of Europe”.
The current U.S. policy towards Russia is not a blip on the radar, but a continuation of a decades-long Cold War strategy. In 1972, shortly after Kissinger’s secret visit to China, he told President Nixon that the Chinese were “just as dangerous as the Russians, and even more dangerous in certain historical periods”. He hoped that Washington could take advantage of Moscow and Beijing by playing “an unemotional balance of the power game”. In Kissinger’s view, 20 years later, the U.S. would lean towards Russia to restrain China, if it could first use China to weaken the Soviet Union. Subsequent U.S. administrations (both Democrat and Republican) followed through on this strategy, working with China and weakening the Soviet Union, hastening its collapse.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not fully satisfy the U.S. During Yeltsin’s administration, the U.S. failed to persuade Russia—like Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan—to give up its nuclear weapons altogether. After the U.S. withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty in 2001, Russia also withdrew from the START II Treaty. At this time, Russia still deployed more than 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads and maintained a strong influence in Eastern Europe. The goal of the U.S. is to further weaken or destroy Russia economically, destabilize its politics, confuse the Russian people, and eventually dismantle Russia into smaller countries, and most importantly, eliminate its nuclear arsenal.
Dismembered Russia in Western Conception.
Washington, however, underestimated the patriotic sentiments of the Russian people. Historically, Russia has suffered many invasions by Western European countries, including Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, the 14-state alliance’s armed intervention in the nascent Soviet regime in 1918, and the German fascist invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which resulted in tens of millions of military and civilian casualties. The Soviet Union and China made the greatest sacrifices in the world war against fascism, shaping strong nationalism and patriotism in both countries at the same time. Patriotism became the most important factor influencing Russian politics, and every political party was judged by how they defended their country. Especially after the difficult period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian people today are not as easily deceived as the U.S. might expect, and President Vladimir Putin has always enjoyed a high approval rating. Despite prolonged U.S. economic sanctions and domestic “color revolutions,” the Russian regime has remained stable for a long time. Eventually, the U.S. decided to escalate tensions in Ukraine on its own initiative, imposing the threat of war on the people of Eastern Ukraine and forcing Russia to defend itself, thus finding a pretext to launch a larger round of hybrid war and economic sanctions against Russia.
Contrary to Kroenig’s alarmist remarks in his article, Russia never claimed invasion amidst the Eastern Ukraine tensions, but complete self-defense. Donetsk and Luhansk, the two affected regions, have, historically, closer ties to Russia than to Ukraine. In the mid-18th century, Tsarina Ekaterina II developed the area into an industrial town, renamed it “New Russia” and migrated a large number of ethnic Russians to the land. Western Ukraine was occupied by Lithuanians, Poles, Austrians, Russians, and Germans for centuries, thus different from Russia ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. Its inhabitants have a lower sense of identity and even deep hostility towards Russia. In recent years, neo-Nazi forces have grown stronger in Western Ukraine, as exemplified by torchlight parades in cities like Kyiv and Lviv to commemorate the birth of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi leader. During the previous conflicts, ultra-nationalists in Western Ukraine raised Nazi banners and threatened to kill all Eastern Ukrainians and pro-Russians. Ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine had to organize resistance and seek assistance from Russia. Public opinion in Russia also agreed that Putin should help their Russian compatriots in the Eastern Ukraine region.
NATO’s eastward expansion has pushed the security issue in Ukraine to a boiling point. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward because its original mission—to confront the Soviet Union and contain communism in Europe—had come to an end when the Cold War ceased. However, NATO reneged on this “gentleman’s agreement” after the Cold War by adopting 14 more member countries, including some former members of the Soviet Union. In 2018, Ukraine amended its constitution to make attaining NATO and EU membership its primary national strategy, which posed a serious threat to Russia’s national security. As Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is only 760 kilometers in a straight line from Moscow, giving permission to NATO to deploy ultra-high-sonic nuclear weapons in Ukraine would almost certainly mean the total military surrender of Russia.
NATO’s Eastward Expansion.
After the end of the Cold War, the driving forces behind U.S. diplomatic strategy have gone beyond the containment of communism, coveting unquestionable and permanent hegemony in the military and economic arenas. In the strategic vision of the U.S., Russia should be disarmed to become part of Europe as a “sidekick” and a bridgehead to contain China, the “more dangerous enemy” as Kissinger described it. But the Russians’ history and current international status have made it unacceptable for them to be a “sidekick” to follow a U.S.-led Europe. Moreover, Putin is already suspicious of U.S. credibility in international affairs. There is no question that the Russian government had no desire in starting a war, not only because of the inevitable U.S. and Western European economic sanctions, but also because Putin does not want to put China in a dilemma. The tension in Eastern Ukraine today is a microcosm of U.S.-Russian relations: the U.S. is pressing forward, and Russia has no space to retreat.
When the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security released its report The Longer Telegraph last year, Chinese intellectuals accurately pointed out that the report was rife with antiquated worldviews, outdated methodologies, and poor-quality content. However, this does not mean that this report, and Kroenig’s recent article, should not be taken seriously by China.
In the field of U.S. foreign policy, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Atlantic Council, and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) are three of the most important U.S. think tanks, and all three consistently adopt a Cold War perspective on China and Russia. The CFR, the most influential in the diplomatic field, has produced an eye-opening timeline of “U.S.-China Relations: 1949-2021,” in which the vast majority of nodes reveal confrontation rather than—as many Chinese scholars would have it—friendly cooperation. CNAS was founded in 2007 when the U.S. political elite began to realize that China’s future leaders would not be the next Gorbachev or Yeltsin, and therefore needed to “design a path for U.S. engagement with China…to encourage a more responsible Chinese regime”—a euphemism for “containment” or “color revolution.” During the subsequent Obama term, CNAS played a key role in the Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy. As for the Atlantic Council, which is mentioned several times in this article, it is a direct supporter of U.S. military hegemony. In the recent conflict in Eastern Ukraine, this think tank was the first to predict that Russia would “invade” Ukraine. The Atlantic Council has been involved in the war in Afghanistan, the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa, and the “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong. These think tanks are deeply integrated with the traditional military-industrial complex, forming a complete chain of inciting, manufacturing, and implementing hybrid warfare.
Despite the current deep bipartisan divide in the U.S., there is a high degree of agreement on foreign policy: Russia must be weakened and dismembered; China is the greatest threat to U.S. imperialist hegemony. While the U.S. economy has not recovered from the 2008 Financial Crisis and has recently been hit by the pandemic, China’s remarkable performance in these two rounds of global disasters makes it a strong challenger to U.S. economic hegemony. In purchasing power parity terms, China’s GDP has surpassed that of the United States in 2013; even in market exchange terms, China’s GDP will surpass that of the United States in 2028. The U.S. political elite is well aware that it will be difficult to defeat and contain China economically, so they have every incentive to resort to hybrid wars (including economic sanctions, legal wars, propaganda wars, etc.) and even hot wars to maintain U.S. hegemony.
John Bellamy Foster of the Monthly Review points out that the United States faces many intractable internal conflicts today, and that Trump, elected to the presidency by disaffected Americans, represents not populism but a brutal, war-hungry neo-fascism. And Biden and the Democratic Party have no contradiction with the Republican Party on the point of being anti-Russian and anti-Chinese. Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in the Trump administration and is likely to run for President in 2024, is a more rational and efficient neo-fascist, ready to plot a war in Taiwan; he will reportedly visit Taiwan this March to meet with “President” Tsai. It looks like he is already pushing the Atlantic Council’s proposed strategy of “defeating Russia and China in overlapping timeframes”.
The U.S. political elite may seem foolish and arrogant compared to China’s governance model of “selecting the noble and appointing the capable,” but our friends in China need to understand that these political elites have the will, resources, and power to wage two wars against China and Russia at the same time and are not afraid to use nuclear weapons. Their danger is not lessened by their stupidity and arrogance. Many Chinese still regard Nixon and Kissinger as “old friends of the Chinese people” after even 50 years since President Nixon visited China. But the reality is that relations between China and the United States are entering a long, cold winter, and the American political elite is already in cold war mode and are ready for a hot war.
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Most Australians welcomed the defeat by Labor of the mendacious, corrupt, incompetent, climate criminal, and racist Australian Coalition Government in the 21 May 2022 elections. However the Australian Albanese Labor Government, while vastly better than its predecessor, is egregiously neoliberal, cowardly, pro-Zionist, US-beholden and pro-fossil fuels, and has so far failed on nuclear weapons, poverty and climate change that are the 3 key existential threats to Humanity.
The website “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change” summarizes what Humanity needs to do in the present worsening crisis. A nuclear winter from nuclear war will decimate Humanity and the Biosphere. Poverty already kills about 7.4 million people each year, and worsening famine in the global South due to the US-provoked but nevertheless war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine surely demands urgent aid and systemic change from the rich global North to end deadly poverty in the global South and the ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust. It is estimated that in the absence of requisite action on climate change, the Biosphere will be devastated, and about 10 billion people will die this century in a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population in 2100 of only about 1 billion people.
Professor Stephen Hawking: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action NOW [my emphasis] to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change”. Summarized below is how after a mere 6 weeks in office the Australian Albanese Labor Government is already abjectly failing on the key existential threats to Humanity and the Biosphere of (1) nuclear weapons, (2) poverty, and (3) climate change.
(1) Labor is failing on nuclear weapons.
(i) Under Labor Australia blindly backs US nuclear terrorism through key communications bases crucial for US nuclear strategy (Pine Gap and Harold Holt), helping encircle China, hosting thousands of US military, and hosting nuclear-armed warships.
(ii) Labor ignores continuing UK nuclear contamination of Australia (notably at Maralinga) that threatens both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
(iii) Labor supports anti-China Australian alliances with nuclear powers, namely the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) Alliance and the Quad (Australian US, India and Japan).
(iv) The circa $200 billion Labor-supported Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) nuclear submarines deal locks Australia in with US militarism, threatens an arms, risks nuclear proliferation, and will subject millions of Australians to deadly poverty.
(v) The US lackey Australian Labor Government strongly backs US hostility to peaceful but nuclear-armed China. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, but the Coalition Government insulted China in 14 areas, and Chinese investment has slumped. Despite China overtures, the new Labor Government is following the counterproductive and insulting “megaphone diplomacy” of its predecessor. Ignoring border spats with India, Russia and Vietnam, China has invaded and occupied only 2 countries in the last millennium (Tibet in the 12th century and Xinjiang in the 18th century). In contrast, as UK or US lackeys, Australians have invaded 85 countries in 234 years (30 of the invasions being genocidal), and in the last 80 years Australians have violated all Indo-Pacific countries variously through war, climate criminality, subversion, and covert US-backed regime change in Indonesia (1960-1965), Laos (1960), Cambodia (1970), Chile (1973), Australia (1975, 2010) and Fiji (1987, 2000).
(vi) Australia is second only to the US in fervently supporting nuclear terrorist and serial war criminal Apartheid Israel that has 90 nuclear weapons with submarine-based and other missile delivery systems. Apartheid Israel has invaded the territory of 13 countries, has annexed the territory of 4 countries, and routinely bombs Syria, Iraq and the Gaza Concentration Camp. The WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.2 million Palestinians deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation, 2.1 million. Of 15 million Palestinians, 8 million are Exiled from Palestine, 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians have zero human rights under military rule and cannot vote for the government ruling them (apartheid), and about 2 million Israeli Palestinians can vote, albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based discriminatory laws. Despite a century of genocide, 7.2 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israeli 47%). Pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-apartheid Labor supports the all-European, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish-anti-Semitic and holocaust-denying International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) of which Australia is a member, and which has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations.
(vii) Australia’s alliance with nuclear terrorist America makes Australia a prime nuclear target. If the US uses nuclear weapons against another country, any nuclear response on Americans would likely precipitate all-out nuclear war (and the end of Humanity and the Biosphere). However a graded nuclear response would target Australia.
(viii) Labor has yet to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However US lackey Australia would violate the TPNW by continuing intimate involvement in US nuclear terrorism. It is therefore unlikely that the US lackey Australian Labor Government will sign and ratify the TNMW.
(2) Labor is failing on poverty.
(i) Australia has an obscene role in the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (7.4 million deaths from poverty annually) through low development aid – 0.22% of GNI compared to 1.05% (Luxembourg), 1.02% (Norway), and 0.99% (Sweden).
(ii) Serial war criminal Australia’s defence spending will be 15 times greater than development aid by 2030. Fourth Geneva Convention-violating Australia was involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars that resulted in 40 million Asian deaths from violence and deprivation.
(iii) Labor will tolerate massive domestic poverty – over 3 million people, including 1 million children, live in poverty in rich Australia in which the property-owning rich are getting vastly richer and the excluded poor (including the working poor) are getting poorer.
(iv) Labor will ignore huge preventable deaths in Australia – preventive measure inadequacies mean that 85,000 Australians die preventably each year due to “lifestyle choice” and “political choice” reasons ranging from adverse hospital events and smoking to suicide and homicide.
(3) Labor is failing on climate change.
(i) Climate criminal Australia is among the worst in the world for climate policy and climate action (in 2022 it ranked worst for climate policy).
(ii) Australia has 0.3% of world’s population but is responsible for 5.4% of global greenhouse gas pollution (including Exported as well as Domestic pollution).
(iii) Under Labor 114 new coal and gas projects will start, but science, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Greens demand no new fossil fuel projects for a global “net zero carbon pollution by 2050”.
(iv) Labor pledges only 43% off 2005 greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 and the Coalition 26-28%, but the Greens demand “net zero or net negative Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 or sooner”.
(v) Like the Coalition Labor rejects any true costing of pollution via a Carbon Tax based on a Carbon Price ($200 per tonne CO2-equivalent but a global applied average of only $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent). The World has an inescapable Carbon Debt in USD of $200-250 trillion that is increasing at $16 trillion per year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $5 trillion that is increasing at $400 billion per year and at $40,000 per head per year for under-30 year old Australians.
(vi) Australia is committed to continue leading the world in coal and gas exports, and is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality variously impacting Humanity, the Biosphere, and a worsening biodiversity loss.
(vii) Coal-exporting Australia is complicit in air pollution deaths totalling 75,000 overseas and 10,000 domestic. 9 million people die from ait pollution each year from burning carbon fuels.
(viii) Climate criminal Labor will be complicit in worsening Climate Genocide. It is estimated that in the absence of required action on climate change, the Biosphere will continue to be devastated, and about 10 billion people will die this century in a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population in 2100 of only about 1 billion people (see Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”).
Labor has already commenced a big diplomatic blitz from London to the South Pacific to falsely convince the world with spin that it means business. However, small, cosmetic improvements on the disastrous policies of the previous Coalition Government are grossly insufficient. Labor spin will not alter the reality that a plus 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise is now effectively unavoidable, and that the world needs to urgently do everything it can to make the future “less bad” for future generations.
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GR Editor’s Note
US threatens the world with the unthinkable, blames Russia for Ukraine, etc., whilst illegally invading, inhabiting, recruiting terrorists, stirring, stealing, destabilizing, terrorizing in Syria.
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The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), along with local citizens from the village of Al-Mujaibara, have expelled a US army convoy that tried to break into an area under the control of the Syrian government in the northeastern Hasakah governorate.
According to local sources, a US convoy of five vehicles made an attempt to cross through the village towards one of its bases in the countryside of Hasakah on 5 July. It was intercepted by locals and SAA troops, who forced the occupation troops to turn tail.
On the same day, several protests were reported in the villages of Yusufiya and Al-Junaidah in Rmelan, Hasakah, with locals blocking roads and chanting slogans against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
This is the second time in the span of a week that Syrian troops intercept US occupation forces, as another US convoy on 1 July was stopped as it tried to make its way through the village of Qabur al-Granja in the Qamishli area.
Discontent has been growing against the US army and its proxy militias across Syria, with many protests taking place over the past year.
Tuesday’s events came just one day after a large missile strike reportedly targeted a US occupation base in Deir Ezzor governorate.
Hours before the attack, a US convoy consisting of 55 tanker trucks smuggled stolen oil from Hasakah to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Hundreds of trucks filled with Syrian wheat and oil have been smuggled out of the war-torn country over the past 18 months alone, forcing Damascus to rely on the solidarity of regional powers to fulfill its needs.
The presence of US forces in Syria is illegal under international law, as troop deployment in the war-torn country was implemented without the consent of Damascus or the UN.
Earlier this year, The Cradle reported that US forces transferred dozens of ISIS detainees, including high-ranking commanders, to Deir Ezzor governorate, close to the Iraqi border.
This was reportedly an attempt to ‘revive ISIS’ for the purposes of destabilizing a region that had recently been liberated by the SAA, with the help of Russian troops.
A recent report also suggests that the CIA is actively working to recruit ISIS militants imprisoned by the SDF in northeast Syria to join the fight against the Russian army in Ukraine.
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Featured image: U.S. Battalion in eastern Syria in 2019 Photo: Creative Commons / U.S. Army Reserve
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Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
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Author: Mark Taliano
Year: 2017
Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)
The European Union is spending €8 million ($8.1 million) to build a secure bunker in Brussels where leaders can meet in secrecy, EUobserver reported on Friday. The chamber will be insulated against electronic interference, and all gadgets will be banned from entering, with the news site claiming that such measures are necessary against “Russian or other eavesdroppers.”
Claiming to have seen an EU memo describing the project, EUobserver reported that the chamber will be designed to host around 100 people comprising up to 34 leaders and associated staff. Due to be built by 2024, the bunker will be located somewhere within the European Council’s complex in the Belgian capital.
The meeting room will be offline, but will contain microphones wired to secure booths for interpreters. Both the room and these booths will be shrouded in a “NATO-certified insulation cage” to stop electromagnetic and radio waves from within being picked up outside, and anyone seeking to enter, even cleaners, will need a “SECRET EU” security clearance – the bloc’s second-highest level of classification.
According to the supposed EU memo, the facility will be swept “before and after the meetings to detect, locate and neutralize any eavesdropping device,” and anyone entering will be required to leave phones, laptops, smart watches, electronic key fobs and hearing aids in soundproof lockers outside.
This intense focus on security is aimed at shutting out “Russian or other eavesdroppers,” EUobserver wrote. However, it is unknown whether the EU is building the chamber in response to a specific security threat or out of a general sense of caution. Individually, EU members have accused Russia of espionage long before Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine, and the expulsion of diplomats over alleged spying is par for the course in international relations, with Belgium claiming to have booted out dozens of Russian spies earlier this year.
However, spying takes place between allies as often as adversaries, with the United States famously bugging a reported 122 world leaders circa 2014. Extensive surveillance was carried out by the US National Security Agency on high-level officials in both France and Germany, according to documents released by WikiLeaks.
Israel
and China have also been accused of conducting surveillance operations
in Brussels, and the EU has pressed Belgium for years to tighten up its espionage laws, which allow spying to go unpunished in many cases.
