By Prof. Glenn Diesen, Substack, 11/26/24

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contacts with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men have died on the battlefield. The decision by diplomats to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant as diplomacy could have reduced the excess of violence, prevented escalation, and even resulted in a path to peace. However, the political-media elites skilfully sold the rejection of diplomacy to the public as evidence of their moral righteousness.

This article will first outline how NATO planned for a long war to exhaust Russia and knock it out from the ranks of great powers. Second, this article will demonstrate how the political-media elites communicated that diplomacy is treasonous and war is virtuous. 

NATO’s Long War

To exhaust Russia in a long war, the goal was to ensure that the Russians and Ukrainians kill each other for as long as possible. The US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin outlined the US objective in the Ukraine War as weakening its strategic adversary: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”.[1] In late March 2022, Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[2]

The Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Russia and Ukraine agreed to the terms of a peaceful settlement in Istanbul, in which Russia would withdraw its forces and Ukraine would restore its neutrality. However, why would the US and its allies accept that Ukraine return to neutrality, when the alternative was to use the powerful proxy army they had built in Ukraine to bleed and weaken Russia?[3]

The Turkish Foreign Minister acknowledged that there are “NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.[4] The former Israeli Prime Minister also confirmed that the US and UK “blocked” the peace agreement as there was a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” to destroy a strategic rival.[5] The retired German General, Harald Kujat, a former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, also argued that this was a war deliberately provoked by NATO, while the US and UK sabotaged all paths to peace “to weaken Russia politically, economically and militarily”.[6] Interviews with American and British leaders in March 2022, revealed that a decision had been made for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime”.[7]

Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US State Department criticised Washington for the objective to prolong the fighting to “fight to the last Ukrainian”.[8] Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued that the US was in a favourable position as it could fight Russia to the last Ukrainian: “I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person”.[9] Republican leader Mitch McConnell was similarly explicit:

“the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. Helping equip our friends in Eastern Europe to win this war is also a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies, and contest our core interests”.[10]

Senator Mitt Romney argued that financing the war was “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done” as “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money” and “we’re losing no lives in Ukraine”. US Congressman Dan Crenshaw also celebrated the proxy war as “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea”.[11]

Retired US General Keith Kellogg similarly called for extending the war in Ukraine as knocking out Russia would allow the US to focus on China: “if you can defeat a strategic adversary not using any US troops, you are at the acme of professionalism”. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg shared this logic as he argued defeating Russia on the battlefield will make it easier for the US to focus on China. Stoltenberg also noted that “if Ukraine wins, then you will have the second biggest army in Europe, the Ukrainian army, battle-hardened, on our side, and we’ll have a weakened Russian army”.[12]

Diplomacy as Treason and War as Virtue

When the decision had been made for a long war, the politicians and media began to construct narratives and a moral case for a long war, which would convince the public that diplomacy is treasonous, and war is virtuous.

Presenting the world as a struggle of good versus evil lays the foundation for effective war propaganda, as perpetual peace can be achieved by defeating the evil opponent while negotiations entail sacrificing indispensable values and principles. To this end, the Hitler analogy is very effective as diplomacy becomes dangerous appeasement while peace requires military victory. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s “war is peace”, Stoltenberg argues that weapons are the path to peace.

The Western public was reassured that fuelling the war was required to push Putin to the negotiation table, however, during almost three years of war the West never proposed negotiations. Reading the Western media, one gets the impression that Russia would not negotiate. However, Russia never opposed diplomacy or negotiations, it was the West that shut the door. So-called “peace summits” were held to give the public the impression that governments pursued peace, although Russia was not invited and the stated purpose was to mobilise public opinion and resources against Russia.

In November 2022, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley argued for starting negotiations with Russia. Ukraine had just captured large swaths of territory in Kherson and Kharkov, and General Milley argued Ukraine would not be in a better position to negotiate a peace deal. General Milley was correct in this assessment, yet he neglected that the principal objective of the war was to keep it going to bleed Russia. General Milley had to walk back his statements that threatened to end the war.[13]

The EU almost always advocates for immediate diplomacy and negotiations in conflicts around the world. In Ukraine, the EU’s foreign policy chief at the beginning of the war, Josep Borrell, argued that the war would be won on the battlefield.[14] The incoming foreign policy chief of the EU, Kaja Kallas, rejected any need for diplomacy during the war: “Why talk to him [Putin], he is a war criminal”.[15] Diplomacy now entails sitting in a room with people who agree with you, and pat each other on the shoulder for having isolated the adversary. The EU has completed its transition from a peace project to a geopolitical project.

Anyone suggesting to restore diplomacy or start negotiations is immediately smeared as a far-left or far-right pro-Russian stooge. It is hardly original to present the opposition to war as taking the side of the adversary, yet the accusation of treason is a powerful instrument to crush dissent. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban travelled to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US (to meet with Trump) to explore the possibility of charting a path to peace. The EU responded by punishing Hungary and the political-media elites sought to delegitimise him as a puppet of Putin. The same script is applied to anyone suggesting to end the war.

Arguing against the dangerous precedent of “rewarding” Putin’s aggression with territory has been another seemingly moral argument against peace negotiations. However, this argument is based on the false premise that the war began as a territorial dispute. As we learned from the Istanbul peace agreement, Russia agreed to pull back its troops in return for Ukraine restoring its neutrality. Furthermore, the proxy war has been lost and Ukraine will only lose more men and territory with each passing day.

NATO’s continued insistence that Ukraine will become a member state after the war is presented to the public as a moral sign of support for Ukraine, although in reality, it has the effect of obstructing a political settlement. Ending NATO expansionism must be the cornerstone of any lasting peace agreement as this was the source of the war.

The Coming Backlash

As the Ukrainian frontlines collapse and their causalities subsequently intensify, the Americans are pushing Ukraine to lower its conscription age as sacrificing the youth could keep the war going for a bit longer. The Ukrainian public no longer wants to fight, desertions increase drastically, and “recruitment” consists of grabbing civilians off the streets and throwing them into vans that take them almost directly to the front lines. A recent Gallup poll found that there is not a single oblast in Ukraine where the majority support continuing the war.[16]

Oleksyi Arestovych, the former advisor to President Zelensky, predicted in 2019 that the threat of NATO expansion would “provoke Russia to launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine”. NATO would then use the Ukrainian army to defeat Russia: “In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West—with weapons, equipment, assistance, new sanctions against Russia and the quite possible introduction of a NATO contingent, a no-fly zone etc. We won’t lose, and that’s good’.[17]

The war did not go as planned and Ukraine is being destroyed, and Arestovych recognises the folly of continuing the war. There is a growing realisation in Ukrainian society that NATO sabotaged the peace to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Ukrainians will resent Russia for decades to come, although there will also be hatred against the West. The war propagandists in the Western media will then surely act bewildered and blame Russian propaganda.

---

[1] G. Carbonaro, ‘U.S. Wants Russia ‘Weakened’ So It Can Never Invade Again’, Newsweek, 25 April 2022.

[2] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.

[3] The Minsk Peace Agreement was never intended to be implemented but used as an opportunity to build a large Ukrainian military, which both German and France have admitted.

[4] R. Semonsen, ‘Former Israeli PM: West Blocked Russo-Ukraine Peace Deal’, The European Conservative, 7 February 2023.

[5] N. Bennett, ‘Bennett speaks out’, YouTube Channel of Naftali Bennett, 4 February 2023.

[6] Emma, ‘Russland will verhandeln!’ [Russia wants to negotiate!], Emma, 4 March 2023.

[7] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.

[8] A. Maté, ‘US fighting Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’: veteran US diplomat’, The Grayzone, 24 March 2022.

[9] A. Maté, ‘US, UK sabotaged peace deal because they ‘don’t care about Ukraine’: fmr. NATO adviser’, The Grayzone, 27 September 2022.

[10] M. McConnell, ‘McConnell on Zelenskyy Visit: Helping Ukraine Directly Serves Core American Interests’, Mitch McConnell official website, 21 December 2022.

[11] L. Lonas, ‘Crenshaw, Greene clash on Twitter: ‘Still going after that slot on Russia Today’’, The Hill, 11 May 2022.

[12] T. O’Conner, ‘So, if the United States is concerned about China and wants to pivot towards Asia, then you have to ensure that Putin doesn’t win in in Ukraine’, Newsweek, 21 September 2023.

[13] K. Demirjian, Milley tries to clarify his case for a negotiated end to Ukraine war, The Washington Post, 16 November 2022.

[14] Foreign Affairs Council: Remarks by High Representative Josep Borrell upon arrival | EEAS, https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/foreign-affairs-council-remarks-high-representative-josep-borrell-upon-arrival-1_en

[15] “Why talk to Putin? He’s a war criminal” Estonian PM Kaja Kallas,

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DG1IbMP7SR4?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[16] B. Vigers, Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War, Gallup, 19 November 2024, Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War

[17] A. Arestovich, ‘Voennoe Obozrenie’ [Military Review], Apostrof TV, 18 February 2019.

Rumble link here.

By Kit Klarenberg & Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 11/25/24

After years in the wilderness of right-wing radio, where he flamboyantly proclaimed his loyalty to president-elect Donald Trump for years, Sebastian Gorka has finally found his way back into Trump’s inner circle, earning an appointment as incoming White House counter-terror advisor. 

Gorka served as Trump’s deputy assistant advisor on national security issues for eight months in 2017, storming out of his job with a petulant resignation letter that blamed “forces” within the administration that did not support Trump’s “MAGA promise.” During his brief tenure in the White House, Gorka, a London-born immigrant, was credited with masterminding the President’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which refused admission to the US for citizens of countries identified as national security threats.

While Democrats have hammered Gorka as “a far-right extremist” and MAGA sycophant, he has stood out as a voice of Biden foreign policy continuity within Trumpworld, pledging further aggression against Russia and even greater military aid to Kiev. During a November 23 interview, for example, Gorka promised that “the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts” if “the murderous KGB colonel” Vladimir Putin does not obey Trump’s dictates. 

Gorka’s full origin story explains why his views on the Ukraine proxy war track more closely with those of the anti-Trump turncoat John Bolton than incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, who has vowed to negotiate an end to the conflict. As this investigation will demonstrate, the mindset of the Transatlantic policy operative was molded primarily through his intimate involvement in British intelligence circles—not his role within the America First movement.

The son of an anti-communist Hungarian exile, Gorka joined a British Army intelligence unit while still in university. When he entered the world of national security studies, he learned at the knee of a notoriously conniving British military intelligence officer named Chris Donnelly, who has dedicated his career to instigating conflict with Russia, and was exposed by The Grayzone as an architect of the notorious Kerch Bridge bombing.

Donnelly personally endorsed Gorka’s PhD thesis, granting him the imprimatur of a top intelligence officer in the British Ministry of Defence. The relationship fueled Gorka’s career within the burgeoning Atlanticist military infrastructure, yet ultimately cost him security clearance in his family’s native Hungary, where the country’s National Security Office suspected him of being a UK spy.

Soon after Gorka resigned from the first Trump administration, leaked documents exposed Donnelly as the founder of a secret, UK state-funded influence operation called the Integrity Initiative, which was aimed at drumming up war with Russia through a covert international propaganda network. A 2017 funding proposal submitted by the Integrity Initiative to the British Ministry of Defence promised to deliver a “tougher stance on Russia” by arranging for “more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures.”

When Donnelly visited Washington in 2018 to expand his secret initiative, the first item on his agenda was breakfast with Gorka. To this day, Gorka refuses to discuss the meeting, or any aspect of his relationship with Donnelly, erupting with rage at reporters who have dared to inquire about the long friendship.

Gorka’s security clearance rejected “due to his connections with British intelligence”

Sebastian Gorka grew up in London in the shadow of his father, Paul, an exiled Hungarian nationalist activist affiliated with the Vitezi Rend, an anti-communist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. Sebastian Gorka blames Kim Philby, the British double agent, for betraying his father to the Soviets, leading to his imprisonment – and seemingly exposing his father’s role as an MI6 asset. However, Paul Gorka provided a different account of his capture in an interview with the British historian and Holocaust revisionist David Irving, claiming Hungarian intelligence broke his cell after discovering papers on one of his cell’s couriers. 

After members of Vitezi Rend broke Paul Gorka out of prison during their failed 1956 attempt to topple the country’s communist leadership, he found refuge in the UK. From London, Paul Gorka worked for the British government, helping them vet anti-communist emigres arriving from Hungary. Young Gorka’s mother, Susan, found part-time work as a translator to Irving, the Holocaust revisionist historian. She was credited as an interpreter in his 740-page tome, “Uprising! One Nation’s Nightmare, 1956,” which portrayed the CIA and MI6-backed Hungarian rebellion of 1956 as a worker’s insurrection against a corrupt communist leadership, which happened to be disproportionately Jewish. 

With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Sebastian Gorka set his sights on a career serving British national security interests. From 1990 to 1993, Gorka served in Unit 22 of the British military’s Territorial Army Intelligence Corps as an interrogator. The duties he carried out in the intelligence unit later became a source of intrigue, and remain mysterious to this day.

In 1999, following a fellowship at NATO, Gorka returned to Hungary to advise the first government of Victor Orban, establishing himself as a prominent national security commentator in the country of his family’s origin. Three years later, when Hungary’s new Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy faced accusations that he had conducted counter-espionage operations for the country’s communist government 20 years prior, Gorka was selected to investigate the charges on a parliamentary committee. However, the country’s National Security Office rejected the security clearance he needed to join the committee because, as the Hungarian news outlet Origo reported, it “became risky from a national security point of view due to [Gorka’s] connections with British intelligence.”

As the scandal swirled in Hungarian media, dramatically different accounts of Gorka’s involvement in British Army intelligence appeared in the media. The UK’s Sunday Times reported that Gorka’s duties in the unit included gathering “evidence for the war crimes tribunal set up after the collapse of Yugoslavia.” However, Gorka claimed to Hungarian media, “I never dealt with intelligence… we were tasked with guarding key facilities [in Northern Ireland], such as fending off IRA threats.”

It was unclear how Gorka could have served in two regions at around the same time, or what his intelligence duties actually entailed. When contacted by American reporters about his service, the British Military of Defense declined to provide details.

A year after being publicly accused of working for British intelligence, Gorka left Hungary for the US. “My American wife and I woke up one morning and realized America was the future,” he claimed.

Donnelly praises Gorka’s “academic excellence”

The scandal over Gorka’s security clearance received a smattering of coverage from liberal blogs when he was appointed to serve during the first Trump administration in 2017. But US media has not written a word about the much more consequential relationship he enjoyed with the British intelligence officer Chris Donnelly.

Donnelly brought Gorka under his wing during the post-Cold War period, while he personally lobbied for NATO enlargement in former Soviet satellite states like Hungary. The officer’s 2005 work, “Nations, Alliances and Security,” was edited by Gorka, who also wrote its foreword. 

Two years later, Gorka published a PhD dissertation on “Content and End-State-based Alteration in the Practice of Political Violence since the End of the Cold War.” Donnelly, then-chief of the British Ministry of Defence intelligence unit known as the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, authored a glowing “external review” of Gorka’s doctorate, describing it as “a work not only of academic excellence, but also of significant current policy relevance.”

In October 2008, Britain’s Ditchley Foundation, which holds regular conferences on the topic of British-American relations, convened an event in conjunction with the Foreign Office, on “the future of NATO, in Europe and globally.” Both Donnelly and Gorka appeared on the discussion panel, alongside spies, high-ranking military NATO officials, and lawmakers. The meeting was “deliberately timed to sit between the Bucharest summit of April 2008 and the 60th Anniversary Summit in April 2009.”

The Bucharest summit was where NATO member states agreed Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.” Then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has since written with intense regret about the decision, which laid the foundations for Russia’s crushing of Tbilisi in a brief war five months later, as well as the current Ukraine proxy conflict.

When Gorka and his mentor reunited in Washington almost a decade later, Donnelly was intent on working his connections to drive conflict with Russia.

Below: Chris Donnelly’s passport, leaked in the Integrity Initiative files

Donnelly meets secretly in DC with Gorka, pushing war with Russia

During Trump’s first term, as the president battled a deluge of partisan propaganda painting him as a Putin puppet, and with American liberals transformed overnight into frothing Russophobes, British intelligence gleaned a perfect opportunity to escalate a simmering new Cold War.

On September 18, 2018, Integrity Initiative chief Chris Donelly flew into Washington to expand his new covert influence network. The following morning, he headed straight to breakfast with his former understudy, Sebastian Gorka. 

Afterwards, Donnelly took a car to the Arlington, Virginia offices of CNA, the think tank adjunct of the US Center for Naval Analyses and key Integrity Initiative “partner” in DC, to deliver a lengthy presentation on “mapping Russian influence activities.” 

Leaked files of Donnelly’s Initiative listed Gorka’s wife, Katharine, as a key contact. At the time, she was a senior advisor at the Department of Homeland Security. (Today, she is the chair of the GOP in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County, a hub for private military and intelligence contractors).

The same file described how the organization’s clusters “engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal contacts…and try to influence them gently.”

On that basis, both Gorkas clearly fit the bill for Integrity Initiative cluster members, even though the covert operation played an apparent role in several propaganda operations aimed at destroying Trump and subverting his agenda.

For instance, Integrity Initiative operatives were instrumental in circulating disgraced MI6 officer Christopher Steele’s bogus “Trump-Russia” dossier at the highest levels of the US government, and in turn, disseminating it throughout Western media. That connivance was clearly aimed at delegitimizing Trump while boxing his administration into a belligerent stance on Russia.

In Britain, Integrity Initiative operatives fraudulently linked the Brexit referendum’s result to Russian meddling. In Spain, meanwhile, the Initiative spread disinformation falsely portrayjng the Catalan independence movement as a Russian-controlled operation, delivering a body blow to cordial relations between Madrid and Russia. 

In March 2021, when grilled by The American Conservative about his secret meeting in DC with Donnelly, Gorka exploded, telling the outlet’s reporter to “go to hell,” and asking “who the hell” they were to ask him about “private conversations…with a friend.” Gorka refused to discuss his bond with Donnelly any further.

He similarly ignored questions sent by The Grayzone through direct message to his personal Twitter/X account.

Today, Donnelly helps oversee Britain’s clandestine role in the Ukraine proxy war. As The Grayzone revealed, Donnelly oversaw the blueprints for the Ukrainian terror attack which damaged the Russian-built Kerch Bridge in October 2022. By design, the bombing was a pivotal step up the escalation ladder.

Now, as Trump sets out to fulfill his promise to end the conflict in Ukraine, Donnelly enjoys a direct line to one of the president’s top national security aides, who happens to be his longtime understudy.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 12/11/24

The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, which Moscow had helped to prop up for almost a decade, has dealt a serious setback to Russia’s global ambitions.

But Russian foreign policy specialists insist it’s not a ruinous one.

As they grapple with the rapid demise of Mr. Assad’s rule, Russian analysts say that the Kremlin will need to adjust to the shifting balance of power in the Middle East. That includes absorbing the likely loss of Russia’s two military bases in Syria, and accepting what analysts call the crushing defeat of Kremlin ally Iran.

The psychological blow to Russia is also serious, they warn. The Kremlin’s 2015 military intervention in Syria was Moscow’s first such post-Soviet operation outside its own region. Its perceived success drove a lot of Russia’s subsequent diplomatic efforts in the Mideast, as well as its recent inroads into Africa.

Igor Korotchenko, editor of National Defense, a Moscow-based security journal, says he’s still cautiously optimistic that Russian global influence can survive the loss of Syria, and perhaps the Kremlin can even forge a practical relationship with any new Syrian regime that emerges.

“Let’s wait and see how things play out,” he says. “Russia is still a player in the region, maintaining good relations with countries like the UAE, Egypt, and Qatar. We never put our stakes on one person, and we have sufficient resources to pursue our goals” without a foothold in Syria.

Doling out blame for Syria

For now, the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces have not touched the Russian Embassy or military installations – Iran’s Embassy in Damascus was trashed on the first day – even though Mr. Assad and his family have been granted asylum in Russia.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Moscow was in contact with the new Syrian authorities in an effort to safeguard Russian assets. “We need to base our actions on the realities that exist at this moment on the ground,” he said.

Russia reached out to the Taliban after the United States’ failure in Afghanistan, canceling its “terrorist” designation and discussing a broader normalization of relations; experts say Moscow may wish to make a similar outreach to HTS. But it will be much harder given Russia’s staunch backing of Mr. Assad and its armed efforts to suppress the Syrian opposition over the past decade.

Russia’s naval base in Tartus, Syria, shown here in a Dec. 5, 2024, satellite image, is one of two Russian military bases whose future the Kremlin is worried about under a new Syrian government.

Whatever may happen, the blame game is already in full swing in the Russian media.

Some are pointing at Turkey, which allegedly sidestepped the Astana peace process and went behind Russia’s back to sponsor the HTS rebel offensive that overran Damascus last weekend. Others say Israel’s successful war against major backers like Iran and Hezbollah made Mr. Assad’s fall inevitable, even though Moscow kept providing air support to the bitter end.

Some accuse Mr. Assad himself of self-isolating and refusing all attempts to find a broader social compromise.

“Assad didn’t take Russian advice,” says Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser. “He was told many times that he needed to initiate some real political reforms, include members of the opposition in government, reconcile with Turkey, and curb the excesses of his security forces. He didn’t listen.

“So, Assad was already distanced from Russia. At the end, he was taking advice from Iran and his own family, not from us,” he says.

“A bad setback, but we can get past this”

Despite the Putin-era aura of success, this is far from the first time Moscow has faced a debacle in its Middle East relations.

Soviet-sponsored Syria lost two wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973, necessitating replacement of its military arsenal. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat canceled a treaty of friendship with the USSR in 1971, and kicked all Soviet advisers out of the country. Moscow’s disastrous war in Afghanistan in the 1980s poisoned its relations with the Muslim world, and even contributed to the collapse of the Soviet state.

“We’ve got a long history of dealing with these countries, and we’re quite accustomed to seeing them defeated militarily,” says Mr. Markov. “So, the mood in Moscow [over the loss of Syria] is calm enough. It’s a bad setback, but we can get past this.”

Unlike the former Soviet Union, which based its foreign policy on ideological calculations, Vladimir Putin’s Russia tends to take a pragmatic and transactional approach, seeking advantage where it can, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal.

“The Middle East is a region where you can’t expect any lasting success,” he says. “The big loser in this turn of events is Iran, and the winners are Israel and Turkey.”

As for Russian relations with Ankara, he says, “Of course Moscow is angry, because the Turks knew about the HTS offensive and didn’t say a word to us about it. But that’s how Russian-Turkish relations work in general: A very low level of trust, but we try to find common ground and work together where we can.”

Moscow’s formerly good relations with Israel will grow even worse with the implosion of Russian military power in Syria. “Israel is becoming much stronger as a regional power,” says Mr. Markov. “Russia needs to think about how to deal with Israel in these new conditions, where it is a clear winner.”

A shift in world affairs?

Mr. Lukyanov argues that the fall of Mr. Assad illustrates a completely new trend in world affairs, in which regional players take the lead and the influence of their great-power sponsors diminishes. The main actors in the Syrian drama are relatively independent ones, including Israel, Turkey, Iran, and even HTS. The U.S. and Russia are still on the stage, but are not driving events and, Mr. Lukyanov says, are increasingly irrelevant.

“It’s a seismic shift, in which outside powers are steadily losing influence and local actors are taking the lead,” he says. “Russian capacities are shrinking, but so are American ones. In future, regional powers will be the most important players, formulating their priorities in a regional way.”

Russia already made the choice to put its own local interests first, declining to divert any resources from its war in Ukraine to help Mr. Assad.

“Moscow needs to think about the implications of this,” Mr. Lukyanov says. “Maybe the race for global influence is obsolete, and Russia needs to reformulate its ambitions in terms of being an effective regional power.”

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 12/13/24

President-elect Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of “escalating this war” in Ukraine and “making it worse” by allowing U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired from Ukraine deep into Russia.

“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published on Thursday. He said:

“Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake, very big mistake.”

Last Thursday former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter was on a day-long venture in the labyrinth of House office buildings on Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress and their staffs to prevent the U.S. from attacking Russia with ATACMS.

That alone, Ritter argued, would reduce the threat of a nuclear exchange with Russia, which had warned would be possible if the missile attacks continue.

Among the steps Ritter recommended to Republican Congressmen was to get word to Trump’s transition team to get Trump to make an immediate statement that after he is sworn in he will order a cessation of ATACMS being fired into Russia.

Such a statement from Trump, Ritter argued on Capitol Hill, would lessen tension with Moscow over the ATACMS and possibly avert catastrophe.  Trump’s comments to Time was what Ritter had in mind.

Trump  said:

‘”I think the most dangerous thing right now is what’s happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it’s a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that.”

Ritter entering Congressional office at the Capitol to warn of nuclear war. (Joe Lauria)

Biden’s Inexplicable & Reckless Change in Course

Just two months ago, in September, President Joe Biden had bowed to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose allowing long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.

Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” 

That was a clear warning that British and U.S. targets could be hit. Biden thus wisely backed off. 

It was the second time that Biden had sided with the Pentagon against the neocons in his administration when it came to avoiding direct war with Russia.

The first time was in March 2022 when his neocon Secretary of State Antony Blinken stepped out of line to announce that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft.  

[See: The Madness of Antony Blinken]

Members of Congress and the media then piled the pressure on Biden to approve it until cooler heads at the U.S. Defense Department, the greatest purveyor of violence in history, stepped in to stop it.

Biden ultimately sided with the Pentagon, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”

But then, after his party lost the White House in November, Biden suddenly reversed himself on his sensible positions and is defied the Pentagon to roll the dice that Russia’s warnings are bluffs that won’t lead to nuclear conflict. 

While he previously would not even authorize British long-range missile attacks into Russia in September, let alone U.S. ATACMS, he authorized the ATACMS, risking Russia taking direct action against U.S. targets. 

It remains to be seen if Trump’s words can reassure the Kremlin.

Of course it was Trump who provided Ukraine with lethal aid. Barack Obama had refused, saying Ukraine was not a vital U.S. interest, as it was for Russia and there was no point in angering Moscow. Obama also worried that U.S. weapons could wind up in the hands of “thugs” — i.e., Azov, neo-nazi types in Ukraine.