By Blaise Malley, Responsible Statecraft, 7/10/24

This week at the NATO summit in Washington, alliance leaders are expected to sign a joint communique that declares that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to joining the alliance.

This decision is likely to be celebrated as a big step forward and a reflection of Western unity behind Ukraine, but a series of newly declassified documents show that the U.S. has known all along that NATO expansion over the last 30 years has posed a threat to Russia, and may have been a critical plank in Moscow’s aggressive policies over that time, culminating in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The documents show that the Clinton administration’s policy in the 1990s emphasizing two tracks of both NATO enlargement and Russian engagement often collided, leaving lasting scars on [then Russian President Boris] Yeltsin, who constantly sought what he called partnership with the U.S,” according to the National Security Archive, which wrote about the newly declassified documents this week. “But as early as fall 1994, according to the documents, the Partnership for Peace alternative security structure for Europe, which included both Russia and Ukraine, was de-emphasized by U.S. policymakers, who only delayed NATO enlargement until both Clinton and Yeltsin could get through their re-elections in 1996.”

In 1995, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake warned President Bill Clinton that Russian leadership would not accept the expansion of the alliance to the East.

“Russian opposition to NATO enlargement is unlikely to yield in the near or medium term to some kind of grudging endorsement; Russia’s opposition is deep and profound,” Lake wrote. “For the period ahead, the Russian leadership will do its level best to derail our policy, given its conviction that any eastward expansion of NATO is at root antithetical to Russia’s long-term interests.”

Two years later, as Washington and Moscow were entering negotiations on the future of NATO-Russia cooperation, State Department official Dennis Ross wrote what the Archive calls an “astute and empathetic analysis” of the Russian position on NATO expansion.

“To begin with, the Russians for all the reasons you know see NATO expansion through a political, psychological, and historical lens,” Ross wrote in a memo to Strobe Talbott, then the Deputy Secretary of State.

“First they feel they were snookered at the time of German unification. As you noted with me, [former Secretary of State James] Baker’s promises on not extending NATO military presence into what was East Germany were part of a perceived commitment not to expand the Alliance eastward,” the memo continues.”In addition, the 1991 promise to begin to transform NATO from a military alliance into a political alliance was part of the Soviet explanation for accepting a unified Germany in NATO.”

Because these perceived promises were never made concretely, Ross says, the Russians were “taking the lessons of 1991 and are trying to apply them now in the negotiations on NATO expansion.”

Despite these roadblocks, Clinton and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin nonetheless reached an agreement on a series of issues at a summit in Helsinki one month later. During a private conversation with Clinton at that summit — which was part of the set of declassified documents — Yeltsin would say that he reached an agreement with NATO not because he wanted to “‘but because it is a forced step.”

In his exchange with the American president, Yeltsin made one thing apparent. “[NATO] enlargement should also not embrace the former Soviet republics,” he said. “I cannot sign any agreement without such language. Especially Ukraine. If you get them involved, it will create difficulties in our talks with Ukraine on a number of issues.” Clinton did not agree to a “gentlemen’s agreement” to that effect, and the two men eventually moved on.

The consequences of choosing to ignore Russian concerns decades ago continue to have an impact on relations between the West and Moscow today, experts say.

“These declassified documents underscore that U.S. officials clearly have long understood the depth of Moscow’s objections to NATO’s eastward expansion, going back to the Gorbachev era and Yeltsin’s presidency. Yet Washington proceeded with this expansion anyway, judging that Russia would remain powerless to prevent it,” George Beebe, director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute, told Responsible Statecraft. “Today, Russia is both embittered by this history and much more powerful than it was then, and it is resolved to block NATO’s incorporation of Ukraine and Georgia by whatever means necessary.”

By Natylie Baldwin, Consortium News, 7/15/24

With the Biden administration having given Ukraine permission to use U.S.-made weapons to strike military targets inside Russian territory and Ukraine reportedly having hit a radar in southern Russia that is part of its nuclear early warning system at least once in recent weeks, a new level of escalation threat has aisen between the U.S. and Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by warning that Russia will essentially consider the U.S.-led West to be a direct belligerent if it provides satellite, intelligence and military help to facilitate any long-range missile attacks by Ukraine on Russian territory.

I talked to Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about these recent escalatory events and their implications.  The discussion took place between June 5 and July 5 of this year by Zoom and email.  

Natylie Baldwin: In response to the recent reports of Ukrainian drone strikes on radars in southern Russia that are part of their early detection system regarding incoming nuclear attacks, you told the Schiller Institute: 

“The Russian satellite-based early warning system is very limited and cannot be used to cover the blind spots created by damage to the radar. The Atlantic, Pacific, and Northern radar warning corridors are more important, and the Russians also have radars in Moscow. However, the radars in Moscow will only see threats at a later time, resulting in yet shorter warning and decision-making times — thereby increasing the chances of a catastrophic accident… They will almost certainly choose to operate their nuclear strike forces at a higher level of alert, which will further increase the chances of accidents that could lead to an unintended global nuclear war.”

Can you talk more about how Russia’s early warning system is limited, especially compared to the U.S., and specifically how that escalates the danger of accidental nuclear war?  

Theodore Postol: Well, I think the tremendously important difference, and it’s not minor, is the fact that the Russians do not at this time have satellites that can provide them with global warning and surveillance of missile launches — hopefully they will, it looks like they’re trying to launch something, but they’ve had big delays. But hopefully it will begin to solve this problem, although we have not seen this problem solved over the last over 20 years. So, the United States has satellites in space in geosynchronous orbits. 

A geosynchronous orbit is at an altitude above the earth that basically is inclined at the equator of the Earth. So it’s in the plane of the equator of the Earth. And it’s at an altitude so that it rotates around the Earth every 24 hours. That’s what a geosynchronous orbit is.

(Theodore Postol)

So, basically, if you’re in a geosynchronous orbit, you look down at the Earth and you are always over the same location of the Earth because the Earth is rotating once every 24 hours and your orbit is rotating once every 24 hours.

So a geosynchronous orbit is ideal for all kinds of satellites, communication satellites. So you only have to point at one, you know, from the ground and it only has to cover the same point on the ground without rotating a lot from space. But this also turns out to be an ideal orbit for a satellite that’s looking down and trying to see things on the ground.

Now, the problem with a geosynchronous orbit is that it has to be very high in space typically around 40,000 kilometers so that altitude, which is required — because as you go to higher and higher altitudes the rotation rate of the satellite slows — and so you need to reach the right altitude where the rotation rate of the satellite coincides with the rotation rate of the Earth.

Because that altitude is so high, the Earth is quite far away, so you don’t have a lot of high-resolution capability. A typical what’s called spy satellite or reconnaissance satellite might be at 200 or 400 kilometer altitude rather than 40,000.

And the reason for that is you want to get close to the earth so your cameras can see smaller objects.

Now, what makes the American system unbelievably useful is we can see the entire surface of the Earth.

So, for example, if we had a radar that detected an incoming ballistic missile from, let’s say, Russia, it looked like it was coming from Russia, we would immediately be able to look down at the entire planet and see that nothing else was going on, that there weren’t missiles launched from other areas. So we would immediately be able to tell that this is not a general attack if it’s an attack at all. 

So this system, which gives you a global presence, a global ability to monitor, gives you tremendously more information than you would get with radars because the radars are limited to line of sight. In 1996, there was a significant accidental alert of the Russian early-warning system because they saw a single rocket, but they could not see the rest of the Earth. So they had no way of knowing whether this was the beginning of a nuclear attack. 

And now I think that many people have overstated the danger at that time from this accidental alert because at that time the situation between the United States and Russia was very, very calm. Yeltsin and Clinton were — with respect to presidents — there was no sense that the United States or Russia, there was no incentive for either of them to attack each other.

There was, at that instant in time, it seemed like we were going to actually become constructively engaged with each other. Of course, that hasn’t happened, but that’s another discussion.

But now, if the Russians saw, let’s say, a few incoming ballistic missiles, which may or may not be a general attack, they would have no way of knowing whether this was the beginning of a very large-scale attack or something very small. The reason for that, of course, would be they have no global information and they have no idea what is below the radar horizons of all their other early warning radars that will, at some time, just break through their radar fans at a time too late for them to take a retaliatory action.

So the global satellite-based system is a very, very stabilizing and critical piece of the early warning system because — one way to state this is that it gives you situational awareness which sounds kind of mundane but that mundane information could be critical in determining whether or not you inadvertently take action to retaliate to an attack that’s actually not occurring.

So the fact that the Russians do not have this space-based early warning system is very serious and really presents a major problem.

I had lots of contacts in Russia because I was working with the Russians on an infrared early-warning project that was supposed to be being done with the United States [RAMOS – Russian American Observation Satellites]. As usual the United States reneged on an agreement for a program with the Russians. And I was doing everything in my power to try to get the Pentagon to follow through on the agreement it had reached with the Russians.

Tundra Earth-Limb With & Without Array Pixel Files. (Theodore Postol)

Baldwin: I just want to clarify one important point: In discussing the deficiencies in Russia’s nuclear early-detection system, you often reference information you became aware of in the 1990s. Can you confirm that there is recent data indicating that this deficiency — a lack of a geosynchronous global satellite early-warning system — has not been rectified by Russia as of 2024? Where is that data coming from? 

Postol: The answer to your question is simple. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) publishes orbital data on all satellites that are in orbit. These data are typically published in the form of “Two Line Elements,” which provide all of the parameters needed to reconstruct the orbits of satellites at any time.

Since satellites can drift from their orbital positions, NORAD publishes revised two-line elements for every satellite in its catalog called regular business days (not on weekends). Hence, to analyze a specific satellite’s orbits, all that is needed in principle [are] the NORAD two-line elements for that satellite.

There is a very substantial body of information that supplements and builds on NORAD’s two-line element data. This includes a very large, well-informed, and energetic community of people who actively track and study everything they can find about satellites in orbit.

It is also of interest that the Russians have openly talked about their early-warning satellite system as consisting of satellites in both Molniya and geosynchronous orbits. [There is] a highly informative article by Anatoly Zak, a deeply knowledgeable historian of Russian space programs, [in which he] discusses the extraordinary efforts and unfortunately serious failures of the part of the Russian space-program that is dedicated to building in early warning system.

In reading of this history with the informed eyes of an individual who understands the extremely demanding technologies required to build look-down space satellite systems reveals that Russians are certainly aiming at this capability but have not yet achieved it. 

As such, a comprehensive technical understanding of the demands of spaced-based ballistic missile early_warning detection and the history and choices made by Russia in its planning to deploy and its actual deployments overwhelmingly indicates that Russia is still limited to Earth-limb viewing technologies in their satellite systems. 

If the Russians start launching into geosynchronous orbit, we will know after there are at least two or three occupied locations whether or not the satellites are Earth-limb viewing.

If they are Earth-limb viewing, they will be at the same geosynchronous locations of the Prognoz satellite constellation, which was ultimately canceled because of extremely high false alarm rate. We will just have to see and hope for the best. 

Baldwin: Can you also discuss the role of decision-making time? How long does the president of the U.S. have to make decisions around responding to a believed nuclear attack compared to the Russian president and what is the process for assessing the threat before it gets to the respective president on either side? 

Postol: The two figures below show the situation with regard to early warning times associated with a postulated U.S. SLBM attack on Moscow. Since Russia does not have satellites that can look straight down at the earth and see ballistic missiles when their rocket motors ignite, the only way it can detect the approaching attack is when the ballistic missiles pass through the radar search fans of Russian early warning radars. 

The figure below showing the actual trajectories of postulated ballistic missile launches shows the location of ballistic missiles at one-minute intervals.

(Theodore Postol)

The first point on each trajectory indicates roughly where the ballistic missile will complete its powered flight when it is rocket motors shut down. After that first point, every additional point shows the location of the ballistic missile at one second intervals as it coasts towards its target. There are significant uncertainties on how fast the radars can determine the presence of incoming attacking missiles as they break through the radar search fan. Nevertheless, approximate numbers are good enough given only uncertainties associated with assessing such an attack. 

The table below shows the amounts of time consumed by different operations associated with detecting, assessing, and responding to an attack.

(Theodore Postol)

Roughly two or three minutes will be needed for the radar to detect and estimate the direction and speed of the incoming ballistic missiles. This information would be immediately reported through command links to the highest-level military officers in the Moscow command center.

In all likelihood, they would have to alert the highest-level officers and bring them into a “conference.” Depending on the scenario, this could also consume several minutes.

The assessment of the situation would then have to be sent to Russia’s president — who may or may not be immediately available to get the message.

If the attack assessment is incorrect, a decision by the Russian president to retaliate would be indistinguishable from a decision to destroy Russia, so it is reasonable to assume that the president will want as much information as possible.

If a decision is made to retaliate, messages would then have to be sent out to missile facilities. The missile facilities would need to go through some process of verifying the accuracy of the launch order and going through procedures to actually launch the missiles. Even under the best of conditions it is likely that this process would take another two or three minutes. 

Finally, the missiles must be launched at least one minute before the arrival of attacking warheads, as once the missiles leave their protective silos and are in flight, they would be extremely vulnerable to the blast waves from the attacking warheads.

Since warning times are potentially as short as seven-to-eight minutes, depending on the trajectories of attacking SLBMs, it is clear that there is no way to reliably guarantee that a nuclear response could be ordered by top political leadership of Russia. Russians are certainly aware of the situation and have certainly taken measures to assure that a retaliation would happen with a high degree of certainty. 

This near certainty of retaliation would be implemented by pre-delegating launch authority to missile units in the field and dictating strict conditions under which these pre-delegated launches could occur.

For example, if there are any indications of nuclear detonations in the sky of Russia or on the ground, this could be detected by special sensors that could then transmit this information to missile launch installations. Obviously, this is not an ideal situation, and it would be in everybody’s interest to take cooperative measures to [reduce] the chances of an unforeseen set of circumstances leading to an accident. 

Baldwin: What is the likely sequence of events that would occur if Russia responded with nuclear weapons to a false alert of a western attack due to their limited detection system? Would there be any space for stopping a spiral toward omnicide? 

Postol: Because the timelines are so short, and the warning and communications systems are so fragile, it is difficult to see how anybody could stop the uncontrolled escalation if an accident occurred. 

Baldwin: What are the implications of the fact that Ukraine’s armed forces could not have pulled off this attack on Russia’s early warning radar system without U.S. assistance? 

Postol: I have no way of knowing whether or not the Ukrainians received critical information from the United States. The Ukrainians have been using the Starlink satellite system for communications between various military units as well as for other purposes.

The Starlink satellites are a dense constellation of low-altitude satellites that are designed for communications with systems on the ground. There is good reason to believe that the Ukrainians could use this system to communicate with a long-distance drone on a mission to attack a Russian early-warning radar. The locations of the radars are very well-known and easily identified by simply using Google Earth. 

As such, it is not clear to me that the Ukrainians had to have the advice and support of the United States to perform this mission. Having said this, it is clear that the United States government does not have complete control over the Ukrainian leadership.

A very large part of the current Ukrainian leadership are known supporters of the Stepan Bandera ultranationalist ideology which was most prominent in Ukraine during the 1930s. The current admirers of Bandera would certainly know that Bandera’s followers were key figures in the brutal murders of between 60,000 and 100,000 Poles living in Western Ukraine in 1943, and also were actively involved in the murder of well over 30,000 Jews at Babi Yar in 1941.

Plus many other Bandera followers actively joined Ukrainian SS units that not only fought against the Russians, but just as importantly were engaged in mass killings of people who are not considered “racially pure” Ukrainians. These people were put in positions of authority during the U.S. sponsored Maidan Coup in February 2014. 

The U.S. is now reaping the benefits of having played a major role in allowing ultranationalist extremists to gain control of the Ukrainian government. The reasons for choosing these people were simple, expedient, and standard U.S. operations for overthrowing governments that do not adhere to U.S. political demands.

The most extremist elements are the best choice because they are violent, willing to use violence, well organized, and ruthless relative to other political groups of choice. This is why the U.S. put [Augusto] Pinochet in power in Chile, and the shah in power in Iran.

The problem with this approach to “diplomacy” is that besides supporting murderous nondemocratic regimes, the U.S. can really lose control of those they have put in power. 

Tundra Satellites Spaced 12 Hours in All Four Orbits (Theodore Postol)

Baldwin: This next question is admittedly asking you to engage in some speculation, but you have stated publicly that you have spoken to some of the currently serving officials in the executive branch of the U.S. government so I am interested in your opinion on this. 

There was an Austrian military analysis of the recent Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s early-warning system that suggested that it could have been a warning by the West since there was no military value to the attacks for Ukraine. As Russia expert Gordon Hahn has said — if the Austrian military thinks this is a credible interpretation, one can only imagine how this looks to Russia’s military/security organs. 

First question: As Russia is militarily winning in Ukraine and the U.S. is on a course to suffer an eventual embarrassment and loss of face in this conflict that it played a huge role in provoking, is it possible that the U.S. is probing Russia’s nuclear defenses and indicating that it is willing to go nuclear to save face? 

Postol: As incompetent as U.S. leadership has been, I do not believe they would knowingly try to provoke the Russians into some form of nuclear attack against the West. They may be foolish and reckless enough to say things to the Russians that they know, or should know, will lead to a reaction.

One of the most astonishing of many things that [U.S. Secretary of State] Antony Blinken has said to [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergei Lavrov was that United States reserved the “right” to put nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Ukraine.

Blinken made this statement to Lavrov in January 2022, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Imagine a Russian Foreign Minister telling John Kennedy in 1962 that the Russians reserved the right to put nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba, rather than indicating that Russia was willing to negotiate.

When you look at how the Biden administration has conducted its policies in Ukraine, it is hard to understand what their intentions are and whether or not they have given any thought to what they are doing. Nevertheless, I do think that they do not want to nuclear war with Russia. 

Baldwin: Ironically, many in the West thought Putin would be the one to go nuclear if faced with possible defeat — is it possible that the U.S. is the one who is more of a threat to do this? 

Postol: The only time I believe there might have been [a] danger that Putin would use nuclear weapons was when it initially appeared that Russia might catastrophically be losing the war with Ukraine. 

Baldwin: In a presentation you gave in March of 2022, one of the things you talked about was what the results of a nuclear war would be in terms of death and destruction. You showed some harrowing images of the victims of WWII fire bombings which would be similar to what the firestorms resulting from a nuclear blast would do to people.

As a Generation X-er, I remember the threat of nuclear war being talked about when I was growing up and it was featured regularly in popular culture. Even our leaders — whether you liked them or not — seemed to understand how much a nuclear war must be avoided.

You stated at the beginning of the Ukraine war that you thought Biden was doing a good job of making it clear that he didn’t want to escalate to a direct confrontation with Russia. Since then, it seems like we’ve been experiencing the frog-in-boiling-water phenomena of the Biden administration eventually giving in to more escalatory actions. Do you think our current leaders have lost their fear of nuclear war? If so, why? 

Postol: I do not think that Biden has lost his fear of nuclear war. I do think that Biden is suffering from some form of terrible debilitating and degenerative disease like dementia or Alzheimer’s.

I would be surprised if either Blinken or [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan did not understand that nuclear war with Russia would be a catastrophe for the United States and the world.

However, both Blinken and Sullivan are so isolated from reality that I do not rule out them inadvertently making decisions that lead to a nuclear catastrophe through escalation. 

Blinken and Sullivan have presided over one of the biggest foreign policy disasters that the United States has had since the end of the Cold War. Their mindset is incomprehensible to me and wholly disturbing. You may be in a position to understand my current thinking due to your heartbreaking situation with your mother.

Imagine that a deeply loved individual started showing the signs of mental deterioration. Obviously, it would lead to tremendous pain, stress and sadness for all involved. But then imagine allowing that person to put at risk the lives in your community by encouraging them to drive a delivery truck! This is what the people surrounding Biden are doing. 

Biden is clearly mentally incapacitated, yet the people around him have sought to conceal this terrible and horrifying condition from the American electorate.

The people around him must know that this is only the beginning of something that will be far worse. Yet they have so little concern for the future of our country and its citizens that they are willing to put a man into the office of president who is incapable of doing the job.

They are willing to do this even though the nation is facing multiple existential crises. Yet all these people surrounding Biden seem to care about is how they can maintain their privileges of power. 

I am sorry for this diversion into our nation’s social situation, but I think the dangers we face of a possible nuclear war have much more to do with the frightening [domestic] social and political circumstances at the moment.

If people in power have absolutely no understanding of reality, then the situation is dangerous because they have no way of knowing how to make sound choices. Unfortunately, there are many other examples of delusional leadership from history. 

Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The Grayzone, Antiwar.com, Covert Action Magazine, RT, OpEd News, The Globe Post, The New York Journal of Books and Dissident Voice. She blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com.  Twitter: @natyliesb.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

By Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 7/7/24

On July 1 the Russian delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control organized a round table on “The Transformation of the World Order in the context of the Ukrainian Crisis.” This article is derived from the author’s presentation there.

Reflecting on my participation on July 1 in the Russian-hosted forum in Vienna on the ongoing transformation of the world order, I was struck by the words of Ambassador Alexander Lukashevich, the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). 

The ambassador told a very personal story when he took part in the Istanbul summit back in November 1999 as a junior diplomat in the delegation he now heads. There, despite tensions that existed between the United States/NATO and the Russian Federation over NATO’s then bombing of Serbia, OSCE leaders, through a process of dialogue, adopted three foundational documents that served as the framework for European security for the next two decades. 

These were the Charter for European Security; the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe; and the Istanbul Summit Declaration.

The Charter for European Security reaffirmed the commitment to a free, democratic and integrated Europe as defined by the geographic and political boundaries set forth by the territories encompassed by the OSCE,  which coexisted in peace, with their respective individuals and communities enjoying freedom, prosperity and security.

The Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) served to modify the existing CFE Treaty to consider the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact; the unification of Germany; and the expansion of NATO, all with the goal of facilitating equitable security and stability for all parties to the treaty.

Finally, the Istanbul Summit Declaration outlined the shared vision for European security and cooperation, emphasizing strengthening cooperation between the OSCE and other international organizations,  enhancement of OSCE peacekeeping efforts, and expansion of OSCE-backed police activities designed to maintain the rule of law.

Ambassador Lukashevich lamented that the conflict in Ukraine, beginning with the 2014 Maidan coup that saw Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich ousted by U.S. and E.U.-backed Ukrainian nationalists, has undermined and destroyed all three of the Istanbul Summits crowning achievements.

INF

Helmeted protesters face off against police on Dynamivska Street during the Maidan uprising in Kiev, Jan 20, 2014. (Mstyslav Chernov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The OSCE, working at the behest of NATO, used the Minsk Accords to further the expansion of NATO, instead of brokering peace in Ukraine. Today, NATO is engaged in a war with Russia using Ukraine as its proxy. In short, the very processes of peace and security Lukashevich said he’d worked so hard to create and implement back in 1999 were “melting before my eyes.”

I had been involved in a process of foundational importance to European security — the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The INF Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987. 

In February 1988 I was one of the first military officers assigned to the newly created On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), created by the U.S. Department of Defense to implement the INF Treaty. 

In June 1988 I was dispatched to the Soviet Union as part of an advanced party of inspectors to install a multi-million-dollar monitoring installation outside the gates of a Soviet missile factory in the city of Votkinsk, some 750 miles east of Moscow in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. 

For the next two years I worked in the company of my fellow American inspectors, side-by-side with our newfound Soviet colleagues, to implement a treaty which, without our mutual commitment to making the world a safer place through disarmament, would most likely have failed in the face of deep-seated opposition in both the U.S. and Soviet Union (you can read about my experiences in my book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika.) 

Square One

Gorbachev and Reagan signing the INF Treaty in the White House in 1987. (White House Photographic Office – National Archives and Records Administration, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

On June 28 last month, a mere three days before the Russian round table in Vienna, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was going to resume production of short- and intermediate-range missiles — the very weapons myself and my fellow American and Soviet inspectors had worked so hard to eliminate. Putin said he would weigh their potential deployment in Europe and elsewhere to offset similar deployments by the United States of intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the Pacific. 

Putin was referring to the deployment by the U.S. of Mk 70 containerized missile launchers capable of firing the SM-6 “Typhon” dual-capability missile as well as the Tomahawk ground-launched cruise missile. The SM-6 has a range of under 310 miles, making it compliant under the terms of the INF Treaty, the Tomahawk’s range of 1,800 miles makes it an INF-capable system.

The United States withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, during the presidency of Donald Trump. Russia, however, indicated that it would not either produce or deploy INF-capable missiles (despite being accused by the U.S. of doing just that in justifying its decision to withdraw from the landmark arms control agreement) so long as the U.S. did not introduce them into Europe. 

U.S. Army Typhon medium-range capability missile system. (US Army, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

In September 2023, the U.S. deployed two Mk 70 launchers onto the soil of Denmark as part of NATO military exercises. And in May of 2024 the U.S. likewise deployed the Mk 70 launcher on the soil of the Philippines. These actions prompted Putin’s response.

In short, we have literally gone back to square one when it comes to arms control and nuclear disarmament — to a time when Cold War politics nearly brought the U.S. and Russia to the edge of the nuclear abyss.

That is where we stand today.

Like Ambassador Lukashevich, I am literally watching my life’s work melt before my eyes.

The difference between now and then is stark. Four decades ago, we had an engaged public, and diplomats who talked to one another.

June 24 marked the 42nd anniversary of the million-person march in Central Park against nuclear war and for nuclear disarmament.

The political pressure created by this event resonated into the halls of power.

‘Walk in the Woods’

 Nitze, left, visiting The Hague in January 1985 while serving as U.S. arms control adviser. (Rob Croes/Anefo, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

July 16 will mark the 42nd anniversary of the famous “Walk in the Woods” conducted by Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky, respectively the U.S. and Soviet lead negotiators for INF talks that, at the time, were stymied.

Faced with a calcified recalcitrance on the part of U.S. hardliners, the two men took a walk in the woods outside Geneva, Switzerland, where they outlined possible ways to break the negotiation impasse.

The ideas that Nitze and Kvitsinsky came up with never came to pass — neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union were ready to undertake such drastic actions.

But their courageous stab at diplomacy at a time when neither side was talking to the other shook free the rust that had frozen their respective sides, lubricating the machinery of diplomacy, and set in motion the processes that led to Reagan and Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty some five and a half years later.

The key take-away from the Nitze-Kvitsinsky “Walk in the Woods” was that, when it comes to meaningful arms control, success is not immediate. The process of arms control must be seen in the long term. 

It was also clear that fear fueled consideration of positive outcomes that eventually led to an equitable solution in the form of the INF Treaty.

There is no doubt in my mind that within the ranks of the Russian and U.S. diplomatic corps today are two men possessed of the vision and courage of Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky who can, if given the opportunity, recreate the magic of the “Walk in the Woods.” That magic helped create the conditions for negotiations that helped pull the U.S. and Soviet Union from the nuclear abyss more than four decades ago. 

But two hurdles must be crossed first. It is difficult to imagine a U.S. and Russian diplomat walking and talking today when, as Professor Sergey Markedonev, a fellow participant at the Vienna round table pointed out, official U.S. policy precludes even shaking hands with Russian diplomats. 

It’s Up to the American People

To cross that bridge the U.S. government needs a signal from the American people that such behavior is not acceptable.

We need a modern-day version of the June 1982 Central Park million-person rally in support of nuclear disarmament and arms control and against nuclear war.

America has an election coming up in November where issues of our collective existential survival as a people and nation are on the line.

There is no more existential issue than that of nuclear war.

As was the case in June 1982, we, the people of the United States, need to send a collective signal to all who seek to represent us in the highest office of the land, that we will not tolerate policies that lead toward nuclear war.

That we insist on policies that promote nuclear disarmament and arms control.

That we demand that our diplomats begin talking with their Russian counterparts.

I’m tired of watching my life’s work melt before my very eyes.

It’s time to rebuild the foundations of our collective survival.

To make mainstream the cause of disarmament that once saved us from nuclear Armageddon.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 7/10/24

The above table is taken from a publication for the Quincy Institute by George Beebe, Mark Episkopos and Anatol Lieven (Beebe et al). The paper makes a very important argument, one that needs to be assessed carefully by those who may consider that Russia is a force that is unbeatable by the entirety of NATO.

The paper concedes that Russia has no expansionist intentions, but that there is definitely an escalatory danger. This danger calls for diplomacy in view of the fact that in a full-scale war with NATO as a whole, Russia faces a force whose collective GDP exceeds Russian by a factor of 20 and for this very reason Russia could be highly incentivized to reach out for a nuclear option. The paper talks of 3:1 Russian disadvantage in active duty ground forces; 10:1 military advantage (air, naval), and a NATO capacity to establish a naval blockade on Russian shipping. See the table for further details and note that the table excludes North America and Turkey (!)

Much of the confidence that Russia regularly exudes and which it inspires in its defenders lies in the original justness of its cause and in the expectation that ultimately Russia is at war with Ukraine, even if Ukraine benefits from (or is entirely dependent on) western weapons, or that, at worst, it might find itself dragged into confrontations with its immediate neighbors. Consider the following conclusions from the Beebe et al. paper:

• Russia has an overwhelming military advantage over the national militaries of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
• In a conflict limited to the militaries of the “Eastern Arc” of NATO states bordering Russian territory, such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Finland, Russia would have a 3:1 advantage in ground forces but no advantage in naval vessels or warplanes.
• In a conflict against all European NATO countries with no U.S. involvement, Russia would be outnumbered 2:1 in active-duty ground forces and at a much larger disadvantage in air and naval forces.

Perhaps most worrying for Russia is this quotation from the conclusions of a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies which states that:

“The VKS [Russian air force] is at a distinct quantitative and qualitative disadvantage when compared to the combined airpower strength of NATO. Although some of Russia’s newest fighters have fifth-generation characteristics, none can truly be called fifth generation. … In an air-to-air fight, Russia would be outclassed in numbers and tactical ability by a NATO force. In addition to a numerical disadvantage, Russian forces are not as trained as NATO pilots. Despite attempted modernization, Russia has struggled to build a modern air force. Russia conducts little training at integrated air operations. Most training flights are only formations with small numbers of aircraft. Additionally their pilots generally fly less than 100 hours a year, about a third of what the average NATO pilot flies.”

The behavior of NATO over the past year, and the inclusion now of Sweden and Finland (with its extensive border with Russia) might certainly lend weight to the impression that internal conflicts notwithstanding, the body as a whole is preparing for full-scale war. It is in the light of this possiblity that future discussions must be directed. I anticipate the paper will excite quite a bit of push-back from the more astute of the conflict’s observers and will report on this in the coming days.

One of the most important issues to be discussed at the NATO summit in Washington (in addition to whether NATO should promise Ukraine an “irreversible” – i.e. Trump proof – path to membership of NATO, together with $40 billion aid in 2025) is whether to set up a NATO command in Ukraine itself, which, if agreed, removes any pretence that this is still a Ukraine-Russia conflict and not a NATO-Russia conflict. The idea comes from an address by US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, to a forum hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce and co-sponsored by defense contractors. This is occurring not only in the context of a recent and important expansion of NATO, but also in a significant growth in the number of NATO members who are complying with an agreement in 2014 that they should dedicate at least 2% of their GDPs to military expenditure. In the past few years the number of countries that fulfill this basic minimum has risen from 9 to 23 of the 32-member alliance. In 2024, NATO allies are expected to “invest” $500m billion in defense (up from $325 billion in 2020). Russia by contrast is expect to spend $391.2 billion in 2024. But I would note that what Russia is able to buy with $391 billion is at least as much as the purchasing power of NATO’s $500 billion.

NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg has recently claimed that NATO could have 100,000 forces “where they need to be” within a week, and 200,000 a month, rising to 500,000 within the “ensuing weeks.” These figures have surprised many – and been derided by some.

The Beebe et al. analysis does not take into account how the balance of forces would be impacted by the involvement of China or other BRICS nations in active support of Russia. Since China must know that a defeat of Russia by NATO will precipitate full NATO attention to China (even, or especially under Trump in the US White House) China has considerable incentive to become a more active partner in the defense of Russia against NATO.

The report does not discuss in any detail how a sufficient consensus for full-scale war can be achieved in what is becoming a highly fractious environment in Europe, as exemplified in recent European and national elections, a fractiousness that not only includes the Ukraine skepticism of countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Turkey, and now, perhaps France and Italy, but also has to deal with a strong anti-war sentiment everywhere, amidst declining living standards for the majority.

Elections

In follow up to my considerations yesterday as to the significance of recent elections in France for the future of the NATO proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, I note that even in the immediate aftermath of the success of the New Popular Front there are growing indications that the Front itself is disunited, and that it is veering rightwards in compliance, most likely, with the terms of its agreement with the Macron bloc to head off the threat of Marine Le Pen.

Melanchon’s middle class France Unbowed (LFI) is in an alliance that includes the powerful but pro-business Socialist Party (PS). One faction of the LFI, represented by Clementine Autain, may support a government led by the Socialist Party in partnership with the French Communist Party. This would produce a sell-out entity comparable with Greek SYRIZA (formed in 2015) and the Spanish Podemos (formed in 2019) which, in power with the PSOE, has backed Azov and sent weapons to Israel.

As for Britain, the new Labour Party Defense Secretary has already visited Ukraine even as his bosses were headed for the NATO summit in Washington. One might also note the outcome of an investigation by the investigatory outlet, Declassified, which finds that the Israel lobby funded (to the tune of over $700,000) half of the new British cabinet (13 out of 25), including the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and UK Trade Secretary. This, even as the group of 10 top UN independent experts finds there is famine throughout Gaza that is the result of a deliberate Israeli policy of mass starvation, confirming the latest (June 25) assessment of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

By Kit Klarenberg, Substack, 6/15/24

It’s been reported by Georgian media that Tbilisi is now “actively working” to restore the country’s diplomatic relations with Moscow, severed by the then regime in August 2008, following its trouncing in a calamitous five-day war with Russia. While this may seem mundane to outside observers, it is a seismic development, amply testifying to the extraordinary pace and scale of the US Empire’s self-inflicted collapse.

Over decades, Washington has invested enormous energy and money into turning Georgia against Russia. Tbilisi has deep and cohering cultural, economic, and historic ties with its huge neighbor. Today, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is widespread, and Joseph Stalin remains a local hero for a significant majority of citizens. While public support for Euro-Atlantic integration and EU and NATO membership is strong, recent developments have prompted many Georgians to reconsider their country’s relationship with the West.

Since taking office in 2012, the ruling Georgian Dream has struck a delicate balance between strengthening Western ties and maintaining civil coexistence with Moscow. This has become an ever-fraught dance since the outbreak of the Ukraine proxy conflict, with external pressure to impose sanctions on Russia and send arms to Kiev perpetually rising. Against this backdrop, there have been multiple apparent plots to overthrow the government and install a more belligerent administration.

In order to neutralize the threat of a coup by Georgian Dream’s domestic and international adversaries, legislation compelling foreign-funded NGOs – of which there are over 25,000 in Tbilisi – has been passed. Its gestation produced a bitter showdown with the EU and US, ending with lawmakers who voted for the law being sanctioned by Washington and the threat of further action to come. Along the way, Georgian citizens were confronted with the poisonous reality of their relationship with the West. And they didn’t like it.

‘Foreign Assistance’

Contemporary media reports on Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan “revolution” either ignored the unambiguous Western role in fomenting it or dismissed the proposition as Russian “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory”. Ever since the proxy conflict began, Western journalists have become even more aggressive in rejecting any and all suggestions that the insurrectionary upheaval in Kiev was anything other than an overwhelmingly – if not universally – popular grassroots public revolt. 

Yet, it was not long ago that the Empire unabashedly advertised its role in orchestrating “color revolutions” throughout the former Soviet sphere, of which Maidan will surely in future be considered the final installment. In 2005, intelligence cutout USAID published a slick magazine, Democracy Rising, documenting in detail how Washington was behind a wave of rebellious unrest in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere during the first years of the 21st century.

Two years prior, the Washington-sponsored “Rose Revolution” unseated longtime Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze, replacing him with handpicked, US-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, a close associate of George Soros. Shevardnadze had since Tbilisi’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union eagerly served as a committed agent of Empire, opening up his country to far-reaching privatization for the benefit of Western investors and extensive societal and political infiltration by US and European-funded organizations.

In a bitter irony, such subservience was Shevardnadze’s ultimate undoing. Brussels and Washington exploited this space to lay the foundations of his overthrow, financing individuals and organizations who would serve as shock troops in the “Rose Revolution”. For instance, Democracy Rising reveals that in 1999, US funding “helped Georgians draw up and build support for a Freedom of Information Law, which the government adopted.” This allowed Western-funded media and NGO assets “to investigate government budgets, [and] force the firing of a corrupt minister.”

The US, moreover, bankrolled the training of “lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others” to wage war against their government. The official purpose of this largesse was to “give people a sense that they should regulate the government.” As per Democracy Rising, “the Rose Revolution was the climax of these efforts.” Following Tbilisi’s November 2003 election, US-financed exit polling suggested the official result – pointing to the victory of a coalition of pro-Shevardnadze parties – was fraudulent.

Scores of anti-government activists from across the country then descended upon Tbilisi’s parliament building, ferried on buses paid for by Washington. Nationwide demonstrations led by US-bankrolled NGOs and activist groups raged for weeks, culminating on November 23 with activists storming parliament brandishing roses. The very next day, Shevardnadze resigned. One recipient of Western support remarked in Democracy Rising, “without foreign assistance, I’m not sure we would have been able to achieve what we did without bloodshed.”

As the USAID pamphlet noted, many US-financed and trained assets in Georgia central to the Rose Revolution went on to become officials within Saakashvili’s government. One, Zurab Chiaberashvili, was appointed as chair of Tbilisi’s Central Election Commission from 2003 to 2004, before becoming mayor of Tbilisi. He was quoted in Democracy Rising as saying:

“Under US assistance, new leaders were born…[the US] helped good people get rid of a bad and corrupted government…[this assistance] made civil actors alive, and when the critical moment came, we understood each other like a well-prepared soccer team.”

The Empire’s in-house journal Foreign Policy has conceded the results of the “Rose Revolution” were “terribly disappointing”. Far-reaching change “never really materialized,” and “elite corruption still continued apace.” Saakashvili was no more democratic or less authoritarian than his predecessor – in fact, his rule was brutal and dictatorial in many ways Shevardnadze’s was not. Questions abound about his involvement in several suspicious deaths, he directed security services to assassinate rivals, and at his personal behest, prisons became politicized hotbeds of torture and rape.

The Empire could forgive Saakashvili all this though, for further facilitating his country’s economic rape and pillage, and even more crucially, intensifying Tbilisi’s anti-Russian agitation locally and internationally. This crusade came to a bloody head in August 2008, when Georgian forces, with US encouragement, began shelling civilian positions in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow intervened to decisively defend the pair. As many as 200,000 locals were displaced in subsequent battles, with hundreds killed.

Dissident journalist Mark Ames visited sites of the fighting in December of that year and witnessed “an epic historical shift” – “the first ruins of America’s imperial decline.” The Georgian army had been trained, armed, and even clothed by the US over many years, only to be comprehensively crushed by Russia’s military – and there was “no American cavalry on the way.” His first-hand insights led Ames to dub the outbreak of war that year, “the day America’s empire died.”

Ames had previously visited Georgia in 2002 to report on the arrival of US military advisors to the country. As the journalist records, “At the time, the American empire was riding high.” TIME magazine had recently celebrated George W. Bush’s inauguration with a column declaring that Washington was “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome,” and thus positioned “to re-shape norms, alter expectations and create new realities,” via “unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.”

US military expansion into Georgia was one such bold “demonstration of will.” Military advisors were dispatched ostensibly to train Tbilisi’s soldiers to combat “terrorism”. In reality, as Ames wrote, the purpose was to tutor them “for key imperial outsourcing duties.” It was expected that “Georgia would do for the American Empire what Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: deliver greater returns at a fraction of the cost.” The move would also secure Washington’s “strategic control of the untapped oil in the region.”

The benefit for Georgia? “[Moscow] wouldn’t fuck with them, because fucking with them would be fucking with us – and nobody would dare to do that.” In the event, however, Saakashvili’s intimate bromance with the West was no deterrent at all. The blitzkrieg’s success, moreover, left Russia “drunk on its victory and the possibilities that it might imply”:

“Now it’s over for us. That’s clear on the ground. But it will be years before America’s political elite even begins to grasp this fact…We have entered a dangerous moment in history – America in decline is reacting hysterically, woofing and screeching and throwing a tantrum, desperate to prove that it still has teeth. Russia, meanwhile, is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory…If we’re lucky, we’ll survive the humiliating decline…without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world.”

The Maidan coup starkly showed the Empire failed to learn lessons from the 2008 war, and Ames’ hope that Washington’s “humiliating decline” could be endured by US citizens and politicians alike “without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world” was futile. The West is now struggling to confront its undeniable defeat on Ukraine’s eastern steppe and accept the unraveling of its long-running efforts to absorb Moscow’s “near abroad”, openly mulling direct intervention in the proxy conflict. God help us all.

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