“In a world without laws, where might alone makes right, all of us will ultimately be the losers.” —Jonathan Cook
And this by Scott Ritter:
“In a war of attrition, grinding the enemy down is just the first part. Stretching what remains until it breaks is how you finish the job.”
Scott is, of course, referring to the US / NATO (Ukraine) war against Russia; the latter being close to finishing the job.
The same war-time allegation or strategy, is taking place now in our “civil” (not to confuse with civilized) world, where we, the People, are gradually extending our knowledge of crimes committed during the past hundred-plus years by a powerful clan of elites, coming to culmination in the past four years – is like stretching the enemy, the all-powerful elite, to the breaking point. This crucial moment is near – it is only a question of time, but irreversible.
Light is overcoming darkness.
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Many of us knew it all along, that the mRNA vaxxes are made to kill, are part of the depopulation agenda, compliments of the World Economic Forum (WEF), especially Klaus Schwab, who prides himself having authored the Great Reset, concluding in “You will own nothing but be happy”.
The UN Agenda 2030, which is supported by the UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres, a gutless character put in this position and prolonged in this position by the United Sates, sounds like the God-given salvation for humanity, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Until you look at them closer, and you will see the hidden message behind the SDGs. They are an announced death sentence for humanity.
As Cult rules dictate, their crimes need to be announced well in advance to materialize. So far so good. But no farther. That is it. The Light has started penetrating their darkness to their detriment.
Both these documents, the Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030, are congruent – they were supposed to work in tandem. That is what “they” thought they had in store for us, but it will not happen.
These two “visionary” documents are actually linked by an illegal agreement of June 2019 between the WEF’s Schwab and the UN’s Guterres. Who would have thought, that the United Nations becomes an instrument of those who fund and support the WEF, i.e. BlackRock, et. al.
The FEAR on which the entire crime was built – the cornerstone for peoples’ submission – is crumbling or has already crumbled and is being smashed to bits and pieces like a house of cards – that looked in 2020 like a pyramid to the sky; today it is a shambles.
The unhumans – oligarchs and billionaires and wannabe controllers of the world’s wealth, working out of Darkness— have not made their calculus with the all-overcoming LIGHT.
The strength of our thoughts – of our positive thinking and willpower – may help stretch this Light across the globe, into every corner of life. This power is unsurmountable, once the fangs of fear have gone, and our minds are filled with thoughts of harmony and Peace.
Forbidden News has divulged the “news” of an unknown CIA whistleblower – no names given – who tells us how the CIA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the WEF, and the Rockefeller Foundation, have invented the mRNA killer-technology.
The COVID plandemic was a tool to convert the surviving humanity into a surveillance state – into a One World Order (OWO), following a One World Government (OWG), with digital, programmable money – so-called “Central Bank Digital Currency” (CBDC), with mandatory vaccination, to eliminate a large proportion of useless people (Schwab’s Israeli adviser Yuval Noah Harari), to free up resources for the elite.
These deadly “vaxxes”, the Secret CIA agent says, were not developed in warp speed for a non-existent deadly virus, but were prepared at least ten years ahead of the plandemic to be used for depopulating the planet.
The “system” was well-thought out and prepared by long hand, with all the key players in cue to execute their role. It was to function like an octopus stretching its tentacles around the globe, and whenever one would be damaged, teared off by accident or by “mistake”, the remaining ones would continue their business of death and let the “broken” tentacle gradually grow back.
This is reminiscent of a frank Bill Gates statement in one of his by now famous stuttering interviews. This time, not stuttering, he said proudly something to the extent,
“Even if I’m gone, the system is so solid, it will continue on the same course that was prepared a long time ago”.
Of course, the system needs to fool the people, and fool them well – and for a long time – with the same-same messages, to fully indoctrinate the lies, an onslaught of plandemics, necessitating endless vaccination-mandates; transhumanism through chips-implants, full digitization of everything; all-destructive “climate change”, for which mankind’s excesses are responsible, like the needed destruction of agriculture as we know it, for food production, à la “eat bugs and insects or you may starve!” and ever newly appearing enemies – from which they, the kind elite, will save humanity by an OWO with an OWG.
The fooling is done by many means, including a fully bought, corrupt mainstream media, but primarily by a rather obscure UK-based company called Tavistock, whose front is a luxury real estate agency, but their real specialty is mind manipulation and social engineering – a science they developed to perfection since the early 1940s. Tavistock closely cooperates with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), an agency attached to the Pentagon.
Climate Change – alright. Man-made.
It is called geo-engineering. Chemtrails based on and working with thousands of patented chemical and heavy metal combinations, influencing the stratosphere, our weather and climate – plus the falling particles will poison our breathable atmosphere, water, soil, eventually plants and animals, our food and our bodies.
The second generation of geo-engineering uses DEW technologies. Directed Energy Weapons consist of high-powered electromagnetic waves, for example, those that destroyed Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii. DEW-type energy is also able to cause earthquakes, as they are capable of penetrating deep under the earth’s surface and break tectonic plates.
See this 16-min video clip for more details:
People of the world are waking up.
The wannabe-controlling elite may fall into panic, as awoken people may mean justice for the evil done to the very people over years – what many might call a Nuremberg 2.0.
We are not there yet.
But, yes, justice should be done.
Equally important though – we, Humanity, must move away from this rotten, materialistic, enslaving system. No justice can correct it.
We MUST begin afresh – with a new spirit and with connected positive thoughts of Light that span the world.
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Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
There is a vast difference between “not winning” and “losing” a war.
In the case of Ukraine, “not winning” means that President Zelensky and his handlers in Washington choose to pursue a negotiated settlement that would allow Russia to keep the territory it captured during the war while addressing Moscow’s modest security demands. (Note—Ukraine must reject any intention of joining NATO)
On the other hand, “losing” the war means that the US and NATO continue on the same path they are today—pumping lethal weapons, trainers and long-range missiles systems into Ukraine—hoping that the Russian offensive is progressively weakened so Ukraine can prevail on the battlefield. This alternate path—which amounts to ‘wishful thinking’—is the path to “losing” the war.
Unlike the “not winning” the war scenario, “losing” the war will have a catastrophic effect on the United States and its future.
It would mean that Washington had been unable to prevent a Russian military incursion into Europe which is NATO’s primary raison d’etre. It would challenge the idea that the US is capable of acting as the guarantor of regional security which is the role the US has enjoyed since the end of WW2. The perception of a US defeat at the hands of Russia would unavoidably trigger a re-evaluation of current security relations leading to the dissolution of NATO and, very possibly, the EU as well. Simply put, losing the war would be a disaster. Here’s how Colonel Daniel Davis summed it up just last week:
“We can’t let Russia win.”
I’ve heard that throughout the entire 2-plus years of the war. But here’s what I’m saying: If you keep going down this path—ignoring all the realities we keep talking about—not only will Russia win, we’ll lose. And I assure you if you thought it was bad to ‘let Putin win’—which means having a negotiated settlement in which Putin ends up with territory he didn’t start the war with—…But if you say that—because I don’t want that to happen, I’m going to keep fighting—that implies you think you can win. But if you can’t win, then the likely outcome is that you lose even more, and that’s what’s really going to hurt our credibility because, imagine if the whole force of NATO was shown to be unable to stop Russia from winning? Now our credibility is damaged far worse than having a negotiated settlementColonel Daniel Davis, You Tube
So, while “not winning” is not the perfect outcome, it is vastly superior to “losing” which would severely undermine the Alliance’s credibility, greatly erode Washington’s power in Europe, and force the US to rethink its plans for projecting power into Central Asia. (pivot to Asia) In short, a US defeat by Russia in Ukraine would be a serious body-blow to the “rules-based order” and the denouement of the American Century.
So, there’s a lot at stake for the United States. Unfortunately, there is no real debate in elite power circles about the best way forward. And, that’s because the decision has already been made, and that decision hews closely to the maximalist views articulated in an article at the Atlantic Council titled “NATO at 75: The Alliance’s future lies in Ukraine’s victory against Russia”
NATO will mark its seventy-fifth anniversary on April 4 as history’s most successful military alliance. However, its future as a credible deterrent to aggression now lies in the success or failure of Russia’s unjust and brutal invasion of Ukraine…..
Allied leaders have unambiguously bound NATO’s security to this war. NATO summits have repeatedly condemned the invasion and demanded that Russia “completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its forces and equipment from the territory of Ukraine.”
And the rhetoric has escalated. French President Emmanuel Macron recently described the war as “existential” for Europe. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility would be reduced to zero,” Macron said…
If the upcoming Washington summit is to inspire continued confidence in NATO’s credibility, and thus its future, then t he Alliance must take action to place Ukraine onto a clear path to victory…
Allied leaders must unambiguously endorse Ukraine’s war objectives—that is, total territorial reconstitution back to the nation’s 1991 borders. Anything short of that is a disillusioning signal to Ukraine and encouragement to Putin to sustain his invasion. NATO at 75: The Alliance’s future lies in Ukraine’s victory against Russia,atlanticcouncil.org
Repeat: Allied leaders must unambiguously endorse Ukraine’s war objectives—that is, total territorial reconstitution back to the nation’s 1991 borders. Anything short of that is a disillusioning signal to Ukraine and encouragement to Putin to sustain his invasion.
As we said earlier, this maximalist view of NATO’s objectives is nothing more than wishful thinking. The anemic UAF is not going to drive the Russian Army out of Ukraine nor are they going to win the war. Even so, the views above are shared by the vast majority of foreign policy elites who have not adjusted their thinking so that it corresponds to Ukraine’s bloody battlefield losses. Here’s more from a Foreign Affairsop-ed:
The Biden administration and its European counterparts have failed to articulate their endgame for this war. Three years into the conflict, Western planning continues to be strategically backwards—aiding Kiev has become an end in itself, divorced from a coherent strategy for bringing the war to a close.
But the “theory of victory” presented by Zagorodnyuk and Cohen to replace the strategic malaise in which the west finds itself is, remarkably, even more dangerous and ill-conceived than the status quo. The authors call on the White House to come out in full-throated support of Kiev’s war aims: namely, ejecting all Russian forces from Ukraine’s 1991 borders including Crimea, subjecting Russian officials to war crimes tribunals, extracting reparations from Moscow, and providing Ukraine with “long-term security arrangements.” Put differently, the West must commit itself to nothing short of Russia’s total and unconditional battlefield defeat.
How is Ukraine, with its battered military, collapsing demography, and an economy entirely reliant on Western cash infusions, to accomplish this lofty task? By doing more of the same, but on a larger scale. The New Theory of Ukrainian Victory Is the Same as the Old,The American Conservative
The point we’re trying to make is that this type of delusional thinking is virtually universal among US foreign policy elites none of whom are prepared to accept the fundamental reality on the ground. As a result, there is no chance that the Biden administration will make a course-correction or make any attempt to prevent a direct clash between the two nuclear-armed adversaries, NATO and Russia.
So, how would a reasonable person approach the current conflict in Ukraine?
They’d look for a way to end it ASAP while inflicting as little damage as possible on the losing side. Here’s what Marymount Professor Mark Episkopos had to say in the same article above:
Western leaders are long overdue in articulating a coherent theory of victory—one that grapples with the trade-offs and limitations confronting Kiev and its backers rather than sweeping them aside in pursuit of maximalist battlefield objectives that are increasingly detached from realities on the ground. This does not mean resigning oneself to Ukraine’s unconditional surrender. Yet it will require policymakers to acknowledge that there is no viable pathway to Russia’s unconditional defeat and to shape their thinking around war termination accordingly. It is not too late to end the war on terms that guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty while advancing U.S. interests. The West still has substantial leverage on and off the battlefield, but the key to wielding this influence effectively is to finally abandon a zero-sum framing of victory that has prevented leaders from repairing to a more pragmatic, strategically nimble approach. The New Theory of Ukrainian Victory Is the Same as the Old, The American Conservative
Bottom line: A deal can be made that will minimize the overall damage to the United States and Ukraine, but it’s up to US diplomats and foreign policy elites to identify areas of common ground so an agreement can be reached that will avoid an even bigger catastrophe.
The problem with Professor Episkopos recommendation, is that it is an imminently reasonable suggestion which means it will be dismissed out-of-hand by the warhawks who set policy. Even now, US powerbrokers are certain that the war can be won if they just throw caution-to-the-wind and apply more raw, military force. That ought to do it. (they think)
This is the kind of flawed reasoning that drives the US war machine. Policy elites honestly believe that if they fully embrace a ridiculous platitude like “We can’t lose”, that somehow the reality of superior Russian firepower, manpower, logistical support and industrial capability will vanish into thin air and the “exceptional” nation will prevail once again. But that’s not going to happen.
Okay. So, what will happen?
For that, we turn to military analyst Will Schryver and a recent post on Twitter:
It… must be understood that the US/NATO could not assemble, equip, send, and sustain even a dozen competent combat brigades to engage the Russians in Ukraine.
Do you realize what would happen to 50k NATO combat troops — none of whom have EVER experienced high-intensity warfare — if they were suddenly thrust, with necessarily deficient leadership and coordination, into the Ukraine battlefield?
They would be mercilessly slaughtered. Bleeding the Beast, Will Schryver, Twitter
“Mercilessly slaughtered”? That doesn’t sound very hopeful.
Even so, France has already announced that it will send military trainers to Ukraine, and others will certainly follow. At the same time more lethal weaponry, particularly long-range missiles and F-16s are already en route and will likely be used sometime in the near future. But, will it matter? Will the provision of new weapons and combat troops turn the tide and prevent the collapse of the Ukrainian army? Here’s Schryver again:
Why should the Russians object if the US/NATO sends more of its scant stockpiles of short-range ballistic and longer-range cruise missiles? The success rates for ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles has been abysmal, and steadily decreases with the passage of time. They are strategically meaningless. And there is effectively zero replenishment capacity!
Why should the Russians object if the US/NATO sends a squadron — or even five — of antiquated F-16s to Ukraine. Yes, of course, they would be piloted by NATO “volunteers”, and they might even achieve a handful of overhyped and fleeting “successes” in the early going. But if they actually attempt to mount serious sorties over the Ukraine battlefield, old F-16s with inadequate logistics and sustainment are going to have a life span numbered in mere HOURS. Bleeding the Beast, Will Schryver, Twitter
Is Schryver right? Will these prospective long-range missile strikes on targets inside Russia merely be pinprick attacks that Putin will ignore while his troops continue to crush Ukrainian forces along the 800-mile Line of Contact? And should Putin welcome the introduction of US/NATO “ground troops” into Ukraine to face the Russian army? Will that actually bring the war to a swifter end? Here’s Schryver one more time:
At the rate this whole Ukraine debacle is going, essentially all European-based military power… is going to be attrited to “combat-ineffective” for at least a decade, and probably more. If I were the Russians, I would view that objective as the summum bonum (“The highest good”) to be achieved as a result of this war, and I would be loath to interrupt the Masters of Empire while in the process of handing it to me on a silver platter….
So, if I’m Gerasimov, I would say, “Bring ’em on! Bleeding the Beast, Will Schryver, Twitter
The furor over the use of NATO-provided long-range missiles (and deployment of F-16s and French trainers) only diverts attention from the inescapable fact that NATO is going to be defeated by the Russia Armed Forces if they enter the war. So, a wise man would pursue a negotiated settlement now before things get out of hand. But that is not what our leaders are doing, in fact, they are doing the exact opposite and escalating at every turn.
So, let’s examine the facts a bit more thoroughly. Check out this summary analysis by the pros at War on the Rocks:
When asked two weeks ago in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee whether the Army was “outranged” by any adversary, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley said: “Yes … the ones in Europe, really Russia. We don’t like it, we don’t want it, but yes, technically [we are] outranged, outgunned on the ground.”
Given Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, this is sobering testimony. But is it accurate? Unfortunately, yes: Nearly two years of extensive wargaming and analysis shows that if Russia were to conduct a short-warning attack against the Baltic States, Moscow’s forces could roll to the outskirts of the Estonian capital of Tallinn and the Latvian capital of Riga in 36 to 60 hours. In such a scenario, the United States and its allies would not only be outranged and outgunned, but also outnumbered….
Outgunned? (The Russians) have much more advanced armor, weapons, and sensors, and in some areas — such as active protection systems to defend against anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) — are superior to their Western counterparts….
Beyond the disadvantages of being outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned, a slew of other issues compounds the problem. First, NATO allies and the U.S. military would be of limited immediate help offsetting these disadvantages.European allies followed the American lead by cutting armor and optimizing their remaining forces for “out-of-area” missions like Afghanistan. Thus, Great Britain is continuing with plans to withdraw its last troops from Germany, while Germany has reduced its army from a Cold War level of 10 heavy divisions to the equivalent of two.
But it’s not just the numbers here that matter. The United States and its partners have also steadily reduced the infrastructure necessary to support any kind of substantial deterrent or defensive effort in Europe. Today, there are no U.S. division or corps headquarters forward-based on the continent, nor any Army aviation, engineer, and associated logistics brigades….
Russia fields perhaps the most formidable array of surface-to-air missile (SAM) defenses in the world. Operating from locations within Russian territory, these SAMs far outrange existing defense-suppression weapons and present a credible threat to U.S. and allied airpower that would be costly and time-consuming to counter….
Today NATO is indeed outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned by Russia in Europe and beset by a number of compounding factors that make the situation worse….
A war with Russia would be fraught with escalatory potential from the moment the first shot was fired; and generations born outside the shadow of nuclear Armageddon would suddenly be reintroduced to fears thought long dead and buried. Outnumbered, Outranged, and Outgunned: How Russia Defeats NATO,War On The Rocks
What does this analysis show?
It shows that—despite the delusional fulminations of armchair generals on cable TV braying about inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia—it’s not going to happen. Russia has the edge in virtually every area of firepower, manpower, combat-readiness and material. They also have the industrial capability that is unmatched in the West. Here’s how Schryver summed it up:
There has been no meaningful increase in armaments production in the collective west, and there won’t be anytime soon. Europe has been effectively demilitarized, and the US is severely depleted and effectively deindustrialized….
Outside of the hopelessly propagandized populace of the so-called “western democracies”, no one in the world believes Russia looks “meek” at this point in time. Instead, they realize the Russians have completely defeated the empire’s plans and exposed its weakness….
The west has no advantage whatsoever. NATO is an empty shell…. I am utterly convinced a NATO expeditionary force in Ukraine would be massacred AT LEAST as comprehensively as the AFU has been, and quite likely MUCH WORSE, and MUCH MORE RAPIDLY…. Will Schryver, Twitter
There it is in black and white: The “deindustrialized” West is an empty shell that has no chance of prevailing in a combined-arms ground war with Russia. Even so, Washington is determined to proceed with its lunatic plan pushing the world closer to Armageddon while bringing ruin on the American people.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from TUR
The original source of this article is Global Research
A US report points to significant problems in rebuilding the Ukrainian Armed Forces, especially as front line commanders will lead poorly trained recruits, who will be called up under the new conscription law, “to just die.” The same report also indicates that Ukraine is now recruiting prisoners as manpower shortage is evidently having a crippling effect on the front lines.
“We had guys that didn’t even know how to disassemble and assemble a gun,” a deputy battalion commander with the call sign Schmidt told The Washington Post on June 2 when complaining that weeks were wasted on teaching new recruits basic skills, including shooting.
Schmidt also complained that commanders “are wasting a lot of time [on the front lines] with basic training [of] new infantry” and that fresh recruits were being sent to combat Russian forces “to simply die.”
According to The Washington Post,
“With Russia on the offensive, the persistent complaints are a reminder that a newly adopted mobilisation law intended to widen the pool of draft-eligible men is just one step in solving the military’s personnel problems.”
However, the situation is evidently desperate as prison inmates are now able to join the Ukrainian military “in exchange for a chance of parole,” a policy first adopted by Moscow but that Kiev and the West had initially propagated as a sign of the Russian military’s struggle. Rather, the Russian program, first headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, was to recruit for the Wagner private military group and an opportunity for prisoners to achieve redemption, whilst the Ukrainian program is obviously a desperate attempt to deal with crippling manpower shortages.
The new mobilisation law tightens military conscription conditions to replenish the Ukrainian Army, depleted by two years of conflict with Russian troops. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law in April, which reduces the enlistment age from 27 to 25, expands the powers of enlistment officers, and introduces penalties for deserters with massive fines and/or prison.
Ukrainian troops are significantly outnumbered and exhausted and are being overrun by Russian forces, and although it is impossible to reverse this situation, the Kiev regime insists on continuing the war, even if conscripts, including prisoners, are inexperienced and do not have the necessary training.
“There is competition between military commanders to hire (prisoners) since there is a lack of manpower, so they really want to have access to these people,” Ukrainian Justice Minister Denys Maliuska told reporters visiting a prison in Kiev on May 30.
A 5th Brigade representative, using the call sign Vladyslav, told Reuters his brigade had recruited “around 90 people from the prison and was recruiting others.” Although Vladyslav said that those who joined his brigade would be “put into separate, prisoner-only units and that commanders would keep a close eye on them,” he admitted that “there was little scope for them to desert considering the amount of fire Russia could aim at a disorderly withdrawal.”
Maliuska also expressed concern on the issue of desertion, saying that prisoners will be shamed by the media, “if there is a single deserter or a single crime, that would be the type of thing in the media that would be bad PR for us.”
In fact, the manpower situation is so desperate that the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) is forcing priests and parishes of various Christian denominations to urge the faithful to join the Ukrainian Army, a representative of the pro-Russian resistance in Kherson told Russian media.
“The SSU officials supervising churches and other religious organisations, after the publication of the new mobilisation law, forced the clergy of the denominations they supervise to convince parishioners to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The instructions were received in the Evangelical Christian Baptist Church, the Evangelical Faith Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” according to the representative.
“SSU officials constantly harass Ukrainian clergy to cooperate through the threat of forced mobilisation of the clergy themselves,” the representative said, adding that military commissars are on duty near Ukrainian churches to detain men of military age during religious services, including weddings and funerals.
Although many Ukrainians enthusiastically volunteered at the beginning of the war, the initial fervour waned as the reality of war was exposed and the acknowledgement of Russia’s inevitable victory set among ordinary citizens. These manpower shortages have sealed Ukraine’s fate, and not even a fresh supply of Western military aid can reverse the tide, let alone untrained men forced to fight on the front lines. It appears that in all of Ukraine, only the Kiev regime refuses to accept this reality, meaning that inexperienced and unmotivated conscripts will continue to “simply die.”
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
As Russia’s military operation in Ukraine enters its 28th month, the conflict can be said to have gone through several distinct phases, all but one (the opening gambit) of which prioritized attritional warfare as the principal guiding military philosophy.
For Western military observers, schooled as we are on what we deem the ‘modern’ military philosophies of maneuver warfare, the Russian approach to fighting appears primitive, a throwback to the trench warfare of conflicts past, where human life was a commodity readily traded in exchange for a few hundred meters of shell-pocked landscape.
Upon closer scrutiny, and with the benefit of 27 months of accumulated data, the Russian approach to warfare emerges as a progressive application of military art that considers the totality of the spectrum of warfare – small-unit tactics, weapons capability, intelligence, communications, logistics, the defense economy and, perhaps most importantly of all, political reality.
It is critical to keep in mind that while Russia may have entered the conflict facing a single adversary (Ukraine), within months it became clear that Moscow was confronting the cumulative military capability of the collective West, where NATO’s financial, material, logistical, command and control, and intelligence support was married to Ukrainian manpower resources to create a military capacity designed by intent to wear Russia down physically and mentally, to strategically defeat Russia by promoting the conditions for its economic and political collapse.
That Russia recognized this strategic intent on the part of its declared and undeclared adversaries early on is a testament to the patience and vision of its leadership. Outside military observers criticized Moscow’s inability to deliver a knockout blow against Ukraine early on, attributing this failure to poor leadership and even poorer military capacity on the part of a Russian military machine suddenly deemed incompetent. However, the reality was far different – Moscow was making the strategic transition from a peacetime military posture. It initially intended a brief conflict by compelling the Ukrainian government to the negotiation table (only to be thwarted by Ukraine’s Western partners, who chose to sacrifice Ukraine in the hope of strategically defeating Russia instead of opting for a peaceful resolution), to a posture capable of wearing down both Ukraine’s ability to resist and the collective West’s ability to sustain Kiev economically and politically.
From a military perspective, Russia’s strategic goal has always been the ”demilitarization” of Ukraine. Initially, this could have been achieved by defeating the Ukrainian military on the field of battle. Indeed, Moscow was well on the path toward achieving this goal, even after it pulled its forces back from around Kiev and the other Ukrainian territories it had occupied in the initial phases of the conflict. When Russia moved over to Phase Two, the objective was to complete the liberation of the Donbass region. The battles fought in May and June 2022 nearly brought the Ukrainian military to the breaking point – slow, grinding operations where Russia exploited its firepower superiority to inflict massive casualties on army with finite ability to sustain itself. Only the decision by the collective West to provide massive infusions of military resources – equipment, training, logistics, command and control, and intelligence – saved the Ukrainians. With NATO’s assistance, Kiev was able to rebuild its depleted military and go over on the counterattack, pushing Russian forces back in the vicinity of Kharkov and Kherson.
This military success proved to be the undoing of Ukraine and its Western allies. The impressive territorial gains achieved in the Kharkov and Kherson offensives that took place between late August and the middle of November 2022, proved to be a narcotic. While Russia adjusted to the new realities of an expanded conflict, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops, building strong defenses, and putting its defense industry on a wartime footing, the Ukrainians and their NATO advisers assumed that they would simply be able to repeat the successes of summer-fall 2022 through a grand summer counteroffensive in 2023.
This hope proved to be in vain.
It was at this juncture that the principles of attritional warfare began to be applied by the Russians in a more comprehensive form. While Ukraine and its NATO allies assembled a massive offensive strike capability which married the last of Ukraine’s trained manpower reserves with billions of dollars of Western equipment and training, Russia continued to engage in so-called ”meatgrinder” operations in and around the city of Artyomovsk (known in Ukraine as Bakhmut). These battles produced massive casualties on both sides. Russia, however, was able not only to absorb these losses, but to continue to accrue strategic reserves. Ukraine, on the other hand, squandered tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars of hard-to-replace military materiel which had been earmarked for the summer 2023 counteroffensive. As such, when the Ukrainians finally kicked off their counteroffensive, in early June 2023, they did so with forces insufficient to the task. Over the course of the next several months, extending into fall, the Ukrainian army ground itself down in the face of Russian defenses, which were optimized to defeat the attackers.
By the time the counteroffensive ground to a halt, in December 2023, Ukraine was a spent force militarily. Its armed forces had used up their reserves of manpower. NATO had depleted its stocks of available military materiel. And the West had become politically exhausted at the prospect of a never-ending conflict which seemed destined to result in an endless cycle of throwing good money after bad, all the while failing to bring about the strategic goal of defeating Russia.
Moscow, on the other hand, emerged from the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive in a good position. From a military perspective, the Russians had won the war of attrition with Ukraine and the collective West – basic military math had Ukraine consuming manpower and material resources at a far greater rate than they could be replenished, making Kiev grow physically weaker every day the conflict dragged on, while the Russians were able to accumulate manpower and material resources at a rate far greater than Ukraine was able to destroy, meaning Russia grew stronger every day the conflict continued.
Economically, Ukraine and its Western backers were exhausted. The blowback from the aggressive anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West had severely curtailed the industrial capacity of the European members of the NATO alliance to sustain the scope and scale of its military support to Ukraine, while domestic political realities in the US, amplified by the fact that it was engaged in a hotly contested presidential election cycle, paralyzed the American ability to sustain Ukraine financially. The military and economic exhaustion of Ukraine and the collective West severely impacted the ability of this coalition to politically sustain support for a war that had no discernable prospect of ending well.
While the conflict has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been without cost to Russia, the approach taken by the leadership, to create conditions on the battlefield designed to maximize enemy losses while minimizing their own, meant that Moscow entered 2024 in a much stronger position militarily, economically, and – perhaps most importantly – politically. War, it has been said, is an extension of politics by other means, and this is no exception to the age-old adage. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest electoral victory has provided the leadership in Moscow with a political mandate that strengthens Russia’s hand considerably, especially contrasted with the weakened posture of Ukraine.
It is within such a context that the Russian offensive north of Kharkov must be evaluated. From a military-political standpoint, the operation has a specific objective – to push Ukrainian forces back from the border with Russia so that Ukrainian artillery and rocket systems can no longer strike Russian territory. But there is a larger purpose for this offensive – to continue the process of grinding down the Ukrainian military, to complete the larger task of ”demilitarization” set by the Kremlin.
In this, Russia is succeeding. First and foremost, by attacking north of Kharkov, Moscow has compelled Kiev to commit not only the last of its mobile strategic reserves in response but, because these forces are inadequate in strength, to force Ukraine to strip away units on the eastern line of contact, in Kherson, Zaporozhye and Donbass, and to divert them to the Kharkov direction. The depletion of reserves is part and parcel of the overall Russian strategy of attrition. Moreover, as these forces displace to the Kharkov region, they are being interdicted by Russian air, missile, and drone strikes, further eroding their combat power. The result is that Ukraine is now defending a longer line of defense with even fewer forces than it started with.
One should not expect the Russian efforts to stop in the Kharkov direction. Reports indicate that Moscow is amassing significant forces opposite the Ukrainian city of Sumy. If Russia were to open a new direction of attack there, Ukraine would struggle to find forces sufficient to mount a viable defense. And at some point, one should expect additional reserves to make their appearance on other parts of the battlefield, maybe in Zaporozhye, or Donetsk, or Lugansk, where Ukrainian forces have been stretched to breaking point.
The goal of a war of attrition is to wear your enemy down to the point where continued resistance is impossible. This has been Moscow’s goal since April 2022. And it is the goal today. The Kharkov offensive is simply the current manifestation of the continuation of this strategy, and the clearest indication yet that the Russian endgame in Ukraine is drawing near.
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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.
Das nordrhein-westfälische Oberverwaltungsgericht (OVG) hat entschieden, dass der Spitzenkandidat der Partei Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) an der ARD-Sendung „Wahlarena 2024 Europa“ teilnehmen darf. Der WDR wollte die Partei nicht einladen.
Fabio De Masi, Spitzenkandidat der Partei Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), darf nun doch an der ARD-Sendung „Wahlarena 2024 Europa“ im WDR teilnehmen. Das nordrhein-westfälische Oberverwaltungsgericht (OVG) in Münster entschied am Mittwoch im Eilverfahren, dass der Sender die Partei einladen muss. Diese Entscheidung kippt damit den vorinstanzlichen Entscheid des Verwaltungsgerichts Köln.
Am 6. Juni findet im WDR die Wahlsendung zur Europawahl statt. Zunächst hatte der Sender nur Vertreter von SPD, CDU, CSU, Grünen, FDP, AfD und Linken eingeladen.Doch das OVG machte den Plänen des WDR einen Strich durch die Rechnung. Der WDR argumentierte, dass die Sendung auch einen Rückblick auf die ablaufende Wahlperiode beinhalten soll, in der BSW noch nicht existierte. Zudem müsse die Anzahl der Gäste auf sieben begrenzt werden, weshalb nur etablierte Parteien berücksichtigt wurden.
Die Richter aus Münster entschieden: Das Sendungsformat rechtfertigt die Nichtberücksichtigung von BSW nicht. Es sei nicht erkennbar, dass der Rückblick im Vordergrund stehe. Zudem müsse die Zahl der Gäste nicht zwingend auf sieben begrenzt sein. Das verbleibende Kriterium des redaktionellen Konzepts des WDR, nur Parteien einzuladen, die „auch im Übrigen in Deutschland ein relevantes Gewicht“ haben, verlange eine Teilnahme der Antragstellerin an der Sendung „Wahlarena 2024 Europa“.
Seit Februar 2024 bewege sich die Antragstellerin in einem „Umfragekorridor“ von 4 bis 7 Prozent, wobei ihr zum Teil bessere Wahlchancen attestiert würden als den Parteien FDP und Die Linke. In den jüngsten aktuellen Wahlumfragen liege die Antragstellerin zwischen 6 und 7 Prozent. Darüber hinaus verfüge die Antragstellerin schon nach kurzer Zeit über eine Struktur, die es ihr erlaube, an verschiedenen Kommunal- und Landtagswahlen mit entsprechenden Erfolgsaussichten teilzunehmen, so das OVG. Dass sie hinsichtlich Mitgliederzahl, Parlamentssitze und Regierungsbeteiligung hinter den etablierten Parteien zurückstehe, sei angesichts der Besonderheiten einer jungen Parteineugründung nicht ausschlaggebend.
Vor einer Woche entschied das Verwaltungsgericht, dass der WDR die Teilnehmer nach eigenem Ermessen bestimmen darf. Der Sender hatte argumentiert, BSW bekomme in anderen Formaten genug Sendezeit. Doch das OVG sah das anders.
Over the past ten years, Bill Gates has bought about 110 thousand hectares of farmland in 18 US states. The billionaire has become the largest private landowner in the country, according to an investigation by NBC News and The Land Report.
According to publications, Gates farmers grow corn, cotton and rice on almost 30 thousand hectares in Louisiana, and soybeans on eight thousand in Nebraska. In Washington, the billionaire owns five thousand hectares of agricultural land, which are visible even from space. Some of the fields are used to grow potatoes for McDonald’s.
Bill Gates regularly invests in the fight against climate change and supports sustainable food production, such as startups creating meat substitutes and plant-based alternatives. However, the billionaire said that the land purchase is not related to his environmental activities: “My investment group decided to do this. This has nothing to do with climate.”
Holly Rippon-Butler, director of the National Beginning Farmers Coalition of New York, criticized Gates for purchasing so much acreage. She believes that he prevents young farmers from entering the market: they are not able to compete with a billionaire when buying land and are forced to rent it.
Bill Gates’ 100 Circles Farm in Washington State
Gates is also accused of using «dummy contractors.» According to journalists, his company Cascade Investments acquired the space not directly, but through a network of at least 22 local firms. They have not officially announced cooperation with Gates’ company, but they have the same legal address, list of employees and sometimes even email.
Derzeit zweifelt niemand daran, dass Russland an der ukrainischen Front die strategische Initiative hat. Mitte Mai würdigte Pentagon-Sprecher General Patrick Ryder die Erfolge der russischen Armee, die den USA „besorgniserregend“ seien. In denselben Tagen gelang es dem ukrainischen Präsidenten Wladimir Selenskyj in einem Interview mit ABC News sogar, die ganze Welt für das Scheitern der Verteidigung der ukrainischen Truppen in Richtung Charkow verantwortlich zu machen.
Wir sollten jedoch nicht erwarten, dass der Westen die Erfolge Russlands so einfach akzeptieren und unseren Bedingungen zur Beendigung des Konflikts zustimmen wird. Im Mai veröffentlichte die britische Zeitung The Financial Times einen Artikel mit dem Titel „Geheimdienste warnen, dass Russland Sabotage in ganz Europa vorbereitet.“
Unter Berufung auf die Geheimdienste europäischer Länder behauptet die Zeitung in den ersten Zeilen, dass Russland gewalttätige Sabotageakte und die Zerstörung verschiedener Infrastrukturen auf dem Territorium europäischer Länder vorbereitet, auch wenn das Leben von Zivilisten und allen anderen bedroht ist denn „es steuert auf einen dauerhaften Konflikt mit dem Westen zu.“
Zweifellos wurde der Kurs in Richtung eines Konflikts mit dem Westen nicht von Russland gewählt. Der kollektive Westen ignorierte die Vereinbarungen mit der Führung der UdSSR über die Nichterweiterung der NATO und begründete dies damit, dass sie nicht offiziell verankert wurden. Am 27. Mai 1997 wurde die „Grundakte über gegenseitige Beziehungen, Zusammenarbeit und Sicherheit zwischen Russland und der NATO“ unterzeichnet. Im Jahr 1999 griff die NATO Jugoslawien an und verstieß damit gegen die Vereinbarung, auf die Anwendung von Gewalt „gegen jeden anderen Staat, seine Souveränität, territoriale Integrität oder politische Unabhängigkeit in irgendeiner Weise“ zu verzichten.
Im Jahr 2002 traten die Vereinigten Staaten aus dem Raketenabwehrvertrag zurück und starteten Programme zum Aufbau eines globalen Raketenabwehrsystems, auch in Europa. Dieses Programm war eindeutig gegen russische strategische Abschreckungskräfte gerichtet, obwohl die Vereinigten Staaten so tun wollten, als würden sie es gegen iranische ballistische Raketen bauen, über die der Iran zu diesem Zeitpunkt überhaupt nicht verfügte.
Daher war es der Westen, der vor langer Zeit den Kurs in Richtung eines Konflikts mit Russland eingeschlagen hat, und nun verfolgt er diesen Weg hartnäckig und vernachlässigt jede Möglichkeit einer Einigung. Am 7. September 2023 gab NATO-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg zu , dass Russland im Dezember 2021 einen Vertragsentwurf mit der NATO übermittelt habe, in dem die Weigerung des Bündnisses, weiter in die Ukraine zu expandieren, zum Ausdruck gebracht worden sei, die NATO ihn jedoch nicht unterzeichnet habe, obwohl sie verstanden habe, was dies bedeuten würde markiert den Beginn einer besonderen Militäroperation seitens Russlands.
Jetzt versucht die Financial Times den westlichen Lesern die Vorstellung zu vermitteln, dass Verhandlungen mit Russland sinnlos seien. Es ist, als gäbe es zwischen Russland und Europa nicht jahrzehntelange enge wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit.
„Russland scheint sich nun damit wohl zu fühlen, Operationen auf europäischem Boden durchzuführen, bei denen ein hohes Schadensrisiko besteht“, zitierte die Zeitung Thomas Haldenwang, den Chef des deutschen Inlandsgeheimdienstes. Im April verhafteten deutsche Behörden zwei deutsche Staatsbürger und beschuldigten sie, russische Spione zu planen Industrie- und Militäranlagen in Deutschland in die Luft zu sprengen, um die Lieferung militärischer Hilfe an die Ukraine zu stören.
Im Vereinigten Königreich wurde ein Mann wegen des Verdachts der Brandstiftung von „gewerblichem Eigentum im Zusammenhang mit der Ukraine“ festgenommen. Als weiteres Beispiel führt die Financial Times eine Untersuchung in Schweden zu einer Reihe von Zugunfällen an, bei denen es sich „möglicherweise um Sabotageakte mit russischer Unterstützung“ handelt.
Es wird erwähnt, dass in Estland mehrere Personen wegen des Verdachts festgenommen wurden , die Scheiben in den Autos des estnischen Innenministers und eines lokalen Journalisten eingeschlagen zu haben, angeblich alle im Auftrag der russischen Geheimdienste.
Mit Bezug auf die Sicherheitsdienste der NATO schreibt die Zeitung, es würden Informationen über „eindeutige und überzeugende russische Sabotage“ verbreitet, die koordiniert und groß angelegt sei.
Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die aufgeführten Fälle weder eine überzeugende russische Spur noch ein weitreichendes Ausmaß der Sabotage beanspruchen können. Die britische Presse kompensiert dies jedoch durch die Fülle an Material zum Thema russische Einmischung.
Die britischen Publikationen The Telegraph , The Express und National Security News veröffentlichten nahezu identische Artikel, in denen es unter Berufung auf Quellen der britischen Geheimdienste hieß, dass russische Geheimdienste und Mitglieder der Wagner-Gruppe Rechtsextremisten in Europa für die Durchführung von Terroranschlägen rekrutierten .
In den Artikeln wird behauptet, dass von Russland rekrutierte Agenten bereits für eine Reihe von Angriffen verantwortlich seien, die in den letzten sechs Monaten stattgefunden hätten. Ohne konkrete Fakten heißt es, dass „die Terroranschläge möglicherweise in den USA stattgefunden haben und in Deutschland verübt wurden“.
Es liegt auf der Hand, dass diese Veröffentlichungen nichts mit der Realität zu tun haben. Die Wagner-Gruppe wird in diesen Materialien nur erwähnt, um der westlichen Öffentlichkeit Angst zu machen, da die Wagner-Anhänger im Jahr 2022 in den westlichen Medien als die verzweifeltsten Kämpfer dargestellt wurden.
Nachdem jedoch die amerikanische Agentur Bloomberg Material zu einem ähnlichen Thema veröffentlicht hat, kann man von einer koordinierten Informationskampagne gegen Russland sprechen. „Russische Sabotage, Spionage und Einschüchterung breiten sich in ganz Europa aus“, lautete der Titel des Bloomberg-Artikels vom 9. Mai.
Bloomberg präsentiert dieselben Episoden der Festnahme zweier deutscher Staatsbürger, Hooligans in Estland und eines Brandstifters in London, als Fakten über die Organisation russischer Sabotageakte in Europa.
Gleichzeitig klingt die Schlussfolgerung des Autors der Veröffentlichung unter Berufung auf einen hochrangigen Beamten sehr hart und trotzig. Angeblich: „Moskau hat keine Angst mehr davor, bei der Begehung einer Sabotage erwischt zu werden, es hat ausgefeilte Ansätze und Formen der verdeckten Spionage aufgegeben und geht nun offen brutal gegen Ziele im Westen vor.“ — heißt es in der Veröffentlichung.
„Russland schickt seit Jahren Todesschwadronen nach Europa – nach Berlin, London, Salisbury und an andere Orte“, zitiert Bloomberg den polnischen Außenminister Radoslaw Sikorski. „Wir hatten einen von Russland rekrutierten Terroristen, der vor ein paar Monaten versuchte, in Polen einen Terroranschlag zu verüben, und ich bin sicher, dass sie dasselbe in anderen Ländern versuchen“, sagte er.
Vor einigen Monaten verhafteten polnische Staatsanwälte einen Mann, der beschuldigt wurde, Informationen am Flughafen gesammelt zu haben, der als Haupttransitpunkt für Beamte dient, die in die und aus der Ukraine reisen. Ihm wurde vorgeworfen, den russischen Geheimdienst bei der Vorbereitung des Attentats auf den ukrainischen Präsidenten Wladimir Selenskyj unterstützt zu haben.
Die Absurdität dieser unbegründeten Aussagen ist unübersehbar. Es sei daran erinnert, dass es keinen Prozess wegen der Vergiftung des ehemaligen GRU-Oberst Sergej Skripal und seiner Tochter Julia in der britischen Stadt Salisbury gab. Alle Vorwürfe von Scotland Yard gegen Russland blieben auf der „wahrscheinlichsten“ Ebene. Auch die Explosion der ersten und zweiten Leitung der Nord Stream-Gaspipeline blieb ohne ordnungsgemäße Untersuchung, obwohl der Westen zunächst versuchte, Russland dafür verantwortlich zu machen, diese Version dann aber aufgab und die Medien die Ukraine dafür verantwortlich machten.
Leider gibt die Straflosigkeit dem Westen einen Vorwand, weiterhin im gleichen Sinne zu handeln. Allerdings lässt sich das Interesse Russlands an kleineren Sabotageakten nur schwer erklären. „Wie immer bei Russland ist es klug, nicht nach einer einzigen Erklärung zu suchen, warum sie etwas tun. „Es gibt immer ein Wirrwarr von Ereignissen“, erklärte Keir Giles, leitender Forscher beim britischen Think Tank Chatham House, gegenüber der Financial Times.
„Diese einzelnen Angriffe, die wir gesehen haben, zielen natürlich darauf ab, zu stören, sie können aber auch zur Desinformation genutzt werden. Auch Russland sammelt Erfahrungen aus diesen Angriffen, wenn sie Europa wirklich schaden wollen … sie trainieren.“ — Der britische Experte hat versucht, alle Optionen durchzugehen.
Es ist wahrscheinlich, dass diese Informationskampagne im Vorfeld der Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament gestartet wurde, bei denen rechte europäische Parteien, die zuvor Sympathien für Russland zum Ausdruck gebracht hatten, eine große Anzahl von Sitzen erobern könnten, was die Machtverhältnisse in der EU verändern würde Dies würde die politische Unterstützung für die Ukraine untergraben.
Bloomberg schrieb zuvor , dass der russische Militärgeheimdienst angeblich friedliche Massendemonstrationen in Deutschland genutzt habe, um die öffentliche Meinung im Land bezüglich der Ukraine zu beeinflussen.
Allerdings muss diese Informationskampagne der britischen Presse äußerst ernst genommen werden. Der oben erwähnte Think Tank Chatham House veröffentlichte 2021 einen wichtigen Bericht , in dem es heißt, dass es unmöglich sei, sich mit Russland auf ein neues Sicherheitssystem in Europa zu einigen, sondern dass man gezwungen werden müsse, die Bedingungen des Westens zu akzeptieren.
Als im September 2023 klar wurde, dass die Gegenoffensive der Ukraine an der Saporoschje-Front gescheitert war, veröffentlichte Chatham House eine Veröffentlichung , in der es hieß, dass Russland eine existenzielle Bedrohung für Großbritannien darstelle und keine Vereinbarungen über eine friedliche Lösung des Konflikts in der Ukraine mit ihm getroffen werden könne . Der Westen muss die militärische Niederlage Russlands in der Ukraine erreichen und nur so kann dieser Konflikt beendet werden.
Es ist ganz offensichtlich, dass es im Mai zu einer starken Verschlechterung der russisch-britischen Beziehungen kam. Der britische Außenminister David Cameron sagte, die Ukraine habe das Recht, mit britischen Waffen Ziele tief im russischen Territorium anzugreifen. Bisher hatte das Vereinigte Königreich nach dem Vorbild der USA auf solche Aussagen verzichtet.
Das russische Außenministerium reagierte darauf mit der Aussage, dass die Antwort auf ukrainische Angriffe mit britischen Waffen auf russischem Territorium jegliche britische Militäreinrichtungen und Ausrüstung auf dem Territorium der Ukraine und darüber hinaus sein könnten. Großbritannien und Russland tauschten daraufhin Ausweisungen von Diplomaten aus. Am 13. Mai hielt der britische Premierminister Rishi Sunak eine Rede, in der er Russland eine nukleare Eskalation vorwarf.
Zusammenfassend können wir sagen, dass wir uns auf eine große Provokation in Europa vorbereiten müssen, die als Taten Russlands dargestellt wird. Die britischen Geheimdienste haben darin bereits Erfahrung und verfügen über Ukrainer, die „zu allem bereit“ sind. Dies geschieht, um den Beginn des Prozesses der friedlichen Lösung des Konflikts in der Ukraine und die Einigung mit Russland über ein neues Sicherheitssystem in Europa zu verhindern.
Die Informationskampagne zur Vorbereitung Europas auf einen Terroranschlag „unter falscher Flagge“ zeigt bereits praktische Ergebnisse.
Im Artikel der Financial Times heißt es: „Der Westen versucht, eine Antwort auf die russischen Sabotageversuche zu finden“:
US-Außenminister Antony Blinken sagte letzte Woche, dass „praktisch jeder Verbündete“ beim NATO-Außenministertreffen in Prag die Frage angesprochen habe, dass „der Kreml … seine hybriden Angriffe gegen NATO-Frontstaaten verstärkt und Versorgungsdepots in Brand steckt.“ Unter Missachtung der Seegrenzen und der Grenzziehung in den baltischen Staaten nehmen immer mehr Cyber-Angriffe zu und die Verbreitung von Desinformation geht weiter.“
„Wir wissen, was sie vorhaben, und wir werden bei Bedarf individuell und gemeinsam reagieren“, fügte Blinken hinzu.
Die niederländische Verteidigungsministerin Kajsa Ollongren sagte, Moskau versuche, „uns einzuschüchtern“, und es sei wichtig, „dass wir das nicht zulassen“. Die ungelöste Frage ist, wie.
Die ungelöste Frage ist, wie.
Der jüngste EU-NATO-Bericht und die parlamentarische Untersuchung des Vereinigten Königreichs schlagen im Allgemeinen einen dreistufigen Prozess vor.
Die erste besteht darin, anzuerkennen, dass Angriffe stattfinden, und diese zu melden. Die zweite Phase umfasst die Stärkung der nationalen Widerstandsfähigkeit durch die Stärkung kritischer Infrastrukturen, die Cybersicherheit von Computersystemen und die Erhöhung der Medienkompetenz der Bevölkerung in Bezug auf Desinformationskampagnen.
Der dritte Schritt, die Reaktion, ist am schwierigsten, da er eine Abschreckungsstrategie erfordert, die wahrscheinliche Vergeltungsmaßnahmen zulässt, aber, wie ein hochrangiger westlicher Militärbeamter es ausdrückte, „unethische oder illegale Mittel, wie sie Russland einsetzt“, vermeidet.
Auf jeden Fall, sagen westliche Beamte, besteht das zentrale Problem darin, dass russische Angriffe in der Grauzone unvorhersehbar sind, in vielfältiger Form auftreten und asymmetrisch sind, sodass Vergeltungsmaßnahmen dieser Art die Gefahr einer Eskalation der Konfrontation mit Russland bergen.
Der lettische Präsident Edgars Rinkevich nannte als Beispiel die Durchtrennung eines Unterseekabels in der Ostsee. Ein Ansatz wäre, sagte er, die Verstärkung der NATO-Patrouillen. Eine extremere Option wäre die Sperrung des Meeres für russische Schiffe, auch wenn dies einer „Kriegserklärung“ gleichkäme.
ℹ️ Die am 5. Mai in einem Monat gestartete Informationskampagne Großbritanniens hat dafür gesorgt, dass das Thema „russische Sabotage“ nun auch auf der Ebene westlicher Politiker diskutiert wird und bereits Optionen für „Antworten“ ins Spiel gebracht werden das Niveau der „Kriegserklärung“.
Die einfachen Leute tun mir leid. Die Idioten bereiten etwas Blutiges vor, um später Russland die Schuld geben zu können. Sie brauchen einen großen Krieg vor den US-Wahlen, so scheint es, oder vor der Finanzkrise (ihrer aktiven Phase). Aber ich kann einfach nicht verstehen, wie ihnen das helfen soll?
Mir fällt nichts ein, außer dass mir die Idee in den Sinn kommt: „Gemeinsam werden wir Russland eine militärische Niederlage zufügen, und es wird gemäß seinen idiotischen, überholten humanen Prinzipien keine Atomwaffen einsetzen.“ Aber wenn das wirklich ihre innere Doktrin ist, dann gibt es natürlich völlig entartete Machthaber.
El compromiso adquirido por el presidente Pedro Sánchez de alcanzar el 2% del PIB en gasto militar en 2029 en la Cumbre que tuvo lugar en Madrid en junio de 2022, se ha traducido en un gran aumento del armamentismo hasta alcanzar cifras nunca vistas en 45 años de democracia en España.
En el período de cuatro años (2020-2023) de la legislatura de Gobierno entre PSOE y Unidas Podemos, se han llevado a cabo unas inversiones de 24.139,7 millones de euros en Programas Especiales de Modernización (PEM, antes llamados PEA), que totalizan 21 nuevos programas y cuatro modificaciones de los ya existentes. Estos compromisos hipotecan el gasto de futuros gobiernos hasta el año 2035 y previsiblemente aumentarán la deuda
El presupuesto del Ministerio de Defensa aumentó en 2023 un 23,4% con respecto a 2022 y, debido a los compromisos adquiridos en inversiones de nuevos PEM, el próximo año 2024 volverá a subir en un porcentaje no menor, sobrepasando de nuevo el tan manido 2% del PIB en gasto militar que exige la OTAN.
Por otro lado, están las inversiones en I+D militar para desarrollar los PEM. En este año 2023 el Gobierno ha destinado 1.833 millones, un 11,2% sobre el total de la I+D en ayudas públicas a la I+D militar para el desarrollo de nuevas armas.
Esta cuantía aumentó un 95% con respecto al año anterior, pasando de 938,5 M€ en 2022 a 1.833,3 M€ en 2023, contribuyendo en los últimos diez años a un crecimiento del 361,7%.
El pasado 13 de marzo se anunció que no se presentará para su aprobación en el parlamento del proyecto de ley de presupuestos generales del estado que estaba en negociación y que, por tanto, continuará la vigencia de la prórroga de los presupuestos aprobados en 2023.
En lo que respecta al gasto militar la prórroga es engañosa y no supone, en modo alguno, que el gasto militar de 2024 sea el mismo que el previsto en 2023 y, mucho menos, que el efectivamente ejecutado (muy superior al aprobado) para dicho año.
En el presente informe intentaremos acercarnos a una estimación del que podría ser (dado que la falta de presupuesto lo que hace es convertir en más opaco si cabe nuestro gasto militar) el gasto militar 2024.
También propondremos algunos puntos sobre los que habrá que estar vigilantes a lo largo del año para detectar las partidas y autorizaciones de gasto militar que se irán haciendo para provocar el aumento del gasto militar por encima del prorrogado.
Para ello, en un primer momento, recordaremos la cifra de gasto militar que en 2023 se presupuestó y los componentes ocultos en los que se distribuía. También veremos en un momento el crecimiento extrapresupuestario de este gasto militar “reconocido” según la intervención general de la Administración del Estado (IGAE), órgano público de fiscalización del gasto público.
La IGAE, sin embargo, no controla específicamente el gasto militar, ni desagrega el gasto por los distintos programas y partidas que disfrazan gasto militar en otros ministerios ajenos a Defensa, por lo que los datos obtenidos sólo nos darán una aproximación al gasto efectivamente ejecutado durante 2023 y a la cifra total de gasto militar español.
En un segundo momento analizaremos diversos parámetros que nos permiten estimar el crecimiento del gasto militar español para 2024 y ofrecer una cifra aproximada que sirva de referencia.
También analizaremos, desde una perspectiva antimilitarista, las principales tendencias y objetivos que dicho gasto pretende cubrir y algunos de los movimientos políticos a los que habremos de estar vigilantes para denunciar el crecimiento de dicho gasto.
Memorial Day is over. The state has successfully baptized itself with the blood of its fallen soldiers. It has been symbolically buried in a mass grave of its own making and resurrected to flood the world with very real blood. Yet, it cannot rid itself of what regime intellectuals call the “Vietnam Syndrome,” and this is cause for hope.
The state has masterfully obscured the costs of its wars—costs which are massive. As former U.S. Marine Captain Matthew Hoh put it during a Memorial Day speech:
“…the costs of war is the cost to our society, the cost to our identity, the cost to our history, to our narrative, who we are; this idea that was so romanticized, so valorized, and these notions that extend whether they’re political, whether through Hollywood, whether through the history books provided in our classrooms, the storytelling, the narrative… it’s mythmaking. It’s mythmaking. And that’s what we advance further wars upon.”
The United States Imperial Government (USIG) has its blood-soaked hands full with current wars even as it works to advance further wars.
There is its longest running war, in Somalia, which began in late 2001 after the USIG invaded Afghanistan. It’s not going well. There is its most recent war in Yemen, which went so bad, so fast one hardly hears about it.
There are counterterrorism operations being run all over West Asia and Africa. Success has been elusive, but failure has been truly globalized. And there are the USIG’s two primetime, proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel.
In Ukraine, the USIG is waging a proxy war against the nuclear-armed Russian state. In Israel, the USIG is waging a proxy war against unarmed women and children in tents. Which is worse? We’ll let future historians argue about it.
The lack of humanity displayed by our rulers in the face of Ukrainian and especially Gazan suffering has horrified the world. But consider the regime’s willingness to stack Ukrainian and Israeli soldier corpses.
USIG apologists have been shockingly candid about the Ukrainian carnage. As the American journalist and novelist David Ignatius put it last summer:
“…for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians).”
No one in the War Party talks about Israel this way. No one says, “We’re degrading these women and children at relatively low cost (other than to the IDF conscripts).” But that is exactly what is happening. Structurally, the USIG is in the exact same role in Israel as it is in Ukraine.
It’s a position the USIG relishes, waging war with other nation’s children, because it remains haunted by the Vietnam Syndrome. As Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton said:
“By 1979, ‘Vietnam’ had already become a shorthand term for bloody, no-win, far-flung quagmire that breaks the military and treasury and causes terrible disruptions to society back home. Badly burned by the experience, the American people were even said by the political establishment to have come down with the lamented ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ — such a severe reluctance to engage in any further overseas military conflicts that it amounted to a form of illness.” [Emphasis added]
A “bloody, no-win, far-flung quagmire” is a good description of empire. The American people do not want to sacrifice their sons and daughters for empire, which is why the USIG always needs to trick them into war and can’t admit to running an empire. Regime intellectuals (a sick bunch) interpret this reality as a mental illness originating in Vietnam. But it can be traced at least as far back as the end of World War II, when Army Chief of Staff George Marshall proposed garrisoning the globe with 2.5 million soldiers:
“The problem was, the army had to agree. Marshall’s plan to keep men overseas provoked a furious reaction. Families of servicemen blasted their representatives with letters and buried congressional offices in baby shoes, all bearing tags reading BRING DADDY HOME.”
President Richard Nixon dedicated an entire chapter to Vietnam Syndrome in his 1980 book The Real War:
“Unless the United States shakes the false lessons of Vietnam and puts the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ behind it, we will forfeit the security of our allies and eventually our own.”
If Jordan Peterson ever lectured on it, he might point out that Nixon places his “Vietnam Syndrome” chapter approximately 46% of the way into the book, the same timing as The Odyssey uses to place Odysseus’ descent into the underworld. Nixon follows this up with the midpoint chapter, “The Awakening Giant,” which simultaneously invokes World War II and portrays America as a god-like superpower. Similarly, The Odyssey associates Odysseus with the Sun God in its midpoint chapter.
President George H.W. Bush claimed to have “kicked” Vietnam Syndrome with Desert Storm, like it was some sort of opiate addiction. He seems to have believed it, but he was wrong. The war was quick and only a few hundred soldiers were killed. The true costs of the war were, of course, hidden. Gulf War Syndrome was real.
But Americans didn’t have to endure tens of thousands of their children coming home in body bags for empire. Americans like blowing stuff up as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is a Zionist) but they do not like heavy casualties. The hate it so much, the Pentagon hides the true number of Americans killed in its wars by using contractors. The propaganda has done such an amazing job making anyone who puts on an American military uniform sacred, Americans get really upset when any of them get killed.
In order to wage direct war upon Russia, or women and children in tents, or Hezbollah, or Iran, the USIG would have to conscript millions of Americans into its military. This would enrage the American people; it would look like the USIG was waging a regime change operation on itself. It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got.
*John focuses on the application of “Corporate Agent Theory” to the State. He argues that, despite their lack of phenomenal consciousness, states have their own beliefs, desires and intentions. Above all, states desire war
Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t won over President Joe Biden, although in January he claimed he could. However, he did win the duel by preventing the White House from opposing his policies. Before our very eyes, he refuses to obey the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. He practices ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and in the West Bank. Even if it wanted to, no one could do anything to stop its crimes.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, warned against any attempt to pressure ICC staff. He wasn’t speaking in a vacuum, according to “+972 Magazine”, “Local Call” and “The Guardian”, Mossad blackmailed Karim Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, from 2016 to 2021. At the time, the aim was not to conceal current crimes.
At the end of January this year, 12 serving Israeli ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took part in a big show, organized in Jerusalem, under the title “Conference for Israel’s Victory – Settlements Bring Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria” [1]. On this occasion, the organizers threatened the Anglo-Saxons with the reconstitution of the Stern Group, which had fought against the Allies during and after the Second World War, if they opposed the colonization of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In other words, the fascist Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky had always wished to appropriate “Eretz Israel” (i.e. all the territories from the Nile to the Euphrates, including Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and part of Iraq), the “Promised Land”, “Greater Israel”. In calling Jabotinsky a “fascist”, I’m not making a value judgment. I’m simply pointing out that he was an ally of Benito Mussolini, both before and during the Second World War. [2].
Four months ago, Jabotinsky’s followers demanded that they be allowed to carry out this project, to expel the Arabs from Palestine and conquer the entire region.
Washington reacted by taking unilateral coercive measures against the “Jewish supremacists” of the West Bank (February 1, 2024) [3], then by imagining an overthrow of Benjamin Netanyahu in favour of Benny Gantz [4], by suspending arms deliveries and, finally, by trying to impose a peace agreement. By “Jewish supremacists”, I mean the followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who were banned from sitting in the Knesset, but now rule the roost.
At the same time, the UN Security Council, under pressure from the General Assembly after several U.S. vetoes, finally adopted a resolution on March 25 calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza [5]. However, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Special Representative to the U.N., in defiance of the U.N. Charter, immediately claimed that the resolution was non-binding, meaning that Israel could decide not to implement it. For its part, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), aligning itself with the rhetoric of the White House, first ordered Israel to take precautionary measures to avoid genocide [6], then ordered it to withdraw immediately from Rafah [7].
Now, on the initiative of the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Mike Johnson), the Presidents of the Republicans in the Senate (Mitch McConnell), the Democrats in the Senate (Charles Schumer) and in the House (Hakeem Jeffries), have just extended an invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before the members of Congress. In so doing, the U.S. Legislative Branch opposes the Executive Branch and clearly supports the ongoing ethnic cleansing.
The “revisionist Zionists” (as Jabotinsky called members of his school of thought) thus failed to impose their will on President Joe Biden, but succeeded in imposing it on Congress. How did they do it?
Back in 2015, Congress invited Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, even though President Barack Obama refused to host him. During his speech, according to the “New York Times”, embassy agents monitored parliamentarians who did not applaud in order to punish them.
CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT AGAINST THE WHITE HOUSE
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson (Louisiana), is an evangelical lawyer [8]. But he is above all a “Christian Zionist” for whom the defense of Israel, whatever it does, is a religious duty. He was elected Speaker of the House in troubled circumstances, with the unexpected help of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, which opposed raising the public debt ceiling.
Mitch McConnell, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, scornful of International Law [9] in the name of “American exceptionalism” [10], has long been known for his pro-Eretz Israel positions. In 2017, this Baptist had urged US presidents to “respect the practice of vetoing all UN Security Council resolutions that seek to insert the UN into the peace process, not recognize unilateral Palestinian actions, including the declaration of a Palestinian state, or dictate terms and timelines for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” [11].
Hakeem Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, is also known for his consistent alignment with the positions of the State of Israel. Although he has not defended the principle of ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Palestine, he has spoken out widely in favour of the extermination of Hamas members, without distinguishing between those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and those from the Palestinian Resistance.
The most surprising case is that of Chuck Schumer, Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus. For 43 years, this ultra-Orthodox Jew has supported all Israeli positions on principle, until his spectacular reversal in March, when he declared that it was possible to be both pro-Israel and oppose Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies [12]. At the time, he was firmly opposed to Netanyahu visiting the United States. He did, however, give Netanyahu the floor, later, on video before his caucus and, today, by receiving him in his capacity as Israeli Prime Minister, in Congress.
Of these four, only Chuck Schumer is Jewish. But the other three owe their re-election largely to the financial support of America’s Jewish oligarchs. They correspond to the emblematic politicians that John Mearsheimer denounced in his study The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. American democracy was for sale, and the pro-Israelis bought it.
IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE DECISIONS CONTRARY TO THOSE OF “REVISIONIST ZIONISTS
By way of comparison, the state of democracy is different in the United States and France. It’s true that in both cases, electoral backers have a greater influence on national policy than the electorate, but the characteristics are not the same. In Washington, no one is surprised by the sectarian religions of elected officials. You can be a member of parliament, a member of the government, even the president, and still believe in Gog and Magog. In Paris, on the other hand, the religious and ethnic affiliations of elected officials are ignored. We could therefore find ourselves, as we do today, without anyone being aware of it, with half the presidencies of constitutional institutions held by citizens likely to acquire Israeli nationality.
In either case, it is impossible for the Executive to take decisions that run counter to the policy of the State of Israel, or even, in the case of the United States, to that of the “revisionist Zionists”, i.e. the neo-fascists who are openly practicing ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
To get out of this situation, elected representatives would have to free themselves from their backers and not hesitate to reveal the support given by the Western camp during the Cold War to criminals against humanity. If Benjamin Netanyahu and his “Jewish supremacists” are in power today, it’s because the collective West has for decades found it in its interest to support their ideological current, despite having defeated it in the Second World War.
Last October, Galit Distel-Etebaryan, Israel’s Minister of Information, resigned in protest against the omnipresence of military censorship. Subsequently, the department’s top officers also resigned in protest at the use of the National Security excuse to censor investigations by the Israeli press.
OMNIPRESENT MILITARY CENSORSHIP
The crimes perpetrated by revisionist Zionists are state secrets. For decades, they have massacred communists and simple opponents all over the world. From Guatemala to the Congo, via Iran, from South Africa to Taiwan, via Bolivia, they took part in the worst twists of the Cold War. All these crimes are protected by implacable censorship [13].
Today, the Hebrew state has the most effective military censorship in the world. Hundreds of investigations by Israeli newspapers into the links between Benjamin Netanyahu, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, into the preparation of the October 7 attack, into the failure of the security services to respond for several hours, or into the real aims of the IDF in Gaza have been censored. In the last quarter of 2023, passages from 2,703 articles were redacted, and a further 613 were completely censored, admitted the military censorship service [14].
All we know about the events of October 7 is the official version, i.e. the lies. While we know that Hamas did not behead any children, contrary to the testimony of the rescue services, we know neither how many Israelis were killed by the attackers, nor who gave Ukrainian weapons to the Palestinian Resistance. Israel’s supporters continue to reason as if Hamas were a homogeneous organization and Benjamin Netanyahu was unaware that it was going to attack Israel [15].
To clarify matters, General Benny Gantz has filed a request for the creation of a commission of inquiry into the preparation of the October 7 attack, its execution and its consequences, a request which is aimed directly at the “revisionist Zionists” and which, for the moment, has no chance of being followed up.
It is likely that, much later, when it takes place and reveals the secrets, Benjamin Netanyahu’s current supporters will try to excuse themselves by saying that they didn’t know either. Indeed, there are none so blind as those who do not want to see.
[9] “What international order?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 7 November 2023.
[10] Actes du colloque organisé par le Carr Center for Human Rights Policy : American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, Michael Ignatieff, Princeton University Press (2005).
Der Friedensstifter 