By Tarik Cyril Amar, Website, 7/1/24

The likely next president of the US, Donald Trump, has signaled that he has a plan for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. Or, at least, two of his advisers have such a plan. More importantly, they have submitted it to Trump. And most importantly, they have said that he has responded positively.

As one of the plan’s authors has put it, “I’m not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did.” It is true that Trump has also let it be known that he is not officially endorsing the plan. However, it is obvious that this is a trial balloon which has been launched with his approval. Otherwise, we would have either not have heard about it or it would have been disavowed.

The two Trump advisers are Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general, and Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst. Both held significant positions on national security matters during Trump’s presidency. Currently, both play important roles at the Center for American Security: Kellogg serves as co-chair and Fleitz as vice chair. Both, finally, are clear about their belief in what is perhaps Trump’s single most defining foreign policy concept: America First. Fleitz recently published an article asserting that “only America First can reverse the global chaos caused by the Biden administration.” For Kellogg, the “America First approach is key to national security.” The Center for American Security, finally, is part of the America First Policy Institute, an influential think tank founded in 2022 by key Trump administration veterans to prepare policies for his comeback.

Clearly, this is a peace plan that has not come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it has not merely been submitted to Trump to receive his – unofficial – nod, it has also emerged from within Trumpism as a resurgent political force. In addition, as Reuters has pointed out, it is also the most elaborate plan yet from the Trump camp on how to get to peace in Ukraine. In effect, this is the first time that Trump’s promise to rapidly end this war, once he is back in the White House, has been fleshed out in detail. The adoption of the plan or any similar policy would obviously mark a massive change in US policy. Hence, this is something that deserves close attention.

What does the plan foresee? In essence, it is built on a simple premise: to use Washington’s leverage over Ukraine to force the country to accept a peace that will come with concessions, territorial and otherwise. In the words of Keith Kellogg, “We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up’.” Since Kiev is vitally dependent on American assistance, it is hard to see how it could resist such pressure. Perhaps to give an appearance of “balance” for the many Republicans still hawkish on Russia, the plan also includes a threat addressed to Moscow: “And you tell Putin,” again in Kellogg’s terms, “he’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.”

Yet it is obvious that, despite the tough rhetoric about Russia, the plan will cause great anxiety in Kiev, not Moscow, for two reasons. First, the threats addressed to Russia and Ukraine are not comparable: If the US were to withdraw its support from Ukraine, Kiev’s Zelensky regime would quickly not just lose the war but collapse. If the US were to, instead, increase its support for the Zelensky regime, then Moscow would respond by mobilizing additional resources, as it has done before. It might also, in that case, receive direct military assistance from China, which would not stand by and watch a potential Russian defeat unfold, because that would leave Beijing alone with an aggressive, emboldened West. In addition, Washington would, of course, have to weigh the risk of Russia engaging in counter-escalation. In sum, the plan threatens Ukraine with certain defeat, regime, and, possibly, even state disintegration; it threatens Moscow with a harder time – a type of threat that has no record of success.

The second reason the plan is bad news for Ukraine but not for Russia is that the peace it aims at is much closer to Moscow’s war aims than to those of Kiev. While the document that has been submitted to Trump has not been made public, American commentators believe that a paper published on the site of the Center for American Security under the title “America First, Russia, & Ukraine” is similar to what he – or his staff – got to see. Also authored by Kellogg and Fleitz, this paper, too, repeatedly stresses just how “tough” Trump used to be toward Russia. Plenty of strutting there for those who like that kind of stuff.

These statements, however, are balanced by an emphasis on what used to be called diplomacy: “At the same time,” we read, “Trump was open to cooperation with Russia and dialogue with Putin. Trump expressed respect for Putin as a world leader and did not demonize him in public statements … This was a transactional approach to US-Russia relations … to find ways to coexist and lower tensions … while standing firm on American security interests.”

That already is a tone that Kiev cannot but find disconcerting. Because under Biden, US strategy – and therefore that of the collective West – has been built not merely on an extremely belligerent approach (as if that were not bad enough already) but, more importantly and more detrimentally, on the obsessive idea that there is no alternative. Everything, to its adherents, is “appeasement” except constant escalation to “win.” There is no room for genuine quid pro quos and compromise. That attitude is vital to America’s unrelenting support for Ukraine and, in particular, the fact that it has crossed one red line (meaning those previously recognized by Washington itself) after the other, with no (good) end in sight.

Hence, a Trumpist approach that is also anything but “soft” on Russia, while, however, acknowledging the possibility of de-escalation through negotiation is already a major departure from current US policy. You could even think of it as being inspired by the Reaganite foreign policy of the 1980s, which also combined pronounced “toughness” with a genuine readiness to compromise. Yet there would be one big difference: Toward the end of the Cold War, Washington was dealing with a pliable, even naïve Soviet leadership. That was a grave mistake – if made for mostly admirably idealistic reasons – that Russia’s current leaders see very clearly, are still angry about, and will not repeat.

In the case of the war in Ukraine, this means that any settlement, even with a newly “transactional” Washington “coming to the table” would involve not one but two “tough” players: Moscow will not agree to any compromise that fails to factor in that it has gained the upper hand in this war. That, in turn, means that, beyond the basic Trumpist mood of conditional conciliatoriness, details will be decisive.

Unfortunately for the Zelensky regime and fortunately for everyone else (yes, including many Ukrainians who won’t have to die in a proxy war anymore once peace comes), in that domain as well, the realm of the concrete and specific, the plan developed by Kellogg and Fleitz shows some progress. The authors, first of all, recognize important elements of reality that the current US leadership is either lying or in denial about: for instance, that this is a proxy war as well as a war of attrition, that Zelensky’s “10-point plan” (essentially a blueprint for what could only happen if Ukraine were to win the war, that is, never) “went nowhere,” and that Ukraine cannot sustain the war demographically.

They also acknowledge that Russia will refuse to take part in peace talks or agree to an initial ceasefire if the West doesn’t “put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period.” In fact, an “extended period” will not suffice; Moscow has been clear that never means never. But Kellogg and Fleitz may be formulating their ideas carefully with a view to how much their readers in America can take at this point. The plan also, again realistically, raises the option of offering a partial and, eventually, complete dropping of sanctions against Russia. Ukraine, on the other side, would not have to give up the aim of recovering all its territory, but – a crucial restriction – would have to agree to pursue it by diplomatic means only. The implication is, of course, that Kiev would have to give up de facto control over territory in the first place.

And there you have it: This is a proposal that, pared down to essentials, foresees territorial concessions and no NATO membership for Ukraine. It’s no wonder that Kellogg and Leitz conclude their paper by admitting that “the Ukrainian government,” “the Ukrainian people” (that is sure to be an over-generalization, by the way), and “their supporters” in the West will have trouble accepting this kind of negotiated peace. We could add: especially after more than two years of an avoidable (as the authors also recognize) and bloody proxy war. Yet that tragedy has already happened. We can wish it had not, but we cannot undo the past. The real question is about the future. Kellogg and Leitz, and Trump as well, if he will follow such a policy, are right that the dying must end, and that the only way to make it end – as well as avoid further escalation, perhaps to global war – is a compromise settlement built on reality.

RT, 6/10/24

Multiple Ukrainian officials have complained to British daily The Times about the growing power of Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak, who they say de facto runs Ukraine.

The 52-year-old has previously been described as “Zelensky’s right-hand man” and “Ukraine’s real power broker.” Officials in Kiev now say he has become something more, the outlet has reported.

“Yermak’s authority has surpassed that of all of Ukraine’s elected officials bar the president,” The Times’ Maxim Tucker wrote in the article published on Friday. “Some sources went so far as to describe him as the ‘de facto head of state’ or ‘Ukraine’s vice-president’ in a series of interviews.”

Tucker, who previously worked as Amnesty International’s campaigner on Ukraine, claimed to have spoken with “senior government, military, law enforcement and diplomatic sources,” many of whom requested anonymity. He described Yermak as Zelensky’s “greatest flaw,” and his behavior as “thirst for power.”

“Concern is mounting that Zelensky is increasingly reliant on a handful of sycophantic domestic voices,” Tucker noted, as the number of people with direct access to him shrinks while Yermak’s team expands.

Zelensky’s “big mistake has been to entrust so much authority to Yermak, who is clearly intoxicated with power,” said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

Military officials have also blamed Yermak for arranging the firing of General Valery Zaluzhny in February, because he saw him as a rival. A spokesman for the Zelensky’s office denied this, saying Zaluzhny was not fired but promoted to ambassador to the UK, “which signifies a high level of trust.”

A spokesperson for the presidential office, which Yermak runs, dismissed all criticism of the chief of staff as “propaganda attacks.” Yermak has a “direct but efficient management style,” they said, which has delivered successes such as the Swiss “peace summit” next week.

Zelensky “is the one who makes all the key decisions,” the spokesperson insisted.

Yermak is a former film producer whom Zelensky – an actor turned politician – brought into the government in 2019. He has recently begun moving into the spotlight, attending the ‘Democracy Summit’ in Denmark alongside former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, himself a paid adviser to the Ukrainian government.

It was Yermak and Rasmussen’s ‘International Working Group on Security Issues and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine’ that first proposed lifting all the restrictions on the use of Western weapons supplied to Kiev, which was quickly amplified by former British PM Boris Johnson. The talking point then spread to NATO capitals until the White House eventually agreed to it.

By Dan De Luce, NBC News, 6/26/24

Western sanctions have failed to undermine Russia’s weapons production and Moscow has even managed to ramp up the manufacturing of key weapons to fuel its war against Ukraine, according to a new report by a London-based think tank. [https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/occasional-papers/methodology-degrading-arms-russian-federation]

The sanctions effort has been hampered by overly cautious decision-making by Western governments and delays in sharing intelligence among Western allies, said the report by the Royal United Services Institute.

Although the U.S. and its partners have touted an array of sanctions over the past two years to choke off Moscow’s access to key parts needed to build weapons, Russia has dramatically increased the production of artillery rounds, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to the report.

In 2021, before Russian forces invaded, Moscow produced 56 Kh-101 cruise missiles a year. By last year, it had manufactured 460 cruise missiles, according to the report. Russia’s stock of Iskander ballistic missiles also has increased dramatically, from about 50 before the invasion to 180, even though Russia has launched large numbers of the missiles on the battlefield, it said.

To make munitions for missiles and drones, Russia depends on micro-electronics imported from abroad, but U.S. and European measures have failed to block Moscow’s access to those electronic components. Russia has maintained an ample supply of antennas manufactured by an Irish company that are used in glide kits for bombs, according to the report.

The expansion of Russia’s weapons production offers clear evidence that thousands of Western sanctions have proved ineffective, the report said. “In summary, despite the diligent efforts of many civil servants, backed by the political will to disrupt Russia’s military–industrial output, there is little to show for it,” it said.

The U.S. Treasury Department this month announced a new set of sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including penalties for foreign banks that deal with Russia’s economy and restrictions to block the export of certain U.S.-made software and IT services to Russia.

The authors of the report argue that it is still possible for the U.S. and its allies to choke off the supply or prohibitively raise the cost of electronic components, machine tooling and raw materials needed for Russia’s weapons production.

To make sanctions stick, governments need to share relevant intelligence — including classified information — rapidly to allow for timely enforcement of export controls or action. Western governments should form an “intelligence fusion center” that could build “a common recognized target picture of the Russian defense industry,” it said.

Better intelligence sharing would also allow allies to undertake coordinated action — including clandestine measures — to undercut Russia’s weapons production, the report said.

There are “multiple stages throughout the production process where intervention, both overt and covert, can cause delay, the degradation in quality, or a serious increase in cost to Russia’s arms production,” the report said.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 6/11/24

When the banks of the Ural River in eastern Russia overflowed early this spring, creating catastrophic flooding unseen in a generation across the city of Orenburg and driving thousands from their homes, Antonina Golysheva, a local kindergarten teacher, sprang into action.

“Parts of my settlement were flooded, and some of my own neighbors were in dire conditions,” she said by phone from her village, Yuzhny Ural. “I have a small car, so I went out and found people who needed help. I carried their belongings, their pets, their children, and transported them to local shelters.”

After a Ural River dam burst in mid-April, almost completely submerging the city of Orsk, the Kremlin declared a state of emergency in the region. The massive floods swept across 36 regions of central Russia and Siberia this spring and are still ongoing in the far-northeastern Russian Republic of Sakha, aka Yakutia, destroying thousands of homes and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

But one aspect of the crisis that hasn’t received much coverage, even in the Russian media, is the outpouring of public efforts to help those affected by the floods – a relatively new and unexpected phenomenon in Russia. Telegram channels are full of accounts of people raising money, collecting warm clothes and food, and, in the regions themselves, rushing to the scene with cars, boats, and even diving equipment.

“Most people in my circle, if they didn’t need assistance themselves, were out there trying to help,” says Ms. Golysheva. “We coordinated among ourselves. There were representatives of the state working there as well, but we were just ordinary people doing what we could.”

“Our volunteers pulled people and pets out of flooded buildings, found temporary accommodation and hot meals for people in a difficult situation,” says Yelena Suchsheva, regional coordinator of the private charity Golden Hands of an Angel, reached by telephone in Orenburg. “We work side by side with state organizations, such as the ministry of emergency services, local police, and medical services. They do their jobs, and we help them by doing ours. Sometimes we take part of their work on ourselves.”

Restoring a charitable mindset

The rapid growth of popular volunteerism, whether independent or in league with the state, runs counter to Soviet history. The former system ran all kinds of compulsory “volunteer” activities, under tight Communist Party control, and would never tolerate any sort of independent or spontaneous initiatives.

Instead, it was common to see people laboring in regular subbotnik events, basically weekend days of unpaid volunteer work. Residents would come out to clean up their apartment grounds or repair facilities under the watchful eye of the local party secretary, or students would provide free labor on construction sites as part of their studies. The Soviet experience left a legacy of resentment and cynicism that was rather inimical to genuine public spirited involvement.

The Kremlin began cultivating the potential for volunteer activity to supplement state endeavors around the time of the Sochi Olympics a decade ago. It spent vast sums not only on preparing for the Games, but also on remaking Sochi’s infrastructure and on implementing various forms of social engineering designed to involve the public more closely with the state’s objectives.

Around 25,000 young people from around the country were recruited to perform a wide variety of auxiliary functions at the Games that might normally be filled by paid staff. The same formula was repeated for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in several cities across Russia.

The state has since encouraged the growth of a permanent volunteer movement, #MyVmeste (meaning “we are together”), whose activities track closely with official patriotic and national goals. But unlike in Soviet times, the volunteer energy appears real, and the spontaneous involvement of citizens like Ms. Golysheva is easily accepted.

According to Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent [western funded] public opinion agency, the participation rate in private charity activities has been steadily rising, and has tripled among young people from around 3% to almost 10% in the past few years. As many as 50% of Russians regularly donate money or clothing for people in need, bringing their contributions to collection points that are usually run by the Russian Orthodox Church. Over the past two years, the government has actively encouraged the population to participate in collecting aid for front-line troops fighting in the Ukraine war.

“The state offered incentives, and sometimes a kind of coerced volunteering in state institutions and educational establishments. The state created its own network to collect aid,” he says. “Statistical data shows a considerable growth in citizens’ participation.”

The limits of the system

When it comes to natural disasters such as floods and wildfires, volunteers are now an integral part of all stages of relief efforts.

“In an emergency situation, these volunteers cannot work in an absolutely autonomous way, separate from state institutions,” says Olga Basheva, an expert with the official Institute of Sociology in Moscow. “There is a synergy in play, a kind of civil-state partnership.” She says these efforts started as free civil initiatives from the grassroots but have evolved into an integrated system that supplements, and sometimes improves on, state responses.

Experts agree that the expanding list of formerly state-run services that now feature major volunteer involvement only includes activities of which the Kremlin approves. Given the degree to which the state has co-opted the movement – albeit with lavish support, praise, and rewards – there seems little danger of volunteer energies veering into officially unwelcome political directions.

Critics say the growth of volunteerism in Russia is all very well, but it cannot be seen as a substitute for strong and independent civil society organizations that can actually influence state policies and behavior.

Most big, internationally connected groups have been labeled “foreign agents” and forced to shut down in Russia over the past decade. Their absence amid the current flooding crisis is glaring, say experts, as Russian media describe the emergency as a wake-up call about the creeping threat of global warming and the inadequacy of local flood-control infrastructure.

“With the intentional disabling by the Russian government of large [nongovernmental organizations] such as the WWF [World Wildlife Fund] and Greenpeace, there are no longer any actors who would examine and lobby for better flood management practices between catastrophic events,” says Yevgeny Simonov, a Russian environmental activist now living in exile.

“Civil society needs to push for reform of outdated flood management policies before disasters happen, but in present-day wartime Russia, there is little capacity for that.”

I’m just going to leave this here as a supplement to Lauria’s analysis below. – Natylie

Why Do Psychopaths Crave Power?

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 7/6/24

About midway through what was billed as the most consequential interview of Joe Biden’s political career, he uttered the most consequential words in the interview: “I am running the world.”

Those five words explain why he refuses to withdraw from the race and confirm what most Americans deny, but which most of the world knows: U.S. presidents act as world emperors. 

The interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos was supposed to be Biden’s chance to show the country he is mentally fit to remain in the presidency and run for a second term, at the end of which, if he is still alive, he’d be 86 years old. 

Biden is trying to recover from a debate performance on June 27 that showed 43.7 million television viewers the debilitated state of his mind. On the whole, he was as addled in the debate as he has been for years now, but never before not live in front of such an immense audience. 

The reaction from the Democratic Party and its media was unprecedented: pundits and editorialists; Democratic members of Congress; major donors; party political operatives and analysts all demanded in apparent, coordinated uniformity:  Stop being selfish Joe and quit the race so Donald Trump doesn’t win.

But it’s had the opposite effect. Biden has resisted the chorus from the party elite: “I’m not going anywhere,” he told a rally on Friday, saying erroneously that he would beat Trump again in 2020. Earlier he met with Democratic state governors at the White House. He told them he was fine. “It’s just my brain,” he said, according to The New York Times.

And to show the public he’s still got his marbles he sat down with Stephanopoulos in a taped interview, the subject of which was only his brain.

“GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit– cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not– and that’s not hi– sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world..

Madeleine Albright was right. And every single day, for example, today before I came out here, I’m on the phone with– with the prime minister of– well, anyway, I shouldn’t get into detail, but with Netanyahu. I’m on the phone with the new prime minister of England.

I’m workin’ on what we were doin’ with regard to– in Europe with regard to expansion of NATO and whether it’s gonna stick. I’m takin’ on Putin. I mean, every day there’s no day I go through there not those decisions I have to make every single day.”

Biden thinks he’s running the world and he’s not gonna give it up. No matter that he’s losing his mind for all to see. No matter that he is fully supporting an ongoing genocide in Gaza. No matter that he provoked and keeps expanding a conflict in Ukraine that is heading towards nuclear confrontation with Russia. 

Biden is obsessed with power — with the power of “running the world.” And he won’t let go.

America is the first world empire. The U.S. president is the first world emperor. The debate to win the emperorship between Biden and Trump — the “stable genius” deranged in his own right — was an end-of-empire spectacle, as though it were Caligula debating Nero.

The rest of the world shudders in apprehension at what will come of this.  

https://youtube.com/watch?v=k8LoAsHz-Mc%3Ffeature%3Doembed