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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Originally posted by vt View Post
Sometimes Pritchard drives me up a wall when he goes out and puts what would be disastrous military conflicts (a full blown Chinese invasion of Russia) in economic terms by comparing GDP.
All the Gucci necklaces, Nordstroms, inflated real estate values, and KFCs in the world won't stop 3,000+ nuclear warheads from raining down hell on you. Nor will they stop the fact you're outgunned with armor and in the air and on the sea.
The big strong belligerent poor kid still might beat the hell out of the little wealthy transfer student.
So how exactly is this scenario supposed to happen again? -
Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Unless one thinks NATO forces in armed conflict with Russia on its historical back door is a good idea that will end well for the West, shouldn't all people of goodwill everywhere who want peace stop deploying themselves as conduits for warmongering propaganda?
It seems to me that by such efforts we are working diligently to ensure that our children and grandchildren lie dead and wounded on yet another distant battlefield. And this time we will see our daughters come back maimed or in flag draped aluminum coffins.
The way to peace is truth and truth has no nationality and salutes no flag. We cannot afford another disastrous war. Please stop beating the war drums unless you yourself intend to take up arms and send your own sons and daughters.
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.
Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.
First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions--on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems.
With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor--it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.
So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."
Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.
No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
Today, should total war ever break out again--no matter how--our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies--our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.
In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours--and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.Last edited by Woodsman; August 07, 2014, 12:33 PM.
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Putin is doing more and more to marginalize russia from the whole world, and its kinda sad to me because it really will poopoo even further on the legitimacy of the new BRICS bank which I had some high hopes for, even though the countries starting it aren't exactly friends of the west. But the world really needs more institutions like this to challenge IMF dominance. But thee world Russia pushes the Ukraine issue, the more BRICS will start to look like an rouge element in the world, and people will bite the bullet with IMF over a deal which may be a little more reasonable under a competing agency. Now i hear that Medvedev is banning imports from the EU, USA, Canada, Australia and Norway, as if doing that hurts those countries more than it hurts Russian citizens. When they do things like this, it only makes the west a much closer and more tightly knit bloc. When issues like the USA spying and using double agents within Germany should be bigger issues, they are swept under the rug because Russia presents itself as a unifying element that both the USA and EU can focus their anger/frustration on. Not to say that the Western role in ukraine is genuine and out of pure altruism either, but if i were Putin...I really wouldn't have let this thing escalate to the point where Russia would get kicked out of the G8. It will be interesting to see how things play out on this Ukraine issue in the months/years to come. I've been so preoccupied with the israeli-palestine conflict that I almost forgot this stuff in ukraine was even going on
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
I did some basic fact-checking on AEP information: According to LNG journal the East Asian delivered LNG price is $14.90, not 10,50.
"China's Xi Jinping drove a brutal bargain in May on a future Gazprom pipeline, securing a price near $350 per 1,000 cubic metres that is barely above Russia's production costs. " That's what AEP says. The standard conversion takes this price to something less than $10 per MMBtu.
That is far from the production costs of $1.2 per MMBtu stated under.
If the basic economic information is absolutely wrong the ensuing geopolitical analyisis is just nonsense. Just the fact that AEP does not mention the source of his information was suspect.
"The average gas production cost of 2013 is reported at RUR 1232/mcm ($38.72/mcm or $1.2/MMBtu) compared with RUR 1085/mcm ($34.92mcm or $1.1/MMBtu) of 2012. The average cost of Q4-2013 is calculated at RUR 1240/mcm ($38.13)."
The average gas production cost of 2013 is reported at RUR 1232/mcm ($38.72/mcm or $1.2/MMBtu) compared with RUR 1085/mcm ($34.92mcm or $1.1/MMBtu) of 2012. The average cost of Q4-2013 is calculated at RUR 1240/mcm ($38.13).
The average price of gas exported out of the former Soviet Union in 2013 is reported at $380.5/mcm or $11.9/MMBtu (in the reporting standard of Gazprom). Export price of Q4-2013 is calculated at at $375.2/mcm or $11.7/MMBtu.
Mikhail Korchemkin East European Gas Analysis Malvern, PA, USA"
http://www.eegas.com/rep2013q4-cost_e.htmComment
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Marginalizing itself? By pursuing an independent foreign policy? By creating trade deals with its neighbors? By seeking an alternative to unipolar world dominance? By defending its nationals and boundaries? By opposing attempts to undermine its longstanding and historical relations with countries that have been within its sphere for hundreds of years? By refusing to take the fall for an incident that has yet to be determined as anything more than a tragic accident? By resisting encirclement by forces committed to its defeat and humiliation?Originally posted by verdo View Post
The solution is for Russia to lie down and die so that western banks can slice and dice it to pieces and permit its encirclement by forces hostile to its existence, is that about the long and short of it?
Your admitted lack of engagement is quite evident as is your credulousness. Since you haven't been paying much attention, you might note that the war fervor is being directed at a nuclear powerhouse, not at some derelict Middle East country. What exactly are we hoping to achieve by attempting to box Putin into a corner? If we are to send our children to war then we should at the very least be able to articulate what vital US interest is at stake if Russia keeps Crimea and defends its nationals along its border. And no one has done that.
What on Earth is happening when men like Pat Buchannan of all people are a voice of reason and moderation.
My God, have we all lost the ability for reason and common sense when it comes to this?Ike invited Khrushchev to tour the USA after he had drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. After Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, JFK was soon calling for a new detente at American University. Within weeks of Warsaw Pact armies crushing the Prague Spring in August 1968, LBJ was seeking a summit with Premier Alexei Kosygin. After excoriating Moscow for the downing of KAL 007 in 1983, that old Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan was fishing for a summit meeting.
The point: Every president from FDR through George H. W. Bush, even after collisions with Moscow far more serious than this clash over Ukraine, sought to re-engage the men in the Kremlin. Whatever we thought of the Soviet dictators who blockaded Berlin, enslaved Eastern Europe, put rockets in Cuba and armed Arabs to attack Israel, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush 1 all sought to engage Russia's rulers.
Avoidance of a catastrophic war demanded engagement. How then can we explain the clamor of today's U.S. foreign policy elite to confront, isolate, and cripple Russia, and make of Putin a moral and political leper with whom honorable statesmen can never deal?
Is Putin worse than Stalin?Comment
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
you might be drinking too much of the Russia Today koolaid. I can tell that you are...because even with me saying that the western involvement in the situation shouldn't be considered altruistic either, you still found the need to jump down my throat with a bunch of Russian vicitimization garbage, as if Putin were this pristine cherub sitting at God's right hand. Ukraine has a right to its own self determination, without involvement from any external powers. The fact that Ukraine borders Russia doesn't make what Russia is doing right, any more so than the US invasion of Iraq. If you can't see that, then you're probably too far gone for me to discuss this with
Besides, it doesn't matter what "reason" you want to come up with for their marginalized status...The fact is that they are being marginalized...at least by the developed world. Unless you consider things like being thrown out of the G8 as a sign of being embracedLast edited by verdo; August 07, 2014, 03:24 PM.
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Chomsky take on 2 minutes to midnight . . .
If some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). The latter era, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but - so the evidence suggests - not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts.
Day one of the NWE was marked by the "success" of Little Boy, a simple atomic bomb. On day four, Nagasaki experienced the technological triumph of Fat Man, a more sophisticated design. Five days later came what the official Air Force history calls the "grand finale," a 1,000-plane raid - no mean logistical achievement - attacking Japan's cities and killing many thousands of people, with leaflets falling among the bombs reading "Japan has surrendered." Truman announced that surrender before the last B-29 returned to its base.
Those were the auspicious opening days of the NWE. As we now enter its 70th year, we should be contemplating with wonder that we have survived. We can only guess how many years remain.
Some reflections on these grim prospects were offered by General Lee Butler, former head of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy. Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE "by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion."
Reflecting on his long career in developing nuclear weapons strategies and organizing the forces to implement them efficiently, he described himself ruefully as having been "among the most avid of these keepers of the faith in nuclear weapons." But, he continued, he had come to realize that it was now his "burden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster that in my judgment they served us extremely ill." And he asked, "By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestations?"
He termed the US strategic plan of 1960 that called for an automated all-out strike on the Communist world "the single most absurd and irresponsible document I have ever reviewed in my life." Its Soviet counterpart was probably even more insane. But it is important to bear in mind that there are competitors, not least among them the easy acceptance of extraordinary threats to survival.
Survival in the early Cold War years
According to received doctrine in scholarship and general intellectual discourse, the prime goal of state policy is "national security." There is ample evidence, however, that the doctrine of national security does not encompass the security of the population. The record reveals that, for instance, the threat of instant destruction by nuclear weapons has not ranked high among the concerns of planners. That much was demonstrated early on, and remains true to the present moment.
In the early days of the NWE, the US was overwhelmingly powerful and enjoyed remarkable security: it controlled the hemisphere, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the opposite sides of those oceans as well. Long before World War II, it had already become by far the richest country in the world, with incomparable advantages. Its economy boomed during the war, while other industrial societies were devastated or severely weakened. By the opening of the new era, the US possessed about half of total world wealth and an even greater percentage of its manufacturing capacity.
There was, however, a potential threat: intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. That threat was discussed in the standard scholarly study of nuclear policies, carried out with access to high-level sources - Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years by McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies.
Bundy wrote that "the timely development of ballistic missiles during the Eisenhower administration is one of the best achievements of those eight years. Yet it is well to begin with a recognition that both the United States and the Soviet Union might be in much less nuclear danger today if [those] missiles had never been developed." He then added an instructive comment: "I am aware of no serious contemporary proposal, in or out of either government, that ballistic missiles should somehow be banned by agreement." In short, there was apparently no thought of trying to prevent the sole serious threat to the US, the threat of utter destruction in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Could that threat have been taken off the table? We cannot, of course, be sure, but it was hardly inconceivable. The Russians, far behind in industrial development and technological sophistication, were in a far more threatening environment. Hence, they were significantly more vulnerable to such weapons systems than the US. There might have been opportunities to explore these possibilities, but in the extraordinary hysteria of the day they could hardly have even been perceived. And that hysteria was indeed extraordinary. An examination of the rhetoric of central official documents of that moment like National Security Council Paper NSC-68 remains quite shocking, even discounting Secretary of State Dean Acheson's injunction that it is necessary to be "clearer than truth."
One indication of possible opportunities to blunt the threat was a remarkable proposal by Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin in 1952, offering to allow Germany to be unified with free elections on the condition that it would not then join a hostile military alliance. That was hardly an extreme condition in light of the history of the past half-century during which Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia twice, exacting a terrible toll.
Stalin's proposal was taken seriously by the respected political commentator James Warburg, but otherwise mostly ignored or ridiculed at the time. Recent scholarship has begun to take a different view. The bitterly anti-Communist Soviet scholar Adam Ulam has taken the status of Stalin's proposal to be an "unresolved mystery." Washington "wasted little effort in flatly rejecting Moscow's initiative," he has written, on grounds that "were embarrassingly unconvincing." The political, scholarly, and general intellectual failure left open "the basic question," Ulam added: "Was Stalin genuinely ready to sacrifice the newly created German Democratic Republic (GDR) on the altar of real democracy," with consequences for world peace and for American security that could have been enormous?
Reviewing recent research in Soviet archives, one of the most respected Cold War scholars, Melvyn Leffler, has observed that many scholars were surprised to discover "[Lavrenti] Beria - the sinister, brutal head of the [Russian] secret police - propos[ed] that the Kremlin offer the West a deal on the unification and neutralization of Germany," agreeing "to sacrifice the East German communist regime to reduce East-West tensions" and improve internal political and economic conditions in Russia - opportunities that were squandered in favor of securing German participation in NATO.
Under the circumstances, it is not impossible that agreements might then have been reached that would have protected the security of the American population from the gravest threat on the horizon. But that possibility apparently was not considered, a striking indication of how slight a role authentic security plays in state policy.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and beyond
That conclusion was underscored repeatedly in the years that followed. When Nikita Khrushchev took control in Russia in 1953 after Stalin's death, he recognized that the USSR could not compete militarily with the US, the richest and most powerful country in history, with incomparable advantages. If it ever hoped to escape its economic backwardness and the devastating effect of the last world war, it would need to reverse the arms race.
Accordingly, Khrushchev proposed sharp mutual reductions in offensive weapons. The incoming Kennedy administration considered the offer and rejected it, instead turning to rapid military expansion, even though it was already far in the lead. The late Kenneth Waltz, supported by other strategic analysts with close connections to US intelligence, wrote then that the Kennedy administration "undertook the largest strategic and conventional peace-time military build-up the world has yet seen ... even as Khrushchev was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence, and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States." Again, harming national security while enhancing state power.
US intelligence verified that huge cuts had indeed been made in active Soviet military forces, both in terms of aircraft and manpower. In 1963, Khrushchev again called for new reductions. As a gesture, he withdrew troops from East Germany and called on Washington to reciprocate. That call, too, was rejected. William Kaufmann, a former top Pentagon aide and leading analyst of security issues, described the US failure to respond to Khrushchev's initiatives as, in career terms, "the one regret I have."
The Soviet reaction to the US build-up of those years was to place nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962 to try to redress the balance at least slightly. The move was also motivated in part by Kennedy's terrorist campaign against Fidel Castro's Cuba, which was scheduled to lead to invasion that very month, as Russia and Cuba may have known. The ensuing "missile crisis" was "the most dangerous moment in history," in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy's adviser and confidant.
As the crisis peaked in late October, Kennedy received a secret letter from Khrushchev offering to end it by simultaneous public
withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and US Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The latter were obsolete missiles, already ordered withdrawn by the Kennedy administration because they were being replaced by far more lethal Polaris submarines to be stationed in the Mediterranean.
Kennedy's subjective estimate at that moment was that if he refused the Soviet premier's offer, there was a 33% to 50% probability of nuclear war - a war that, as President Eisenhower had warned, would have destroyed the northern hemisphere. Kennedy nonetheless refused Khrushchev's proposal for public withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba and Turkey; only the withdrawal from Cuba could be public, so as to protect the US right to place missiles on Russia's borders or anywhere else it chose.
It is hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history - and for this, he is still highly praised for his cool courage and statesmanship.
Ten years later, in the last days of the 1973 Israel-Arab war, Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser to President Nixon, called a nuclear alert. The purpose was to warn the Russians not to interfere with his delicate diplomatic maneuvers designed to ensure an Israeli victory, but of a limited sort so that the US would still be in control of the region unilaterally. And the maneuvers were indeed delicate. The US and Russia had jointly imposed a cease-fire, but Kissinger secretly informed the Israelis that they could ignore it. Hence the need for the nuclear alert to frighten the Russians away. The security of Americans had its usual status.
Ten years later, the Reagan administration launched operations to probe Russian air defenses by simulating air and naval attacks and a high-level nuclear alert that the Russians were intended to detect. These actions were undertaken at a very tense moment. Washington was deploying Pershing II strategic missiles in Europe with a five-minute flight time to Moscow. President Reagan had also announced the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") program, which the Russians understood to be effectively a first-strike weapon, a standard interpretation of missile defense on all sides. And other tensions were rising.
Naturally, these actions caused great alarm in Russia, which, unlike the US, was quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded and virtually destroyed. That led to a major war scare in 1983. Newly released archives reveal that the danger was even more severe than historians had previously assumed. A CIA study entitled The War Scare Was for Real concluded that US intelligence may have underestimated Russian concerns and the threat of a Russian preventative nuclear strike. The exercises "almost became a prelude to a preventative nuclear strike," according to an account in the Journal of Strategic Studies.
It was even more dangerous than that, as we learned last September, when the BBC reported that right in the midst of these world-threatening developments, Russia's early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States, sending its nuclear system onto the highest-level alert. The protocol for the Soviet military was to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own. Fortunately, the officer on duty, Stanislav Petrov, decided to disobey orders and not report the warnings to his superiors. He received an official reprimand. And thanks to his dereliction of duty, we're still alive to talk about it.
The security of the population was no more a high priority for Reagan administration planners than for their predecessors. And so it continues to the present, even putting aside the numerous near-catastrophic nuclear accidents that occurred over the years, many reviewed in Eric Schlosser's chilling study Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. In other words, it is hard to contest General Butler's conclusions.
Survival in the post-Cold War era
The record of post-Cold War actions and doctrines is hardly reassuring either. Every self-respecting president has to have a doctrine. The Clinton Doctrine was encapsulated in the slogan "multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must." In congressional testimony, the phrase "when we must" was explained more fully: the US is entitled to resort to "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources." Meanwhile, STRATCOM in the Clinton era produced an important study entitled "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," issued well after the Soviet Union had collapsed and Clinton was extending President George H W Bush's program of expanding NATO to the east in violation of promises to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev - with reverberations to the present.
That STRATCOM study was concerned with "the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era." A central conclusion: that the US must maintain the right to launch a first strike, even against non-nuclear states. Furthermore, nuclear weapons must always be at the ready because they "cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict." They were, that is, constantly being used, just as you're using a gun if you aim but don't fire one while robbing a store (a point that Daniel Ellsberg has repeatedly stressed). STRATCOM went on to advise that "planners should not be too rational about determining ... what the opponent values the most." Everything should simply be targeted. "[I]t hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed ... That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project." It is "beneficial [for our strategic posture] if some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control,'" thus posing a constant threat of nuclear attack - a severe violation of the UN Charter, if anyone cares.
Not much here about the noble goals constantly proclaimed - or for that matter the obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to make "good faith" efforts to eliminate this scourge of the earth. What resounds, rather, is an adaptation of Hilaire Belloc's famous couplet about the Maxim gun (to quote the great African historian Chinweizu):"Whatever happens, we have got,After Clinton came, of course, George W Bush, whose broad endorsement of preventative war easily encompassed Japan's attack in December 1941 on military bases in two US overseas possessions, at a time when Japanese militarists were well aware that B-17 Flying Fortresses were being rushed off assembly lines and deployed to those bases with the intent "to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu." That was how the prewar plans were described by their architect, Air Force General Claire Chennault, with the enthusiastic approval of President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall.
The Atom Bomb, and they have not."
Then comes Barack Obama, with pleasant words about working to abolish nuclear weapons - combined with plans to spend $1 trillion on the US nuclear arsenal in the next 30 years, a percentage of the military budget "comparable to spending for procurement of new strategic systems in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan," according to a study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Obama has also not hesitated to play with fire for political gain. Take for example the capture and assassination of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs. Obama brought it up with pride in an important speech on national security in May 2013. It was widely covered, but one crucial paragraph was ignored.
Obama hailed the operation but added that it could not be the norm. The reason, he said, was that the risks "were immense." The SEALs might have been "embroiled in an extended firefight." Even though, by luck, that didn't happen, "the cost to our relationship with Pakistan and the backlash among the Pakistani public over encroachment on their territory was ... severe."
Let us now add a few details. The SEALs were ordered to fight their way out if apprehended. They would not have been left to their fate if "embroiled in an extended firefight." The full force of the US military would have been used to extricate them. Pakistan has a powerful, well-trained military, highly protective of state sovereignty. It also has nuclear weapons, and Pakistani specialists are concerned about the possible penetration of their nuclear security system by jihadi elements. It is also no secret that the population has been embittered and radicalized by Washington's drone terror campaign and other policies.
While the SEALs were still in the bin Laden compound, Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kiani was informed of the raid and ordered the military "to confront any unidentified aircraft," which he assumed would be from India. Meanwhile in Kabul, US war commander General David Petraeus ordered "warplanes to respond" if the Pakistanis "scrambled their fighter jets." As Obama said, by luck the worst didn't happen, though it could have been quite ugly. But the risks were faced without noticeable concern. Or subsequent comment.
As General Butler observed, it is a near miracle that we have escaped destruction so far, and the longer we tempt fate, the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle.Comment
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
And what brillinat mind (in part) came up with this insane stuff ? Well an insane person as portrayed in "Originally posted by don View Post
A Beautiful Mind (2001)". But heck, if Hollywood says he has a beautiful mind then it must be so.
"
Nash began to show signs of extreme paranoia, and his wife later described his behavior as erratic, as he began speaking of characters like Charles Herman and William Parcher who were putting him in danger. Nash seemed to believe that all men who wore red ties were part of a communist conspiracy against him. Nash mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., declaring that they were establishing a government.[17][18]
He was admitted to the McLean Hospital, April–May 1959, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The clinical picture is dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present — particularly auditory and perceptional disturbances, a lack of motivation for life, and mild clinical depression.[19]In 1961, Nash was admitted to the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton. Over the next nine years, he spent periods in psychiatric hospitals, where, aside from receiving antipsychotic medications, he was administered insulin shock therapy.[19][20][21]Although he sometimes took prescribed medication, Nash later wrote that he only ever did so under pressure. After 1970, he was never committed to a hospital again, and he refused any further medication. According to Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind inaccurately implied that he was taking the new atypical antipsychotics during this period. He attributed the depiction to the screenwriter (whose mother, he notes, was a psychiatrist), who was worried about the film encouraging people with the disorder to stop taking their medication.[22] Others, however, have questioned whether the fabrication obscured a key question as to whether recovery from problems like Nash's can actually be hindered by such drugs.[23] Nash has said they are overrated and that the adverse effects are not given enough consideration once someone is deemedmentally ill.[24][25][26] According to Sylvia Nasar, author of the book A Beautiful Mind, on which the movie was based, Nash recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his then former wife, de Lardé, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted. De Lardé said of Nash, "it's just a question of living a quiet life".[18]"
I highly recommend this documentary film to explain Nashe's part in this human tragedy waiting to happen,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVWzRFiADHQ
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
"Marginalizing itself? By pursuing an independent foreign policy? By creating trade deals with its neighbors? By seeking an alternative to unipolar world dominance? By defending its nationals and boundaries? By opposing attempts to undermine its longstanding and historical relations with countries that have been within its sphere for hundreds of years?"
That Russian kool aid must have 180 proof vodka in it.
Independent foreign policy?!? The Ukraine just wants to be independent, of both sides, both east and west.
Of course you forget this:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1227482-stalin-starved-ukraine-must-putin-slice-it-up
Ukraine was treated like dogs by the Communists and Nazis:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Resources/BookReviews/rebecca.htm
"By defending its nationals and boundaries?" Sounds exactly like what Hitler said before World War II.
Sorry, no right thinking individual who wants peace will support one country using military forces to forcefully take over sovereign territory. A pox on tyrants on the right and left.
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
the main beneficiaries of the new western-oriented kiev gov't will be the investment banks which handle the privatization of ukraine's energy infrastructure. business as usual. unfortunately, there are no angels in this story.Originally posted by vt View Post
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
JK. agreed there are no angels.
But Russia has no right to invade a free nation with democratically elected leaders either.
Hopefully the Ukrainians will be able just one day shake off the FIRE government just like the rest of the western world.Comment
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Typical and not at all an unexpected response.
The idea that I am willing to give Putin a pass or overlook his obvious criminality and the implications of his time as a KGB officer is utterly preposterous and a fairly cheap shot, if I might say. This is not a popularity contest and neither are we looking for saints. We take the world as it is and I have no illusions about politics in Russia or at home. Frankly, I consider it a red herring as nowhere did I characterize Putin as you assert....,Russian vicitimization garbage, as if Putin were this pristine cherub sitting at God's right hand. Ukraine has a right to its own self determination, without involvement from any external powers. The fact that Ukraine borders Russia doesn't make what Russia is doing right, any more so than the US invasion of Iraq. If you can't see that, then you're probably too far gone for me to discuss this with
And while the humor of it does not escape me, in truth it depresses me to know that such protestations in support of "self-determination" and freedom from "external powers" have the same emotional impact on me as the Spanish Inquisition sketch.
As for God's hand, ask the Russian Orthodox Church what they think of Putin's piety and obeisance. Me, I don't have an opinion on it.
My concern is to avoid a third European war, particularly one between NATO and Russia. You see, I grew up in a time when that was a BAD, BAD THING and something we all worked really hard to avoid. For a great coda to Don's excellent piece by Chomsky, I'd point you to the National Security Archive and their release of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee materials just days ago:
You're right though. I am TOO far gone for you and so I totally understand if this has to be goodbye.Studies by Once Top Secret Government Entity Portrayed Terrible Costs of Nuclear War
After Briefing on Likely Death Tolls, JFK Remarked: "And We Call Ourselves the Human Race"
Net Evaluation Subcommittee Nevertheless Initially Projected U.S. Prevailing in Global Nuclear Conflict — Although Final Report Described a "Nuclear Stalemate"
Some Studies Depicted U.S. as Launching First, Preemptively
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 480
Posted - July 22, 2014
For more information contact:
William Burr - 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Reports of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee
Washington, D.C., July 22, 2014 – On the morning of 20 July 1961, while the Berlin Crisis was simmering, President John F. Kennedy and the members of the National Security Council heard a briefing on the consequences of nuclear war by the NSC's highly secret Net Evaluation Subcommittee. The report, published in excerpts today for the first time by the National Security Archive, depicted a Soviet surprise attack on the United States in the fall of 1963 that began with submarine-launched missile strikes against Strategic Air Command bases. An estimated 48 to 71 million Americans were "killed outright," while at its maximum casualty-producing radioactive fallout blanketed from 45 to 71 percent of the nation's residences. In the USSR and China, at the end of one month 67 and 76 million people, respectively, had been killed.
This was President Kennedy's first exposure to a NESC report, but the secret studies of nuclear war scenarios had been initiated by his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. It may have been after this briefing, described by Secretary of State Dean Rusk as "an awesome experience," that a dismayed Kennedy turned to Rusk, and said: "And we call ourselves the human race."
Estimated distribution of radioactive fall-out on U.S. caused by a Soviet retaliatory launch-on-warning (LOW) attack in mid-1965 on a range of U.S. target systems: urban-industrial (also Canadian), air defenses (also Canadian), SAC bases, naval bases, command-and-control, and military depots.
Still, it seems to me that we are rushing blindly towards a European war and completely discounting the existential nature of the threat as perceived by Russia. Howzat for strategic thinking? Our planning, if it could be called that, shows no concern as to the geopolitical and internal political realities that the Russian leadership face in their decision making. Our concern here is not because we think they're swell guys, although the Russians seem to approve of their leadership far more than we do of ours. It's just better that way if the goal is avoiding a hot war or proxy war between NATO and Russia as that would be a disaster, an incalculable error and potentially the final failure. It makes sense not to back the Russians into a corner, but hey that's just me and 50 years of Cold War strategery.
I do not want another war. I do not want to see my loved ones and neighbors' children come back in body bags. We've had enough of them over the past ten years, thanks very much, and if this thing gets out of hand no one can know how it ends except in disaster. There is no national interest at stake in Ukraine and we are being lied to on a daily basis by our leadership. This will make the third (fourth?) time in 50+ years we have gone to war under false pretenses, and people are concerned about democracy and self-determination in Ukraine, of all the places? Really, the log in our eye is blinding us.
As for VT's points...
You sir, with all due respect, may go to Hades and and bring me back a t-shirt. I am aware of the tragic history of Russia and Ukraine and the Second World War. It was my privilege to study under men and women whose life experience and scholarly achievement in these very domains make the two of us seem like a pair of bar stool drunks. You are of course entitled to your opinion and I thank you for expressing it so clearly. But if it's pedantry we're engaging in then allow me: Putin is not Stalin. The Soviet Union no longer exists. The threat of the international communist conspiracy is no more. The people east of the Dnieper consider themselves Russian and look to Putin as their protector. You don't have to like that or think it's a great idea. I don't think it's a great idea, and frankly I bet Putin wishes there was some way he could offload them to someone else. But to deny that these people have been a part of Russia since the Kievan Rus and the late 800s is as O'Yeah!, People's Temple down with Jim Jones Kool-Aid as it gets, brother. And it's been running down your shirt since about two minutes after you heard the word "MH17".That Russian kool aid must have 180 proof vodka in it.
We are bumbling into war and it will be our country who loses the most in the end, even if some putative victory can be made to happen on the battlefield and this I doubt with all sincerity. Adventures such as this are the death of empires, republics and democracies across history starting with Athens. I take offense at your slander but disappointing as it is, it does not surprise me in the least. You'll know nothing about the time I spent in service to my country. I am a patriot and I do not want us to be a party to this madness. I'd say I cannot for the life of me fathom why otherwise right thinking people don't understand this, but that would be dumb. We all know why.
And so it goes.There are two dozen factors that will give the great war its unique qualities but consider one in particular that did not exist during WWII: image driven electronic media. Image driven electronic media is the most efficient machine of mass belief shaping in human history. It will be used by the state to erase old beliefs and create new ones in a matter of days if not hours.
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Exactly. This is about trying to pull back and understanding ALL SIDES. Likewise not forgetting WHO is driving this as it is not the politicians.Originally posted by Woodsman View Post
Cui bono and not "who is drinking Kool-Aid" which I like a lot.
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Re: Putin's Pointless Move On Ukraine Leaves It A Vassal To China
Actually I agree with vt, but being a vassal of China is not all bad.
Closer trade with China brings prosperity. China can supply not only money but also plenty of skilled blue collar manpower, technology (e.g. high speed trains) as well as manufacturing and farming know how. Chinese tourists are by far the biggest spenders in the world and this is a lucrative market for Russia. China is also a huge food exporter, exports apples, oranges, vegetables, and they even farm salmon last I heard, if you don't mind the pesticide and antibiotics.
Last edited by touchring; August 08, 2014, 08:26 AM.Comment
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