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Is NATO a Defensive Alliance?

The Hidden Truth about the War in Ukraine, The Postil Magazine, August 1, 2022 Jacques Baud “………………………………………………………………………………………… NATO’s rationale is to bring European Allies under the US nuclear umbrella. It was designed as a defensive alliance, although recently declassified US documents show that the Soviets had apparently no intention to attack the West.

For the Russians, the question about whether NATO is offensive or defensive is beside the point. To understand Putin’s point of view, we have to consider two things that are usually overlooked by Western commentators: the enlargement of NATO towards the East, and the incremental abandonment of the international security’s normative framework by the US.

In fact, as long as the US didn’t deploy missiles in the vicinity of its borders, Russia didn’t bother so much about NATO extension. Russia itself considered to apply for membership. But problems stated to appear in 2001, as George W. Bush decided to unilaterally withdraw from the ABM Treaty and to deploy anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) in Eastern Europe. The ABM Treaty was intended to limit the use of defensive missiles, with the rationale of maintaining the deterrent effect of a mutual destruction by allowing the protection of decision-making bodies by a ballistic shield (in order to preserve a negotiating capacity). Thus, it limited the deployment of anti-ballistic missiles to certain specific zones (notably around Washington DC and Moscow) and prohibited it outside national territories.

Since then, the United States has progressively withdrawn from all the arms control agreements established during the Cold War: the ABM Treaty (2002), the Open Skies Treaty (2018) and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (2019).

In 2019, Donald Trump justified his withdrawal from the INF Treaty by alleged violations by the Russian side. But, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) notes, the Americans never provided proof of these violations. In fact, the US was simply trying to get out of the agreement in order to install their AEGIS missile systems in Poland and Romania. According to the US administration, these systems are officially intended to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles. But there are two problems that clearly cast doubt on the good faith of the Americans:

The first one is that there is no indication that the Iranians are developing such missiles, as Michael Ellemann of Lockheed-Martin stated before a committee of the American Senate.The second one is that these systems use Mk41 launchers, which can be used to launch either anti-ballistic missiles or nuclear missiles. The Radzikowo site, in Poland, is 800 km from the Russian border and 1,300 km from Moscow.

The Bush and Trump administrations said that the systems deployed in Europe were purely defensive. However, even if theoretically true, it is technically and strategically false. For the doubt, which allowed them to be installed, is the same doubt that the Russians could legitimately have in the event of a conflict. This presence in the immediate vicinity of Russia’s national territory can indeed lead to a nuclear conflict. For in the event of a conflict, it would not be possible to know precisely the nature of the missiles loaded in the systems—should the Russians therefore wait for explosions before reacting? In fact, we know the answer: having no early-warning time, the Russians would have practically no time to determine the nature of a fired missile and would thus be forced to respond pre-emptively with a nuclear strike.

Not only does Vladimir Putin see this as a risk to Russia’s security, but he also notes that the United States is increasingly disregarding international law in order to pursue a unilateral policy. This is why Vladimir Putin says that European countries could be dragged into a nuclear conflict without wanting to. This was the substance of his speech in Munich in 2007, and he came with the same argument early 2022, as Emmanuel Macron went to Moscow in February.

Finland and Sweden in NATO—A Good Idea?

The future will tell if Sweden’s and Finland’s decision to apply for NATO membership was a wise idea. They probably overstated the value of the nuclear protection offered by NATO. As a matter of fact, it is very unlikely that the US will sacrifice its national soil by striking Russian soil for the sake of Sweden or Finland. It is more likely that if the US engages nuclear weapons, it will be primarily on European soil and only as a last resort on Russian territory, in order to preserve its own territory from nuclear counter-strike.

Further, these two countries, which met the criteria of neutrality that Russia would want for its direct neighbors, deliberately put themselves in Russia’s nuclear crosshairs. For Russia, the main threat comes from the Central European theater of war. In other words, in the event of a hypothetical conflict in Europe, Russian forces would be engaged primarily in Central Europe, and could use their theater nuclear armies to “flank” their operations by striking the Nordic countries, with virtually no risk of a U.S. nuclear response.

Was it Impossible to Leave the Warsaw Pact?

The Warsaw Pact was created just after Germany joined NATO, for exactly the same reasons we have described above. Its largest military engagement was the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (with the participation of all Pact nations, except Albania and Romania). This event resulted in Albania withdrawing from the Pact less than a month later, and Romania ceasing to participate actively in the military command of the Warsaw Pact after 1969. Therefore, asserting that no one was free to leave the treaty is not correct. https://www.thepostil.com/the-hidden-truth-about-the-war-in-ukraine/

August 24, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international, weapons and war | 3 Comments

NATO Abandons Diplomacy, Says No Longer ‘At Peace’

Libertarian Instituteby Bas Spliet | Aug 23, 2022 At the end of its annual summit in Madrid in late June, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. The guidance document is the eighth of its kind since the founding of the alliance in 1949. It radically breaks with the three previous post-Cold War security briefs, however, which observed that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace” because “the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low.”

In the eyes of NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus, claiming that the military organization can no longer discount the possibility of an assault on sovereign NATO states. Continuing the same cryptic language, the new strategic concept concludes that the Euro-Atlantic area now is “not at peace,” in spite of no NATO member being in a state of war with Russia.

Behind this word play, a more dangerous policy change has been codified in the document. Since the adoption of the Harmel Report in 1967, NATO has always officially included diplomacy in one form or another (with political dialogue and strategic partnership being interchangeable labels) as one of its “core” or “fundamental” tasks. The “NATO 2030” report from November 2020, for instance, unequivocally stated that “NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia.”

In the new strategic concept, the core tasks have been purged of the need for diplomacy, except for one or two throw-away lines about “meaningful and reciprocal political dialogue” about arms control issues buried in the middle of the text. Rather, in addition to its original function of deterrence and defense, NATO now fully embraces “crisis prevention and management,” which it has spearheaded since the 1990s with its legally dubious and morally questionable interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya; and “cooperative security,” referring to NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and its Partnership for Peace cooperation with countries in ever further-away regions, including the Black Sea, the Middle East, North Africa, and even the Indo-Pacific, which the British have been pushing to include in a “global NATO.”

Russia was the first country to sign up for the Partnership for Peace program back in 1994. The new NATO doctrine, however, states that Russia can no longer be considered a partner “in light of its hostile policies and actions.” The strategic concept ignores the fact that NATO’s enlargement and new core tasks, which the alliance adopted after the Cold War in an effort to justify its continued existence, have likewise long been seen as hostile in Moscow, nor does it offer any reflection on how the new policies might have contributed to the current unpeaceful “strategic environment.” Instead, it hails the “historic success” of NATO’s expansion in terms of space and substance and insists that the alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian federation.”

……………………………….. Now, NATO apologists, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, argue that if the alliance had not expanded eastward, Vladimir Putin would have been even bolder in his imperial ambitions. But as John Mearsheimer pointed out back in 2014, there is virtually no evidence that Putin aimed to incorporate Crimea before the Maidan coup. Rather, his offensive foreign policy in Ukraine since 2014, culminating in the 2022 invasion, is one of reaction to NATO creeping up to Russia’s borders. Bringing Ukraine into the NATO fold has long been a big fat redline for Russia, and we crossed it.

First of all, West-European officials promised the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall that NATO’s borders would not move “one inch” eastward. But then all former Warsaw Pact countries and even some former Soviet Republics were incorporated in the 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to the evidence the National Security Archive assembled on this issue a few years ago, recent archival research has once again confirmed these broken promises.

Next, in 2008, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned American diplomats that further NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, would constitute a “potential military threat.” …………………………….

After 2014, Ukraine started to become a de facto member of NATO, which bolstered the Ukrainian regime to take a tough stance against Russia. In 2017, Trump decided to sell “defensive weapons” to Kyiv. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its military and teaming up with it in joint air and naval exercises. In June 2021, a British destroyer sailed through the Black Sea in an effort to shore up support for Ukraine, precipitating a diplomatic stand-off with Russia. NATO was undeterred, however, because a total of 32 countries participated in a major naval exercise in the Black Sea one month later.

In response, Russia decided to engage in coercive diplomacy, much like the Obama administration had done to get Iran to sign on to the 2015 nuclear deal. Putin amassed troops on the Ukrainian border, demanding guarantees that no offensive missiles would be installed in Eastern Europe and Ukraine not to join NATO. When the crisis was not solved diplomatically, Russia invaded Ukraine. Up until recently, there was hardly any diplomatic intercourse between Washington and Moscow in order to resolve the conflict. The UK’s Boris Johnson, too, “urged against negotiations” during a trip to Kyiv in April. Other NATO members, such as France, Germany, Italy and Hungary, have warmed to negotiations. But as long as there is no bigger push to re-establish diplomacy as a core task of the military alliance, Wilsonian rhetoric is likely to continue to make the world unsafe. https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/nato-abandons-diplomacy-says-no-longer-at-peace/—

August 24, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Chinese non-threat

China relies on something called soft power discovered by the Chinese long before the rest of us.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-chinese-non-threat/ Pearls and Irritations, By Gregory Clark , Aug 23, 2022

Our resident non-Chinese speaking, non-Chinese informed but bitterly ‘China is expansionist-aggressive’ commentators in the mainstream media in Australia don’t have,or even want to have, any idea about China.

China is accused of aggressive expansionism, over Taiwan and towards its neighbours in general.

It is a curious charge. Almost all of the 178 nations recognising China have formally recognised that legally Taiwan belongs to China. In the recently proclaimed ‘rules based international order’ such formal recognition by so many nations would seem to have some weight.

Yet Beijing has still done little to claim this promised recognition. On the contrary, it still accepts Taiwan’s control over a number of islands in the South China Sea, including some occupied by the Taiwan military a stone’s throw from China’s coast.

Nor is it only Taiwan that enjoys Beijing’s territorial tolerance.

It has done nothing to follow up on China’s strong historical clam to much of Russia’s Far East. Even at the height of China’s strong tensions with Moscow in the 1960’s and ’70’s it barely moved despite constant invitations to do so by Western hawks.
(Taiwan too had criticised Beijing’s inaction).

Amazingly Beijing has done nothing to try to dominate, let alone attack, the vast areas of a Mongolia with rich resources needed by China and with only 3 million people to defend its 4,600 kilometre with China (Taiwan insists Mongolia is China’s territory and strongly criticises Beijing’s inaction.)

The same is true for Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, central Asian nations which border China and have at times harboured militants that have attacked into China.(Taiwan again criticises Beijing’s inaction.)

Moving down to Pakistan and India, we find Beijing has tolerated borders (the MacMahon Line and in much of Ladakh) imposed by aggressive19th century UK colonial advances far into China’s then nominally controlled, Tibetan-populated Himalayan territories.

True, there have since been disputes with India which took over from the British the large Tibetan populated areas in northern Assam and Ladakh, and wants more. Only when the Indians under Nehru’s forward policy went too far and moved into Tibet across even the UK arbitrarily imposed MacMahon Line did Beijing finally take action.

Even then, and having taught the Indians a lesson, it retreated to the MacMahon Line (a retreat which Taiwan protested, of course).

(As China desk officer in Canberra at the time I know for a fact that the first dispute in 1962 was due to India trying illegally to seize territory north of the MacMahon Line.The Chinese gave us the maps to prove it. The Indians gave nothing.)

Moving further east we find that Beijing, unlike Taiwan, accepts a border with Myanmar that allows Kokang, a large Mandarin Chinese speaking community, to remain in eastern Myanmar. (Taiwan objects to Beijing’s generosity, of course.)

Beijing did nothing to support the many pro-Beijing, Chinese speakers in Sarawak, fighting a losing battle with British and Australian troops while seeking to prevent their 1960’s forcible incorporation into the artificial construct of Malaysia.

Beijing did nothing to maintain the now disappeared 2,000 year colony of Chinese in western Borneo – the Laifang Republic. And as we know tragically it did nothing to protect the one million Chinese and leftwing Indonesian massacred in 1958. Nor did it try to protect resident Chinese from subsequent brutal Indonesian pogroms there .

And finally we come to the alleged Chinese claims against sone minuscule Japanese claimed islands -the Senkaku Islands – in the east China sea. The claims were in fact made by Taiwan, not China; they are supported by China. The islands have no Japanese name; they were discovered and named by Chinese and British explorers. Geographically they are part of Taiwan and lie on the Chinese continental shelf.

Even the US does not recognise Japanese sovereignty.

One wonders whether our resident non-Chinese speaking, non-Chinese informed but bitterly ‘China is expansionist-aggressive’ commentators in the mainstream media have, or even want to have, any idea of any of these details.

By comparison, while China has been doing little in recent decades, the US was quickly trying to take over by force large territories of France, Mexico, Spain (including the Philippines) and even Canada plus a host of islands belonging to other people in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

In shameful collusion with the UK the US expelled the population of the Diego Garcia island and used it for the bombing of much of the Middle East.

China’s long acceptance of British and Portuguese colonies on its border (India was far less tolerant), its delay in taking over Taiwan (a right granted by every nation recognising Beijing, including the US and Australia), its toleration of Taiwan still occupying militarily the Offshore Islands etc suggests almost a dislike of military action.

Instead it relies on something called soft power discovered by the Chinese long before the rest of us. Convinced of the attractiveness of its culture it long believed with it can automatically draw people to its side without force of arms.

That was before it came up against us militaristic Westerners, happy to invade China and vandalistically destroy the symbols of that culture.

GREGORY CLARK

Gregory Clark began his career in Australia’s Department of External Affairs, with postings to Hong Kong and Moscow. Resigning in 1964 to protest at Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War he moved to Japan, becoming emeritus president of Tama University in Tokyo and vice-president of the pioneering Akita International University. He continues to live in Japan and has established himself as a commentator/academic. Between 1969-74 he was correspondent for The Australian in Tokyo.
More on http://www.gregoryclark.net

August 23, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, history, politics international, Reference | Leave a comment

The only thing keeping US and China from war is running dangerously thin

Washington’s ambiguous Taiwan policies are edging towards conflict, but Beijing wants to exhaust peaceful options first.

A US policy at war with itself

What emerges from this amalgam of policy statements and positions is a US policy that is inherently at war with itself, unable to fully commit either to the finality of a “one China” policy or walk away from the sale of weapons to Taiwan. The US disguises this inherent inconsistency by referring to it as “strategic ambiguity.” The problem is this policy stew is neither strategic in vision, nor ambiguous.

radical departure from stated US policy by the Biden administration helped launch a Congressional trifecta of hubris-laced ignorance, which saw the dispatch of three consecutive delegations that threaten to propel China down the path toward a war with Taiwan it doesn’t want to wage, and which the world (including the US) is not prepared to suffer the consequences of.

Despite the clear evidence of a marked departure [by USA] from past policy regarding Taiwan and weapons sales, China continues to believe that there is a non-violent solution to the one China problem.

https://www.rt.com/news/561182-china-taiwan-us-war/ Scott Ritter, 22 Aug 22,

American relations with China in regards to Taiwan have been dictated by years of ambiguous statements and commitments. Now this rhetoric is breaking down and armed conflict seems closer than ever – but is Washington ready to fight over Taiwan, or capable of winning?

Assurances and commitments

Officially, US policy toward Taiwan is guided by three US-China Joint Communiques issued between 1972 and 1982, the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, and the so-called “Six Assurances” issued in 1982. In the Shanghai Communique of 1972, China asserted that “the Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between China and the United States,” declaring that “the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China,” that Taiwan is a province of China, and that “the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere.”

The US responded by acknowledging that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” something the US government did not challenge. The US also reaffirmed its interest “in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.”

Before that, on January 1, 1979, the US and China had issued a “Joint Communique of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations” in which the US undertook to recognize “the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China,” noting that, within the context of that commitment, “the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.”

President Jimmy Carter, in announcing the communique, went out of his way to ensure the people of Taiwan “that normalization of relations between our country and the People’s Republic will not jeopardize the well-being of the people of Taiwan,” adding that “the people of our country will maintain our current commercial, cultural, trade, and other relations with Taiwan through nongovernmental means.”

Carter’s move to establish diplomatic relations with China did not sit well with many members of Congress, who responded by passing the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, in which it was declared that it is US policy “to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people on the China mainland,” and “to make clear that the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”

In this regard, the Taiwan Relations Act underscored that the US would “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States,” and “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.” Finally, the Act declared that the US would maintain the capacity “to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”

The emphasis on arms sales contained in the Taiwan Relations Act led to the third joint communiqué between the US and China, released on August 17, 1982, which sought to settle differences between the two nations regarding US arms sales to Taiwan. The communique was basically a quid-pro-quo agreement where China underscored that it maintained “a fundamental policy of striving for a peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, over which it claimed sovereignty. For its part, the US declared that it “understands and appreciates the Chinese policy of striving for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question,” and, with that in mind, the US declared that it did not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, and that it would gradually reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan while working for a final resolution to reunification.

To mollify Taiwanese concerns about the third communique, the US agreed to what have become known as “the Six Assurances” between the US and Taiwan. These are 1) the US has not set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan, 2) the US has not agreed to prior consultations with China about arms sales to Taiwan, 3) the US has not agreed to any mediation role between China and Taiwan, 4) the US has not agreed to revise the Taiwan Relations Act, 5) the US has not taken a position regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan, and 6) that the US would never put pressure on Taiwan to negotiate with China.

There was an unwritten corollary to the third communique—an internal memorandum signed by President Ronald Reagan in which he declared that “the US willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC [People’s Republic of China] differences,” adding that “it is essential that the quantity and quality of the arms provided Taiwan be conditioned entirely on the threat posed by the PRC.”

A US policy at war with itself

From the moment President Reagan issued the “Six Assurances,” US-China policy was strained over the issue of weapons sales, with China making the case that the US was not serious about either the peaceful reunification of Taiwan with China, or the elimination of arms sales to Taiwan. Arms sales increased exponentially from the Reagan administration to that of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, with the US providing Taipei F-16 fighters, Patriot surface-to-air missiles, and other advanced weapons. In 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan as part of a Pacific tour that included China. Gingrich claims he told his Chinese hosts that, if China were to attack Taiwan, the US “will defend Taiwan. Period.”

In 2005, in response to US backsliding when it came to arms sales and Taiwan, China adopted legislation known as the “Anti-Secession Law” which stated firmly that Taiwan “is part of China.”

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August 22, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, politics international, USA | 2 Comments

Australia and China policy- David Bradbury interviews strategy expert Hugh White

August 22, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Putin Claim U.S. Is Dragging Out War Isn’t Crazy, Military Expert Says

Newsweek, BY NICK MORDOWANEC ON 8/18/22

aims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States is intentionally prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict may not be as implausible as described, says one U.S. military veteran and journalist.

In a speech this week, Putin called out “Western globalist elites” who he said are “provoking chaos, inciting old and new conflicts,” and attempting “to preserve the hegemony and power that is slipping out of their hands.” He added that the situation in Ukraine shows the U.S. is “trying to prolong the conflict.”

Sean Spoonts, a U.S. Navy veteran and editor-in-chief of Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP), told Newsweek that President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seem to have separate policy goals in mind.

“It seems like while Ukraine would like to end the war quickly and decisively defeat Russian forces and drive them out of their country, U.S. policy almost seems designed to prolong the conflict hoping to bring about the collapse of Russia itself, both militarily and economically,” Spoonts said.

……………. As a recent report by The Washington Post indicated, the U.S. was privy to some of Russia’s plans for the invasion of Ukraine before it officially began on February 24. Spoonts alluded to Biden’s remarks on that day, when he said, “Some of the most powerful impacts of our actions will come over time as we squeeze Russia’s access to finance and technology for strategic sectors of its economy and degrade its industrial capacity for years to come.”

“Biden has said publicly that his goal is to degrade Russia as a world power, never again in the position to threaten its neighbors,” said Spoonts. “That goes a lot further than Zelensky’s goal, which is to simply get Russian armies out of his country and regain lost territories in Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea.”………………………………. https://www.newsweek.com/sean-spoonts-us-russia-ukraine-war-policy-goals-1735019

August 21, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Malaysia’s Mahathir says US seeking to provoke war in Taiwan

By EILEEN NG, 20 Aug 22,

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Friday accused the U.S. of trying to provoke a war in Taiwan, and in a wide-ranging interview also said he expects Malaysia’s graft-tainted ruling party to hold general elections in the coming months.

Mahathir, a two-time prime minister long known as a critic of the West and its geopolitics, warned that the U.S. was antagonizing China through recent visits to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. China considers the self-ruled island democracy part of its territory and regards such visits as meddling in its affairs.

“China has allowed Taiwan to remain by itself. No problem. They didn’t invade. If they wanted to invade, they could have invaded. They didn’t. But America is provoking (them) so that there can be a war, so that the Chinese will make the mistake of trying to occupy Taiwan,” the 97-year-old Mahathir said.

“Then there is an excuse … for the U.S. to help Taiwan, even fight against China and sell a lot of arms to Taiwan,” he added…………………….. more https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-2022-midterm-elections-biden-taiwan-nato-96f52741ce6e9e6a2cdcfce5fd459ad8—

August 20, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Malaysia, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a fraud as the nuclear Mafia continue to spend $billions on their nuclear arsenals.

By Robin Lloyd of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) 19 Aug 22

“This a critical moment for nuclear disarmament, and for our collective survival.” wrote Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will commenting on the Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference taking place NOW at the United Nations.

I attended the Conference for several days last week as a NGO delegate from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and have been watching closely the negotiations going on for the entire month of August 2022 over an outcome statement for the Conference.

After two weeks a draft preamble was submitted that reaffirms , amongst other things, “

…that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and commits to ensuring that nuclear weapons will never be used again under any circumstances.”

This could be an extraordinary breakthrough towards global nuclear disarmament. 191 nations are represented in this treaty and are seated in the General Assembly hall now, until August 26, listening to each other. In the first week, we heard urgent warning statements from the nations without nuclear weapons, such as “The clouds that parted following the end of the Cold War are gathering once more,” and, from Costa Rica, scolding, “The lack of firm deadlines has provided the nuclear-armed States with a pathway to disregard their disarmament commitments as flagrantly as they have since the last Review Conference.”

In a hopeful step, in the last year, 89 non-nuclear states have either signed or ratified a binding disarmament treaty, the TPNW (Treaty PROHIBITING Nuclear Weapons) that requires disarmament commitments. These states are no longer tolerating the double talk from the nine nation nuclear mafia.

How can the US consider signing the draft preamble while the House and Senate are finalizing the National Defense Authorization Act which calls for the modernization of our nuclear arsenal? How can our government even take part in this Conference while it is seeking funding for a renewed nuclear edifice of destruction including Modernized Strategic Delivery Systems and Refurbished Nuclear Warheads? Over the next decade, the United States plans to spend $494 billion on its nuclear forces, or about $50 billion a year, according to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report. Trillions of dollars for submarines and bombers and buried nuclear missiles. Things they are committing to not use. Please, does this make sense?

At one of the NGO meetings I attended in the basement of the UN sponsored by peace groups, I blurted out “This Conference IS A FRAUD.” The nuclear mafia have no serious plans to disarm, as required by Section 6 of the NPT Treaty. Their duplicity could be rebuked to the world by a walkout in the final days of the conference by the countries that have signed/ratified the TPNW, and their supporters.

For the NPT Treaty to collapse would be tragic, but for it to continue when everyone knows it is a lie is a moral and mortal affront to the people of the world.

August 20, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

They’ve Bankrupted Themselves’: Europe Gutted Own Security to Funnel Kiev Weapons, Expert Says

Sputnik News 19 Aug 22

Ukraine’s European benefactors made a big show of rushing military aid to Kiev in the early months of Russia’s special military operation, but the torrent has waned to a trickle since then, with no new pledges being made in July. One military expert said Europe is running out of both equipment and willpower to support the “horribly corrupt regime.”

Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, told Sputnik on Thursday that NATO’s policy of giving Ukraine billions of dollars in weapons that so quickly get destroyed is “inefficient and counterproductive” from both a political and a national security point of view.

“The more Europe invests its military capacity into Ukraine, the weaker Europe gets,” Ritter said.

Proxy Wars Are Expensive

“I think there’s a couple of things at play here. One, and I think first and foremost, is that Europe has bankrupted its own military capacity by transferring military equipment to Ukraine in an unconstrained manner. It’s becoming clear to all that Ukraine is facing a very difficult time on the battlefield. Weaponry is being provided by Europe, by the United States, by NATO, and this weaponry is not being absorbed in a coherent manner by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Instead, it’s being received and rushed to the front where it is not being used effectively and increasingly it’s being destroyed by the Russians. This is very expensive, very inefficient. It’s detrimental not only to Ukraine’s military capability but also the nations providing the equipment. They’re literally stripping bare their own inventories to support Ukraine in a losing cause,” Ritter explained.

The second part of this equation is, not only is this inefficient and counterproductive from a national security standpoint, but it’s expensive and counterproductive from a political standpoint,” he said. “I think the political cost of supporting Ukraine is about to become very, very high.”

“Many political leaders in Europe now are going to be facing an increasingly hostile constituency, demanding answers as to why their leaders committed: a) economic suicide by joining in on a failed sanctions effort; b) are further bankrupting the nation by stripping bare their own arsenals, requiring them to expend money to restock. This is an expensive proposition. And c), supporting what is increasingly being documented as a very corrupt and, frankly speaking, vile regime in Kiev.”

…………………………………….Ritter recalled Berlin and Paris were also key guarantors of the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to settle the Donbass conflict in the context of autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions………………………… more https://sputniknews.com/20220818/theyve-bankrupted-themselves-europe-gutted-own-security-to-funnel-kiev-weapons-expert-says-1099744371.html

August 20, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Belarus, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US ‘on brink’ of war with Russia and China – Kissinger

A lack of visionary leadership is to blame, the veteran statesman says, Rt.com 13 Aug 22

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has told the Wall Street Journal that Washington has rejected traditional diplomacy, and in the absence of a great leader, has driven the world to the precipice of war over Ukraine and Taiwan.

Kissinger previously courted controversy for suggesting that Kiev abandon some of its territorial claims to end the conflict with Russia.

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” Kissinger said in the interview, published on Saturday.

Kissinger, now 99 years old, elaborated on the West’s role in the Ukraine conflict in a recent book profiling prominent post-WWII leaders. He described Russia’s decision to send troops into the country in February as motivated by its own security, as having Ukraine join NATO would move the alliance’s weapons to within 300 miles (480km) of Moscow. Conversely, having Ukraine in its entirety fall under Russian influence would do little to “calm historic European fears of Russian domination.”

In the runup to its military operation in Ukraine, Russia presented the US and NATO with written outlines of its security concerns, which were rejected by both receiving parties.

Kissinger, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s held extensive negotiations with Vietnamese communists even as the US military waged war against them, said that modern American leaders tend to view diplomacy as having “personal relationships with the adversary,” and in words paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal, “tend to view negotiations in missionary, rather than psychological terms, seeking to convert or condemn their interlocutors rather than to penetrate their thinking.”

Instead, Kissinger argued that the US should seek “equilibrium” between itself, Russia, and China.

This term refers to “a kind of balance of power, with an acceptance of the legitimacy of sometimes opposing values,” Kissinger explained. “Because if you believe that the final outcome of your effort has to be the imposition of your values, then I think equilibrium is not possible.” ………………………… more https://www.rt.com/news/560780-henry-kissinger-ukraine-taiwan/

August 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia summons session of UN Security Council over nuclear emergency

https://www.rt.com/russia/560576-zaporozhye-nuclear-plant-un/ 10 Aug 22, Moscow has accused Kiev of striking the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, risking a repeat of the Chernobyl disaster

Russia has summoned an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which has been the subject of regular shelling attacks. Moscow wants the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to brief the council on the situation.

The move, which was reported by Russian media on Tuesday, was confirmed by the deputy head of Russia’s mission to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, who said the public needed to learn about “Ukrainian provocations.” The meeting is expected to take place on Thursday.

The IAEA has not had access to the site since before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict escalated in late February and relies on reports from Ukraine to assess the situation on the ground. The Zaporozhye plant is manned by Ukrainian nuclear workers despite being under Russian control.

On Saturday, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed the IAEA’s concern over the artillery strikes, stating that they underlined “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond.”

“I condemn any violent acts carried out at or near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant or against its staff,” he stressed.

Grossi is expected to lead an inspection of the facility for an independent assessment of the situation and verification that non-proliferation safeguards remain in place.

The Zaporozhye plant is the largest in Europe and stores tens of tons of enriched uranium and plutonium in its reactor cores and spent fuel storage, according to the IAEA. The watchdog chief earlier said he was alarmed that the security of the radioactive materials may be compromised amid Russian-Ukrainian hostilities.

Both Kiev and Moscow stated that they were eager for the proposed inspection to take place. However, it has yet to materialize due to security concerns. The Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the delay played into Kiev’s hands by allowing it to continue its provocative attacks.

Moscow called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to leverage his authority to speed up the IAEA visit. The UN Department of Safety and Security is acting irresponsibly by stalling the visit, foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova alleged in an interview on Wednesday.

Guterres last week said that “any attack to a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing.”

Russian diplomats and military officials stated that attacks on Zaporozhye power plant could result in a disaster worse than the Chernobyl reactor meltdown and steam explosion in 1986.

August 9, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Russia, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

President Biden’s new weapons package for Ukraine is the largest one yet, Pentagon says

President Biden has sent $9.8 billion in security aid to Ukraine since entering office, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-bidens-new-weapons-package-ukraine-largest-yet-pentagon By Anders Hagstrom | Fox News 10 Aug 22

The Pentagon unveiled its latest $1 billion weapons package to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion on Monday.

The Department of Defense says the massive delivery is the largest weapons package the U.S. has sent to Ukraine under President Joe Biden’s administration. The U.S. has sent a total of $9.8 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since Biden gained office, far eclipsing the $2 billion the U.S. sent between 2014 and 2021.

“To meet Ukraine’s evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities calibrated to make a difference,” the Pentagon wrote in a statement.

August 9, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

The United States, in decline but still able to kill us all

The march of folly in American strategic policy has enshrined the madness of control by a giant defence industry and defence budget now past $800 billion.

The fiercely presented wearisome trope of commitment to a Rules Based International Order is quite suddenly unmasked as an American Establishment desire to maintain a unipolar control of the world, with violence.

by Dennis Argall Aug 10, 2022

The global dominance of the United States, in so many fields, from space, to science, to entertainment, to sport, to novelty in the development of the English language, has been taken for granted, is part of our fabric of Australian existence.

Reinforced by the Covid Era of Isolation, Netflix, Facebook, and Computer Games and inability even to get to Bali or Thailand let alone China, we are now in a noisy metal barrel where even dissident voices seem projections from the dissident voices of the US, similarly muted and squeezed. At a time when the US and its roles in the world are suddenly dramatically changing.

The undoing of the United States, the collapse of the imperial centre, is happening with little awareness in Australia. Our generally oblivious mindframes affect the capacity of political leaders to reflect upon or point to core problems of our world. Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, that great rabbit adventure full of meaning for human society, coined the rabbit language word ‘tharn’ for the mental state of rabbits caught in the headlights and stuck. We are a tharn nation, gabbling about entertainments and irritations, eyes glued to the seatback monitor, not wanting to know that the plane is crashing.

Heed these markers:

The Americans were first to the moon, but NASA after the retirement of the space shuttle has depended on Russian rockets to get to their joint space station. The Russians are now planning to remove the propulsion units of the station which keep it from crashing, their property, for use on a bigger new venture. America is losing in space, though US private business has appallingly taken the lead in cluttering near space with junk.
The fiercely presented wearisome trope of commitment to a Rules Based International Order is quite suddenly unmasked as an American Establishment desire to maintain a unipolar control of the world, with violence. This is being unmasked in much of the world if not NATO and AUKUS and the conservative acolytes in Japan and ROK. Ideological assertions of democracy versus autocracy, built by vilification and isolation of China and Russia, is rotting from the head as big democracies are in serious trouble.
We are doing OK in Australia, our minds from age 12 filled with bubblegum flavoured vape and Tiktok, graduating to Facebook and the metaverse, and with a newer, kinder, kinda-tealish government we can all go to sleep, take off our masks and order American franchised fast food. Or real Aussie drinks. But while we have had a narrow focus on bad boys in the SAS we fail to review our complicity in the great crimes of the twenty first century, led by champions of democracy, smashing the lives of people in a number of countries far more violently than has the Ukraine war so far. Biden and his Secretary of State were advocates for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, so appallingly bringing down bad governments and making countries ungovernable. Creating Al Qaeda and ISIS in the process, directly through funding and arming extremists (in Afghanistan beginning before the Russians were invited into Afghanistan) and via embitterment of ordinary people. The world is destabilised, American control is widely undone.
The march of folly in American strategic policy has enshrined the madness of control by a giant defence industry and defence budget now past $800 billion. Poverty of foreign policy has led to regimes of sanctions which have been substantially shaped by Richard Nephew whose book reveals that far from focusing on potentates and oligarchs, the targets of sanctions must be ordinary people and the purpose is to inflict pain and weaken resolve (his words). Consider sanctions related deaths in Iraq Venezuela Cuba, Afghanistan Pain but no loss of resolve, hatred not submission. The US official study of the effects of strategic bombing on Germany in World War II by J K Galbraith and others long ago suggested morale and resolve were increased by the bombing of cities and civilians. And yet we have the ongoing commitment to defend and achieve democracy by mass murder, with constant focus on disruption, regime change, and violence… not on peace.
Jeffrey Sachs has recently returned to the themes of his 2013 book on the 50th anniversary of President John Kennedy’s Commencement Speech at American University in 1963. Speaking in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke of peace not as an event or a state but a constant process of engagement. We now have no such thing, we are in an Age of Hostility, Meanness, Folly, and Decay.right wing is fervently in support. Stanley Kubrick made a movie about such madness, we are sleeping through it.

Australia recognises, as does the United States, that Taiwan is part of China. Though the media vague up the history, China kicked the Portuguese and Dutch out of Taiwan early in the 1600s, long before the greatest land grab in history, of Britain over the Australian continent, could even be imagined as the British didn’t know it was there then. The government in Taipei is the Government of the Republic of China. The large opposition party in the National Assembly is the Kuomintang, ruling party of the government of the Republic of China that lost the revolutionary war on the mainland in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. The ROC held the China seat in the UN until 1971 with American backing. The majority of local governments in Taiwan are governed by the KMT because the party of the national government is on the nose both because of its independence-advocating foreign policy and corruption allegations. Pelosi’s visit risks great power war as not seen since 1945. The American right wing is fervently in support. Stanley Kubrick made a movie about such madness, we are sleeping through it.

The US economy is in serious trouble………………………………….

The US campaign for unipolar dominance has included partly fabricated propaganda against China and Russia. This no longer convinces or concerns a wide sweep of the world beyond NATO, the G7, the EU and AUKUS. Mix in enough lies and it all seems lies.

The summit meeting of BRICS in June seemed a more constructive meeting than the G7. The countries of Eurasia also have the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation SCO. The Iran ,Russia, Turkey summit meeting in Tehran in July 2022 seems to have been more successful than President Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia to meet also other Arab leaders, a visit described by the Wall Street Journal as worse than an embarrassment,…………………………..more https://johnmenadue.com/the-united-states-in-decline-but-still-able-to-kill-us-all/

August 9, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Regional security threat haunts nuclear power debate in Australia

we cannot ignore when weighing up these arguments that recent events at Zaporizhzhia help bolster the case against nuclear power. We would not want any future nuclear facilities to become hostage to the vagaries of war.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/regional-security-threat-haunts-nuclear-power-debate-20220808-p5b82t.html Editorial, August 8, 2022, The alarm sounded by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, that fighting between Russian invaders and Ukrainian forces near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant carried “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster” is one with relevance far beyond the war raging within Ukraine’s borders.

The conflict has already served as a grim warning for powers such as Germany and the United States of the costs of relying on fossil fuel-producing nations with despotic leaders for energy supply. But Russia’s seizures of Zaporizhzhia and the defunct power plant at Chernobyl in the early days of the war – though Chernobyl later returned to Ukrainian control – have highlighted that a decision to increase reliance on nuclear power would carry risks even beyond the familiar ones.

As Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic pointed out during Grossi’s recent visit to this country, Australia has an exemplary record on nuclear safety. But one of the most important reasons for this is that we have a ban on using nuclear fission for power generation and have committed not to develop a nuclear arsenal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In recent times both these bans have returned to the spotlight, as the Coalition in opposition has raised the possibility of domestic nuclear power plants to address our energy needs. This followed the Morrison government’s signing of the AUKUS deal with London and Washington last year. The deal envisions Royal Australian Navy submarines being fuelled with weapons-grade uranium.

Peter Hartcher reported for The Agethat the first question US President Joe Biden raised when the AUKUS proposal was put to him was whether it breached non-proliferation commitments. The key to addressing this question has been paragraph 14 of the IAEA’s safeguards agreement with Australia, which creates a loophole allowing weapons-grade material to be used without the usual safeguards in “non-proscribed military activity”. Concerns were raised earlier this month, at the latest meeting to review the treaty, that regardless of Australia’s good intentions, this would set a precedent for further transfers of highly enriched nuclear material to other nations.

Grossi has pointed out that Iran, which first informed the IAEA of its interest in naval nuclear propulsion in 2018, cited the AUKUS deal to argue for its own plans at meetings in 2021.

Some argue that this is a form of proliferation, and even our allies and neighbours, from New Zealand to Indonesia, have expressed strong reservations about the AUKUS arrangement. Australia has said that the nuclear material in its submarines will be handled only by existing nuclear states. Nevertheless, the deal could lead to a perception that nuclear “haves” will simply ignore “have-nots”.

The case for nuclear power more broadly – replacing coal and gas with another non-renewable resource in uranium – faces its own hurdles, from the cost, to the emissions involved in mining and waste management to the question of where highly radioactive waste might be stored.

As The Age has pointed out, nuclear power generation globally is declining. One major reason is the expense. A recent CSIRO report underlines that renewables are far cheaper, even after transmission and storage are taken into account.

All sides of politics agree that Australia faces an increasingly complex and challenging security environment, from talk of Chinese bases in Cambodia and Solomon Islands to cyberattacks by rogue international actors targeting key infrastructure, while general-turned-Coalition senator Jim Molan has outlined an even more apocalyptic scenario, a “second Pearl Harbour” aimed at establishing Chinese supremacy in the western Pacific.

The Age has agreed in the past that Australia should be prepared to have another look at the arguments for nuclear power. That remains our position. But we cannot ignore when weighing up these arguments that recent events at Zaporizhzhia help bolster the case against it. We would not want any future nuclear facilities to become hostage to the vagaries of war.

August 8, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

U.S. says ready to quickly conclude Iran nuclear deal based on EU text

WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – The United States stands ready to “quickly conclude a deal” to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on the basis of proposals put forward by the European Union, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.

The spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran has repeatedly said it is prepared for a return to mutual implementation of the agreement. ………. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-says-ready-quickly-conclude-iran-nuclear-deal-based-eu-text-2022-08-08/
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August 8, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

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