Popular billboard of Putin in Crimea that reads:  Crimea.Russia.Forever

Putin held telephone talks with numerous leaders in the Middle East last Tuesday, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

According to the Kremlin press service report of the talks between Putin and Israeli PM Netanyahu, topics discussed included the sharing of mutually beneficial security information and progress in the fight against terrorism in Syria.  Due to the wording, I’d say that there was no new agreement reached on the situation in Syria, in which Israel has given assistance to jihadist rebels in the past.  Israel does not see the maintenance of the Assad government as in its interest.  The current right-wing Israeli government wants to see any governments that support the Palestinian cause cast aside in order to pursue a program of forcing the Palestinians to accept whatever terms the Israelis want to offer for “peace” – which means Israel not allowing any viable Palestinian state or independence.

Next, Putin had a conversation with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Sisi.  The two leaders discussed the final phase of routing terrorists from Syria and a joint nuclear energy project.  From the Kremlin press service:

“Vladimir Putin informed the Egyptian leader in detail about the Russian assessments of the latest developments in the situation in Syria in the context of the final stages of the military operation to destroy terrorists in that country and discussed the results of the recent talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad,” press service of the Russian president said.

Moreover, Russian President and Egyptian Leader have discussed in phone talks on Tuesday major joint projects, including in the nuclear energy sector, press service said.

“The topical issues of the bilateral agenda were touched upon, with focus on the implementation of major joint projects, including in the nuclear energy sector. The sides reaffirmed mutual satisfaction with the overall development of friendly Russian-Egyptian relations,” the statement said.

Putin then got on the horn with the Saudi king.  Syria, again, was a major topic of conversation.

“The leaders continued the exchange of views on the situation in the Middle East region and discussed issues related to the prospects for a long-term settlement of the Syrian conflict in light of recent successes in the fight against terrorist groups there,” the press service said in a statement.

According to the statement, the Russian president noted that the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, to be held in Sochi, will give impetus to the intra-Syrian contacts and to the settlement of the Syrian conflict in general, as well as stimulate work under the UN aegis in Geneva.

The Kremlin press service also said in a statment that Putin has informed all of his counterparts about the Monday meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as about the main issues on the agenda of the upcoming summit of the countries-guarantors of the Astana process  — Russia, Iran and Turkey — in Sochi on November 22.

On the following day, Putin had a 1-hour phone conversation with President Trump in which Syria and Ukraine apparently comprised the majority of the discussion.   ZeroHedge reported the following:

According to ABC, president Donald Trump spoke for more than an hour Tuesday by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Syria, Iran, North Korea and Ukraine were on the agenda, the White House said.

The Kremlin echoed the White House, and said that the two leaders discussed “a number of topics”, including the Syrian crisis, the North Korean nuclear problem and the situation in Afghanistan as well as the Ukrainian crisis. Putin briefed Trump in the phone call about his talks with the Syrian leader and plans for a political settlement in Syria.

Putin stressed that there were no alternatives for full implementation of the Minsk agreements on peaceful settlement of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“Considering the crisis situation in southeastern Ukraine, the Russian president pointed out the absence of a real alternative for the unconditional implementation of the Minsk accords signed on February 12, 2015,” the statement said.

Speaking of Ukraine, as winter approaches the UN and other aid organizations are highlighting the plight still experienced by many in the Donbass, due to the “frozen” conflict there.  Euronews provided the following details:

Various aid organizations and volunteers help the population affected by the protracted conflict. Food, medicine, clothes are often collected and delivered here by Ukrainians from every corner of the country.

There are still inaccessible areas. In the cold winter months the need for aid only increases.

A Christian mission from Dnipropetrovs’k oblast’ brings bread and spiritual literature to Krasnogorovka, located around 1 km from the frontline. Aid is aimed at the most vulnerable sections of the population. Euronews previously reported the example of a social bakery project, based in Marinka, where the situation remains tense. Locals are regularly subjected to the sound of explosions and gunfire and forced to hide in underground cellars for safety.

Marina, a resident of the village of Kamyanka, in the Volnovakha district in Donetsk oblast’, said she was afraid to return home the day she spoke to Euronews as she could hear heavy explosions in the fields nearby. Earlier, when her village was shelled, she had lost her hearing, only partially recovering since. A house in neighbouring Hranitne was damaged at the end of September.

Freedom of movement in the region continues to be restricted. The waiting time at roadblocks installed by the Ukrainian army and the separatists stretches to many hours, causing enormous human suffering as the roadblocks lack even basic facilities. Searches, interrogations, long lists of banned products provoke frustration and anger among the local population. With the winter season approaching, the roadblocks’ working hours have been shortened by both sides furthermore.

“Thousands of people are without electricity, gas and water, as the ongoing conflict continues to take a heavy toll on critical civilian infrastructure crisscrossing the contact line”, says Ertugrul Apakan, the Chief Monitor from OSCE, whose Special Monitoring Mission has worked in Ukraine since 2014.

In the midst of this, Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) for the past couple of years, has apparently been forced to resign and temporarily fled to Russia as former minister of state security Leonid Pasechnik has now taken over the leadership of the republic.  Russia expert Paul Robinson reported the following on his blog:

Plotnitsky, meanwhile, has been appointed the LPR’s representative in negotiations over implementation of the Minsk Agreements, which he signed, and which are meant to provide a blueprint for an eventual peace settlement in Ukraine. What does this all mean?

The Russian online newspaper Vzgliad has a few ideas. According to an article by Pyotr Akopov, stories of treason in high places are false, and the LPR is secure. Akopov adds that, ‘merger with the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] is currently impossible’ and could happen only in the event of a renewal of large-scale military operations. Plotnitsky’s involvement with the Minsk negotiations doesn’t mean very much, as the negotiations are not going anywhere. And finally, recent events won’t change the relationship between the Russian Federation and the LPR. In short, after a brief flurry of excitement, everything will return to the way it was a week ago. It was all much ado about nothing.

Akopov comments also that the events in the LPR show that ‘Russia supports and helps the republics [LPR and DPR] in all sorts of ways, but in no way leads them.’ To make his point, Akopov quotes a response Vladimir Putin gave to a questioner who suggested that Moscow is in total charge of the rebel Ukrainian republics: ‘You’ve got it wrong … these guys are really stubborn … they’re difficult.’ The Vzgliad article concludes that ‘If Moscow was in charge of Lugansk, it wouldn’t have let the conflict among the republic’s leaders develop into open confrontation.’ Having said as much myself in a recent post, I concur.

Robinson provides more context and discussion on the complicated client-patron relationship between Russia and the Donbass here.

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Upon discovery that he was named on an “enemy chart” during a recent NATO drill in mid-November, Turkish president Erdogan pulled Turkish troops out of the exercise in Norway.  According to ZeroHedge:

The president said he was informed about the issue by Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik.

 “They told me that they are withdrawing our 40 soldiers from there [Norway],” Erdogan said.

“I told them to do that immediately. There can be no alliance like that.”

While the NATO powers increasingly tick off the Turkish leadership, Russia has been deftly filling the void with a pending sale of the S400 anti-missile shield, cooperation on Turkstream, etc.  According to Al-Monitor‘s sources, Russia’s wooing is paying off:

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a consultant with the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, believes Russia is indeed laying the groundwork to recast the Turkish public’s perception of the United States, the European Union and NATO. “No wonder we are overwhelmed with Russian-origin news, some factual and some manufactured according to the need of the day,” he told Al-Monitor.

“Putin’s team is competent — not a bunch of pompous imbeciles — and under the management of a former intelligence man and [with] a wisely designed strategy,” he added. Ozcan, an academic and retired major with the Turkish armed forces, underlines that the West’s contradictory policies and populist narratives against Turkey are also driving the Turkish public toward Russia.

My personal opinions match those of Ozcan and are backed by the results of a poll, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Research on Public Perceptions,” released by Kadir Has University in July. The poll showed “combating terror” was seen by 44.2% of respondents as the biggest problem for Turkish foreign policy. The Syrian war was second, with 24.6%.

Moscow, which is aware of these two sensitivities, skillfully paints the United States as the leading threat in terror and on Syria issues, while managing to keep a low profile in the media regarding its own relations with the Kurdistan Workers Party and its supposed Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party — both of which Turkey considers terrorist groups. In this annual poll, one striking finding was that the percentage of the Turkish public that perceives Russia as a threat dropped from 34.9% in 2016 to 18.5% in 2017.

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The air force is now on track to triple the number of bombs being dropped in Afghanistan – the nation that officially began Washington’s War on Terror after 9/11/01.  As the longest U.S. war on record – and Afghanistan being no closer to a Taliban-free, terrorist-free oasis of liberal democracy, heroin-free flourishing economy and women’s rights – it will likely just represent flushing more money down the toilet that already has sucked up ~$8 trillion.  Democracy Now! reports:

This comes as a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that the U.S. wars since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 will cost up to $8 trillion in interest payments alone over the coming decades. Their report says the U.S. has already spent $4.3 trillion on the wars—and that the U.S. will be paying trillions of dollars in interest on the war debt for decades to come.

To get some perspective on just how much money we’re talking about here, go here to get an idea of what $1 trillion looks like.

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To conclude this week’s post, I wanted to share an excerpt from a thought-provoking article from Canadian Russia expert Patrick Armstrong entitled NATO:  A Dangerous Paper Tiger.  Considering the fact that NATO can’t even beat some goat herders in flip-flops in Afghanistan, the points made in this article sound plausible to me.

Some Russians are concerned that there are today more hostile troops at the Russian border than at any time since 1941. While this is true, it is not, at the moment, very significant. The Germans invaded the USSR with nearly 150 divisions in 1941. Which, as it turned out, were not enough.Today NATO has – or claims to have – a battle group in each of the three Baltic countries and one in Poland: pompously titled Enhanced Forward Presence. The USA has a brigade and talks of another. A certain amount of heavy weaponry has been moved to Europe. These constitute the bulk of the land forces at the border. They amount to, at the most optimistic assessment, assuming everything is there and ready to go, one division. Or, actually, one division equivalent (a very different thing) from 16 (!) countries with different languages, military practices and equipment sets and their soldiers ever rotating through. And, in a war, the three in the Baltics would be bypassed and become either a new Dunkirk or a new Cannae. All for the purpose, we are solemnly told, of sending “a clear message that an attack on one Ally would be met by troops from across the Alliance“. But who’s the “message” for? Moscow already has a copy of the NATO treaty and knows what Article V says.

In addition to the EFP are the national forces. But they are in a low state: “depleted armies” they’ve been called: under equipped and under manned; seldom exercised. The German parliamentary ombudsman charged with overseeing the Bundeswehr says “There are too many things missing“. In 2008 the French Army was described as “falling apart“. The British Army “can’t find enough soldiers“. The Italian army is ageing. Poland, one of the cheerleaders for the “Russian threat” meme, finds its army riven over accusations of politicisation. On paper, these five armies claim to have thirteen divisions and thirteen independent brigades. Call it, optimistically, a dozen divisions in all. The US Army (which has its own recruiting difficulties) adds another eleven or so to the list (although much of it is overseas entangled in the metastasising “war on terror”). Let’s pretend all the other NATO countries can bring another five divisions to the fight.

So, altogether, bringing everything home from the wars NATO is fighting around the world, under the most optimistic assumptions, assuming that everything is there and working (fewer than half of France’s tanks were operational, German painted broomsticks, British recruiting shortfalls), crossing your fingers and hoping, NATO could possibly cobble together two and a half dozen divisions: or one-fifth of the number Germany thought it would need. But, in truth, that number is fantasy: undermanned, under equipped, seldom exercised, no logistics tail, no munitions production backup, no time for a long logistics build up. NATO’s armies aren’t capable of a major war against a first class enemy. And no better is the principal member: “only five of the US Army’s 15 armoured brigade combat teams are maintained at full readiness levels“. A paper tiger.

Kicking off this post is a discussion of the many tragic and/or pathetic shenanigans of the Saudi royal leadership – namely Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) who has effectively been given free reign by King Salman.  Last week, several members of the Saudi royal family who were perceived to be rivals of MBS were arrested, with one reportedly killed.

Simultaneously, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri read what appeared to be a forced resignation of his post from inside Saudi Arabia – a country that he has dual citizenship with and has many close business ties to.

According to renowned international journalist Pepe Escobar, the arrests were part of a supposed “anti-corruption” program with a commission headed by MBS:

Right on cue, the commission detains 11 House of Saud princes, four current ministers and dozens of former princes/cabinet secretaries – all charged with corruption. Hefty bank accounts are frozen, private jets are grounded. The high-profile accused lot is “jailed” at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton…..A top Middle East business/investment source who has been doing deals for decades with the opaque House of Saud offers much-needed perspective: “This is more serious than it appears. The arrest of the two sons of previous King Abdullah, Princes Miteb and Turki, was a fatal mistake. This now endangers the King himself. It was only the regard for the King that protected MBS. There are many left in the army against MBS and they are enraged at the arrest of their commanders.”

To say the Saudi Arabian Army is in uproar is an understatement. “He’d have to arrest the whole army before he could feel secure.”

Of course, the Saudi army is nothing to brag about as shown by their horrible performance in the Yemen war (more about that later).  Escobar points out, among other things, that MBS is seeking total control of Saudi media:

Prince Miteb until recently was a serious contender to the Saudi throne. But the highest profile among the detainees belongs to billionaire Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal, owner of Kingdom Holdings, major shareholder in Twitter, CitiBank, Four Seasons, Lyft and, until recently, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp.

Al-Waleed’s arrest ties up with a key angle; total information control. There’s no freedom of information in Saudi Arabia. MBS already controls all the internal media (as well as the appointment of governorships). But then there’s Saudi media at large. MBS aims to “hold the keys to all the large media empires and relocate them to Saudi Arabia.”

Escobar also discusses the economic problems that MBS is trying to address, how his approach is bound to fail, and why an internal conflict will likely continue on and possibly escalate:

As the regime’s popularity radically tumbled down, MBS came up with Vision 2030. Theoretically, it was shift away from oil; selling off part of Aramco; and an attempt to bring in new industries. Cooling off dissatisfaction was covered by royal payoffs to key princes to stay loyal and retroactive payments on back wages to the unruly masses.

Yet Vision 2030 cannot possibly work when the majority of productive jobs in Saudi Arabia are held by expats. Bringing in new jobs raises the question of where are the new (skilled) workers to come from.

Throughout these developments, aversion to MBS never ceased to grow; “There are three major royal family groups aligning against the present rulers: the family of former King Abdullah, the family of former King Fahd, and the family of former Crown Prince Nayef.”

Professor Amal Saad, in an interview with TRNN’s Aaron Mate, discussed the geopolitical motives of MBS’s actions with respect to the forced resignation of Hariri:

ISIS has been dislodged from the region, Nusra has lost a lot of territory in Lebanon and in Syria, and therefore, Saudi Arabia basically panicked, over and above its losses in Yemen, and it’s been failing miserably in Yemen, as everyone can testify to with this latest blockade and their total desperation to strangulate Yemen. The resistance of the Houthis there is a formidable obstacle for them in their quest for regional domination. They have failed in every single arena that they have thus far fought. And today, by the way, let me say this before I forget, Nasrallah pointed out something quite interesting. He said, and this is something we know now, we know obviously now that Saudi Arabia is pressuring Israel to invade Lebanon, and he said they’ve even been offering it millions of dollars to that effect, but he said that in 2006, Saudi did the exact same thing, that Saudi was in part, not responsible, because Israel has its own calculations and would have launched a war anyway, but Saudi was definitely persuading it back then to wage war on Hezbollah and was actively supporting that war.

So Saudi Arabia has been lobbying for this for quite some time now, and I think it became even more necessary when it saw that all its cards in the region have been played and are of no use to it anymore. This latest tactic, this is a last resort, I think. There’s nothing else that they can do to stand in the way of Hezbollah’s growing influence. They can’t do anything vis-a-vis Iran, and it’s purely an act of desperation, I believe, to, Imagine how desperate a state must be to this openly, and very crudely, kidnap the prime minister, their own ally, of another state. That’s pretty desperate in my mind.

Saad points out how the Saudi policy to try to limit Hezbollah’s increasing power and influence is backfiring as the image of the organization’s leader (Nasrallah) has only increased as a result of the Saudi-provoked incident:

As we saw today, Nasrallah in his speech was defending Lebanon’s constitution, Lebanon’s institutions, its procedural legitimacy. He was behaving like a statesman. He was calling. He was speaking in the language of a state. His discourse is identical to President Michel Aoun, who’s been calling for exactly the same. So Hezbollah has now been further legitimized inside Lebanon on the popular level. Politically, it’s emerged much stronger. At the same time, Nasrallah even actually defended Sunni rights in Lebanon. He said, “Why are you depriving Sunnis of their leader?” So it’s really ironic that what Saudi Arabia has done is marginalize Sunnis, when it’s been accusing Iran and Hezbollah of marginalizing them or disempowering them. It’s gone and done that itself by kidnapping their leader and denying him any future political role.

With regard to the war on Yemen, which has caused the biggest cholera epidemic seen in recent history, destroyed much civilian infrastructure, and has put the country on the brink of mass starvation, Saudi Arabia chose to implement a full blockade of the nation, preventing any aid from reaching the population.  The Saudi government has since partially lifted the blockade, according to some sources, but whether that will have any substantive effect on the suffering is open to question.

As regular readers are probably already aware, the U.S. government is enabling the Saudi war on Yemen, including help with in-flight refueling of warplanes and provision of weapons.   Col. Lawrence Wilkerson recently spoke to TRNN’s Sharmini Peries of his attempts to lobby Congress to support legislation ending U.S. support of the war in Yemen:

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Larry, give us a sense of what they’re telling you when you’re on the Hill about this unconditional support for Saudi Arabia’s war.

LARRY WILKERSON: You’d be amazed, Sharmini. I have gotten answers from staffers and members that range the gamut from, “Well, this is just a niche issue.” That’s a direct quote. “This is just a niche issue.” My response, of course, was, “500,000 people dying is a niche issue?” Well, not a lot, and get them a little off guard with that kind of response, to a response such as this, “Well, I always go with my committee chairman.” That is, the committee of jurisdiction. “So, if Ed Royce is going to go against this, I’ve got to go against it, too.” This is the war power. This is your nation using bombs, bullets and bayonets to kill the citizens of other nations and, oh, by the way, put its own men and women in harm’s way too.

This is the war power. This is the ultimate power, and you bow to your committee of jurisdiction? Come on, Mr. Congressman. You can do better than that. To an answer like this one that I got, “Well, Iran’s there.” My response, “Iran wasn’t there until the Saudi-UAE coalition attacked and we supported them.” “Well, Iran is there now, so we’ve got to fight them. The Saudis are doing our dirty business for us.” Why do we have to fight Iran in Yemen? What is it that Iran is doing in Yemen that’s destabilizing, and destabilizing in a way that threatens U.S. national security interest? “Well, Iran always does that.” Are you kidding me, Congressman? Can’t you think more critically than that? Can’t you think more analytically than that? Iran is not always going against U.S. interest. Iran, in this case, is going against U.S. interest, if they are, because we are supporting the Saudi coalition that’s waging this brutal war.

You just wouldn’t believe it, Sharmini. The first reaction I have is that they don’t know what they’re talking about. The second reaction I have is that they’re venal, they’re cruel, they’re brutal. The third reaction I have is, they’re ignorant, they’re just not willing to look at the issues. And the fourth reaction I have is that they’re in obeisance to the military-industrial complex, which, if you’ll look at the contribution charts, does, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and so forth does contribute a heck of a lot of money to these people’s campaigns. And so with a little war like this, what’s a little war as long as it maintains me in power?

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After a brief meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference last week, Trump and Putin issued a joint statement on Syria, stating that the conflict has no military solution and that settlement must be reached through negotiation as part of the ongoing Geneva peace process pursuant to the UN Resolution 2254.  According to RT:

The joint agreement was worked out in advance by officials from both nations, and agreed upon by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian news agencies report, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

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Before the ASEAN conference, Russia reinforced its cordial relations with Iran.  First,  Putin met with French PM Macron and together they publicly reiterated their support for the Iran nuclear deal, which is under fire in Washington.

Russia also had a meeting with Iran and Azerbaijan in Tehran in which billions of dollars worth of deals were made, including a contract worth $30 billion between Russian oil company Rosneft and Iranian oil company NIOC.   The three countries also signed onto an “understanding” that they would jointly develop gas fields in the near future, which would provide gas to India, among others.

At this meeting, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini suggested that Russia and Iran work together to dump the U.S. dollar in all bilateral trade as a way to evade sanctions.  According to RT, Khameini said the following:

“By ignoring the negative propaganda of the enemies, that seek to weaken relations between countries, we can nullify US sanctions, using methods such as eliminating the dollar and replacing it with national currencies in transactions between two or more parties; thus, isolate the Americans,” he said on Wednesday at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran.

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More positive economic figures have been coming out of Russia.  It’s GDP has risen to 1.7%, amid a stabilized ruble,  and its year-on-year car sales have shown a 17% increase.

Furthermore, Russia’s Ease of Doing Business Score has gone up again.  Alexander Mercouris at The Duran reports:

In a further sign of Russia’s steadily improving business climate, Russia’s Economics Minister Maxim Oreshkin has announced that Russia has moved up the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings from 40th to 35th in the world.

That puts Russia behind only the advanced economies of the West and some (though not all) of the top economies of the Far East.  Russia now has by a substantial distance the best ranking economy for ease of doing business amongst the BRICS.

By way of comparison, Russia’s ranking for ease of doing business was 120th in the world in 2010.  The radical improvement in the business climate is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon and is the direct consequence of sustained and concerted action by the Russian government.

However, on the down side, The Moscow Times recently reported that outlying towns in Russia are having serious budget difficulties and are turning to the major central cities for help.

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In the wealthiest nation in history, our politicians tell us that we can’t afford universal health care and free college tuition – things that other industrialized nations that do not have as large an income as we do manage to provide their citizens.  So where is all that tax money that we fork over every April going?

Well, since 9/11, it’s gone into that budget sinkhole known as the “War on Terror.”   As reported by Common Dreams, the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute (Brown University) has calculated that $5.6 trillion has been spent directly and indirectly:

A new analysis offers a damning assessment of the United States’ so-called global war on terror, and it includes a “staggering” estimated price tag for wars waged since 9/11—over $5.6 trillion.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Center says the figure—which covers the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from 2001 through 2018—is the equivalent of more than $23,386 per taxpayer.

The “new report,” said Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action’s senior director for policy and political affairs, “once again shows that the true #costofwar represents a colossal burden to taxpayers on top of the tremendous human loss.”

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In the near future, I will be posting a book review on a compelling book I’m reading called Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership by Susan Butler.  It’s chock full of interesting historical tidbits and reads like a novel.  Those interested in Roosevelt, Stalin, WWII and the origins of the Cold War will find it a fascinating read.

(https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/24/russia-china-tandem-changes-world.html)

As my co-author and I suggested in our book, America’s power is waning. This is consistent with the historical fate of all empires, mainly because empire is not a sustainable system.   As events in Syria over the past two years have shown, Washington’s uni-polar moment is over.  This is not to say that the U.S. isn’t still very powerful in many respects or that its demise is complete.  The collapse or disintegration of an empire is a process and exactly how long it takes and the details of how it plays out are difficult to predict.

As the disintegration of the U.S.’s unipolar power occurs, a void will develop (indeed is developing) and some other power or combination of powers will inevitably move to fill the void.  As it stands, it appears that the void will likely be filled by something that resembles a multi-polar world with Eurasia taking the lead role.  China, set to be the leading economy within the next 10 years – indeed is already the leading economy with respect to some measures – has developed an alliance with Russia and is taking steps to implement its One Belt One Road initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, that envisions a cooperative economic network throughout Eurasia that covers at least all of the territory of the old Silk Road.

The success of this project requires the ability to defend oneself from aggressive competitors who are stuck in a zero-sum mentality of geopolitics (i.e. Washington and allies/client states that it can continue to coerce into doing its bidding).  It also requires the finesse to prevent and/or subdue any ethnic, cultural or religious divisions within various states or potential conflicts between states that could be stirred up or exploited by aggressive (and desperate) outside powers.   Russia’s military technology and diplomatic skill complement China’s economic power in terms of helping the Eurasian project to succeed, which will in turn, benefit Russia’s economy and security.

In this post I want to take a closer look at some aspects of China that will hopefully give the reader some more insight into the mindset and governance of that country and its role in shaping Eurasia, as well as how Washington is likely to respond to its own decline and Eurasia’s rise.  The first source of insight is a Ted Talk by political science and businessman Eric X. Li.  Li demystifies some of the inner workings of how China governs its people which will cause many to rethink what they’ve been taught about political democracy, particularly how it is practiced by the West and whether it is the only legitimate or the most effective system of governance.   Here are some excerpts from Li’s talk:

In the last 20 years, Western elites tirelessly trotted around the globe selling this prospectus: Multiple parties fight for political power and everyone voting on them is the only path to salvation to the long-suffering developing world. Those who buy the prospectus are destined for success. Those who do not are doomed to fail. But this time, the Chinese didn’t buy it. Fool me once… (Laughter) The rest is history. In just 30 years, China went from one of the poorest agricultural countries in the world to its second-largest economy. Six hundred fifty million people were lifted out of poverty. Eighty percent of the entire world’s poverty alleviation during that period happened in China.In other words, all the new and old democracies put together amounted to a mere fraction of what a single, one-party state did without voting…..

….Yes, China is a one-party state run by the Chinese Communist Party, the Party, and they don’t hold elections. Three assumptions are made by the dominant political theories of our time. Such a system is operationally rigid, politically closed, and morally illegitimate. Well, the assumptions are wrong. The opposites are true. Adaptability, meritocracy, and legitimacy are the three defining characteristics of China’s one-party system. Now, most political scientists will tell us that a one-party system is inherently incapable of self-correction. It won’t last long because it cannot adapt. Now here are the facts…..

…Now, Westerners always assume that multi-party election with universal suffrage is the only source of political legitimacy. I was asked once, “The Party wasn’t voted in by election. Where is the source of legitimacy?” I said, “How about competency?” We all know the facts.In 1949, when the Party took power, China was mired in civil wars, dismembered by foreign aggression, average life expectancy at that time, 41 years old. Today, it’s the second largest economy in the world, an industrial powerhouse, and its people live in increasing prosperity. Pew Research polls Chinese public attitudes, and here are the numbers in recent years. Satisfaction with the direction of the country: 85 percent. Those who think they’re better off than five years ago: 70 percent. Those who expect the future to be better: a whopping 82 percent. Financial Times polls global youth attitudes, and these numbers, brand new, just came from last week. Ninety-three percent of China’s Generation Y are optimistic about their country’s future. Now, if this is not legitimacy, I’m not sure what is. In contrast, most electoral democracies around the world are suffering from dismal performance. I don’t need to elaborate for this audience how dysfunctional it is, from Washington to European capitals. With a few exceptions, the vast number of developing countries that have adopted electoral regimes are still suffering from poverty and civil strife.Governments get elected, and then they fall below 50 percent approval in a few months and stay there and get worse until the next election…..

….There’s a vibrant civil society in China, whether it’s environment or what-have-you. But it’s different. You wouldn’t recognize it. Because, by Western definitions, a so-called civil society has to be separate or even in opposition to the political system, but that concept is alien for Chinese culture. For thousands of years, you have civil society, yet they are consistent and coherent part of a political order, and I think it’s a big cultural difference.

A point made by Li in that last paragraph reminded me of a point made by Vladimir Putin during his first address to the Federal Assembly in which he cited the need for a meaningful civil society to help develop Russia and address the many problems it faced at the time, including massive poverty and crime, the need for reform of the economy and the armed forces, and the worst mortality crisis since World War II.  But Putin implied that the best chance for success was for the state and civil society to work together, stating that there was a “false conflict” between the two.

This shows that not only do Russia and China have many views in terms of geopolitics that are simpatico but also attitudes on the relationship between the state and civil society.   These views, of course, are anathema to the average westerner who has internalized that political democracy as it is practiced – particularly in the U.S. with its strong libertarian streak – is the best and only legitimate way for human beings to govern themselves.  Any other approaches are dismissed as inferior and in need of eventually being destroyed and replaced by the western model.   If the people living in another country don’t agree with this, then it is believed that they are the equivalent of ignorant children who must be forced to grow up and eat their broccoli.

Li also mentions that China has achieved the impressive and unprecedented feat of lifting hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty within the last 30 years.  Progressive economist Mark Weisbrot, who works for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reiterated this success in a recent interview with the Real News Network and compared what China did to what other developing countries did that was less successful:

We looked at this recently in one of our papers and you have these statements from politicians as well, President Obama in his last speech at the United Nations said that over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40% of the world to under 10%. Now that’s World Bank statistic and there’s a lot of dispute over that. But even taking it at face value, if you actually look at what happened since 1990, two-thirds of that extreme poverty reduction was in China. And if you go back a little further from 1981 to 2010, 94% of that net reduction in people living below the extreme poverty line was in China. And even the part that wasn’t in China, a lot of that was the result of China’s growth and importing. Increased imports from developing countries and increased investment as China became the largest economy in the world.

Chinese globalization’s done very well. China’s income per person has multiplied 21 times since 1980. The fastest economic growth in history. But if you look at what they did, most of it’s the opposite of what these Washington institutions and what even President Obama was describing as globalization in his speech. They had foreign investment, but they controlled it. And they still have it. They control it to fit with their own development plans. They have technology transfer as much as they can get. They have performance requirement. Require foreign investing firms to do certain things that promote local management skills and things like that. Export promotion. They have a mostly state controlled financial system for most of this period, and still quite a bit today. Their central bank isn’t independent, which is one of the main thing Washington pushes.

This is the kind of globalization they had, and the rest of the developing world is very different. You have this indiscriminate opening to international trade and capital flows. You have the central bank being independent of the government so it’s not really a subject of public control. It’s more the response of the financial sector. They got rid of these industrial and developing policies that used to be successful, and were successful in China. And all this other financial deregulation and other deregulation. And if you look at what happened in these last 25 years in the vast majority of developing countries outside of China, the ones that did the kind of globalization that President Obama and all these officials at the IMF and the World Bank are talking about and calling a success, and the media usually calls a success, they did very badly overall.

This is not to say that China is invincible or that it will continue at the breakneck speed it has in past years.  As economist Jack Rasmus reports, the Chinese government recognizes that another global financial crisis is on the horizon, which will slow China’s growth and force it to continue addressing internal problems it still has with speculation, among other things:

The past year the US and global ‘real’ economies have enjoyed a moderate recovery. Much of that has been due to China stimulating its economy to ensure real growth in anticipation of the Communist Party’s convention, which has just ended. China’s president Xi and central bank (Peoples Bank of China) chair, Zhou, have announced, post-convention, that China’s real growth will slow and have warned a global ‘Minsky Moment’ (i.e. financial crisis) may be brewing. China will now try, once again, to tame its shadow bankers and speculators who have been feeding China’s debt and bubbles, and prepare for the global financial instability that is brewing.

Moving back to the arena of geopolitics, journalist Finian Cunningham in a recent article contrasted the visions expressed recently by Chinese president Xi and U.S. president Donald Trump and pointed out the obvious about who Putin is more closely aligned with:

Two very different faces of world leadership were on display this week. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping delivered a bold, outward-looking vision of Chinese global leadership. Meanwhile, in Washington President Donald Trump was embroiled in yet more egotistical infighting and tawdry claims of media lies.

Addressing the 19^th congress of China’s Communist Party, 64-year-old Xi was reelected for a second five-year term. He is being talked about as the greatest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong who led the country’s founding revolution in 1949. With dignified composure, Xi spoke to the Great Hall of the People about “a new era of modern socialism… open to the world.”

….“No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation,” Xi told delegates during a three-and-half-hour address.

Reuters again: “Xi set bold long-term goals for China’s development, envisioning it as a modernized socialist country by 2035, and a modern socialist strong power with leading influence on the world stage by 2050.”

….Contrary to American leadership and Trump in particular, Chinese characteristics of global leadership are not marked by knuckle-dragging domination, militarism and aggression. The emphasis from the Chinese leader is on global cooperation and multilateralism. In short, a peaceful and prosperous world.

Contrast that to Trump’s tirade before the UN General Assembly last month when he rhetorically swaggered and threatened nations with “total destruction”.

In that regard, Russian President Vladimir Putin shares the same leadership qualities as China’s Xi. No wonder the two leaders are visibly comfortable when they meet publicly, as they have done more frequently than any other two current heads of state. Quietly, with dignity, the two men seem driven to create a more progressive, peaceful world of co-development and co-existence – in spite of American proclivities to create a world of chaos, conflict and hegemony.

Sadly, it seems safe to say at this point that the American elites have no meaningful or constructive solutions for the U.S.’s myriad domestic problems or its diminishing geopolitical fortunes.   As mentioned earlier in this post, Washington seems stuck in a zero-sum mentality, tilting at the windmills of its former glory days.  It is therefore likely that Washington will continue to see the potentially constructive moves of China and Russia in Eurasia as a threat to be conquered or sabotaged rather than an opportunity to participate to the degree it can in a win-win arrangement that does not rely on full-spectrum dominance of the world and the narcissistic imposition of its “values” and mores on everyone else.

Foreign affairs writer and Russia expert Gilbert Doctorow has penned an analysis of the “Russia-China tandem” explaining how the Eurasian project need not be a threat in any objective sense of the term for Washington, but that the chance of Washington’s recognition of this fact is slim:

Much of what Western “experts” assert about Russia – especially its supposed economic and political fragility and its allegedly unsustainable partnership with China – is wrong, resulting not only from the limited knowledge of the real situation on the ground but from a prejudicial mindset that does not want to get at the facts, i.e. from wishful thinking.

….The chief reason for the many wrongheaded observations is not so hard to discover. The ongoing rampant conformism in American and Western thinking about Russia has taken control not only of our journalists and commentators but also of our academic specialists who serve up to their students and to the general public what is expected and demanded: proof of the viciousness of the “Putin regime” and celebration of the brave souls in Russia who go up against this regime, such as the blogger-turned-politician Alexander Navalny or Russia’s own Paris Hilton, the socialite-turned-political-activist Ksenia Sochak.

Although vast amounts of information are available about Russia in open sources, meaning the Russian press and commercial as well as state television, these are largely ignored. The sour grapes Russian opposition personalities who have settled in the United States are instead given the microphone to sound off about their former homeland. Meanwhile, anyone taking care to read, hear and analyze the words of Vladimir Putin becomes in these circles a “stooge.” All of this limits greatly the accuracy and usefulness of what passes for expertise about Russia.

….By contrast, today’s international relations “experts” lack the in-depth knowledge of Russia to say something serious and valuable for policy formulation. The whole field of area studies has atrophied in the United States over the past 20 years, with actual knowledge of history, languages, cultures being largely scuttled in favor of numerical skills that will provide sure employment in banks and NGOs upon graduation. The diplomas have been systematically depreciated.

The result of the foregoing is that there are very few academics who can put the emerging Russian-Chinese alliance into a comparative context. And those who do exist are systematically excluded from establishment publications and roundtable public discussions in the United States for not being sufficiently hostile to Russia.

….What we find in Kissinger’s description of his accomplishments in the 1970s is that the American-Chinese partnership was all done at arm’s length. There was no alliance properly speaking, no treaty, in keeping with China’s firm commitment not to accept entanglement in mutual obligations with other powers. The relationship was two sovereign states conferring regularly on international developments of mutual interest and pursuing policies that in practice proceeded in parallel to influence global affairs in a coherent manner.

This bare minimum of a relationship was overtaken and surpassed by Russia and China some time ago. The relationship has moved on to ever larger joint investments in major infrastructure projects having great importance to both parties, none more so than the gas pipelines that will bring very large volumes of Siberian gas to Chinese markets in a deal valued at $400 billion.

Meanwhile, in parallel, Russia has displaced Saudi Arabia as China’s biggest supplier of crude oil, and trading is now being done in yuan rather than petrodollars. There is also a good deal of joint investment in high technology civilian and military projects. And there are joint military exercises in areas ever farther from the home bases of both countries.

Doctorow goes on to reiterate what I stated in a blog post months back – that any ideas by Kissinger or the late Brzezinski to try to break up the Russia-China partnership with the promise of better relations with Washington were delusional due to the economic, military and diplomatic ties that had developed in the recent past between the two countries, as well as the recognition by the leadership of both countries that any promises made by Washington were unreliable to put it magnanimously.

But unlike me and some other analysts, Doctorow believes that we are seeing the emergence, not of a multi-polar world, but another bipolar world with the U.S. and its western allies on one side and the Eurasian powers of Russia and China on the other.   He believes that this bipolar world will be the geopolitical paradigm of the foreseeable future and that it may not be such a bad thing as it will at least provide some kind of balance in place of the uni-polar world that saw one nation running through the world like a bull in a china shop.

However, a bipolar world with the U.S. remaining as the main power on one side presupposes that the U.S. will continue to have a stable enough political system to carry out a coherent foreign policy and an economic system robust enough to continue to underpin its military domination and serve as a coercive instrument to keep other “allies” in line.   No one knows how long that will be the case.

The U.S. Congress moved closer to sending more “defensive” arms to Ukraine with the passage of the latest National Defense Authorization Act passed last month.  James Carden provided more details at Consortium News:

Indeed, last month’s National Defense Authorization Act shows that – if nothing else – McCain and Graham are as good as their word: the recently passed defense appropriations bill provides for $500 million, including “defensive lethal assistance” to Kiev, as part of a $640 billion overall spending package.

The aid comes at a good time for the embattled Ukrainian President Poroshenko, whose approval rating hovers around 16 percent. In a bid to stave off the possibility of a far-right coup d’etat, Poroshenko is back to banging the war drums, promising, well, more blood.

In a little covered speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Sept. 19, Poroshenko promised that “American weapons will help us liberate the Donbas and return Ukrainian territories.” He also noted that Ukraine spends roughly 6 percent of its GDP on defense, “a figure,” he observed, “much bigger than the obligation for the NATO members.”

Clearly Washington’s condemnation of governments that wage war “against their own people” remains selective, contingent upon who is doing the killing and who is doing the dying. In this case, it would seem that Russian-speaking Ukrainians simply don’t rate.

Meanwhile, a new report by Sergiy Kudelia of Baylor University outlines the extrajudicial violence, including torture and murder, occurring on both sides with respect to the conflict in Donbass.   These brutal activities are often carried out by ultra-right and Neo-Nazi proxies (Azov Battalion and Right Sector) on the Kiev side:

For most of its twenty-five years of independence, Ukraine has been classified as a “partly free” state with a medium level of restrictions on civil liberties.[2] However, since 2014, its score on the “political terror scale” has increased from medium to high, indicating that “murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life.” While this deterioration can be partially attributed to widespread human rights abuses on rebel-held territories, the application of physical coercion has also become a standard element of Ukraine’s counterinsurgency tactics.

As an index created by V-Dem project shows, violence committed by government agents in Ukraine for the last three years has been at the highest level since the country’s independence (see Figure 1). Reports by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) remain the single most extensive source of information on physical integrity rights violations in Ukraine committed by government agents and their affiliates. The first evidence of enforced disappearances in Donbas by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was reported in August 2014 with new episodes cited in every report since then. By August 2016, OHCHR concluded that the “Ukrainian authorities have allowed the deprivation of liberty of individuals in secret for prolonged periods of time.” Human rights monitors established that there is “a network of unofficial places of detention, often located in the basements of regional SBU buildings” not only in towns of Donbas, but also in Kharkiv, Odesa, Zaporizzhia, Poltava, and other cities. The authorities relied on volunteer battalions, particularly Azov and DUK Right Sector, to capture separatist suspects and interrogate them at their military bases before transferring them into government custody. Incommunicado detention has become an ordinary practice before suspects are officially registered in the criminal justice system. Some of the victims were taken into custody again immediately after their official release from prison and held in secret locations without charge, often for prisoner exchanges.

Continue reading the report, including graphs and charts here

Those same Neo-Nazis were freely marching through cities of Ukraine by the thousands recently to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which colluded with Nazi Germany in the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews during WWII.   Canadian Russia expert, Patrick Armstrong, summed up events for Ukraine in a recent post on his blog:

UKRAINE. Another coup in the making? Demonstrations kicked off by a torchlight parade. Demands (at the moment) are a new election law for parliamentarians, an anti-corruption court, ending parliamentary immunity. Signed by Tymoshenko and Saakashvili among many others including some of the nazi battalions. Perhaps not coincidentally, an investigation into fraud committed by President Poroshenko has been opened. Did the coal from Pennsylvania actually come from Russia? Nuclear fears. Another huge ammunition dump fire. The collapse continues.

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The U.S. continued its provocative behavior this past week with more military drills near South Korea as a North Korean official publicly stated how close to war the U.S. and North Korea are:

As the U.S. completes military drills off of South Korea’s eastern coast, a top North Korean official warned on Monday that “nuclear war can break out at any moment” and that the tensions that have escalated amid President Donald Trump’s threats have propelled the two countries to “the touch-and-go point.”

North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations said in his address to the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee that the U.S. has not subjected any other country to “such an extreme and direct nuclear threat” in several decades.

It has also been revealed that the North Korean government made an attempt through a letter sent via diplomatic channels to Australia to get assistance in de-escalating tensions with Washington. The Australian government was apparently dismissive of the letter. Alexander Mercouris provided the following analysis (along with the full text of the letter at this link):

Australia seems to have entirely misread the letter as well as totally misunderstanding its context. The letter represented the DPRK’s attempt to create a bridge of dialogue between Pyongyang and one of America’s closet allies in the Pacific. For all of the speculation about whether North Korea is prepared to engage in dialogue, this letter proves once and for all that not only is North Korea willing to speak with traditional partners like Russia, but that Pyongyang is also capable of reaching out to US allies in an attempt to foment the same. The fact that Australia refused to read behind North Korea’s typically robust rhetoric to understand the wider context of the letter, represents a clear failure of basic human intelligence.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the name of Eva Bartlett who has done fearless independent reporting from Syria, exposing much of the propaganda and misinformation that western corporate media and politicians have fed us for years.  Ms. Bartlett participated in a recent fact-finding trip to North Korea and has published a wonderful photo-essay on her visit, including some of the country’s successful infrastructure, education, culture and entertainment, and a health care system so well-functioning that it is “the envy of the developing wold”.  She also has quotes and photos from everyday North Koreans who are proud and resourceful, turning the average American’s view of North Korea as a gray dungeon where everyone is miserable and suffering on its head.

Propaganda and history aside, what we hardly ever see in articles on North Korea is the human side, some of the faces among the 25 million people at risk of being murdered or maimed by an American-led attack.

From August 24 to 31, 2017, I was part of a three-person delegation that independently visited the DPRK, with the intent of hearing from Koreans themselves about their country and history.

As it turned out, we heard also about their wishes for reunification with the South, their past efforts towards that goal, their desire for peace, but their refusal to be destroyed again. Following are snapshots and videos from my week in the country, with an effort to show the people and some of the impressive infrastructure and developments that corporate media almost certainly will never show.

Some sample photos:

Pyongyang’s Science and Technology Center, completed in 2015, is an expansive structure heated by geothermal energy, and with drip irrigation-watered live grass on inside walls. Its more than 3,000 computers are solar powered, the library has books in 12 foreign languages, and a long-distance learning program enables people from around the country to study and earn a degree equivalent to that of in-university studies.

See full photo-essay here

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“There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion?  The committee continues to look into all the evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion.  Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any. ” -Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr

This statement after going down the laundry list of all the thousands of pages of documents that have been reviewed, the hours of testimony heard, etc. over the course of an investigation that has gone on for a year or more, kind of says it all, don’t you think?

Mike Whitney has a full write-up over the Unz Review on just how absurd this has all become.

With the recent exposure of the Pentagon scheme in which weapons are being funneled from Eastern Europe to Syria, using a falsified paper trail, it is obvious that Washington is still keen on trying to achieve a partition of Syria as a Plan B to its failed regime change policy by backing various opponents of the Syrian government, namely the Kurds.   It is therefore unsurprising, although still disturbing, that the Russian Foreign Ministry has released satellite footage from Eastern Syria that appears to show the U.S. military cooperating with jihadist groups like ISIS.  A transcript from the Ministry of Defense, which was released along with the video, reads:

#US Special Operations Forces (#SOF) units enable US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) units to smoothly advance through the ISIS formations.

Facing no resistance of the ISIS militants, the #SDF units are advancing along the left shore of the #Euphrates towards #Deir_ez_Zor.

The aerial photos made on September 8-12 over the ISIS locations recorded a large number of American #Hummer vehicles, which are in service with the #America‘s #SOF.

Go to Russia Insider’s write-up to view the video and images.   An excerpt from their article follows:

The shots clearly show the US SOF units located at strongholds that had been equipped by the ISIS terrorists. Though there is no evidence of assault, struggle or any US-led coalition airstrikes to drive out the militants.

Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them. This suggests that the#US_troops feel safe in terrorist controlled regions.

Analyst Tom Luongo discusses other disturbing events in Syria that seem to portend Washington continuing its failed strategy of backing nefarious elements in Syria to achieve a partition – to which Putin will continue to successfully counter in his Judo-esque manner:

The sides are now very clear.  They were always clear to the astute.  They are now fully out in the open with this week’s events.

It is the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia versus Russia/China/Iran with the EU and Turkey trying to change sides while still receiving NATO money.

On Tuesday, an attack on a Russian military police position by Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) was repulsed by Russian Spetznaz and close air support forces.

….What’s important here is that the Russians believe the U.S. was behind the attack, which was no small thing.  It was designed to sow chaos in Idlib and stop the advance of the Syrian Army and its allies (Russia, Iran and Hezbollah) from crossing the Euphrates River.

….Now that there is clarity of the U.S.’s position through the re-consolidation of power by the Deep State, Putin will not hesitate to make bolder and bolder moves to cripple U.S. ambitions in the region.  It means that clashes like these are going to continue to happen with increasing frequency and severity.

Read his full analysis here

Mike Whitney also has a compelling analysis out about how this is potentially the most dangerous moment of the Syrian war as Putin will be forced to consider how much he will concede in order to placate Washington and avoid a serious confrontation as the two nuclear superpowers find themselves “cheek to jowl” in the same area of Syria.  Washington seeks to keep a foothold through an oil-backed Kurdistan and Russia supports the SAA in re-taking the most critical parts of the nation.

This blog will, of course, continue to follow events in Syria.

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Russia is still on a gradual but positive trajectory out of its recession. First, it was just announced that Russia’s grain harvest will again break records and will likely keep the country in its position as the number one exporter of grains.  Of course, this is also good for Russia’s domestic food security.

Second, BNE Intellinews has reported that retail sales are up, along with wages, and unemployment has fallen below 5% for the first time since 2014 – although it never reached over 6% through the recession.

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PBS has been broadcasting a much ballyhooed multi-part special by Ken Burns called “The Vietnam War.”  I have not had a chance to watch the series yet, but based on what I do know about the war and the critiques of trusted journalists and analysts, it sounds like it’s a whitewash that will likely not encourage Americans to meaningfully ponder its imperialist militarism or the profound consequences of its actions in Vietnam on several million Vietnamese in addition to the scarring of the land and continual suffering from illicit weapons used on that nation.

Chuck O’Connell, professor of sociology at UCI, has  great critique up at Counterpunch:

After watching Episodes One and Two of the Burns and Novick Vietnam War series, I am reminded of the old adage asserting a valuable point for students of history: the class that controls the means of material production controls also the means of mental production.  Listening to the narrator scroll through the list of financial sponsors cautioned me to lower my expectations that the series would break away from the predictable liberal narrative that has been dominant in discussions about the Vietnam War.

What is that liberal narrative? It is a bundle of intertwined claims: Vietnamese opposition to the French and then the Americans was motivated by a nationalist desire for independence, the Saigon government of the South was a legitimate government, the rebellion of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam against the U.S. supported Saigon regime was directed by the communist Hanoi government of the north, the military conflict in Vietnam was thus a civil war, and U.S. military involvement in support of the South was the result of a series of mistakes by American political leaders. It’s a narrative that has a certain plausibility not least because it has been repeated over and over for fifty years.

A more comprehensive scholarly reading of history produces a more accurate narrative: First, without discounting the significance of nationalism in Vietnamese society, a more important factor in the war was the goal of land reform offered by the communists to the peasants who comprised the majority of the population. The military struggle was in large part a social revolution against the landlord class and its foreign backers. Second, the Saigon regime that emerged after the failed French war of re-conquest was a U.S. creation financed and managed by the Americans who built its military and prodded it into fighting against the Vietnamese revolutionary forces. When an army such as the South Vietnamese Army is funded and trained by a foreign power to maintain the foreigner’s domination of that same country, that army is not fighting a civil war – it is fighting a war of counterinsurgency and is essentially an army of collaborators.  Third, the National Liberation Front was an autonomous Southern political entity that emerged from the failure of the Hanoi government to press a fight against the southern regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. Dominated by communists it was in liaison with Hanoi as the North gradually gave greater assistance to the rebels’ efforts. Fourth, the U.S. involvement was not the result of a series of mistakes but was the result of a series of deceptions and provocations made by every U.S. administration running from Harry Truman all the way to Richard Nixon on the basis of the perceived political-economic imperatives of advanced capitalism in Southeast Asia. Let me amplify these points.

Read the full article here

Next is John Pilger’s critique.  As regular readers of this blog may recall, Pilger is one of my journalistic heroes.  He was an on-the-ground journalist (and truth-teller) in Vietnam and, along with his photographer, was the first western journalist to report on the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.   He has been reporting on the ground in various conflicts and speaking truth to power for decades, from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and elsewhere.

Pilger’s critique can be found at Consortium News.  An excerpt follows:

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its “exceptionalism,” Burns’s “entirely new” Vietnam War is presented as an “epic, historic work.” Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Burns says he is grateful to “the entire Bank of America family” which “has long supported our country’s veterans.” Bank of America was a corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number are estimated to have taken their own lives.

I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings.”

The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans – it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences. In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans.

Read Pilger’s full article here

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It’s always nice to end a blog post on a positive note.  According to Sputnik News, a delegation of state senators from New York recently visited Moscow and found much to admire and even emulate in the Russian capital:

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The delegation of New York state senators, which is currently visiting Moscow, is impressed by the city’s way of governance and wants to implement some of its innovative decisions for running of New York City, member of delegation Diane Savino told Sputnik on Thursday ahead of a meeting at the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation in Moscow.

“We were really quite surprised to see how well the city of Moscow is run … So we are hoping that we can learn some stuff and bring it back to NYC and maybe implement some of really smart stuff that they have done here in the past few years,” Savino said.

….Last year, Moscow was included on the list of the world’s best cities, according to a survey by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and BAV Consulting companies. The key metrics for the survey comprised the levels of influence in terms of politics, economics, infrastructure, innovation, culture, entertainment, as well as the access to public education, public health and other points.