Oliver Boyd-Barrett is a critical scholar of media and communication, propaganda, and international news media and film. Subscribe to his Substack, Empire, Communication and NATO Wars, here.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 3/26/24

Crocus Hall in Context: America is Behind This 100% (Ritter)

Scott Ritter in interview with Judge Napolitano today describes Ukrainian intelligence, especially the military intelligence agency GUR, as a total construct of the CIA and MI6, and that there is nothing that happens in the GUR that is not known by, approved by and coordinated with the CIA or MI6. (I would say much the same about the SBU, Ukraine’s internal intelligence agency, which President Putin today says should be recognized as a terrorist organization).

Essentially, it (i.e the GUR) works for the USA, just as the war with Ukraine is nothing to do with Ukrainian independence but is being fought for US national security interests, which in this case, says Ritter, are directed towards the strategic defeat of Russia. Many times in the recent past (Kirch, Bryansk, Belgorod) and still today the CIA and the GUR are working in support of what Ritter describes as Russian nationalist groups’ efforts to invade Russia. The purpose of the most recent attempts was to disrupt the election of Vladimir Putin.

So this tells us that the CIA is capable of carrying out acts of violence on Russian soil. This of course is relevant to our understanding of last Friday’s events in Moscow’s Crocus Hall concert. We should note that the Russian Security Council secretary Patrushev has said today that Ukrainian Special Forces was behind (a link in a bigger chain of) the Crocus terror attrack. Dima [of the Military Summary channel] says that Ukraine was involved in training (in the Middle East – presumably Turkey) and perhaps in funding and assisting. Any such money would effectively have originated with the USA. We should also take account of statements today by the head of the SBU, presumably with the permission of Zelenskiy, confirming its responsibility for assassinations over the entirety of Russia, including the assassinations of Kiva, Tatarsky, Pritepin and former LPR officials.

The Tajik terrorists responsible for the Crocus Hall attacks, trained in Turkey, were supposed to have launched their attack on March 8 or the 9 because a major nationalist and popular superstar was due to perform there on one of those days (nobody seems sure as to which it was) and there would have been many high-level people present. But security was too tight, so the terrorists backed out and went into hiding until security was reduced.

The US says that it provided intelligence about this planned attack to Russia on March 7, with the specification “concert hall.” They clearly had foreknowledge. Ritter claimed earlier today that instead of that intelligence passing through formal channels as protocol requires, it was only passed on informally, that nobody contacted the Russian government, and Foreign Secretary Lavrov said as much the other day. The FSB Director today clarifies this: the evidence passed by the US to Russia he says was only of a general nature (presumably the same as was made public by the US Embassy on March 7 for the safety of US citizens in Moscow) and that Russia acted upon it.

I note that Anatol Lieven for the Quincy Institute today criticises Russia for not maintaining higher security at Crocus Hall in the light of the intelligence that they had received: but this criticism misses the point, first, that the intelligence, as claimed by Ritter, was not passed through the correct channels (according to Ritter, or was simply very general), and, second, that the dates given for the anticipated attacks turned out to be incorrect (or they were simply postponed from March 8 or 9 to March 20) and, third, since the expectation was that the purpose of the attack was to assassinate some of the important people who would have been present on March 8 or 9, and to disrupt the Russian presidential election, it was not unreasonable for the Russian authorities – assuming they were aware of the US warnings – to relax their guard and assume that the worst of the danger had long passed since the original, public US warning indicated that the danger would have expired by March 10th.

Mercouris identified a copy of the US warning in the Dutch-based, English language and extremely anti-Putin Moscow Times which communicated awareness by the US embassy in Moscow of imminent, extremist (but no mention of ISIS) plans to target large public gatherings in Moscow, including concerts, over the next two days. The warning passed on by the US to Russian authorities was simply the same warning that they had made available publicly. The heavy security presence at the concert of March 8 or 9 at Crocus City Hall did indeed indicate a significant Russia concern for security at that event.

The USA was therefore cognizant of something that it later attributed to ISIS-K, The Afghan offshoot of ISIS. Jihadi terrorists of this stripe conventionally take film or video footage of themselves uttering the Shahada or the oath of allegiance to Islam, raising their right index finger as they do so (in Islam, Ritter explains, the left hand is the hand of evil). The Crocus Hall terrorists used their left hand. They were not authentic jihadists who were prepared to sacrifice their lives; they were mercenaries who accepted money, and who fled from the scene of their crime (which they had perpetrated not only in the holy month of Ramadan but also on the holy day of the week, Friday). And they fled to what Ritter describes as their “safe haven,” their “true North” – Ukraine. Russian authorities were monitoring their communications and overhead them liase with Ukrainian military intelligence to secure safe passage through the border.

The Crocus Hall attack, as Napolitano notes, was an act of war that murdered 140 innocent concert-goers. Who in the USA would have known? Ritter notes that the National Security Acts of 1947 and 1948 authorizes the CIA as the only US agency authorized to carry out covert action (deniable by law, unlike clandestine action). The CIA’s special activities center is tasked with covert action. These are the people who train terrorists to invade Russia, and who carry out sabotage operations deep inside Russia.

The President of the USA is directed by law to be briefed on such activities. He has to sign a presidential finding that gives the CIA authority to proceed. And the finding must be reported to the specifically nominated 8-person congressional group charged with this responsibility. Otherwise, it is a rogue operation. We know that the CIA is engaged in terror preparations in Ukraine. Let there be no doubt, says Ritter, that the President of the USA has given his approval to the CIA to carry out terror attacks in Russia whose ultimate goal is regime change. The CIA will have directed the GUR to carry out terrorism actions inside Russia: whether the CIA knew what exactly the targets were that the GUR was planning to attack, we cannot say.

Did Victoria Nuland have any role in the Crocus Hall acts of terrorism? Ritter considers she may have been broadly aware of plans for terrorist acts but may not have had specific knowledge of the targets. Jeffrey Sachs says that Nuland’s reference to “nasty surprises” a couple of weeks very well might have foreshadowed the events of last Friday. Sachs today tells Napolitano that the US record of lying on such matters in the past means that nothing them USA says about, say, ISIS-K, can be treated as credible, or serious, or as having weight.

British news media today report in unison, notes Alexander Mercouris in his daily broadcast, that the Crocus attack was clearly an ISIS operation and that Putin is merely being devious in trying to implicate Ukraine. Brirtish media claim there is no evidence for this at all – a claim that is actually entirely beyond their competence, although it is manifestly obvous that there is very good reason for suspecting Ukrainian involvement (always remembering that evidence is not the same thing as proof): notably, that the four gunmen were trying to escape into Ukraine and doing so in the context of an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia in which Ukraine has carried out many attacks on citizens in Russia itself, as admitted by Ukrainian authorities, including in border villages of Russia in the month of March 2024.

The French in Ukraine

Macron has put 2,000 troops on notice for relocation, and would like to send another 18,000. They are being sent to Romania as non-combatants, and will bring the current French force in Romania up from 700 to 2,000+, presumably in readiness for intervention in the event of Russian action in Odessa. Scott Ritter today comments that they will make no difference in the battlefield context of over 1,000 Ukrainian casualties a day. The real goal, in the words of a Polish politician, is to expand NATO’s presence in Ukraine to 60,000 taking in troops from Poland and the Baltic states.

The practicality of all this is extremely dubious: will these forces, assuming they would ever reach 60,000, have sufficient food, training and weapons? Would they be capable of meaningful, coordinated action? And why is 60,000 a magic number? The Ukrainians have fielded many hundreds of thousands of troops and is still losing the war.

So it seems unlikely that the Macron initiative will add up to more than a hill of beans. Russia will take whatever measures that it must in order to destroy these forces, should they attack Russia and, in particular, should they attempt anything that diminishes the usefulness of Russian nuclear deterrence, in which case we may talking nuclear war. Many people think Russia is bluffing; Ritter asserts that the Russians do not bluff.

Could Macron’s initiative have been taken without the consent of other Western leaders? Yes. Macron feels abandoned by the USA, which has now backed off from the provision of further arms to Ukraine (while House Republicans continue to insist on more action on the southern border before they will consent to voting on a new arms package). On the other hand, the USA has not instructed the Europeans to stand down. Perhaps it is content to see Europe slide further into the economic abyss, no longer a remotely competitive player against the USA.

Is the Ukraine war becoming a direct NATO-Russian war? The Russian army is preparing a flotilla that will patrol the Dnieper river from the summer. Ritter speculates that Russia is anticipating the collapse of the Ukrainian army and the taking of Kharkiv and Odessa. Ritter is finishing a book to be titled Ukraine and the End of NATO, and the end of NATO, he says, is the inevitable outcome of a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Battlefields

Dima reports today that Zelenskiy has fired his Secretary of the National Security Council, Danilov, perhaps indicating a struggle for power within Kiev and an intensification of Ukrainian nervousness as the likelihood increases of a fairly imminent Russian offensive to take a major center of population such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipro, or Zapporizhzhia.

Kharkiv is today completely without electricity, presumably as a result of recent Russian strikes on two power plants serving the city. In nearby Volchansk fire hydrants are not working as a result of power blackouts. Ukraine, says Dima, would prefer Russia to strike at Kharkiv (rather than other possible targets) and it is not impossible that Ukraine is exaggerating the energy crisis there, making it look worse than it in fact is. Such tactics have been used in the past to distract Russia from re-attacking certain areas. Perhaps Ukraine’s attitude is based on the fact that Russia considers Kharkiv to be a particularly pro-Russian city, that therefore Russia would pull its punches in trying to take it. Dima speculates that one route such a Russian offensive might take in the north east would run from the mainland down through Chuhuiv to Donets.

The Ukrainian mobilization bill is proceeding, with an age of conscription being established as 18.

Assange

The British High Court has delayed the extradition of Assange to the USA until it has received certain assurances from the USA that he will not be subject to the death penalty in the event of further charges, and that the Department of Justice will have the same respect for his 1st Amendment Rights as it does for an American citizen. Napolitano considers that if the latter assurance was actually issued, then the USA would no longer have a case against Assange since journalists are granted immunity for publication of the truth. Napolitano’s interviewee, former British ambassador Craig Murray, noted, however, that the High Court dismissed all the more substantive points of the appeal (e.g. concerning freedom of speech, political extradition, conditions of imprisonment). There is no hope that Assange’s role in the exposure of war crime will any longer have a role in this dispute. And how would any Department of Justice assurances to the Britsh stand up in the event of the future, contrary judgements of US courts?

It is hard to be optimistic. It is possible the European Court of Human Rights might intervene with a stop order, if it could act quickly enough, prior to extradition but it is not certain that the UK would obey this.

If there is good news, it is that Murray speculates that Biden won’t want Assange coming to the USA anyway, ahead of the November election. So this gives Assange some months.

Palestine

The US yesterday abstained from voting for the UNSC resolution (demand) for an immediate (not permanent, but one that would be followed by one that is a lasting and sustainable) ceasefire. All other UNSC members – even Britain – voted for the resolution.

The US abstention offers further evidence to the Global South that the US is not on their side, as the world moves from unipolarity to multipolarity. Joe Biden should understand that he stands to lose the election in Michigan, perhaps also in some other states such as Florida, Minnesota and some other swing states where there are large numbers of Arab-Americans or of the latest, pro-Palestine generation of the former Reform US Jews of whom Crooke spoke yesterday. The US State Department describes the resolution as non-binding, but Murray assures us that it does have legal force even if it does not make punishment (in the form of sanctions, even military action) mandatory.

It requires all parties to do what they must under international law to cease all violence and hostilities against citizens, the holding of hostages, obstruction and barriers to aid etc., and to release all hostages. There is no specific reference in it to Hamas. The resolution thus enfuriates Israel but adds to growing international pressure on Israel, complementing what is likely to be a final decision by the International Court of Justice on the matter of Israeli culpability for genocide. Meantime, Sachs notes that US flows of arms to Israel continue, as do Netanyahu’s assurances of Israeli readiness to launch a ground operation on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands are starving and dying of starvation.

This is the ongoing policy of the Administration of President Joe Biden – the worst behavior since Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days.

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 2/8/24

A day ago I was invited by the editor of a daily digest on Russian affairs to comment on the President’s Speech to the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) that was delivered on 3 December 2023 at the Association’s annual conference. See

https://www.aseees.org/news-events/aseees-blog-feed/2023-presidents-address-de-centering-russia-challenges-and

As Political Science professor Juliet Johnson of McGill University remarks in her text, at the conference of the ASEEES during the preceding year there were 175 sessions that explicitly addressed the theme of ‘Decolonization’ of Russian studies in some way, accounting for more than 30% of the sessions overall. Either with intent to blaze new trails or just to employ a less emotive term, Johnson has renamed the subject at hand ‘decentering.’ The intent and the content remain the same.

The speaker further notes that one scholar at the year earlier conference said the following from the podium: “The conference program for ASEEES23 may have more occurrences of the word ‘decolonization’ than any other I have read. Take that, Putin!’’ Regrettably that puerile final point brings to mind the blather of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock when in the early months of the Russia-Ukraine war she admonished Germans to give up showers in favor of washing the three strategic body parts, saying ‘Take that, Putin!’  Baerbock is widely acknowledged to be a fool’s fool. The academic cited by Johnson is no better, nor are the recommendations set out by Johnson herself to achieve decolonization or decentering.

But my intent in this brief essay is not to take readers’ time with those pointless recommendations which only would direct research funding and teaching positions to peoples of the Former Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe who carry no weight in the world, never did and so hold little interest for normal people wherever they live. As we say, only their mothers could love them.

Instead I take issue with the speaker’s fundamental notion that Russian studies were ever carried on by academics in the USA or elsewhere who had the slightest empathy for Russia and whose disregard for everyone else in that part of the world was due to some inexplicable Russia-centrism. At their best and most relevant, these studies were conducted by people who were paid to inform U.S. military and diplomatic officials of the real challenges posed by the USSR and then by its successor, the Russian Federation. Period. Everthing else, like studying Russian literature, arts, economy, etc. just came along for the ride.

                                                                                           *****

My first point to develop is that Russian studies for most of the 20th century were the domain of everybody except Russians. Going back to when I was a graduate student in the 1970s and 80s, the field was almost exclusively taught by immigrants from the MINORITY, borderland peoples of the Russian Empire all of whom had an anti-Russian axe to grind.

Curiously, when new ethnic and nationalities studies were added to university programs in the 1970s and later, it was argued by those who had a vested interest in securing appointments that only blacks could properly teach Black History, or only Ukrainians deserved posts in the newly founded Ukrainian Studies Centers.  No one ever bothered to extend that logic to who was recruited for Russian Studies, perhaps because the field was not expected to generate positive feelings about the nation under the magnifying glass.

Who were the big names when I was at university? I point to my undergrad thesis adviser Richard Pipes at Harvard, a Polish Jew. He would comment on his weekend trips down to Washington to provide advice to Senator Jackson, best known to the broader public as the sponsor of the Jackson-Vanik amendment which aimed to knee-cap the Soviet economy over its emigration policy for Jews. Pipes later served for a little more than a year in Reagan’s National Security Council, where he fought tooth and nail against détente and against arms limitation agreements. Still later he was a key member of the Neocon dominated Committee on the Present Danger.

A few years later, when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Russian Research Center, now the Davis Center, its director was the Polish Pole Adam Ulam who was no less a Russophobe than his colleague Pipes.

During my years at Columbia doing my doctorate, the lead professors were Leopold Haimson and Marc Raeff, on the one side, which perhaps we may call the ‘side of the angels,’ notwithstanding their religious and ethnic affiliation, but they were outdone by the Russia-hating Polish Pole Zbigniew Brzezinski on the other side. I do not have to explain who he was because since the start of the Ukrainian troubles back in 2014 even the broad public knows about his textbook for reducing Russia to a small box in the European region, Grand Chessboard. What they would not necessarily know is that Brzezinski advocated and even helped to implement the ‘pipeline wars’ against Russia’s hydrocarbon exports that logically and ultimately led to the destruction of Nord Stream I at the orders of Joe Biden. And let us remember that Madeleine Albright, the champion of NATO expansion which has brought us to the present day near-war with Russia was a student and protégé of Brzezinski.

 I do not present these few professors as constituting the majority of specialists in Soviet – Russian affairs. But they were the most important academics of the age. Perhaps a larger percentage of instructors was drawn from native-born WASP and other non-Slavic extraction candidates, but when the study programs at Harvard and Columbia were formed just after WWII, they drew heavily on ex-US intelligence officers whose views of Russia were certain to be less than empathetic.

I have little doubt that that the demographics of Russian studies changed somewhat in the 1990s when American universities generally closed down foreign language programs, including Russian. Consequently Russian speaking immigrants from the Russian Federation were suddenly very welcome. But they brought with them, whatever their personal ethnic or religious label, a loathing for the country they left behind which was very suitable for teaching the courses they were expected to give.

My second point is that the problem with Russian studies goes back to Russia itself, where the most influential historian of the last quarter of the 19th century, Vasily Kliuchevsky, set out views that suited very well the Anglophile Russian self-haters whom we know as Liberals. It was he who emphasized Russian expansionism and wars under the tsars which gave us the notion that when it stopped expanding Russia would implode. This view of Russia, the autocratic and aggressive, was carried forward and abroad by Kizevetter and then Milyukov, and their continuator at Harvard Mikhail Karpovich. It was then was picked up by our very first native born American historian of Russia Geroid Robinson, founder of the Russian Institute at Columbia to which he recruited alumni of the OSS (wartime US intelligence).

The consequence of the foregoing two points is that Russian studies were ever financed in the United States for reasons of the strategic challenges this particular country and people posed. That fact has not changed. And if a policy of ‘decolonization’ or ‘decentering’ is pursued by the association which is the professional torchbearer, they will only marginalize their field and condemn themselves to irrelevancy and unemployment.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 3/24/24

Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists shows that it’s not above suspicion.

They were responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina in summer 2022, carrying out the Crimean Bridge truck bomb attack that fall, assassinating Vladlen Tatarsky in spring 2023, and the cross–border terrorist raids by the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” over the past year. They’re also tied to Crimean Tatar terrorists and ISIS-linked Chechen ones. The CIA is connected with these terrorist acts and groups too after the Washington Post reported last fall that they rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014.

The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing Hybrid War on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template, thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious actor was arguably the GUR.  

What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the Ukrainian border claimed that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.

These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia. Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.

They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.

Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA, which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.

In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to go through with their plans.

The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical Westerners.

And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention to the GUR instead.

Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false credence to the ISIS-K narrative.

By Kit Klarenberg, Substack, 2/28/24

In an extraordinary testament to the sheer pace and scale of the US Empire’s collapse, on February 15th Politico published a remarkable investigation, How the US broke Kosovo and what that means for Ukraine. In unprecedentedly forensic, candid detail, it documents how NATO violently “wrenched” the province from Yugoslavia’s grasp, then forged a politically and economically dysfunctional, unsustainable “American protectorate” in Belgrade’s place, while US officials and corporations corruptly profited every step of the way.

The relevance of Kosovo’s fate to what will inevitably befall whatever territory comprises Ukraine once Russia has completed its Special Military Operation couldn’t be starker. Whenever that day comes, Kiev will be wholly reliant on US support to keep its literal lights on, reconstruct whatever isn’t irrecoverable, and pay salaries of state employees and government officials. Washington already pumps tens of billions into the country for the latter purpose alone.

While there is a growing sense among Ukrainians within and without the country they have been abandoned and betrayed by their American “friends”, officials in Kiev continue to talk up their alliance with Washington, while routinely pleading publicly for short- and long-term financial assistance from the Empire. Yet, as Politico observes:

“For Ukraine, the task of fixing its shattered infrastructure will represent a daunting, generational challenge. For corporate America, it will be just another business opportunity. And if Kosovo is any guide, the Ukrainians should be careful what they wish for.”

‘Serious Reservations’

The “liberation” of Kosovo Albanians, and creation of an “independent” state in the province – long-considered “the cradle of Serb civilisation” and “Serbia’s Jerusalem” – began as a deeply personal pet project of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and longtime deep state operatives and notorious warmongers like Madeleine Albright. Their crusade was then adopted by subsequent US administrations. Accordingly, Kosovo today is laden with monuments, avenues and squares dedicated to these individuals, including Wesley Clark, who as US Supreme Allied Commander Europe oversaw NATO’s criminal bombing of Yugoslavia.

Such is the affinity of Kosovo Albanians for the States, star spangled banners and garish posters proclaiming, “Thank You USA!” can be found in profusion throughout Pristina. As Politico notes too, “at one point, local authorities seriously contemplated naming a lake after Donald Trump” – and “the affection is mutual.” Entire generations of US officials “carry Kosovo around with pride,” a Washington diplomatic source boasted to the outlet. “But should they?” Politico bluntly enquires.

The answer, unambiguously, is absolutely not. Once Pristina unilaterally declared independence in 2008 – a highly controversial move unrecognised by much of the international community, and Serbia, its constitution still categorising the province as Belgrade’s sovereign territory – “American fortune hunters” started moving in en masse, employing “prominent former officials from the Clinton administration who’d had a hand in helping Kosovo liberate itself” to “grease the skids.” In other words, secure lucrative contracts via dubious if not outright criminal means, for personal enrichment.

An early entrant in this imperial feeding frenzy was US government-tied construction giant Bechtel, “a major player in the reconstruction of Iraq’s energy sector” following the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion. Its mission in Kosovo – building two highways – was much more modest. Nonetheless, US officials first had to convince authorities in Kosovo, “which had a poverty rate of about 60 percent at the time,” the roads were a vital necessity.

In order to bolster its sales pitch, Bechtel recruited Mark Tavlarides, a member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during the Kosovo War, and then-US Ambassador to Priistina Christopher Dell, to assist. Despite “serious reservations about the project’s economic viability on the part of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” authorities greenlit the proposal in 2010, while refusing to publish the full contract, “despite pressure from civil society groups.” It was nonetheless revealed the effort’s final cost wasn’t capped.

Initially, the highways were to span just over 100 kilometres, and cost €400 million. By the time of their completion two years later, they had been shrunk to just 77 kilometres, at a cost of €1 billion. Undeterred, in 2014 Pristina handed Bechtel another major highway contract. Completed five years later at a cost of €600 million, multiple Kosovo officials involved in the deal were recently jailed for secretly overpaying the company to the tune of €53 million.

‘Kosovo’s Saviors’

Politico’s investigation highlights a spectacularly egregious aspect of US “nation building” in Kosovo, largely unacknowledged or outright ignored in the mainstream over the past two-and-a-half decades. Namely, the very same officials intimately involved in Yugoslavia’s destruction profited – or, at least, sought to profit – from their actions subsequently. The same is true of every other target of imperial intervention since.

Politico dubs Madeleine Albright “one of the icons of Kosovo’s fight for freedom.” As US Secretary of State 1997 – 2001, she aggressively  tubthumped for NATO “intervention” in Yugoslavia, and resultant privatisation of the country’s industry and resources, which at the time of the bombing was overwhelmingly worker-owned. The 78-day-long aerial onslaught destroyed just 14 Yugoslav tanks, while decimating 372 industrial facilities, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. The military alliance took direction from US corporations on what sites to target.

Subsequently, Albright – via her personal investment firm Albright Capital Management – sought to make a mint from the wreckage. She gradually began buying up Kosovo’s newly-privatised telecommunications sector, and in 2013 was on the verge of seizing a 75% stake in the formerly state-owned PTK, the province’s postal and telecommunications authority. Major controversy over the deal at home and abroad eventually forced her to back out. Local celebrity not dimmed, six years later a statue of Albright was unveiled in a Pristina square named after her.

Politico records how Albright’s “family and colleagues remain active” in Kosovo, including her daughter Alice, who as chief executive of US government aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation, “issues development grants” to Pristina, which then get handed back to US corporations via government contracts. Meanwhile, Wesley Clark has been attempting to profiteer in the would-be country for over a decade. He is reportedly “unapologetic about his efforts to reap financial benefit from his reputation as one of Kosovo’s saviors.”

Despite that “reputation”, Clark has been unsuccessful. In 2012, as chair of Canada-based Envidity Energy, he began vying for rights to Kosovo’s copious lignite coal reserves, the fifth largest in the world, promising an investment of $8 billion. The next year, Pristina conveniently tore up laws “designed to prevent foreign investors from exploiting the country’s mineral wealth in a way that didn’t serve Kosovo’s interests,” granting Envidity a licence to dig for coal throughout the province, without public tender.

A scathing 2016 UN Development Program report put an end to Clark’s “Kosovo dream”. It expressed concern Envidity’s project would’ve been completely illegal were it not for the scrapped legislation, there was a high risk of bribery and corruption if it went ahead, and Kosovo “would be stripped of its resources with the profits going into the pockets of foreign investors.” Negative comparisons were also drawn with Bechtel’s grossly exorbitant highway construction. Subsequently, Kosovo’s parliament withdrew Envidity’s licence. However, Clark was undiscouraged:

“The former general is now concentrating on renewable energy projects. He has met with Prime Minister Kurti and other top Kosovo officials to discuss his plan to reimagine the country’s energy infrastructure.”

‘Forgotten Battalion’

Politico observes that the “failure of US nation-building” in Kosovo is particularly conspicuous, given the province is “tiny, roughly one-third the size of Belgium, with a population of 1.8 million,” with a GDP of just $10 billion – “less than one-quarter the size of Vermont’s, the smallest US state in terms of economic activity.” As such, “making a difference there would not require the US to invest the trillions poured into Afghanistan and Iraq.” Furthermore, “the population loves the US.”

The outlet acknowledges the Empire “threw plenty of money” at Pristina post-1999, but “Washington’s priorities were informed more by short-term American business interests than providing the country what it really needed to develop.” Kosovo may have “been a good bet”  for “the American businesses active” in the province, but not the local population. This more widely reflects how “political will in Washington to remain engaged in foreign countries typically fades once big business has squeezed what it can out of America’s presence.” 

While these revelations are apparently surprising to Politico, and may well be news to many of its Western readers, it is a major, long-apparent structural flaw in the Empire’s foundations, which will be Washington’s ultimate undoing in many parts of the world. This is particularly the case throughout the former Yugoslavia. Today, the entire Balkans cries out for new infrastructure, and much else besides. 

Yet, Western investment to rebuild what was destroyed – in several cases by NATO bombing – and renew roads and other logistics structures and facilities has been almost entirely unforthcoming in the decades since. A chronic lack of employment opportunities and derisory incomes has moreover precipitated a grave, region-wide population collapse. In “American protectorate” Kosovo, these issues are particularly pronounced, with the highest unemployment and poverty rate in Europe by some margin.

The wars also created, or exacerbated, a host of social and political problems with no simple resolution, which Western powers still struggle to comprehend, let alone settle. In closing, Politico notes that on top of a failure to invest in Kosovo for the benefit of its population, “Washington and Brussels have utterly failed” to end the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina on the future of Kosovo’s remaining Serb population. The outlet expresses disbelief that: 

“Despite a quarter century of trying, the US, the most powerful country in the world, has been incapable of resolving what amounts to a border dispute involving a population the size of a small American town.”

Of course, the US is no longer the world’s most powerful country. The military, diplomatic, and economic clout it exerted during Yugoslavia’s destruction has been lost, and will not be returning. This decline is writ large in Kosovo, which is home to Camp Bondsteel, the largest and most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe since the Vietnam War. Covering almost 1,000 acres, it was meant to house 7,000 troops, although typically just 1,000 are stationed there.

Bondsteel, Politico reports, has been nicknamed the “Forgotten Battalion” in Washington as a result. Despite its manpower shortages, “the troops there are nearly the only thing standing between Kosovo and Serbia.” The long-term viability of the base, and the corrupt, collapsing protectorate posing as a state it supports, is an open question.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative reporter. Go here to subscribe to his reporting.

By Glenn Diesen, RT, 3/20/24

Western media coverage of every Russian election is bad. But this time it was even worse than usual.

Instead of lashing out at the incompetence on display, it’s more constructive to explore why rational discussions about the country continue to appear impossible.

Not to mention the dire consequences of the ongoing self-delusion.

Reason versus conformity to the group

One of the first things we learn in sociology is that humans are in a constant battle between instincts and reason. Over tens of thousands of years, we have developed the instinct to organise in groups as a source of security. This is the result of evolutionary biology as survival demands that we organise into “us” versus “them”. In-group loyalty is augmented by assigning contrasting identities of the virtuous “us” versus the evil “other”, which helps stop an individual from straying too far from the pack.

Yet, human beings are also equipped with reason and thus the ability to assess objective reality independent of their immediate circle. In international relations, it’s imperative to place yourself in the shoes of the opponent. The rationality required to see the world through the perspective of the “other” is vital for reaching mutual understanding, reducing tensions, and pursuing a workable peace.

Every successful peace process and reconciliation in history – from Northern Ireland to negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa – has been based on this.

We expect journalists to be objective in their reporting of reality, which is especially important during war. But this seems to be almost impossible, especially during conflicts. When human beings experience external threats, their herd instincts are triggered as society demands group loyalty and we punish those who deviate. The political obedience demanded during war time usually results in the weakening of freedom of speech, the role of journalism, and democracy.

Why did Russians vote for Putin?

So, how can we understand the reasons for President Vladimir Putin’s immense popularity in Russia and his landslide victory?

If we use our reason and resist our tribal instincts, it should not be difficult to understand the popularity of Putin. While the 1990s was a golden period for the West, it was a nightmare for Russians. The economy collapsed and society disintegrated with truly horrific consequences.

The country’s security also collapsed, as NATO expansion meant there was no chance to agree an inclusive European security architecture. This had been outlined in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the OSCE founding documents.

A weakened Russia meant that its interests could be ignored, and NATO was able to invade Moscow’s ally Yugoslavia, in violation of international law.

When Putin took over the presidency on 31 December 1999, it was commonplace in the West to predict that Russia would share the fate of the Soviet Union. That is eventual collapse.

However, Russia has instead become the largest economy in Europe (by PPP), its society has healed from the disastrous 1990s, its military might has been restored, and new international partners have been found in the East and Global South, as evidenced by the growing role of BRICS.

Furthermore, most Russians believe it’s not a good idea to have major disruptions to leadership in the middle of a NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine that is deemed an existential threat. Don’t change horses in midstream as the American proverb, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, advises.

Speaking of the US, the late Mikhail Gorbachev – who was immensely popular there – did not shy away from criticising Putin, when he was still with us. However, he nevertheless argued that Putin “saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse”.

Today, any Western journalist repeating this would be immediately branded as a “Putinist” – implying a betrayal of the “us”. Western journalists cannot acknowledge the immense achievements of Russia since 1999 as it could be interpreted as lending legitimacy and signalling support for the “bad” side.

The price of self-delusion

Arguments are not judged by the extent they reflect an objective reality, rather they are assessed by how they are seen to express support or condemnation of Russia. Conformity to a narrative signals in-group loyalty, and the desire to deprive opponents of legitimacy limits what is allowed to be discussed.

Acknowledging Putin’s achievements over the past 25 years is treated as expressing support for him, which is tantamount to treason.

Meanwhile, journalists hardly ever discuss Moscow’s security concerns and the extent to which our competing interests can be harmonised. Instead, Russian policies are conveyed by referring to derogatory descriptions of Putin’s character.

As in our other wars, conflicts are explained by the presence of a bad man and if we could just make him go away, then the natural order of peace would be restored. Putin, the narrative contends, is our most recent reincarnation of Hitler and we constantly live in the 1940s where an adversary must be defeated and not appeased.

How can journalists then explain to their audience Putin’s popularity and the reasons for his huge personal vote when it is not allowed to say anything positive about the Russian president? Unable to live in reality and unable to place ourselves in the shoes of the opponent – how are we supposed to have sensible analysis and policies? As I always warned my students of international relations: Do not hate your rivals, it produces poor and dangerous analysis!

Making self-delusion virtuous comes at a high price. How can the West pursue diplomacy and work with Putin when he is presented as the embodiment of evil and an illegitimate leader? Even explaining Russian policies is condemned as legitimising Russian policies, which is deemed to be propaganda that must not be given a platform. People conform to the good versus evil mantra as it feels virtuous and patriotic to signal that they support the in-group and loathe the out-group. But how can we pursue our interests when we have committed ourselves to self-delusion and have banned reality from our analysis?

I have attempted to explain for two years why the anti-Russian sanctions were doomed to fail and why Russia will win the war, only to be told that it is Russian propaganda to undermine support for sanctions and to challenge the narrative of a pending Ukrainian victory. Reality be damned! Ignoring reality results in a distorted picture of Russia which predictably leads to miscalculations. How could Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country” defeat the most draconian Western sanctions and see its economy not only survive, but by some measures even thrive? Why would Russians unite under an existential threat when we cannot acknowledge the role played by NATO in that regard?

Sigmund Freud explored the extent to which instinctive group psychology could diminish the rationality of the individual. Freud’s ideas were further developed by his nephew, Edward Bernays, who became the father of modern political propaganda. Over a century ago, Walter Lippman cautioned group psychology, managed with propaganda, as it came with a heavy price. Yielding to the instinct of viewing conflict as a struggle between the virtuous “us” versus the evil “other” implies that peace requires defeating the adversary, while a workable solution becomes tantamount to appeasement.

What better explains the current failure of rational analysis and the resulting collapse of diplomacy?