By Aaron Sobczak, Responsible Statecraft, 10/4/24

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to increase the size of Russia’s military even while it’s seeing regular successes on the battlefield. These developments are leading some in the Ukrainian military and civilians alike to become more open to the idea of talks aimed at ending the war.

The Kremlin is currently negotiating a new military budget proposal of upwards of $145 billion which would mean that, if signed into law, Russia’s 2025 defense spending would grow to 32.5% of the budget, a 4.2% increase from this year’s spending.

This proposed increase coincides with the Kremlin’s recent announcement that it would revise the country’s nuclear doctrine, saying that Russia could respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons and that it would consider any attack that is supported by a nuclear power to be a “joint attack” — a policy presumably meant to deter at any Ukrainian attack inside Russian territory with U.S/Western weapons.

And even as the Russian military is increasingly seeing more successes on the battlefield, it’s about to increase in manpower. To support his previous order to add 180,000 troops to the military, Putin has called up 133,000 Russian men to serve as part of the autumn draft.

Meanwhile, it appears the Ukrainian military and public at large are growing war weary. The Financial Times reported this week that “Ukraine is heading into what may be its darkest moment of the war so far” in the face of increasing battlefield losses, its struggles to replenish military ranks, and the prospects of facing another winter with regular power and heating outages. “Society is exhausted,” said the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee chair.

FT points out a poll conducted this summer by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology for the National Democratic Institute which found that 57% of the public supported negotiations with the Kremlin, up from 33% the previous year. Additionally, 55% are opposed to a deal that would include ceding land to Russia, down from 87% last year.

FT also noted that according to KIIS polling, “making any deal acceptable that allows Russia to stay in the parts of Ukraine it has seized since its first invasion in 2014 will hinge on obtaining meaningful Western security guarantees, which for Kyiv means NATO membership.”

Diplomats engaging with Ukraine also report that Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials seem more open to peace talks. One diplomat said, “We’re talking more and more openly about how this ends and what Ukraine would have to give up in order to get a permanent peace deal.”

In other Ukraine war news this week:

Reuters reports that China and Brazil, amongst others, compiled a peace plan to present to Ukraine and Russia last Friday. Seventeen countries met in New York during the last United Nations General Assembly meeting to discuss a potential end to the war, with China chairing the talks. Zelenskyy showed no interest in the peace plan, and questioned why they were drawing up alternative plants to his own.

Incoming NATO secretary-general says that the alliance will support Ukraine regardless of who wins in America’s November election. According to The Wall Street Journal, new Secretary-GeneralMark Rutte said, “I am absolutely convinced that on this issue, they both see what is necessary.” He added confidently that “supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do. And it is also an investment in our own security.”

In September 30th’s State Department Briefing;

State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller responded to a question regarding Ukraine’s ability to strike at Russian targets. Miller reiterated that Ukraine does not need permission to strike Russian targets with its own weapons. He also stated that the United States had given Kyiv permission to use some American weapons in a retaliatory fashion against targets in Russia.

He was pressed as to why Ukrainians are limited as to which American weapons they can use to strike targets in Russia. In his response he said, “We look at all of the capabilities and all the tactics and all the support that we provide Ukraine in totality, and look at how – when we approve any new weapon system or any new tactic, we look at how it’s going to affect the entire battlefield and Ukraine’s entire strategy. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

In this week’s October 2nd State Department Briefing;

A reporter asked Mr. Miller if Washington was ready to start implementing Ukraine’s proposed victory plan, to which he responded with, “We took that plan, we reviewed it, we saw a number of productive steps in it. We’re going to engage with them about it.”

Finally, Miller interacted with a question which compared US support of Israel during the recent Iranian missile strike to the support which Ukraine has received. He explained that the United States gives Ukraine the support needed to shoot down missiles, saying that “we have made clear that we support Ukraine’s right to defend itself not just in words but in deeds, and we have provided them with the equipment they need to shoot down missiles.”

YouTube link here.

By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 10/11/24

The following article was made possible by paid subscribers of The Dissenter. Become a subscriber and support independent journalism on press freedom.

An Israeli district court ordered Israeli security forces to release American journalist Jeremy Loffredo from detention. 

The police accused Loffredo of “aiding the enemy during wartime” and “providing information to the enemy” and appealed a prior court decision to grant him bail. That appeal was denied.

As reported by the Seventh Eye, an Israeli independent news publication, Loffredo had refused to allow the police to access his phone. Security forces managed to break into the phone in the past 24 hours. An Israeli police official urged the court to extend Loffredo’s detention so that they could examine the phone and collect data that would show that Loffredo committed a crime. 

Judge Chana Miriam Lomp rejected this request. However, the Israeli authorities were permitted to keep Loffredo’s passport and phone, and he was barred from leaving the country until October 20. In the meantime, the Israeli police may attempt to manufacture a case against Loffredo. 

The court was informed by civil rights attorney Lea Tsemel, who is representing Loffredo, that after the Israeli police appealed the bail decision they took advantage of having more time with Loffredo in their custody. He was interrogated in the night without an interpreter.  

Loffredo is a freelancer and contributor to The Grayzone. Hours before Loffredo’s release, the media outlet put out a statement unequivocally rejecting the “outrageous accusations from Israeli police.” 

“We stand by Jeremy’s legitimate reporting. The claim that Loffredo and The Grayzone represent Israel’s enemy in wartime merely suggests that the Israeli government views the American people and free press as a legitimate target,” The Grayzone declared. “We represent no one else.” 

“We will fight these charges and ask that you contact the State Department and urge them to act in defense of their citizen detained in Israel. The U.S. has an obligation to defend its journalists who are merely adhering to their ethical obligation to inform the public of pertinent facts,” the organization added. 

On October 5, The Grayzone posted a video report from Loffredo on Iran’s missile strikes, which occurred on October 1. Loffredo traveled the next day to the area around the Nevatim air base in the Negev Desert and interviewed locals from a nearby Bedouin village. He also traveled to an impact site around the Mossad headquarters. His goal was to see for himself how the Israeli military and intelligence sites were damaged.  

The Israeli military censor had prohibited news media from publishing particular details about the damage caused by Iranian missiles. But a reporter for Ynet, an Israeli news site, published an article on Loffredo’s detention that embedded the video report from Loffredo. This undermined the accusation from police and helped convince the court to order Loffredo’s release.

Nick Schifrin, a foreign affairs and military correspondent for PBS “NewsHour,” was also treated differently by Israeli authorities. He traveled to the impact site near the Mossad headquarters, but apparently police never questioned or detained Schifrin.

“This is the impact site for one of those Iranian ballistic missiles, and if you see the size of this crater, that’s about 30 feet deep and maybe 50 feet wide,” Schifrin reported. “You can see all the debris around here, and to give you a sense of the target for these strikes, that white building back there about 1500 feet behind me is the headquarters of the spy agency, the Mossad.” 

After Schifrin posted this clip, Israeli radio news presenter Eran Cicurel responded,“I think you are breaking the Israeli censorship rules.”

Ynet reported that representatives from the U.S. Embassy attended the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court for [the October 10] hearing on the request of the police to extend his detention.” But as of the morning of October 11, the State Department had yet to make any public statement about the matter.

The reason why Israeli authorities arrested and charged Loffredo instead of Schifrin—or any other international journalists who published supposedly sensitive information on Iran’s strikes—may have something to do with a disinformation or smear campaign that was attempted in June against The Grayzone.

A network of current and former officials and journalists in the U.S. and Israel falsely claimed—through a story later retracted by the Washington Post—that The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian state media. 

The fact that the Israeli security forces still have Loffredo’s phone is alarming for anyone in Israel or the occupied Palestinian Territories, who has communicated with Loffredo.

As highlighted in a report from the Global Investigative Journalism Network in January 2023, “A law enforcement agent scrolling through a journalist’s unlocked phone is already a problematic scenario for press freedom. But this risk is supercharged by technology that can copy and search the entire content of phones and computers, sometimes even if they are locked.”

“Mobile device forensics tools can recover deleted data, as well as lots of data that isn’t visible to the naked eye when scrolling,” Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford Internet Observatory, told the network.

Chip Gibbons, the policy director for Defending Rights and Dissent, said, “The arrest of Jeremy Loffredo is deeply troubling. Israel, with its killing and arrest of journalists, anti-democratic military censorship and shuttering of news outlets, has made itself the gravest governmental threat to press freedom.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation also opposed the arrest and detention of Loffredo, saying, “Every journalist imprisoned is another voice silenced. The public can’t learn what’s happening in Israel and the region if journalists are in jail.” 

“If the theory is that reporters illegally provide enemies with information whenever enemies read the news, that could criminalize a whole lot of journalism.”

Such a theory has surfaced in Espionage Act prosecutions by U.S. prosecutors, particularly the political case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It would fit the Israeli government’s war on press freedom if their police also subscribed to the dangerous idea that publishing information on the internet is all a journalist has to do to commit the crime of “aiding the enemy during wartime.” 

*For more on Loffredo’s arrest and detention, read The Dissenter’s previous report.

By Tom O’Connor, Newsweek, 10/7/24

The United States will face “dangerous consequences” if it presses on with growing military aid to Ukraine rather than backing a proposed Russian settlement that would see Moscow take over swathes of territory, the man serving as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat for 20 years said in exclusive responses to Newsweek questions.

Well over two and a half years after Putin ordered a “special military operation” against Ukraine in what has become the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Kremlin offers a viable blueprint to end the bloodshed and revamp the security architecture of the continent. He accused the U.S.-led NATO military alliance of first sowing the seeds of war a decade ago and continuing to fan the flames.

“Russia is open to a politico-diplomatic settlement that should remove the root causes of the crisis,” he said. “It should aim to end the conflict rather than achieve a ceasefire.”

Russia’s plan would mean Ukraine ceding the substantially Russian held provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, which were formally annexed by Moscow following an internationally disputed referendum in September 2022, as well as Crimea, seized by Russia and annexed through a similar vote in 2014. Kyiv must also agree to abandon its quest to become a NATO member, and take other steps rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his international supporters, including the U.S.

Kyiv and its foreign backers instead demand an unconditional Russian withdrawal, while Moscow has said an escalating conflict brings NATO closer to a direct clash with Russia, which possesses the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

“At present, as far as we can see, restoring peace is not part of our adversary’s plan. Zelensky has not revoked his decree banning negotiations with Moscow,” Lavrov said. “Washington and its NATO allies provide political, military and financial support to Kiev so that the war would go on. They are discussing authorizing the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] to use Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory. ‘Playing with fire’ in this way may lead to dangerous consequences.”

The measures sought by Moscow, Lavrov said, align with the trajectory of a fast-changing world in which Russia has forged a deep partnership with China and has fortified ties with developing nations seeking a greater say on the global stage. Even as Moscow incurs costs, he said that Kyiv and its supporters stand to lose the most in a long war.

“What we have in mind is that the world order needs be adjusted to the current realities,” he said. “Today the world is living through the ‘multipolar moment’. Shifting towards the multi-polar world order is a natural part of power rebalancing, which reflects objective changes in the world economy, finance and geopolitics. The West waited longer than the others, yet it has also started to realize that this process is irreversible.”

Lavrov’s remarks come as the Russian military advances on several key Ukrainian fronts despite simultaneously battling a Ukrainian counterstrike within Russia itself.

Crucial to the course of the war could be the result of the U.S. presidential election on November 5 between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Support for Ukraine has been the subject of political infighting in Western capitals and not least in Washington, which has provided the greatest direct assistance.

“Generally speaking, the outcome of this election makes no difference to us, as the two parties have reached a consensus as to countering our country,” Lavrov said. “On the whole, it would be natural for the White House resident, no matter who they are, to mind their domestic business, rather than looking for adventures tens of thousands miles away from American coasts. I am confident that U.S. electors think the same.”

The following text of the responses has been lightly edited for clarity.

Newsweek: As the Ukraine conflict continues, how different is Russia’s position than in 2022 and how are the costs of conflict being weighed against the progress made toward strategic objectives?

Lavrov: Our position is widely known and remains unchanged. Russia is open to a politico-diplomatic settlement that should remove the root causes of the crisis. It should aim to end the conflict rather than achieve a ceasefire. The West should stop supplying weapons, and Kiev should end the hostilities. Ukraine should return to its neutral, non-bloc and non-nuclear status, protect the Russian language, and respect the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

The Istanbul Agreements initialed on 29 March 2022 by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations could serve as a basis for the settlement. They provide for Kiev’s refusal to join NATO and contain security guarantees for Ukraine while recognizing the realities on the ground at that moment. Needless to say, in over two years, these realities have considerably changed, including in legal terms.

On 14 June, President Vladimir Putin listed prerequisites for the settlement as follows: complete AFU withdrawal from the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic], LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic], Zaporozhye and Kherson Oblasts; recognition of territorial realities as enshrined in the Russian Constitution; neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear status for Ukraine; its demilitarization and denazification; securing the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens; and removal of all sanctions against Russia.

Kiev responded to this statement by an armed incursion into the Kursk Oblast on 6 August. Its patrons – the U.S. and other NATO countries – seek to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Under the circumstances, we have no choice but to continue our special military operation until the threats posed by Ukraine are removed.

The costs of the conflict are greatest for Ukrainians, who are ruthlessly pushed by their own authorities to the war to be slaughtered there. For Russia, it is about defending its people and vital security interests. Unlike Russia, the U.S. keeps ranting about some sort of “rules,” “way of life” and the like, apparently poorly understanding where Ukraine is and what the stakes in this war are.

Newsweek: How likely do you think it is that a military or diplomatic solution can be achieved, or do you see a greater risk of the conflict spiraling into something even larger with Ukrainian forces receiving more advanced NATO weaponry and entering Russian territory?

Making guesses is not my job. What I want to say is that we have been trying to extinguish this crisis for more than a decade, yet each time we put to paper agreements that suit everyone, Kiev and its masters would backpedal. This exactly happened to the agreement reached in February 2014: it was trampled on by the opposition that committed a coup with the U.S. support. A year later, the Minsk Agreements endorsed by the U.N. Security Council were concluded; these were also sabotaged during seven years, and the leaders of Ukraine, Germany and France, who had signed the document, bragged afterwards that they had never intended to fulfil it. The document initialed in Istanbul in late March 2022 was never signed by Zelensky at the insistence of his Western supervisors, in particular, the then British prime minister.

At present, as far as we can see, restoring peace is not part of our adversary’s plan. Zelensky has not revoked his decree banning negotiations with Moscow. Washington and its NATO allies provide political, military and financial support to Kiev so that the war would go on. They are discussing authorizing the AFU to use Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory. “Playing with fire” in this way may lead to dangerous consequences. As stated by President Putin, we will take adequate decisions based on our understanding of the threats posed by the West. It is up to you to make conclusions.

Newsweek: What concrete plans does Russia have in line with its strategic partnerships with China and other powers to achieve changes in the current world order and how do you expect these ambitions to play out in areas of intense competition and conflict, including the Middle East?

What we have in mind is that the world order needs be adjusted to the current realities. Today the world is living through the “multipolar moment”. Shifting towards the multi-polar world order is a natural part of power rebalancing, which reflects objective changes in the world economy, finance and geopolitics. The West waited longer than the others, yet it has also started to realize that this process is irreversible.

We are talking about strengthening new centers of power and decision-making in the Global South and East. Instead of seeking hegemony, these centers acknowledge the importance of sovereign equality and civilizational diversity and support mutually beneficial cooperation and respect for each other’s interests.

Multi-polarity manifests itself in the increasing role of regional associations, such as the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union], SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], African Union, CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] and others. BRICS [led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] has become a model of multilateral diplomacy. The U.N. should remain a forum for aligning the interests of all the countries.

We believe that all states, including the United States, should comply with their obligations on an equal basis with others rather than disguise their legal nihilism with mantras of their exceptionality. Here we are supported by the majority of countries, which see how international law is violated with complete impunity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, just the way it had earlier been violated in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and many other places.

Our Chinese partners can answer for themselves, but I think and I know that they share our main point, the understanding that security and development are inseparable and indivisible, and that as long as the West continues seeking dominance, the ideals of peace set forth in the Charter of the United Nations will remain a dead letter.

Newsweek: What impact do you expect the U.S. presidential election to have on Russia-U.S. relations if Donald Trump wins or if Kamala Harris wins and how is Russia preparing for either scenario?

Generally speaking, the outcome of this election makes no difference to us, as the two parties have reached a consensus as to countering our country. In case there are political changes in the United States and new proposals to us, we will be ready to consider them and decide whether they meet our interests. At all events, we will promote Russia’s interests decisively, especially as far as its national security is concerned.

On the whole, it would be natural for the White House resident, no matter who they are, to mind their domestic business, rather than looking for adventures tens of thousands miles away from American coasts. I am confident that U.S. electors think the same.

By James Carden, The American Conservative, 9/26/24

On September 12, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the upper chamber’s floor to praise the work of the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a congressionally appointed panel run out of the RAND Corporation. McConnell, summarizing the report’s findings, said,

Any of our colleagues who haven’t yet taken a close look at this report should. But I’d like to reiterate a few of its conclusions that I discussed last month as the Appropriations Committee finalized defense spending legislation for the coming year. This ought to grab our attention: 

From the report, quote, “the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” 

A further quote, “the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners.”

And, quote, “the U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare.”

Writing during the early months of the First World War, the journalist and grand strategist Walter Lippmann observed, “While it takes as much skill to make a sword as a ploughshare, it takes a critical understanding of human values to prefer the ploughshare.”  And, if anything, “human values” are conspicuous by their absence in the recommendations of the RAND Commission on the National Defense Strategy report, which, if implemented, would put the US on a permanent war footing likely to provoke—perhaps concurrently—wars in Asia, Europe, and the Greater Middle East.

Necessarily, then, the report relies heavily on euphemism and the misleadingly anodyne terminology of defense experts. In response to the threat posed by the new “no-limits” partnership between Russia and China, the report recommends what it calls a “Multiple Theater Force Construct” since, in the view of the report’s authors, neither the previous “bipolar Cold War constructs and the two-war construct designed afterward for separate wars against less capable rogue states… meets the dimensions of today’s threat or the wide variety of ways in which and places where conflict could erupt, grow and evolve.”

A combined defense and intelligence budget of roughly $1.4 trillion a year? Not enough! The “Multiple Theater Force Construct” is in reality a bid to create what far less euphemistically and more accurately might be called a “Global War Zone” where, as the report goes on to recommend, the U.S. “must engage globally with a presence—military, diplomatic and economic—to maintain stability and preserve influence worldwide.” 

Presence, not empire. Influence, not imperium.

The report also evinces a deep-seated confusion between the level of defense expenditures and, well, results. The report claims that current defense expenditure of 3 percent of GDP is dangerously low—noting,

During the Cold War, including the Korean War and Vietnam War, DoD spending ranged from 4.9 percent to 16.9 percent of GDP. The comparison to that period is apt in terms of the magnitude of the threat, risks of strategic instability and escalation and need for US global presence.

Yet given the examples (U.S. and allied forces lost roughly 170,000 men in Korea and 280,000 in Vietnam) there is surely a case to be made that might be an inverse relationship between expenditure and security.

The RAND commission speaks of the imperative to further “integrate” with our allies. At multiple points the report insists on the “indispensability” of our allies with whom we must deepen our cooperation. The U.S. “must continue to invest in strengthening its allies and integrating its military (and economic, diplomatic, and industrial) efforts with theirs.” Yet, as we have seen in the case with the now decade-long effort to wrangle Ukraine into NATO’s orbit, the search for endless allies is also a search for endless trouble.

The report is very much a product of the former Democratic Representative Jane Harman, who served as the RAND Commission’s chair.

Readers may recall that in 2006 Harman was picked up on a wiretap promising an Israeli spy she would lobby federal prosecutors to go easy on two officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. In return for that assistance, the Israeli agent offered to lobby then-Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi to name Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

In a normal country, Harman’s offer to undermine a federal case to benefit a foreign power, as a sitting member of Congress no less, would have landed her in prison. At the very least, she’d be treated as persona non grata among the great and good of Washington. But instead Harman, wife of a California billionaire who later became the owner of Newsweek, was appointed to the CIA’s External Advisory Board only a couple of years after her quid pro quo was caught on tape. Still more, the commission was rife with conflicts of interest, as a report by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft pointed out last year.

That said, if the authors of the RAND report are cognizant of any risks in creating a Global War Zone, they keep it to themselves. Might a conventional military build up in the Indo-Pacific prompt China to achieve nuclear parity with the US? Is the establishment’s nonchalance with regard to the risks of provoking Russia a reasonable position in light of the recent admission by CIA Director William Burns that “there was a moment in the fall of 2022” when he thought “there was a genuine risk” of the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia? RAND is likewise silent as to whether there exist alternative grand strategies that might better suit the moment, such as retrenchment.

In the end, the RAND report leads one to a conclusion that can’t be avoided: The U.S. establishment is itself a threat to U.S. national security.