Ukraine war triggers debate on Japan’s nuclear option,
The Interpreter. PURNENDRA JAIN, 14 Mar 22,
In a new and volatile strategic environment, a decades-
old commitment on non-proliferation is up for discussion.
In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister and now head of the largest faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has suggested that Japan consider hosting US nuclear weapons facilities on Japanese soil, similar to some European nations, such as Germany, which have nuclear sharing arrangements with the United States.
Abe’s suggestion was made in the context of Ukraine having renounced nuclear weapons in 1994, leaving itself vulnerable today. The announcement also comes on top of deepening concerns about China’s growing military assertiveness around Japan’s maritime space and beyond, and the dangerous situation on the Korean peninsula with threats from the nuclear-capable rocket-launching North Korea.
Debates over whether Japan should host nuclear weapons or even go fully nuclear are not new………….. Discussion has since continued among political and scholarly communities as to whether Japan should go nuclear, opt for a nuclear sharing arrangement with the United States by hosting nuclear weapons, or maintain its current non-nuclear weapons status.
This latest eruption though is in a different context. This time, chairman of the General Council of the LDP Tatsuo Fukuda, who like his father Yasuo Fukuda before him holds an influential ruling party post and is touted as a future prime minister, has suggested that “we must not shy away from any debate whatsoever”. Last year’s LDP party presidential candidate and current LDP policy chief Sanae Takaichi also favours a debate. Some smaller conservative opposition parties want to include nuclear options in policy discussions while considering Japan’s strategic objectives. The main opposition parties have, however, strongly resisted any such prospects, arguing in favour of Japan’s non-nuclear status.
Abe’s suggestion was promptly and solidly rejected by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, as well as by the leader of the Komeito, the junior coalition partner of the ruling LDP. Even Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe’s younger brother, adopted into the Kishi family, also dismissed the idea of hosting nuclear weapons on Japanese shores. Kishi may have expressed this view in order to align with his boss, Prime Minister Kishida, rather than reflecting his true thinking on the matter, given his political pedigree.
Kishida quickly confirmed that Japan firmly adheres to the three non-nuclear principles adopted in 1967, to not possess, produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan’s territory. These principles remain sacrosanct, even though Japan has made substantial departures in defence and security matters in the past decade…………….
Not only has the Kishida government announced an intended update to the NSS, first issued in 2013, it has also promised to revise the National Defence Program Guidelines and Mid-Term Defence Program issued in 2013 and 2018. All these updates and revisions are undertaken in view of a rapid transformation in the strategic environment……………….
| Japan, along with Germany, has often been recognised as an example of a “civilian state”. Germany currently hosts US nuclear weapons facilities and, in view of the Ukraine conflict, has announced a significant increase to its defence budget. Calls are now being made to urge Japan to follow suit. The postwar US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security has ensured that Japan has lived happily under US extended deterrence, including the nuclear umbrella. This arrangement is unlikely to change, barring an existential threat to Japan’s territory and sovereignty. But what seemed to be taboo in terms of Japan’s strategic policy – that is, breaching one per cent of GDP on defence spending and developing strike capabilities – is now being discussed seriously. No policy in international relations is eternal, it must change as a nation’s interests change. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/ukraine-war-triggers-debate-japan-s-nuclear-option |
Hypocritical cries of grief from weapons and other corporate businesses, as Western governments and media ramp up war fever.
[Ed. Here is the later part of this long article, which first details the history of other criminal wars, and the background to Russia’s understandable fear of Western aggression. I urge you to read the entire article, – while this bit examines only the current Ukraine situation]
Supporting this God-given path are not only big-biz executives, financiers, and military brass, but also a subservient media, obedient politicians aiming at highly-paid jobs when they leave politics, a number of labor leaders, and power holders in academia. They all form the Establishment, one quite similar in all so-called free and free market democracies, except that for over 80 years the U.S, sector has asserted its role in the pack as alpha wolf.
A Criminal War Ushers in the Worst of Times in Ukraine, Russia, and Europe
My overriding hope is that current talks may lead to peace, to an end of death and destruction, and to the repair and renewal of all efforts to build a world without exploitation, without aggrandizement, without aggression, without war.
Portside, March 12, 2022 Victor Grossman ”…………………………………………….Every single wartime death or wound is terrible; every missile, every bullet is unnatural. There are too many similar tragedies now in Ukraine. Yet, while writing this, I find myself thinking: Despite each and every tragedy—thank goodness that Ukraine has not been hit like Iraq in 2003, with the death of hundreds of thousands. Yet alas, while I see the Brandenburg Gate lit up with Ukrainian blue and yellow, I recall no Iraqi colors there in 2003, nor those of Palestinians in 2014 after the death of 547 children during the bombing of Gaza.
In the years that followed, as military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere mired down or lost, symbols, slogans, and catchwords about terror wore thin, the fearfulness of words like Islamism, communism, and socialism eroded, like Bolshevism and anarchism in earlier eras. The gargoyle faces, the grayed grimaces of Reagan’s Evil Empire warnings in 1983 needed replacement, for the pressures remained. Putin’s angular face and physique often have to suffice—or is the yellow peril back in play? And what are those pressures, refurbished but still very real?
Some are easy to call by name: Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, friendly German rivals like Rheinmetall, Krupp, Maffei—and a further limited list. They earn their billions by producing and selling their products, which must constantly be multiplied, replaced—or used.
Thus, while military actions by Putin or any others may be treated by such folk with loud cries of condemnation or sympathy for the victims, behind their dampened Kleenex hankies we can sense their jubilation as military budgets soar, now nearly $780 billion a year in Washington, and the German government, previously tugged one way by traders with Russia or China, now being overwhelmed by the military monopolies, ambitious expansionists, and devoted Pentagon friends who, since the march into Ukraine, have gained the upper hand.
The military budget in Berlin now aims at topping the 50-billion-euro level, with ever more spending for jets, frigates, armed drones, and more personal armor as well; after all, those patriotic lads or lasses in uniform must not be neglected, but always sent well-armored to their deaths.
And how many have the courage to disapprove of all of this? To vote against it, in the Capitol or the Bundestag? Only a very, very few, now angrily disqualified or ignored.
Not only manufacturers of armaments are waving blue-yellow flags with one hand and concealing profit calculations with the other. If their real hopes come true, if Putin’s move goes awry and ends up with a regime change in Red Square, as in Maidan Square in 2014 but far bigger, what new opportunities would be opened up!
….……. Many are surely dreaming of wide new Eurasian monoculture, of unlimited raw materials, new markets, skilled proletarians. Tyson and Cargill, Bayer and BASF, GM and Daimler, Nestlé and Unilever, Murdock and Springer, Facebook and Amazon must certainly be checking electronic atlases for maps reaching from Smolensk to Vladivostok—and across the Amur River, too, where great multitudes could then be reached so much more easily.
What this all adds up to is a continuing hope for world hegemony—always with God’s help of course. Sen. Mitt Romney, once a candidate for the presidency, put it clearly:
“God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world, or someone else will. Without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.”
Supporting this God-given path are not only big-biz executives, financiers, and military brass, but also a subservient media, obedient politicians aiming at highly-paid jobs when they leave politics, a number of labor leaders, and power holders in academia. They all form the Establishment, one quite similar in all so-called free and free market democracies, except that for over 80 years the U.S, sector has asserted its role in the pack as alpha wolf.
Countries to be “taken out”
In a broadcast with Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007 one vector of a world-wide program was revealed by Gen. Wesley Clark: a memo by then-Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz which described “how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran.”
The timetable didn’t work out exactly—timetables often don’t—but was close enough. And if Iran could really be tamed once again, as in 1952, Georgia would then be close. And Russia as well.
Another vector was even more crucial. When East German annexation was agreed upon in 1990, Soviet army withdrawal was matched by the American and West German verbal promise to a very trustful Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would never expand past the Elbe River into East Germany or beyond.
The promise was soon broken. The Pentagon-based NATO moved with its military technology into East Germany and on to Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, the Baltic countries, thus surrounding all but the southern flank of European Russia with an increasingly tight, hostile ring, featuring broadened, strengthened highways and rail lines pointing eastwards, potential missile launchers in Poland, swift jet planes, fueled and polished, in German and Belgian hangars, with nuclear bombs waiting nearby, and annual aggressive military maneuvers along Russian borders. NATO was spending $111 billion on armaments, Russia $62 billion.
And then north and south were linked. In 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, no angel, faced a choice between the unsteady but undeniable advantages of economic cooperation with Russia, his country’s main energy supplier, or biting at the bait of promised Western prosperity, with all the luxuries it symbolized for many Ukrainians, especially in its western regions.
The American leadership, thinking no doubt of fat dividends but far more about closing that tight ring, or noose, around Russia and gaining control of Sevastopol, the big naval base on the Black Sea, Russian till then, by contract, decided to move ahead. After spending $5 billion or more on propaganda and organizing anti-Russian groups and parties, it re-animated its earlier “Orange Revolution.” Joining with openly pro-fascist groups—complete with swastikas, “Heil Hitler!” salutes, and all—it managed the ouster of the elected president, who had to flee to safety. In a famous decision, revealed in a hacked telephone call between the U.S. ambassador in Kiev and Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, the American puppet Arseniy Yatsenyuk, referred to endearingly as “Yats” by Nuland, was installed by her as prime minister.
Leadership positions in Ukraine have changed several times since then, as the influence of varying oligarchs altered. Some things remained constant. Russian speakers were discriminated against and suppressed, resulting in the vote of a great majority in Crimea to become part of Russia once again—as they had been until 1954. Two Russian-speaking eastern provinces defied the anti-Russian pressures and broke away, with Moscow support. Armed Ukrainian militia units, some with openly pro-fascist symbols on their uniforms or skins, kept battering against them
Perhaps it was their strength which prevented the Kiev government from abiding by the peace agreements of Minsk, in which Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Kiev had agreed on seeking solutions, with partial autonomy for the Russian-speaking provinces, or was it pressure from Washington and local oligarchs which moved the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at first seemingly in favor of negotiations, to back out?
Since that goal of world hegemony in many wealthy American brains, Republican and Democratic alike, was never abandoned, and only Russia and China stood in the way, Ukraine was clearly being built up as a counterforce against one such barrier, indeed as a ramp for further action. Which leads us to 2022.
Putin clearly disapproved of any ramps close to his borders. He hardly needed to leaf in the history books for the years 1812, or 1918-21, or 1941-45 to strengthen his resolve. With the increasing threat from an enlarged, aggressive NATO, he could not possibly ignore a Ukraine eagerly pushing to join up as soon as possible, after it had already joined in NATO wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. All the offers Russia made to negotiate the issues—above all a bar to Ukraine officially joining NATO—were rejected in the West as “non-starters” and accompanied by further waves of recriminations and new sanctions.
Was this extreme hostility by media and politicians, with its implied threats (and its actual incidents, as in Syria), the reason for Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine? Despite TV hours and piles of paper and ink expounding about it, I see absolutely no basis for warnings that Putin has plans to “expand his empire.” I have not seen a single word threatening Finland, Poland, Romania, or the Baltic trio, which are often loudest in exhortations. And Germany? The idea of Russia attacking Germany is fully unthinkable—though not enough to hinder big armament expansion plans in Berlin.
In the past, Russia was systematically threatened and also attacked—and is surrounded by a world with over 750 American military bases, with an American military budget bigger than the next ten countries combined, and with four times as many NATO soldiers as Russians in uniform. Even when Russia deployed troops outside its borders, bitter as these occasions were, they were only in countries which were on its borders, and hence—if under unfriendly control—were viewed as potential threats as much as Russian or Chinese deployments in Mexico or Canada would be viewed in the U.S. Ukraine definitely borders Russia—its heartland. Militarily, the USSR and Russia were always basically on the defensive, not on an offensive track.
And yet its soldiers, tanks, and planes have invaded Ukraine, with results just as horrible for those affected, even if not on the same scale, as American attacks in the Philippines and Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Iraq—or in two of the worst crimes ever committed by humankind—at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We cannot look into Putin’s mind, nor know of possible threats he seems to have considered immediate. We must strictly reject any nonsense disputing the will of most Ukrainians to remain independent and sovereign—though not to become part of a NATO-led threat.
Why this war now?……………….
The invasion, for whatever reason, has not only caused great misery in Ukraine, but also given an immense steroid push to the forces on the political right, the traditional Russia-haters, those thinking constantly of protecting and increasing their fortunes and those who want no peace, but only victory, any victory, over Russia. They want to demolish not only the reign of Putin but Russia in general as a barrier to capitalist expansion, to a hegemony ruled from Washington, Wall Street, and the Pentagon.
It is these people who are demanding no-fly zones. Some 27 former Pentagon and State Department officials and a former top NATO military commander joined Zelensky in calling for a no-fly zone, although they know full well what that means. As even Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said of the demand: “It means starting World War III.”
On the other hand, the march into Ukraine has caused saddening collateral damage, another likely season with the splintering and weakening of progressive forces who work for peace and whose growth is becoming almost desperately necessary in the face of a growing fascistic menace around the world………… https://portside.org/2022-03-12/criminal-war-ushers-worst-times-ukraine-russia-and-europe
Nuclear threat: Faslane, home to Trident, symbol of humanity’s power and folly
Nuclear weapons are often described as a deterrent. But do they really deter? That they have “kept the peace” is just a story, “a myth”, not backed by evidence of cause and effect, as New York Times writer Ward Wilson has put it. He observed, “We don’t accept proof by absence in any circumstance where there is real risk.”
Nuclear threat: Faslane, home to Trident, symbol of humanity’s power and folly, https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-threat-faslane-home-trident-110835394.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAG3X514QPdgktFOrKbKPrnzoSz6joD3PVpI6uSj2DBv3oIZTOIzUDZWnifcsw_SXXPYtt3h1orA3QYlShoI_rlgBn5o675_PqDys5-xmgpGOEFmBJ1ooQWfTzK9RMofsPeZk-CfshnVXybppn5h7kGhpqKtNAaeAVwv0YCeavNKnVicky Allan
Sun, 13 March 2022, On the northern shore of Gare Loch, washed by salt waters that merge into the Firth of Clyde, is the naval base, Faslane, home to Vanguard-class submarines. The UK has four such Trident-carrying submarines, each armed with eight missiles, each of which carries three warheads. All together, currently, the UK holds a stockpile of 225 such warheads. This sea loch, and the wildlife it sustains, knows little of the destructive capacity contained within it.
Each warhead is said to be eight times as destructive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed over 140,000 civilians. They are dark pearls of latent horror; symbols of humanity’s power and folly.
This stretch of shoreline has, for this reason, been one of the most controversial sites in Britain since the 1960s – first home to Polaris, more recently Trident. Concern over the threat of nuclear weaponry, has waxed and waned with the changes in global politics.
The SNP’s calls to scrap it were a key message of the Independence referendum, and one still repeated now. 2016 saw debate around whether the programme should be renewed at an enormous cost of £31 million for just the replacement submarines – CND estimated the overall cost would be more like £205 million. The House of Commons backed it, though only one Scottish MP voted in favour. Then, just last year, Boris Johnson announced a lift on the cap on the the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40 percent by the middle of this decade. This ended thirty years of gradual disarmament.
UN Elder Mary Robinson’s view on this was clear, “While the UK cites increased security threats as justification for this move, the appropriate response to these challenges should be to work multilaterally to strengthen international arms control agreements and to reduce – not increase – the number of nuclear weapons in existence.”
We are now in another chilling moment. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his threats of “consequences you have never seen”, have meant that the word nuclear is on our lips again. The threat, which not long ago had seemed half-forgotten, a childhood nightmare demoted down the current list of existential threats, was there again: “the nuclear option”. Might the Russian leader be mad and power-hungry enough to use it?
Ian Blackford recently confirmed the continuing support of SNP for getting rid of Trident, saying, “The idea that having nuclear weapons provides a deterrence that removes that threat is far-fetched, to say the least.”
Nuclear weapons are often described as a deterrent. But do they really deter? That they have “kept the peace” is just a story, “a myth”, not backed by evidence of cause and effect, as New York Times writer Ward Wilson has put it. He observed, “We don’t accept proof by absence in any circumstance where there is real risk.”
Above all Faslane is a reminder of the ridiculous nuclear arsenal the world has built. We may have already clambered down from the global peak stockpile of nuclear weapons which existed in 1986, but there is a long way to go. Approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads exist worldwide and almost 90 percent of them belong to two countries: the United States and Russia. There are more than enough, if such maths made any sense, to kill every human on the planet, one hundred times over.
That fact, and Putin’s terrifying recent posturings, should be a reminder that global nuclear disarmament must remain a key goal of our times.
Ukraine war fills Pentagon’s, NATO allies’ war chests
“Over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, we have tried to minimize friction with Putin and with Russia, in the hopes that it wouldn’t exacerbate a problem….And I feel like that era is over,” said Slotkin, a former Pentagon official. “I think it’s a sea change for how both the Defense Department and the State Department should think about our presence in Europe.”
[N]ow there is a unique moment of bipartisanship that will allow the Pentagon to request and receive just about anything it wants, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Congress is poised to approve $14 billion for Ukraine aid this week, including nearly $5 billion for additional troops in Europe and replenishing U.S. weapons already sent to Ukraine. The House passed the package Wednesday and the Senate is expected to vote on the bill by Friday.
“Over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, we have tried to minimize friction with Putin and with Russia, in the hopes that it wouldn’t exacerbate a problem….And I feel like that era is over,” said Slotkin, a former Pentagon official. “I think it’s a sea change for how both the Defense Department and the State Department should think about our presence in Europe.”
Ukraine war fills Pentagon’s, NATO allies’ war chests https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/113283937/posts/3880404511, Rick Rozoff, Anti-bellum
Stars and Stripes, March 10, 2022,
Congressional support for larger defense budget grows amid Ukraine invasion The changing security landscape in Eastern Europe will “no doubt” increase next year’s defense budget, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at an event last week. Other Capitol Hill lawmakers say they are also prepared to funnel more money to the Pentagon as the U.S. rethinks its national security and defense posture.
“President [Joe] Biden needs to put a serious budget proposal forward to confront the real threats we face,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in a statement. “Russia is just one reason why defense spending needs to be higher. China and other nations are watching the seriousness and resolve of freedom-loving nations.”
Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has prompted other NATO countries to pledge additional funding for their armed services.
In a reversal of decades of post-Cold War policy, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last month that his country would embark on a $110 billion rearming program. Poland announced last week that it will raise its spending on defense from 2% to 3% of the country’s gross domestic product. Leaders of France, Italy, Latvia and Romania have all vowed in recent days to boost their commitment to defense.
U.S. lawmakers authorized nearly $778 billion for defense spending for the 2022 fiscal year – $25 billion more than requested by the White House. The Biden administration has yet to submit its budget request for fiscal year 2023, which starts Oct. 1, but Smith said last week that the eventual spending plan will be “the most impactful and important budget that we’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve been in Congress.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he wants to see defense expenditures grow by at least 3% to 5%, adjusted for inflation….
[N]ow there is a unique moment of bipartisanship that will allow the Pentagon to request and receive just about anything it wants, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Congress is poised to approve $14 billion for Ukraine aid this week, including nearly $5 billion for additional troops in Europe and replenishing U.S. weapons already sent to Ukraine. The House passed the package Wednesday and the Senate is expected to vote on the bill by Friday.
“Over multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican, we have tried to minimize friction with Putin and with Russia, in the hopes that it wouldn’t exacerbate a problem….And I feel like that era is over,” said Slotkin, a former Pentagon official. “I think it’s a sea change for how both the Defense Department and the State Department should think about our presence in Europe.”
Video analysis reveals Russian attack on Ukrainian nuclear plant veered near disaster.
NPR, March 11, 2022: Last week’s assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was far more dangerous than initial assessments suggested, according to an analysis by NPR of video and photographs of the attack and its aftermath.
A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack reveals that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant’s massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel. Photos show that an administrative building directly in front of the reactor complex was shredded by Russian fire. And a video from inside the plant shows damage and a possible Russian shell that landed less than 250 feet from the Unit 2 reactor building.
The security camera footage also shows Russian troops haphazardly firing rocket-propelled grenades into the main administrative building at the plant and turning away Ukrainian firefighters even as a fire raged out of control in a nearby training building.
The evidence stands in stark contrast to early comments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which while acknowledging the seriousness of the assault, emphasized that the action took place away from the reactors. In a news conference immediately after the attack, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi made reference to only a single projectile hitting a training building adjacent to the reactor complex.
“All the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all,” Grossi told reporters at the March 4 briefing.
In fact, the training building took multiple strikes, and it was hardly the only part of the site to take fire from Russian forces. The security footage supports claims by Ukraine’s nuclear regulator of damage at three other locations: the Unit 1 reactor building, the transformer at the Unit 6 reactor and the spent fuel pad, which is used to store nuclear waste. It also shows ordnance striking a high-voltage line outside the plant. The IAEA says two such lines were damaged in the attack.
“This video is very disturbing,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. While the types of reactors used at the plant are far safer than the one that exploded
n Chernobyl in 1986, the Russian attack could have triggered a meltdown similar to the kind that struck Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, he warns.”It’s completely insane to subject a nuclear plant to this kind of an assault,” Lyman says.
In a news conference on Thursday, Grossi said that he had met with Ukrainian and Russian officials but failed to reach an agreement to avoid future attacks on Ukraine’s other nuclear plants. “I’m aiming at having something relatively soon,” he told reporters in Vienna.
The assault
On March 3, the nuclear plant was preparing for a fight. A news release posted to its website just hours before the assault described the facility as operating normally, with its assigned Ukrainian military unit ready for combat.
The Russian decision to move on the plant was clearly premeditated, according to Leone Hadavi, an open-source analyst with the Centre for Information Resilience, who helped NPR review the video.”It was planned,” Hadavi says, and it involved around 10 armored vehicles as well as two tanks. That is far more firepower than would have been carried by, say, a reconnaissance mission that might have stumbled across the plant by chance.
Just before 11:30 p.m. local time, someone began livestreaming the plant’s security footage on its YouTube channel. The livestream rolled on as Russian forces began a slow and methodical advance on the plant. The column of armored vehicles, led by the tanks, used spotlights to cautiously approach the plant from the southeast along the main service road to the facility.
Around an hour and 20 minutes later, one of the two tanks that led the column was struck by a missile from Ukrainian forces and was disabled.
That marked the beginning of a fierce firefight that lasted for roughly two hours at the plant. Immediately after the tank was disabled, Russian forces returning fire appeared to hit a transmission line connected to the plant’s main electrical substation. The IAEA says two of four high-voltage lines were damaged in the attack. Lyman says that these lines are essential to safe operations at the plant……..
Based on photos and damage assessments by Ukrainian officials and the IAEA, Lyman says that the damage appears to have been to some of the less hardened points within the nuclear plant. Unlike office buildings and elevated walkways, the reactors themselves and their spent fuel are sealed within a thick steel containment vessel that would withstand a great deal of damage.
But he also says that the host of systems required to keep the reactors safe are not hardened against attack. Cooling systems rely on exterior pipework; backup generators are kept in relatively ordinary buildings; vital electrical yards are out in the open; and the plant’s control rooms are not designed to operate in a war zone……………. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-zaporizhzhia
Los Alamos Study Group outlines a clear solution to the Ukraine war
Understanding why Russia invaded is not condoning the invasion. Russia’s view is that of existential dangers to its very existence. …… Russia’s view has to be respected, whether or not we agree with it. Failure by the U.S. and NATO over the course of decades to respect Russia’s position, and to provide a humane and reasonable provision for Russia’s security needs is the main if not the only material cause of the present conflict.
An end to the invasion and war in Ukraine can only be guaranteed if Russia’s security is itself guaranteed. …… The fundamental cause of the current conflict is the desire of the U.S. to weaken or “break”Russia.
A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War
An end to the invasion and war in Ukraine can only be guaranteed if Russia’s security is itself guaranteed. Security is largely indivisible. Security for one state requires security for others, says the Los Alamos Study Group.
Consortium News By Greg Mello, March 7, 2022
Los Alamos Study Group Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, what was a regional conflict has become a global hybrid war with ever-greater stakes, not least the risk of nuclear war.
Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the difference of motives between parties, which is also the fundamental cause of this war: Russia seeks security, while the U.S. and its NATO allies have been using Ukraine to deny that security — to “break Russia,” in Henry Kissinger’s 2015 phrase. The U.S. does not want peace, unless it be the peace of a conquered Russia. That is why there is no obvious end to the escalations and counter-escalations. The U.S. and NATO see opportunity in the war they have been trying so hard to provoke.
The tragedy is that few people seem to understand that at the root of the Ukraine crisis is a specific strategy known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after Paul Wolfowitz who, as under secretary of defense in the administration of George H. W. Bush, was one of the authors of a 1992 document that laid out a neo-conservative manifesto aimed at ensuring American dominance of world affairs following the collapse of the Soviet Union………….
The Wolfowitz Doctrine triggered the post-Cold War use of NATO as an instrument of bloody aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. It declared, in effect, that diplomacy was dead and that American power ruled by violence if necessary. A resurgent Russia led by Vladimir Putin was next, and on the horizon, a risen China.
The 2014 Washington-engineered coup in Ukraine that removed an elected leader who sought to reinforce his country’s relationship with neighboring Russia, was a product of the 1992 Doctrine and the extremism it represented. Victoria Nuland, a neo-conservative ideologue and President Barack Obama’s “point person” in Ukraine, has played the same role in President Joe Biden’s State Department.
The 1992 Doctrine is elaborated in an infamous RAND study on how to overextend and, in Kissinger’s words, “break Russia.” This is U.S. foreign policy today: a fact well understood by the Russian leadership who regard their country as effectively under siege by the United States.
The potential of American missiles pointed at Moscow from former Soviet satellite countries, together with NATO troop deployments, is the reality they see. A militarized and virulently anti-Russian Ukraine being used as a tool by the U.S., with an expressed wish for nuclear weapons, on the brink of invading Russian-sympathizing provinces on the Russian border — all that was too much for Russia. What, do you suppose, the U.S. would do if such a situation arose in Mexico or Canada?The potential of American missiles pointed at Moscow from former Soviet satellite countries, together with NATO troop deployments, is the reality they see. A militarized and virulently anti-Russian Ukraine being used as a tool by the U.S., with an expressed wish for nuclear weapons, on the brink of invading Russian-sympathizing provinces on the Russian border — all that was too much for Russia. What, do you suppose, the U.S. would do if such a situation arose in Mexico or Canada?
Since 2014, the Las Alamos Study Group has made it part of our business to understand the conflict in Ukraine and its significance for the world. In that year we held public meetings and teach-ins discussing it and since then have tried to examine developments as we could. In the Obama Administration, we took our concerns to the offices of the National Security Council — and were appalled by the lack of knowledge and understanding we found there.
Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have taken positions on this conflict. In our view, most (not all) of their statements are superficial, and/or omit the causes of the invasion as Russia understands them, or are in lock-step with U.S. and NATO propaganda.
The Study Group’s Basic Conclusions
- Understanding why Russia invaded is not condoning the invasion. Russia’s view is that of existential dangers to its very existence. The sincerity of that view is evident in the grave risks Russia is taking in this invasion which, again, we need neither justify nor condemn. Russia’s view has to be respected, whether or not we agree with it. Failure by the U.S. and NATO over the course of decades to respect Russia’s position, and to provide a humane and reasonable provision for Russia’s security needs is the main if not the only material cause of the present conflict.
- Telling Russia what to do is the problem, not the solution. We in NATO countries and in the West more broadly, and in peace-oriented groups, should confine our imperatives and judgments to what we ourselves can do, in our own countries and in relation to NATO. It is imperative to bring peace to Ukraine as best we can and to not inflame or broaden this conflict further. Our words can kill, or heal.
- An end to the invasion and war in Ukraine can only be guaranteed if Russia’s security is itself guaranteed. Security is largely indivisible. Security for one state requires security for others. This is a core principle of European security which Russia rightly insists upon. The U.S. should honor that. The fundamental cause of the current conflict is the desire of the U.S. to weaken or “break”Russia.
- Human rights, including the right of political self-determination, are pillars of Western values and institutions. The government of Ukraine has denied human rights and political self-determination to the peoples of the Donbass. Some 13,000 people have died during the eight years since the 2014 coup, according to the United Nations. The Ukrainian government has overtly genocidal policies toward Russian minorities. Since the 2014 U.S. sponsored coup, the U.S. and its European allies have used Ukraine to undermine Russian security.
- Nazi and neo-Nazi formations and ideologies in Ukraine present a clear danger to human rights and human life everywhere.
- Peace and nuclear disarmament organizations should be alarmed by NGO support for U.S. efforts to demonize and destabilize Russia.
What the Study Group Wants
1. We want a negotiated peace at the earliest possible time. In our own countries, every effort should be made to achieve this. We do not see those efforts.
2. We want an end to further escalation and broadening of the conflict, which threatens the well-being and security of the whole world. None of our countries should be introducing or transporting arms or conducting military activities or providing training or support of any kind in Ukraine. Peace groups should oppose all such escalation. “Helping Ukraine” with military “aid” is just a way of getting more people killed in the service of long-term U.S. aims to destroy the Russia.
3. Weapons should not be provided to civilian individuals, gangs, criminals, children, and “stay-behind,” guerrilla, or Volkssturmgroups. This only inflicts needless suffering and damages prospects for peace now and in the long run. There is no honor or legitimacy in such tactics in the present circumstances.
4. All economic sanctions – which hurt ordinary citizens more than elites – should be lifted. Economic sanctions are weapons of mass destruction, with global effects.
5. We want measured, just, de jure de-nazification of the Ukrainian government and laws.
6. The independence of the Donbass region within pre-conflict administrative boundaries should be accepted by all peace organizations and states.
7. The democratic decision of Crimea to rejoin Russia should be accepted by all peace organizations and states.
8. Peace groups should support a neutral, demilitarized (i.e. without heavy weapons or force projection capability) Ukraine, which is similar if not identical to the outcome sought by Russia.
9. Civilian areas must not be used as military staging or artillery bases. This is illegal, in fact. There is evidence that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are engaging in this odious practice.
10. Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO. That was a capital demand of Russia and one that we should all support.
11. NATO should disband. The largest military alliance in the world, NATO consumes more resources than all the world’s militaries combined, and has conducted multiple wars of aggression, in violation of the U.N. Charter and Nuremberg principles. NATO is also a nuclear weapons alliance.
12. The U.S. and the five states that host U.S. nuclear weapons should, jointly or individually, end nuclear hosting arrangements, as well as end the training of non-U.S. pilots in nuclear weapons use and the prospective use of non-U.S. dual-capable aircraft for nuclear missions.
13. Clearly, all of the above is urgent if the killing is to end, and there is to be a lasting peace in Europe.
Greg Mello is the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group in Albuquerque, New Mexico. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/07/a-proposed-solution-to-the-ukraine-war/
USA cheers Ukrainian fighters on, makes sure to keep Americans out of it.
US Policy: Cheer Ukrainians On – and Keep Us Out! Anti War.com by Patrick J. Buchanan March 08, 2022
After Friday’s NATO summit refused to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the allies’ failure to “close the skies” to Russian military aircraft gives “a green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities.”
“All the people who will die starting from this day will … die because of you,” said Zelensky to NATO, “because of your weakness.”
Zelensky’s indictment of NATO for cowardice came after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ruled out a no-fly zone:
“NATO is not party to the conflict. NATO is a defensive alliance. … We don’t seek war, conflict with Russia. … We should not have NATO planes operating over Ukrainian airspace or NATO troops on Ukrainian territory.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed Stoltenberg:
“Ours is a defensive alliance. We seek no conflict. … President Biden has been clear that we are not going to get into a war with Russia.”
Sunday, Blinken expanded:
President Joe Biden has “a responsibility to not get us into a direct conflict, a direct war with Russia, a nuclear power, and risk a war that expands even beyond Ukraine to Europe. … What we’re trying to do is end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one.”
U.S. policy in summary: Ukrainians should keep fighting and dying, killing Russians, while we stay out – and cheer them on.
In the greatest European military crisis since NATO was founded, U.S. actions and inaction speak louder than its words.
Simply put, establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine would entail U.S. planes and pilots shooting down Russia’s planes and pilots. This would mean war between Russia and America. Given Russian military doctrine, such a war could swiftly escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Bottom line: We are not willing to risk war with Russia over Ukraine, as that nation of 44 million is not a vital interest nor a member of NATO.
We will not establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as that would mean war with Russia. But had Russia attacked Estonia, not Ukraine, we would be at war with Russia, because Estonia is a member of NATO……………….
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been clear and convincing.
Any attempt to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine will be treated as an act of war. And Russia reserves the right to attack any nation whose planes are enforcing this no-fly zone.
As for the transfer from former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland of older MiGs to Ukraine, for use against Russian troops, says Putin, this would be an act of war, and Russia would retaliate against the nations putting the MiGs into the fight.
Biden also met last week with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland, a neutral nation that shares an 833-mile border with Russia. Niinisto may be considering membership in NATO.
Yet, this presents problems, among them the warning Friday from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Maria Zakharova:
“We regard the Finnish government’s commitment to a military non-alignment policy as an important factor in ensuring security and stability in northern Europe. … Finland’s accession to NATO would have serious military and political repercussions.”……………….
Did Ukraine’s trolling for membership in NATO trigger Putin’s war?
Friday’s Wall Street Journal writes:
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders, (Russian historian) Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever that Ukraine would eventually join NATO – an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. ‘It was the last straw,’ Mr. Service says. Preparations immediately began for Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine.”
An alliance established to prevent war may have just ignited one. https://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2022/03/07/us-policy-cheer-ukrainians-on-and-keep-us-out/
Serbia will not join NATO, will never forget bombing victims – president — Anti-bellum
B92March 9, 2022 Vučić in Kuzmin: We won’t join NATO, we want to protect our country on our own The citizens of Kuzmin gathered in large numbers to welcome the President of Serbia and the Serbian Progressive Party, Aleksandar Vučić. *** “We will not join NATO, we want to protect our country and our sky […]
Serbia will not join NATO, will never forget bombing victims – president — Anti-bellum
Serbian parliament president: When Hitler entered Ukraine, the U.S. did not declare war — Anti-bellum
B92March 2, 2022 “We have died for the sake of others; they aren’t against Russia, but against Serbia” ==== Also see: Serbia is only free country in Europe, only one not obeying NATO’s orders – official Serbia: West plans to oust Russia from UN, trigger total collapse of existing order ==== Speaker of the National […]
Serbian parliament president: When Hitler entered Ukraine, the U.S. did not declare war — Anti-bellum
Russia prepared to stop war, if Ukraine agrees to conditions, including independence of Donbass areas
Russia will stop ‘in a moment’ if Ukraine meets terms – Kremlin, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russia-will-stop–in-a-moment–if-ukraine-meets-terms—kremlin/47409340 Mon, March 7, By Catherine Belton, LONDON (Reuters) -Russia has told Ukraine it is ready to halt military operations “in a moment” if Kyiv meets a list of conditions, the Kremlin spokesman said on Monday.
Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was demanding that Ukraine cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.
It was the most explicit Russian statement so far of the terms it wants to impose on Ukraine to halt what it calls its “special military operation”, now in its 12th day.
Peskov told Reuters in a telephone interview that Ukraine was aware of the conditions. “And they were told that all this can be stopped in a moment.”
There was no immediate reaction from the Ukrainian side.
Russia has attacked Ukraine from the north, east and south, pounding cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv and the port of Mariupol. The invasion launched on Feb. 24, has caused the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two, provoked outrage across the world, and led to heavy sanctions on Moscow.
But the Kremlin spokesman insisted Russia was not seeking to make any further territorial claims on Ukraine and said it was “not true” that it was demanding Kyiv be handed over.
“We really are finishing the demilitarisation of Ukraine. We will finish it. But the main thing is that Ukraine ceases its military action. They should stop their military action and then no one will shoot,” he said.
On the issue of neutrality, Peskov said: “They should make amendments to the constitution according to which Ukraine would reject any aims to enter any bloc.”
He added: “We have also spoken about how they should recognise that Crimea is Russian territory and that they need to recognise that Donetsk and Lugansk are independent states. And that’s it. It will stop in a moment.”
NEW TALKS
The outlining of Russia’s demands came as delegations from Russia and Ukraine prepared to meet on Monday for a third round of talks aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.
It began soon after Putin recognised two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014, as independent – an action denounced as illegal by the West.
“This is not us seizing Lugansk and Donetsk from Ukraine. Donetsk and Lugansk don’t want to be part of Ukraine. But it doesn’t mean they should be destroyed as a result,” Peskov said.
“For the rest. Ukraine is an independent state that will live as it wants, but under conditions of neutrality.”
He said all the demands have been formulated and handed over during the first two rounds of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which took place last week.
“We hope that all this will go OK and they will react in a suitable way,” Peskov said.
Russia had been forced into taking decisive actions to force the demilitarisation of Ukraine, he said, rather than just recognising the independence of the breakaway regions.
This was in order to protect the 3 million Russian-speaking population in these republics, who he said were being threatened by 100,000 Ukrainian troops.
“We couldn’t just recognise them. What were we going to do with the 100,000 army that was standing at the border of Donetsk and Lugansk that could attack at any moment. They were being brought U.S. and British weapons all the time,” he said.
In the run-up to the Russian invasion, Ukraine repeatedly and emphatically denied Moscow’s assertions that it was about to mount an offensive to take back the separatist regions by force.
Peskov said the situation in Ukraine had posed a much greater threat to Russia’s security than it had in 2014, when Russia had also amassed 150,000 troops at its border with Ukraine, prompting fears of a Russian invasion, but had limited its action to the annexation of Crimea.
“Since then the situation has worsened for us. In 2014, they began supplying weapons to Ukraine and preparing the army for NATO, bringing it in line with NATO standards,” he said.
“In the end what tipped the balance was the lives of these 3 million people in Donbass. We understood they would be attacked.”
Peskov said Russia had also had to act in the face of the threat it perceived from NATO, saying it was “only a matter of time” before the alliance placed missiles in Ukraine as it had in Poland and Romania.
“We just understood we could not put up with this any more. We had to act,” he said.
(Reporting by Catherine Belton, editing by Mark Trevelyan, Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)
Ukraine is a sacrificial pawn on the imperial chessboard.
 | |||
No meaningful diplomatic effort is being made by Washington to end the violence. Ukrainian lives are being spent like pennies to facilitate the agenda of US planetary domination by whipping up international support for the strangulation of Russia while pouring vast fortunes into the military-industrial complex rather than taking even the tiniest step toward de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.
Ukraine Is A Sacrificial Pawn On The Imperial Chessboard, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/03/06/ukraine-is-a-sacrificial-pawn-on-the-imperial-chessboard/ Caitlin Johnstone, The war is not going well for Kyiv, and it would be unreasonable to expect that to change. As a vastly superior military force overwhelms the US client state, reality is in the process of crashing down hard in the face of western liberals who bought into the war propaganda that the brave, sexy comedian was leading an upset victory to kick Putin’s ass out of Ukraine.
Zelensky is now raging at NATO powers for refusing to intervene militarily against Russia, apparently having previously been given the impression that the US-centralized empire might risk its very existence defending its dear friends the Ukrainians from an invasion.
“Unfortunately, today there is a complete impression that it is time to give a funeral repast for something else: security guarantees and promises, determination of alliances, values that seem to be dead for someone,” Zelensky said Friday.
“All the people who will die starting from this day will also die because of you,” Ukraine’s president added. “Because of your weakness, because of your disunity.”
It must be hard, the process of learning that you were never actually a valued partner in western civilization’s fight for freedom and democracy. That you were always just one more sacrificial pawn on the imperial chessboard.
In a new article titled “U.S. and allies quietly prepare for a Ukrainian government-in-exile and a long insurgency“, The Washington Post reports that US officials anticipate Russia will reverse its early losses and successfully drive the Zelensky regime out of the country, after which “a long, bloody insurgency” is planned against the invaders backed by billions of dollars in US funding.
The US has a history of working to draw Moscow into gruelling, costly military quagmires which monopolize its military firepower while leaching it of blood and treasure. Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of US hegemonic manifesto The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, openly bragged about having lured Russia into its own Vietnam fighting the US-backed mujahideen in Afghanistan for a decade.
Just two years ago then-US Special Representative for Syria engagement said during a video event hosted by the Hudson Institute that his job was to make Syria “a quagmire for the Russians”.
So this isn’t something new or out of the blue, and what it means is that all the self-righteous posturing by the western political/media class about the need to pour weapons into Ukraine is not really about saving Ukrainian lives (only negotiating a ceasefire can do that), but about seizing this golden opportunity to hurt Russia’s geostrategic interests as much as possible. Ukraine on its own is powerless to stop Russia from taking Kyiv no matter how many weapons are sent, but those weapons can be used to fight a “long, bloody insurgency” after that happens which costs many more lives, keeps Moscow militarily preoccupied and hemorrhaging money, and ultimately hurts Putin’s popularity at home.
This by itself would do a great deal to advance US interests, but on top of that you’ve got the even greater benefit of manufacturing international consent for unprecedented acts of economic warfare against the entire nation of Russia, as well as killing Nord Stream 2 and rallying immense support for NATO and the imperial military/intelligence machine. The western world is now a united front against the Sauron-like menace of Vladimir Putin in much the same way it united against the threat of global terrorism after 9/11, and we’re probably only seeing the beginnings of the agendas this will be used to roll out.
We can expect these agendas to be used in an attempt to impoverish, undermine, agitate, and ultimately collapse and balkanize Russia, as the CIA and Washington swamp monsters have wanted to do since the fall of the Soviet Union.
This would leave China standing alone without its nuclear superpower guard bear and much more vulnerable to imperial operations geared toward thwarting the emergence of a true multipolar world, a goal US imperialists have had in writing for three decades.
That’s a whole lot of potential benefit to the US empire just for losing Ukraine. Kind of like sacrificing a pawn to get the queen in chess.
I think a big part of why I and others wrongly underestimated the likelihood of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine was that the cost-to-benefit math never made sense; on paper Moscow stands so much more to lose by this action in the long term than it stood to gain. There was also a bit of an assumption that the empire would rather Russia not take Ukraine, preferring to gradually encroach with NATO salami slicing tactics than give up a useful client state on Russia’s border, and would adjust its actions accordingly.
But chess is all about out-maneuvering your opponent to leave them nothing but bad options to choose from, and in the end leaving the king with no safe moves. The drivers of empire would have known that, as the late Justin Raimondo explained all the way back in 2014 for Antiwar, Putin could not afford to lose Ukraine to the west without losing crucial support in Russia. Combine that with increased attacks on Donbas separatists and the west’s adamant refusal to make even the most meaningless concessions like guaranteeing they wouldn’t add a nation to NATO who they had no intention of adding anyway, and you can understand if not support Putin’s drastic course of action.
No meaningful diplomatic effort is being made by Washington to end the violence. Ukrainian lives are being spent like pennies to facilitate the agenda of US planetary domination by whipping up international support for the strangulation of Russia while pouring vast fortunes into the military-industrial complex rather than taking even the tiniest step toward de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.
And it’s entirely possible that this was all planned years in advance.
Is it a coincidence that before this started we were bombarded with shrieking anti-Russia narratives for five years, all of which were initiated by secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies and none of which have ever been substantiated with hard evidence? The discredited conspiracy theories that there was a Kremlin asset in the Oval Office had nothing to do with Ukraine. Neither did the plot hole–riddled and still completely unproven claim that Russian hackers intervened in the US election, or the baseless claim that St Petersburg trolls did the same. Neither did the claim that Russia was paying Taliban-linked fighters to kill US troops in Afghanistan, which was eventually walked back by the same intelligence cartel that made it.
All these hysterical anti-Russia narratives were shoved in everyone’s face day after day, year after year, with nothing really uniting them apart from the fact that they drove up general anxiety about Russia and that they were initiated by the US intelligence cartel. Even the empty Ukrainegate scandal which led to Trump’s unsuccessful impeachment was initiated by a CIA officer who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
And while all those shrill narratives about a Putin puppet serving as America’s commander-in-chief were being aggressively hammered into public consciousness, Trump’s actual policies toward Moscow were extremely hawkish and aggressive. Beneath the narratives about Kremlin servitude, a new cold war was being dangerously escalated.
And now, lubricated years in advance by these mass-scale anti-Russia narratives, I’ve got western liberals in my social media notifications with blue and yellow profile pictures calling me a Russian propagandist and a Kremlin shill all day, every day. Because of that mass-scale propaganda campaign, we were paced to this point all the way from where we were at a few years ago when Obama was mocking Mitt Romney for his then-outlandish Russia hawkishness.
So we’re looking at increasingly aggressive confrontations between the US power alliance and the China-Russia bloc for the foreseeable future in a struggle which has already erupted in hot war and could easily get infinitely worse. All because a few manipulators in high places convinced the US establishment that global unipolar domination would be a good thing. Many of these unipolarist empire architects were involved in the murderous and influential Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose founding members are now providing expert punditry on what should be done about the war in Ukraine.
Michael Parenti saw this all coming long ago:
The PNAC plan envisions a strategic confrontation with China, and a still greater permanent military presence in every corner of the world. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world’s natural resources and markets, power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere — including North America — the blessings of an untrammeled global “free market.” The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of American global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower.
We should not have to live this way. We should not have to see the horrors of war inflicted upon humanity with the risk of total nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads every minute of every day, all for some dopey grand chessboard maneuverings of a few sociopaths who can’t just let humanity be.
There is no good reason why nations cannot simply collaborate with each other for everyone’s benefit. There is no good reason we should accept these omnicidal games of planetary conquest as inevitable, normal, or fine. If our minds weren’t so pervasively locked down by mass-scale psychological manipulation, there is no way we would stand for this madness.
I don’t know if the US will succeed in this grand strategic confrontation to prevent the rise of a multipolar world. From where I’m sitting it depends on which side of the conflict has more tricks up their sleeve, and that could easily be the emerging China-centralized alliance of which Russia is a key player. But I do think it’s far too early for anyone to declare that the US-led world order is over and a true multipolar world has solidified.
There are many moves on the chessboard still to be played.
NATO Intervention In Ukraine Could Spark Nuclear War. Here’s How It Could Happen
NATO Intervention In Ukraine Could Spark Nuclear War. Here’s How It Could Happen,The Federsalist, BY: HARRY KAZIANIS, MARCH 04, 2022
In the simulation we mapped out, not only does NATO get sucked in unintentionally, but Russia releases nuclear weapons in its desperation.
How did we just kill a billion people?”
Over just three days, as I have done countless times over the last several years, a group of past and present senior U.S. government officials from both sides of the aisle gathered to wage a NATO-Russia war in a simulation at the end of 2019. In the course of what we called the NATO-Russia War of 2019, we estimated one billion people died. And if we aren’t careful, what happened in a simulation could happen if a NATO-Russia war erupts over Ukraine.
In fact, in the simulation I mentioned above from 2019, in which Russia invades Ukraine in a similar way as it did over the last week or so, not only does NATO get sucked in unintentionally, but Russia eventually releases nuclear weapons in its desperation. The result is an eventual escalation of bigger and more dangerous nuclear weapons whereby over one billion lives are lost.
But before we start staring into the abyss, allow me to explain the goal of such simulations. NATO clearly would have a massive conventional advantage in any war with Moscow, ensuring that in a straight-up fight Putin would lose. However, Russia has stated time and time again it will use nuclear weapons to defend its territory and its regime if it feels mortally threatened. Our simulation always seems to ask: Can we ever defeat Russian President Vladamir Putin in an armed conflict over Ukraine or the Baltics and not start a nuclear war in the process?
So far, over at least several years, and with at least 100 different participants that all held different ideas about war and political allegiances, the answer is a flat out no.
Setting the Scene for War
The scenario the group decided to test back in late 2019 was similar to today: The scenario the group decided to test back in late 2019 was similar to today: Russia decided to invade Ukraine under the excuse that it is must defend Russian-speaking peoples that are being “oppressed” by Ukraine’s fascist government. In our scenario, we assumed Russia performs far more admirably than it does today but has more limited objectives, in that Moscow wants to connect Crimea to separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine that are under its effective control. We assumed that Russia does that quickly, achieving most of its military objectives in roughly four days.
But Ukraine does not give up so easily, just like in real life today. Ukrainian forces, after taking heavy losses, mount an impressive counterattack, whereby Russia loses over 100 tanks and over 2,500 soldiers. Images on social media show Russian armor ablaze, elite Su-35 fighter jets are shut down from the skies, and arms are now flowing in from the West in massive numbers.
Putin is outraged. He thought Ukraine would simply roll over, but he does not factor into his calculus the nearly decades-long training Kyiv received from the U.S. and NATO nor Ukraine’s military build-up for the last several years that was focused on this scenario.
Russia then decides that its limited military objectives were a mistake, and that all of Ukraine must be “demilitarized.” Moscow then launches a massive ballistic and cruise missile strike followed up by Russia’s air force launching its own shock and awe campaign, destroying a vast majority of Ukraine’s command and control structure, air force, air defense, and armored units in the process. At the same time, Russia starts surging troops to the borders of Ukraine in what looks like an imminent general invasion and occupation of the entire country.
The Spark
Here is where things take a turn for the worst. A Russian ballistic missile’s guidance system fails and crash-lands into NATO member Poland, killing 34 civilians as it tragically lands into a populated village along the Polish-Ukraine border. While the missile was not directed at Poland intentionally, pictures on social media show children crying for their mothers and bodies left unrecognizable, and demands for justice and revenge mount.
To its credit, Poland, which has its own tortured history with the Soviet Union and Russia, does its best to show restraint. While not responding with its own military, it leads an effort to see that Moscow pays a steep price for its aggression in Ukraine and actions, even unintentional, in Poland. Warsaw leads a diplomatic and economic boycott of Moscow resulting in Russia being kicked out of SWIFT as well as direct sanctions on Russian banks, similar to what we are seeing today.
In our scenario, Russia’s reaction is also swift. Moscow decides to launch a massive cyber attack on Poland, having based cyber warriors all throughout NATO territory, using their geography and proxy servers to mask the origin of the attack. Russia, in just two hours, takes off-line Poland’s entire electrical grid, banking sector, energy plants, and more — essentially taking Poland back to the stone age.
And this is where the nightmare begins. Even though attribution is hard to achieve, Poland appeals to NATO and starts to privately share its desire to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, declaring that an attack on one is an attack on the entire alliance. NATO is worried, as there is debate on how far to punish Russia while also feeling as if they do not have a clear military objective amongst the member states as some want to respond to what happened to Poland while others feel they must intervene militarily in Ukraine.
The Response
Here is where NATO surprises everyone. The alliance decides to set up a limited no-fly zone around the Ukrainian city of Lviv to protect innocent civilians and refugees that are trapped and have nowhere to go. Russia is warned: NATO is not intervening in the conflict, but will ensure that its planes and the airspace around Lviv are protected. NATO does make clear its jets will be in the skies above Ukraine, but will not operate from Ukrainian territory.
In Moscow, Putin now gets a sense that NATO is destined to intervene on Ukraine’s side. Russia fears NATO will use this protected corridor as a base of operations to send ever more sophisticated weapons. And with its economy now in a tailspin due to sanctions, Putin feels the walls closing in him. Before NATO can impose its no-fly zone, Putin orders strikes on any remaining airfields and military assets around Lviv.
But here is where Putin miscalculates and sets the stage for a NATO-Russia war. Putin orders another massive cyber attack on the Baltic states’ military infrastructure, thinking that NATO will use the Baltics to stage an invasion of Russia.
This ends up being the last straw for NATO, which then decides direct intervention in Ukraine is necessary to push back against Russian aggression. Before even an announcement is made, Russian intelligence sees missile and troop movements that indicate an impending NATO attack and decide to strike first — with tactical nuclear weapons. NATO decides to respond in kind.
Russia then targets European cities with nuclear weapons, with NATO and America also responding in kind. What is left is nothing short of an apocalypse, with what we estimate is billion people dead.
No War Goes As Planned
In every scenario I have been a part of there is one common theme to all of them: When Vladimir Putin feels boxed in and feels Russia is directly threatened, usually from a mistake he makes on the battlefield, he decides to use whatever escalatory step he desires to try and make up for it.
While we may well soon see Ukraine and Russia find a diplomatic path out of this brutal war, both sides seem dug in. That means the chances for escalation like the above are high. And if Russia and NATO do become involved in direct conflict, Putin knows that in a conventional fight his regime would be defeated. That means Russia will choose nuclear war.
The only question in a NATO-Russia war seems obvious: how many millions or billions of people would die?
Harry J. Kazianis is director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest in Washington DC and executive editor of their publishing arm, The National Interest. The views expressed in this article are his own. He’s on Twitter @grecianformula. https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/04/nato-involvement-in-ukraine-could-spark-nuclear-genocide-heres-how-it-could-happen/
The US and NATO’s Sacrifice Of Ukraine
The US and NATO’s Sacrifice Of Ukraine https://www.pressenza.com/2022/03/the-us-and-natos-sacrifice-of-ukraine/ 04.03.22 Mark Lesseraux
THE INCEPTION POINT OF A NEW ERA
We are fast approaching the 33rd anniversary of Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to untie the Soviet knot that held back the countries of Eastern Europe from moving in an independent, democratic direction. A decision that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and, subsequently, to the overturning of the Communist regime in Eastern Europe.
It was a turning point, a hopeful moment, that marked both the beginning of the end of the Cold War conflict and the inception point of a new era of cooperative possibilities between East and West.
THE U.S. AND EUROPE PROMISE TO END NATO EXPANSION
With the breakup of the Soviet Union it became clear to pretty much everyone involved in the diplomatic and political instigation of these major changes, that NATO had become obsolete. Washington and Europe met with Mikhail Gorbachev to create a new security pact that aimed to bring Russia into the cooperative fold. The Reagan administration, along with their West German allies, promised Gorbachev that once German unification was underway NATO would, for certain, cease expanding itself in an eastward direction.
This promise to end the expansion of NATO, which France and Great Britain also agreed to, seemed to signal the onset of a new era of global cooperation. It was agreed then and there by all parties present that a de-escalation of military spending and weapons production was in order now that the Cold War was winding down.
THE PROMISE IS BROKEN
In the years that followed, the war industry completely went back on the aforementioned promises. In fact, a massive eastward expansion of NATO was set in motion along with an unprecedented increase in military spending, weapons production and global weapons sales. NATO added Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia to its fold.
These countries were all forced to restructure and reconfigure their militaries to become compatible with NATO’s military alignment policies. Most of the aforementioned countries achieved this realignment via large loans, creating debt and dependence on corporate lenders.
NO NEW ERA OF COOPERATION
Over the course of the last two-plus decades NATO has become a multi-billion-dollar cash cow for huge corporations that depend on the Cold War for profit. There has been no new era of cooperation with Russia, as promised by all who were involved in setting the new age of supposed partnership in motion. On the contrary, NATO has ignored Russia’s constant warnings and requests to stop its campaign of expansion. Instead NATO, led by the US, has pushed itself right up to Russia’s border, all the while generating a steady stream of new Cold War propaganda, demonizing Russia while proceeding to encircle its territory.
THE SACRIFICE OF UKRAINE
Seven years ago the Obama administration prudently refused to sell arms to Kiev. This act of cautiousness was subsequently cast aside by the Trump and Biden administrations. Over the past several years weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain have been pouring into Ukraine.
By flooding Ukraine with weapons (which is what the US did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia) over the past few years and refusing Russia’s constant requests that NATO drop its plan to annex Ukraine, an extremely volatile and deeply dangerous situation was created for Ukraine. A situation that has basically amounted to the sacrifice of the people of Ukraine.
NO JUSTIFICATION
There is no justification for the savage actions that Vladimir Putin has undertaken in Ukraine over the past week and a half. Putin is responsible for the bloodshed that he has generated. What this article is pointing to has nothing to do with absolving Putin for the violence in Ukraine. What this article is pointing to is the fact that the US and NATO have been myopic and reckless. What this article is illustrating is that what is going on now in Ukraine is, in part, the result of a thirty-three year history of broken promises and careless, greed propelled decisions made by the US and NATO.
MANY SAW THIS COMING
Over the past three decades, dozens of diplomats and historians have warned that a situation like the one we are seeing now in Ukraine was inevitable if NATO expansion continued. I’m going to end this article here with a quote from George Kennan who was considered by many to be the most respected voice on the matter of US-Soviet relations:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.
Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
– George Kennen 1998 Mark Lesseraux
Mark Lesseraux is a singer/songwriter/socio-political columnist from Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a Humanist, a proponent and practitioner of Active Nonviolence and a student of Nonduality.
Western govt, media, and public, ignorant about the complex history of Ukraine
Lenin were he alive today would no doubt point out that Russia today, as well as the U.S., is a capitalist-imperialist country…….. He [Putin] is despicable, but his demand that NATO ceases expansion is as eminently reasonable and Biden’s desire to expand it seems crazier by the day.
Putin, Lenin, Imperialism and the (Real) History of Ukraine, Portside, March 5, 2022 Gary Leupp
— The people of this country suffer, I’ve always thought, from a general ignorance of history. ………
In 2014 having, having given little thought to Ukraine to that point, people in this county (self-defined Americans and others) were informed by the most authoritative sources they knew, the cable TV news anchors and commentators. They were treated to a history lesson that went something like this: The country of Ukraine has always been oppressed by Russia. It was colonized by Russia for centuries. Russia still, after the end of the Soviet Union, wants to control Ukraine! So it responded to a popular revolution in Kyiv, an expression of the Ukrainians’ longing to fulfill its “European aspirations,” by invading Ukraine!
having made its point clear in the brief invasion of Georgia in 2008 (to end talk of Georgian membership), having watched a U.S.-backed coup topple a president friendly to Russia replacing him with a pro-NATO cabal—was re-annexing Crimea (not just Russian from 1783 to 1954, but still Russia’s main naval port, then on lease from Crimea, and coveted by NATO) and supporting separatists in the primarily Russian speaking population in the Donbass region primarily to prevent further NATO expansion……………
In the real world, the U.S. has acted in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the collapse of what Washington perceived as the global communist movement, with an effort to encircle Russia with the most horrifically threatening military force in world history. It has expanded NATO in the absence of any real threat to itself from 16 to 28 members, bordering Russia on the Baltic coast and threatening to encircle it entirely. It has used NATO to pursue wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, in the last case illegally intervening in a failed effort to gain control over a longstanding Russian ally…………
In the real world, Biden became president determined to both reassert U.S. “global leadership” and to continue NATO expansion. His campaign literature in 2020 reminded us that he believed in the cause. And it was clear he had a particular interest in drawing Ukraine in, which meant convincing Germany and other unenthusiastic NATO members to agree that Ukraine had cleaned up its corruption sufficient to get the nod.
He sent his secretary of state Anthony Blinken, who as Biden’s foreign policy advisor had urged him in 2002 to support Bush’s war on Iraq, to persuade the Germans that their gas pipeline to Russia threatened NATO unity! Meanwhile, U.S. puppet and NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg visited Kyiv to assure Ukraine that it will, indeed, be admitted to NATO. And the arms flowed into Ukraine.
Putin considered all this more threatening than ever………… The Russians were talking about their security, and need to defend their borders; the U.S. president was talking about his right to expand the alliance as he pleased.
For the U.S. media, what we see here is a clearly drawn conflict between Good and Evil, or in Blinken’s schoolmarmish conception “Democracy versus Autocracy.” What I see is two evils, neither of them democratic, locked in a conflict over the more powerful evil’s lust for further expansion. Both evils have their controlled news media and means to shape public consciousness.
Ukraine has been inhabited and crisscrossed by Scythians, Celts, Germanic peoples, Huns, Khazars, Mongols as well as Slavs. Given its history of incorporation into different states ………… at least the closest approximation of an independent state so far—was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Russia demanded that Ukraine be considered an independent state on the world stage; it held a separate UN seat. With Belarus it was one of the closest SSRs to Moscow, and most hesitant to withdraw from the union when Boris Yeltsin unilaterally dissolved it by pulling Russia itself out. Once established in its current configuration, Ukraine agreed to abandon its nuclear arsenal; it also agreed to a long-lease arrangement with Russia involving the vital Crimean naval base.
When Putin points to this history or at least aspects of it, he is not churning out lies at the level of the dutiful U.S. ……………
In the real world, Ukrainian fascist movements exist and were surely on display in the Maidan coup in 2014. They played a key role in the violent overthrow of an elected government, under Victoria Nuland’s watchful eye. There remains much support in some quarters for the wartime nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who espoused a fascist ideology and helped round up Jews in Ukraine for the Nazi death camps. Anyone paying attention realizes that there are fascist elements in the military (the entire Azov Battalion) and that fascist parties, while small and with little electoral influence, have been able to stymie the implementation of the now-defunct Minsk Accords. So, yes, there is a fascist movement in Ukraine and it has a long history……
Crucial battles in this 1941-1945 war, also known as the Anti-Fascist War, were fought on Ukrainian soil, where some local communities sided with the fascists and embraced the Nazis’ Russophobia. Putin wants to essentialize Ukrainians as tending towards fascism, now working in tandem again with Russia’s enemies. This effort could well backfire among Russians who realize that Ukrainians are divided politically and ideologically among themselves and in any case undeserving of Putin’s characterization.
……….. Russians and Ukrainians retained amicable relations; the mere fact of new mutual independence was not a great problem for the relationship. Relations only deteriorated when, from around 2005, Ukrainian leaders requested NATO membership. In 2010 an anti-NATO president was democratically elected; the U.S. State Department oversaw a massive regime change effort to depict him as corrupt, anti-EU, impeding “Ukrainian’s European aspirations.” It succeeded in ousting him….
…….. Lenin were he alive today would no doubt point out that Russia today, as well as the U.S., is a capitalist-imperialist country…….. He [Putin] is despicable, but his demand that NATO ceases expansion is as eminently reasonable and Biden’s desire to expand it seems crazier by the day………………….. https://portside.org/2022-03-05/putin-lenin-imperialism-and-real-history-ukraine
Russian forces approach Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear power plant in Yuzhnoukrainsk
– The US ambassador to the United Nations has warned that the world averted
nuclear catastrophe ‘by the grace of God,’ as troops move closer to the
country’s second-largest nuclear power plant. In a statement given during
an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council following the news that
Russian forces had shelled Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Linda
Thomas-Greenfield said that troops were ‘now 20 miles, and closing, from
Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear facility,’ the South Ukraine nuclear
power plant in Yuzhnoukrainsk.
Unilad 5th March 2022
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- May 2026 (25)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 