This is just an excerpt. I highly recommend clicking on the link and reading the whole article. – Natylie

By Michael Tracey, Substack, 2/10/22

…I know it’s considered gauche to actually listen to what Vladimir Putin says, but on occasion he provides information that might be relevant for assessing the nature of geopolitical problems. During an hour-and-a-half-long interview with NBC News in June 2021, which can be watched in full here, Putin was pressed on a previous “buildup” of Russian forces around the border with Ukraine. (By the way, imagine Biden sitting for a televised interview with Russian media for any length of time.) In response, Putin noted that the US had just been conducting its own large-scale military exercises in conjunction with NATO throughout Eastern Europe. And he was factually correct. The US media does not report on the existence of these operations to any real extent — you have to dig deep into the relevant documentation to learn, for example, that “DEFENDER-EUROPE-21” included live-fire drills in the country of Estonia, which happens to sit on the border of Russia. Putin bringing this up in a US context would doubtless get him accused of “whataboutism,” but at the same time — what about it? Why is the US conducting large multinational military exercises in such close proximity to Russia, and how ought that to reflect on the US tendency to immediately characterize any of Russia’s own military exercises as inherently aggressive?

This context gets ignored, and the insane possibility of the US triggering some sort of catastrophic war in Ukraine is just accepted, thanks in large part to the propagandistic onslaught of the past several years — which completely warped how many Americans perceive the “threat” of Russia, and completely mangled the US media’s ability to question US policy toward Russia. Remember when merely having “Russian contacts” was suddenly considered an extreme political liability? Is anyone surprised that this eventually led to the deterioration of US-Russian diplomatic relations?

The moment Donald Trump did something on the foreign stage that appeared relatively non-belligerent, such as professing his eagerness to achieve a kind of “détente” with Russia — or, relatedly, meeting with Kim Jong Un — a huge faction of Democrats and the media pounced to accuse him of only doing these things for sinister reasons, such as abetting a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin. Political incentives therefore skewed in favor of Trump taking the more aggressive option, to demonstrate that he was not collusively in thrall to Russia. So the “détente” that Trump long claimed he wanted (though without using that highfalutin word) never came to pass, relations with Russia cratered to what many regard as a post-Cold War lowpoint, and now we’re in this predicament of quasi-brinkmanship in Ukraine where the main function of US policy appears to be egging on conflict. Seems like that “confrontation” so many were pining for is working out fantastically well!

Simply by generating tensions that wouldn’t have otherwise existed (as alleged by Zelenksy) the US is making more likely the outbreak of full-on war, which could arise from something as minor as an unforeseen accident or miscommunication. I don’t think World War III should be invoked lightly, but prominent US officials have raised it as a distinct possibility. This psychotic op-ed by Evelyn Farkas, who served as a Pentagon official during the 2014 Ukraine coup and then tried to marshal that distinguished experience into a Cable News sinecure — before unsuccessfully running for a House seat in New York as a Democrat, naturally — almost has to be read to be believed. Farkas predicts a breakout of World War III unless the Biden Administration prepares immediately for “direct combat” between US troops and Russian forces. She seems oblivious that if anything is liable to spark World War III, it’s the lunatic plan she advocates.

Is the situation in Ukraine likely to culminate in World War III? Probably not, but even the most remote possibility of World War III is probably something that should be strenuously avoided if at all humanly possible. Biden is sending more US troops to Eastern Europe, China is declaring its support for Russia’s goals in Ukraine — and none of this makes for a reassuring dynamic. At a recent appearance with Emmanuel Macron, Putin warned that war in Ukraine would engulf the whole of NATO.

So if the worst does happen, the aggression and paranoia spawned by Russiagate — and its irrational influence on US policy-making and public opinion — will have played an under-recognized role. Where is the opposition to the conflict-instigating posture of the US? Democrats have been largely habituated into viewing anti-Russia antagonism as a wonderful “progressive” virtue, while Republicans are largely useless, trying to score cheap points against Biden by idiotically accusing him of “appeasement” every chance they get. Journalists often think they are bravely holding the powerful to account by demanding more proactive US intervention. In sum, the key segments of US society are primed for sleepwalking into a war they claim they don’t want, but keep taking actions to precipitate. If this all gets out of hand, which is ominously plausible, I hope the “Kremlin agent” pot-shots from 2016 to 2020 were worth it.

By Alexander Dynkin and Thomas Graham, Politico, 2/9/22

We see four elements to a solution. First, restrictions on military operations along the NATO/Russia border. Second, a moratorium on NATO expansion eastward. Third, resolution of ongoing and frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space and the Balkans. And fourth, modernization of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which created a pan-European forum and articulated agreed principles of interstate relations to undergird East-West detente.

These four elements must be negotiated as a package, although progress is likely to proceed at different paces along the four tracks, because both the United States and Russia need to see where they are headed before they will engage in substantive talks on details.

Curb military operations. To reintroduce military restraint along the Russia/NATO frontier, the two countries can begin by resurrecting aspects of Cold War agreements that have fallen into abeyance in recent years as one or the other side lost interest in adhering to them. Both sides agree that this is an important step, although Russia insists that it be taken only after the issue of NATO expansion is addressed — one more reason why all aspects of the settlement must be on the table if there is to be progress on any one of them.

Today, the two sides need to reaffirm agreements to avoid dangerous incidents at sea or in the air. They need to negotiate something akin to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty that regulated military activities in nonthreatening ways in border areas, taking into account current realities. They need to resurrect the INF Treaty at least for Europe — that is, no deployment of land-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles on the continent. That will require the United States and Russia to resolve grievances that led to the treaty’s demise in 2019, when neither country was prepared to muster the political will to pursue the technical fixes that could answer its concerns. Reaching agreement on these matters will take time, as it did for analogous agreements during the Cold War, but agreement is surely possible.

Agree to a moratorium on NATO expansion. NATO’s expansion eastward is the crux of the current dispute. One of us has proposed a formal moratorium on expansion into former Soviet states, including Ukraine, for 20-25 years. The other proposes 2050 as the year in which the moratorium would end. There is nothing magical about the period; it just needs to be long enough so that Russia can claim its minimal security requirements have been met, and short enough so that the United States can credibly claim it has not abandoned the open-door policy. Even if a moratorium cannot be agreed, it should prove possible to find a mutually acceptable way to make it clear that Ukraine is not going to join NATO for years, if not decades, to come — something American and NATO officials will readily admit in private.

At the same time, the two sides should seek agreement on limits to NATO activities in and around Ukraine that meet Russia’s security concerns, but once again do not compromise NATO’s principles. Those could include a pledge by NATO member states not to build or occupy military bases in Ukraine or to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons systems that could strike Russian territory in exchange for a Russian pledge not to deploy certain weapons systems within a defined zone along Ukraine’s borders. This would not be an extraordinary concession by NATO members. In the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, NATO pledged not to deploy nuclear weapons or substantial permanent combat forces to new member states — because it had no plans to do so in any event. Certainly, NATO can now make pledges to refrain from certain types of activities with regard to nonmembers, if that will help ease Moscow’s concerns.

Resolve “frozen” conflicts. The ongoing and frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space and the Balkans, including Crimea, Kosovo and Donbas, all involve separatism of some sort. All should be resolved on the basis of some form of local democracy, that is, a vote to ascertain the will of the people in the separatist regions is the starting point, after which a series of technical agreements need to be reached to regulate issues that would necessarily grow out of any peaceful secession of a territory from a larger state. The exact form of the vote could be adapted to the specific circumstances of each conflict. It need not be a referendum on the issue of separatism. In the cases of both Crimea and Kosovo, the most prominent conflicts, regularly scheduled elections could serve this purpose, with the stipulation that victory would require that a qualified majority of the electorate vote for candidates who support separatism. The only requirement would be that the vote be internationally observed and then certified as free and fair to erase any doubt that it was legitimate. Such votes would undoubtedly reaffirm what most impartial observers know to be the hard truths that Kosovo will remain independent and Crimea will never go back to Ukraine. A similar vote could be used to determine how to move forward with the Donbas separatist regions, including whether the Minsk agreements should form the basis of the resolution or whether some minor adjustments have to be made to take into account local preferences.

Update the Helsinki Accords. Updating and modernizing the Helsinki Accords would cap a comprehensive settlement, laying the foundation for decades of peace in Europe. In particular, the two sides should seek agreement on the interpretation of the 10 principles guiding relations between states, to which all the parties agreed, including respect for sovereign rights, self-determination, noninterference in internal affairs, restraining from threats or use of force, and peaceful settlement of disputes. The goal is to establish a firm basis for the organization of European security going forward that takes into account historical developments and technological advances since 1975 that affect the way states relate to one another and act on the global stage.

Read full article here.

By Michael Hudson, Naked Capitalism, 2/7/22

The Iron Curtain of the 1940s and ‘50s was ostensibly designed to isolate the Soviet Union from Western Europe – to keep out Communist ideology and military penetration. Today’s sanctions regime is aimed inward, to prevent America’s NATO and other Western allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China. The aim is not so much to isolate Russia and China as to hold these allies firmly within America’s own economic orbit. Allies are to forego the benefits of importing Russian gas and Chinese products, buying much higher-priced U.S. LNG and other exports, capped by more U.S. arms.

The sanctions that U.S. diplomats are insisting that their allies impose against trade with Russia and China are aimed ostensibly at deterring a military buildup. But such a buildup cannot really be the main Russian and Chinese concern. They have much more to gain by offering mutual economic benefits to the West. So the underlying question is whether Europe will find its advantage in replacing U.S. exports with Russian and Chinese supplies and the associated mutual economic linkages.

What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO?  And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?

These are the concerns that have prompted French President Macron to call forth the ghost of Charles de Gaulle and urge Europe to turn away from what he calls NATO’s “brain-dead” Cold War and beak with the pro-U.S. trade arrangements that are imposing rising costs on Europe while denying it potential gains from trade with Eurasia. Even Germany is balking at demands that it freeze by this coming March by going without Russian gas.

Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat. All countries have come to realize that the world has reached a point at which no industrial economy has the manpower and political ability to mobilize a standing army of the size that would be needed to invade or even wage a major battle with a significant adversary. That political cost makes it uneconomic for Russia to retaliate against NATO adventurism prodding at its western border trying to incite a military response. It’s just not worth taking over Ukraine.

America’s rising pressure on its allies threatens to drive them out of the U.S. orbit. For over 75 years they had little practical alternative to U.S. hegemony. But that is now changing.

America no longer has the monetary power and seemingly chronic trade and balance-of-payments surplus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and investment rules in 1944-45. The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.

The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.) But Germany has no other way of heating many of its houses and office buildings (or supplying its fertilizer companies) than with Russian gas.

The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”[1]The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor…

Read full article here.

By Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch, 2/7/22

Doomsday predictions by the US and UK that Russia is about to invade Ukraine are rejected by military experts in Kyiv, who deny that the Russian army has the numbers or the equipment to stage such an attack.

“What we currently have,” writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the former Ukrainian defence minister, and military specialists, in a report by the Centre for Defence Studies in Kyiv, “is the military threat posed by about 127,000 Russian servicemen along Ukraine’s borders, in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, and in Crimea. This number has not increased since April [2021], and is not enough for a full-scale offensive.”

The report states categorically that Russian forces are not in a position to invade in the next two or three weeks and are unlikely to be able to do so in 2022. It points to the absence of ammunition and fuel along with field hospitals and trained up-to-strength military units essential to a modern army going to war. This negative judgement about the prospect of a Russian offensive is confirmed by Ukrainian ministers and defence officials who politely downplay the war hysteria in Washington and London.

Nor are the Ukrainian military experts alone in saying that Russia has not taken the practical military measures necessary for an invasion. Senior French officials express similar doubts: “We see the same number of lorries, tanks and people [as before],” one official told Le Monde. “We observed the same manoeuvres, but we cannot conclude an offensive is imminent.”

Contrast this view that nothing much is happening with what British and American officials are telling the world. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Wednesday that the United States sees “every indication that he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is going to use military force sometime perhaps [between] now and the middle of February”.

An anonymous senior British intelligence official speaking three days later was even more specific, being quoted as saying that six Russian amphibious warfare ships could seize the Black Sea port of Odessa as part of a multi-front offensive aimed at occupying the whole of Ukraine. “It’s not just a negotiating tactic or an idle threat when you deploy this many troops with this capability,” he said.

On the contrary, this is precisely what Russia would do in order to give their unspoken threat of invasion substance so that it can be a powerful lever in any negotiations. Going by reports from Kyiv, the Russians have in reality done surprisingly little to make the prospect of their launching a multipronged blitzkrieg more credible.

But then they do not have to because the US and Britain are doing the Kremlin’s work for it. They compare the deployment of 127,000 troops – far too few to occupy Ukraine, which is larger than France – with the 11 million strong Red Army at the end of the Second World War. The intelligence official cited above sought to drive home the analogy by pointing to the transfer of Russian forces from the Far East, saying that this had not happened since 1941 and was “unprecedented in the modern era”.

If a grand Russian offensive is not in the offing, could they not stage a more economical attack, perhaps confining it to seizing big cities like Kyiv, Kharkov and Odessa? In practice, this would be a recipe for disaster since it would leave great tracts of Ukrainian territory unconquered, and capable of resistance, in the rear of Russian tank columns.

The only Russian advance that has military credibility would be in the far south-east of Ukraine between the Russian separatist self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and Russian-annexed Crimea. It would be possible for Russian troops to seize Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, a city with a population of 565,000 and two of Europe’s largest steel mills, which is only 15 miles from the separatist republics.

But analysts with good sources in Moscow tell me that the Russians would not do this, even if the crisis escalates dramatically. Seizing even a sliver of Ukraine would precipitate an avalanche of Western sanctions, halt the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and drive Ukraine closer to Nato – things which are the opposite of what the Kremlin wants to get…

Read full article here.

By Henry Hale & Adam Lenton, PONARS, 2/2/22

(PONARS Eurasia Commentary) With warnings Russia will invade Ukraine growing louder by the day, it is common to hear that President Vladimir Putin has passed the point of no return. Having made public security demands that NATO considers non-starters, anything short of invasion will be seen as weakness and undermine Putin’s authority at home. In other words, Putin may have—intentionally or not—backed himself into a corner.

Such accounts overlook key sources of Putin’s domestic appeal, which is based much more on pragmatically providing stability, security, and prosperity than on aggressiveness. This gives him options for backing off that Western governments should not neglect.

What Russians Want

Surveys have long asked Russians what kind of foreign policy they want, and two things are clear. For one, Russians do see the United States and NATO as a threat. But when asked about how Russia should treat the West, majorities consistently favor a cooperative, soft-line orientation. In other words, Russians want to treat the West better than they think it is now treating them.

What Putin Tells His People

In his major appearances, Putin sells himself to his people in just this way, as a cool head of reason and pragmatism in the face of a West that he depicts as rash, hysterical, and full of double standards and zealotry. This rhetoric has been remarkably consistent since his famous 2007 “Munich Speech.”

This is also how Russians understand Putin. Rather than a hawk, most believe they are getting a foreign policy moderate with Putin. Moreover, it is consistently pro-Western Russians—not anti-Western ones—who support him. Russians who advocate a more aggressive foreign policy tend to back others, such as the Communist Party (which recently called on Putin to recognize the breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine) or the LDPR (whose leader, in turn, called for the whole of Ukraine to “become part of Russia”). These parties seldom risk overt conflict with Putin but allow Putin tactically to occupy a broad center, where majority opinion lies….

Read full article here.