Yesterday Turkish forces in the Idlib province of Syria, who have been attempting to stave off the defeat of Turkish-backed terrorist “rebels,” were killed as a result of airstrikes that have been officially blamed by Turkey on the Syrian government but may have involved the Russian air force. Newsweek reported the following:

Turkish Hatay province Governor Rahmi Dogan has announced that at least 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in airstrikes blamed on the Syrian government against their positions in the country’s northwestern province of Idlib. The count has risen steadily since an initial announcement of nine dead and more injured, some critically.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitor supportive of Syria’s exiled political opposition, first reported a death toll of up to 34 Turkish soldiers earlier Thursday in an area where both the Syrian and Russian air forces were highly active. The monitor did not assign responsibility for the strikes.

Erdogan has been talking tough about how he will spare no effort to stop the Syrian government from re-taking control of its own territory in Idlib, which it is feared would result in hundreds of thousands of additional refugees crossing into Turkey, among other problems. Scott Ritter reported yesterday for RT that Erdogan had consulted with NATO – invoking Article 4 – but seems to have had little success in getting the alliance on board to assist Turkey in Syria:

Turkey engaged NATO in Article 4 consultations, seeking help regarding the crisis in Syria. The meeting produced a statement from NATO condemning the actions of Russia and Syria and advocating for humanitarian assistance, but denying Turkey the assistance it sought.

The situation in Idlib province has reached crisis proportions. A months-long military offensive by the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force and pro-Iranian militias, had recaptured nearly one-third of the territory occupied by anti-Assad groups funded and armed by Turkey. In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dispatched thousands of Turkish soldiers, backed by thousands of pieces of military equipment, including tanks and armored vehicles, into Idlib to bolster his harried allies.

The result has been a disaster for Turkey, which has lost more than 50 soldiers and had scores more wounded due to Syrian air attacks. For its part, Russia has refrained from directly engaging Turkish forces, instead turning its attention to countering Turkish-backed militants. Faced with mounting casualties, Turkey turned to NATO for assistance, invoking Article 4 of the NATO charter, which allows members to request consultations whenever, in their opinion, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.

Among the foundational principles of the NATO alliance, most observers focus on Article 5, which declares that an attack against one member is an attack against all. However, throughout its 75-year history, Article 5 has been invoked only once – in the aftermath of 9/11 – resulting in joint air and maritime patrols, but no direct military confrontation. The wars that NATO has engaged in militarily, whether in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq, have all been conducted under Article 4, when NATO made a collective decision to provide assistance in a situation that did not involve a direct military attack on one of its member states….

…The best Turkey could get from its Article 4 consultation, however, was a lukewarm statement by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, condemning Syria and Russia while encouraging a diplomatic resolution to the fighting in Syria that focused on alleviating the unfolding humanitarian crisis regarding refugees. This is a far cry from the kind of concrete military support, such as the provision of Patriot air defense systems or NATO enforcement of a no-fly zone over Idlib, Turkey was hoping for.

Antiwar.com has also reported that comments out of Washington don’t seem to indicate much interest in direct military assistance to Turkey at this time:

US officials are making clear they aren’t considering joining the war in any real way. Defense Secretary Mark Esper in particular said that “I don’t see any likelihood that we would be back along the border.“

In a failed effort to pressure the European nations to support Turkey’s continuing gambit in Syria, Erdogan decided to open up the Turkish border into Europe, namely Bulgaria and Greece, for 72 hours to allow Syrian refugees to head into the EU.

A telephone conversation took place between Erdogan and Putin in which the Kremlin confirmed that a meeting could take place in the near future but no date was given. Other than the airing of views between the two and an agreement to ” step up the corresponding interagency consultations and to examine the possibility of soon holding a meeting at the highest level,” nothing concrete was announced.

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Tulsi surrogate Niko House debates Bernie surrogate Ben Burgis on their respective candidates’ policies. The debate primarily focuses on foreign policy but some domestic policy is touched on as well.

Turkish troops have been engaged in direct fighting with Syrian Arab Army soldiers as the Assad government – with the help of the Russian air force – has endeavored to retake control of Idlib province, the last stronghold of foreign-backed terrorist “rebels” in Syria. Below is a video of journalist Aaron Mate interviewing former weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the current situation in Idlib.

In the midst of escalating clashes, Erdogan announced this past weekend that he has agreed to meet with Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Macron on March 5th regarding the situation in Syria. According to Politico:

Erdoğan did not say where the leaders would meet. Russia, Germany and France did not immediately confirm the meeting.

Merkel and Macron have expressed growing alarm about the situation in Idlib, where an escalation in fighting has displaced nearly 1 million people in recent weeks amid aerial bombing by Syrian regime forces and their Russian allies.

The two leaders also took time out from an extraordinary leaders’ summit on the EU budget this week to hold phone calls with Putin and Erdoğan about the situation in Syria.

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The extradition hearing to determine whether Julian Assange will be handed over to the United States from the UK to face charges under the Espionage Act, began this past Monday. One of the best places to get updates from the hearing in London is from journalist Kevin Gosztola. His Twitter thread live from the Monday’s hearing can be found here:

This is a thread for Day 1 of Julian Assange’s one-week extradition hearing. Prosecutor (unsure of name at moment) has started opening argument and emphasizes there have been “misstatements of the charges against him.”

Prosecutor: First charge is “straightforward criminality and a conspiracy to steal and hack into Department of Defense computer system. This is an ordinary criminal charge and any person, journalist, or source, who tried to gain unauthorized access to computer system is guilty.”

Prosecutor: “Reporting our journalism is not an excuse for criminality.” “True in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States of America”

Prosecutor says they are not criminalizing the publication of classified materials but rather the publication of names of informants or dissidents who help the US and allies in military operations

James Lewis QC suggests identities revealed in documents were all individuals who passed information about countries, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran

James Lewis QC said Assange is raising abuses of process to “deflect from his criminal behavior” and those issues can be dealt with once he is “returned” to the United States

James Lewis QC states Assange knew publishing documents to the internet would be so damaging to security and intel services in United States and damaging to armed forces, as well as US interests.

James Lewis QC is essentially reciting summary of Chelsea Manning’s trial, which I’m not going to bother to share details from unless he says something we didn’t hear in 2013 during her trial. But all her conduct is being recited because US is prosecuting as conspiracy case

Much of this is recycled, and crucially, James Lewis QC shares details about the digital media found in Bin Laden’s compound in Abottabad which was a sensational piece of evidence in Manning’s trial to argue she aided the enemy. Manning was acquitted of that charge

You can follow his reporting at Shadowproof.com.

Joe Lauria of Consortium News is also reporting directly from London. An excerpt from his report on the second day of the trial in which the defense responded to assertions made by the prosecution:

Assange attorney Mark Summers revealed that Assange’s supposed attempt to help Manning “hack” a government computer for secret documents was actually an attempt to help her crack a password to  download video games, movies and music videos, forbidden on military computers.

Summers says Manning had legal access to classified material and did not need a user name or a password to get into the database.   The Espionage Act indictment says Assange helped Manning sign in under an administrator’s password in order to help get secrets, not the latest video game.

The U.S. government’s case is based on “lies, lies and more lies,” Summers told the court.  Summers said that there’s no evidence Manning ever saw WikiLeak‘s wish list, and she provided material that wasn’t asked for. Manning gave WikiLeaks the U.S. Rules of Engagement in Iraq to show that the Collateral Murder video had violated those rules, not because Assange had asked for it, Summers said. 

It is difficult to understand how a journalist asking sources to provide the information, even classified information, can be construed as a crime. 

Summers also gave a detailed explanation about why the government’s assertion that Assange had endangered the lives of U.S. informants was false.   He explained that Assange had instituted a Harm Mitigation Program to redact the names of informants and other people that might be at risk, a program so stringent that David Leigh of The Guardian complained to Der Spiegel, two publications partnering with WikiLeaks, that too much time was being wasted. 

A Spiegel journalist said it was the [most] extreme measures he had ever experienced. Summers also told the court that The Guardian was responsible for publishing the password for the encrypted, un-redacted State Department cables that WikiLeaks and its media partners were slowly and carefully running out. When The Guardian made the entire archive available, Assange called the State Department to warn them.    

Read more here.

As we keep hearing reports of a possible withdrawal agreement with the Taliban being imminent, it’s a good time to take note of a few facts about the U.S. military presence in that country and its effects.

At the end of 2019, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft reported on the Asia Foundation’s periodic Survey of the Afghan People. Unsurprisingly, Afghans want U.S. forces to leave their country and fear them as much as the Taliban:

Foreign military occupations are known to increase resentment among the local population. After 18 years of war, Afghans experience similar levels of fear when encountering American-led international forces as they do Taliban forces. At the same time, they are increasingly optimistic about the prospects for peace but don’t see the foreign forces as important to that process, according to the latest iteration of the Asia Foundation’s Survey of the Afghan People. For the United States, this raises serious questions about the utility of its continued military presence in Afghanistan.

The intent of the survey is to gauge the opinions of the Afghan people over time and provide useful data for policymakers and stakeholders. This year’s survey conducted in-person interviews with over 17,000 Afghans in all 34 provinces from July 11  to August 7 of 2019. Significantly, this year’s survey included, for the first time, questions related to the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban. An overwhelming majority of the Afghan people support the negotiations (89.0 percent)….

…Afghans have been asked over the past few years how fearful they would be when encountering various security forces. When taken as an average score, Afghans experience similar fear when encountering both Taliban forces and international forces. The Taliban have sympathy from only about 13 percent of the population according to this year’s survey and target civilians as a deliberate strategy, and yet, Afghans still fear foreign forces at near similar levels.

As Nichols J. Davies recently wrote in an article in which he compiled published reports of why Afghans join the fighting in the conflict – whether its on behalf of the government forces, the Taliban or other militias. The reasons, it turns out are similar in all of the military conflicts in which the U.S. has current involvement:

Afghan government troops and police who are suffering the worst casualties on the front lines of this war told the BBC they are not fighting out of hatred for the Taliban or loyalty to the U.S.-backed government, but out of poverty, desperation and self-preservation. In this respect, they are caught in the same excruciating predicament as millions of other people across the greater Middle East wherever the United States has turned people’s homes and communities into American “battlefields.”

In Afghanistan, U.S.-trained special operations forces conduct “hunt and kill” night raids and offensive operations in Taliban-held territory, backed by devastating US airpower that kills largely uncounted numbers of resistance fighters and civilians. The US dropped a post-2001 record 7,423 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan in 2019.

But as BBC reporter Nanamou Steffensen explained (listen here, from 11:40 to 16:50), it is lightly-armed rank-and-file Afghan soldiers and police at checkpoints and small defensive outposts across the country, not the U.S.-backed elite special operations forces, who suffer the most appalling level of casualties. President Ghani revealed in January 2019 that over 45,000 Afghan troops had been killed since he took office in September 2014, and by all accounts 2019 was even deadlier.

Steffensen traveled around Afghanistan talking to Afghan soldiers and police at the checkpoints and small outposts that are the vulnerable front line of the US war against the Taliban. The troops Steffensen spoke to told her they only enlisted in the army or police because they couldn’t find any other work, and that they received only one month’s training in the use of an AK-47 and an RPG before being sent to the front lines. Most are dressed only in t-shirts and slippers or traditional Afghan clothing, although a few sport bits and pieces of body armor. They live in constant fear, “expecting to be overrun at any moment.” One policeman told Steffensen, “They don’t care about us. That’s why so many of us die. It’s up to us to fight or get killed, that’s all.”

…In the final interview in Steffensen’s report, a policeman at a checkpoint for vehicles approaching Wardak town from Taliban-held territory questioned the very purpose of the war. He told her, “We Muslims are all brothers. We don’t have a problem with each other.” “Then why are you fighting?” she asked him. He hesitated, laughed nervously and shook his head in a resigned manner. “You know why. I know why. It’s not really our fight,” he said.

The attitudes of the Afghan troops Steffensen interviewed are shared by people fighting on both sides of America’s wars. Across the “arc of instability” that now stretches five thousand miles from Afghanistan to Mali and beyond, US”regime change” and “counterterrorism” wars have turned millions of people’s homes and communities into American “battlefields.” Like the Afghan recruits Steffensen spoke to, desperate people have joined armed groups on all sides, but for reasons that have little to do with ideology, religion or the sinister motivations assumed by Western politicians and pundits.

….In 2015, the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), interviewed 250 combatants from Bosnia, Palestine (Gaza), Libya and Somalia, and published the results in a report titled The People’s Perspectives: Civilians in Armed Conflict. The researchers found that, “The most common motivation for involvement, described by interviewees in all four case studies, was the protection of self or family.”

In 2017, the UN Development Program (UNDP) conducted a similar survey of 500 people who joined Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and other armed groups in Africa. The UNDP’s report was titled Journey To Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping-Point for Recruitment. Its findings confirmed those of other studies, and the combatants’ responses on the precise “tipping-point” for recruitment were especially enlightening.

“A striking 71%,” the report found, “pointed to ‘government action’, including ‘killing of a family member or friend’ or ‘arrest of a family member or friend’, as the incident that prompted them to join.” The UNDP concluded, “State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerant of recruitment, rather than the reverse.”

Read the complete article here.

Meanwhile, a recent report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) revealed that not only has little actual reconstruction occurred in the country considering the amount of money provided by U.S. taxpayers, but thousands have been killed and wounded as a result of the project:

2,214 people were killed overall, 216 of them American soldiers and 68 others American civilians. 2,921 others were wounded, and 1,182 ominously just “went missing.” This is again, for the sake of a reconstruction which mostly didn’t happen, and failed even where things weren’t built.

SIGAR John Sopko was asked to put a letter grade on the US reconstruction effort, and said he believes even a D- would be too high for it. He added that the US got credit for attendance and that was it.

It seems safe to say that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has been an unmitigated failure and it’s way past time for us to leave.

I wanted to give readers a status update on my forthcoming book, The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations. The manuscript is in the process of being professionally copy edited. That should be completed by the end of this month and then work on book cover design and conversion will begin in March.

I will, of course, send out another update when I have a publication date and a pre-order page live on Amazon.

Thank you to everyone who has helped with financial contributions, beta reading, and those who keep reading and sharing my blog posts/articles. As some of you may have noticed, the number of subscribers here has doubled over the past year.

I was also asked to do my first video interview a couple of weeks ago by Julia Dudnik of Russland – a YouTube channel dedicated to news and analysis of Russia for a German audience. I discussed the basis for hostility toward Russia in U.S. foreign policy – including the Wolfowitz Doctrine and Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard, the Clinton machine’s 2016 electoral loss and subsequent Russiagate hysteria, and Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric versus his actions. It was a bit nerve-racking since it was my first on-camera interview and I think I was a bit weak on the last question I was asked, but I think overall it went fairly well.

I have another YouTube interview tentatively scheduled for April. More details about that to come…

We’re constantly hearing U.S. politicians crow about NATO being so essential and how Trump was an apostate for even suggesting during one of his transitory moments of lucidity some time back that maybe NATO was no longer necessary. You’ve heard this shibboleth trotted out several times during the Democratic primary debates. It would be unthinkable to question NATO and the U.S. commitment to it – all for one and one for all – especially in light of that dastardly Putin who’s just waiting for the right moment to swallow up the Baltics, Poland, Germany, France and maybe the eastern seaboard of the United States for dessert.

But how do many in Europe feel – the ones who would be most affected by a potential NATO conflict, especially with Russia? Well, as it turns out, according to a recent Pew Center Poll, many of them are not so gung-ho on that little detail known as Article 5 or the mutual security clause that states an attack on one is an attack on all. In other words, all NATO members are potentially obligated to jump into the fray if Russia and any other NATO member were to somehow end up in a military conflict. The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity reported:

Pew Research Center poll results released Sunday indicate that the majority or plurality of people in 11 of 16 NATO countries where individuals were questioned oppose their respective governments meeting this commitment, at least if the military adversary were Russia…

…When asked if their respective countries’ governments should use military force to defend a NATO ally country neighboring Russia with which “Russia got into a serious military conflict,” people living in the 16 NATO countries tended to answer in the negative. “No” was the answer for the majority of polled individuals in eight countries – France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Turkey. In three more NATO countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland – a plurality rejected military intervention. Only in five countries – the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Lithuania – did more people (a majority in each case) support such military intervention than reject it.

For those of you who may have been surprised to see Poland included in the countries who had a significant percentage of their population showing skepticism of abiding by Article 5 in a conflict against Russia, there are even people in the Polish political class who are questioning the wisdom of continuing to nurse historical grievances rather than attempting a modus vivendi.

Earlier this month, ex-Polish president Lech Walesa – who lobbied for Poland to be included in NATO in the 1990’s – admitted that it’s time for Poland and Russia to work to bridge their differences, acknowledging that neither country can escape geography:

It is imperative for Warsaw and Moscow to improve relations, outlive the troubled past and move forward, ex-president of Poland Lech Walesa has said, adding that only a “third party” benefits from the discord.

While the relationship between Poland and Russia wasn’t particularly warm throughout recent decades, it can be unfrozen if both sides do their part, Walesa told Russia’s Sobesednik weekly.

“Even now, these relations can be made good,” the former president said.

When we quarrel, only third parties win. Warsaw was always closer to Moscow than to Washington.

As I explained in a previous post, Russia has no desire to invade or occupy other countries in Europe. It simply wants its security interests to be respected. Any further expansion of NATO should be publicly and officially taken off the table and the U.S. should gradually draw down on its military engagements and entanglements. No, I’m not arguing for isolationism – economic and diplomatic engagement with the world is fine, but militarism is not. There’s absolutely no justification for any country in the world needing 700 or more military bases throughout the planet. Given our geography and our nuclear arsenal, the U.S. is not going to be invaded.

Graham Allison in a recent article for Foreign Affairs said what many observers have noted for a while now – the U.S.’s moment in the sun of being the lone superpower is over:

“Unipolarity is over … For the United States, that will require accepting the reality that there are spheres of influence in the world today—and that not all of them are American spheres. … Yet because many U.S. analysts and policymakers still cling to images of China and Russia formed during this bygone era, their views about what the United States should and should not do continues to reflect a world that has vanished.”

Russia is a major power on the other side of the world that has interests that are not going to be the same as the U.S. Indeed, no two countries’ interests are ever identical. Challenges will come up in relations between countries, especially those who are or perceive themselves to be major powers. Russia will likely be a competitor of the United States for the foreseeable future. But a competitor does not have to be an enemy.

Serious and sustained multilateral diplomacy can lead to a new security architecture in Europe that does not require Russia to be an enemy and does not require the U.S. to play big daddy. Putin proposed an outline that can be used as a starting point for this years ago but was rebuffed out of hand. More recently, he has called for the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council – all major nuclear powers – to hold a summit to cooperate on peace and other pressing global issues. France 24 reported on the proposal last month:

Speaking in Jerusalem at an event marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Putin argued that the countries that created a new global order after World War II should cooperate to solve today’s problems.

“The founder countries of the United Nations, the five states that hold special responsibility to save civilisation, can and must be an example,” he said at the sombre memorial ceremony.

The meeting would “play a great role in searching for collective answers to modern challenges and threats,” Putin said, adding that Russia was “ready for such a serious conversation.”

Putin suggested war-torn Libya could be on the agenda, following recent peace talks in Moscow and Berlin.

To date, China and France have shown interest in a possible meeting in September at the UN General Assembly, but the US and UK have yet to respond.