Submitted by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,
It’s 2018, and President Hillary Clinton has announced that the Russians have violated her “no fly zone” over Syria. Damascus is about to fall, as jihadists – some armed and supported by the United States – gather in a final assault on the city. In the fog of war, a Russian fighter jet nearly collides with a US warplane sent in to fulfill the US “responsibility to protect” the “moderate” rebels.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the newly-elected ultra-nationalist government has declared its intention to take back Crimea, and the freshly-rearmed Ukrainian military – with the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade in the lead – moves into the city of Mariupol, which has just voted to secede from Ukraine and asked for Russian protection. In Kalingrad, the isolated Russian outpost completely surrounded by Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, groups funded by the EU are staging demonstrations demanding reunification with Germany. In the midst of all this, Vladimir Putin announces Russia’s withdrawal from the INF treaty, Russian forces converge on the border with the Baltic states, and President Clinton puts US nuclear forces in Germany – which have just undergone a second “upgrade” – on high alert.
Since the US-Russian verification and information exchange, mandated by the INF treaty, has been suspended since 2016, both countries are flying blind as far as monitoring the actions and intentions of the other.
It is near midnight in a small town in eastern Germany, as NATO radar picks up indications that what may be a Russian fighter squadron is headed for Kaliningrad, and NATO’s missile defense system – just installed in Poland last summer – readies its response. The world teeters on the brink of World War III, as Hillary Clinton gets that call at 3 a.m.….
Given the resumption of the cold war with Russia, some variation on the scenario described above is not only entirely possible, it is nearly inevitable. The INF treaty signed by Ronald Reagan is in danger of falling apart at the seams as NATO moves its forces ever closer to the Russian border and the Russians respond in kind. The US-EU coup d’etat in Ukraine, Georgia’s imminent entry into NATO, the “upgrading” of US nuclear weapons in Germany, and the radical uptick in anti-Russian rhetoric by US military and political figures has returned us to a danger we thought ended with the implosion of the Soviet empire: the threat of nuclear war.
Accusations that Russia has violated the terms of the INF Treaty are not quite true, but what is clear is that the US and its NATO allies are prepositioning heavy weaponry on their eastern frontier and doubling the size of our “Response Force” in Europe. The Russian response has been largely rhetorical: in terms of facts on the ground, their much-touted nuclear modernization effort still puts them many miles behind the US. As Adam Mount, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, puts it:
“Even if Russia were somehow to accelerate its nuclear modernization efforts, the U.S. Department of Defense recognizes that Russia “would not be able to achieve a militarily significant advantage by any plausible expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, even in a cheating or breakout scenario under the New START Treaty.”
“To summarize: Russia could deploy many more missiles and still remain behind the United States in numbers of launchers and under the New START caps. Even if it cheated on the New START treaty and deployed still more, the Pentagon does not believe that this would significantly affect the strategic balance.”
The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, installed anti-ballistic missile systems in two east European countries, and has aggressively moved to expand NATO to the point that they are standing before the gates of Moscow. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed by President George Herbert Walker Bush and then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the winter of 1990, was effectively breached by the construction of permanent US military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, and the installation of US ABM facilities: the general atmosphere produced by the new cold war caused the Russians to formally withdraw from the treaty in 2007.
The encirclement of Russia is a key element of Putin’s justified paranoia: not only in Europe but also in Central Asia, the Americans are on the march, as John Kerry’s recent trip to the region demonstrates. There Kerry canoodled with Central Asian despots like Islam Karimov, whose bloody dictatorship is a model for tyrants everywhere, making stops in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as well as Uzbekistan, where the USA maintains a military base not far from the Tajikistan border. Manas Air Base, near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has been a key link in the supply chain servicing US troops in Afghanistan. Kerry’s Uzbekistan sojourn was marked by a news conference in which a Washington Post reporter was hustled out of the room by US and Uzbek security for asking inconvenient questions about Karimov’s horrendous human rights record.
But human rights are only an issue for Washington in this context insofar as they can be used to indict Putin: the arrest and imprisonment of, say, journalists in Ukraine for questioning government policies is not even mentioned by our State Department, let alone protested.
The anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Washington doesn’t discriminate as to party: while Hillary Clinton has been vocal about the alleged Russian “threat,” and hasn’t backed down from her “no fly zone” advocacy since the Russian intervention, GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio has done her one better by openly coming out for shooting down Russian planes in Syrian skies. Falsely claiming that the US isn’t modernizing its nuclear arsenal, Rubio wants to install more ABM sites throughout eastern Europe, and says Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO – setting the stage for a full-on showdown with the Russians. Rubio’s “vision for Europe” would send us back to the 1950s, when the specter of all-out war between the superpowers haunted the headlines.
This retrograde vision is shared by most of Rubio’s Republican rivals, with the exception of Sen. Rand Paul – who is far behind in most polls. With Mrs. Clinton waxing hawkish when it comes to Putin’s Russia, and even Bernie Sanders echoing cold war propaganda – he supports US aid, including military aid, to Ukraine, and “freezing Russian assets all over the world” – the political atmosphere here in the US does not bode well for Russo-American relations.
With the general collapse of the post-cold war arms agreements with Moscow, and escalating tensions with the Kremlin in eastern Europe and the Middle East, the danger of a military confrontation between the US and Russia is as great as it has ever been. This represents a shift by the Washington elite away from their seemingly eternal “war on terrorism” to a Russia-centric policy targeting Putinism rather than Islamism as the main danger to US interests.
What is needed is a grassroots movement to counter the hysterical cold war propaganda being beamed at us by the “mainstream” media. We’ve been warning against the dangers posed by a new cold war with Russia for years, and the latest developments simply underscore how right we were.
While grassroots campaigns can’t hope to match the Washington think-tanks monetarily, it does have one huge advantage, and that is the natural unwillingness of the American people to be drawn into another cold war. Popular support for arming Ukraine and provoking the Russians is very low, and no one wants a nuclear showdown with the Kremlin. Significantly, the less Americans know about Ukraine the more they support US intervention – which just underlines how important our educational campaign is
The demonization of Putin has been relatively successful, but the reality is that Russia has come a long way since the days of Stalin, and the willingness of the American people to engage in another international crusade against the Kremlin is highly problematic, at best. We have enough problems here at home that need addressing.
What is desperately needed is a revived grassroots movement to reduce our nuclear weapons arsenal and rebuild the arms agreements with Russia that have been gathering dust in the wake of the new cold war. Do we really want another version of the Cuban missile crisis?
I was struck by what one participant in the recent “Realism and Restraint” conference, co-sponsored by The American Conservative, the Charles Koch Institute, and the Georgetown University political science department, had to say at the outset of the event. In the first panel, Kori Schake, a research associate at the Hoover Institution who thinks US foreign policy must necessitate the recreation of the British Empire, raised a question that was meant as a litmus test of the other panel members’ views. What, she wanted to know, “should we do about Russia?”
That we need to “do something” about Russia is in itself an assumption that hardly anyone in the foreign policy community “mainstream” questions. Undergoing economic convulsions and suffering from a rapidly falling birth rate, Russia is in no position to challenge the policy of US “primacy” so lovingly advanced by Schake and her fellow neocons. The reality, however, is that the policy of global hegemony pursued by our foreign policy elites requires the subjugation of Russia – which is, after all, a nuclear power. And that represents a dire threat to the peace of the world.
The Russian question is, today, the main issue before us – and how we answer it will make the difference between war and peace.
The War Party never rests: their cold war propaganda campaign is off and running.
“Beware of the leader who beats the drums of war in order to whip the citizens into a patriotic frenzy, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood and narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will not need to suspend the citizens’ rights. Rather, the citizens, struck by fear and blinded by patriotism, will subordinate all their rights unto the leader, and even do it gladly. How do I know that? I know it, for this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”
—————–Gaius Julius Caesar, Roman general and statesman
“Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe-making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”
——————— Mark Twain
If the war party is too stupid even to protect our military secrets, then they might ought think twice about pokin’ Putin with their pointy stick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvdlYLKHykI&feature=em-subs_digest-g
War Party? – singular?
I can show that both Rep and Dem are the War Parties.
Mena Lee Grebin says she was given a vision of the opening of the 2nd Seal in Rev 6 and the Rider on the Red Horse was BHO. TD Hale was given a vision of BHO in a black suit, shirt and tie; then his heart was exposed and it was enveloped in a black cloud; he saw BHO shoot the American Eagle with a shotgun from the Truman Balcony of the White House and then BHO picked it up and wrung it’s head off and smiled. Some modern prophets have been told BHO is the last POTUS and almost all see America destroyed by Natural Disasters, war etc. The Iranians believe BHO is the Black Mahdi prophesied by Mohammad’s cousin; he is to be a Black who will be the leader of the greatest Western Military; will advance Islam and help bring on war and The Mahdi (and Christ will appear at the same time); they believe Mahdi will defeat the West and Christ will say Mohammad is Lord. There is no doubt in my mind that the Nobel Peace Prize winner and POTUS is an Islamic warmonger (and Racist Commie SOB); the American voters and nation have been Judged by God and could be the (or at least a) Mystery Babylon of Revelation.
Ya know, it does seem like our relations with Russia have taken a bit of a downturn since Obama took office.
Islam too.
But it makes little difference what you or I think, say, or do. Things will happen as they will happen with or without us.
We live in a world where the strong rule the weak, something evolutionists might refer to as survival of the fittest.
The question we should concentrate on is whether we are the strong or we are the weak.
But we have many more pressing issues to deal with first such as racism, homophobia, genderphobia, gay marriage, income inequality and such to deal with first. Maybe after we’ve dealt with those things ………….
Bureaucrats are nothing but extra baggage and hinder more than help the US defense capabilities.
http://www.politico.eu/article/inside-the-pentagons-fight-over-russia-us-eastern-europe/
In the wake of the battle, however, Macgregor calculated that if his unit had fought a highly trained and better armed enemy, like the Russians, the outcome would have been different. So, four years later, he published a book called Breaking The Phalanx, recommending that his service “restructure itself into modularly organized, highly mobile, self-contained combined arms teams.” The advice received the endorsement of then-Army Chief of Staff Dennis Reimer, who ordered that copies of Macgregor’s book be provided to every Army general.
But Macgregor is still fighting that battle. In early September he circulated a PowerPoint presentation showing that in a head-to-head confrontation pitting the equivalent of a U.S. armored division against a likely Russian adversary, the U.S. division would be defeated. “Defeated isn’t the right word,” Macgregor told me last week. “The right word is annihilated.” The 21-slide presentation features four battle scenarios, all of them against a Russian adversary in the Baltics — what one currently serving war planner on the Joint Chiefs staff calls “the most likely warfighting scenario we will face outside of the Middle East.”
In two of the scenarios, where the U.S. deploys its current basic formation, called brigade combat teams (BCTs), the U.S. is defeated. In two other scenarios, where Macgregor deploys what he calls Reconnaissance Strike Groups, the U.S. wins. And that’s the crux of Macgregor’s argument: Today the U.S. Army is comprised of BCTs rather than Reconnaissance Strike Groups, or RSGs, which is Macgregor’s innovation. Macgregor’s RSG shears away what he describes as “the top-heavy Army command structure” that would come with any deployment in favor of units that generate more combat power. “Every time we deploy a division we deploy a division headquarters of 1,000 soldiers and officers,” Macgregor explains. “What a waste; those guys will be dead within 72 hours.” Macgregor’s RSG, what he calls “an alternative force design,” does away with this Army command echelon, reporting to a joint force commander — who might or might not be an Army officer. An RSG, Macgregor says, does not need the long supply tail that is required of Brigade Combat Teams — it can be sustained with what it carries from ten days to two weeks without having to be resupplied.
Though it may sound to outsiders like a disagreement over crossed t’s and dotted i’s, the dispute is fundamental–focusing on whether, in a future conflict, the U.S. military can actually win. Even inside the Pentagon, that is very much in doubt. A recent article by defense writer Julia Ioffe reported the “dispiriting” results of a Pentagon “thought exercise” between a red team (Russia) and a blue team, NATO. The “table top” exercise stipulated a Russian invasion of the Baltics, the same scenario proposed by Macgregor. “After eight hours of gaming out various scenarios,” Ioffe wrote, a blue team member concluded that NATO “would lose.”
It is such a shame that the white race is so intent on committing suicide; the Russians are a Christian nation and should be natural allies against the mongrel hordes encroaching from all sides… What a bunch of fools we are for allowing mongrels to maneuver us into this wanton self-destruction.
Bottom line: Amerika NEEDS (!!!!) enemies to survive and grow …. and if you don’t have one (as was the case when the Soviet Union collapsed), we’ll invent one (hello, “terrorism”!).
To long to post, so click the link for this article titled “Why America Needs War” … it explains everything;
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There is no secret Obama CIA openly supplying TONS OF ARMS to m isis terrorists in Syria. Now openly bombing hospitals with doctors without boarders.Does anyone else worry for our military that O will purposefully send our men and women into a Custer like suicide mission trap into Syria?Obama needs to step down.NO CONFIDENCE!
WWIII might be the only cure for an electorate stupid enough to keep voting for Hillary Clinton.
America only needs “enemies” to stoke the fires of the MIC. Imagine all that money instead being used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
It’s high time the people spoke up about our “foreign affairs”.
I was in NATO LSE and read the After Action Reports on these exercises; we always needed to resort to Tactical Nukes to counter overwhelming combat forces. I would point out to superiors that no Limited Nuclear Option (LNO) would ever stay limited but they always argued that we had the nuclear advantage, so what. Bottom line is that if we are weaker, any war could rapidly escalate into WWIII. PS: Our troops in Korea, Ukraine, Syria etc are “Trigger Troops”; they’re not going to turn the tide like the AEF under Gen Pershing in 1917 but will be slaughtered and become the trigger that angers the public enough to allow the MIC to expand the war. .